Council vetos improvised weapons ban
Apr. 15, 2021 at 6:00 am
Council has rejected a proposal to ban items from public gatherings that could become weapons if a peaceful protest became violent.
The proposal would have banned otherwise legal items from protests including sticks/poles larger than three inches in diameter, any length of metal pipe, all baseball bats, any aerosol spray (including tear gas, mace, pepper spray, smoke canisters or bear repellent), slingshots, catapults, chains longer than 20 inches, all blades, martial arts weapons, containers of noxious liquid, all glass bottles, open flames, shields, bricks or laser pointers.
“There are items that people can have ordinarily in the course and scope of their lives that are fine to have but within the context of showing up in a protest, you have to ask how is that contributing to the expressive conduct,” said Interim Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks. “If we want to promote peaceful protest, and we want to encourage constitutional activity, which is the goal — that is a longtime goal of this organization to facilitate that — the circumstances have evolved such though that there are people who will come up with the intent of creating the chaos, creating the fear of injury, looking to escalate the circumstances. And they’ll use these kinds of things to do exactly that.”