It's no wonder that Daniel Wood looks terrified in his mugshot. He'd just been shocked and set on fire after all he wanted to do was get a cheap high (and maybe nibble on a cop or two). The article switches back and forth on whether it was a Taser or a stun gun that was used on Wood, but it explains that:

The makers of stun guns warn that such fires are extremely rare but a risk nonetheless, and Lancaster's written policy for the department's seven new Tasers says that the devices shouldn't be used when flammable materials are evident.

Apparently this isn't the first time use of a Taser ended with a fire either. According to the article, some guy in Australia decided to run toward police officers after pouring gasoline on himself and a tasering later: Kapoosh! Flames. In that case it makes perfect sense that a fire could start, but Wood only huffed a bit of keyboard cleaner. How could that be sufficient for combustion? [Dispatch via Obscure Store]

You've got to wonder just what was going through prison officer Walter Schmidt's head when he decided to use a 50,000-volt stun gun on some kids visiting the Talahassee prison he worked at. One of the kids ended up going to the hospital and, not surprisingly, Schmidt got fired.

37-year-old Schmidt told officials who later fired him that he had only been trying to show the children - whose parents all work at the jail near Tallahassee - what a typical day involves while handling unruly inmates.

'It wasn't intended to be malicious, but educational,' he explained to the St Petersburg Times.

'The big shock came when I got fired.'

The jokes just write themselves, don't they? [Daily Mail via The Daily What]

The X12 fires a jolt through the air (wirelessly) through nonlethal bullets that can cut through clothing to paralyze a perpetrator within an effective range of 88 feet. Apparently this paralysis occurs without pain (though I wonder if that's a relative idea), meaning that freeze tag just got a whole lot more fun, though ever so slightly less fair.

Authorities will receive their first shipments of the X12 in June. The endless pranks will begin sometime thereafter. [Taser via Yahoo via The Raw Feed]

The one in the top video is self-defense tool shop KSP's TMM S-308 model. The man shows how, despite the layers of heavy clothing, being tazed with that thing still hurts like hell.

But wait, if that one didn't strike your fancy, how about any of these four?

That guy's leg has enough charge to power all the homes in Rhode Island by this point. [Gizmodo Japan]

The kid bought the gun for $15 while on vacation in Bulgaria, which makes Bulgaria sound like kind of a badass place to go on vacation, and smuggled the device (capable of up to 30,000 volts) into school. He zapped three of his classmates, apparently not realizing that assault with a weapon is actually against the law, and was arrested shortly thereafter.

It's kind of a scary story, since "stun gun" could all too easily be replaced with "real gun," and the results would be a lot worse. This particular gun is not very dangerous, certainly not strong enough to kill anybody, but he probably didn't know that. The kid apparently "feels sorry" for acting like a jackass, which is nice of him, I guess. But the real villain here is the nation of Bulgaria. What gives, guys? Do you not have regulated crowd control arms sales or something? [Mail Online]

Even if you never get to use it on a real assailant, it feels good to click an e-commerce button that says "Add to Cart and Choose Voltage"—that is, assuming you don't live in New York, Massachusetts, Michigan, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Illinois, New Jersey or the cities of Baltimore, Philadelphia or Washington, DC. [TBO Tech via BBGadgets]

According to the Deputy DA in Portland, Ryan Wittman had made comments to witnesses saying he wanted his child "to be tough." When first questioned, the dad's genius response was to say that the two of them had been "playing peekaboo." Hmm, that'll be the special version of kilovolt peekaboo we've never heard of, then.

The 100,000-volt weapon Wittman used is, apparently, more powerful than police tasers. Wittman's excuse for the incidents? Arguments with his wife. It took just 20 minutes for the court to decide that Wittman should be sent down for four years. [CNN]

To Serve and Protect

As a somewhat spoiled only child, I got a lot of sweet Christmas gifts in my day: a VIC-20, the first Stetsasonic album, Soundwave. But the topper was the handheld police scanner that my dad scooped up at Radio Shack in the late 1980s. Paid for on a layaway plan (a fact which pops still brings up to this day), that beloved scanner afforded me many, many joyful hours of eavesdropping on cellphone convos, trucker banter and, most importantly, police chatter.

I guess that's when I started thinking about becoming a cop—oh, how I yearned to run around the streets of pre-Ramparts Los Angeles, chunky utility belt strapped around my waist à la Batman. It was a dream deferred, then denied as I chose a life of the mind over a life of wanton Taserings.

But a Geekish-American can still fantasize, yes? And then flesh out the fantasy with some low-end gadgets that can turn any civilian into a poseur policeman. After the jump, three techie toys that'll help you play make believe, yet cost less (combined!) than my favorite Xmas gift from the days of yore. PLUS: The low-end champ of one-gig drives?

You gotta trick out your car cop-style to start, and that means investing in this nifty four-in-one, $29.99 siren combo. The hype sheet language really says it all: "Don't settle for one boring blast when you can have 4 loud at your fingertips." I guess the stumbling block here is that your local PD may have cars that feature a different "police wailer" sound, and so you might seem out of place. When in doubt, simply activate the "euro ambulance siren"; that should confuse everyone sufficiently to make them pull over to the shoulder, wondering how and when they ended up in Zagreb while en route to the local 7-11.

Low End Theory does not advocate the use of firearms, primarily because they're too darn expensive for cheap folks like us. But what would a cop be without some means of subduing the bad guys? Stun guns are the affordable means of doing so, and cheap models are legion at any store run by a real-world version of one-armed Herman from The Simpsons. But the geek in me just can't resist spending a few extra quid on the Palco Cellphone Stun Gun, which looks like a Motorola handset circa 1991. Hunting-and-fishing megastore has it on sale for $69.99, but if you poke around you should be able to locate a unit for closer to $50. Again, the hype sheet lingo is evocative enough to deserve a full quotation: "This causes an attacker to drop while the brain tries to remember how to move the arms and legs." Perhaps the attacker is merely trying to process why you, his tormenter, hasn't yet upgraded to one of Verizon's cheap Razrs.

The toughest get of this trio was a police scanner; used ones abound on eBay, largely via PD surplus sales, but new units are still mighty expensive—a lot pricier than CB radios, for sure. The solution is to do an end-run around the market and opt for one of Uniden's scanners designed for the NASCAR set, specifically the BC72XLT-1RHS. It's designed to let race fans eavesdrop on the back-and-forth between pit and driver, but if you search around you can doubtless find some cop chatter, too. (At least that's what promised on the hype sheet; anyone know if they're stretching the truth here?) The nicest feature here is Uniden's trademarked Close Call, which automatically latches onto nearby radio signals should you so desire. So if there's a crime scene located down your block, this might be the best way of finding out what's going on. (Note: I've found that asking a cop, "Hey, what happened?" tends not to work; the stock response is, "Sir, move away from the yellow tape.")

With a little diligence, you can scoop up all three of the aforementioned items for around $130 to $170—far less than the $228.79 that my dad ended up paying for my scanner when all was said and done. (Yes, he quotes that exact figure.) The caveat—and you knew this was coming—is that your local PD may not appreciate your aspirations to copdom. In fact, should you spend a day roaming around your town with siren wailing, zapping random passerby who seem to be committing misdemeanors, I can pretty much guarantee that you'll end up in jail. If/when that happens, please e-mail with the subject heading "I've Been Arrested". While I'm far too broke to provide bail money, I might be able to show up at your trial as a character witness.

LOWER THAN LOW: In last week's column, I marveled over a $31 one-gig flash drive that's being hawked more-or-less factory direct by a Shenzhen manufacturer. I guess I'm not really too up on low-end USB drive pricing, though, as a couple of readers pointed out drives that were closer to the $20 mark. The best seems to be this RiDATA unit, available on Newegg.com for $22.89. As we move ever closer to the ultimate low-end dream: one gig for one dollar. (Thanks, Gyg)

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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When the compilers of the study wanted to mention the negative aspects of stunning, including the rare but real chance of heart attack, they were dropped with a good jolt an told to keep quiet.

Taser says stun gun showed to avert deadly force [Reuters]