Ledyard sensei wrote, "As to your comment about working with the police, I totally agree. I love working with them. But they'd be the first ones to tell you that they are not there to defend the citizens. They arrive after a crime has already been committed and don't normally get to act proactively. It is still up to the individual to take responsibility for his or her own defense rather than mistakenly believe that someone else is going to perform that function."
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George S. Ledyard
Aikido Eastside
Bellevue, WA
I should have been more clear when I was talking about working with police and their role in our defense. The example that will stand out for the rest of my life is of a cop that I train with, all of 5'6" and 140 pounds
who one night pulled over a belligerent drunk. Said officer has been training with me for about 2 years, (I am 6'4 and large)and we have been working on leg picks to get big people down. After months of mixed results, he starts getting the technique down.
Well, the drunk 6, 200 attacked him that night(said he wasnt going to be taken in alive). Jeff (in a panicked state, he said) dropped off the line, leg picked him, put the drunk down on his face, partially cuffed him and waited on backup. He says specifically that what he did was a result of our training...ie failure, evaluate, retry.
Another policeman singlehandedly takes a rowdy, threatening and dangerous drunk off the street (without beating him half to death) and goes home to his wife and kid. Who knows, Clark Sensei's 40 years of training passed onto Duncan Sensei's 25 years of training passed onto my 7 years of training may have all been only to save Jeff's life that night?
Frankk
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