British police medic uses nightstick to treat his involuntary patients

Justin McKeating asks: “Now, I’ve never had any medical training so can someone more knowledgeable please tell me what the above procedure is called and what it’s used for in a medical capacity?” (via, Why That's Delightful!)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Takuan

yeah, I’m use the Red Cross appreciates the fine distinction. Asshole move, UK police, asshole move. The slippery slope you tread for a microscopic gain in available manpower shows a mentality that can’t be trusted with public safety.

Police can only work with public consent. They are vastly outnumbered and ultimately out-gunned (even in the UK). They can function to a limited extent when they have replaced public respect with fear, but when they cross the line into public hatred, things fall apart.
Blaine

Tak@26:

That’s obviously been Photoshopped. When you read the police reports, it was the crowds who were so unruly that the police were unable to get him help.

In the video you can clearly see it’s the protestors themselves who move the crowd, not by swinging a truncheon but by actually telling the masses “Hey, back the fuck up – this guy is having a heart attack”. And the people respond.

It’s almost like… if you use your words instead of shoving people around, they’ll actually react voluntarily in the manner you wish!

And since we know thats bullshit… it’s all shooped in that one.
Takuan

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/10/g20-assault-investigation
John Coulthart

Bludgeon therapy

or

Medicine: you’re doing it wrong.
yezzer

I think this is the original photo here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/amjamjazz/3406353191/
Anonymous

Neither the phrase “police medic” or a white cross on a blue field are protected emblems. The do, indeed only imply that ther copper in question has taken some medical training, not that he is either a doctor or protected under international law.
Takuan

hey, take the kids to work and teach ‘em a trade!
TheMadLibrarian

I’m not sure this deserves a LOLtag, except as amended by /sarcasm.
yezzer

From the same day, here’s 2 police medics doing their thing:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigcrustyape/3406023407/sizes/o/
Ray DelMundo

Trepanation.
Aneurysm

I believe that medical procedure is called a freedomectomy. It’s typically performed on people with chronic cases of Civil Rights.

The standard tissue blungeoner shown above is used throughout most of the UK, with the exception of Irleand where they uses medicinal shelalees.
Girl With A One Track Mind

Um, FYI, you appear to be using someone’s photo without permission/attribution: the original is here http://www.flickr.com/photos/amjamjazz/3406353191 and All Rights Reserved…
starfish and coffee

” now open your mouth, say AAAAAHHH”
Anonymous

forget about the nighstick, as its standard PD equipment. What about the sap gloves? To me it looks like he anticipated fighting, and decided to buy a new set of gloves with a bonus 6 ounces of lead powder for hippie head crackin.
Antinous / Moderator

Actually, there’s a real medical procedure that involves breaking a patient’s face. It’s called a LeFort procedure and is used for patients with severe facial anomalies. LeFort fractures are common facial fractures seen in injuries. Facial surgeons create controlled breaks in the patient’s face in order to rearrange the facial structure for deformities like mid-face hypoplasia or eyes set way out to the sides. The original research consisted largely of dropping skulls face-first.

On a lighter note, when you have a nose job, the doctor more or less sticks a screwdriver up your nose and yanks it side to side to break it.
mortis

creating patients?

^m^
xanderkale

He’s clearly an anaesthetist.
Takuan

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/apr/20/police-assault-g20-protests
starfish and coffee

“you may feel a small stick”
Anonymous

It had all started with demands for a more militant and homogeneous police force, for greater technical resources in general, and for more firearms in particular. To get this it had been necessary to exaggerate the hazards that policemen faced. Since verbiage had not proved politically effective enough, recourse had then been made to another method: namely, the manipulation of statistics.

At this juncture the political demonstrations during the second half of the sixties had opened up magnificent possibilities. Demonstrators pleading for peace had been suppressed by violence. Hardly ever armed with anything but their banners and their convictions, they had been met by tear gas, water cannons, and rubber nightsticks. Few were the nonviolent demonstrations that had not ended in tumult and chaos. The individuals who had tried to defend themselves had been mauled about, arrested, and prosecuted for “assaulting the police” or “resisting arrest.” All this information had been fed into the statistics. The method worked perfectly. Each time a few hundred policemen were sent out to “control” a demonstration, the figures for alleged assaults against police had rocketed.

That’s from the Locked Room, written in 1972.

The Blair regime, and the Brown one that followed it, have really increased the scope of this kind of thing (Jacqui Smith barely bothers to cloak her totalitarian designs), but similar things have been happening in the UK since the 1960s. The Battle of the Beanfield is an excellent example.

The same is true of the US.

The police are at least as much of a problem as they crime they are supposedly controlling (even when the police aren’t actually being bribed to look the other way by criminals: that being an example of regulatory capture) just like the critics of Sir Robert Peel predicted when Peel created the Metropolitan Police Force.
Takuan

losing faith
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/apr/13/hillsborough-disaster-police-south-yorkshire-liverpool
AirPillo

A police medic is just a normal cop with some medical training. So he can beat all the meat he wants.

What he does at home after his shift isn’t the issue in contention, here :p
Takuan

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/8000246.stm
Takuan

THREE YEARS
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/12/ian-tomlinson-g20-police-verdict
Anonymous

Well, I don’t know about the police, but when I was a medic in the army, we were expected contribute (shoot the enemy).
Anonymous

He’s beating out an alcohol fire. The “victim” is actually burning and is quite grateful.
Rikki Simons

Obviously he’s a brain specialist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qlrBEHtJWw
Xopher

Girl 47, it’s fair use.
Takuan

new outrage
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/15/metropolitan-police-tomlinson-assault-g20
Anonymous

What has happened to the UK? It’s as if they have read books like 1984, and V for Vendetta and decided that it what they were shooting for all along.
Takuan

let’s see, looks like the heroic cop backhands the woman and THEN smashes her in the knee with a club… what do you think?
Teller

I think he’s handing that dangerous weapon to someone behind him. People could get hurt with it.
Girl With A One Track Mind

@Xopher #50: I’m no legal expert but regardless of this picture being seen in a ‘review’ context – and therefore open to a “Fair Use” description – shouldn’t the originator of the photo still be credited and/or linked here?
FoetusNail

He’s a Police Medic, not Protester Medic. He’s practicing preventive medicine.
Anonymous

I believe that this is a Punch and Judy reference, no? In Neil Gaiman’s version, the “medicine” that the doctor applies to Punch is a beating with his stick.
wobinidan

I’m not a big fan of the policing of protests in London, and I’ve been the victim of police kettling in 2001, but the police medics were on hand almost immediately to treat a man who collapsed next to me for no apparent reason.

I doubt that they are as quick to come to the aid of people who’s skulls they’ve just cracked though. They seem to be for medical emergencies only.
SeamusAndrewMurphy

Well,

Thank goodness his jacket isn’t labeled, “Police Proctologist”.

Bad-a-bing.
bcsizemo

@17

Excellent Farscape reference…

Beat’em till the blood runs clear.

Best show ever.
Anonymous

the procedure is called blunt object trepanation, and can cure a variety of ills most notably aggression. it does so by releiving pressure of too much blood in the cranium by creating small cracks in the skull. this is a very old and effective procedure.
GregLondon

That’s percussive maintenance.
Anonymous

Looks to me that the cross is only designating where his kit is, not the officer himself. teh white cross on green or blue background is a common symbol for kits. As long as he isn’t wearing a blue star, or the scepter and snake (whole new meaning to it now) I don’t see him as any different than any cop. just to throw in a devils advocate response, consider for a moment that the officers are acting out of fear. they do their jobs, or get fired, and in the current conditions, there may not be another job, or even if there was, who would hire an ex-cop. many of them probably were trained by officers who lived in the days of the IRA terrorists, and expect any mob to end up in a gunfight. Its a mob mentality gotten out of control, with no moderating influence. I’d also suspect that stress has a big affect on how the police reports are written, as even if the officer is trying to be honest, they do not have a clear picture of what happened. An experiment for you to try, get a painball gun, preferably automatic or with a high rate of fire, an approved mask, and a pair of coveralls. get someone to shoot you so your brain understands the pain, and links it to the sound. wait a couple of hours, let the adrenaline rush drop off. Now, get the other person to shoot at you, try to hit you while you hide behind something that might protect you, and try to do a soduko, or a memory puzzle. it helps if you have to run to new places while under fire.
When you are in danger, a lot of your “higher” brain functions get dropped.

“never attribute to Malice, that which can be as adequately explained by Stupidity.”
Takuan

how do you know they weren’t just lifting his wallet?
Anonymous

Well, he is a police medic – not a protester medic…
Takuan

if someone wearing a Red Cross picks up a gun during war, they become legitimate targets.
Anonymous

It’s called drumming up business.
Anonymous

Really, I’d have thought it was obvious. Just take a look at the appendix to the hypocritic oath and you’ll find it there
Xopher

I wonder if any of the GOOD cops in the UK have any concerns about their international reputation being that of mindless half-zombie thugs?

Or have all the good ones already been driven out?
Blackbird

It’s simply a make work project. Now move along.

Plus, now they have easy spin to the media…’we had a medic working on him’.
Takuan

http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/04/17/gandhicam-makes-it-d.html
Takuan

getting bigger
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/11/g20-pathologist-ian-tomlinson
angusm

The recession has been hard for everyone. Even the police medics are expected to go out and find new clients themselves.
FreakCitySF

He’s throwing a leg splint! Maybe that nightstick didn’t connect to anyone? Or he’s not going for blood? I think that patch just let’s police know he is trained to handle medical situations where as regular cops have less training? Maybe just a classification?
gnoodles

Xopher @ 6: “Or have all the good [cops in the UK] already been driven out?”

No, there are a few left. But they’ve all been transferred to Sandford for making the others look bad.
poops

A police medic is just a normal cop with some medical training. So he can beat all the meat he wants.
Bruce Arthurs

He’s just testing protesters’ reflexes.
Anonymous

In medicine we talk about procedures as being diagnostic (e.g. colonoscopy) or therapeutic (e.g. appendectomy). I came up with a third category: punitive, e.g. gastric lavage for overdosers. The gentleman pictured here has developed a new punitive procedure; he could probably write this up and get it published in Lancet.

Another punitive procedure: getting to do a Captcha to preview AND to post.
merreborn

I think there’s something about nightsticks in the hypocritical oath.
mstoddard

MÃ¼llerian mimicry
scottzer0

It’s called “Job Security”
grimc

He’s obviously performing CPR using a chest compression enhancement device.
stevko

See Warren Ellis’ Transmetropolitan: it’s called a “medical truncheon”.
UncommonSense

I understand that devices of a similar nature were used by doctors in the Victorian age to cure women of “hysterics”. Does it come with batteries?
Stephen

I wonder how the Red Cross feel about that use of the medical designation. This may be a fairly serious international crime, whatever the rules are in the UK.
Takuan

much more evidence of other assaults;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/15/g20-protest-police-videos-catalogue
Anonymous

Notice the other cops wearing slickers? It isn’t raining; they just want to keep the blood off their uniforms when that guy connects.
zeroy

The Subgenius calls it “acubeating.”
ill lich

Obviously. . . it’s a rectal thermometer.
Anonymous

That is radical cranial resuscitation
ref: http://www.hackcanada.com/canadian/zines/spacemoose/pileum.gif
iamanumlaut

It’s an approved and accepted medical treatment for Luxans.
Stephen

Hm… Apparently this is just fine because the cross on his back is not red on a white field.
Anonymous

The man he was treating had some free speech stuck in his throat. The medic was just trying to dislodge it.
newe1344

Police medics often follow the old adage, “a good defense is a strong offense,” as can be seen here by the medic proactively eliminating the “threat” to his fellow officers. Well done, medic.
FoetusNail

Takuan, thanks again for the links. I have less and less time each day to be a part of this community or even read the news. Your links are very important to at least one.

Starting to tend bar a few nights a week at a beer bar, 40 taps of liquid pleasure and adult company, plus tips. Good job for a insomniac. Don’t tell anyone, but I’d probably do it for free to get out of the house without the boys.
Anonymous

What is the copayment for “a sound thrashing”?
Takuan

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/11/police-surveillance-marina-hyde
Anonymous

precision operation the wakastiktomy… usually only used in cases of extreme innocentitis.
Takuan

http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/04/politically_tim.html
Church

He’s obviously trying to let the demons out of the protesters’ heads.
ScottMcG

#13: you’re exactly right.

But really, why shouldn’t medics have some fun too? I mean, you spend weeks in cop school and then find out you can’t injure the public with impunity? I think it’s very courageous that he’s rebelling against the oppressive system that keeps medics from realizing their dreams.

Alternatively, I guess you could say he’s taking charge of the supply chain.