The Rocket

Issue date: 9/28/07 Section: Opinion

There is nothing I love more than excess.

Excess french fries at McDonald's.

Excess laughter from someone that leaves us all thinking "wow, what an idiot."

And especially excessive use of force.

Most of us have seen the video of the college student being Tasered by police at a John Kerry speech. I don't know if any of you guys counted, but there were five police officers there. Five. Five police officers trying to handle one guy who wouldn't shut up.

Maybe I'm really overestimating the ability of law enforcement, but I tend to think that five against one is a pretty unfair fight to begin with.

Even if the college student struggled and resisted them, I'm sure that they could have found a way to get him out of the building without Tasering him.

What's even worse about this video is everyone in the audience sits idly by, watching, even cheering for the obvious police brutality that is occurring.

All it would have taken was a few people to start screaming and making a scene and the police would have been distracted enough to decide that getting him out of the room was the best thing to do without running the risk of creating a bigger scene.

Now, I don't want anyone to get the impression that I hate the police or anything, but how many of you actually feel safe when cops are around?

I know I don't. Sure, many police officers are great people who are just looking out for the welfare of society, but some of them aren't, and I'm not going to stick around long enough to find out.

I hear that Slippery Rock Borough Police are getting Tasers, and if the Police Blotter is any indication of what's to come, there will be a lot of jittery college students in class on Mondays.

So I thought I could best serve the student population by letting everyone know about ways of protecting yourself from Tasers:

1. The Thor Shield. It's got a pretty cool name, but it's only sold to people in the military and law enforcement.

I think it's a little rude for the makers of the Thor Shield to sell protection to the exact people who will be Tasering you in the first place. Seems to me that if you can buy a Taser, you should be able to buy protection from a taser.

Either way, the Thor Shield is apparently some kind of fabric that you can attach to jackets and things and it protects you against Tasers and other electric-shock death weapons, if you can get a hold of it. The polyester fabric is looped with another conductive material that sends the electricity back to the Taser itself.

2. Aluminum foil. There isn't anything on this planet that performs double, even triple-duty quite like aluminum foil. Not only will it protect you from when the aliens try to read your mind and when the government tries to read your RFID tags, it also could help protect you from police brutality.

It's been said that aluminum chain mail also might help, though it isn't as effective as the Thor Shield.

3. Finally, you can always try to use the Force. This is a simple technique involving watching many hours of Star Wars movies, as well as visiting several Star Wars conventions.

Master the manipulation of the Force, and you've got instant Taser protection.

Besides, even if you could protect yourself from Tasers, the police can still club you unconscious. There is nothing like good ol' brute force to do society good. Maybe if people would just stop expressing their opinions, we wouldn't have to taser the fool out of them.

Lisbeth Wells-Pratt is a freshman creative writing major and a regular contributor to The Rocket.

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