It is obvious that in the USA and other countries with large amount of guns per person, the police clearly need guns. However, not every country in the world has legalized guns, neither does this take away the requirement for learning Jiu Jitsu. If every cop knew BJJ then there would be fewer deaths due to situations being managed with more confidence and control. This is a strong opinion of Andre Galvao who has previously advocated for all police forces to learn BJJ.
Of course, there would still be tragedies that would happen. However, we would be much more likely to be seeing individual tragedies rather than large statistics of controversial practices and deaths. Unfortunately, unscrupulous politicians will often use tragedies to push through their own agendas, rather than do what is best for everyone.
In the examples below, we will remove guns and other deadly weapons from the equation. This is because if your own life is directly threatened you likely shouldn’t be using BJJ and need to keep a safe distance from the criminal. There is no magic fix to resolve this problem in law enforcement.
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Benefits Of BJJ For Subdueing An Attacker
Jiu Jitsu or wrestling teaches takedowns, either of these would be good to use on someone who has attacked you or another person. Secondly, BJJ allows you to control a person on the floor, especially if they are inexperienced being there.
This alone gives you a huge advantage in the fight since you have moved the area of combat into a domain you are very comfortable in.
If we exclude blood and air chokes for a moment, you should be able to pin someone who is somewhat larger than you to the ground in a 1 on 1 situation and hold them there until backup arrives. This could be done from side control, top half guard, mount or even on the persons back. If they are untrained they will have no idea how to escape from any of these positions.
The person on the bottom will not really be able to attack you from this position either. If they are striking wildly upwards, you can either strike back or put them in an armlock, kimura or armbar, depending on what they are doing with their arms.
Why Should Cops Learn BJJ? Why Not Something Else?
In the example given above, there is almost a 0 risk of death or any serious brain injury. You may think chokes are dangerous, they are not if trained and used properly, which will be explained later.
If you taught cops Muay Thai, Boxing or any other kind of striking sport then there would be a lot of deaths and traumatic brain injuries. This is because if they are taught to strike attackers, at some point someone is going to get knocked out and hit their head on concrete.
Police must do SOMETHING against an attacker since their options are basically limited to striking, grappling or shooting. There is a clear answer on which of these 3 is safest for the criminals own well-being.
But Aren’t Chokes Dangerous?
Chokes CAN be dangerous but aren’t if learnt correctly. Driving a car can also be dangerous if you’ve never done it before and are now in a high-speed chase.
This is the main problem behind why people don’t like the police to use chokeholds and think that they are unsafe. It is because (the majority) of police are not trained properly.
If someone has achieved a blue belt in BJJ then they will at least know how long they need to hold a choke for before someone goes unconscious.
If the cop is new to this situation, they might:
#1 Have no idea if they’re actually choking the criminal or not (especially if choking from the back)
#2 Not know how long to hold the choke for
Both of these scenarios give a chance for the criminal to die since the cop have no experience in the said example.
Why not wrestling?
Wrestling would be a very useful tool for a cop to have. I would go as far as to say, it is good enough for 99% of situations. However, there are some situations that are life-threatening to the cop. In these cases, there must be an option to use a chokehold.
If the suspect is considerably bigger and stronger than the cop in a drug-fuelled rage they cannot be calmed down or reasoned with. Even if you managed to take the suspect down and knew he didn’t have a gun. He could only be controlled for a certain amount of time. If he manages to get back to a top position then your life could be in danger. With a controlled choke, you could make render him unconscious and not have to worry about him getting back on top.
This is why wrestling would be very good, but perhaps not good enough – since chokes are not permitted in wrestling, they wouldn’t be trained.
Overall Thoughts
The increasing lack of options for cops to use chokes and ignorance of ground fighting is going to put them into some dangerous situations. These situations will become more dangerous for both the cop and the criminal since the stakes are now higher.
Without chokes, cops will be forced to gamble on the suspect not trying to harm them.
At the very least cops should be learning wrestling with some ground pins and sweeps, even if they don’t learn any submissions. This would be good enough to handle almost all of the situations which will arise.
