Tuesday 12 June 2007

Body Armour Safer But Defensive Equipment Needed

“Fishery Officers are supportive of the moves by the Minister of Fisheries, Jim Anderton, to issue staff with stab resistant body armour but believe that if the risk is big enough to wear one, Officers should also be able to to carry retractable batons and pepper spray to extricate themselves before being stabbed,” said Martin Cooney, Organiser of the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) today.

Mr Cooney said the Union was gratified that the Minister had now recognised the risk of edged weapons in the fisheries environment and was taking steps to mitigate that risk. “The previous advice to simply withdraw from any dangerous situation and call the police for support is now recognised as impractical.”

“Fishery Officers face regular situations where offenders threaten them with knives, gaffs, spearguns, oars, and axes. The risk of an assault with a weapon on a Fishery Officer is about the same as for the police,” said Martin Cooney.

“If an offender does decide to physically attack a Fishery Officer with a knife (and the officer is unable to tactically withdraw from the scene), the only actual defensive options available to the officer is to engage the offender using ‘empty hand’ techniques (including punches, kicks, elbow strikes etc), tactical handcuffing or the use of the carotid hold.

All these techniques require the officer to physically engage the offender. This contradicts international best practise which dictates that officers should always use tools that enable them to dis-engage the subject and create and maintain distance. The body armour actually has an extra risk of being grabbed in close attack.”

“Pepper spray and retractable batons are used as joint defensive tools that keep a stabbing offender at a 3-5 metre distance. Fishery Officers would be trained to use them to extricate themselves from a position of risk only when all other less forceful means at their disposal have failed.”

ENDS

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