[quote name='Luckless' timestamp='1298501749' post='4778175']
When the suspect in question is attempting to force a locking door closed between them, yes.

You say that like you are a police officer, but I highly doubt you are a police officer.

What happens if I come home after the bar and it takes me a little while to get my keys in the door. That might look a little suspicious. If the police officer catches me as I'm closing the door and punches me in the face is that ok?

[s]He wasn't resisting arrest, because he wasn't being arrested. At most he was obstructing justice. As far as I am aware, obstruction of justice is not a punch-in-the-face-able offense.[/s]
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I checked and the verbiage of the canadian law includes resisting detention.
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I'm not a police officer, but a number of my co-workers and family members are.

If you are drunk and make it look like you are breaking into someone's front door, then yeah, you might just get hurt if you insist on doing something stupid. If however you turn around when the officer calls out to you, and answer his questions, then he'll be off again after a few minutes.

Or would you rather have an officer just shrug his shoulders and walk away when someone, who looks like a burglar, enters a building and closes the door? Are you actually suggesting that all someone should ever need to do to evade the police is to close a door in their face, and that doing so should have zero consequences? If so, I really hope you come home to find yourself robbed a few times a month.

[quote name='Luckless' timestamp='1298506450' post='4778206']
I'm not a police officer, but a number of my co-workers and family members are.

If you are drunk and make it look like you are breaking into someone's front door, then yeah, you might just get hurt if you insist on doing something stupid. If however you turn around when the officer calls out to you, and answer his questions, then he'll be off again after a few minutes.

Or would you rather have an officer just shrug his shoulders and walk away when someone, who looks like a burglar, enters a building and closes the door? Are you actually suggesting that all someone should ever need to do to evade the police is to close a door in their face, and that doing so should have zero consequences? If so, I really hope you come home to find yourself robbed a few times a month.

You are completely skipping the possibility of him catching up to him and not punching him in the face.

It's like tackling and punching in the face exist in the same space of force. They are on two different levels of force.
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Wait, what part of Might get hurt suggests that all physical altercation result in punches being thrown?

But no you are wrong on the tackling being a lower level of force than punching. They are both in empty hand/physical control level. If a situation requires a forceful tackle, rather than a "Please turn around and put your hands on your head", then throwing a punch is a perfectly valid option if the officer feels it is required to quickly and safely bring a resisting suspect under control.

So if you were an officer, and someone was just about to slam a door in your face, what do you do? Stop short, smile and wave, then quietly wait there for them to open the door and hope that enough backup can arrive to watch all exits before the suspect can get to one? Ask them nicely to open the door after they ignored your previous shouts to stop? (Police are trained to use verbal control first and foremost, so it is laughable to suggest they wouldn't first order someone to stop.) No, you force the closing door back open if you can, restrain the suspect as quickly as possible, and establish control over the situation.
Exactly as officers are trained to do.

Doorways are incredibly dangerous areas. They are transitional zones which means limited access and room. They can also limit communications and situational awareness. An officer likely doesn't know what is inside a doorway. (Even an open glass design can still conceal a lot. You don't know what is in another room, such as other persons who may aid the suspect, potential weapons, etc.) A doorway can also limit the ability for other officers to provide backup when needed.

http://www.policechi...age132_fig3.pdf

But no you are wrong on the tackling being a lower level of force than punching. They are both in empty hand/physical control level. If a situation requires a forceful tackle, rather than a "Please turn around and put your hands on your head", then throwing a punch is a perfectly valid option if the officer feels it is required to quickly and safely bring a resisting suspect under control.

no. They are not the same. Tackling is a form of restraint. Punching is a form of self defense intended to cause someone pain.

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No, I've had my face pushed into a floor mat enough times during training events to tell you that a punch is a very valid use of physical control. It happens to be more toward the hard side, but if you look at the little chart you conveniently provided, you'll notice that hard and soft physical control are all shaded in the same color, and are part of the same box.

Punching is no more a form of 'self defense' than tackling is. The goal is to disable and restrain the suspect, and a suspect who is stunned for the half second you need to grab their arm and twist it behind their back is a suspect who is more quickly and safely restrained. An officer doesn't have x-ray vision, he can't know if the suspect has a weapon that hasn't been pulled yet, and the longer a confrontation goes on, the higher the chance of serious injury.

You seem to be under the impression that tackling is pain free and completely safe. I'm guessing you've never watched the way someone's head bounces after striking concrete or similar hard surfaces.

If you resist and do not comply with instructions, you will be hurt. You will have your joints twisted painfully to restrain you by hand long enough to apply mechanical restraints, or you may be hit hard in nerve clusters or joints to stun you long enough to have the restraints applied.
You may even have blunt weapons such as batons or clubs used against you to further increase the pain if you continue to resist or show that you are a threat.
If you demonstrate that you are enough of a danger, you can have chemicals sprayed into your eyes and air ways, high voltage electric shock applied to your body, or in some areas high energy blunt impact (rubber bullets) weapons fired at you. You might have noticed a trend in all of this, and these all tend to be very painful things. Humans tend to respond to pain by trying to make whatever is causing the pain to stop, and quite often are smart enough to respond by stopping their attempts to fight back.

Of course, if you decide to demonstrate that you are an extreme danger, you are shot with lethal force.

Strikes and tackles fall into the same level of force in every training method I've been exposed to, and they should. They offer similar levels of potential pain and damage. Unless you want to argue that a fist to the head is some how far more likely to cause serious injury than having your face smashed into a hard floor after you are tripped and have a 180+ pound officer falling over on you. (Bringing a suspect to his knees and restraining him in that position is actually safer for the suspect than having to outright tackle them. You'll often see police lowering a suspect from their knees to their front on the ground after applying a hand restraint. From there they can better control the suspect and partly release the hand restraint to apply secure mechanical restraints.)