Mason - Matthew Flint staggered backward, grabbed his chest and began violently coughing.
Flint, an Ingham County Sheriff’s Office sergeant, had just been shot with a round of pepperballs from the office’s new Jayco SA200 Pepperball Launcher System.
A pepperball is a small cylinder that breaks on impact, filled with oleorecin calsicum, a powder version of what is found in pepper spray. The impact of the pepperball and effects of the chemical inside are enough to stop a suspect trying to harm officers.
“The OC really gets to you,” Flint said. “It’s hard to breathe, there’s a tightening in your chest - all you really want is to get out into fresh air and get away from the cloud.”
The sheriff’s office looked into purchasing six of the launchers, which cost about $350 each, about a year ago.
The launchers began going out with road patrol officers a week and a half ago, Sgt. Roy Holliday said.
The department used the weapon for the first time Wednesday when a Holt man came at its officers. Holliday said the system worked extremely well.
Holliday said the department wanted to get the launchers to offer another nonlethal weapon to its officers.
“With this weapon you will have some bruising, but no real serious injuries,” he said.
“It’s a tools to control people without having to kill them.”
Ingham County Sheriff Gene Wriggelsworth said officers are “tickled pink” over the new system.
“In the past, we had to go right up to a subject and spray them with pepper spray, or we had to throw them in a canister,” he said.
“With this, we impact them and put the pepper right on them. The officer doesn’t get hurt, nor the subject.”
MSU’s Department of Police and Public Safety helped Ingham County choose the launcher. It also trained the department in how to use them.
The department purchased two pepperball launchers in the summer of 2000, said MSU police Detective Steven Beard. They were the first law enforcement agency in Michigan to implement the system.
Beard said they have not had to use the weapons, but they would have been helpful in MSU’s 1999 riot.
“It gives more options when dealing with a crowd of that size,” he said.
Beard said the older launchers would shoot off canisters of tear gas and pepper spray, which is a lot more harmful to both the officers and the protesters than the pepperball system.
“There was the potential of injury because the canisters were on fire or really hot,” he said. “You alleviate that problem from pepperballs.”
But pepperballs are not entirely painless, Holliday said. They leave large bruises and welts on people who are hit with them.
“When it hit me in the hand, it really hurt,” Flint said, showing the large bruise he received from the pepperball. “I dropped the hammer I was holding.”
