If you’ve ever watched/read a piece of Batman media, you may have seen one of his gadgets, the bola wrap. Based on an old tool used to catch cows by the legs, it’s a pair of weights held together by a tough line that wraps around a target’s legs and knocks them over. Police officers in San Jose, California must like the sound of that, because they’ve begun testing an electronic device based on the same concept, the BolaWrap 100.
Similar to a taser, hooked weights tied with a Kevlar line are loaded into a launching device via a cartridge. With a press of a button, the weights shoot out and quickly wrap around the first thing they hit, which are, ideally, a perp’s legs. Beat cops have not begun using these devices yet, but test trials have shown promising results, so we just might be seeing junior Batmen on the San Jose streets soon.
