An interesting thing happened the other day. I was acting as cover officer on a call regarding a drunk vagrant. In addition to the me and the other officer, two firefighter-EMTs and two paramedics were on scene. The paramedics had already made the decision to involuntarily transport the vagrant to a nearby hospital due to mental and medical reasons.
As everyone else was discussing the situation, the vagrant decided it was time to leave, and she turned to walk off. However, I was standing in her way, and as cover officer, I stepped in to prevent her escape. As I reached up with my reaction hand to stop her, she suddenly grabbed my hand with a remarkable amount of force. I easily broke free of that and placed her into an arm bar. The paramedics were able to get her onto a stretcher and transported without further incident.
What caught me off-guard about the situation, was not that a drunk would become resistive, rather the perceptions of the other people on scene. Neither my partner, nor the four EMS workers, had seen her start to leave or grab me. Engrossed in their conversation, all of them looked back when they saw a flurry of motion, and by that time, I had physical control of the drunk. Their perception was that I had grabbed the drunk because she must have ‘pissed me off,’ when the reality was something far different.
What if the situation had been a little different, and I had been forced to plant the drunk into the pavement? The good folks from the Office of Professional Standards start investigating, and there are five public safety workers within four feet of the incident that only saw me body slam a drunk, but no reason for me to have done so.
My point in all of this is that I could have better protected myself by stating “Don’t grab me!” while I executed the arm bar. At that point everyone else there would know exactly what had happened, and there would be little doubt in any later inquiries. As it was, I –assumed– that everyone had seen what had happened.
Regular readers of Massad Ayoob’s “Ayoob Files
This is one reason why I believe that instructors need to train officers to always verbalize in any use-of-force encounter. Witnesses who do not see why the officer used force are far less damaging to the officer’s credibility if they testify that they at least heard the officer shouting “Drop the gun!”
Stay safe!