By Jennifer Peter, The Associated Press
BOSTON (AP) - At least one big-city police department has suspended use of pepper-spray pellet guns blamed for the death of a 21-year-old college student who was shot by police trying to break up a rowdy crowd of Red Sox fans last week.
The Seattle Police Department said it has shelved the equipment until it can determine what happened in Boston. Department spokesman Scott Moss said that the guns are normally restricted to a few trained officers and have yet to be used.
Other police departments around the country said they have found such crowd-control weapons to be effective and would keep using them.
“We’ve used it on six occasions and haven’t had any problems with it,” said Sgt. Carlos Rojas of the Santa Ana, Calif., Police Department.
Boston police, who acquired the weapons for last summer’s Democratic National Convention, have put them aside at least temporarily and have gone back to using a previous model since the death of Victoria Snelgrove, who was shot in the eye.
The reassessment came hours before another Sox-inspired frenzy as the hometown team completed a four-game sweep of the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals. Police reported 35 arrests, 14 revelers taken to hospitals, 30 were treated for lesser injuries at the scene and one officer at Boston Medical Center with a shoulder injury.
Snelgrove was among an estimated 80,000 fans who swarmed the streets outside Fenway Park after the Red Sox beat the rival New York Yankees to advance to the World Series for their first since 1986.
Officers fired into a crowd of fans, striking Snelgrove and at least two others.
Within 24 hours of Snelgrove’s death, Boston Police Commissioner Kathleen O’Toole suspended use of the pepper guns. Several days later, O’Toole tapped Massachusetts’ former chief federal prosecutor, Donald K. Stern, to lead an investigation into the death.
On Wednesday, the lawyer for the police commander in charge of crowd control the night of Snelgrove’s death said the officer fired four rounds from a pepper-spray pellet gun, but did not hit Snelgrove.
Deputy Superintendent Robert O’Toole fired the weapon in an attempt to rein in out-of-control fans who were climbing on the rafters at Fenway Park and a sign at a nearby bar.
The Boston Globe quoted two anonymous sources, including an officer involved with police weapons training and an individual briefed on the investigation, as saying O’Toole fired at a group of students who were climbing the girders behind Fenway Park’s left field wall.
O’Toole, who is not related to Kathleen O’Toole, then handed his weapon to patrolman Richard Stanton, who refused to fire it because he also had not been trained, the sources said.
O’Toole handed another gun to patrolman Samil Silta, who also told O’Toole he was not trained to use it but fired into the crowd anyway, the Globe reported. Another officer who fired into the crowd, patrolman Rochefort Milien, was trained to use the guns, the sources said.
Attorney Timothy Burke said the rounds fired by O’Toole did not strike anyone in the head. “No one was aimed at or shot at in the face,” Burke told The Associated Press.
Burke also said that contrary to the Globe report, Burke had been trained to use the weapon.
Virginia-based FN Herstal, which manufactures the FN303 weapon used in Boston, said there have been no other instances of anyone seriously injured or killed since the gun went on the market about two years ago.
Bucky Mills, deputy director of law enforcement sale, marketing and training, said a couple of hundred law enforcement agencies have bought the guns, including New York City and Washington, D.C., and several federal agencies.
Charles “Sid” Heal, a commander with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and an expert on less-than-lethal force, said the only thing that stopped his department from buying the FN303 was its cost - about $900 per launcher. Heal said the FN303 launcher was known to be very accurate.
“They’re one of the best that are out there,” Heal said. “We tried it, we liked it, we just couldn’t afford it.”
On its Web site, FN Herstal says the weapon should never be aimed at a person’s throat, neck or head.
The same weapons were used without incident in College Park, Md., in 2002 after the University of Maryland basketball team won the NCAA championship.