Tag Archives: crime

WHO DO WE FIGHT? by Hock Hochheim

(In my upcoming book, as a result of the popularity of my Who, What, Where, When, How and Why lectures, this book will be published in mid-2025. In the Who segment I explore so many who topics. This is one – who do you REALLY think you will be fighting?- Hock) 

Who Question 2: WHO do you really think you will be
fighting?
We’ve asked “who are you” in question one, and now with the duality mandate we must ask – who do you really think you will be fighting, given your geography, lifestyle, the times, crime and war trends? The quick answer in crime is usually someone you somehow know. But, not always! you must consistently read about and watch the news for crime trends and antisocial behaviors to pursue the idea of who you might be actually fighting, “friend” or foe? Usually none of this is covered in your local martial arts school or seminars, because they are busy being-doing their martial arts thing. They fight each other, virtually mirror images of themselves, other matching sports and arts people. In many cases there’s even film on how their competitors fight.

Some training programs foolishly treat every challenge as if the threat were a Nazi commando, plucking their eyeballs out, gutting their guts out, knocking them down and out and squashing their throat and face with multiple boot stomps. Unless you are in a war, this is excessive in so many situations, and you may well wind up in jail. Every hand, stick, knife and gun fight is a highly situational, drama and trauma, with consequences.

So, who do we fight? We list two general groups.

Group 1: People you know.
Group 2: Stranger on stranger (criminals and enemy soldiers)
 

Enemies within 1: Friends and relatives, the “Drunk Uncle Conundrum:” A lot of family and friend violence goes unreported, but a lot is reported. It is very common in life to fight people that you know. Often you don’t wish to really hurt your drunk buddy or uncle-relative. This self-control is hard. I know because in police work we are also expected to “fight” but not really hurt people unless things get really “out-of-hand” and elongated and the situation really escalates in a mess.

I started out in Ed Parker’s Kenpo Karate in the early 1970s and Parker warned that when you have to fight a friend or relative, and you control yourself so as not to really hurt them, the fight lasts much longer. So true also in police work also. That’s a tough call, this control thing. But know this, poke your buddy’s eye out, bite off his ear, hammer-fist your uncle’s windpipe, smash his face, shatter your father-in-law’s knee, and then see what happens to you. Usually, often, that happening is you end up in jail and/or battling lawsuits. Money and problems, even if justified at first. Then there’s the revenge factor later, also covered here in a later segment of my book.

Remember technically, when a friend or relative… or someone… anyone…attacks you, an official crime begins and technically they (or you?) become…a category criminal. Then you could also just lump your aggravated uncle or spouse into the crime category should he take a poke at you, etc. The Drunk Uncle Conundrum is – do you report the crime? Does he? Or do you both just put ice on the bruise and go home? The family-and-friend situational nuisances dictate the temperature of your response. This is why a  lot of family-and-friend violence goes unreported, unless there serious bodily damage? Call for an ambulance? Then usually the police get involved. Crime report or no crime report, you may well be fighting a friend or a relative over…who knows what!

Someone you know as elevated to criminal status. Angry friends. Angry relatives. Angry co-workers, business partners, Angry spouses. Sex and money problems. People that know people in these shapes, forms, or fashions and problems may percolate… 

Speaking of knowing each other, there is a lot of domestic violence out there. The Department of Justice reports some annual generalities: “about 29% of women and 10% of men in the US
have experienced rape, physical violence, or stalking by a partner, which has adversely impacted their daily functioning. Nearly 15% of US women (14.8%), and 4% of men, have suffered injury due to intimate partner violence,
including rape, physical violence, and/or stalking.”

Annual global estimates from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reports on total female intimate partner/family-related homicides: “Women and girls in all regions are affected by
killings. While Asia is the region with the largest absolute number of killings by far, Africa is the region with the highest level of violence relative to the size of its female population. The Americas (all of the western hemisphere) is next, followed by Europe and Oceania.”

Prison Legal News reports the headline: “Most murders committed by friends and family.” Psychology Today reports, “Therefore, the statistics appear to indicate that ‘the streets’ are likely far safer places for women and girls than their domestic environments.”

Study after study, year after year finds this all true. I consider working homicides as the “World Series of Police Work.” I have worked murders for many years and usually the common murder is frequently solvable because it takes some sort of friend, business, relative, money, sex, serious motive-anger to kill a person. This motive can usually be researched and uncovered. The great work of EMTs and emergency room crews can save a life, thwart a murder, turning the crime into an attempted murder or aggravated assault. The victim is alive to tell the tale. And importantly, we cannot view the problem of violence by just examining murders and attempted murders alone. Physical conflict is far more complicated and traverses all levels of crime.

Enemies within 2a: Criminals: Stranger on stranger. Someone you don’t know. Stranger-on-stranger crime is another kind of beast to solve. I’ve learned in many “Assault and Violent Death” schools I’ve attended, that stranger crime can be very scary. The USA Office of Justice reports: “Stranger-on-stranger crime is often considered more frightening than non-stranger crime because it creates a perception of randomness and lack of control, as the victim has no prior relationship with the perpetrator, making it seem like anyone could be a potential target at any time, regardless of their actions or precautions;
this fear is amplified by the unknown nature of the assailant and the inability to predict or prevent such an attack.”

As an investigator, stranger on stranger crime opens up a whole second set of motives that must be pursued.

Enemies Within 2b: Enemy soldiers: They are essentially strangers, but we kind of know who those people are. Generally. We know the “likes” of the enemy anyway, but they are literally individual strangers to us. We meet them years later after the war and we become fast friends. Oh, the irony. 

But, temporary enemies are often just that – temporary enemies. In war, since the history of man, we usually choose to kill them from as far away as possible, impersonal, but we often can’t keep that distance and things get face-to-face, facial expression-to-facial expression, blood spatter, up-close and personal.

Fighting is situational. Civil law, criminal law and even the Geneva Convention, as well as human morality-ethics, all look at fighting these two groups differently. Our responses in every fight, every battle are very situational. But, this is who…we…fight. 

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Hock’s email is Hock@HocksCQC.com

My book will cover many Q and A topics within the who, what, where, when, how and why of it all. Coming in mid-2025…

 

THE LOST INTERVIEW

(I say lost because, I have no memory of doing this interview!)

What got you into the martial arts?

That is a very long story, but even as kid, I was always interested in tactics and fighting. Maybe movies and TV spurred my interest? The how-to tricks. A vehicle to learn this stuff was martial arts, which I started in 1972 with Ed Parker Kenpo. I was about 18 years old? No kids back then. But martial arts were never my end goal, just a ways to learn those tactics and tricks. I personally find martial arts themselves to be distracting. All sorts of biases and things happen in this training process that gets one off the path of clean, unarmed and mixed weapon, generic fighting.

Incoming mob/crowd, you have 30 mins to teach a complete novice how to fight. What do you teach them? 

The suggestion in the question is – me and a group are about to be bombarded by a mob or group? My questions to best answer that question is who, what, where, when, how and why? The answer has to be customized for the situation. Who is the mob? What do they want? Where are we? When is this happening? How specifically will it happen? Why? If IO knew that? I could answer something.  It is so, so situational.

Short times? Generally, I almost never, ever do short, self defense training classes. I have to be really be pushed, coerced or “guilted” into doing one. Fighting info is too big and too perishable as it is for people in regular training. I know some people that like to do that but I don’t for that reason, I am just not geared up to cover short segments/deals. I do have do a speech on “Who, What, Were, When, How and Why,” though. A speech, nothing physical, that is pretty important for all to know and that speech can be squeezed into all kinds of very short or longer time frames.

As a self-protection expert, what do you consider to be under-taught or under-appreciated concept in the self-protection field?

The seamless mix of hand, stick, knife and gun training is way, way and foolishly under-taught. No matter where in the world you live, no matter the laws and rules, criminals and enemy soldiers use knives, sticks and guns. You fight them, you pick up their weapons. “We live in a mixed weapons world” is one of my opening mottos.

It is commonly taught that if someone demands your wallet or purse, you should throw it to the ground and run. Is this good, universal advice? If not, are there cues as to when we should do this or not?

Many instructors just say “always run away, which is “simpleton” advise. “Simple” better advice is “run away, if you can.”  Based on military and police history as in crime and war, you should pick and choose and gamble with just “turning around and running away.” Sometimes the mugger wants your watch and ring too, not just the wallet. They chase you. Then, they also chase you out of a predator instinct. The military once called it “The Caveman Chase.” And remember, you are easier to kill from behind, another long known concept that goes back as far as Alexander the Great. Easer to kill, not because you can’t see the attacker, but the attacker can’t see your face, doesn’t personalize you. Much more about this in my knife book. The goal is an “orderly retreat,” as a method to leaving, whatever that is situation-by-situation. Also, who are you leaving behind when you run? How fast and far can you run? How fast and far do you think the attacker can run? What clues do you have that you can run? Maybe the physical make-out the robber? I can’t answer that with any certainty.

A common argument in the self-defense community is that if you really want to protect yourself, buy and carry a gun. What are your personal thoughts on guns and conceal and carry?

Oh yes, on the handgun. But you just have to figure out and be trained on how and when to use it. Well, the whole who, what, where, when, how and why to use it. That goes for  any weapon for that matter. But I use the breakdown for training.

  1. There/Not There – why are you “there” in the first place? Why can’t you leave?
  2. Pull/Don’t Pull – When and if do you pull the weapon out?
  3. Point/Don’t Point – Is the weapon out, or ready in some way and concealed in some way? Bladed body, etc. Or, do you point it at the enemy?
  4. Shoot/Don’t Shoot – All of these require an essay to dissect.

If you look at the entire self-defense community, the majority of people learning to defend themselves are men. Men with little or no fighting experience are often concerned (apart from being harmed) with defending themselves and getting sued, taken to court and/or arrested. What do you tell your students/clients who are concerned with this issue?

In the end, remember that for citizens in modern times and civilizations, your willingness to fight, no matter how righteous and defensive your actions might be, may often end with you going to jail, with considerable legal fees and maybe with some added doctor bills to boot. You may well be vindicated later but at a physical, emotional, and monetary loss. You can very easily be arrested and you could be sued. Violence sucks. It’s a negative experience. But you are stuck in that nasty  vortex.

Regular people should fight criminals to escape (and a criminal could be your drunk Uncle Harry. Once he attacks you he is officially a criminal). So, winning for most, regular people is just fighting to escape. No over kill, no maiming, no killing unnecessarily. (My courses are called “Force Necessary”) You fight to win, but what is winning?. There are 5 ways to “win,” or to “finish” a fight, whether soldier, citizen, security or cop.

  1. You leave. You escape from the opponent (using the “Orderly Retreat” concept), with no physical contact.
  2. He leaves. No physical contact. You use threats, demands and intimidation to make the opponent desist and leave.
  3. He stays. Physical contact. You inflect less-than-lethal injury upon the opponent. Injure and/or diminish to a degree that the opponent stops fighting and won’t chase you.
  4. You and he both stay. Physical contact or verbal control. You control as in arrest, contain and restrain. You capture and, or escort the opponent. Or, you detain/capture the opponent and await the proper authorities.
  5. He dies. Lethal methods. We fight criminals and enemy soldiers. Sometimes we kill them.

I get concerned that so many systems teach fighting like everyone you struggle with is a Nazi commando doomed to a neck break or scooped out eye balls. The system you train in, the things you say on the web, the tattoos you have, the names of the weapons you carry, your associates, everything can be used against you in court. I can tell you story after story about this.

Many self-protection specialists say that self-defense is more of a mental game than a physical one. Is this your opinion? Why or why not?

That is one of those intellectual hair-splitters that I don’t care to hair-split. I guess you need both but to what “exact” percentage at any given time, I can’t say. 50%-50%? You could be mean as hell in your head, but gas-out in 40 second fight. Then your mean/tough mind is in a skull on the ground getting bashed because you didn’t physically train enough. It’s both sides seamlessly working in unison. Why split it? Some folks got it, some folks can get it, some folks never will.

Women and children are the most victimized individuals in any society. Should women and children be taught differently than men? Why or why not?

“It’s a mixed person’s world” is one of my mottos. In many ways everyone should be taught differently. Every person is a different size, shape, strength, age, fitness level, job, situation, etc. with weak spots, ailments and laws to work around. There is no cookie-cutter fight system for all. In the end, it is the responsibility of each person to find their favorite things they can do well, for facing the problems they most likely will face. The instructor is supposed to facilitate that process, not make cookie-cutter robots. At some point you can teach statistically high “blanket” items like “hand striking” of course, especially in the beginning, but we can’t forget the eventual, necessary customization. And customization and prioritizing shouldn’t ignore lesser, probable events. Crazy stuff has  and can happen.

Another big concern and why so many people are doing jiu-jitsu now is the perpetuated line that “most often the fight will end up on the ground.” In your experience, do you find that this is true? Either way, what traits/abilities are essential in someone to adequately defend themselves?

Well, for starters, when I did jujitsu it was a different time. Lots of standing solutions and takedowns. Judo was the ground wrestling arena. Today, the Brazilians have utterly redefined the term, as well as advanced the ground chess game.

But I think that everyone should be able to up, down and fight everywhere. I don’t like to see Billy Bob’s Kick boxing school on one street corner, and “Big Ralph’s Wrasling” school on another corner. Fighting is fighting and you fight where you fight. Seamlessly. Standing, kneeling, sitting and on the ground. You fight where you fight, with and without weapons. That is the end goal for me and what I teach people to pursue. But, in order to amass an education in these subjects we must meet experts in each of these fields. Again, all sorts of biases and things happen in this training process that gets one off the path of clean, unarmed and mixed weapon, generic fighting.

A collaboration of criminal justice colleges years ago came up with the four common ways we hit the ground, as best they could from research.

  1. We trip and fall
  2. We are punched down (usually sucker punches)
  3. We are tackled down
  4. We are pulled down

The very fact that you can often land on the ground, is reason alone to worry about it. I am a big fan of generic, MMA-ish, fighting with an emphasis on ground and pound. MMA has become very clean and generic for it does. It wants to win and system borders be damned. Plus, nothing replaces ring time -to quote Joe Lewis.

We are now in the New Year. What resolutions do you have and/or goals for the year?

I am supposed to be retired, you know. HA! I hope to trim my seminar schedule down to one USA city a month, one international city a month and one Sunday a month in the Dallas/Ft Worth area where I live. Technically, this means I am home two full weeks a month, but I can already see this is stacking and packing up differently than I planned for 2017 already. But, I would like to teach way less, write way more, and just hang out with my wife most of all.

Bonus Question – What book or resource (besides your own material) have you suggested or gifted most and why?

Oh man…DON’T get me started on THIS list, as I recommend a different book in every one of newsletters every three weeks for years, but here are just a few.

  1. Smarter Faster Better : by Charles Duhigg. Tremendous, enlightening, myth-breaking into on performance
  2. The Talent Code : by Dan Coyle
  3. Streetlights and Shadows : Searching for the Keys to Adaptive Decision Making by Gary Klein
  4. Anti-Fragile : by Nassim Talib
  5. Bounce : by Matt Syed

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Hock’s email is HockHochheim@ForceNecessary.com

Check out these books, now in Amazon Ebook format for only $10!

 

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