This is news that shouldn’t be: officers arrest a resisting suspect and for their efforts get splashed on the news for alleged brutality. At least the B.P.D. didn’t flinch.
I say eighty percent of videos that purport to show brutality involve people under arrest who won’t put their hands behinds behind their back. If you’re under arrest and so ordered, you need to put your hands behind your back.
Here’s the thing — and I want you to try this at home or work with someone you love — lie on your belly with your arms under you. Now have that someone try and force yours arms apart. Resist. Those arms won’t budge. Now make it a threesome and have two people pulling. Those arms still won’t budge.
It’s incredibly hard to get a resisting person’s arms out from under them. It’s just the way the human body is built. So when that happens, police police use what is called (strangely un-euphemistically), “pain compliance.” It’s a fancy term for old-school putting on the hurt.
Pain compliance is done with pressure points or mace. In a pinch, you could strike somebody, but this is not how it’s supposed to be done because it looks bad and you might break something.
Pain compliance is not self-defense. And it’s not normal use of force in which the force is directed toward the goal. Pain compliance is supposed to hurt. And it keeps hurting we keep hurting until you decide it’s in your best interests to follow lawful orders. And as soon as you comply, we’ll stop putting on the hurt. Because you see those hands… how are we going to get those hands behind your back? We’ve already tried asking and forcing.
[thanks to Gotti]