Consider yourself warned, Canadians: Drinking and driving could bring cruel and unusual punishment in the form of being forced to listen to a 15-year-old Nickelback album.
The Kensington Police Service is warning those “dumb enough to think they can drink and drive” that on top of hefty fines, criminal charges and a yearlong driver’s license suspension, offenders can also expect to hear Nickelback’s 2001 album “Silver Side Up” in the police cruiser on the way to jail.
“Now, now, no need to thank us, we figure if you are foolish enough to get behind the wheel after drinking then a little Chad Kroeger and the boys is the perfect gift for you,” the department posted on its Facebook page on Saturday. “So please, let’s not ruin a perfectly good unopened copy of Nickelback. You don’t drink and drive and we won’t make you listen to it.”
The post, which has been shared more than 1,200 times, suggests that holiday drinkers take other steps to avoid the possibility of forced Nickelback listening, including finding a designated driver ahead of time, taking a cab, or spending the night at a friend’s house.
Constable Robb Hartlen, who authored the post, told CBC that the department was merely trying to inject a “little humor” into a very serious topic.
“What it does is it sparks that conversation, it pushes that idea that everybody knows with a little bit of humor,” Harten said.
Hartlen said he selected the band for the post because Kroeger — whose real name is Chad Turton — was convicted of drunken driving in British Columbia in 2008. And although he admitted that police don’t actually have a copy of the album ready to punish suspected drunken drivers, that doesn’t mean that won’t change.
“I would have no problem at all getting hold of a copy of Nickelback and making that the musical play-along on the way in to chat with someone who’s been caught for drinking and driving,” he said.
But Hartlen — who admits liking a few of Nickelback’s songs — said there’s no reason to feel sorry for the Canadian rock band formed in the mid-1990s in Alberta, Canada.
“Poor Nickelback,” he said. “They take the brunt of a nation’s joke, and I’m sure they’re crying all the way to the bank.”
The tongue-in-cheek threat is the latest example of music used as punishment.
A police department in Minnesota threatened last week to force people arrested for drunken driving to listen to One Direction cover bands on the way to jail.
“We use humor to spread our message & engage with our community,” the department said in a post on Tuesday. “Traditional straight forward ways don’t succeed on social media. Humor does.”
Military interrogators have also reportedly used loud music to punish or extract information from detainees, including songs by well-known artists like Metallica, Britney Spears and Eminem.
Former inmates at Guantanamo Bay have testified that songs by AC/DC, Spears, Rage Against the Machine, the Bee Gees and even the “Sesame Street” theme song were played at extremely high volumes to disorient and punish detainees. An FBI agent reported observing one detainee at Camp Delta with an “Israeli flag draped around him, loud music being played and a strobe light flashing,” according to the Washington Post. FBI agents also used growling dogs to intimidate the detainees, according to memos by FBI agents to their supervisors cited by the newspaper.
Newsweek reported in 2003 that soldiers with the US military’s Psychological Operations Command in Iraq blared Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” into shipping containers holding detainees. The idea, according to the soldiers, is to “break down a subject’s resistance” through sleep deprivation and unfamiliar music that new listeners may deem offensive or excessively loud.
The tactic was also used in 1989, when US forces were trying to force Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega to leave the Vatican’s diplomatic mission in Panama City. American troops blasted rock songs like Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile” and “Nowhere to Run” by Martha and the Vandellas. Senior Vatican officials told the New York Times at the time that the apparent psychological warfare effort was “ludicrous” and “childish.”