Dangers of ‘less lethal’ weapons
Years of injuries as US lacks national rules
There’s a gap in Scott Olsen’s memory for the night of Oct. 25, 2011.
The Iraq War vet remembers leaving his tech job in the San Francisco Bay Area and taking a BART train to join an Occupy Oakland protest against economic inequality.
He remembers standing near protesters who faced off with Oakland police officers bristling with riot gear. He remembers being carried away by other protesters.
But not the moment when a “bean bag” round fired from an officer’s 12gauge shotgun crashed into the left side of his head, fracturing his skull and inflicting a near-fatal brain injury that forced him to relearn how to talk.
What happened to Olsen was not unique or isolated. Time and again over the past two decades – from L.A. to D.C., Minneapolis to Miami – peace officers have targeted civilian demonstrators with munitions designed to stun and stop, rather than kill.
As many as 60 protesters suffered
head wounds during recent Black Lives Matter events, including bone fractures, blindness and traumatic brain injuries. Civil libertarians worldwide have urged police to ban less lethal projectiles from use for crowd control. Law enforcement in the United Kingdom ceased using them that way decades ago.
But an investigation by USA TODAY and Kaiser Health News found little has changed over the years in the United States.
Beyond the Constitution and federal court rulings that require police use of force to be “reasonable,” there are no national rules for discharging bean bags and rubber bullets. Nor are there standards for the weapons’ velocity, accuracy or safety. Congress and state legislatures have done little to offer solutions.
While locations and demonstration types vary, a pattern has emerged: Shooting victims file lawsuits; cities pay out millions of dollars; police departments try to adopt reforms. And, a few years later, it happens again. Law enforcement officers, typically with limited training, are bound only by departmental policies that vary from one agency to the next.
Sometimes referred to as kinetic impact projectiles, less lethal ammunition includes bean bags (nylon sacks filled with lead shot), so-called rubber bullets that actually are tipped with foam or sponge, and paintball-like rounds containing chemical irritants. Velocity and range vary greatly, but they can travel upwards of 200 mph. The rounds were developed to save lives by giving police a knock-down option that can disable threats from a safe distance without killing the target.
But, over decades of use, munitions that originally were touted as safe and nonlethal have proven otherwise:
In 2000, a protester at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles lost an eye. Seven years later in the same city, scores of migrant-rights demonstrators were wounded amid a fusillade of less-lethal rounds.
In 2003, 58 people were injured in Oakland when officers launched a barrage of wooden pellets and other devices during anti-Iraq war protests. To settle court claims, the city adopted new crowd control policies. Eight years later, Olsen was struck down.
In 2004, a college student in Boston celebrating a Red Sox victory was killed by a projectile filled with pepperbased irritant when it tore through her eye and into her brain.
The past two months have been telling, with dozens maimed or hurt amid Black Lives Matter demonstrations: Photographer Linda Tirado, 37, lost an eye after being hit by a foam projectile in Minneapolis. Brandon Saenz, 26, lost an eye and several teeth after being hit with a “sponge round” in Dallas. And, in Portland, Oregon, 26-year-old Donavan La Bella suffered facial and skull fractures when he was shot by a federal officer with a less lethal round.
“Nothing has changed,” said attorney Elizabeth Ritter, 59, one of several people shot in the head by an impact munition at a 2003 protest in Miami. A video later surfaced showing police supervisors laughing about her shooting. “It’s fairly sickening to me. We have a systemic, deeply ingrained problem.”
‘We’re just in a circle’
From a law enforcement perspective, less lethal weapons are essential tools in a continuum of force. A spongetipped round or a pouch full of pellets can stop a violent act without putting the officer in peril – and without killing the suspect. Police leaders typically condemn the indiscriminate firing into peaceful crowds but characterize such incidents as conduct violations rather than weaponry problems.
Steve Ijames, a retired officer who developed programs for the International Association of Chiefs of Police, blames “boneheaded policemen’’ and a training gap for the misuse of arms. Law enforcement instruction focuses almost entirely on how to use less lethal force against individual suspects, Ijames noted, and not on crowd-control scenarios that occur only sporadically.
Still, when demonstrations morph into disturbances, less lethal devices are pressed into duty.
“What is the alternative?” asked Sid Heal, a retired commander from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department who has extensively studied the munitions. “We’re stuck with the tools we have. And if you take one away, we’re going to have to go to something else, and it will probably be harsher.”
The National Institute of Justice spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on initiatives to collect data and start
developing national standards for less lethal weapon safety after the Boston student’s death in 2004. Funding dried up after a few years, and the efforts died.
Against that backdrop, Congress has shown little interest in regulating bean bags and rubber bullets. And national law enforcement leadership groups have repeatedly punted when given an opportunity.
After the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri, a bill introduced in the U.S. Senate in 2014, 2015 and 2017 would have banned state and local law enforcement from using key federal grant dollars for less lethal weapons. The measure never made it out of committee. In 2017, a coalition of law enforcement groups representing police leaders and unions, which gathered to study use of force, published a consensus policy and discussion paper. The groups advocated a ban on police use of martial arts weapons – but did not extend it to less lethal munitions. A White House task force established after the Ferguson protests recommended “annual training” but little more for less lethal weapons.
In June, 13 U.S. Senate Democrats asked the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, to investigate the alleged misuses of rubber bullets and bean bags against Black Lives Matter demonstrations.
“Although intended to only cause minimal harm, such weapons may cause significant injury,” the senators wrote. “Better information is needed to identify deficiencies in the training and use of these less lethal weapons ...”
The Justice Department’s inspector general has launched an investigation of federal officers’ response to protests in Portland and Washington, D.C., the watchdog announced Thursday.
Charles Mesloh, a former police officer, certified instructor and longtime researcher on less lethal weapons, said the status quo is “unacceptable,” but he sees little chance that national standards will be imposed for training, weapon safety and use. “I’ve been doing this long enough, I just – we’re just in a circle,” Mesloh said. “We’ll have some lip service ... and there'll be some mandated training, and then we’ll just go right back to where we were.”
LOS ANGELES: Searching for a less lethal alternative
Carol Sobel, a Los Angeles civil rights attorney, keeps an unusual photo on her desk. It shows her with a goose-egg wound to her forehead and two black eyes. What’s not visible in the picture is the concussion, sinus fracture and more than six months of headaches.
That’s the impact of a police projectile that struck her between the eyes as she stood outside the 2000 Democratic National Convention with a mainly peaceful crowd. "My head snapped back and it hurt," she said. "It was inconceivable to me that someone would shoot me in the face."
Over the past two decades, Los Angeles police have repeatedly used less lethal firepower on demonstrators, injuring hundreds and generating lawsuits that Sobel helped prosecute.
Los Angeles police turned to bean bags as an alternative to live ammo after 1992 rioting triggered by the acquittal of officers who beat a Black man named Rodney King. In the aftermath, the department was criticized simultaneously for brutality and for failure to defend the community. Bean bag rounds and later 40mm projectiles emerged as options that were supposed to allow officers to protect themselves and the city without deaths or lawsuits.
With the new arsenal, police in 2000 descended on protesters at MacArthur Park during the convention. Witnesses
said demonstrators were shot in the back with rubber bullets as they tried to disperse. The city approved $4.1 million in payments to more than 90 people hurt during the melee.
In May, when protests erupted after the death of George Floyd, police in Los Angeles unleashed bean bags and sponge rounds. A lawsuit filed by Black Lives Matter alleges “that the training of the LAPD in the use of these potentially lethal weapons was absent, seriously deficient, or intentionally indifferent to the known serious harm that can result.” The complaint, with Sobel as lead attorney, seeks a ban on the use of less lethal arms for crowd control.
Los Angeles police leaders declined to be interviewed for this article because it deals with personnel matters and issues that “will eventually be fleshed out in a complete, independent after-action report.”
Sobel said she has seen it all before: “There is absolutely no institutional memory in the LAPD. That's No. 1. And No. 2 – they don't care."
BOSTON: A tragic celebration
Victoria Snelgrove leaned against a railing of a parking garage at Fenway Park, waiting for the crowd to dissipate so she could drive home from a raucous Red Sox celebration. Then Boston police fired the projectile that tore through her eye and into her brain. The home team had just won the 2004 American League Championship. Sox fans rejoiced in the streets around the stadium. After some set fires and threw bottles, police began launching projectiles.
Snelgrove, a 21-year-old college student and sports enthusiast who aspired to be an entertainment reporter on television, slipped into a coma. Her parents made the excruciating decision to remove life support hours later.
The family collected $5 million in damages – reportedly the city’s largest settlement at the time. Snelgrove’s death spurred Boston police to convene a panel to figure out what went wrong.
Among the findings: Boston had acquired its launchers less than a year earlier, without adequate understanding of safety issues. The manufacturer had suggested rounds would not break the skin. But a second protester had had a projectile lodged in his forehead, and a third suffered a gaping wound to the cheek.
The commission said police needed more training on how to use less lethal weapons, particularly in crowd-control situations. It called for the National Institute of Justice to collect and disseminate information on a burgeoning array of less lethal projectiles. And it urged the federal government to develop minimum safety standards with a testing program overseen by an independent agency such as the institute.
NIJ awarded grants to a Wayne State University researcher, Cynthia Bir, to help develop standards. Over several years, study groups were formed. Testing modes were developed.
“NIJ gave us a fair amount of funding to look at this issue and then … the focus switched to Tasers,” Bir said. “Everything just kind of went away.”
The NIJ did not respond to multiple emails seeking comment.
Rick Wyant, a forensic scientist who served on an NIJ panel, said standards could be imposed by tying them to federal grants. Otherwise, unregulated arms can continue putting the public at risk, he said. “I can go in my garage and develop something, and if I get a (police) chief to sign off on it and deploy it, that’s all that needs to happen,” Wyant said.
No standards in 18,000 police forces
Law enforcement experts point out there are about 18,000 police forces in the United States, and it may be impossible to develop standards or practices that work in communities ranging from New York City to Minooka, Illinois.
The alternative – and the reality – is a system where each agency decides which weapons to use, what training to provide, and what policies to enforce.
All operate on the same underlying function, as spelled out by Ed Obayashi, an attorney and deputy chief of California’s Plumas County Sheriff ’s Office: “to inflict pain to gain compliance and to disperse a crowd.” If protesters ignore police instructions, he added, firing on the overall crowd could be justified depending on circumstances.
“When law enforcement gives an order to disperse, and that doesn’t happen, we don’t have a lot of options,” agreed Wade Carpenter, the police chief in Park City, Utah, who oversees IACP’s firearms and tactical committees. “Whenever we have individuals that are trying to incite these riots, there is a level of force that has to be used.”
OAKLAND: ‘Cascading events’
If Scott Olsen struggles to recall what happened when police shot him with a bean bag round, his sentiments about the Oakland police are crystal clear: “I think bad things,” Olsen, now 33, said in a recent phone interview.
The projectile that struck Olsen’s head in 2011 was launched despite previous, similar incidents that resulted in lawsuits, independent investigations, court orders and police reforms.
James Chanin, an Oakland attorney who filed some of the civil actions, and won settlements, tells about a “long history of alleged civil rights violations” by the city’s police force.
In April 2003, protesters against the Iraq War blocked a Port of Oakland entrance at a marine terminal. A lawsuit described how police moved to break up the demonstration, firing wooden dowels and bean bag rounds into the crowd, and setting off stinger grenades that scattered chemical irritants and small balls.
Eight years later, Olsen was near the front of an Occupy Oakland demonstration when police ordered the crowd to disperse. Officers then launched a fusillade of less lethal munitions, including the round that struck Olsen. As other protesters rushed to his aid, an Oakland police officer deployed a chemical canister into the group, an independent investigation commissioned by the city later found.
Police said afterward that they did not see Olsen had been wounded, so they did not fulfill a mandatory requirement to render medical aid and immediately start a formal investigation of the shooting. The independent investigation called the police department's account “unsettling and not believable.”
The city ultimately agreed to a $4.5 million settlement with Olsen.
Once again, Oakland revised policies and training. Then George Floyd demonstrations broke out, and so did the less lethal weapons. According to a federal complaint filed in June by the Anti Police-Terror Project, Oakland officers launched projectiles, flashbangs and tear gas into crowds and at individuals.
For Olsen, now tending bee colonies and chickens on a small Wisconsin farm, the memory with a hole came flooding back. “We passed these regulations and policies to control the use of less lethal weapons,” he said. “It’s heartbreaking to see other people’s lives affected as mine was. … Police have shown they do not care about these kinds of controls, so the next step is to take those weapons away from them.”