Friday, August 06, 1999
Police use beanbag bullet to nab suspect
Incident ends without use of deadly force
BY TANYA BRICKING
The Cincinnati Enquirer
A beanbag bullet is fired from a 12-gauge shotgun.
(Enquirer file photo)
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A tense standoff with a gunman in South Fairmount was defused early Thursday by what a Cincinnati police captain called quick thinking by officers.
Officers surrounded a suspect and shot him with a beanbag bullet, packing a punch to his neck but possibly saving his life, Capt. G. Alan Matthews said.
“It certainly averted what could have been a very terrible situation,” he said.
At a time when the police division is revising its “shots fired” policy about when officers can pull the trigger, police say it's good to have alternatives to lethal force.
The division does not want its officers to be afraid to shoot, Capt. Matthews said, rather “what we are trained to do is use deadly force as a last resort.”
Cincinnati police equipped 60 cars with 12-gauge beanbag shotguns in the wake of the 1997 fatal shooting of mental patient Lorenzo Collins.
The beanbag bullets, the size of tea bags, are meant to subdue suspects with the force of being hit by a fastball thrown by a professional baseball player.
This is the third time in two years Cincinnati police have used the beanbag guns and the second time they have been successful in stopping a suspect.
“Any time you have the chance to use less than lethal force, you want to try to do that,” Capt. Matthews said.
Nationally, there's a move to increase the ways police can respond to situations, said Hubert Williams, president of the Police Foundation in Washington, D.C.
“It gives officers choices,” he said.
In Thursday's incident, which began just after 1 a.m., police got a call that Orbie Harris had stolen his brother's .25-caliber handgun.
One of the first officers on the scene happened to be Brent McCurley, the officer who fired the deadly shot in the March 19 Michael Carpenter case. Officer McCurley became the center of a controversy when he shot the motorist because he said he feared being run over.
Thursday, he and his partner called for help; and as officers surrounded Mr. Harris, they yelled for him to drop the gun. Instead, Mr. Harris pointed the gun to his head, threatened to kill himself and yelled to officers: “Shoot me! Kill me!” Capt. Matthews said.
Within moments, police say, the 25-year-old West End man fired two shots into the air and then pointed the gun at two people in a car, one of whom was off-duty Officer William Springer. Officer Springer got out of his car, taking his keys with him, leaving Mr. Harris without an escape, Capt. Matthews said.
Then Lt. Joseph Borger, the relief commander, came on the scene with a beanbag shotgun and shot Mr. Harris in the neck, he said.
The force of the shot sent Mr. Harris to the ground. He dropped the gun, and a dog from the K-9 unit bit him in the chest. He was treated at University Hospital before being booked in the Hamilton County jail. The incident lasted about an hour.
He faces two counts of aggravated robbery; two counts of discharging firearms; and one count each of felony theft of a firearm, inducing panic and having weapons under disability of a drug trafficking conviction.
Capt. Matthews called the arrest a success.
“Nobody comes on this job to take a life,” he said.
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