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I recently attended a presentation by Gordon Graham, a nationally known law enforcement risk manager. He stressed the importance of officers spending more time thinking like risk managers in preventing known risks than spending all their time thinking like a lawyer practicing damage control after the event.
This concept needs to be applied to weapon disarming situations. If officers were to spend more of their time developing ways to prevent a disarming attempt, they would most likely have to deal with fewer actual attempts to disarm them where the offender is able to physically lay hands on the officer’s weapon.
For instance, officer should always remembers that a subject that they are dealing with may attempt to disarm them. Knowing this, the officer will position his/her body in such a way to prevent a disarming attempt from happening. Furthermore, the officer will keep his/her hands up to deflect an assault by the subject or sweep the subject’s hands away should that person tray to grab the officer’s gun. Knowing this, the officer can move to cover, get behind an obstruction, or simply create distance.
All other these preventive measures will help to keep an assailant off of the officer’s gun whether drawn or in the holster. This means that, if necessary, the officer can shoot the subject because the assailant has not been able to get his/her hands on the subject’s gun.
Prevention is the name of the game.
