JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) - Police in Juneau kept their old school batons longer than many departments in the country, but they now plan to replace the straight stick model with collapsible steel batons this fall.
Police departments across the U.S. decided to get rid of the larger club models after the 1991 beating of Rodney King, the Juneau Empire reported (https://bit.ly/1G1ws6f). But Juneau Police Department kept the batons, says Lt. Kris Sell, because they delivered more force than the collapsible type.
But now the department is changing to the new structure because officers often leave the cumbersome straight stick batons in their patrol cars.
“Because of their size, they can slap up against your legs when you’re running, and they’re awkward on a bicycle,” Sell said. “We found out that a baton left in a patrol car delivers zero force, and so we decided to re-evaluate how we were looking at the batons.”
JPD Chief Bryce Johnson says he also wasn’t crazy about the image of Juneau officers patrolling the streets with something that resembles a baseball bat.
“The visuals of that are a little bit stand-off-ish, whereas if I have this one,” he said, pointing to the new collapsible baton, “and it sits on my belt like that, the visuals are a lot different. So this is quite a bit more approachable.”
The new batons range from 21 to 29 inches long and deliver about the same amount of force as the straight stick models. With a flick of the wrist, a silver metal rod flies out of a black handle and makes a distinctive audible ring.
“What we’re hoping is that when anybody hears that, they’ll just comply, and we’ll just put it away,” Sell said. “That’s the objective.”
There are only two cases in the past five years where officers used batons to strike Juneau citizens, according to the department’s annual police report, which was released in June.
Tasers, hands and pepper spray were more often used as a means of force, said the report, and Juneau police have not used deadly force since an officer shot and killed a man wielding a samurai sword in 2007.
Johnson said that batons can be an alternative to using deadly force.
We want officers to have “a lot of different force options,” he said. “What this will end up doing is it can reduce the injury to the officers, and it also can reduce injury to people because if we can hit you with a baton instead of having to shoot you, that’s a good thing.”
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Information from: Juneau (Alaska) Empire, https://www.juneauempire.com
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