Stunned By Stun Gloves Waste
A Series on Misinformation, Disinformation and Subterfuge
When a headline catches my attention it often does so because of a past connection to something else.
My father held a contract to produce these for the LA PD, under FATS, when I was a child. It was the most unusual time too as this wasn’t the typical contract he worked on as those normally involved tech, training and multimedia—yet he had this one.
The coolest part of all of that was a .38 magnum with a mounted laser/light with a matching vest that was better at laser tag than actual laser tag toys. The gun itself was rather heavy with the added components though when you pointed and pulled the trigger instead of the kickback one expects, you feel nothing as the shooter. Instead of you were hit while wearing the somewhat heavy vest, the wearer felt a pleasant thwack, like being patted somewhat hard at the point of contact with an open palm. The not so cool part were all the stun glove components strewn about in dad’s workplace nor when the contract ended.
The gloves themselves sent electrical current that freeze up a target’s muscles, again mostly radiating at point of contact, like the toy joy buzzers. If contact ends, the tightness in the muscles does too.
There are obvious problems with using such taser-like devices. The wearer may for example, touch themselves or another person on their team. They may cause a victim to fall uncontrollably causing injury. Or the most obvious, they forget or otherwise forget to turn them on as these aren’t exactly things one uses all that much because it’s rather easy to inadvertently shock oneself haphazardly putting one’s hands in a pocket or god-forbid, having an itch these people wind up scratching.
The LAPD never used them, which explains just how stupid it is that Trump’s paramilitary forces are going to waste taxpayer money on this ‘cool joy buzzer’ personal wear.
The other fun story about that contract was one of its 80s style training video, filmed out of sequence, that inadvertently used the same heavy set actor as an extra juror that was also the deceased victim the trial was about. Given the hit and run was filmed at night, didn’t really show the actor’s face, so may not be so obvious to police trainees the company opted to not re-film either scene. My father was also filmed in the same scene as a juror, the only time that I am aware of that he had grown a mustache.