7 Insane Police Tactics That'd Be Funny If They Weren't Real

The Problem:

"Skunk" has a few problems, aside from a name that sounds like the new teen dance craze. Described by one journalist as smelling "like dirty diapers mixed with old roadkill that's been left in the sun," it's so hardcore that it sounds like something the Israeli military would come up with. Mainly because that's exactly where it came from.

Skunk scent has a tendency to linger for days and cause massive collateral damage. Spraying looters in a store may discourage them, but you've also ruined all the store's merchandise and made it impossible for them to operate for a week. Stinking for days makes it easy to identify rioters to arrest after the fact, but it also ruins the lives of innocent bystanders, whose friends, family, and co-workers will think they were out committing crimes. And let's not pretend there isn't an element of humiliation. In September, it was reported that U.S. police departments have been stocking up on skunk. Imagine the reaction if a mostly white police force made a mostly-black community reek like beached sperm whale for days.

Even if people are happy to see protests broken up, that good faith will be lost when they have to live and work with the smell of shit clogging their noses for a week. Whenever your riot control invention is a supersized version of a junior high school prank, you're inviting the same people who thought stink bombs were hilarious then to go mad with smelly power.

Yes, you can even use them as feet-cuffs. Holy shit, how did no one think of this before?

The Problem:

They did! In the '80s, unsurprisingly. This is how it went:

There's a reason nunchaku are illegal in California. Cops stopped using them after lawsuits from protesters and their own broken wrists. But they say it'll be different now, because they'll have to go through a mandatory 16-hour training program to use them. Even if they're more responsible this time around, we imagine that increased tactical versatility will be offset by the need to detain far more suspects, because we can't even begin to guess how many wasted dudes are going to start some shit so they can later brag to their friends that they got into a goddamn nunchaku fight with a cop. On the other hand, should this program prove successful, we're one step closer to this being a reality:

OK, yeah, that's a bad idea. Sure, in a demonstration in which your greatest enemy is your production budget, it's easy to calmly and safely perform a one-handed crotch reload. But if you're in the middle of a real firefight and you've already lost the use of an arm? It's all too easy to imagine someone panicking or fumbling around and accidentally giving themselves an impromptu vasectomy.

The attachment's other function is to simply hold stuff, like handcuffs, keys, or cufflinks, in case you need to raid a black-tie gala. But we know what you're thinking: "Can I stick an exposed knife dangerously close to my gut, where anyone can grab it and stab me with it?" Yes, you absolutely can! They even show you how:

Finally, consider the fact that approximately 100 percent of people who have used a belt clip have had something fall off it and be lost to history. Things stick perfectly to the tactical magnet in the demo, where the inventor stands completely still. But the moment he breaks into anything more than a brisk walk, knives and handcuffs are going to trail behind him like bread crumbs. Although if your weapons fall off as you chase a criminal, at least you won't have to worry about anyone (including yourself) attacking your dick with it.

The Problem:

Suspicions were first aroused when the shotguns went on the market without any test results being revealed -- which is worrying if you're releasing a new line of televisions, let alone a product that could lead to someone's death. And then ... guess what happened. In March 2015, an Albuquerque police officer improperly used a Taser shotgun during a bungled attempt to arrest a mentally ill homeless man, starting a chain of events that led to two other cops killing him with actual guns. In Taser's defense, the officer shouldn't have been using their product. The cartridges had expired, and the manufacturer had issued explicit warnings that using an expired Taser was about as safe as eating expired raw chicken.

Taser had discontinued the product line three years ago, but Albuquerque police thought they were just too rad to give up. Taser cited flagging sales, while everyone else on the planet cited the fact that they were about as accurate as your blind grandma playing Call Of Duty, and that, oh yeah, they had the potential to cause serious injury. During one incident in Britain, police fired two shots at a crazed suspect. One missed and the other did precisely bupkis, so the man went on to kill himself. We admittedly don't know much about weapon design beyond "always see if you can add a chainsaw," but we don't think the trick to making a good nonlethal weapon is to take an already-problematic one and make it worse.

The Problem:

Now, you're probably wondering, "Is this thing safe, or will it make me cry blood for a month after I inevitably point it at my own face?" Well, the product description claims that the laser "will inflict Z-RO damage to retina and cornea" ... which sounds less like a pacifistic reassurance and more like a promise that they've trademarked a special brand of eye damage more terrifying than anything you've ever witnessed before. "Z-RO damage" is something we expect to see pop up in a badly-translated fighting game, not the sales pitch for something police officers might carry.

Also, if the last thing a person judged erratic enough to incapacitate will see for a quarter of an hour is a gun in their face, wouldn't that only make them more freaked out? Imagine someone who's drunk, angry, and waving a knife around -- now they're also confused and flailing wildly. And as Complex points out, in an era in which we're more concerned than ever with police accountability, taking away the ability to witness the actions of cops isn't going to go over well with anyone. We stand by our "this is some sci-fi shit right here" comment, but now we're thinking it's less Jetsons and more 1984.

The Alternative, in addition to being the slogan of half the world's radio stations, is a little metal ball that attaches to a gun and essentially turns the first bullet fired into an oversized BB. Instead of ripping through flesh, it just hurts like an incapacitating motherfucker.

The Problem:

This is actually a fairly good system ... for exactly one shot. Every shot fired after that will be of the regular, organ-perforating variety. Which is important, because in almost every police shooting, the suspect is shot multiple times. If you fear for your life, you don't take one shot, pause to see if you were accurate and effective, and then go from there as if you're shooting pop cans. No, you fire several shots to make sure the target goes down. One nonlethal bullet isn't going to make much of a difference if it's instinctively followed by three deadly ones.

And what if you manage to restrain yourself to a single shot, but miss? Now you either have to shoot regular bullets or pause to stick another metal Ping-Pong ball on the end of your gun while your terrified or pissed-off target either flees or fights back. You can't elevate the situation to active gunfire if you only get a single shot before your strategy has to radically change.

The official website advertises the Alternative as the "missing link" between lethal and nonlethal force. Again, we're no experts, but it seems to us like a weapon should probably be one of the two, so you know exactly what to reach for. Creating a hybrid is only inviting disaster, like a soda fountain that occasionally pours poison. That the Alternative's being sold despite significant criticism and a complete lack of data on how the shot affects a human being and how police would use it while under stress is terrifying. But at least it's so far only found its way into the hands of responsible police officers in ... uh, Ferguson, Missouri.

The Problem:

Pretty much every nonlethal weapon has racked up a modest kill count thanks to either misuse or simple bad luck, and there's serious concern that both could be exacerbated by the depersonalization drones create. It's already tempting enough to fire a Taser at someone who's annoying you. Now, you don't even have to look them in the eye, deal with the consequences, or acknowledge them as real human beings?

One county sheriff called the entire bill ridiculous, arguing that unsupervised weaponized drone surveillance was a key plank in his crime-fighting strategy. We're not sure if we should be more terrified of the supervillainy that's supposedly occurring in North Dakota or the loose drone cannon sheriffs that are combating it. Either way, a man who calls efforts to keep weapons off police drones "ridiculous" and refuses to disclose how many drone flights he's overseen is not someone we'd trust with their finger on a remote Taser trigger. Furthermore, we're worried that the drones ARE WONDERFUL. THIS IS NOT BEING TYPED BY A NORTH DAKOTAN DRONE AFTER THIS CRACKED WRITER GOT ZAPPED IN THE BALLS. YOU BETCHA.

You can read more from Mark at his website, which will blind you for 15 minutes if you leave a rude comment.

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