VICKSBURG, Miss. – As security guards circled a mat laid out in the loading dock of the basement of the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) headquarters building, Lt. Michael Kelly of the Clinton Police Department (CPD) faced Ashton Everett, a Department of the Army security guard stationed at ERDC. The two men were set to demonstrate an incredibly tense moment in a security professional’s career — taking a subject into custody.
In May, ERDC security forces met with two representatives from CPD to receive training on innovative and safe restraining procedures. The program, called Police Subject Control, is a series of techniques that allow security forces to take control of a scenario and facilitate de-escalation with as little force as possible.
"Today, we were going over the use of force and refresher training for use of force incidents and application of deadly force,” said Kelly. “What authorizations are present for officers to utilize in defense of other's lives and their own? The physical skills that we’re working on today are based off of programs called Police Subject Control — that's using a person's body structure and joint manipulation to encourage compliance with an order and instruction, so that it's not using physical strikes or anything like that. It's the absolute least amount of force necessary to gain compliance. There's nothing that is overly aggressive, and it's still enough force to get that compliance to what we are trying to accomplish."
Taking a subject into custody is a strenuous task for security and police forces. In this moment, the officer is closest to the subject and has the greatest chance of something going wrong.
"Anyone involved in public safety — at some point in their careers — is going to encounter an uncooperative subject, and it is our job to be able to take custody, detain that individual with the least amount of force possible for the best outcome for all parties involved,” said CPD Officer Dustin McNolan. “The more you use these tactics, the more proficient and fluid they'll become. If you treat this as a ‘one and done’ training, a month from now, it's going to be very hard for you to use these tactics efficiently without hurting yourself or someone else. So, it is important that you practice these maneuvers as much as possible."
The process began slowly with Kelly and McNolan offering several scenarios to encounter and taking each step to ensure compliance before moving on to the next.
“The more proficient you are in this, the less nervous you're going to be,” said McNolan, “[People] can tell when an officer is insecure about what they are doing. So, it's important for you to be fluid and understand the tactics. It will make you much calmer and be able to de-escalate the situation a lot better. "
At each step, the police officers asked for questions, investigating the position from multiple angles like paused sports footage. Kelly patiently waited on his knees, torso bent backwards slightly with his hands behind his head, intertwined, as the examination continued.
"The ERDC people did fantastic,” said Kelly. “Anytime you have a group doing the repetitions and giving you positive feedback — questioning the tactic if there's a failure point or anything like that — that's one thing we want to do with any tactic that we're training. We want to test it. If it's going to fail, then I want to do it in a training environment than in the real world. So, we want people to try these tactics. See if you can find failures; see if you can defeat it — we encourage that. If you do find a way to defeat it, let us know. That helps us to sharpen the sword, make the tactics better and help other people in the future."
"I had a basic idea from military training,” said Everett, who was a motor transport operator in a military police unit before joining the ERDC security force. “But, I've never gotten detailed training on how to cuff someone. You're not trying to hurt anyone, but small joint manipulations or threading fingers together — where you don't exert yourself — and they comply easier."
“One of the things we had discussed in the training today is being able to separate — it's a tactical process, not an emotional process,” said Kelly. “Understand that we are humans, and we have to maintain tandem operations where we are able to keep things operating professionally and tactically controlling the situation. When we go in, and we are demonstrating the handcuffing techniques, it's step by step. It's a very slow process. I don't move to the next step until I get compliance at this step. If things start to fall apart, I can break contact. We have coverage and still have control of the event, and then we can reassess, start over and re-implement. But, it's keeping control and not responding on an emotional level."
The multi-day training was one in a series of collaborations ERDC Firearms Instructor and Field Training Officer Tina Long has been planning with Clinton Police to utilize ERDC’s large facilities for simulations and workshop techniques for safe and effective security procedures.