Police officers in Los Angeles, Calif., the "car-chase capital of the world," are testing a Global Positioning System (GPS)-enabled dart as part of the Los Angeles Police Department’s strategy to end high-speed pursuits, the Associated Press (AP) reports.
The "dart" would be fired from a police car onto a fleeing vehicle, where it would stick, allowing officers to follow the vehicle at a safer distance.
"Instead of us pushing them doing 70 or 80 miles and hour, this device allows us not to have to pursue the car," William J. Bratton, LA’s chief of police, told the AP. "It allows us to start vectoring where the car is."
The new device is being tested in LA at the suggestion of the U.S. Department of Justice.
During the testing phase, a small number of patrol cars will be equipped with compressed air launchers to fire the darts, which are roughly the size of golf balls.
During last year alone, there were some 600 pursuits in LA and upwards of 100,000 nationwide, the AP said.
When asked why his police force found themselves in so many pursuits, Bratton, who deemed LA the "car-chase capital of the world," told the AP: "There are a lot of nuts here."
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