Police in Ariz. Seek Monkey for SWAT Team

[Fed_Up_With_Politics]

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Police in Ariz. Seek Monkey for SWAT Team
Apr 18, 10:12 PM (ET)


MESA, Ariz. (AP) - The Mesa Police Department is looking to add some primal instinct to its SWAT team. And to do that, it's looking to a monkey.

"Everybody laughs about it until they really start thinking about it," said Mesa Officer Sean Truelove, who builds and operates tactical robots for the suburban Phoenix SWAT team. "It would change the way we do business."

Truelove is spearheading the department's request to purchase and train a capuchin monkey, considered the second smartest primate to the chimpanzee. The department is seeking about $100,000 in federal grant money to put the idea to use in Mesa SWAT operations.

The monkey, which costs $15,000, is what Truelove envisions as the ultimate SWAT reconnaissance tool.

Since 1979, capuchin monkeys have been trained to be companions for people who are quadriplegics by performing daily tasks, such as serving food, opening and closing doors, turning lights on and off, retrieving objects and brushing hair.

Truelove hopes the same training could prepare a monkey for special-ops intelligence.

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.

It has been a little over a year since Truelove filed a grant proposal with the U.S. Department of Defense under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and he is still waiting for word.

If the grant goes through, Truelove plans on learning how to train the monkey himself and keeping the sociable monkey at home, just like a K-9 officer would. He projects that $85,000 in grant money would outfit the monkey with gear and pay for veterinarian care, food and habitat for three years.

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Information from: East Valley Tribune/Scottsdale Tribune, http://www.aztrib.com

Anyone else of visions of this little critter infiltrating a crime boss's meeting, and flinging poo or stoping short of his target to spend "quality time with itself" doing that other activity monkeys are reported to enjoy.

What's next...gorilla's kicking down doors? Chimps serving as CHiPs officers (they can be trained to ride motorcycles)?

[Monster]

It's like a Disney film made real!!!

[eeper69]

PETA's gonna have a field day with this one!

[Lrechna]

Dunstin checks in. Get out of town!

[Zoot]

$85,000 in GRANT money? Isn't there a better way to utilize that sort of money rather than training a chimp to do a cop job? How stupid is that?

[Monster]

Well, if the monkey helps stop crime rings, than any money seized in raids can be "reappropriated."

[Fed_Up_With_Politics]

Originally Posted by Zoot

$85,000 in GRANT money? Isn't there a better way to utilize that sort of money rather than training a chimp to do a cop job? How stupid is that?

Yeah I thought what a waste too, but then thought a little more...that's $85,000 over 3 years. What's the cost of a cop to handle the job? Will it make the officers safer? Fitting the monkey with a vid, camera and two way radio sounds like maybe using it for surveillance type activities. Check out a building before SWAT officers go charging in. I dunno...vs putting a cop in the line of fire, or spending much more to develop robotic devices to handle the same tasks, this might actually make some sense to try.

Besides sometimes nature's creatures do a job better and more efficiently than other methods we can come up with. Take the US Navy's use of dolphins and sea lions for instance...
http://www.navy.com/navydivers/units

Course there's that whole animal rights argument....but that's a whole other can of worms.

[Zoot]

I was waiting at my son's school today to pick him up and I told the cop there about the monkey story. He said in cases of bomb threats, such in our city under multiple bridges, it would be of great use to law enforcement. Soooo....perhaps it's a good thing.

[RedLine99]

if my local police force ever buys a monkey..they better teach it how to play an accordion

[SG-1]

Yes... lets hire a monkey to go in to find bombs that could possibly detonate upon them so we dont have to build a robot just as capable and use it instead due to its increased expendability. Good idea Mesa... sometimes I can't believe that I grew up there. Its all about the money...