My second project is the design and creation of a future police suit. The idea was to create a police suit inspired by what the past thought the future might look like, essentially a retro riot police.

I didn’t really have a plan for what the suit would look like in the end, I just knew that I had a cool looking helmet that I found at a thrift store, a white spandex suit and a white mask. From there I just went looking at thrift stores to find things that I could use for armor. For the main body and legs, I found a Homedics heating/vibrating pad that I cut up and sewed into shape. For the shoulders, I found football pads. I cut off the top flap of the pads to make the butt guards. For the arms, I used 4 shin guards used for soccer. For the weapons I used a metal tripod as nightstick/taser. And for a microwave gun I used an old-school unfolding flash, used for photography.   After several trips to the thrift store, the pieces started falling into place. I was very pleased with the results and just how unsettling the costume ended up looking.

The concept for the suit arose from my concerns of the continually expanding defense industry and its implications on society. There is a very real possibility of the draft or a version of it being implemented. President elect Obama has been passionately preaching the need for a National Civilian Security Force that is just as well organized and well funded as the US military. (See video here) And for the first time in history, military forces are being deployed inside the US to deal with civil unrest and crowd control. The armies 1st brigade third infantry were deployed on October 1st to be on guard incase of any national emergency. Next year and the year after there is an expected 20,000+ soldiers to be deployed inside the US, not counting the private contractors who will surely be used. This is in direct opposition to the long standing Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act, which substantially limited the powers of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement.

I presented the suit in the context of a new defense contractor called Civil Defense Technologies presenting a new suit they had designed which was meant for a civilian police force. At the end of the video, the record that I put on by Stevie Wonder begins to skip where it had been scratched. Oddly enough its sounds like he is saying “cock sucking nazis”. This was my cue to begin to act like I was malfunctioning and begin to turn on the audience.