MARTIAL ARTS LAW AND ORDER

(May ‘96/#19)

Here’s an interesting take on Martial Arts Law.

Over the course of years I have taught every imaginable type of person. Out of all of them the one that comes to mind instantly, when people talk crazy, is the San Quentin guard.

The prison guard told me some absolutely horrible things. He told me about the time he went to a weenie roast, where convicts were the weenies!

He told me that when guards worked out with weights their sole purpose was to gain the strength to body slam a 300 pound prisoner.

He told me about the time the guard beat the snitch until the cement of which the floor was constructed was completely obscured by blood.

And he told me some things which I won’t tell you. I won’t tell anybody. They are just too terrible.

In a sad attempt to regain some of the humor of this column let me say that there are some things which even Case Histories won’t print.

But the one thing he told me which I do wish to tell you is that convicts have been video taped holding classes on how to take batons and guns away from cops, how to get out of handcuffs, how to generally disable law enforcement officers, and so on.

This brings me to the point of this month’s Case Histories.

Cops, in America, don’t have the right or ability to fight back.

By law they can’t use such things as chokeholds or any other technique that threatens the life of the person being arrested.

And yet the people being arrested, the ones that fight back when the officer does his duty, the real criminals, go to school to learn how to disable and main, and even kill, the officer.

Something is rotten in Denmark, and I don’t mean the cheese!

I once saw a lady interfering with some officers making an arrest (remember the scissorsman?) She kept trying to get past the officers and wake up the sleeping bum who had chased the ten year old boy with scissors. “Hey, don’t do that! I know him!”

If ever somebody needed a billyclub across the smile it was that lady! By her ‘concern’ over police tactics she endangered everybody!

Yet what do we do?

I’ll tell you what to do.

If you need a cop…call him.

If a cop misbehaves get his badge number and report it…and follow up until you know he is handled!

If you see somebody getting in the way of the cops tell them to bug off!

And, in short, support your local police officer!

And if you don’t like the laws then you’d better get involved and see to changing them!

I know this column is mostly aimed at humor, I prefer it that way, but sometimes you have to face the horrible, or it will just get worse!

I have received mail from police officers about this column, and learned a bit concerning their training and rights and Martial Art Law.