on ethics, the law, and SWAT 4.

so, i've been playing a hell of a lot of swat 4 lately. it's pretty addictive. and kinda weird. a simulation of being a cop is just so interesting. it's even more interesting when i'm smoking a bowl whilst i order my squad to thunk some old lady with a beanbag fired out of a shotgun.

while i'm playing, it raises some interesting ethical issues. (yes, i CAN and DO apply critical theory in a lame, baked way to every damn thing in the world. buzzkill, i know.) so according to this game, everyone that's on the scene, no matter who they are, has to be zipped up in these little zippy plastic cuffs, cos, like, you never know who's gonna whip out a gun and blow your brains out. but this puts you in the interesting predicament of sometimes having to put the taser to a nurse just because she doesn't want you to tie her up and leave her there on the floor. which is pretty idiotic. like, you could obviously just cuff her whether she wanted you to or not. but still, say it's a burly guy who you don't want to wrestle to the ground? i mean are you really justified in dealing these people a hell of a lot of pain just cos you're afraid they might cap you in the back? cos i mean, it's a legitimate concern.

like, one girl who was dressed all nicely and was entirely not "Suspect" looking material whatnot was not "complying" (aka putting her hands up) , so i pulled out the taser thinking, god, i have to electrocute another innocent bystander. and while i'm about to hit her with it, she pulls out a gun, and i zap her before she can shoot me. and it's like, wow. good thing i didn't just leave her there. (at this point you are thinking, what a fucking nerd. how long can he go on about this for? a long fucking time, lemme tell you.) not only could i have tasered her without receiving a penalty for "unauthorized use of force," but i could have capped her in the knee and yelled at her, and still been within the bounds of my rights as a simulated officer of the law. so i mean, i'm as ACLU as the next guy, but maybe people who won't just shut up and let themselves get cuffed when there's heavily-armed maniacs running around deserve a few thousand volts. unless they've got a pacemaker and they die. so cops should just say, hey, you got a pacemaker? with the taser out, and then hopefully the implied threat will be enough to shut them up.

and the whole 'unauthorized use of force' thing also got me to thinking as well! every damn thing gets me to thinking. and that's why i'm up at 2:30 in the damn morning.

in the one instance i was thinking about, i used my magical sniper control feature (which is so fuck'n cool. oh shit.) to cap three militia-type dudes that were walking around in the room of a building with AK-47s. and i got deducted 30 points, for unauthorized use of force. but come on. these people are not just casually exercising their constitutionally-protected right to bear arms. they're in a building that's been occupied by terrorists, they're dressed like terrorists, they're armed like terrorists ... i think that anyone would be justified in leaping to the conclusion that they're probably terrorists. i don't know what real-world limits on usage of force would say about something like that. but i say, from the perspective of a nerd wanting to get more points and a citizen wanting to save the lives of police, rather than terrorists - if these obvious terrorists can be picked out of thin air by a sniper on top of a building and have no chance to fuck with anything, they oughta go for it.

a different unauthorized use of force penalty got deducted when i emptied half a clip into the back of another cop, who happened to be standing between me and a criminal type. now ... that seems pretty justified i guess.

haha. if you read to the end of this post, then congratulations, you're probably a nerd like me! talk about video games for that fucking long; who do i think i am?