Life and Death at Paint-Blank Range : Hobbies: Police officers use the Indoor City Paintball arena for drills and training exercises, where shooters risk nothing more than getting splattered with dye.

At least half a dozen members of the Hawthorne Police Department SWAT team were killed one recent night--some more than once--in a series of vicious gun battles.

All of the slain officers have fully recovered. Several vowed to get revenge.

The reason for their Lazarus-like recoveries is that the bullets that hit them were not made of lead, but were instead little round gelatin capsules filled with paint. And the scene of the gun battle was not a street in Hawthorne, but rather an 8,000-square-foot entertainment center near Gardena known as Indoor City Paintball.

It’s a place where for $20, anyone can enjoy the apparently satisfying sensation of shooting another person with paint-filled balls fired from special air guns.

“It’s fun for us, but it’s work too,” said Hawthorne Police Lt. Mike Effler as he and his 10 Tactical Entry Team officers took a break from practicing several training scenarios, including flushing a suspect out of a building and serving a search warrant for drugs. The fatigue-clad officers shelled out their own money to rent the Indoor City Paintball playing arena for a private two-hour training session.

“This is still a game, but it adds a little adrenaline,” said Effler, especially since getting hit with a paint ball that’s traveling 250 feet per second can leave a nasty welt. “It helps us test our reactions.”

After several training exercises in which relatively few rounds were fired, however, the Hawthorne SWAT team members finally got a chance to do what most paint ball players do: swarm into the playing area and start shooting at each other like a bunch of kids, amid hoots and shouts and boyish cries of, “Gotcha!”

Most of them were hit at least once.

“It smarts,” said Officer Steve Ailshie, another shooting victim.

“This is more like a fun thing,” said Detective Tom Jester. “It’s a camaraderie thing.”

And fun--violent, messy, dirty, exhausting fun--is what paint ball is all about.

However, some people view paint ball as somehow, well, almost immoral, acknowledges Mitch Hotta, vice president of I & I Sports, a paint ball equipment distribution company that operates Indoor City Paintball.

After all, they argue, in these violent times, when people in Los Angeles are shot to death almost every day, and when even toy guns are considered by many to be “politically incorrect,” isn’t there something wrong with shooting people for fun? Even if you’re only shooting them with paint?

“I hear that a lot,” says Hotta. “And a lot of manufacturers are trying to change the image of the sport. But I don’t think you can ever disassociate the image of violence from the sport of paint ball.”

Paint ball has been around for about a decade. According to Randy Kamiya, editor of Action Pursuit Games magazine, a Burbank-based publication for paint ball enthusiasts, perhaps as many as 5 million people have played at least one paint ball game. Another indication of the sport’s immense popularity, Kamiya said, is that last year paint ball manufacturers produced almost one billion paint balls for sale worldwide.

Paint ball guns, which are marketed under names like “Sniper” and “Splatmaster,” range from pump action to semi-automatic to fully-automatic. They cost $200 to $600 and more, not including accessories, such as special sights, ammo bandoleers and carbon dioxide cartridges.

Players wear face masks to protect their eyes; men are encouraged to wear groin protectors, and women to wear chest protectors. Although the water soluble dye in the paint balls is supposed to wash out, old clothes are recommended.

Paint ball games most often are played outdoors, with the players creeping through bushes and sagebrush to find and shoot members of an opposing team. (Under most rules, there are no wounds in paint ball; any hit that leaves a paint glob, from a head shot to a finger nick, is considered fatal, and the dead player must leave the field for the rest of the game.)

But Indoor City Paintball takes the outside game and transports it to an indoor, urban-like environment, where players creep through a maze of paint-splattered plywood buildings and obstacles in search of their human prey. Hotta said it’s the only indoor facility of its kind in the Los Angeles area.

“There’s a lot more action,” Hotta says of the indoor game. “The game periods are shorter, so if you get shot you don’t have to sit out as long. It’s a lot more intense than the outdoor game.”

There are some other differences between outdoor and indoor paint ball games, says Michael Suh, manager at Indoor City Paintball. For example, at the indoor facility, paint ball grenades, paint ball mines and paint ball rocket launchers are not allowed. Also, semi-automatic paint ball guns are limited to a projectile velocity of no more than 250 feet per second--about one third the velocity of a bullet from a standard-issue, military style .45-caliber pistol.

All of the indoor games are monitored by referees, who rule on whether someone has been hit and make sure everyone wears protective equipment and follows other rules. Troublemakers are not allowed.

“We’ve had a couple of times when tempers got out of hand,” Suh said. “Another problem we sometimes have is cheaters. They get shot and then try to wipe the paint off. That’s a problem in the sport. We try to weed those people out.”

Despite the fact that paint balls are flying around and that every participant has to sign a lengthy liability release form before playing, both Hotta and Suh insist that it is a safe sport. In fact, Hotta says with all seriousness that, if you don’t count minor welts and bruises, paint ball is statistically “safer than bowling.”

Who plays paint ball? According to Hotta, participants vary from doctors and lawyers to assembly line workers. Some come to Indoor City Paintball alone for “pick-up” games, while others come in groups of up to 20. According to Hotta, groups of employees from companies such as Honda Motors and Hughes Aircraft regularly play, in addition to members of various Los Angeles area police departments.

Although there are some female players, Hotta says most players are men--or rather, boys trapped in men’s bodies.

“Guys who like paint ball have a lot of the little boy inside them,” Hotta says. “It’s playtime for them.”

Indoor City Paintball can be expensive. The $20 admission fee covers gun and protective gear rental, and allows you to play 16 10-minute games, but paint balls must be purchased at the Indoor City Paintball “pro shop” for $6 per 100 balls.

Still, the players think it’s worth it.

“This is rad,” said Sam Ibrahin, 18, during a break between games. “This is better than basketball.”