Star Trek-style phaser guns should be issued to police officers so they can "temporarily switch people's brains off," according to a top Midland cop.
Ian Arundale, Assistant Chief Constable of West Mercia Police, said the futuristic non-lethal firearm would make it easier for bobbies to safely apprehend dangerous criminals.
But he conceded that such sci-fi weaponry, as used by Captain Kirk and Mr Spock, would not be available "in my lifetime."
"What we would like in the future is a Star Trek-style phaser that, perfectly safely, temporarily switches someone's brain off so that officers can move in," he said.
"We know we are not going to get that, probably not in my lifetime anyway, but we will look at anything that takes us in that direction."
Mr Arundale, who also heads the firearms unit of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), was slammed by civil liberties groups who said the gadgets could kill people with weak hearts.
"The danger is that officers will adopt a 'fire first and question later' policy," said a spokesman for Liberty. "It is a little premature to be talking about weapons which we don't understand and which don't, in fact, yet exist.
"Mr Arundale might as well have called for officers to be issued with Star Wars light sabres and Superman X-ray glasses."
Writing in the Police Review magazine, Mr Arundale also said that ACPO was looking at two other alternatives to the plastic baton round which currently has the capacity to kill if aimed at the head and upper body.
According to a Star Trek website a phaser - short for Phased Energy Rectification - is a "hand-held energy discharge weapon which can be adjusted to stun, heat, disrupt and overload, and has been in use since circa 2266."
It continues: "The weapon discharges plasma particles which travel at light speed and have a potential range of 300,000km" --which means crooks would be in range of cops even if they fled to the moon.
Currently the closest weapon British police have to the phaser is the taser, which is on trial with five forces including Northamptonshire.
It fires a dart which can deliver a 50,000 volt shock to attack the central nervous system and cause muscles to temporarily contract rendering the target helpless.
In the USA scientists have invented a ray gun which works along similar principles as the phaser - but with the abilty to reflect beams around corners with the use of a mirror.
The Anti-Personnel Beam Weapon emits ultraviolet laser beams which can paralyze suspects up to two kilometres away - dwarfing the taser's 20-foot maximum range.
Californian inventor Eric Herr is hoping to raise $500,000 to build a functional prototype.
