Los Angeles is internationally renowned as the capital of high-speed police chases. Long a staple of
news broadcasts and Internet crash videos everywhere, the Los Angeles Police Department has made the dangerous pursuits
a seemingly regular part of their repertoire, reluctantly or no. But despite their almost clichéd popularity
among television rubberneckers, there’s no debating tha they remain a scary and dangerous proposition. As
such, finding a way of avoiding them altogether has become a high priority… and as the UK Guardian reports,
the LAPD may finally have found their silver bullet dart.
The prototype system in question employs GPS-enabled air-propelled sticky darts, which when fired from a specially
outfitted police vehicle, allows officers to track a fleeing suspect and pursue from a safe distance (or set up road
blocks in advance). The firing mechanism (fitted to patrol cars’ radiators) has a range of 65 feet, but has
never been tested on a moving target.
The system is being test-fitted to a handful of LAPD patrol cars for a four-to-six month trial.