SADIEVILLE, Ky. (LEX 18) — The Sadieville Police Department has added a new non-lethal tool to their equipment - a device that helps officers apprehend subjects without causing harm.
The BolaWrap 150 deploys a 7.6-inch Kevlar cord that wraps around a subject's legs or arms, temporarily restraining them without causing injury.
"This is a non-lethal tool designed to deploy a 7.6-inch Kevlar cord towards the suspect in order to attempt to assist us to apprehend them," said Timothy Lawson, Assistant Chief of Sadieville Police Department.
The small device provides officers with another option before resorting to more forceful methods.
"Due to being another non-lethal tool that we can carry on us, you know, it gives us just another development to keep from going to one of our other tools that we have such as the taser or the pepper spray, it's a lower on our tool belt basically," Lawson said.
Lawson purchased two of the devices after seeing them used by a police department in Northern Kentucky, currently the only other department in the state utilizing this technology.
To operate the device, officers must insert a cassette, which arms the BolaWrap and makes it ready for deployment.
"So with the BolaWrap we have to have the cassette in the device itself. Once the cassette's in the device. The BolaWrap is armed and ready," Lawson said.
Before using the device in the field, Lawson completed an eight-hour training course to learn proper and safe usage techniques.
When deploying the BolaWrap, officers are trained to announce "Bola, bola, bola" to alert both the subject and other officers that the device is about to be used. This verbal warning also indicates that lethal force is not being employed.
"It wraps around uh the subject's legs at that point. Again, you don't want to just stand there and watch the ball of wrap. You want to go to the subject. You have about a 2-3 second window that they're gonna be stunned for a moment," Lawson said.
Lawson believes the new technology demonstrates the department's commitment to community safety.
"It just shows that, you know, we're working for a better agency and we're getting the training and we wanna make Sadieville a safer place and this is one option that we had to, to keep doing that," Lawson said.
The assistant chief encourages other law enforcement agencies across Kentucky to consider adding the BolaWrap to their non-lethal options.
