Why I Built the Valkyrie Link: The Backseat Risks Every Cop Knows (And the Numbers That Prove Them)
- Dawson Schmidt
- Jul 20
- 4 min read
I’ve been in the back of enough patrol cars — and driven enough of them with someone cuffed behind me — to know the old-timers weren’t just telling war stories.
They were trying to keep us alive.
I still remember the first time an old salt grabbed me by the vest after a transport and said, “Kid, never trust the cage. Never trust the cuffs.” At the time I thought he was over the top. A few years and a handful of close calls later, I realized he was the smartest guy in the room.
Those close calls are why I built the Valkyrie Link.
The Escapes Aren’t Rare — They’re Routine
A multi-year study of prisoner transport incidents (the one that still gets passed around in training rooms) found an average of 309 escapes from transport vehicles every year.
Three hundred nine.
Of those:
68% came from vehicles that already had a cage
84% of the prisoners escaped from the back seat of a caged car
I’ve seen it. I’ve heard the radio traffic. I’ve watched the bodycam. A pair of cuffs and a plastic or metal barrier is not enough when someone is determined, flexible, or just plain lucky. The old guys used to say the cage only slows them down. The data says they were right.
And it’s not just escapes. Marked police vehicles get stolen every single day somewhere in this country. A lot of those thefts start with a handcuffed arrestee who was left alone for thirty seconds too long.
We’re Getting Assaulted Doing the Most Routine Thing We Do
FBI LEOKA numbers don’t lie:
In 2020, 12.6% of all officer assaults happened while we were handling, transporting, or maintaining custody of prisoners.
In 2021 that number hit 13.8%.
That works out to roughly 7,000 to 8,000 assaults a year tied directly to prisoner handling and transport. In the same transport study, about 12% of the officers involved in escape incidents were injured. Less than 1% were killed. We all know what that “less than 1%” actually costs.
I’ve been kicked, spit on, and had a prisoner try to loop an arm around my neck from the back seat. I know plenty of guys who have it worse. This is the part of the job that feels routine until it suddenly isn’t.
The Stuff They Leave Behind
Every policy says search the car before and after every transport. The old-timers treated it like gospel for a reason.
Suspects leave guns, knives, dope, and worse in the back seat constantly. There’s no clean national statistic for “contraband left in patrol cars,” but every cop who’s been on the road more than a couple years has a story. One of mine involved a loaded .380 that the next shift found wedged under the seat. That kind of thing stays with you.
Crashes, Thrashing, and Self-Harm
When a prisoner gets even partial control of a patrol car, it almost never ends clean. High-speed pursuits, PIT maneuvers, multi-car wrecks. One California study showed roughly 3,600 officer-involved collisions a year in that state alone. Add a stolen or commandeered police car and the danger multiplies.
Then there’s the thrashing and self-harm. Handcuffed suspects bang their heads, try to slip cuffs, and sometimes try to crash the car on purpose. The same transport study showed about 12% of escaping prisoners were injured and 3% were killed in the attempt.
Why I Made the Valkyrie Link
I got tired of watching good cops get hurt doing something that should be routine. I got tired of hearing the same stories from the old-timers and then seeing the same problems on the street the next week. So I built something simple that actually addresses the core problem: uncontrolled movement in the back seat.
The Valkyrie Link attaches directly to the handcuffs and limits how far a prisoner can move, thrash, or attempt to bring their hands around. It doesn’t replace good tactics, double-locking cuffs, or searching the car. It just closes one of the biggest gaps we’ve all lived with for decades.
It’s patent-pending, takes seconds to apply, and costs less than two hundred dollars a unit. I designed it to be the kind of tool the old-timers would have demanded if it had existed when they were on the road.
Prisoner transport is one of the most common things we do. It’s also one of the easiest places to get complacent. Complacency is what gets people hurt.
I built the Valkyrie Link so fewer of us have to learn that lesson the hard way.
Stay safe. Check the back seat. And if you’re still running transports the same way we did twenty years ago, it might be time for an upgrade.
— Dawson Schmidt Founder,
Heimdall Equipment Creator of the Valkyrie Link
Sources
FBI Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA), 2020 & 2021
“Prisoner Transports, Officer Safety & Liability Issues,” Corrections1 (citing 2002–2007 analysis)
Tremco Police Products tracking of stolen emergency vehicles
California officer-involved collision study (peer-reviewed, 2000–2009 data)
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