Jiu-Jitsu for Policing

Control & Restraint Training for Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Students 

Modern policing requires police officers to have the ability to preserve personal safety and the safety of other officers and the public while sometimes facing violent resistance, drug impairment, or mental instability. According to the FBI's Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted report, there were over 90,000 assaults on law enforcement officers in 2025. In addition to concerns about personal safety, officers also face pressure to protect themselves and manage resistance while respecting legal, moral, and societal expectations. These demands place a premium not simply on being able to apply overwhelming force, but rather on the ability to skillfully apply force as professionals. Skill is not exemplified through merely "winning," but rather through the successful application of a trained method or procedure that ensures effectiveness, safety, and public acceptance.     

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Jiu-jitsu offers a structured approach to that policing challenge.

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A Different Model of Police Control

Traditional defensive tactics often emphasize achieving compliance through incapacitation, pain compliance, or the infliction of injury. These approaches can work, but they depend on physical attributes and possible avoidable injuries; these approaches can also increase risk of civil liability and damaging community respect. Aggressive models of subject control are also difficult to simulate in scenario training at realistic levels, introducing a gap between training and field application.     

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Jiu-jitsu approaches control differently.

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Rather than transforming resistance into "fights," jiu jitsu operationalizes the management of resistance through:

• Positional control 

• Leverage and mechanical advantage

• Incremental restriction of movement

• Communication

 

This allows officers to stabilize resistance before attempting restraint, rather than attempting to apply handcuffs during a chaotic scramble. This approach acknowledges the value of utilizing time in resolving chaotic arrest scenes. The Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) has been advocating that restraint procedures that slow the pace of an encounter and allow for the use of time may reduce injuries to officers as well as to civilians (PERF, 2016; 2024).  

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Control Before Restraint

A central problem in many police encounters is the collapse of two separate tasks into one:

• Controlling a resisting subject

• Applying mechanical restraint (handcuffing)

 

When control is not established first, officers often must:

• chase arms

• react to unpredictable movement

• improvise under pressure

 

This often escalates force and increases risk.

 

Jiu-jitsu provides a structured sequence:

1. Establish positional control

2. Stabilize movement, reduce resistance, and attempt de-escalation

3. Transition to restraint from a stable position 

 

This is consistent with long-standing defensive tactics principles, but jiu-jitsu offers a trainable, repeatable, and superviseable method for actually achieving it. In its 2024 restraint safety report, PERF acknowledges that the principles of jiu-jitsu show promise in improving the safety of police restraint struggles.

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Preparation for Real Resistance

Most police use-of-force training suffers from a fundamental limitation:

It cannot be practiced at full resistance without exposing police officers/ cadets to injury risk during training.

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                                       Jiu-jitsu-based control methods achieve control through positioning and leverage—not strikes or dangerous joint                                         locks. These methods can therefore be practiced at similar levels of resistance to actual field resistance. The                                                 United States Army realized this benefit in 1995 when Gracie jiu-jitsu was adopted for training U.S. soldiers.             

                                       Scientific publications reinforce that training under pressures more similar to field application improves outcomes

                                       (DiNota & Huhta, 2019).     

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This matters. When officers can practice under the same or similar levels of energy and effort as operational struggles, resistance will impose much lower levels of anxiety on officers, and will feel "familiar," rather than unexpected. Published research by (Butler & Wang (2024) shows that officers who train in Brazilian jiu-jitsu have improved confidence and reduced anxiety when dealing with resistance compared to officers who do not train in jiu-jitsu. ​
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Performance Under Stress

Police encounters on the street are not technical demonstrations. They are stressful events involving real danger; anxiety is a natural reaction to danger.

Under stress:

• fine motor control degrades

• decision-making narrows

• the uncertainty of improvisation feeds back into the stress loop

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Jiu-jitsu addresses this by embedding control within repeatable motor patterns that can be accessed under pressure, because they are rehearsed under pressure in training.

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Instead of improvising in a chaotic exchange, police officers training in police BJJ can learn to:

• slow the encounter

• stabilize movement

• deploy well rehearsed sequences of control

• create time for decision-making

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Control is not just an end objective. It shapes the pace of the entire interaction.

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Safety and Risk Reduction

Contemporary policing increasingly emphasizes:

• de-escalation

• proportionality

• reduction of injury risk for all involved

 

Jiu-jitsu aligns with these priorities by focusing on:

• leverage-based control rather than pain compliance

• positional stabilization rather than an improvised "fighting" framework

• gradual depletion of energy and "will to fight" rather than infliction of injury

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When resistance is controlled structurally, both officer and subject operate in a more stable environment. This can reduce:

• unnecessary force escalation

• injury to officers

• injury to subjects

• damaging optics to the public

 

A System That Works Across the Officer Population

Police agencies train officers with widely different:

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• athletic backgrounds

• sizes

• skill sets

 

 

 

Techniques relying on strength or speed will fail for the officers who need effective methods the most.

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Jiu-jitsu is built on mechanical advantage, allowing effective control:

• across a wider distribution of officer backgrounds

• for less physically dominant officers

• across police officer genders

 

This makes Brazilian jiu-jitsu a practical system for all police officers.

 

Training at Lakewood Jiu-Jitsu Academy

Defensive tactics training is structured specifically for operational application in policing. 

​Features include:

• control-first approaches

• realistic training with resistance that reflects operational resistance

• structured transition from control to restraint

• training structure designed for long-term memory retrieval and fidelity under stress 

 

This is not sport jiu-jitsu repurposed for policing. Control and restraint methods are specifically trained for the context of police arrests and purposefully avoid reinforcing techniques restricted by Colorado law (CRS 18-1-707) such as vascular neck restraints.

 

Who This Is For

• Patrol officers and deputies

• Detention and corrections staff

• Police academy cadets

• Criminal justice students

• Security officers​