Police chasing a fleeing car in Southern California now sometimes reach for something that the Los Angeles Times describes as "a secret weapon that is part grappling gun, part lasso." Riverside County now boasts the first sheriff's department in California to deploy the appropriately named Grappler, a $5,000 bumper-mounted device that shoots out a net designed to snag the rear tires or axle of a suspect's vehicle and bring it to a rapid stop (see it in action here). Lt. Jason Santistevan, who pushed for its adoption after seeing it at a K9 expo, says it's already been used roughly 45 times, at speeds up to 106mph, and can prevent pursuits from escalating into deadly crashes. The Grappler was invented by Leonard Stock, a construction worker with no police experience who came up with the concept after viewing a program about pursuits, per InvestigateTV.
"I suddenly woke up with this image of some kind of a strap going around a tire," he notes. The Grappler is part of a wider search for safer pursuit tactics as California logs thousands of chases a year: In 2023, for example, the California Highway Patrol counted more than 13,600 pursuits and 43 deaths, per the Times. The device has limits, however. In an April 8 chase involving a grand-theft suspect, deputies tried and failed twice to snag his car before it slammed into a building. Criminologist Geoffrey Alpert says there's not yet enough data to judge the Grappler's overall effectiveness, though he supports tools that cut down on high-speed pursuits. "Anything is better than chasing," he notes. "The higher the speeds, the higher the variables and the higher the risks." InvestigateTV notes there are now about 120 police departments that use the device. More here.
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