Tired

Exhausted.  I'm not entirely sure what day it is now.

It started Wednesday with a phone call, "We've had a bunch of staff assaults.  Can you help us out?"  Oddly phrased:  A bunch? Can I help? Quick shower and too fast drive, not sure whether I was being asked to investigate, to coordinate a tactical response, as extra security or replacing one of the injured officers.

Officers, friends in the hospital. One badly bitten by an inmate.  Things haven't been finished in the chaos. I finish processing the inmate for disciplinary housing, talk him into agreeing to a blood draw. (Critical skill- if the source of a body-fluids contamination can be tested, it can save the victim a lot of worry and grief.  It is, however, a medical test and can be refused.  If the threat refuses it can take days for a court order to take a blood draw by force.  Always better, faster to talk them into it, no matter how you feel on the inside.)

Successful... and then not. It will take two days to run the test, or about an hour in an ER.  The local hospital refuses to test the blood unless they can register the inmate as a patient.  They even say that they can use the blood we have already drawn, but the patient has to be present.  There is no reason for it beyond 'policy', but policy is God.  We have to do a dangerous, senseless and expensive transport for a stupid piece of red tape.  We do it.

Then right to another shift at the regular job.

Then four hours of fitful sleep and a double shift, the first eight hours teaching rookies how to survive a fight.  They do well and it's a good group.  One is so bright-eyed and eager that it's like a puppy.  In conversation he hears about a time when I threw someone using only his back hair for a grip.  He glances at his forearms and asks, "Should I shave these? Should I start shaving everywhere? That sounds like it will really hurt."  I start to tell him about a salon downtown and how he should go in and ask for a "Combat Brazilian wax" and they'll know what he means... but I can't keep a straight face.  That would have been one of the best practical jokes ever.

It was good, too, teaching with Jose. We've shed a lot of blood and sweat together.  The rookies listened hard as he told about the cost of mental errors, about fighting the wrong kind of fight.

The second shift, as I got tired, other people's vulnerabilities were glaring.  It's a weird state- not so weird, maybe fairly common for me in an actual conflict- where I am acutely aware of weak lines of balance, exposed targets, perceptual locks or distractions in the people around me.  It hits their emotions too and I can feel their insecurities, their fears.  When I get tired it seems like my attention snaps on to any weakness.   Usually, it's a big piece of why I can talk people down.  I spent Thursday toying with and controlling the impulse to poke buttons.

Somewhere since then we moved fifty inmates, searched a dorm, did taxes and got a new cat.

And on and on.... almost four hours of sleep last night.  Tonight should be better.

What You Don't Know

"He who knows not and knows not that he knows not,

He is a fool: Shun him.

He who knows not and knows that he knows not,

He is simple: Teach him.

He who knows and knows not that he knows,

He is asleep: Wake him.

He who knows and knows that he knows,

He is wise: Follow him."

That's listed in my "Treasury of the Familiar" as an Arab Proverb.  It may be from the hadith, I would like if it were.

People can't see their own blind spots.  That inability to see it pretty much defines a blind spot, so that is okay. Still...

Too much pussy-footing.  Why is it that really, really painfully dumb people think that they are smart?  Is there a mechanism for that?  Probably something as simple as that people who are insecure about their abilities and intelligence keep learning and the people that are so sure either stop or simply cherry pick for things that confirm their own beliefs... which we all do to some extent.

Also, the strength of an opinion is almost inversely proportional to the strength of its basis.  I see this commonly in politics where things that we will not even understand for two generations or more, and decisions that were made with information that the opiners could not have are condemned or praised with religious zeal.  Speaking of religion... maybe it is just my extended circle of friends, but has anyone who has ever had direct contact with  a (what's the noun I want here? God? Great Spirit? Satori? Deep religious experience?) ever felt the need to kill the people who disagreed?  That seems the job of the ones who haven't.  Maybe. Counter examples welcome.

A friend challenges opinions with a simple formula: "First, tell me what you know. Then tell me what you don't know. Only then tell me what you think." I'd attribute it, but he stole it from somebody else.

If we're honest, we'll probably never get past the list of 'don't knows' even on a relatively simple subject.  Which is cool, because if you love the subject that is a list of research possibilities and new learning. Unless you already think you know it all. Ahem.

A tactical plan has a list of critical information: threats, hostages, weapons, history, dynamics, resources... it's a damn big list.  A lot of those will have UNK written beside them, sometimes right up until the situation is resolved.  You contingency plan a lot of it: If one hostage versus two; if hostages together versus hostages separate.  But a potential killer is to put something down as 'known' which is untrue.  UNK frees you to improvise.  Finding an error of fact from your briefing in the middle of the operation makes everything you thought you knew suspect.  It could be a trap. It feels like betrayal. Morale, decisiveness, team cohesion can all collapse in a second. It will only be recovered by esprit and decisive leadership.

What are your 'don't knows'? Especially in the things that you value most, the things that you consider yourself an expert in.  I guarantee you the list is long.  We are all 'simple' and can be taught.  If the list isn't long or (especially) if you fail the jikkyoshado rule and defend your views against direct experience (especially your own!!!) re-think it, baby.  That way is the easy path to bar-stool experts and arm-chair generals.

Letting Go

There was a monk, I don't remember the name, but he was a certified enlightened Zen master who walked away from the monastery and came back in a few days. He found it far easier to maintain his enlightenment in the calm of a monastery than in the hustle of a city.

Maybe that seems hypocritical to you. Maybe it seems that his enlightenment wasn't real if it wasn't universal. That call is up to you.

I think he was very wise. He knew what he had and didn't let his ego force him into spreading it farther than it reached. That is a sign of non-attachment.

Good martial arts (and real fighting} is in the transition. Victory happens less in the technique than in the spaces between the techniques. At the point of impact boxers, muay thai guys and karateka aren't that different, but what they do with their hips, their legs and their shoulders before and after are very, very different. Do you know why classical jujutsu does more damage in a strike than a "pure' striking art? It's because jujutsu teaches target preparation as an obvious and easy part of striking. Make no mistake- a good boxer hits much harder than I do, but 9 times out of ten, if I have to hit the ribs, the threat is bent over my hip with his spine extended and twisted and his ribs exposed and flexed to absorb the strike.

If you haven't been taught to prep the target, it seems like magic. If you have been taught, it seems obvious. A good fighter is integrated. Offense is defense. There is no separation between weapon and target. At higher levels your enemy is working for you, just another variable in an equation. A really good fighter integrates the threat, himself and the environment. An extraordinary fighter integrates luck.

The key to using luck is letting go. Luck can be defined as the things you didn't expect. 'Expectation' is the ‘what you believe’- your experience, your training. When you can accept it when training or experience fail, when you are cool with being surprised, you can exploit luck. Like anything, some people have a talent at it but it can also been learned, trained and practiced.

If you have ever been in the high desert of Eastern Oregon you have seen the steep hills. One of our fun childhood games was to run down those hills full-speed. The trick was to not rely on contact with the ground. Once you were at extraordinary speed you were effectively falling and, when appropriate, when necessary, when effective you would make a small contact with the ground to steer just a bit. It was control in the loosest possible sense. I never saw an adult play this game and it is just as well. The slightest stiffness, the slightest need to show more control than you had would lead to a hellacious tumble and broken bones.

It was good training. Life is like that- something like freefall. Control, beyond a basic ability to control yourself, is an illusion. Even that control is limited ( think how your skills will change with injury and advanced age and different blood sugars). But well-timed instances of control can let you ride out a storm or survive a situation that would crush the stolid and certain.

Proud

The radio blares "Duress alarm" and a location and I'm sprinting. Through a door, down the long corridor. These are always false alarms, but one day it might not be and a few seconds difference between a sprint and a stroll could be paid in blood, so I run, every time. It feels good, arms pumping, legs feeling light... a full-burn sprint of about three hundred meters, turning with the contours of the corridor, coffee cup still in one hand. Just before I get there, it's over, false alarm. Confirmed.

So back to the dorms, talking to inmates. I'm breathing a little heavily and imagine that when I was younger that never happened, but it did.

Two more back-up calls, medical only. Not worth the sprint. And the regular job: paperwork, counseling deputies, counseling inmates. It's already feeling like an off night. Jean makes a point of letting me know I'm not my usual chipper self. Maybe.

Then the first big one. Back up for a fight. Multiples involved. By the time it is over, a matter of seconds, five inmates are cuffed and removed. Several more may have been involved. Blood and pepperspray make the floors slippery. I cuffed one and helped with a second, but H and G were the heroes wading in early and hard. Enough inmates were involved to qualify as a riot in any other facility. If there had been even a second of hesitation from staff, it would have been a full-blown battle with racial and gang over-tones.

But this staff doesn't hesitate. Can you imagine charging into a fight with at least five involved and another fifty cheering and, without hesitation, taking control? Could you imagine doing it as a woman who is outweighed by at least a hundred pounds by every single individual involved? H didn't hesitate. I hope it was because she realized that she wouldn't be alone. We were all there in a few seconds. Still outnumbered, technically, but decisive action more than makes up for indecisive numbers.

The world happens at the same time. We were short staff. The next shift needed to be filled and officers reassigned and enforcement officers needed escorting and visits went on... and in the midst of that another fight, one notch less brutal. So much to do. So much to make sure got done. Reports. OC decontamination. Medical evaluation. The daily cleaning, too, and the regular day-to-day problems.

Sitting and writing reports afterwards it hit me hard how much I love these people. It can be an ugly job. There aren't a lot of praise and thanks and recognition. When things are slow we bicker and whine like a huge dysfunctional family. But when things go very bad, they are there. Fast, decisive and above all, professional. Despite the blood and numbers and force, we didn't injure a single inmate. One, later, tried to provoke force and only got a sad smile.

I'm proud of my troops today. They did good.

CCA

Sunday at 1400 (yes, a mere two days from now) I'll be teaching a seminar at Jeff Standish's "A Martial Arts Club" in Marysville Washington. It's kind of last minute, but it originally started as a trip to the Seattle area to say prospective good-byes to some friends.

One of those friends, John Darby, asked if he could set up a seminar. Sure. Whatever. John Bossert asked for the joint lock class. I think I vaguely remember that stuff...

So the talk part will cover the seven stages; the physical part entries, locking and probably environmental fighting. I don't at this point even know how much time is reserved...which just makes it more fun. If you're interested and in the area, drop by.

SUDDEN CHANGE. IT's 11:45 Sunday morning and the venue has changed. I found out by cell while driving to Seattle a couple of hours ago.

New venue is:New Life Center off Evergreen on Madison Ave, to the east.

the directions are on www.newlifecenter.org...call me (John Darby) 425-327-2152

Except...

A good talk with John Miglorie Monday got to one of the deep frustrations with trying to teach this material. The night before, at work on a very, very quiet night, one of the rookies said, "Yeah, but it can jump off in a second." It bothered me partially because he was a rookie, partially because he was exactly wrong and partially because he was exactly right, too.

Experienced officers are rarely surprised in a dorm setting. The mix of 75 inmates in an open room has a sound and a feel and you almost always sense when things are going bad well in advance. So the things that "jump off in a second" never really do. Most take days or hours for enmities and anger and indignation to build up... at the same time, these things can jump off in a second. The days and hours may have happened years ago on the street or in another prison. An experienced officer is rarely surprised, except when he is, and then he tends to be really surprised.

Someone breaks into your house in your sleep- do you make a noise to let them know the house is occupied? That would actually work for many of the low-level burglars. If, however, it was a home-invasion rape that's just calling the predator.

But what if you say you have a gun? Probably good, unless this was a process predator who had studied you and believed that you didn't. Lying from fear would encourage him. If you actually had a gun? Cool, except not announcing works better if you have to use it, announcing might work to prevent having to use it.

The assertive body language that discourages most predatory assaults might invite or even trigger a monkey dance.

The best research shows that survivors of vicious assaults fell back on an enraged and righteous mindset... but acting from anger instead of fear might negate a claim of self-defense (your lawyer will try to explain that anger was an expression of fear, the opposing attorney will argue that fear and anger are mutually exclusive and the jury will decide who had the most honest-looking haircut.)

I have to teach about the effects of adrenaline and the different types of freezes, but I rarely get them anymore. But I still can, and it is just as bad.

If you have trained to reflex so that the thug attacks and you parry and strike faster than thought and pull the punch a half inch away from his nose, he'll probably reconsider and back off and you will think you have done really well...except if the guy is experienced he will immediately know that you have just missed, pulling strikes is a reflex and you have thus been training to miss and he will bring a fight to you like nothing you have ever felt.

You will get cut in a knife defense. Believe it... but in my local circle of friends, including myself, we have twelve knife defenses and only one of us has even been scratched- and it was just a scratch. At the same time, it's a false sort, since the people who did get cut are far less likely to tell the story. (I could add two more data points, Jeff and Mauricio, but I don't have the details of number and severity of encounters.)

Action beats reaction. I live by this, but I've beaten it too, and so has everyone I know who survived a close-range knife ambush. Does the fact that I've done it mean my students can do it? It doesn't even necessarily mean that I can do it again.

That's a lot of hard truth that all boils down to uncertainty. Nothing works all the time, not even a .45 to the head. It is hard to teach confidence when the more you know, the less confident you feel. And for the record, the real job (and life for that matter) is to act anyway. You don't need confidence in a successful outcome to do the right thing (and that confidence would be false, anyway.) Every time you put your life on the line, it is an act of faith.

Broadly

David wrote:

"I really like what you're talking about, essentially maintaining a broad frame of reference (basically, what compassion is), but, how did/do you train to get there when violent situations rapidly narrow that frame? Is it just lots of practice?

Did you ever get emotionally traumatized from a violent encounter? Because that really locks a person into a certain magnification or frame of reference and keeps him from varying it, and I would imagine that then the reaction to any similar events would be the same again and again. How do you escape from that vicious cycle?"

First, defining compassion as having a broad frame of reference is completely new to me and it works in many ways. Thanks for something to think about.

Second: "...violent situations rapidly narrow that frame." and "... locks the person into a certain magnification..." and "... the reaction to any similar events would be the same..." Are assumptions. that doesn't meant that they are wrong, but you really have to look at where they came from, whether they are true and whether, even if they generally happen, does that make them automatic? When I talk about how people tend to be off when discussing the subject of violence yet so positive they are right, it often gets down to basic assumptions that are seen as facts.

Some people react to stress by focusing too broadly- "why is this happening?" often on questions that don't really affect the situation. Sometimes extraneous thoughts float into your head. Sometimes you are so focused on trivia that it fills your whole mind. Alexis Arwohl writes of an officer who was reading the cases of his partners ejected brass in flight while in a shootout. That's a pretty tight view. One of my contentions is that people confuse what they remember and the words in their heads for thinking. Most cognition happens so fast and below the surface that humans usually make good decisions before they have ever said the questions in their heads. My best guess (I puzzled for years why their would be both tachypsychia and the blur state, why your brain would evolve two different mental strategies for dealing with similar stresses) is that these aren't mental states at all as much as memory conditions. In tachypsychia, the conscious brain is given some busy-work so that the real brain can take care of business; in the blur state it is put in a closet.

So the key for me is a broader understanding of consciousness. In even an ugly fast fight, my decisions are my responsibility. They are conscious, but they are not handled at the level of talking myself through the decision process. That would be too slow and would miss too many levels.
That might have made things more confusing.

You may or may not lock into the same pattern next time. It will depend largely on whether what you did the first time was successful. Just be aware that the hind brain may have a very different idea of success than you do. When you see someone who has been repeatedly victimized without fighting back, the logical brain may say, "that is stupid, look at the injuries, this is a bad idea..." the hindbrain only knows that survival followed non-resistance, ergo non-resistance is the only proven strategy for survival so far. The hindbrain is reluctant to attempt ANY new strategy when the stakes are that high.

Which brings up another aspect of this that can contradict everything else. Really, really panicked people; people really surprised; people with no experience with what is happening; people who had very firm expectations that are completely thrown out of the loop by events tend to fall back into pure hindbrain mode and they fight (or freeze or run) like animals. Their training goes out the window completely. (The firm expectations are the ones that scare me, the ones I call kool-aide drinkers. The more sure they are, the more vulnerable they are.) This is the piece that can be helped hugely by experience, but there are levels to it.

Anybody can be surprised, but recovering from surprise is a skill that can be conditioned. That helps with that part. Experience is the guardian against not being able to tell what is going on- just as a good MA instructor can spar and give advice to another student simultaneously, I've been fully engaged with a bad guy while watching the rookies for levels of emotion and sending them on chores e.g. "Go get a a pair of leg irons." But, when the circumstances change, experienced people can be nailed because they go with their experience instead of the changing situation. If every other time I've done this entry I got surprise and spun the bad guy but this time he saw it coming and jumped up and away... many experienced people will continue the move that they planned instead of changing to what they need.

The third level is to just accept that this is chaos and luck plays a role and to have no expectations. I believe good teachers foster this from day one by saying that there are no right answers, nothing works every time and constantly encouraging students to adapt, to recover from mistakes instead of starting over. Never set up as an ideal something that is unlikely in chaos (and that's not entirely true either- I've taken down crooks with perfect form- good stances are just good body mechanics, but the focus and energy was never on the form but on getting the job done. Doing well, not looking right.)

how did/do you train to get there is the real question. Experience is huge, of course. Training to the problem is important, which means training for real bad guys using real attacks in a real environment under real rules. How do ambushes happen? How do criminals set them up? What do you look for in advance? What do you do if you are surprised? How do you deal with clutter and enclosed places- not just avoiding but using the gifts. Are you training to do stuff that will land you in prison?

The third, which I believe can be taught but am also aware that I have a natural inclination this way, is to be comfortable with uncertainty. I've never felt I had answers or know what would happen if or what I will do when... I've never had any illusions that I was ready. That is a huge advantage because I don't have emotional attachment to a plan and can walk away the second it ceases to apply. I deal with how the threat attacks and not how he is supposed to attack. THIS ONE IS CRITICAL: If something happens that I don't believe is possible I deal with it as it is before I try to fix my mental map!!! The reason nonsequitors work in de-escalation, the reason that karate and jujutsu were so successful in the early years and the Gracie stuff later is that people would stop fighting to figure out what was happening. Fight first, re-write your reality map later.

I'll talk about emotional trauma later, but... one example.

Without Contention

This is Mac-level stuff.
Steve commented on the last post that I hadn't addressed several of Bobbe's points. 'Course not. There was no reason to. I didn't really address his theme, either- just let it inspire some thoughts on another aspect of the same subject. So I'm going to be even worse here and run with something that Steve got me thinking- note bene: not stuff Steve said or Steve meant, just some stuff I read into his words that I rarely address.

Two people write on the same subject, one obviously after the other, their general conclusions very different. It can look like disagreement without being disagreement. One can write on how the trivia transmitted can overwhelm the function; the other writes that without a base it's possible to transmit nothing of value, or not transmit at all, and it might mimic someone avoiding trivia. No contention. It's like tracking with a friend- it's not a matter of being wrong, but of looking at different things. I might look at prints and miss the lint on the thorn; my friend might see the strange print configuration of four distinct paws on a direct register animal and not think to smell the dirt which explains it all.

Disagreement leads people to expect some emotional content. That leads, often, to an all-or-nothing mindset: if you really disagree, you must disagree about everything. (This is simplistic, I know. Bear with me.) I never meant to tear down Bobbe's house. I just saw a wall that could use some spackle. But that expectation flow: difference to disagreement to contention to total annihilation is expected in certain circles- in politics, in internet flame wars-

I don't hate criminals. I'm very aware of some of the most horrendous things done in this area. I know the people who did them. Sometimes I knew the victims. But I don't think I could do this job if I expended the emotional energy to hate. I would suck at the job if I turned a blind eye to how the criminals are as people (some are respectful, well-behaved, even wise when they are off drugs and away from a victim pool; some are good parents; most have hopes and dreams) just so I could preserve the integrity of my vision of them as criminals. This is not soft bleeding-heart talk. This is not an either/or. Both are in my head at all times: a particular person may be vicious, depraved and will continue to victimize people until somebody sticks a needle in his arm and a good chess player and mentor to fish who don't know how to do time. I can treat him with respect without extending trust.

This extends to use of force itself. Maybe the threat sees me as an enemy. Maybe he needs to. Maybe he needs to imagine that I am corrupt and evil and the blunt instrument of a repressive society. But I don't have to play the game. By refusing to limit the problem to a him-or-me, by refusing to see it in terms that are expected or demanded, I can choose to make it a problem and not a fight. Or even the step beyond and decide that it isn't a problem at all.

No one fights all out. Almost no one. When it is over and the cuffs are on, I try to recognize and remember that. The fight is over because the threat quit fighting. He chose to quit fighting. No matter who he or she is, the threat could have made the fight harder, worse, more dangerous. Might have won, if they had taken it to a place where my will had crumpled before theirs (and part of it is easy in that most criminals are very aware that if they 'lose' they will not be injured, a comfort the officer does not have. It makes it easier and safer for the threat to quit). Sometimes I say what I am thinking, "Thanks. You could have made that a lot worse. I appreciate that you quit when you did." It's not sarcastic and they seem to respond to the sincerity of it. It's been very calming for psychs and people on stimulants. I don't think you could use the words unless you feel it, but it opens up a door. If the officer is seeing something that allows him to appreciate ... what else is there to see? And, over the years, a lot of inmates have chosen to talk instead of fight when I'm available to try to find another way.

I couldn't access this if I saw conflict as emotion-laden or violent or total. It's just two organisms trying to work something out. Most of the time, the problem isn't even between the two organisms, but between one of the organisms and its environment. As an interested fellow organism I can sometimes share my perspective.

Lineage and Tradition

This was inspired by a Bobbe Edmonds post. It's worth a read, and some thought. I'm going to hit it from the other direction, though.

First things first- not everyone studies martial arts for the same reasons. I have no problem with people exercising or learning a culture or testing themselves in the arena. It is what it is. I have a little problem with people who think that all of those things- fitness, culture, sport- are the same. Worse when they delude themselves into thinking that those skills equate to either combat or self-defense (and those two are not the same, either). I don't have a big problem until people start teaching that they are all the same. Even there, though, it is not a huge problem- delusional people teaching other delusional people things that they will never test is like any other religion: a big problem, but not my big problem.
Anybody offended yet?

Second, though I get a lot of secondary benefits from study and practice, my primary objective in studying martial arts is to keep me uninjured though I spend a great deal of time unarmed while in close contact with violent criminals. (In person, I would go off on a tangent here about how broad and strategic a subject that is- reputation and presentation have prevented more bad events than skill has ever overcome).

People are fond of saying that there are only a finite number of ways the human body can move. That's true, but there is a nearly infinite number of ways those movements can be prioritized. For every ten things a person sees, there can be a hundred interpretations. Interpretations affect what we 'see'. What we 'see' and how we are taught to prioritize it, drives what we do.

From this perspective, lineage and tradition are important.

Whatever you study came from somewhere and it came through somebody. If the time difference between where it came from and you is great, then it was transmitted through several people. This makes for two obvious and important places where things can go very, very wrong.

Where it came from: Though there are athletic basics to martial arts, the 'how to fight' guts of a system came from one of two places. Either one or more people experienced enough cutting and bone breaking to pass it on or somebody made it up. That simple- in it's earliest incarnation, what you learned is either based on truth or fiction. Experience or imagination (well-reasoned imagination, probably... but we know by now how far off basic assumptions can be). Is it possible for an imagination-based art to be workable? Sure, for two reasons: sometimes random chance works. The art may be workable just by luck. More likely, though, it is because of the ingenuity of humans. A great natural fighter can make a shitty system work. People hate losing and certain people are very good at winning (the art of advantage is a very broad-spectrum skill). All bets are off when you have someone good. The converse is also true- in one of the arts I most admire for it's sheer tactical efficiency and ruthlessness, I know two instructors who couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag.

This is also why it is important to know what your system was for. Military arts are very different than civilian arts. Arts of last resort are completely unrelated to dueling arts. What an Okinawan peasant needed to know to prevail in a bar fight or a fishing rights dispute is vastly different than what a soldier needs to know for sentry removal and both are completely different than the skill the sentry needs in order to not be removed. Things stretch, but they only stretch so far. The most valuable techniques on my list for ambush survival are nearly worthless sparring. Things are what they are.

So tradition, in the sense of where it came from and what it was designed to do, can be vital.

Transmission The second source of problems is in how the lessons are taught. As Mr. Edmonds pointed out, you have only ever learned from your direct instructor(s). Sensei Billy-Bob may have learned from someone who learned from someone who learned from someone who learned directly from Shihan Smackemdown but you have only learned from Billy-Bob.

The whole point of teaching, really, is to bypass the experience issue. . I want students who can do what I can do without the (feel free to ignore, it's been written before) screws in the knee and the fists that won't close all the way and the memory loss from concussions and the eye that is permanently blurry from the scratched lens and the wrist that pops loud enough to wake me up and the fingers that go numb.

Combat is rare enough and messy enough that very few people will ever gather enough experiences to have much insight. It is weird, too in that everything you have learned about human psychology and civilization ceases to apply under rage and fear; that everything you think you can expect from your mind and body changes under extreme stress. On a very fundamental level, the 'you' in an assault won't be the same 'you' that trained for the assault. People don't accept this. People are funny, too. They can't leave simple alone; they feel a need to 'improve' things even when they don't understand them... and secretly, they think that they are smarter than everybody else.

So the fact that someone gathered and the experience he or she transmitted is now at the mercy of how well each generation of instructor can pass it on. And each generation will be tempted to 'improve' the product. Each generation may lose or forget something or accidentally change something. The changes become part of the tradition.

Rote memory can avoid this, sort of. If you make a standard high enough, information can be passed down word for word and motion for motion even if no one understands it. The problem, of course, is that people come to believe their skill is measured by precision and not by adaptability, by how they move and not how they think or see. It is the essence of the dilemma between moving right and moving well.

One of the cool things about the rote system is that it can get information, intact, to people who might use it generations down the line. I've never seriously studied karate, but I see more good fighting skills and wisdom in karate kata than almost any karate instructor I know. But in a lot of ways, it is like teaching answers without questions.

Bottom line- are tradition and lineage important? If you have neither, you're just making stuff up. Unless you have a good amount of first-hand experience with the subject it is just mental entertainment. If the tradition arose from somewhere else that applies, the seeds were there. If not, you are just indulging in someone else's fantasy. If the seeds were there but the teaching was flawed... the seeds are usually still there, but you will have to find them on your own. My preference is to learn things that have proven useful, passed on by people who understood them- but I'm funny that way.

Character and Skill

This is one of those issues that can get philosophical very fast. (Strange, isn't it that philosophical, which used to mean 'love of learning' has become almost synonymous for "blowhards with agendas?") Nature/nurture, the limits of training and back to the old question of "heart".

It is possible for someone to do something badly because they don't know how to do it well. It is also possible for someone to do something badly in exactly the same way because of who they are. One is a training issue, the other a character flaw. One is a relatively easy fix. The other may not be fixable.

This problem hits a lot of buttons in our society. The word "flaw" is very judgmental, and that is frowned on. The idea that some people might not be able to learn something seems clearly discriminatory and possibly even elitist.

These buttons exist side-by-side with other facts, that are rarely challenged but just the same things in different words. All people are different. Personalities are defined as the collection of character traits that last over time. It is okay to say that everyone has a talent (though some seem to very clearly not) and it is sort of okay to say that everyone has a weak spot... but when it extends to 'certain people are incapable of certain things', we glitch.

Theoretical example: a rookie police officer who uses excessive force. It may be a training issue in that he lacks the skills to handle things at a lower level. It may be an experience issue that he doesn't have the confidence in himself to handle things the softer and riskier way. Those are both fixable. But he may also be prone to panic, and when the fear kicks in he lashes out in a blind flurry. Or he just may be mean. Those are character issues and harder to fix, if they are fixable at all. One of the problems is that in an actual incident mistakes or bad behavior can look exactly the same regardless of source. A rookie with training issues can be an asset given time and effort and experience. The same rookie with a character flaw will be a detriment and a danger to everyone for as long as he has access to victims.

It's similar on the criminal side. Every human being has criminal impulses. It would be cool to have instant gratification and if it weren't for this stupid conscience and this nagging, quixotic belief in the humanity of others we could go to town, baby! Relatively few act on the impulses. A smaller number have no hesitation. What would be an impulse in another person is just the way things are- the humanity of their victims doesn't even register... and you get a career violent criminal. (There's more going on there, of course- just an illustration)

So which things are character and which are training? How much of the self-help industry is based on attempting to train away problems that are deeper than knowledge? If someone believes that they are largely jellyfish adrift and controlled by events (what psychologists term an external locus of control) can you really just teach them to take control of their lives and be assertive?

(And this hits another snag in the discussion- there are deeper levels of teaching, some of which can affect character, but often not reliably or it doesn't last. Or people will say or even believe that their character has changed, but their behavior doesn't. Buyer beware.)

How sure do you have to be to declare something a character flaw? When do you take away an officer's gun?
Again, in most lines of work, the difference might not matter much. But in a profession where the person will be subject to high levels of stress and must make high stakes decisions under that stress very quickly a character that freezes or over-reacts can get a lot of people hurt.

Even more, since I am a monkey and have to complicate things- what are the gradations of character and where do you draw the lines? I am very, very good at staying objective under stress. Partially training, a lot due to experience, but much of it is just temperament- for whatever reason I don't feel fear as an emotion with a lot of connotations. I register the adrenaline but it's not a pleasant or unpleasant thing. It just is. So, what about the guys who are just very good at it? Or good? Or okay? Most human traits are scalar, not binary.

This is just a discussion here but in another place and time it is a harsh decision with potentially drastic consequences. As a teacher, as a supervisor how much risk at what stakes with what evidence...

"Load 3 of 6 and twelve loose in your pocket."

We were on the B side of the range yesterday. Eight hours- shooting, shooting while moving and pivoting, moving in a tight stack with live weapons, target discrimination, entries with a team of mixed lethal and less-lethal weapons to engage a mix of threats: deadly threats; dangerous threats and hostages. It was a good shoot, even cold at seven yards nine of my first ten were in the two-inch square. Moving was almost as good. I threw several rounds while moving on the boardwalk- as complexity increases (shooting + moving + listening for commands + target discrimination + magazine changes and failure to fire drills + keeping your balance on a fairly narrow, slightly wiggly platform) it becomes easier to let little things slide, like, oh, the front sight. Still, even there the shooting was good- just not consistently the standard I need to put a round on the nose of a moving threat without hitting the hostage being used as a shield.

On the A side of the range the local contingent of a federal agency were qualifying. I watched one miss the paper, the two-foot by three foot paper, not just the large silhouette of a bad guy in the middle, three times out of three before the instructor came over to help. Shooting for a two inch pattern on the B side, happy to hit the paper at all on the A side.

At one point both sides of the range were cold, so we could take off our hearing protection and I heard the instructor on the other side order, "Load three magazines of six and put twelve loose rounds in your pocket." Wow. That means that they have not changed their qualification course since they gave up revolvers. Think about that. Lots of things don't change- human aggression really hasn't changed since before we became humans, the instinctive physical motions when threatened aren't that different either- the difference between an antelope bone and broken cue stick in actual application are negligible. Technology does change some things, however... and sometimes people don't change in response, even when the stakes are high. If you see an officer who carries his magazine pouch on the same side as his weapon, he has been taught to do that and probably told it was faster. And it was faster, back when we carried revolvers and had to switch the weapon to the other hand to pop the cylinder and use the speed-loaders.

I was a weaver shooter for decades. I'd seen the stats that people almost never blade their bodies under stress but I was sure that didn't apply to me. All those years and hours of practice surely made me a special case (you may laugh)... what convinced me was JJ pointing out a change in technology; "You realize that your stance points the biggest hole in your armor right at the bad guy, right?" Crap. Time to learn the modified isosceles and actually point my armor at the bad guy.
Aside- old pistol duelers advocated an elbow to hip, hand at shoulder stance side on to the opponent. If he did happen to hit the torso area with his pistol ball it would have to penetrate all three arm bones before getting to the ribs.

The tendency to not recognize when the world has changed and go with the original plan is really powerful. Sometimes people don't see the change. Sometimes they stay within their comfort zone of behavior. Sometimes it just seems that tradition and habit have a kind of weight and momentum. This combined with human ability to rationalize and a hefty dose of ego makes for some pretty poor decisions defended with rabid ferocity. It's funny, most of the time. But sometimes there is a real price.

I've written about training artifacts before- things that were introduced to make training safer that have become the "right way". The pronated fist in karate. The follow through in a judo throw. There are technology artifacts, too. If you have ever had the opportunity to take apart an old Filipino sword, the handle is no more than a piece of rattan pounded onto a rattail tang. So maybe, the flowing cuts of some of the styles are because the blade stays in the wound longer... or maybe it's because almost any other technique made the handle fall off. Maybe the curve in a katana is because it is some mathematical function of the way people's arms move when they slash... or maybe they never figured out how to use the folding technique on a straight blade (FWIW, some viking weapons were pattern-welded by braiding the softer and harder steels, but the vikings never figured out the differential tempering trick).

It's hard to step back and look at these things in your own stuff. Often, unless something is tested to destruction, the weak spots don't look like weak spots in training. When you do find one, however, it often leads to an entire new set of insights. When Bric pointed out that the magazine placement we had learned was based on the revolver, it got me thinking and led to a change in weapon retention- because that skill was also based on revolvers and revolver holsters and some of the techniques, such as turning your hip away when the weapon is grabbed from behind, actually gives up the third level of retention on a modern holster, making it easier for the bad guy.

Being Invisible

Another one for the "Combative Twilight Zone Files" today from training. (hmmmm... that would make a hell of a book, wouldn't it?)
I usually stay away from the twilight zone stuff on the blog because I am worried about the reaction. Incredibly strange, impossible stuff happens at the edge. When you talk about it, impressionable people either:
A) Don't believe you. (Which doesn't bother me. I'm writing for myself primarily and most people live a life of sufficient comfort and safety that they can believe anything they want with no real effect.)
B) Believe you. If they believe you, they might:
b.1) Start believing in magic and quit "wasting time" on basics or;
b.2) Twist their focus and come to believe that the twilight zone fluke is "the way it is" and the other hundred mundane examples are ignored or;
b.3) Become weird little intellectual groupies, which frankly creeps me out. I'm tons more comfortable with Steve P.'s disagreements than I ever will be with, oh... you know what? I'm not even going to finish that thought. Someday just give me a scotch and ask me about the 'one move that embodies a style '. Puke. Gag.

Weird stuff happens and most of it can be explained once you understand the influence of super-high stress. The trouble is that understanding after the fact doesn't really prepare you for responding and understanding doesn't imply that you can predict or exploit the phenomena. That's why they're called "flukes" I guess.

On an entry, the first person in is responsible for immediate threat, near corner, far corner, cross corner. Don't hang up on the terminology. The first guy in has to deal with any immediately apparent bad guy, then check to make sure there isn't an ambush coming from the flank, then scan the room. His partner does the same from the other side.

One of the things we do in training is throw bad guys in at inconvenient times to make sure our entry team can adapt on the fly. Today on one of the reps, I was standing directly in the doorway when the point man came in. He blew right by me and covered a door (a potential danger spot). He actually brushed me. He never saw me. In the debrief he is adamant that I was NOT there.

I started to form the thought that I could fall in behind him like part of the stack, but the number 2 guy smashed me into the wall before the thought was completely formed. Which is excellent, it's what I train him to do.

Weird, though. This invisibility thing has come up a couple of times. In training (see the post on Perfect Predator Moment), just goofing around- one friend I stalked and counted coup on four times in a half hour while he was looking directly at me; but it is hard to tell if it has ever happened in a real fight. No one, at least, has ever told me I was invisible, but they have said, "Where in the fuck did you come from?" Wouldn't it be cool to interview the bad guys after a dust up? Something beyond crimes and discipline but more like, "What was your initial plan and when did you realize it had gone to hell?"

Adrenaline can cause tunnel-vision, and that accounts for a lot of the cases (the difference between invisible and unnoticed is very small in practice) but we'd been drilling this all day and it wasn't a rookie.

Cool.

South Coast Writers

I did some classes for the South Coast Writer's Conference and I've been letting it settle for a week. There was a fair amount of sleep deprivation and a very long drive; a beautiful sunset and a small town charity fish-fry; a hilariously awful hotel experience and great food and conversation at a heavy-metal cowboy bar and grill. A poet's first autograph. A writer's critique group that will become a long story over beer someday.

I was a bit of an experiment. Most of the presenters were literary types- people who identify themselves as writers. I was more like a thug who happens to have a book coming out. But an attractive subject: Literature is about conflict, right? And you have villains, right? So I was there to talk about violence and villains.

On the good side, only one of the students left the room and only for one segment. A few covered their eyes at the slides. The notebook of photographs that I sometimes pass around never made it all the way around the room, as if a small knot of people were afraid that the pictures would somehow enter their psyches if they touched the cover, and bring on nightmares.

Violence can be awesome, in the old sense of the word- the meaning that brought on kneeling, hoping that if you were small enough the god would not see you and crush you. It can be cathartic, completely changing in an instant how you will view the world. It can even be funny. It is often pathetic and sordid and messy. It is almost never dramatic or entertaining.

If I use force and it is dramatic or entertaining, I am doing it wrong.

So these writers, many of whom impressed me with their intelligence, insight, warmth and compassion got to see a tiny bit of the world that their profession often packages for entertainment. They got to see the rhinoceros that inspired the unicorn that they create.

The murders of Linda Lawrence and Kyle Dinkheller. Excited delirium. How and why women fight differently than men. What happens when an outsider interferes in an in-group's "adjustment session". How a real shooting differs from the range. What bullets and knives and bats and bites do to a human body. What happens when a martial artist tries to break up a bar fight and over-estimates himself.

How bad guys see themselves. How cops see them. How their families see them. How they see each other. How truly aberrant that can be at the extremes. Some of the norms, the "normality" in certain sections of criminal subculture. Why things that seem impossible to polite society make good survival sense in that world.

Prostitutes and the "Bad Date Line". Drugs, inmates and riots. Gangs and molesters. Icky days. Professional good guys and professional bad guys. And scars. We talked about the scars at one point, but only the ones on the skin.

It's always strange to talk to good people about bad things. Do you sensationalize it? But you can't sensationalize Linda Lawrence's murder: it could never be sold as fiction. Too weird, too impossible, too brutal (not her murder, per se, which happened in the space of a few seconds, the fight with her killer afterwards which would seem a bit 'out there' in a werewolf movie.) You can't sensationalize the heroism (and sheer bloody determination) of a Marcus Young. You have to tell them it is rare, but this stuff happens: blood has been used as house paint. Wounds have been raped.

And there is a constant, lower-level buzz of violence: casually abused children, casually beaten wives. Problems solved by boots and weapons as a matter of course... and they glitch hard there because since most people do not know anyone who regularly solves problems with violence they have a hard time accepting that there is a group that considers it an obvious first choice. Obvious. That's the glitch.

It went well. Janet Pretti worked her...erm... very hard to make sure that everyone had a good time. She even got me to do a public reading, though I almost choked when she said to pick something "family friendly". So much for anything out of the book.

And I got great reviews. But what would you expect? No one ever tells the teacher with the gun that he sucks.

A Mix

Today was a mix. Lots of paperwork. Good interactions with officers and inmates. An epiphany. A call-out.

The epiphany: I've always worked under the assumption that my job was to either prevent or fix problems. That seems to apply to every job there is- you are either making things better or keeping things from getting worse. Part of that responsibility is to accurately see what the problem is, how big it is. Part of the responsibility is sharing that information up the chain of command. But that's not always the way it works. People want to accomplish the mission- get the job done. Bureaucracies are about preserving the system. When the ship is heading for big rocks, the obvious thing to do is to change course. The bureaucrat begins hiring the smartest, toughest, most creative people in the hopes that they will find away to avoid the damage without changing course... and god help the individual who stands up and says "This won't work- the system is flawed." Though the bureaucrat is driving the ship onto the rocks, they will throw someone over the side for making waves.

The Call Out: Not a lot of action lately, so when a neighboring agency without a tactical team calls for assistance with a riot with multiple barricaded, armed threats... it was looking like an interesting day. The team hit the ground running: a hasty pre-plan, some ball park concepts, equipment choices and draws for a range of scenarios; commo and even an advance team on the way... when the bad guys decided to surrender. This is the tactical equivalent of a case of blue balls.

Quotes

"What I saw was couple of DUMBASSES who didn't have the tactical sense god gave an animal cracker." - Mark Jones

"You don't teach answers. You teach humans." - Asher Bey

"I don't trust people who are sure." - David Becker

"We aren't lowering the standards.  We're just changing them so that more people will pass."- Anonymous administrator.

"I want them to see me looking; to look in my eyes and see the price of admission."- Paul McRedmond

"Leadership is making things better.- J. Callum

"I think you got some zen in my eye."- Brandon Oto

"There were grade school teachers and high school teachers and kindergarten teachers and counselors. Those were all the oppressions, I mean professions in the class."- Se-ah-dom Edmo

Walking

You can't walk towards something without walking away from something else. Every choice that you make removes other choices from the table. If you stop, you can't be going. If you keep going, you miss all the things that you would have experienced by stopping for a spell.

I've made a decison. A certain piece of it is out of my hands, but the decision is made. It involves huge changes. Walking away from some things means walking away from other things as well. Some of those things are going very well. When I return, they may have grown on their own or withered and died. I won't know, can't know until I return.

Things will develop in their own time. From this perspective it seems monumental if I think about it too much. Yet I already know that I will live in the moment, experience what is there and, someday, it will become just another thing that I've done. A piece of history. A collection of stories. Valuable, important...but there will be just as many stories I will miss. Stories and experiences I would love. It's one of the reason that change is hard, especially for people who have been successful in creating a nearly perfect life. But part of my perfect life is abandoning the comfort zone. For now, at least. Rest may become more valuable in later years. Not yet.

This has the potential to be very cool.

Love/Hate

There is an old Persian tale about a man whose wisdom was tested by Allah. He was told to cook the best meal in the world and the worst. For the best meal he chose tongue, delicately seasoned. Because from the tongue, from speech, came all truth, all praise, all teaching... everything that was extraordinary in the world comes from the ability to communicate.

For the worst meal, of course, he also prepared tongue- decomposed and rotting, half burned and half slimy. Because evil requires deceit and that too, comes from speech.

A few decades ago, for one of those cheesy psych test I was asked my favorite animal. Without hinking I answered,"Humans." Humans are also my least favorite. At their best, humans embody everything that is nobility. The human capacity for heroism, for self-sacrifice, for doing the right thing at great personal cost is humbling. Conversely, the human penchant for betrayal, for sadism, for deceit also seems to be without limits.

So I love people and I hate them. It's not a halfway thing- or maybe it is: When I don't think about them, I'm pretty neutral about people- about the human race and its existance. But when I do think about them, when I observe humans as they live and act and interact I am usually blown away by the miracle of humanity. Or disgusted by creatures who can be given the triple gift of life, reason and will and use it only to hurt and use others for their own benefits.

Sitting in a restaurant/bar today (small town, Valentines day) I watched a bartender and a waitress working like machines. They were dealing with drinks and food, seating. The waitress was new and had a cheat sheet to figure out the table codes. They were running their asses off. I've watched higher paid people with 'higher status' jobs who would grumble, whine or simply refuse to put out a quarter of the effort these two did. And these two women did it with good cheer and wicked humor. It was a pleasure to watch.

Notes

In the middle of  a day with nothing planned (!!!) it seemed like a good time to go over some old stuff.  My students may not know that I take notes after class:

"JJ- (list of students) working on very minor stuff- triangle immobilizations; steady vs. staccato force; tendon lock; shearing from ground; mental vs. physical stops; controlling pace physical and verbal RTPV.  Caught a ridge hand to the eye. Had to do the whole psych FA thing on face contact. All good."

I like the balance- nuanced physical skills and critical physical distinctions; mind and body; tactics and techniques; finishing and prevention; emotion and socialization.

Triangle Immobilizations are a simple way to pull on a wrist, elbow, collar, hair or push/glide other contact points in such a way that the threat can't move either foot and sometimes can't twist his spine.

Steady vs. Staccato- a staccato attack, especially one in broken rhythm, upsets the OODA loop more than a steady rhythm; is harder to adjust to and can increase damage by utilizing it's own "bounce".

Tendon Locks are ways to position your own bones to make it very difficult for the threat to move you or a part of you.  Structure used for grappling defense.

Shearing from ground is just one way to break connection, a fast way.  Breaking connection with the ground cripples most people's fighting ability.

Mental and physical stops are largely about you. Your brain freezes and you body follows when you concentrate on the surface or the point of contact.  It decreases your ability to do damage or apply power in other ways.  The most common way of demonstrating is playing the childhood game of "Red Rover"  If the runner concentrates on the hands, he will usually be stopped.  If he concentrates on the horizon, he will either break through or drag the entire line, even if moving at a slower speed.

Controlling Pace... Physically, emotionally and even with your voice you can make someone else move faster or slower.  You will often see a good technician slow down in the middle of a match and his opponent will subconsciously slow down to match.  I've used this in real fights- along with the staccato explosion once the threat expected slow.

RTPV are the rate, tone, pitch and volume of voice.  Even without understanding a word of a mutual language you can set the tone for an interaction with good conscious skill at RTPV.  This is the kihon of verbal de-escalation.

Psych FA There must have been a rookie in the class.  Our society (all societies I know of) have serious tabus about adults touching other adults on the face.  That is why the slap is such a staple of domination- and why it is so often used by predators.  The socialization runs so deep that in MA classes, a rookie who accidentally makes face contact will stop, apologize and feel terrible. Once this tabu is brought into consciousness, you can train for it and even use it.

All good.

"I heard..."

Talking with Vinnie in the locker room at the end of a wild, busy shift:

"This one big guy, the guy DC called on, for a second I thought he was going to get brave."

"Yeah," Vinnie said, "I heard that you even put down your coffee cup."

"Huh?"

"Everyone knows, you put down the coffee cup, it's last chance."

Everyone?  One of the big motivators to applying for the desk job was a real fear that there was something wrong with me on a very deep level.  I'd found myself fully engaged with an amateur boxer (he got the first move at extremely close range) and as he literally bent over backwards before hitting the floor, I'd been composing the report in my mind, not really interested in what he was doing or what I was doing either.  Before that (long story) a local agency had chased a car thief into my neighborhood.  The pursuing officers had jumped the fence into my backyard, where I happened to be, wondering what the commotion was about.  I was staring down  five guns with excited, largely rookie officers behind them.  I was the only calm one at the scene.  Last example- yawning while a 300 pound biker threatened me.

If that sounds like bragging, it isn't.  A data point- at one time my adrenals were so burnt out that unless I was actively being shot at I was bored.

There's a level of adrenaline, a trickle, that tugs at the corner of your mouth and crinkles your eyes and makes you fell very alive, very present in the moment.  It took a year off to get that back, and it's great.  But in the course of the year I'd expected things to move on.  I'd expected that someone else would step into the ready position, someone else would just be expected to deal with the problem children.  No one else has stepped up (that's not true- we have many good officers who deal every day with situations that would make a clinical psychologist choke or that some Federal enforcement officer would be analyzing in books for decades), but no one has stepped up to the extent that I'm forgotten.

Have you ever heard of the Johari Window?  It's a psych concept where you imagine yourself as a square with a vertical bar and a horizontal bar.  Everything to the left of the vertical bar are the things you know about yourself.  To the right are the unknown things.  Above the horizontal bar are the things others know about you.  Below the bar are the things others don't know about you.

Part of skillful living is to try to move your vertical bar as far to the right as possible- to know everything you can about yourself.  The window implies that there are always things things that others know about you that you don't.  What others can see sometimes (often, if you don't really examine yourself) is more accurate than what we choose to believe about ourselves.

So I keep my ears open for little hints, like, "Everyone knows..."

Years ago, Mike pointed out the position I took when force was about to happen. That was okay with me because the position (which I call the 'modified Columbo') was a purely conscious choice... but he also pointed out a specific thing I do with my wrist just in the instant of 'go'.  that bothered me a little. Partially because it was unconscious (effective, believe me, but unconscious) but also because I'm not used to anyone else looking for minor battle tells.  That was when I was absolutely sure that Mike would be a superb team leader.

Invisible to me, but "everyone knows" even the inmates that haven't worked directly with me before. Put down the coffee cup and it's the last chance.

That's what I heard.

Incident Analysis

An interesting problem last night- inmate refusing an order.  Not an english speaker.  Signs (not symptoms- an important distinction, especially with a language barrier) of possible opiate withdrawals or a psych crisis or great fear.

The staff on hand didn't want to use force.  We generally avoid force whenever possible, but if there is no immediate threat to others (the inmate was successfully isolated) no active self-harm and it's probable that the deeper reasons are avolitional* we will go to great lengths to not hurt somebody.  Great lengths, in this case, involved waiting for me to clear another duty and try talking.

Last night it worked out very well and there is some stuff in there to analyze.

1) Reading the threat:  I invited the inmate to sit down immediately, which gave me a read on his understanding level (0 to english, okay to his native language) and general compliance level.  Entered the cell to get a read on his territoriality.  Stood at different distances and with different postures to examine his comfort zones and see if I could work my way into his 'intimate distance' without setting him off.  At one point, trying to rule out fear based on recent trauma, I stood too close and put a hand on his shoulder.  No excessive flinch response.  Note- all of this proximics stuff is extremely valuable but you must be superbly confidant in your close-range ability to defend yourself.

2) Comfort: I knocked before I went in.  Didn't wait for an invite, but it's a courtesy that many respond to even if they don't consciously register it.  Didn't wear gloves- to some inmates, they presage violence (I have put on gloves very ostentatiously in the past to let an inmate know that force was imminent and give them a chance to back down.  Most do.) Gloves can also become a focal point for schizophrenic or paranoid inmates.  My body language was extremely relaxed- a little slumped, rare direct eye contact, very casual, sipping a cup of coffee (a posture that also covers my center line, allows me to explode directly into the threat if necessary and takes full advantage of the design of the cell for obstacles and power generation). Voice low, slow, a little sleepy.

3) Back-up.  This could have been handled better.  The more officers involved in a back-up, the less likely for anyone to be hurt.  It seems counterintuitive, but if you really want to fight and I have six guys, I can probably get cuffs on you just by holding you down.  If I'm alone and you want to fight, I may have to break you.  When dealing with EDs (Emotionally Disturbed) I like my back-up out of sight.  Too many uniforms can trigger their paranoia and make my relaxed mode seem insincere. If available, you need B/U there (you CAN NOT do a hostage negotiation without a tactical response ready), but better not to be seen. A few wanted to watch and stayed in the inmate's line of sight.

4) Timing.  The third time into the cell was for the nurse.  I gloved up for that one.  In his home country, a child will be beaten for merely making direct eye contact with any law officer.  Each time I had entered the cell, he had expected physical violence.  I figured the third time he might be toying with the idea that I might be reluctant to use force and he might get brave.

5) Physical.  I touched the inmate four times.  Once was the early hand on the shoulder mentioned above.  I did the same thing later and looked in his eyes and very softly said, "I know you don't want me to hurt you. Please don't make me." It helped, (he did understand quite a bit) because it allowed him the chance to not fight as a favor to a nice guy (me) rather then out of fear. At one point he started to move suddenly and I put one hand on the back of his elbow ( a leverage point) and one on the wrist- our standard escort hold.  He tensed, testing my strength and whether it would provoke a reaction.  He got no reaction so he didn't escalate.  I did, however, warn him that moving fast would be a very bad idea.  The fourth time was holding his arm so the RN could take his blood pressure and trying to take a BP by palpation. No big deal, but the dynamic with a second person (small and untrained) in the room was different.  I had to be ready to knock him off his balance if he made any threatening move towards the nurse.  The leverage point at the back of the elbow again.

6) Remote control good-cop/bad-cop: You've all heard of it and it works.  One of my best partners had this perfect work persona as the Bitch Queen from Hell.  It was a delight working with her- if a new arrestee started working himself up to fight she would turn towards him with this indescribable look and I would put a hand on his arm and plead, "I can't control her when she's like this! Please, please don't say anything."  We almost never had a use of force.  Working close-custody and max, I got pretty good at playing GC/BC all by myself: most of the inmates would warn the others that I was a pretty nice guy, but not all there.  I could snap.  For the incident last night I got on the radio and told the OIC that we couldn't quite get there and the guy was demanding we use force and asked for his blessing.  The OIC said, "We have no choice." This was all done in the inmate's hearing.  I said, "You heard the man."  The inmate complied.

7) Detail. I noticed early on that whenever I started to leave the cell, the inmate would start to comply and then catch himself, consciously forcing himself to stop.  I don't know what this means and didn't figure out how to exploit it in the time we had.  With the language barrier (and because it appeared unconscious), it's unlikely that I'll ever figure it out, but I will watch for it in other incidents.  Just a data point.

8) Restoration of normality.  The primary officer decided to treat this as a probable psych issue instead of a disciplinary matter, so we took him to a module.  This got a little weird because every officer that didn't have anything specific to do was hanging around.  That's good- this was the most likely place to go bad in the jail- but for an ED inmate it can feed into paranoias or delusions.  One offered to carry the inmate's property.  It was natural, because when you've been waiting around you want to do something and he's a good officer who wants to be useful.  But it was important to make the move as normal as possible, so I had the inmate carry his own stuff.  It's also very important for EDs, especially as they are coming out of crisis, to get a feeling of control.  Something as simple as carrying their own things or cleaning up can give them a feeling of normality and control that they value very much.

*Avolitional.  Most criminals are extremely self-centered and manipulative.  They have done criminal acts because what they wanted was more important to them than their victim's rights or feelings or even lives.  EDs- truly terrified or mentally ill people sometimes display behavior or have motives that they can't control (it's actually rare- most can control their behavior most of the time, but not their motives). If it's not a choice (avolitional) we try to cut as much slack as we can; when it is a choice, especially if the criminal is counting on us being nice or taking time that is manipulative behavior that we work hard not to reward.