Retired Officer Makes Clubs -- Batons Burnished For WTO Protests

ISSAQUAH

With the eye and hand of an expert, Ken Koenig stares down the teardrop-shaped shaft of smooth Australian hardwood.

In the sawdusty workshop behind his Issaquah home, he'll sand the 3-foot stick to perfection and apply varnish and wax until it's just so. Then he'll slide a rubber handle on one end and gently tap it into his palm, just to feel its decisive weight.

This week this beautiful, bourbon-colored baton will be in the hands of a police officer who will be fully prepared to use the business end on an unruly protester during the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle.

"It gives you leverage for taking someone down," the amiable retired officer explained with an inviting smile.

"Police don't have a keen idea of what they're going to be dealing with. They have to be ready for anything and everything. The sooner you end a fight, the less likely someone is of getting hurt. The sooner you end it, the less likely you are to have someone in the hospital."

For the past month or so, Koenig has been working around the clock out of his tiny shop called Tiger Mountain Woodcrafts, cranking out hundreds of batons for police departments all over the area. He usually specializes in wooden martial-arts equipment and, until the WTO and Y2K came along, made police equipment on the side.

"They wanted a lot more batons and riot sticks," Koenig said. "So I had to shut down the other stuff and start doing this."

His handiwork already was standard issue for officers in Spokane, Bellingham and Pasco, and the Tukwila Police Department recently bought about 40 of the $40 batons to equip officers preparing to help stand watch at Boeing Field. Olympia and Tumwater police bought dozens for New Year's preparedness. And the Port of Seattle, which oversees Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and the Seattle waterfront, just bought more than three dozen.

"We're quite happy with them," Port police Sgt. Tom Monahan said. "Hopefully, we won't have to use them."

Individual officers from other departments, including Seattle, have bought the clubs with their own money.

Nightsticks, billy clubs, movealongs, truncheons or shillelaghs. Call them what you will. They've been an important police tool for time immemorial. And Koenig, 55, ought to know how to build a good one.

He retired from the Redmond Police Department in 1991 after 11 years on the force. Before that, he spent more than a decade patrolling Mercer Island. There, when he was a rookie in the late 1960s, he was called in to help quell Vietnam War protests in Seattle.

"We had these real skinny little things (batons) that weren't really good for anything," Koenig recalled.

"I made one for myself, then I started making them for other people on my watch, and then I started making them for other agencies."

It also helps that he is a martial-arts master, an expert in jeet kun do, a specialized fusion art made famous by Bruce Lee.

Yet, he appears to be a warm, cheery chap, more like Mr. Rogers than Chuck Norris. He sees his wooden weapons as tools to prevent lethal violence. But he knows how a good, heavy stick can be used for a lot of things, the least of which, believe it or not, is whacking someone upside the head.

"Just resorting to batting practice can be pretty ineffective against someone on drugs - they can't even feel it," Koenig said. "My first concern is officer safety, so they don't get hurt. And it's a control issue, so they don't have to upgrade the use of force."

So what would Koenig, who trains police at the state academy, do with one of his batons? He answered as Bruce Lee might have.

"If you break a snake's fangs, it can't hurt you," he said. "Hands are a person's fangs, and if you take their hands out of commission, they're not as likely to hurt you."

Also, the batons don't have to be used as clubs to be effective. Officers can use them to lever people to the ground, bar their paths through a police line or wedge through a crowd. If a person grabs it, Koenig demonstrated, a trained police officer can use the stick to wrench an arm into a painful contortion.

But as he zipped baton after baton through his saw, he said the best baton is an unused one. And he said he hoped there would be a lot of those this week.

"I just hope no one gets hurt," Koenig said. "With that many people, it only takes just one to start something. I'm kind of glad I'm not in it."

Ian Ith's phone message number is 206-464-2109. His e-mail address is iith@seattletimes.com