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Frank75
12-16-2014, 02:49 PM
Hi guys,
I am looking for your advice: we have to use beanbags from regular shotguns, which we use to shoot dogs ( or suspects if necessary ). The shotguns are personally issued. We can not use special shotguns for beanbags only!!! We had several situations, when a planned operation went down and the shotgunner had to switch from 00 buckshot to beanbags for several reasons. Do anybody have a special procedure for a situation like this? I am thinking about doing a cross check or similar, to make sure, that only beanbags are now in the gun.
Thank you,
Frank

KevinB
12-16-2014, 02:56 PM
Don't do it.

IF your going to use a LL Shotty get a dedicated LL Shotty - or there will be a mix up.

ST911
12-16-2014, 03:31 PM
Dedicated, highly visible, unmistakable, for 12ga LL use.

Transitional is asking for trouble, especially with your LCDs. If you insist, have a specified process for ammunition storage, spares carry, unloading, clearance, and loading procedure that uses at least the buddy system.

jnc36rcpd
12-16-2014, 05:56 PM
We looked into impact munitions deployed from shotguns until a new retired major dumped the program. He was the same lieutenant (who retired as a captain) who ridiculed rifles, asking if we expected terrorists to come marching down the street and asked if we thought we could stand up to terrorists. No, sir, we expect to be slaughtered along with the citizens. Our plan involved calling for Delta Force, Seal Team, 6, and Guardians of the Galaxy. That rant over....

Both my counterpart on the allied county agency and I considered the idea of transitioning buckshot/slugs to impact rounds. Our thinking was that one officer would download the lethal round and load the beanbags under the supervision of the second. In retrospect, I think this would only work in daylight, on a square range, and under minimal stress. The problem is that one is only going to be transitioning rounds when something very exciting is happening nearby. Both the shotgun operator and the cover officer are likely to be distracted by the circumstances (which probably include the possibility of the threat breaking containment and assaulting them). The ammunition transition is likely to happen in low light. The risks of human error are high.

If you're going to try this, I would recommend that the ammunition be transitioned at the station and a less lethal shotgun be marked with tape. That said, I really don't think it is a good idea. While I understand that budgets are restricted, I'd recommend that less lethal munitions be fired from a 37/40mm launcher.

My buddy's agency eventually purchased Benelli shotguns for the better shots and transitioned their 870's to exclusive less lethal. That department adopted Tasers at the same time. I don't believe patrol ever launched a beanbag though I believe SWAT has done so.

Dr. No
12-16-2014, 06:06 PM
Absolutely 100% not acceptable. Never EVER mix LL and lethal rounds. It is a recipe for disaster. There is not a single LL instructor in this country that will back you up in court if you have an accident. You will carry all the liability and you will not be shielded in court, personally or professionally.

Marking LL shotguns involves buying 5$ worth of blaze orange paint from Home Depot and masking tape.

If your LL guy needs a lethal option he should transition to pistol.

Lon
12-16-2014, 07:14 PM
Absolutely 100% not acceptable. Never EVER mix LL and lethal rounds. It is a recipe for disaster. There is not a single LL instructor in this country that will back you up in court if you have an accident. You will carry all the liability and you will not be shielded in court, personally or professionally.

Marking LL shotguns involves buying 5$ worth of blaze orange paint from Home Depot and masking tape.

If your LL guy needs a lethal option he should transition to pistol.

What he said. Our patrol guys have zapped several people with bean bags from dedicated shotguns.

SWAT Lt.
12-16-2014, 09:44 PM
I would be surprised to hear if anyone has a "procedure" for this as the practice is ill advised and should never be done. Agencies mandate specially designated shotguns for LL use ONLY and identify them as such for a reason.

Frank75
12-17-2014, 07:42 AM
WOW, thank you for the input and sharing your expiriences. It seems, that we should avoid that situation and I will think about it.

Dagga Boy
12-17-2014, 11:46 AM
This is a good situation where you can learn from US Law Enforcement (I don't know if everybody picked up that you are posting from Germany). We used to use lethal lethal munitions from regular shotguns on a regular basis here. Literally, I know of nobody who des that anymore because there were a lot of issues with getting ammunition mixed or miss identified. This is in the United States and at a time when US officers were very familiar with working with shotguns regularly. When I was in an exchange program with German police, their officers were always amazed at how much we shot in general, and how much we used shotguns.

Now, if absolutely forced to use a regular shotgun, here is what my SWAT guys did prior to the days of dedicated guns (this is why it is good to have old guys around;)). My two dedicated gas specialists (Grenadiers) were each issued a 12" barreled Remington 870 specially built by Robar. They also had shortened rear conventional stocks. They would work with each other to set the guns up for missions. They were specialists at using multiple types of munitions in 37mm, 40mm and 12ga. They would use these guns for all sorts of missions from gas deliver, riot munitions, direct fire less lethal, breaching and lethal. The key was working as a team with protocols to how they would load and to work as a back up and safety check for each other to ensure the right munitions were going into whatever they were using.
To this day some of this is still done, just not with the 12ga. They now use 40mm almost across the board for all of these missions, including direct fire less lethal........40mm bean bag works FAR better than the 12ga variant.
Again, if you can learn anything from US law enforcement who are well know worldwide for 12ga. use......dedicate specific guns for less lethal, and still have special checklists for them.

David Armstrong
12-17-2014, 06:23 PM
Being a bit of a dinosaur from back in the day, we didn't have dedicated Less Lethal guns. Or procedure was was simple....if we were going to use a less lethal round all other rounds were first removed from the gun and only less lethal ammo was loaded. When done, all the less lethal was put away and the regular stuff was put back in. No mixing was allowed and whatever you were not using was not carried or available to you. For example, if moving to less lethal it was done at the vehicle, all the lethal rounds were put in the trunk and the trunk then closed. When done, all the less lethal was put back in the trunk and the regular rounds were put back into service. It worked, but I'll certainly agree that a dedicated gun is better.

czech6
12-17-2014, 07:02 PM
There was a cop in Portland that mistakenly loaded a round of buckshot into a less lethal shotgun and shot a crazy guy with it. If you look at the internal report it's an almost unbelievable series of little things that went wrong, and it added up to two lives being ruined. The whole thing could have been prevented by visually inspecting rounds, but it highlights the dangers of having humans use a LL system that is capable of firing lethal ammo.

With the availability of 37mm launchers, pepper balls guns, and Tasers, I don't see any good reason to deploy a LL 12 gauge. I get that money doesn't grow on trees, but LL 12 gauge is false economy. The cost of one little mistake will pay for dedicated LL systems many times over. Portland paid $2.3 million bucks for one round of buckshot. They could have bought a Taser for every officer on the force and put 100 37mm launchers or pepper ball guns on the street and still had money left over. Never forget the guy pulling the trigger is the one facing prison, not the idiots who were too cheap to buy the right equipment to begin with. SWAT can have 40mm to play with and it makes it impossible to accidentally load a 40mm gas canister in a 37mm launcher and pop someone in the chest.

ST911
12-17-2014, 08:32 PM
Use of a 37mm LL launcher instead of a dedicated 12ga has been an increasingly popular recommendation for best-practice. Existing inventories of 12ga guns, knowledge, and field support make that tough though.

Frank75
12-18-2014, 04:43 AM
Again guys, thank you very much for the input. I truly understand the issues and I read from the Portland case. Nevertheless we have no possibility for going with dedicated LL shotguns. Our administration will get all the input too, but I am responsible for the firearms training of my unit and I have to write a "procedure" how we will handle that problem. Probably we will be close to NYETIs statement. The guns are personally issued and on our team even about 15 guys are trained to employed a shotgun at all. So I hope, we can handle it by changing their primary weapon to the shotgun to make them even more effective.
Nevertheless thank you all for the expiriences, of course I would like to go the American Way and issue dedicated LL shotguns, but we can't.

railfancwb
12-18-2014, 10:15 AM
Can you obtain and use shotguns with removable magazines such as the Saiga? Identify one magazine for each gun visually and tactically as LL. Keep it in the gun as default, with nothing in the chamber. Second and only other magazine for each gun is for buckshot etc.

Wayne Dobbs
12-18-2014, 10:29 AM
Another old guy here with thoughts.

If an organization is going to use shotgun delivered LL munitions, then there should be NO shotguns used in that organization with conventional ammo. You should be all of one or the other with shotguns or somebody WILL mix things up. Whether tragedy will ensue is up to other factors, but you're asking for trouble with mixed use guns.

My old PD was and is dysfunctional to the point of madness, but they did this one thing with firearms correctly: ALL shotguns are LL and marked as such; NO conventional shotgun ammo is in stock or allowed in possession of ANY officer; AR-15 Patrol rifles for all for the shoulder weapon role with an LL shotgun in every car.

czech6
12-18-2014, 11:20 AM
A great alternative to LL 12 gauge for dogs are CO2 fire extinguishers, a dry chemical extinguisher can kills a dog. Dog tend to be very adverse to the noise that extinguishers make and if they get close enough it's easy to hit the dog with a wall of the spray. It doesn't hurt to have several extinguisher around anyways.

Chuck Haggard
12-18-2014, 10:52 PM
Found this while I was cleaning out a bunch of stuff on my work computer;


Back when we went to the horribly-named and not very effective 12 ga. "less lethal" (originally "less-than-lethal," a nonsensical concept at law which only recognizes deadly force as a concept), a number of us pulled for a few dedicated fowling pieces with a substantial penalty for putting conventional ammo in beanbag-marked guns or putting beanbags in "real" shotguns. "It won't matter," we were told. "If there's a mistake, you were enabled to use deadly force when you shot regardless of the load."

You better hope so as the following case relates:

Oops: A Central Precinct officer mistakenly shot a suspect with a live round instead of a less-lethal beanbag on Thursday morning. The man had reportedly been acting in an intimidating manner at a Southwest Portland [OR] park. Callers told police the man appeared intoxicated and armed with a knife. The officer thought he was firing less-lethal beanbags at the suspect, who was not complying with police commands. In fact, the beanbag shotgun had been loaded with lethal shotgun rounds, Portland police said at 6 p.m. Thursday. The suspect was hit by five pellets in the hip and was taken to the hospital with non-life threatening wounds, police said… (Several years ago, when his department chose to introduce beanbag rounds, a list member successfully lobbied his department to replace the combo of a 12-gauge shotgun and a 9mm carbine in each unit with a short-barrel .223 rifle, precisely to avoid the risk of “live” ammo migrating to the beanbag shotgun or vice versa.)

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2011/06/portland_officer_wounds_a_man.html

Beat Trash
12-19-2014, 12:53 PM
This is a liability nightmare.

We revisited LL shotguns after a huge civil lawsuit resulting from deployments during riots in 2001.

The manufacture of the beanbag ammunition came out after and stated that their product hence forth must be targeted at extremities only. No center of mass body shots. If an agency did so, then the liability's on them.

My agency pulled the LL shotguns from Patrol and restricted them to SWAT only.

If you are going to be forced to use non-dedicated shotguns, I would be so OCD as to have two man verification of the loading process. While it may sound ridiculous, in the current political environment, it could be ugly if an accident were to occur and lethal ammunition got mixed with non-lethal.

stinx
12-22-2014, 04:59 PM
When my agency used 12G shotguns for less lethal we used a dedicated system, Our policy mandated that the guns have orange stocks and forends. Officers assigned a unit that had the less lethal were prohibited from carrying a live shotgun( Benelli M-2) and also were prohibited from having live shotgun ammo in their unit, on their person or in their patrol bags. Officers assigned a unit with a less lethal were required to take a patrol rifle. We kept the less lethal shotguns unloaded and had 5 less lethal rounds on the shotguns side saddle and 5 loose rounds in the case net to the shotgun. WE have sice gone to the 40mm system so we no loner have worries about mixing live ammo ammo.