Beansbags from not dedicated shotguns

[czech6]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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/i...nds_a_man.html

[Beat Trash]

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]

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.