Posted on 05/28/2020 6:32:00 PM PDT by DEPcom
A police training expert shared perspective with 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS on the cell phone video, showing the incident involving Minneapolis police and George Floyd.
Mylan Masson worked as a police officer for 20 years and ran police training for the state of Minnesota at Hennepin Technical College until 2016.
(Excerpt) Read more at kstp.com ...
I was a little shock to read this. It is a restraining option with parameters. What does Unconscious Neck Restraint mean? wondering about the word Unconscious.
"Masson said MPD also does not typically teach the "knee on neck" technique and instead teaches "knee into shoulder blades" as a restraint tactic."
I have to wonder if Police officers have recurring training on how to restrain.
Knee in shoulder blade with cuffed suspect. 4 cops, one on each leg. One ready to tase. Of the 26 departments with which i was familiar, none allowed extended carotid just for control for 3-4 seconds to take down., None allowed neck pressure. For those who say it’s ok, you saw the results on neck pressure.
4 cops on a cuffed guy should be able to control non-lethally. interested in knowing what happened between cuffing and how they got into that position.
“Masson said MPD also does not typically teach the “knee on neck” technique and instead teaches “knee into shoulder blades” as a restraint tactic.”
Thanks for explaining.
“The Unconscious Neck Restraint shall only be applied in the following circumstances:”
Do you know what do they mean by Unconscious Neck... in that line?
A knee on the neck can potentially damage the vagus nerve and/or the sympathetic cardiac nerve, which play a role in pacing heart rhythm.
As a former resident of Mpls my impression has always been that Mpls police has a reputation of being thumpers, so best not to antagonize them.
The guy was handcuffed & not resisting.
The cop should have put him in the cruiser & taken him to central booking. Period.
Instead, the cop made him sit down by the wall, then get up, then lie facedown on the street next to the car, then pressed his knee on his neck FOR 7 MINUTES.
You can see when the guy dies— he goes limp, his eyes cloud up & he peed the pavement.
I don’t know their intent.
If you press the carotids with force you can make someone unconscious in 20-40 seconds if i recall correctly. If you maintain the hold longer, you can kill someone. We would only apply pressure if the officer’s life in danger in a situation where he/she had no options. We were in prison with 18-25 year old weight lifters, back in the say.
We taught and used the carotid. but LAPD broke a guys wind pipe and killed him. The officer’s forearm was against his throat. The proper move was pressure on the carotids to the side with the throat open in the crook of the elbow. Support him from behind and take him to the ground.
But the governor told all state agencies no more neck holds. That was in the 80s in Cal. Never saw anyone who had cuffed an inmate or parolee put knee to neck.
https://www.policemag.com/341089/reconsidering-carotid-control
Notice no pressure on the front. Pressure on the sides.
IF THE MPD ALLOWS THAT TECHNIQUE, THE COP COULD WALK. Inconceivable that you can use the with cuffed individual and 3 other cops around.
Depending on the way someone’s head is positioned and the weight of the person applying pressure to their neck, the knee-to-neck maneuver can cause significant damage, said Seth Stoughton, an associate professor of law at the University of South Carolina.
Another officers take. I believe we need a whole lot of more officers like this.
With thanks to HollyB for posting this to me.
This was posted on FB today
———————-
“ I feel like I do a very good job at keeping my personal opinions to myself. However with this, I cannot.
The George Floyd incident.
I want to apologize in advance to anyone that may be offended or disagree with what I am going to say. These statements are my own opinion and in no way reflect the opinions of any department(s) or other officers - just myself:
As an Officer, this deeply hurts my heart. I want those who read this to know that there are MANY officers shaking their heads in disappointment right now. We are people too and we know when something is wrong.
I’ve been blessed to work for a department that has religiously preached, “Once the cuffs are on, the fight is over.”
I’ve had several situations where a fight will continue after the cuffs have been placed on an arrestee but, that’s not what I mean by my previous statement.
What I meant by my statement is this:
Regardless of the crime, once a person is in handcuffs you have to treat them accordingly. There is zero need to continuously use force unless you ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO; to maintain the arrestee’s safety, surrounding citizen’s safety, other officer’s saftey, or your own safety. I do not feel or see an immediate threat here.
As Officers, we’ve all been taught that once we have someone in custody, that arrestee essentially becomes our “baby”. At that point, we are required to take care of that person until they are passed through a chain of custody (hospital, intake center, juvenile center). We are fully responsible for that person because we have essentially taken their freedoms of movement and decisions away. That person now falls on our hands. We MUST take care of that person.
If someone is saying, “I can’t breathe!” It’s the job of the officer to make sure that person CAN breathe. If someone says, “I need medical attention” or they complain of pain, it’s the job of the Officer to see that the arrestee receives the proper medical attention he/she is entitled to.
If you see that your subject is not awake or breathing, you better stop and immediately revert to your other job training skill of being a life saver instead of a law enforcer. If you can’t do that, you damn sure better call someone who can (EMS, Fire, or another trained officer).
Yes, I have had to use force on people while they’re in handcuffs. However, I have not drove my knee in to someone’s neck for the duration of 10 minutes. There’s thousands of ways to control someone. They’re just as effective but, not nearly as dangerous. The force used did not fit the severity of the crime that was claimed to have been committed.
If you’re okay with this use of force on someone who is handcuffed, I personally feel you need to take one of these courses of action:
1) Turn in your badge before you tarnish it for the rest of us.
That’s it, that’s the only course of action you should and need to take.
I read a comment earlier in a thread where a person stated, “Well what if he had a gun before this and that’s why they’re doing it?”
Well, the fact of that matter is that he DID NOT and the “what if” game is absolutely asinine in this situation. Even if he did, once in custody....we are going to revert back to a comment I made earlier....”the fight is over.”
I’ve arrested countless people who have used weapons in the commission of violent crimes. I’ve also arrested people who have pointed weapons directly at me.
After a person is in handcuffs, it DOES NOT matter what happened before the arrest. I’m sorry but, it just doesn’t. I’m sure plenty of officers will disagree with me and I’m sure some will even refuse to work with me over that statement. Events that happen before a subject is placed in to custody does not give anyone the right to batter, beat, or suffocate the arrestee once they are secured in handcuffs. Any different logic of thinking is absolutely WRONG in this line of work. Any Officer with integrity and morals will tell you that.
Thankfully, I’ve been blessed to work with Officers and for a department that teaches and thinks this way as well.
Does that mean I’m going to drop my guard with the arrestee? Absolutely not. I still have a job to do and that person is going to jail for a reason. Make no mistake, I know how to do my job and I know complacency will kill you in this line of work. Does that mean placing your full body-weight on someone’s neck for 10 minutes is appropriate? HELL NO.
There’s a thousand other ways that man could’ve been kept under control. All are less dangerous and just as, if not MORE, effective.
I know this is going to resurface debates on police & prejudice. Let me say to you all...
I am sincerely sorry.
I see this video and I empathize with you. I understand why you are so frustrated. I know I am not African American so, I would never try to act like I’ve been in your shoes before. That would be terribly disrespectful. But, please hear what I have to say...
I have personally never worked with a prejudice police officer. In fact, some of my favorite zone/beat partners are African American and they are FANTASTIC people/officers. I work with wonderful officers who are gay or bisexual. I work with wonderful officers of all races, religions, sexes and creeds - all of them are absolutely amazing. The color of your skin, the person you love, the God you worship does not define what kind of person you are. Most police officers realize this and do not use those factors as leverage to form an unfair or biased opinion on the individuals they are called to assist/help/arrest. We are taught to be fair and impartial at all times. That is extremely important to myself and all the officers I work with. Many officers realize that we are only people; we just wear a different uniform to work. We all wake up and put our pants on the same way (unless you do some funky ass way but, that’s a conversation for a different time, ya big weirdo). We all bleed red. We all die. We all get buried in a six foot hole. We are all human-beings.
Most officers are extremely humble; we realize that we are no better than the people we interact with on a day-to-day basis. After all, we work for a specific city and the citizens who live in that city. We can’t properly work for the citizens if we walk around believing that we are better than them. That’s not how this job works. We have to be open and willing to listen to all your problems, concerns, worries, and questions. With that said, I can also say I HEAR YOU, I SEE YOU, I CARE ABOUT YOU. I see and understand why you are all concerned. I’m here to help alleviate those concerns for you. We, as the police, are here to help you, not harm you. We genuinely care about you, all of you.”
The lateral vascular neck restraint - basically a choke to render the person unconscious was a technique taught years ago. You see it in MMA. It was just below lethal force on on the use of force continuum and it has been abandoned by most departments. I would find it hard to believe that the videos I saw were something the officers were taught to do. If you use your weight with a knee it is applied to the shoulder of the person who is in custody or on their stomach. You are taught to never interfere with a person’s breathing and to monitor a person who fought or actively resisted for excited delirium or difficulty breathing.
A proper use of force is ALWAYS the minimum amount of force to respond to the threat and to place the person in custody.
This was very hard to watch. I always try to give the police the benefit of the doubt (it is a hard job) and know better than most the issues they deal with, but I cannot excuse this based on what I saw no matter what happened before the guy was cuffed and on his stomach.
That was awful.
“interested in knowing what happened between cuffing and how they got into that position.“
The man was cuffed when they pulled him from his car on first contact. Remained cuffed the entire time. Below is the link to first contact video and cuffing. There is a street cam video where the deceased is sitting on the sidewalk, cuffed, and is then led by an officer to the location of the viral video. No true resisting can be seen in any of the videos.
https://mobile.twitter.com/hannahfloodfox9/status/1265433776248819712
Yes we know the police officer did wrong and Floyd died because of the bad knee restraint procedure.
This post was about the Minneapolis Police Department Policy & Procedure Manual.
The manual states “Neck restraints shall not be used against subjects who are passively resisting as defined by policy.”
So if Floyd is handcuff and not resisting anymore the police officer should have stop the knee restraint. Side note: the Officer doing the Knee and Floyd might know each other from another job (possible motivate).
The training expert states the officer who did the kneeing was wrong.
I was very surprise that the neck restraint was in their training manual. The neck is a very weak point of the body as Kirkwood pointed out at post 6.
By the way in another video it was a different cop that made him sit by the wall then the one who killed Floyd. Waiting for the other body cams to show where they place Floyd on the ground.
There was a hostile crowd. The cops could have been restraining the suspect limb by limb, but they had to keep a defensive posture against the hostile crowd.
Disclaimer: I hate cops.
Thanx
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