N.Y. Police Officer Named as East Coast Rape Escape Instructor
U.S. Police Only Clear Half of all Rape Cases
U.S. crime rate is up for first time in decade
Lies and Damned Lies
The Preparation Paradox

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 “Conditioning is the best submission hold.”  Frank Shamrock

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 N.Y. Police Officer Named as East Coast Rape Escape Instructor

Accomplished defensive tactics instructor and martial artist Sgt. Steve Kardian is now teaching the popular Rape Escape classes on the East Coast.  Get the full story here.

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U.S. Police Only Clear Half of all Rape Cases

 The FBI’s Uniform Crime Report shows that big city police departments routinely clear about half of all rape cases.  Milwaukee is the city that reported the best clearance rate – 93%, while Phoenix reported the worst rate of solving rapes – less than 25%. 

Of course, be suspect of the wide range in the clearance rate between different cities.  Most of the difference is in how each department reports its “clearance” or how the initial crimes are categorized in the first place.

It has been known that rapists have a very low rate of conviction.  According to other FBI statistics, only 3 percent of reported assaults result in a conviction.

That’s what makes it even more difficult for me to stomach the organizations that advocate against resisting an attack.

Even many police department advise against resisting your attacker on the grounds that you may invite further injuries. Instead, they advise you to concentrate on providing a good description for later arrest and conviction. Remember, police departments exist for the greatest good for the greatest number of people in the society. They generally cannot be counted on -- or held liable -- by individuals, although the police officers I know personally are very heroic and would desperately love to catch the rapist, child molester or armed robber in the act. This is extremely rare, however.

It is every woman’s personal choice as to whether she can – or will – resist.  If you choose not to resist, that's your choice.  But you've already been raped, beaten and possibly killed with no assurance that the rapist will be:

1. caught;

2. if caught, prosecuted;

3. if prosecuted, convicted;

4. if convicted, sentenced to a meaningful term;

5. if sentenced, forced to serve the entire term.

You have also endured the humiliating experience of the police investigation and the public trial.

Why chance it?  Don't be a victim in the first place...

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U.S. crime rate is up for first time in decade
All categories but assault rose in 2001

WASHINGTON - Murder, rape and every other violent criminal act except aggravated assault rose last year according to the FBI in reporting the first year-to-year increase in overall crime in a decade.

The number of murders increased for the second straight year, following several years of decline, according to the FBI, which compiles its annual survey from crimes reported by 17,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide.  

The 15,980 murders represented a 2.5 percent increase over 2000, while forcible rapes were up less than 1 percent and robberies rose 3.7 percent. When adjusted for population increases, murders were up 1.3 percent; forcible rapes down 0.8 percent and robberies up 2.4 percent. The latter figures were calculated from the number of crimes per 100,000 population.

 Aggravated assaults fell by a half-percentage point, reaching its lowest level since 1987.

The FBI did not include the Sept. 11 deaths at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the plane crash in Pennsylvania.  

These deaths, the FBI said, "are different from the day-to-day crimes committed in this country."

 The report listed the total number of Sept. 11 murder victims reported by law enforcement agencies as 3,047.   Of those, 2,823 occurred at the World Trade Center, 184 at the Pentagon and 40 in Somerset County, Pa., the FBI reported.

The total number of crimes rose 2.1 percent last year, the first increase from year to year since 1991, the FBI said. But overall crime still is down 10 percent compared with 1997, according to the report.

Property crimes such as burglary, larceny and arson, with no threat of violence, rose 2.3 percent, to 10.4 million cases.

 The total value of stolen property was pegged at $17.1 billion, with motor vehicles and jewelry accounting for the most money. About a third of stolen property was recovered.

The FBI report differs from a survey done earlier this year by the Justice Department, which identified a drop in all violent crimes except murder in 2001, based on interviews with victims. Murder is not included in that survey, and the FBI cautions against comparing the two reports.

There were 4,160 crimes per 100,000 people in the United States last year, up slightly from the 4,124 per 100,000 recorded last year.   Despite the increase in murders, the FBI said the overall number still is down nearly 33 percent from 1992. Murder accounts for only about 1.1 percent of the nation's violent crime, with aggravated assault making up about two-thirds of the cases and robbery 29 percent.

There were 6,750 white murder victims, 6,446 who were black, with the remainder a mix of other or unknown races. Men were far more likely than women to be murdered.

Firearms accounted for 8,719 slayings, or about two-thirds, followed by knives, "personal" weapons such as fists and feet, blunt objects and such methods as drugs, strangulation and drowning.

Police were able to make arrests in about 20 percent of all cases. They did better with violent crimes, solving 46 percent, including two-thirds of all murders.

 Burglaries remain the toughest cases to crack, with just 13 percent of offenses resulting in arrests.

 There were more than 2.3 million arrests for crimes tracked by the FBI in 2001, down less than 1 percent from the year before.

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Lies and Damned Lies

 As we discuss national trends, remember what Mark Twain said, “There are three kinds of lies; lies, damned lies and statistics.”

 Although crime statistics can be useful and often sobering, they might not have anything to do with you personally. 

 I remember Rorion Gracie saying that a fight is what it is -- you can’t predict how it will unfold because it has too many variables.  It can’t be what you want it to be.

 For example, rapists are, for the most part, loners when they commit their crime.  However, there is a current open case of a pair of serial rapists operating together in one major U.S. city.  They are literally operating as a team, abducting and raping women together.   This is very uncommon.  Not unheard of, however.  I was personally involved in a case in Los Angeles where two men were raping women in their van as they drove up and down the freeways.

 Other examples – you are selling your RV and one of the prospective buyers suddenly and without warning attacks you with a knife!  Or you’re sitting in your car at a fast food drive-thru and a guy walks up to your open window and punches you in the face! 

 The point is, overall statistics cannot really tell you what to expect in your own personal case.  You should train in your self-defense system to be flexible enough to handle any number of situations and scenarios.  You are not going to be attacked when you are set up and ready for it (the few times this could happen is when you engage in mutual combat i.e. “let’s go outside and settle this like men”)

And, you need to stay aware.  You can be attacked by anyone, anytime at anywhere.  Even if it doesn’t make sense to you, there is some sort of trigger in the bad guy’s mind that tells him this is a good time to make his move on you.

An excellent drill to help you on this is one that I picked up from Tony Blauer:

• Face your training partner
• Your training partner can attack at any time with any kind of attack;
• You must move and gesture in ways that are normal and take you out of your “guard” position.  You will act like you are holding a cell phone to your ear, combing your hair, crossing your arms, making routine gestures like you do when you are talking to someone.
• You must defend and counter when your partner attacks.

You are going to feel dumb doing this because it’s artificial and you know your partner is going to attack.  However, you must force yourself to keep moving – you’ll end up looking like a third-base coach giving signals – so you can train to respond to attacks from an unprepared position.

Start slow.  Your partner could blast you at the start because the drill is new.  However, you will be astonished at how quickly you start to become a lot more efficient and effective in both recognizing attacks and responding to attacks. 

You can progressively speed up the attacks and start adding sparring gear so the attacks are more realistic.

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The Preparation Paradox

Okay, so you can’t really predict how and when an attack will transpire.  However, the paradox is that you probably will only face a limited number of attacks.

Our good friend and training partner Mike, who is a DT instructor for an elite Federal law enforcement agency, reminded me of that the other night while we were discussing DT curriculums.

His street experience supports that the most common attacks are fairly simple and not magic.  He says they are:

• Overhand right
• Tackle

To a lesser extent, he has seen some headbutts as attacks, but he says you likely won’t be facing a jumping spin kick on the street. 

I agree with him.  Don’t make the mistake of overestimating your opponent in a fight.  He is not going to suddenly turn into a Jedi Knight or Ninja with superpowers.  (If he does, you are pretty much toast anyway…)  He will have to hurt you with some sort of hit, kick, headbutt, throw or choke.  If you’ve been training for some time you’ve seen all of these.   Your self-doubt about the true capabilities of your opponent can kill your confidence and leave you weak.

If you’ve been training correctly, most real attacks will actually seem slow and amateurish compared to those you’ve faced in class.  (We covered that response before in other newsletters – students tell us that their real fights are “just like class”).

The other side of the paradox here however – while most opponents are not as skilled as they posture to be, you can’t judge how skilled an opponent is by his looks or posturing alone.

Treat every encounter as deadly serious until you have total control.  The tide of many a fight has turned on a lucky punch or a sneaky move.  You’ll be surprised at the swiftness and ferocity of the attack.  Your first mental response is likely to be, “This guy is really trying to hurt me!”

In training for self-defense, I would recommend training against these common attacks:

• He attacks you with windmilling left and right haymakers;
• He grabs you in a standing headlock and starts punching you in the face or, while holding you in the headlock, throws you to the ground, landing on top of you;
• He grabs your shirt with his left hand and punches with an overhand right;
• He grabs your shirt or lapels and curls them up, lifting you up onto your toes (watch the headbutt here);
• He pushes you in the chest sharply with both hands and immediately follows up with an overhand right;
• He grabs you around the back of the neck with both hands and either headbutts you or pulls your face down into his rising knee;
• He grabs your hair with one hand and begins punching you in the face with the other;
• He offers to shake your hand and then pulls you forward so he can stab you in the kidney with the knife in his left hand;
• Looking away from you, he begins to turn as if he was leaving only to suddenly turn back and deliver an overhand punch.

Obviously, you can begin to add many, many variations to these.  But most American streetfights are settled with repeated blows to the head.  You need to learn a method for protecting your melon long enough for you to recover from the surprise of the attack and then to counter attack in a way that you can beat a stronger, larger opponent if need be.

True, we’ve seen untrained, but experienced, scrappers demolish high-ranking “martial artists” with one or two of these simple attacks.  But we’ve seen infinitely more examples of experienced operators make streetfighters look like the drunk punks that they are. 

The difference is knowledge, training and karma.   Right makes might.  You will prevail by remaining dedicated to training in a realistic, intelligent manner, and by staying committed to the ideal that good will always triumph over evil.

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