'Sussex PCs used baton and Taser on elderly man in wheelchair" Now I know we don't have full possession of all the facts but given: 1 The man they were facing was 93 2 He only had one leg 3 Suffers from dementia 4 Is confined to a wheelchair Is It not fairly safe to assume he was not exwctly an immediate threat to anyone not within arms length even if he was waving a knife around? Using batons, debilitating sprays is surely excessive. Why not wait until he falls asleep ,(something 93 year olds , with or without dementia tend to do quite frequently). Joking apart the man died within 3 weeks of the incident without ever leaving the hospital he had to be taken to. Whatever happened to proper training in how to defuse a situation. We talk about US Police but I thought better of the UK policing standards (as Long as you exclude the Met in that)
Policing standards are pretty poor, reinforced by an "us Vs them, police Vs public" mentality reinforced by both senior officers and the police unions. The police are quick to remind us how difficult their job is, and I agree. I'd have no idea how to deal with a 93 year old man wielding a knife, the problem is neither do they. I'd probably make a better go of it judging by this account. The police still haven't been properly held to account for some of their excessive behaviour during lockdown, and the ongoing action against the participants of the Sarah Everard vigil is disgraceful and not at all in the public interest, they just can't bear the fact that they got shown up, after one of their own committed the horrific murder. Zero accountability or introspection.
And it’ll be lapped up, because your average Joe or Jill doesn’t think they’ll ever be affected by such measures.
Ah! But thinking about it. Remember all the early horror and zombie films where the victim ( often a screaming girl) was running away but the zombie or creature was only shuffling along with outsretched arms. And yet, he always seemed to catch and corner his victim. Nov given our 93 year old had wheels, think how much faster he would be.
Maybe putting a sweeping brush in spokes of his wheels to slow him down or trip him up may have helped
