This brief provides an overview of products that are commercially available, as well as research products that are approaching market readiness, that could detect when a service weapon has been unholstered, pointed, or discharged.
This document provides a review of technologies that meet a need by the National Institute of Justice to investigate the landscape of technologies that are able to detect when a service weapon has been unholstered, pointed, or discharged, and communicates that information to dispatchers. Secondary and primary resources were consulted in the research for this paper, resulting in a high-level summary of technology systems for documenting, detecting, and communicating service weapon activity; it focuses on technology that can be integrated into or onto the weapon, in a holster, in a body-worn camera (BWC), into a wearable device, or environmental sensing tools. The document concludes that no single tool is available to perform all those tasks, law enforcement officers may rely on a combination of products to meet agency needs.