lemaymiami
Member
Have to chime in here... In short head strikes with any club (or just the traditional "blunt instrument"...) are simply lethal force any way you look at it - and that's what courts held time after time when the issue arose. As a result police outfits, starting in the late seventies (or maybe earlier - but that was the timeline down here in south Florida...) were forced to not only change their tactics but also the basic rules for how you trained your officers to use clubs of any kind (including my personal favorite -the machined aluminum flashlight...). Since you can never be sure of the outcome with a head strike (occasionally someone died....) every department found itself behind the eight ball when striking force wound up in court...
Strikes to the shoulders, elbows, and knees are what was taught once the courts got involved - and even then many cities simply paid off rather than risk juries... When my outfit (a small hundred man department in Dade county - we were the first nationally accredited police department in Dade county - one out of almost thirty different agencies...) made the shift over to the ASP baton it came with trainers from the company that made that particular collapsible baton. They trained our trainers and every officer was required to go through a specific training regimen with the new gear - including hands on against trainers in Red Man suits. By the time we were done the cost was not small - but at least we had a good chance if any use of force wound up in court, provided the officer was within policy...
No, this is not the sort of stuff that street legends are made of and most old timers weren't very happy - but times change, and in a world where lots of lawyers will volunteer to come after any police department - you learn or pay... That's why, when years later the Rodney King incident happened out in California most that I knew couldn't understand why they (the department involved...) hadn't gotten the message... Towards the end of my career as tasers came into wider use we went through similar training - and every officer wanting to carry one on the street had to take a full hit - in training - themselves so that they could honestly testify in court as to the effects of getting hit by one...
I'm long out of police work and I imagine things have evolved even further since I left, but that's how it goes in a world where you're very likely to end up in court if you injure someone -even if they richly deserved anything that happened to them....
Strikes to the shoulders, elbows, and knees are what was taught once the courts got involved - and even then many cities simply paid off rather than risk juries... When my outfit (a small hundred man department in Dade county - we were the first nationally accredited police department in Dade county - one out of almost thirty different agencies...) made the shift over to the ASP baton it came with trainers from the company that made that particular collapsible baton. They trained our trainers and every officer was required to go through a specific training regimen with the new gear - including hands on against trainers in Red Man suits. By the time we were done the cost was not small - but at least we had a good chance if any use of force wound up in court, provided the officer was within policy...
No, this is not the sort of stuff that street legends are made of and most old timers weren't very happy - but times change, and in a world where lots of lawyers will volunteer to come after any police department - you learn or pay... That's why, when years later the Rodney King incident happened out in California most that I knew couldn't understand why they (the department involved...) hadn't gotten the message... Towards the end of my career as tasers came into wider use we went through similar training - and every officer wanting to carry one on the street had to take a full hit - in training - themselves so that they could honestly testify in court as to the effects of getting hit by one...
I'm long out of police work and I imagine things have evolved even further since I left, but that's how it goes in a world where you're very likely to end up in court if you injure someone -even if they richly deserved anything that happened to them....
