Crisis Intervention & Use of Force Assignment - Dangers of Edged Weapons

Crisis Intervention & Use of Force Assignment

Dangers of Edged Weapons

March 21, 2018

Jillian Tica

        It was around two and a half millions of years ago that the edged weapons were created from the stone age period of history. The edge weapons are the motion by a human that also does a slit or a forceful motion to a person or object. Some of the weapons that are used to attack someone are handheld spears, arrows, daggers, throwing spears, axes, and katana swords. The danger of the edged weapons is that it is unannounced what could happen in a situation. Not expecting an edge weapon attack can cause serious injury, but also death. Someone could look like they have no obvious hiding spots for the weapons and the next thing you know it is in their hands. The officer always has to suspect that when they are about to be attacked, such as knowing the result of the situation as to the weather conditions and the cause and effect of what happened, the target’s behavior, like them making a fist with an angry emotion, from a normal posture to a fighting stance, officer’s perception, and the tactical considerations such as if there is going to back up with the officers, how the officers will communicate, and which equipment’s will be used it all leads to access-plan-act process to make it complete and understandable of how the use of force model works.

        Yes, I agree that using empty hand techniques is an option and effective against someone that has an edged weapon because the officer can use hard physical control to protect themselves such as kicks, punches, strikes, neck restraints and blocking or soft physical control is that involves joint locking, touch pressures and non-resisting techniques. It also matters on the fighting stance, arms sides together, distraction and the proper fighting techniques to successfully defend themselves. If they do not defend properly, the officer can get injured and the attack will run away. After successfully finishing the empty hand techniques, there’s four types of resistance that an officer will experience, which is the resistance from the escort position, resistance while applying the handcuffs, passive resistance, and active aggression.

        The 21-foot rule is a distance to find out the time it would for an officer to notice a threat, bringing out a weapon, and fire two rounds against someone attacking with a stabbing weapon. The 21-foot rule originated from Lt. John Tueller in 1983 who is a firearms instructor from the Salt Lake City Police Department. He set up a drill where he placed an attacker armed with an edged weapon that is 21 feet away from an officer that had a sidearm. He told the attacker to run into the officer. The purpose of it was to see if the officer could fire the attacker before he stabber the officer in possibly about 1.5 seconds. It takes more than 1.5 for an officer to react to it. The 21-foot rule is still valid in some situations. It affects it in some ways depending on the attacker’s speed to reach the officer and the officers speed on reacting to the attacker’s charge. If the rule is less than 20, it will be a risky and a fatal chance. While, more than a 21-foot rule gives the officer more time to get ready when the attacker goes after the officer. It also gives the time for the officer to distract the attacker before striking. It’s important to have defence edged weapon training because no matter how badly injured they get, they have to do their best to stop the attacker. That is why it is dangerous if an attacker has an edged weapon, once the officer is distracted in some way, they can lose their chance on taking the attacker down.

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