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I've spent a lot of time in my life doing BJJ and it's very hard to strangle somebody to death without realizing something has gone wrong long before that. It's not even a George Floyd situation where the restraint wasn't a conventional choke and/or it was very potentially a stress heart attack. The Marine was capable of restraining the homeless guy in far less risky positions.
10+ years of experience doing Judo (at a very low level). I only ever choked out a person once. The other times, they tapped out or the choke didn't work because they tugged their chin in.
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My reaction as well from the same background. If i read the coverage right he held that chokehold for two minutes, which is crazy. It only takes a few seconds to knock someone out like that. Anyone trained enough to know the hand position would know that from experience.
Watching the video, although he does use the BJJ position it doesn't really look like he has a blood-choke; his arm just seems to be wrapped around the guy's chin?
Hard to tell of course, but I guess if the dead guy is found to have drugs in his system the defense will want to raise the possibility that the hold was just a restraint and the guy would have OD'd anyways.
On the other hand, the article I read seemed to say that he was just acting unruly but hadn't assaulted anybody at the point when the Marine started restraining him -- which puts the Marine in violation of the 'MYOB' doctrine, which is a bad place to be in a situation like this.
If he had been choking him properly (tightly) the guy would have stopped struggling and the other guys holding him down would have been unnecessary.
Most likely the guy choking him out had only a vague idea what he was doing, or clothing/bags/etc prevented a clean choke. The result was that the guy didn't really go out, but was just oxygen deprived for a long time still struggling, which caused an episode when combined with fentanyl or stress or whatever else.
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Have we considered that the article may not be telling(or may not have) the whole truth as to what this crazy homeless guy was doing?
I'm the "don't believe anything you haven't seen with your own eyes" guy -- so yeah.
But given that this is clearly going to court and likely to be a cause celebre, if the grappling was in fact preceeded by a significant assault we will hear about it soon enough. There would probably be a verbal altercation as some part of this, which may be bad for the Marine in terms of claiming self-defense.
Maybe. But maybe that doesn't matter. "Hands up, don't shoot" was a blatant lie. It was known to be a lie almost immediately. It was authoritatively proven to be lie some time later. Neighborhoods still got burned to the ground, and people still believe it to this day.
The flag has been planted at this being an unprovoked lynching. Now, even if a hypothetical video shows the violent felon literally inches from shanking a defenseless woman on that subway, people will be quibbling over whether that really entitles a marine to "murder" him. That we don't know, not for certain, that he would have actually shanked that woman. The woman probably would have survived, the punishment for a survivable stab wound shouldn't be death. People survive stab wounds all the time.
Once upon a time I would have thought that exaggeration. Except it already happened. So yeah. There is no possible provocation that man could have done, up to and including actually physically harming another passenger, which would justify to these activist the subsequence events. Their claims that he didn't do anything preceding the events is not a statement of fact. It's an ontological statement of orthodoxy. Anything he did, no matter what, counts as nothing.
It won't matter to the mob, but it will matter to me.
The court, maybe.
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See this absolute masterpiece of a Tweet from Valerie Jarrett, for example:
As you point out, this is in the context of Bryant being in the process of attempting to disembowel another unarmed black teenage girl. So it's not just that some protestors got carried away, top level Dem officials unironically argue against shooting someone that is in the process of attempting murder.
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He is a marine, but he didn't spend his life "doing BJJ".
This wasn't a controlled situation like a martial arts match.
The only way you're going to realize "something has gone wrong long before" the guy dies is if he stops struggling first.
You don’t have to spend a lifetime doing bjj, the rear naked choke is a move taught to beginners. The way it’s taught involves practicing it on other people, you see an instantaneous reaction from the other person the moment you apply pressure. It’s essentially impossible to learn the move without understanding what it does.
This is not to say I feel no sympathy for people defending themselves against a crazy person on the train, being a commuter myself, but the idea that someone could rear naked choke another person for two minutes and be surprised it was lethal is not realistic. The question is whether lethal force was warranted in the situation.
Did we watch the same video? I don't see a man being held still and unconscious for two minutes, I see a man struggling against restraint for two minutes that is eventually choked out. Here's the full video to the best of my knowledge. Until approximately the last 15-20 seconds of the video, he's still visibly struggling, which is presumably why the guy who applied the choke did not release it.
At this stage, I don't think we have sufficient evidence to reach a conclusion regarding whether reasonable people would have believed that the threat had ended.
He's struggling, but he's unconscious. It's not clear to an untrained eye, and from time to time even MMA/jiu jitsu refs will fail to recognize that the person struggling isn't conscious anymore, so it's understandable that these guys didn't realize that he was unconscious.
However, to someone who has experience with this stuff, it's very clear that the guy is unconscious for at least two minutes and twenty seconds of being choked.
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It doesn't look like has the choke on perfectly in the first part, though we can't really see it the second minute.
I agree, and as per my earlier comment I don't even have an opinion on whether he was unwarranted in using lethal force in the situation. My objection is to the idea that any trained person wouldn't understand that the rear naked choke isn't meant to restrain someone, it has deadly potential if held continuously. From his use of the move and his leg wrap around the guy's legs he clearly has training.
I've been training jiu jitsu for the better part of a decade now, and I disagree. The RNC and hooks combo is common enough that a lot of people who don't train have seen it on UFC, and his execution is sloppy enough in more than one way (against a basically non-resisting opponent, by that time) that I find it hard to believe that he had any significant amount of training.
Anyone that trains will know that you shouldn't be holding a legit RNC tight for minutes after the guy has gone unconscious. However, I find it to be very unlikely that they knew the homeless man was unconscious. The homeless man was still moving, and even professional MMA refs occasionally fail to recognize that the competitor being choked is only jerking around unconsciously. If you have little to no training, and a piss poor RNC (which probably didn't put him out quickly), and the guy you're trying to choke keeps flailing around.... and you don't have have enough years in jiu jitsu to have seen people keep fighting when unconscious, then it's pretty easy to conclude that you just aren't successfully strangling him.
Teachmegrappling guy agrees
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Honestly, I think that's reading too much into it. I think it's perfectly possible to have a long and successful martial arts career without ever needing to internalize the potential lethality of any hold if it were used beyond the point of tapping out, because it never comes to that in organized settings.
I honestly really don't think that's true, when you practice this live it's totally normal to see people pass out if they're stubborn or don't tap out quickly enough. Even if you just watch the sport you'll see this happen regularly.
I disagree. I did various martial arts for over a decade and only ever choked a person out once. People all tap out before that or tug their chin in and you just let go after a while.
From your above comment you did judo? How often are rear naked chokes used? I thought pushing down on the back head as part of a choke was fully banned in judo tbh. I've seen people go out more times than I can count in bjj and have come close to passing out myself.
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Hm. Probably true.
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Yeah, fair, I would expect even a casual observer of mixed martial arts to have noticed that this is probably going to be very bad for someone if not released quickly.
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Other willing people, who are playing along. Which was not the case here. Even if the Marine had been taught the move in a controlled situation and practiced it on other people, if the homeless guy didn't react the way the Marine had been taught, the Marine would be in uncharted territory at that point.
No, you practice it live too. We have children do this, I’d be shocked if actual marines don’t as well.
what? like you go to random strangers and choke them to see how someone in an uncontrolled situation would react?
No, you spar, where you're trying to attack another person who is resisting you and trying to attack you. This is a very far cry from "having other people play along," and you regularly see people pass out from using this move in sparring, making it extremely unlikely that anyone would be familiar with it and not understand what it does.
I've said several times in this thread I don't have a stance on whether his response was right or wrong, at least until more info comes out, because if someone attacks you in real life sometimes lethal force is warranted. What I question is that he wasn't aware that this move had lethal implications, it's genuinely really clear to anyone who's used it. The "how would people react in an uncontrolled situation vs a controlled situation?" isn't the question here, it's "how would someone's bloodflow react to this move in an uncontrolled vs controlled situation?", to which the answer is "the same".
A spar is still a simulation of a fight. Maybe a pretty good simulation of a fight, but a simulation nonetheless. See also 2-Gun Action Challenge Match-style shooting competitions; they're probably as close as you can get to replicating the stress of real-life combat, but still falling short of the real-ass thing.
But the guys in the 2-Gun Action Challenges understand that guns are lethal even without actually being shot, and someone who has trained or sparred in bjj would understand the implications of a rear naked choke hold.
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