Kaze Uta Budo Kai Forum Archive

Some Self-defense discussion came up n Judoinfo. The one good tidbit from the posts was a link to this research paper.
http://ejmas.com/jnc/2007jnc/jncart_Leblanc_0701.html

The paper takes information from a pair of department studies about the altercations officers faced in a year. The studies have their share of limitations, but there are a few interesting tidbits I’ll point out.

They found:
62% of altercations ended with the officer and subject on the ground, with the officer applying a joint lock and handcuffs.
52% of attackers attempted to force officers to the ground (includes pulling, pushing tackles and strikes).
60% of those (31% of the total) succeeded.
52% of the officers taken down had ground training prior to the event.

Once on the ground:
64% continued to assault the officer.
31% fled.
5% waited for the officer to rise before continuing (obviously a fan of the Marquis of Queensbury).
77% continued with grappling and pinning techniques.
66% used strikes (not distinguished if standing strikes on a grounded opponent or strikes from grappling positions).
21% tried to disarm the officer.

The paper also asserts that the situations studied are comparable to the situations encountered by regular citizens. The study suggests that altercations often end on the ground, but the old axiom “95% of fights end on the ground” may not be completely true.

Any thoughts or discussion?

It's good info Chris. You spend a lot of time on the Internet 😉

My only issue with the data is it's all police officers. They are authority figures, and as such people treat them differently. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. I guess we could talk to Matt McRorie or Jeremy Perkins to see what sort of groundwork OKC covers in the academy. There has to be some, but how much?

If it's John Q. Public versus Joe Citizen, I suspect greater than 62% of the encounters would end up on the ground. Just my $0.02.