Some people don’t want “to come quietly.” Some choose not to obey police commands even in dynamic situations. And the overwhelming majority of police officers would rather get through their day avoiding any degree of confrontation or the need to use force and certainly don’t want to get into fights.
Police Use Of Force: What The Public Often Misunderstands
Often, those with a passing interest in joining the police say they couldn’t do so because they don’t like conflict. I don’t either, and anyone applying to join the police who does profess to actually enjoy confrontation, rather than refuse to shy from it, is plainly unsuitable and should be shown the exit door immediately.
Bad or deluded people will sometimes seek to harm others, requiring the police to step into the fray, even if that means putting their own lives at risk. Over my policing service, I was involved in quite a few situations where my colleagues and I had to use force to quell a violent person and protect innocent people. I was lucky in that I probably dealt with fewer such incidents than some officers, and I certainly wasn’t in daily fear for my life, but sometimes I, like every other police officer, had to get hands-on.
Subduing somebody intent on harming others or themselves can take many forms, from “tactical communications” (basically talking somebody into a more reasonable state) to the use of lethal force. It is the middle ground, though, that brings out the armchair experts. Depending on the conduct and response of the person concerned, use of force can unfortunately look ugly, messy and even brutal to the untrained eye, particularly if that observer is witnessing the incident through curated and edited digital footage.
The week before last, a man attacked and stabbed two Jewish people in Golders Green. Police officers arrived very quickly and challenged the man, who ignored their demands to stand still and drop the knife. Given he’d already stabbed two innocent people and, for various reasons, could reasonably be suspected to be an active terrorist, the officers became very vocal in their demands. Then, when he continued to pose a threat, they deployed Taser. The man fell to the ground, and the officers immediately rushed forward to restrain him, only too aware that he was still holding the knife and could use it on them.
Given that he was still presenting a lethal threat and may have had other weapons or devices on him, the officers had to apply additional force to that normally required after somebody had been Tasered. It was loud, sweary and not pretty. Officers appeared to kick the man on or near his head while he still refused to let go of the very weapon he used to try to kill two people with and could use on them. This additional use of force to make him release the knife and comply was necessary, proportionate and incredibly brave. Who knows how many lives it saved?
Why Political Commentary On Policing Needs To Be Grounded In Facts
All police officers know they are under scrutiny, but such scrutiny should be on the basis of the evidence, facts and contextual awareness. Therefore, when the leader of the Green Party, Zack Polanski, blithely shared a post alleging that the police had repeatedly and violently kicked a mentally ill man in the head after he had been tasered, he was not only ignorantly jumping on an inflammatory bandwagon posited by those who would no more walk in to quell a violent situation than on the moon, but he also undermined any credibility he might have as a political leader.
When I was the divisional commander at Brighton and Hove, I was the first such officer in the country to run a city’s police while working with a Green Party council and a Green Party MP. During that time, we had many violent incidents and protests and occasions when questions were raised about the use of force. However, those councillors and Caroline Lucas, the MP, took time to talk to me or my colleagues about what had happened rather than make ill-informed public statements. Sometimes they still criticised us, but it was from a position of knowledge, and that was fine.
Mr Polanski would do well to learn from his party’s previous leaders rather than reaching for the retweet button, thereby highlighting his foolishness to the world.
I originally wrote this for my weekly column in The Argus, published on Monday, 11 May 2026.
