By Tom Hays, The Associated Press
NEW YORK -- Forget the megaphones. Police will have a much more high-tech -- and louder -- option to make themselves heard over the din of Manhattan traffic and protesters outside the Republican National Convention.
Called the Long Range Acoustic Device, the machine was developed for the military and is capable of projecting sound at an ear-splitting 150 decibels.
The sound machines, to be posted outside Madison Square Garden, are being tested at an airfield in a remote section of Brooklyn along with other devices such as hand-held radiation detectors and mechanical barriers strong enough to stop a moving vehicle in its tracks.
At the training site on Thursday, police practiced disarming a truck bomb at a checkpoint. Scores of officers also made mock arrests of police cadets who posed as protesters.
The department recently bought two of the 45-pound acoustic sound machines for $35,000 apiece. It would mark the first time the instrument -- which can beam sounds for 300 yards or more -- has been used by a civilian force.
“We believe we’d be able to use them in a number of scenarios,” said police department spokesman Paul Browne.
Two possible uses cited by Browne: directing crowds to safety following a terrorist attack or other calamity, and reminding protesters where they’re allowed to march and rally.
The military, which has used the machines in Iraq, bills them as a “nonlethal weapon” designed to disperse hostile crowds or ward off potential combatants by delivering prerecorded warnings in several languages and, if needed, an earsplitting screeching noise.
Police insist the latter feature won’t be used at the convention. Decibel readers will be used to keep the volume at safe levels, said Inspector Thomas Graham of the department’s crowd control unit.
Mobile metal barriers will form a series of checkpoints around the arena. Once a bus, truck or car is secured between two barriers, it will be screened for bombs or other contraband by cameras that provide real-time video images from underneath.
In addition, hand-held radiation detection devices will help officers to guard against a “dirty bomb.”