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So today we did our first handcuffing training session, the first “hands-on” police training we’ve done. Today was also the first time we wore our Academy-issued duty belts. The variety of configurations around the room was astonishing. Some folks decided they didn’t need “keeper clips” to attach the duty belt to their pants, and others figured that since they had a duty belt it wasn’t necessary to wear their regular belt. As is typical with our class, the lessons to be learned were in abundance.

The act of handcuffing is one of those things which “police enthusiasts” such as myself have seen many times on T.V. shows, and thus initially it doesn’t seem like a tremendously laborious task to learn. Such is not the case. After managing to accidentally attach my handcuffs to my own wrist shortly after roll call, I realized that there was going to be more to it than met the eye.

There are many different methods for actually attaching cuffs to wrists, and if you asked 10 cops about the right way to cuff people you might get 10 different answers, but today we focused on one particular technique and spent a good deal of time on the other issues. Some examples: putting yourself in a position of advantage before even taking your cuffs out, gaining control of the subject from the moment of first touch, keeping enough distance from the subject to avoid being “inside” where he can exert the most power against you, and all this assuming the subject is being initially compliant. We made the barest of beginnings today, but it felt pretty good overall.

Hazard Has One Z

When you as a citizen (a.k.a. normal person) think about a police vehicle pursuit, you probably envision a bunch of police vehicles chasing a bad guy where-ever necessary at whatever speed is necessary to get him or (of course) her to stop so the cops in question can haul the evil-doer out and slap the cuffs on him or (naturally) her. This makes a bit of sense, generally, because hey you have to catch that bad guy right?

Contrary to the popular belief, police departments have policies governing when (and when not) and how (and how not) to pursue fleeing vehicles. The goal of these policies is ultimately to protect officers, citizens, and their respective property. There have been a number of tragic incidents lately bringing more attention to the need for such policies. In general, a pursuit policy has three main elements: the need for authorization by a supervisor, a guide to assessing risk, and a matrix for weighing that risk against the reward of catching the suspect.

Sometimes the police shouldn’t chase bad guys because it endangers themselves and bystanders. A good example of this can be seen here. Police officers in these situations generally aren’t thinking about a pursuit policy; they’re more interested in backing up their brothers, which is how it should be. The supervisor needs to know when to call it off, though. Sure, it’s tough to watch any bad guy get away, but if he’s an income-tax evader that jumped in his car to avoid being picked up on a warrant, the law is eventually going to catch up to him. Violent fleeing felons are obviously a different story.