Downsized Weapons Expert Aims at Nonlethal Defense

Jaime Cuadros is an expert on the composition, ballistics and penetrating properties of projectiles.

From the early 1960s to the early 1990s, Cuadros worked in the defense industry, using his expertise to make projectiles more lethal. Had he not been forced to retire in 1991, when industrywide downsizing left him with no employment opportunities in his old sphere, Cuadros might never have considered using his knowledge to reduce the lethality of projectiles.

He’d been at loose ends for several months when he saw a news story about a woman who had been abducted from a shopping mall, shot and dumped by a freeway.

“I wanted to do something to help people like that,” Cuadros said, “to give them something they could use to repel that kind of aggression without killing the attacker.”

His first idea was to design a weapon for private citizens that would be loud enough to attract attention while firing an ink projectile to mark an assailant.

“Then I thought, heck, if you’re going to hit him with something, you might as well hit him hard enough to knock him down.” This started him thinking about police applications of nonlethal weaponry, and he began sketching out some concepts.

Soon he realized that 30 years of designing projectiles that were well above the killing threshold had left him unprepared to design a weapon that would inflict incapacitating, but not lethal, pain. Several months of research led him to the further realization that there was little information available on where the killing threshold actually lay, on what a nonpenetrating projectile should be made of, or on how it should be launched in order to reach its target accurately.

Using the best information he could find, Cuadros designed a shotgun-launched soft bag projectile filled with metal powder. To test it, he borrowed a crash dummy from the General Motors Research Laboratory and took it to the Preventative Sports Medicine Institute Ann Arbor, Mich. There, the dummy was shot repeatedly and measurements of the level of energy imparted by the impact of the bag were taken.

The data developed through this and similar testing led to improvements to the bag, and, through Cuadros’ subsequent publications and presentations to engineering symposiums and police departments, the establishment of reliable composition and ballistics standards for the nonlethal weapons industry as a whole.

Cuadros’ device is now being manufactured by MK Ballistic Systems in Northern California and is a valued part of the Los Angeles Police Department’s arsenal.

“If we can safely take a person into custody without using lethal force, that’s what we want to do,” said Sgt. Larry Wehage of the LAPD’s Newton Area division. “It’s great for the community, it’s great for citizens, it’s even great for suspects.”

Cuadros is now working on a launcher for rubber bullets.

“The minimum nonlethal range on the shotgun is 20 to 30 feet,” he said, “so the LAPD asked me to design something for close encounters that doesn’t look like a gun. If you take out a gun in a situation like a domestic dispute, you immediately escalate the situation. So I’ve designed a launcher that holds five rubber-nosed projectiles but looks like a box.”

Having demonstrated the prototype to favorable reviews by the LAPD, Cuadros’ next step is to find a manufacturer, which he expects to do shortly.

Kate Dunn is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles. She can be reached at katedunn@earthlink.net

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

AT A GLANCE

* Name: Jaime Cuadros

* Age: 65

* Present career: Designer of nonlethal weapons and consultant to the nonlethal weapons industry

* Experience: Long Beach police reserve officer, 1976-79; sales for GE, Wells Fargo, PacTel Finance, 1981-86; consultant, computers, management, technical installation, 1986 to present

* Previous career: Principal investigator for Advanced Weapons Concepts, General Dynamics

* Education: Engineering degree, Santa Monica College