Utah police departments adopt a new non-lethal tool — but they haven’t used it yet

    SALT LAKE CITY (KSTU) -- At least 12 police departments across the state — from Logan to Washington County — have purchased a new less-lethal device they say will help them restrain people more safely.

But none of them have actually used it yet.

For some agencies, that’s because they still haven’t trained their officers on the BolaWrap, which deploys a 7-and-a-half-foot Kevlar cord that winds its way tightly around a suspect like a lasso. At least one department doesn’t plan to use the tool at all.

Other agencies say they simply haven’t needed to deploy them – something Keith Squires, the chief safety officer at the University of Utah, sees as a positive.

"If we never have to use it, that would be a good thing,” he said in a recent interview with FOX 13 News. “But if it happens that an officer is in a situation where they know that there’s potential of engaging with someone who is ready to fight or use force against them – whatever it is – and they can use this tool to be able to de-escalate that situation, that’s a win.”

The university’s police force is one of the biggest adopters of the new technology in the state, spending around $76,500 to arm all its patrol officers with the tool.

While they haven’t yet used BolaWraps in the field here, the decision by Utah police departments to spend a collective $238,000 on them comes at a time when agencies are continuing to evaluate their policing practices in the wake of local and national outcry over officer use of force in recent years.

Rodney Sherrod, vice president of training at BolaWrap, said he believes the device has the potential to reduce injuries to both officers and suspects. It could also lower the temperature on “the community outrage [that] is really unparalleled in law enforcement right now,” he said.

Wrap Technologies, the company behind the BolaWrap, has marketed it as particularly useful in situations with people who are “emotionally disturbed,” suicidal and mentally ill – as well as with subjects under the influence of alcohol or drugs or who are “passively resistant and non-compliant.”

The device is designed to be deployed from a distance of 10 to 25 feet, in order to allow an officer to gain control of someone without having to go “hands on” or use a riskier less-lethal tool, like a Taser.

“We’re actually helping those in crisis now,” Sherrod said, “whereas before the traditional tools of the trade affect their pain and it escalates a situation."

A little more than half the uses of the BolaWrap nationwide have been on people in some kind of mental or behavioral health crisis, he said.

Rob Wesemann, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Utah, noted that people experiencing severe mental illness are disproportionately represented in violent encounters with officers. The population is more than 10 times as likely to experience force in an interaction with police as those without mental illness.

That’s often because officers misinterpret their symptoms as hostility, or their inability to respond to commands as noncompliance, he said.

“For [an officer] with limited training, they may see someone’s behavior as simply being defiant: ‘No, I’m not going to do what you tell me,’” he said. “When it could be much, much more complicated than that.”

Wesemann said NAMI Utah is in favor of having additional non-lethal tools available to officers. But as more officers put BolaWraps on their belts, he said continued emphasis on de-escalation and training – as well as on understanding people with mental illness – will be important, too.

"Our initial response is it’s a little problematic developing this kind of stuff that’s only supposed to be used for folks with mental health conditions,” he said of the BolaWrap. “However, we are not law enforcement, as well, and so we acknowledge the very difficult situation that law enforcement gets placed in. And so again, we really encourage the training piece.”

Squires, with the University of Utah, said officers in the state receive ongoing training on de-escalation. And no matter how many less lethal devices officers have on their belts, he said, their “greatest tool is usually their ability to communicate with an individual.”

“What we want to do is give every opportunity for our officers to have options,” Squires said. “And as they assess the situation, being able to have a tool that doesn’t require them to have to use a firearm or other lethal means – potentially lethal means – for me is an investment and an opportunity to save somebody from being harmed.”

But as with most policing tools marketed as “less lethal,” the BolaWrap isn’t without risk.

The company notes in its safety guidelines that the device “involves the possibility that a person may get hurt or die from direct effects of force or from secondary effects including tripping or falling, physical impact or exertion, or unforeseen circumstances.” The guidelines also warn that the barb on the end of the cord may “cause a mark, scratch, puncture, or [cause] other skin or tissue damage with possible infection hazard.”

When the university's police department tested out the BolaWrap on Squires last year, he said the barb punctured his skin and had to be manually removed.

“But for me, the [injury] alternative compared to what the other tools are that we possibly would have to use in a situation like that was very minor,” he said.

To prevent injury, BolaWrap suggests officers avoid aiming the devices at someone’s head or using them on a target more susceptible to tripping or falling.

As departments across the state buy into the promise of the BolaWrap, at least one agency has decided against the new technology.

When Roy Police Chief Matthew Gwynn was appointed in 2021, he decided not to put the BolaWraps into use, based on concerns about increasing decision fatigue for officers who may need to make a split-second decision in the field.

“I don’t want them to have to spend a significant amount of time trying to decide which less lethal tool they have to go to and try to find that and then deploy that,” Gwynn, who’s also a state lawmaker, said in an interview. “I think this just further complicates that decision making when time counts.”

Previous departmental leadership on the BolaWraps through federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act money in Gwynn said the department ultimately wasn't able to secure a refund for the devices – so for now, the BolaWraps are “currently being stored” in the agency’s armory, he said.

These other Utah departments have also purchased the BolaWraps:

Utah Highway Patrol spent nearly $48,250 on the devices in May 2023 – at a cost of around $1,300 per unit, plus cartridges and holsters – as part of an effort to “provide more methods and tools for de-escalation,” according to an internal memo FOX 13 News obtained through an open records request. The department said it hasn’t yet had a chance to issue the BolaWraps and train officers on their use. The Tooele Police Department purchased the BolaWraps through a grant in January for around $17,400 and trained officers on how to use them in late May. The department said none of its officers have deployed the device yet. The Sunset Police Department said it had only recently purchased the BolaWraps and set a date for training, so the devices have not yet been used. The office purchased 10 of them for about $16,530. The North Salt Lake Police Department said it has not deployed the BolaWrap outside of training. The department spent $925 each for 14 devices, at a cost of approximately $12,950. The Washington County Sheriff’s Office spent about $6,670 on six BolaWraps, as well as belt clips and cartridges. The department initially said in a response to FOX 13 that it had used the tool twice, but police reports obtained through records requests on those instances revealed that wasn’t the case. Instead, both incidents involved the uses of WRAP’s full-body restraint. The Kanab Police Department spent $6,000 on the devices. In the year and a half since officers have had them, the department said it has not had “any incidents that required the tool to be used.” The Millard County Sheriff’s Office spent $5,685 on the BolaWrap tools but said it has not yet “issued nor implemented the BolaWrap” and didn't "have any deployments or usage.” The Nephi Police Department said it has not had any deployments of the BolaWrap since it purchased them in September 2020. The department spent about $2,930 for two devices and cartridges. The Logan Police Department said it spent $2,370 on the BolaWraps. The agency said it trained four officers on the devices in August 2021, but they haven’t yet been deployed. The Hurricane Police Department said it purchased two BolaWraps for $2,340 and received a grant to pay for three additional devices. The department said it hasn’t deployed them in any incident since officers were trained on their use in October 2023. More than 1,000 other departments across the United States have adopted the devices so far, while others are in the process of testing them, according to BolaWrap. And Sherrod said he expects more agencies in Utah to adopt the tools in the coming months as well.

“Our vision is to ensure that we equip every police officer that is responding to calls of service” in the country, he said. "We would like to see all the frontline officers who respond to calls each day be equipped with a BolaWrap on their person.”