I’ve just read this excellent story by Kit, an American female cop who was off on sick leave (walking with a stick) who encountered a potential predator whilst out taking photos of a river.

Not only did she get a photo of her would-be attacker (right), but gives a full narrative of “the interview”, the process by which a predator sizes up their prey, before deciding whether to act. Not only that but she details the key elements which meant she successfully “failed” the interview (if that makes sense) and the encounter didn’t turn violent.

In summary they were:

• Listen to your instincts and raise your awareness levels when your instincts tell you it’s time.
• Keep your eye on a potential bad guy.
• When it’s time, make sure you’re facing the threat.
• Take charge whilst there’s still distance between you and the bad guy.
• Don’t behave like prey, if you don’t want him to behave like a predator.
• Choose safety over a “civilised” response.

I want to just explain that last point a bit. You may be surprised to learn that criminals are often experts at social psychology (though they may not realise it) and are well versed in victim manipulation. Notice how the story here (car battery flat, want a jump start but can’t afford the tow truck) pulls on the heart strings and whilst a Good Samaritan response would be to help, that would massively increase the risk.

When faced with a situation where you’re being asked to do something that your gut it telling you to be wary of, it’s often useful to remind yourself of the gross circumstances. In this example: lone female, injured, in an isolated spot, approached by a strange man asking for help, some excuse why no one else will do.

The answer of what to do should be obvious and Kit did a marvellous job of making the choices to fail his interview.

“self defence” is more about attitude and mindset

Many people I speak to don’t realise that “self defence” is more about attitude and mindset, than it is about fancy but impractical knife disarm moves say. Which is why I call myself a Personal Safety Coach, not a Self Defence Instructor.

I also prefer Coach to Instructor, as in my mind a coach allows you to unlock or access your current capacity for something, whereas an instructor teaches you something you didn’t know before. Everyone knows how to keep themselves safe; it doesn’t take years of training, rather just a few hours. It’s simple and easy and a lot of fun too. If you want to discover how, take a look at our upcoming course list.

At the time of writing, the next one is in 11 days. I hope to see you there.

This question was posted on my personal blog, and as it raised such an important point, I thought it deserved it’s own post on here:

“I follow your Blog and PDR progress with interest but thought I would raise one comment with you to discuss (or ignore if you wish!). PDR sounds great and full of really useful techniques…. but what stops me signing up is the belief/concern that these types of classes can make you more aggressive as a person. Gaining ‘confidence’, ‘awareness’ and ‘self belief’ to deal with situations is one thing but this can often translate into someone being or being perceived as more aggressive.

“I know friends who have taken up Jiu Jitsu and after a few months they were talking about having ‘much more confidence’ and ‘ability to handle themselves’ should the need arise but my overwhelming thought was that they had become more aggressive as a person (attitude, presence and even down to how they walked down the street… which in my view could result in more confrontations with the wrong people?).

“I’m wondering whether this question has ever come up in the PDR world? How does PDR make people more confident without making them more aggressive (perceived or actual)?”

The short answer is no, absolutely not. But clearly that’s not sufficient, so let me address several of the points in turn.

First off then, and this is a common misconception, we don’t teach “techniques”, we teach principles. The distinction is sometimes subtle so I’ll explain: a technique implies that when attacked like A, you always do technique B, e.g. the bad guy grabs your shirt, so you clap him over his ears.

There are several problems here: not only do you now need a technique to deal with every possible attack, but that technique takes no account of the scenario, and it’s the scenario that always dictates your response. Let’s put that into a couple of scenarios:

“Have you seen my kid, she’s missing, please help me!”

1) A distraught woman grabs your shirt and yells “Have you seen my kid, she’s missing, please help me!”. Do you still clap her over the ears? If you’ve trained it a thousand times to the point it’s instinctive (a key aim of traditional technique based systems) you just might! Clearly that technique based response is far too much violence for that scenario.

2) At a party with a friend, you see a man you recognise peering over the balcony. You go over to say hi and he immediately grabs your friend’s shirt and throws him over the balcony to his death. Startled, you freeze for a second and he grabs your shirt… Now this shirt grab is deadly attack, so is an ear clap a sufficiently violent response or can you now use lethal force to defend yourself? Of course you can, the force you can use in defence of yourself is proportional to the threat, so here an ear clap isn’t enough!

That for me is the key reason that technique based self defence classes are a turn off, which is why we don’t like to use the term “self defence” but rather “personal safety”.

We don’t teach techniques, we teach principles.

I realise that I haven’t answered the question yet, but that was an important point to address. The next big difference between traditional martial arts / technique based self defence and the Personal Defence Readiness, is that we teach 2 additional layers of protection, before physical defence ever comes up. Succinctly then, we have: Detect, Defuse, and Defend.

Detect: Our students are taught to detect a potential violent encounter at an early stage, sometimes before they are even aware what the specific threat is, and avoid it. This sounds easy to say and is often breezed over by traditional systems, but this is absolutely fundamental to the whole PDR and SPEAR System training. It involves instincts, intuition, emotions, feelings, social conditioning, human psychology, fear management and is absolutely NOT a small or insignificant topic.

Read how one of our students effectively defended herself and child, by detecting and avoiding a predator.

Defuse: What do you do when someone is screaming and shouting in your face, but hasn’t actually physically attacked you yet? We teach skills to actively defuse violent confrontations that you’ve been unable to avoid. Again, a large component of defusing violent confrontations is firstly fear management and emotions, but also psychology. Understanding what bad guys want and don’t want, helps to make better decisions that can minimise your worth as a target.

“Oi fella, got a light mate?”

For example if someone just stops you in the street and asks for a light, that could be the precursor to a mugging; “the interview” it’s often called. Whether you may realise it or not, you are already in a violent confrontation that’s seconds from going bad, and you’d better be able to defuse that.

Defend: Only as a last resort do PDR students defend themselves, and we not only teach a few really simple, natural and instinctive physical skills (not the fine motor skill techniques you see in traditional systems), but in many respects more importantly, our students understand and deal with the emotions and fear they will experiencee, and how to use their emotions to their advantage.

Your concern about aggression is not unique and is a general criticism of traditional technique based self defence systems. It’s like this: if your only tool is a hammer, you see every problem as a nail. So if your tools are all physical (strikes, kicks, grapples etc) you see the solution to every problem as a physical one. It sounds corny perhaps to say that PDR is different, but the emotional and psychological side is an integral core component that underpins everything we teach.

Regarding the point about confidence and walking down the street, just walking in a confident way will reduce the likelihood of you being attacked. Of course as you’d expect me to say, it depends on the scenario but muggers for example want easy, compliant victims, so they look for timid, worried, or distracted looking targets.

This was shown in the 1986 Victim Selection Study by Betty Grayson and Morris Stein, where they filmed people walking down the street and then showed the film individually to criminals (muggers, rapists, murderers etc) and asked them who they’d attack? They consistently picked a whole variety of people and they discovered it was basically down to how confident they were walking. The more confidently you go about your daily business, the less likely you to be picked as a possible target. As Willy Wonka said to Violet Beauregarde:

“Well, you do seem confident and confidence is key.”

In summary then, I want to make it clear that not all self defence based systems are bad. But “self defence” is synonymous with “technique” based systems, and I don’t believe that’s the best approach to take. Aggression is clearly not a good idea, but confidence is. If you do something that makes you feel more confident, you’re already safer, just make sure that you have a lot more in your toolbox than just physical techniques. If you don’t like advice from Willy Wonka, how about Mr. Miyagi:

“Best way to avoid punch, no be there.”

This week Maxine, one of our recent PDR students, posted a message on Facebook that she’d been followed whilst walking around town with her daughter in a pram. That’s her on the right dealing with a reality based confrontation scenario. This was her Facebook message:

“Some weirdo has just followed me around town. PLEASE can everyone I know and care for just get signed up with PDR Manchester NOW!! Who knows what horrible thing I may have just avoided thanks to just 6 hours of training. Thanks Chris Worrall and Colin McNulty.”

Of course I asked her what had happened, this was her reply (my emphasis):

“Was wandering around the shopping centre, whilst I was in Thorntons I saw a guy with rather a lot of valentines gifts in a bag and I thought “that’s weird, surely he’s got enough, not chocolates as well” then I thought maybe I was just tight!!

“Went to pay for my car park ticket and someone came up behind me and spidey senses starting tingling, couldn’t tell you why. I then went to press the button for the lift and the bloke with large valentines gift followed me to the lift, “he’s not paid for his ticket” thought I. Social conditioning was saying “stop being silly, get on with your day“, spidey senses were saying other wise so I walked away from the lift to a higher pedestrian traffic area.

“He followed me again. I waited by some kiddies rides for him to go away. He didn’t. So I decided to walk out of the shopping centre to the front of the car park where I thought the security guard office was. He started to follow me out of the shopping centre but he wasn’t there by the time I got to the security office so I decided to get in the car as quick as I could.

“Might have done it differently if I hadn’t had the pram with me and I wasn’t wearing heels but we’re all in safe and in one piece and that’s the main thing. Thanks again for convincing me not to listen to my social conditioning ”

After reporting that matter to the shopping centre management, Maxine was told that there’d been another incident that day where a woman had been followed into the car park and the man in question had been sent off my security, with CCTV given to police!

Hearing stories like this, especially when it’s from one of our students, always gives me goose bumps. The number 1 takeaway from this story is to always listen to your intuition, that little voice in the back of your head that says: “Something is not quite right here, pay attention!”

One trap you don’t want to fall into is to second guess what Maxine could or should have done. Could she have done things differently? Sure. Were there better choices she could have made? Possibly. But the fact remains that Maxine did exactly the right thing, for her, in her circumstances, with her state of mind, as it was on the day. How do I know this? Because an hour later she was home, safe and sound and able to post about it on Facebook, and that’s all that counts.

This is a fine example of what we mean by Personal Safety Training. Maxine couldn’t have done a “stun and run” tactic as typically taught in women’s “self defence” courses, because of the pram and heels, assuming she could have actually stunned the guy with one strike anyway.

Instead she followed what she’d been taught on our Personal Defence Readiness course and Detected and Avoided the threat before becoming embroiled in it. In doing so she never got to the Defend stage, or even the prior Defuse stage of a confrontation. She showed excellent situational awareness, then Accepted the situation, Challenged herself to act, and kept Thinking – which are the 3 golden rules.

Well done Maxine, we’re all proud of you!

We were very pleased here at PDRmanchester towers to get this review drop into our inbox from one of our Personal Training clients. Someone who’d travelled up from Birmingham no less for a full day’s one on one personal training with Colin McNulty. This is what he had to say about the day, warts and all:

I came across a website advertising the SPEAR system of self defence. Another ‘ultimate’ street self defence, I thought to my self. Another American martial arts instructor after a quick buck, I thought. I had a read of the SPEAR concept, which sounded weird (you just flinch). The logic behind it made sense. If your going to flinch in a fight, why not use it to your advantage. I wanted to give this SPEAR system a try.

In this day and age, being able to take care of yourself and your family should be a priority for anyone. As someone who had only recently married a few months previously this was particularly important to me. So there’s a handful of instructors in the UK who teach this system. I won’t lie, I went for the one that was closest to me, which happened to be in Manchester.

I met with Colin who is a young tall well built man. He was very pleasant and polite and well spoken. He set up a presentation with a projector and screen (very professional). He went through the reason why the flinch system works. Then we discussed the mindset of good and bad guys, and about fear. Initially I was thinking to myself what a waste of my flippin time (I woke up at the crack of dawn, and drive an hour and a half on a cold Sunday morning for a flippin presentation!). I was wrong.

In fact this was the most interesting part of the day. Quite a few points during the course of the presentation, really made me think differently about the whole process of self defence (e.g. a bad guy only wants 3 things from you, so if you devalue yourself from these three things, you take away his reason to attack you). The presentation was excellent, and Colin gave me opportunities to ask questions and challenge him on any points.

O.k. So what about the action stuff? I learnt the basic stance. The way the flinch should be deployed and how to then keep the attacker away from you. Even though Colin was twice my size, I still managed to keep him off me when I used the proper SPEAR technique. Since it was a one to one session, any mistakes were spotted straight away by Colin, and fixed. He was patient and explained things clearly and in simple steps (so I wasn’t too overloaded with information).

The final half an hour was when we put on the protective [High Gear] suits and got a bit rougher. It was the first time I had been in such a situation so I know I didn’t perform as well as I could have, but it was definitely worthwhile to get as close a possible to a real fight situation without being seriously hurt. It’s better to experience the pressure of the fight situation in training, than in the real fight. I left after 6 hours of intensive training feeling confident that I had learnt principles that would alter how I defend myself from that moment onwards (now that’s pretty amazing).

Would I recommend it to anyone? Only to people who want to learn how to defend themselves and their loved ones in a practical, sensible and effective way.

Thanks
Saeed

I don’t think any more needs to be said. Saeed’s reaction is quite typical to be honest: significantly increased confidence in one’s own ability after just one session is the norm for anyone attending a Personal Defence Readiness course or seminar.

In the news today is the seemingly dramatic story of brave Prince Harry rushing to the aid of his friend who was robbed of his Blackberry.

It would appear that the Prince was talking to his friend Thomas van Straubenzee on the phone whilst Thomas was walking through Battersea in London. Obviously Thomas was approached by at least one person and Prince Harry overheard a scuffle taking place. Then apparently they were abruptly cut off and the Prince (with personal armed body guard in tow) jumped on his white Charger (or Audi in this case) and drove off to circle the streets of Battersea looking for his friend; who was safe and well giving a statement at the police station.

What can we ordinary people do in a situation like this to improve our personal safety?

The question is then, for those of us that don’t have a bona fide Prince of the Realm to rush to our rescue, what can we ordinary people do in a situation like this to improve our personal safety? What would you do, if whilst walking down the street chatting on your phone, you suddenly become aware of someone who you instinctively feel poses an imminent threat?

There are many ways you can devalue yourself as a target, by giving the impression you have nothing of value to steal for example, but in this scenario the bad guy has already seen you talking on an expensive looking phone. So what do you do? You can “attack” the bad guy on a psychological level in order to change his mind about picking you as a target. So how can you give the impression that mugging you right now is not a good idea?

Bad guys don’t want to get hurt

Tony Blauer’s SPEAR System teaches us that one of the 3 things a bad guy doesn’t want, is that bad guys don’t want to get hurt. This is fairly obvious when you think about it, after all who would think: “I’m want to steal that phone, but I’m going to get my ass kicked in the process.” and then still go ahead with the attack?

So here’s one thing you could do: You’re walking down the road chatting on your phone and you become aware of the bad guy, you want to give the impression that you’re not going to be easy prey, you start shouting down the phone (feel free to throw in some expletives too, I haven’t here as I don’t know who’s going to be reading this):

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CAN’T DO THAT?!? I’M TELLING YOU, YOU’D BETTER DO IT OR SO HELP ME I’M GOING TO GIVE YOU A BEATING YOU’LL STILL BE RECOVERING FROM *NEXT* CHRISTMAS, OR HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN LAST TIME ALREADY? … NO, NO I WANT ACCEPT THAT. … I’M TELLING YOU, YOUR PUSHING MY BUTTONS RIGHT NOW, IF YOU CAN’T GET THIS RIGHT YOUR GOING TO WISH YOU’D NEVER MET ME!”

Hopefully you get the point. If you heard someone on the phone having a conversation like that, wouldn’t you think they were some mad psycho who would as likely rip your head off as soon as look at you? Think about it from the bad guy’s perspective, they want an easy target. Getting into a street brawl with some nutter who may well do them some damage (even if that’s just scratching them in the face), generally isn’t in their script.

Suddenly that shiny phone isn’t looking quite so attractive. Oh hold on, here comes someone else talking on the phone, and they look much more docile…

Hannah Cant was walking home from a night out in Chippenham, when she was dragged into a car and raped by soldier Jonathan Haynes (who was recently jailed for 11 years). Hannah had the presence of mind to spit on the car seat and pull out her own hair, in order to leave her DNA in the car, a move which helped secure Jonathan’s prosecution.

It must have been a tough decision indeed then for brave Hannah to forego her anonymity and appear on ITV’s This Morning with the husband and wife presenting team of Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford, in order to tell her story. Eamonn asked Hannah: “It’s that old thing, I always say. Why were you tempted to walk home?”

Hannah explained that she had walked home with a friend, but she lived 2 streets further away and walked these last 2 streets alone. Eamonn pushed the point at the end of the interview, saying: “I hope you take taxis now. Everywhere you go, coming home at night.”

“This “blame the victim” approach is shocking

I think this “blame the victim” approach is shocking. Women should be entitled to walk where ever they like, whenever, and do so without fear. Women are not poor defenceless little flowers, who need to be kept all nice and safe inside, or inside a taxi if they dare to step outside. Besides taxi’s are hardly without risk, has Eamonn not heard of John Worboys, the London Black Cab driver who was jailed for sexually assaulting 12 women in the back of his cab?

Now of course sadly we don’t live in that utopian world, and there is an argument that everyone (male or female) should be make sensible decisions about the risks they take in the places they go. I would prefer not to walk through Moss Side at midnight for example, that’s just being sensible, but in this case I think most reasonable people would have done what Hannah did.

Hannah, you have a free place at any of my self defence courses

It would have been far better for Eamonn to have asked Hannah what she has done in the last 2 years to deal with the emotional scars of her attack, and what she would do differently if she was in a similar situation again. For my small part, Hannah if you ever read this, you have a free place at any of my self defence courses, any time you like.

Halloween is upon us again, and whether you love it or hate it, it’s an event that kids anticipate for weeks and months. I mean, a day when huge piles of sweets are obtained for free and consumed in gluttonous proportions without consequences, it’s every kid’s dream day surely?

To be honest, I’ve always thought it a bit odd that most people* tell their kids not to talk to or take sweets from strangers, then on one night of the year, we actually facilitate and encourage this behaviour. This giddiness means that children (and adults to some degree) can put thoughts of safety to one side. At a time when kids are in fancy dress, out on the streets at night, on strangers’ property and knocking on strangers’ doors, this is the last day of the year you want to forget about safety.

I was very pleased then, when child safety pioneers KidPower emailed me to tell me about their 8 point plan on how to keep kids safe on Halloween. You can read the full article here: Halloween Safety ~ The Kidpower Way, A Grab Bag of Safety Treats and Tricks for Your Family! The main points of the article are:

1. Stay Focused on Your Children’s Needs
2. Be Aware of Costume Safety
3. Watch Out for Cars
4. Keep Cats and Dogs Inside and OUT of the Action
5. Take Extra Precautions to Avoid Getting Lost
6. Review Stranger Safety Rules
7. Avoid a Halloween Meltdown
8. Make a Plan About the Treats

I love the KidPower articles because they are full of real, actionable advice, and will help you enjoy Halloween with your family as it should be: having fun, safely.

Stay safe.

P.S. I said above that most people tell their kids not to talk to strangers. I actually think this is the wrong advice! One day, your child may find itself lost and alone and need to approach a stranger for help. Maybe they’ve lost you at the shops, or maybe their responsible adult has had an accident and is unconscious. Either way, do you want the first time your desperate child needs to illicit help from a stranger, to also be the first time they’ve actually tried talking to a stranger? Or worse, if they’ve never learnt the skills of how to pick a safe stranger, have them wait to be approached by someone offering help (which is much more dangerous!)?

Encourage children to talk to strangers!

So whilst it’s a contrarian view point, I actually encourage children to talk to strangers, but do so under my supervision and so in a controlled and safe environment. This then becomes a learning opportunity to discuss how to pick someone to ask for help, and how to listen to and trust your intuition and instincts.

Early in 2011, Men’s Fitness magazine attended part of a Personal Defence Readiness Coaches Certification at CrossFit3D in Manchester.  The write up that appeared in a subsequent edition of the magazine can be read here by clicking the image below (it’s a .pdf file):

Click the image to read the Men's Fitness SPEAR / PDR Article

“An Englishman’s home is his castle.” That’s the phrase that everyone thinks about when the subject of what to do with burglars who break into an occupied house comes up. What most people think is that we should be able to defend ourselves, our loved ones and our home, as a feudal Lord did his castle: at the end of sharp pointy stick!

Sadly there’s this small matter of taking the law into our own hands, and vigilantes, and reasonable force, and human rights, and all that nampy pamby stuff that turns the criminals into the victims, and puts the innocent householder in cuffs. We can’t do a thing can we? It’s political correctness gone mad.

That’s right isn’t it? Well no, not really.

You see despite what you may think, or rather despite what the media like to lead you to believe, the law actually is on the side of the victim of crime, the householder in this instance. This is why the perennial call for tougher self defence laws because of some horror story like the Tony Martin case (the Norfolk farmer who shot and killed a burglar and was convicted of manslaughter) falls on deaf ears. David Cameron’s comments recently about making it clear that decent honest people are allowed to defend themselves, will ultimately come to nothing, simple because we already can!

As proof I present here 3 cases where burglars have been stabbed to death in Manchester in the last 3 months. 2 were house invasions and one was a shop:

Peter Flanagan stabs and kills John Bennell in his Salford home

June 2011: Peter Flanagan who along with his son Neil and girlfriend, were asleep in bed at home and at midnight heard noises downstairs. Going downstairs to investigate they were confronted by 4 masked men in the house, one armed with a machete. In the struggle that ensued one of the burglars was stabbed in the chest. His 3 accomplices dragged him outside but left him in the road as they flee (nice!). The burglar died (John Bennell) but when the police came, Salford/Manchester man Peter Flanagan along with Neil and girlfriend were all arrested! If you missed them, you can imagine the headlines and uproar over this case.

Verdict The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) dropped all charges against Peter, Neil and the girlfriend, despite the fact that Peter admitted stabbing and killing 27 year old John Bennell.

Cecil Coley stabs and kills Gary Mulling in his Old Trafford florists shop

July 2011: 72 year old Cecil Coley was playing dominos with his friend in his florists shop in Manchester when 4 men burst in, armed with guns and a knife. Cecil’s friend is knocked unconscious and Cecil is pistol whipped, breaking his jaw. At some point one of the guns is fired (it turned out to be a blank firing starter pistol) and Cecil grabbed a knife off the counter and plunges it into Gary Mulling’s heart. The assailants flee, but not before another one receives knife wounds, again leaving their wounded fellow to die on the pavement (spotting a pattern here?).

Verdict After recovering from the broken jaw and leaving hospital, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) dropped all charges against Cecil Coley.

Vincent Cooke stabs and kills Raymond Jacob in his Bramhall home

September 2011: Vincent Cooke was relaxing in his Bramhall home when 2 men smashed their way in the door, held a knife to his throat and told him he’s going to die. Apparently after a hidden safe they’d been told Vincent had, Raymond and his accomplice Michael Thorpe ransacked the house looking for it. It appears that Vincent didn’t offer much of any resistance (who would?) until that is, something the burglars didn’t expect happened: Vincent’s wife and 12 year old son returned and stumbled into the scene!

Now the situation suddenly turned, no longer was Vincent’s property at stake, suddenly his family were at risk too and he acted as anyone would (I’ll come back to this in a future article). Screaming for his family to “Get Out”, he struggled against Raymont, managed to grab a kitchen knife and stabbed him, apparently 6 times in the arms and legs. Raymond it seems succumbed to bleeding from a deep would to his leg whilst attempting to flee our of the front door.

anyone, who acts in good faith in using whatever force they honestly feel is necessary… will not be prosecuted

Verdict Vincent was released on police bail while they investigated the incident and a few weeks later heard from the CPS that all charges would be dropped. North West chief prosecutor Nazir Afzal said: “It is clear to me that Mr Cooke did what he honestly and instinctively believed was necessary to protect himself, his home and his family from intruders. The law is clear that anyone, who acts in good faith in using whatever force they honestly feel is necessary to protect themselves, their families or their property, will not be prosecuted.”

So 3 burglars are stabbed and killed, and so far there’s not been a single charge pressed against any of their killers (an emotive term but one that I use here simply as a statement of fact). That’s not quite in keeping with the common opinion I stated at the start of this article now is it? The reason is simple but the media doesn’t like it: the law currently does allow us to use reasonable force to protect ourselves. The Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 says that for you to successfully claim you acted in self defence, you must have:

1. Acted instinctively.
2. Feared for your safety or the safety of those around you.
3. Or be enacting a lawful arrest.
4. Used a level of force that was not excessive, in the circumstances as you believed them to be at the time.

It’s the 4th point that’s the commonly quoted “reasonable force” clause, but even that is qualified in the victims failure as you can even use force that is deemed UNreasonable in hind-sight, if you believed it to be reasonable at the time, even if it turns out you were mistaken. Of course proving that is a little tricky, but that’s the principle which is applied. An example of where you may cross the line in the use of reasonable force is this case:

Munir Hussain beat Walid Salem causing brain damage

September 2008: Munir Hussain was an Asian businessman who had his house invaded by 3 men and was threatened along with his family. When a struggle broke out and the alarm raised, he chased Walid Salem, one of the intruders, out of the house and with the aid of his brother Tokeer Hussain, caught Walid. Joined by 2 others, the 4 of them beat Walid badly with a cricket bat and hockey stick, causing a fractured skull and brain damage.

Verdict Munir was charged with grievous bodily harm with intent, found guilty and sentenced to 30 months in jail (39 months for his brother Tokeer). On appeal Munir’s sentence was reduced to one year, suspended for two years, so he was released (but is still a convicted criminal now).

Decided to dish out some of their own revenge “justice”

So why was this different? The key thing to note here is that Munir was only charged for the attack once Walid had been caught after his escape from the house. Nothing that Munir did whilst Walid was in Munir’s home was considered in the case, that was all deemed reasonable force. It only became excessive force once Walid had been apprehended by Munir and Tokeer and they subsequently decided to dish out some of their own revenge “justice”. The law sees the 2 incidents as quite separate.

The reason people get so upset when these stories break is because the first thing the police do when arriving at a house and finding someone dead, is to arrest everyone and sort it all out down the station. Can you imagine the alternative headline: “Police fail to arrest killer, who said: ‘It wasn’t me gov!’” Of course they have to arrest the victims, because it starts to bring some control to what is likely a highly emotionally charged scene, and it’s always better to arrest someone and let them go later, than to let a murderer go and have to go looking for him later. Some may argue that the justice process isn’t perfect, but roughly it goes something like:

The justice process goes something like this

1. Some altercation happens and the police are called.
2. The police arrive, arrest everyone remotely involved on “suspicion of…” and collect evidence.
3. Everyone is interviewed at the police station.
4. Good guys tend to be released on police bail, pending further enquiries (interviews of witnesses and forensic evidence).
5. Sometime later a file is passed to the Criminal Prosecution Service (CPS) who decide who to charge with what, and importantly in the cases above, who to drop all charges against.
6. Those charged end up in court.

Whilst you can never rely on broad sweeping generalisations, the law in a nutshell could be summed up thus: If you are in genuine fear for your life or safety (or that of those around you), you can use as much force as is necessary to eliminate the threat, including killing your attacker in self defence. BUT at the moment your attacker is no longer a credible threat, you must restrain yourself, something that I can quite agree could be very hard to do.

July 2011 saw the second time Tony Blauer visited Crossfit 3D’s facility near the Trafford centre to host another certification for new PDR Coaches. Martial artists travelled from all over the UK and Europe to attend and get certified as PDR Coaches to be able to teach Tony’s unique material.

One of the cool things about being a returning Coach is not only the community aspect of meeting and teaching a whole bunch of individuals dedicated to making people safer, but we get to put on *advanced level* demo’s as shown below. Note that all the individuals in High Gear impact reduction suits are either experienced PDR Coaches or SPEAR System Instructors and whilst it looks chaotic and dangerous (just like a real fight!) every effort has been taken to make this demo as safe as possible. But it remains a full speed, full contact demo, hence the High Gear suits.

The scenario is: 2 bouncers approach a drunk who’s fallen asleep, when they try to move him he kicks off so they restrain him, then his 2 mates see what’s going on and pile in (I’m in the blue trainers), take a look:

This demo epitomises Personal Defence Readiness in many ways and it’s worth highlighting just a few of them:

• Scenario based, which gives vital context to training.
• Replication of a street fight, whilst being as safe as humanly possible.
• Full speed and full contact (note this is NOT a beginner’s drill!). If you practice to miss or pull shots, that’s what you’ll do in a real fight.
• Short and explosive: the whole 3 v 2 fight lasts just 14 seconds!
• Pressure testing the SPEAR System principles under realistic conditions, very few systems have the integrity to do this.
• Lastly and most importantly, wonderful people giving up their time and energy to make you a safer and your family safer everywhere you go.

Whilst you will never be expected to suit up and go at it at a Beginner’s PDR Seminar, you might be lucky enough to have a PDR Coach suit up and let you try out your new found skills on him. It’s not only a whole heap of fun, it’s liberating, confidence building and complete validation of the new skills you will have learnt.