When the Shit Hits the Fan, Will New Yorkers Even Notice?

The New York Police Department is a 38,000-officer strong force whose arsenal runs the gamut from golf carts and nightsticks to assault helicopters, spies in foreign countries, and even the Goodyear blimp. It is, as is commonly said, a medium-sized army. Not a single one of those weapons, however, can plant as much terror in the hearts of law-breakers as a purportedly “less-than-lethal” cannon rumored to exist within some anonymous police armory in Queens. No official report attests to it being used, but every now and then, conspiracy theorists citywide speak of a weapon so devious that its very existence surely violates several federal laws, the Bill of Rights, and even the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Those who claim to have seen it call it the “brown gun.”

I remember the exact day I first heard of the “brown gun,” when, as a sophomore couch-surfing through orientation week, I signed up to run straight into trouble if I saw any. Volunteering to document the arrest of protesters at the Republican National Convention for the American Civil Liberties Union, I sat in a large hallway as an instructor told us of the alleged cannon.

The machine, he told us, looks like an oversized speaker with handles mounted on a turret, which emits an ultrasonic signal strong enough to incapacitate a man and wide enough to stop a rushing crowd. When it hits you straight, it knocks the air out of your lungs, makes you feel like someone is jackhammering your skull, and causes your entire body to spasm. Most notoriously, your inner organs begin vibrating at the rate of several thousand oscillations per second.

Lying on the ground after what can only be compared to being tossed inside a martini shaker, excruciating pain turns every muscle taut. A few seconds later, you’re in handcuffs. Then you realize you’ve lost all bowel control.

The day I learned about the “brown gun,” I was scared shitless every time I saw a cop. By the time I was slated to go volunteer, I’d gotten my shit together, but still shat a brick every time a protester started heckling an officer. What unnerved me most, though, was not the likelihood of seeing a cop go apeshit on unruly protesters, but the fact that so many New Yorkers unconnected to the protest could run around without giving a shit. Didn’t they know their trip to Starbucks might end up in the world’s most embarrassing visit to the dry cleaners if the shit hit the fan? Could they really just stand by, carelessly shooting the shit, while a massive street protest unfolded across from them?

Three years and several dozen protests later, I’m no longer amazed. At the center of the universe, New Yorkers see a lot on a daily basis. Some events really are mind-boggling, one-of-a-kind happenings, but for the most part we’re just too jaded to care. Some call it apathy, but in reality, a much more complex emotion is at work. Like learning how to walk through a crowded subway station while reading a fully-spread New York Times, ignoring one’s chaotic surroundings becomes second nature to New Yorkers. After you see an elephant cross the Brooklyn Bridge into Times Square, it’s hard to even notice the circus. Overwhelmed by outside stimuli, we shut them out, and since a lot of important, um, stuff happens here, we tend to miss some of it.

Which brings me to Ahmadinejad. As the rest of America flipped out over the presence of the Iranian president at Columbia, what was truly remarkable was not that so many people on campus were engaged in the Aaaaaaaaaaaah-madinemania. What’s truly remarkable is that so many didn’t care.

Classes went on as usual. People went to the gym, to work, even to grab free cookies at 212. True, the large turnout attests to the fact that many did care about seeing the speech or participating in protest, but many had nothing more to do with the event than, perhaps, answering the obligatory phone call from mom letting her know that campus was not really under siege. Oh, and that Secret Service snipers are kinda cool. A couple years from now, when our generals tell us that, despite their best efforts to find the hidden nuclear warheads in Tehran, the occupying American army is at a loss to find any weapons of mass destruction, I might regret having skipped out on the end of Ahmadinejad’s speech to go to class.

Or not. I heard he mostly talked shit.