[familyguy45]

Glass is a surprisingly tough barrier for projectiles.... handgun and rifle bullets have been known to do all kinds of weird stuff after hitting it. Still, I'm surprised that it fared as badly as it did. I would have thought that all of the pellets would have at least penetrated. I'm not sure whether this is an indictment of the "lower recoil" (and like Guardian said, lower velocity) buckshot loads or just one of those freaky things that happens from time to time. Police Magazine (http://www.policemag.com) in their April, 2003 issue did a quick evaluation of various loads through various parts of cars. They used (regular) Winchester 00 Buck. In the article, they mentioned that they had heard that 00 Buck could not be counted on to reliably penetrate windshields. But firing from 7 yards they always got penetration. Many times, the rear window would be shattered by a pellet or two as well. However, as range increases, 00 Buck becomes much less effective. Obviously, window glass usually isn't laminated like a windshield and I don't know how close the officer was, but what I suspect is that distance + lower velocity + glass = oh s***.
I'll stick with my non-low-recoil buckshot, thank you very much...