Learning tactics, making changes to adapt
CELINA — Education and law enforcement are constantly changing, adapting to a rapidly developing world. When the two are put together, changes happen even faster in an effort to make improvements as soon as flaws are exposed. For eight hours on Saturday — and for more than 50 hours over the next month — cadets at the Wright State University — Lake Campus Police Academy received an education in how to control combative subjects effectively and as safely as possible for all involved.
“It really is more important now
than it was before,” said instructor Pat Elking. “We have to teach them the right way to do these things and even in the time that has passed since the last class came through, we’re eliminating a couple techniques that had been taught before.”
“We’re teaching them to stay away from the neck area,” added instructor Ed Klausing. “Even though we did have one takedown where they reached across the subject to leverage the head area, when we saw some of them were kind of coming across the throat, we corrected them and showed how you could safely come across and not even be on the throat.”
The day began by learning the basics including how best to approach someone cadets are about to arrest and how to be in a good position to escort someone to a cruiser. After a few rounds of practice, Klausing and Elking introduced more of a challenge by encouraging the “arrestees” to resist slightly and showing the cadets techniques to either distract the arrestee
or pressure points to encourage them to keep walking.
“You’re not trying to hurt him, you just want to keep him focused on moving forward,” Elking explained. “If you keep a subject focused on putting one foot in front of the other, they aren’t trying to figure out how to hurt you or how they can get away.”
Cadets learned that something as simple as a push to the shoulder or small of the back can be enough to keep the subject moving. If that didn’t work, pressure to the tricep was used to cause some discomfort.
As the day went on, the resistance increased and techniques to combat that resistance were explained, demonstrated and practiced until the instructors were satisfied that concepts and techniques were understood. Those concepts will be reinforced for the next five Saturdays as Elking and Klausing continue to teach future officers how to safely do their job.
“If it’s a deadly force situation where we’re on the ground, we can’t grab our gun, we can’t grab our taser, we can’t grab our duty knife and going around the throat is our last resort
for us to go home that night, that is the only time they can do that,” Klausing said. “But anytime you’re just taking a person down to the ground, you have to stay away from that.”
Elking added that the techniques used to control people in police custody still fall under the force continuum that officers use to determine what actions to take. He explained the difference between passive and active resistance and what options are available for each.
Something as simple as a person sitting in a chair and refusing to get up is considered passive resistance and requires a gentler touch. If someone begins actively resisting by fighting or attempting to fight with officers, the response of the law enforcers can be increased to overcome the resistance.
“There is an eighthour class we teach on civil liability and use of force that talks about when you can use this type of force and when you can’t as well as the different court decisions about them,” Elking said. “We’ll explain what they can use, when it’s necessary and the factors like gender, size, age, injuries, skill levels and the relevant factors
of any weapons. It’s not either an all out fight situation or no force, there are a million shades of gray in between.
“In a fight, that level goes up and down constantly because people can go postal and then halfway through it they give up or they’ll jump back and forth and back and forth so we teach them to respond appropriately.”
Although it took some practice, by the last couple hours of class, cadets were dropping each other onto the mats with regularity and purpose but because of the techniques they had been taught, none of the cadets were hurt.
“They’ll be sore for a couple days but that’s because we’re doing the same thing over and over instead of just once in a while like they would have out on the road,” said Klausing. “It’s still incredibly important for them to know what to do and what they are capable of so this is an important training for them, even if they probably won’t use all of it every single shift.”