Around 9:25pm last Sunday night, November 21, police received a call from a woman on 46th Avenue near Point Lobos. She told police that her husband was intoxicated and being combative, and that he was out in front of their house with a rifle.
Police responded to the scene at 9:35pm and found the man on the 400 block of 46th Avenue. Despite telling his wife earlier that he “wanted the police to shoot him”, the man began running, turning onto 47th Avenue where he then jumped into some bushes to hide.
The man eventually emerged from hiding, with the rifle still in hand. The man refused to drop his weapon at the request of police, who then shot him with an extended range impact weapon, or ERIW.
The ERIW is a non-lethal weapon that shoots ammunition similar to bean bags according to Lt. Troy Dangerfield of the SFPD Public Affairs office. According to a SFPD memo from 2005, the ERIW is a firearm with munitions that are designed to deliver force similar to an impact weapon from an extended range.
According to policy, the SFPD can use an ERIW in crowd control situations or “to apprehend a suspect when other means of control or apprehension would be ineffective.”
The police report did not detail how many times the ERIW was used, but one eyewitness recalls hearing four or five shots. According to Lt. Dangerfield, shots from an ERIW are not as loud as a typical firearm and sound more like a “whooshing sound”.
Officers were then able to control and handcuff the man, who was arrested and booked on charges of brandishing a weapon, trespassing and resisting arrest.
Dangerfield said a photo of the man’s weapon was included with the police report and that it looked “like a machine gun, an assault rifle”, which matches a description given to us by an eyewitness on the scene.
Dangerfield said it was the type of weapon that would shoot BB’s, which would be unlikely to hurt officers. Eight to nine police cars responded to the incident on Sunday night, including two Supervisors.
An eyewitness and resident on 46th and Point Lobos sent me a short video clip taken after the arrest; the accompanying photo in this story was taken from it. The police cars in the foreground are pointing south on the 400 block of 46th Avenue, where police first responded to the call.
Surprisingly, no mention was made of the incident in Monday’s police blotter, which prompted the neighbor to contact us.
Do you live in the area of this incident? Did you witness it? Leave a comment here on the article to let us know.
Sarah B.
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