Video: NYPD Testing High-Powered Lasso Gun To Subdue Mentally Ill Suspects

Eric Adams, shortly after he was shot with the BolaWrap

As the NYPD continues to blow past promised deadlines for training police officers in deescalating encounters with emotionally disturbed individuals, the department is testing a new gadget intended to restrain the mentally ill: a high-powered lasso gun.

Unveiled last year, the BolaWrap™ 100 is a hand-held remote that allows officers to quickly fire barbed Kevlar cords toward suspects at speeds of 640 feet per second. The stated goal of the product is to entangle a person's limbs "early in an engagement," thereby allowing police officers to avoid using lethal force. The intended target is described by the company as "the mentally ill population" and, elsewhere, "the bad guys." Each unit costs $800, and sounds like a gunshot when discharged.

Asked about the product during a crime briefing last week, Police Commissioner James O'Neill said, "We are always looking at new technology. We're not looking at it right now, but at some point I'm sure we will." A few days later, police officers quietly tested the product alongside company reps, according to Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams.

On Thursday, Adams invited press to a demonstration of the product, which he calls an "amazing evolution in the concept of policing." Standing in a Brooklyn Borough Hall courtroom, he shot and was shot at with the BolaWrap™ 100, then spoke of the need for the NYPD to begin a pilot program immediately. "This is Marvel meeting reality," he exclaimed, his legs ensnared in the eight-foot Kevlar cords. "Spider-Man has nothing on Bola."

Wired Technologies, which manufactures and distributes the wraps, claims that 24 police departments across the country are testing the product internally, and that six departments are testing it in the field. A version that sounds less like a gunshot is currently in development, for use on college campuses, according to Mike Rothans, the senior vice president of Wrap Technologies.

During Thursday's demonstration, Adams, flanked by Rothans and Wired Technologies CEO David Norris, assured reporters that the product was neither painful nor dangerous (Adams did wear protective goggles, just in case). The trio brushed off questions about whether it might be more difficult to deploy the wraps in a crowded, high-pressure environment, rather than a tightly controlled courtroom, by pointing to the device's laser sight. Despite the fact that a website advertises the wraps as having 380 pounds of strength, Rothans promised that they wouldn't be strong enough to strangle someone if accidentally fired at their neck.

Rather, the gizmo should be seen as a low-risk alternative to the more painful, less reliable stun gun, they said. At one point, Adams referred to a video—shown by company reps earlier in the demonstration—of an 86-year-old man with dementia getting tased by police officers during a traffic stop, as precisely the sort of situation in which the resistance tool could be of use. "Some might look at the incident with the 86-year-old and say why would you need any force there, but that's not the real universe of policing," said Adams, a former NYPD officer. "I would have used the device with the 86-year-old. Maybe I strike his legs instead of his arms, so he can break his fall."

In Adams's estimation, the device could successfully subdue about 70 percent of the 150,000 or so emotionally disturbed individuals encountered annually by the NYPD. The department's handling of such cases—known as EDPs—has attracted scrutiny in recent years, with advocates demanding better training for officers responding to mental health crises, particularly following the deaths of Saheed Vassell and Deborah Danner. While the Mayor's Office vowed last year to have all 23,000 patrol officers trained "by 2018," a spokesperson for the NYPD told Gothamist that only 10,261 officers had received the training as of October 1st.

"There’s no reason we don’t have that training in place," Adams responded, when asked about the delay. "An officer leaves his or her precinct with a tool box to correct conditions, and crisis intervention training must be one of those tools in the box." So too, he feels, should the BolaWrap™ 100.

We reached out to the Mayor's Office about their thoughts on the device, and to ask whether the remaining 13,000 patrol officers will receive the crisis intervention training by 2018, as promised. We'll update if we hear back.