The Alliance Police Department is expanding its use of a device that aims to safely disarm or immobilize someone who may be experiencing a mental health crisis.
The BolaWrap 150, from the company Wrap Technologies Inc., is a small yellow handheld device that ejects two Kevlar cords that wrap around a person’s body. In addition to the cords, it also makes a loud “pop” sound as an auditory distraction.
Alliance Police Chief David Leavitt said the department already had four of the devices when he joined the team in early 2024; now every officer is getting one.
“I thought, what a safe, humane, low-risk way to take someone in custody who maybe isn't physically, actively fighting and being aggressive, but they're just not obeying commands, not cooperating, whether that's because they don't want to, or because of a mental health situation or a drug intoxication situation,” Leavitt said.
Alliance Police Department is the first in Nebraska to implement the device.
“Many departments across the country use Taser devices, and the success rate with Tasers is just, it's just not very high,” Leavitt said.
The department hopes it can help officers’ response, since the city is seeing an increase in the number of mental health calls. Leavitt noted a variety of factors could be affecting these numbers.
Another part of the department’s efforts to better handle mental health calls includes Crisis Intervention Team training through Lutheran Family Services.
In November, Lutheran Family Services held two of the training sessions in Alliance. The weeklong sessions included 40 hours of training.
Rebecca Hancock, the community outreach and training program manager for LFS, said the organization holds CIT training sessions annually in multiple cities and towns throughout Nebraska, including Kearney, Alliance and Omaha.
“Looking at [CIT] as an umbrella of training for individuals to deal with the mental health substance abuse calls for service that they receive. Now each agency can have a CIT team within their own agency,” Brad Negrete, LFS director of crisis response for Nebraska’s eastern region, said.
The training curriculum consists of community stakeholder presentations that focus on a variety of mental health topics in addition to scenario reenactment for trainees to test out their new skills.
“The chief, and really the city of Alliance, have been, you know, big proponents of mental health and substance use training, and they were really pivotal in helping us to expand this training statewide,” Hancock said.