Friday, August 09, 2013

Attitude


Ten days or so back, a kid walked into Beaverton City Hall and told the clerk he was ODing on mushrooms. Banged his head again a receptionist's glass wall. 

She called for help. 

A trio of police officers came out to talk to him, but he got agitated and aggressive, offered that he was gonna kill somebody, so they tackled him. (Link above takes you to the video.)

The kid–he's eighteen, skinny, dressed in shorts and T-shirt–managed to pull a pistol from one of the officer's retention holster as they went down and cook off a shot. Supposedly there are three levels of retention with the Beaverton police holsters, and I don't know what level was in use. 

One of the cops got a death grip on the Glock, the others piled on, and they pepper sprayed and tased the hell out of him. According to the report I heard, they were at contact range with both the spray and the tasers, and they had to stop the pepper because it was affecting the officers but not the suspect. Tasers went seven rounds, along with a couple of solid knees, none of which helped, and it took three more officers to finally control the kid.

Now this is an unfortunate event. I never heard of anybody on mushrooms doing this kind of dance, and there was a report that there was cocaine in the kid's system, which would explain a lot more than psilocybin alone. 

But the point of this post is, attitude alone will take you a long way. Imagine if this kid had serious training in a fighting art, or a knife ...

6 comments:

Kris said...

True. I have a good friend who went into his (offensively) early baking job, only to be rushed by two, larger men who had broken in. Now, thanks to a correspondence you and I had, over a decade ago, he was enrolled in a Silat/Kali class. Less than two seconds later, their physical positions reversed, he had scored three strikes on each assailant, whereas they had just made two clumsy grabs. He then took one step toward them, and they turned and ran like hell. A few hours later, my friend is in the police station, reviewing the security footage, and the cop says, "Off the record, I get the feeling that they are pretty lucky that they ran when they did". What makes this story relevant is that, at the time, he had only been training in the art for about two years- the rest was attitude. To this day, I am still disappointed that he wasn't wearing his bakers hat during the confrontation.

Steve Perry said...

Wow. Great story, Kris.

Kris said...

Heh. I know that he reads this blog, when he can. I'm hoping that he'll raise his hand.

A.C. Parry said...

*Raises hand*
Attitude and instinct, really. I was in the shop at a time when I should have been alone, so I was surprised when the door to the freezer swung open as I was walking toward it. However, it was seeing two men walk out, sweaters pulled up over their faces, that really kicked the fight-or-flight instinct into gear.
On top of the Kali and Silat, I had about eight or nine years of other arts under my belt as well (Muay Thai, TKD, whatever was available to me). But in that particular situation- narrow hallway, back to a wall, two larger attackers- it was the Kali/Silat that really shined.

In case you're curious, I was training in Mande Muda Silat (Pak Herman Suwanda'a style), Inosanto/Lacoste Kali for knife and unarmed work, and Villabrille/Largusa Kali for the stick work. I've since moved three states away from where I was, and I can't tell you how much I miss the training.

Steve Perry said...

Always nice to hear a tale in which the good guy walks away the winner. Good on you.

Anonymous said...

Mushrooms are a frequent catalyst for excited delirium. And until you have fought with someone who was in a state of excited delirium, cocaine psychosis, or overdosing on meth... You haven't fought. Bath salts and even LSD can coz an excited delirium state. Read up on it. Its not just PCP that can cause it.