Jailer Attacked

Posted by: Ray Beshirs

April 13, 2018

This incidents comes to us from Oklahoma, and shows a jailer being attacked by an inmate as the jail door opens. The incident doesn’t have any audio, but I’m assuming the inmate may have said something as he came forward at the jailer. We noticed the jailer struck the inmate one time during the standing portion of the event, but the inmate punched him numerous times. We wanted to touch on training your staff to be violent when necessary to lawfully protect themselves from assaults like this one. The problem is most law enforcement agencies don’t train their staff to punch kick and be offensive. The word “defensive tactics” places us in a mindset to be defensive in nature, which can cause us to be victims. You should strike a person first when they make statements to you indicating they have intentions to approach and assault you. I have a better chance of winning the encounter if I strike first! The strike should be delivered to the nose, or a kick to the chest to maintain distance and access an alternative weapon. We create victims of our personnel through the lack of providing them confidence to defend themselves during these type of attacks. We want agencies to create confident officers that are willing to engage. We also want administrators to come to briefings and training to see what is being taught to their personnel so they have a better understanding of response to resistance, and tell personnel they are willing to support their actions.