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leadchain: Shackled in the Navy … By “Anonymous” (Used with permission.)When I was a sailor waiting at a shore station to be assigned to a ship, I was sent to work briefly for the Master at Arms. My job was as a “chaser”: I took Navy prisoners to and from the brig, various ships and courtrooms. I got pretty handy in the use of handcuffs, leg irons, belly chains and found I really liked chaining up other guys. I enjoyed the few practice sessions where we temporary chasers chained up each other, too.If a guy hadn’t been in the brig before, I liked to make a show of chaining him in the courtroom right after he had been convicted of something. After the court adjourned, I would go over, take the guy by the arm and tell him I was sorry but it was my duty to place him in irons. No matter how minor the offense, I would give him the full works, leg irons and handcuffs behind the back. I usually took my time about it and made lots of noise ratcheting the cuffs through at least once before locking them around the sailor’s wrists and ankles. It was even better when the sailor had a few buddies or even a girlfriend or parent to observe the chaining. I would then keep him on a bench in a public area, chained up in his dress blues, for a while until I was good and ready to walk him over to the brig. Most guys swallowed hard and just seemed humiliated. Judging from a few wayward bulges, a number of them really got off on being chained in public.I always talked a lot as I was chaining the guys up, real official-like stuff I just made up, telling them just what I was doing, asking for a wrist or what have you, asking if the shackles weren’t so tight as to cut off circulation or something. I was always on the lookout for their reactions. Most guys just tried to tough it out, real emotion-less. Some would laugh about the mickey mouse crap the Navy was putting them through. I would get real stern and official with this kind of guy and tighten the cuffs until he stopped laughing. I would always loosen the cuffs up a bit if asked, or if I could see they were going to do damage.Once in a while I’d detect a mini-whimper or a quivering lip in a young sailor. That was always an opening for me to bellow out, “don’t tell me you’re gonna CRY or something.” That was always enough to get him blubbering. Then I would make him sit in a public waiting area, tears streaming, nose running, and hands cuffed behind his back, until he stopped. Handcuffing Rules in the NavyWhen I was in the Navy, the shore patrol was for the most part made up of guys between assignments for whom the Navy didn’t have anything better to do. Unlike the Army’s military police, which has long been organized as a separate career path, career “Master at Arms” types in the Navy are a relatively recent development. Anybody might find himself tapped for temporary shore patrol or chaser duty. Some, like me, tended to stay in longer because we got good at it or actually liked the work. While I am sure there were a lot of rules on paper, practice varied a lot, and so did levels of professionalism.I remember some reluctant chasers (particularly chasers-for-a-day from some ship’s company) who never wanted to use their handcuffs at all, even though it was policy that prisoners on their way to or from the brig were supposed to be handcuffed. Most guys don’t join the Navy to be pseudo-cops: they want to be at sea, not some dreary shore station. The reluctance of some chasers to use handcuffs certainly wasn’t due to lack of equipment; we had plenty. Ships always had their own supply as well. I think some of the reluctant chasers felt sorry for our prisoners, or had a feeling that but for different circumstances, they might be the ones in trouble. I didn’t pity my prisoners, I envied them!Every chaser was issued his own pair of handcuffs, and there were always a few extra pair in our prisoner transport vans as well as a few pair of leg irons. The “American Munitions” brand were standard issue at the time. Leg irons were freely available in the office, with little or no accountability. I suggested to our CPO that we should have some belly chains, so a few sets of those were requisitioned. They also kept a few straitjackets at the brig.Nobody ever objected to my using the whole works, leg irons, handcuffs and/or belly chains, when I took a guy into custody. Anytime somebody made a comment, I would say that rules were rules. What I didn’t say was that I was making up the rules as I went along! In fact, I was seen as the resident expert on handcuffs, and eventually I led handcuff instruction sessions for new chasers. I don’t remember there being a firm rule about cuffing in back, and it was relatively infrequently done (except by me).My general interest in handcuffs led me to start collecting them while I was still on active duty in the Navy. I acquired a pair of old H&R [Harrington & Richardson Firearms Co.] cuffs at a pawn shop, among others. H&R’s were once the standard cuff of the FBI, and the Chinese are currently producing and using a similar model.The most unusual thing about H&R cuffs is the hidden and deliberately awkward-to-reach keyhole placement. Just to make the keyhole accessible requires the handcuff chain to be held at a 90-degree angle from the normal position the chain lies in when the handcuffs are locked around someones wrists. Unless you already know how they work, you are highly unlikely even to see the keyhole. This is all the more so when the first time you come into contact with H&R cuffs is by having them clamped onto your wrists with your hands behind your back. If the hands are cuffed behind the back with the palms facing out, it is extremely difficult for the prisoner to remove the cuffs, even if he knows how they work and has the key in hand. One sailor, whom I’ll call Jackson, had been sentenced to “six-six-and-a-kick” (six months imprisonment at hard labor, forfeiture of two-thirds of his pay for six months and a bad conduct discharge) for repeated instances of unauthorized absence and barracks theft. He was quite bitter and let us all hear about it. It was “fuck the Navy” this and “fuck the Navy” that, combined with quite a few “go fuck your-self’s” that convinced me the lad needed a bit of informal reinforcement of the court’s sentence. Right after trial, I told Jackson we [my partner and I] had to put him in irons to take him to the brig. My partner was a real baby-faced seaman recruit who was awaiting assignment to the fleet; he seemed as afraid of using the shackles as he was of Jackson! Although Jackson cursed us bitterly, I told him to pipe down if he knew what was good for him. It was no problem to get him into the leg irons and handcuffs; he was all talk and he did not really resist, even through he lambasted us nonstop. Neither Jackson nor my partner knew anything was different when I slipped my H&R’s out of a back handcuff pouch and onto the prisoner’s wrists. I discreetly double locked them, and said nothing to either my partner or Jackson about the unusual cuffs. I told my young partner that he could take Jackson to the brig on his own since he had been well secured in irons, and only one escort was technically required for a shackled prisoner. I told him I would go to early chow, saying I would follow later and catch up with him at the brig.I took my time at chow before sauntering over to the brig to see the fun. Foul-mouth Jackson was still pissed off but subdued; even though the leg irons had been removed, his hands were still firmly cuffed behind his back. My young partner was holding the leg irons awkwardly, not sure of what to do with them. Several chasers and brig guards were staring at the H&R manacles still imprisoning Jackson’s arms behind him, and were trying to figure out where the keyhole was. One guy authoritatively stated that these were clearly one-time-only cuffs that would have to be sawed off.The gathering knot of sailors at intake attracted the Chief Petty Officer’s attention. By way of explanation, I told the chief I had used special cuffs because I viewed the prisoner as an escape risk, and didn’t want my younger buddy to lose a prisoner. The chief took that on board without comment, and understood exactly why I had decided to give Jackson an extra-hard time. He tacitly approved because it would make for that much less of a discipline problem for Jackson’s next six months in the brig. The Chief nevertheless gruffly told me the next time I should stay with guys that I had put into non-standard cuffs.I removed my H&R cuffs from Jackson out of sight of everybody, and kept their working details to myself as I slipped them into their pouch. Jackson said nothing more to me as he changed out of his service dress blues for the last time and into his new brig uniform for the first time. To this very day, I still have the cuffs I used on Jackson.When I saw my young partner locking and unlocking his own cuffs and leg irons, getting more familiar with the tools of his new trade, I gave him an impromptu session on handcuffing techniques by taking turns cuffing each other.Photo: Sailor in H&R handcuffs -- source link
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