#crowd-control

There was no “they.” There was not even a “he,” no armed person turning on a crowd. But what happened at JFK last night was, in every respect but the violence, a mass shooting. The fact that there was no attack at the center of it was both the weirdest and the scariest part — that an institution whose size and location and budget should make it a fortress, in a country that has spent 15 years focused compulsively on securing its airports, in a city with a terrifyingly competent anti-terror police unit, could be transformed into a scene of utter bedlam, stretching out from all eight terminals across the tarmac and onto the adjacent highways, by the whisper of a threat. Within minutes, the whole apparatus of the airport and its crowd-control mechanisms had collapsed into total disarray. When the thousands of us who had been racing away from shooters finally managed to catch our breath, long after midnight, the idea that the airport could ever manage a crowd, let alone a hysterical one, looked ridiculous. The fact that there had been, actually, nothing to panic about was an enormous relief, of course. But it made things all the more eerie the next morning, when we woke up feeling like survivors of a ghost trauma, a minor local-news story. For several hours, we were in the flood of panic and chaos of an ongoing act of terror. There’s no other way to describe it. That it was an overreaction almost doesn’t matter; in fact, that is how terrorism works.

Crowd-Control Drone Can Fire Pepper Spray

The 'Skunk' drone is fitted with paintball guns which can fire up to 80 pepper spray pellets every second.

A crowd-control drone fitted with paintball guns, speakers and strobe lights has been built by a South African company.

Desert Wolf says it has already received an order for 25 of the Skunk Riot Control Copters from an unnamed international mining company outside the country.

The guns can be fitted with dye markers, solid plastic pellets and small capsules of pepper spray.

The drone has a payload capacity of around 40kg; it can carry up to 4,000 projectiles and fires up to 80 shots each second.

The eight-rotor aircraft also has high-definition and thermal imaging cameras.

It needs two people to control it; one to manoeuvre the aircraft, and one to control the array of tools and weapons on board.

Complete with a ground control station, it will cost around 500,000 South African Rand (£27,400).

A spokesman for Desert Wolf said more orders were in the pipeline from customers around the world.

These include security companies, police units and businesses.