Speaker 1: Hi, it's Gilbert. I want to tell you about a
Speaker 1: new show from Lava for Good coming out today, Absolute
Speaker 1: Taser Incorporated, with filmmaker Nick Berardini. Taser Incorporated comes from
Speaker 1: the same team that worked with me on Bone Valley,
Speaker 1: and just like Bone Valley, this podcast is a riveting
Speaker 1: listen that will open your eyes and tug at your heart.
Speaker 1: We've all seen the taser carried by cops, seen it
Speaker 1: in the news and movies. Have you ever wondered how
Speaker 1: they became so ubiquitous? Nick Barardini and Lava for Good
Speaker 1: are taking a close look at Taser inc. Now known
Speaker 1: as Axon, the eight hundred pound gorilla in the paramilitary
Speaker 1: police equipment industry. Their story is one of ambition, hubris,
Speaker 1: and technology overtaking the very people it is meant to serve.
Speaker 1: Look for Absolute Taser Incorporated wherever you hear this and
Speaker 1: check out this clip from episode one.
Speaker 2: They ride where you are, We'll throw you a gun.
Speaker 2: Gun violence is surging across the US so.
Speaker 1: Far there is a soon show with a gun.
Speaker 3: What would it be like to live in a world
Speaker 3: where none of this is possible? One man had a vision,
Speaker 3: a vision of a new reality.
Speaker 2: The whole reason we started this company is we don't
Speaker 2: get people stop killing each other.
Speaker 3: And in order to do he was going to make
Speaker 3: it happen with an invention.
Speaker 2: Technology has the power to elevate. It can bring out
Speaker 2: the best in humanity. It makes the impossible possible. It
Speaker 2: can make dreams real. It can make tomorrow different than yesterday.
Speaker 3: Rick Smith is building this new reality in a real place.
Speaker 3: I visited the space Age headquarters, rising up from the
Speaker 3: Arizona Desert. My tour guide put his eye up to
Speaker 3: a retinal scanner to get me into the building. The
Speaker 3: steel doors retracted slowly, like we were entering a vault.
Speaker 3: I walked through a wide hallway and saw catwalks criss
Speaker 3: crossing above me. Employees in glass conference rooms drew equations
Speaker 3: on the windows. I watched as an assembly line of
Speaker 3: workers built this future weapon called a Taser. Electricity buzzed
Speaker 3: through the air. It felt like science fiction, but they
Speaker 3: were really doing it. I was inside this world, could
Speaker 3: see what this new technology could be capable of, and
Speaker 3: I wanted Rick's dream to be real. This is absolute.
Speaker 3: Season one, Taser incorporated a story about unchecked power. I'm
Speaker 3: Nick Beredeini. Episode one whips, poles, and chains. I know
Speaker 3: a lot of cops and they get asked all the time,
Speaker 3: have you ever fired your gun? Rick Smith in his
Speaker 3: space age Outpost was trying to build a world where
Speaker 3: the answer would always be no. But if you were
Speaker 3: a cop before that, like my friend Matt Masters, you
Speaker 3: were skeptical. Matt had been trained. If you think your
Speaker 3: life is in danger, shoot.
Speaker 4: Door comes flying open and dude's running out. He's got
Speaker 4: the cash register in one hand and a gun in
Speaker 4: the other, and I'm like, robbery, Robbie, robbery, should we
Speaker 4: bail out of our car in the middle street. I
Speaker 4: think the kid just didn't even like realize that the
Speaker 4: cops were there, So as he's running, he kind of
Speaker 4: like turned like oh shit kind of thing. The gun
Speaker 4: was pointed at me, and at that point I just reacted,
Speaker 4: and I mean, he wasn't stopping, and I opened fire
Speaker 4: on him. I shot shot him like five times, and
Speaker 4: so he went down right there and dropped the cash register,
Speaker 4: dropped the gun. I'm standing in the street, put out
Speaker 4: on the radio. Shots fired you know, also involved shooting whatever.
Speaker 4: Whatever I said.
Speaker 3: It wasn't until you rolled him over that you realized
Speaker 3: how young. He was right, yeah, yeah, no, what did
Speaker 3: he look like? He looked like he.
Speaker 4: Looked like he was a fourteen, fifteen year old kid.
Speaker 3: You know what did that feel like?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: It bothered me.
Speaker 4: You know, I remember the kid looking up at me
Speaker 4: and he's like.
Speaker 3: You shot me. Matt says he did what he was
Speaker 3: trained to do, aim for the chest, but he also
Speaker 3: did what a lot of cops do under pressure. He missed.
Speaker 3: Cops call it dipping. He told me he didn't mean to,
Speaker 3: but he lowered his arm hit the kid's legs.
Speaker 4: I was just glad that didn't killing, because I think
Speaker 4: that would have been.
Speaker 1: A different.
Speaker 4: I think that would have been different emotions that I
Speaker 4: would have had to process. Ended up being a BB gun.
Speaker 4: There's a replica that look like a real gun. There's
Speaker 4: no way I would have been able to know that
Speaker 4: that was a BB gun. But I don't know that
Speaker 4: I needed to shoot him. So I think that part
Speaker 4: kind of bothers me a little bit, like knowing that
Speaker 4: I didn't have to shoot him.
Speaker 2: Why does an officer ever need to use lethal force?
Speaker 2: Police don't use lethal force because it's lethal. They use
Speaker 2: it because it's reliable. It's the most effective way to
Speaker 2: stop a threat.
Speaker 3: In a marketing video from twenty twenty three, Rick Smith
Speaker 3: tells us not anymore. He shows us the newest Taser,
Speaker 3: a black and yellow gun shaped device. Instead of one barrel,
Speaker 3: it has ten holes to shoot out ten little darts.
Speaker 3: The darts are attached to electrified copper wires, so when
Speaker 3: they shoot out and puncture your skin, the current makes
Speaker 3: your muscles lock up. You can't move, but when it's over,
Speaker 3: you can get right back up.
Speaker 2: I feel a sense of true hope watching this technology
Speaker 2: be adopted, and I can't wait to see where the
Speaker 2: coming years will take us.
Speaker 3: Walking through the Taser headquarters blew me away. While I
Speaker 3: was there, I sat down with a VP and he
Speaker 3: told me how proud he was to work for the
Speaker 3: company Tasers saving lives.
Speaker 1: That's the business that we're in. We're protecting the truth
Speaker 1: and we're protecting lives.
Speaker 3: I was impressed. As I walked back through the steel
Speaker 3: double doors and into the desert that day, I also wondered,
Speaker 3: was what he said too good to be true? I
Speaker 3: threw myself in a half decade into that question. I
Speaker 3: even made a movie about what I found. That's how
Speaker 3: I met officer Matt Masters. I was answering questions on
Speaker 3: Reddit about the movie. He left me a comment, Hello, Nick,
Speaker 3: I was thrust into the reality of tasers just over
Speaker 3: a year ago. I didn't see it at first. I
Speaker 3: only caught it because a friend asked later if I'd
Speaker 3: talked to this guy Matt yet. When I finally met him,
Speaker 3: he'd been a cop for nineteen years. Crew cut, blue eyes,
Speaker 3: tattoo of an archangel slicing a demon's neck. He opened
Speaker 3: up right away. He laughed a lot, especially when he
Speaker 3: was talking about something that might make him cry. We
Speaker 3: had dinner at a restaurant and we talked for hours.
Speaker 3: Matt's wife, Stacy was there too, dark straight hair, dark
Speaker 3: brown eyes, feather tattoo. She's part Shawnee and sometimes wears
Speaker 3: a t shirt that says no more Stolen Sisters. We
Speaker 3: started talking because Matt and Stacy were trying to make
Speaker 3: sense of something that happened to them.
Speaker 5: AHI found fucking just get out out right now, Out
Speaker 5: of the car. How do the car Taylor deployment on
Speaker 5: the ground, Out of the car on the ground, on
Speaker 5: the ground.
Speaker 3: The taser changed everything for cops, changed everything for math too.