[animal]

Hey,
I apologize for drifting into philosophy in the first thread. I look at it as the basis of both law and tactics, so I wasn’t thinking of it being off-base for the forum. What got to me in the thread was the name-calling arguments, and I hoped the philosophy could be used to redirect that and bring it back to tactics. For me, philosophy dictates the tactics which should be used.

First, I wouldn’t have bothered with the "drunk" guy if it had been somewhere that I didn’t think I had the right and responsibility to protect. (To me, protection includes trying to prevent bad things from happening whether they are violent or not.) I might have used the cell if it were available … at most. There’s no legal duty to help him and no threat to legally justify force, imo.
I’m pretty sure he would have just walked off or tried to run if anything but option 2 was chosen.

As it was, I approached him (and yes, I was prepared to deck him or worse if he turned violent), used a "soft" form of verbal manipulation to get fluids in him, get him in the truck, and to more help. In all, it all took about 20 minutes. I’m pretty sure that was faster than 911 would’ve been in this case and it seemed like I needed to stay with him at the time. Not saying anything bad about our 911 service here, They’re mostly just busy and you have to admit this situation doesn’t look important enough to pull a busy cop off another job or take a higher priority than the average call.

It turns out, he was down here visiting his family. He struck out walking towards the closest park and 3 hours later he was lost and about 5 blocks in opposite direction. Judging by direction he came from, he’d been a lot farther away. Who knows where the dirt, grass, and stick came from ?
His clothes were soaked from sweat. He appeared to have stopped sweating and was beginning to dry out ?… and thus the odd pattern of dryness on his clothes, dry face and dry arms. I wasn’t sure if this was the case (I wasn’t really sweaty either), but I had seen it before (even felt it before) … but I’ve never seen anyone act the way he did from getting too hot .. a little confused, yes… but not like him. All the guys I’ve seen this happen to, get really red-faced, then turn pale and lethargic instead of animated. All I can figure, is that his emotional state from being lost had aggravated the condition, but that’s just a guess. He did seem to become more grounded in reality the more I talked to him. He also started sweating within minutes after drinking the first sports drink. I don’t think that usually happens either. The whole thing has me wondering about a lot of things.
I didn’t know for sure this guy’s problem was heat exhaustion until I got a call from his niece hours later, letting me know he was OK. Yeah, I had a pretty good idea, but because of too many unknowns, and things that didn’t fit what I thought I knew, there was no way to be sure.

As far as tactics go, no planning had prepared me for this. It was completely unexpected. Mostly, only general principles, and acting on educated guesses was left. Verbal manipulation was the main tactic with specific rules used, but I’m no pro. Most of my limited skill in using that against impaired people comes from dealing with drunks, but the same methods were applied here, and they also use weighing of probability (in relation to his wants).

All I was doing was playing the odds based on as much information I could get to weight the "bets". I consider this a tactic, and use it in violent situations as well, but there are no set rules. As a tactic, I think it is valuable way to take the situations we’ve planned for, and use fragments of the scenarios we’ve imagined … to fit them into an unplanned event. When I gave him the drink, for instance, I still had drugs, diabetes (my sister in law has had several crashes), insanity, and even drunkenness (as slightly possible) in mind. The only condition of the bunch where the drink could do harm was diabetes, the likelihood was extremely small then … and it also carried the possibility of helping.

You might say this "tactic" is simply "thinking on your feet". I’m convinced that it can be studied, taught and applied in situations… to decide both when and how to fight.

So, setting aside the stuff that caused me to stick my nose where it might not have legally belonged ….



Is "thinking on your feet" this way a valid and teachable tactic, is it just gambling, or something else ?