Wyant, Rick
A Holistic Approach to Police Weapons

This presentation will cover how bullets and less-lethal projectiles interact with various materials commonly encountered during an incident, and what happens to those projectiles as a result of impact. With the use of doppler radar, high-speed videography, ballistic gelatin, and other techniques, attendees will be acquainted with terms like critical angle, fragmentation threshold, and departure angle. High profile incidents will be discussed where the interpretation of projectile behavior was critical to the outcome of the case.

Rick Wyant - Bio
R.T. Wyant, M.S. has been a forensic scientist since 1995 and specializes in firearm analysis, shooting incident reconstruction, and officer involved incidents. He has examined thousands of items from crime scenes and autopsies. He is a member several forensic organizations and has served on the NIJ less lethal technical working group (NIJ-TWGLL), an FBI scientific working group for firearms (SWGGUN), and the International Law Enforcement Forum (ILEF). He consults and provides training related to forensic analysis and investigations all over the US and abroad. Since 2000, he has been a reserve deputy for the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office performing bicycle patrol and search and rescue functions. Wyant is an internationally recognized expert in less lethal options, including the principal author of the text: Risk Management of Less Lethal Options, CRC press 2014.