FOX CROSSING, WI (WTAQ) – Every year, police officers are required to take part in a series of training sessions to sharpen their skills and keep their techniques up-to-date. DAAT, or Defense And Arrest Tactics training is one of the more common practices that officers see at least once a year.
“It’s a series of verbalization skills with some physical alternatives that we use to try and gain some compliance with people who are resisting arrest,” says Fox Crossing Police Officer Dan Wiechman, “DAAT covers everything from handcuffing a cooperative subject and using verbal skills to aid in that – to going hands-on and doing an escort hold on somebody who’s maybe being disruptive in a public place. All of these different techniques and skills cover a wide variety of potential scenarios.”
Wiechman completed his annual training session this week. The drills usually take about a day at an off-site facility. Specialized instructors, who are often department officers themselves, help the officers refresh their knowledge of proper arrest tactics and ways to handle different situations.
“We start with basic hand strikes with mats and partners, nothing too crazy – we don’t want anybody to get hurt,” Wiechman says, “We’ll go through all these techniques and refreshers with each other, and then we’ll do some sort of scenario-based training at the end where we have one of our instructors in simulation suits. They’re very heavily padded. And then they play the role of the actively resisting individual and we have to use the skills that we brushed up on to address whatever scenario it is that we’re playing out.”
Most arrests will involve basic DAAT techniques, that’s why some sort of DAAT is usually incorporated into other aspects of training as well. Wiechman says a lot of skill sets used by officers meld into each other and are often used within moments during a real-life situation.
However, if a situation becomes heated or some kind of threat is made – officers may have to rely on more advanced training.
“If they’re actively resisting, where they’re clenching their fists or making statements like ‘I’m not going to jail that easy’ – if there are indicators like that, that’s when we can escalate our arrest tactics and use other forms like deployment of a taser or a baton,” Wiechman tells WTAQ News, “If the situation warrants the use of a taser or pepper spray, we have to be prepared to use defense and arrest tactics if any of those tools prove to be ineffective or inoperable.”
Wiechman explains that there is a distinguishable difference between passive and active resistance to arrest. Passive resistance can usually be broken down through DAAT techniques, while active resistance often leads to more physical events or the use of a tool like a taser to subdue the suspect.
