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De-escalation tactics – Part One

This four part series is designed to be a brief introduction to the field of non-violent resolution tactics.

Part One – Underpinning Principles

PART ONE – UNDERPINNING PRINCIPLES

All aggressive and violent behaviours have underlying causes, which could be summarized under the headings of chemical factors and psychological factors. These are interrelated but for the sake of brevity are listed separately. Understanding and influencing these (through communication) is the best way to resolve conflict.

PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS

Motivating factors

These may be far more varied than the examples listed below, but can generally be categorized as immediate or primary causes and underlying or secondary causes.

Immediate causes affecting decision-making and behaviour:

Physical presence or (over-long) eye contact interpreted as a challenge, overly alpha or beta male body language, a push or stumble into a person, the spilling of food or drink, a vehicle accident, peer pressure, denial of a perceived need.

Secondary causes affecting decision-making and behaviour:

Family or work stress, suppressed anger (generally linked to the former but inhibited by potential consequence), racism or social/political beliefs, past experiences, peer pressure, the role and acceptability of violence and aggression in both upbringing and normal social environment, fatigue, past success in achieving aims through aggressive or violent behaviours.

Inhibiting factors

These could be categorized as physical and social factors.

Physical factors:

The relative sizes of parties involved, perceived strength and ability of the other party, the ‘known quantity’ of the other party, body language, perceived alertness, company (of either party), immediate consequences, likelihood of injury.

Social factors:

Peer reaction – acceptance or alienation, legal and family or work repercussions, the social acceptability of aggression and violence within the individual’s social group.

Through positioning, body language, listening and using appropriate tone and speech the underlying aim should be to attempt to reduce the individual’s motivation to continue to use aggression and possibly attempt violence, while strengthening their inhibition against such approaches.

CHEMICAL FACTORS

Drugs

Alcohol or other substances weaken inhibition and can reduce awareness and comprehension. This will affect the ability of another person to influence the individual’s motivation and inhibition.

Underlying medical conditions

Due to a pre-existing health condition the other person may not necessarily be on the same ‘operating system’ as everyone else and may not respond in the same way.

Adrenaline

Aural and visual exclusion along with other side effects of adrenaline may hinder communication and attempts to influence the individual’s motivation and inhibition.

It is unlikely that there is much that you can do once an incident has already begun that will mitigate underlying chemical factors. If spotted early enough then the effect of drugs such as alcohol can be reduced by slowing absorption into the blood stream by providing food and withdrawing further alcohol (if safe to do so), but these are factors that are largely outside your control.

It is important to be aware of the role of chemical factors as ‘tipping points’ in an individual’s behaviour patterns. Whether they are part of the primary or secondary cause of the problem they may lower the probability of a successful non-violent de-escalation.

Headlines, knives and kneejerk reactions

Last week the Office for National Statistics in the UK published its latest Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW). This regular publication does not normally merit much public comment in the media unless a politician seizes upon it to argue that crime is continuing to fall, but the July 16 2015 release made the headlines because of an apparent increase in offences involving sharp weapons.

First Knife Crime Rise in four years proclaimed the BBC.

The Daily Mail let us know that Dramatic rise in knife crime is down to a fall in stop and search, says Met chief Hogan-Howe

Knife crime in England and Wales up for first time in four years cried the Guardian.

The question I’ve been asked is that with this frightening increase in knife crime, should we change our training to focus more on edged weapon awareness and blade defences?

Actually that’s not true, no-one’s asked me if they should do more edged weapon awareness, they just want blade defences.

Reality check.

Have there been more recorded offences involving edged weapons? Yes. According to the CSEW

“In the year ending March 2015, the police recorded 26,370 offences involving a knife or sharp instrument, a 2% increase compared with the previous year (25,974, Table 9a). This is the first year in which these figures have increased since 2010/11 (the earliest period for which data are directly comparable).”

However, before we panic we should bear in mind two things. Firstly the low numbers involved mean that they are susceptible to high percentage changes. The CSEW itself notes that
“For some offence types, such as rape and sexual assault, the relatively low number of offences, that involve the use of a knife or sharp instrument means the volume of these offences are subject to apparent large percentage changes, and should be interpreted with caution. For example, in the year ending March 2015, the number of sexual assaults involving a knife or sharp instrument increased by 28% (an additional 28 offences compared to the 101 recorded in the previous year) and the number of rapes involving knife or sharp instrument increased by 21% (an additional 55 offences compared to the 267 recorded in the previous year).”

Secondly, although we have yet to get fully comparable data, the evidence from hospital admission data indicates that this rise in use has not been mirrored with a rise in injuries. The CSEW records that

“An additional source of information about incidents involving knives and sharp instruments is provided by provisional National Health Service (NHS) hospital admission statistics5. Admissions for assault with a sharp instrument peaked at 5,720 in 2006/07. Admissions have declined since that year; the latest data available, for the year ending March 2014, showed that there were 3,654 admissions, a 5% decrease on the previous year. Admissions for assault with a sharp instrument in 2013/14 were the lowest since 2002/03.”

Knife crime is up, slightly. Deaths from blade usage is down. So have the general populace of England and Wales suddenly become better at defending themselves against knives? No. Defending against a knife is not easy. Training to defend against a knife can have validity, but it is not a simple process.

If a person intends to use a knife, as opposed to using it as an effective tool for coercion and intimidation in robbery or sexual assault, the odds are you won’t even see it.

If we need to do anything ‘new’ as a result of this year’s fresh statistics it is to improve our behaviour. Prevention is better than cure. Some events are so random that they cannot be avoided, but good awareness and good behaviour go a long way to avoiding becoming a crime statistic. As Gichin Funakoshi wrote in his 20 precepts

When you leave home, think that you have numerous opponents waiting for you. It is your behaviour that invites trouble from them.

Biting the bullet

At some point in time almost everyone who exercises will sustain an injury that limits their ability to train in the martial arts. It may occur during training or randomly in daily life. Even those who are lucky enough to avoid breaks, sprains, strains, or hernias may catch a cold or flu, or have to miss training for a period of time due to a medical condition. Those who successfully avoid any of these hurdles may find that family or work commitments may also interfere with training. It is rare to find anyone who has trained for a sustained amount of time who hasn’t had something external happen that could have stopped them from training.

I’ve had my fair share of injuries over the time I’ve been training in the martial arts; I even started karate with a broken wrist in a fibreglass cast. I’ve also had two transplants since I began and a number of other operations, in addition to having permanent catheters that went into my abdominal cavity and also into my bloodstream for several months. I’ve also worked in jobs that consisted of shifts spread through both the evenings as well as the day and over thirteen days a fortnight. As a result I can empathise with people who have had to miss training for a few weeks.

It’s easy for a few weeks to become a longer period of time, or even never. The longer you stay away from training the harder that first step of going back can seem. It’s easy to find excuses not to go: that little muscle twinge, feeling tired, housekeeping that needs doing, that good program on the TV, or the simple appreciation of how comfortable the couch is. Training is always a little bit harder when you return after a period of absence, particularly if you have had to recover from a physical injury or operation. In some respects it is like being a beginner again, only your brain knows what you want to do and the body doesn’t comply, or the body complies but isn’t flexible or strong enough to do so without giving you considerable aches and pains the next day. Pain which your prior level of conditioning may have led you to forget.

Sometimes you have to bite the bullet, accept that it isn’t going to be easy, and make the effort. The longer you stay away the harder it will be. In the past I have trained with clubs as quickly as possible after major surgery because I knew that the longer I left it, the less likely it would be that I would return. I have also trained with tubes going into my body taped to the outside.

Good instructors are not monsters. They would rather see you training slowly at the side, and getting advice to assist your physical recuperation, than have you leave. If you aren’t ready or well enough to train, visiting and watching will help remind you of what made you stay before, and encourage you in your recovery.

Returning to training needn’t be torture, and the time you have spent away from training needn’t be detrimental. Stepping back a bit, watching others more, and working slowly can even be better for your skill development than the classes you missed.

To help you ease back into training, don’t expect everything to be perfect straight away. Your objectives should be SMART, that is: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Rewarding and Time limited. Don’t be disheartened if you have to be flexible with them, the important thing is to keep working, it simply means that you over-estimated how achievable something was in the timeframe you set.

Getting back up after being knocked down isn’t easy. Going back to train isn’t easy. But if you are able to bite the bullet and try, you may find you can do more than you thought possible.

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