his hip, shattering the bone. He screamed, doubled over, and collapsed to the ground. He continued to writhe and shriek as she disarmed and handcuffed him, ending the carnage.
De Jesus and his four victims were rushed to Bellevue Hospital, where miraculously, no one died, not even the perpetrator. Malaeyeva, who had the most grievous injuries, was listed in fair condition by his doctors later that evening. De Jesus was also listed in fair condition after surgery. He told detectives that he had wanted to die and was hoping to goad a police officer into killing him by randomly stabbing and slashing people.
Officer Diaz was consoled by other officers and treated for trauma at the hospital. Afterward she told a reporter, “Thank God the guy is alive. Thank God I stopped him before he hurt someone else.”
If you try to use Level 4 in a Level 5 situation, you will get hurt. Perhaps badly. If you try to use Level 5 in a Level 4 situation, on the other hand, you will likely wind up in jail. Or be sued. Or both. We are not just talking legalities here; you have to be able to live with yourself afterward too.
Martial artists learn dangerous, even deadly techniques. Classical systems were developed long before the advent of modern medicine. In those days, any injury sustained from a fight could be catastrophic. A busted jaw, or even a few lost teeth, might mean you’d starve to death. In the days before social services, a broken arm or leg boded poorly for your long-term chances of survival when you could no longer work for your living. Internal bleeding, a ruptured organ, or a severe concussion; forget about it—you almost certainly would not have survived.
Knowing that the shorter the fight, the lower the chance of debilitating injury, the ancient masters built systems designed to stop adversaries as quickly and ruthlessly as possible. The modern rule-of-law concept and associated legal repercussions had not been invented yet. This put ‘em down, take ‘em out mentality worked great at the time. If it didn’t work, the styles would not still be around today. Those tactics and techniques worked so well that contemporary systems often have foundations built upon traditional methods.
The challenge is that the very same applications that may have kept you safe in the feudal times have limited utility today. It is not that they don’t work, but rather that they work so well that they can only be used in certain circumstances. The brutal beat-down you deliver on the other guy might well save your life, but in the wrong circumstances, it will also land you in jail. For a really long time. Or it might make your opponent and his lawyers wealthy at your expense. Conversely, if you take the beat-down yourself, you could be seriously injured, permanently disabled, or killed.
That is why scaling force is so important. It is holistic and style-agnostic. Most importantly, it works in any situation to ensure that you will choose the right level of force when you need to use what you have learned in the dojo to defend yourself on the street.
For years, police agencies have used different versions of a force continuum to teach rookies how to judiciously choose an appropriate level of force, as well as to educate citizens and juries in what constitutes an appropriate force decision. Recently, there has been a movement away from teaching in this manner. The most commonly quoted reason is that officers and juries will see the continuum as a game of “connect the dots” where each level must be tried before escalating to the next. It has never been taught this way and we know of no case where an officer or a jury explained a bad decision in this manner.
The more compelling reason for many agencies abandoning an official force continuum is that the courts do not use it to adjudicate cases. Since Graham v. Connor 490 U.S. 386 (1989), it has been recognized that “the calculus of reasonableness must embody allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments—in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving—about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation.” To many, it appears that this is exactly what codifying a force continuum is attempting to do.
Remember this: You do not work under a departmental use of force policy. You may, however, need to act in self-defense and you must act within the law. The levels of force described in this book are not prescriptive. We will not tell you, “If you are facing X, then response level Y is appropriate.” That is, and will always be, the call of the person on the ground.
In Graham v. Connor, the Supreme Court stated: “The reasonableness of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight. Not every push or shove, even if it may later seem unnecessary in the peace of a judge’s chambers, violates the Fourth Amendment.” This logic can be applied to civilian cases and criminal prosecutions as well.
There are six levels of force described in this book. While you may never need to use all of them, what we will say to you, and what we expressly believe, is that if your training does not cover the full range of skills presented here, there are situations in which you will have no appropriate options. More often than not, that will end badly.
Even if you have never completed a woodworking project, you probably know that you could pound nails with a drill. You also know that it’s not a horribly effective method of doing it. And it is really tough on the drill. If you want to drive nails, then a hammer is a much better choice. Clearly, knowing your tools makes any woodworking project go more smoothly.
Similarly, a scale of force options gives you a set of tools for managing violence. It also provides a basis for selecting the appropriate application to use in any given situation. The first three levels—presence, voice, and touch—can help stave off violence before it begins, precluding the need to fight. The last three levels—empty-hand restraint/physical control, less-lethal force, and lethal force—are applied once the confrontation becomes physical. Choosing the right level of force lets you control a bad situation in an appropriate and effective way, increasing your chances of surviving without serious injury while simultaneously reducing the likelihood of adverse consequences from overreacting or under-reacting, such as jail time, debilitating injury, or death.
Before you can choose the proper tool, however, it is important to understand the environment in which you will use it. That’s what this section is about. If you have read our other books, much of this material will be familiar to you. Yet it bears repeating because the sections lay out important fundamentals that you need to keep in mind. Our intent is not to go in-depth, but rather to present an overview that places the various force options into the proper context.
I’d thrown…ahem…escorted more than twenty people out of the stadium that day, but I recognized him anyway. Sometime during the third quarter, he’d taunted a Coug fan one too many times and gotten a nice shiner on his left eye for it. But the cops assigned to help us manage the end zone were busy dealing with another altercation, so I gave him the option of leaving of his own volition. When I explained what he faced in terms of minor in possession, drunk in public, disorderly conduct, and assault, he made the wise choice and voluntarily missed the rest of the game. I confiscated his ticket, marched him out the gate, and summarily forgot about him.
But he hadn’t forgotten about me.
Nearly two hours later after the contest had finished and we’d gotten the stadium cleared, I spotted him in the parking lot. Not the public
