REUTERS

CHICAGO CHICAGO police, who have a reputation for dealing toughly with protesters, will be prepared for the worst with new riot gear, including ‘sound cannon’, if demonstrators at the NATO summit get out of line this weekend.

America’s third-largest city and President Barack Obama’s hometown has never hosted anything like the meeting starting on Sunday, which will draw representatives from some 50 countries, including leaders of the 28 members of the military alliance.

The two-day summit is also drawing protesters from around the United States and beyond, most to protest peacefully against the NATO-led war in Afghanistan and economic inequality.

Protest organisers hope thousands will turn out to demonstrate on Sunday and march to the summit site at a sprawling convention centre along Lake Michigan.

Police said they will be keeping a watchful eye out for anarchists bent on more provocative actions, and have ordered about $1 million worth of new riot gear, including face shields that attach to helmets and fit over gas masks.

They have also ordered armour for police horses and acquired two long-range acoustic devices that can be used as ‘sound cannon’ to disperse crowds.

Critics say these devices can cause hearing damage. A police spokeswoman said they would be used to deliver messages to crowds.

“What I want to do is extract the people who need to be extracted,” Chicago Police Chief Garry McCarthy said of the strategy for handling protesters.

Police would not use their new riot gear unless it was necessary to control the crowds, he said in an interview broadcast on local radio on Tuesday.

There are fears are that the meeting could descend into the chaos of the 1999 World Trade Organisation negotiations in Seattle, where window- smashing protesters ran wild. Since then, protests have become a fixture at such international meetings and police have become more sophisticated at handling them.

NATO’s summit in the French city of Strasbourg in 2009 was marred by significant violence in which hundreds of youths rioted and set fire to buildings, although this was not repeated at the last meeting of alliance leaders in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon in November 2010.

There is also the ever-present risk of terrorism at such a gathering of world leaders, local FBI chief, Robert Grant, told a February briefing for business people.

“Weapons of mass destruction and all those things that scare people at night - that’s my world,” Grant said, adding that precautions were being taken to detect any plots.

Some Chicago city officials privately express the hope that Obama’s decision to move the G8 summit — a much smaller gathering of just the Western powers and Russia — from Chicago to the seclusion of Camp David, Maryland, will diminish the protests as the G8 is where economic issues will be discussed.