Funny and Gentle Arrest by Norwegian Police.

[mandryka]

I hope and expect the British police would, for the most part, be similar in the same situation too.

At one part, there's an exchange about him having a temper, and he replies something like 'Of course, I'm from Lofoten'. I've heard of the Lofoten Islands, do the inhabitants have a reputation for being aggressive?

There was one thing which surprised me. They come close to mocking him -- I wouldn't have done that. Maybe they didn't cross that line but for me, they came too close for comfort. Laughter can disarm the strong emotions and so is useful, but in this case I think they were lucky that he didn't think they were disrespecting him, which would have made him even more angry and even more difficult to control. Indeed at one point he did kick. Of course there may be lots of important nuances in the culture and language which I'm missing which mean that I'm really misunderstanding.

Apart from that, what they do reminds me of the techniques I've seen teachers use to control angry children who have lost self control. I think they are fairly standard ways of dealing with this type of behaviour, ways which are both the most effective (because least confrontational) and the least likely to cause harm, you can go on courses about it. There's someone who posts here, I forget who now, who has some experience of dealing with this sort of behaviour -- a teacher, not a policeman.

 

[stevec67]

Too often the police have to spend time dealing with issues that would be more appropriately dealt with by mental health services and social work departments. There should be a more integrated approach which over time would save money and result in a better deal for society.

AndrewC's post above, and a link, shows exactly this being done in Nottingham. Second person from the left is some dodgy copper or other who's got in the photo to make the force look good.

I see police cars round here advertising the fact that officers are mental health trained, which is exactly right. I suspect that In the case of minor disturbances the police spend 80% of their time dealing with the mentally ill rather than people who are actually doing anything criminal. I remember one fly on the wall documentary, I think it was Lincoln police, I know the city so I watched it. They had found a mentally disturbed young woman having a meltdown in the shopping centre. They arrested her and took her back to the station, where she carried on kicking lumps out of doors, the custody desk etc. The police throughout remained remarkably calm, and simply supervised her until a mental health worker could be brought in to work out what to do.

 

[Andrew C!]

Second person from the left is some dodgy copper or other who's got in the photo to make the force look good.

We trained all the response officers at the time regarding the Mental Capacity Act, too.

PS I pinched the Notts model from Leics - they did know this, btw

 

[TheDecameron]

Best line ever -from police spokesman at press conference following shoot out in Florida,

“And to those out there who might be foolish enough to ask why we shot him so many times, that answer is simple: Because evil can never be dead enough."

https://abc7chicago.com/florida-shootout-brevard-county-sheriff-paris-wilder-wayne-ivey/11013732/