NZ police get bigger handcuffs for larger offenders

The new handcuffs will be "one size fits all" for any shape of suspect

Police in New Zealand are to get larger handcuffs to cope with plus-size suspects.

The current manacles are too tight for what the Stuff.co.nz news website calls "fat-wristed criminals", meaning that police have ordered a batch of larger cuffs. "The reason we're moving to the larger handcuff is to accommodate people whose wrists are simply too big for our existing smaller sets," Sergeant Graham Grubb from Police National HQ said. "Who on the frontline can't tell a story about trying to arrest somebody who just won't fit into the standard handcuffs?" he asked New Zealand police magazine Ten One.

The larger cuffs won't make it easier for lightweight suspects to give the police the slip, though. According to the New Zealand Herald, the cuffs can still be tightened as far as the current model, "to ensure slimmer-wristed offenders are also catered for". They'll also fit in the same cuff pouch on officers' uniforms, and won't require any extra training.

The change comes in the wake of a New Zealand government report which says the country has the third highest obesity rate in the developed world, rising three-fold since 1977. Almost one in three adult New Zealanders is obese, and one in 10 children, the Ministry of Health says.

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