Nomination For A Hero Badge

Yeah, but!

Here is the latest and greatest device for humanely capturing criminals. A bolo type device that is fired from its container and designed to wrap around a suspect’s legs, so that they can’t run. Looks good on paper. Real life, not so much…
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/police-test-spider-man-device-as-alternative-to-taser/ar-AAHqBWn#image=AAHqBWn_1|1

Okay, I can see how this device might be non-lethal for a suspect standing still. Course if he is standing still, why would an officer need to bolo his ass?

Here is a more realistic scenario. A hood rat breaks and runs and starts across the street, without regard for traffic. He crosses in front of a garbage truck. Being fleet of foot and wearing felony fliers, this is no step for a stepper. The officer deploys his non-lethal bolo thingy. It works as promised. The line wraps around his legs stopping his forward progress. It is truly a non-lethal alternative. The same cannot be said for the garbage truck.

On the bright side, the hood rat’s mama now has two entries in the ghetto lottery: the police and the company that owns the garbage truck.

Police work is the poster child for unintended consequences. People who have no idea what the job entails come up with policies or inventions that represent the latest panacea for kinda gentler. Experience will show that as Maxwell Smart used to say: “They missed it by that much.” There are a variety of reasons for the failures.

The first thing one must know is that given the opportunity the average police officer can and will fuck up a box of rocks with a rubber mallet. Sometimes it is out of malice. Oftentimes it is trying to make do with a tool or direction that was never intended to be used in that application.

Capture net

NYPD used a capture net to subdue a knife wielding wacko perched on a store awning. The net ensured that wacko couldn’t use his knife anymore. That didn’t stop him from struggling and rolling off the awning to the sidewalk below. He died. His mama hit the ghetto lottery and for all I know moved to Miami Beach.

The old standby for most cops was the night stick. LAPD used a night stick(s) with marginal effectiveness against Rodney King. A little known fact is that all of the officers were within LAPD policy and training as they beat down ole Rodney.

The policy required that the officers issue commands and if they didn’t obtain compliance, strike, and continue to command and strike until the suspect complied. They didn’t anticipate that Rodney was having an out of body experience and mentally left the scene.

LAPD instituted the policy after several officers were injured or killed while engaged in wrestling matches with suspects.

It goes without saying the NYPD officers who tried to turn a suspect into a Popsicle by the injudicious placement of a nightstick were beyond the pale.

I could go on. Call it a Taser, a capture net, bean bag round, rubber bullet, night stick, pain compliance or this bolo thingy. They have a place. They might work and then again they might not. These are things, inanimate objects. It is up to Chiefs to select officers suited to the job. Once selected they must be trained and equipped to carry out the mission. The culture of the agency must be one that requires superior performance.

Police work is dynamic. Generally it involves the interaction of two or more people. Often the agendas of the participants are not compatible. The style, these days is to hold the police accountable but the offenders get a bye. Their role in setting the stage or contributing to the outcome is rarely discussed.

Common sense says being a crook is a tough job. They ought to be made to take the bad with the good. Just like the rest of us.