Officers who carry during their off-duty hours often stop crimes before they escalate into tragedies, and they can provide valuable backup to on-duty officers when needed. And officers who carry off duty are not only protecting themselves and their loved ones, they are a force multiplier for agencies and the communities they serve. Most agencies no longer run two-officer patrol cars, so their officers are out on their own and need a second handgun. The reasoning for this is easily understood. It’s unclear what kinds of chemical irritants and projectiles Park Police officers do use, though, because their policies about less-lethal weapons are redacted in publicly available material.Politics aside, however, it appears that many law enforcement agencies nationwide are allowing their officers to carry more than one handgun on duty and carry a personal protection pistol off duty. Park Police initially denied using tear gas and rubber bullets to clear Lafayette Square on Monday. These too are part of police use-of-force policies, which are often available to the public through the police departments themselves or through the Use of Force Policy Database.īut local police are not the only officers on the scene of many of the protests.Īt least 16 law enforcement and military agencies responded to protests and unrest in Washington, and their policies about less-lethal force are not available to the public. In the past two weeks, various law enforcement agencies have used many non-projectile and nonchemical tools, including batons, helicopters, riot shields and even horses, to attempt to control unrest. Muscle injuries and bone fractures can be caused by violent muscle spasms, particularly in people who have preexisting conditions. Injuries can result from falls when people lose muscle control. The manufacturer’s warning lists many things, from burning, scarring and puncture wounds to seizures and respiratory and cardiac problems. (Atlanta Police Department/Reuters) What can go wrong
What types of guns do police officers use driver#
Older square-shaped rounds have largely been replaced by sock-style bags, which are round and less likely to cause penetrating injuries.Ī frame from an Atlanta Police Department body-camera video shows Officer Ivory Streeter using a Taser on driver Messiah Young on May 30. Beanbag rounds are intended to spread impact out over a larger area. They can be single rounds or multiple rounds packaged into one shell.īeanbag rounds are cloth bags containing lead pellets that fit into a cartridge. These large rounds spread the force of impact out over a larger area, reducing the chance of injury.īaton rounds, also called rubber bullets, can be made of foam, plastic, wood or rubber. These are becoming the most common types of less-lethal projectiles, according to Cynthia Bir of the Wayne State University’s ballistic-research lab. Sponge grenades are 40-millimeter rounds with foam noses that are slightly softer than their dense cores and deform when they hit a target. Skip-firing is banned by some organizations because the bullets carom so unpredictably.
Kinetic weapons can be shot directly at people or “skip-fired,” which means aiming into the ground to disperse projectiles more widely and target only the lower body. Ideally, law enforcement officers aim kinetics at arms and legs to avoid major internal damage, unlike in lethal-weapon situations in which officers are taught to aim for the center of a person’s body. They are often less accurate than ordinary bullets, especially at long distances. Kinetic weapons include all the things police fire from guns and launchers that are meant to inflict pain without penetrating the skin.
Tear gas, for instance, is considered a higher level of force than kinetic projectiles such as rubber bullets, which are in turn a higher level of force than pepper spray. police, the use-of-force continuum begins with the simple presence of uniformed police and ends with deadly force. There is no national standard for police use of force, so these continuums vary among departments.įor the Civil Disturbance Unit of the D.C. These types of weapons are often included in police department “use of force” continuums, which attempt to assign an appropriate response to the level of risk an officer might encounter. Both are evidence of crowd-control measures that were once called “nonlethal” but are now dubbed “less lethal,” a nod to the fact that they sometimes kill. Some footage from protests after the death of George Floyd - even some of the peaceful ones - shows ominous plumes of gas rising above fleeing crowds or streets littered with projectiles.