Could our police force ever resemble the film RoboCop? The original movie is 1987 action film set in a crime ridden and extremely violent Detroit, Michigan. One officer named Alex Murphy is brutally murdered and subsequently recreated by a megacorporation, using robot components. This turns him into a super human cyborg known as RoboCop. A remake of the film was released in 2014.
The story is set in the not too distant future where violent crime is spiraling out of control and the city is financially ruined. The city government contracts the corporation called OCP to pay for and operate the police force. Before this malevolent corporation can achieve citywide domination, it must end all crime. Elsewhere, Alex Murphy is soon to be killed by a gang of thugs plaguing the city. What is left of his bodily organs are later transferred into a full body prosthetic and his brain is ‘blanked’ so he has no memory of his former life. He becomes a brilliant crime fighting machine.
So could we ever have human cyborgs fighting crime in our cities? The police force already have access to some amazing technology but of course, it stops short of actually being part of their body. They do, however, wear technology on their bodies. Body Worn Cameras are worn by many police forces around the world as a tool for recording evidence and to protect themselves from false accusations. For more information, visit http://www.pinnacleresponse.com/body-cameras-and-the-law/.
If you see a vehicle that looks like a normal police car but has two small yellow circles at each of the top corners of the windscreen, then this car is a mobile armoury. It could well be a BMW X5 as the suspension deals better with the weight of the weapons inside. The officers will be wearing Glock 17 pistols and have access to an arsenal including: the Benelli Super 90 shotgun, the Sig Sauer automatic gas-piston operated rifle, the Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine gun, the G3 sniper and assault rifle and the G36 carbine. And you thought your average bobby just had a trucheon?
The Met’s specialist firearms squad, SCO19, when all kitted out, look scarily similar to RoboCop. They wear masks, helmets, boilersuits and weapons and look very militarized. However, before you start to think that all our police officers will become gun-toting cyborgs, still only a very small fraction are armed in this way. The levels of technology and armoury are slowly increasing though with the rise of military style tactics in policing and the use of the Taser.
Thousands of our officers are now regularly armed with Tasers, which are described as non-lethal but have still managed to kill several people. Tasers were deployed 10,000 times in 2014 which equated to an increase of 40% from the previous four years. The important thing is to know where to use adequate force. Whilst we wouldn’t want to see RoboCops marching down our leafy, quiet village streets – we certainly would want our police to have every available gadget and weapon when it comes to fighting inner city organized crime and terrorism.