Very interesting responses. This wasn't hypothetical, it really occurred well over a decade ago in Phoenix. The store staff followed him outside and restrained him using a sleeper hold (carotid artery neck hold, of unspecified type). The suspect allegedly died from neck compression injuries* during the struggle. No weapon was found, but the scene was unsecure for at least twenty minutes and the female fled the scene and returned later, so we will never know for sure. The store employees, three young men ages 18-21 were charged with murder which was later reduced to manslaughter and they were given probation. The reason they were prosecuted was because the use of sleeper holds in the Arizona correctional institutions was under fire, there had been quite a few deaths in a short time period and the continued use of the technique was in question. Be careful. The law is not always on your side, even more so when media hype and politics are involved. *The coroner's report also showed alcohol and cocaine in the decedents blood stream. Having a stimulant and depresant places a great stress on the heart. Drug users involved in physical struggles are known to be prone to cardiac arrest.
"Sleeper Hold's" are potentially lethal force (nominally), under the Force Continuum and hence reside at Level 6 therein. Using improvised weapons also falls under potentially lethal force (presumably due to their uncontrolled nature). The law was right in that Level 6 of the Force Continuum or the event of Justifiable Homocide was not warranted in this case, in my opinion. Even if he had not died, reckless endangerment/injury would have been a likely result at any rate. Better to have put him on the ground at the door. Use the licensed baton, stay at level 5 and be sure his use of level 4 is plainly corroberated. This is a real consideration for security personnel: staying within the letter of due process. Hence the importance of other threads examining the Force Continuum, for any at these boards which may be involved or become involved in the industry.
'give me the gun baby. give me the gun! hahahaha, thats kinda funny. Id put my boot up his ass.. permitted by law or not.
On the store situation, as soon as he leaves the store, he is no longer under your jurisdiction. If you follow him out and attempt to subdue him, you are commiting assault. In general you have to prove that you were REASONABLY certain that you were under threat. Which means that a 5', 100lbs woman walking in the dark and heving her path blocked by a 6'6 300lbs man screaming at her could shoot him dead and likely get away with it, but not the reverse. As MAist, we have to be doubly carefull as our training, or more importantly, people's perception of our training and capabilities, will be used against us.
I have been of the boards for a while so i have actually missed this debate. Damn it! I could have been useful for once!!! I have picked this post because it raises questions relating to the continuium. It is one of those issues were a little clarification can work wonders. The level of response is not something that you will internally debate for any real length of time when you are actually "live". Essentially, If you have time to go "Hmmm...I wonder where my response should be here? I am being abused by a large male and ..etc" then you have time to run away and should have done for your safety if nothing else. I am sure I do not have to tell you how stressful a real fight can be. Often techniques are forgotten, let alone hierachies of response. In simple terms, if you have looked up and seen the same 275lb gorilla as before coming at you then your reponse had better be pretty damn quick and effective. You cannot afford to give him a "love tap" and then escalate it if it does not work because by then he will be over you like a rash. In thise circs, I would argue you are entirely justified in smacking him as hard as humanly possible. When he goes down and you get away then you look at what you did and place it in terms of the continuium. In other words the report of the incident is where the levels of response are referred to in detail such as size, environment, relative skill of defender, avenues of exit open to you etc... These are referred to as IMPACT FACTORS. You will often find you will unconciously realise when to hit hard and when not to if you are anything like a sane and rational human being. If you see a shaven headed 22yr old with a face like a bulldog and a barrel chest waving a stick at you then you would be pretty safe to hit him with everything you had. The exact same response would be totally inappropriate for an 8 year old with the same actions waving the same stick. REASONABLE force is the key. Who decides if is reasonable? You do, but be prepared to justify your action. Theoretically you can reverse your car over someone's head provided that action was justifiable (e.g. he was about to shoot you in the back of your head) The "I'll take anyone out who attacks me" argument is plain silly. We are not animals, we are a thinking sentient beings and should act like such! If I can get away with just sweeping you I will - If I don't think I will get away with it, I'll drop you instead!
Excellent!! I was wondering when you would add to the debate!! (BTW, the guy was older than 22 I think, and had a chest size of two barrels, but I think he was puffing it out! It was resolved by breaking eye contact and let him get on with it somewhere else.) This was why I was wondering whether it was realistic to use restraining procedures for someone in my position who is the smaller assailant. Incidentally, you mention impact factors. In one of the other scenarios I mentioned, was one in a petrol station with a couple of youths chucking stuff about. they were really skinny, and I wasn't intimidated by their size, however, there were a couple of them, and they were picking anything up to hand and throwing it. I don't think I'd be thnking about pulling punches still, especially as knives are quite common with angry youths, and so Im not sure if I would have controlled the agression with the strike again only because I feel that if (Big if) I had got involved then I might be in for a serious kicking, (There were other friends in car - don't know about weapons) and don't want to half ass about. Very rarely do assaults take place with single people as you probably well know Hannibal, and so 'dropping you' is the only thought to come to mind. What would you think from your experience would be reasonable in that situation?
Well in the "gorilla" incident you would be nigh on suicidal to try and restrain him so I would say they are NOT an option! With the garage incident...well It's tricky. I usually "whip out my warrant card" (ooer!) and that tends to send them packing. In the case of your good self I would hold back from physically engaging them unless they are a genuine threat to either you or the asistant. What you CAN do is phone the police (if you have a mobile) and get a damn good look at them. Most garages have CCTV and I would rather have 1 good, reliable and detailed witness than 10 "heroes" who leave me with a bloodied pile of offenders and the difficult task of investigating them for their "defensive" actions I would avoid hitting unless you absolutely have to - armlocks don't leave bruises and an be denied later (your word against his!) but bruises are kind of hard to explain away. Gotta fly, but I'll be back soon!
Even against multiple assailants? I got the registration no. of the car, and informed the police officers that came afterwards that I would be a witness. I've heard nothing since so Im assuming it got sorted. The guy in question started picking up things from the shop counter and started chucking them at the shop assistant. These ranged from a couple of sweets to a mini tub of petrol, he also tried grabbing the shop assistant and hitting him. I wanted to intervene but his mate was there and I didn't want to escalate the situation to make it worse for the petrol garage workers - the shop assistant wasn't harmed, but it wasn't very nice either. Amusingly, the mate turned around and started saying 'he's only a kid' to the shop keepers to stop them hitting him back - they then got out, returned with more objects and started throwing them about everywhere... I was annoyed that I couldn't do anything because I didn't want to get myself in trouble (health wise and law wise!) and I didn't want to make things worse...I hate watching people getting beat on for no reason. Can a bystander do anything to help and intervene in this case?
Absolutely! You would be intervening to prevent injury to another or damage to property - under common law you are entitled to do that. But like I said, if you are going to go in be prepared to explain why. You did well from what I can tell...give yourself a pat!
Interesting articles. Legal issues can get so comlplicated. Doesn't it all come down to "He said/They said". Does the United Kindom, Australia, Canada and any other Countries; have something like the United States 5th Amendment?
This is a really interesting thread guys, would like to ask your opinion on what is justifiable in these situations under law: 1. Walking down a street after clubs have closed, a man bigger than you walks up to you shouting in a drunk but not particularly aggresive manner then as he gets close tries to grab your testicles shouting "Lets have a feel big lad!". 2. In a mosh pit getting picked from behind up and thrown down near some broken glass, you get up not seeing who did it but then a couple of minutes later you are grabbed again from behind and picked up to be thrown 3. Again in a mosh pit someone slams into you repeatedly and drives his elbow into your guts on the last occasion, finally you have a shouted warning from a friend who points over your shoulder, you turn to see the guy rushing at you with his hands up to push you. 4. You find a group of 7 or so men antagonising one young woman, pushing her round, calling her a variety of names and provoking her, she is arguing back and when one of them rushes up to her in a chest to chest fashion shouting abuse and knocking her back with his body, she tries to eye gouge him but he grabs her arms and kncks her to the floor. Again this is late at night and all the people involved seem faiurly drunk. So I'm curious to know what I am legally allowed to do in all these situations and what you would have done?
I think situation plays a big part in it as well, in the UK at least. If you can prove beyond reasonable doubt that you believed your life was in danger, you can back up the usage of brutal force and possibly improvised weapons. Ie. if there was more than one attacker, if the attacker was sizably bigger than you, if you were took by suprise, if you had relatives to protect, if you were ill, injured, if he had a weapon, etc etc. About weapons, I think you can pretty much discount the use of proper martial arts weapons. Because let's face it, juries tend to be stupid and easily swayed, and the minute the prosecuting lawyer says "he used some nunchucks/katana/tanto/kendo stick" or "as a black belt in xxxxx martial art" they are gonna think 'killing machine' or 'something not right with that bloke'.# Whereas if you use an improvised, 'household' weapon then at least they won't think you're a psychopath and could possibly put themselves in your position.
1. Open palm strike to bottom of chin. 2. If picked up with your arms free: Double leopard knuckle strike to his hands, followed by bringing your elbows forcefully to your sides; this should pop his hands loose. (think about getting out of the mosh pit) 3. Hop back and snap kick to the pelvic bone with the right foot, arms up to deflect his arms. 4. Get a beer, sit back and see what happens.
I agree the first impulse is to aid the young lady. Given the location as a bar they could all know each other and the alcohol just made them stupid for a bit. Watching episodes of "COPS" you occasionaly see domestic problems. When they start to take the guy away the woman turns against the cops saying that she loves him or something like that. This link: http://www.martialartsplanet.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28763 Shows how a woman was getting abused by the guy but she went to help him in the end. Being the USA is sue happy, that also could be 7 guys who have 7 lawyers. The bar should have some kind of security in place..at least one bouncer. Nope, I think, that in that particular situation it is best to wait and see what happens. They may end up hugging each other, the bouncer my take care of it...or she could call for help, in that case I would diffenantly help her.
Back again after a few months of internet loss. One of my biggest problems with the Westminster justice system is that it relies almost completely on trusting the judge on the day, rather than having a strict set of guidelines encased in law. It works by interdependance rather than independance and I find that undemocratic in its very essence, but more to the point have been wrongfully failed by it far too many times to have any sort of respect for it whatsoever. The Act simply states that you may use reasonable force (in England), and reasonable and proportionate force (in Aust.), but does not in any way seek to define these in legislation beyond long winded conversational and argumentative statements made in the house of Lords, upon which the entire basis of governing is formed. Their purpose is to capture a sense of late medieval traditionalism and at times this may very well be considered far more relevant than the matters upon which it rules themselves. I disdain it. Individual ex-police officers, instructors and industry professionals themselves are left to interject international use of Force guidelines, like the Force Continuum developed in concert with US law enforcement services. There is not even any guarantee these will work for you with a judge, in fact the clearest manner to be definitely in agreeable standing is to have the precise appearances, especially in character that is expected of you. To be a production-line clone and a firmly Anglican one at that. Individual police officers are given a relatively massive degree of authority under this basis, with none of the strict, philosophical proceedural requirements of US law enforcement. They are given the role of interpreting the roughage of Westminster law and then left on their lonesome subject to concurrance by a judge at the court dates. US cops get a lot more peeking over their shoulder at every turn. Why? The US constitution defines the rights of citizens. The Westminster ones define the rights of government. Quite a difference in practise. Yes, ours gets less lawsuit, often because piddly awardments by judges who simply have not been cultured to take individual rights seriously rarely cover court costs. But then we also get judgements of low sentencing in a proved rape case because the victim "had been asking for it" (the formal statement of the judge in court). Expect the same slap dash approach to self defence, especially since it's an issue which involves a reasonable degree of public interest, therefore another presidence of Westminster traditionalism as opposed to the safer incidences of little or no interest (which generally run by the book and things actually turn out logically and with some degree of actual, rather than cultural or religious justice). Did I mention I actually work at parliament house now, too. I'm not making this stuff up and express openly my want for an abolishment of the parliamentary system of governing for the completely democratic system of a constitutional republic. My biggest concern with the former is the justice system and the cultural blinders that go with it. Most of the time I have to leave many conversational observations 'till speaking with tourists or immigrants, who often begin conversations mentioning things about the culture that've been driving me nuts for years. I'm aware this is a road to at least local unpopularity that I walk. Oh well, you hurt yourself lying about this kind of stuff to placate rather than standing firm and going for reform or emigrating proudly. But back to Hannibal's most welcome appearance into the thread to have helped bring back some perspective I feel I may have lost sometime after my initial thread posting. I hope I can get back the objective clarity I started this little project in. My head is lonely and hard enough to deal with at the best of times.
