Nov 11 Dennis Jones – Teenage Yobs

This interview was conducted in February 2005 

Steve Rowe talks to Shi Kon Martial Artist and doorman Dennis Jones

SR  Last month’s article raised a fair bit of interest, particularly where you talked about some doorman who picked on youngsters but not older harder thugs… do you think that there are times when a doorman has to be ‘firm’ with teenagers and if so… how?

DJ  Just because someone is a teenager, it doesn’t mean that they can’t be a thug! Teenagers are getting involved in crime at a very young age nowadays. They get into pubs and clubs, they’re all around us. Often they are young and fit and it can be difficult to discern age in a violent confrontation especially if there is more than one person involved. 

To a certain extent you can take into account a persons age when defending yourself- there are times you make allowances for their attitude and the insults that they hurl when they have a go at you. Personally though, as I’ve got older I’ve become more tolerant, thinking of my own children and hoping that other people are just as tolerant but if they are tooled up and prepared to use it, teenagers are as dangerous as fully grown men!

SR  Our home town is the birth place of the now famous ‘Chav’ culture, do you think it’s a particularly ‘hard’ place?

DJ  I think it’s to do with people, whether they are naturally tough and some areas seem to breed them tougher than others, many of the Welsh are quite hard and I’ve met a few men that just have that natural ‘hardness’ about them. But to be quite honest Steve, the ‘hardest’ place is wherever you happen to be getting your head kicked in!  And that can happen in the most surprising of places! 

SR  …Your grandfather was Welsh and served with distinction during the first World War-Military medal at the battle of the Somme I believe.

DJ  Good memory Steve, you’re right. You know compared to the old boys the antics of a lot of people today are unbelievable.

I had a guy come up to me in the nightclub a little while ago with his nephew and he was telling me that his nephew wanted to be a bouncer, he told me that he did kickboxing and liked a fight and the violence that went with it. He then told him to show me some moves but before he got himself in a stance I said I didn’t need to see a demonstration of his kickboxing.

He was young so I went on and explained that it wasn’t all about violence and that social skills counted for a large part of the job, but this guy wouldn’t stop talking about how his nephew liked a fight, so I turned to him and asked if he liked fighting and violence so much, why he didn’t go out to Iraq…. He replied he didn’t want that much violence!

SR  The thing is Den, you walk down the road where we live and nearly all the young guys are baseball capped, spotty faced, slack jawed, wearing clothes that don’t fit and unable to talk in a coherent fashion, the girls aren’t much different with hoop earrings that a gymnast could swing on and the classic ‘face lift’ with their hair scraped up into a top knot that a sumo wrestler would be proud of, in other towns you find some youths like that but here there are so many!

DJ   The scum have hijacked fashion! A lot of youngsters dress like that but only a few are problem. The skill is in being able to tell who’s the villain, after all, even you like listening to Eminem (laughs)

What struck me on our trip to the Czech Republic earlier this year was the fact that there was nothing like that there, the Czechs did seem to be able to keep their youth under control and better focused.  Delinquency in England is such a big problem, drink and drugs just seem to overwhelm them at such at a young age!  Not all of them, but these problem kids are ‘in our faces’ and we don’t seem to be able to get away from them.

SR  I was watching a television series on violence around Britain, showing cctv footage of terrible violence and they were blaming alcohol and the ‘free drinks’ and ‘happy hour’ culture, but they never mentioned drugs, watching the violence, I’d say a lot of it was drug related, no one was drunk, they were all drug ‘hyper’, why do you think the media don’t talk about the drug problem?

DJ  Drugs are a huge problem and affect everyone.  Drunks can barely stand and don’t present so much of a problem, but as you said, drugs ‘energise’ them and the violence is much worse.  When you try to communicate with someone high on drugs you quickly realise how psychologically damaged they are and that your communication skills just aren’t going to work. 

It’s an offence to take drugs but people still do it, they’re often cheaper and easier to obtain than alcohol.  The authorities just don’t want to admit how much of a problem it actually is, they just keep going on about pushers.

SR  They don’t seem to test for drugs but they must be able to…

DJ   It is not an offence if you’ve taken it! But it’s a problem if you drive a car and

I know it’s a problem in the construction industry where people take drugs at a nightclub and are then driving heavy machinery the next day…  There needs to be drug testing in the workplace.

SR  It seems that the problems occur as soon as the offender is touched by the police, he becomes violent and abusive, it takes up to six policeman to restrain him in the street, in the police vehicle and at the station.  It’s obvious that he’s out of his head on drugs- they don’t act like any drunk I’ve known-yet in the morning he’s released and gets away with a caution or such a miserable fine that it makes a joke of the whole process.

DJ  I think that these people get away with so much with the police because they know that the police are generally quite restrained with them. They could also be getting away with a lot because the police are trying to keep the crime statistics down.

SR  What do you think the answer is?

DJ  It seems to me that we need to admit that we have a problem and punish accordingly.  We’re setting youngsters off on a life of crime because they feel that they’re invincible because they have so many rights, we don’t need to be too draconian, but there has to be a balance.  We have to stop massaging statistics and deal with the problem. 

The public need to be able to defend themselves against these criminals, all too often the wrong party gets punished.

SR   Yes…and when we have to protect life and limb and property I’m all for a most robust defence (laughs)

You also confused some people last time with your statement that “doormen can do nothing if they want to”…

DJ  With the new regulations coming into force in February 2005 there has been a lot of discussion, if the Security Industry Alliance get on our case too much, it’s easy for us to just do nothing.  If there’s a problem it’s easy to just leave it and phone the police, but without our intervention, good people get hurt.  Inevitably, the police can’t respond to all the incidents on a busy Saturday night at throwing out time and the public therefore have to lean heavily on the doormen.  If the police reserves are not sufficient to attend all the incidents, they are not liable for non attendance!  It’s a serious matter, the public could very well find themselves without any help if they are attacked.

I learned this lesson a long time ago.  First aid is not there to replace the medical services, it’s there to save or prolong life until the experts arrive, self-defence is the same.  My first serious lesson in why self defence is so important happened when  I was 15 years old and I was nearly killed in a fight with adults. One had two broken bottles the other had a knuckleduster with spikes.  My father had to fight both these guys and it was violent, bloody battle and luckily, my father won. One attacker had a broken bottle in each hand with the other attacking from behind with the spiked knuckleduster! 40 – 50 yards down the road when this was going on were 5 or 6 police officers who could apparently see what was happening but didn’t intervene,  maybe they were frightened, I don’t know, but they didn’t come to our assistance.  Police officers are not like soldiers; they’re not trained for that sort of thing.

SR  Maybe they should be.

DJ  In a civilised society we survive by co-operation and all need the services of each other.  I don’t think that martial arts are there to replace the police, but they do serve as a form of first aid before their arrival, a doorman also serves this purpose.  It gives us a chance to survive where otherwise we might be killed or seriously injured..  

SR  The problem with change is that it’s not always for the better….  Maybe next month we can give some advice for those who work on the doors….

Steve Rowe

Steve Rowe is a highly successful Martial Arts instructor - an International Neigong, Qigong and Tai Chi Teacher and an 8th Dan Karate with many other senior dan grades in other martial disciplines.

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