False Confidence

31 Aug 08

From my friend and colleague, Dave Spaulding, as only he can put it:

"I don't know how many times, over my thirty-plus-year LE career, I've seen some company conjured up 'Karate-in-a-Can,' be it the PR-24, Handler-12, ASP baton, OC-spray/foam/squirt, and now the Taser. All were touted as THE answer to our challenges with dangerously violent suspects.

No longer would we need hands-on training in genuine fighting with one's own hands and other body parts, which has now been watered-down to ' Response-to-Resistance' (I'm still not sure how some VCA, who is doing his level best to throttle the life out of your scrawny neck, can be accurately referred to as is 'resisting')

Many administrators, buying into the manufacturers's own promotional literature, now call for 'minimal-force,' on the assumption, of course, that all this great stuff is going to work as advertised. In all fairness, most of the time it does, but...

This caveat: In thirty years of careful observation, the one 'constant' I observed is that all these gadgets work infinitely better on cops in training than they ever did on real suspects in the street. All of which makes me wonder if we, as trainers, were, and are, providing young cops with (1) too much confidence in gadgets and (2) insufficient training on what to do when all the machines die!"

Comment: "Smooth seas do not good sailors make!"

/John