Why aren't there better non-lethal ways of stunning or restraining people?

Factual Questions
1

Police officers these days, especially in dangerous urban settings, often have somewhat hardcore, hair trigger attitudes and responses toward being attacked. Belligerent people are getting shot and killed everyday by nervous, pissed or scared police. The overall attitude seems to lead to a fairly short yellow light between warn and kill.

On the other side, there are people who struggle with police when they are drunk or on drugs or just plain angry, who might not have been killed if they could have been restrained or stunned effectively. With all the high tech stuff out there why do so many belligerent arrestees wind up getting shot and sometimes killed, instead of stunned or otherwise incapacitated?

Why is the technology to effectively stun people non-lethally, so poor and lacking in this high tech world?

2

I think it’s around, but still experimental. There’s also probably some fear on the part of municipalities and police departments about what would happen if someone did die while being subdued with allegedly non-lethal force. For example, there’s a foam that can be sprayed on a person to stick them down, rather like getting caught in a spiderweb. What if the police officer with the spray gun accidentally got the guy in the face and suffocated him?

Personally, I think using non-lethal methods that have a slim chance of being lethal is better than using lethal or brutal methods all the time (e.g. guns and nightsticks). But I think it’s fear of lawsuits that stops people (similar to this recent case where a guy died even though the injuries the police inflicted on him to subdue him were not themselves lethal), and it’ll just be a matter of time before more police departments get over it and start using them.

3

Because people are fairly fragile. Anything advertised as non-lethal had damn well never kill anybody, which is almost unreasonable as anything strong enough to stun or incapacitate will also be strong enough to accidentally kill from time to time. You know as well as I do that there would undoubtedly be public outrage and lawsuits (against both the police and manufacturer of the “non-lethal” device) whenever someone has a heart attack induced by an electric shock, or a split skull from a high-powered bean bag, or any of the other devices that have been proposed. There is a lot of stuff out there that has potential, but it’s a very fine line between incapacitating someone and killing them.

4

And varied. Good luck finding a weapon that will reliably disable a 20 year old bodybuilder on a drug-induced psychosis, while at the same not being dangerous to, say, a 70 year old woman with Alzheimer’s who is wielding a knife because she has mistaken her husband for a burglar.

While you’re at it, please also design it so that it is as easy to carry and deploy as an ordinary gun – those crossbow-like contraptions which fire rope nets or balls of sticky stuff are cool, but it’s not something that a cop on the beat would carry around routinely. And of course, it has to disarm people just as effectively as an ordinary gun would kill them, because if the first attempt missed the cop may not get a second chance.

5

Mainly because hitting someone is the “Least Lethal” way to go. For example just in Cincinnati. Most have you have seen the tape.

They DID use pepper spray on him. No effect. The Mayor of Cincinnati was asked…“Why didn’t they just shoot him in the leg?” thus maybe causing injury or loss of leg but leaving him alive. He replied that anytime one uses a gun it is considered “lethal force” and is not always appropriate.

This man also had traces of PCP. I have seen people on PCP and it can make them rather impervious to pain.

If you look at the tape I only saw them hit him in the body. Avoiding the head and other “sensitive” areas.

Ironically a punch looks more brutal but is much less lethal overall.

6

Personally, I think the simplest approach is something like the stun-sticks used in the Blade movies (as well as the Stephen King novel The Running Man which described such devices as “move-alongs”), essentially a standard police nightstick with an electrode in the end you could jab somebody with. The item is (ideally) light enough that it could be carried by a cop on the beat, and also used as a standard club if need be.

Right now, I guess, the problem is designing a capacitor and battery light enough, but electricity will probably end up being the way to go, since tasers and stunguns are well-established, the effect is momentary (as opposed to the lingering, possibly suffocating effects of pepper-spray or tear-gas) and focussed on an individual (unlike tear-gas which can affect bystanders and the officers themselves).

7

Notice, also, that pepper spray, Tasers, etc. are not termed “non-lethal” weapons, but “less lethal”. These tools, as well as nightsticks, or even mere physical restraint can and do cause the occaisional death. Anything that will reliably restrain some-one carries some degree of risk.

We can conceive of other approaches, sure. What about a dart gun like Jim always used to use on Mutual of Omaha? What if the suspect has a previously-unspected medical condition? How about interfering with nerve signals (on preview, I see this is essentially what Bryan is proposing)? That’s what Tasers do, and they can cause fatal cardiac arrhythmias in suceptible individuals. Nets? How do you deploy it in close quarters? Indefatigable covered adhesives, and troub did the “less lethal” shotgun rounds (beanbags, baton rounds, etc.).

In short, the window you are aiming for is very small and highly variable. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t researchers devoting lots of time, money and energy to the problem. Just that is is a complex problem.

8

Bryan, two possible problems with that:[ul]
[li]The effects of electricity on people are notoriously unpredictable, so I’m not sure that it meets the requirement of disabling people reliably while being safe at the same time. “Move-along” is one thing, forcing a guy freaking out on PHP to cease & desist without using a potentially lethal amount of power is something else.[/li][li]You’d need to step in close enough to press the stick against the guy’s body and then hold it there firmly while you press the button. Not a fun exercise when confronted with a knife-wielding maniac, especially when he’s clad from head to toe in leather motorcycle gear or something.[/li][/ul]

By the way, please forgive me for being sexist by assuming the knife-wielding maniac to be male.

9

Heck, you could always start training officers in Vulcan nerve-pinch techniques.

10

Do smaller, slighter, or otherwise out of shape policemen and policewomen, that would potentially be a physical disadvantage, go to the gun more quickly when faced with a big, strong belligerent opponent? Would recruiting bigger, burlier policemen and women more capable or grappling with uncooperative subjects reduce the rate of fatal shootings in these type of altercations, or are big, strong, in shape policemen just as quick to the gun as smaller ones?

11

I wonder if there is research on that ** astro**. I have heard that women are actualy far less likely to go for force and more likely to talk a person down. I have always believed this, but as a second thought I think I need see if there is a way to find out if it is true. Unfortunatly I need to get next weeks lesson plans done today and I will probably forget about it before I go look.

12

There are microwave devices in the works, intended to be used as non-lethal personnel deterrents.

A directed microwave energy beam is focused on the subject, causing excruciating, incapacitating, but overall harmless pain. The pain stops when the device is no longer applied.

The Air Force is working on this right now…it’s called [urlhttp://www.de.afrl.af.mil/factsheets/activedenial.html]Active Denial Technology

13

Most unlikely. It is well established that there is no corelation between size and intelligence, omitting obviously pathological cases. The biggest, most athletic LEO will therefore not be stupid enough to close on me if I am not shown to not have a club, knife, or gun to hand.

14

Taser technology is the way to go. Too bad most police don’t have the funds to buy these things.

Also too bad I didn’t buy 10,000 shares of their stock 6 months ago:

15

Oops…fudged my link…

You’re smart people, you can figure out the URL for yoursleves.

16

i have thought about this before. i have some ideas. there must be some compond that only causes pain, no other affect on the body. the idea is you put them in so much pain they pass out, like the fictional zat gun, only a chemical version.
some concerns with methode,
one it would really hurt of course.
two heart might not be able to take the brief stress before passing out.
three lawsuits.

another idea is a smart dart gun. it could would have a dial. the officer would eyeball the weight of the perp and select it on a dial. the gun squirt the right amount of tranc. dope into the dart right before firing.

speed is an issue with this one. first the dart will have to fill before firing, then it wil take a little time for the drug to work.

17

Any “non-lethal” method is going to be lethal to someone. Case in point - sleeper holds. Used all the time in judo. LAPD tried it - a couple of people died, and they had to stop. (FWIW, that was why Rodney King was tazer-ed and beat down instead of choked out - choke holds are illegal under CA state law. )

So they develop a method that works 95% of the time without hurting the subdue-ee. Sure as you’re born, some one is going to go ballistic at a traffic stop, and then die as a result of the new Magic Sleep-Away Restraint Spray. Is that better than shooting him? Sure, but good luck trying to convince a jury of that.

The Mayor of Cinncinnati (or his functional equivalent) is always going to say, “Why didn’t you just shoot him in the leg?”, when you are lucky to hit center mass one time out of ten under the stress and adrenaline dump of real combat. Same thing for any method - “Why didn’t you threaten him with Mace, instead of killing him with a Tazer? Why didn’t you call for back up? Why didn’t you just hit him with your nightstick? Why didn’t you stop hitting him with your nightstick? Instead, you used this new, unproven technology, and now my client will never see her son again!” (Cut to the girlfriend sobbing, “It was only a traffic stop! They didn’t have to kill him!”)

“We find for the plaintiff, for twenty million dollars.”

Regards,
Shodan

18

Electricity is baaaad stuff to use on people. This is why cops generally don’t carry stun guns.

A jolt that would knock you on your can won’t slow me down at all.

A jolt that would lay me out like a sack of potatoes will only piss off Sandy Duncan on PCP.

A jolt that would stun the hell out of Sandy Duncan on PCP will stun me and leave ugly burns that I can sue about, and would fry and/or cause permanent nerve damage to… say, Michael Jackson. Not that anyone would notice.

And ghod forbid someone’s toddler got hit with the thing.

No, electicity no good. Bad. How about tranquilizer darts? Well, there’s the matter of dosage… in fact, dosage problems come across quite a bit like the electricity argument, above… with the added bonus that no one ever seized up and died on the spot from an allergic reaction to electricity. Be fun explaining that one to the plaintiff’s lawyer…

“Well, your honor, it was intended to be nonlethal. How did WE know he was violently allergic to that particular sedative? Oh, he wasn’t? He was, in fact, already drugged up with that particular sedative, or a similar one, for recreational reasons, and our tranking him just caused an overdose effect? Hey, wow, does that mean we aren’t legally liable for killing his ass?”

…no, I don’t think trank guns are a good idea.

This leaves the electrode billy club. It isn’t a new idea. However, it opens a can of worms, too. Keep in mind that a jolt that will knock Marilyn Manson on his skinny butt will simply irritate me. Any half-smart cop is going to know this.

…and a good, professional cop isn’t going to poke me with the thing. If he needs to use it, he’ll just whack me upside the chops with it.

But not all cops are good, professional persons. Some cops rather enjoy being jerks. Are you proposing that we provide them with an instrument of torture that MAY, at some point, also come in handy as a stunning weapon?

This leaves us with the problem of designing and building an electric billy club that can (a) hold and store a charge sufficient to carry out its electrical stun function, and (b) be shockproof enough to still function after Daryl Gates has used the thing to beat Rodney King’s head in.

This is not to even begin to address the sheer amount of crap some departments require their officers to pack around, while maintaining secure enough that the perps can’t just pluck it off your belt and murder you with it.

Man, if I was a cop, I’d just want two pairs of cuffs, a billy, and a gun. Period. If I can’t talk him down, and I can’t beat him down, then I really doubt that a stun gun or a phaser or that net launcher from “Predator II” is going to do me any damn good…

19

Police don’t train to “shoot to wound”, with good reason as this is not an effective way to use lethal, deadly force.
For that matter, nor should homeowners decide that this is a good way to go when confronted by criminals. When faced with a potentially lethal attack all the experts agree to shoot center-mass - to kill. No, it’s not pretty to think about.

Law enforcement personnell often have only a split second to decide the course of action to take.

20

…as opposed to enough time to decide whether to get the gun, the stunner, the electro-club, the mace, the trank pistol, the net gun, or Logan’s DS pistol, much less which setting to use…