Thread: British "Cosh" or American "Blackjack"?

Originally Posted by Hirlau

... they were used to intimadate (not the way they are to be used) & the subject becomes aware of their presence, takes it away from you, then beats you, with your own "blackjack". That really sucks when it happens.

I carried this one the first 6 years on the job,,, it ended a lot of fights,,, then they were banned for us to carry. This one just collects dust now.

I was a military policeman in the 70s and we had weeks of daily nightstick training. At the end, the instructor called us all into a huddle and said, "If you ever have to use this and the guy fights back and starts to to get it away from you, let them have it, back up a step quickly while drawing you weapon, and shoot them. They have since they now have a deadly weapon." Good advice.

Nightsticks & PR-24's I left them in the car,,, never cared for them,,, the only time in 25 years I ever used one was to smash out a car window, to save a dog that had been left inside, in the heat,,

Originally Posted by Hirlau

Nightsticks & PR-24's I left them in the car,,, never cared for them,,, the only time in 25 years I ever used one was to smash out a car window, to save a dog that had been left inside, in the heat,,

Good on you for doing that. Poor dog. I hope the owner of the dog was smacked around a few times.

A few true stories ......... in NYC if there was a fire, and the fireman came upon a car parked in front of the johnny pump, they would sometimes break the front windows on either side and run their hose through the car to hook to the pump. Sometimes they would turn the car on its side and slide it across the asphalt out of the way. Got this from a friend who was a NYC cop.

On blackjacks, saps, slap jacks, in my younger days I knew some guys who had been on the wrong side of those things. For the flat slapjacks one guy told me if the LEO hit you with the narrow side of it, instead of the flat front or back, the thing really hurt.

In San Francisco in the '50s, '60s a 'bad actor' I knew when I was a kid told me that the cops sometimes wore gloves that had lead in the fingers and palms. A slap from one of those was worse than a tazer.

They were the original ”Less than Lethal” weapon.

The small one, like Cuda’s with the spring handle and Lead Shot head, was a universal tool for breaking windows, close quarters combat, detaching grips of hands by tapping joints or fingers and when properly thrown like a throwing knife, brought a quick end to foot pursuits…

You have to remember the first rule of a street fight, “There are no rules”.

In Britain we'd probably call it a cosh or a truncheon. Truncheons are more commonly associated with the police over here, but bludgeoning weapons generally get labelled as such, correctly or not.

I have one of the woven handle ones with an "egg" of lead woven on one end with the spring handle and lanyard. The leather is kind of in bad shape as are the stitches. I do have a pair of Hatch gloves with 8oz. of powdered steel sown across the knuckles. Those are bad news. Saw them in a catalog and "had to have them". Well I never used them offensively or defensively, but I used them for a while while shooting hard kicking magnum handguns and the extra weight tamed the recoil and the heavy leather in the palms spared my flesh from severe recoil shifting of the grips in my hands.

You blokes are going to lead this sometime leather worker astray you know that?!


Mick