Inmates of the Pitchess Detention Center, watch your step. If you get out of line, you may get blasted with an invisible heat ray.

The jail's energy weapon is a small-scale version of the Active Denial System, the experimental crowd control device that the U.S. military brought to Afghanistan – and then quickly shipped back home, after questions mounted about the wisdom of blasting locals with a beam that momentarily puts them in agony. The pain weapon seemed at odds with the military's efforts to appear more humane and measured in the eyes of the Afghan populace.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department not only found those concerns overblown; they used the military's long-standing reluctance to zap Afghans as fodder for the plan to zap Pitchess' prisoners. "I already had contacts at [Active Denial maker] Raytheon who were reeling from the short-sided, self-serving cowardice of people who were more interested in saving face than saving lives, and leveraged it right into getting it into our jails," former LASD Cmdr. Charles "Sid" Heal tells Danger Room.

The LASD has long been a hotbed of advocates for exotic weaponry – everything from sonic blasters to spy drones. But the Active Denial System has long been of particular interest. Heal calls it the "Holy Grail of crowd control." He's been trying for years to get the technology deployed in Los Angeles.

The LASD unveiled the 7½-foot-tall millimeter wave weapon late last week, partially as answer to the 257 inmate-on-inmate assaults at Pitchess so far this year, and the 19 additional assaults on deputies. Sheriff Lee Baca believes the modified pain ray can break up these incidents before they get out of hand. With a range of 80 to 100 feet, the heat beam can blast prisoners that a Taser couldn't hit. "This device will allow us to quickly intervene without having to enter the area and without incapacitating or injuring either combatant," Baca says in a statement.

The National Institute of Justice – the research arm of the U.S. Justice Department – is paying for the six-month trial at Pitchess, part of a larger effort to test technologies that might cut down on inmate violence. "If we try and fail we've sent a message that we care, because even the effort becomes noble!" Heal e-mails. "If we try and succeed we've become heroes in that we accepted a risk the Department of Defense refused — even after they spent $40 million of the taxpayers money and even while they're killing people, because [they] are unwilling to use it."

Photo: LASD

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