Meditations on Violence. Rory Miller
as it exists “in the wild” and violence as it is taught in martial arts classes and absorbed through our culture.
Couple things first…
I get paid (and paid well) to go into a situation, usually alone and usually outnumbered by sixty or more criminals, and maintain order. I prevent them from preying on each other or attacking officers. That’s the job. Now, since I don’t fight every day, or even every week (anymore—I’m a sergeant now, one step behind the front line) most of the minutes and hours of the job are pretty easy, far too easy for what they are paying me. But every once in a while on a really, really ugly night, I more than earn my keep.
The fighting happens less, partially from moving up in rank, but even more from the fact that almost every criminal in the area knows me, and I’ve become better at talking. At CNT training (Crisis Negotiation Team—sometimes called Hostage Negotiators), Cecil, one of the instructors, recommended reading books on salesmanship. In the intro to one book, the author stated that everyone, every single person in the world is engaged in selling something—no matter if you were building a car in a factory, performing medicine or changing oil.
I thought, “Bullshit. I’m a jail guard. I’m not selling jack.”
Shortly after, there was an extremely stupid and crazy old man who very much wanted to fight five times his weight in officers. It took about twenty minutes to talk him into going along with the process. It was then that I realized I am selling something, a product called “not getting your ass beat” which is very hard to sell to some people.
Here’s the resume and bona fides. Feel free to skip it.
I enjoy teaching people who have already trained in martial arts how to apply their skills to real conflict. I like teaching officers—people who might need it—the simple, practical skills they need to stay alive or the equally simple and practical skills they need to restrain a threat without getting sued…and I like teaching the difference.
I have a BS degree in experimental psychology with a minor in biology from Oregon State. I’d planned on a double major, but Biochem killed me. While at OSU, I earned varsities in Judo and Fencing, and dabbled in Karate, Tae Kwon Do, and European weapons.
I’ve studied martial arts since 1981. I’ve been a corrections officer since 1991. As of this writing, that’s fourteen years, twelve of them concentrated in Maximum Security and Booking. In 1998, a lot of things happened. I earned my teaching certificate in Sosuishitsu-ryu Jujutsu; I published two articles in national magazines; I was named to the CERT (Corrections Emergency Response Team) and was made the DT and Hand-to-Hand instructor for the team. I was also promoted to sergeant. By the end of the year I was designing and teaching classes for the rest of the agency, both corrections and enforcement. I’ve been the CERT leader since 2002.
CERT has been a huge force in my life and career. By 1998, I already had lots of “dirt time” in Booking, something over two hundred uses of force, some ugly (PCP and/or outnumbered and/or ambushed and/or weapons), but I’d only had to take care of myself. Suddenly I was responsible for teaching rookies how to do what I did. I had to really think about what made things work.
CERT also allowed me access to huge amounts of training—I’m currently certified with distraction devices (flash-bang grenades), a wide variety of less-lethal technology (40 mm and 37 mm grenade launchers used to fire everything from gas to rubber balls; paintball guns that fire pellets filled with pepper spray; a variety of chemical munitions and shotgun-fired impact devices; pepper spray; and electrical stun devices). I’ve had the opportunity for specialized high-risk transport EVOC (Emergency Vehicle Operations Course) and have trained with the local U.S. Marshals in close-combat handgun skills. More importantly, I’ve had the opportunity to use some of these tools and learn what was left out of class. There has been other agency training as well—I’ve done CNT classes, though a CERT leader won’t be in that role; been through the introductory Weapons of Mass Destruction class from FEMA; attended school for the Incident Command System; been certified as a Use of Force and Confrontational Simulation instructor, and recently received a certification as a “Challenge Course Facilitator” in case anyone wants to walk a high wire and do some team building. When I’m not on swing shift, I’m an advisor for the Search and Rescue unit. Swing shift or not, I’m a peer counselor for my deputies.
I was a medic, NBC defense instructor, and rappel master in the National Guard; studied EMT I and II a long time ago; bounced in a casino for a couple of years; and attended Tom Brown’s survival and tracking basic course…and I grew up in the eastern Oregon desert without electricity or running water.
That’s just a list. Here’s the truth:
Violence is bigger than me. There’s more out there and more kinds of violence than I’ll ever see…and certainly more than I could survive. I’ve never been a victim of domestic violence and I’ve never been taken hostage, but in this book I will presume to give advice on those two subjects. I’ve never been in an active war zone or a fire fight. Never been bombed, nuked, or gassed—except by trainers.
Violence is a bigger subject than any person will ever understand completely or deeply. I’ve put as much personal experience into this as I can, along with advice from people I know and trust to be experienced. I’ve also quoted or paraphrased researchers (many of whom have never bled or spilled blood in either fear or anger) when the research sounded right.
In the end, this is only a book. My goal in writing it is to give my insights to you through the written word. It will be hard to write because survival is very much a matter of guts and feelings and smells and sounds and very, very little a subject of words.
Take my advice for what it is worth. Use what you can use. Discard anything that doesn’t make sense.
You don’t know me; you’ve never seen me. For all the facts you have, I might be a 400-pound quadriplegic or a seventy year old retiree with delusions. Take the information in this book and treat it skeptically as hell.
Never, ever, ever delegate responsibility for your own safety.
Never, ever, ever override your own experience and common sense on the say-so of some self-appointed “expert.”
Never, ever, ever ignore what your eyes see because it isn’t what you imagined. And strive to always know the difference between what your eyes are seeing and what your brain is adding.
The format of this book. This book is divided into chapters. The first section, the Introduction, gives a brief overview of what the book is about, who I am, and why I wrote it. You’ve already either read it or skipped it. Fair enough.
Chapter 1: The Matrix, is an attempt to clear up the language of violence. It addresses the many types of violence, especially how different they can be and how the lessons from one type do not apply to the needs of another.
Chapter 2: How to Think, addresses assumptions about violence, about training, and introduces training for strategy and tactics.
Chapter 3: Violence, describes the dynamics of violence. It is focused on criminal violence—how it happens and what it is like. It will also cover the affects of adrenaline and stress hormones that accompany a sudden attack and how to deal with them.
Chapter 4: Predators, is about criminals—who they are, how they think and act. What you can expect from them, and what knowledge is not important in a moment of crisis.
Chapter 5: Training, will give advice and drills to help adapt your training to the realities of violence.
Chapter 6: Making Physical Defense Work, is about physical response to violence—not about effective technique but about what makes a technique effective.
Chapter 7: After, discusses the after-effects of violence—what to expect and how to deal with the psychological effects of either surviving a sudden assault or long-term