Police Explore Nonlethal Weapons

Timothy Erickson had one thing to say to the officers who shot him:

Thanks.

A predawn standoff with an armed and aggressive Erickson ended when he was shot--not with bullets but with a nonlethal beanbag round from a shotgun.

It was the first use of the weapon by police in Everett, Wash., and Erickson thanked officers from his stretcher for bruising rather than killing him.

In the past, police might well have shot him dead. After all, he was reported drunk and making threats at officers as he blasted holes in his home with a 9mm Ruger. Instead, the incident last October is just one example of how police departments nationwide--many of them beleaguered by protests after fatal shootings--are looking to new weapons that offer cops a “less-than-lethal” alternative.

“Unfortunately, in some departments, they have nothing beyond their voice and a gun,” said Geoff Alpert, a criminology professor at the University of South Carolina.

“That to me is very frightening, when police officers have no choice, when there’s no intermediate weapon,” he said. “That’s a tragic mistake. That forces them to use a gun when it’s unnecessary.”

Nonlethal weapons run from batons and pepper spray to electronic shockers, rubber bullets, doughnut-shaped projectiles, even a Spider Man-style net gun known as the WebShot, designed to wrap and immobilize a suspect.

In Seattle, the fatal shooting of a black former mental patient, David John Walker, has sparked the same outrage and charges of racism seen in New York and other cities, and raised the question of why only the city’s SWAT teams have nonlethal weapons.

The April 12 incident began with Walker firing two shots at a grocery security guard. But by the time police--and TV crews--showed up, he had stowed his gun in his pack, so what the public saw was Walker smiling and skipping down a sidewalk, then appearing to lunge at an officer with a knife, and being shot.

Police defended their action, and their interim chief, Herb Johnson, ordered a sweeping study of nonlethal weapons.

Mayor Paul Schell strongly supported the move. “The Walker case has shown all of us the importance of avoiding lethal force whenever possible,” he said.

The FBI is investigating.

In San Diego, where police were criticized last summer for fatally shooting former NFL linebacker Demetrius Dubose and in February for shooting a stick-wielding transient, all officers now are being trained and equipped with electric Taser guns and beanbags--actually cloth bags of pellets--fired from shotguns.

“There was community outcry on both cases, and the community felt we should have used other methods,” said police spokesman Bill Robinson.

New Weapons Give Police More Options

Phoenix police now carry beanbag rounds in every squad car, and departments from Los Angeles to New York state also have adopted them.

“In years past, if you didn’t have this option, they’d have to shoot the person. You didn’t have a choice. You had to take their life,” said Sgt. Ken Fixel of the Gilbert, Ariz., force, which recently began using the beanbags.

The federal government has funded research in nonlethal weapons since the early 1990s.

“We make sure it’s technically feasible and it’s also practical for law enforcement officers,” said Sandy Newett, Less Than Lethal program manager for the National Institute of Justice, a division of the Justice Department that coordinates research on criminal justice issues.

The government’s involvement traces to the 1974 fatal shooting of an unarmed 15-year-old boy who was running from a $10 burglary in Memphis, Tenn. The shooting resulted in a 1985 Supreme Court decision that limited the use of force against fleeing suspects, and Justice was asked to promote development of less-than-lethal weapons.

The WebShot gun has been on the market for about a year and is in trial use with the Los Angeles and San Diego police and Florida’s corrections department, said Shawn Gaskell, a design engineer for manufacturer Foster-Miller in Waltham, Mass.

Gaskell said WebShot is ideally used against “an unarmed person that’s being combative. They’re aggressive. You don’t want to get too close to them or they’ll start swinging.”

Only the Milford, Mass., police have a WebShot gun; they have taken it to a handful of standoffs and other situations, but it has yet to be fired, the department said.

The WebShot’s special gas gun must be reloaded by the manufacturer--$75 the first time, cheaper for further reloads.

Beanbag Rounds Work in Some Situations

Beanbag rounds are among the most popular nonlethal weapons, and their punch, like being hit by a line drive in baseball, has helped end a number of standoffs.

Last June, police shot a beanbag round to knock down a woman threatening to toss her 9-year-old daughter out of a third-floor window in Yonkers, N.Y. In the Seattle suburb of Bothell, a man armed with a pitchfork reportedly goaded police to kill him in a “suicide-by-cop” attempt; two beanbag shots subdued him.

But police in Fresno said they hit former NFL lineman Tom Neville, 36, nine times with beanbag rounds in a May 1999 standoff before fatally shooting him when he lunged for an officer’s gun. In Los Angeles last June, a domestic violence suspect was hit in mid-charge by a beanbag round but kept coming and was fatally shot.

All nonlethal weapons have limits, said James Fyfe, a former New York police lieutenant who teaches in the criminal justice department of Temple University in Philadelphia.

“Virtually none of this stuff is useful to a first responder in a life-and-death situation,” he said. “You put a lone cop out and he’s confronting someone who’s a real threat to life--if you ask him to use a nonlethal weapon and it doesn’t work, that’s a real problem.”

For example, Taser guns, which shock subjects with two wired darts, won’t work at a distance, won’t penetrate thick clothing and work only if both darts sink in, he said.

Critics often ask why police don’t use tranquilizer guns or other seemingly painless methods. The Justice Department’s Newett said researchers have found no sure way to gauge proper dosages.

“If you shot somebody that was small, it could kill them. If you shot somebody who was big or had drugs in their system, it might not do anything,” she said.

Critics also want to know why police generally shoot to kill rather than wound suspects or, taking a page from the Lone Ranger, try to shoot weapons from their hands.

“Throughout the country, we’re not trained that way,” Seattle Police spokesman Clem Benton said. “To try to aim at a person’s arm or leg when they’re constantly on the move is unrealistic. You could hit a bystander . . . or you can hit the arm or leg and get a through-and-through”--a bullet that continues to travel.

“We’re trained to shoot at the torso, and sometimes when you’re . . . a distance away, it’s difficult enough to hit an arm, let alone the torso when they’re moving,” he said.

In Seattle, the chief’s “Force Options Research Group” has begun talking to other departments about their nonlethal arsenals and training. It hopes to wrap up the study by midsummer.

Alpert of the University of South Carolina said Seattle and other departments are simply “keeping up with the times.

“I don’t know anyone who objects to the technology,” he said. “It’s more, ‘Can we afford it?’ I would answer that you can’t afford not to afford it.”

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On the Web: National Institute of Justice, https://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/

Seattle Police, https://www.cityofseattle.net/spd/spdpan.htm