Police Explore Nonlethal Weapons

SEATTLE — 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.