Are you a good witness?

**Tripitaka of AA** · 07-04-2004, 10:30

As you might expect in a Martial Arts forum, we talk a lot about self-defence situations. There are some which talk about the armed mugger, with most intelligent contributions we get the caveat "better off just giving them your wallet", then a few ideas on how to win the fight if it cannot be avoided.

In this thread I'd like to explore a little more the first option. How to come out of a street robbery the victor, without force.

In introduction, does anyone remember the pilot episode of "Martial Law" with Sammo Hung? He gets mugged at the airport when he tries to collect his rental car (IIRC). Now, we already know he is a martial artist from the prologue scenes in China, but does he take on the muggers? No. He gives them the wallet and the car keys. Later, he describes them and their vehicle to the attending officer and back at the police station he is able to identify his attackers from the mug books.

In a BBC TV pogram a few years ago, they did some experiments to highlight how poor our memories can be. They had a small Studio with about 200 audience. After the audience took their seats and settled down, just before the show started, a man ran across to a lady in the front row, grabbed her purse and ran off. The audience were then questioned individually to see what they could remember of the attacker's appearance. The results were startlingly bad. People remembered moustache/clean-shaven, dark/blond, glasses/hat/overcoat and everything short of a stripey shirt, mask and a bag marked "swag". They made an E-fit photomontage of the bad guy, and when they re-ran the taped theft, he was nothing like it. When he came on at the end, the audience were naturally amused to see how bad their memories had been... yet if this had been a street attack for real, their descriptions could have made the difference between an arrest or not.

As martial artists, we are apparently prepared to undergo strenuous training and extreme discomfort for whatever reason we choose (quite a few, although not all, will say "self-defence"). If we want to be really useful, shouldn't we put a little more effort into training our minds, our memories and our ability to make an accurate description of the perpetrators?

So do any of you do this already? Have you any tips to pass on? Are there any good links you know of?

Perhaps the various LEOs that frequent these pages can offer a view from their experiences.

**Ron Rompen** · 07-04-2004, 11:20

The only recommendation I have (and it's not always feasible) is to WRITE IT DOWN....IMMEDIATELY.

I have witnessed a few serious accidents, and always made a point of writing down what I saw as soon as I could....license numbers/makes/colors of cars, a quick sketch of what happened....any information.

You'd be suprised how soon that detail fades, or worse, how soon YOUR details can be influenced by hearing someone elses details.

The mind is a funny thing...all that information is in there, you just have to recall it.

**Tripitaka of AA** · 07-04-2004, 12:21

Excellent point Ron. I witnessed a n altercation in a supermarket car park a couple of years ago which ended with a chap razor slashed on his cheek. I took down a few notes when I got home and used them when the police took my statement. I had added various bits as they came to me, over the next few days.

I was amazed at how much I didn't remember! What the attacker looked like, what he was wearing, etc.

I had vivid recollections about certain snippets of dialogue I had heard in the build-up, as useless as that was, but couldn't remember the attacker's hair colour, or even which side of the victim's face had been slashed.

**Sgathak** · 07-04-2004, 12:44

I have a really good trick called the "SAS A to H" that we teach to women in their Assault Response courses. It was developed by the British SAS for IDing people when doing bodyguard details.

I dont have time to post it now, but will soon.

**Chrono** · 07-04-2004, 21:15

We did a little experiment in forensics class in high school where we would all do some sort of scenario and then write down what all we saw and try to guess what really happend. As you might guess, we didn't do very well.

The Nephilim · 07-05-2004, 08:54

I have a hard time trying to remembermost things from yesterday let alone a situation. But I do remember following a person wearing a grey hoodie, grey trousers and addidas trainers walking past me with 2 other hoodies around his waist. It was a known thief to the police and while on my mobile phone to the police I gave information including the house number he went into ETC.

It seems that memory is selective. If you ask me what colour car went past, I would say blue, but the one before.... no chance. But I do remember my shodan test and nearly having my head taken off with a live blade katana, but not the colour of the car. Unless you do that memorize trick of placing a story to the sitution you could remember. Like Brigarier Beven, who used to be in charge of the TA infantry of Yorkshire and Major Tasker, the training major. I used B for Brigadier and his name was Beven so it became BB. Tasker was the training major and I used the image of a steep hill. Hard to get up as it is a hard task(er). Things along those lines.

**jruner** · 07-05-2004, 10:34

I find that writing it down and even closing my eyes and trying to block everything out accept the event helps me to remember the event better. I used to do security work and was only allowed to observe and report. The only time I could use force was if my own safety was threatened.

John Runer

**lightninrod** · 07-05-2004, 12:06

There is a good exercise for improving visual recall, which I learned about in high school, but I don't know where to get the necessary materials. There were alot of groups of photographs which where different in little ways, and the challenge was to look at one for just a few seconds, wait one minute (or however long you wanted to try) and then look at another picture and try to list the differences. The photographs were pictures of rooms with various objects here and there, and in different pictures, the objects would be different, or just placed differently, or both. Some of the differences were subtle and some of them weren't. Sometimes pictures would have many differences, sometimes just one, or a few. It was a really interesting experiment to see just how much we overlooked even when we knew that we were going to be required to list differences from picture to picture and we only had to remember it for one minute.
With today's technology, this would be pretty easy to design as a computer program and could be expanded to include images of people. Maybe it has already been done.

Justin Mears

**Tripitaka of AA** · 07-05-2004, 13:09

Have we stumbled on a largely unexplored market for a Memory Improvement and Observation, Perpetrator Identification Course, to be known as MIOPIC

for short.

**lightninrod** · 07-05-2004, 13:27

MIOPIC!!! Exellent pun! Man, are you witty or what? Good one! I'm still laughing!

If I knew programming, I would already be marketing it, for sure. Somebody might get rich from this! Maybe I should get a patent attourney, huh? Maybe I'll save this thread as proof that I thought of it first!!!

Hmmm.... Anyone want to buy my idea?

Justin Mears

P.S. Since you came up with the name, I'll cut you in for 50% of the take, OK?

The Nephilim · 07-06-2004, 01:21

Originally Posted by lightninrod

MIOPIC!!! Exellent pun! Man, are you witty or what? Good one! I'm still laughing!

If I knew programming, I would already be marketing it, for sure. Somebody might get rich from this! Maybe I should get a patent attourney, huh? Maybe I'll save this thread as proof that I thought of it first!!!

Hmmm.... Anyone want to buy my idea?

Justin Mears

P.S. Since you came up with the name, I'll cut you in for 50% of the take, OK?

Sounds like the criminal computer system that the police were trying out. It would recognise faces even in disguise. It was developed in the 90's to detect fires by the thin whisps of smoke before the fire even took place. It was futher added to and made into feature recognition. I have no idea of the outcome though.

**Tripitaka of AA** · 07-06-2004, 04:10

Ahhh, but Will (shall I call you "Neph"), you fail to appreciate the potential customer base for this new product...

Everyone who ever forgot a face... everyone who ever saw a dodgy-looking guy hanging around the ATM... everyone who wanted to be able to greet people by name... every old granny who wants to be able to identify the neighbourhood kids that keep climbing into her backyard to collect their football...

The software isn't to automatically recognise... it is to teach you how to use your brain more efficiently.

But anyhow... apart from that pipe-dream, don't any of you guys have some techniques we can share. Are you really saying that all your training is to "be a hero" and you don't have ANY plans to make a good witness. The laws of probability would suggest that you're wasting a lot of time on something you won't use, and not giving ANY time to something you will probably need.

Hey, I know nothing! But I wouldn't mind trying to improve on that

**Mandeigh Wells** · 07-06-2004, 06:30

I have the worst memory ever........most of the time I can't evern remember what day of the week it is........I would call a red car a blue one.....etc....I guess I would be the most hopeless witness ever.

Mandeigh

The Nephilim · 07-06-2004, 07:53

Originally Posted by Tripitaka of AA

Ahhh, but Will (shall I call you "Neph"), you fail to appreciate the potential customer base for this new product...

Everyone who ever forgot a face... everyone who ever saw a dodgy-looking guy hanging around the ATM... everyone who wanted to be able to greet people by name... every old granny who wants to be able to identify the neighbourhood kids that keep climbing into her backyard to collect their football...

The software isn't to automatically recognise... it is to teach you how to use your brain more efficiently.

But anyhow... apart from that pipe-dream, don't any of you guys have some techniques we can share. Are you really saying that all your training is to "be a hero" and you don't have ANY plans to make a good witness. The laws of probability would suggest that you're wasting a lot of time on something you won't use, and not giving ANY time to something you will probably need.

Hey, I know nothing! But I wouldn't mind trying to improve on that

Call me Will as The Nephilim were a race of giant people around 4000 B.C allegedly created by the gods.

Only thing to do is to attribute the situation to a story or somewthing to easily remember. Those memory people do it all the time. Something like sky blue car or green grass car. Both have a way or remembering the colour. My dads car in 1979 was a Vauxhall Chevette Hatchback, dark blue with the registration PHD 416P. That was when I was 8 and I am now 33.

**Chrono** · 07-06-2004, 10:32

If I remember correctly, cognitive psychology has said that people are much better at remembering faces than their names. I, on the other hand, am the other way around. From the first time I hear someone's name, I remember it. But, let me meet them again and I'll be thinking, "It's that (insert name here)?"

**Sgathak** · 07-06-2004, 11:53

SAS A to H

A - Age
Give a rough outline. Dont try to be "on target", just be general.... ""He was in his 30's"

B - build
Dont describe how tall he was, what he weighed, etc... notice his build i.e, fat, skinney, althetic,

C - clothing
Note what hes wearing but remember that his clothes can be easily changed. This means the sooner this info gets given to the police the better. However, if you note anything generally odd about his clothes (patches [biker patches for example], all one color [reds, blues, blacks, greens], symbols repeated through the clothing [13's, sharks, fists, etc], and so on...), make sure you pass this on.

D - distinguishing features
scars, tattoos, etc - pretty easy

E - elevation
I said above not to describe how tall the person was, here is where you make up for it. Most people are horrible at describing height. Adrenaline or fear can make a person seem much larger than life... how many people have you met in your life thinking they looked like a "big guy", but after youve known them for a while dont seem quite as imposing? Same situation here. So instead of describing the 5'8" mugger as *easily 6'2"*, pick an object the person is standing next to or moving past and note where they line up with it. Then you can show police how tall he was based on his relative height.

F - facial features
shape, mustache, beard, etc.

G - gate
anything particular about the way he walks

H - hair
Easy nuff on this one right?

The A to H was designed to provide the most useable information, noticed in the fastest period, with the ad of a simple memory device - The faster you get this info to the police, the better (obviously)

**Tripitaka of AA** · 07-08-2004, 07:33

Thanks for that Joe, it is a good and simple method. I guess it just needs a bit of practice to make it second-nature.

I have a little game I play to myself while I'm out walking. I try and remember the words of a favourite song. Then at the end of the verse I try to recall a useful description of the last person who walked past me (easy in a desert, a bit harder ina busy town on shopping day).

Try to remember the third last face you saw.

Try to describe in words, the shape and identifying features of your mum's face. Now try to describe your workmates. Describe six people, then get someone who knows them to guess which one is which.

Oh and, forgive me for being rude, but you mean gait don't you!