Sebastopol Police showcase their only “military” weapon: a bean bag shot gun

Bean bag shotguns are a less-than-lethal option for gaining compliance from a violent or threatening individual

Bean bag shotguns are painted blue or red to distinguish them from regular shotguns. (Photo by Laura Hagar Rush)

Two years ago, due to concerns about the militarization of the police, California lawmakers passed Assembly Bill 481, requiring law enforcement agencies, such as the Sebastopol Police Department, to have a military equipment use policy approved by the City Council prior to requesting, acquiring or using items defined as military equipment.

Police departments are also required to hold a public meeting showcasing these items. The Sebastopol Police held such a meeting on Monday, Oct. 23, displaying the only type of item that qualified from their arsenal—a bean bag shot gun with bean bag rounds.

“A bean bag shotgun is a tool that's used specifically to try and de-escalate situations,” said Police Chief Ron Nelson. “For example, if we have an aggressive, violent person or a person who simply decompensating and may not be aware of exactly what they're doing but they may be armed with a stick or an edged weapon or something, threatening people or engaging in behaviors that are dangerous for the public, it's a tool that can be utilized by law enforcement to try and gain some type of compliance, without us having to get too close to them. Because oftentimes, if we get too close, it places us in danger and it puts the person more in danger. So this is a tool that we can use from a distance.”

It can also be used, like rubber bullets, as a form of crowd control.

The gun shoots little round “bean bags” of metal pellets, called Super Socks.

“It shoots out what’s called a bean bag because, as you'll feel, it's very soft. It's a small cloth-covered sock that's filled with really small BBs, and it comes out at about 250 feet per second. The manufacturers state that it can be fired almost point blank, but our recommendation to our staff is to not get that close and not have to utilize it unless it was a emergency situation where they were being attacked. But anywhere from about 10 to 60 feet, so we can keep a good safe distance and hopefully resolve the situation,” Nelson said.

Chief Nelson noted that the bean bag shot gun is known as a ‘less-than-lethal” weapon, but he said they can be lethal if used improperly.

“Essentially you want to avoid the chest area, the face area and the genital area. Those are not approved target areas,” Nelson said. “They [meaning the bean bag shotguns] work very well on extremities. They're actually quite accurate. So most people, when they think of a shotgun, think of shotgun pellets that tend to scatter. These fire directly in a straight line.”

It hurts to get shot by one of these things—and that’s the point. It’s called “pain compliance.”

“It leaves a welt,” Nelson said. He compared it to getting hit by a paintball. “It's designed to not exceed a velocity that's going to generally break the skin. There may be some light contusions depending on how close you are, but it's not supposed to penetrate at all.”

A Super Sock bean bag

The shotgun, which is painted bright blue to distinguish it from a regular shotgun, is kept unloaded in its zipped case in the back seat of every Sebastopol police vehicle. (Their real shotgun is kept in the front seat area.) In addition, Nelson explained that the bean bag shotgun only fires one round at a time and it has to be purposely reloaded and re-racked after every shot, requiring time and deliberation.

Thus far no officer has used it in the line of duty in Sebastopol (or elsewhere), though they have trained with it, Nelson said.

There were only three people in the audience at the meeting on Monday: a resident, this reporter, and councilmember Stephen Zollman, who opposes the use of bean bag shotguns. (Zollman grilled Sebastopol Police Captain James Hickey on the topic of bean bag shotguns at a recent council meeting, but he was silent during this meeting, just taking notes.)

“I'm still a little concerned about using any degree of force on somebody that clearly is mentally decompensating,” Zollman said after the meeting. “My thought would be, it would be less painful for them to experience some degree of tear gas before deploying something like this and incurring the risk of having an officer mix up the weapons and then having some degree of lethality involved. I'm also a little bit more concerned by the fact that we heard that the weapon can actually fire live ammunition and that it's up to the officer to be calm enough to actually put the bean bag in.”

“I'm also concerned about the fact that if you're mentally decompensating, you're not really present in reality and having a rifle fired at you—whether you're together enough to realize that it's a bean bag rifle and not a real rifle—that would be very detrimental…I think that there are better, more de-escalating techniques that can be employed.”

Nelson said his officers are trained in multiple de-escalation methods. He noted that they also train regularly using different scenarios—so they’ll be ready to grab the right tool from their 30-pound tool belt or vest or from their car when the situation arises.