Dylan Brogan
The Sage Deuce Launcher, which fires Nerf-like projectiles (lower right), can be used against subjects as far away as 120 feet.
This summer, the Madison Police Department added a new “less lethal” weapon to its arsenal of compliance tools. The Sage Deuce Launcher is a modified grenade launcher capable of firing two 40 mm sponge rounds from as far away as 120 feet, significantly farther than other “less lethal” weapons used by police. Officer Chris Masterson, who demonstrated the weapon for the media on Oct. 18, compares the impact from the blue, Nerf-like projectile to being hit with a baseball at 40 miles an hour.
“This is a pain compliance tool. Like pepper spray, like a baton strike, this causes pain,” Masterson said at the demonstration. “Our goal is to get someone to comply.”
Before this summer, the launchers were only available to the SWAT team for crowd control. In the short time they have been available to patrol officers, the launchers have been deployed twice.
In an Oct. 9 incident, police responded to a 29-year-old man on North High Point Road who was threatening to kill himself. He refused to comply with officers’ commands to drop a knife. When the man began to cut his throat, police fired a sponge round at him, causing him to drop the knife. Officers were then able to safely approach the subject, clot the man’s self-inflicted wound and take him to the hospital. Police Chief Mike Koval says the man’s life was saved by officers using the new weapon.
“He was committing suicide, literally suicide before the officers’ eyes…. His life was literally within seconds of ending,” Koval says. “But with this less lethal round, we can — with a better sense of efficacy and accuracy — create greater distances with better stopping power. [It provided] space so we don’t have to go to lethal force options.”
Police used the launcher less effectively during a nine-hour standoff at a Monona home on Sept. 8 against a man who was being sought on an attempted homicide. “It knocked the subject down but he got back up,” Masterson said. “So like all our pain compliance tools, it’s totally based on what a subject is willing to go through.”
The subject was eventually “overcome by smoke” and apprehended when the house he was in caught on fire.
Masterson says the launchers are similar, but more effective, than 12-gauge shotguns that shoot Kevlar beanbags filled with lead. The launcher can be safely used as close as five feet from a subject while the shotgun beanbags require a minimum distance of 20 feet. Because the sponge rounds are more aerodynamic than bean bags, the launcher can also accurately hit a target almost 50 feet farther than the shotgun beanbags.
The Sage Deuce Launcher may be more effective than other less lethal weapons but the policy and training for deploying deadly force hasn’t changed.
“It says it right in our policy [that the launcher] is not a substitute [for deadly force] unless you have a very specific set of circumstances that dictate otherwise,” Masterson says.
The department wanted to give officers another tool to use in non-lethal situations that could become lethal, says Lt. Anthony Fiore, who suggested to Koval that patrol officers have access to launchers. “We just think it will be a more effective tool and allow some capabilities that the shotgun doesn’t in terms of distance and accuracy,” he says.
The Standard Operating Procedure states that officers shouldn’t arm themselves with an impact projectile weapon unless “another officer at the scene has the immediate ability to deliver deadly force.”
Each of the department’s five districts will have two 40 mm launchers, says Assistant Chief Victor Wahl. Officers will have to wait for a supervisor to bring the weapon to a scene, which Masterson estimates could take “10 or more minutes.”
“I think it will improve availability. But the 40 mm [launchers] are expensive. The rounds are expensive. Everything about them is expensive,” Wahl says. “So it’s not like we can have one issued to every officer or even have one in every car.”
The launchers — a modified grenade launcher not available to civilians — cost $1,400 each and each non-reusable sponge round costs $26. Obtaining additional launchers from the manufacturer also takes time because the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives needs to clear each purchase.
But Fiore says the launcher will — under the right circumstances — give officers another way of deescalating potentially deadly situations. Officers are trained to use handguns at a maximum distance of 75 feet. The 40 mm launcher will allow police to stay even farther away.
“We can now engage with subjects at a much greater distance. It gives officers another tactic on how they can position themselves in the safest way for both the subject and the officer,” Fiore says. “I think we will start seeing more and more incidents where the [launcher] is used as officers become more familiar with this tool.”
