Not another statistic thank you. by The Blue Light Run

Not another statistic thank you.

written by The Blue Light Run on the 02^nd March 2013 at 0:42 - Posted in Police Blog

Two days ago I went toe to toe with a young man who had mental health issues, plus markers for violence, mental health and weapons. My control room tried (& failed) to send me to this job single crewed by splitting up the crew. If they didn't know who he was before they dispatched me then I could forgive them, but they knew everything about him (it was a domestic).
15 minutes later I was rolling around with this young man at the top of a set of stairs, he was trying to bite me, head butt me and claw at my face. A few palm strikes and an unapproved force head lock managed to get him under control (17 stone on his back helped too) until he was unceremoniously carried downstairs into the back of a van, snarling & gnashing his teeth.
Now, there were two officers, both of us got stuck in and made equal contributions to getting hands down (the head lock was my colleagues main contribution). The fact is we had a very long struggle, the male managed to get to his knees again despite two burly coppers doing their best to pin him down. It was a hard fight, at the end of it we were knackered and worn out. With the exception of the suspect of course, who still wanted to fight but fortunately couldn't due to handcuffs (rear stack) and limb restraints. We were all very lucky not to get seriously injured, given the close proximity of the stairs.

So, did we get a welfare check from the control room? No. Was the controller willing to send one of us to our doom? Yes. Is the force over stretched, under resourced? Definitely. Do the powers that be care about officer safety? Absolutely not.

Give me a taser and the right tools to do the job properly if you are going to make cuts that compromise the safety of officers. I don't want to end up as a Facebook like or a twitter retweet for the wrong reasons.

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