Reducing the number of police shootings has become a priority in recent years as several high profile cases have made headlines in the news. While many protests have occurred one thing that I have heard little or nothing about is how to reduce the number of shootings. Adding body cams and and vehicle cams.
Here is my suggestion. At present every single police department in the country sets their own training requirements, they set their own policies and they create their own training standards. I had that reality brought to my attention when I found this video on youtube recently.
As you may have observed this officer did a good job of wrestling with a perp that was resisting. He did it without the use of deadly force and managed to hold the guy down until help arrived to help get the perp into cuffs.
This issue of none standard training methodology is something that I decided to research. What I found is this web page which verifies that every police department sets their own training policies.
http://www.policehow.com/police-training.php
I don't know how realistic that it is to require that every police officer become a trained MMA fighter, but the situation could certainly benefit from a more standardized training methodology, which includes ground fighting techniques and handcuffing strategies. Like the commentator explains in the video a lot of time people take the most excessive option because that is the only tool that they have at their disposal.
We live in a world where criminals have "How To Be A Better Criminal 101" classes available both on television and on the internet 24/7. In a rating survey many years ago many marveled that the television show Cops was the favorite show being watched in prison, but that wasn't a surprise to me. They criminals are watching so that they can be better at getting away from the police. They are also watching MMA fights on television, and youtube. They are working out in the weight room to become stronger. They are honing their fighting skills in the yard, and when they get back out sometimes they are even tougher to take down than they were when they went in.
For police to be capable of taking these bad guys down without the use of deadly force they need to have the best tools, technology, and training available. If they aren't keeping pace with the times then they will be forced to use the most extreme measure and pull their firearm. So lets visit the idea of including some ground fighting and handcuffing strategies in every police academy.
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