A judge has ruled that a lawsuit against the NYPD for officers’ use of a Long Range Acoustic Device sound cannon at a Black Lives Matter protest can proceed, because “sound can be used as a force.” The city had sought to get the federal lawsuit thrown out in part on the basis that “the LRAD is not an instrumentality of force, but a communication device,” and that “the officers’ creation of a sound that plaintiffs happened to hear cannot be considered ‘physical contact.'”