yeah... that's all

How would a blind judo master do against a blind ninja? Or a blind Shaolin monk?

Austin Powers: "Judo ... CHOP!"

and I also second Jason's HAHA

lol almost made me want to go to the video store to see if they still had ''blind justice'' - good on the guy, should have snapped the muggers neck, he'll only go free and mug someone else.

Funny though, seems to be an increase of crims getting their just desserts...

He's lucky it wasn't a Ninja, or he would have leant the Five-Point-Palm Exploding Heart Technique the hard way.

>Despite a bloody nose, Esser declined hospital treatment, declaring he was already late for a rendezvous with some chums to go and listen to a football match.

is it just me, or does this suggest that he was let off without actually being arrested?

I'll see y'all's "HaHa!" and raise y'all a 'Neener-Neener!"

How's he gonna make this sound cool in pokey?

"What're ya in for, mate?"

"Attempted robbery"

"Where'd ya get the bruises?"

"Got beat stupid by a blind man..."

BOF alert

Good thing is was Germany, if it had been the UK the blind guy would be up on assault charges, the ar*ehole would be getting counselling about his smoking problem and the police would be tutting about "have a go civilians", you know "leave it to the professionals" (who will get to the paperwork next Thursday to list your personal mugging as a statistic).

"is it just me, or does this suggest that he was let off without actually being arrested?"

Yes....because it was Germany, and not the UK (arrest/conviction targets...).

I think you mis-read it. Esser was the blind bloke! Why should the police arrest the victim. This wasn't the British Police!

"does this suggest that he was let off without actually being arrested?"

It would probably make no difference anyway. The average sentence, even for serious crimes, seems to be less than than the few minutes this miscreant had already been detained for.

And of course, its the fact that the average sentence is far far far too short that we have to thank for the fact that this guy thought stealing in the street was a commercially-justified calculated risk.

"is it just me, or does this suggest that he was let off without actually being arrested?"

Arrested for what? Self-defence?

Esser was the victim not the attacker...

Obviously using his Jedi sense to detect the disturbances in The Force

"is it just me, or does this suggest that he was let off without actually being arrested?"

Yes, and they couldn't use him as a witness either: Cops asked him, but he told them he hadn't seen anything.

Esser was the victim, not the attacker!

"Exploding palm" - using Sony batteries these days?

@hmm - Esser was the muggee, so no he wasn't let off.

DNA strikes again?

"Good thing is was Germany, if it had been the UK the blind guy would be up on assault charges,"

Rubbish. That only happens in cases of disproportionate violence (kicking someone repeatedly in the head, say, or shooting them in the back). A friend who was jumped by two thugs broke one's arm and got the other down; when they told police they wanted to press charges, they were told in no uncertain terms to "sod off and stop taking the p!ss". And that was Bristol.

David Beck seems to live in "Political Correctness Gone Mad!" land, not the UK.

Made my day, thanks. It could only be better if Esser had killed the vermin (I'm supposing he's a Neonazi, although that might not be the case)

British law says; If they're attacking, take them down. If they leg it, you can't catch them up and give them a beating or shoot them in the back as they run.

I think we're supposed to say "Political Correctness Gone Mentally Challenged" now.

If that's true then I'm moving to Bristol.

Round here they arrest people for even thinking about defending themselves.

I have to admit the British bobbies are generally pretty fair about this sort of thing in spite of the dafter headlines in the press.

My old Jiu-Jitsu instructor got chased up a narrow blind alley by a national front march for shouting something inappropriate. By the time the police got to him he had broken several arms, legs and heads and was happily laying into the remaining skinheads with gay (literally) abandon.

The police arrested him and carted him off to the police station, but then were good enough to explain that it was only because they couldn't get a couple of hundred skinheads into two panda cars and let him of with a tsk, tsk, please don't do it again.

Oh dear oh dear. The 5PPEHT was invented by Pai Mei, who is Chinese and "hate[s] fucking japs". Ninjas are from Japan. I don't think Pai Mei would teach his technique to any Ninjas, even if he did teach it to Uma Thurman for some reason.

</extreme pedantry>

A good and much older buddy of mine (seventy odd at the time) once found himself in a similar situation to Herr Esser. Before anyone else had managed to register that a hazardous situation was about to occur, the tables were turned. The skinhead vermin concerned found himself swiftly subdued by my old drinking buddy (who just happened to have been a royal marine commando who survived things like the Naarvik campaign), who proceeded to offer him (held in a neck lock) around the boozer for "free digs" (no takers - fortunately for all concerned), before the attempted yob was given a good old fashioned kick up the backside and left sprawling outside the pub. The story passed into pub legend, and my bootnecked buddy went peacefully into the afterlife some years later.

Don't you just love it when the good guys come out on top.

... with regards to Police attitudes to self defence. Here in Staffs, my experience is very negative. Not content with simply being incompetent gung-ho wankers who think having a warrant card makes them somehow superior to 'civilians' (they honestly seem to think that Police officers are not civilians), they have frequently, in my personal experience and that of my friends, attempted to press charges against those who defended themselves, apparently on the simple expedient of "Well, the other guys have run off now, so we can't charge them and the stats will look bad if we don't charge someone..."

I wish I was exaggerating. Perhaps I ought to return to Scotland (which, to be fair, I have long intended), like Bristol, Grampian force seemed to have common sense officers and a genuine street presence.

"By the time the police got to him he had broken several arms, legs and heads..."

On the first readthrough, the ambiguous wording here suggested to me that the protagonist in your story hadn't, as turns out to be the case, turned the tide and begun fighting back, but was a poly-limbed, multi-headed genetic freak who had been severely injured by his attackers.

I referred this to my former-judo champion now wheelchair bound father who informed me that in his day the 80something head of the British Judo Council was set upon by four thugs who learned to regret their decision.

Some things don't change.

It happens here in NZ.

We are "allowed" to defend ourselves using "reasonable force".

However, being a trained martial artist makes you a weapon and so using a martial art constitutes unreasonable force unless you warned them before hand - and if you do that, the prosecution lawyer in your trial will claim you incited the other to attack you by proclaiming your fighting ability (yep, the poor attacker is not responsible for his actions, you forced him to attack you by bragging about how good you are...) or claim you were "threatening" the poor attacker with violence.

In a lot of cases, a *jury* will let you off by reason of self-defense, but you still have to go through the whole "be arrested, get out on bail, get a lawyer, defend your actions in court" crap while the attacker gets assistance because he came from a "broken home" or some such shit.

Bear in mind that a 6'10, 250-lb gang member with steel-capped boots is "unarmed" and a 5'6" weedy bloke with a black belt in pretty much anything is "armed". "Armed response" is not permitted against said gang member because it's not like he can *kill* you using just his strength, mass and a pair of steel-caps, is it? How dare you use a weapon (martial arts) against such a minor threat.

About the only means of defense you're allowed to use without prosecution is to run away - but you'd better stop when you reach a busy road and let the bugger catch up and beat you because if you were to run across the road and he tried to chase you then was struck by a car and injured, it'd probably be your fault...

Did martial arts for several years in NZ.

Amoungst the people there were several police officers.

Every couple of years they would take aside the senior students and inform

them what the police expected them to do if they were the wrong place

at the wrong time.

I never had any problems with the police ,except they turned up too late,

when this happened to me.

But then I and my mates only did enough to scare the stupid buggers off

and not go out of our way to beat the living daylights out of them.

Perhaps your Marital arts club should have got some police offficers in for a

talk.

Or perhaps you are not speaking from personal experience? but from my

mates cousins, pets, best friends, distant relative on the feline sides?

Also a prosecuters job is to prosecute, not go well the defendant is a nice

bloke you should aquit.

I must ask

Are you typing this using firefox with ubuntu too?

I have this strange issue on digg (yes embarassing in the least)

that almost all my comments get double spaced after a new line...

"We actually encourage citizens to take the law into their own hands: it means less paperwork for us."

To Quote Pratchett

Rule One: "Do not act incautiously when confronting a little bald wrinkly smiling man,"

Rule Nineteen is: "Remember Never to Forget Rule One. And always ask yourself: How come it was created in the first place?"

Seems that the crooks are coming up short against the elderly all over the place. A 20 year old punk got his bare butt handed to him by a 69 year old gentleman a few miles from my place over here in the states.

The short:

Wayne and Kathie Boniface returned from dinner at an Observation Hill neighbor’s home shortly after 8 p.m. Thursday to find a burglar in their house.

Kathie Boniface asked the burglar who he was. “I’m with the FBI and you are blowing my cover,’’ the burglar said.

When Wayne Boniface got done with the intruder, he had no cover.

After a more than five-minute scuffle with Wayne Boniface, the burglar lost all his clothes and ran out of the West Ninth Street home nude.

The long:

http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/articles/index.cfm?id=49782&section=News

This is a bit like a happy-slapping incident down here in Brighton a while back...

A group of half a dozen yoof's thought they'd do the old "punch an innocent bystander and video it on their mobiles" thing. Unfortunately for them, the bloke they picked on was a local amateur boxer - who promptly knocked one unconscious and put two of them in hospital.

Link to the story:

http://www.theargus.co.uk/mostpopular.var.1188750.mostviewed.slap_victim_who_fought_back.php

I live in NW London.

'nuff said.

I'm glad you said it... I was going to reply in the style of the late-great Pai Mei myself, and it would almost certainly have involved insults to women, americans, japanese and those pathetic shoalin monk dogs! ;)

The law in the UK says you're allowed to use "Reasonable force". But the problem is "What is resonable?". Well, it's rather a subjective thing. But generally using force to defend yourself, others or property is acceptable provided it's in proportion to the offence being committed. Even deadly force can be justified if you genuinely believe your (or others) life is in danger. Also there is the matter of motivation. You're allowed to defend yourself, others and property, but you're not allowed to give someone a kicking once they're past defending themselves, or use excessive force to prevent someone running off once they've given up on the offence. Keeping them in an armlock is probably allright. Breaking their legs with a lumphammer... no...

Seriously, the guy was BLIND. No jury on the planet would convict him, even if he murdered the guy.