Officials from an LA area prison are showing off their newest crowd control weapon — an "Assault Intervention Device" that blasts millimeter waves at rowdy inmates, creating an "intense burning sensation real quick." An NPR reporter tried it out!
NPR visited the Pitchess Detention Center in California to check out the new device, which is produced by Raytheon Missile Systems (nice). Prison guards can use the zapper from the comfort of a secure room and operate it with a joystick without ever having to get near a riot or an unruly prisoner. Mike Booen, a vice president of Raytheon, told NPR that "It penetrates about a 64th of an inch under your skin. That's about where your pain receptacles are." And what kind of pain are we talking about here?
Holy smokes!" cried Brian Day, a reporter with the Pasadena Star, as he flinched from the pain and jumped out of the way.
"At first, it's a warmth," he says. "Then it becomes an intense burning sensation real quick."
When I volunteered, the guards hit me first in the arm, and stronger, in the neck. Ten minutes later, I swear I could still feel the pain.
"That's the mind and that's the memory," [Dave Judge from the sheriff's department] says. "We all tend to imprint a discomfort. So you burn that sensation in your mind, which is a positive thing, because we want individuals to remember that. So if they're inclined to do [something wrong], they think twice and not do it."
Naturally, the ACLU is upset about the device, which is a scaled-down version of the "Active Denial System" also built by Raytheon, but for the Pentagon. An attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, Peter Eliasberg voiced the group's concerns over the weapon: "We're going to use people in the jails as guinea pigs for some mega arms builder to test their device."
Look at the cops testing it out, it's so funny!
[Image via AP]
