Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => Physiology & Medicine => Topic started by: syhprum on 14/10/2016 10:26:35
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The normal way for the UK police to apprehend a violent dangerous person is with an electric shock machine followed by strangulation.
This sometimes leads to the death of the person involved but the police are always exonerated.
On 13/10/2016 a large gorilla left its enclosure in the London zoo and although not normally very aggressive these large mammals pose a potential danger but it was sedated with a tranquilizer dart and successfully returned to its quarters.
Why is this system not used with humans ?
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Unlike the dumb ape, the human would realize a gun was being pointed at them and take evasive action, e.g. take cover.
More importantly tranquilization isn't instantaneous, unlike tasering (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taser) , pepper spray (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper_spray), & old-fashioned truncheoning.
Police do have non-lethal/less-lethal guns that fire a bean-bag (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bean_bag_round).
But the need for such a device is a niche-application,
e.g. tackling someone who is holding a gun to their own head.
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In addition to being slower acting, tranquilizers are quite dangerous. There is always at least one doctor (vet) on hand when an animal is tranquilized, to monitor their vitals and administer antidote or take other measures as needed. Unless we want to send doctors around with police on their rounds, tranqs are not the way to go.
Lastly, most tranquilizers are opiods, which people have very different tolerances for. The dose required to knock out someone who has a high tolerance would easily kill someone with a low tolerance. The same goes for knockout gas. For instance the gas used in the Moscow theater hostage crisis in 2002. Of the 900 or so people in the building (almost all of whom were knocked out), between 100 and 150 died from the effects of the gas alone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisis#Chemical_attack
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It's quite likely that more people would have survived the Moscow siege if the military had told the doctors what they had done.
The biggest problem is the slow action.
If the guy doesn't have a gun you don't generally need to shoot him. If he has, then he's got time to shoot a few rounds before the drugs kick in.
And in the mean time he's half stoned; if he shoots someone while under the influence of drugs administered against his will by the police, who is legally responsible?