Yahoo news suggested by Kurt
Ferguson police are testing new
methods of incapacitating suspects — six months after a highly
controversial police shooting involving one of their officers.
This week,
five instructors for the Missouri city’s police department are training
to use a "less lethal" device, called the Alternative, which has enough
force to knock a suspect to the ground but not kill him or her.
The Alternative is
a small orange device that attaches to the top of a normal handgun and
extends a Ping-Pong-ball-sized projectile in front of the muzzle.
After
traveling through the barrel, the bullet embeds itself inside the alloy
projectile, and the docking unit immediately detaches from the weapon,
according to the manufacturer.
This
process decreases the bullet's velocity and dampens its impact. The
bullet, then, should not pierce a human’s skin and cause the type of
internal damage that would kill the person. However, it retains enough
blunt force to knock someone over and deliver severe, debilitating pain.
Christian
Ellis, founder and CEO of Alternative Ballistics, says Ferguson police
reached out to him after an extensive Google search.
“After
the Michael Brown shooting, they were very concerned about taking lives
and making sure that they are proactive,” he said in an interview with
Yahoo News. "These guys are taking it very seriously. They really like
the technology, and I think they are doing the right thing by giving
their officers more tools so they can deal with deadly force encounters
in different ways."
