Campus Crime Briefs would be a lot less exciting each week if the University would just bite the bullet and invest in a team of vigilante robots that fight crime.
I know what you’re thinking, and I agree. The University should make me a highly-paid consultant. Every University administrator knows my ideas are golden tickets straight to flagship university status.
Usually, when my words can clearly change lives and re-define the way we think about higher education, they have all the effect of pearls before swine. This time is going to be different because vigilante robots already exist and are already fighting crime in America.
These robots can actually make the University safer – just ask Atlanta bar owner Rufus Terrill.
Terrill – a former Marine – built and designed his own robot to protect the area surrounding his bar, according to The Associated Press. His nightly patrol includes the downtown area and a nearby day-care center. If some reports are to be believed, Terrill’s unique take on night-time security may just stop crime in its tracks.
“This isn’t fun,” Terrill told the AP. “I don’t like being here every night. I’d be able to better run my business. But I have to spend all my time being the sheriff.”
Now, I’m the first to admit few other “sheriffs” have a 300-pound robotic deputy, but I see no reason why the University can’t take a chance to lead Louisiana in crime fighting just as it does in education.
You can’t argue with results, you know?
The University already has the raw materials to build these robots. A Feb. 21 article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution outlines the robots’ rudimentary design, and by my estimation, it falls within what remains possible in Louisiana.
“[Terrill] mounted an old meat smoker atop a three-wheel scooter and attached a spotlight, an infrared camera, water cannon and a loudspeaker. He covered the contraption with impact-resistant rubber and painted the whole thing jet black,” the paper reported.
If the University doesn’t have half that stuff lying around in back of Facility Services, I’ll eat my shoe.
More importantly, the schematics required to put these components together don’t seem terribly demanding. Terrill is a far cry from a professional robot wrangler – he is an environmental engineer who created the vigilante robot prototype “Bum Bot” during his spare time in three months, according to an April 23 news story in Britain’s The Daily Telegraph.
While I don’t have the statistics on the number of retired Marines employed at the University, I know there’s a whole department of environmental engineers begging for hobbies and prestige – and if this won’t get us federal research grants, then I don’t know what will.
Now, I do have to disclose something – I really want to be the guy who brings the vigilante robot craze off the streets of Atlanta and onto campus, and it’s all because of The Daily Reveille’s readers.
The debate over concealed firearms being carried on campus has opened my eyes. I believe that maybe – just maybe – if there were a few overclocked campus cops rolling around on three wheels, we could finally put the firearms debate currently raging online to rest and unite in time to acknowledge the supremacy of our robot overlords.
I haven’t fully worked this out yet, though. At first, I was pretty convinced the presence of these robots alone would be enough. It would be just like building those traffic cameras at intersections, I thought – the presence of future tech would deter future crime.
But I was wrong.
Sure, a few stationary robots here and there might fix some of our problems, but vigilante robots can do so much more – they move around by remote control and boast a totally boss firing mechanism for the fully-operable water canon.
If I were a mugger on campus, the sight of a tricked-out robot advancing toward me on three wheels with ill-intent would send me running a lot faster than a stationary one.
Terrill agrees.
“I tell them they are trespassing, it’s private property, and they have to leave,” Terrill told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “They throw bottles and cans at it. That’s when I shoot the water cannon.”
“They just scatter like roaches,” Terrill added.
I know this sounds crazy, but vigilante robots are the only sane way we can put legitimate campus safety issues behind us.
Students don’t realize our University is poised precariously between chaos and order – and the LSU Police Department is the thin blue line that allows us to go to class, eat at the Student Union and sun ourselves on the Parade Ground without fear of anarchy.
I’m not a fan of leaving the good guys defenseless, so who am I to deny LSUPD the 21st century arsenal they need to finally put the bite on crime?
Safety is the biggest issue facing this campus, and if robot justice is the only way to get it under control, then so be it – desperate times call for desperate measures.
—-Contact Neal Hebert at nhebert@lsureveille.com