Well, hopefully Dox decided to lurk here and still pick up some info. If you do read this, understand that the LEO's that you were taking umbrage with were not being condescending, we were looking out for your well being. Nobody should be eager to have a weapon in order to be able to get into harrier situations and think they will extricate themselves. Where drugs are concerned, if the bad guy doesn't feel pain, then it doesn't matter if you have your metal stick or hot sauce.
As far as getting jumped outside of a store, that is just nuts. If you are alone and you say to a guy "you are under arrest for..." and the guy does anything other than say "Jolly good, right-o. It's off to the office, then?" let him go. WE DON'T DO ARRESTS ALONE IF WE CAN HELP IT!! EVER!! You always go with the plus one rule: whatever you know or see, assume there is one more. One bad guy to arrest? Where is his buddy?
As for Dox's comments on not being able to arrest until they leave the store, that is wrong. That may be a policy, but if you depackage an item and conceal it on your person, you are already committing the offence. It sews it up nicely to pin them outside, but it isn't required.
I don't know why anyone thinks it takes a heap of training with the baton. It is pretty basic to use. Raise arm, strike target. Repeat as needed. Of course there is more to it than that, but you get the idea. If you are going to spend years of training at something, take Aikido or Ju Jitsu. Then you probably won't use the baton except for helping people push the door unlock button in their car when the window is down a crack (my most frequent deployment).
"Delete my profile" ??? Who was that supposed to hurt? :