Courtesy Photo | Petty Officer 1st Class Rene Gonzalez, a maritime enforcement specialist from U.S....... read more read more
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ST JOHNS, Antigua and Barbuda - March 8 was the second day of pressure-point training run by members from both Coast Guard Training Teams East and West. Law enforcement experts are supporting Exercise Tradewinds 2011, providing instruction to multi-national classes.
Students have spent the last day learning to identify the different nerve bundles that can be manipulated to cause pain and ensure compliance with a given order. Within the human body there are locations that when pressure is applied to them, electronic signals of pain are sent to the brain.
These pressure points are an integral part of U.S. Coast Guard procedures when dealing with individuals that resist verbal commands and must be given consequences for non-compliance.
The pristine view of the beach along Antigua’s western coast was disrupted by the screams of “do it or you will feel pain” as students playing the role of officer clamped their hands and forearms around the heads of their “suspects.” The look of fear was visible in some students’ eyes as they realized that not complying with the given order would result in intense pain.
“I have done some training similar to this before,” said Lead Seaman Lacalle Johnson of the Royal Bahamas Defence Forces. He has previously been through a U.S. Coast Guard maritime law enforcement training session. “Although this amount of hands-on work makes it more interesting and more fun as well.”
Although the idea behind the training is to learn proper technique, the infliction of pain is still the base function of each method. Instructors make sure that the pain doesn’t carry over after the training ends.
“I want everyone to remember why we’re here,” said Petty Officer 1st Class Rene Gonzalez, a member of Training Team East, while addressing the group before training began on the pressure point known as the “jugular notch;” reaching behind the rib cage at the base of the neck and squeezing nerves while forcing the subject to sit. “We all want to learn this the right way and need to remember that we are all on the same team.”
These are tactics that Coast Guard boarding officers use when confronted with someone who is impeding their search of a vessel, but not in a non-violent way. When looking for illegal drugs or trying to combat human smuggling, they will sometimes sit on top of a scuttle or hatch in an attempt to block officers from entering a space.
“We are teaching methods that are used when dealing with what’s called a passive resistor,” said Chief Petty Officer Ryan Hooper, an instructor from Training Team West in Alameda, Calif. “When someone isn’t actively trying to fight back against an officer, we can use these kinds of tools to move them from one place to another.”
Cooper’s class was made up of students from more than six countries and had students with varying levels of experience, but similar backgrounds.
“Some of these guys are strictly police and have a lot of experience with this, but work in their maritime division, whereas some of them are part of their country’s coast guard, and haven’t been exposed to this type of training before,” said Cooper. “They have been working in teams, which is great, because we want them to be able to work together when they get back home.”
Students were shown the proper method and techniques for each of the different pressure points used. When instructors asked who would be the volunteer for each demonstration, they were met with hesitant glances and some nervous shuffling before one brave volunteer stepped forward. Pvt. Mark Pemberton of the St. Kitts-Nevis Defense Force, dropped to his knees on a mat with a grin, waiting for a member of the training team to shuffle step in behind him.
Hooper approached at a crouch, grabbed his head and gave orders for Pemberton to raise his arms out to his sides, palms facing up. When he refused to comply, Hooper applied a “C-clamp” hold to Pemberton, simultaneously squeezing the nerve bundles beneath his nose and behind his ear. When Pemberton’s arms shot into the air, Hooper beckoned for the two students acting as the rest of his boarding team to move in and secure him.
After seeing an instructor demonstrate the technique, students split into pairs, alternating between officer and subject, which allows them to understand what level of pain can be inflicted and how it effects different individuals. Some students in the class would laugh when their head was grabbed, but become completely serious when the officer would position their hand.
With watchful eyes and ensuring that no students were injured, instructors roamed through the rows of students, changing the holds that some were using and the placement of manipulation points on others.
“The instructors here are very good,” said Pemberton. “They teach everything in a very straightforward way so it’s easy to understand what you are supposed to be doing.”
Tradewinds is a joint-combined, interagency exercise and will involve U.S. personnel from the Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Army, Navy, Air Force, National Guard, Joint-interagency Task Force-South, Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation along with forces from: Antigua-Barbuda (host nation), Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Colombia, Dominica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama, St. Kitts-Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Suriname, Trinidad-Tobago.
| Date Taken: | 03.08.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 03.08.2011 18:28 |
| Story ID: | 66700 |
| Location: | ST. JOHN'S, AG |
| Web Views: | 545 |
| Downloads: | 3 |
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