Dykes in uniform are now a staple myth—can do anything a man can do, right.
I preferred duty in felony cars, that’s a squad car with two officers which gets sent on potentially dangerous calls. The paper car is the car that has one officer who is dispatched to fill out property damage reports, complaints, etc. I never drew my weapon off the range and only had about five really hard physical situations in my career. That’s kind of high. I was considered an officer who “ran hot” a possible liability for the department—for God’s sake someone might get hurt! Understandably, most officers have no combatives training, are totally unprepared to deal with violence in any effective way short of shooting—bad, very bad—and wrestling the subject until we get the cuffs on. The entire middle ground, between shooting and cuffing is therefore problematic. I know male officers who have been disarmed and disabled, totally at the mercy of the suspect, who thankfully fled in both disarmament cases.
Yes, we have one dyke who sends out a back-up call and we find her hiding under her car from a homeless female, who was not really that much of a handful. We had two dykes in a felony car who were defeated by a lone irate woman. We had to rescue them as well—with the use of minimum force, of course.
The following illustrates the difference in policing from one region of the country to another. Outside of the department, in a nearby jurisdiction, there was a police funeral. I attended. It was also attended by a contingent of Irish cops from Boston, led by a captain. These were dignitaries. Police funerals, for officers killed in the line of duty, these are events with their own distinct character—complex in a word. I know an officer on the force in question so got a little information beyond the hearsay. The Boston contingent ask if there is an “Irish” pub in the area, and of course they are directed to an Irish-themed establishment, but there will be very few actual people of Irish extraction there.
After sometime the 911 dispatcher gets a call about ten men who claim to be police clearing this bar, just telling patrons, “This is ar baar—out ya go!”
No one was hurt. They didn’t have any trouble getting compliance from the clientele who all went on their way. But the proprietor was understandably disturbed by this abrupt change of ownership. I do not know how this was resolved. It was a touchy situation involving dignitaries—including a captain, which simply boggles the mind—and eventually went up the chain of command until someone of sufficient rank on the host force impressed upon the Boston PD captain that in this part of the country, the police uphold the rights of business owners, not reassign them. God only knows what it’s like to be drinking at a bar in some East Coast city that is suddenly taken over by police behaving like Vikings within their own jurisdiction.
This violence guy knows, and its fucking scary.
Mar 23, 2019, 7:05 PM (3 days ago)
to me
You have an excellent ear and memory! I’m impressed that you tied together all my sea stories and presented them accurately without taking any physical notes at the time. You are more accurate than the reporters at my local fishwrap, who would consistently get some detail wrong in any police incident I was involved in.
And that was some damn good Italian food, too!
One small detail – and it doesn’t require a correction, just so you personally can have a clear picture of my years of servitude: I DREW my pistol frequently on duty… “draw-and-direct” on suspects, or at a “preparatory position” when doing building searches, that sort of thing. What I didn’t do was ever FIRE the thing outside the range. (Strange as it may seem, I never had any firearm mishaps either. We had one SWAT guy, who was actually a righteous dude and a good friend, who “killed his locker”, and another SWAT sniper who had an accidental rifle discharge on a callout, because he had one in the pipe while low-crawling into position. That is an inexcusable fuckup – Sniper 101 – but as with all things SWAT it was hand-waved away so as not to tarnish the rep of the Golden Ones.)
Retired Portland Cop
A Once Great Medieval City: 2016: Impressions of Baltimore Maryland
"Understandably, most officers have no combatives training, are totally unprepared to deal with violence in any effective way short of shooting—bad, very bad—and wrestling the subject until we get the cuffs on. The entire middle ground, between shooting and cuffing is therefore problematic. I know male officers who have been disarmed and disabled, totally at the mercy of the suspect, who thankfully fled in both disarmament cases"
My cop friends in this town are all completely useless in a fight. They all run for exercise and are thus small and weak. None of them wrestled in high school. Several of them are pretty high up and pilot a desk so I guess it's OK other than they're setting a bad example. The criminals in this town are mostly dope fiends stabbing one-another or teenage Latino gangsters, so I guess there's no real need to be tough. Mostly, the cops are mopping up from a dope-fiend stabbing or collaring teenage skinnies.
We had a friend who was a skinny male Evangelical and was - I'm sure this goes without saying - completely unaccustomed to violence. He joined the LA County sheriff's department where they start you off in the county jail. After discovering that he was completely ineffective in extracting non-compliant prisoners, he turned to us for help. We put him on a Starting Strength 3x5 SQUATZ AND OATZ plan and before long he had to dial it back because he was hurting prisoners with his grip.
Ideally, we all would've wrestled in high school and boxed but if you missed those opportunities, the easiest thing to do his get bigger and stronger with weightlifting. My friend's dad, also a police officer, weas a weightlifter and well over 6 feet tall. Shaking his hand was like grabbing a brick. He didn't need a weapon.
That said, we should all read "The Violence Project" by our host and learn combatives. The reasons are given by Officer Friendly above and Greg Ellifritz:
activeresponsetraining.net/the-new-normal-in-police-tactics
Even if you are armed with a gun, the last thing you want is to be disarmed and brained with a screwdriver.