Concluding Remarks

a) Essential Training

It is clear to police trainers that competence builds confidence, and this comes through the sustained practice of basic training techniques and tactics.

This can be acquired only in part in the police academy; it should also be backed up with on-going in-service training.

This can be done simply in the form of regularly scheduled pre-parade training, even if just for five or ten minutes per session.

Not all training is beneficial; poor tactics trained well, or good tactics trained poorly, can have detrimental results.

Some officers are electing to do additional training by joining a martial arts gym but be aware that there is a hidden danger in doing classical martial arts (or others that have not be street-proofed for law enforcement use).

Some martial art styles have a weak transference from the training hall to the street.

Adaptations attempted by well-meaning martial artists who have no street policing background can be, in reality, deeply flawed.

Why train with “police instructors” who have zero street credibility? That is not to say that such skilled instructors are not useful in police training, but they should not oversee or develop such training.

The author’s leave of absence from the Vancouver Police Department in 1986 to study use-of-force training in various parts of the world was enlightening (his 2024-2025 quest will be far more comprehensive).

If you are getting your training outside of your policing agency, put some critical thought into if such training is of a practical nature and if it will keep you safe.

If you instill unsafe practice is in your training, under stress you will fall back to those techniques and tactics (like willingly going to the ground in sport).

Just because you have taken a fight to the mat hundreds of times before without any ill effect, doing so on the street would be foolhardy given your inability to control his free arm, his buddies, and any other circumstances not found in the martial arts training hall.

Clearly there are no refs, no rules, no mats, and perhaps no sense of morality or fair play offered in street altercations (street-proofing of martial art techniques is essential).

All aspects of sport, tradition, and ritualism must be cast aside in favor of practical, tactical, and ethical methods of making arrests (this is Police Judo’s forte).

Our way is not the only way, but we strictly adhere to the aspects of training techniques that keep officers alive.