View from inside a vehicle of cars on a two-lane highway with cloudy skies.
(Photo courtesy of San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office)

Sheriff’s deputies now have the ability to lasso fleeing suspects — or at least their vehicles.

The San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office is trying out a device designed to safely end vehicle pursuits. But it’s not without controversy.

Produced by an Arizona-based company, the Grappler Police Bumper unleashes a net from the front of a police vehicle that snags on one of the rear tires of the vehicle being pursued. The net wraps around the tire and the rear axle with the intention of bringing the vehicle to a safe stop.

Sheriff Patrick Withrow told KCRA-TV that the Grappler “comes in, quickly grabs hold of the back of the vehicle and drags it to a stop in a matter of seconds.” It has been used nine times in the past six months.

A February 2024 report by the San Francisco Chronicle found that at least 3,336 people were killed, including 15 law enforcement officers, and 52,600 injured as a result of high-speed pursuits throughout the U.S. from 2017 through 2022.

A car in front of a police car with the police car showing a net protruding from the front
A police SUV in Eagan, Minnesota, shows how the Grappler is deployed from the front to latch on to one of the rear wheels of a fleeing car during a pursuit. (Photo courtesy of Eagan Police Department)

“When someone tries to flee, we have new, effective tools to hold them accountable,” the Sheriff’s Office said in a social media post. “We’re also protecting innocent people on the road.”

But the Grappler is no panacea. It needs to be deployed at close range — and sometimes it results in one or both cars crashing. In one North Dakota case, a sheriff deputy’s patrol car overturned after deploying the Grappler last year during a pursuit.