The entire study is behind a paywall at El Sevier (link in the article).
Just say yes to VNR.
I thought the risk was positional asphyxiation. Which you can do without even touching the neck.
WEll, read the article ?
I don’t know. As a grappler, I’ve certainly strangled and been strangled (or VNR’ed if you prefer) probably thousands of times at this point. So it seems pretty safe to me. However, friendly gym rolls probably aren’t comparable.
I’m also not sure how reasonable this assumption is.
“Dr. Lewinski echoed the researchers’ warning, “The safety of the VNR is directly tied to its proper application, and training is key. Not only do we expect officers to know how to apply a proper VNR against a dynamic and resisting suspect, we expect them to know which people to avoid.”
I guess it would come down to the safety of VNR, including a poorly applied one, vs whatever the present alternatives are.
The training part is two parts: Being able to grapple effectively enough to control the subject in order to effectively and “safely” apply the VNR.
As you know, it takes a lot of training and experience vs resisting opponents to be able to have reasonable control of the amount and direction of force one is applying.
I don’t see cops having time or motivation for that kind of thing.
As far as judging who NOT to apply a VNR to, well, shit happens awfully quickly in the field.
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Yeah. Unless specific cops take it upon themselves to train independently, I doubt they would have sufficient training time to perform competently under pressure.
I have known around a dozen people that had strokes from / while being choked on the mats.
People tend to think something can’t happen, or won’t happen, until they personally experience it, or see it for themselves.
Some general rules of thumb:
Don’t apply chokes to people who have high blood pressure, especially if they are over the age of 55, and especially-especially if they also smoke.
Also, don’t apply chokes, nor any kind of head trauma to people with epilepsy, or a pronounced history of serious brain injury.
Don’t apply chokes to people who are on serious blood thinners, or otherwise have hemophilia.
And don’t apply chokes to people who have had prior strokes.
And, to err on the safe side, I also would not apply chokes to people 55 and older, and certainly not 60 years old, and older.
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Did the stroke victims have fit the categories you warned against applying chokes to in your subsequent post?
Cops, of course, all have a priori knowledge of all those things on random perps who they go H2H with…
I will note that as I got older, having VNR applied to me in Judo or BJJ got more and more of an interesting experience. By the time I was 54 or 55, even being partially put out, or working to escape a partially applied technique, left me pretty spacey for a while. Going all the way out and I’d have to sit out for a while to recover. Nothing painful, mind you, but I was out of it for a while.
Still very relaxing, though.
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Interestingly, most of them were between the ages of 25 to 45, with no known prior underlying conditions.
However, the conditions I listed are the conditions for having several times the normal risk factor of having a stroke (without being choked),
or from having serious brain issues, or bleeding out, from traumas that otherwise healthy people normally shrug off.
Which says there is not that much risk. And ironically vascular restraints are an answer to positional asphyxiation because you are not really taking a guy down face first (sort of)
I sit them down.
The risk factors for clamping some rando on a concrete footpath are many and varied. And it is either not taken in to account or weirdly the wrong thing is taken in to account.
So a guy has four fatties sitting on him and one guy is on his neck. It is the guy on his neck who must have kulled him. And that isn’t always the case.
So they create a rule to stay off his neck. But that just forces your four fatties to put down more top pressure everwhere else creating more risk of killing the guy.
I think the solution is probably to have people who have some skill working alone, or together, with techniques/methods to not use the infamous “pig pile” to control people on the ground.
Of course, sometimes, it’s probably not an option, depending on said person being restrained.
Whether or not a VNR is appropriate to be apply would be situational, to state the obvious.
Cops in general work rotating, 10-12 hour shifts, plus or minus time to write reports, book people in, etc. If they have families, it’s an even bigger strain on their time and attention priorities.
Becoming skilled enough at H2H to be able to effectively and relatively safely handle people using something that requires the skills of VNR (the technique itself and the ancillary grappling skills), seem to me to be a bit of a stretch.
So we have vascular restraints and say risk of stroke. And that is a thing.
And we have george Floyd who didn’t die from a stroke caused by a vascular restraint.
Probably.
Sometimes it’s not possible to find an exact cause of death?
Floyd had a load of illegal drugs in his system. Add in pre-existing health conditions, and it’s a recipe for disaster to restrain him face down.
The cop in charge fucked up, and paid the price.
Not really. The risks are many and varied. So I can basically pull a guys head off using a throat crush over a short period of time. I think you will struggle to find a crushed windpipe from a vascular restraint.(believe me I have tried)
So thats if the cop does everything wrong. He still probably won’t kill the guy.
But old mate out on the pingas held face down for two long. Definitely can die from that.
Old mate thrown via sweep or push or punch crack his head on the concrete. Definitely can die from that.
I think we are confusing correlation with causation.
Cop had guy by the neck so therefore he died via neck restraint.
I’m not confusing them.