Although Irvine police said they won’t use the Cybertruck as a patrol car, the police department didn’t rule out other uses should the need arise.
A police department in Southern California says it has the country’s first Tesla Cybertruck for police use, but the unusual vehicle won’t see much action.
The Irvine Police Department unveiled the purchase Tuesday in a splashy video on social media, including Facebook and X. The price tag: $153,175.03, including the installation of emergency equipment.
The police department said its Cybertruck would have a limited role: jazzing up anti-drug events at schools through the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program.
DARE is still happening places?
That shit causes insane levels of damage…
We had it in elementary schools and they said everything would kill you and was equally bad. So when a few kids started smoking weed in middle school. We expected their lives to be over. A few years later they were fine so everyone started smoking, then kids quickly moved onto coke, opioids and pretty much everything else.
Because they lied about some stuff, most kids assumed they lied about everything.
The cybertruck is obviously fucked, but it’s insane anywhere in the country is still grasping to a program we know hasn’t worked for decades
It’s crazy how expensive it is too. At my HS, as an ASB rep got contacted by DARE reps once and they where oh its only $15k per classroom. It all made sense when I started to learn its always been a money grubbing grift. It never had a good reason to exist other then excuse to charge alot for busybwork.
Not just money.
Kids love cops, so cops love going to schools and having everyone treat them like super heroes
Until there’s a school shooter that is, then suddenly they’re stuck in the phonebooth trying to take their glasses off.
Copaganda
To make things worse, we’ve known they were ineffective for over 20 years
This is sadly the typical progression. People come to the conclusion that drugs aren’t really that big of a deal but then do too much of them. It’s sort of like people turning 21 and getting hammered. Better to help people do things safely and provide alternatives or treatment than to proclaim abstinence.
Of course it would fucking be Irvine and of course it would be the provenly-inedfective D.A.R.E. folks.
For you non Californians, Irvine is a corporation that bought up land and made a “utopian” suburban city. I went to grad school there. It’s the kind of place you get pulled over for having long hair (as I can attest to).
Edit with a joke: People from Irvine be all like “Who is John Galt”.
For everyone’s reference, D.A.R.E (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) was not only ineffective, they were anti-effective. Their presence and total demonization of weed not only didn’t reduce drug usage rates, they frequently increased the rates.
They’ve been known to be ineffective since at least 2004: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1448384/
DARE is a wild program. They finally admitted defeat to drugs and have switched to suicide prevention. The kids that do petitions for them, at least around me, are militant. I had one follow me into a restaurant to keep pestering me. Didn’t stop until I told the children to kindly fuck off already
Yeah, that was my experience. All those stories made me more curious about drugs than anything else even back in elementary school. Also, having people that used to have addiction problems come in to talk about them showed that you could get through them.
Also didn’t really help that the one guy’s description of things going wrong for him was basically a bus ride with a hangover where he needed to puke out the window. And that he still did it after that, implying that there was something good about it.
It wasn’t DARE exactly but some Canadian equivalent. I hadn’t really thought about drugs that much before that and didn’t shy away when I had an opportunity to try weed a few years later (thought it was interesting but not worth the money at the time).
Also it only took taking psychedelics a few times to figure out the real problem authority has with them: they can help you break down your preconceived notions and see through the leaps of “logic” that the current system depends on.
Like the first time I did mushrooms, I realized that authority figures (like doctors, police, etc) were just people like you or me and included people having bad days, people not focused on the current task, people who cheated their way through school or got to where they were via corruption, people who think they understand something better than they really do or base their knowledge on outdated information, trolls and bullies, as well as people trying their best in good faith.
It was so obvious in hindsight, but I realized that up until then I had this implicit trust that even if there were times I didn’t fully agree with them, they were generally “different” in a “better” kind of way instead of a spectrum of the same kind of people you went to high school with, just with a selection process that is supposed to filter some out (with varying degrees of success).
The kids that did petitions in my experience seemed to have a chip on their shoulder to impress authority or they were related to a cop. Also, there would be prizes like a PSP or an iPod touch. Higher value stuff than any other fundraiser in the school.
It’s a real shame; Irvine has lots of great food, and it’s another large east-Asian population center within the LA-OC metro area, but it’s also so staunchly Republican that I can’t stand to watch local news down there.
That’s nothing against the university, though. I have family who got their degrees there, and I even took summer classes on campus once. I dig the school and it was my fallback when I applied for colleges (back when it was possible to have a fallback).
Do they still give out D.A.R.E. shirts? Those things made you the king of the party when the bong was being passed around in high school.
I’m still trying to find a D.A.R.E. beer koozie.
I had a black DARE shirt growing up. It disappeared or got given away at some point and I didn’t care.
Now, the purple Jump Rope For Heart shirt I had was my absolute favorite. I wore that until it evaporated.
I like how they’re trying to encourage people to say no to drugs with an expensive vehicle from a company headed by a notorious drug abuser.
Say no to drugs or you will approve of shit like this “car”
Wankers. ACAB.
All
Cybertrucks
Are
BadThe
uninsurablecybertruck being bought by police stations is the surest sign that police are ignorant money sinks.uninsurable
That story was fake news based on one tweet
Thanks for the update. Corrections tend to be buried. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/geico-tesla-cybertruck-coverage/
I think if I were like 10 years old and some cop showed up in a Cybertruck and told me not to use drugs, I’d probably wonder what’s so good about drugs instead.
Oh don’t worry, that’s dare’s normal effect
Maybe just… Defunding the police just a liiiiitle bit wouldn’t be so bad…
Im joking btw dont hurt me or argue at me ;-;
You know you’re on Lemmy, right?
Hahah, people don’t see it right away. Here you’ll get trashed for not saying it with your chest. Honestly, I’m happier than a pig in a donut shop
“Hey kids, this is what cars look like when you’re on drugs. Do you really want THAT?”
Nothing would drive me to drugs faster.
Unless you need to go through sand to get to the drugs, or it’s raining.
Shoulda used that money for a one-off Anti School Drug Event.
I remember in the late 90s the cops in my large city caught flack for buying SUVs in a city with no offroading and zero hills. They gave the same reason. Now all the squad cars are SUVs.
Are car manufacturers actually making cars anymore? Seems they all shifted to SUVs.
I’m more surprised that D.A.R.E. still exists.
Even when I was a kid in the 90s, it was largely known then it was a massive failure.
By highschool, most of the kids doing drugs renamed it Drugs Are Really Expensive. Probably didn’t help that the police officer assigned to the high school was known amongst the students to be selling drugs to the students.
'member when all the “cool” DARE cop cars were seized drug dealer cars?
This seems like a wild misuse of government services. Aren’t the police in the law enforcement game and not the drug abuse game? Why aren’t the city bus drivers also teaching these programs and getting to drive around sweet ass cybertrucks?
Just say no!
Ha ha!
