How could this have been better handled?

[MasterPain]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJOhSS1AAOU

Opinions?

[Lupin1]

Well right away he grabbed him by one arm and kept it straight. The first thing my friend who's teaching me some Akkido taught me was that you can't control someone when their arm is straight. He should have bent the guy's arm and got him under control (on his stomach on the floor) and then got him cuffed right away instead of giving the guy a chance to fight.

Although the guy who commented and said the cop shouldn't have even touched the guy and should have stayed back pointing his gun at him and told him to get down on the ground had a point, too. Not sure that particular guy would have listened, but it seems like more of a cop thing to do.

[sensei8]

Get back up ASAP!! Imho, the leo should have kept his weapon drawn on the suspect and then ordered the suspect to the ground. Kept his distance from the suspect, and if the suspect left the scene, radio all of the necessary info for a later arrest.

However, I don't know the policies of that police department on apprehending a robber suspect by yourself until back up arrives!! Not many leo's are properly trained enough in the martial arts, other than what's taught at the academies.

[Soheir]

Well, the police is way too close! Why on earth did he go right there with the gun? But, maybe he had a reason....who knows. Perhaps he took the gun out on the first place because he was alone, I can't make up another reason.

[MasterPain]

Get back up ASAP!! Imho, the leo should have kept his weapon drawn on the suspect and then ordered the suspect to the ground. Kept his distance from the suspect, and if the suspect left the scene, radio all of the necessary info for a later arrest.

However, I don't know the policies of that police department on apprehending a robber suspect by yourself until back up arrives!! Not many leo's are properly trained enough in the martial arts, other than what's taught at the academies.

That was about what I thought. The best range for a handgun is 10 feet, any closer and it starts to become a liability. I would never initiate a grappling situation with a gun in my hand.

[ps1]

Too close. The pushing and pulling should never have happened.

[tallgeese]

The popular law enforcement opinion will be to create space, take some form of concealment or cover and issue commands from there.

However, if you've got a visual on both hands, and they are empty, I don't have a radical problem with crashing to contact as long as:

- the initial contact is surprising to the bad guy

- the initial contact is overwhelming in nature

- control is established quickly and maintained after contact

It's less than ideal to have a gun in hand at that point, but I don't want to Monday morning quarterback the guy. It might have seemed like a good idea at the time. I don't know too many good cops who would let this guy walk out of the store.

Back up is also ideal, but to his defense, it's alot harder to remember to do all those operations when the adrenaline dump hits. It's almost certain as well in this video that regardless he's going to have to take some sort of action alone.

So, once we deal with the gun issue, either creating space or moving right to contact with it holstered- again, I won't pass judgment here each situation and officers training is different- let's look at the takedown.

One of the major problems I see over and over again in police control tactics is the reliance on the straight arm bar to put people down. The problem is that it rarely works when one is operating by themselves. This leads to what I call "the dance of death" where both parties, now tied together via lousy arm bar, spin around while they via for control.

There are a couple of reasons this happens:

-lack of routine training in said arm bar

-lack of willingness to strike prior to takedown on law enforcement's part

-generally, it's a less efficient manner of putting someone on the ground than others out there

There's just too much movement possible when you're only controlling one arm on the part of the bad guy. There's also far to little time to train multiple transitions thru small joint stuff for most cops to work on routinely.

It's part of the reason I prefer body contact type takedowns. Modified doubles and singles, upper body locks, and when in doubt the old fashioned full body tackle. I've had much more success with these types of things than any arm bar type work.

The times I've used limb initiated throws, I've found shoulder cranks to be more useful again than strait arm bars due to the higher level of control of the whole body.

I think traditionally, le trainers have shied away from contact takedowns due to their fear that smaller cops won't be able to do them. Very possible. However, they're not having any more luck with the straight arm bar. It's cases like this that le trainers and administrations need to admit there are limits to the tools we give people and we need to work on transitioning up the use of force scale with those people. There's case law, it's okay.

Ideally, for me, I'd gun out and get the guy to turn around. Once I could see the hands, holster and smash. We have the benefit of a spiffy emergency button that minimizes fiddling with the radio in the event you're surprised and in a fight. It's guaranteed to go off at least once a shift because you bump it getting into or out of your car, but it's good for stuff like this. Otherwise, you'll have to read the bad guy to see when your opportune time to get on the air is. This, you can't really call, it's dependent far too much on his actions, posture, and non verbal cues.

Lots of good learning points here. I'm going to download this for use int control tactics refresher this year.

[MasterPain]

Yay! Bill did good.

[JiuJitsuNation]

Yeah I thought the running up and putting the gun to the suspects head and trying to take them down at the same time was poor technique. But agree with the officers actions.

[sensei8]

Yeah I thought the running up and putting the gun to the suspects head and trying to take them down at the same time was poor technique. But agree with the officers actions.

Yeah, because his life was in danger even more so at that time, imho.