Any decent martial arts instructor will tell you that if someone has a weapon, your best bet is to run. You can be a master of any art; if your opponent has a knife, you will get cut, or stabbed. It’s almost impossible to disarm an aggressive attacker who has a knife without getting cut; unless you get lucky, it usually becomes a struggle to control the knife, and the person holding the handle gets cut up far less. Your martial arts training may allow you to eventually dominate the situation, disarm your attacker, and defeat your opponent – but you’re still going to get cut up in the process. If they have a gun, then all your training for is give you a slight chance of not getting shot, maybe, if everything goes perfectly. The only time things go like in the movies is in the movies. And cops aren’t going to be martial arts masters; the best we could hope for for most of them is some basic submission technique, like the shit that murdered George Floyd.
Yes: cops should be getting focused time in de-escalation, but expecting cops to grapple with people, when they have no idea what weapons the person may have concealed in their bodies, or to expect them to perform some Steven Segal weapon disarming is unrealistic.
I agree with you, though; guns are not the answer, and I’m not sure I believe cops should even be armed - although, this is there US, and about 2% of the population goes around daily armed.
Random martial arts in plain cloths against a knife… yeah, bad. But cops have equipment and numbers. They don’t have to do this alone, they can have shields in their car, they can wear tonfas, etc.
If the primary goal was to deal with attackers non-lethally, I am sure that would be possible. At least to a certain degree.
Any decent martial arts instructor will tell you that if someone has a weapon, your best bet is to run. You can be a master of any art; if your opponent has a knife, you will get cut, or stabbed. It’s almost impossible to disarm an aggressive attacker who has a knife without getting cut; unless you get lucky, it usually becomes a struggle to control the knife, and the person holding the handle gets cut up far less. Your martial arts training may allow you to eventually dominate the situation, disarm your attacker, and defeat your opponent – but you’re still going to get cut up in the process. If they have a gun, then all your training for is give you a slight chance of not getting shot, maybe, if everything goes perfectly. The only time things go like in the movies is in the movies. And cops aren’t going to be martial arts masters; the best we could hope for for most of them is some basic submission technique, like the shit that murdered George Floyd.
Yes: cops should be getting focused time in de-escalation, but expecting cops to grapple with people, when they have no idea what weapons the person may have concealed in their bodies, or to expect them to perform some Steven Segal weapon disarming is unrealistic.
I agree with you, though; guns are not the answer, and I’m not sure I believe cops should even be armed - although, this is there US, and about 2% of the population goes around daily armed.
Random martial arts in plain cloths against a knife… yeah, bad. But cops have equipment and numbers. They don’t have to do this alone, they can have shields in their car, they can wear tonfas, etc.
If the primary goal was to deal with attackers non-lethally, I am sure that would be possible. At least to a certain degree.
The kid had a stick, for Pete’s sake