Washington, Feb 6 (IANS) A giant beam-emitting weapon that triggers a painful burning sensation but apparently causes no tissue damage is being tested here to break up fights between prison inmates.
Officials at the Los Angeles County sheriff’s department are currently testing the weapon.
According to Christian Science Monitor, officials plan to set up the beam-emitting machine, known as Assault Intervention Device (AID) in a dormitory at the North County Correctional Facility at the Pitchess Detention Centre in Castaic, California.
‘This device allows us to stop a fight or lessen the severity of it without inflicting injury,’ said Cmdr. Bob Osborne of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
As a directed-energy weapon, the AID is laserlike in concept, though its beam is in the invisible millimeter range of the spectrum. Its ray penetrates one-sixty-fourth of an inch into the skin, down to the location of our pain receptors.
‘In terms of pain, it’s like brushing against a hot stove or an iron,’ said Osborne, who has experienced the AID’s effects many times.
Yet the AID does not cause actual burning of the skin or nerve damage, according to Raytheon, the makers of the weapon and its parent device, the Silent Guardian, several units of which have been sold to the US military.
‘You instinctively yank your hand away, and then you look at (your hand) and there’s nothing there,’ Osborne said. ‘You go, ‘Boy, that’s hot, but I’m not injured,’ and that’s what we love about the device.’
‘All the other tools we have,’ Osborne said, such as batons or pepper spray, ‘hurt people’.
Correctional officers would operate the device from a station that oversees the dorm’s common area. The AID’s interface is very much like a video game: It includes a basic computer monitor with a crosshair-esque marker on it and a joystick with a trigger.
To avoid shining at a human target for longer than necessary or intended, the device only fires for a few seconds for each trigger press; to resume firing, the trigger must be released and depressed again, Osborne explained.
The AID trial is funded by the Department of Justice’s research, development and evaluation agency, the Washington-based National Institute of Justice (NIJ). Although the AID was unveiled in September 2010, the NIJ has decided to review the project further before moving forward, he said.
