This is 99% indiscible. I'm Roman Mars.

On January 3rd, 1979, two officers from the Los Angeles Police Department went to the home of Yule May Love, a 39-year-old African-American mother.

The officers were there because of a dispute over an unpaid gas bill.

They had been called to her home by the gas company because she had hit the utilities bill collector with a shovel.

This is Love was overdue with her $69 payment.

The officers approached her and the encounter quickly turned violent. Love allegedly threatened the officers with a knife.

They fired 12 times and killed her. Her neighbors in Watts couldn't believe it.

They could have seduced this lady without using the weapons that they used. They could have took her alive.

Plan it simple because it was two cops against one lady with a butcher knife.

Neither of the two officers involved were prosecuted for the killing.

That's George Lavender, a criminal justice reporter at KCREW in Los Angeles.

The shooting sparked protests and calls for the resignation of the chief of police.

In the months since, blacks and liberals have become intensely critical of what they charge is excessive use of force by the Los Angeles Police Department.

The American Civil Liberties Union says that in the last four years officers here have shot over 300 people killing nearly half of them.

Even though police shootings had been happening for years and are of course still happening today, the killing of Yula Love received a lot of media attention.

That put pressure on the department to respond. The Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners recommended changes to training and the way shootings by officers were investigated.

In the killing also led the department to research non-lethal weapons to see if there was some alternative that might reduce the LAPD's reliance on guns.

We needed to find a way to control people. Was there something that we could do before we had to shoot them before they had an opportunity to attack and get shot?

That's Greg Meyer. He's a retired captain with the LAPD. And in 1979, he was given the job of researching non-lethal weapons for the department.

And what we were looking for was something that was effective at subduing a person so that they could be handcuffed expeditiously without a big fight.

Meyer and the LAPD set out to find a new tool that they hoped would help avoid needless deaths and injuries.

The police chief at the time Darrell Gates told the Los Angeles Times, quote, what we need is that thing you used to see in buck Rogers, that thing you used to zap him.

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