From the report it sounds like the doorman acted within the advice of many "urban/street combat" instructors. Verbal warnings, then preemptive strike when the victim made physical contact.
Yep, I havn't read the original reports, but it looks similar to what happens everyday in the pub trade. There's always that risk when you hit someone in the head.
Telford pub bouncer jailed for vicious pub attack which left man disabled The lying to the police, and the lack of first aid probably didn't help his case. But it's hard to get a valid overview from just reading newspaper reports.
I'm always loath to judge a case that a jury, given much more evidence than I, has judged. Not much to go on from that report. "Words were exchanged"...could mean many things. Doesn't tell us what the words were, what other witnesses also saw/heard and more importantly what level of "fear" the doorman was under when he acted. As I understand it the advice of many isn't just to strike on physical contact but also to look at body language, tone, etc. Geoff Thompson I think recommends not letting someone touch your fence more than twice (could be once?). Sounds to me like the doorman in this case elevated the use of force beyond what the demeanor and actions of the guy he hit warranted.
Could well be that the victim annoyed him and he wanted to assert his dominance by "teaching him a lesson". 999 times out of 1000 he would have got away with it. It's not so much the advice given, and I'm talking more about those influenced by Thompson than the man himself, but when you always drill to the highest level of force, add some adrenaline and your body will enact that drilling whether the situation warrants it or not. The threshold for action becomes a lot lower than it is in the training hall. You either need lower levels of force options in training, negatives and false positives in simulation, or both. Otherwise you've only got one reaction, and if it's not proportional to the threat then you're putting yourself at risk, as well as others.
Just for the record, I wasn't talking just about this case in particular, but the fact that, on paper, the doorman's actions seem to fall squarely into the actions endorsed by many SD instructors.
It certainly sounds within the standard advice. I see what you mean about the level of force, I imagine that could depend on the scenario - in a door security based scenario the power of applied force could be brought down when the threat isn't severe i.e. initiate with a slap as a deterrent. Whereas if under threat by multiple aggressors then you probably want to disable them quickly. Either way it's always that risk - a hit hard enough is probably always going to be a risk, I guess it needs to be weighed up against the threat(s).
Sounds like in this case it was two bouncers and one "aggressor" (though it sounds more like a belligerent drunk that could be dealt with verbally). Grappling would be a far more appropriate low force option in this case, if it was needed. Maybe you could justify a slap, but I wouldn't personally see that as appropriate. I don't really see a slap as appropriate in any situation, as it is just as likely to escalate a situation than end it. I would hope that a jury would look at an unintentional death or serious wounding following a strike differently if the defendant was facing multiple aggressors.
Again not knowing the details... There's plenty of belligerent drunks who are more then happy to start on security and then cry foul when they get hurt. I'm not saying that's what's happened here. But all in all pub security is caught between the law, and coping with people's actions. It's not a job many people would choose to do.
Depends who's doing the slapping. Peter Consterdine and Iain Abernethy are fans of the power slap as a pre-empt. Trained with Dave Turton one time and he liked the slap too. But that would seem to have the same potential consequences as a punch if it KO's a drunk guy. If you separate someone from their senses you run the risk of this happening unfortunately. One thing to think about is that in modern kata bunkai there is an emphasis on gripping and controlling while hitting (using the hikite) and a controlling grip can help control the descent. There's a great clip of an old karate sensei gripping the gi with one hand, landing a KO punch with the other and gently lowering his opponent to the floor using the grip. Lee Morrison stresses "indexing" while striking for the same reason. The tactile sense can help you realise when someone is going down and disengage or help them on their way.
Security work is really badly paid, too. Not to mention horrible hours. You know, I nearly went off on a tangential caveat about power slaps, but axelb was talking about low force slaps, so didn't think it was necessary I find Lee Morrison both good and bad. He does his research, is knowledgeable in the field, has experience of violence, his training is logical and thought-through... but at the same time he comes across as desperately wanting to be teaching military instead of civilians. I find all the stuff about psychologically preparing yourself to use deadly force, seminars on taking out terrorists etc. very off-putting for a civilian syllabus, even though there is a lot of good material there also.
Yeah. I love his stuff. I like that sort of straight up attitude and explanation. He'd be near the top of my list of people to have on my side in a fight and conversely bottom of my list of people to fight. But I can appreciate he's quite the character and fairly extreme and a live-wire.
I have no problem with his character and demeanour. It's seeing him do simulations of terrorist attacks that leave me scratching my head. He also occasionally takes dodgy evidence and runs with it into fantasy land; like saying that during WWII 2% of soldiers were sociopaths, so by his reckoning around 50% of scally ne'er-do-wells these days will murder you and film it for entertainment. This kind of training does not produce proportional actions for the vast majority of contexts for a civilian.