More Trouble With Police and OWS

It looks like the police are getting serious with respect the Occupy protests here and about. It now appears that at least in NYC and Philly that they have deployed LRAD.

The Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) is a distance hailing device and non-lethal crowd control weapon developed by LRAD Corporation to send messages, warnings and harmful, pain inducing tones over longer distances than normal loudspeakers. ... LRAD systems are used by maritime, law enforcement, military and commercial security companies to send instructions and warnings over distances, and to force compliance.

This is serious. This is a military weapon and at ranges less than 100 meters can cause serious and permanent injury(according to the manufacturer). The police in many of the large cities are already outfitted as combat troops and using urban combat techniques against lawful protesters but it now seems they are going to take it one step further. These weapons are not meant to be used in such settings and people are going to get hurt. It is getting harder and harder to recognize the "shining beacon on the hill".