A collection of weaponless techniques, Defensive Tactics (DT) enable officers to control or subdue those who become combative or resist arrest. These tactics are an essential skill. However, the amount of training time allotted to DT, given the sheer number of techniques officers are expected to learn, is insufficient. Compounding the problem is that many skills are too complex and evaporate under the stress of a real encounter. Further deterioration of skills comes with the lack of progressive, realistic and follow-up training. These factors, in turn, lead officers to use the force they know best, or the force they believe will keep them safe. It can also lead to fear-based overreaction. Consequently, many of the current DT systems set officers up for injury or disciplinary action. Department heads need to rethink the defensive tactics philosophy of their agencies to reduce injuries to both officers and suspects.
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Fear & Stress are Important Factors
Law enforcement DT training does not prepare the officer for the speed, emotion and exhaustion often experienced in real world applications. Officers rarely train at full speed, with a legitimate fear of being hurt. They often train against instructors dressed in bulky, unwieldy protective gear—this is like coaching a lineman on a football team at half speed and then putting him into a game.
Without the proper DT training, confidence in a set of skills decreases. If an officer is faced with a combative subject, and the skills the officer has been taught are not working—or he doesn’t believe they will work—fear will set in. This fear of danger, or perceived danger, is compounded by the officer’s lack of confidence or proficiency in handling violent confrontations. These officers resort to what they are most confident will help them stay safe.
This may cause administrative action if department policy has force guidelines or requires use of “approved” techniques. Even when fear is not in play, stress can cause an officer to resort to inappropriate techniques that may have worked in the past, but not necessarily what they learned about at the academy. Poor technique or personal methods used when controlling subjects will often cause injury to the officer and the suspect. Injury to the officer can compound fear, which can cloud the mind and impair decision making.
Fear-based overreaction may not even be a conscious decision on the part of the officer but merely the automatic survival response. This is not an issue if the officer can stop their actions when the threat has been removed, but acute stress can cause a person to act without conscious thought. Acute stress can also cause a person to fail to act. Both responses negatively impact the officer and suspect alike. Again, these responses may be avoided or diminished with the proper training.
It Starts with Training
Training should concentrate on a limited number of techniques that utilize gross motor movements, with emphasis on deflecting attacks and managing the distance between the officer and the combative subject to facilitate handcuffing or, if necessary, other force options.
Currently, the DT journey begins at the academy with a week or two of training. Eighty hours—perhaps more in certain jurisdictions—to learn blocks, strikes, footwork, takedowns, leg sweeps, escorts, distractions, pressure points, handcuffing, vehicle extractions, joint locks, balance points, disarming attackers, ground fighting, etc. The expectation of this training includes a working knowledge of the techniques, ability to perform them under stress and responsibility by directive for using them in force situations.
Mere weeks after graduation, most officers remember, at best, a handful of the techniques they were taught at the academy. Even fewer officers can duplicate them on a resisting subject. Most rely on actions they put into play without thinking about them and that have worked for them in the past. Too often, however, these instinctive techniques bear little resemblance to the techniques officers are directed to use or have learned at the academy. Hardwiring new skills takes time. We should consider significantly reducing the number of techniques and using the limited time designated to DT to train those techniques until they become natural responses when subduing or controlling a suspect.
Many of the skills learned in DT require multiple movements in sequence to perform correctly. Time and again, it is proven that simple, direct actions work the best against resisting/combative persons. It is one thing to practice complex moves on a passive, accommodating fellow officer, but it is quite another to perform them when needed on the street. These are easy to apply in a choreographed setting. The hard part is recognizing when to apply a technique in a fluid and violent confrontation, without hesitation and before the window of opportunity closes. Processes requiring multiple steps take too long to develop in real confrontations and will generally fail.
Simple, gross motor movement skills are infinitely more effective. A strong shoulder lock used to turn a person on his stomach is a much simpler way to gain control than maneuvering him into the T3 handcuffing position.
Follow-Up is Key
Follow-up training in law enforcement, yearly after the academy, generally consists of four hours spent walking through a couple techniques. Any physical skill deteriorates over time if not used or practiced and four hours a year (or eight) is not enough for officers to stay proficient. Realistic training, however, even with limited time, would more effectively help the officer retain the skill.
Most people will use the same techniques that work for them over and over. These are not uniform across departments as each person has a different and unique set of experiences. But the rationale behind using the same technique again and again makes intuitive sense—if it works, you trust the technique and will use it more often, getting better at it because of the frequency of use. More importantly, your mind has a strong incentive to remember and employ without hesitation those skills and movements that will preserve your life or stop danger quickly, making the hardwiring of those skills a faster process.
Become Really Good at a Few Techniques
We need to significantly reduce the number of techniques we teach to officers by determining the most common encounters they have on the street and addressing them. We then determine when officers should actually go “hands-on.” Finally, we devise, or adopt, from current systems some simple techniques to address these issues, focusing on the concepts behind the techniques. If we can, we adapt the skills for multiple situations.
Learning how to avoid/block a sudden attack or work on leg sweeps/takedowns are essential skills for any officer, as one technique can be trained for use in multiple situations, such as wrist grabs, lapel grabs and sudden attacks by subjects. A person grabbing an officer by the arm or lapel is a very aggressive action and a palm heel strike to the face is reasonable to free yourself and prevent further aggression. If an officer is suddenly rushed on, a palm heel strike to the face and transitioning to another weapon system is appropriate. Multi-use skills should be simple and direct for use under extreme stress.
In designing this new training, the agency command staff can decide when an officer should actually use empty hand techniques on a subject. If a suspect is told he is under arrest and refuses to comply with orders, is verbally combative and exhibits resistant behavior/body language—why try a hands-on method of control? Order him to the ground and, if necessary, follow up with OC spray or a Taser, then handcuff. Some experienced officers say that handcuffs only go on two ways—easy and hard. The easy method is for a compliant person who obeys commands. No one gets hurt. The hard way is generally seen as the pile-on. Officers should not feel compelled to approach this combative person until they are on the ground (ordered) or incapacitated (using another weapon system). Use of OC spray and Tasers has helped to facilitate significant decreases in injury to both officers and suspects, so the availability of alternate force methods further reduces the number of techniques an officer has to learn.
Once the suspect is on the ground, danger to the officer is reduced and handcuffing can take place. Ground control techniques trained in real time can further facilitate handcuffing and reduce the incidents of serious injury to the officer and suspect alike.
Conclusion
Once administrators identify where the priorities in training lie, departmental instructors can develop a program from existing techniques—choosing only the most simple, effective procedures and adapting them to multiple scenarios. There is a need to concentrate on protective measures during sudden attacks, creating distance and transitioning to other weapons systems or taking the suspect to the ground and handcuffing quickly. If departments focused on these skills, using simple techniques honed with repetition and realistic training, the officers would be more competent, confident and operating within policy. This confidence would reduce fear felt by officers and instances of increased stress, allowing officers to make appropriate force decisions, reducing excessive force complaints and uses of deadly force.
Resources
1. A Multi-Method Evaluation of Police Use of Force Outcomes, final report to the National Institute of Justice, July 2010, NCJ 231176. Retrieved from http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/231176.pdf.