Why it’s okay to kick a knife-wielding terror suspect in the head

An adult male was arrested in the UK yesterday, after the stabbing of two Jews in the Golders Green area of London. The attack has been declared a ‘terror incident’ by the police and investigations are ongoing. Video showing the suspect being apprehended by police was posted to social media.

The video shows two police officers, with the help of a Shomrim volunteer, attempting to wrestle control of the suspect’s hands. The suspect is on the floor, he appears to have been tasered and he is refusing to comply with loud commands of ‘Drop the knife!’. Five swift kicks are dealt to his head until his arms can be forced out from under his body so the deadly weapon can be eventually pried from his grip.

Normally, you’d expect this to be an opportunity for the general public to commend the bravery of the officers involved and the success with which they incapacitated an alleged terrorist, suspected of stabbing Jews and armed with a deadly weapon. But these aren’t normal times.

Although ‘dumbest take imaginable’ was a highly contested category after yesterday’s atrocity, I feel Shola Mos-Shogbamimu just about edged into first place. Beyond her role as a professional race-baiter, I’m not actually sure what she does besides having a talent for producing the worst takes on current events imaginable. She posted the following on X:

‘Contemptible abuse of police power. Why kick him in the head several times when he’s already tasered and in your control? Should he not be alive to be brought to justice in a court of law for stabbing two Jews??!! Disgusting.’

Alarmingly, Shola was not alone in condemning the police’s actions.

We’ll just let go for a moment that the suspect was, in fact, taken in ‘alive’ by the police, contrary to Mos-Shogbamimu’s claim. Of course, had the suspect been face down and in cuffs, a good kicking (although tempting) would absolutely be an ‘abuse of police power’. But in the real world, police were faced with a terror suspect in possession of a knife. A knife that mere moments earlier was allegedly being plunged into the necks of innocent Jews, so his willingness to use it was surely beyond doubt.

Police attempted to use non-lethal force in the form of a taser. And still the suspect refused to drop the knife. This set of circumstances poses what sane people understand to constitute ‘an immediate threat to life’.
Commands were not being followed and the use of a taser had failed, meaning further reasonable force was justified as a last resort.

Many seem to believe police tasers are magic wands that cast spells, instantly and permanently immobilising their target. Or that they are even so effective that the suspect was physically incapable of dropping his weapon. None of this is true.

While incredibly useful as a form of non-lethal force, tasers operate for five seconds at a time. They stun their targets. If someone manages to keep hold of their weapon while this is happening to them, it’s because they intended to. And if you don’t quite buy that, then you still have to explain why the suspect would not drop his bladed weapon in between these five-second zaps.

It’s also worth pointing out that an armed response was almost certainly on the way to the scene. Had an armed-response unit encountered the suspect first, and found him to be in possession of a deadly weapon and non-compliant, then they would have taken him out without hesitation. He should consider himself very, very lucky to have only received a boot to his bonce rather than a bullet.

There are many reasons I could not do what our police force does, but I think chief among them would be to witness the certainty with which professional know-nothings sit comfortably behind their keyboards, demonstrating their complete ignorance of what it’s like to be in a violent confrontation involving a deadly weapon – while throwing scorn at those who risk everything to keep us safe from such attacks.

They seem to be advocating for a form of policing whereby Jew-stabbing terror suspects are handed additional opportunities to stab more people in the neck. This option is somehow more palatable to them than a few swift kicks to the head of an allegedly murderous, anti-Semitic lunatic.

I feel nothing but shame that British Jews are being attacked and made to feel unsafe in their own country – and worse, that so much sympathy is reserved for their attackers. I have long feared that anti-Semitism could only get worse, and I’m utterly depressed to have been proven right.