Power to the People Police!
Pretty soon, cops won’t just be packing stun guns. They’ll be carrying electrically-charged riot shields, zapping their unruly without unholstering their weapons. That is, if the folks at Taser International have their way.
The company just introduced the “Taser Shield Conversion Kit featuring the Taser Repel Laminate Film Technology.”
You know. If I give you a badge, and pay your wages with my tax dollars, what you do is my fault: especially if I give you power and authority to act far beyond the ken of a normal citizen. I communicate to you (and through you) my distrust of my fellow citizens. Then, as I humbly kneel and beg you to protect me, as I make a fetish of your power over me, and as I eroticize your uniform and your gun, as I instil naive trust in you coupled with near-religious fear of you in my children, as I make TV shows and Movies that raise you towards Olympus, even in your darker incarnations, I shouldn’t be surprised when you come to me and say, in the immortal words of John Belushi, “You fucked up: you trusted us.”
It’s all my fault, really.
david says:
google pentagon ray gun, or youtube-it, which is a clumsy verb, but taser has nothing on this. it was approved for use in iraq but has been held back as far as we know.
and there are killer robots, that’ve already been successfully deployed and taken lives.
I don’t agree with the rest of the post huw.
For one thing, most of the tv shows are about assuming the guilt of the perp and doing whatever it takes to amass the evidence: csi, shark, law & order (I’m not familiar with cops).
Notable exceptions are NCSI has a conscience, and as silly as numb3rs is the show also has a conscience in the character of the zen monk. and my favorite, dexter. and reno911 which just had a field day with the whole idea.
I agree that the previous lineup of shows eroticize their characters but it’s tv. I don’t that means we eroticize reality that way. There is no court of justice I’ve ever been near that isn’t skeavy, smelling of sour bodies, and in the filthiest part of town. It just seems universal.
I think it’s that shield barrier and distance we need to worry about. I’ve seen police quote din print recently that they don’t want to be put in harms way doing their job. Seriously? I’m sorry I thought that was the job. To be the one who gets in harms way, up-close and stops harm from happening.
Maybe that’s a bit naive on my part. But, I assumed the vests are for a reason, that carrying guns bears responsibility, adn that a badge means protecting other people.
I think the majority of the time it works.
17 May 2008 - 13 אייר 5768 at 12:32 am