Police chiefs and MPs lead attack on new title that encourages players to torture and execute law officers
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Simon McGee
Political Editor
POLICE chiefs have condemned video game due for release next month which encourages players to torture, shoot and execute policemen.
The game Reservoir Dogs, based on Quentin Tarantino's 1992 cult film, all
ows players to carry out – in the words of censors who recently banned the game in New Zealand and Australia – "most extreme forms of violence and brutality for the purpose of entertainment".
Players can take police officers hostage and go on to burn out their eyes with a lit cigar, chop off their fingers with a cigar cutter and hack off their ears using a scalpel, while they plead for their lives and scream in pain.
One Yorkshire MP claimed the game encouraged people to act in the same brutal way as the killers of PCs Sharon Beshenivsky and Ian Broadhurst, two West Yorkshire police officers recently gunned down in the line of duty.
But the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) confirmed yesterday that it has given the game the go-ahead for distribution, meaning it will arrive on shop shelves in Yorkshire and beyond by the end of August.
The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), representing Britain's chief constables, told the Yorkshire Post last night of its total disapproval of the game.
"Anything that encourages violent emotions, including such emotions towards members of the police service, is particularly disturbing and can only be described as offensive," said an ACPO spokeswoman.
"It is disappointing to find violent video games on the market that may cause psychological harm to those who play them."
The West Yorkshire Police Federation chairman Tom McGhie, representing rank and file officers, labelled the game a "sickening glorification of violence against police officers".
He added: "Anything that encourages that type of behaviour, when police officers are suffering more attacks than ever before, should be banned.
"It's impossible to see how such a game can have anything than a highly damaging effect on how people perceive and react to police officers."
Harrogate MP Phil Willis said: "I am absolutely staggered that such a game is being allowed to be sold in out shops.
"It sends out the message that the police and authority figures are there to be targeted and dispatched, desensitises people to the idea of killing and undermines normal moral values.
"Players of Reservoir Dogs are effectively encouraged to act in the same way as the murderers of PC Beshenivsky and PC Broadhurst."
Mr Willis is one of the backers of a Commons motion, tabled by Leicester East MP Keith Vaz, insisting that the game "promotes and supports the infliction of extreme violence and cruelty" and calling on it to be banned.
Eidos Interactive Ltd, the company behind the game, was unavailable for comment last night but the BBFC made it clear that it was happy for it to be distributed with an 18 licence.
"It contains nothing that is particularly stronger than things found in most 18-rated games," said a BBFC spokeswoman.
She added that the 18 certificate meant vulnerable young people should be protected from it and dismissed the idea that video games affected people's behaviour in the real world.
The BBFC spokeswoman also put Australia's decision to ban the game down to the country having no rating above 15 – so it would have had to make it acceptable for 15-year-olds or for no one at all.
But New Zealand's Office of Film and Literature Classification was unequivocal in its view earlier this year that the game "encourages the player to perform – and showcases in slow motion – the most extreme forms of violence and brutality for the purpose of entertainment".
Chief Censor Bill Hastings added: "Players can pistol whip hostages and repeatedly smash their heads on to nearby walls and surfaces. After the police comply, they can be disarmed, or killed in whichever manner the player chooses."
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