DAYTONA BEACH SHORES, Fla. — One Central Florida police department is turning to martial arts to reduce injuries to its officers and the public when things get physical.
Police body-camera video from Marietta, Georgia, shows an officer using Brazilian jiu-jitsu to quickly take a man down to the ground and cuff him.
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Marietta police say they have reduced injuries to officers by 48 percent, injuries to suspects by 53 percent and decreased the use of Tasers by 23 percent since training its officers in Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
That’s the outcome Daytona Beach Shores Public Safety wants.
It’s training its officers in the martial art that focuses on using ones hands to apply the least amount of force to neutralize an opponent.
“Jiu-jitsu is not relying on anything other than the officer and the technique,” Daytona Beach Shores Capt. Michael Fowler said.
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Fowler said officers train regularly with their guns even though they rarely use them.
“We put our hands on people all the time. We have people that resist us all the time,” he said.
And there is very little physical training required as far as that goes,” he said. “We feel a program like this corrects that”
The department is training all its recruits at least twice a week in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and the agency will pay for the training to continue once recruits graduate the academy.
Daytona Beach Shores Officer Enrique Rosario said he and another officer used the techniques they learned through this class several months ago to subdue a man who hit an EMT.
“We did a takedown we learned in jiu-jitsu and took him to the ground and took the situation from a 10 back to a 2,” Rosario said.
Randy Nelson is Bethune-Cookman University’s criminal justice chair and a former parole officer.
Nelson commended police for the program but said more focus and training should be placed on making sure interactions between the police and public never get physical in the first place.
“One of the things you’ll see in the law enforcement academy -- the hours dedicated to communication and those things isn’t as robust as it needs to be,” he said.
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Nelson said the number of hours at the academy dedicated to communication skills has not changed much since he graduated in 1987.
“You have to commend them for wanting to get better and trying something. But also, you need to get better in the social interaction and de-escalation,” he said.
Daytona Beach Shores Public Safety wants to see the program expand to other departments across the state if it is successful
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