Pizza is so persuasive, in fact, that a police squad recently used it as a bargaining tactic to talk a suicidal man down off the dangerous precipice between life and death.
There's no denying that, of all the cheesy circular things, pizza is the most persuasive. Look us in our faces and tell us otherwise … yeah. That's what we thought.
Pizza is so persuasive, in fact, that a police squad recently used it as a bargaining tactic to talk a suicidal man down off the dangerous precipice between life and death.
Allow us to explain.
Last week, a man in San Jose, CA was threatening to end his own life by jumping from an overpass onto a freeway in a suicide exhibition. He was holding a knife, and was highly distraught.
A five-hour standoff ensued as police failed to talk him down from his death perch, employing every known tactic in their suicide prevention training manuals without avail. So, they busted out the best idea they could in order to save his life: send a robot to bring the man a delicious, cheesy pizza. That, more than anything in this world, was what the police thought would give the man a reaosn to live … scrumptious, fun-to-eat, easy-on-the-wallet pizza.
The robot they sent, the Northrup Grumman Remotec Andros F6A, is typically used to dismantle and dispose of bombs, so it's not like it wasn't used to saving lives (*hair toss*). But, the slow-moving bot still needed to convince the likely scared and potentially dangerous man to pick up a phone and talk to officers who could calm him down and persuade him not to jump. So, police rigged the savior bot so that in order to get the pizza, the man had to pick up the phone.
Apparently, this is all normal protocol: pizza is so life-affirming that it's routinely used in suicide calls. Police sergeant Chris Sciba told IEEE Spectrum, “[Because] delivering food is a way of encouraging someone to do something we want them to do, we sent pizza with [the] phone. We [instructed the subject] that if he wanted the pizza released, to pick up the phone. The robot was holding the pizza, it released the pizza once the subject picked up [the] phone to talk to negotiators.”
The pizza robot also had an integrated audio-video system so that police could see the man’s response as it approached with the chewy, tangy circle of life.
Lo and behold, the man immediately picked up the phone to obtain his pizza prize and was convinced by negotiators to drop his knife and surrender. Less than an hour after the pizza wad deployed, the man voluntarily approached officers and was taken into custody. Makes perfect sense to us … have you ever tasted pizza? It makes you a king.
In other news, pizza also saved a woman's life and is being used to quell gang violence, proving that pizza, more than police or politics, is what keeps the cogs of society turning towards our destiny.
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