Documenting Your Art
by Jim Wagner

Warning: Over the past five years, a trend has developed in the law-enforcement community, and it’s threatening to spill over into the civilian martial arts world. It involves police officers who get injured in a conflict, then sue their department for not having adequately prepared them for dealing with that type of incident.

One category of legal trouble pertains to knives. Bladed-weapon attacks against patrol and correction officers are common, but few agencies give their people the realistic training they need. Instead, departments rely on outdated techniques and tactics, or they give only the bare minimum of instruction required by law. Some departments bypass the training altogether for political reasons—perhaps they don’t believe it’s beneficial, they have an it-won’t-happen-to-us attitude or they don’t want to spend the money.

Now, let’s transplant those liability issues from the law-enforcement world to the civilian martial arts world. How long will it be before a student attends a course focusing on gun disarms, for example, then happens to get injured in a gun-related incident and decides to sue his instructor? The grounds? The instructor failed to provide up-to-date training.

It may seem far-fetched, but it’s food for thought. Here’s some more: You’re a martial arts instructor. One of your students gets in trouble with the law for using “excessive force” against an assailant. He turns around and accuses you of having taught him all those deadly moves and when to employ them. What will you say when you’re dragged into court? Do you have a written record of exactly what you taught the class to which he belonged? Do you have proof that you regularly explain to all your students where each technique falls within the use-of-force continuum so any actions they take in self-defense will be justifiable? The answer to all these questions has to be yes, or you’re risking your livelihood.
 
The sad truth is, more than a few martial arts instructors would be terrified to document what they teach their students because there would be too many holes and deficiencies in their program. Often they claim to teach reality-based self-defense but neglect to cover terrorist attacks, drive-by shootings, stabbings, gun threats beyond grabbing range, ways to identify stalkers, the prevention of child abduction and so on. If cross-examined in court, most of these instructors would be able to say nothing more than, “I show people how to punch and kick,” because they don’t understand where their techniques fit into the use-of-force continuum as it relates to pre-conflict and post-conflict factors.

In contrast, virtually every law-enforcement and military course I’ve attended over the past two decades has provided its attendees with outlines and even handouts or detailed manuals. Yet the law-enforcement agencies are still getting sued. Imagine how much trouble civilian schools will be in once this latest legal trend spreads.

If you’re a student of self-defense, be skeptical of any school that doesn’t provide outlines listing the material taught and the situations in which you can legally apply those techniques. If you’re an instructor, immediately start creating worksheets and manuals that explain every move, concept and term you teach. Make sure everything you cover in class is justifiable in the eyes of the law. Then, if one of your students accuses you of having taught him to use violence in a situation that may be inappropriate, he’ll have a hard time proving it.

About the author: Jim Wagner is a police and military defensive-tactics instructor and a civilian reality-based personal-protection trainer. For more information, visit http://www.jimwagnertraining.com.