Click here to download the catalog as a PDF file. To view this site you need Adobe Flash Player and your browser must allow javaScripts. Go here to get the latest Flash Player. Commander Gilmore Don’t Try This With Fake “Deterrent Guns” eah, you’re just cruisin’ along doin’ 20 over the limit when you spot that police cruiser sorta semi-stealthily squattin’ at the side of the road and screeeech!!! You stand on the brake pedal, hoping the cop didn’t get you on radar. You’ve been there and done that, right? Soon, you might be in luck, and that cop-mobile won’t be a real police car — just a hollow shell, a deterrent put there to get you to slow down. A Sacramento company called National Police Presence is marketing “decoy cop cars,” promising public officials the cruiser look-alikes will slow down speeders and intimidate crooks. For $12,990 you get a realistic-looking fake police car with no engine or real doors, just wheels, so it can be towed and dropped off at selected locations. Years ago Sweden tried to slow traffic down by using life-size one-dimensional fake police cars, traffic cops holding radar guns, and — the overwhelming favorite of the hundreds of people who began “liberating” them and carrying them away — a really cool-looking motorcycle cop perched on his bike! Folks were walking away with those lightweight deterrents as fast as the state could put them out. In Vilnius, Latvia, the city distributed hundreds of “cardboard cops” along problem stretches of streets and boulevards, and they too learned that people liked ’em a little too much. And, when it rained or there was just a heavy fog, the “paper police” just kinda melted and curled up Y on the ground, leaving a sodden lump of soggy cardboard in the middle of a spreading pool of blue paint. Illustration by Nick Petrosino So, you’ve got a clown dead-to-rights on a murder charge, but you know if he pleads “not guilty” the trial might bankrupt your county. He offers to plead guilty, but for a price: He wants a break from jailhouse chow. Tremayne Durham, 33, agreed to cop a plea in exchange for an all-he-could-eat marathon meal of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Popeye’s chicken, mashed potatoes, coleslaw, carrot cake and ice cream, with options for an Italian feast following sentencing. What do you do? If you’re Multnomah County, Ore., Judge Eric Bergstrom, you take it, saving your taxpayers countless dollars and your court docket maybe months of disruption. That fast-food fiesta was on the county’s tab. After sentencing — Durham won’t be eligible for parole for 30 years — he gets to binge on calzones, lasagna, pizza and ice cream. But he or his defense attorney has to pay for that. Kinda makes you wonder how many expensive felony trials we could avoid if we offered “double-bacon cheeseburgers for a month” incentives, doesn’t it? 24 OCTOBER 2008 Fast-Food Fiesta They wouldn’t have missed a nail clipper, but airport security personnel in Brisbane, Australia, admitted they missed a big duffel bag with the word BOMB written on its side. The story got even better after the bomb-bag passed through Qantas check-in screening. Following about 40 minutes of muddling and wondering what to do, unnamed managers dragged the bag, still unscreened, into a more populated area of the airport. Finally some grownups arrived. The bomb-bag was isolated, carefully removed to an appropriate remote area and examined. Explosive ordnance experts determined the only volatile thing about the bag was the language marked on it. Some people weren’t very comforted by that. Asked for comment, TWU national airline official Scott Connolly said, “What happened today is far from ideal, and if the device was actually a real bomb, the way it was handled would have been a disaster.” Duh. Really? Police in Santa Cruz, Calif., were initially kinda confused when a recent stab- Bomb Bag Chaos Free Pass bing victim called and asked why the woman who stabbed him was out of jail and wandering around the downtown area — close to where she had stabbed him, in fact. After a quick check of their arrest records, they wanted to know why too! Denise Jones, described as having a significant history of violence and considered armed and dangerous, was supposed to be safely ensconced in County Jail awaiting trial. No, assured the stabbing victim, she was not, and he wasn’t feeling all that snuggly safe. Why would Jones be on the loose? Well, they learned, it was “because she had asked.” Police learned that Jones had asked a judge if she could be released from jail long enough to attend a funeral — presumably, not the funeral of anyone she had killed. The unnamed judge granted her a “pass,” as long as she promised to be back by 8 o’clock that evening. Big surprise: 8:00 p.m. came and went and Denise didn’t show up. But she promised! We’re guessing that somebody at Santa Cruz PD rolled their eyes, heaved a big sigh and issued a new APB on Jones. 9 www.shootingindustry.com