Speaker 1: You're right where you are, We'll throw you a gun.
Speaker 2: Gun violence is surging across the US.
Speaker 3: So far there is a soon with a gun.
Speaker 2: What would it be like to live in a world
Speaker 2: where none of this is possible? One man had a vision,
Speaker 2: a vision of a new reality.
Speaker 4: The whole reason we started this company is we don't
Speaker 4: get people stop killing each other.
Speaker 3: And in order to.
Speaker 2: Do that, he was going to make it happen with
Speaker 2: an invention.
Speaker 4: Technology has the power to elevate us. It can bring
Speaker 4: out the best in humanity. It makes the impossible possible.
Speaker 4: It can make dreams real. It can make tomorrow different
Speaker 4: than yesterday.
Speaker 2: Rick Smith is building this new reality in a real place.
Speaker 2: I visited the Space Age headquarters, rising up from the
Speaker 2: Arizona Desert. My tour guide put his eye up to
Speaker 2: a retinal scanner to get me into the building. The
Speaker 2: steel doors retracted slowly, like we were entering a vault.
Speaker 2: I walked through a wide hallway and saw catwalks criss
Speaker 2: crossing above me. Employees in glass conference rooms drew equations
Speaker 2: on the windows. I watched as an assembly line of
Speaker 2: workers built this future weapon called a taser. Electricity buzzed
Speaker 2: through the air. It felt like science fiction, but they
Speaker 2: were really doing it. I was in side this world.
Speaker 2: I could see what this new technology could be capable of,
Speaker 2: and I wanted Rick's stream to be real. This is absolute.
Speaker 2: Season one, Taser incorporated a story about unchecked power. I'm
Speaker 2: Nick Beredini. Episode one whips, Poles and Chains. I know
Speaker 2: a lot of cops and they get asked all the time,
Speaker 2: have you ever fired your gun? Rick Smith in his
Speaker 2: space age outpost was trying to build a world where
Speaker 2: the answer would always be no. But if you were
Speaker 2: a cop before that, like my friend Matt Masters, you
Speaker 2: were skeptical. Matt had been trained. If you think your
Speaker 2: life is in danger, shoot.
Speaker 5: Door comes flying open and dude's running out. He's got
Speaker 5: the cash register in one hand and a gun in
Speaker 5: the other, and I'm like, robbery, robberie robbery. So we
Speaker 5: bail out of our car in the middle street. I
Speaker 5: think the kid just didn't even like realize that the
Speaker 5: cops were there. So as he's running, he turned like,
Speaker 5: oh shit kind of thing. The gun was pointed at
Speaker 5: me at that point I just reacted, and I mean
Speaker 5: he wasn't stopping, and I opened fire on him. I
Speaker 5: shot shot him like five times, and so he went
Speaker 5: down right there and dropped the cash register, dropped the gun.
Speaker 5: I'm standing in the street, put out on the radio.
Speaker 5: Shots fired, you know, also involved shooting whatever. Whatever I said.
Speaker 2: It wasn't until you rolled him over that you realized
Speaker 2: how young he was, right, Yeah, yeah, no, what did
Speaker 2: he look like? He looked like he looked like he
Speaker 2: was a fourteen fifteen year old kid. You know what
Speaker 2: did that feel like?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 2: It bothered me.
Speaker 5: You know, I remember the kid looking up at me
Speaker 5: and he's like.
Speaker 2: You shot me. Matt says he did what he was
Speaker 2: trained to do, aim for the chest, but he also
Speaker 2: did what a lot of cops do under pressure. He missed.
Speaker 2: Cops call it dipping. He told me he didn't mean to,
Speaker 2: but he lowered his arm hit the kid's legs.
Speaker 5: I was just glad that I didn't killing because I
Speaker 5: think that would have been a different I think that
Speaker 5: would have been different emotions that I would have had
Speaker 5: to process. Ended up being a BB gun, there's a
Speaker 5: replica that look like a real gun. There's no way
Speaker 5: I would have been able to know that that was
Speaker 5: a BB gun. But I don't know that I needed
Speaker 5: to shooting. So I think that part kind of bothers
Speaker 5: me a little bit, like knowing that I didn't have
Speaker 5: to shoot him.
Speaker 4: Why does an officer ever need to use lethal force?
Speaker 4: Police don't use lethal force because it's lethal. They use
Speaker 4: it because it's reliable. It's the most effective way to
Speaker 4: stop a threat.
Speaker 2: In a marketing video from twenty twenty three, Rick Smith
Speaker 2: tells us not anymore. He shows us the newest Taser,
Speaker 2: a black and yellow gun shaped device. Instead of one barrel,
Speaker 2: it has ten holes to shoot out ten little darts.
Speaker 2: The darts are attached to electrified copper wires, so when
Speaker 2: they shoot out and puncture your skin, the current makes
Speaker 2: your muscles lock up. You can't move, but when it's over,
Speaker 2: you can get right back up.
Speaker 4: I feel a sense of true hope watching this technology
Speaker 4: be adopted, and I can't wait to see where the
Speaker 4: coming years will take us.
Speaker 2: Walking through the Taser headquarters blew me away. While I
Speaker 2: was there, I sat down with a VP and he
Speaker 2: told me how proud he was to work for the
Speaker 2: company Tasers saving lives. That's the business that we're in.
Speaker 4: We're protecting the truth and we're protecting lives.
Speaker 2: I was impressed. As I walked back through the steel
Speaker 2: double doors and into the desert that day, I also
Speaker 2: wondered was what he said too good to be true?
Speaker 2: I threw myself in a half decade into that question.
Speaker 2: I even made a movie about what I found. That's
Speaker 2: how I met Officer Matt Masters. I was answering questions
Speaker 2: on Reddit about the movie. He left me a comment, Hello, Nick,
Speaker 2: I was thrust into the reality of tasers just over
Speaker 2: a year ago. I didn't see it at first. I
Speaker 2: only caught it because a friend asked later if I'd
Speaker 2: talked to this guy Matt yet. When I finally met him,
Speaker 2: he'd been a cop for nineteen years. Crew cut, blue eyes,
Speaker 2: tattoo of an archangel slicing a demon's neck. He opened
Speaker 2: up right away. He laughed a lot, especially when he
Speaker 2: was talking about something that might make him cry. We
Speaker 2: had dinner at a restaurant and we talked for hours.
Speaker 2: Matt's wife, Stacy was there too, dark straight hair, dark
Speaker 2: brown eyes, feather tattoo. She's part Shawnee and sometimes wears
Speaker 2: a t shirt that says no More Stolen Sisters. We
Speaker 2: started talking because Matt and Stacy were trying to make
Speaker 2: sense of something that happened to them.
Speaker 4: Fucking just get out out right now.
Speaker 7: Out of the car, Out of the car. Taylor appointment
Speaker 7: on the ground, out of the car, on the ground,
Speaker 7: on the ground.
Speaker 2: The taser changed everything for cops, changed everything for math too.
Speaker 2: There was a time when police didn't use tasers, and
Speaker 2: I wanted to know how I had become so popular
Speaker 2: with cops. So I went to meet a former police
Speaker 2: officer who was the very first in the country to
Speaker 2: arm his department with tasers.
Speaker 6: Yeah, people have this idea, ye know. Oh wow, that'd
Speaker 6: be a police officer, you know, how exciting or how
Speaker 6: dangerous or whatever.
Speaker 2: Greg Meyer is retired now, but he was a cop
Speaker 2: with the Los Angeles Police Department back in the seventies.
Speaker 6: I always say, well, it's a fun job, but somebody
Speaker 6: has to do it.
Speaker 2: I was honestly scared to call him at first. Everything
Speaker 2: I knew about the LAPD came from TV police chases
Speaker 2: and movies like Training Day. I was twenty three and
Speaker 2: reporting on small town cops in mid Missouri. I wasn't
Speaker 2: sure a retired captain from the LAPD would want to
Speaker 2: give some kid journalist a history lesson how'd you guys
Speaker 2: kind of get started getting getting tisgered on the street
Speaker 2: from there. But Captain Meyer loves history.
Speaker 6: LAPD had looked at the taser three or four years.
Speaker 2: Greg told me the story of how why he brought
Speaker 2: tasers to the LAPD like he was my grandpa telling
Speaker 2: me about the war.
Speaker 6: So in January third of nineteen seventy nine, in South
Speaker 6: Los Angeles there was a very tragic police shooting.
Speaker 2: A widowed mom named Ula Love was killed by police.
Speaker 2: It was all over the news.
Speaker 4: On Focus tonight.
Speaker 1: Police brutality a topic of intense national interest nowadays because
Speaker 1: last January a black woman named Ula Love was shot
Speaker 1: by two policemen.
Speaker 2: She threatened the officers with a knife.
Speaker 8: They fired twelve times and killed her.
Speaker 2: Ula Love hadn't paid her gas bill, and when the
Speaker 2: collector came, she threatened him with a shovel. When he
Speaker 2: called the cops, Ula Love threatened them with a knife.
Speaker 2: They could have subdued this lady without using the weapons
Speaker 2: that they used. They could have took her alive plant simple.
Speaker 2: Even the mayor made a statement.
Speaker 4: There is a WHI I'd spread feeling which I share
Speaker 4: that the shooting might have been avoided.
Speaker 2: That Ula Love shooting put the city of Los Angeles
Speaker 2: on edge and set the LAPD on a mission.
Speaker 6: The boss has decided, we got to find a better way,
Speaker 6: and that's how I ended up with the Non Lethal
Speaker 6: Weapons Project.
Speaker 2: The department started looking for a non lethal weapon that
Speaker 2: could stop a shooting before it happened.
Speaker 6: I had no idea that was going to become my
Speaker 6: life's work. I actually wrote an article forty years ago
Speaker 6: or so, the title of which was Tasers, tear gas, whips,
Speaker 6: poles and chains your non lethal weapons Alternatives. And that
Speaker 6: came about because I was given carte blanche, look at
Speaker 6: everything that we could that's out there.
Speaker 2: Greg told me the LAPD actually sent out a survey
Speaker 2: to the fifty biggest police departments in the US. They
Speaker 2: were asking, how do you stop someone with hurting them?
Speaker 6: What do you guys use besides you know, the baton
Speaker 6: and the handgun and the SAP and the handcuffs to
Speaker 6: subdue people.
Speaker 2: But cops everywhere were kind of in the same boat.
Speaker 2: Everything they could use was pretty brutal. Like if you
Speaker 2: don't know what a SAP is, it's basically a leather
Speaker 2: club with a lead ball at the end of it.
Speaker 2: It can cause a ripping laceration to the face. Sounds
Speaker 2: like something from Bravehearder Game of Thrones. Greg told me
Speaker 2: he was so stuck he even ran ads in the newspaper.
Speaker 6: And so people would write us letters. Doctors would write
Speaker 6: us letters. People make phone calls to the office making
Speaker 6: the suggestion, and.
Speaker 2: When they say there's no bad ideas in a brainstorm.
Speaker 6: Whips, poles and chains. I'm not kidding. We actually had
Speaker 6: a guy in Australia say that we should use bull
Speaker 6: whips on people because that's what they use. And it's
Speaker 6: like what several people, including some doctors wrote in that
Speaker 6: we should try tranquilizer guns, like they tranquilize animals with
Speaker 6: little drug cocktails. So I actually spent a day out
Speaker 6: at the Los Angeles Zoo with the head veterinarian at
Speaker 6: the zoo. Okay cool, except what he told me was, yeah,
Speaker 6: the media never seems to find out the animal would
Speaker 6: die half the time. So we kind of blew by that.
Speaker 2: One doesn't scream LAPD a more humane way of policing.
Speaker 2: But Greg didn't give up. He looked into a metal
Speaker 2: chain hooked up to a seven foot shoust. Honestly, I
Speaker 2: can't believe he looked into that one. It has chain
Speaker 2: in the name, Greg, it.
Speaker 6: Was called an action control chain, and you would try
Speaker 6: to wrap the person up with that and then knock
Speaker 6: them down with a big long, six or seven foot
Speaker 6: baton and then get them handcuffed. And it's like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 6: we didn't have a lot of luck with that.
Speaker 2: And then he considered they're a giant fishing net.
Speaker 6: Now the guy's all wrapped up, and then they get
Speaker 6: him into the station and behind closed doors, get the
Speaker 6: net off, and then the fight would be on.
Speaker 2: There was pepper spray, but even the environmentalists got in
Speaker 2: the way.
Speaker 6: The state of California did not allow pepper spray. It
Speaker 6: was banned. The state Department of Health Services said, no,
Speaker 6: we don't want the pepper spray. We're not sure what
Speaker 6: effect it would have on the ozone layer. So we're
Speaker 6: out there kicking people with combat boots and beating them
Speaker 6: with metal pipes and we can't use pepper spray because
Speaker 6: they're worried about the ozone layer. It was nuts.
Speaker 2: And then Greg found this news clip about a former
Speaker 2: NASA scientist working on some kind of electric gun. This
Speaker 2: wasn't Rick Smith, it was before his time. The guy
Speaker 2: in the clip was named Jack Kover got.
Speaker 8: Her a new space age weapon that stuns but does
Speaker 8: not kill.
Speaker 6: I picked up the phone and I called Jack Kover,
Speaker 6: who was the taser inventor. His little factory was here
Speaker 6: in southern California, in the city of Industry, and I
Speaker 6: went out there and met him. Jack was a very
Speaker 6: impressive guy. Jack had been a World War two airplane
Speaker 6: test pilot, okay, and he was part of the Apollo
Speaker 6: moon landing program.
Speaker 2: Jack explained the concept to Greg.
Speaker 6: I remember he asked me. He said, Greg, did you
Speaker 6: ever work on a car? Did you ever do it
Speaker 6: tune up on a car? And did you ever like
Speaker 6: you know, did you ever touch the distributor cap and
Speaker 6: get a short circuit through your body? And I go, yeah,
Speaker 6: that happened. That happened once, he says, But it didn't
Speaker 6: kill you, right, No, but it really startled you, right
Speaker 6: And I go, well, yeah.
Speaker 2: Jack showed Greg a prototype and he was sold. Soon
Speaker 2: the laped had a few hundred tasers. The concept of
Speaker 2: the taser was so good, but they weren't reliable. They
Speaker 2: were shaped like a flashlight, hard to hold and hard
Speaker 2: to aim. Plus they were big and bulky. Some cops
Speaker 2: had to keep them in the trunks of their squad cars.
Speaker 2: But the biggest problem was that a lot of times
Speaker 2: they just didn't have enough power to stop an assailant,
Speaker 2: which of course made the news.
Speaker 1: Officers trying to take a man into custody, they used
Speaker 1: a taser.
Speaker 2: The tasers should have dropped him.
Speaker 4: Long enough for the officers to take control.
Speaker 3: It didn't stun guns to tasers.
Speaker 1: They can be effective, but have never been totally reliable
Speaker 1: against focused, combative attackers.
Speaker 6: It just wasn't ready for prime time.
Speaker 2: Then the taser was featured in primetime in March of
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety one. The world watched as three LAPD officers
Speaker 2: beat Rodney King. While many people were appalled to see
Speaker 2: police nearly beat a black man to death, lots of
Speaker 2: cops noticed something else too. The LAPD had tried to
Speaker 2: fire the taser twice before the brutality began, two taser
Speaker 2: shots that failed to keep King on the ground before
Speaker 2: the other officers could put him in handcuffs. Greg moved
Speaker 2: on from tasers, The weapons stayed on the fringe of
Speaker 2: law enforcement until a bright young man from Scottsdale, Arizona,
Speaker 2: had an idea. At the same time as Rodney King
Speaker 2: was in the news. Rick Smith, the guy who had
Speaker 2: changed tasers forever, had just graduated from Harvard. He was
Speaker 2: getting his MBA, and he'd grown up watching his dad
Speaker 2: try out business after business. Rick told the story to
Speaker 2: my colleague Matt Stroud a few years ago.
Speaker 4: He started a restaurant at one point failed bottom batical
Speaker 4: distribution business fail.
Speaker 2: Finally Rick's dad got in on the ground floor of
Speaker 2: a Silicon Valley startup and made millions.
Speaker 4: And you know, it was pretty cool, Like dad went
Speaker 4: from struggling and then they's buying a Ferrari.
Speaker 2: Rick says he made up his mind that by the
Speaker 2: time he finished business school, he wanted to start his
Speaker 2: own company. He just didn't know what kind yet. And
Speaker 2: then he heard some news from back home in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Speaker 2: Two guys he knew from playing high school football, Todd
Speaker 2: and Corey, had gone speeding down Scottsdale Road in a
Speaker 2: white Chevy Camaro and cut off a guy driving a
Speaker 2: Honda a Cord.
Speaker 4: They don't go to a party on a Friday or
Speaker 4: Saturday night, and this guy follows him and they probably
Speaker 4: got out of their car. There's yelling, there's tempers. This
Speaker 4: other guy sees two big guys. He takes a guy
Speaker 4: out in the glovebox, and he ends up shooting and
Speaker 4: killing them both.
Speaker 2: Todd and Corey's death changed Rick's life. Rick was ambitious.
Speaker 2: He didn't want to leave school and just get a job.
Speaker 2: He wanted to do something big, and this shooting started
Speaker 2: making him think about the scale of gun violence in
Speaker 2: the US. How many thousands of people are killed by
Speaker 2: guns every year. He wanted to do something about it.
Speaker 2: Rick had heard of a taser. He'd seen it in
Speaker 2: movies like The Enforcer, and he was a Star Trek fan.
Speaker 2: Captain Kirk didn't have a gun. He had a phaser,
Speaker 2: a weapon that stuns but doesn't kill. Rick didn't understand
Speaker 2: why wasn't the taser already a smashing success.
Speaker 4: I'm convinced there will come a day with the idea
Speaker 4: of blowing holes in people is going to seem horrific
Speaker 4: and outdated. I think, yes, Pa, we can take some
Speaker 4: inspiration from science fiction. Right, How bizarre were to look
Speaker 4: at Captain Kirk whipped out a glock and blew a
Speaker 4: hole in a Clayton Right.
Speaker 2: Rick says, he saw the patent for the taser was
Speaker 2: owned by a guy named Jack Kover, and Rick wanted in.
Speaker 2: He convinced his dad to put up some money, and
Speaker 2: he took his parents' camper two hours south of childhood
Speaker 2: home to park it in Jack's driveway. They were kind
Speaker 2: of an odd couple. Rick was the young and ambitious businessman,
Speaker 2: Jack was the crotchety old scientist ready to give the
Speaker 2: taser one last try. They bought parts at the local
Speaker 2: hardware store and got to work in Jack's garage. Within
Speaker 2: a few months, they had built a new prototype, the
Speaker 2: air Taser thirty four thousand. They marketed it to civilians
Speaker 2: who wanted to protect themselves, not police. They went on
Speaker 2: sale in the Sharper Image catalog in nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 2: It was a disaster. Rick thought that regular people would
Speaker 2: jump at the chance to buy tasers for their self defense.
Speaker 2: But what he didn't really consider was that most people
Speaker 2: bought guns because they liked guns. They know what they
Speaker 2: are and how to use them. They didn't like tasers.
Speaker 2: I'm three years in. Rick was running out of cash.
Speaker 2: By then, Jack Kober was gone. Rick was on his own.
Speaker 4: Millions of dollars went into this basically wiping out my dad.
Speaker 4: My mom at that point was super upset with us
Speaker 4: because she was watching the nest egg Windel.
Speaker 2: Rick told another journalist that his mom was so upset
Speaker 2: she didn't even go to his wedding. He was scared.
Speaker 2: He would stay up late filling orders himself, drinking beer
Speaker 2: and wondering if everything he had put into this dream
Speaker 2: was even worth it.
Speaker 4: By now, I to be honest, I was on my
Speaker 4: friends from Harvard. We're doing these startups up in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 4: They were at these companies with goofy names like Yahoo,
Speaker 4: and at this point I just sort of frank job
Speaker 4: wanted out. But we had no choice.
Speaker 2: As Rick tells it, his dad had signed over everything
Speaker 2: he had to get the bank loans Rick needed. If
Speaker 2: Rick couldn't pay him back, the family would lose everything.
Speaker 2: Rick thought hard about his company. He still believed in
Speaker 2: the mission to replace guns and by doing so, save lives.
Speaker 2: He just needed customers, and if the sharper image crowd
Speaker 2: wasn't buying, maybe police would. So he called the first
Speaker 2: cop to ever give tasers a shop, Greg Meyer, from
Speaker 2: the lapd. Rick invited him to dinner at Musso and
Speaker 2: Frank's big red booths, white tablecloths, big steaks, A century
Speaker 2: of Hollywood power brokers making deals.
Speaker 6: Musso and Frank is more than one hundred years old.
Speaker 6: Now it's a Hollywood hangout restaurant. All the stars would
Speaker 6: hang out there and all that.
Speaker 2: Greg talked about all the ways the taser needed to
Speaker 2: be better, and.
Speaker 6: What law enforcement need, and what the strengths and weaknesses are.
Speaker 2: Shape it like a handgun to make it easier for
Speaker 2: cops to point and shoot. Make it smaller. All these
Speaker 2: tasers were way too big. But most importantly, make sure
Speaker 2: it worked every time.
Speaker 6: And we had a wonderful dinner, and I wished them
Speaker 6: well in their venture.
Speaker 2: Rick heard Greg loud and clear. He knew how important
Speaker 2: it was for the taser to be reliable. He'd seen
Speaker 2: his taser fail before a couple of years earlier. In
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety eight, Rick had taken the airtaser to a
Speaker 2: police convention and he was giving a presentation to a
Speaker 2: couple hundred cops when he asked if anyone would like
Speaker 2: to volunteer to take a hit from the air taser.
Speaker 2: He thought he'd fire it. The volunteer would drop to
Speaker 2: the ground and everyone would get a laugh. But you
Speaker 2: know that old saying, don't ask a question you don't
Speaker 2: already know the answer to. A man named Hans Morrero
Speaker 2: raised his hand a volunteer.
Speaker 3: I shoot him and literally doesn't plage.
Speaker 2: Rick shot Hans with the taser, but he didn't go down. Instead,
Speaker 2: he told Rick that the taser shock was making him uncomfortable,
Speaker 2: which is, you know, not what you want to happen
Speaker 2: when you're demonstrating a new weapon that's supposed to incapacitate
Speaker 2: an attacker, and.
Speaker 3: The whole audience roaring with laughter.
Speaker 2: Everyone was laughing for the wrong reason. Later that night,
Speaker 2: Rick Smith was down in the hotel bar, head down
Speaker 2: and embarrassed. Hans found Rick and they started chatting.
Speaker 4: And I asked, you know, so I started asking in
Speaker 4: questions and he starts explaining to me. He's as well,
Speaker 4: yeah we know, sir, I've studying marcial arts at the
Speaker 4: He's two years old.
Speaker 3: He's like a karate kid meets the terminator.
Speaker 4: So he tells me about this and I said, hey, look,
Speaker 4: we're we're working on a new system.
Speaker 3: I think you are the ultimate test.
Speaker 2: Rick and a small engineering team launched Project Stealth. It
Speaker 2: was an all out effort to build a taser strong
Speaker 2: enough to take down anyone, even Hans, a former chief
Speaker 2: instructor of hand to hand combat for the Marines. A
Speaker 2: year later, Rick was holding a new mup, the Advanced
Speaker 2: Taser M twenty six. It was smaller, lighter, and easy
Speaker 2: to use because it was shaped like a handgun. But
Speaker 2: the biggest breakthrough was that it was more powerful. Who
Speaker 2: was almost four times stronger than the airtaser twenty six
Speaker 2: watts instead of seven. Rick flew Hans out to a
Speaker 2: warehouse in Arizona to test the new taser on him.
Speaker 2: He brought a video crew with him to film the
Speaker 2: whole thing. The video starts.
Speaker 8: Wow.
Speaker 2: White text pops up on the black screen. It says
Speaker 2: non lethal weapons cannot stop a focused, motivated attacker until
Speaker 2: now the challenge Hans versus the Advanced Taser M twenty six.
Speaker 2: Hans comes onto the screen, fists up standing on a
Speaker 2: boxing mat. He's wearing white shorts, socks and sneakers and
Speaker 2: nothing else. His muscles are on full display, like twelve
Speaker 2: pack apps buys bigger than an NFL running back, huge
Speaker 2: biceps in chest. The background is all black. He takes
Speaker 2: a deep breath and gets in a fighting stance. He's
Speaker 2: gonna go try to grab a gun on the ground
Speaker 2: five feet in front of him. Every time I watch,
Speaker 2: I kind of think he'll get it, but of course
Speaker 2: he never gets the gun. The taser shoots electricity through
Speaker 2: his body. Hans drops to the floor. Rick sent that
Speaker 2: video to police departments around the country. It was like
Speaker 2: the trailer for a summer blockbuster, and Hans was the star.
Speaker 2: That video of Hans gave officers proof proof that the
Speaker 2: taser was a weapon they could rely on and that
Speaker 2: it wouldn't fail. Rick actually hired Hans to teach other
Speaker 2: cops how to use the taser and lead a brilliant
Speaker 2: grassroots marketing campaign. They started visiting police departments across the country.
Speaker 3: Our sales pitch was really easy.
Speaker 4: We would go around the police departments and we'd say, hey,
Speaker 4: who's your biggest, topest guy.
Speaker 8: Bring you in.
Speaker 4: Okay, Spinky could beat this. Here's a one hundred bucks.
Speaker 4: We pin them with the taser to boom down. They
Speaker 4: would go.
Speaker 2: Greg Meyer from the LAPD finally found that non lethal
Speaker 2: weapon he'd been looking for, and as he remembers it.
Speaker 6: It is a big hit. The public would come out
Speaker 6: and see the police action. They were used to seeing
Speaker 6: the police get in a big fight with these guys.
Speaker 6: Now you've got the police stand in ten or twelve
Speaker 6: feet away and launching these electric probes at the guys.
Speaker 6: And what was also beautiful. When you have a naked
Speaker 6: PCP suspect, they're usually all sweaty, And guess what, sweat
Speaker 6: is a great electrical conductor. The salty sweat on your
Speaker 6: body is a great and so it would make this
Speaker 6: fascinating blue and purple light show on the person's body
Speaker 6: while they're being taken down. So the public's standing there
Speaker 6: on the corner clapping and cheering when the officers would
Speaker 6: take these guys down with a taser, and nobody's getting
Speaker 6: beat up, nobody's getting hurt. So it was like revolutionary.
Speaker 8: If your local police officers are not get armed with tasers,
Speaker 8: chances are they will be soon.
Speaker 1: Across the country, cops call this taser the revolution.
Speaker 8: These stun guns are growing in popularity as a way
Speaker 8: to stop violent suspects without killing them.
Speaker 2: The taser was doing everything that Rick Smith promised. It
Speaker 2: was back in the national news, and this time for
Speaker 2: a good reason.
Speaker 1: Last year in Phoenix. Gun shootings by police went down
Speaker 1: by half and fatal shootings dropped by a third. Thanks
Speaker 1: to its reputation, there's a twelve week backlog in demand.
Speaker 2: Thousands of police departments started buying the weapon. Rick took
Speaker 2: Taser International public in May of two thousand and one
Speaker 2: and raised about eight million dollars. Three years later, the
Speaker 2: company was worth one point nine billion. The money was nice,
Speaker 2: but for Rick it was always about the mission.
Speaker 4: I remember why nottuly Ki up to me to tell
Speaker 4: me a story about a thirteen year old girl that
Speaker 4: was suicidal and was rightening to kill herself and then
Speaker 4: slash her own risks. The officers are called to the
Speaker 4: scene and she charges at them with a knife and
Speaker 4: she screaming, killed me or something that's effect.
Speaker 3: They'd taste her. They dropped her, and.
Speaker 4: The officer said, I can tell you Rick one center.
Speaker 4: We didn't know her device. Would he killed her an
Speaker 4: exciting We didn't get in this business to kill thirteen
Speaker 4: year old girl.
Speaker 2: Stories like that one aren't science fiction. There really is
Speaker 2: someone who is alive today because she wasn't shot with
Speaker 2: a gun when she was thirteen, alive because of Rick's weapon.
Speaker 2: The company studied the impact of the Taser and found
Speaker 2: they were saving roughly fifty people's lives a day. I
Speaker 2: left Taser's sci fi headquarters in Arizona with my own
Speaker 2: mission to know everything I could about the Taser and
Speaker 2: Rick Smith. Rick's whole thing is that he's working to
Speaker 2: make the impossible possible, and as I'm reading about him,
Speaker 2: he constantly references Star Trek and the show's technology as
Speaker 2: his inspiration phasers that don't kill people. If the headquarters
Speaker 2: is his star Fleet ship, he's Taser's Captain Kirk. So
Speaker 2: I started reading more about Captain Kirk, and what's interesting
Speaker 2: to me is how he got a start. There's a
Speaker 2: simulation that's part of his training. It's a test. Kirk
Speaker 2: has to make a choice save a ship of innocent
Speaker 2: people from certain death and kill his own crew in
Speaker 2: the process, or save his crew and let the civilians die.
Speaker 2: There's no right choice. In the show, the whole point
Speaker 2: of the test is to teach leaders about no win situations,
Speaker 2: but Kirk doesn't believe in no win situations. He realizes
Speaker 2: the game is rigged, so he decides to rewrite the rules.
Speaker 2: He secretly reprograms the game so he can save the
Speaker 2: ship and his crew. He becomes a captain, even though
Speaker 2: technically he cheated. That's what Rick says he's doing, creating
Speaker 2: technology to prevent lethal situations for cops and the people
Speaker 2: they serve. But then I began to wonder if Captain
Speaker 2: Kirk cheated, did Rick Smith cheat too? This season on
Speaker 2: Taser Incorporated.
Speaker 4: Look, I've been hit with this thing seven times. Every
Speaker 4: senior employeet this company has been hit with a taser.
Speaker 4: Many of our wives, many of our children have been
Speaker 4: hit with tasers. So we believe this is the safest
Speaker 4: way to get a violent person under control.
Speaker 2: That's huge.
Speaker 4: We're very proud of what we do, and it is
Speaker 4: like a religion to us.
Speaker 5: At the end of the day, if you have to
Speaker 5: put your hands on somebody, you got to scuffle with somebody,
Speaker 5: why risk that you can just shoot them on the taser.
Speaker 5: So it became more of a compliance tool, in an
Speaker 5: everyday compliance tool where hey, put your hands behind your back,
Speaker 5: fuck you, okay, watch this, you know, And it was,
Speaker 5: you know, a taser deployment, and that was how we
Speaker 5: were trained.
Speaker 2: I get right back there, and it's bad, It's really, really,
Speaker 2: really bad.
Speaker 5: And I'm just like, why don't cops know any of
Speaker 5: this stuff? Like, if you knew this, you wouldn't use
Speaker 5: this thing.
Speaker 2: They said, We've now warned you, and if you do this,
Speaker 2: guess what it's on you. Absolute Taser Incorporated is a
Speaker 2: production of Lava for Good in association with Signal Company
Speaker 2: Number One. Be sure to follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook,
Speaker 2: and threads at Lava for Good. Follow me at Nick
Speaker 2: Beredini on Instagram and Twitter. Taser Incorporated is written and
Speaker 2: produced by me Nick Beredini. Our executive producers are Jason Flamm,
Speaker 2: Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Wordis. Kara Kornhaber is our senior producer.
Speaker 2: Jackie Paul is our producer. Hannah Biel is our writer
Speaker 2: and producer. Joe Plored is our sound designer. Music composed
Speaker 2: and produced by Alexis Quadrado at The plot Azza Rojas Studio.
Speaker 2: Marianne McCune is our editor, fact checking by Danya Suliman.
Speaker 2: Jeff Cliburn is our head of marketing and operations. Our
Speaker 2: social media director is is Marie Guarda Rama, our social
Speaker 2: media manager is Sarah Gibbons, and our art director is
Speaker 2: Andrew Nelson additional reporting by Matt Strapp,