To the shock of absolutely no one, the ACLU hates the idea of blasting Los Angeles prisoners with an invisible heat ray. The civil liberties organization has sent a letter to L.A. Sheriff Lee Baca, begging him to not use the pain weapon, less than a week after its installation at the Pitchess Detention Center.

But both sides of this energy weapon fight seem a little, um, confused. The ACLU claims that the so-called "Assault Intervention Device" is a killer – and "robot-like," to boot. (Not that the system has killed anyone, or can operate on its own.) The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is claiming the ray gun can't cause lasting harm. (Well, if you ignore those test subjects with second degree burns.)

The Assault Intervention Device is a small-scale version of the U.S. military's Active Denial System, which blasts a target with millimeter waves that penetrate a 64th of an inch beneath the skin. People almost always run away in agony after just a few seconds. The weapon was briefly sent to Afghanistan this summer – and then just as quickly withdrawn. But the LASD thinks the device could subdue unruly inmates quicker and from further away than a Taser or a billy club.

The ACLU's Margaret Winter and Peter Eliasberg tell the LASD that they "strongly oppose the view that it is ever appropriate to deploy against the detainees of a county jail - or any other incarcerated population – a military weapon intended to cause intolerable pain and capable of causing severe injury or death."

Which leads former LASD commander (pain ray proponent) Charles "Sid" Deal to wonder: "What difference [does] it make if the military invented it? Is it more objectionable because of who invented it – even if the motives are the same?"

And while the pain ray might theoretically be able to end someone's life, so could just about any weapon. To date, the Active Denial System hasn't actually killed anyone, after more than 10,000 test-blasts on human subjects.

But Heal's former colleague – LASD Commnader Bob Osborne, who claims to have been blasted by the beam more than 50 times (!) – is off-base, too. "The neat thing with this device is you experience pain but you are not injured by it," Osborne tells the AP. "It doesn't injure your skin, the beam doesn't have the power to do that."

Try telling that to the airman who had to be evacuated to a burn center after getting zapped by the heat ray. And even if didn't cause permanent damage, the ACLU executives write, a jailhouse pain beam "creates a wholly unjustified risk that detainees will be needlessly subjected to excessive force – indeed, a use of force tantamount to torture, in violation of the Eighth Amendment, basic human rights norms, and international law."

Heal counters that "if they are content in having us solve these problems with the primitive weapons we have now, then we can skip the heartaches and expense of trying to do it better (but then they don't like that either)."

Perhaps the biggest misstep in this debate, however, is found is an ACLU blog post, complaining about this "robot-like," "Star Wars technology." Come on, guys: Star Wars? The pain ray isn't the droid you've been looking for. It's more Rodenberryesque, like the evil, bearded Spock's "agonizer" compliance device. We'll presume you meant Star *Trek *and leave it at that.

Photo: LASD

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