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.
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”
Just say no!
Ha ha!
Maybe just… Defunding the police just a liiiiitle bit wouldn’t be so bad…
Im joking btw dont hurt me or argue at me ;-;
Screw Elon. Stop spending tax money to support his endeavors.
Shoulda used that money for a one-off Anti School Drug Event.
Nothing would drive me to drugs faster.
Unless you need to go through sand to get to the drugs, or it’s raining.
I wonder how much education could have been done with $150 000. Like imagine if you use that money to actually teach people about responsible drug use.
Or just early childhood general education and intervention. You could hire 2-3 teachers with that.
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.
D.A.R.E. taught me that random people will force me to take drugs. Still waiting on that one. We did learn you can get high from sniffing glue though.
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).
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
Our division does DARE with 4th graders still. Officers come in and spew that shit for a few weeks and kids get a bunch of swag and cupcakes for signing a pledge. I’m not a fan of any of it, but it’s above my pay grade.
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.
Cops are a parody of themselves.
Didn’t they see the episode of Reno 911 where they bought a Hummvee for “community outreach “?
Really hard to park
@MicroWave “So remember, kids – drugs’ll make you do really weird stuff, like pay $153,000 for a Cybertruck.”
Geico won’t insure it. If others follow, then it’ll be illegal to drive in California, since insurance is mandatory.
"For over three decades, our DARE officers have driven attention-grabbing and one-of-a-kind vehicles that never fail to turn heads and excite students,” the department said on Facebook.
How many of those excited students were stopped from using drugs by these attention-grabbing one-of-a-kind vehicles? An exact number isn’t necessary, I’ll accept an educated approximation.
Also-
And she said the department needed a new D.A.R.E. vehicle anyway.
I may be showing my age here, but back when I was a kid, Officer Friendly used to come to my school and tell us how drugs did not make you cool in his regular old patrol car.
I drive a school bus and it’s depressing how excited elementary and middle-school kids get when they see a cybertruck. Shit, they still get excited when they see a tesla and those things are everywhere.
I used to work on a school bus and I get excited when I see a CyberTruck, too. Then I can look in the mirror and say, “you’re not the dumbest person I’ve seen today!” It’s a real ego boost.
I don’t doubt kids get excited over them since they’re marketed to people of that maturity level, but I doubt it would convince any of them to not use drugs if they were considering it.
They were usually seized assets which is awful but seems less so than spending over $150k on a vehicle that major insurers refuse to cover.
I don’t know the exact number, but I’m sure it’s less than zero.
…or $44 billion for Twitter…
Oh good, now you can get away with crime if it’s raining
“Hey kids, this is what cars look like when you’re on drugs. Do you really want THAT?”
didn’t rule out other uses
- Paper weight
- Accidental jail cell
- Battery ram (see what I did there? Hold for applause)
- Means to explore young citizens’ limited value
- Digit amputator
At $150k, I’d say it’s a 6-digit amputator
Don’t forget - flint and steel for fire starting when you happen to be in an area of the wilds accessible by a shitty city car that dies if it sees a puddle!
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.
My son has an old school D.A.R.E shirt he got from Goodwill. He wears it sometimes to go play hardcore shows.
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.
