Former Gang Member Teaches Self-Defense To Police

One gentle, spring-like afternoon I went out to visit my friend Jim DeMile, who operates his Wing Chun Do training center for martial arts.

There may have been an association that pulled me there - the gentle, spring-like day and the fact that Tao Wing Chun Do means "beautiful springtime."

What goes on out there near North 175th Street and Aurora Avenue North is anything but gentle. Jim's pupils, ranging from boys to grown men to middle-aged housewives, learn to respond violently to an attack. They even learn to disarm an armed robber.

That's what DeMile does when he's here. On Friday he goes to Port Clinton, Ohio, to teach self-defense techniques to police officers in surrounding small towns. On April 8, he goes to New Zealand, then to Australia, to teach more officers.

In July he teaches a confab of police chiefs in Ohio, then the Police Academy in Nassau County, Long Island.

"Lately," he said, "I've been working with the King County sheriff's department on what we call a `gun retention' program. FBI statistics show that 20 percent of all officers killed are killed with their own guns. Ninety percent of officers will be shot if they have their guns taken away."

To my mind, at least, Jim is an amazing figure. Here is a one-time violent, youthful gang member who now teaches police officers how to defend themselves.

"Back in the 1950s," Jim said, "there were gangs all over Seattle. Each gang had its `designated fighter' when it went up against another gang. The designated fighter was known as `The Duke.' I was The Duke of the Capitol Hill gang up on 15th.

"I always wore a jacket and inside the jacket I had a hidden bicycle chain. I was a bad one, all right, fighting all the time."

Jim's life changed when he got busted in 1959. It was a minor caper, involving theft of a stereo set. DeMile served 59 days in the King County Jail.

"But I got out. I was released on condition I go back to school. In school is where I met Bruce Lee, and he changed my entire life."

The late Bruce Lee was the Elvis Presley of martial arts. He became a legend, a slight young man generally thought to be the world's greatest martial-arts fighter. Jim worked with Lee, studied under him and became, in effect, his disciple.

So it's striking then that this one-time kid street brawler is now teaching policemen how to save their own lives.

"I don't try to teach officers the whole of martial arts. They don't have time for it.

"But I do take certain things out of martial arts and adapt them to the individual cop who has special needs. You have to be selective, adapt to the individual.

"In one of my gun-retention classes with the sheriff's department, I had one very big guy and one small woman. Obviously, you can't teach them the same things."

In teaching officers, Jim is careful not to bad-mouth their previous training. But he is appalled by what he says is a "generic" approach to their training - ignoring the need for individual application in subduing or disarming a criminal.

"Bruce Lee taught that way," Jim said of individual application. "He said in teaching self-defense, you don't try to make everybody clones."

Jim is also appalled by the tremendous pressures and conflicts among officers doing their jobs. They have to worry, for example, about lawsuits.

In one class in Ohio, he demonstrated how to disarm a criminal by breaking his arm. They told him, "But we can't do that, it's abusive."

"And in the face of this," Jim said, "are the FBI statistics that show 90 percent of the cops will be shot at if they have their guns taken away by a thug."

In police training, Jim uses a gun that shoots - not bullets, but a beam of light. He devised the gun himself. In this way, he says, he can demonstrate techniques of disarming people: Success is judged by the beam of light.

Shortly, he will be teaching Seattle police. His introduction will always be the same: "You tell me what you need. I will design a skill for you."

To begin his police classes, Jim went to the head of the downtown Gateway Tower. The Gateway has a sizable health-club facility. "If you guys will provide the space," he said, "I will teach the police and sheriff's officers free of charge."

A deal was struck immediately, and classes will begin shortly. DeMile is still very troubled by the role of a policeman in society. So much is asked, so many restrictions drawn.

"It's a tremendous conflict," he says. "On the one hand you've got the police bureaucracy worried about being sued, while the officer is worried about his life.

"I figure if I can help these people, it's my contribution to the community."

Emmett Watson's column appears Sunday and Thursday in the Northwest section of The Times.