#246 — Police Training & Police Misconduct
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 41 minutes
Words per Minute
187.73137
Summary
Henner Gracie is a third generation member of the Gracie family that is credited with creating Brazilian jiu-jitsu, in large measure, and passing it down through three generations. Henner and his brother, Huron, are some of the best teachers on the planet, and they have focused in recent years on teaching police officers the skills they need to apprehend and control suspects without significantly injuring them. And jiu jitsu is uniquely good for this, and this training is being made available to police departments all over the country. And, as you ll hear, this conversation is a true PSA and almost an infomercial for this kind of training, and that s not an accident. We re at a moment now in the public perception of policing that is nothing short of calamitous. So in the hopes of doing some small thing to help rectify that, I wanted to have a full discussion with Henner on this point, on the point of what it takes for a police officer to arrest someone who is resisting arrest, and we break that down here. And we talk about some recent successes, which hopefully will be a sign of things to come. And now, without further delay, I bring you Henner's guest, Sir. Henner and I am here with me, Sir, my pleasure. . Sam Harris - The Making Sense Podcast "This is the marriage of one of the lower energy voices on Earth, and my own, my own voice on Earth." - Stacey Stacey, Stacey And this is a delightful, balanced conversation about the state of law enforcement and jiujitsu. So let me tell you that this is the perfect marriage, and you will be in for a perfectly balanced conversation. - Let me know what you think of it - let me know your thoughts, comments? Tweet Me! Timestamps: 0:00:00 - What's it's going to be? 6:30 - What does it take to make a balanced conversation? 7:00 8: What are you looking for? 9:15 - What s it going to happen? 11: What do you think? 12:00 | What is your favorite piece of advice? 13:15 | How do you need to do? 14:30 15:40 - What is the best training for law enforcement? 16:20 - What are your favorite part of the law enforcement training?
Transcript
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Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast, this is Sam Harris.
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Okay, well today is yet another PSA, this time on the topic of police violence and the
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relevance of jiu-jitsu training to mitigating some of the problems there.
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Today I'm speaking with Henner Gracie, and Henner, if you don't recognize the name, is a third
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generation member of the legendary Gracie family that is credited with creating Brazilian
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jiu-jitsu in large measure, and passing it down through now three generations, where
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Henner and his brother Huron are some of the best teachers on the planet, and they have
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focused in recent years on teaching police officers the skills they need to apprehend
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and control suspects without significantly injuring them, right?
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And jiu-jitsu, as you'll hear, is uniquely good for this, and this training is being made
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available to police departments all over the country, and Henner and Huron are at the forefront
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They're not the only people doing it, but they are amazingly effective at what they do.
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So, as you'll hear, this conversation is a true PSA and almost an infomercial for this
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We're at a moment now in the public perception of policing that is nothing short of calamitous.
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As I record this, we're getting to the end of the Derek Chauvin trial.
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It's, of course, not yet clear what the verdict will be there.
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However, as you'll hear, Henner and I are both quite clear in leaving aside the Chauvin
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It is certainly not an example of pervasive misunderstanding of police procedure.
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I think anyone who saw the killing of George Floyd recognized that we were witnessing a shocking
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instance of police misconduct, and at just what level a jury will soon decide.
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But, for instance, in recent days, since I recorded this conversation with Henner, there's
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been the case of Daunte Wright, a motorist who was shot and killed by a police officer in
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And this, if you've seen the video, it's about as clear as it can be that the police officer,
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Kimberly Ann Potter, thought she was drawing her taser when she was, in fact, drawing her
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And when she shot Daunte Wright, she was horrified to discover that she had her gun in hand.
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As you'll hear, this is relevant because the police reliance on tasers is not without significant
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In this case, risk of the extremely negative outcome of drawing your firearm by accident.
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But the overall picture here is that our police officers are shockingly ill-equipped to deal
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So when members of the general public believe they're witnessing the murderous sadism and
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racism of an oppressive police force, in many cases, that's not at all what's on display.
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What we're seeing are people who are poorly trained and very much in over their heads once
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And I really don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the pervasive misunderstanding of
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what's happening here is tearing our country apart.
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So in the hopes of doing some small thing to help rectify that, I wanted to have a full
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discussion with Henner on this point of just what it takes for a police officer to arrest
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So Henner and I break that down here, and we talk about the kind of training that should
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And there are a few people who are working harder to make that happen than Henner and
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They are the chief instructors at Gracie University, which is a global jiu-jitsu organization that's
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They have over 180 brick-and-mortar locations worldwide affiliated with them, and over 300,000
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students learning online at gracieuniversity.com.
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And they have over 20 years of experience teaching law enforcement professionals.
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And we talk about some of the recent successes here, which hopefully will be a sign of things
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And now, without further delay, I bring you Henner Gracie.
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Yes, I was telling my producer, Stacey, that this is the marriage of one of the lower energy
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voices on Earth, my own, and one of the higher energy voices on Earth, yours.
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And so I'm going to have to snort cocaine over here or do something to bridge the distance
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between us, or you're going to have to slow it down.
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Or it's a perfect marriage, and all your listeners and fans will be in for a delightful,
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perfectly balanced conversation about the state of law enforcement, jiu-jitsu, and whatever
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So first, I've spoken about self-defense and martial arts and jiu-jitsu in various places
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on the podcast before, but you contacted me because, I mean, many of us are seeing kind
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of troubling signs in, you know, police behavior and training and ideas about what should be
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legal and illegal in terms of kind of the escalation of force procedure on the side of
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the cops, and there's just so much confusion about what is going on in the world with respect
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to the cops and violence, both warranted and unwarranted.
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And so you do a lot of training, you and your brother, Huron, who's been my main jiu-jitsu
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And so we really want to jump into that and talk about it, and it's obviously an incredibly
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timely conversation given that, you know, we are now recording this during the trial of
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And so there's a lot to say there, but before we jump into police procedure and violence
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per se, let's just talk about jiu-jitsu and grappling generically and introduce us to how
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And I'll just set it up by saying that you and your brother are part of the Gracie family,
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which is this, you know, legendary, isn't too strong a word, family in the martial arts
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community, and you can talk briefly about the history there.
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But I just want to say that the conversation we're going to have here is not really adequate
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to the topic if people don't then go look at some of the video that we might reference
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of you guys training cops and you really teaching anything on the mat.
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I mean, the two of you are two of the most gifted teachers of anything I've ever come
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So people really, we'll link to some videos that will be relevant on my website where
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But, you know, this is an audio document that really requires some visual aids in the end.
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And perhaps you can just briefly talk about the history of jiu-jitsu and how you come
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And I always appreciate the opportunity to share, you know, really my family's legacy
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of self-defense and martial arts with a new audience.
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So thank you, Sam, for having me on and for your dedication to this amazing martial art for
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And yeah, it's wise of you to kind of give some framework for the listeners to understand
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what's going on here because you, as someone who practices the art, it's as what we're
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going to talk about today is as common sense and logical in terms of the major advancements
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that have been made in the recent months and years in law enforcement training as a result
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For you, it absolutely makes sense because you have all that kind of that frame that is
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But for listeners who do not have a history or even knowledge of jiu-jitsu and maybe the
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exposure, because it's such a pop culture phenomenon now is mixed martial arts, maybe
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your exposure is literally hearing about a UFC title fight and a technique or an arm bar
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So understanding that that's the case, I can give a brief breakdown of the family history
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and, you know, how we got into jiu-jitsu and what it was intended for.
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And then how, when the time comes, how that translates perfectly into the use of force
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in law enforcement today, which we're absolutely involved in for the last 25 plus years.
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So, you know, the Gracie family, my grandfather, Elio Gracie, was the co-creator of Brazilian
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They learned it from his brother, Carlos, who learned from Japanese men in Brazil.
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And eventually when my grandfather started practicing, he had difficulties with the Japanese rendition
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of the art and because he was a very small, very frail, very weak young man as a teenager.
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So because of his physical frailties, he had no choice but to modify the techniques over
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And those adaptations to the Japanese predecessor are what gave birth to what is known today as
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Brazilian jiu-jitsu or Gracie jiu-jitsu, depending who you're learning it from.
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And, you know, that happened in Brazil in the early 1900s.
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And to test the efficacy of these techniques, my grandfather started engaging in challenge matches,
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fights with other representatives of other martial arts.
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Think mixed martial arts, but before it was called that.
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These are just, you know, no rules fights between two masters of their crafts, really
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from a scientific perspective to understand what works and what doesn't.
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And my grandfather, you know, fought all comers and so did some of his brothers.
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So these are Gracie challenge matches started in Brazil.
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And then my father brought the art to America in 1978, got established in his garage here in
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Southern California, in Hermosa Beach, and continued teaching at his garage and also having these
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challenge matches in the garage where, you know, he would meet a karate master through
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a student of his in the garage, was introduced to a karate master or a taekwondo master.
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And then these challenge matches would happen between two arts.
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When you're knocked out or passed out or tap out, we stop.
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And again, these were professionals really believing in their crafts, going there.
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And invariably, these representatives of these other disciplines would get submitted and
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neutralized very quickly, minutes, sometimes less than a minute.
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And it was almost unbelievable to them how effective jujitsu was.
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And the reason why jujitsu was so effective, if I had to summarize it in a nutshell, why jujitsu
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is so good is because where other martial arts rely on speed, strength, power, and explosiveness
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and surprise attack and violence in that manner, jujitsu, above everything else,
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violates the distance from which traditional fights are fought, right?
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Rather than standing toe-to-toe and swinging to see who knocks the other person out, jujitsu
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aims to close the distance, control the subject, take the person to the ground or surface where
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their strikes no longer have power because they don't have their feet planted and the
00:12:02.880
They're now on their ground flailing, don't know what to do.
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And then the jujitsu person who's more comfortable in that grappling distance controls them until
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they exhaust and invariably the opponent or the untrained adversary, the non-jujitsu opponent
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in that case, will make a mistake by exposing a limb or a neck, a joint of some sort.
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And then the jujitsu practitioner will use leverage, not strength, but leverage, full body
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mechanics to isolate one of the limbs or neck of the subject and then apply a submission
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At that point, they have no choice but to tap out or suffer extreme bodily harm if the pressure
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were to be applied to his max capacity or capability, which 99 times out of a hundred isn't necessary
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because the jujitsu trained expert there knows that they have full control, they get compliance
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or they get cooperation, or in this case, a tap out during a challenge match and the fight's
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And in many cases, it's, you know, and you see these, these are videos are online.
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If you look up Gracie challenge matches, they're on YouTube from the garage days, from random
00:13:03.980
And then my father and his partner, Art Davey, were the co-creators for the UFC.
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And that's where the whole thing took another form because it was basically using the UFC,
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using television as a platform to make these challenge matches seen to the world so that
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everyone around the world could say, wow, how is karate going to do against boxing, against
00:13:21.080
sumo, against judo, against kickboxing, against jujitsu?
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And, um, and today, you know, fast forward several owners, right?
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My father sold his interest after the first, I think five installments.
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And then at that point, it changed hands a couple of times to the Fertitta brothers who
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And with Dana White's help made it a, you know, a spectator sport on a regular television,
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And today everyone knows jujitsu kind of in that lens.
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But I think the important part for this discussion is that the people at the, at the core of
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jujitsu, right, the Gracie family and, you know, people that we've taught and other instructors
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who've made this their life know that above everything else, jujitsu is the art that gives
00:14:06.200
a smaller, less physically fit, powerful, less athletic person, the ability to defend themselves
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and control and overcome a larger, more athletic person by way of distance management, by way
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of alavanca or leverage, and by way of, you know, energy efficiency.
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And through those processes, control someone in a relatively nonviolent manner, neutralize
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them, exhaust their energy, and then ultimately win the fight with a leverage-based joint lock
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It's truly the leveler of the playing field for smaller, weaker individuals, which is why
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it's taken just such a rapid, you know, escalation of popularity here with the assistance
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of the UFC, it's now becoming the martial art to learn as an adult or as a child, right?
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Where historically, you know, karate and taekwondo were more associated with children, right, developing
00:15:01.780
And as someone got older, they would stop doing taekwondo or karate.
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And every other person who's just a lifelong fan and practitioner of the art, it's so engaging,
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it's so effective, it's so reliable, and ultimately, it allows people to neutralize
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And that's what I think has, you know, such pertinence to today's discussion regarding
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Yeah, I just want to pick up on a couple of points there.
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One is just for those who are not fans of mixed martial arts and don't really know the
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significance of what happened in the UFC in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, which
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launched, it was 1993, right, was the first one?
00:15:45.480
Yeah, so your father, Horian, launched that, and, you know, it's become this major sport,
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which is great, but we should recall that it really was in the beginning and for the longest
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time remained a virtual science experiment to discover which martial art was the best, really.
00:16:06.540
I mean, it's like, so under conditions of minimal rules, I mean, there are now more rules than
00:16:11.460
there were back in the day, but, you know, virtually no rules apart from eye gouging.
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I mean, you could even, if memory serves, you could even strike to the groin in some of those
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I mean, it was just, it was as close to a street fight in a ring as anyone had ever seen,
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and there were no weight classes and no time limits, right?
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And, if I add, it was a single elimination, eight or 16-man tournament in the same night.
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So you had to fight three times to win in the same night with no time limits.
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Yeah, it's like the movie The Game of Death, where Bruce Lee has to fight someone on every
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If you're going to win that thing, you have to just keep advancing through opponents.
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And so your uncle, Hoist Gracie, won, to the astonishment of virtually everyone who didn't
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understand what was likely to happen here, the dominance that he showed in those initial
00:17:10.340
bouts over people who were, you know, obviously bigger and stronger and obviously thought they
00:17:18.320
And the fact that he did it all by, as you say, closing the distance and, you know, essentially
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strangling people, it was mystifying and it created a total reset of the thinking around
00:17:36.260
And, I mean, since things have moved on, I mean, the primacy of jiu-jitsu is less noticeable
00:17:43.480
now because people from every discipline, whether they start out as a college wrestler or even
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just a stand-up striker, if they're going to get into mixed martial arts, they're going
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to learn a lot of jiu-jitsu, whether they call it that or not, because it is the necessary
00:18:00.660
foundation for grappling and certainly submission in the sport now.
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So it's, we shouldn't give the false sense that jiu-jitsu is all a person needs to know
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Obviously, there's a lot of striking and specialization in that space, but it has unique relevance to
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the topic at hand, which is so much a matter of understanding how to control people.
00:18:29.740
When you're talking about the tools that are available to police officers to, with a minimal
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amount of violence, arrest somebody who they've decided to arrest, the tools they have are quite
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limited, and there's certainly no tool that is better than being a true expert in how to
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physically control people without inflicting lasting injury on them.
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And if you don't know jiu-jitsu, if you don't know, you know, call it grappling more generically,
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if you're not an expert grappler, and there's so many videos that attest to how poorly trained
00:19:07.960
most cops are in this space, you resort to the use of other tools that are synonymous
00:19:18.540
So the moment you take out a baton and start cracking someone over the head with it,
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right, that is going to work by a principle that is synonymous with neurological injury.
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cops here, but I guess there's two sides of this that are very interesting to me.
00:19:35.540
There's what the cops are trained to do and should be trained to do and how they can
00:19:42.960
But then there's also the immense amount of confusion people have over the significance
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of how the people getting arrested can behave or misbehave.
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When I see videos of these botched arrests, you know, where cops use or, you know, for one
00:20:00.840
reason or another, provoke to using, you know, inordinate violence, so often I'm seeing people
00:20:07.000
resisting arrest in obviously dangerous ways, obviously provocative ways, obviously doing
00:20:13.600
things with their hands that, you know, in another context a cop has to expect is an effort
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And these things are going off the rails because so many people just do not understand the cop's
00:20:31.760
So I think we should talk about both sides of this, but that's just to set you off and
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running in the direction of what cops should and should not be doing here.
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So we have to start with, by clarifying some of the misunderstandings around police training
00:20:48.380
policing because, right, what we have today at the core, what we have right now is an
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Like an unmatched level of disappointment from the general public on police performance
00:21:04.340
It's fair to say that there's just, it's never been such a high degree or such a large
00:21:10.720
gap between what level of force the police officers are using and what the general public
00:21:16.340
believes the police officers should be using, okay?
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And I want to kind of start with that position.
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I want to talk about how we got to that point and where we actually started.
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So the most shocking information I give people when I talk about this subject is the fact
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that the average police officer in California, okay, and other states, some more, some less,
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but on average, in California, receives four hours of control, arresting control training
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Now, just to be clear, arresting control includes jujitsu type grappling, restraint devices,
00:22:04.560
So they have to have the refresher on what the law is regarding use of force and certain,
00:22:08.120
you know, case studies that they kind of revert to when they talk about use of force and law
00:22:12.080
enforcement. So in four hours, it's not uncommon.
00:22:15.960
This is the actual trainers here at local California agencies telling me this.
00:22:20.000
They said, Henry, in four hours, it's not uncommon that only one of those hours at most
00:22:24.200
is physical control tactics that the officer can use when they're taking someone down and
00:22:30.480
controlling them in a violent resisting of arrest situation, right?
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So when you hear that, four hours every two years, which means basically two hours a year,
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but you split those four hours up and there's only an hour of grappling, which gives you an
00:22:45.940
average of 30 minutes potentially of grappling jujitsu type training annually for an officer.
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It gives some framework to what we're dealing with here.
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So when I see the state of the country right now and people are like pissed that cops are using
00:22:59.720
too much force and defund the police, there's a lot of things going on there, I'm torn because
00:23:05.660
I'm going, I don't think the general public knows how little training we're talking about
00:23:14.360
And then, so then the question, when you see an excessive use of force, it's for one of
00:23:19.380
It could either be the cop was incredibly well-trained and they're abusing their power deliberately,
00:23:25.600
For any number of reasons, they're flexing their power and they're going above and beyond
00:23:29.860
and they just want to show how they can hurt people and they go and they do it.
00:23:32.980
There's another possibility here though, that the cop is so disastrously under-trained, the
00:23:39.280
actual end user street cops are so disastrously under-trained that when they enter into these
00:23:44.520
violent, incredibly intense, life-threatening altercations, even when there is no weapon present
00:23:49.860
from the subject, there's always a weapon on the officer's hip.
00:23:52.540
So every engagement is a life or death engagement when there's a gun on the officer's hip that
00:23:56.720
can be taken from them, which does, which is not uncommon.
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So when they're in these life and death physical altercations or arrest scenarios and they,
00:24:05.060
and this is your expertise, so you can correct me here.
00:24:06.980
And they experienced the amygdala hijack, right?
00:24:10.240
Where their, their, their survival response takes over because they're so under-trained that
00:24:17.440
And as a result, when the amygdala hijack happens and they lose prefrontal cortex control,
00:24:22.980
now all of their decisions are fight or flight or freeze or survival mode, fear-based responses
00:24:27.400
that are really automatic and they don't have much of a choice in the matter.
00:24:32.080
And the level of force they use at that point, it's a complete toss in the air of what's
00:24:38.520
And that's why we get so many uses of force that are so disastrous.
00:24:40.880
So the point I'm making is that my experience and every single time, Sam, that I go to a
00:24:47.460
GST, Gracie Survival Tactics, is our law enforcement week-long 40-hour certification course where
00:24:53.940
these cops learn the Gracie tactics and they become trainers that then go back to their
00:24:59.780
The problem is in those courses, we teach them for a whole week and they learn a ridiculous
00:25:04.320
amount of information and they become proficient when they test out of that course.
00:25:07.520
When they go home and the California agency, the chief says, yes, you can train our officers.
00:25:12.640
They call them in-service officers, the ones that are the street cops.
00:25:18.220
And out of those four hours, this every two years, you can teach one hour of GST.
00:25:22.480
So the fact that we're teaching the cops great techniques that are nonviolent is really
00:25:26.560
insignificant because when they go home and teach it one hour every two years, really on
00:25:34.180
There's no reflex development in that amount of time.
00:25:36.260
I have students that train one hour a week, two hours a week, and there's still white
00:25:39.440
belts after a year who could finally put this stuff together.
00:25:42.360
So the level of undertraining cannot be overstated.
00:25:45.800
And the fact that we train instructors at a high level, but they go back and get blocked
00:25:49.240
by the state mandated requirements is where this entire thing falls flat on its face.
00:25:53.960
So GST, as great of a course that it's been, and as much as a great review we get from the
00:25:58.060
students that we teach, those are the instructors.
00:26:00.880
So they go back and teach these end users and everything falls apart.
00:26:03.980
And I would go so far to say that based on my knowledge, because I ask them, Sam, every
00:26:07.700
class we survey them, and I ask, how many hours on average annually do your in-service
00:26:16.260
And I'm in the room with 100 officers from sometimes 50 to 80 agencies, right?
00:26:21.840
So I'm teaching a massive room full of people of all these instructors, and the average answer
00:26:27.740
But that includes all those other things that we're talking about, right?
00:26:30.840
Some other states have more, some states have less, but all of them know that even if it
00:26:34.920
were eight hours, Sam, and it was all eight hours were GST techniques, it would not be
00:26:43.740
And my recommendation for the country is it has to be at least one hour a week of jujitsu
00:26:52.220
Preferably jujitsu adapted for law enforcement scenarios, because it is different.
00:26:56.400
Like when there's a gun involved and this person can grab your gun, you got to do the
00:26:59.920
Americana arm lock is different when someone's reaching for your gun.
00:27:03.120
But the point is, I would go so far to say, and I've said this publicly already, that based
00:27:07.920
on what information I know about how under-trained the end users are, which is not public knowledge,
00:27:12.180
The people typically don't, they think they're trained like Navy SEALs, which is why you
00:27:16.620
Because if they were trained like Navy SEALs, where they trained six months for an eight-week
00:27:20.320
deployment, if they were trained like Navy SEALs, we wouldn't see this level of poor
00:27:26.160
But I'd go so far to say, and I have, that police officers in America are the most under-trained
00:27:37.140
There is no profession in America where we ask the professional to do more with less training
00:27:46.540
invested in them than when we ask a police officer, which is a regular human being, like
00:27:52.780
you or I or any other person off the street, we ask a regular human being to arrest a violently
00:27:59.240
resistant and in many cases, assaultive subject with four hours, let's just call it, of training
00:28:08.360
You're not, you couldn't create a worse scenario for someone asked to do a harder job.
00:28:13.180
Yeah, I'll simply add, I don't actually know the exact numbers, but I know that the story
00:28:18.580
with respect to firearms training isn't much rosier.
00:28:22.580
I mean, the assumption is that cops are very well trained with guns and have all the scenario
00:28:30.020
training that tunes their intuitions with respect to when to draw a gun and when to fire
00:28:36.820
And it's just amazing how little, little effect of firearms training cops have.
00:28:42.580
Six hundred and sixty-four hours, Sam, is the state mandated requirement of training by
00:28:47.660
California Post, peace officer standard of training, to be a police officer in California.
00:28:54.000
In California, it's six hundred and sixty-four hours to become a cop.
00:28:56.800
Just for comparison, it's sixteen hundred hours to become a cosmetologist and fifteen hundred
00:29:05.440
So both of those require more than double the training that it takes to become a police
00:29:09.720
officer in the United States of America, California state of the United States.
00:29:15.040
And every other state has slight deviations from that.
00:29:17.700
But the point is, to your point, that includes firearms, that includes hand-to-hand combat,
00:29:22.240
that includes arrest and control, that includes legal policy and everything else in between.
00:29:25.720
So even on a macro level, what it takes to become a cop, I was talking more on the micro
00:29:32.800
On the macro level, we're setting these cops up for disasters because you're taking a regular
00:29:39.740
human who, in many cases, has never been in a fight in their life.
00:29:43.080
You're giving them six hundred and sixty-four hours of training that include everything under
00:29:45.820
the sun, but not nearly enough of everything, right?
00:29:48.020
So they learn a little bit about everything, but they're masters of nothing.
00:29:50.900
And then you give them a gun and a badge and say, go enforce the law.
00:29:53.400
And they think that because they have a gun, that people are going to listen to them.
00:29:56.740
So the moment that someone says, I'm not going to jail, spits on the cop and starts walking
00:30:01.140
And now you're asking this regular human who played high school, graduated high school,
00:30:05.280
played video games every day, all day, four hours a day, got it, went in, joined a police
00:30:11.180
Not all of them, but I'm just saying, this is possible, right?
00:30:14.160
You're getting a kid who's never played a sport, never been in a fight in his life or her,
00:30:17.400
and now is being asked to arrest a violent person without any substantial training
00:30:25.060
The grappling and or jujitsu skill set that will allow them to do that in a way that A,
00:30:31.260
First and foremost, protect the officer, but secondarily, and very importantly, protects
00:30:38.440
So because, listen, the amygdala hijack happens, as you know, when there's an actual or perceived
00:30:46.140
And in law enforcement, a high stress law enforcement situation where someone resists arrest, an officer
00:30:51.440
can very quickly go into the mental framework of, oh my gosh, I can't control them, they're
00:30:55.680
not listening to me, they get very quickly elevated anxiety, and soon they're in the
00:31:00.400
amygdala hijack, and now it's fight or flight, and now they're going to quickly resort to
00:31:03.540
their pepper spray, taser, baton, or any, you know, firearm, worst case scenario, in very
00:31:09.800
What jujitsu does, look at you or me, Sam, for example, who've invested years in a skill
00:31:16.540
set that allows us to be in close quarters with someone, control them against their will,
00:31:23.240
Think about how we would respond in a situation where there's an officer, or sorry, a suspect
00:31:28.260
who's behaving erratically and violently and not cooperating, and we decide we have to take
00:31:33.540
We have so many options before this situation becomes deadly because we've invested in the
00:31:40.440
And as a result of that confidence, the perception of loss of control comes much later.
00:31:45.640
It requires much more violence and chaos for you or I to perceive the loss of control than
00:31:54.020
for an officer who does not know how to control a violent subject with their bare hands.
00:32:01.400
We're fighting to get more training for officers because when I see these videos go viral and
00:32:07.860
people are so quickly to judge it as an abusive use of power by the police officer.
00:32:13.700
And just because it's on topic, the Derek Chauvin case, I'm not referring to that, right?
00:32:22.940
That was not a—in my case, I would not classify that as, oh, he's undertrained, therefore he
00:32:32.080
There was not really any threat to him or other officers.
00:32:34.060
And he kept the knee on the neck for far too long.
00:32:36.460
And the anatomy of how that affected his blood flow, we can discuss later if you want.
00:32:41.560
I'm talking about the 99% of other videos where it just gets out of hand, crazy.
00:32:46.820
And the cop escalates force unreasonably to the public who see it on video.
00:32:51.660
And everyone goes, man, that cop abused, used their deadly force, used their taser way
00:32:56.060
What I'm speculating and what I feel is often the case is you have a good person who's doing
00:33:02.100
But even the best cop, the best character, moral character, best values, the best cop
00:33:08.480
on the planet, let's just say, the second they're in a situation that they are not prepared
00:33:13.980
to handle non-violently, they're going to handle it violently.
00:33:21.400
Well, not only that, they have a duty to handle it violently because—I want to come back to
00:33:28.160
that one detail you brought into play here is that when you're dealing with a cop, there's
00:33:36.900
And this is something that people just simply do not have intuitions about.
00:33:40.780
So when you see some of these videos where someone starts resisting arrest and they start,
00:33:46.420
you know, pushing a cop or, you know, grabbing, you know, the cop tries to restrain someone,
00:33:53.860
They start resisting, they start pushing back, it becomes a grappling match or, you know,
00:33:59.100
the guy's girlfriend runs up and grabs the cop to stop him from trying to cuff the boyfriend
00:34:05.120
Whenever you put your hands on a cop, this, in the cop's mind, very, very quickly has to
00:34:16.100
That's what will happen if you overpower the cop.
00:34:19.960
In the cop's universe, that is an absolutely bright line that cannot be crossed.
00:34:25.640
And yet in the thinking of so many people who just think they shouldn't be arrested for
00:34:33.020
You know, it's like if the cop pushes me, I can push him back, I can grab him, I can punch
00:34:37.380
You know, it's like it's completely inappropriate for a cop at that point to draw his gun and
00:34:41.620
shoot somebody, but the cop doesn't know what you're going to do if you knock him out, right?
00:34:48.480
He has to assume the worst at what you're going to do to him and to the rest of the
00:34:55.680
And so the presence of the cop's firearm changes everything.
00:35:00.840
And then there's the additional fact that people have terrible intuitions for what is truly
00:35:07.280
threatening from the cop's point of view with respect to what a person can be doing with
00:35:12.560
I mean, it's just the moment someone sticks their hands in the pocket of their hoodie or
00:35:17.700
they turn around and grab something off the front seat of their car and they're not following
00:35:22.060
directions, the moment your hands go out of sight, that is a five alarm fire from the cop's
00:35:29.940
And it has to be because every cop knows of the case where a half a second later, that
00:35:37.520
hand that just disappeared is now holding a gun and it's shooting a cop in the face,
00:35:45.760
Virtually 99% of people are unable to rationally interpret what they see when they see these
00:35:56.060
And I think that it's a very valid point, 100%.
00:36:02.040
One of them was the cop has a gun on his hip and the likelihood of that gun being taken
00:36:06.960
from him or her during the altercation is so real that the cop cannot get knocked out.
00:36:12.780
It has to be, in the cop's mind, it has to be impossible that they allow a knockout so
00:36:16.760
they're willing to do anything to prevent that.
00:36:18.620
And the other one is letting the suspect's hands, you know, be out of sight and kind of splitting
00:36:23.280
Regarding the cop having the gun on their hip and the risk that that presents in every
00:36:28.280
And I think that people are completely oblivious to those realities because cops understand
00:36:32.860
and have seen all the videos and have done all the research and have, you know, have
00:36:35.840
had the training and ultimately been told, right?
00:36:39.520
That, yo, if you get knocked out, they can take your gun, they can shoot you with it.
00:36:44.420
So they think they can, you know, rustle and tussle and just kind of grab and push or
00:36:48.580
and be aggressive with an officer, not knowing that the officer can't play that game because
00:36:52.760
of the risks that await them because the stories have happened.
00:36:55.840
But what I will say is that the chance of Henner, if I was a police officer, and I'm not a great
00:37:01.420
example because people are going to say, oh, you're a black belt, you've been doing this
00:37:04.000
But let's just, any version of me, let's call the blue belt Henner.
00:37:06.420
Let's call the white belt with four stripes Henner or yourself, right?
00:37:09.700
As a blue belt, that the chance of someone in a ground fight, taking a gun from you or
00:37:14.660
I is significantly lower than taking a gun from a cop who has no ground control and no
00:37:22.740
comfort in that, in that close quarter situation.
00:37:24.860
So even though what you're saying is true, that the people have to understand what I'm
00:37:29.280
saying is, listen, we can only control so much what the world thinks of law enforcement.
00:37:35.340
We can, we can only, you know, it's like, it's like regarding bullying, right?
00:37:38.780
Like parents go, yeah, well, kids shouldn't bully.
00:37:40.380
I go, well, yeah, you can't control what bullies do, but you can control the preparation you
00:37:44.820
give your child so that when they go to school, if they're bully proof with jujitsu, they can
00:37:50.040
put up a barrier and they can behave in a different way.
00:37:51.780
So what I'm saying is I agree that there's a huge problem regarding the public's perception
00:37:55.880
of understanding the reality surrounding law enforcement and the uses of force that they
00:38:03.100
But what I can say is that an officer is exponentially less likely to have to resort to deadly force
00:38:09.720
when the feeling of threat against the officer is reduced by the increased training that they
00:38:15.940
So the more trained an officer is, the less likely that their gun be taken from them
00:38:22.640
A simple example happened in Kansas City a few years back.
00:38:28.600
Officer Donald Hubbard, Kansas City police officer, Officer Donald Hubbard, you know,
00:38:33.400
approached a scene where there had been a man who attacked a cab driver and the man
00:38:37.240
attacked a cab driver, was pissed off and was drunk, punched him.
00:38:39.980
Officer Hubbard shows up, tries to take the man down.
00:38:42.680
And in doing so, tries to control, puts him on the ground, puts a knee on his back, like
00:38:49.760
Now you have Anthony Bruno was the suspect's name.
00:38:52.760
Anthony Bruno was on top of Mr. Hubbard and was hitting him in the face.
00:38:56.300
Like imagine a side control position, Sam, like, you know, bottom of side control, like
00:38:59.880
kneeling next to you and then hammer fisting you in the face and like scratching you.
00:39:04.480
So he was just kneeling on the ground over the top of Officer Hubbard, punching, scratching.
00:39:08.720
Officer Hubbard on his back had no clue what to do, draws his firearm, fires one round
00:39:14.660
and kills the suspect from the bottom of the fight, shooting upward into his torso.
00:39:19.620
The suspect was off-duty firefighter Anthony Bruno.
00:39:22.980
On his wedding night, was drunk, had a debate with the cab driver, and got killed at the
00:39:30.160
hands of a police officer from the same Kansas City.
00:39:35.060
Where when I look at that situation, right, because that Officer Hubbard wasn't wrong in
00:39:39.280
his use of force because his life was in danger.
00:39:42.180
But the danger to his life was a function of the four hours every year or two that he receives
00:39:47.340
in ground fighting to where he did not know how to recuperate guard, use his legs to manage
00:39:52.180
the distance, neutralize the strikes that were reaching his face.
00:39:55.920
Had he known how to do any one of those skills, right, he would not have had his life in danger
00:40:00.180
and therefore he could have waited there, waited for help to arrive just by holding a position
00:40:04.000
of guard in Punch Block Series stage one, as we learn as a beginner here in your first
00:40:10.300
If he were just to hold that position, he would have retained his firearm.
00:40:18.220
I blame the department who ultimately is at the mercy of the state because the state sets
00:40:24.400
the annual training requirements and chiefs don't like to operate out of bounds.
00:40:28.420
They typically will stay within the state's requirement and say four hours is what the
00:40:33.420
That's what we're going to do for every in-service officer every year.
00:40:36.120
So everyone ultimately is a victim of the state.
00:40:39.160
And there's not really a federal law enforcement requirement.
00:40:43.780
And then within the state requirements, the agencies have the right to do more or less,
00:40:47.560
but generally they try to stick within the state's requirements just to be safe.
00:40:50.920
So who's to blame in the fact that Officer Hubbard had to shoot off duty firefighter Anthony
00:40:55.480
Bruno because Officer Hubbard reached an amygdala hijack, a perceived loss of control.
00:41:01.840
Well, really actual, I guess, in his case, because he did not know what to do.
00:41:04.900
An actual loss of control in a violent altercation and had to use deadly force because had he got
00:41:10.820
knocked unconscious, for all he knows, the suspect could have used the gun against him.
00:41:15.200
Whether he did or whether he would or would not have, we don't ever know.
00:41:17.860
But they have to presume that that is going to be the case.
00:41:22.960
So he shoots that, he shoots officer, he shoots the firefighter, Anthony Bruno.
00:41:27.600
And then people could look and say, oh man, you know, why did he shoot him?
00:41:32.020
And my point is, you don't have a choice to use techniques you never learned.
00:41:35.420
And that's where the whole system is failing these officers.
00:41:38.700
We're putting them in situations to expecting much more from them than what we're giving
00:41:45.280
And then the whole country's on fire because these excessive uses of force.
00:41:50.040
And I'm like, man, of course, there are some of these that are not training issues, right?
00:41:55.020
Their character, their moral issues on behalf of the officers that, you know, are not the
00:42:01.020
The same way there are corrupt and there are criminal jujitsu teachers, there are bad people
00:42:07.060
in every segment of society, in every demographic, and in every profession, there are terrible
00:42:11.240
doctors, there are terrible police officers, there are terrible jujitsu.
00:42:16.700
So you're going to get those officers who are just, shouldn't be police officers, you
00:42:22.120
But the majority are good people who want to do the job the right way.
00:42:26.840
But if they're under-equipped and they underperform as a result of that, who do we blame?
00:42:40.300
I think I probably saw it first circulated in an email from you.
00:42:45.640
And one of the things that disturbed me about that, I recall, is that this is one of these
00:42:48.960
cases where you have to reflect on how you have the video in the first place.
00:42:52.560
You've got members of the public videotaping this altercation between a cop and somebody
00:42:58.700
And the bias, the default bias from the public is that the use of force by the cop is often
00:43:06.920
So in many of these videos, I don't remember in that one in particular, but in many, you're
00:43:11.360
seeing people basically, you know, take the suspect's side of whatever this altercation
00:43:16.780
is and they're shouting at the cop, you know, just leave him alone.
00:43:19.040
But what's not happening in these videos and what certainly wasn't happening in that one
00:43:29.300
It would have just taken a few other people to help.
00:43:32.520
You know, granted, in an ideal world, this wouldn't ever be necessary because the cops
00:43:37.180
would be sufficiently well-trained and in sufficient number to meet any challenge that
00:43:43.420
But I mean, here you have a very clear case of this thing is escalating to a lethal use
00:43:49.040
of force and it would have been rendered totally unnecessary if you just had a few other people
00:43:54.320
grab an arm and a leg and help the cop de-escalate the situation.
00:44:01.260
And listen, every single time we see a video that goes viral, you always get people in the
00:44:05.980
comments will say, why are you filming and not helping?
00:44:09.220
But we have to understand, Sam, that people can only help in situations where they perceive
00:44:16.580
Like it's easy for you and me to say, hey, trust me, I walk around the streets like looking
00:44:21.840
for an opportunity to help, but it just doesn't happen around me for one reason or another.
00:44:26.140
Like if I saw something, I'm getting in because I would hate for an incident to happen in front
00:44:31.140
of me and to someone to die because I did not intervene.
00:44:34.760
And as a result of my non-intervention, the officer had to escalate a level of force that
00:44:39.180
was probably unnecessary had I otherwise intervened.
00:44:43.040
Now, to be clear, there are also videos of people intervening and they're always glorious
00:44:47.380
And we do breakdowns on them and we highlight them.
00:44:49.440
And I've even asked officers, Sam, I say, guys, if you're having a troubling arrest situation,
00:44:57.020
I've actually asked them this on video and they publicly said yes.
00:45:00.120
Like I had a hundred cops in the room and I just did a big video on it one time.
00:45:02.780
And I said, yes or no, do you guys want help if the public is there and you're having trouble?
00:45:09.880
They would rather have help and not have to escalate level of force.
00:45:12.600
But if they have to do it by themselves and they're outweighed or, you know, someone who's
00:45:15.620
much more athletic than them or they're exhausted or any number of variables that gives the suspect
00:45:20.280
an advantage there, then they have no choice but to use the level of force necessary to neutralize
00:45:26.140
And the whole point is we still, I agree that people could help.
00:45:31.200
I agree that people could know not to grab a cop's gun or not to push back when a cop
00:45:37.680
But again, the whole proposition and my whole position in all of this is that may happen
00:45:42.800
over time, but I don't know what the right solution is to get to all of the people of
00:45:46.580
But I do have access to most of the law enforcement organizations and departments in the country.
00:45:51.800
And if we can simply increase their capabilities, we will lower the level of force across the entire
00:46:06.480
And ultimately, cops will eventually, with proper amount of training, perform at a level
00:46:17.780
Because when expectations are met with reality or when reality meets expectations and vice versa,
00:46:28.600
So when a cop takes someone down, ties them up beautifully, maintains the mount, twists
00:46:32.260
them into a handcuffing procedure, and then cuffs them and walks them into the car, people look
00:46:38.540
But what's wild, Sam, is today's day and age, the unremarkable arrests that just happened
00:46:48.960
Yeah, but they're so unusual because the training is so disastrous.
00:46:52.920
So it kind of begs the question of like, man, have cops always been this bad?
00:47:01.780
And I will say with confidence, and cops have verified this kind of off the record with
00:47:05.800
me, is I say, guys, why is the public and the cop law enforcement relationship in America
00:47:15.200
And they said, and ultimately the conclusion is this, the public visibility of police performance
00:47:20.800
and uses of force has never been so high, right?
00:47:23.260
The public account, opportunity for accountability by the public has never been so high because
00:47:27.340
every incident is recorded with 17 different cameras, dash cam, body cam, security cam,
00:47:33.540
So you have all these people filming incidents.
00:47:36.220
So while public visibility has gone through the roof, police training standards, Sam, remain
00:47:47.900
The states have not said, okay, now that the visibility is so much higher, we probably
00:47:52.780
got to brush up our arrest and control skills to 12 hours a year instead of four hours a
00:48:00.800
So we're literally sitting at the crossroads between archaic training practices and new
00:48:08.800
age accountability and visibility opportunities for the public.
00:48:12.260
That disparity between those two things is why there is such disappointment and why there
00:48:19.660
Now, let me just tell you this, change is happening.
00:48:22.480
It's gradual, but the fact that that disappointment gap is so large and the public outcry is so substantial
00:48:29.000
right now for better policing and reform, we'll call it, of some sort, some defunding, some
00:48:42.780
Because at everyone, at the core for everyone is they don't want bad cops.
00:48:46.160
They don't want to give a gun and a badge, Sam, to someone who's going to abuse that power.
00:48:54.480
And people don't mind call, even people who are anti-police and want to defund will call
00:49:00.280
So people want a good officer with good intentions to come do the job and protect and serve and
00:49:06.940
have a high, you know, reverence for human life.
00:49:11.020
The challenge is, how do you differentiate between good cops and bad cops?
00:49:19.060
And I have a formula that I like to propose as one way that we can arrive towards a better
00:49:25.900
decision on that one key variable that I think every civilian and every police department even
00:49:33.780
In order to tell the difference between good cops and bad cops, we have to give all cops
00:49:41.080
sufficient training for the challenges they face.
00:49:45.560
And then you see which cops adhere to that training and which cops deliberately deviate
00:49:56.020
Because Sam, if I were to arrest grandma, let's just say, Henner were to arrest grandma,
00:49:59.540
I had a gun and a badge, Torrance police officer, Henner Gracie, and I'm not a cop,
00:50:05.820
If I were to go arrest grandma and Sam, I took her down for a traffic violation and
00:50:11.120
I pulled her down, I trip her, throw her on the ground, get on top of her, and I start
00:50:17.980
And you saw a video and you knew my record, you knew my training, and you knew all the backstory
00:50:25.680
And you assess that, you would say, man, Henner's a freaking bad police officer.
00:50:31.660
Because for everything that I know about this case and everything I know about him,
00:50:34.700
that was not necessary for him to use that level of force.
00:50:38.600
And it's not like he doesn't have the training to accomplish the objective of neutralizing
00:50:42.820
the threat and taking her into custody with lower level of force.
00:50:46.320
So you would be accurate in your assessment that I was abusing my power.
00:50:51.460
This is the same reason why a black belt in a martial art, right, when they use their martial
00:50:55.780
arts in a street fight, let's say, and they have to, you know, this whole idea of you're
00:51:00.580
Like you have, because you have lethal training in martial arts, you are judged in a different
00:51:06.640
realm of use of force as a civilian than someone who had no training, right?
00:51:11.100
So I could be, my black belt is almost a liability when it comes to use of force, because
00:51:16.620
a judge or a jury might say, no, Henner, because of your training, you didn't need to
00:51:20.960
use that much force in a street fight over a, you know, a road rage incident.
00:51:24.700
You beat the guy up and you broke both of his arms.
00:51:27.240
Based on your training, we have reason to believe that you should not have used that
00:51:31.420
It was unnecessary, the level of force that you applied in this street fight that you
00:51:36.020
So the same reason that that's an accurate assessment, because I have the training, I'm
00:51:40.180
held to a higher standard, and my deviation from that training is a reflection of my character
00:51:45.320
more than my ability to handle or not handle that situation.
00:51:49.020
So that's my proposition, is the whole country needs to be brought up in terms of a reasonable
00:51:53.740
amount of training, so then when deviations happen, we have nothing to blame other than
00:51:58.380
the character of the officer, because their training and their muscle memory did give them
00:52:03.020
the quality and the skills necessary to perform and neutralize that situation with a lower
00:52:07.000
level of force than what was captured on that video.
00:52:12.700
I mean, it's, there's no argument for the status quo.
00:52:18.260
I mean, I guess someone must be making a resource argument that they don't have the money,
00:52:24.100
the time, they can't spend the resources required to recruit the right people into the ranks of
00:52:30.240
I got to think, at this point, morale is somewhere near an all-time low in police forces across
00:52:37.220
the country, just given what has happened to public perception since the killing of George
00:52:43.640
So it's got to be a very difficult time to recruit good people to the force.
00:52:51.380
Like, I have, in every state, from all these courses that we've taught and all these relationships
00:52:54.680
we've made, and I've never heard the eagerness towards retirement that I'm hearing right now.
00:53:00.400
They say, Henner, this is not, it's not worth it anymore.
00:53:02.700
Now, you may be aware of what happened in New York recently, right?
00:53:06.520
So the New York, they passed this bill that's kind of like unofficially the diaphragm bill
00:53:10.700
where police officers are, and this was signed into law by Mayor de Blasio, and this was the
00:53:16.520
end of last year, and I fought as hard as I could with all my social media and everything
00:53:20.300
I could to try to resist it, but who am I, right?
00:53:23.680
But basically, it says here that never sit, kneel, or stand on the subject's torso, never
00:53:28.560
use a chokehold, sorry, never use a chokehold, neck hold, or headlock on the subject of an
00:53:32.520
Never sit, kneel, or stand on the subject's torso, including the back, chest, or the abdomen.
00:53:37.220
So they've criminalized this, and now what they've said is that if you do one of these
00:53:42.920
In New York, if you do one of these things, even if it was unintentional and no harm was
00:53:48.620
caused to the suspect in its use, you may be subject to criminal prosecution, personal
00:53:59.500
So this is probably one of the worst things that ever happened in law enforcement.
00:54:02.320
Now, in this bill, just to be clear, there were things that were proposed that got passed
00:54:06.280
that were good things, more accountability, better reporting, different things, certain
00:54:11.780
So there were other kind of logistical things, but when it comes to use of force, and I'll
00:54:15.620
even go so far to say, hey, the removal of neck restraints, chokeholds, or vascular neck
00:54:19.760
restraints, more accurately described, in law enforcement, there's been a lot of debate
00:54:27.460
I'm even okay with that, Sam, because a police officer who does not know how to use the neck
00:54:31.400
restraint, and they only get trained four hours every two years, they're probably going
00:54:35.700
So even though you and I both know that they're very safe and very effective as a method of controlling
00:54:43.480
So in a situation where you might otherwise have to use your weapon, there have been many
00:54:47.000
lives saved when the officer instead opted for a vascular neck restraint that neutralized
00:54:50.960
the threat, and let's say a firearm malfunction, they used a vascular neck restraint, and the
00:54:57.840
So there are many more of those cases than the alternative when the suspect ends up dying
00:55:01.840
as a result of a misuse of a neck restraint against the suspect.
00:55:05.220
But the point is, if you're going to get rid of neck restraints, or let's just put them
00:55:08.820
at lethal force or get rid of them altogether, fine.
00:55:11.800
But Sam, what they're doing in New York, they've criminalized the mount position, side mount,
00:55:24.680
When this got signed into law, the head instructors, the main guys in NYPD who run the defensive
00:55:30.300
tactics contacted me privately, obviously, right?
00:55:33.420
And I'm not going to share any names, but they said, Henner, we fought as hard as we
00:55:39.160
And they sent me the internal videos showing what they're no longer allowed to do and the
00:55:46.420
In New York City last year, I think it broke all records.
00:55:49.020
Like for sure, it broke all the trends, but it was astronomical.
00:55:51.860
And I'm getting DM'd and Twitter'd and message and email from all over New York.
00:55:58.780
They've disincentivized us from now controlling suspects, violent criminals.
00:56:06.980
We cannot sit in the most gentle, effective ground control positions.
00:56:11.120
And as this is all public, I said, New York, watch what's going to happen.
00:56:15.140
By criminalizing the least violent ground control positions that have been used for thousands
00:56:21.380
of years in martial arts of all grappling kinds, by criminalizing the least violent control
00:56:26.180
methods, you are now encouraging and incentivizing the use of more violent control tactics.
00:56:33.260
Taser, baton, firearm, punches, closed fists, blunt object strikes.
00:56:38.120
So these things are now, and there are videos that have happened since this bill has been
00:56:45.120
Videos have come out, Sam, of arrest situations.
00:56:47.580
And I did a breakdown recently, you may have seen it, of this exact dilemma now.
00:56:51.260
You have four cops trying to control one person by their limbs because they're not allowed
00:56:55.640
to put any contact on the torso and controlling someone by the limbs.
00:56:59.300
Imagine trying to get a little kid who doesn't want to go to bed and trying to drag them by
00:57:03.160
their arm or leg and they're twisting and turning.
00:57:06.840
You can't just grab their torso, pick them up and walk them to the bedroom and put them
00:57:12.040
So as a result, in this particular video that I'm talking about, the cops start punching
00:57:17.820
And then the video goes viral because of the excessive punches.
00:57:21.080
But the general public sees that video and they don't realize the reason all those punches
00:57:25.680
were necessary was because the officers were legally prevented from using more gentle mount
00:57:32.960
It wouldn't have required five officers if they knew basic mount.
00:57:36.140
So anyways, New York is pretty much a lost cause in terms of arrest and control tactics.
00:57:42.780
And the police department would agree with this.
00:57:46.720
This is like, you know, representatives, right?
00:57:50.000
Of the city who have never been in a fight, wear a suit, are not cops, don't know what it's
00:57:54.300
like to hold someone down who doesn't want to be arrested, who are making these laws.
00:57:59.340
And like I said, it's been a downhill slope from there.
00:58:01.440
And I rest in peace, New York City, you know, and sadly, sadly, the civilians think this
00:58:16.380
And now, because New York City is a lost cause, I'm setting my sights on being very vocal
00:58:20.960
about how disastrous and how counterproductive this new bill has become and warning other
00:58:27.280
states that if they engage in this same type of reform, where you just strip officers from
00:58:33.580
these nonviolent control tactics as really a gross overreaction to their aversion to neck
00:58:40.140
restraints, really, it kind of all started with neck restraints, right?
00:58:43.020
And then, you know, things happen and there's videos go viral.
00:58:45.080
And they say, okay, let's not do anything, even touch their torso because the diaphragm,
00:58:50.180
they can't breathe as easily when you're laying on their hips.
00:58:52.180
And as a result of that, you know, it's all downhill from there and it's only going to
00:58:56.480
It's only going to get worse before it gets better.
00:58:59.920
And then eventually, they're going to have to undo certain elements of this new law in
00:59:04.940
order for the police to be able to do their jobs again.
00:59:07.280
But I'm just hoping that more states don't follow suit because you could quickly have a
00:59:10.560
situation where it's way worse than we currently see.
00:59:13.500
So this is literally, and this is my whole point, Sam, is that writing a bill into law
00:59:19.500
that says you cannot use the mount and many other things, but let's just keep it basic
00:59:24.840
You cannot sit on someone's abdomen in a mount.
00:59:27.280
Writing that bill into law is done by a group of people who mistakenly believe, Sam, that the
00:59:33.640
cops were sufficiently trained in empty hand control tactics to begin with.
00:59:41.740
If you believed that every one of these cops in New York was trained like Navy SEALs, and
00:59:46.800
even with that sufficient amount of training, that excessive amount of training, they performed
00:59:52.640
It's understandable that you say, let's take away all their ground control skills because
00:59:59.200
But if you start from the premise that cops get four hours in New York City is probably
01:00:03.120
way worse every year or two, then the starting position has to be, wait a minute, let's give
01:00:08.480
them better training before that we take away their least violent options.
01:00:13.340
Yeah, perhaps we should say something to make this a little clearer to people who are probably
01:00:19.760
no more informed than many of the people who passed this law about the details here.
01:00:24.720
But I mean, you imagine someone's violently attacking you, right?
01:00:29.360
Somebody who is at least as strong as you are, and your job now is to stop them from
01:00:37.540
overwhelming you or getting away and hurting a member of the public.
01:00:41.240
So you have to figure out how to bring this person under control.
01:00:52.280
They've got a baton, they've got a taser, and then they've got whatever hand-to-hand
01:01:00.120
They've got their own strength and athleticism, such as it might be.
01:01:04.960
And some of these tools are, by definition, synonymous with death or significant injury,
01:01:13.820
The way you bring someone under control by hitting them in the head repeatedly is, as I
01:01:21.360
said before, synonymous with neurological injury, right?
01:01:24.960
If you punch them in the face and knock them out, that is...
01:01:28.180
And they fall down and they hit their head on the concrete.
01:01:31.020
You're not in a ring that is designed for the safety of the contestants.
01:01:37.340
And if you tase them, they rather often, if the taser works, I mean, tasers are by no means
01:01:44.640
foolproof, but when it works, this person is also falling to the concrete, not under their
01:01:52.880
own control, and very likely hitting their head, right?
01:01:57.100
So all of this is extremely risky in terms of the continuum of force, and far riskier than
01:02:08.800
And in fact, everything that was just outlawed in New York is practiced in every single jiu-jitsu
01:02:24.320
And nobody dies from that, from this practice, in an under-controlled setting, when you actually
01:02:29.520
So I want to ask you, Hanner, the most provocative of these maneuvers is what we call the rear
01:02:39.380
And so this is when a person grabs someone, reaches around their throat with their arm
01:02:47.240
from behind, and the elbow, the crook of the elbow is now aligned kind of with the subject's
01:02:52.880
chin, and they are squeezing, it's called, as you say, it's somewhat erroneously called
01:02:59.080
a choke, it's actually a vascular blood restraint, you're cutting off the circulation through the
01:03:04.620
carotid arteries, and after about six seconds or so, the person loses consciousness.
01:03:10.440
How dangerous has that proved to be over the course of, I mean, given what you know, and
01:03:16.200
I mean, you now have tons of experience teaching this, you have how many, I don't know, how many
01:03:21.460
schools affiliated with your school who teach this.
01:03:24.600
There are thousands upon thousands of martial artists training in this, and they all experience
01:03:30.600
both sides of this choke, I'm sure someone somewhere has died, because someone somewhere
01:03:36.780
has died from virtually everything, but what is your perception of the risk and the variables
01:03:46.360
Listen, you know, like you said, every single day, millions and millions of vascular neck
01:03:51.940
restraints are applied at the, you know, hundreds of thousands of schools around the world
01:03:56.760
that teach jiu-jitsu, like there's, this is, this is, this is the safety, from a statistical
01:04:01.340
point, you know, you could not, I mean, I don't know, 0.0000001%, I don't know, it doesn't
01:04:06.500
mean that it hasn't happened, of a reported death in practice, right, by someone who knows
01:04:11.020
what they're doing, who has any degree of training with this, right, this is, normally
01:04:14.660
we hear of death when it's used egregiously by someone who doesn't know when to let go,
01:04:18.980
or they squeeze a neck restraint, someone passes out, and then you maintain pressure on
01:04:22.820
an unconscious person's body or neck, you maintain additional vascular pressure for, in many cases,
01:04:28.500
what needs to be about 30 to 60 seconds after loss of consciousness is reached, so the amount
01:04:33.300
of pressure and the duration of time that is necessary for someone to, to die from the
01:04:38.720
use of a vascular neck restraint is, is substantial.
01:04:41.700
Now, of course, when you consider drug, alcohol use, other medical conditions, those can play
01:04:46.260
a part, but by and large, the, the technique has been deemed safe, right, in, in all the studies
01:04:51.800
that have taken place, and just anecdotally, throughout the country, and throughout the
01:04:55.420
world, in regular practice of martial arts, these are used all the time, so, you know,
01:04:59.400
but I think that pointing back to the New York situation, Sam, and you were kind of alluding
01:05:03.520
to the, the, the violence of taser, a baton, right, these blunt force, and that's kind of
01:05:09.180
just, for the listeners out there, what you have to understand is that all the techniques
01:05:13.040
that were outlawed are, you know, monumentally safer than what is being encouraged now for
01:05:20.200
these officers, because they can't do it, and you started with the example that you
01:05:22.860
were kind of painting of a violent criminal, just committed a crime, wants to flee the
01:05:26.440
scene, or wants to assault an officer, now you have, the officer has the burden of not
01:05:30.300
just neutralizing that person and, and, and taking them into custody for their own protection
01:05:34.440
and for the protection of the public, the officer has the burden of doing that without
01:05:38.420
applying any body-to-body contact on their torso, chest, back, or abdomen.
01:05:44.580
Listen, this, this is unheard of, there is no way, there's no way.
01:05:48.600
It literally rules out, if you have, if you have someone who's violently resisting, if you
01:05:54.140
imagine all the scenarios where you're able to take them down to the, to the ground and
01:05:59.380
control them so that they can be arrested, and you, you add to that picture the criterion
01:06:09.560
You have basically ruled that out in virtually every case, the moment you, you make those
01:06:21.980
There is no way to do it without, without, exactly.
01:06:23.980
And that's the, that's the whole, that's the kind of the, the, the, the entire, the confusion
01:06:28.240
here is that they did something, Sam, hoping to lower the level of force that officers would
01:06:35.340
use on suspects, not realizing that now because of the impossible equation you've painted for
01:06:40.480
this officer of having to subdue someone without using their body to do it, they can only use
01:06:45.700
their hands, but a violent criminal cannot be held down by someone's two hands if you cannot
01:06:51.720
And I'm telling you this as a black belt, lifelong practitioner, if you, Sam, did not want to
01:06:57.060
be taken into custody and someone said, Henner, take Sam and put handcuffs on him right now.
01:07:01.440
But the condition was, I'm not allowed to lay on your body, Sam.
01:07:04.840
I could not put, I could not put any pressure on your torso, chest, back, or abdomen.
01:07:11.300
If that was the requirement, I do not feel capable of subduing you and I'm a master.
01:07:19.020
And I'm not saying you like Sam, the blue belt.
01:07:20.580
I'm talking about Sam, the regular civilian, a regular person, just a man or woman who does
01:07:24.920
not want to be taken into custody, I would not be able to do that by myself.
01:07:28.880
I would need four or five other officers to hold one on each limb and then a third person
01:07:34.620
So we've literally created a fifth person punching you in the face.
01:07:37.720
We've literally created an impossible equation where a single officer is no longer capable,
01:07:47.200
Even if they had a black belt in jujitsu, a single officer to take a single suspect into custody
01:07:51.740
who is determined not to go is very, very unlikely to pan out in a way that is both suitable
01:07:59.700
or acceptable to the general public, acceptable to the police force, and acceptable to the
01:08:04.140
civilian in that they hopefully don't have to die while they're getting arrested.
01:08:07.800
But you're forcing the cop to escalate their level of force unnecessarily because you took
01:08:12.820
away their lowest and most effective control options.
01:08:16.580
It's literally the worst thing I've ever seen from a police training and tactics change across
01:08:24.240
It's the most negative backwards step that has ever been taken.
01:08:27.940
Now, again, the rest of the bill had some good things.
01:08:30.040
It's the diaphragm contact aspect that literally throws away all judo techniques, all wrestling
01:08:36.540
controls, all jujitsu standard controls that have been used for thousands of years and
01:08:43.060
I'm talking about just laying on someone, like two kids wrestling in the backyard.
01:08:53.080
And it's so sad for those officers who are now basically, literally, it was already hard
01:08:59.600
Arresting someone on four hours a year of jujitsu training was already hard enough.
01:09:03.480
Now saying, hey, not only are you going to get that minimum four hours, but you're not
01:09:06.800
allowed to touch their torso with any part of your body or you're going to be criminalized.
01:09:10.440
You're basically saying either be ready to use lethal force to stop the subject from fleeing
01:09:16.520
Because at the end of the day, you have to arrest the person or simply don't arrest them.
01:09:21.220
Actually, this may be of interest only to martial arts nerds, but perhaps we can say something
01:09:27.020
about why the often touted pain compliance kind of wrist locks are so hard to use when
01:09:39.820
Why can't you just teach a bunch of wrist locks and get past all of this?
01:09:45.220
Any pain compliance technique requires healthy neurological processing to take place, right?
01:09:52.480
So the second that someone is either drugged, intoxicated, or high on adrenaline in any way,
01:09:57.860
shape, or form where their pain tolerance, right, as we know, goes through the roof, then
01:10:01.720
a wrist lock simply doesn't have the desired effect.
01:10:04.320
And often instead of pain compliance, you get what's called pain defiance, right?
01:10:08.680
Which is a threshold because imagine if I was like, imagine if I grabbed one of your fingers,
01:10:13.880
And I got to a point where it was uncomfortable and your logical brain said, yeah, he's going
01:10:18.760
Imagine if instead of stopping at that point, I just tripled my level of force on your finger.
01:10:24.120
Do you think that your processing would be, okay, I really better listen now?
01:10:30.380
Your brain would essentially be flicked into survival, amygdala hijack, and you would literally
01:10:35.340
do anything on the earth to free yourself from that about-to-be-broken limb.
01:10:42.120
You're about to lose a finger or a broken joint.
01:10:44.220
And the same is true for an elbow or a shoulder.
01:10:46.740
You can go pain compliance while they're healthily processing the encounter.
01:10:49.960
But the second the person's drugged or alcohol or their pain tolerance simply goes through the
01:10:53.540
roof because of any one of these outside variables, you simply cannot do it.
01:10:56.940
So my point is, what officers need to do is they need to control body-to-body control
01:11:09.960
I'm talking about basic side mount, basic mount control, basic back mount, 100 seconds
01:11:22.480
And to teach the- remember UFC 1 when Hoist fought Art Jimmerson, Sam, when he mounted
01:11:27.400
on Art Jimmerson and Art, excuse me, was trying to bump, twist, and push him off, and Art could
01:11:33.180
And as a result of several seconds going by where Art could not escape his mount, this
01:11:37.300
is one of his opponents in UFC 1, Art just tapped out.
01:11:48.860
Like, he was trying as hard as he could, and he was ineffective at escaping from a superior
01:11:57.340
And at that point, Art was able to process that since he could not get out with all of
01:12:01.560
his might, that it was only going to be downhill from there on out.
01:12:06.880
So that right there, Sam, is the number one recommended law enforcement arrest and control
01:12:12.900
Get the suspect on their back, not on their belly, on their back, and hold them there
01:12:17.760
for 100 seconds with body-to-body control once the suspect has a chance to process that
01:12:26.200
A whole processing happens in their mind, and they go, wow, I'm not going to get out.
01:12:30.200
I can't get a hold of their gun because they have good underhooks and weapon retention.
01:12:36.220
At this point, they can kind of go into the process of, maybe I should comply and just get
01:12:40.320
But as long as there's hope of escape, there is going to be savagery from the suspect.
01:12:45.380
And what I'm saying is to kill the hope, you have to use the 100-second rule and maintain
01:12:49.320
that top position on a supine suspect until help gets there or until their spirit is sufficiently
01:12:54.420
broken that they will comply with the pain compliance technique or simply verbal commands,
01:12:58.800
which often work once the spirit is broken and they realize that they're really not going
01:13:03.320
It's a whole different human that you're dealing with.
01:13:05.700
So to answer your question, it's not as easy as it looks.
01:13:08.540
And if you can't control body-to-body supine for 100 seconds, if that's not legal, there
01:13:14.360
is no guarantee that you're going to get this person into custody off wrists, twists, fingers,
01:13:19.820
Someone will let their arm break and then free themselves from this situation because they're
01:13:28.440
But when you have someone who has much better training than you have in grappling, I mean,
01:13:33.820
again, the mystifying thing is that they don't even have to be bigger than you.
01:13:39.460
But if there's simply a very significant mismatch between how you know how to wrestle based
01:13:46.760
on your apish intuitions and the person who's holding you down, it is like there is something
01:13:55.360
I mean, it is like your adversary, in this case the cop, is functioning with a different
01:14:04.800
And only sufficient training can create that kind of disparity, and that is the thing you
01:14:12.340
need to ensure that people get arrested in a way that doesn't require a continual escalation
01:14:21.220
So we've been painting a very unhappy picture here, Henner, but I know there are bright spots
01:14:26.660
Tell me someplace where this is working better than it is in New York.
01:14:30.440
So I've been advocating, I briefly mentioned it earlier, I've been advocating for quite some
01:14:34.620
time now, that my prescribed solution to this use of force kind of pandemic in America is
01:14:43.780
one hour of jiu-jitsu every week for every officer in America.
01:14:52.760
I'm just telling you what it needs to be, because I know what one hour a week of jiu-jitsu
01:14:59.620
And I know that that's the bare minimum someone needs to be sufficiently trained.
01:15:04.620
To get in a violent altercation and be able to just stay afloat and handle their business
01:15:09.400
and not have the amygdala hijack take over, right?
01:15:14.100
And of course, that presumes after several months or, you know, six months to a year of
01:15:17.360
one hour a week, someone will be at a place where if they get into a fight, they're going
01:15:21.320
to be able to at least stay focused, stay calm, manage the distance, manage the damage,
01:15:26.020
And at the very least, until help arrives, which in many cases, all they need to do, right?
01:15:31.520
So that being said, I've been touting this loud enough for long enough that one of our
01:15:35.820
agencies that we've been working with since 2009, Marietta Police Department in Marietta,
01:15:41.160
Georgia, one of these agencies who's a GST certified.
01:15:44.260
So they've had their instructor certified in our week-long certification.
01:15:47.420
But like every other agency we work with, they get cut off when they go home and go to teach
01:15:52.880
They're only allowed to teach for four hours a year, right?
01:15:55.020
So Marietta, Georgia has been GST for about 11 years and two years ago, almost exactly
01:16:01.240
April 1st, two years ago, what happened was prior to that, a video went viral in Marietta
01:16:06.880
that showcased the officers who, again, are getting their bare minimum annual training of
01:16:15.040
These officers aggressively striking a subject on the floor in a restaurant.
01:16:21.120
And at that point, Marietta command staff ultimately say, hey, listen, we're getting,
01:16:26.340
we get upset at these officers for performing so poorly, but we're not giving them any better
01:16:32.920
And four hours a year clearly isn't cutting it.
01:16:35.340
Look at the performance and look at this viral video.
01:16:37.280
So that was kind of the tipping point there for them.
01:16:42.580
Marietta did something unconventional, unexpected, unheard of, and revolutionary all at the same
01:16:53.220
Major Jake King was kind of the conductor, the man who pulled this whole thing together,
01:16:58.680
The conductor of the orchestra here in terms of the Marietta transformation.
01:17:02.180
And he deserves a lot of credit for taking this risk because he believed in jujitsu.
01:17:08.220
They were going to say, okay, let's get rookies because they've heard this.
01:17:11.600
They've heard this proposition of jujitsu regular weekly practice.
01:17:15.700
Rookies in their police academy, the new hires, we can pretty much have them do whatever we
01:17:19.820
And they have to do it because it's kind of like the guinea pigs, right?
01:17:22.640
So they said, let's do these rookies and let's get them to do jujitsu, mandatory jujitsu,
01:17:27.260
at a local, carefully vetted, civilian-owned jujitsu school where they go to regular classes
01:17:35.620
Let's get them their uniforms and let's mandate that they go.
01:17:38.560
I think it was twice a week was the mandated period for the five months while they're in
01:17:46.680
And five months later, these rookies came out of the police academy training weekly.
01:17:55.560
And not surprising to anyone who does jujitsu, but seemingly to the shock of everyone else,
01:18:05.000
These new rookies, brand new cops came out of the academy.
01:18:07.560
And the number one word they used, this is reported to me by Major King, who I've interviewed
01:18:11.400
extensively about what happened in Marietta in terms of the data there.
01:18:15.800
So Major King says, Heno, the number one word on their exit surveys was confidence.
01:18:18.960
These officers left the academy with a greater degree of confidence than ever had happened
01:18:25.360
before in the history of Marietta Police Department.
01:18:28.000
They go into the field, Sam, and they start applying their techniques.
01:18:31.020
And they're taking people down and they're arresting people.
01:18:33.320
And I have, there's actually a video you guys can link to.
01:18:36.340
It's actually at gracieuniversity.com slash reform.
01:18:39.720
Has all of the Marietta data I'm going to share with you now.
01:18:42.000
And the video showing the use by these officers, their jujitsu skills as rookies.
01:18:46.320
So these guys come out of the academy and girls, and they have these use of force incidents.
01:18:55.080
They're verbally saying, hey, you're going to be okay.
01:18:59.040
Let's just, you know, we're going to take care of you.
01:19:03.900
All the things we've gotten used to seeing as a country don't exist with these officers
01:19:08.020
who went through the jujitsu program in Marietta.
01:19:11.280
Listen, it was so successful, this program for these rookies,
01:19:13.960
that they decided to open it up to in-service officers, Sam.
01:19:22.480
Of the 145, 95 of the officers opted into the free jujitsu program
01:19:28.600
sponsored and paid for by the agency at the civilian-owned school
01:19:33.560
where they're allowed to go train weekly for free to them,
01:19:37.420
paid for by the agency as official regular jujitsu students.
01:19:45.980
So we have a control group against which we can really compare
01:19:56.800
It's been 18 months since the program has been initiated
01:20:01.020
for the department permitting this type of use.
01:20:07.040
these are published by Marietta Police Department.
01:20:08.700
And like I said, they're on our website at the URL I gave.
01:20:14.020
So let me just run through some of the key points here.
01:20:16.540
And we can dig a little bit on what the implications are
01:20:21.360
in the history of law enforcement arrest and control tactics.
01:20:33.520
What if they get injured while they're training?
01:20:47.640
These 95 officers, some of them are young rookies.
01:20:52.160
and have never seen the inside of the gym in their lives
01:20:56.160
And they're now starting jujitsu for the first time.
01:21:30.220
and they have to stop the person from fleeing the scene.
01:21:39.000
In the 18 months prior to the instituting of this program,
01:21:42.060
there were 29 injuries to officers in the field,
01:21:49.060
there were 15 injuries to officers in the field.
01:21:52.620
That's a 48% reduction department-wide of officer injuries.
01:22:14.160
that have not started this program of weekly practice.
01:22:19.020
because a fight is a very scary and dangerous thing
01:22:31.960
a serious six months off-duty workers' comp claim
01:22:41.560
That's exactly what is being said by these rookies.
01:22:58.040
hey, that was one of the best takedowns I've ever seen.
01:24:06.680
When we talk about serious injuries to suspects,
01:24:10.600
If someone did not need to be cleared at a hospital,
01:24:39.820
If we could reduce the hospitalization by half,