We have seen a bit written about the arrest outside a Christchurch Countdown supermarket over the last week or so. Just for the record, I had no input to the first article by Cam, only a tiny input to the second article and basically nothing in the follow-up article yesterday.
My initial reaction upon seeing the first video that was released, the one that was taken by the man’s son, was that there was probably more to this story and we shouldn’t jump to conclusions or, indeed, jump on the Defund the Police bandwagon. We have all seen the likes of the CNN Maga-hat boy videos to know that one video does not give a comprehensive understanding. Lord knows, I watch enough videos that break down that sort of false reporting to know that it goes on all around us, particularly when it involves Police. Just search YouTube for ‘Donut Operator’ if you want to see what I mean.
So being naturally dubious (well I am an ExPFC after all), I suggested that if we were going to go to bat for this guy, we needed to ensure we had more facts; and Cam was able to follow that up, speaking with the chap concerned directly, and obtaining his footage which was put up in the abovementioned articles.
So my thoughts, for those that might be interested?
My first thought, upon viewing the first video, was that the chap kneeling on the ground, with his arms behind his back was already in cuffs. I then realised he was about to be cuffed by the male officer, so clearly, the man had acceded to the arrest. The male officer moves behind him and moves the man’s left arm up behind his back and out. This is done in a sort of twisting motion and is a normal manoeuvre to keep a little pressure on the subject. It normally hurts a little bit; pain is good for compliance. That cop puts one portion of the handcuffs on his left hand and the female cop comes in with a weak attempt to help by grabbing the man’s right arm but, at that time, the first officer has grabbed the subject across the face and pulled him backwards onto the ground.
There is a little break in the video just before that, so it is possible we have missed something there that happened to cause the male cop to grab the subject’s face, but it can’t be more than a second or so judging by what is happening in the background. Basically, from there it becomes a tutorial on what not to do: weak and ineffectual techniques to control a man who is, at most, passively resisting.
Then I learn that the subject had already been pepper-sprayed by the time this all happens! So let me tell you how pepper spray works.
The entire purpose of pepper spray is to subdue the offender, by the use of pain and involuntary closure of the eyes, and through fear. The pain and eye closure is self explanatory: unless you are drugged up, or extremely goal driven (such as the need to escape as your life will be in danger if you are caught with the 3 kg of weed that the Mongrel Mob have asked you to deliver), you can’t control or overcome it.
Trust me, pepper spray works most of the time. It hurts like hell, it makes you cough, you cannot open your eyes for more than a split second and probably most importantly for compliance, it makes you think that you can’t breathe. You can breathe, but the impression that many people have once sprayed is that they are going to die. So they stop fighting, you get control of them and sort the problem out.
Because you can’t see, you feel very vulnerable. If you are being physically restrained or beaten upon, you don’t know where the next blow will come from. Many people ball up to protect their heads and abdomen. Some stiffen up, some go floppy, some scream in pain, some are very quiet. The quiet ones in my opinion are the ones who are the most frightened. It can be extremely disconcerting to hear everything that is going on around you in this chaotic time, know that you are about to have hands laid on you, but not knowing from where they will come, or how violent it will be when it inevitably happens.
The other thing with pepper spray is cross-contamination. Every single time I have used it, I have got some on myself. The last thing you want to do after you have sprayed someone is to get into a scrap with them as it gets all over you, and yes, you will be suffering from a lot of those things that your subject is. You just know that it isn’t going to kill you because you have been through all this before. The fact that there will be copious amounts of snot and slobber pouring from the subjects face is certainly enough to put you off rolling around with them too.
So I wonder, why did this man get his face scragged by the male cop and dragged backwards? It seems like a major over-reaction. And all this after the instant over-escalation, as described in yesterday’s post.
For an officer to then kneel on top of someone’s head, in this post George Floyd age, seems to me to be a very strange decision to make. As a cop of 20 years I for sure did some things like this, we all had to. Yes if we have to scrap with an offender, they will likely get a thwock, an attention breaker if you will, to take their mind off the resisting and allow you to get an upper hand on them. That may well be bonking his head on the ground or giving them a good whack, but this is only done when necessary – efficient use of pain holds is usually enough. At the end of the day, I always put my safety over an offender’s; if it came down to him or me going to the hospital, it was better that it was him.
But you sure as hell don’t do all this in front of a crowded supermarket, when you know you are being filmed and you are trying to arrest a man, ostensibly for not wearing a face mask, who is compliantly kneeling on the ground with his hands behind his back, waiting for you to put the cuffs on him. I don’t know what the hell these cops were thinking!
The lazy explanations of ‘stop resisting’ at the start of the incident – when it is clear for all to see that at that point he isn’t resisting at all and is pinned to the ground by his head by one officer with another on his legs – are simply to try and justify what the cop is doing. ‘Stop Resisting’ is the standard call you make when you want to give the offender a few extra taps to show him who is boss. Again, it wasn’t necessary and it looked like the cop was just trying to justify his over-reaction.
Once the cop had rolled the man over, after kneeling on his head for some time, it is apparent to me that the subject looked unconscious and floppy. This is when the two cops both say, “Are you alright?”. They said that for a reason! This is when the son got upset and pushed forward to help his Dad. He clearly realised at this point that things were getting more serious for his father and did what any son would do in the circumstances.
I am sure the red shirt chap who intervened will say that he was trying to stop the policeman from being attacked at that point, or perhaps that he was trying to stop the young fella from getting himself into trouble. Time will tell here too. The identity of the red shirt man should have been taken down by the officers there so I imagine he will have a complaint laid against him in due course but that is up to the subject and his son.
At 2.26 on the video, another officer violently pushes the man’s head into the concrete; again, it’s completely unnecessary and unjustified.
The whole thing just reeked of amateurism. As yesterday’s writer attested, this entire fiasco needed nothing more than a quiet chat and at the very most a trespass order. Hell, a genuine cop might have offered to go in and buy the medicine for the guy!
For the officers to go down the route of pepper-spraying the subject in the very early stage of the interaction, clearly goes against the Police’s own Tactical Operations Framework. As can be seen in the graphic below, ‘passive resistance’ can only be met with a ‘low degree of force’ and ‘compliance’ with even less than that. I think someone’s got some ‘splaining’ to do. It will be very interesting to see copies of the various reports and explanations that the officers concerned are required to furnish. They will (should) all also be available to the accused.
There is a chance we are missing something here but Countdown will have their own video evidence, films that will have already been secured by any competent Police investigator, and will be available by way of discovery to the accused. That will also come out in time.
On the subject of what charges he is facing, I will do a separate post shortly once I have ascertained exactly what offences and sections of the relevant legislation he is being accused of breaching.
What all this does show, however, is the value of video evidence. I suspect the Police may be a little poorer after this incident, and to be honest, I hope Countdown is too.