Patent Application
20050187025
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to police batons having a side handle and more specifically to such a baton which is easier to control.
2. Background Art
The use of batons as weapons for striking is far from a recent novelty. The English word baton is derived from the French baton or the Latin bastum, both meaning stick. As both artifacts, the remnants of human activity, and the behaviors of some of mankind's present day primate relatives suggest, from their earliest appearance, hominids have likely used sticks as both striking weapons and to display that authority. Human history is replete with examples of certain types of fashioned sticks or clubs, like maces, which serve these simultaneous purposes. There have been both maces which are weapons for war and civil maces. There have also long since been sticks or clubs such as the Irish shillelagh, which have served primarily as weapons, and sticks or clubs such as royal scepters, which have served exclusively as ceremonial implements.
Similarly, the use of side handled sticks as weapons is in no way original. In the seventeenth century, the people of Okinawa adapted a farm implement, which is known as a tonfa or toifa, that is “handle”, as a weapon. The tonfa is simply a 15″ to 20″ long stick with a side handle. When used as an agricultural tool, the tonfa's stick is inserted into a hole on the side of a millstone and the tonfa's side handle is then grasped by the worker to turn the milling stone. Alternatively, a warrior might rapidly rotate the tonfa's stick into position for blocks and strikes, by first loosening the grasp of the weapon's side handle as he snapped his wrist and, then, interrupting the stick's subsequent rotary travel by tightening his grip on the side handle. In the 20th century, manufacturers in the U.S. adapted these techniques for use with law enforcement batons or truncheons. Such a side handled police club is illustrated in U.S. Design Pat. No. 230,150 issued to Anderson on Jan. 29, 1974 and incorporated herein by reference. Note that this billy club, as does the tonfa, consists simply of a stick with a smaller side handle secured at a right angle thereto. U.S. Design Pat. No. 333,692 issued to Parsons on Mar. 2, 1993 and also incorporated herein, illustrates a variation on such a police baton. Now, the impacts of objects, such as aluminum trash cans, which were previously hurled at peace officers to their injury, could be effectively blocked. The side handle also prevents the night stick from rolling (but not sliding) from the reach of the peace officer if he and/or she should lose their grasp of the baton during its manipulation.
Police throughout the U.S. quickly discovered one of the foibles of the tonfa technique. When the police officer loosens his or her grasp of the baton's side handle to swivel its stick into blocking or striking position, he or she risks losing their grasp of the baton entirely or having it snatched from him or her by an assailant. To overcome this problem, manufacturers began placing trundles or trumbulls on the side handles. Now the police officer could firmly grasp the trundle between his or her middle, ring and little fingers and palm while rotating their wrist and moving the baton's stick into a striking or blocking position. The officer could then interrupt the rotary travel of the baton's stick by grasping the free end of the side handle above the trundle with their thump and index finger. Articulated side handle batons are certainly not in themselves a new concept. U.S. Pat. No. 2,988,949 issued to Rohmann on Jun. 20, 1961 and incorporated herein by reference, illustrates such a ceremonial baton. Articulated clubs are also far from a new concept as attested by such ancient weapons as the Indian lathi, the morning star, flexible coshes (from the Romany kosh or stick), and war flails, which like the tonfa were adapted from a primitive agricultural tool, the flail, a hand threshing instrument.
However, while correcting the tactical dangers presented by an officer's loosened grasp of a baton's side handle, the trundle itself created additional unforseen tactical problems for the peace officers deploying side handled batons. Round headed tools such as screwdrivers and baton side handles are grasped most strongly between the middle, ring and little fingers and the palm of the hand. The index finger which closes into the web of skin between the thumb and index finger and the thumb itself are little involved in such a grasp. The thumb and index finger or the thumb, index finger and middle finger are used together to grasp and manipulate small objects and for such fine work as writing and sewing. The thumb and index finger provide little of the strength needed for grasping tools like screwdrivers and baton side handles. See Earl D. McBride, Disability Evaluation (Philadelphia: J.P. Lippincott Company, 1948) 177-212. Accordingly, when officers attempted to precisely interrupt the travel of a baton stick at desired striking and blocking positions by grasping the free end of the side handle above the trundle with their thumb and index finger or even with their thumb and index finger and middle finger, they found that this weakened grasp allowed the stick to slide past the desired striking or blocking position.
Thus, there is a need to find an alternative side handled baton which can be both firmly grasped in the human hand while its stick is rotated to and precisely stopped at calculated striking and blocking positions.
It should be noted that on many batons, ridges are cut into the handles or side handles. The earlier cited U.S. Design Patent to Anderson illustrates such ridges. As with the ridges on the bicycle and motorcycle handlebar grips, the purpose of these side handle ridges is to impede the grasping hand from moving laterally and slipping off the handle. Accordingly, the knurls on the side handles of these prior art batons have chamfers or fillets.
The invention comprises a baton having a stick with a smaller side handle secured at an angle thereto to move with the stick and an axle which passes through a grip and attaches it to the free end of the side handle. The operator can now grasp the baton by the grip with his or her index finger and overlying thumb, while the baton's stick and side handle rotate. A top ridge or stop prevents the grasping hand from slipping off the handle laterally. The middle, ring and little fingers and palm of the hand can now be used to firmly grasp the side handle to precisely interrupt the rotary travel of the baton's stick and side handle while the baton remains secured at its grip by the operator's index finger and thumb.
When the side handle is grasped between the operator's middle, ring and little fingers and his or her palm, the handle, fingers and palm act as a drum brake with the handle acting as the brake drum and the skin of the operator's fingers and, primarily, the skin of the operator's palm acting as the brake pad. As the skin is pressed against the side handle more and more forcefully, forces of friction bring the rotating side handle to a stop. The magnitude of kinetic friction is calculated using the equation fk=ukn. Acceleration being an implicit factor within a kinetic force equation, cutting grooves into the rotating side handle, that is attached to the bound spindle, can make this breaking even more precise. The grooves and their corresponding ridges rotate and contact and drag along the surface of the operator's palm skin at different speeds. Different areas on the continuous sheath of highly elastic palm skin simultaneously experience forces of friction of differing magnitudes. The elastic properties of the skin act differently to retard these forces, quickly binding the rotating handle. Grooving the handle also increases the surface area in contact. These effects are optimized by making the grooves and ridges of approximately equal width or diameter and planing the tops of the ridges flat while cutting the grooves so their cross section roughly resembles an arc of a circle. Of course, manufacturing and surfacing material(s) can be selected with coefficients of friction desirable to enhance the breaking, or surfaces might be otherwise engraved or treated to enhance the forces of friction. The baton's rotating stick may be of fixed length or telescoping.
The various embodiments, features and advances of the present invention will be understood more completely hereinafter as a result of a detailed description thereof in which reference will be made to the following drawings:
Referring to the accompanying drawings that a police baton 10 comprises an elongated stick 12 which is typically formed as a circular cylinder having dome-shaped ends 13 and having a length of about two feet. A handle 14 extends perpendicularly from the stick about one-quarter the length of the stick from one end thereof and having a typical length of 4½ to 5½ inches from the exterior surface of the stock. As seen best in
This disadvantage is solved by the present invention, a preferred embodiment of which is shown in
As shown best in
It will also be observed that unlike the prior art handle 7 of
It will be understood that because the handle 14 of the inventive baton 10 utilizes a braking portion at the proximal end of the handle as opposed to the prior art which employs the braking portion at the distal end, the braking action is implemented by the middle, ring and small fingers which are stronger in grasping than the thumb and forefinger. Therefore, the officer's control of the baton is more precise as a result of the improved handle of the present invention.
Having thus disclosed an exemplary preferred embodiment of the present invention, it will be further understood that various modifications and additions are contemplated and will now be perceived by those having knowledge of the baton art and the benefit of the teaching herein. Accordingly, the scope hereof is to be limited only by the appended claims and their equivalents.
