Citation

Beatty JA, Stopyra JP, Slish JH, Bozeman WP. J. Forensic Leg. Med. 2020; 69: e101892.

Affiliation

Wake Forest School of Medicine, Dept. of Emergency Medicine, USA. Electronic address: wbozeman@wakehealth.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.jflm.2019.101892

PMID

32056809

Abstract

Law enforcement officers have a number of force options at their disposal. One less lethal force option available to police is kinetic impact projectiles (KIPs) such as beanbags or synthetic “rubber bullets” fired from shotguns or specialty launchers. A variety of KIPs are currently used by law enforcement agencies. The primary mechanism for KIPs is to deliver a painful impact that mimics being shot with a firearm. This is intended to temporarily incapacitate subjects in order to allow an officer to apprehend them with minimal injury to all parties.

While less injurious than traditional firearms, KIPs are expected to impart blunt trauma to temporarily incapacitate and allow apprehension of violent, threatening, or combative subjects. The use of KIPs and other Less Lethal Weapons have been associated with reduced injury rates among both criminal suspects and officers, as well as with reductions in the use of lethal force. While case reports have documented rare severe or even fatal injuries due to KIPs, their overall injury potential and wounding patterns have not been well characterized in the literature. We sought to measure the rate of significant injury following discharge from a KIP weapon in the course of apprehension from law enforcement, and to further characterize injuries following KIP use ...

Language: en