Police Stories: Hand-To-Hand Combat with Mental Patient

By Tactical-Life

“Affect their ability to see and/or breathe and you shall win the day!” Those words came to me in a smoky American Legion hall in 1976. I was talking with a veteran of the trench warfare of WWI, and he offered these words of wisdom to me as a way to deal with any future conflict.

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Jump ahead to 1984 and I was working patrol in a two-man unit, accompanied by a reserve deputy for the evening. We were dispatched to handle a “probate detail,” which was a fancy term for escorting a person to the mental hospital. We hooked up with a pair of attendants in a private ambulance for this detail, and I decided I would ride in the ambulance with the patient while my partner followed along behind.

About halfway to the hospital, the patient, a large woman, started to hum and then began to talk about Beelzebub and Satan. She quickly became agitated and tried to sit up against her leather restraints. When that did not work, she let out a loud scream and with the strength of Hercules broke her leather restraints. Let me repeat …Read the Rest

Source:: Tactical Life