Finding and applying new technologies to law enforcement
David G. Boyd · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1994
Law enforcement officials have long recognized that a wide and dangerous gap exists in the range of tools that are available to them. The most common law enforcement tools, the nightstick and the gun, may be either too weak or too strong a response to many police situations. In violent confrontations, officers may be obliged to choose an unnecessarily strong response for lack of an effective alternative weapon. These problems demand that we persevere in the development of less than lethal weapons, that is, weapons which are designed to provide effective enforcement while at the same time minimizing the risk of life.