Good for Newark!
But, from what I understand, they gave the cops better training and got better result. That is how education works.
But, from what I understand, they gave the cops better training and got better result. That is how education works.
Rener Gracie is obviously famous for Brazilian jiu-jitsu but he also trains police on how to subdue criminals in a safe way. He has some interesting ideas about how to identify bad cops also.
It was worth the listen.
https://samharris.org/podcasts/246-police-training-police-mi...
It’s good to see grappling arts make a comeback, as there are plenty of non-lethal ways to make someone submit.
Edit: For cases where the police officer already is in control.
It’s unfortunate because there are some aspects that could make judo a better groundfighting base than BJJ for this type of situation. When a judo match goes to the ground, the competitors must be clearly making progress toward a pin or submission or the referee stands them up. This favors more explosive movements (resolving a situation quickly) over a slow positional game from your back.
Of course, a skilled BJJ practitioner could also make quick work of an untrained opponent. But judo’s focus on quickly establishing a dominant position has some advantages.
Unfortunately this ruleset also enables competitors to “turtle up” in a defensive position on all fours. It’s hard for your opponent to quickly get a submission or a pin from this position, so the fight will quickly be reset by the referee. This has led to a lot of even competitive judoka having very weak ground game, as they can get by for the most part by assuming this position. Obviously that’s not going to be very effective in a real-world situation.
BJJ has its flaws for this sort of thing too. At least in the gyms I’ve trained in, there was very little focus on throwing. So once a fight is on the ground someone with a BJJ background will excel. But against a resisting opponent, they don’t have nearly the tools that a judoka has to bring things there.
In the end I think either one will give you a massive leg up, but it’s important to keep in mind why you’re training in the first place and understand the bad real-world habits that their respective rulesets can encourage when taken too seriously for the sake of competition.
Honestly, for the general self defense you only need a few well practiced takedowns. We drill single leg, double leg, and I drill a couple collar based judo trip/throw. It mostly comes down to spending time on the feet. No-Gi at my academy lets you do basically anything from standing. My gym does a lot of MMA and has a strong competitive nature (we train for comps a lot) so we get a lot more focus on the standing game I think.
FWIW I have done Judo some too and find it fun. Except when I get slammed lol.
They disbanded the entire department -- breaking the police union in the process, and then hired far _more_ (but somewhat lower-paid) police than before.
The new, larger, but reformed department has done dramatically better than before. So there's really something for everyone -- breaking the union was important, _increasing_ funding was important, but also increased de-escalation training helped.