This is an interesting video to me for a lot of reasons, because it so simply illustrates how so many simple self-defense community tropes are incredibly foolish.

Now, before I take a look at this, understand something. I am not going to comment at all on what the police officers should be doing prior to the start of this video. LE tactics and procedures as it relates strictly to LE work is beyond me and whatever lane I have some knowledge of. I refuse to go into those areas that I am not familiar with just because I am considered a subject matter expert is some other vaguely related area. Too many people make that mistake, and I will not be one of them.

So, with that proviso, let’s look at what stands out to me about this video.

1. The first bullet point is the sucker punch. There is a continuing bleating in the tactical/self-defense community about not going to the ground in a street fight, mostly because you will get stomped and KOed by other attackers. While I agree that is a definite danger, the issue I have with that statement is the implied part that being on your feet makes it easy to deal with multiple attackers. The simple fact is that the position is not the problem, but being hyperfocused in the position is. Note that the officer was standing, and had plenty of room on level ground to move. And it did not matter one single bit. He got hyperfocused on the person he was helping to arrest and got hit. Also note that it actually was not multiple attackers against a single defender. It essentially is two attackers versus two defenders! Even numbers and it still went bad, even on their feet and upright. Also note that the cops were well aware that there were a lot of people standing around, and they still failed the awareness test. Take a look at slow the second bad guy comes into the fight before he throws a punch. He was taking a lot of time and there were ample chances for just one of the LEOs to see him, and it did not happen. Just being on your feet does not mean you are going to be situationally aware and prepared for multiple attackers anymore than being on the ground automatically means you are extra vulnerable to multiples and will be taken by surprise. We need to move away from simplistic and mindless sound byte phrases.
2. The second big takeaway is what happens when the bad guy takes the cop down. First watch the cop on the bottom try the eye gouge The bad guy obviously has no ground game and does not even try to control the cop’s hands or block them, and the vaunted eye gouge has literally ZERO effect. Then watch the third cop come in and kick the bad guy in the head (just like all the combative gurus warn grapplers about) and then punch him, and again exactly zero effect. I am not saying that getting booted in the dome or getting eye gouged can be laughed off, but I will categorically state that those things are not sure things. Not even close. There is a good chance (as demonstrated here in this video in great depth and detail) that they will be useless and if you don’t have the skill set to deal with the entangled fight, and are relying on those kind of tactics, you may very well be setting yourself up for failure.

In short, don’t rely on phrases that sound good but fail in the real world as often as not. Base your self preservation on high percentage and intelligently thought out material.