Weapon Defense: On and Off the Bike
by Bernie Hogancamp, IPMBA President
In late May, two officers in my region were shot with their duty weapons after being disarmed. The first was in Lansing, Illinois, just a few miles from me; the second was in Appleton, Wisconsin. Fortunately, both officers survived. Both offenders died by gunfire, one by his own hand with the officer’s gun.
There are several striking similarities between these events that are worth examining. First, these were encounters with offenders involved in relatively minor property crimes (retail thefts) without any obvious indicators of dangerous conduct. They were single-officer encounters in areas to which backup officers are already on the way or otherwise nearby. In each case, the offenders were unarmed until they violently attacked and forcibly seized the officer’s weapon.
The use of force on unarmed persons is increasingly coming under intense criticism and scrutiny. What is seldom considered in these circumstances is just how dangerous unarmed people can be. A review of the FBI Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA) report shows that during the most recent ten year data period (2005-2014), twenty-seven officers were murdered with their own weapons by otherwise unarmed offenders. As alarming as these statistics are, they do not account for the uncounted number of violent assaults (like the above-mentioned cases) wherein the officers survive their injuries.
Considering the many dangers officers face in the course of their duties, weapon retention training should be an integral part of any training program. But the philosophy and effectiveness of that training should be scrutinized. By calling it weapon retention rather than weapon defense, we may be overemphasizing the importance of keeping the weapon secure at the expense of focusing on the real threat: the offender trying to take it away. This can be especially true for officers whose assignments, like bike patrol, keep their hands otherwise occupied.
The immediate focus of defensive response tactics needs to be directed towards neutralizing the threat posed by the person attempting to disarm the officer. Emphasizing powerful strikes to vulnerable areas is far more likely to disrupt the weapon grab and cause the offender to lose focus on the officer’s weapon as an objective.
IPMBA has been fortunate to be able to offer Krav Maga for Public Safety Safety Cyclists at our recent conferences, provided with great skill by Krav Maga Minneapolis. The instructors, Gail Boxrud, Dante Pastrano and Murray Prust, most recently instructed at our 2016 conference in Asheville, North Carolina, and their training couldn’t have been more timely and important.
This training has the right focus and philosophy: simply that any attack, included an attempted disarm, is only likely to be unsuccessful if the defensive tactics focus on neutralizing the source of the attack…the attacker.
We sincerely hope to see them again at our next conference in Delaware, Ohio, June 5-9, 2017…and hope to see you all there as well!
Further Reading:
2014 Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted: https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/leoka/2014/tables/table_15_leos_fk_victim_officers_weapon_stolen_by_offender_2005-2014.xls (http://tinyurl.com/LEOReport)
Krav Maga for Public Safety Cyclists: http://ipmba.org/blog/comments/krav-maga-for-public-safety-cyclists.
(c) 2016 IPMBA. This article appeared in the Summer 2016 issue of IPMBA News.