 |
|
|
 News from Around the Americas | October 2007 
Border Agents to be Issued Stronger Air Guns
 Leslie Berestein - San Diego Union-Tribune
go to original
| | Weapon fires balls of pepper or ink |
Border Patrol agents in the agency's San Diego, Yuma and Tucson sectors will soon begin using a more powerful compressed-air gun to fire pepper or ink balls at illegal border crossers during violent confrontations.
The device, called an FN 303, can shoot the filled plastic projectiles 225 feet, said Andrea Zortman, a spokeswoman for the agency in Washington, D.C. The pepper-ball launchers currently used by agents have a range of about 60 feet.
Training in how to use the FN 303 has been going on for some time, and the devices will be used in the field within a few months, Zortman said this week. They will be used first in San Diego and Arizona because that is where the most violence against agents has occurred, she said. Eventually the air guns will be distributed for use nationwide.
Zortman said there were 893 assaults on Border Patrol agents nationwide between Oct. 1, 2006, and Aug. 31, versus 752 for all of the previous year.
In San Diego, there were 238 attacks on agents between Oct. 1, 2006, and the beginning of this month.
We are definitely seeing an increase in assaults on our Border Patrol agents, a lot coming from a greater distance, Zortman said. There are rocks thrown, bottles thrown, vehicle assaults, shootings. We want to be able to have our agents address the situation, and potentially defuse it, at a lower level of lethality than using his or her firearm.
Agents are armed with .40-caliber handguns and collapsible batons, and can check out a pepper-ball launcher at the beginning of a shift if they anticipate needing one, Zortman said. The ink component, which is new, is to mark smuggling suspects or attackers for potential arrest by authorities on either side of the border.
The agency refers to the FN 303 as less lethal, rather than nonlethal. Fatalities have occurred: In October 2004, a 21-year-old female college student died in Boston after being struck in the eye by a pepper ball fired from an FN 303 used by officers to control crowds celebrating the Red Sox's pennant win that year.
The Mexican Consulate is critical of the use of pepper-ball launchers for the same reason. In Imperial County this year, two Mexican teenagers were hit by pepper balls fired by agents, and one boy now stands an 80 percent chance of losing an eye, said Pablo Arnaud, the Mexican consul in Calexico.
A 20-year-old Mexican man died there in March after an agent-involved shooting with a firearm.
Zortman said part of the idea is to cut down on agent-involved gun shootings. Agent Matthew Johnson in the San Diego sector said 14 such shootings have taken place locally since Oct. 1, 2006.
A fatal agent-involved shooting took place in Escondido in May, when an agent shot and killed a smuggling suspect who, it was later discovered, was a legal resident.
Leslie Berestein: (619) 542-4579; leslie.berestein@uniontrib.com |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us