Cover Story
It’s a Wrap
Police around the country try out the BolaWrap 100, a new non-lethal restraint On a chilly Thursday afternoon, the team from Bola Wrap has found yet another police chief willing to stand in front of its new product. Company COO Mike Rothans holds a small device in his hand and discharges the device. Pop! In the blink of an eye, Chaska chief of police Scott Knight finds 8 feet of Kevlar rope tied around his legs. He can barely move and that’s the point. “This restrains the individual so that you can get them help, without hurting them,” Rothans explains to room full of chiefs and police officers inside the city fire station. Rothans, a former Assistant Sheriff with the Los Angeles County department, and his team at Wrap Technologies has offered this demo 26
We have developed a product that fills the gap between the verbal commands police might use in a crisis-situation and pain compliance tools. dozens of times at police departments around the country. “We were initially talking to people we knew,” he says. “But after about 2 months we started to get inundated with requests for demonstrations.” BolaWrap visited with Chaska police in November. In the weeks since then, Knight says his Use of Force Training Team has worked on drafting a policy and prepared the department to train and deploy the BolaWrap 100. “The moment I saw this device, I
knew that we needed to have it,” Knight told the Star Tribune back in November. “This is one of the biggest advancements I’ve seen in my 43-year career. I wish I’d had this tool when I was an officer.” Like a lot of emerging products in law enforcement, BolaWrap is the creation of entrepreneurs who grew frustrated watching media coverage of police use of force encounters that turned deadly. “The number one problem police have right now is facing mentally ill MINNESOTA POLICE CHIEF
