Having been removed from the board of the Whitney last year due to his involvement in the sale of tear gas, Warren Kanders has announced that Safariland will sell off their crowd-control products divisions.
Kanders announced earlier this week that his company will divest their interests, and sell on all “crowd-control solutions, including chemical agents, munitions and batons, to law enforcement and military agencies.”
Safariland’s sale of “crowd-control solutions” most notably that of tear gas, has brought with it an onslaught on negative press in recent years. He stepped down from his role as vice chairman if the Whitney Museum of American Art after the group Decolonize This Place held protests outside the gallery. Marz Saffore, a member of the group, wrote in an Instagram comment that Kanders and his company were “responsible for supplying tear gas to police in MN and all over the world.”
It is believed that the tear gas Kanders’ company sells has been used on migrants at the US-Mexico border.
Eyal Weizman, founder of Forensic Architecture, a group who focus on collecting evidence of human rights violations, said that: “Tear gas is a chemical weapon. We need to move beyond Kanders and use the momentum of the current protests to ban tear gas outright and worldwide.”
While Kanders’ statement did not outright address the reason for selling off the division of Safariland, he noted that the company would focus instead upon the sale of products that offer “passive defensive protection” including bulletproof vests. He declined to comment further.
