A California police department wants to be the first agency to have a law enforcement-branded Cybertruck, according to an internal email obtained by 404 Media.
The email Sergeant Jacob Gallacher, of the Anaheim Police Department, sent in early February read “P.S. I spoke with the Chief yesterday and we still want to be the first police agency to have a Cybertruck. If anyone can make that happen, I know it is you!” Gallacher sent the email to James Hedland from UP.FIT, a company that sells modified Teslas for use by law enforcement. The email was part of a conversation about the department’s use of Teslas.
Gallacher later told 404 Media that the email was something of “a joke,” but reaffirmed the agency’s wish to obtain a Cybertruck before other agencies, even if more for “community engagement” than using it as a patrol vehicle.
“We would, but it’s not necessarily from a patrol perspective,” Gallacher said. 404 Media obtained the email through a public records request.
Yes, we need the least functional, least capable, most failure prone, most brutalist vehicle possible. For community engagement.
EDIT: Also the most dangerous to both occupants and especially pedestrians.
Its just like the cars they drew when they were in grade school.
With the very crayons they ate
You’re talking as if they were ever able to graduate elementary school. The last time I saw police near an elementary school they were too scared to go in
OK, I’ll argue for the cops on this one. Just this once!
Community engagement is a real thing, gets people talking to cops who otherwise wouldn’t. And that can be a positive experience all around.
For example; The Tulsa cops had a bitchin’ (my 80s coming out) Corvette Stingray they showed off at the fair and every other chance they had. They had quite an audience gathered around, talking about the car at first and then asking questions about LE.
Idea being, it’s not supposed to be a regular cruiser.
At least Stingrays look good, I don’t think anyone’s gonna be crowding around a cybertruck asking about it’s specs
The YouTube channel Throttle House did a road trip with the cybertruck and they found that a lot of people actually were curious about it.
https://youtu.be/xNE-NyaYBcg?si=1CS2DxHsocEYc0b- (around 24:15)
For all it’s flaws, you can’t deny it looks different from all the other cars around, and most people aren’t online enough to have an opinion about Musk and his bullshit, so to them it’s just an interesting looking car.
I mean, sure, if a Cybertruck parked next to me somewhere, I’d probably take a close look and talk to the owner if they were around. I’m curious as much as anyone.
I don’t have high expectations, and I’m not interested in owning one, but I’d still check it out.
But that’s just because these cars are rare and novel. If anything, the questions I’d ask would be tilted towards figuring out just how shitty a car it is.
If the police are roaming around in them, they become less novel, and generally speaking people aren’t usually interested in approaching random cops for conversations. People who socialize around cars usually aren’t a big fan of the cops.
I don’t understand this point. Not only does Elon Musk’s bullshit appear regularly on boomer tv stations, but you don’t have to be very online to get exhausted with Musk content. It’s not exactly niche content, he owns Twitter and is constantly attracting media attention with dumb stunts. You have to go out of your way to avoid hearing about him.
Anyone interested enough in cars to be influenced by what kind of car the cops drive, is someone likely informed enough to know that the Cybertruck is a misengineered lemon of a car.
To car people. To other people it can be a “generic fancy car”, while the Cybertruck can be something unusual that no other car looks alike. Can’t get everyone.
Buddy, every police department with a flashy sports car has the same story.
Let me know how many facts I get right about it:
Your logic is sound
Ok. They could put police lights on a weiner mobile too. That would get a ton of community engagement. But for some reason I can’t put my finger on, they have chosen a very expensive tiny dick toy instead.
I actually love brutalist architecture, but the Cybertruck is fucking nasty.
Yeah, brutalist and brutal are different. The cyber truck is a fucking stupid design that will hurt people far more than most vehicles (big dumb truck hoods not withstanding).
They aren’t even going to be able to sell them anywhere that has reasonable pedestrian safety laws. CA needs to pass some and kill the fucking thing, not give them to cops who already want to kill anyone who makes them nervous.
People tend to fuck up brutalism. It doesn’t just mean angular. It’s supposed to be brutally honest. No disguising what something looks like, or what it’s made of, or why it’s there. Bare concrete needs no excuses as a building material. It is perfectly functional. Any marks left by forming it are informative and sincere. But if you have an iron railing, you’re gonna need to paint that thing. What color doesn’t matter. There is no reason it has to be iron-colored, or even one solid color. There’s no reason it can’t be decoratively patterned if you’re gonna put in the work to protect the material.
The Cybertruck is like… when steampunk means “glue some gears on it.” It’s a shallow error. Cars have obvious functions, even more evidently than a building, and a rustbucket with the aerodynamic profile of a doorstop is not serving those functions. It’s not good at anything except looking like that. That’s the opposite of brutalism. That is useless decoration, aping the aesthetics of another ethos.
A brutalist truck is a Willys Jeep. That is a car stripped back to its necessary components and put together in ways that convey why each piece is there. None of it’s left pointy for the sake of being pointy. Curves exist for a reason. Christ, it’s the straight parts of modern cars that are an affectation. If they were just swoopy and streamlined, they’d still look like wind-tunnel potatoes.
Arguably a more modern take is any Australian ute. “I don’t care if it’s fuck-ugly, I want a sedan with a bed. If I wanted to haul six bags of mulch I’d buy a damn Civic.”
You’re forgetting the most important part of the Cybertruck for those in the club: danger to pedestrians and non-Cybertruck civilians.