Hey all,

I'm beginning a project to collect verifiable accounts of martial artists engaged in self defense situations. I'm interested in both cases of successful and failed defenses.

Definitions:
By Martial Artists, I mean anyone who specifically trains in fighting systems (MMA, TMA, RBSD, Boxing, etc). By verifiable, I mean reports that have either been run in a third party source (news paper for example) or where I can contact an institution (police department) to get a report on the incident.

Part of the reason for this is I'm interested in having actual data to discuss when people proclaim either "TMA/MMA/Secret Monkey Style/Ect do/don't work under X self defense conditions."

Any help would be great!

- Matt

Yes.
http://www.bullshido.net/forums/showthread.php?t=23596
The video in this thread is the best clip I have seen showing a good, legal, actual self defense situation.

The karate man, Jay Lee, acted in complete conformity with self defense principles.

Most states have a duty to retreat in public places, but only if it is safe to do so. As you can see, Jay Lee walks away from the aggressive guy, until he breaks away and gets closer. The he wisely stops and stays in a position to defend himself. Only when the guy comes at him does he do anything. One punch (hammer smash no less) is all that was necessary, after the guy goes down, he continues with his safe retreat.

Textbook, really.

At the moment I must point you towards the MA in the News forum. I have posted many articles about that, and I'm sure you can find something.

If I recall any specific ones I'll direct you to them.

The police responded to my last fight and I told them what happened. Do they write that stuff down and keep it? I didn't see anybody writing anything down. If they wrote anything down it was most likely "suspect was attacked" or something like that. Anyway, I'm the one who told them what happened so what's the difference? I guess they spoke to my friend Erica and the guy who jumped me but whatever. How do you get a copy of the police report?

Verifiable? you mean like where one or more of the people involved in the altercation had a handy-cam running?
Cause if you mean what so and so told the media = verifiable you might as well ask Kungfoolss.

I saw a fight on some Wildest Police Videos show on TV tonight. Some guy attacked some college police who were trying to fingerprint him. He manhandled them until they blasted him with pepper spray. Then he manhandled them some more until he fell down off camera. The funny part was that they deserved it for yelling at the dude like they were hard for 15 minutes instead of trying to keep him calm and get through everything as easily as possible.

How do you get a copy of the police report?

Call the records department of the police department that took the report. There may not be a report, but there will be a call record. There will also be a confidential report, but you will not necessarily be able to get a copy of that.

Thanks Mantis. I'm gong to check that out.

Couple points...

1. Piz, yeah, I have been checking there. It's one of the reasons that I posted it here. You've provided one of the best basis for checking this.

2. On this issue of media. I'm not at all suggesting that media reports are unbiased. But, they're an important resource for historical work. I'm not sugggesting that they're perfect, but if we're interested in where the rubber meets the road, then we need to look for these types of accounts. Additionally they can be linked to police reports (as noted above).

Otherwise are we just to throw our arms up in the air and say there is no way of knowing anything outside of the classroom/ring? In that case, throw out every shred of history, martial arts and otherwise, that you know.

Great video btw!

- Matt

The issue with first hand accounts is there is no way to verify the confrontation. For better or worse, the media typically only publishes things that end up on the police blotter.

BTW, I'm cool with first hand accounts (as I said above) if you can give me something I can call a police station about. Hence the verifiability is an ability to trace it back to an incident report of some sort.

Honestly, I've been through self defense encounters where MA helped tremendously, but they never escalated to the point of calling the police. As such, I can't use it as a substantiatable story. And as everyone here likes to mention, anecdotes don't mean **** if you are trying to back something up.

- Matt

Like I said Osiris, then go ahead and throw out the rest of history while you are at it. And well just have to settle on the "there can be no proof but that of the ring and anything anyone else says is bullshit."

Suggesting that any report of a successful self defense scenario needs to be discounted is as rediculous an ideology as saying that performance in the ring has no bearing on performance outside of if.

The fact is a presence of a police report makes is a more substantiatable event. And that's improves it over anecdote. Could it be false? Yeah. But under the right filter everything leaks. I'm willing to accept that level of leakage. Hell even fights can be fixed (though I agree this is a rediculous stance to take).

Clearly you're not. That's cool.

- Matt

Like I said Osiris, then go ahead and throw out the rest of history while you are at it. And well just have to settle on the "there can be no proof but that of the ring and anything anyone else says is bullshit."

Suggesting that any report of a successful self defense scenario needs to be discounted is as rediculous an ideology as saying that performance in the ring has no bearing on performance outside of if.

The fact is a presence of a police report makes is a more substantiatable event. And that's improves it over anecdote. Could it be false? Yeah. But under the right filter everything leaks. I'm willing to accept that level of leakage. Hell even fights can be fixed (though I agree this is a rediculous stance to take).

Clearly you're not. That's cool.

- Matt
The problem is that police reports scew the data in a certain direction.
The vast majority of people will claim that they were acting in self defence or in defence of a friend. If you relied entirely on statements made to the police you'd have to assume that no one ever started a fight themselves.

Police reports are supposed to be a recussitation of the facts as identified by physical evidence and eyewitness accounts. The physical evidence is give more weight.

The opinions are generally in the confidentials, which are not released (usually).

Then, in these cases, there may be hospital or doctor accounts of nature and extent of injuries observed.

Thanks for the backup on this Mantis.

Look, as I posted above (and note I've got some training as a historian) what police reports provide is a more verifiable form of evidence. Better than personal anecdote. Are they perfect? No. But they can be a really useful tool.

Osiris, what do you propose we use for evidence of efficacy of martial arts? In your mind does it all boil down to the ring? Or otherwise, what you suggest? I mean, are you serious that you see no difference between a media report that we can tie back to a police report and the type of anecdote that someone publishes here?

And if that's the case do we throw out every anecdote from the martial arts?

- Matt

All good suggestions. I need to get the reports first though before I can filter them.

- Matt

Since you mentioned boxing, Mike Tyson was involved in what he claimed was a self defense situation on June 21, 2003 at the Brooklyn Marriott when two guys supposedly claimed they had guns or knives and menaced him after he refused to sign an autograph.

I don't know whether this will end up fitting your criteria, but there was a (very poor) video record of the fight, and it was litigated, so there would be police records and potentially court documents on both sides. Tyson ended up pleading guilty to disorderly conduct. I don't know what happened with the assailants, but they were charged with menacing and harassment. Sounds like Tyson would have escaped charges except he beat one of them pretty badly and did not appear to take an opportunity to leave. I'm sure his notoriety didn't help him much either.

Details:

http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/07/30/tyson.tape/

This site has a link to the video

http://www.wnbc.com/sports/2364805/detail.html

Good Luck