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Terrifying Anti-Riot Vehicle Created To Quash Any Urban Disturbance (boingboing.net)
"Are you an urban police force thinking about how to control your fellow humans?" jokes Cory Doctorow. "Look no farther! Your pals at Bozena have an all-new RIOT system, a crowd-control killdozer for all your protest-suppressing needs!" He's one of several web commentators marveling at the marketing copy for a Slovakian company's new anti-riot machinery, also spotted by Slashdot reader drunkdrone. Some quotes from the BOZENA RIOT SYSTEM site about the device's features:
- Easy attachable bulldozer blade.
- The [6,600 pound] shield comes equipped with launching ports designed for use of guns or other rubber projectiles launchers.
- The trailer is capable of displacing the water/foam or its mixtures (available additives: pepper or painting substances) under the high pressure into the distance of several dozen meters.
- Communication with rioters through the loudspeakers.
- Designed to control riots in streets and urbanized areas...intended predominantly for the special military and police units responsible for the CROWD CONTROL during the violent political/social demonstrations, against football hooligans, etc.
I wondered when a one of our companies went into EOD machinery construction, but a look at the web page told me that it's Slovak not Slovenian :) We seem to do explosive ordnance clearing through fundraising and "manual labor" - http://www.itf-fund.si/.
As if living in a police state wasn't enough... From the picture and video tabs:
"You need to upgrade your Macromedia Flash Player! Get Macromedia Flash"
There's a good chance that this machine's software/interfaces will have....inadequate security. Someone, somewhere, will achieve control over it, and then when it turns on the thin blue line behind it, ostensibly waiting to "clean up" the now-subdued rioters, there will be some outrage from the police department/s who bought it, some swift spin from the manufacturer, and the units will either 1. be withdrawn, or 2. given a firmware upgrade, in which case, see above.
At the very least, someone will be able to jam its communication, rendering it unresponsive.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
I don't see anywhere to scoop up rioters to take to the factory. Soylent Green won't make itself!
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
Technology like this isnt helping riot control. its dangerous brinkmanship. Once you start deploying autonomous anti-personnel devices like MRAPS's and BOZENA, youve made citzens aware that not only do you not care about the current reason theyre rioting but you're willing to herd them like cattle instead of take the time to listen.
Treat people like expendable trash and theyll fight you in ways you wouldnt expect. in Texas it meant after a slew of police shootings of unarmed black men, a black man took up a sniper position and began executing police from a rooftop with a high power rifle. if your only answer to systemic inequality is to deploy a 6600 pound shield, you'll soon find how resilient it is to firearms that are many, many times more powerful than what you would normally be faced with in a riot situation.
Good people go to bed earlier.
All the better for Soylent Green processing.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
They would be sued for certain. But the Govt would pick up the tab, and business would go on as usual.
Officers inevitably get fired, and increasingly nobody wants to take their place.
https://www.abqjournal.com/783...
And why would they? There seems to be an expectation these days that no matter how much a citizen harasses an officer, the officer shouldn't ever respond in a way that a typical person likely would respond. Thus, it would make sense that a typical person wouldn't want to become a police officer.
good.
if you think people in the position of enforcing law with force should be allowed to lose temper like any other drunk defending their supposed honor, i hope you are the very first to experience it.