points by fedpost 2 days ago | 0 comments
I cannot articulate how much they fucking love this stuff. If you want to actually help your community you become a paramedic or a teacher...
...but if you want to have absolute power over your community, you become a cop or a mayor.
The cops are obsessed with all the shiney toys that let them surveil and kill people. They will buy literally any wildly unnecessary thing they can get their hands on if it tickles their sense of cool. That's why they're driving around in GWOT surplus MRAPs with GPS synchronized emergency lights (Google it) and complaining about not being able to buy the latest drones from China so loudly.
[–] properbrew 2 days ago
[–] alnwlsn 1 day ago
I have dealt with such a system. I'm not sure it was GPS based but one of the options you could get was a radio system so that additional vehicles that arrived on scene would automatically sync their lights and sirens to match the ones already there. The lights and sirens themselves are CAN modules and run off a custom CAN bus. It was pretty interesting to go through the configuration software and see the literally hundreds of preset flash patterns for different regions of the world.
[–] cucumber3732842 2 days ago
Around here they're based off GPS plus time. To many cops got splattered because they had their lights set to day at night and the traffic couldn't see the officer.
[–] rglover 2 days ago
I live in the middle of nowhere and the local police have an MRAP. First time I saw it, I figured it was a display piece but nope, they use it for "SWAT" (in a heavily religious, sleepy, nothing but meth heads kind of low crime area). They've also littered ALPRs all over rural roads. I spot them constantly and they're always in strange "why there" places.
It's all ironic when you see the same people claiming "anti communism" and "low or no government" but then proceed to happily install the boot on people's faces. The cognitive dissonance is chefs kiss.
[–] DeluluDon 2 days ago
Ironically we saw the same thing in communist countries.
[–] fedpost 2 days ago
It's not so much cultural political leaning as it is authoritarianism. The US is completely fixated on Left vs Right but most people can't fathom another axis affecting them.
I actually did and whilst I can understand how ridiculous it sounds, to be honest it kind of makes sense. A large number of emergency vehicles at a scene at night can become it's own mini light show which can be really distracting / blinding.
https://standbygroup.com/uk/sync-breathe/
It does look kinda cool though.