Deputies may carry non-leathal weapon

SANTA ROSA COUNTY, Fla. (WALA) - Santa Rosa County sheriff's deputies might be getting a new non-lethal weapon to aid them in law enforcement.

Deputies and leadership witnessed a new tool Thursday to help them control combative suspect's; it's gooey and travels at 400 miles per hour.

“This OC that they're carrying now is 200,000 Scoville heat units, where this is 400,000, so it's going to drop you,” said Ron Teeters, T.E.A.M. Products and Training.

To give you an idea of how hot that is, the Scoville heat unit of a jalapeno pepper is about 8,000 units.

The handheld pepper spraying device is named the JPX Cobra 450, it’s made in Switzerland. 

It fires a blast of concentrated capsaicin goo at a distance of 25-feet, with a two-foot spread.

Ron Teeters, a 25-year veteran sheriff's deputy from the streets of L.A., sells the unit and trains departments on its use.

“It's different each time. You don't know what to expect each day you put your uniform on and hit the street. And if you're not carrying some type of less than lethal device, the only other thing you're also carrying is your lethal device and you really don't want to kill anybody, you want to have an option to take them down,” said Teeters.

His team displayed the device for Santa Rosa County sheriff's deputies and leadership.

“The major came up to me from Santa Rosa County and said: I need your card, we really like this thing.  That's the same response we've gotten from every department we've went to,” said Teeters.

Three volunteers in total took a shot from the weapon right in the face.

Each one of the volunteers doused themselves with water afterwards for at least twenty minutes.

“There's no cross-contamination, I can walk into a building and if I was to spray regular aerosol into a building, you've contaminated the whole building; you've got to evacuate it, everybody.” Said Teeters, “This, right here, I can walk in --if I have a person who wants to fight, I can shoot them with the weapon and nobody else is contaminated.”

Teeters said the Cobra 450 is effective in close quarter combat, but you should not shoot someone in the face at a range less than five-feet.

“If you were to throw a punch at me, I'd shoot you once in the chest, which is just going to be a splat -- to get you off guard, step back and then I'd fire one to your face,” said Teeters.

Teeters says, the Maricopa County Sheriff's office in Arizona, has been using the device for the past four years, with great success.

“Everybody’s had the same reaction to this thing, I thought I was the only person excited about it once I watched the product video,” said Teeters.

He said the device costs three-hundred dollars each, and it takes six hours to train one instructor on its use.