Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Well, they do tend to get into too much trouble with their firearms. . .

"ANDERSON, Shasta County (CBS/AP) — The police department of a Northern California town has decided to supply its 20 officers with nunchaku sticks, a martial arts weapon they say will help them take down suspects."

19 comments:

WarriorClass III said...

Yes, now they can kill you while inflicting far more pain.

Anonymous said...

Nunchucks are illegal in California.

Anonymous said...

Except that Nunchuks are generally illegal in Califoria, with an exception for martial arts instructors using them on the premises of their schools. Did Sacramento pass *another* law exempting the Only Ones? Or is this going to get interesting..

S Adams [LEO, Ret.] said...

It was always hard enough to get LEO's interested in just maintaining proficiency with a firearm [most don't]. I don't see this use of sticks gaining much traction. I would predict the use will be discontinued about the same time the first LEO has them taken from him, and beaten with them.

Chiu ChunLing said...

...

Okay, props for thinking outside the box, but they should have put more actual thinking in before settling on this 'solution'. The ubiquitous tonfa-derived design is an excellent and versitile weapon which serves well as a defensive tool and can be used to help grapple or pin an adversary's limbs with advantageous leverage.

Nunchakus are a simple flail weapon, they are for allowing an attack with maximum force while reducing the chance of the impact being transmitted back to the wielder (resulting in injury or loosening the wielder's grip). They are not for restraining or disarming opponents, no matter how they are used in movies (and I don't think they're usually shown being used that way anyway). Either task is better served by positive transmission of contact force back to the wielder to allow greater control of what the other end of the weapon is actually doing. The particular model they are showing doesn't have a connective strap long enough to be suitable for an expedient restraint device anyway.

If they really want something that is less likely to cause serious injury and better for expedient restraint, they should have gone with a knotted rope about two meters long. While the reach and high velocity which the furthest extension can achieve if wielded energetically make if far from a harmless weapon if used as a lash, and the possibility of inflicting lethal injury to the neck by strangulation or sudden arrest (of bodily motion) is very real, it is not excessively more dangerous than a normal nightstick. And it actually can be used to entangle a fleeing or attacking adversary (even if thrown or hurled rather than used as a lash) and then quickly serve as an expedient restraining device.

Or, horror of horrors, the police might commit to a response pattern which relied less on immediate infliction of injury or incapacitation (however temporary) and more on positively identifying suspects so that flight or fight was not a viable response for actual criminals. It's a small town, use cameras to identify and an indelible paint/scent spray to 'tag' suspects who try to escape crime scenes and then bring them in at your leisure. If you need to shoot someone to avoid loss of innocent life that's one thing, but most criminals will think better of adding murder to their rap when they know they can be easily identified and caught.

This nunchaku nonsense seems calculated to inspire cops to engage in silly theatrics, and confuse those encountering them as to whether they are actually legitimate law-enforcement.

Happy D said...

Somebody has been watching too many Bruce Lee movies, nunchaku require extensive training to be effective with.
Like Bruce Lee did!
If departments that can't get enough trigger time for their officers they can't get enough training time for this system.

Anonymous said...

How quaint. It is almost like they are doing this to retain some "only ones" status. Recall now that Sotomayor was instrumental in saying that nunchucks are NOT a protected arm....

Some might think that foolish, we'll both aspects of my comment, and they are right. But then, the vanity demonstrated by progressives is what it is.

Uncle Elmo said...

Best comment to the article-
(the use of nunchakus are) going to produce some of the most epic cop failure videos ever made.

Looks to me like it sure would be easy to break somebody's arm with one.

Anonymous said...

Nunchucks are not intuitive to use. I can see a lot of self-inflicted injuries and "owies". As well as a lot of bystanders and witnesses ROFLFAsO. (Can you be arrested for laughing at a po-po?) I know I'D love to be a fly on the wall (at a safe distance) to observe some of these nunchuck take-downs.

B Woodman
III-per

FedUp said...

Youtube video of cop hitting himself in the head with a nunchaku coming up in 3...2...1...

In all seriousness, the large tonfa that became popular in the 1980s is usable as a police baton. Nunchaku, not so much.

Anonymous said...

Having been PROPERLY trained in the use of nunchuku, and actually having used them in multiple instances against combative persons, I can absolutely say that without a doubt, if used properly, nunchuku are unparalleled as a restraint and compliance device. They can and should be deployed in a low-key manner and once employed are almost impossible to counter or escape. That being said, ignorant asshats will undoubtedly pontificate on things of which they have little or no experience, and morons will most likely improperly utilize what COULD be a great compliance tool resulting in unnecessary personal injury and face-palming worthy u-tube videos, truly the worst of all possible outcomes.

Anonymous said...

Shotguns have 'virtually sold out' in Austria as citizens rush to buy arms amid fears of a massive influx of migrants, dealers claim

http://www.weaselzippers.us/237925-shotguns-virtually-sold-out-in-austria-due-to-fear-of-migrants/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3291978/Shotguns-virtually-sold-Austria-citizens-rush-buy-arms-amid-fears-massive-influx-migrants-dealers-claim.html

Anonymous said...

So ... Cali is now starting to "degun" their Only Ones?

III

Woodcanoe said...

Well by trying to use these at least that will lessen the chance of the Barney Fifes killing innocent bystanders as they are wont to do now and then. Judging by seeing how they have shot up a number of places and innocent bystanders, it seems to me that many of the cops are not qualified to have a gun anyway!

WC

Sedition said...

Jeez...any street punk with a 2 foot monkey fist could put a cop down before he could even bring them to bear.

Chiu ChunLing said...

I'd say probably the worst thing about police using tonfa-style batons is that they can be effectively used as a flail too, especially if they are designed with a rotating pin rather than a fixed connection for the side-handle. But you can't rapidly deliver maximum velocity strikes the way you can with nunchaku, with nunchaku you can hit someone in the head three or four times per second at maximum velocity with almost no risk of dislodging your grip. It doesn't really take as much skill as some people think from watching fancy martial arts moves either.

Short-strap nuchaku are the worst, because they aren't versatile enough to be used for a lot of the other things you can theoretically do with nunchaku if you're highly proficient with them. If you try to restrain someone with them, it's like restraining them with a comically oversized nutcracker (non-hilarity may ensue). You also can't do a lot of the fancy posturing as easily, though I consider that a small loss. But the tighter connection between the part you're holding and the part your striking with means you can get it up to speed much more quickly.

For delivering a merciless hail of unremitting high-velocity strikes, nuchaku are highly effective. I just don't believe that's the kind of thing cops should be doing (then again, I think they should probably just stop being cops entirely).

Chiu ChunLing said...

I mean, "compliance and restraint" tool, what are we talking about? "Compliance" tool means that it can inflict an irresistible amount of pain. Well, nunchaku can certainly do that, being subjected to a barrage of high-velocity blows from a hard rod can result in crippling levels of pain very quickly. It can also result in death, by the way, or at least broken bones and such.

But restraint...take a look at that picture of the cop with the nunckaku wrapped around that woman's wrist. Where exactly does this scenario go? Well, he uses his dominant hand to hold the nunchaku while going for his handcuffs with the other. Now, the mechanical advantage he's got in exerting force on this woman's wrist is about 10-1, which is part of the 'compliance' aspect, in that he can easily exert a literally bone-crushing force on her wrist with just a light squeeze on those handles. But while he's only using one hand, she's got an advantage in pulling force because the strap is around her wrist and he's retaining the nunchaku by grip friction. So what happens if she suddenly lunges away for some reason? Well, in order to retain possession of his nunchaku (and restrain her lunge) he has to grip those handles together quite tightly, perhaps not with all his strength but certainly hard enough that with a 10-1 lever advantage he can crush her wrist-bones like they were chalk, very likely resulting in permanent damage.

Why might she lunge away? There are several reasons, she might think that the moment he's only using one hand is a chance to escape, she might be in pain and take fright when she realizes he's going for something on his belt (because she knows he has a gun), she might stumble or trip (not an uncommon occurrence when being restrained) and just be trying to recover her balance. She could end up with permanently crippling damage to her wrist for no reason other than because a cop thought it would be fun to 'restrain' a pretty girl on some slight pretext (using his cool "ninja power").

The "compliance" aspect of using nunchaku (particularly these short-strap kinds) for 'restraint' is based entirely on how easy it is to exert bone-crushing force on the limb being 'restrained'. I keep using 'restrain' in scare quotes because of the aforementioned aspect of the relative disadvantage the wielder has in retaining control of the nunchaku if the victim pulls away suddenly. The reason the victim doesn't is because doing so would result in immediate breakage of their bones. If it was just going to hurt a little (okay, a lot) for a moment, they could and would pull away, gaining control of the weapon in the process. They don't try it because it is obvious that they will end up with a broken limb as a result.

But stuff happens, particularly when cops are going around 'restraining' people they wouldn't be justified in shooting. People startle, or try to run, or trip, and then they end up with irreversible crippling injuries because some cops want to look like ninja warriors or something.

Anonymous said...

Nunchaku sticks are not easy to master. I held a second degree black belt and could never get the hang of those damn things. Bruce Lee didn't know how to use them until taught by nunchaku master Don Inosanto for the movie "Game of Death". So yes, I can see an awful lot of cops screwing up some how with these things. Fight scene from Game of Death (nunchaku fight comes in at 1:00 minute mark) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fjh0dLDwv90

Anonymous said...


I do not see how this is going to help the department or the officer's?
The You tube of an officer yanking a suspects wrist is not going to look good.The officer has to be close and personal. I think a taser would be much better!

I think will we hear about this again when a complaint is filed because someone gets really hurt from this?