POCATELLO — Every Pocatello police officer is armed with a beanbag gun for just the type of incident that occurred on Old Town’s busiest street on Monday evening.

Because of what police refer to as their “less-lethal weapons,” the confrontation on North Main Street between Pocatello police and a man trying to commit suicide by cop ended without loss of life or any significant injuries, police said.

Pocatello police officers shot the man with a beanbag gun, incapacitating him so he could be taken into custody and receive treatment for his severe post-traumatic stress disorder.

The situation began to unfold around 6:10 p.m. Monday when police were dispatched to North Main Street between Center and Clark streets after a police dispatcher received a 911 call from a man who said he was armed, wanted to die and was going to start shooting people at that location, police said.

The man then hung up but the police dispatcher called him back and the man said that police officers better hurry to the scene or else he was going to start opening fire on people, police said.

“This was an extremely serious situation,” Pocatello police Lt. Eric Anderson said. “The guy called 911 and told us to send police immediately before hanging up. We called the man back and he said, ‘They better hurry, they better hurry, someone is going to get shot.’ All the while, our dispatchers are trying to relay this information to the responding officers.”

Police located the man on North Main between Clark and Center and the confrontation ensued.

The man had an object hidden under his shirt that he said was a firearm and he told the responding police officers that he wanted to die, police said.

Around 6:15 p.m. Monday on North Main between Center and Clark, police shot the man with a beanbag gun, which incapacitated him so he could be taken into custody, police said. The one-block section of North Main was closed to all traffic for about an hour as police investigated the incident.

Pocatello police are equipped with beanbag guns, also known as less-lethal weapons, to take individuals into custody without killing them during threatening situations.

As serious as Monday evening’s confrontation was, the positive outcome to the very threatening incident is a huge credit to the constant training Pocatello police officers receive throughout the year, Anderson said.

“These guys are trained to make split-second decisions,” Anderson said about Pocatello’s police officers. “We train year-round so that the best outcomes can happen. If that guy were to have been armed or were to have pulled out a handgun, the outcome is likely much different.”

Police said it turned out the man was unarmed and the item he was concealing under his shirt was a vaping device. That came as a surprise to police who said they believed the man actually had a firearm during the incident.

Police said the man suffers from severe PTSD and wanted to commit suicide by cop. Police said that because of the nature of the incident they are not going to release the man’s name but they did say he is from Pocatello.

After being shot by the beanbag gun, the man was transported via Pocatello Fire Department ambulance to Portneuf Medical Center to make sure the beanbag did not injure him. Police said PMC doctors examined the man and determined that he was not injured and he was then admitted to the hospital’s mental health ward for treatment of his PTSD.

The man told hospital staff that he wanted to die during the confrontation with police and he thought the officers were very-well trained considering he was not killed, Anderson said.

“The man made a comment that we were trained too well because he was hoping to die last night,” Anderson said on Tuesday. “And what people don’t realize is that these are bad situations for us, too. Our dispatchers were on the phone with the guy when they heard the (beanbag) shots fired. They had no idea what happened and thought that the man had possibly shot a police officer.”

Police said they likely won’t charge the man with a crime for the incident, though the matter remains under investigation.

“This is by far the best way this could have ended,” Anderson said. “I think that our officers and dispatchers did an amazing job and the public did a great job of allowing us to get in there and do our jobs. Based on the situation, I am extremely grateful that this is the way it ended.”