The Conflict Resolution Training Blog » Violence

Death in Custody – Police to be held to account

PBrereton — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 09:00:46 +0000

Changes to the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 have come into force recently mean that any death whilst in custody comes within the remit of this act. This means that not only the police but any authority, organisation or private firm who have responsibity for people held in custody can be held to account.

It’s an important issue as a recent Independent Police Complaints Commission report identified 333 deaths in police custody between 1998 and 2009. The specifics of these cases I’m not going to get into here but I do want to highlight that, once again, the importance of appropriate management of any situation of potential conflict is so very important. Nobody in these situations wants to get hurt and the police, or any other enforcing authority, must be ever more vigilant in ensuring that they use the correct physical restraint technniques and use appropriate self-defence techniques when needed.

At the risk of sounding like a real bore on the subject it’s all down to practice….practice…practice. The police have some excellent training available to them and I am sure that officers are skilled in restraint techniques and self-defence but unless it is something that is practiced then they are at risk of either getting themselves hurt or hurting others. Getting back into the class room to practice skills on a regular basis should be essential ‘maintence training’ and this applies to anyone who works in industry sectors that deal with the public and are at risk of being in conflict situations.

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Company Directors charged under Corporate Manslaughter Act

Darren Good — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 22:24:25 +0000

I’ve been reading a few blogs recently about Lion Steel Ltd.who are the second company to be charged under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 since its implementation. This is a real wake up call for Company Directors to sit up and take notice of staff safety as they will be held to account.

The Greater Manchester Police have charged the storage manufacturing company with corporate manslaughter as a result of the death of an employee when he fell through a fragile plastic roof panel on an industrial estate. I have also read that the company is charged under section 2 and 33 of the Health and Safety Work Acts 1974 (HSWA) for failing to ensure the safety at work of its employees.

So it is that the three directors are each accused of manslaughter by gross negligence under section 37 of the HSWA for failing to ensure the safety at work of their employees.

Notwithstanding the terrible tragedy of the dealth of a man I am pleased to see that the Corporate Manslaughter Act is being used and has not just been a paper exercise. I believe employers should look upon this act as an opportunity to really look at the personal safety of their employees. Equally employees should use this Act as a way to ensure they are getting everything they are entitled to receive to enable them to their jobs safely and effectively. This will include the environment they work in, the equipment used and the quality and frequency of the training they receive.

This applies to all types of workplace, not just where there are obvious risks such as in manufacturing or building services but also where personal safety could be an issue due to staff members interactions with the general public. The NHS for example, often reports violence from patients towards their staff, and this not always from the mentally unstable. So here we have a caring profession….not somewhere you would automatically think of as an environment in need of personal safety for its staff…that in reality needs to and in many cases does, provide personal safety training for it’s staff.

The first hearing for Lion Steel Ltd. Will take place on 2^nd August.

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Doorstaff arrested on suspicion of murder

Darren Good — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:37:46 +0000

I want to share with you a tragic and ongoing situation that raises a number of interesting points for me around physical intervention strategies when dealing with conflict. The situation concerns four door security men from a nightspot in Southend who have recently been arrested on supicion of the murder of Reece Lamude. Mr Lamude, 37, was rushed to hospital following an altercation with the four door supervisors but hospital staff were uable to save him and he died early that morning. The post-mortum examination revealed that Mr Lamude had sustained neck injuries, possibly as a result of the incident.

This case is of interest to me because it raises…and not for the first time…the issue of the use of reasonable force when dealing with conflict situations. It is as ever a highly sensitive area and without acurate eye witness accounts or cctv footage it may be impossible to unpick what happened on that night. The four securaity guards in question are not the only ones who should be called to question here as their employers also have a part to play. Did their employers ensure that they had recieved all the required and appropriate training?

For those of you that don’t know all door supervisors should hold an SIA licence.That gives them a basic knowledge to permit them to be legally employed as a security guard. But it’s a bit like getting your drivers licence. You don’t get your licence and then start racing formula one cars and so it is the case with security guards of busy nightspots.

Employers of such venues should know that additonal physical intervention and conflict management training is more than likely necessary if their venue is likely to attract situations of violence and aggression. Failure on their part to supply this is a breach, by them, of the Health and Safety Act. So they too have a part to play.

Now none of this helps the tragedy of Reece Lamude’s situation and the courts will decide the outcome of that later in the year. But I would like to hope that cases like this raise the importance to employers to provide appropriate training to their staff and also for employees to demand appropriate training if they believe they are at risk. It will all go along way to making it safer for us all whether we are an employee or a member of the public like Reece.

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Everyday conflict management

Darren Good — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 13:41:40 +0000

I was doing a fun run with my 14 year old son at the weekend and it reminded me how ever present the potential for conflict is. It started with the usual heated debate with my wife as we were rushing out the door of ‘where are the car keys’ …quickly diffused by son number two reminding us that we were walking.
Potential conflict removed I was soon rewarding myself for making the effort to leave early in order to walk to as I saw the massive queue to get parked. My , dare I admit it, slightly smug mood was quickly distracted by the sound of a car horn being furious beeping and a man jumping out of his car to hurl abuse at the car behind him. I say car, not person because I don’t actually think he was seeking to get into a one-on-one argument he just responded to the ‘trigger’ of the car horn and it clearly was the last straw for him that morning. There were two adults in the front of the car…a ..shall we say quite large gentleman driving and I’m guessing his mum or Grandmother to the two red-faced kids in the back seats who, as you can imagine, just wanted the ground to swallow them up with embarrassment. Whether she knew what she was doing or not I’ll never know but as the man got out of his car to face his aggressor this senior lady nimbly positioned herself between the two and smiling at the abuse hurling man said “lovely day for it” clearly not expecting this response the abuse man was left to agree it was.
What a fantastic open question, completely at odds with the situation and friendly in intention.
I don’t know what happened after that because, as my wife reminded me, it’s rude to stare but as I heard no more shouting and the cars moved slowly on I can assume all was resolved.
So…..as I was saying I was reminded of the ever present potential for conflict. Intentionally or otherwise the woman in question diffused an aggressive situation by positive body language and an open and unexpected question that by its very nature united them. It was a lovely day for “it” and “it” was the fun run with the kids. She established common ground and a shared purpose. She positioned herself alongside the ‘aggressor’ and showed she was willing to listen. Essentially she demonstrated a number of key communication skills to manage conflict situations that I summarise in my acronym P.O.L.I.T.E. where ‘P’ is for position, ‘O’ observation, ‘L’ listen, ‘I’ intuition, ‘T’ talk and ‘E’ emotional state. I’d even go as far as to say it was almost text book perfect.

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Attack rituals – We need to trust our instincts if we are to avoid being attacked

Darren Good — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 15:06:29 +0000

All killers go through an attack ritual before they start their attack – I have talked at length about these types of rituals before on the blog. In my previous post I talked about the three types of rituals but in this post I want to highlight how important it is to trust your own intuition as it could save your life.

The Yorkshire Ripper caused terror in the 1970s across the Yorkshire region sadly attacking numerous women and killing several. Many of his attacks in Bradford occurred in the Lumb Lane area of the city and this was quickly associated with the killings in West Yorkshire.

The TV programme Band of Gold which was shown between 1995-7 highlighted this part of Bradford again, and showed it as a seedy red light district. The local residents from the area decided they had simply had enough of this bad reputation and they decided to make a stand. They teamed up by getting together and protested by joining hands and forcing the prostitutes and the pimps out of their neighbourhood. This pushed the red light district to the Thorton Road part of the city which is next to the University of Bradford and it has been there every since.

More recently the self-proclaimed “Crossbow Cannibal” Stephen Griffiths was a student at the University of Bradford and he had a house just off Thornton Road which means he has been walking these streets every single day for many years. One prostitute was reported as saying she saw him every single day. Why is this important I hear you ask? Because all of the victims of the latest murders in Bradford were likely to have known Mr Griffiths personally because they saw him every day. They knew him, or at the very least, they will of known of him.

A scary fact is more than half (60%) of women are attacked by men they already know – not a complete stranger.

In my opinion the guy that attacked these ladies probably lived amongst them.

Good personal safety is being aware of people you know as well as the complete strangers.

Attack Rituals

If we look at attack rituals, an attacker is almost always likely to have his blood full of adrenaline. The murderer, or attacker, attacks people for a reason and usually it’s because they get a buzz out of it.

So if you see someone you know and they are behaving just slightly differently this can often be a key clue because it’s not congruent. Now I am not saying that everyone who acts a little differently is going to attack you but it should ring some alarm bells in your head.

If someone is going to attack they are either going to use the ambush technique, or they are going to use the talking distance attack, because it has to take place at talking distance. The attacker needs to get close, so they can either run and ambush or they come and talk to you nicely but they won’t be acting like they normally do.

If I was to guess I would say that these terrible series of Bradford murders were probably talking distance attacks and the girls probably recognised their attacker and felt pretty comfortable in his company. In fact, one newspaper article I read said the accused, Stephen Griffiths, was acting in a very different way on the day of the final murder – in other words he looked a bit shifty!

There are three elements to look out for:

Body language
Tonality
Words

If the other person seems excited or nervous, or both, there will be a incongruency between their body language, tone and words. In other words they may be saying one thing but their body language and tonality would be saying another because of this extra excitement.

Psychopaths like to kill people because there is a feeling of being important and more in control – they enjoy this kind of domination. They don’t understand empathy and often they simply do it to get a chemical reaction in their blood.

So if your proposed attacker wants to get close, he will try and talk to you and he will have increased levels of adrenaline. This is why some people appear “shifty” as there body language is saying something completely different to their words.

I know this advice may sound simple and it is but it could save your life. I would recommend you trust your instincts even with people you know.

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Positional Asphyxia and how not to restrain someone?

Darren Good — Wed, 19 May 2010 13:09:04 +0000

There was a sad story in the media this week about a shoplifter who unfortunately died in police custody. These stories are always sad and I don’t know how the person in this particular case died but often people who pass away in custody actually die from positional asphyxia.

With this in mind I thought it would be a worthwhile exercise to go through a few ways not to restrain someone.

Restraint techniques have to be professionally taught in a certain way to help prevent death from positional asphyxia. A case which illustrated this was a clubber who sadly died in Bradford.

When any person, door supervisors, authority or organisation considers restraining someone they must be aware of the dangers of positional asphyxia as it’s a known killer. Wikipedia describes positional asphyxia as:

A form of asphyxia which occurs when someone’s position prevents them from breathing adequately. A small but significant number of people die suddenly and without apparent reason during restraint by police, prison officers and health care staff. Positional asphyxia may be a factor in some of these deaths.

It is mainly caused by someone’s lack of ability to breathe, which could be acerbated by the position they are put in when being restrained. For instance, if you restrain someone around the neck that can increase the risk, so can putting extra pressure on the chest as that can restrict the person’s breathing.

Often there is more than one person involved in restraining someone, sometimes if can be by holding them to the floor and another person separately holding them around the neck.

There are a number of factors that can increase the chance of positional asphyxia and these include the following:

1. Someone being pinned down on the floor. Most people will move the person as quickly as possible and get them into the recovery position swiftly

2. Putting weight on a person’s back as this is going to restrict the person’s breathing.

3. Being held around the neck as this also heavily restricts breathing

Wrist Lock

4. Obesity – a person’s own body weight can restrict breathing

5. Alcohol and drug use

If all of these factors occur at the same time, the chance of positional asphyxia is heavily multiplied.

People suffering from this condition often can’t breathe and they are gasping for air, then they begin to panic and they need even more oxygen to compensate and it becomes a bit of a viscous circle. It’s a bit like a bower constrictor snake slowly strangulating them of oxygen.

There is a common misconception that if someone is talking, they must be breathing, but it has been proved that people can talk even if they can’t breathe. It is an indicator that they are OK but not necessarily true.

In our training at GoodSense we use wrist locks on arms because when the attacker pushes against you and your restraint they put their own pressure on their wrist. The worst that can happen is you can break their wrist but if you sit on them to restrain them you could actually kill them.

In other words as a training organisation we teach holds that reduce the risk of positional asphyxia. We are also designed to work within the manual handling regulations so the person doing the restraining is much less likely to injure themselves as well during the process.

I have enclosed a video which is a good example of the sort of wrist lock we would use but when we do it we would use two people locking each individual wrist. However, we would initially use an escort or holding position first but only if the subject was compliant. If they were non-compliant we would use a wrist lock as shown in the video. You wouldn’t use this type of hold on a child as you could easily break their wrist but you would do it on an adult.

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Prison officers deserve regular good quality self defence training

Darren Good — Wed, 05 May 2010 07:43:47 +0000

The recent shocking and violent attack in Armley prison on a prison officer tells me that the officers are still very vulnerable in what is still a very dangerous job. He was reportedly looking after 71 inmates on his own at the time. These people have to deal with the most violent people in society and the attack in Armley wasn’t simply a one-off it happens a lot in our prison system, I remember there was a recent case in Durham prison. The Times reported:

One female officer was stabbed in the back and two male colleagues suffered arm and face injuries in the attack at Frankland Prison, Co Durham, on Saturday.

The Category A prison has seen a number of assaults on staff in recent years and in 2008, HM Inspectorate of Prisons raised concerns over levels of violence.

The most recent attack took place just after 9am when the officers, who are all in their early thirties, opened the door to a cell.

One of the officers was thought to have been slashed in the face after rugby-tackling the inmate, while another was said to have suffered a potentially life-threatening arterial bleed.

The key information here is that the officer rugby tackled the inmate, as this shows that people still use this when fighting or restraining people. The best fighting system for dealing with rugby tackles is the Spear system. Both the Gracie and Spear systems have very similar defences against rugby tackles this called sprawling.

If the sprawl hasn’t worked you will be usually be dragged to the floor and you use a technique called The Gracie Guard, which is where you bear hug with your hands, and grab the attacker between your legs and pull them in them tight. If you use this technique you are not going to let the attacker get any power in their punches. When your body is under extreme pressure or stressed (when your heart beat goes above 220 bpm) you can’t use your minor motor skills because you are shaking and your fight or flight kicks in. However, the techniques I have just described work whether you are stressed or not because you are using your legs.

NHS staff that work in prisons are the responsibility of the NHS – which results in their training to be very mixed. The training for these brave team members has to be realistic and practical.

I believe that the people doing these types of jobs should be trained in the latest techniques including how to get out of tackles and locks etc. Although these officers do receive adequate training I personally feel that self defence training in our prisons could be vastly improved. If I was recommending training for them, I would suggest a six-week Gracie or Spear program at the very minimum – not just having a few short lectures on self defence because it’s simply not enough. These are people’s lives we are dealing with here.

I was at an event recently with experts in the UK and not one instructor mentioned the relevance of dealing with a Rugby Tackle but I have seen it happen in attacks.

I have included a video which shows a prison attacker getting attacked and it is pretty shocking. Training can save lives – watch the video and judge for yourself.

The enclosed video clearly shows me the significance of the Gracie system because in that they pull the attacker into the body which stops them having the leverage to punch you. The Gracie defence for this was clearly shown in the post that I did earlier in the year on police training.

Both this post and my previous one clearly demonstrate the importance of good quality training, it should never be a tick box exercise as it could save their lives.

In my opinion, this training needs to be something that is regular and intensive that shares the latest self defence techniques, fear psychology, anti-ambush methods and looking at how to analyse and deal with attack rituals.

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Why do police value a proven criminal’s statement the same as an innocent man?

Darren Good — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 13:12:56 +0000

I read an interesting story yesterday about a man, Mr Roberts from Nottingham, who protected his mother’s home by stabbing two burglars. The man had been charged with murder but he was acquitted this week.

Apparently, when he came to her house he found the patio door of the semi-detached house in Nottingham smashed to pieces. So he grabbed a kitchen knife from a drawer nearby to protect himself and then he was attacked by a 14-year-old burglar, who was brandishing a blade. In the struggle the youngster, who hasn’t been named for legal reasons, was stabbed twice in the leg and then was chased off the property by Roberts. The second burglar Mr Juett, was upstairs checking a bedroom. He then rushed down the stairs to confront Mr Roberts. In the fight Mr Roberts sadly stabbed the teenager in the shoulder which severed one his major arteries resulting in the burglar’s death.

The 14 year old accomplice told the police that Mr Roberts had chased him outside and then stabbed him outside of the property this was key to the investigation. The fact that he said it happened outside and then Mr Roberts went back into the house armed with a knife to get the other burglar is the reason Mr Roberts was acquitted.

Mr Roberts on the other hand, was clear with the police he said he stabbed both burglars in the house as self defence, it was the other burglar that had said he had chased him out.

The idea to prosecute Mr Roberts is interesting and it all stemmed from the stabbing outside in the criminals statement. This is because the prosecution said he could have called the police rather than going after them in vengeance or retaliation. By definition this isn’t self defence and it is clearly breaking the law.

However, the 14-year old changed his story and admitted when was re-interviewed by the police. He then told them he had been waiting for the other burglar outside the house which matched Mr Roberts statement. In other words Mr Roberts never actually went outside of the property. This in the eyes of the law shows he was simply protecting his home in self defence not retaliation. He was simply frightened and outgunned and did what most people would do pick something up to protect themselves.

The Independent’s article reported:

In a press conference immediately following the hearing, it emerged some police officers did not want the case to be brought against Roberts.

His mother Jacqueline McKenzie-Johnson, 47, said the law now needed to be clarified.

At present home-owners are not allowed to use "unreasonable force" but there have been calls for it to be strengthened so that only "grossly disproportionate force" would warrant prosecution.

She said: "There’s a need for clarification on ‘reasonable force’. I particularly believe that when you are faced with an intruder in your own home, the expectation that you behave reasonably doesn’t seem to fit.

"There are number of things that have had a bearing and I am sure that the General Election had something to do with it. Also, the overwhelming support we have had from the public may have influenced the decision as well as the fact there was no evidence."

In the eyes of the law you are allowed to protect your property, including the garden, but once you go off your property you should phone the police as this could then be seen as overly aggressive. This event apparently actually all happened inside the property. So it is seen as reasonable for Mr Roberts to have picked up a kitchen knife, when he had two armed burglars in his house. The intent was simply to defend himself and his mother’s home.

The law doesn’t need changing

The laws are there to protect us, personally I don’t feel the law actually does need clarifying. The general public just need to understand the law better. The mistake here was from the police and forensics in my opinion. If they had interviewed the younger burglar earlier they could have got the true story from him. I don’t know what the reason was why they didn’t sort this side of the investigation out immediately. Because once they got to the truth it all became clear and the charges were dropped.

Questions that need answering

My questions are these:

Why did it take the police to get so long to the truth?
Should the police take witness statements from known criminals with the same amount of validity as an innocent man protecting his mother’s home?
If all of these events did take place in the house why didn’t the forensic evidence either back up Mr Roberts’s story and negate the 14-year olds story?

As you can see there are more questions than answers here but the law is clear if you are scared for your life you can protect yourself in your own property. However, you simply can’t chase someone down the street with a machete and attack them and expect to get away with it as that would never be seen as reasonable.

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Telephone tips: Conflict resolution on the telephone?

Darren Good — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 12:44:23 +0000

I am writing this post to hopefully pass on some advice on how to deal with conflict on the telephone. I was giving a conflict resolution training course in London last week, so this is still very fresh in my mind.

When people on the telephone call you and come across all angry and frustrated, it isn’t always because they are actually cross. Sometimes these are just mis-read signals by people and you need to be careful in making assumptions quickly, especially when using the telephone.

For instance, if the call is to the NHS, the caller might be frightened as they are trying to get some important test results to determine whether they have cancer or not. So it may be that they are simply on edge and frightened, not angry. However, the person on the other end of the telephone (NHS) might pick up the wrong signals.

The caller that has got the problem, knows that they have a problem, but the person on the other end of the telephone doesn’t understand it. If this happens (and it often does) it means there is very little rapport, if none at all, and the caller might start to come in with one or two different types of aggression depending on their state.

I have identified two types of aggression as either:

a: aggressive – they are venting anger but they are prepared to negotiate
A: Aggressive and not prepared to negotiate at all

As with many things I talk about in conflict resolution, this is all about building rapport because you have to build trust with the caller first before resolving anything.

Building Rapport – a: aggressive

On the telephone rapport is based on 84% tonality. In other words your attitude comes across in the tone of your voice. People are going to make their minds up quickly mainly based on your voice tonality. Your voice tonality is made up your volume, speed, pitch and your Timbre (the quality).

So if you start to match the voice tonality of the person on the other end, you are more likely to build some rapport with them. The easiest way to do this is to match the tempo/speed of their voice. Don’t match their aggression, just the speed! By doing this you are sub-consciously saying “I am like you. You can trust me because I am like you”. This is because the person we trust the most in the world is ourselves.

Just by doing this they will be far likelier to be receptive to your questioning or problem solving skills because they now have some level of trust in you. They are much more likely to take on your advice and take their time rather than simply ranting down the line at you.

If you can sort their problem you should do it quickly and SMART.

S – Specific (Get to the route of the problem)
M – Measureable (I will get back to you by 2pm this afternoon – did I get back to you)
A – Alternatives (Giving the person different alternatives – refund, deduct money next month etc)
R – Realistic (we will reimburse you etc)
T – Time (I will get back to you by XXX – If you get back to them they will trust you because most people don’t get back)

Taking action with A: Aggression (not prepared to listen)

This is the most difficult person to deal with, you need some kind of pattern interruption by coming in at a slightly different angle. Now to do this you need to have their name and phone number before you do anything.

When you have all of their details, you tell them you won’t be able to help them whilst they are behaving like that.

My quick tips to deal with A: Aggression

You say the following quickly and bluntly:“I am not prepared to accept that behaviour”
You then hang up on them.
You then ring them back in about 15 mins with a new fresh tone offering to help.

You do this because it interrupts their pattern of anger. They didn’t expect you to put the phone down on them initially and they certainly didn’t expect you to ring them back. You can now offer them a gift – by solving their original problem.

Now they should like you a bit more because you have called them back and hopefully they are now a little a rather than a Capital A. They also know you will put the phone down on them if they get too aggressive. You have set the rules of the call. The 15-minute rule also doesn’t give them enough time to write a ranting email or letter of complaint, so you should have covered all bases.

I am not saying this works with every irate customer but these are good rules to go by.

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Why I believe the G20 officer got away with it!

Darren Good — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 08:45:23 +0000

I heard this story on the news the other day and to be honest it’s not that surprising this police officer was cleared of the charges. Even if it may be viewed by an outsider as being over zealous or aggressive. When you examine the law closely you then begin to understand why he was acquitted.

G20 Police Assault on Woman

If you watch the video clip which I have included in this post, you can see the background to the event. In other words what was going on before this particular event actually took place. In the video you can see members of the public being aggressive and surging towards the police. They are moving towards the police aggressively and the police are clearly vastly outnumbered, which could cause them to fear for their lives.

Then Miss Fisher approaches Sgt Smellie in an aggressive manor and he uses what we call clearance strike to push her back and out of his way. You can see he uses the back of his hand – he didn’t use his fist or his baton.

After the strike, she then moves towards him again, in possible retaliation and she seems to have items in both hands. From the video you can’t tell what she has in her hands. They could be anything.

So Sgt Smellie honestly believed he was under attack and consequently under Section 3 of the Criminal Law Act was fully entitled to use reasonable force to protect himself. You can see on the video he drops his body level so he can strike Miss Fisher’s legs, rather than a strike at head height, which could have caused severe head injuries. Because he takes this approach he is demonstrating a measured response which shows he is trying to use reasonable force.

He only uses two strikes, he bends his knees and strikes twice. They are not life threatening blows but you have to remember he also didn’t know if she had a weapon or not. She had already been warned both verbally and with the clearance strike. It is my understanding that the CPS weren’t even interested in the clearance strike, they were only interested in the use of the baton, but the judge decided it was reasonable force and threw it out.

The IPCC still might sanction the police officer in some way. However, the police officer could theoretically sue the police for removing his human rights, Article Two is the human’s right to life. He could say you have taken away my right to defend myself.

The circumstances of the case were extremely public and I believe the Government had to be seen to be doing something but the judge just threw it out. It shouldn’t have gone to court in the first place. The problem is many people simply don’t know how these laws work and they cause confusion.

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