Good News York by Growth Mode Content - GNY EP.175 | feat. DECS

Episode Date: May 7, 2026

Syracuse Officers Launch De-Escalation & Control Solutions to Train Civilians for High-Stakes Situations On Good News York, host Matt Masur interviews Syracuse Police Sgt. Joe Commisso and Joe Senf about their business, De-Escalation and Control Solutions (DECS), which provides civilians tailored training for high-pressure situations such as school fights, physical aggression, and civilian responses to “active killing.” Drawing on law enforcement and military backgrounds, including academy leadership and reality-based training certification in New York State, they adapt skills like physical de-escalation, awareness of cues, and decision-making under adrenaline to civilian needs, often training on-site at client locations; they also use partner facilities when needed. They explain the business started in 2023 after repeated community requests and concerns about department liability and fairness. They promote a limited-cap women’s self-defense seminar in late May at a vineyard, featuring data-driven myths, practical basics, and a Q&A. 00:00 Academy Training Mission 00:50 Meet the Two Joes 01:19 Why Civilians Need Training 03:33 Tailored Skills and Credentials 04:43 School Fights and Active Threats 06:48 Confidence and Decision Making 09:22 Reality Based Training Logistics 11:09 Common Threats and Awareness Cues 13:44 Why They Started DECS 16:23 Beyond Violence Performance Skills 18:11 How to Find and Contact Them 20:58 Situational Awareness and Intuition 22:25 Womens Self Defense Seminar Details 25:46 Wrap Up and Thanks

He's being pretty humble, but he's the director of the Academy for the Syracuse Regional Police Academy and I'm Academy staff. We take in these young adults with no baseline, like no foundation in anything. And it is our responsibility over six months, as most prepared as they can be, to deal with the most wild situations as a police officer. So like we, it is our job, our day-to-day job where we take people in with no ability. whatsoever. And in six months, we put out the best product. Hey, folks, Matt Major for Good News, York. Welcome. We've got an incredible episode today. We've got a couple of gentlemen that are really interesting, and we've been learning a lot about their organization. I want to jump right in. Gentlemen, go ahead and introduce yourself,

and tell us a little bit about why you're here. I'm Joe Camiso. I'm a sergeant with the Syracuse Police Department, and I'm one of the owners of D.S. Glacin and Control Solutions, entirely separate from our departments. Gotcha. Yeah, I'm Joe Samp, two Joe's. Ironically, coincidentally, he's my boss. I also work for the Syracuse Police Department. Yeah.

So what is this organization about? It's about training civilians. Well, can I do the ultimate no-no and ask you a question to answer your question? Do you see a need? for the training law enforcement receives in the civilian world? Sure, absolutely. Can I ask you where you think some of that might fit in? I think in a lot of situations.

I think of just like emergency response, you know, what to do when folks need help and things of that nature. So where we specifically saw it was a civilian response to active shooter. And that word kind of gets, we were at a training, they really shouldn't call it active shooter because there's times individuals need to shoot and it puts a negative connotation on. So they call it active killing now. But just so that we're talking about the same things. And one of the main reasons that we saw it is physical de-escalation methods, specifically in schools where administrators were, you know, getting in trouble for not

doing something or doing something and credit to a school district that reached out to us and said, hey, we need to give our people something. And really what we're trying to do is give high stakes, high pressure situations, civilians who have never encountered that, methods to deal with it. Wow. Yeah, we, with our backgrounds in law enforcement and the military as well, we have gotten specialized training to deal with these tense, unpredictable situations. But it's not far-fetched for civilians to also be in unpredictable tense situations. Sure.

So it doesn't seem fair that we have all this knowledge and skills to deal with these problems and nobody else does. And we've gotten requests, hey, can you guys come provide this training to us? Because we're constantly dealing with whatever. And it felt wrong telling them no because of liability and politics and things like that. Sure. So we decided, hey, let's go give these communities what they need. Let's go give these people what they need. Wow.

So you now have this organization where you can provide this. And is this something that anybody can reach out to and say, we want this sort of training? Or how does that sort of thing work? Anybody. And I think one thing that really separates us from others is that, and I hate this because it almost sounds like a sales pitch and it's really not intended to be that way.

We have black belts and jujitsu. I have, you know, eight years on SWAT, high-level wrestling. We can make the training as advanced as it needs to be or somebody who's never seen it before. So really we talk to the client and we get specifically what they're looking for. And at times they might not know exactly what they're looking for. And kind of that's where we come in. But it's how far do you want to go with it? Because, and I hate talking about resumes, but there's just no other way to get around it,

we've been lucky enough to do a lot of different things within our department. We're still active law enforcement officers, so we're continuing to progress. So not only are we passionate about what we do, we continue the same training that we're training civilians on. And one thing we really try to separate is we know that this isn't law enforcement training. But there's specific things that we're exposed to that need to be molded into the civilian world. Can you give us an example of that?

That sounds really interesting. Yeah, sure. So first case would be school administrators, right? They're looking to break up a fight and what does that mean? And a lot of times, this word de-escalation gets thrown around. And what we try to emphasize is that de-escalation is bringing a reduction in the volatility of the situation. And that made me physical.

There's not, there's very, a lot of times words just don't work. So very, first-hand would be physical de-escalation methods in schools. And what we're looking to do is bring schools back to where it should be just a learning environment. And we're looking to give administrators the tools to continue to be professionals. Now they didn't get asked to do those types of things, right? But unfortunately, that's just the times that we're in. So that being the case with physical de-escalation methods,

and this thing we call active shooter, active killing. Like, what is this civilian's response in probably the most dangerous situation on the planet? You have an armed individual who's looking to harm unarmed individuals. So what do we do that? That's wild. Also, you know, we're talking about school administrators where their responsibility is to, you know, protect their students. Sure.

or even staff. We've helped security guards who also have a shared responsibility of protecting the establishment and staff and patients and whatever. But I don't want it to get confused. We don't just provide training to people that have their responsibility or obligation to protect. Like anybody out there could find themselves in a bad spot. You could be in a grocery store and you could just be in the one aisle with the one person who's having to crash out in that moment.

So like this, we are not limiting our training to only those who are looking to protect or have an obligation to protect people, but anybody, anybody that is not comfortable or feels vulnerable, we are looking for those individuals. We want to train everybody up so that people can have confidence in what they do on a day-to-day basis. One of the things we really talk about is stacking your advantage is, and we, have no misconceptions that training doesn't absolutely solve all of your problems. Sure. But if you think about it on a scale, right, if you have a high trained individual,

they're pretty likely to be successful in whatever they're going to encounter. Yeah. And you take that down to the lowest spectrum of it. If you have an untrained individual, their chances of being successful in that situation are pretty low. Yeah. And I want to come back to one thing about what Joe is saying about, you know, we have, we have this vast variety of experiences, whether it be jiu-jitsu or mortire or, or, or or wrestling or whatever and how we can make it as intense or as dialed back as possible.

He's being pretty humble, but he's the director of the Academy for the Syracuse Regional Police Academy and I'm academy staff. We take in these young adults with no baseline, like no foundation in anything. And it is our responsibility

over six months to get them as much, as most prepared as they can be, to deal with the most wild situations as a police officer. So, like, we, it is, it is our job, our day-to-day job, where we take people in with no ability whatsoever. And in six months, we put out the best product that we possibly can. We are very passionate about what we do,

and we don't take anything lightly. So going back to that person in the grocery store, like, if it's somebody that might not have the obligation to protect somebody, and feels like, hey, I've never been an athlete, I've never played sports, I've never taking a karate class. It's like, that's okay. Because we're so used to working with people like that.

Like, let's coach you up. Let's get you ready. Just to add, we have two partners that are also not here. One of them's a deputy chief for a local department in the area. And the other one is a lieutenant, also within the Syracuse Police Department as well, who's handled IA investigation. So the spectrum of what we deal with is really, really, really,

brought and credit Joe for giving me a hook, but he's one of the lead in-service instructors to for the department and now with the Academy staff. So we are really passionate about what we do inside and outside of work. Like we love human performance, we love to see how decisions are being made and that's really where this boils down to. Also, it's not only the skills and techniques that are important. It's like how are people making decisions? Because I can have all the skills and ability in the world. If I can't process that information, it's not really going to be worth too much.

Yeah. So gentlemen, tell me a little bit about the logistics here. Is this something where you come to meet? Do you have a facility that folks can come and train at? How does that all work? So one of our bread and butter here is we are certified through the state of New York to instruct reality-based training to police officers. And what that means is we try to make the training as real as possible

so that when these police officers go out in the public and they have a real situation, that's not the first time they've seen it. So what we prefer is we actually like to go to the client, the student's location where they're working, where they're going to be where they have these moments, and we like to do the training there. Because it gives us a better idea of where tables are positioned, where exits are positioned, where you normally stand, where you normally sit, and then what kind of objects can be used against? you, what kind of objects can you use to create time and opportunity for yourself? So we fall back on that reality-based training, and we'd like to go to their locations where

they're going to be doing the thing. I love that. You're not just giving good tips. You're actually real-world scenario. You are unfortunately probably most likely to encounter, right? Yeah, we're building it for what the client has expressed to us that they'd like to see. And sometimes we'll build on that. Sometimes we'll just continue to make sure they're competent and what they're looking to achieve.

We got to throw a hook to Ken at Tai Chi, who's allowed us to use his facility for, you know, organizations and individuals that needed to, that needed the mat space. And he's hooked us up. Not every, I really appreciate that. Not every client has the ability to shut down business for the day or have the space for us to work in there. In that case, we have found we have outsourced locations for those trainings that are convenient for them. Wow. So let me ask you a little, little contextual question about the Syracuse area, right?

What is, I guess you would say, the most common threat somebody might encounter as they go about their business around town? We'll see. If we match here, but I would say it's probably physical aggression, some type of assault of nature. That's not what I was going to say. Somebody, what they call a mugging back in the day? Is that accurate? Is that a term people still use? I don't know.

You know, mugging, robbery. I was assaulted. Yeah. Those things definitely occur. And I think a lot of times people only hear about the really, really bad things, which creates a lot of panic and scare. But the majority of calls are not muggings. Yeah.

There are people just at their worst moment in their life and they need help. So they're calling 911 and then the police show up. Yeah. Mental health being a huge problem for just about every area. And the one thing that we tell all of our clients is like, look, we hope you never have to use what we're instructing to use. But I'm sure that you'd rather have it as well too. And the one thing, Joe and I have gotten really big on is like this thing we call anticipation or cues. Can I pick up on the signals beforehand?

Can I get as much information before it's a problem? Like putting myself in the right spot. We say it all the time. Stack our advantages pick up on cues. And that's easier said than done. That really comes from training. But if you're able to do those things, you're going to increase. your chances of being successful.

I use a, I guess a metaphor or an analogy of like an old school cartoon bomb, right? Circular bomb with a long fuse or something, maybe something like that where you like the fuse and eventually the fuse gets burnt up and then the bomb goes off. We, our goal is to give people the ability to cut the fuse before the flame ever reaches the bomb. Because if that bomb goes off, the damage, the cleanup is so much worse. So if we could pick up on cues, the signs and symptoms, if we can train our students to be more aware, solving the problems is significantly easier in that moment when the fuse is still going. Yeah, wow. That's, I mean, that makes a lot of sense, right? That's, that's awesome that you gentlemen are out here doing this sort of thing. How long have you been doing it, by the way? I haven't even asked you that. Well, instructor-wise has been several years now, but the business side of it's been since 2023. Okay. And I think you answered this a little bit earlier, but, you know, what was really the driving force to go, this is a business? This is something that we need to do as a side vent. I'm sure your gentlemen are busy enough just in your everyday careers, you know, what really made you think we should

be doing this as well? I'll answer for me and my guess is Joe is probably going to be similar as we really enjoy training. We enjoy it from the law enforcement side. He and I are both coaches outside of work. We enjoy the human performance side. And on top of that, the training really came to us. Individuals would call the department and we're like, oh, this seems like a great idea.

We should go do that. And for liability. And here's another thing that nobody talks about. Okay, so even if the department was able to get away from liability, who did they say yes and who did they say no to? Could you imagine I come to give you training and I skip the next person? Sure. And the flip side of that is, it's just because we're officers doesn't mean we're

specialized in training the civilian population. We spent hundreds of hours looking at the civilian side of it. How do our law enforcement tactics and experiences and exposure make sense in the civilian population? So to answer that question, it really was like it came to us and we have a huge passion for training. That was my side of. I don't know if Joe's going to be different. It's very similar. When I would get those phone calls and I had to turn people away, there was a level of guilt that was associated with that. Like I got into this occupation, not Dex, but law enforcement because I wanted to, I wanted to be the guy to help people. Sure. And now people are calling me with problems,

and I have to tell them, no, I'm not going to help you. Yeah. didn't sit well with me, which kind of motivated us to do this. But what keeps me doing it is the success stories. Like when we go to these trainings, we have annual, biannual students. And when we see them, we say, hey, so how has it been for the past three months or four months? And usually in the beginning, it's a little quiet. Nobody wants to volunteer any information. But as the training gets going, you hear everybody's stories.

And when they started telling you, like, you know, I didn't really buy into this whole thing. But I did that. I repositioned myself in this way, and it worked. It was like magic. And then it's like that that's what's keeping me going is hearing the success story, seeing that like what we're doing is actually there's good associated with it. It sounds like a lot of these skills that you're teaching folks go beyond an emergency situation. Is that accurate?

Yeah, yeah. They can be applied into several scenarios. And much of the decision-making stuff I apply to like, you know, coaching techniques for young athletes. Really it depends on where you want to take it. What we need to, what we need to take into the total picture is, as I talked, I touched on earlier, we've got to talk about the decision-making. And, you know, it can be part of your own, what you do in your own life as well, too.

What we have to understand is that in these high-stakes, high-pressure situations, we have these adrenaline-dob saying, like, do I want the first time to experience that to be the first time I experience that? Yeah. So how much can we take? talk about that, having these mechanisms to deal with it. I think that applies across the board. What about anxiety? What about, you know, having a stressful day at work? Coming into a podcast. Come talking, you know, like, it's not a, it's not just about what,

about the violent encounters. It really, there's, there's so much carryover with what we do. We both are very fascinated with, with performance on all levels. Like he brought up, he's, he's a coach. I'm a coach as well. I invest so much time into performance on what makes good performers. And a lot of what we offer is based off of the scientific information that is acquired through that interest. And that can be applied to anybody in any circumstance. One thing to add to that, Joe, is like our journey, too. Like a lot of these protocols that we hear, it's like you learned them along the way,

but you didn't recognize that was the thing. And now you hear about the scientific evidence behind you. Like, okay, that makes sense. Yeah. But a lot of what we're learning, like individuals throughout whatever their thing might be is through their own experiences. Wow. This is incredible. What should we tell folks in terms of how they find you?

If they want to learn more, they want to become a client, where do they go? I'll leave that to Joe. I know his wife helps us out a ton with that, and they're really the social media guys. So we have a website, but it seems to be with how culture or society is currently now that the biggest, thing is social media. So we have several, several social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram. You can go to any of our pages, our website. They'll direct you where you need to go. And you can browse that and get whatever information you need. Of course, there's contact. There's a contact email and phone number two if somebody wants to inquire about potentially doing the

training or anything like that. If folks do want to do a training and they reach out, what's some good information for you to know right off the bat? What is it? Yeah, what's your first questions that they could answer for you on the first interaction if they knew itself? For me, it's very broad. It's like, what are you looking for? What are you trying to accomplish?

And if I could, Joe and his wife did an excellent job with setting up a woman self-defense course that we're going to be running at the end of May and credited them for doing that. So that's something that we've done kind of separately from larger organizations. This is specifically dedicated to women and self-devence and what we feel that they may be exposed to. But for the client itself, and they might not know, you know, but and then they can sit down and talk to us. But I would ask them, they're calling us for a reason. What's that reason? Then we can kind of go down those avenues. Okay. Sometimes people don't know what they don't know.

Yeah. Right. And that's usually how my conversations go when I get the phone call is what are you looking for? And they're like, I'm not really sure, but I know I need something. Like, okay, well, what are you dealing with? Like, what, what motivated you to make this phone call? And then they tell me what they're dealing with and I go okay sounds like this is what you need gotcha and that's what kind of really separates us from I mean I don't know too many other companies that offer anything like what we do but if there was other ones this is what separates us is we tailor the training to fit the clients needs like it's based off of what they need and if they don't know what they need well tell me why you're calling sure and we'll figure out what it is that you need yeah we haven't

taken on a client that we haven't first met in person Yeah, we are not salesmen. You know, I hope neither of us are myself especially coming off that way because it's I got out of sales years ago just not my thing We feel and that's no knock to salesmen needed right but You know this thing's kind of been organic for us. Yeah, yeah, and because we are active law enforcement officers that we can only put so much time and effort into this business thing But you know, we feel like word of mouth is kind of our biggest our biggest Avenue Absolutely to stay kind of on that. Like if you're somebody in a,

uh, out there that's listening to this or sees us, um, and you are interested, but maybe, uh, you're not ready to, to pick up the phone and make that phone call.

My biggest advice to that, that person is just start being more aware. Start being more aware. Uh, be aware of, of where you're, you're putting your attention, your focus.

Um, be more aware about where you stand in a room. And this isn't to be like a dooms day. paranoid mindset thing. This is just be more aware. When you talk to your friends, your loved ones, notice how they stand. You're in a safe, safe environment. Just start looking for little things. And you might not necessarily understand why it's important to look at the hands or the waistband or the space between you and them. But just start noticing that. And then when you're around people you don't know, see the contrast. Just start becoming more aware. Because that's,

that's really the foundation to all of this. It really is. We encourage our clients to listen to their intuition. Like for whatever reason we have these things that we pick up on and sometimes we don't play. And it doesn't mean we need to do anything about them in the moment. But I'm having these feelings for a reason. And what is the really, what's the reason I'm having them? We encourage clients. If you feel like there's something wrong, then there's probably something wrong.

Doesn't mean I have to go to X, Y, Z now. But to Joe saying, what am I picking up on and why? Wow. I love that. Gentlemen, this has been great. It really has. Before we go, you mentioned the women's self-defense course. Is that something that is that filled up or is that something that folks can get in on?

Yeah, so there is a, there is limited seating. We have not reached our cap yet. So if somebody's interested and wants to buy a ticket, there's still, there's still time to do so. And I guess what they can expect with that is we are, we have taken data, statistics, national numbers, numbers to kind of figure out when women are found to be in these physical violent encounters, sometimes sexual too, like where is that occurring the most? Because that's something that we do for law enforcement is we want the training to be specific to the data.

Because if this is how it's happening every single time, then that's how we should train because of specificity, right? So, like, we're using statistics and numbers to kind of bust some myths about these violent encounters that women have. Like, I think a lot of people think that they occur in, like, a dark alley with a stranger, and that's actually not the case. The amount of times that that happens is far and few in between. So we're going to go over some myths. We're going to go over some data. who's more likely to be a victim to these things versus who's not.

And then it's a very low-level, basic introduction to self-defense. Self-defense is a perishable skill set. You got to stay on it. You got to continue to do it. Otherwise, you lose those abilities, your reaction, your speed, your strength. Our goal is to inform people with this woman's self-defense seminar, inform them, introduce them to it, because I think the hardest part with getting people

to start investing themselves is just getting them through the door. Like they're shy, maybe they lack confidence, but if we can get them through the door and then we could show them that this is a good time, they're more likely to continue to do it. So at the end of it, we'll make a recommendation list of places they can seek out further training.

But that's kind of the idea, inform and kind of empower. That's great. All of our training, going to get up and move. We're going to have some practical nature to it, unless it's very specific lecture basin. That's very, very rare for us. But that's what we want. We want people up and moving and applying these things that we're teaching, given the confidence. I do know these things. One last thing on that, too. If any of our students are of age, I feel like it would

be right if I didn't throw this out there as a selling point for it. There is a complimentary glass of wine at the end of the training, a Q&A with us for anybody that wants to hang out and is of the age, and it's being held at the Strigo Vineyard. Vineyard? Is that a vineyard? Yeah. So it's not like it's going to be in some dungy gym with dirty wrestling mats. It's in a comfortable setting for first timers.

Can relax and learn how to be safe. I like that. That's a good situation. That's the plan. I like it, guys. Joe and Joe, this has been incredible learning about your business. It's not a type of business that I even knew existed, especially locally. And clearly there's a call for it.

So it's great to see that happen. So anytime you've got something going on, something special like that, and you want to spread the word, we'd love to have you here. This is the type of good news that we like to share is helping folks out. So we appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, thanks for having us. This is great.

I'm a big fan of podcast, the first one I've been on, and hopefully you have this back in the future. Absolutely. Absolutely. we will uh gentlemen thank you again i'm matt major we'll see you next time peace out