The PR-24 has a less well known use:
Chain link fence climbing tool.
The short handle goes up against the chain link and you hold the long section while your buddy uses it as a step to go up and over!

This awesome karma has closed but to show my late-arrival appreciation for it, a brief tale of my father’s LE service in Southern California that spanned from the late 1960s into the mid 1970s.

As a deputy with a major metropolitan Sheriff’s Department, one piece of his duty gear (that I now have in safekeeping) is an old-school baton (no side handle). Think the batons on “Adam-12.”

My father described a major ruckus afoot at a local park at which a legion of deputies had been summoned to clear a rowdy crowd from the grounds. The crowd responded to megaphone requests to stand-down with catcalls, thrown bottles, and the one-finger salute to the khaki-shirted officers.

The Sergeant in charge raised his baton in the air like a cavalry saber and yelled, “Charge!” to which the deputies did just that and rushed the mob.

My father recalls getting whacked in his thankfully helmeted head by a thrown cooler before seeing a ne’er-do-well making a run at him, coming across the top of a picnic table. Dad squared-off with his trusty baton and smacked the dude on the side of the kneecap. My father heard something “crack” and it wasn’t his baton! He left the punk where he lay and kept moving through the park with his fellow deputies.

As noted by an earlier poster…those ‘70s, man…

quote:

I would love a shot at that, but sadly we're prohibited by policy from carrying a PR-24 on duty. Smacking somebody with a straight stick = ok. Stick with a side handle = not ok. Yeah, I don't see the logic either.

I'm wondering if that's because it's easier to modulate the force of a straight baton impact, simply by pulling back a bit just before contact. Versus the side baton with its free-spinning grip: once in motion, it's going to unleash its full energy into the target.

quote:

Originally posted by kkina:

quote:

I would love a shot at that, but sadly we're prohibited by policy from carrying a PR-24 on duty. Smacking somebody with a straight stick = ok. Stick with a side handle = not ok. Yeah, I don't see the logic either.

I'm wondering if that's because it's easier to modulate the force of a straight baton impact, simply by pulling back a bit just before contact. Versus the side baton with its free-spinning grip: once in motion, it's going to unleash its full energy into the target.

If things have reached the point where you're hitting somebody with a stick and you're not doing it full-force, you're doing it wrong. I'm pretty sure the side handle issue is pure optics...those policies started popping up after Rodney King

Thanks again Beancooker, and congrats FLKev...I'm looking forward to some gator and snake thumping videos!