Chris above mentioned "night stick". I think they were phased out years ago. I believe LE went to the ineffective metal expandable gizmos and then mace and now the electrical alleged stun jobbies that don't really seem to work on the drugged or the crazy or the combined drug and crazy who are usually the critters that are violent. I still have mine out in the garage somewhere. Black cherry wood, custom made for me by a local fruit farmer circa 1965 iirc. I was trained how to use it by Old Heads and actually learned how to twirl it like the old beat cops did. I used that implement a number of times in a number of different ways in order to effect (or affect
) an arrest. Some were bloody and some weren't. It usually meant me winning as my old Lt. told me, "They don't pay you enough to lose."
Sadly, cops have been relegated to being social workers. They are hired not for the ability to do the job, mainly because the bosses don't really know what the job is nowadays, but to fill quotas of so called racial minorities, females, trans-genders, gays, vertically challenged, horizontally challenged, follically challenged, (I don't think they have included the quadriplegics yet and that's a shame.) the toothless, those with outsized feet and the list goes on. The training is poor because they are trained to be social workers, not to do the dirty work that lands in their laps and might embarrass their bosses and the local politicos in this 21st century land of ignorance and bliss. I don't mean this as denigrating good police officers, but some of their peers are sorely lacking and it shows. Sadly, it's probably not their fault either.
If the police officer who shot "Scout" had a proper nightstick and knew how to use it, he might just not have found the need to shoot. But that could be bloody and untidy. We can't have that, so shoot. I once was confronted with a 15 year old kid in a back yard, who I figured out was quite mentally disturbed, who had been walking around a neighborhood, walking into houses and scaring people, mainly because he had a machete and was babbling.
He was close enough to me to be troublesome, probably 25 feet or so. I disarmed him with my nightstick with no damage to him or me. I'm not saying I was right. I could have easily shot him. He was quite out of it. But I had a proper nightstick and knew how to use it. It ended well.