Fairfax County police to use Spider-Man-like lassos to subdue suspects

Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis announced Tuesday that his department was buying 450 of the devices — good for one in each patrol vehicle, which officers sometimes share.

The department will become the first big law enforcement agency in the D.C. region to have them — though Wrap Technologies, the company that makes the devices, said more than 1,000 police departments across the country have purchased the devices. The company’s CEO said pilot programs have been run in Los Angeles, Detroit and Seattle, but Fairfax will be the biggest department to put them in widespread use.

“It’s simply a restraining device,” Davis said on Wednesday. “I describe it as a kid watching Spider-Man shoot something out of his wrist, flies through the air and then wraps around you.”

The lasso works like this: A cartridge with a 7 1/2-foot Kevlar cord with two hooked barbs tied to each end is loaded into the BolaWrap device, experts say. Police power on the device, which points a laser at the officer’s target. When an officer pushes a button, the cord is propelled out of the device using a micro-gas generator.

The velocity of the barbs is such that when the cord connects with its target, it wraps around the person police are trying to subdue — as many as three times around the abdomen or legs. Scot Cohen, CEO of Wrap Technologies, said the cord length ensures it will wrap tightly around people’s bodies, but not too tightly that it would choke someone if the device accidentally went around a person’s neck.

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In the past, some police officials have questioned whether the device would be truly effective or worth the cost — about $1,000 per device for the Fairfax County department. In 2020, after the Landover Hills, Md., police department held a demonstration to debut the devices, then-D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said he had seen videos and was skeptical.

“Any less-than-lethal option is something we always consider,” Newsham said. But from the video, “I questioned its ability to take someone down who is not trying to be taken down.”

This Spider-Man-like lasso is marketed as a policing game-changer. Some aren’t buying it.

Nearly four years later, officials with the D.C., Arlington County, Prince William County and Prince George’s County police departments said that they do not use BolaWraps, nor does the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office. Robert Liberati, chief of the Landover Hills department — which has just six officers, including himself — said since purchasing the device, “we have not used it in an actual case yet.” But he did not regret the investment.

“There have been situations where I suppose we could have used it, but luckily we were able to de-escalate in other ways,” Liberati said. “It is impossible to have a tool for every situation. BolaWrap has limitations. Taser has limitations. … But if you got someone who is out in the open, and you have time to get them under control, it’s an option. But it’s not going to be something you can use in every situation.”

Cohen and other officials with Wrap Technologies asserted the device has an 85 percent success rate, and 51 percent of deployments aid people in mental crisis. Davis said the department will not classify deploying the device as a “use of force,” but officers will still be mandated to report to their supervisors each time they use it. The company says the devices are particularly effective in handling mildly aggressive subjects or those in the throes of a mental health crisis. The ACLU of Virginia declined to comment for this story, saying it was not yet familiar enough with the devices or Fairfax County’s use of them and needed to do more exploration.

From November 2022 to April 2023, Fairfax County police had 30 BolaWraps placed throughout its stations and used by its crisis intervention team in a pilot program. Davis said on Wednesday that the pilot sold the department on the product, and officials purchased roughly 450 BolaWraps for every patrol officer to have in their cruisers. Davis described the pilot as a success, saying that officers found the device was a good fit for situations in which people didn’t respond to commands but weren’t actively posing a threat.

“I think in the community, it’s always tough to observe the use of force taking place,” Davis said. “It’s even more challenging when several police officers are required to take a single person into custody. So anytime five, six, seven police officers are struggling with the person to get handcuffs on — that’s always a bad look. It invites community scrutiny about proportionality. So I think of this as flying handcuffs, for lack of a better description.”

Asked why the devices were not in more widespread use, Cohen said: “It’s really hard to change habits because we’re used to certain things.”

“So when you’re offering a new piece of equipment, there’s a lot of resistance,” he said. “So there is always a lot of naysayers early. … But it’s pretty self-explanatory when you see officers use it through a body cam. And what’s driving us is results we see.”