You have to feel sorry for the police officers who are required to frisk people for guns or knives - after all, if someone who doesn't want to be arrested is carrying a lethal weapon, the last thing that most of us would want to do is get close enough to that person to touch them. That's why the New York Police Department teamed up with the United States Department of Defense three years ago, and began developing a portable scanner that can remotely detect the presence of a gun on a person's body. The NYPD announced the project yesterday.
The device uses infrared light rays to image radiation being emitted by a person's body. Wherever a solid metal object such as a gun is blocking those rays from reaching the body, a silhouette of that object will appear on the scanner's screen. So far, the technology only works from a distance of about three or four feet (about one meter), although NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly hopes that its range can ultimately be extended to at least 25 meters (82 feet).
The plan is for the scanner to be mounted on a van, then used on suspects who would otherwise have to be physically searched.
