Nick Berardini
Appearances
Bone Valley
Introducing - Absolute: Taser Incorporated, Teaser
He was going to make it happen with an invention.
Bone Valley
Introducing - Absolute: Taser Incorporated, Teaser
Rick Smith is building this new reality in a real place. I visited the Space Age headquarters rising up from the Arizona desert. My tour guide put his eye up to a retinal scanner to get me into the building.
Bone Valley
Introducing - Absolute: Taser Incorporated, Teaser
The steel doors retracted slowly, like we were entering a vault. I walked through a wide hallway and saw catwalks crisscrossing above me. Employees in glass conference rooms drew equations on the windows. I watched as an assembly line of workers built this future weapon called a taser. Electricity buzzed through the air. It felt like science fiction, but they were really doing it.
Bone Valley
Introducing - Absolute: Taser Incorporated, Teaser
I was inside this world. I could see what this new technology could be capable of. And I wanted Rick's dream to be real. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, a story about unchecked power. I'm Nick Berardini. Episode 1, Whips, Poles, and Chains. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever fired your gun?
Bone Valley
Introducing - Absolute: Taser Incorporated, Teaser
Rick Smith, in his space age outpost, was trying to build a world where the answer would always be no. But if you were a cop before that, like my friend Matt Masters, you were skeptical. Matt had been trained, if you think your life is in danger, shoot.
Bone Valley
Introducing - Absolute: Taser Incorporated, Teaser
Matt says he did what he was trained to do, aim for the chest. But he also did what a lot of cops do under pressure. He missed. Cops call it dipping. He told me he didn't mean to, but he lowered his arm, hit the kid's legs.
Bone Valley
Introducing - Absolute: Taser Incorporated, Teaser
In a marketing video from 2023, Rick Smith tells us, not anymore. He shows us the newest taser, a black and yellow gun-shaped device. Instead of one barrel, it has 10 holes to shoot out 10 little darts. The darts are attached to electrified copper wires, so when they shoot out and puncture your skin, the current makes your muscles lock up. You can't move.
Bone Valley
Introducing - Absolute: Taser Incorporated, Teaser
But when it's over, you can get right back up,
Bone Valley
Introducing - Absolute: Taser Incorporated, Teaser
Walking through the Taser headquarters blew me away. While I was there, I sat down with a VP and he told me how proud he was to work for the company.
Bone Valley
Introducing - Absolute: Taser Incorporated, Teaser
I was impressed. As I walked back through the steel double doors and into the desert that day, I also wondered, was what he said too good to be true? I threw myself and a half decade into that question. I even made a movie about what I found. That's how I met Officer Matt Masters. I was answering questions on Reddit about the movie. He left me a comment. Hello, Nick.
Bone Valley
Introducing - Absolute: Taser Incorporated, Teaser
I was thrust into the reality of tasers just over a year ago. I didn't see it at first. I only caught it because a friend asked later if I'd talked to this guy Matt yet. When I finally met him, he'd been a cop for 19 years. Crew cut, blue eyes, tattoo of an archangel slicing a demon's neck. He opened up right away.
Bone Valley
Introducing - Absolute: Taser Incorporated, Teaser
He laughed a lot, especially when he was talking about something that might make him cry. We had dinner at a restaurant and we talked for hours. Matt's wife, Stacy, was there too. Dark straight hair, dark brown eyes, feather tattoo. She's part Shawnee and sometimes wears a t-shirt that says, no more stolen sisters.
Bone Valley
Introducing - Absolute: Taser Incorporated, Teaser
We started talking because Matt and Stacy were trying to make sense of something that happened to them.
Bone Valley
Introducing - Absolute: Taser Incorporated, Teaser
What would it be like to live in a world where none of this is possible? One man had a vision. A vision of a new reality.