Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Jay Wadsworth and Adam Haidary - Defensive Tactics and Combatives for Law Enforcement

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

Jay Wadsworth is a 2nd-degree black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and retired pro/amateur MMA fighter, bringing over two decades of street cop experience and 14 years in SWAT. He's a certified SWAT Operator and Defensive Tactics Instructor with a robust background in developing and teaching advanced defensive tactics curricula. Adam Haidary is the founder of Police Posts and co-founder of Effective Fitness and has seven years of law enforcement experience, including his role as a training supervisor. With six years of grappling experience and multiple instructor certifications, Adam has been instrumental in enhancing officer safety tactics and implementing tactical medical programs. Together, they lead Effective Fitness Combatives, a comprehensive program designed to enhance physical fitness, defensive tactics, and officer safety. In this episode, they share their expertise on the essential skills for law enforcement and how their program equips officers to handle real-world scenarios effectively. https://www.efcombatives.com/home Wolf 21- Check out what they have to offer for the best sleep of your life:  https://www.thewolf21.com Use Code: "clearedhot" for 30% off of your 1st order The Speed of War Comic Series: https://www.thespeedofwar.com/ Check out the newest Cleared Hot Gear here: https://shop.clearedhotpodcast.com/  

Welcome back, everybody. Very interesting episode for today. Before we get into that, though, the business side of the house. How is this podcast possible? It's possible because of Black Rifle Coffee and their continued support that allows me to do this. Let's go to their website and see what they have to offer, shall we? 22 count rounds. These go into your curing. I guess if you hate yourself, but you like you. coffee, this is a good solution? I might just like put this in my lip as a dip as opposed to making a curig. Actually, I'm just talking shit. I have nothing against curig. It's just not my particular cup of coffee, if you will. I like a nice pour over. I like anything, even a curig above a French press. Because I think French press says a lot about you as a person. Again, I'm just joking. Black Rifle coffee, they have the roast, the slider. Light to dark. Currently right now, what we're using in our coffee machine at the coffee shop, silence or smooth.

It is amazing as an espresso shot. Underneath that, apparel in gear, coffee bundles, coffee sampler. There's over a million followers on social media. And like I talked about last Friday, if you click at the very top, you can look at all the veteran causes the Black Rifle Coffee supports. That's what I love about the brand more than the coffee itself, the founders and what they actually do with it. Very soon, two weeks from this episode coming out, we're heading to France. jumping into the 80th anniversary of D-Day with Black Rifle. There's going to be some amazing content that comes from that. Let's talk about my guests today. Jay and Adam.

So Adam has been on before. If you're on Instagram, there's a really cool Instagram page called Police Posts. Some of the stuff they put on there is really hard to watch because they're really bad situations. And sometimes it's cops just getting owned. I don't think a lot of people know how hard of a job it is. They're quick to critique. They've never walked a mile in their shoes. And I'm not making an excuse for officers that fall below the standard that we expect of them. But most people have no idea what it means to live that life. Adam is the first time I met him, he was running that page. And I think he might have a team now that's working with him. But I'll say for the, maybe I'm wrong, he can correct me if I'm wrong, but he's running the back end of that page. It drives a lot of attention and awareness. And what I like is they provide a breakdown as well. So with Adam today is Jay. They have a

program called effective fitness combatives. We're going to talk a lot today about where law enforcement falls short and a lot of it has to do in the training realm. This might be a tough one for people to listen to who are supporters of law enforcement or law enforcement themselves. and I don't care because we need to have hard conversations. You work in essentially a no-fail environment. When people call 911, they expect people to show up that are capable and competent and to basically solve their problems that they're having on their worst day. So the EFC, I'm going to describe that as, I know that there's a lot more to it,

but I think a lot about what we talked about today is what happens when a police officer puts his hands on another human beings. The complexities that can come from that individually or with a team, and they have an entire program that is based in decades of law enforcement experience to try to improve officers' abilities specifically in that moment. And perhaps that's best to leave it at that because Adam and Jay can do a much better job of explaining it than I can. So let's get into it. Episode 326 with Adam and Jay from EFC. Effective Fitness combats. Enjoy. To the smoke, I'm looking at danger close now. What do you boys want to kick it off at?

Thank you for having us. Yeah. Of course. Well, I've had you one before. I don't remember what episode number it was. 157. Holy cow. That was many years ago then.

2000, 2020. Were we breaking COVID protocol? Were we being criminals at that time? I hope so. I hope so. Montana took it very seriously, as did most. places for I'd say somewhere between four to six weeks. Okay.

I think where it changed is farther on into that particular. What's the word? Guidance at a federal level. I don't want to say they deviated, but I think the right word is deviated. And we're just a little bit looser. Yeah. It was like California, but not. Okay.

Is how I would describe it. All right. I just remember we rented a SUV with Florida plates because we lived in New York and you weren't allowed to go into Florida like two, three weeks after they shut down the whole country. And we rented that like a car and drove to my in-laws and then just stayed there for like a month and a half and let the kids do school. They were just doing it online anyways. We could be outside, swimming, hanging out. Yeah. What are we going to do in Buffalo in the middle of March?

this wasn't a bad place to weather that time period it uh off-road vehicle sales went through the roof like the dealerships are like i mean if you want a razor yeah you can come back in like three years motorcycles like offro literally people were just out in every direction there's only like think one million maybe 100 thousand people at all montana and it's all kind of populated in this l of whitefish cow spill mazula bozeman or uh mazula butte Bozeman Billings and then there's so much more state outside of that. So you can almost still go in any direction. That's kind of nice to be outside.

Yeah, it's beautifully. It's like my fourth or fifth time here. Yeah. It's my first time to Montana. Ever? Ever. One of the states I've never been to you. Okay.

What else is on the list? Alaska. But I'm going there in December. I'm actually actually pretty upset with the hosts for that course because I told if you're going to book me in Alaska, do it before October because I don't like the cold. Is Alaska? traditionally cold in December? Yeah.

It's not a doctor. So they booked me the first week of December. Yeah, that's not going to be warm. No. Where in Alaska? Sitka. Right? You're familiar.

State Police Academy. He's a big hunting guy. The old State Police Academy. What do they want to know? Yeah, they sent two guys to a course we did in Arizona. And then they sent another one to the Austin course. and they loved it, and they turned around and booked us. Let's work backwards on, let's break down for people what the courses are, but talk me backwards to the inception of those and then how you two met.

Because were you guys working together when I came last time? Negative. Or when you came last time. Did you know each other? Yes. Okay. Well, I knew of Jay. Okay.

I was following him on Instagram. He was doing some, you were still doing the combative DT stuff, but it was with a different company. And I was doing the fitness thing. I said, well, I want to do something. else more towards the DT control tactics, combative side. Defensive tactics for those of you who are like, what the fuck are you talking about?

So we'll get into the language of all the lingo you can use within law enforcement. So I reached out to Jay and I said, hey, I have an idea. I want to run it by you. I think you're the guy. I know you're the guy. And so it was in the talks for what, probably six months. Yeah, at least, maybe even more.

I would say probably more like toward, I'd say eight to ten months. Yeah. And then I flew. him down to South Carolina. We talked and he was still active in law enforcement in time. He was with the street crimes unit, basically.

Yeah, it was undercover drug and gun. So, and then once we kind of started, and then we got to start booking classes. He obviously had a lot of contacts in the combatives, law enforcement, enrolled, as did I. And we kind of combined powers.

I had a lot of knowledge and expertise on the back end side of things, like the website design, the programming, like that whole, the whole side. And we just needed the guy. That was the guy. And so fast forward two years. And we've been in almost, what, 400 agencies? A lot.

Yeah. And we only been around for not even two years yet, not quite two years. Yeah, I think it was actually two years last week. Last week, perfect. Uppibble Addle? Changing the culture and training? Just in general. EFC.

I feel like just starting something. something new inside of organizations that large. So company-wise, no, we're, like, we're very well organized. We have, I mean, getting them to buy in. Yeah. So that, that's obviously tough sometimes. But I would say that the culture is changing because jiu-jitsu helps, obviously, a lot with that. Yeah.

Once we're there, it's an easy sell. Like, we usually book for a year or two out before we leave places. Go to New Jersey. booked us in the fall. Michigan State Police booked us the following winter for three back-to-back private courses. This year alone, we've been in NYPD in Chicago, the two largest departments in the country.

And they love it. And like Chicago, like some of the guys are in there, is like, where's this been? Where have we been? And it's like, it's there. It's been there. I've been teaching it in New York at my department since 2009, 10, 11 into

when I left. Sure. And then I integrated it into the state program starting in 2016 and then officially after all the pilots were done in 2018. So it's like it's been there. It's just the wheels of justice move slowly. Yeah, but it's in an occupation where people are required to touch other human beings. Yes.

You would think that that would at least be the spark or impetus for them to move a little bit faster. Yeah. And you know, a lot of people call it like defensive tactics. and like, or control tactics. And I've never been a big fan of defensive tactics or control tactics. And the reason being is that's a small piece of what we do in an incident. I think combatives is a full, full spectrum of what we do.

Your hands-on problem becomes a gum problem in less than a second sometimes. Or vice versa, right? So it's not always just, hey, control tactics. There's actually like a post in one of the private groups. that I'm in and they're like, what are better names for defensive tactics, control tactics, whatever? Like, one, we really aren't trying to be defensive, okay? Like, sometimes we have to be offensive. And two, it's not just control because what if I need to actually disengage, create space,

and get to a tool or get to a weapon or whatever? So it's like, I think combat is for us is where we really hit it is we try to bring the gun side of things and the DT side of things into like one curriculum. And the state, you know, saw it and they were happy with it. So they brought me in. Revamped that program. We ran pilots for two years across the state. And now everyone in New York State under Post or what is called DCGS in New York runs that program,

except for NYPD because they govern themselves. And New York State Police, they govern themselves. But they've actually just had EFC both of those departments in this year. So how'd you start off in law enforcement, walk me through your career? So I originally went to school. I loved soccer. I played collegially. And I was going to go be an attorney in the back of my mind and then realize that, you know, Jay is not the suit and tie guy.

Jay doesn't want to be in an office. He's competitive. He wants to constantly do something. I mean, the show suits is pretty dope. Yeah, you're right. It is. And I don't mind being in a suit now and then. but I wouldn't mind to do that every day.

I don't think they do it every day. For the lawyers that I know, the courtroom scenes where they're strenuously objecting and laying out these arguments, it's about 0.05% of their actual career. I think that's too much. Yeah. And the rest of what he was saying.

It's paperwork. And they're just like, fuck. Yeah. And then that's, you know, like the office. But like, you know, so I was like, I'm going to go into the academy. I did a couple ride-alongs. I'm like, I'll go in the academy.

It's not the same thing every day. And before you go into law enforcement, you don't know. My dad was in the military for several years, 12, and then he got out, and he kind of wanted me to go that way, but I ended up going to college to play soccer. So going into the academy was made him kind of happy to doing some sort of public servant, and he's old school. He's 83. Where were you living at the time? In New York, Western New York, Buffalo.

And so then I went to the academy, and then I got out, and it was 2000. and I was like, all right, got into a couple of confrontations at work. And I was like, Jay doesn't know how to fight. Thank God this guy's drunk and can barely stand up because he's a lot bigger than me. And so then I started trying to seek out training, seeking out jujitsu. And there was just nothing in Western New York at the time. No black belts. There was nothing.

And so we would travel, do privates, come back, get some wrestlers that were in the area. that were in the area, some guys that wanted to fight. We just started, like, training MMA on our own. What was everybody else doing on the force at that time? And what did they teach you in the academy? Okay, so PPCT, pressure point control tactics for those that don't know. It's, it's, it's, I went to the course, actually, 2000. Did they show you everything?

Because there are some deadly moves in that that I know we probably should be careful talking about. Yeah. Podcast over. I reference, I reference PPCT is like one plied toilet paper. You're going to get shit on your hands. Yeah. And it just doesn't work. You also can force people.

So paying compliance is interesting. If you push it too far, you will entice them to behave even worse. Yes. Because they think they're going to die. And so they freak the fuck out. Correct. And you can drive a problem that probably wasn't going to be as bad as you just turned it into into a place where you're in very deep water.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, a lot of it, too, is pain some, compliance after your pressure points fail, which the majority of time they're going to fail. And, you know, there's a bunch of articles out there. But one of them references pain compliance fails two thirds of the time. So it means only one third of time in a gun belt and in a situation, you're going to be able to de-escalate it with like pain compliance.

The rest of the time is going to probably escalate the situation. So we know all doing jiu-jitsu that in wrestling some form of control tactics with live sparring. are the arts that work in MMA, some sort of striking, wrestling, and jiu-jitsu. And now the mixed martial artists are, they're amazing. These kids are, they're good at all of them. Yeah. Before it's like you were- To include kicking your head off from a distance you didn't think was possible.

Yeah, it's crazy. But like in police work, it's like, okay, the majority of resisting arrests in what we would call like an actively resisting, they're not actively combative. So it's not a super high-level force, but it's a hands-eastern. on level of force. Yeah. Right? So having those skills, and we know that most of people we deal with

and arrest are under the influence alcohol on a controlled substance. Adrenaline is a great drug. You know, so pain compliance fails. Now that's actually a form of escalation when it fails instead of having the skills to de-escalate it with like some sort of control. But with control also comes putting your hands on people and being close. And then you introduce unknowns and weapons. So then we have to know what to do as far as engaging or disengaging on those things and the awareness and body language of, you know, when they're presenting a weapon and kind of get us playing chess and then playing checkers.

So you found it on your own. You sought it out on your own. What kind of walked me through your career? So I was a proactive patrolman for the beginning of my career for quite a bit, like just working the streets. You're just out there looking for shit? Yeah, just out there getting into it. I just had like, and I don't even know how I learned it, to be honest. Sometimes you just have those, like, I could look at a car and tell my partner and be like,

we got to find a reason to stop the car, it's probably got drugs in it or they got gun in it. Right. Maybe it's from knowing the areas, just, you started just having that sense. Like you could stop a car and like it would be like the dispatchers or guys who are working on, be like, oh, he's working today. Like it's going to be a shit show. And that's usually what it was. And then I wanted to be on SWAT.

So in 2008, I got selected. And I didn't know anything. Like I didn't know how to do CQB. I barely had shot a long gun, especially not like an M4 at the time. What'd you have in your car? So at the time, we were just transitioning from shotguns to the AR platform. Okay. So we had to shoot them.

Okay. But before that, you were rolling sidearm and shotgun? Yeah. Fuck yeah. Yeah. Which. The old room broom. Yeah.

But we all know, too, like the shotgun's got its place, but realistically in an urban environment. Yeah. It does not. Having something with an optic on it that's as accurate as the AIR platforms is a game changer. Let's be honest, though. The most, the noise attributed with stopping more people in their tracks. Yes. You're right.

Like home defense? Totally. Like home defense? Just rack it probably solves a lot of problems. You're burning rubber out of your house if they, yeah, it's the 870. Just. Yeah. For sure.

Yeah. Not great past. Well, depending on what you have in there, I'm going to call it 50 yards. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I didn't know much about weapon manipulation with the rifle moving and shooting, you know,

simple barricade tactics. but nothing like we ended up learning and moving to eventually, right? Like I look back now and I'm like, I didn't know anything. Yeah. You know, it was just being open-minded and continuously working and putting yourself around people that were better in the lane that you wanted to be better at. And I would probably say one of the guys that helped me the most with my buddy Doug, he was a seal. on a long

and I learned probably more weapon manipulation, malfunctions, moving type things than probably from anybody else. I mean, that weapon system is primary. There was a time where they played around with some scars and some guys switched to like MP7 and stuff like that for reasons that they can articulate on their own. It's not great also past a certain distance.

I don't know if you guys have ever seen the round on an MP7. It looks like a 22 round. it's we but yeah every block of training it's like a median action drills with that thing you just learn the M4 inside and out so it doesn't surprise me

and I feel like the M4 is so accurate that anyone can be good shooter with it yeah I think the biggest thing with that is being able to manipulate the weapon and move in an urban or congested setting right because that's where people get off

like sure I can stand on a line My daughter, when they were 13 and 15, started shooting it and brushed it on a bench and they can plug holes in the target, right? Yeah. But now moving it around people, teammates, like the weapon manipulation and movements is I think where's the big shortcoming in law enforcement training still today. Yes. Even with handguns, but more so like the long gun. So I ended up being in SWAT, worked away up from just being a basic, you know, operator to... Still out in Western New York at this time?

Yep. Yep. I was in western New York until I retired last April in 2023. Okay. I stepped off the team early in 2023. I knew it was retiring, and it got too much trying to keep up with training. And being on the team and running the – being in – I wasn't running. I was part of an undercover, like, proactive, like, drug gun team.

And so I stepped off that in early 23. but we had got the team to where we wanted. Like in New York State, there's a SWAT certification. So your team can be certified as a SWAT operator under DCGS standards, or it can just be a SWAT team and not under DCGS standards, which is kind of crazy because you would think the liability of not being certified if something goes bad when there's a certification in your state. But there was only when I left, I think there was only 22 or 23 teams in the entire state that were certified.

all the rest of them were just kind of like cowboying it or they didn't have the means to be able to get certified they couldn't do the PT standards maybe the shooting standards maybe the number standards you know because you have to have a sudden number of guys every operator has to go through a 160 hour school before they can even have your team has to everybody has to be certified under DCS as an operator and that's 160 hour school so like a lot of these smaller departments just don't have the means to do that. From a liability perspective, I feel like that's a nightmare. It's a nightmare. They don't get any money either. Yeah. No grant money. That's another pro of being certified.

But the liability for years was just crazy to us. Like, you know, we have to get certified. And we just worked to where we could get all our guys certified and did it. Okay. Adam, just to make this standalone once you run through your career as well, too. And then we can kind of kick it off at modern day. Yeah. I did not do 20 years.

I did seven. So I did five of them. It's basically the same. I mean, I'm not great at math, but I feel like it's pretty close. It's close enough. I don't think anybody in this room is good at math. I don't even try to be. Well, maybe tuck.

It's true. There you go. Yeah, so I did five years on patrol. And then I did two years as a full-time training sergeant. And that's kind of where I started seeing the lack of training in law enforcement and started to drive the train, obviously using social media to start my fitness company. EFT and then fast forward about four years reaching out to Jay and going we got to do something different because there's this is still awful like yeah there's some great guys out there teaching

some good stuff but they're not doing it at a level that needs to be done and I know we can do it and so our mission is simply to provide that resource to cops that's our number one mission and so with that being the forefront of EF combatives that's that's what we're doing. And I can say this with pretty much certainty. We're probably the fastest growing law enforcement and combatives company. I would probably say in the world right now. Just from, we've only been in business for two years and we've already done almost 400 agencies. Yeah. And we're booked for 24 completely. Yeah, we have 36 courses booked for this year. That's an awesome problem to have, though. Yeah. So you also run another Instagram page.

I have a few. You do. And the reason I bring it up because I think it's important is from my perspective, as a consumer, it would be easy for people to say, well, this particular Instagram page is only highlighting deficiencies in cops. And then people can view it like that if they want to. When I see things like that, I would hope that it lights a fire under people's ass that they would say, maybe initially at surface level, like, fuck, man, I never want to be on this page. Maybe that's, but hey, if that's the fire that gets under your ass, I'm okay with that. But what I would hope from a professional perspective is that organizations are looking at was probably what is happening elsewhere. Or maybe it's somebody that they don't even know, but it's on their same department.

I mean, NYPD officers are there. There's no way they all know each other. I think it's right around, give or take, 33,000 right now. That's what I'm saying. It's like, so they're like, oh, shit, that's one of our guys. Probably never crossed paths. They see that and like, okay, we need to fix this. And I don't know.

I don't know how much buy-in you would get if you only highlighted the positive. Correct. So I can see how it would be viewed controversially, but I think it's an incredible training tool. That's what I view it as. And if people get butt hurt by it, I mean, that's a personal problem.

Right. So my perspective on that, too, is... Oh, police posts is the page. Correct. So people know what the fuck we're talking about. Yeah. So on police posts, of course, I get the comments of,

oh, well, you know, Monday morning quarterback, or you weren't there. Sure. Correct. I was not there. but yes it's very easy to point a finger and say you should have done this or you could do this right so and yeah we could do that but we're also providing a resource it's not like we're not just saying this is bad and we're not doing anything about it we're saying hey this is not optimal this could have been handled here's some other options right because obviously we're not going to work in absolutes

right so here's some other options here's a non-optimal or an optimal way you know this obviously didn't turn out as successful as i'm sure this officer wanted here's a few options that you could utilize. And we provide that resource at EFC, right? And so that's where I feel like the difference is. So yes, highlighting the unsuccessful or some of the rougher content is very easy to do, right? But providing the resource is really the goal there. So it's an educational page. I try to tell people that it's not just like, oh, we're here to get likes and clicks. It's we're here to help you understand why we do what we do and then provide that resource. I hope that it allows people who are not in the law enforcement world to understand how gnarly that job can be, too.

It's easy to judge somebody's occupation without walking a mile in their shoes. It's tough. And one of my favorite examples of this, and there are good examples on YouTube, for those who just do not like the police for whatever reason. They want to defund and they go get put into a use of force simulator for the first time. Crushed. And just murder. every single person. Every time.

And they come out of there going, huh. Stress and fear. Yeah. They come out like, okay, maybe I didn't know what I was talking about. So I do think there's actually immense value in the page. Correct. And, you know, again, I would say the majority of the followers are probably not law enforcement. Yeah.

Probably the general public. And that's also why we do what we do is to help educate why cops do this. And then say, oh, look, hey, this is a better solution. Let me tell my buddy who's a cop about this. Yeah. Great. What's the most controversial thing that you've put up there? Or what's the one thing that you've put up that received the most engagement out of all?

Because you've been at it for a few years. Oh, yeah. I'm trying to think now. It's got to come back to some sort of building clearing. Oh, just tacticians coming out from the ceiling. I'll say this. CQB is like one of the most controversial topics ever. I'll say this.

Probably the most recent one that I can remember. I think I got two or three million views was the thing. was Seattle or Oregon where they had the pedophile staying and the pedophile showed up to the hotel. Oh, yeah. And the door opened and he pulled a gun and cop shot him like on the balcony 40 times. Yeah. Yeah, that one got about two or three million views. What I appreciated about that is at least there was a cop in every direction while they were shooting, except for like over the top of the banister.

They really fanned out. Yeah. They got their fair share. Crossfire is a serious issue. It's a serious issue in law enforcement. Crossfire is a serious issue everywhere that has ballistic tools if you don't train to a particular standard. And that's the problem in law enforcement. And that's the thing that civilians don't see.

Civilians don't understand how under trained the profession is. It's pretty bad. Like, unless you're on a specialty team and depending on what specialty team that is, these guys are going to the academy. They might get two to three weeks of range training. Yeah. And then two to three weeks of hands-on training. And then they might not ever get hands-on training again.

department ever and then they expect them to be good at it they're just a normal human being that puts a gun and badge on and goes to work every day they don't know how to fight now they get putting a fight on the street with all these other environmental concerns weapons unknowns and attributes probably favoring the suspect most of the time because again the profession is extremely overweight and out of shape so the attributes are going to probably favor the suspects most of the time and they expect us to perform well. And that's just a recipe for disaster. I mean, let's, I mean, let's be real.

When society calls 911, they want someone to come and solve the problem. Yeah. And they want you to be an expert marksman. Yeah. CQB, hands on. De-escalator, yeah, medical professional, yeah. Medical professional. And that's just not realistic.

One of my favorites recently was the Acorn Ambush. Oh, my goodness. Yes. Yikes. Gentlemen, what are your thoughts? So I did some internet searching on the officer. Yeah. And it came back the article I read and it's the internet.

So take it with a grain of salt. Yeah. I'm asking this because you might know more. Well, if you click on the first link of the search page, it's usually pretty good. You're going to be fine. All right. Yeah. Even though there might be 50 page, just click on the first one and then proceed as if you're an excerpt.

Said he in the military with some sort of SF. group, but was never deployed. Yeah. Right. So like again, you know, we talk about training continuously and training in police work is similar to the military. Completely different perspectives of what they're doing for their job. Yeah. But what I'm saying is like your basic infantry, they're taught how to use this M4 and then go out and train. They don't get the tactics that you get, right, that other units get that are specialty units or special forces.

Like they don't get those training. Just basic here, this is how we shoot the gun. We do movements and that's it. Same with police work. Like we give them the bare minimum in the academy and then we expect them to be in a glass house and be good. And they're not. And it's it's almost like a call to action for society to force the politicians to make training mandatory continuously. That's going to be your true police reform is to they got to train all the time.

Otherwise, you're expecting them to be perfect in a glass house. and they don't have the skills to do that. Yeah. Yeah, that guy threw down. Yeah. First, I watched it in shock at first, and then I was thinking, the dude who was in the back of the car,

can you imagine how small of a footprint he was trying to make in that moment? Like, slide down underneath the cushion. Just try to conform to whatever thing he could. And we know if there's nothing in the trunk. That's one of the easiest. There's zipping right through. Yeah.

They're zipping through. Yeah. It's crazy. There's no. I mean, my man went to slide lock. Yeah. You're right. But, you know, speaking to slide lock, too, like in training, like, Austin Police has a video on YouTube.

I think it was from 2022. They have a vehicle stopped. A guy at gunpoint, guy at multiple forms of lust lethal. And then the guy ends up charging them. and you're hearing lethal go off, less lethal's go off, one guy goes to slide lock, the dude eventually goes down, there's about 20, that's an exaggeration, there's a lot of crossfires, there's actually one guy still sitting in his car, like, in front of the whole thing, of officer that bails out. But the guy that goes to slide lock, and I think it's like the second body cam they show, it's like seven minutes and 30 seconds. He's at slide lock for 21 seconds. Until he reloads? Well, he reloads when the bad guy gets back up and comes at him again. And so for people listening, trying to define slide lock here, a magazine, it's not called a clip, as much as you would like to call it at.

That's what the bullet's come in. For certain, like, you know, 5, 5, 6 rounds coming to a stripper clip. I don't know. The stripper, probably not what you think, but this was what it's called. That would be cool. They showed up in what people are probably thinking, but it's called a stripper clip. It goes into a magazine spring-loaded. It's just got a piece of plastic or metal.

You're pushing it all the way down. the slide of the pistol, I'll use a pistol because that's what we're talking about, as it comes back, it ejects the round out, and then it has spring tension that brings it forward, and it's stripping around. When the magazine gets to empty, there's a mechanical stop, so it'll come back and lock open, which is a physical and visual indicator. If you train enough, you don't actually have to look at it because you can feel it. So you go to slide lock, and you should be immediately reloading. I tried to never, even on my M4, never get to slide lock, find a pause. you know do a tactical relics here always top even if there was a little bit of a break i'm gonna take a mag with 15 rounds in it and stuff a 30 round mag in my m4 um it takes practice correct you can feel it

you can feel it on an m4 too even though you can't see the bolt lock to the rear it's a it's a softer more deadened recoil and you immediately know you're a slide lock and so there's the same emergency procedure shake can the hole and put the new one in drive it forward and and go to work yep 21 seconds is a long time. And for people who might not understand why, the gun has the effective range as a fucking ball peen hammer at that point. Yeah.

So your primary weapon system is empty, depending on how far you can throw. We've got one chance at that. That's it. And it's probably outside of most police procedures. Be like, ah, I can hit massive gash on their face from a slide lock to the rear. I mean, if you're in deadly physical force, I guess.

Yeah. But you need to, the second you recognize, that you have to eject a magazine and get a new one in there and at least be ready to go to work. Without that, you don't, I mean, you have a weapon in your hand, but it's unloaded. And that, again, comes from most agencies are only mandated to qualify once a year, and they have to pass standing still on paper 70. So now I'm getting a C, which I still suck at shooting and I'm shooting with no stress on paper. They don't understand the feel of the gun, right? You said it.

When you're working at nods, you're working at night. You can't see it, but you feel it because you've shot. It just feels different. You put enough time in on the gun, right? It's softer is how I describe it. And so then an emergency reload is literally like, I'm empty. I have to reload. My gun's worthless at this point, unless I use it as a blunt force off, you know, topping

out the gas tank. That's extremely under trained. When do I do a deliberate reload? I reload on my time, not when I'm empty, right? So it's like, these are all things that should be trained. But if you're only doing it once a year and you only get one quality. a year and maybe four hours on the gun, you're going to suck at being on a gun. So what is the argument from the officers to not pursue training in their own time?

I feel like most people realize there is a deficiency, even those who have the uniform on. And it is their life at the end of the day that is at risk. Yes. But at some time, they find a way to not do it. I'm going to go off of things that people have told me, conversations I've overheard. And I don't know really truly myself, once I started training early in my career. I just started doing it even more. Started to work towards getting Jiu-Jitsu Blackbell.

Got a Jiu-Jitsu Blackbell in 2015. Who did you get your blackball from? Julio Fernandez and Rodrigo Manderos. They're BGJ Revolution team. they are some of Carlson Gracie's first black belts and then Carlson died and instead of going under junior, they kind of started their own affiliation. Rodrigo still will compete under the Carlson name. Sweet. So that was like, you know, a good milestone.

But like I really- How many people were training in Jiu-Jitsu at that time? I'm a late adopter. I waited, you know, I was like, I know how I'll make this harder. I'll wait until I'm 40. That's a good idea. It had been shot. When I'm fucking made out of glass and my, you know,

elasticity in my brain is like a dried rubber band from being in the sun for 20 years. Not many. Like very, very few, especially police officers. We did a good job at RPD of like when I left. We'd have like other guys that are our cadre like Joe Andicado, who's a retired state police guy as a black belt. Rob Hugis, who actually started training in 96. Right. I think he had his black belt when I started training.

I don't like those people. Yeah. And he's one of our guys. He was a state police. He was on their full-time sort team. Then he was a sergeant in the academy and kind of started revamping their DT stuff. He was kind of like a mentor to me. Yeah. Early on of how to get better at doing training and adding jiu-jitsu and that type of thing. But those guys will say to me, they're like, man, you guys in Western New York, your guys' department trains more than anybody else we know.

And the guys trained more on their own than you know. Right. Like we had, when I retired, we had multiple black belts, multiple collegiate all-Americans that were wrestling. And we would all, they were basically all those guys ended up gravitating to the squad team for the most part. And that was just kind of the culture we did. But, you know, the chief there kind of let us run with.

the training too. Basically was like he was a retired military guy 20 years. And he was a SWAT team leader for a while. Then he got promoted to chief. And he basically told us like, you come to me with what you want to do and how you want to do it. And it was a good reason. It's going to better the department, better training.

We'll do it. And we were adding in multiple DT trainings a year, reality-based training, you know, integrating like force on force and some stress drills. Yeah. one of the biggest game changers, I think for law enforcement, is adding in those. Multiple ranges. I think we were up to four ranges a year when we left. And, you know, for just basic patrol, which was three times, four times more than what other agencies are doing.

And you could see a difference. That lockback, and the reason I bring that up is when we run a drill, like a box drill type thing. Yeah. And one of them is we only put a few rounds in the gun, so they go lock back fairly early. and they're basically going to call and hold. It ends up in a shooting and they'd call hold. The amount of people we saw at lockback was crazy the first year we ran it. Yeah.

And then it's like fix it, you know, talent. We make them look through their after actions. All right, we got to add in after actions. What are we doing? Every time we're on the range, okay, is a suspect down or is the behavior changed? Should I be moving? Is there multiple suspects? Am I alone?

Is my gun up and running? Am I okay? Right? What's my backdrop? If you start playing those through whenever, there's a pause, you stop missing all those things if you're not training as continuous as you should. Right. So we started saying by adding in those after actions, it was huge to changing how our officers were responding in real life and on the calls. And then even so in training. Like when we left,

our box drills like for the most part, everyone was pretty good. Even if they didn't train like outside of work, just training that much at the department was a game changer. And I'm like, how does people not see that this is a huge form of de-escalation is having better trained officers. Yeah, yeah. It's crazy. It's on society, though. You know, to talk more about your question about some of the excuses, right? Time, money.

It's the agency's responsibility to train me. Ego. Ego is a big one. I might put that one at the very top, actually. I've been doing this job. I was just at a very large agency. and I did a brief demonstration, and they were really big on striking, right?

Everybody in that room has way more experience than I do at a, you know, in a pretty high-call volume, high-call-volume agency, and they're just really big on striking. They're like, because, oh, it's the shock factor, it's the paying compliance, it's this, it's that, and I'm thinking to myself, okay, what if you break your hand and have to go to your gun?

What if you need to control space and not create space? And they were, oh, well, striking's instinctual. What if the dude gets on your back? Right. So, you know, there's just so many things. That just goes to show you that even if even if you've, headbut, headbutt, okay, what if he buries this?

It's like, I mean, there's a. Right. So just because they've been doing the job for 20 plus years, yes, you have that experience. And that experience is great. Yeah. You know, super valuable. But sometimes we have better options now than just striking, right?

And so obviously, you know, kind of our core statement, I would say, is, you know, we take the principles and concepts of jihitsu and wrestling integrated with weapons into the environment of policing, right? And we do throw in striking in there, right? Yeah, we like striking. Striking, like, can help us create distance. It can help us close distance. It can be a distraction. Maybe it changes their behavior. Maybe it doesn't, but we can't just rely on just over and over.

Just striking and say, because, you know, again, it's, I'm going to use the John Denner, her term, dilemmas, right? you know, it sets up the dilemma, right? Like, if we're in a good neon top position and we have the opportunity to strike because maybe, you know, they're starting to strike us and maybe we gain that compliance and start to protect their face, and now they're giving us the opportunity

to control the elbow, right? And so now we can establish control. That was the goal. The goal is not to attack the attack. The goal is to gain control. And we gain control through the striking portion to gain that control, not just to strike to strike.

Jay, you often talk about how the MMA matches can go, 50 significant strikes and no knockouts. Yeah, I mean, you look at the car, like every round now, I think in the UFC, there'll be like significant strikes. Yeah, they put it up almost every bout. Yeah. In between every round. Most of those fights have, at least each person having some sort of significant strikes

in well above double digits. Again, it's pain compliance. A strike can be beneficial. It can do multiple things for us. We're not against striking, and I think we should have striking in your curriculum, for sure, which we do. But you can't rely on it over and over again. You have to have something to supplement what your strike is setting up. Also, what happens if you encounter a drunk Golden Gloves boxer?

Yeah. Mr. like, I like striking the guy. It's like, yeah, me too. Yeah. You're right. You're right. And that's the thing. Like just because cops are training, like not, it's one of the things I love Jiu-Jitsu very much.

I haven't been doing it very long. I fucking suck at it. But I recognize that it's a tool. And that doesn't mean that the tool is used for good. Right. You know, you. God. There's no way to say this without just saying it.

If you were a predator and you wanted to further weaponize yourself, it's a fucking great tool. Yeah. It's like a superpower. Yes. So why would anybody think that there wouldn't be people who don't respect law, don't respect life, that they're not out there training as well? Yeah. I mean, I think one of the biggest mistakes you can make is think that your enemy or adversary is an idiot to underestimate their capability and potential. Because you will find yourself behind the power curve real, real fast.

Yeah. And striking too, like you said, like even if he's not a skilled striker. everybody's got a puncher's chance of landing the knockout. Yeah. Right? The longer you stay in that distance and you stay in that game, the more your odds go up of someone landing that knockout. And that might be on you.

Yeah. Right. If someone doesn't train to grapple, they're not good at it. That's actually a factual statement. Anybody can throw punches and be, and land a knockout. Anybody can do it. Sure. Get lucky.

Everybody has a puncher's chance. You don't get lucky. lucky in Jiu-Jitsu. You have to be skilled. Unless you outweigh them by about 200 pounds, then you might be proper fucked. That might help, yeah. Yeah. And you have an LBS technique? Yeah. Which is 100% real, and I don't think people who used to play professional football should be taught Jiu-Jitsu.

Well, you know, we often talk about that as well. We talk about the attributes, right? And even when we talk about cops, they're like, hey, just because we're teaching you these techniques and concepts of principles, the curriculum, doesn't mean that you can go up to somebody who's twice your size and be able to go to work, right? We got to also incorporate tactics, sound judgment, right? My pet peeve. Time, right? Because, again, like, if you look at a lot of older body cam footage, it was a rush to get them

in handcuffs, a rush. Why? Was that just because they were easier to control? They were less of a threat in cuffs? No, hands kill. So we got to control the hands right away. Yes. But that's because nobody knew how to control the body, which is crazy because

Jiu-Jitsu really didn't arrive in the U.S. till, like, 93 when Hoyes comes in and beats the piss out everybody. Yeah. But wrestling's been around forever. Only since, like, the Roman time, though. Right. Just a couple thousand years. Where is that?

When we're vertical, we use more wrestling skills in our curriculum than we do jujitsu. Now I like, now that I have found jujitsu, I like looking at old sculptures. I'm like, oh, that's a nice underhook. Yeah. Very, very well played. All that Greco-Roman. But like, wrestling's been around forever. 100%.

Yeah. thing's been around forever. Yeah. The other thing that I found with doing so much training lately, not lately, I should say, for the better part of almost two decades now, is underhooks are trained and overhooks are trained responses. If you don't train, you don't know how to do a whizzer or an overhook. You posted a video about that today. Yes, I mean, again, an example. It was a 15-year-old. Oh, okay. A 15-year-old. Well, I didn't do it. Who, and I wonder what. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's an older video, but they just resurfaced. I don't know why they got that close, but this kid basically comes in, gets the inside space, wraps the dude up and just, I mean, people don't understand what happens.

If you get your head back behind you, like the guy goes down. Yeah. Thankfully, everybody was like, nah, and they kind of like pulled him off and he was able to roll. But that's a grass too. Yeah. It was on grass. A 15-year-old kid got double underhooks. Yes. Got a what looked like maybe a gable grip, actually, and just popped the guy right over.

Athletic kid with attributes, right? That's it at 15. years old. I think the backstory that there was a fight, and I think the cop was trying to pull him off. And when he turned, he ended up and then you see that video, the cop reaches high. Yeah. Because

you protect your inside space, man. You don't know. It's because, you know, grabbing the head is an untrained response. You see cops, they'll always say, oh, if I control the head, I control the body. Yes, if certain other things are in place. Right. Right. And so that's, that's, that's, that's

the asterisk that they also leave out of that. And that's the old school mentality is if I control the head, I control the body. Yes, in certain situations, that is correct. And that's why in a person that has a competent level of skills, winning the underhook is king. It's huge. Because an untrained person, which is the majority of people you fight, don't know what an overhook is. Yeah.

They reach for the shoulders. They reach for your head. They don't know what to do with that arm. Direct route to the back. Please do. Safest angle we can have for a takedown on. They're going to try to put you in a headlock probably. Correct.

Yeah. But can we also say now, where does that help us in courtroom documentation, human behaviors? I underhooked this dude and he wizard me. You can say because of human behavior, this guy has some sort of training. He wrestled in middle school. Yeah. He wrestled in high school. He did jiu-jitsu, maybe Army combatants, something where he learned how to do an overhook or what is known as a wizard.

Yeah. Because an untrained person doesn't know what that is. Correct. Yeah, I think in most untrained people, you'll see them go for the classic, just headlock. Correct. I mean, you'll see cops do that too. Yeah. I mean, you see cops do it.

But that's why, because they don't know how to win inside space. They don't know underhooks. Well, everybody likes to think they rise to the occasion. I think everybody at this table realizes you fall to the level of your training. Yeah. You don't, you mean going red isn't going to solve every problem? Yeah. I've actually heard people say that.

I thought that was a joke. No, it's not. Buddy Paul Sharp, who was Chicago. I know, Paul. Yeah. Yeah. And he's just, he's like, would tell me about. people who'd say, I don't need to train.

I'm a game time player. And I would look him dead in the eye, but like, shut the fuck up, Paul. Nobody has ever said that to him. And I have now heard it said. And I'm like, do you have 20 minutes? Because I want to see this. What, I mean, like, should we play bodies hit the floor? Like, what do we need to do here?

Like, let's get it on. Like, eye gouged. Like, oh, you fucker. They truly do say that. And again, it's kind of like emotional intelligence. right like they think that they're going to be better in a situation than they truly are why here's the biggest issue they don't know how do we how do you get around ego i truly believe and i don't say this negatively we all have egos it's about keeping your ego in check so for me the first i resisted

i had heard about judas for a long time people were so boisterous about it i'm like get away from me yeah Like it was almost, it was nowhere. I think it has continued to become more popular. But I would hear about it. And it was almost kind of like, just like, I'm going to pass because you're so excited. Then I move up here. I never did. The lick of Jiu Jitsu in the SEAL teams.

I get up here. I meet my buddy Nelson. And he is like, Jiu Jitsu. I'm just, we're drinking at my house one night. I'm like, if you will just shut the fuck up. Literally what I said. If you will shut up, I will try a class. And I went into the class and.

and one of the coaches here is a one-stripe black belt. My first class, they were actually was closing the distance, getting a grip, and then working your way to the back. And we're just moving around a little bit, and I could feel even that. I'm like, okay, there is something about this that if you don't understand this, people are going to be able to do to you

whatever they want to do, regardless of how much you don't want them to do that. And in my mind, that's like a red star club. or going up in the sky. Like, you need to pay attention to that. And if it works and it's ineffective and you have the ability to do that, whether you want to be offensive or defensive

with it, you still have to have an understanding of the buffet in front of you to know what you're going to be eating. So to me, as soon as I felt that, I was like, okay, I need to understand this. Because I don't give, like, I'm very capable of violence, but I'm not looking. I'm so not interested in violence.

Yeah, right. Like, you're so smart. Here's another beer for you. Sorry, I'm sorry that I offended you in whatever way. that I offended you. Like, have a good night. Like, I'm leaving. I'm not interested at all.

You know? That's why we want more trained cops because you don't need to prove yourself to you, but you're not nervous. It's like, you would rather be like, all right, you know, I'd kick your ass if you didn't have that gun on badge on. You're probably right. Let's not find out. Let's not get you more charges.

Let's just go take care of the warning. Plus, I know what humans are capable of now as well, the deeper understanding. And honestly, I get to beat the shit out of my friends and they get to beat the shit at me. Two hours every day, almost every day a week. Like I'm not, I'm actually, I'm good. I don't need to go do that on the concrete. Yeah. It's another thing I think about.

I'm like, oh. Oh, yeah. That didn't feel good on a judo spring floor. What'd that feel like on gravel? Oh, fuck that. I don't want any part of that. But the ego piece, how, how do you break through it without them being on the inside of one of those videos that you post? I would trick them.

Yeah. That's, that's honest. Through adult learning. They have to experience it. Again, you can show videos all day long. You guys have encountered, though, cops that don't want to experience it. Correct. And I don't know what to do about that.

I've started to figure it out. Okay. Do you tell. So there's six main adult learning, how adults learn through six different routes. Okay. One of the ones you have to talk about is like, what do they actually do? What is like real life that they're doing and what do they experience? So when I first started teaching jiu-jitsu for police, and that's why we don't call it.

police jiu jiu jutsu for police. Police jitsu. It's not really Jiu Jitsu. Jiu Jitsu. It's skills from jiu Jitsu, skills from wrestling integrated and bridging the gap of what we do

in a combative environment. Right. So like, I love Jiu Jitsu. The jiu jitsu part is how do you build your skills? Yeah. How do you channel your energy? How do you control your body?

How does it help you control your mind? Okay. But it's, police work isn't really jujitsu. There's too many other variables and factors. So I was teaching when I first would go in in service. I started teaching, oh, we got to play full guard and we got to go to Kimoras and we got to like to sweep them. And that's not it.

You know why? Because if I take that cop that's never been on his back before, why am I learning this? I've never been there. And the majority of cops have never been put on their back on the street. So now I'm trying to teach them something that I'm telling them they should know and they've never been there. Yeah. But what do we do every day as cops? Probably cuff people.

Cuff them and try to take them into custody with us or our partners on top of them. So takedowns and control. Let's start using the fundamentals of control to teach them how to do that better. Then they are like, oh, I could use this every day. I could use that. Right. So that's how I've been. tricking them is kind of reverse engineering. What do I need to do to get him to buy into it?

And it's just one of the adult learning principles. Like, so since I've started doing that game changer. Really? Yeah. Is it true that, and I've heard this from quite a few cops, everything generally seems fine and dandy until that first handcuff touches the wrist. And then it's kind of like rolling the dice. So it's not even first handcuff. It's just first touch. Yeah. Okay. Right. So first contact, it goes. So like... Is that because they're thinking in their head, they're like, okay, maybe this isn't happening. And then they...

In their mind, they see, like, the cell door is closing as the control is established. Well, that and most people don't like to be touched by people they don't know. Yeah. Right. So we all this do. It's a different podcast. When we're doing jukeets. That's why you like to cuddle.

Well, that's why he trains in the ghee. I like both. I don't know what. I do, too. Yeah. Why he's so anti-gee? Don't put that on me. Don't put that on me. He is.

Let me just say that. I think he says he likes no-Gee more. I train once a week in the ghee. But he does train in the ghee once a week. All right. I have to because Jeff makes me. That's good, though. Jeff and Jay, both make me.

You should do it twice. I don't have time, do it. I'll tell you what. It's a classic cop excuse. Good job. Extracting people from cars. Extracting people from cars, not the driver's side compartment, but the other compartments. usually another human characteristic is they go away from you and they put their feet in their pillars.

Oh, I've seen that on YouTube so many times. So the geegrips on the pant legs, bro, game changer. People do wear clothing. Yeah. Where we are right now, jackets were a thing until about two weeks ago and they will be a thing again starting usually Halloween. There'll be some snow and it works its way down. I came from Fort Myers, so I almost brought my snowsuit knowing it was only going to be in the 60s. Yeah.

I'm trying to get better. And I used to live in Buffalo, so that's kind of a real wimpy thing to say, but I hate DeCole. Did you ever encounter sovereign citizens? Oh, yeah. Yes. Fuck yes. Tell me about them. They're super difficult to deal with.

Obviously, there's no real de-escalating those situations verbally. After the show, I will pull up my YouTube search history, and you are going to be shocked at the number of sovereign citizen videos that I fucking, I love it. Yeah. They're difficult. Because I didn't have to deal with them professionally and they edit out all the other bullshit. But it is. They're big on the color of law, right? The color of law.

A black's law dictionary. Yeah. It's like all the time. We used to have them. They would drive around with like. They want to get cardboard plates on their car. Right? Like they're difficult to deal with.

They truly are. Well, yeah. For the most part, though, you have time. to get more guys there because you can talk to them and de-escalate that verbally until you have more guys there if you're going to have to go hands-on. So I think that's just what we tried to do with those guys is, you know, don't do this by yourself.

I don't need to get him out of the car and fight with him right away. Like, I'm just going to get guys coming and then once guys get there and maybe be like, hey, come show me the plate. He gets himself out of the car, you know, show me why this is legal. Yeah.

So then instead of having to yank this dude out of the car. Well, they're going to hand you the paperwork most of the time. Yeah. A full three ring binder of shit. You're supposed to just take the time to read on the side of the road. Yep. But that got them out of the car for us, you know, and then we have guys there to, you know, pin them on the vehicles or take them into custody if they fought. And a lot of them are just passive, too.

Like, the ones you see on YouTube are like, it's just like anything else that goes viral. Their camera is probably recording honestly as they're driving around. Yeah. They are there to try to entice an interaction. Correct. And I'm not going to lie. I'm here for it. God.

It is entertaining. Yeah. Only if you're not a police. officer. If you're somebody sitting on their couch with like 20 minutes to burn, fuck yeah, it's entertaining. I mean, say the sovereign citizen and you have your first amendment auditors, right, and your second

amendment auditors that will go out there and just you know, there was that one video of two guys got they said they got unlawfully pulled over and they walked into the police station slinging rifles just because they said they could. Is that what you mean by like a Second Amendment auditor?

I think I've seen people on like, correct, parking or like hiking trails and they're gunned up and eventually cops get called because that's not normal behavior. Correct. And so there's been videos that we've posted before of guys that have come out. And it's like, hey, like, and they're, you know, I mean, you say man with a gun in a park, the cavalry's coming. For sure. Right.

And so they're coming out, long guns out. And the guy's just sitting there with it slung. I might repost it here soon. And he's like, I just want to see what you guys would do. I just want to see how you guys would respect the Second Amendment. And they're like, okay, cool. You know, remind if we take the gun. off you to run you and stuff like that.

And he was super compliant. He just wanted to see what they would do. That is an unnecessary risk, in my opinion. Well, that too, but now you're taking away resources from people who actually need cops. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. And so that's, and that's honestly the biggest thing. And so, again, but those First Amendment auditors, they're just there to get an emotional reaction from cops to then sue, to then get paid, right? And most of the time, they're not doing anything wrong because they know the law. They know what they can and cannot do or where they

can and cannot stand. And they just, you know, keep invoking the cop, which are your badge number, da, da, da, da, da, you know, why are you bullying me? And they're going to get that emotional response. And then they're looking for that as soon as the officer touches that individual. Now it becomes an assault, right? And then that's what they're going for. And that's, and that's, and it also is very click baity on the, uh, on the interwebs. Yeah, especially now, you know, everyone's being influence are in different ways and they just, you know. YouTube's a dangerous place. It is.

Yeah, wear a life jacket. Yeah. Don't go too deep. Take a buddy. No, shallow water blackout is a real thing. Take a buddy if you're going to do a bounce dive. Yeah. Because, I mean, for whatever reason, the sovereign citizen movement led me to the

Flat Earth movement on YouTube. Okay. And then once that led me to Netflix. Jesus, Andy. Documentaries about the Flat Earth Society. Okay. My favorite, so check this out in this documentary, which has nothing to do with what you guys are here to talk about. Go on.

There are experiments that these guys claim they can do to show that the earth has no curvature. So at the end of one of them, it did not work out? And they were like, at the end of one of them, the fucker literally proves that there's curvature to the earth. Yeah, because he like shines a light into a camera or something like that. Yeah, and it should be completely flat. And then he has the guy either raise or lower one. And then you can start seeing it. And the guy's just like, well, that's a little weird.

It's like fade to black. I'm going to find this leggings advertisement and send it to you. So my wife's going to kill me for saying this on the podcast. But it's a curvy woman. And she's got leggings that are the earth. Okay. And it says, who's telling me that it's a flat earth? I literally just saw this like last weekend.

I'm like, I should buy these for my wife. I mean, the internet is just undefeated. It has everything that you would ever want and also everything that you would never want to be exposed. I just used that line like this week, the internet's undefeated. It is truly undefeated. Like you can't like, will I, I'll post stuff and then I'll get people and I'll say, this is why. And then they want to argue. I'm not going to argue on.

This is why I'm doing it. You're an adult. If you want to do it a different way, then feel free to do it a different way. I don't advise, but do it your own way, right? Like building clearing. How many different ways of skin that cat? that what are you going to do, spend five hours arguing about it or are we going to go train? You know, so it's like, anytime you have differences, it's like, okay, what is your why?

What's the pros and cons? Does it work better for you? Then, okay, choose that route. It's the easiest way to do it instead of arguing back and forth over stuff like in my earlier days, I would do that. And just like with the internet. Waste so much time. You don't win. You're never going to win.

The internet's undefeated that way, right? It's just never going to win. And so it's like try to finding better ways to have dialogue without like getting into an argument. Yeah. Is probably what I've been working on the most right now. Sometimes it's hard for Jay to be the bigger man. The internet is a tough place to be the bigger man because it's largely consequence free and that shit can creep in. Exactly.

Yeah. It's easier to fire off something that you wouldn't say to somebody in person. Right. And I think the world will be better if there were some consequences to things that people said. I've moved to DMing them, usually after like one or two responses if it's not there because then we can have whatever conversation. They can share it, whatever they want because that's my thoughts. Usually they don't. But like the whole world doesn't need to know Jay and Andy's conversation of disagreeing on something.

Where do you get the videos you post all over? People send them to us. I have, I was going to say, I feel like you have. I was going to say a trickle, but I think it might be like a rushing waterfall. Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. Yeah.

So since the last time I've been on here, I've developed a team over at Police Post now that are full of former inactive cops that help provide content from the page. We have our media guys at EFC and EFT that obviously help collaborate on those pages as well. But yeah, we get it from everywhere. I mean, you get it from YouTube. People send us cell phone footage of something they saw. the on the street or even some guys will send us body cam footage whether they're allowed to or not we don't really ask unless they ask us not to post they're just asking for some thoughts we'll still do that as well yeah yeah i mean and i mean even some of the content so one one interesting thing about

us is that jay uh jay post his own body cam footage on eFC using the techniques that we utilize real world and at least to my knowledge i don't think anybody else is doing that so no from when you were active yeah i wish uh i wish uh i wish I wish your boy was here. We could, uh, well, we can, uh, we can talk about that later though. You know, Michael needed some R and R. Yeah. From what?

I don't know. I think when we started. And Sean, and Sean has it down pretty good too. So like, he'll make a post knowing that he's going to get the keyboard warrior responses. Yeah. And then the next post is like, oh, that wouldn't work in the street. And then he'll like throw my body cam down. Yeah.

The next post. Or what we're getting now even is. our attendees and students. I think he just posted today or, yeah, I think he just posted today, team tactics. Actively aggressive person that had either Warner was getting arrested

from one of the guys that was in our class. His partner doesn't train outside of work or just started, but he had run him through the one in multiple officer apprehension and it was clockwork. It was clockwork. And that's coming from a guy that doesn't train

Jiu-Jitsu. He just was good in the system because Casey showed him how to do it and said, hey, we're not fighting each other. If you go high, I'm going low. Vice versa. I'll control the anchors. And it was beautiful. And he just posted that today on EFC.

Sure. Yeah. And I even, so some of our certified academies, so we actually have, we actually have EF combative certified academies where they teach our curriculum. They have a cop class. So I teach a cop class at Falli Jiu-Jitsu every Wednesday,

1030 for free for the past two years now. And, I mean, At first, day one, we had one guy show up, right? So he got a private from me and Jeff Robertson, who's been a cop for 27 years, third degree, secondary black belt? One of those. Yeah, not sure.

And started at one, now since we get 20 cops. And it's great from all different agencies. We even have some Coast Guard guys come in, which is a base right there. And it's great, because the majority of them haven't trained jiu-jitsu. They're all brand new. So we do it specifically, just like we do our curriculum,

every day is a building block, or every Wednesday is a building block. These guys just in eight months, right? So you talk about one class a week, and they're not coming every other week, right? They're coming, you know, sometimes they're coming twice a month. Yeah, they're getting in when they can. Correct.

And the body cam footage we've been receiving from them, unfortunately we can't post a lot of it is incredible. And it's these guys that, they're not even, blue belts, right? They're not even, there's no striped white belts, and they're taking guys down. They're getting guys in handcuffs. They're controlling them quickly. What we've had, well, Joe works for us now, but we have one guy. He's been in two weapons-based entanglements, and I can show his videos after, where he recognized the 45 flare as a guy's walking away. Joe collapses on his arm, takes him down, controls, controls the weapon, controls the hands,

has his gun drawn while his partner comes in and removes the gun from the suspect, all with in 10 seconds that happens. Yeah. And it's just because he trains. Like it's not rocket science, right? And so that's also one thing that we also preach is you don't have to be an experienced practitioner to learn

this to be effective. And I think that's why some people don't like police jiu jihitsu. It's like, oh, like, just like you said, jujitsu, it's like, all right, dude, shut the fuck up about Jiu Jitsu. It's like, no, no, no. This is for your job. It's specific for your job. It's not for everybody. I've watched, I mean, I've watched

My wife is one of the coaches at the gym. So, I mean, I get some inside tea on people who come in and they try it. And they're like, I don't dig it. Yeah. And I get that. And again, I'm a fucking hobbyist. Also, people take the shit way too seriously. Like, hey, man, you're going to go compete?

I'm like, I have my kids this weekend. I don't have fucking, no. I got my purple belt and did a competition because my wife was going to go and coach. I was like, fuck, I might as well go because I'll get to spend time with her. Yeah. You know, like I could give two shits about any of that. So it's not for, I get that it's not for everybody. I get that for women, it's a harder, God, it's, I've watched my wife pour herself in to try to get the women's community.

They started such a disadvantage, size, strength, idiots who don't know how to modulate their weight, they're getting smashed. I talked to her about her first two years. She's like, yeah, I stared at fucking ceiling fans for two years. Inside Control Bottom, or Mount Bottom, you know, because she's like, like the guys were not going easy. me. I was getting fucked up. She fought her way through that, but most people don't want to. So it's hard enough to get people in. The difference in that is cops fucking touch people for a living.

And their life might depend on it. Somebody else's life might depend on it. And the person that they're touching, their life might depend on it as well. So I don't expect them to be the guy who was at six classes a week. Right. But dude. Correct. Develop an understanding.

So not only that you are safer, but the people that you are serving. are safer too. So we developed in our, we have a video library, we have an app, course material, PowerPoints use force, like the whole nine. But we developed a skills module. And that skills module is not tactics. It's teaching people how to shrimp, pommel, underhooks, overhooks, body lock positions, standing up, all the things that you need to do, breaking grips, stances, train that

once a week, right? Yeah. Then train it with a partner. At the certified academies, I give them a 26-week layout. And basically it goes from the front of the curriculum to the end of the curriculum. And if we're going to do, say, some sort of takedowns today, say body lock takedowns, the skills and drilling are going to be pummeling inside head position, stances, breaking your posture. And then we're going to go into one or two takedowns off of that.

And then maybe we're going to do some resistant training from standing, starting over unders or wherever it should be. So again, I tell people, judicious is not for everybody. Yeah. In the police world, we need to teach to the competent level officer, okay, not to the jujitsu blue, brown, purple, black belt, because we're going to get people that don't want to do jujitsu. And realistically, jiu jiu jitsu and wrestling skills, going to a gym is the faster way you're going to develop those skills.

But even if you're a black belt, there's a big gap stealing tactics to the weapon-based entanglement's portion. No, yeah. And to the use of force, right? And a lot of them don't like to hear that, but it is. And then you put them in like, you know, we do with like the civilians that the review boards. They come in there, put them through some really based training drills. What do they do?

They shoot people all the time. Or a lot of times you put the black belts through these. And what you see is they're dominating this dude, but they're dead because they got stabbed or they got their gun taken. And they didn't even know it. You know why? Because they fell back into sport mode. Well, it's not a complete tool set. As much as I love it, I try to be super open and honest about that.

I mean, ranges to me are what is the most important when it comes to self-defense. Again, I'm not a police officer, so I don't have to look about it. I'm not looking for people committing crime so I can be fucking Batman and put him in cuffs. I just got a cell phone and be like, excuse me, somebody who has a badge and gun can probably come handle this because I'm not getting involved. Smart man. Yeah, the person looks like he's crazy and I don't want to get contact meth high or hepatitis. So wear your gloves. Be a good witness.

Yeah, totally. Be a good witness. It's not, there's not striking in most jiu-jitsu schools. Like you said, there's no Batman tool belt. And if you don't train with those things, just like anything else, I don't think you should be. It falls back to the game time player. Like, cool, you're a black belt in jiu-jitsu. Absolute and immense respect for that.

But if you think that means that you're going to be able to apply the other tools without practicing those things, you're basically saying the same thing like, hey, I'm a game-time player. Right. Just through a different verbiage. Yeah. And this even goes back to our... So actually, today's day and age,

memes are a legitimate form of communication, right? Yeah, I would agree. You're fantastic. One of the best things about the internet. So I made a meme, and it's a picture of a sign that says, stay in your lane, like it's taken off the highway or whatever.

And I put, not all black belts should be teaching law enforcement combatives, right? And under that, obviously I put a really nice description that probably nobody read about what this meme actually means, like the seriousness of this meme. Oh, like in the commentary section?

Correct. Yeah, zero people said that. So anyway, I thought the meme was funny. Right. Yeah, it's wasting breath at that point. And it's true, right? It's, yes, you can provide value on the jih Tjitsu side and the control side, but we talk about the two things that I just said in our mission

is the integration of weapons into the environment of policing. Those things are massive. With the use of force. With the use of force. When you talk about the environment of policing, you're talking about, yes, the environment, the concrete, the ground, the asphalt, but also case law, policy, things like that. That, that just because you have a black belt,

doesn't mean that you have that experience in Graham versus Connor or Tennessee v. Garner. Yeah. If anything applies with integration to weapons, you guys just spend a whole time talking about weapon manipulation, right? And how important that is. Like, there's some guys out there that teach cops that haven't shot a gun in 13 years. I knew that was coming. Yeah, yeah.

I was saving that for like the past four years, bro. I'm assuming we're talking about a particular person. I'll show you later. Okay. And it's like, yeah, but do you want this guy teaching cops? He hasn't shot a gun in 13 years? No. Okay.

Either would I. Yeah. Cool. And if it's just the skills portion of it, great. And can like community black belts help police? Of course. 100%, yes. Because some departments don't have,

they don't have someone that skill in jiu-jitsu or wrestling. So, hey, reach out to your common jiu-jitsu gyms and be like, hey, can we come there for the skills? But realize that that's only a portion. Jiu-jitsu skills is only a portion of combatives. Correct. Right. Like, is it an essential portion of it? Yes, it is.

And we all love jiu-jitsu sitting in this room. We love it. But, like, we understand that it's not a full tool in the combatives environment. And there's a gap to bridge there. And there's a lot of variables that come into play that we have to understand. And I think that's why EFC is like blowing up so much is because we really stress our why on the skills of jujitsu and wrestling, some striking. And then how do we bridge the gap into what we really do? And that's why I like people that don't do jujitsu come to our class, they can pick it up, they can retain it, the concepts, the principles, the skills.

And then they actually want to learn it because they're like, oh, this really works. And then I'll be like, oh, here's a body worn camera of me. And I think what's better than just body worn camera of me is actually our students' body warning care of. Yeah. Right? Because, oh, Jay's of Blackbelly's been training. He trains all the time.

Right. So like, no, it's the people that you've taught that will move the other ones. It's a people that have taught. So now that we're getting those body cameras, that's game changer, right? I wish we could post a lot stuff too. It's just so hard because you have the FOIA requested. And there's some states that don't even release anybody. body cam footage, even if the case has been either dismissed or adjudicated or whatever the case may be,

they don't release that now. Someone will release the dash cam footage. Yeah. But really, I would say it's agency dependent whether they want to release it or not. So we're trying to build these relationships to where we can show, say, hey, look, this worked very well for you guys. And Grand Rapids Police Department is probably the best example that we have currently of a full integration. when we have a year's plus worth of data of them going full EFC, they had a, I'll go into the incident a little bit. They had an incident where an individual was on a traffic stop,

Kyle was on traffic stop, pulled the individual out. I think he went to go hands-on, and then he pulled his taser. He, you know, wasn't the best time to deploy a taser. Individual grabbed the leverage point, took possession of the taser and they're going to the ground. Traffic stop, as he goes to go hands-on, the guy flees. That's right. Okay. It's a very brief foe pursuit to the front yard, basically just like around the hood of the car and then into the front yard of the, and during the takedown or standing, the officer starts to present a taser, which comes into what we talk about that doesn't get trained enough is when can we present.

Right. But anyways, he presents probably not the best time that they get in a fight over the taser and somehow the suspect ends up with it. Suspects on all fours and officers behind him. And the officer is actually a very fit officer as far as like runs, stays in good shape. Yeah, you tell. But it's the physical confrontation wrestling match, him trying to break down the house and control that guy, was somewhere, give or take three minutes. And he's losing control, guys got taser, and the officer ends up shooting the guy. There's a contact shot.

It's actually still in trial, so I can't really go too much more into. But the videos out there. It's a fatal shooting. It's a fatal shooting. And right after that, Grand Rapids contacts us for a two-day course, solo and officer team tactics tactics, control attacks, and weapons-based entanglement. So we run that class. They open it up to the area.

Some Michigan State police guys come. It's our first course in Michigan. And it was a two-day, just kind of like overview of those modules. And they were a hit. Everyone's like, wow, where's this been? So they now have 26 or 28 certified instructors. The lieutenant at the time becomes a captain in charge of training. And he gets a mat room, Grand Rapids Grappling Club, Grand Rapids Police Grapling Club.

They got officers coming in and training off duty. It's growing. They're doing phenomenal work out there. They've implemented EFC completely into their academy and. into their in service and he did an end of the year presentation and I can't uh I have right here Jay okay we yeah we can't show the pictures of the body cam and stuff that he put in this presentation yet yeah of course but he can read like Adam can read off like what it was and it's it has changed the game for them yeah so basically uh so so so Grand Rapids is the second largest city in

the state of Michigan so it's not a small like five-man agency. They're pretty big. They have about a 305 sworn, right? So, again, second largest city. So in the conclusion, they had over 826 uses of force reported in 2023. That's almost three per day. Right.

Yeah. So roughly 600 EFC techniques were utilized for that reason. So about 78%, 76, 78% were utilized. And the way that they were able to calculate, that is they changed their use of, uh, their use of force reporting, uh, documentation to then have like a checkbox and they could, and they could elaborate in the actual report. Yeah, they're parsing their data a little bit more specifically. And so this was a, it was a, it was a pretty long, um, it actually, they actually even went to the history back from, I think it was 2020. So they started with

all that data from 2020 and then when they started going towards the EFC side and you just see a dramatic decrease in, you know, law to worker comp claims. Like just, I was just going to say, and I was going to ask you guys, there's got to be quantitative data showing probably less injury to

suspect. Yep. Less injury to officer. God, unfortunately, the use of force incidents are probably not going to decrease. Because crazy people do crazy shit. So actually, since COVID,

assaults on police officers is up 10. Some percent. and assaults on police house weapons up like 11%, give or take from one of the studies. And I can send that to you if you want to see it. I wonder if that's because people somehow equate the lockdowns being the idea of the police, or they were the ones who were enforcing it?

That and I think bail reform and no consequences in a lot of the states. New York, California, like they're getting rid of bail, so there's no consequences for these guys, so they're going. And some people are like, oh, 10%'s not that much, 11% is not that much. If I came to you and said, I'm going to give you 11% raise this year, you're not telling me no.

That's a lot. Flip it to the other one and say, hey, I'm sorry, we're going to increase your taxes by 11%. Yeah, correct. Yeah, right? People are like, I have a better idea. How about you go fuck yourself?

Yeah, that's actually good. Andy, I might steal that one. Go ahead. Classes. Because, you know, it's crazy. But in this 20-23 report from them, also there was three situations where guys had guns

and were fighting with them. And they ended up recognizing the flares or the presentation of the weapon, being able to pin it, place staples, either contact, like not contact shots, but, you know, talking them through, like putting them at cover and contact and then saying, hey, let go of the gun. And all three of them were resolved with some sort of weapons-based entanglement techniques or concepts, and they were taken into custody without shootings. What do you guys think the likely result would be of that lawsuit?

I mean, again, not to get into specifics, but is this a situation where somebody reached the end of their tool set and didn't know what else to do? They were gassing, right? So they're starting to get losing control. They have a Batman belt, right? One of the tasers, the non-lethal is already off of the table. So now they're falling back to the only thing that they have. Is there a chance that that is viewed as justifiable? How do you think it would net out in that particular case?

So, again, total hypothesis and conjecture, I'm just curious. So a normal human being fighting for three minutes is a long time. Yeah. Most human beings, when I grapple with new people I've never grappled before. You have about 60 seconds. Yeah, a minute, minute a half, they're done. They're exhausted. And I'll use even a better example.

I was up in Zone 5 in New York, Zone 5 Academy, and I was grappling with a guy that had just trained for a marathon. He just ran, was it, 26.2 miles? Couldn't tell you. I despise running. Okay, so I think it's 26.2 miles. Was in the greatest shape of his life comes the following week to the DCGS class. Yeah, but the problem is this. Marathon training and grappling training are not the same.

Correct. I roll with him one day at lunch. After about a minute, he was exhausted. And I have nothing but respect for the work that they put in. For sure. But those energy systems are they... It's not the same. God, I wish they were, though, right?

Because I also wish you could do... Jiu-Jitsu and then just go run a marathon. Yeah. I wish it went both ways. I'm here to report. It does not. They're different. They're different.

So, again, if I were a subject matter expert in that case or say a hypothesis case of that situation, one, I fought with this guy for three minutes. He does have my taser. Okay. I don't know if it's deployed or not. And I'm completely exhausted. and disengaging is probably not an option for me. I don't have the energy to be able to disengage safely.

And preclusion. Every other thing I tried has failed. I've tried verbal de-escalation. I tried cooperative cuffing. He ran. I tried to tackle him. I tried to tase him. He took my taser.

I tried to get the taser back and fight with him for another however many seconds. And I was completely exhausted and he's still resisting arrest. I had no other. options but this, right? So that's how I would attack it. I hate that for that cop. Taking a life like that is a heavy burden. I hate it for that that he got to that place where he thought that was the only option he had left. Yeah. You know, so City of Rochester also has a grappling club now, and they're doing a phenomenal job. A bunch of their instructors are our cadre. They're all swach eyes. But they open it up.

to all service members in the entire county to come. They actually had a very similar incident not too long ago. It was a shots fired call. The officer locates the truck. The guy takes off from him. It's mini pursuit. And then the guy bails and the cop starts to chase him with his taser. At night through the yards and the guy gets around one of them.

you can see just ambushes the cop comes around, tackles him. He had, I think he had thrown his gun prior to this. The person running? Yeah. Yeah, okay. And I don't know if the cop knew that or not. But he tackles him, and it's an all-out fight. They hear the taser go off.

Radio silence goes out. They can't get a hold of them. Gunshots go off. I think there's five gunshots. Don't quote me on the number, but four or five. And once they find the officer and the guy, the suspect is shot, okay, and in serious condition. And the officer's completely exhausted his whole outer vest carrier is thrown in like 10 feet away from him.

That's where his radio is. He got his gun out or the bad guy got his gun out. Four shots are gone during the scruffle of it. And then the fifth one ends up hitting the bad guy. And the officer has like very little recollection of what happened. And all you can do is hear it because the body cam is face. down in the grass. Jesus.

Right. So like those situations are like again, and he probably fought that guy way less than three minutes. Yeah. You know, and he has no recollection. He got hit in the head. The bad guy mounted him at one point, took his taser. And I think...

It's four points. Yeah. So it's kind of crazy. You know, those are the things. It's like, how do you articulate those things? Graham Connor has the three main factors, which is the major use of force case that governs us using force and police work. But on top of those three factors, the court will consider all these other factors as long as you articulate them. Size, weight, maybe if he's skilled or not, were you exhausted, what's the environment you're fighting in?

How many suspects, how many cops, or were you fighting in traffic? All these things should be documented in those reports, but if the offer has no recollection. It's going to be difficult to articulate that. Yeah. You know. So it's tough. A body cam facing the ground can provide some audio, but. So not complete.

I'm glad you said that because the thing I've added in probably the last 18 months or so is as technology advances. And we know any military police is always looking to advance tactics and thing. That body camera is a tool. Even when it's not blocked, most officers carry it center. line of their chest or left or right. So it picks up 40 to 60% of what happens and it misses 40 or 60% of what happens. And it's not a cool 360 GoPro. Like it's got one angle.

It's an electronic device. So it has no feelings. The one thing it does all the time or the majority of the time is pick up sound. So we should be using our verbal commands and dialogue to narrate the story of the suspect's actions. and our actions to the body cam. Say I have a body lock on you from behind. My body cam is picking up darkness. Yeah.

Right? So that's not picking up anything that's occurring. So you got to start narrating to the body cam. And the cops are like, oh, how are we supposed to do that? We can't even, like, you know, train. Yeah, you can't be in fucking code black. You can't go red. Yeah.

Train. Stay calm, you know. Give dialogue. That's just your verbal commands, but in a descriptive way of telling what the story is. So your documented use of force matches what your body cam is. And if it doesn't show in it, it matches it verbally. Yeah. Picks up the sound of what's going on.

I like that idea. Yeah. And you can 100% get to a place where you could very, I'm not going to say easily, but you could very well verbalize what is happening because you're cognitive way of where of what's going on because you're thinking through the situation because you've exposed yourself to stress incrementally before the world throws this. bowless of stress at you because the code black shit

like condition black is fucking real. People are just, you're like, oh, you're not with us right now. No, no, no. You've checked out for a few. You're right. Yeah. When we're off air, I'll show you a body cam of mine

where I actually go like to belly to back and put the guy on the ground and you can't see anything, but you can hear me tell my partner, let me know when you're set. Yeah. Because he gets punched in the face first. And then he goes and anchors the low legs.

I do the takedown. Yeah. And the guy's hands, I have one arm, like, wrist grab, but I don't have it, like, extracted yet. And I'm not going to start moving the guy around trying to extract it to my anchor set. So you can hear me say, let me know when you're set, then I'll start extracting arms. But you can't see it. Yeah. And the reason being is because my camera was not facing in that direction.

Right. And that also becomes important whenever weapons are involved on the suspect. Correct. Or you go to present a weapon, too. Because obviously, if you're in a kneel in top position, your body camps picking up what? Just like Jay said. basically straight in front of you. So if you're doing a knee on top, right,

that's kind of what we call it, is your body can't stop picking up the waistline. Right? Yeah. Stop reaching. Stop reaching. He has a gun. Stop reaching.

He has a knife. Stop reaching. Right. And so when you narrate that stuff, it's like, oh, well, you know, Sir, why did you shoot this guy, right? And then you could say, well, because he was reaching for a knife or a gun, right?

You can articulate the point in time in which you saw that, right? And then you can address. it, you know, accordingly. Welcome you guys through the curriculum that you offer. Is it mostly two-day courses or do you guys do extended states? Oh, no. The two days are only custom right now. They're just custom courses.

So our largest, most popular course right now is our level one instructor course. It builds instructors and takes them through the whole curriculum, kind of like our way of teaching, our method of teaching, teaching to the why. And we tell people, too, like if they're not instructors, come. because you're still getting the full curriculum. Yeah. And it's a curriculum, right? It's a system.

Kind of like you talk about like John and New Wave, they have a system. That's why they're so good. You can have super skilled guys and if they don't have a system, they're not great. So it's concepts principles and it's an entire system laid out. It's four or five days. It's a 40-hour course. So hosts get to pick. They can take four or 10-hour days or five-eight-hour days.

that's up to whatever they choose. And the first three hours is PowerPoint. We cover use of force, adult learning, our eye form of coaching, teaching to the why, and then we rotate right into the mat. And then we do a whole skills module. And that is these aren't tactics. These are the most fundamental skills that we think you need in most combative situations. Underhooks, overhooks, shripping, freeing your hips, right?

sitting up, frames, frames versus posts, inside head positions, breaking grips, stances, you name it, we cover all the skills. And then we go into what we call dominating bad positions. And I would say that's primarily known in the community as like jiu-jitsu ground fighting for most companies. Like this is their ground defense blocks. But like I don't like the word survival because what's survival? I'm doing whatever I have to do to survive

and I'm not necessarily like probably thriving. So I want them to dominate all these positions, even if it's not great. In Jiu-Jitsu, guard is neutral. In MMA... Depends on the player. Some guard players are you drug into their A-game. Yes.

But like for the most part, guard is considered a neutral position. In MMA, that changes a bit. Now the top guy can strike and put you in the cage. It's not as much neutral as it is in just a sport of jujitsu. Less people are going to pull guard

in MMA than they are jujitsu. I don't know if I've actually ever seen it. Right. Ryan Hall has. Yeah, right. Yeah, but he's fucking crazy. Gary Tonin. Yeah, but Gary Tonin got punched

into the fucking next century by trying to leg lock the dude from the bottom. You're right. Yeah. What's the one guy, he's pretty good. He's in the UFC right now. Ryan Hall did that fucking, like, it was basically a bit.

Himini role, yeah. The MNRI role on BJ Penn. Well, it worked on BJ, but his last fight did work so much. You know why? Because he went against another good ground fighter that has good wrestling and good striking. So now he controls her the fight go. And I also think he was just like, fuck it. This is how I'm doing this.

Yeah. Regardless of the feedback I'm going to get. Because he kept doing it. Yeah, he did. I specifically remember watching that fight. Because I'm a huge Ryan Hall fan. I was pretty frustrated to watch that fight actually. He's so good.

You knew the outcome after like one or two attempts. And it also. made it hard to defend for being honest. But that guy, I think, was a brown or black belt that he fought. I know, but also, it don't do that shit in a setting where there's strikes. Yeah. If you want an immonari roll at the gym, knock yourself out, but dude, you're in the UFC. I don't think that that is a great move.

No. So, like, on the street now, we have a gumbelt on, and we're on pavement and rocks, like you mentioned earlier. Yeah. Bottom guard is not neutral. Yeah. That's a bad position. Any position where our butt and backs down the ground is a bad position.

Or my head. Yeah. Right. So we call it dominating from bad positions. Our number one goal is to get out or get on top. So we want to stand up or get on top. And we work through, hey, how to build frames, wedging out, how to wrestle up, how to get some sweeps, how to escape and then sweep. So that's like our ground defense block.

And then I would say like one of our bread and butter's of the course is our one officer and team tactics. control and takedowns. So then that's the next couple days. We do one officer control. Then we do one officer takedowns. And then we add in two, three, four, and five guys. And they all have dedicated jobs. Basically what you do in one man, the next guy comes in and just takes the responsibility off your plate. We don't fight each other. And they know, hey, I'm anchoring on the legs. I'm anchoring on the head. The next guy's coming in watching our backs. If they need us, they'll call us. Talk about communication, developing SOPs for that. And then we get into the entire weapon-based entanglements module.

And that is all from, we start that out with what we call deflection to movement out of space or engagement. So the first best part of weapon retention is don't let them get on your weapon. Be aware. Don't let them grab it. So we'll have them interviewing someone in the clinch where you and I can touch each other and the suspect's going to reach for the gun. And you're going to deflect them. We already taught him arm drags. two-on-wans underhooks.

But everyone starts to push away and start going straight backwards. And then they move continually moving backwards. So we teach them how, hey, when I demoed this, I gave you the answers to the test and you just didn't see it. He went, I deflected, whether I arm dragged or I parried and I moved down range in the direction I was traveling. He has to turn around and find me. I'm already moving. I'm threat-focused, getting to a tool or just getting to space and ready to fight on my own terms, whatever it might be. That's a big learning curve there.

That's a big shortcoming in police work. Then we go into weapon retention in the holster, standing on top, like neon top positions are us dominating bad guy and then us on the bottom. And we have principles for that. And then we go to weapon retention outside the holster. And that's like a concept I came up with years back called cut. And that's always a fan favorite. And then after that, we talk about the difference of defending a knife and a gun. Distances.

We know it distances the guns is dangerous, but the knife's not. Yeah. But up close, they both could be dangerous. Yeah. So disengaging a knife when we can would be the best option. If we have space, you know, do we have space? One, is it confined space or can we move? Is it congested? What's the congestion in the space?

What's a priority of life in the space? So all these things come into driving our tactics there. And then the gun, the big thing with the gun is, do I disengaged gun or do we stay engaged? And that depends. How far engaged am I? And again, am I behind the draw? What's the congestion in the space? What's the priority of life in that space?

Probably drives a tactic if I stay in. That's real eye-opening to people. And then we talk about when do we present in police work. you get a lot of this, I'm a DT guy or I'm a gun guy. Okay. Well, if I have a 25-yard problem and it's a gun problem and I'm a DT guy and I suck a shooting, that's bad for me. Yeah. But if I'm a gun guy and you're stuck in a closet with me or an entryway and you think that gun's going to get up anonomy in time for you to solve the problem, that's probably a bad day for you.

Yeah. Right? I'm probably taking your gun and shooting you with it. And the majority of the time in like railway-based train drills, that's what I do. And that's kind of eye-opening. So when do we present in the clinch, whether it's on the ground, against a wall, against a car, in a car, in a closet, in an entryway. And that's our cap block. You know, we talk about controlling the near side arm of the suspect, the weapon we want to present.

And that might be a taser. That might be my handgun. Could be a baton. Whatever I'm going to present, I need to control the near side arm of you to that. and then have an angle, then that's my safest time to present in that clinch portion. And then we go into what we talk about is post-immediate use of force. What are our options once they're in custody? So they're in cuffs and we can't move them to transport right away and we're getting resistance and we can't sit them up.

So we got to restrain them in cuss. We saw that over COVID with George Floyd, Daniel Prude and Stephen Dulcay. They all happened in like a five-week time, hit the media at different times. all very similar in that they were restrained in cuffs, and then they weren't getting moved to transport right away. So they're being restrained because they're also being somewhat uncooperative. And a lot of that was just there was nothing. We weren't, we're teaching our guys to cuff them, search them, stand and move them.

Well, what happens if we can't? So that's a big lack we saw in curriculum. So that's kind of how we end the block. We did a bunch of data on that, talked to a bunch of, you know, professionals in the medical. side of things and then worked on some restraint positions and cuffs. And there's three primary positions. What are the pros and cons of them? And how do we document the pros and cons?

What's true and what's not true here? The biggest myth is like position, you know, fixia as far as like stomach down or if they're in the lateral position or stomach up. So there's a civil case where the guy actually rolls him to a recovery position. and says, I moved him there because he breathes better. Well, there's studies that actually show stomach down gas exchange is better than on their side. So, like, that's not necessarily true. So we have to just avoid saying they breathe better in any of those positions

because there's different studies that kind of will contradict that. And all of them are showing that there's not enough gas exchange to actually, like, cause positional fixy on these positions. So, you know, there's a lot of good data out there on there. Dr. Newman beat Dr. Ray in court on that. Dr. Vilk testified for the Daniel Prude case in grand jury, which I was the subject matter expert on. And all that data's out there. These people just got to do the research on it. Yeah. So that kind of concludes the level one. Okay. That's our biggest seller. And that's the bread and butter of what the curriculum is. That's what you'll do every day in police work. And level two launches in June.

And that's going to be more of like your box drills, training officers of stress, but more so teaching the instructors how to coach that and set up those drills. How long will that course be? That's going to be a four-day, 32-hour course, and it's going to have vehicle extractions in it also. Sweet. And so on top of that, to just add the level one is we have the ability to also integrate our curriculum into the entire agency. Just because you send instructors and you have, let's say you send five guys, and those five guys teach in service, we now have a way that we can actually help.

speed up the learning process and in service, instead of just going to in service and doing the same thing, which guys are getting their baton out, they're hitting the bag saying stop, get back, maybe know some handcuffing techniques, and then that's what they do. And those are probably wrong. Yeah, those are probably not optimal. And so they're, they're on, that's on repeat until, right? And so we're actually now able to lay a foundation and actually build these officers up with the mandatory train that they're given. And what that also does what would also allow grand rabbit to do is it also allowed them to increase their training time they're able to take this data they collected and say we need more time like and when you take that

to your review boards your administration it's kind of hard to argue with that right yeah it's a metrics based approach and so if you look at like the admin stuff they're looking at liability or looking at money right and things like that one thing that we can do is regardless of the size of your agency we have a solution, right? And we can actually tailor what you need. We'll find your pain points, and we'll fix, we'll be able to add solutions to be able to help fix that problem that they're having, right?

And it's super cost effective. It works. We know it works. We have the data to prove it works. Michigan State Police, we were, again, they sent how many instructors? So the first course, they had sent 18, and then a year later, they did three courses,

and they ended up sending like 90 guys through three courses of 30. Right. So that's just one agency in Michigan. And so because they saw the value in it. And then just by doing the certified academy stuff, there's an agency in South Carolina, North Charleston Police Department, which is probably one of the highest crime,

higher crime areas within the state. And they're going to now go to EFC because they're seeing guys that do train it. They're seeing their body camera going. This works. And it works really well. And it works quickly. The nice thing about the agency program is you send, say, five instructors,

10 instructors to get certified. Well, then you have to get the rest of the agency through in service and get them all caught up on it. So prior to them coming to in service, to speed the process up, every officer, every sworn officer in the department can get our app, which gives them the user course. So they have to go through all the PowerPoints. They have to go through all the videos in the curriculum. them. So everybody's already on the same page. They have that on their personal work phone,

on their laptop, whatever it is that they can refer to any day of the week. Maybe they have a fight with someone and they use these techniques. They can review it on the language on there if they're not sure how to document it. But they may say you're the man, you're the D.T. Lieutenant. Okay, you're in charge of making sure they all finish the training. So it's five to eight hours of material and you can see how far everyone's gone to complete it and you can say hey we're going to start in service in June and it's May whatever 10th today okay by the end of May you guys need to finish this five hour online training and we're going to cover these blocks and use of force or hands-on training so now they all have again watched it heard it before they go do it and we know in

adult learning that adults retain 10% of what they either hear or see, 40% of what they see and hear, and then 90% of what they see here and do. Okay. So if they're seeing and hearing, us do it prior to going to in service, they're going to retain way more than if they just have to go in blind. And they have that whole course material. They have all the course material, the student guide, the entire curriculum laid out, written, all the video libraries, all the skills, if they want to use that skill library to go train on their off time, they can use that to train the entire department can. So that's the easiest way to get the trickle down from implementing a new program.

How can we help cops from dying so soon after retiring? So that's a great. That's a different topic. Actually, not really. So I actually had this conversation the other day. So obviously shift work, right? Yeah. The night shift stuff.

I mean, heart disease is, I'm going to go past cops too. It's first responders who are, it seems to be shift work largely based as well. Heart disease within 10 years, astronomical rates. Right. You know, again, I think I told you this stat. Cops are 21 times more likely to die of a cardiovascular event than they are at the hands of a bad guy. that's terrifying right so obviously you have your shift work you have your poor diet right you work a night shift what's open 7-11 and they might not even have the education of what's good for you right

by the way to go to eFT we have free info on what you should be eating we have tips to night shift so the education's out there he's got to seek it right have you guys seen the videos of ronnie coleman as a cop do his fucking meal crap hell yeah he's sweating he's just sweating his patrol car just in the driver's seat just getting his protein blocks in. Swaying. Meal prepping's huge. When I was working shift work, meal prepping was huge because what do they get stuck doing? Fast food, fast food, fast food.

Especially if you don't plan it and you're like, fuck I'm out of time. I'm starving. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I used to keep my cooler in my car because like I never really took lunch. Like that was the guys at work when I retired were probably happy because like I would skip lunch and keep working because I would just eat on the go. Yeah.

Or I'd be eating when I was filling out like a rest paperwork. Or I'd set up buys during lunch purposely because I know it just pissed those guys off. Or maybe that's lunchtime sometimes is when those guys get up and start doing work. Yeah. Right. So like why am I wasting this time to go eat lunch when I can eat on the road or eat like going? But it's healthy, right? You have to, you have to meal prep.

Yeah. And then sleep. Yeah. It's just tough with sleep. I was going to say for those, you know, meal prep, I think that's achievable. for most people, but the fucking sleep. If you're forced into a shift work scenario, especially like up here,

I think they do one month and then it flips to the next one. And then they do a month and then it flips to the next one. You can mill prep your way through all of that. That's great, but you just can't smash your circadian rhythm like that. Yeah, it's, you know, obviously the overuse of caffeine, I mean, is a real thing. Guys are forced themselves to stay awake sometimes and they're consuming unhealthy amounts of caffeine,

which obviously can lead to cardiovascular issues. Short and long term, actually. Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. You know, and so it's kind of one of those things where I know some agencies have gone down. They've tried eight-hour shifts and ten-hour shifts to kind of help slow down the, you know, the likelihood of them being awake and even, like, kind of working different shift times to kind of help combat that. But it's still, it's still 24-7 service. It's never going to be perfect because you have guys that work night shift.

and then when's court? Court's always during the day. And it's on your day off. So if you're the dude that's out there, if you're the dude that's out there making arrests like four or five times a night, okay, you're going to have court probably two, three times a week. When I was working night shift, I had court almost every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Or I'd have court Wednesday and Friday. One, I knew Wednesday and Friday were prelims. So I knew if 72 hours before that I made felony arrest, I'd get court overtime.

right so i'd be proactive on days that was going to get me court if i wanted to work overtime then you're like oh man i don't want this court over time anymore because they just want to sleep but those things are out of your control if you work night shift and you have to go to court you have to show for court right so that limits your sleep and then maybe you have children and then you want to spend time with them in the afternoon when they get out of school or whatever it may be so like the sleep's the difficult part um i did work with a guy uh it was one of my good friends uh he's a black belt also, Swachye, and he's still working. And I was in the drug unit with him as well.

But when he worked night shift, he actually took a spare bedroom in his basement and he, like, blacked it out. And that was, that dude would sleep there. And he was always getting the best sleep out of all of us because he had this blacked out room. Then there was another guy that we worked with. He stayed up on his days off. So he never broke his cycle. He worked night shift. So he worked 11 to 7th, 11 to 9th to 7 in the morning.

On his days off, that's what he stayed up. He stayed. He would sleep during the day. Fucking vampire hours. Yeah. Can you say vitamin D deficiency? So that's what he did, right? And then the afternoon would be like his time.

So like, you know, say he slept every day, say got home by the time he's sleeping. Say he slept or say he would sleep eight till three. Three to ten was his time. And then 11 you go to work on nights off. That's great until 30 days later, then your swings. Yeah. 30 days later, then your days. And it's just not good for your body.

I don't know how you could manage that. I don't care how blacked out your Rupin. Probably not good. Every 30 days your rhythm is shifting. I just, phew. Well, that's also why there's thought there's such a high turnover in the profession is because guys right now aren't staying in very much. Well, at least now, at least some of the younger guys that are getting in,

they're doing what, two to four? And they're getting out? Yeah, I think guys are starting to retire more right at their 20 or 25 where like the old guys are staying forever. And that kind of comes back on a thought I call purpose. Most police officers don't have a life outside of work. They live the job. You could apply that to many occupations. Military would be one I would put deeply in that bucket.

So they live the job and they never have any outs, no friends outside of the. community, no, which is super unhealthy, in my opinion. Super unhealthy, right? And those are the people that you see that stay long. And then as soon as they retire, they're already like 70, so they die soon. Or they have, they have no life after police work. Police works their whole identity. Like, I wouldn't tell people I was a cop. Like, they would always ask what I... Well, you were undercover. Did. That was only like the last few years, you know. But like, I would always tell people as a sanitation engineer because it sounds good, but I was taking trash out the street, so it kind of fit what I was doing.

And it was like, you know, so that was the term I always used, especially like when I was younger and we were going out. That's what we told people we did. Well, I even say, you know, Jay's, you know, I mean, because when I left at seven years, I mean, obviously being younger, I, it definitely was my identity. It definitely became who I was even just with seven years on. I'll say Jay's done a lot better at transitioning from least what I've seen. You know, that was also one of my worries because it is a very common thing. Like you don't think you miss it. You don't think like you're just going to be fine and then all of a sudden you're like I don't feel important anymore I'm not getting calls

my friends quote unquote aren't calling me you know um it it sucks and it can lead to you know some not so good places mentally but you're still getting calls sometimes well you're not going back I have a very good memorization of faces so like I'm still getting the text like who's this sometimes be careful what you text yeah yeah you know no and you know it's you know there's one thing that I often talk about, and you can definitely shed some light on this. So, you know, I know when I started law enforcement, it was, I had to put in 27 years before I could retire. Okay, that's a long time. You knew that day one, though. Correct. Correct. I did that day one. I was also 23 years old when I started law enforcement. So I was just like, yeah, whatever, put it on my tab.

Nobody lives at 50 anyway. Yeah, I was like, yeah. Overrated, whatever. I didn't care. You know, But, you know, because I know in the military, at least from my understanding, is you can do four years, leave and still have full medical. No, no, you can't anymore. No. 20 in a wake-up call, meaning 20 years in like a day. And then you will get a pension in health care. There's disability that you, depending on what happens, right? Then there's a whole system about that.

But the health care benefits only come through retirement. Got it. But if you medically retire, you get to keep those benefits? Correct. Yeah. And that's obviously like a both my, both my neighbors are Rangers. Yeah.

And they're both, one did five years, one did 16, and they both medically retired or claimed disability. And they're like, cops don't have that. And I was like, no,

he's like, so you can't put in for a disability claim after how much time? I said, yeah, you can. You can, but it's harder.

It's a lot harder than it is in the military. But it's like, yeah, I mean, it's, that's one thing is like, this job is every day, if you're,

if you're, if you're, if you're, street, you know, kind of patrolling. And it's just so much work because I've, a kind of guy that have gotten hurt on the job, tried to get medically retired, and we're not able to. And we're just fired.

And they had nothing, right? That's a rough spot. Yeah. And that happens. Yeah, and I know you were worried about me, you know, a lot of guys are like, oh, because dude, when I went to work, I put 150% in any work. But he was still working.

And he'd be down in Charleston, both of his fucking phones, not ding, ding, ding, yeah, she did what again? Okay, cool, let's go talk to her. I'm like, dude, it's just nonstop, 150%. But outside of work, like I had my other channels that weren't jujitsu, friends that weren't part of the police community. Sure, I had guys that was really close to, like that way on the team and those types.

As you should, but I, and I've cautioned so many people against this. If your entire social circle is your occupational circle, Yeah. There is no work-life balance. It's just work all the time. Yeah. And after 22 years, I had did everything I had set out to do. So once I got into police work and I realized what I wanted to do, I eventually wanted to be proactive in everything I did, especially like in the streets on patrol.

But I wanted to be on SWAT and I wanted to work undercover. Like as far as like plain clothes working in the drug gun community. And I did all those things. And I did all those things with a pretty high level of success. So then my new purpose now is providing better solutions for officers that don't understand it, don't know it, don't know what they should have. And so that's why I think it was easy for me is I'm so busy right now. Like I don't have time to think about missing work. Do I miss kicking indoors sometimes? Sure. Do I miss going on SWAT training days to the gym and training for an hour and then going to range or going and doing whatever training we're doing? Of course. Or going on three or four raids on a training day because that's how the department gets around overtime, of course. But you know, you miss those things, but it's not my life.

Yeah. And at some point you've got to put it down. Yeah, I know my purpose is somewhere. else now. Yeah. What would you guys change about the occupation if you were king for a day? If you could come in and make a sweeping change just policing in general. We'll talk in like the entire United States because obviously there's so many different departments. Where would you guys start? Mandatory training biweekly. And not just in DT, range, building, clearing, like it could it could alternate. Yeah. But there is a there is a 10-hour schedule that every other week you get an eight-hour training day.

So you as a department, or me as a person that would have the God say, could say, every department is going to this 10-hour schedule and every other week is an eight-hour training day for people. That's how you implement continuous training. Now, the training's got to be good. So then we'd have to hit that route too. But that starts the ball rolling of continuous training. There's no continuous mandated training in police work. And if it is, it's not good.

And it's not enough. That's insane to me. And most society doesn't know that, though. So it's like society doesn't know that. Legislation isn't made to mandate them to do it. So the course of cities and departments aren't going to do it if it costs them more money or to have to find ways to do it or it's too dangerous we're going to get hurt. Like you're going to get hurt training. Well, if you don't train, everybody's going to get hurt.

You suspects, victims, like that's even more of a liability. And I know nothing about how these changes are made in these departments, but I feel like unless the citizens demand it, the change will not happen. But they have to be educated. And I also don't think, well, I don't think people would have any issue reallocating tax dollars to things that are more effective. I do think people would push back on additional taxes. I was just going to say, I don't think people would mind paying more, but I do. But I think they would like to. I think we're paying enough.

I was going to say, I think what they would like to say is, can we get an Excel spreadsheet? where all this money went. And how about we have some oversight and we reallocate? But if they don't know, that's the key. What are they going to do? They don't know. And what sucks is, you know how they're going to find out? Catastrophe.

Yep. And that fucking sucks for everybody involved. And, you know, the big thing after George Floyd was all this de-escalation training. We're going to throw all this money into verbal de-escalation. Okay, verbal de-escalation takes two parties. The cop and the person they're dealing with. If one or the other is unwilling to de-escalate verbally, that fails. And that most of the time is a suspect, but can fall on the cop sometimes.

Oh, I've seen some cops from Code Red. Maybe he's got a bad day. Maybe he's going through divorce. Maybe he's just angry. He's got issues going on and he fails to de-escalate verbally. Once de-escalation fails by one over the other party, okay, what's the next form of de-escalation? Good hands-on control. Good training.

As that builds up, what's the next form of de-escalation? Being able to transition to tools, being able to create distance. I have this new saying that everybody likes. So distance gives us what? Time. Time. So distance plus time gives us what's the result we want? What's time give us?

I think it gives you the opportunity to make better decisions. Better decisions under stress. Yeah. More solutions. And it allows people to gap inexperienced. as well. Correct. Because the worst thing you can do is rush somebody who is inexperienced to a decision-making

point. Yes, for sure. So now, if we don't have distance or distance isn't the best tactic, what gives us time to equal all those solutions? The training. Control. Yeah. So if we're in close, we have to understand how to control someone.

If we can control them in a manner where we are in control and we have time, we use that as time now. Yeah. So good control equals time. Right? All three of us know the deal. Like, I'm sorry. There's some people like, if I get on top of you, fucking get comfy.

Yeah. Here's a sandwich. Yeah, the five-minute buzzer is going to save you. But I could have a conversation with somebody else and still control them down there. Again, I'm playing a different world where I know they're not going to shiv me in the rib cage because we're playing inside of a rule set. But you're 100% right that it buys you time. Yep. Because if I can get you to a position that I can dominate you in, you're on my time now.

Right. And that's why we don't have to be in a rush to get their hands. hands behind their back. We have to know what their hands are doing at all times and be able to assess them. But we don't have to go to hands. If I go to your wrist and Adam goes to your wrist and we don't control your hips in your head, guess how long it's going to take us to get your hands behind your back? Like 35 minutes at least. Yeah, a long time. At least. So like it's a hypothetical number, but now we need to control your body. Yeah. Then work the arms. Yeah. And I kind of showed him a little bit before you guys got here about just a simple

a simple way of guys will try to get the hands behind the wrist and they just start doing the circle. Yeah. Right? As a, yeah. Or eat an elbow directly in the teeth. He just wanted to cuddle with you without us here.

He was actually demonstrating on somebody else. Yeah. I didn't have the pleasure. He did already try to underhook me at the coffee shop. He was flared out. He was drinking his coffee. I'm like, this beautiful. Giving up the inside.

He's like, I'll wrist lock you. I'm like, that shit's not real. So yeah, the curriculum man's been a work in progress since 2009-ish 10 when I really started changing it from when I went to PPC instructor school, and then I started training MMA and Jiu-Jitsu. And then the chief was like, I don't care what the state's doing. I want you to revamp our DT program. Yeah, he also does have an MMA background, which you didn't.

What areas of the country are the most resistant to this type of stuff? We don't have to mention particular departments, but are there areas that are like, no. We're not changing anything. We're kind of the best ever. I think, I wouldn't say an area of the country. Because I think- Size matters. I would think... Department size?

I think it varies from department-to-partment. It depends on who's in... What mindset is at the top of the table. So, like, Grand Rapids, their lieutenant at the time ends up becoming the captain and has a say and now trains... Change the department. A good friend of mine is the chief of police at Grand Prairie in Texas. He is around 350 officers.

He's a black belt. He now has seven or eight black belts that are cops, and they had their own mat room and their own jiu jitsu team. So out of the 300 officers or 350, I think they have like 60 to 70 jiu jitsu members now that train at the gym. That's still woefully low. It's waffily low. But compared to like most agencies that size,

they might only have like four or five. Right. Right. So it is changing, but it's getting the right people in charge, getting guys that don't have the ego, or being willing to sit down and have the conversation. Like if I could sit down with admin,

and have a conversation with them, I could show them the liability of not doing it, which might make them think, right? Switching the liability onto them is a really good way of, like, getting them to think about it. Right. And to that point, too, is some areas have civilian review boards, right?

And obviously they have a process in which they have to get approval to implement some type of particular training. A lot of those civilian review boards, of course, have zero law enforcement experience. So when they get presented with the, we want to better our defensive tactics, combative subject control, whatever you want to call it, program. It's going to be like, well, I mean, and there's been videos posted of some civilian review boards.

There's one in Ohio I can show you. And he's like, do cops like, when they're like, do they always have to carry a gun? Like, it's just like, it's, but again, they don't, they're not educated on the topic. So you can't really fault them for it. But it's like, why is this even, why are we wasting our time even having this discussion? Right. And so that's also one issue that we've not come across too often. There are some particular agencies that it'll go to the attorney,

then it'll go to the Civilian Review Board, and it'll just get shut down right there. I mean, even if it's just us coming in for like a one-day thing, it's been frustrating in time, time. But I would say it's probably more rare. When I testified in the Daniel Perude grand jury case, that was a naked black guy with the spit hood and cuffs in city of Rochester that ended up dying right around the same time,

Floyd did but came out. I have family that lives out there. Yeah. Came out later in the summer. I remember like 10 minutes in. I was like, they just don't know any better. They don't know. So I need to attack my testimony as I need to teach them.

Yeah, it needs to become more educational. They just need to educate them in why we are doing these things. So what is the why behind it? why are we posting his head on the ground we're just head stabilization it's just pressure on your skull okay that's not going to injure you what's going to injure you is blunt force trauma if i start bouncing your head off this pavement with punches yeah that's going to injure you right it might injure myself as well if i just stabilize your head there okay it's a control point and making it safer for you and me but the big thing was is like have you ever had anyone post on your head you know as an instructor every instructor course I do. I do team tactics up to three guys for this drill. And I have someone go knee on top. I have someone low anchor me on the legs. And then I have the biggest dude in class, put all the pressure he can and plank right on my head on pavement or on the hardest surface we can find. Yeah. Okay. And you know why? Because it takes the anxiety away. Then I make them go all out and do it.

If you're going to teach this, you can be able to be able to do it and you need to know why behind it. Okay. Because they're going to say, oh, it looks bad when you post on their head. Well, do you want me to post on their head or would you rather me be teaching officers to drop elbows and punches on their face and bounce it off the hard pavement? Yeah. What looks better? What's more effective? Yeah.

So now I say, like, do you want their booking photo to look nice or do you not want it to look nice? Like, I'm posting on guys' head and it's going to be fine. You know, skull is very strong. It's actually stronger than your pelvis. So, like, structurally, it's a stronger bone than your pelvis is. Your pelvis is pretty strong. So it's like... It's a rough optic for people who don't understand the why.

Correct. Yeah. So it's like just educating. I think it's just educating civilians more. And one, the media. Educating the media. Because they don't know. They don't want to be educated.

I don't know if that sentence makes any sense. I don't think... Is this camera still a lot? because the light just shut off. Did it? Yeah. I don't know. Did it overheated?

I knew it. I think there's too much gray in that hair and I was trying to blend it out. I put it in deodorant. Could be shiny and bald. Yeah, no, it's not my beautiful skin. I just saw, I just saw it go off for a second. I was like, what are you talking about? You didn't see shit.

I don't know why. What? My mic on? Is Jay's mic on? What are you guys talking about? You say, what? This down? What?

What? I don't know what he's saying. Your elbows block in your face. Oh. My elbows block on my face? For everybody listening and watching, we don't know what the fuck's going on either. I have no idea. It's not. Anyways, carry on. Yeah.

Now, that is a rough optic. And for people who don't know why you would do that, I mean, fuck, it's an uphill battle for sure. And it's just education. And, you know, I think, like, what would really be is, like, if you're on a city council. If you're on a civilian review board, you should have to go to a civilian police academy. Maybe just a minimum of like 40 hours, you know, if run them through like the curriculum that we run or just run them through different scenarios and then explain to them why we do one thing over the other. Yeah. And then let them do it.

Just educating them. Like we can't really blame them if they don't know any better. like it's been so long since I was just like didn't know what police work was to be able look back and be like I don't know what I would have thought and then like I think of it like man I always thought like I don't remember learning how to do underhooks but at one point in life I must not have known what an underhook and an overhook was it's just been so long I don't remember not knowing it you probably knew them you just didn't know what they were in the utility yeah like it's a normal movement pattern but if it's it's a normal movement pattern but if it's it's Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, kids watch infants fuck around. Like they're going to get underhooks. Oh, hell yeah.

But they're not trying to. They just realize that. Yeah. Yeah. But the overhook. But the overhook, they don't know. Yeah. They don't ever do it, right?

No, no, no. At some point, we learned how to overhook to defend the underhook. Yeah. And it's like, that's a learned skill. Yeah. Right. I agree. What do you guys want to close that out with?

What do you want to leave people with? We've been at this a couple hours and at some point in time. Go ahead, Jay. So I've got to fucking been to Montana. I was like, I got to let you go out and check it out a bit. Yeah, I know. I was flying since like five yesterday. That was, that was a, it was an interesting trip.

Three different airlines, a bunch of different cities. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah, but we made it. Yeah. What do you want to leave people with? I think just, you know, one, educating society with why certain tactics are better than others. people always talk about optics it's not always the optic sometimes the optics like again posting on the head maybe the optic doesn't look what's your better alternative

what's the better solution you want me to punch him and bounce is that off the pavement that's a rougher optic on fox news but that's the skill that they get right or like the chiefs in the administration's like oh you can't post on the head but you teach you guys to punch him in the head or there's 20 videos out there of your department punching dudes in the head right like just that education portion of it. I think as a company, we do a great job of providing what we think is the best solution for law enforcement moving forward and integrating DT range into that whole combative's curriculum. It's not just control.

It's all together. Again, it's like a wire mesh ball of things. And you just have to train to that stress. You have to train. And if you don't, stress is stress. and fear are going to be channeled the wrong ways. It's going to be channeled into, I would just go red. Yeah.

But if you channel your stress and fear or train it to break those, we're going to be better as a society. We're going to be better as a profession. It's a harder path, but it leads to a better place. Correct. Yeah. Agreed. Adam, what are your thoughts?

I would just say, if you're not training above the standard, you're not training. Right. If you're not training, if your agency's standard is this, you're not training above that, you're not training at all. Right. And I think that's, that's, you can't just rely on the agency to train you because they're probably not going to train to the level that you need to train that.

Now, that's not all agencies. There's some agencies doing a phenomenal job out there like Grand Rapids as they have multiple open mats, right, to where guys can go and train. They have the ability. It's obviously not mandatory. That's obviously the goal is to get it mandatory. So they have to, all officers have to have this training.

Once people see the utility, the word mandatory becomes less powerful. 100%. So it's a, they're like, now this is just what I do. Yeah. Right. So it's like a baby step process. but I would say that.

And if you don't know something, it's okay. You can ask questions. There's a lot of resources out there. We have a lot of free material that we give away on the page. We post a lot of our curriculum on the page, Jay's at courses, and he's posting options. We'll take body cam footage, whether it's his body cam footage or one of our students' body cam footage or something we found on the internet. And we'll provide a solution for that incident. And that's accessible to everybody, YouTube, Instagram.

Yeah. And yeah, so that's that's it. Just train above the standard. Close us out with where they can find that information, though. Of course. So Instagram is EF combatives. Online is EFcombatives.com. We have our YouTube page, which is effective fitness combatives.

And then if you want to get information on hosting a course, you can email at admin at eFcombatives.com. And we can set up a call, Jay, if you want to talk to me or whoever, We can definitely get that going. We have no problem talking to administrations, talking to command staff, attorneys. We have no problem doing that. So don't be shy. Say, oh, well, they're going to want to talk to you.

Perfect. Set it up. So I would say those are probably the best three ways to contact us. Yeah. And, you know, we're available for consulting, like have us come in and look through your training program. Yeah. And we can be like, this is what we would change. This is what we would do.

Here's how we can help you. Or at least this is what you know. need to start looking at changing. Perfect. Thank you, boys, for making the travel. I know it's not close to where you live. So appreciate it for having us, brother. Yeah, man. Thanks, man. Let's go get some training in. Yeah, let's do it. By that, I mean, eating lunch. Perfect.