Islington Police Station, would not be my first choice as a venue for a fun filled Friday evening, nor would its fine officers necessarily be my first choice as boon companions for the aforesaid fun filled Friday evening. I was there to identify one of my students whom they had arrested. The name hadn't rung a bell with me over the phone so I said that I would go to identify him. The alternative was that he would be charged, though it wasn't clear what with.
John had been practicing his Tai Chi sabre form with a metal sabre on an open green beside the block of flats where he lived. Acting on information, from frightened children according to what I was told, from an old lady according to what John was told, 4 squad cars screeched to a halt; the uniformed occupants jumped out , told John to drop the sabre, lie face down and place his hands behind his back. This he did.
John was handcuffed, searched, thrown into the back of one of the vehicles and driven to Islington Police Station, where he was questioned at length, kept in a cell, identified by me as being one of my students and released about six hours after the original arrest with much gay badinage about Bruce Lee, the ninja etc.
Having spent 9 years in the Royal Hong Kong Police Force and having taught a number of police officers, I believe that most police officers are thoroughly decent human beings. After more than twenty years practicing martial arts, I have the same opinion about martial artists.
Most police officers do not practice martial arts and have little or no knowledge of them apart from a few self defence routines learned at training school. Most martial artists are not police officers and have little contact with that world. As a result there is mutual ignorance. Many police officers and martial artists are young and can be overly keen either in enforcing the letter of the law or in practicing martial arts skills at an inappropriate time or place. Also the nature of police work is that you see people at their worst and this can lead to a jaundiced view of society. Through the actions of certain police officers and certain martial artists, there is therefore a degree of mutual suspicion and animosity.
This has historical roots in both Chinese and Japanese martial arts, where in the distant past and, certainly in the case of Chinese martial arts, also in the present governments have attempted to enforce draconian measures to prevent the use of martial arts as a focus for rebellion against state terror.
On the other hand, it is well known that certain martial arts clubs are little more than recruiting offices for criminal gangs such as the Chinese triads. Nor is this activity restricted to the Far East as is shown by the recent arrest in Sweden of a martial arts instructor and a number of his students for armed robbery.
We have only to look at other scandals nearer to home, such as the Kateda affair or the recent attack in London by one Chinese martial arts group against another which occupied the same sports centre, to see that it is not entirely surprising that the police and the media sometimes view us in a less than favourable light. As far as martial arts are concerned at least, the police and the general public do not like it when life starts to imitate art as depicted in kung fu movies. Even behaviour which would be acceptable in a park in Taiwan or Singapore could find you the object of a 999 call from a terrified member of the public.
One of the other problems we have to face as martial artists is the effect of the rise in crime, especially in crimes of violence, in the last decade. This has put pressure on politicians of all political parties to do something. They have made certain cosmetic changes in the law which have had little or no appreciable effect on the crime level, but which have had a profound effect on martial artists practicing certain weapon skills. The police have the unenviable task of trying to enforce yet more laws while the level of violent crime remains much as before. The only positive aspect of a rise in crime is that it does also tend to increase the number of people wishing to learn martial arts.
In the short term I don't see much prospect for improvement on either side, except that I don't think that John will get arrested again for practicing with his sabre in that part of Islington. In the long term, I'd like to see martial artists displaying more common sense and self control in their conduct both inside and outside of martial arts classes , and attempting to portray themselves in a more positive light. I'd like to see more police officers practicing martial arts and adopting a manner towards members of the public, whether martial artists or otherwise, more like that of Dixon of Dock Green than Robocop.