Introducing - Absolute: Taser Incorporated, Teaser

Absolute, Season 1: Taser Incorporated is at once a tale as old as time - a true believer learns the hard way that the costs of lofty ambition and hubris just might outweigh even the most optimistic upside - and a thoroughly modern story of technology overtaking the very people it is meant to serve.  In this case:  the ubiquitous electric gun carried by cops everywhere and inspiring comedic shenanigans in movies like The Hangover.

Host and documentarian Nick Berardini has been obsessed with this story for his entire adult life. With Absolute, Season 1: Taser Incorporated, he left no stone unturned. 

Taser, Inc., now known as Axon, the 800-pound gorilla in the paramilitary police equipment industry, is led by its charismatic CEO and co-founder, Rick Smith.  Fueled by a self-described religious dedication, Smith’s Star Trek obsession, and an ambitious vision of a world without gun violence, Rick leads Taser, Inc. to be the key tech supplier to virtually every police force in America. But as stories of alleged misuse, deaths, and serious injuries from Tasers begin to emerge, Taser, Inc. and Rick arrive at a crossroads between Rick’s vision and reality, with cops and the citizens they are sworn to serve and protect paying the price.

Absolute, Season 1: Taser Incorporated is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hi, It's Jason and I'm excited to tell you about
a new show from Lava for Good. It's called Absolute
Taser Incorporated with filmmaker Nick Baradini. Now, Taser Incorporated comes
from the same team that worked with Gilbert King on
Bone Valley, and just like Bone Valley, this podcast is
a riveting listen that will open your eyes and tugg
it your heart. We've all seen that taser carried by cops,

(00:27):
seen it in the news, even in movies, but have
you ever wondered how they became so ubiquitous? Nick Baradini
and Laba for Good are taking a deep dive into
Taser inc. Now known as Axon, the eight hundred pound
gorilla in the paramilitary police equipment industry. Their story is
one of ambition, hubris, and technology overtaking the very people

(00:48):
it was meant to serve. Look for Absolute Taser Incorporated
wherever you hear this and check out this clip from
episode one way ride. Where you are, We'll throw you
a gun.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Gun violence is surging across the US so far.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
There is a sod share with a gun.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
What would it be like to live in a world
where none of this is possible? One man had a vision,
a vision of a new reality.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
The whole reason we started this company is we don't
get people stop killing each other.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
And in order to do that, he was going to
make it happen with an invention.

Speaker 3 (01:56):
Technology has the power to elevate us. It can bring
out the best in humanity. It makes the impossible possible.
It can make dreams real. It can make tomorrow different
than yesterday.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Rick Smith is building this new reality in a real place.
I visited the space Age headquarters, rising up from the
Arizona Desert. My tour guide put his eye up to
a retinal scanner to get me into the building. The
steel doors retracted slowly, like we were entering a vault.

(02:34):
I walked through a wide hallway and saw catwalks criss
crossing above me. Employees in glass conference rooms drew equations
on the windows. I watched as an assembly line of
workers built this future weapon called a Taser. Electricity buzzed
through the air. It felt like science fiction, but they

(02:54):
were really doing it. I was inside this world. I
could see what this means technology could be capable of,
and I wanted Rick's dream to be real. This is
absolute Season one Taser Incorporated a story about unchecked power.

(03:17):
I'm Nick Bendini, Episode one, Whips, Poles and Chains. I

(04:09):
know a lot of cops and they get asked all
the time, have you ever fired your gun? Rick Smith
in his space Age Outpost was trying to build a
world where the answer would always be no. But if
you were a cop before that, like my friend Matt Masters,
you were skeptical. Matt had been trained. If you think

(04:30):
your life is in danger, shoot.

Speaker 4 (04:33):
Door comes flying open and dude's running out. He's got
the cash register in one hand and a gun in
the other, and I'm like, robbery, robberie robbery. So we
bail out of our car in the middle of street.
I think the kid just didn't even like realize that
the cops were there. So as he's running, he kind
of like turned like oh shit kind of thing. The

(04:56):
gun was pointed at me, and at that point I
just reacted. I mean, he was isn't stopping, and I
opened fire on him. I shot shot him like five times,
and so he went down right there and dropped the
cash register, dropped the gun. I'm standing in the street
put out on the radio. Shots fired, you know, also

(05:17):
involved shooting whatever.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
Whatever. I said, it wasn't until you rolled him over
that you realized how young he was, right, Yeah, yeah, No,
what did he look like?

Speaker 4 (05:26):
He looked like he looked like he was a fourteen
fifteen year old kid.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
You know what did that feel like?

Speaker 1 (05:33):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (05:34):
It bothered me.

Speaker 4 (05:35):
You know, I remember the kid looking up at me
and he's like, you shot me.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
Matt says he did what he was trained to do,
aim for the chest, but he also did what a
lot of cops do under pressure. He missed. Cops call
it dipping. He told me he didn't mean to, but
he lowered his arm hit the kid's legs.

Speaker 4 (05:59):
I was just glad that I didn't killing because I
think that would have been a different I think that
would have been different emotions that I would have had
to process. Ended up being a BB gun, there's a
replica that look like a real gun. There's no way
I would have been able to know that that was
a BB gun. But I don't know that I needed
to shooting. So I think that part kind of bothers

(06:21):
me a little bit, like knowing that I didn't have
to shoot him.

Speaker 3 (06:30):
Why does an officer ever need to use lethal force?
Police don't use lethal force? Because it's lethal. They use
it because it's reliable. It's the most effective way to
stop a threat.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
In a marketing video from twenty twenty three, Rick Smith
tells us not anymore. He shows us the newest Taser,
a black and yellow gun shaped device. Instead of one barrel,
it has ten holes to shoot out ten little darts.
The darts are attack to electrified copper wires, so when
they shoot out and puncture your skin, the current makes

(07:05):
your muscles lock up. You can't move, but when it's over,
you can get right back up.

Speaker 3 (07:12):
I feel a sense of true hope watching this technology
be adopted, and I can't wait to see where the
coming years will take us.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
Walking through the Taser headquarters blew me away. While I
was there, I sat down with a VP and he
told me how proud he was to work for the company.

Speaker 3 (07:33):
Taser's saving lives. That's the business that we're in. We're
protecting the truth and we're protecting lives.

Speaker 2 (07:39):
I was impressed. As I walked back through the steel
double doors and into the desert that day, I also wondered,
was what he said too good to be true? I
threw myself in a half decade into that question. I
even made a movie about what I found. That's how
I met office. They're Matt Masters. I was answering questions

(08:02):
on Reddit about the movie. He left me a comment, Hello, Nick,
I was thrust into the reality of tasers just over
a year ago. I didn't see it at first. I
only caught it because a friend asked later if i'd
talked to this guy Matt yet. When I finally met him,
he'd been a cop for nineteen years. Crew cut, blue eyes,

(08:25):
tattoo of an archangel slicing a demon's neck. He opened
up right away. He laughed a lot, especially when he
was talking about something that might make him cry. We
had dinner at a restaurant and we talked for hours.
Matt's wife, Stacy was there too, dark straight hair, dark
brown eyes, feather tattoo. She's part Shawnee and sometimes wears

(08:47):
a t shirt that says no more Stolen Sisters. We
started talking because Matt and Stacy were trying to make
sense of something that happened to them.

Speaker 3 (08:56):
A fucking just get out out right now, out of
the car, out of the car.

Speaker 4 (09:04):
Taylor appointment on the ground, out of the car, on
the ground, on the ground.

Speaker 5 (09:19):
The Taser changed everything for cops, changed everything for math too.

Speaker 1 (09:28):
Listen to the rest of Absolute Taser Incorporated, Season one
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.