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."
