The Police, You and Self-Defense

This is going to be very short, it is a feeling I got reading a very big book on Self-defense. In one very small paragraph the author describes the obstacles, hurdles and restrictions the police have to deal with while keeping the public safe. It just occurred to me while reading this book that we, the private citizen, in any event or situation involving the legal system and the police, etc. we also have to deal with a huge amount of similar obstacles, hurdles and restrictions when we are in a Self-defense situation. 

Example, and I quote, “no way in hell would I (the author) want to  do their job (the police) under the restrictions and pressures place on them by modern society, the administration, the courts, social media, camera phones, and the ‘blogsphere.’”

While reading, for the second go around, this book it came to my mind that if I, or for anyone not police or even some other professional, were to be involved in some legal matter, lets use the SD model since that is the topic of the book, I too as a citizen would be under “the restrictions and pressures place on us by modern society, … , the courts, social media, camera phones, and the ‘blogsphere.’” (Note: I pulled out the reference to administration cause for us, as citizens, we are not directly affected by them other than how that makes the police, the first responders in an incident, procedures that may or may not affect my legal status, i.e. “being detained, questioned, taken into custody and so on.”

The SD world is a very large continent filled with land mines that can take you out if you step on the wrong piece of land. Every step along that road through the mine field makes for some very dangerous ground. Here is the real issue tho, we may face some similar obstacles, etc. but the one thing that is different from what I perceive is, “The police are professionals who work this stuff every single day and have seen and experienced things we, as regular citizens, have only encountered while sitting in a dark and quiet theater up on the screen - movies.” We are doubly handicapped because we are pretty darn ignorant about all this stuff and when the flood hits (adrenal stress chemical dumps) we will in all likelihood fall into what we know, i.e. fiction, television, movies and other such fictional and often incorrect or inaccurate depiction’s mostly set to goose your monkey’s emotional triggers in the name of DRAMA.

That is why knowledge is power and you want that type of power on your side if you have to face the police and possibly the legal system. Nothing is guaranteed and you have to have your shit in the bag to navigate the mind fields and this book is an awesome beginning. 

p.s. best advice I read and have been told about meeting the police, in my own words, is to be as polite as you can be much like meeting a date for the first time, i.e., be very, very polite, respectful and do what they tell you (within reason, etc.). Most of all, be polite, be polite and be polite. Did you miss that one, I said, “BE POLITE!”