Your tax dollars at work…

This is easily the stupidist thing that I’ve read in a long time…

It’s a story about a Mesa, Arizona SWAT team thats seeking $100,000 of federal grant money to make a trained Capuchin Monkey a part of their team. He would essentially do recon work for them with an attached video camera….

It all sounds plausible until you get to the part where they talk of dressing the little guy in a bullet proof vest:

Weighing only 3 to 8 pounds with tiny humanlike hands and puzzle-solving skills, Truelove said it could unlock doors, search buildings and find suicide victims on command. Dressed in a Kevlar vest, video camera and two-way radio, the small monkey would be able to get into places no officer or robot could go.

Critical analysis after the fold…
A bullet proof vest works by attempting to stop penetration and disperse force throughout a larger area… Anyone taking a round in a bulletproof vest generally winds up stunned, with the breath knocked out of them, and a huge bruise internally and externally and a lot of pain for a few days… depending, of course, upon the caliber of the bullet.

Now, let’s imagine Mini-Bonzo taking oh, let’s say a thirty eight directly to the chest of his little kevlar vest… proportionately, that would be roughly equivalent to the average human absorbing the impact of the surface area of a bowling ball at muzzle velocity. Mini-Bonzo’s kevlar vest would probably stop the round from penetrating and it would also serve as a nice disposable bag for all of the monkey goo inside. If the round pinned Mini-Bonzo against a girder or a wall, you’d have the equivalent of a road kill pancake…

Well, I guess it would be awfully cute to see a tiny monkey dressed in a bullet proof vest… with a tin cup for donations for the Policeman’s Benevolent Association or something… but to the tune of $100,000?

“Everybody laughs about it until they really start thinking about it,” said Mesa Officer Sean Truelove.

Yeah… and then they just shake their heads in stunned silence… Maybe it’s the lack of water and brain-frying temperatures…