Less lethal, but more to explore

Journalist Linda Rodriguez McRobbie shares lessons from her two-year, in-depth examination of kinetic-impact projectiles.

THE PEOPLE VS. RUBBER BULLETS, a comprehensive examination of less-lethal munitions and their use in crowd control, is Long Lead’s most ambitious production to date. Consisting of six parts and an interactive visual timeline, the feature took two years from pitch to publication. Linda Rodriguez McRobbie’s deeply reported story also features hundreds of photos and dozens of videos that illustrate the impact that kinetic-impact projectiles have made on the lives of victims, communities, and law enforcement. It’s the most robust multimedia examination of the subject ever published.?

As the U.S. continues to grapple with issues surrounding police violence, THE PEOPLE VS. RUBBER BULLETS shows that there are many lingering questions about the use of these tools for crowd control, how officers are trained on them, and the function a police force serves for its constituency.?

As the story’s final installment was published, Long Lead talked to McRobbie about what made her want to tackle the subject, why there is so little data on kinetic-impact projectiles, and the psychological effects using these weapons has on law enforcement and the public. This conversation has been edited and condensed.

Long Lead: Journalists don't land—or even pitch!—35,000-word explainers in 2023. What was your original proposal, and how did it turn into this huge piece?

Linda Rodriguez McRobbie: It was initially conceived as a history, psychology and an overview of less-lethal, kinetic impact munitions. It was inspired largely because of what we were seeing coming out of the protests from 2020. It seemed like these weapons were being used at an unprecedented rate, in ways and in places that were really not seen before.?

Now, certainly, this was the most civil unrest that we've seen in decades, but the widespread use and reliance on them by law enforcement was surprising to me. It was shocking.

I wanted to dive into what these weapons were—it was more conceived of as a profile of the weapon itself. And so I was interested in where they're manufactured. Who makes them? How are they tested? How are they used? What are the guidelines? And what are they supposed to be? From there, it expanded.

"You can't tell the story of kinetic impact projectiles without talking about the people who have been dramatically injured by them."?

LL: What challenges did you face reporting on something this extensive?

LRR: One of the big things that I discovered through the course of writing this is that there's not a lot of real solid information or data about how [less-lethal munitions] are being used. There are more than 17,000 different law enforcement agencies at work in the United States. And each of these agencies has the power to make their own guidelines and rules. They also don't [document less-lethal usage] because they are under no official obligation to report how they use force. It’s, as one researcher told me, a big black hole of information. So we only know what they tell us.?

We also only know what the manufacturers say about them. I was perpetually surprised by that. I'm not certain exactly why I was so surprised, but I figured somebody somewhere has to know how these are being used, whether they are actually less lethal.

That's the part that keeps coming back to me — we're just using these [weapons] with no real understanding of how they work practically in the field. We're using them in circumstances where they're probably not warranted. And we're not using them effectively even in circumstances where they could be warranted.

LL: So we’re pretty much flying blind.?

LRR: Totally. You look at the cases where people have been dramatically injured, and they seem so preventable. Certainly, hindsight is absolutely 20/20, but there has to be a reason why police officers and law enforcement agents who are using these things think that if they just fire them off, it's fine.?

LL: What is the biggest blind spot when it comes to using less-lethal munitions?

LRR: One area where I wish there was actual data and research on is the psychological effect of using these weapons. Are these words that we're using to describe them — ”less lethal,” “rubber bullets,” “foam round” — having a demonstrable effect on how police officers are deploying them??

If you had a gun in your hand that you thought wasn't really going to hurt anybody, would you use it more often?

There's a huge chasm between less lethal and totally fine. One of the things that has changed over the last 50 years is that we increasingly use the word “less” lethal instead of “non” lethal. But it's shocking to me to think that for a long period of time, these kinds of weapons were considered non lethal as if they couldn't possibly kill someone when demonstrably that was false.?

LL: What was it like working with Long Lead on this project??

LRR: What was exciting was expanding the possibilities of how we would be presenting the information. Knowing that it would be possible to have things like audio and images and video to augment the reading experience was very exciting.

Also, having the fact checkers be as thorough as they were was incredible.

LL: What do you ultimately want to be the outcome of this reporting?

LRR: What I would like to see is an increased recognition that these munitions are not benign. And that the effects that they've had, and the warnings against those effects have been part of this conversation for 50 years, there's nothing new about how dangerous they are.?

I would love to see more data, more information about how they're being used, so that we can make informed decisions about whether they're actually a benefit. Even some of the people that I've talked to who've been injured by these [munitions] suggested that there are places and times and contexts in which these could be useful. What I'm hopeful about is that the level of reporting and the effort that went into this could inform a discussion, and that discussion will be more nuanced.?

One of the most interesting things that came out of the report looking into the death of Victoria Snelgrove in Boston was that the officer who fired the pepper spray ball that killed her had been trained on how to maintain the weapon, how to take it apart and put it back together. But he had never been taught about when to fire it.?

"I do think a blanket ban on these munitions is probably not practical — or likely. I think what’s more important to change is how we consent to be policed in America."?

I think it’s important that this work is a lens to look at how policing is conducted in America. That is a bigger topic, and there are many more well-informed people than I am on this, but if you look at some of the less-lethal practices in the context of American policing, it's a troubling picture.

My hope is that some of the conversation can inform how we talk about policing in the future.?