Being the victim of an attack isn’t limited to big cities such as New York or Los Angeles. Even in little Bowling Green, Ohio, attacks can happen to anyone at anytime for any reason, and deciding what to do in that situation could be a matter of life or death.

This past week, members of the Citizens Police Academy went through the different ways you can defend yourself if an attacker happens to choose you as their victim.

According to Patrolman Jeremy Lauer, the police can only give you options, they can’t tell you how to react in certain situations.

“You have to decide what is most important for you to survive,” Lauer said. “If letting the attack happen works for you, it might need to be done. We can’t tell you what to do. You have to decide what is best for you at that particular moment.”

The class consisted of verbal descriptions and some hands on training. During the verbal demonstrations Patrolman Lauer and Patrolman Darin Reinhart described some horrific ways to defend yourself.

The defense tactic that irked most people in the class was the eye gouge. Patrolman Lauer said that if you are being attacked you must do anything possible to survive. Well, doing anything to survive may include poking your finger into your attacker’s eye so hard that ocular fluids gush down your arm. And if that doesn’t stop the them, once your finger is in, just go ahead and pull the whole eye out.

Luckily the tactics don’t get juicier, just a bit more painful.

If someone is attacking you and the only thing you can get to is their throat, well, then Patrolman Lauer and Reinhart say to grab that Adam’s Apple and do anything you can to it. Poke it, pull it punch it. The idea the patrolman are trying to get across is that if anyone attacks you, you have the right to do anything in your power to survive, but it must be done quickly.

“If you are going to succeed in the defense of an attack it’s got to be right from the beginning,” Reinhart said. “If you get into a situation you have to go 1,000 percent because there is no turning back.”

I’m not sure about the average person, but if I was put into a situation where I had to pull someone’s eye out of its socket, I don’t think I could revert back to my days of playing “Mortal Kombat,” I’d definitely have to come up with a different tactic. “You have to know if you are the type of person that can do these tactics or not, if not, you have to do anything you can to survive,” Lauer said.

Whatever the tactic you choose, the idea is to create a space between you and the attacker. After you’ve countered their attack with some sort of force, most of the time you will have the option to run.

After the extremely descriptive verbal portion of the class was over, we got the opportunity to attempt some more everyday strikes that might help us defend against attacks.

The patrolmen explained to us that the majority of the general public doesn’t know how to punch correctly, so the proper punch when defending yourself is the palm heel strike where the heel of your palm acts as your weapon. This punch is less likely to cause harm to you, and more likely to disable your attacker.

Along with the palm heel strike we learned the forearm strike, the knee strike, the grab, how to get out of chokeholds, how to get out of headlocks and basically how to keep yourself safe if being attacked.

If someone has you pinned up against the wall, if you take your arms and push up on their upper arm and walk forward with force you will take away their balance and gain the upper hand.

On the other hand if someone grabs you from behind, you can drop to one knee and roll them over your shoulder also gaining the upper hand.

Even though you think you might be able to defend yourself in an attack situation, there are factors that have to be weighed before deciding to defend yourself.

“You can’t just learn this stuff and expect to do it, you need to be able to practice it,” Lauer said.

Even though this class was just a brief demonstration of what you can do in an attack, I definitely feel safer knowing that I have options, whether or not I will be able to act on those options is a different story.

“If you take just one thing out if this class, then we’ve done our job,” Lauer said.

I definitely learned that even though I’m not Chuck Norris or Bruce Lee, I still will be able to dive into my repertoire and pull out some special tactics that might be able to save my life.

This last class marked the ninth week of the Citizens Police Academy. Next week, graduation time.