The potential for jiu jitsu to enable police officers to be better at their job is enormous. We often observe videos like trips and perfect stand up technique enabling men in nasty situations to defend themselves regardless of what side of the conflict they’re on.
Outside Trip So Good It’s Criminal
However for Law Enforcement Officers there’s an obvious benefit to knowing ground work – aka brazilian jiu-jitsu.
This is what led the England officer Antony Hall to establish something called copjitsu – a jiu-jitsu program specifically for policeman that goes down every Wednesday night.
Anthony Hall told jiujitsutimes:
I’ve been a police officer for 12 years and essentially I’m a beat cop. So, if people ring the emergency number…I come.
I started BJJ three and a half years ago and essentially I started it to help control dangerous offenders and to spend time with my brother, who already trained. I am now a blue belt with one stripe.
Adding he soon realized he and his collegues could greatly benefit from this leading them to establish South Yorkshire Police BJJ Club:
… we all recognized how good it could be in self-defense and we all loved the family feeling that the BJJ community has, so we set up the South Yorkshire Police BJJ Club. It is intended to introduce cops to BJJ for self-defense and fitness. We started in mid 2017 and the class is growing and growing. We all train at different BJJ clubs and so we all asked our coaches if they would teach a class every Wednesday on a rotating system. We also have my judo coach to teach work applicable takedowns.
We intended to set it up as a platform to introduce cops to BJJ, to get some grounding before moving to a local club. This has been really successful, with lots of cops joining local gyms. But most of us keep Wednesday free to meet up for “copjitsu”.
Cop Uses Judo Throw On Troublemaker
Reasons Why Law Enforcement Officers Should Learn Jiu Jitsu
People don’t understand the benefits of BJJ in a policing scenario. I think people look at a gi and fail to recognize that you can use a person’s everyday clothing to control them as you would a gi. I don’t feel that people actually understand what grappling is and how is can be used to control a larger opponent or suspect.
