FOI 12549 and 12550
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NOs: Warwickshire Police 12550 and West Mercia Police 12549
I write in connection with your requests for information which were received on 10th September 2019. Please find below the responses to your requests for Warwickshire Police and West Mercia Police information:
Request:
I understand that there is Home Office Approved Training for the application of handcuffs on suspects/detainees, however, there seems to be a lack of information regarding what type of suspect/detainee should have which of the approved application methods applied.
I have found information that rear handcuffing in the stack position should be applied to slimmer people and larger suspects should have either back to back (of hand) or if impractical, to have 2 sets of handcuffs connected together.
It is clear that some people are too large to have rear stack at all or are large enough not to be able to have rear stack without causing considerable pain, discomfort and injury, yet I have found evidence of some people who clearly shouldn't have been handcuffed in the rear stack position being handcuffed in the aforementioned position.
What is your force policy on handcuffing large people who struggle to or cannot practically position their hands/arms for a rear stack and what are officers taught in regards to handcuffing in the rear stack position?
REPLY:
Please find below the Warwickshire Police and West Mercia Police response:
We have no formal force policy with regard to handcuffing large people who
struggle to or cannot practically position their hands/arms for a rear
stack.
The following information which may be of interest to you, has been provided by the Forces Learning and Development Department,
All Warwickshire Police and West Mercia Police Officer Safety Training (including Handcuffing) is material taken solely from the College of Policing Personal Safety Manual of Guidance
Warwickshire Officers and West Mercia Officers are taught during their initial training and reiterated/updated during all refresher courses to use either a ‘Front Stack’ application or a ‘Rear Back to Back’ application.
The decision to apply handcuffs in any formation is down to the officer who will use the National Decision Model (NDM) to justify their decision making process. This will include considering factors such as behaviour, impact factors and an assessment of threat.
Officers do have the option of using multiple handcuffs for one subject, but as only a single pair are issued to Officers, this would need additional Officers to attend the incident to provide such resources.
There are a number of nationally recognised handcuffing techniques, and although we do not specifically cover the ‘rear stack’ application within the refresher training, its use can again be justified using the NDM. The decision to apply a rear stack could be for reasons such as the size/flexibility of the subject, the resistance they are presenting or through an urgency for handcuffs to be applied. The officer will still need to use the NDM and based on their threat assessment may consider changing the rear stack formation to a rear back to back when it is safe and practicable to do so.