A Highland Park patrol officer was five minutes from the end of his shift when the call came in: a mentally ill, armed, and violent person nearby. Officer Javom Odom and his colleagues found a woman standing in an alley with a knife in her hand, and what happened next ended without a single shot fired.
Odom and other officers worked to slow the situation down, keeping the woman talking as they assessed the scene, according to WXYZ 7 News Detroit. The woman's mother had told police her daughter had been stabbing herself, and at one point the woman told officers directly that she wanted them to kill her. Odom said she repeated that she wanted them to end her life. Rather than draw his firearm, Odom reached for a BolaWrap — a non-lethal device that fires a Kevlar cord designed to wrap around a person's body or legs and temporarily restrict movement.
The tether worked. The station reports the woman immediately dropped the knife once the BolaWrap deployed, and she became more willing to talk to officers afterward. Her crisis, police said, had stemmed from an argument following her birthday. Odom later said the goal in moments like that is to help the person in crisis through effective communication, not force.
How the Tether Device Actually Works
The BolaWrap 150 fires a 7.5- to 8-foot Kevlar tether tipped with four-pronged metal anchors at speeds up to 640 feet per second, designed to bind a subject's limbs or torso from 10 to 25 feet away, according to Sandstorm Defence Solutions. Manufacturer safety guidance calls for a minimum 10-foot deployment distance to avoid anchor skin-penetration injuries, and officers are instructed not to aim above elbow level so the cord doesn't wrap around a target's neck, per Police1. In the Highland Park case, the device produced a loud bang without causing pain, per the WXYZ report. If the first shot misses or more restraint is needed, the device can be reloaded with a fresh cartridge in roughly three to five seconds.
Highland Park is one of 25 Michigan law enforcement agencies using BolaWrap, per the WXYZ report. Adoption has accelerated since Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Ruling 2026-2 took effect July 2, formally designating the BolaWrap 150 as a handheld remote-restraint instrument rather than a firearm or weapon under federal law, a reclassification that removed a procurement obstacle for departments nationwide, Police1 reports. The device's maker, Wrap Technologies, Inc., is a publicly traded public safety technology company based in Tempe, Arizona, trading on NASDAQ under the ticker WRAP, according to Simply Wall St. Before the federal ruling, the company had already demonstrated the system to more than 1,100 U.S. police departments, with over 60 agencies running formal internal tests, according to a document hosted on Scribd.
A Regional Push for Non-Lethal Tools
Highland Park isn't alone in Metro Detroit. Neighboring Detroit City Council approved a $32,083.44 one-year contract with Wrap Technologies in February 2024 to equip the Detroit Police Department with 22 BolaWrap units, averaging roughly $1,450 apiece, according to meeting records posted on eSCRIBE.
Highland Park is a 2.97-square-mile enclave completely surrounded by the city of Detroit, home to an estimated population under 9,000 residents with a poverty rate exceeding 45 percent, according to WDET 101.9 FM. The small department confronts an outsized share of behavioral health calls region-wide; a study of Wayne County emergency service data found public and private EMS providers responded to more than 63,500 behavioral health calls out of 142,040 total emergency responses in a single year across Detroit and surrounding enclaves, per research published through PubMed Central.
Talking First, Tools Second
Investigator Everett Monroe with the Highland Park Police Department said verbal communication remains the first and most critical de-escalation tool, used in 95 percent of the department's calls involving people in mental health crisis, per the WXYZ report. He said de-escalation reminds a person in crisis that they are still a person rather than a situation to be managed. Monroe noted that a mental health crisis can stem from events like the loss of a loved one or a divorce.
Highland Park police officers receive Crisis Intervention Team training and co-responder support through the Detroit Wayne Integrated Health Network, which provides crisis stabilization simulations and clinician debriefs across Wayne County law enforcement agencies, according to DWIHN. The department also has an embedded clinician and crisis intervention trained officers who can check back in with individuals after an encounter, the WXYZ report states.
That follow-up appears to be paying off. Highland Park resident Frances Hunt experienced a family crisis after a relative suffered depression and anger stemming from Hunt's intervention to care for that person's children. Police responded, and the department's mental health team provided guidance, conversation, and resource numbers before following up with the family member afterward. Department officials attribute a decline in repeat calls — cases that once required five or six police visits a day for the same person — to that kind of follow-through connecting people with needed resources.
