By admin 
(InvestigateTV) — Police chases aren’t just dangerous; they can often turn deadly.
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From 2001 to 2021, deadly pursuits have increased by 41%, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. During that time, more than 8,000 people died. Of those, 36% were innocent bystanders.
In an effort to stop those chases before they start, some departments are turning to a tool called the Grappler.
How the device works
With the flip of a switch, netting shoots from the police vehicle to under the wheel of a suspect’s car, tangling it and bringing it to a standstill.
“These arms are folded in. They deploy out as the net comes out,” said Patrol Sgt. Travis Gardner. “This black piece here is what actually wraps around the tire of the fleeing car.”
In 2022, Lenexa Police was the first department in Kansas to start using it. Since then, Officer Danny Chavez said they’ve seen tremendous success.
“We’re looking at over 70% of the time it’s deployed, it’s effective in safely bringing the fleeing vehicle to a halt, allowing us to take those people into custody,” Chavez said.
Chavez said many of the cars they’ve grappled would never have been pursued under Lenexa’s chase policy, which only allows pursuits for felony crimes. He said without the Grappler, suspects of theft or traffic violations who didn’t pull over would have gotten away.
In one case, a vehicle reported stolen was stopped before it could speed away.
“Literally, before he gets onto the highway and reaches highway speeds, we’ve got it at a stop,” Chavez said.
From construction worker to inventor
Leonard Stock created the Grappler Police Bumper. He has no police background and was working in construction when he got the idea.
He told us his invention came to him after watching a pursuit show.
“I suddenly woke up with this image of some kind of a strap going around a tire,” Stock said.
His invention, which started in one department in 2018, is now at roughly 120 police departments across 31 states.
Its growth over the years is in part due to success stories. In Phoenix, Arizona, the device stopped a kidnapping. In Eagan, Minnesota, police safely stopped a driver at low speeds who ran a red light. And in Livonia, Michigan, when suspects continued trying to speed away from their police after their car was grappled, the entire rear axle of their vehicle broke off.
“The ultimate goal of the grappler is to protect innocent civilians,” Stock said.
Personal mission to reduce pursuit deaths
It’s innocent people who sometimes get caught in the crosshairs of a police chase and pay the ultimate price.
Jon Farris founded Pursuit for Change, a nonprofit fighting to make police pursuits safer. For Jon, the mission is personal.
“Paul and his girlfriend Kate hopped in a taxi,” Farris said. “A person in an SUV made an illegal U-turn, and a state trooper saw the person make an illegal U-turn.”
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The driver bolted and ran. The trooper determined it was worth pursuing.
“The SUV hit the taxi as it went through an intersection. The SUV was doing 73 miles an hour. It t-boned them right in the side,” Farris said. “He was killed instantly.”
Jon’s son, Paul Farris, was 23. He’s been gone almost as long as he lived.
“Look at it. It’s 18 years later, and I still get teared up about it,” Farris said.
Farris said Pursuit for Change’s toughest hurdle is that chase policies aren’t just different state to state or city to city, but department to department. Some restrict it entirely. Others allow it for felony suspects. Some leave it up to the officer’s discretion, even for crimes like shoplifting or making an illegal U-turn.
The debate on whether police should chase suspects has been unsettled for years. That’s why the Grappler piques Jon’s interest.
“Any tech that could stop it from happening in the first place, any tech that can stop it during the pursuit, to end it before tragedy occurs, you know, that’s great,” Farris said.
Questions about data and effectiveness
But Farris would like to see data, and right now there isn’t a full public record. Police can supply their numbers to Stock’s company, but they’re not required to.
There are examples of the Grappler not working as intended. In Thurston County, Washington, the Grappler was deployed during a chase that the sheriff says reached speeds of up to 100 miles per hour. The device came loose, and the suspect’s car crashed. No one was injured.
Just outside Portland, Oregon, after a grapple, the suspect reversed into officers’ vehicles. In North Dakota, a newspaper reported injuries to a suspect and an officer after both vehicles lost control and crashed.
Stock warns things can go wrong
“There was a fatality. During a grapple, there was a terrible incident high speed there have been a few minor injuries above that so I you know I can’t minimize that someone was killed, but I think that overall the numbers do show pretty well of being safer than a lot of other techniques,” Stock said.
Techniques like a PIT maneuver involve officers using their vehicle to spin a suspect’s vehicle.
Lenexa PD says it’s successfully grappled vehicles 46 out of 59 times. The times it failed, they say there were no injuries.
“If a pursuit goes bad if throwing stop sticks goes bad that can that can be fatal for people involved and we just haven’t seen that happen with the grappler,” Chavez said.
Chavez sees an opportunity to potentially save lives.
“If we can stop a vehicle at 30 miles an hour that likely would have been going over a hundred miles an hour in a pursuit I think it’s reasonable to assume that it has saved lives both of the offender perhaps the officer, and then most importantly, those innocent citizens,” Chavez said.
Deployment policies and costs
Different departments have different policies when it comes to using the Grappler, just like how departments have different pursuit policies. Some set a maximum speed limit for deployment, and that speed can vary.
As for a price tag, the creator says it ranges from about $5,000 to $8,000 per vehicle, depending on if a department does the training and installation itself or hires his company to do it.
The National Police Accountability Project, a nonprofit dedicated to ending law enforcement overreach through legal action, sent a statement saying in part, “If agencies deploy the Grappler, they should treat each deployment as a documented use-of-force incident, publish outcome data, and ensure civilian oversight. Public safety means fewer unnecessary high-speed police pursuits and more accountability, not simply adding new ways to apply force.”
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