Page Twenty Seven - Kung Fu Panda (Copcast #142)

Years ago a lot of effort was put into teaching new police officers a variety of holds, grabs and takedowns. Some of these holds were so complex that a degree in human anatomy was required to implement them, as was a fair degree of luck when trying to apply them to your quarry. George still remembers those late nights in the gym at Training School, practising an array of thumb-locks, arm holds and handcuff takedowns prior to the practical assessments the next day.

There is no doubt that some of these skills have proved to be effective during his service but he still has to suppress a grin when he sees two or three bobbies piled on top of a struggling prisoner. He’s not laughing at them, it's just that the reality of restraining someone is to get them on the floor at the earliest opportunity and to keep the sharp bitey bits from your soft fleshy parts and he’s never a textbook thumb lock.

The most effective way to implement this is to execute a front or rear leg sweep followed by the ‘Kung Fu Panda’ static restraint method otherwise described as sitting on the suspect. Once this method of restraint has been applied, the prisoner can be handcuffed, limb strapped and will be firmly under no illusion that he had been detained. There is little room for complex thumb locks in this real world, so much so that someone at the Training School has finally realised this and most of those holds are no longer taught.

Recently George was on duty with a probationer, Sam was a mere slip of a girl and just 19 years old but loved to get ‘stuck in’. It was late evening and they were called to a disturbance in the street. Reports were coming in of a male trying to attack vehicles with a tree branch in the middle of the road.

Sure enough upon arrival they saw a number of cars trying to turn around and a man screaming at the top of his voice. "I want to ascend" he was shouting, along with threats to kill himself. George and Sam ran over to the man who had fortunately discarded his hefty tree branch by leaving it on the roof of a stationary vehicle, it's driver clearly intent on not getting out.

George grabbed hold of the man by his collar and started to drag him to the side of the road, as there were far too many moving vehicles in it for his liking. Reasoning with him was not an option.

His probationer was trying to force the man’s right arm up his back to gain control, but this wasn't working. They eventually dragged him to side of the police car where George forced him against the boot. He was shouting at him to calm down, but the man responded by throwing a punch George’s way, which he successfully dodged.

With size and sanity on his side George executed a text-book-perfect front leg sweep taking the violent and disturbed man to the floor. He struggled and kept shouting to be let go, so that he could 'ascend' to a higher place. The only place to go in George’s mind was a cell or a Secure Psychiatric Assessment Unit.

The man continued to struggle then tried spit at Sam. The only way to deal with this guy was to get his face closer to the pavement, which meant George having to place his full body weight on the thrashing prisoner whilst holding him in a half nelson. This gave his probationer an opportunity to secure him in limb restraints. A few minutes later the male, successfully subdued and restrained, was helped into the rear of a caged van that took him to hospital having been detained under the Mental Health Act.

The whole incident had only lasted a few minutes but both George and his probationer were exhausted. It just goes to show that when it all kicks off the rules and ju-jitsu type nose holds go out the window.

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Page Twenty - The FM Button (Copcast #135)

In the UK, police personal radios have a little orange button. It sits on top far, far away from the working end of the radio, the keypad. The purpose of this button is to get help pronto, on blues and twos from wherever and whomever possible. Hold the button down for a few seconds and everyone in your division is alerted to your peril by a loud intermittent bleeping noise that cuts in over all transmissions.

Everyone can hear you, whether its screams of fear or shouts of ‘Get back!’, normally followed by various expletives. In training you are taught to shout ‘location location location’ but no-one ever does. In essence this is the modern day equivalent of the police whistle and is, fortunately, rarely used. Most of the time they are accidental activations; normally CID officers leaning on it whilst stretching for their coffee cup or over zealous PCSO’s who are following someone ‘of interest’.

The noise from the activation immediately grabs your attention and there is usually a slight pause before the officer calls up to say sorry for leaning on it. George has happily been to precious few real activations, probably only about ten in his entire career, although as you may remember he has had cause to use the little orange button himself.

Not everybody is entirely comfortable with the whole ‘FM’ button thing, recently for example George was in the station half monitoring radio traffic, half trying to complete a court file. He was with his skipper talking about almost anything but work when all of a sudden they heard the words “10-9 officer assistance”. It was spoken fairly quietly, the officer a little out of breath but sounding calm and no orange button activation. The radio traffic fell silent as dozens of police officers listened intently. Was this a joke, had they misheard the transmission? No, ‘10-9’ is what hey used before they had the new radios and you had to literally shout to get assistance and not rely on technology. The caller was a dog unit and he was in trouble.

George and the skipper stared at each other for a micro second then bolted towards the door where they saw a great sight, at least half a dozen response cars with lights activated all scrambling to get out of the rear yard. They jumped in a station van at the rear of the convoy and headed towards the last known location of the dog unit and arrived within a few minutes to find a house completely surrounded by at least twenty police officers. George went to the front of the house for no reason other than that the back garden was full of coppers and he felt like a spare part. He saw a man trying to fight about five officers in the hallway.

He lost and was dragged out, handcuffed and limb strapped. He certainly wasn’t very happy, there was a lot of confusion and an awful lot of blood. George took an arm and helped place the struggling prisoner into his waiting caged van destined for the hospital.

It became clear that the dog handler had stopped this chap following reports of a domestic incident at the address. As the dog handler started to check him out, the suspect made off on foot and the officer gave chase but lost him in some foliage around the corner. The suspect then jumped on the police officer from the foliage and started to pummel him to make good his escape. The dog handler used the only thing he had in his reach to defend himself, his ASP Baton and used the handle of the baton to strike the suspect over the head several times causing a three inch cut on top of his head. Hence all the blood.

The suspect then ran off, that’s when the dog handler called for assistance and the world and his brother turned out for him which must have been very reassuring.

With the suspect safely restrained everyone returned to the police station as the suspect was at hospital getting treatment for the head injury with three of the biggest, meanest officers to guard him.

A while later there was another call for assistance and George drove the van back to the hospital where he found the prisoner had decided he hadn't had enough fighting for one day and started to play up whilst being sutured. He had to be further restrained by the officers at scene during which the head wound was inadvertently reopened. More blood.

Thankfully the dog handler had only received minor injuries, his stab vest taking the brunt of the punches. If he'd deployed his dog things might have been very different but, as so often happens in this job, events happened so quickly he never had a chance to. Afterwards he openly admitted to forgetting his radio even had the orange ‘FM’ button but fortunately he had the presence of mind to say where he was immediately prior to the assault. A valuable lesson learned that day for everybody.

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Page Ten - Sister and the Fighting Drunk (Copcast #125)

George was listening to the latest episode of Copcast and chuckling at Morgan's valiant attempt at an english accent, that had somehow morphed into australian, when his Night Duty refs break was interupted by a call on his radio.

“Units to attend the Accident and Emergency department at the hospital, patients fighting with members of staff, graded I India”

George and his operator, along with their whole team, were already in the back yard looking for their cars before the message was halfway through. George, like most officers in the UK, was taught very early in his training that hospital staff are among his best friends, they support and protect you but they are non-combatants and you should protect them and treat them with respect. Upset a nurse and your life is likely to become very miserable one day when either you need their assistance with an injured witness or prisoner or worse still if you're hurt and need their care.

George had a particularly close friendship with one of the A&E Sisters who he knew was on duty that night and worse, despite being only a petite 5'2” she was most likely in the thick of the action. Needless to say he was first on scene and his operator had white knuckles from holding the FM handle so tightly.

They ran in to the hospital to find a large group of people milling around in the corridor and pushing their way through found, as George had feared, the diminutive nurse with her hair somewhat messed, sitting on the back of very beligerant and apparently drunk male in his twenties, who was sprawled out on the floor, restraining him. George tried hard to surpress a grin as he asked, “Sister, could you possibly explain why you are using this poor man as a seat?”

Sister explained that the male in question had been brought in by his mother after he had been out drinking to celebrate getting out of prison. Apparently he had been so much the worse for wear that he fell and split his scalp, which explained the large amount of blood on the floor. While he was waiting to be treated the young man had got into an argument with his mother and ended up holding her by the throat against a wall and beating her head against it. At this point Sister had intervened and by all accounts a most impressive roll-around had ensued with Sister winning.

Sister just wanted the male treated and out of her department so George agreed to assist her while she sutured his impressive scalp wound which was bleeding profusely. During the procedure George noticed that Sister seemed to have forgotten to anaethsetise the patient before she began stitching, when he mentioned this she smiled slightly and said “Don't you think he's got enough anaesthetic inside him already and besides he needs to learn not to attack medical staff, we're here to help people and not to become part of their fight. Don't worry, he really can't feel this at all and it could be dangerous to add anaestheatic to his ethenolic state”.

Eventually the man was sutured and ready to leave, he woke up the next morning with a thumping hangover in a police cell with the news that he was being charged with several offences including assaulting his mother and the nurse and would be going directly to court that morning. It seems his celebrations at being released from custody were a little premature after all.

George's opinion of medical staff, especially nurses, went up yet another notch that night; they may well be non-combatants but you really do not want to mess with one of them.

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