A few Ferguson police officers are training to use a non-lethal bullet before introducing it to the entire police force, Washington Post reported.

The city's assistant police chief, Al Eickhoff, researched a less lethal weapon following the aftermath of the Michael Brown case. The non-lethal weapon called "the Alternative" is an orange device placed on a normal handgun barrel. When a bullet is fired with the device, it is merges with a projectile to form a small ball which makes it strong enough to knock a person down but not enough to kill them.

Such a device would have prevented situations like when Officer Darren Wilson fatally shot unarmed teenager Brown.

"It gives another option," Eickhoff said of the device, which he later tested for himself. "I really liked it. ... You are always looking to save a life, not take a life."

Steve Ijames, a former Springfield police major and training export, said, "I am all about less lethal. What bothers me is we will allow an officer to face immediate deadly jeopardy with a less-lethal round. Deadly force is the most likely thing to repel deadly force."

Ijames says the Alternative puts officers at greater risk because they have to remove it from their belts and place it on the weapon. That split second could mean life of death for an officer.

Civil unrest erupted after a grand jury decided to not indict the officer who killed Michael Brown. That is just one case among many other where officers killed unarmed suspects because they feared for their lives.

Christian Ellis, the chief executive of Alternative Ballistics, said he developed the device to stop incidents like the one that occurred with Brown.

"Ask a police officer what are the options when lethal force is justified, and he'll say, 'I have my gun and my bullets,'" Ellis said.

He recently began marketing the Alternative in the United States and abroad calling it "an air bag for a bullet."

The concept of a less lethal bullet was developed by a retired sheriff's officer.

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