Koga Police Control and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for Colorado Officers
Robert Koga developed his influential law-enforcement arrest-control system while serving with the Los Angeles Police Department in the 1960s. His approach drew on decades of martial arts experience, including judo training while stationed in Japan with the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War and later study of jūjitsu and aikido. Koga studied aikido extensively with Koichi Tohei, whose principles became an important influence on his developing approach to police control. Koga then adapted these Japanese martial principles to the practical demands of searching, handcuffing, arrest control, and officer self-defense. The resulting Koga system was implemented through the LAPD training academy and subsequently spread to law-enforcement agencies throughout the United States.
Colorado Peace Officer Standards and Training materials specifically identify Koga as a recognized arrest-control discipline that may be approved for academy instruction. Historical records also document Koga training within the Lakewood, Denver, and Aurora police departments. Although individual agencies have modified their defensive-tactics programs over time, Koga remains an important part of the history of police arrest-control training in Colorado.
Koga Was Designed Around the Arrest
Koga is fundamentally a police system. Its techniques were organized around what officers actually have to accomplish during an arrest. The officer must approach a subject, establish control, conduct a search, apply handcuffs, protect weapons, and maintain custody. Much of the Koga system therefore operates from a standing position. Footwork, balance disruption, wrist and arm controls, takedowns, and escort positions are used to progress an arrest scene toward subject restraint.
Many of the same mechanical principles of Koga come from Japanese jūjitsu. Proper joint control involves more than bending a wrist until it hurts. The controlled limb becomes a connection to the shoulder, torso, posture, and balance of the person being controlled.
At Lakewood Jiu Jitsu Academy, the comparison between these systems is informed by Professor Medley's 45 years of Japanese jūjitsu experience and a fourth-degree black belt in that art, combined with nearly 20 years of contemporary Brazilian jiu-jitsu training.
That background makes one distinction especially important. Pain and control are not the same thing, and more importantly, inducing pain can make control more difficult.
The Biomechanical Challenge of Standing Control
The dynamics of human movement create a challenge for any standing arrest control technique. In kinesiology and motor-control science, the human body is understood as having many degrees of freedom. Numerous joints and body segments can be coordinated in different ways to accomplish movement. An officer may control a subject's wrist, for example, while the subject remains free to move the elbow, shoulder, spine, hips, knees, and feet. The subject can rotate, widen the stance, lower the center of gravity, pull away, or reorganize the rest of the body around the joint being controlled. This can create a need to constantly adjust the angle of a joint control or abandon the attempt and escalate to another force option.
A well-executed Koga or Japanese jūjitsu technique attempts to overcome this problem by connecting the controlled joint to the subject's posture and balance. But as resistance increases, the number of available movement solutions become an increasingly complex puzzle. Although both aikido and Brazilian jiu-jitsu are based on a traditional Japanese jūjitsu, Brazilian jiu-jitsu addresses the challenge of degrees of freedom in the context of law enforcement control and restraint.
Brazilian Jiu-jitsu Reduces Movement Before Restraint
Instead of beginning primarily with a distal limb, BJJ commonly seeks control over thoracic body segments such as the hips, shoulders, and torso. Ground positions can progressively remove the subject's ability to generate useful movement.
Once a person is stabilized against the ground, many of the degrees of freedom available while standing disappear. The feet can no longer easily create distance. The hips have less freedom to rotate. The body has fewer ways to reorganize around an officer's control. The encounter becomes more predictable and slower.
That does not mean police officers should automatically take every resistant person to the ground. Standing control preserves mobility and environmental awareness and may allow an arrest to be completed efficiently. The value of BJJ becomes particularly apparent when the standing arrest has already failed, and the encounter has become a sustained physical struggle. Virtually all resisting events end on the ground, and BJJ gives officers a familiar system for continuing to progress toward control and restraint after standing control has failed.
Pain Compliance and De-Escalation
This distinction also has implications for police de-escalation training.
Many standing defensive-tactics systems have relied heavily on pain compliance. The strategy is that the resisting subject experiences pain as a consequences of the resistance, and is encouraged to choose cooperation. The difficulty is that pain requires a behavioral response. A highly agitated, intoxicated, frightened, or determined person may not react as expected. Instead of becoming calmer, the person may pull harder, tense the body, or fight more aggressively against the source of the pain. In that circumstance, increasing pain may become counterproductive to de-escalation and therefore control. The officer is attempting to reduce resistance while simultaneously introducing stimuli that may intensify it. Modern psychology literature describes how the ability of the brain to reason diminishes as emotions like fear and anger escalate.
Positional control operates differently. A person does not have to decide to cooperate for leverage and body positioning to restrict movement. The physical ability to move aggressively is reduced without fueling involuntary resistance by provoking the the fear of injury. Once sufficient control is established, the officer may be able to reduce the pace of the encounter, communicate, and obtain more cooperation from the subject.
This may help explain why BJJ-based police training is increasingly being studied alongside de-escalation and injury-reduction initiatives. Recent research has reported reductions in force severity and injuries after officers received training that deemphasized pain compliance in favor of leverage-based control and de-escalation. The Police Executive Research Forum has also identified Brazilian jiu-jitsu-based approaches as promising methods for improving control during grounded restraint encounters, while emphasizing the need for continued research.
Koga and BJJ Are Not Opposed
The emergence of BJJ does not make Koga obsolete. Koga's enduring strength is that it was designed specifically around the police mission. Searching, handcuffing, weapon protection, and prisoner movement are built into the logic of the system.
BJJ contributes something different. It provides extensive experience controlling a person who is actively trying to escape. Regular resistance training teaches officers to recognize changing positions and continue solving the control problem when one technique fails.
Modern police jiu-jitsu training in Colorado can benefit from both traditions.
Koga provides an important historical and operational framework for moving from contact toward custody. Brazilian jiu-jitsu adds a deeper understanding of positional control, sustained resistance, and the progressive restriction of movement once an encounter moves to the ground.
For law enforcement, that principle has implications beyond martial arts technique. Better control can create time. Time can support communication and de-escalation. And when officers can control resistance without immediately relying on pain or higher levels of force, the potential exists for safer outcomes for both officers and the people they arrest.
Lakewood Jiu Jitsu Academy provides Brazilian jiu-jitsu and practical control training in Lakewood, Colorado, with specialized relevance for police officers and criminal justice students preparing for careers in law enforcement.
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