Shockpike

For the humanitarian and the peacekeeper, keep your foes at spear's length. Keep yourself and others safe with SHOCKPIKE; now available with RGB lighting and sound effects.
Legal disclaimers apply.

— Shockpike Marketing

Shockpikes are telescopic staves lined with powerful electric emitters along its length that allow its user to both bludgeon and stun-shock its victims. It is widely marketed to riot police, prison guard, and other law-and-order types due to being technically non-lethal, usually with an asterisk applied. The same technicality makes them widely available to anyone who wants to buy one, something that arms manufacturers have taken full advantage of.

Description

Shockpikes are about a meter long metal rod with rubber handles, a few buttons, and a battery gauge. Some models eschew all that for complete wireless activation, with a sleek industrial look. Pikes are relatively hefty, weighing as much as 3 to 5 kg. They usually come with a sticker with an arrow pointing forward, with "FRONT TOWARDS ENEMY" helpfully printed on it.

by Johny Mnemonic (with slight alterations)

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When activated, a small electric motor extends the pike up to a meter and a half. The full pike is lined with electric coils that give a very ominous crackle when activated.
The battery is slotted through an opening in the bottom, locked tightly when not in use. It can be open electronically for a quick-swap when required, but most corporate forces disable the feature for security reasons.

One of the most popular modifications is to make the pike surge with arcs of electricity when active. It drains the battery much faster and does nothing for its performance, but it does have a certain dramatic flair to it.

The standard Shockpike come in stainless metal with a black or chrome finish, but every vendor keeps their own lines of highly customized shockpikes. From neon-pink to mimicking weapons from popular media, Shockpikes comes in all forms, sizes, and shapes. Those in "professional" use are usually stock or in the company colors.
Some corporations have their own favorite kind of modification to their fielded shockpikes, and they rarely make things less lethal.

A Shocking Conclusion

A human life is such a terrible thing to waste, you know?
Just make them wish they were dead instead. Everyone wins.

— Marcus Parks, Centurion Arms & Armor CEO

Shockpikes are used for crowd and riot controls, for situations where spraying a crowd with bullets might not make for the best PR. Pikes see action in the slums during corporate-police raids and evictions and in prisons.

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There are plenty of manufacturers that make and sell the Shockpikes, with the most popular being the Centurion Arms & Armor megacorp.
Brands like the Hoplite, the Naga, and the Thunderstrike dominate the market, with a few dozen minor brands and knock-offs competing for share.

by Johny Mnemonic (with slight alterations)

Along with the different brands and customization options, Shockpikes are easy to modify. Doing so is technically illegal and voids warranty, but the popularity and sales gained from the modding community makes it a fact. Most manufacturers make no effort to make their pikes more difficult to modify, with a nudge and a wink. From increasing the voltage to strapping a shotgun to the end of it, Shockpikes see all kind of modification, particularly in popular media.
The current craze among Shockpike enthusiasts is RGB lighting and musical integration, which goes great with the screaming.

"Technically"
Even without modification, it's pretty easy for someone to kill with a shockpike. The hefty staff can break bone with a solid swing and the taser-like discharge can cause cardiac arrest without too much trouble.
A lot of prisons require their prisoners to sign a liability waiver when they first arrive. Public use of the shockpike is usually heavily sanitized in the media.

by Johny Mnemonic

Badly fitted or made Shockpikes often vibrate when held, leading to jokes that everyone has heard a million times by now and nobody really thinks is funny, but still get told.

In Media

Shockpikes almost see more use on movie sets than they do in real combat. From villains to heroes to goons dispatched by the horde, modified shockpikes see use by everyone.
Corporations have in turn made some of their pikes look as cinematic as possible to further appeal both to movie studios and people who consume that sort of media content.

by Johny Mnemonic (with slight alterations)

Popularity

With the immeasurable value of human life not quite what it used to be, security-minded consumers tend to just buy firearms. Shockpikes are not common consumer weaponry, but still fairly popular with gangsters, hoodlums and riot cop alike, for different reasons.
They're intimidating, reliable, and reasonably likely to leave someone alive, compared to a bullet. For those rare, precious moments when mercy happens in Megacorpolis, Shockpikes has a time and a place.
Shockpikes are also theatrical and criminal gangs especially use them not only for their efficiency, but to bolster their own image and get views on social media.

by Johny Mnemonic