What type of baton do police use

The reduced weight allows officers to practise offensive and defensive baton techniques at a much lower risk of injury. This section also includes some baton accessories, including protective carrying cases, training bags and repair kits for expandable batons.

When shopping for police batons online at CopsPlus, don't forget that all of them are covered by our low price guarantee. Boston Leather Junior Sap 8. Boston Leather Midget Sap 6. View All. Customer Service: Mack Ave. If you see someone hit with a police baton, what can you do to help them?

To get answers, we turned to Jeffrey M. Goodloe, M. Here's what you need to know about police batons, the injuries they can cause, and how to treat those injuries should they occur. While a police baton strike has fewer variables than a projectile rubber bullet, there are still factors that can change how the strike affects your body. I'm not aware of too many law enforcement officers who are trained to swing softly. The variability comes from where you are hit. If you're hit in those places, the impact will likely be painful to the point of temporary debilitation.

Fractures do occur, and often out of self-defense. Police baton strikes can occur to the head, the effects of which can range from simple bruising of soft tissue on the scalp to internal brain bleeding to eye injuries.

Strikes to the chest or abdomen can result in fractures or internal bleeding. The amount of pain also depends on the style of police baton and what part of the baton made contact with your body. All-metal batons are likely to deliver more pain than ones made of composite material.

Being struck with the more tapered end of a collapsible baton would affect less surface area than being struck with less tapered end. You'll feel pain for a few days. At a recent national conference of law enforcement instructors, the topic of baton use surfaced at one of the presentations. The instructor asked the audience if any of them, as instructors, had used a baton against an aggressor or assailant within the past year.

To be fair, many of those instructors were currently on assignment at their respective academies and not on the streets, and thus would not have had the opportunity to use force. But of those who were street warriors, the answer was, astoundingly, zero. The instructor then asked these instructors, who should have their fingers on the pulse of use-of-force incidents in their respective departments, to comment on the frequency of baton use in general.

Now, there were some small departments represented in that group, but most were midsize and large agencies, and these instructors struggled to remember the last time a baton was used to strike and subdue a suspect.

One trainer said he was from a officer department and the baton was used only once to strike in the past year. In my sphere of influence, I continue this poll with the agencies I train and network, and I've found the above results are the norm rather than the exception.

To complicate matters, in agencies where baton use exists, and in court cases in which I've been retained as an expert witness, I've discovered numerous baton failures, primarily not in product, but in application.

Maybe I just missed the agencies where baton use is frequent and universally successful, but I suspect not. By the time you read this article, the Rodney King incident will have observed its 15th anniversary. Did that event serve as a defining moment in the decline of impact law enforcement? Is the decision to strike with an impact weapon now tantamount to the decision to shoot? Interesting questions for debate, but it's possible other influences are silently at work, such as:.

Many of the above factors underlie decreasing baton usage. Certainly, the criminal element is not growing lax in their approach to resisting and fighting with the police.

Regardless, I am a proponent of the police baton for numerous reasons. First, it's the link between empty hands and deadly force; in other words, officers don't have to put it away to deploy another piece of equipment to escalate or de-escalate force, and no other piece of equipment on your duty belt offers this multiuse capacity.

It stops some fights before they start because people believe they will get hit if they don't comply, and a baton is affordable and its use easy to train. Call me a traditionalist, but it just still seems to fit the police profile. Probably most important, however, the baton can end a confrontation fast without excessive injury to the officer or the suspect, and since confrontation ends quickly, the likelihood of prolonged confrontation and excessive repetition, a major element in custody death, is minimized.

Finally, fellow officers seem more anxious to help stabilize a subject downed via baton than they do when the threat of 50, volts is present. Now let's discuss what technology exists on the market today, how agencies and officers should choose from all the options and take a look at the three major players currently on the market. What's Available? We have traded the long wooden baton of the past for a more convenient product, the expandable baton. Consequently, we have traded size and mass, ease of deployment and simplicity for the convenience and assured presence of today's expandables.

Deployment, though, is an issue with expandables, and I will discuss that below. Before you decide to embrace or abandon the baton, consider the technology currently available and its potential for controlling highly resistive or assaultive subjects. Unlike the LAPD 26", second-growth hickory baton of my grandfather, the modern day expandable comes in a variety of sizes and weights.

The one-size-fits-all mentality no longer applies to batons. Officers can choose a baton ranging from 16"" long, depending on their duty assignment, stature strengths and weaknesses. Officers can color-coordinate with high-profile silver, nickel or chrome batons, tactical black batons or even gold batons, and choose from an assortment of grip textures. The age-old debate over the best caliber for law enforcement continues, but in the end, officers must perform a personal task analysis based upon many personal variables.

Do you want one-hit stopping power, multiple-strike capacity, quick reload, big, small, etc.? You also must answer the question, "Can I handle what I want? Like gun and ammo manufacturers, baton manufacturers will argue all day about the capabilities of their product s , but the fact remains all products offer advantages and disadvantages when it comes to individual operators.

Bottom line: Operators must make the best possible decision when choosing a tool upon which they may stake their lives. Final judgment must be based on officer size, strength, training, experience and assignment. A baton is not an option if it's impossible or too difficult to deploy, and, of course, no baton strike will work when delivered weakly or ineptly. Also, without the right attitude behind the strike, failure is predictable. But although any baton in the hands of a skilled and fit operator should suffice, "skilled" and "fit" are subjective, and officer experience varies, so a more objective guideline for choosing a baton must exist.

Start by considering your duty assignment. If you need to conceal the baton due to a plainclothes or detective assignment, go with a shorter length. This compromises baton weight, but the element of surprise as you dramatically extend the baton can morph you from a seemingly nondescript citizen to a warrior and have a very debilitating effect on an aggressor.

Speed, shock and overwhelming action are sometimes more important than the size or weight of the stick. As an instructor, I've done demonstrations that prove this by using a foam training baton, and if I can do it with foam, you certainly can do it with steel. Non-uniformed officers must, therefore, practice so they become fearsome in deployment and presentation. Uniformed officers usually choose a baton in the 21"" range depending on their own size and whether they stand and walk or sit and drive the majority of the time.

Longer models on shorter officers usually result in a baton poking the ribs; although a rotational holster helps some, with all the equipment on duty belts these days even the rotation may not help.

An officer on a foot beat can deal with the extra length without compromising comfort. Many perceive a baton's length as an advantage because it can extend your distance from an encounter or subject. In fact, a long baton could prove cumbersome to handle in close battle. Carefully assess the probability of a spontaneous attack versus a pre-announced event, and you may decide length is for show and compactness and efficiency are for "go.