iPod: This Season's Must-Have for Muggers

KH writes "West Midlands police have issued a stark warning to iPod users: ditch the white headphones or pay the price." Apparently, muggers recognize the headphones and target passersby for muggage.

Comments

Re:The Next Apple Innovation

[mhore]

And each iPod must have a unique identifier (presumably for DRM among other reasons), right?

Just a quick note to let you know -- they DO in fact have a unique identifier. All Apple products (computer-wise, anyway) do. My powerbook and iPod both have serial numbers that I registered with Apple when I bought them.

West Midlands

[mr_tommy]

As a resident in Birmingham UK (The West Midlands) i might add that people world wide probably don't really need to worry to much. Birmingham has quite high crime rates and a lot of rich boroughs surrounding it - people are prime targets. People need only remember the shootings that took place over new years eve last year.

Re:Mugging

[prockcore]

My understanding is that they work mainly with pain compliance (despite what the dreck^H^H^H^H^Hmarketting literature says), and pain compliance is not a tool I would choose to use on a mugger.

Then you misunderstand them. It paralyzes you. Your muscles cramp up and you can't move. It's not that the pain is so bad, it's that the signals coming from your brain telling your muscles to move are being drowned out by the signals coming from the tazer.

Tazers work.. even on people pumped up on PCP.

Re:Mugging

[phoneyman]

Anecdotal evidence says otherwise. I've talked to cops that use them, and have had them used on themselves, and the comments are that it hurts - not that it paralyzes. Of the commonly available "stun" weapons, the Tazer is indeed the best, but they aren't reliable stoppers.

I've talked to so many people who have been zapped from everything from garden variety stun guns like gramma had in "Die Hard II" to the much ballyhooed Myotron and the common denominator is that they hurt.

I'd personally be more than willing to get "stunned" by any available electrical "paralysis" garbage on the market, and I'd be willing to bet that I could close in on the stunner and clinch them while they stun me. I'd be willing to be that I could fully demonstrate ability and motive to continue an assault, and prove that if I were an assailant the "stun gun" would be a meaningless tool for self-defence.
really disabling the nervous system is also capable of stopping the heart and killing the attacker. Thus, you might as well use a weapon that is designed to do just that.

I can get to Washington State, so if anyone wants to take me up on this you provide the stun weapons and I'll provide the flesh.

Pierre

FUD Alert!

[useosx]

Great, Pudge didn't do his homework on this one.

I considered submitting this story, but I was busy and now I regret it because according to this MacWorld UK article, this is just an unsubstantiated media frenzy. The proof of how widespread these muggings are is still pretty sketchy.

Re:Mugging

[timmerk15]

No, no they don't. As a law enforcement officer, at least in our city, we have to get tazed to know what it feels like. The 3 times I have been tazed by one, was by a 500,000 volt one, and I didn't fall or become paralyzed. It would still be easy to attack after.