Toronto police have used a shotgun loaded with beans in fabric — a so-called Sock Gun — to disable a man walking into traffic with a knife in his hand on Monday in the Bloordale Village area. The altered weapons were put into service last year and are being used elsewhere as well. We see a take down in Vancouver, above left. Police received Monday’s call before 2 p.m. about a man, believed to be in his 30s, who appeared to have a buck knife around Bloor Street and Lansdowne Avenue. The man was walking northbound on Lansdowne Avenue toward the subway, police said. When officers arrived on scene, they deployed a sock gun and seized the knife. “It was a bright orange and black gun. When I saw that, I figured it probably wasn’t a lethal firearm,” a witness, Conor Devitt, told CTV News Toronto on Monday evening. The bullets used by police were fabric, according to officers, which is a less lethal way to take down suspects.
