Law enforcement officers need to train Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu; both for their own and the public’s safety. However, the vast majority of them lack any sort of meaningful training – and it doesn’t go unnoticed.
Rener Gracie reflected on this fact in the recent episode of Paddy “The Baddy” Pimblett’s podcast:
Sadly, law enforcement officers are disastrously undertrained when it comes to going hands-on.
I’ve been teaching law enforcement for 25 years now, I’ve been involved in this discussion of teaching law enforcement in America… And I try to expose the truth as much as possible in this regard.
But, the average police officer in America gets under 4 hours per year of training on how to grab a hold of someone and control them with their empty hands.
Less than 4 hours of training a year is unbelievable, emphasizes Rener:
As a result of this, what happens is that a police officer gets into an interaction with the public… [And] when they go to go hands-on, they are ineffective because they don’t know how to do it technically!
So, what they end up doing is that they panic.
And when a police officer panics, Rener explains, they lose control over the interaction. At that moment, all hell can break loose:
The level of force escalates so rapidly that they end up resorting to the taser, baton, pepper spray, or in some cases – lethal force – much sooner than it would have been needed, had the officer been equipped with some of the basic skills… Of control, immobilization, some submissions.
