I certainly wouldn't want to take on a bear with a handgun and load that's optimized for incapacitating humans! And avoidance is generally the best policy, but

I certainly wouldn't want to take on a bear with a handgun and load that's optimized for incapacitating humans! And avoidance is generally the best policy, but it's not an option for the police. So it's better than nothing, and there have been successful stops of bear attacks with these sorts of handguns. Hmmm, a downside of replacing the police shotgun with "patrol carbines" (AR-15 variants, generally), you could always use slugs in the former, which are effective against bears.