GEORGIA POLICE TEST NEW, NON-LETHAL WAY TO STOP SUSPECTS
LaGrange GA May 6 2018 A Georgia police department this week auditioned a new high-tech tool which is a non-lethal way to stop suspects.
The BolaWrap is a handheld remote that deploys an eight-foot Kevlar rope. Used at a distance of 10-25 feet, it can entangle a suspect’s arms or legs and stop one from running or striking an officer.
Sounds kind of like Spider-Man, doesn’t it?
“For someone that has never seen it before, it would be similar, I guess,” says LaGrange Police Lt. Dale Strickland. “Whereas Spider-Man shot out more of like a sticky substance, this is more a single string that when it comes out has two little weighted ends. It appears to use gravity, and with the two weighted ends, it just continues to wrap around–the force causes the string to wrap around you.”
The LaGrange Police Department in Troup County hosted a demo by the company, Wrap Technologies, also inviting members from other law enforcement agencies including the sheriff’s office and the Franklin and Pine Mountain police. The company bills BolaWrap as the least lethal option a department could use to temporarily control a suspect and a way to keep confrontations from escalating.
Lt. Strickland tells WSB that officers would appreciate this as a non-lethal option for taking people into custody, especially when dealing with the mentally ill.
“Often, officers are faced with people with mental issues or in mental crisis,” he says. “They’ve not, maybe, necessarily committed a crime, but need medical attention and they really don’t realize it because of the mental crisis. Officers are put in a position where they’re trying to assist so that people can get the treatment that they need. The last thing they want to do is to get in there and get hurt, or hurt the individual they’re trying to help.”
Strickland says the BolaWrap, which is strong with a 320-pound breaking point, could also be very handy in preventing the so-called “suicide by cop” in which a person tries to provoke law enforcement into shooting them.
In the demo, the department used a mannequin to see how the string would wrap around a body. Strickland says in evaluating whether to add the BolaWrap to the tool belt for LaGrange Police, they would want to do field tests on moving people, and that their training coordinator, Lt. Eric Lohr, is in touch with the company to explore it. That could come within the next couple of months, he says.
“We’re in the business to help folks, and we want to do it safely,” says Lt. Strickland.
“If this would allow us another tool to assist officers with taking people into custody without them being injured and our officers not being injured, I’m all for it.”
