California cops are getting a Kung Fu makeover.
Police in Anderson, California, are learning how to use nunchakus in order to “more compassionately gain compliance” from difficult suspects.
“The Anderson Police Department is implementing the police nunchaku as a tool to more effectively arrest, control and subdue non-compliant suspects,” Chief Michael Johnson told NBC News on Tuesday. “The nunchaku can be deployed to more compassionately gain compliance from a suspect through pain application opposed to striking, as customary with the side-handled or straight baton.”
Cops in the town of 10,000 must pass a 16-hour training course if they decide to use the weapon. The department, located approximately 150 miles north of Sacramento, has 20 officers.
“We can use them for joint manipulation, wrist control [and] pain compliance. We’re not training officers how to swing the [Orcutt Police Defensive Systems], or the nunchaku, around like we have seen in Hollywood. That’s not the idea. The idea is to stress control over striking someone,” Sgt. Casey Day told the network.
Chief Johnson said the weapon should be seen by the public as an option that, “may offset some of the more aggressive perceptions the public have about police intervention.”
