Riot Shield

About the Riot Shield

A riot shield is a wall you can carry, a broad slab of transparisteel or armorplast that a security officer plants between themselves and a mob. Its primary job is defense, soaking thrown bottles, blows, and the occasional blaster bolt, but a shield in trained hands is also a weapon: a shoving edge, a battering face, a tool for driving a crowd back or slamming an aggressor to the ground. The stunning shove that comes with a well-braced push can drop a charging rioter and knock the fight out of them without a lethal blow, which is exactly what crowd-control doctrine wants. Line up a row of them and you have a moving barrier that herds and contains. Alone, it turns a single guard into a stubborn, immovable obstacle that a panicked crowd learns to flow around.