Maybe I just missed the agencies where baton use is frequent and universally successful, but I suspect not.īy the time you read this article, the Rodney King incident will have observed its 15th anniversary. 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. 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. One trainer said he was from a 300-officer department and the baton was used only once to strike in the past year. 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.
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. But of those who were street warriors, the answer was, astoundingly, zero. 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. The instructor asked the audience if any of them, as instructors, had used a baton against an aggressor or assailant within the past year.
Click here to subscribe to Law Officer MagazineĪt a recent national conference of law enforcement instructors, the topic of baton use surfaced at one of the presentations.