For both Joshua Bragalone and deputies with Maryland’s Calvert County Sheriff’s Office, it had already been a long night. Neighbors had called 911 multiple times for the disturbed man, and the deputies who responded to yet another call at 9:30 the next morning found Bragalone running down the street, agitated and apparently intoxicated. They arrested him for disorderly conduct and intoxicated endangerment.
En route to jail, Bragalone got free of his seat belt and began kicking the transport vehicle’s protective cage. He threatened deputies and suggested he’d self-harm. The deputy driving him diverted to a nearby station to await backup when he saw, through the partition, Bragalone wrapping the seat belt around his neck.
The deputy quickly intervened, removing the belt and restraining Bragalone, and backup officers helped secure him and complete the transport. He was not hurt, but it was an alarming incident.
“Sometimes the people we transport are like little Houdinis,” said Judy Setina, vice president of the namesake company Setina, a leading upfitter of police vehicles for more than 60 years. “They can wiggle themselves out of anything.”
Thrill rides inspire a new idea
Bragalone is not the only police detainee to try to use the seat belt of the vehicle conveying them to jail as an implement of self-harm. In 2020, a suspected burglar and car thief in California killed himself that way. In some cases it’s a method to delay the inevitable arrival at jail; it could also be a consequence of mental illness or drugs. Either way, police can’t let it happen.
For one department, the problem got bad enough to approach their upfitting partner and ask for help.
“A department came to us and said they’d had rash of suspects who were buckled in but tried to wrap the seat belts around their necks because they’d rather go to the hospital than to jail,” recalled Brett Ware, Setina’s national sales manager. “Then they told their buddies, and all of a sudden there were a bunch of guys doing it. They asked us what we could do about it.”
The company had already designed its backseat restraints with safety in mind, developing a center-pull belt system that kept officers from having to reach over detainees to secure them, potentially exposing their torso and duty belt. Pulled to full length, like any seat belt, it would click and lock and then could get tighter but not looser.
Doing that with every transported detainee, though, was an extra step the client believed its officers wouldn’t be thrilled to take. So Setina personnel huddled with their seat belt supplier in search of a better way.
The resulting idea was adapted from amusement park ride restraints and involved an automatic locking retractor.
“We came up with this electronic retractor, which essentially does that same thing: It puts it into an emergency mode as soon as they’re belted in,” said Ware. “Each receiver has a sensor and can tell when the belt’s buckled, and it will lock that belt so it can get tighter, but it won’t get looser. It’s always in that secure position.”
Offered today as the company’s SmartBelt, it’s a feature that both enhances officer safety and prevents wriggly detainees like Bragalone from slipping free and causing mayhem.
Just lift and click
With the SmartBelt, officers need not activate locking mechanisms manually to restrain their transportees – they only need to position the subject and lift the buckle from its holder and click it into the seat latch. The system senses the buckle’s engagement and locks the retractor electronically. The system remains in lock mode even with power loss.
“Visually it looks like our standard seat belt, and other than the fact it’s electronic, it behaves the same way,” said Ware.
If the belt is unbuckled, the retractor unlocks, allowing the belt to spool freely. If this happens the officer receives a safety alert via a warning light that mounts on the console or dash. Should the officer have to step out of the car, a second output can send an additional signal to the siren or light bar. “We’ve all seen videos of police cars getting stolen, and this is an extra layer of protection against that,” Ware added.
For vehicles where power draw is a concern, the retractor is only powered while in the unlocked position – it draws no amperage when buckled.
Officer safety is ensured by the buckle’s resting position mounted on the seat partition alongside the B pillar. It’s easily pulled from there down to the receiver without unnecessary exposure should a detainee be inclined to fight. “All they have to do is take it from the parked position on the partition and move it down to the receptor,” said Judy Setina.
With standard belts, there’s also a risk of pulling too quickly and accidentally locking prematurely. This requires releasing the belt and pulling it again – not something you want to happen when restraining a detainee.
“The SmartBelt won’t do that because that emergency function is completely electronic,” noted Ware. “It’s not designed to have to sense a rollover or accident because once it’s buckled, it’s in that accident-ready position already. So it’s easier to use in that regard.”
The SmartBelt is fast and simple to install and can be retrofitted into existing vehicles. It works with factory, replacement or cover-style seats. It meets the requirements of relevant federal motor vehicle safety standards for seating systems, seat belt assemblies and assembly anchorages.
At the forefront of safety
The creation of the SmartBelt was another first for Setina, which in the early 1960s developed the first prisoner partitions for police vehicles and was an early pioneer of push bumpers among other landmark additions. The company has numerous other patents as well.
“We did a lot of research to solve this problem,” said Judy Setina. “The idea about the amusement rides came in discussions with our supplier, and it got us thinking in that direction. Nobody had ever thought of that previously, and we’re the only ones who do it.”
While civilians rarely need to think twice about seat belts, they’re an important matter in vehicles that transport dangerous criminals. Center-pull designs such as the SmartBelt and Setina’s earlier system have kept the company at the forefront of safety-focused design.
For more information, visit Setina.
