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The Effects of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Training on Police Officers

This week’s post is going to be a little different than our usual summaries of published research. This week, we are presenting research that we haven’t published. From time to time, we do a research project that we think is interesting, but isn’t quite what peer reviewed journals are looking for. In the traditional academic world, these projects go into the file drawer and are never published anywhere. We think that these projects still have value, and from time to time, we will publish them here. This one is an evaluation of a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu training program at the Marietta, GA Police Department. This was written by Jake King from the Marietta Police Department, Kathleen Padilla from the School of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Texas State University, and Me.

Introduction

Police use of force has been of public concern for some time now (President’s Task Force on Policing, 2015), but the death of George Floyd in May of 2020, brought intensified scrutiny and nationwide outcry. Since that time, polling has indicated that confidence in the police is at an all-time low (43%) and almost half (45%) of the United States population says that police violence against the public is an extremely serious or very serious problem (AP-NORC, 2021; Brennan, 2020; Saad, 2023). Even before the death of Floyd, public approval of police use force had been decreasing since the 1970s (Mourtgos & Adams, 2020).

Departments across the country have tried a variety of strategies to improve relationships with their communities. One idea that seems to be gaining traction is training officers in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ). A quick google search for “police BJJ” returns more than 7 million hits. There are several police BJJ programs with national reach and at least one state (Georgia) has a BJJ certification that police officers can earn. Despite the clear interest in the use of BJJ in policing, it appears that there is little research examining the effectiveness of police BJJ programs. Here we report a case study from the Marietta, GA Police Department designed to begin addressing this gap.

What is BJJ?

BJJ is a martial art and sport that focuses on grappling. BJJ descended from the Japanese version of jiu-jitsu that was developed by samurai to use when they lost their weapons. This martial art was turned into the sport of Judo by Jigoro Kano to allow participants to safely practice techniques and compete against each other. This sport made its way to Brazil where the Gracie family and others modified it to become the unique art and sport of BJJ.

BJJ focuses on taking your opponent to the ground, establishing control, and ultimately submitting your opponent using various joint locks or chokes. Police-focused BJJ typically concentrates on taking the suspect to the ground and establishing control for the purpose of handcuffing a suspect. Police classes often teach submissions so that police officers know what they are and how to counter them, but do not focus on them in the same way that general BJJ classes do. One of the things that separates BJJ from other types of martial arts is that almost every BJJ class will include live sparring where participants are free to do whatever techniques they choose to control and submit their opponent. This gives BJJ participants an enormous amount of experience in applying various techniques against an opponent who is resisting to the best of their ability.

Proponents of training police officers in BJJ believe that because BJJ focuses on control, officers trained in BJJ should ultimately use less force to arrest suspects. Consider the arrest of a suspect. Say that the officer reaches for the suspect’s arm to initiate the arrest and the suspect pulls away. The BJJ practitioner regularly practices closing the distance, getting effective holds on key parts of the suspect’s body, and using these holds to take the suspect to the ground in a controlled fashion. These all fall at the empty hand control use of force level. Because the BJJ practitioner practices these skills frequently, he should be better at accomplishing them and less likely to go to higher levels of force such as empty hand striking, baton hits, or even taser deployment. Proponents also believe that because the focus is on control and not striking, suspects should be less likely to be injured. Additionally, because the officers are more skilled, they should be less likely to be injured when trying to control suspects. We explore these contentions in this evaluation by looking at uses of force and resulting injuries.

Training in BJJ inherently involves improving cardiovascular and muscular fitness. There are several perceived and reported physiological benefits to the use of BJJ, including lower body fat, flexibility, and general injury prevention (Jones & Ledford, 2012). Additionally, participants are engaging in problem-solving skills, bodily awareness, among other benefits of working within larger groups (Renzo Gracie Academy, n.d.). We examine these potential benefits in interviews with officers from the Marietta GA Police Department.

The Marietta BJJ Program

After several high-profile use of force incidents across the country, the Marietta Police Department began its BJJ program with a test run on recruits in March of 2019.  The program consisted of one mandatory training session per week conducted by a local BJJ gym for the entire recruit training period (5 months). The costs (including equipment) were covered by the department and the recruits were covered by workers’ compensation. At the end of the five-month period, a blind survey was completed. The participants indicated that they were significantly more confident in going hands on with a suspect and able to remain calmer during physical altercations due to their experiences sparring (rolling) with other BJJ students. The survey data were further supported by FTOs who observed that these new officers appeared much more confident and competent.  Since the original class, several adjustments have been made to the program. Following the first class of cadets completing the BJJ program, all new cadet classes were required to attend BJJ once a week for the time that they were in the academy. In June of 2020, on-duty BJJ training was made available to all officers on a voluntary basis and the amount of training required for cadets was increased to twice a week while they were in the academy. In 2021, mandatory BJJ training for recruits was extended to include twice a week while they were in their FTO program. This extended their BJJ training an additional 3 months beyond the academy. In April of 2023, once a quarter mandatory BJJ training for all officers was instituted. Four years after the program’s inception, almost the entire MPD uniform patrol division has been through at least some BJJ training.

Evaluation

Our evaluation of the program consisted of two parts. In the first, we looked at quantitative data on uses of force and injuries. In the second, we interviewed ten officers who had various levels of participation in the program to assess their impressions of the program.

Use of Force

We began our assessment of the impact of the BJJ program by looking at use of force incidents for MPD. MPD requires officers report a use of force incident when any force above soft hand control is used or when any injury to a suspect is reported. This means that when BJJ techniques are used, they are not reported as uses of force unless an injury occurred. We collected data on all uses of force that occurred at MPD from August 2017 to March 2021. This gave us a full two years of follow-up data on the BJJ program after it was implemented. Because of changes to the reporting system used by MPD in 2017, we could only get 20 months of data preceding the implementation of the BJJ program. Between August 2017 and March 2021, officers reported 123 use of force incidents (average of 2.8 incidents per month). Before the BJJ program began, MPD averaged 3.2 (SD = 2.14) use of force incidents per month. Following the implementation, they averaged 2.5 incidents per month (SD =1.50). This represented a .7 drop in use of force incidents per month following the implementation of the BJJ program.

Because we had a pre BJJ observation period that was a different length than the post BJJ period and because policing activity can vary seasonally, we also assessed the percentage of arrests that included a use of force. This allowed us to control for the monthly variation in police activity. We felt that arrests were the appropriate measure of police activity because arrests are the situations where a police officer is most likely to use force. We calculated the percentage of arrests involving force by dividing the number of uses of force in each month by the number arrests in the month and multiplying the result by 100. Figure 1 displays the results of this analysis. The solid lines present the actual data and the dotted lines are linear trend lines that were added to help reduce the noisiness in the data. As can be seen, MPD was experiencing a small increase in the percentage of arrests that involved a use of force before they started the BJJ program. However, that trend reversed following the implementation of the program.

Figure 1. Percentage of Arrests Involving a Use of Force

Injury

To assess injury to both suspects and officers before and after the implementation of the BJJ program, we followed a process that was similar to how we assessed uses of force. We collected data on all suspect and officer injuries that MPD recorded from August 2017 to March 2021. During that time, there were 147 (3.3 per month) suspect injuries and 44 (1.0 per month) reported officer injuries. Before the BJJ program began, MPD averaged 4.1 (SD = 2.8) suspect injuries and 1.35 (SD = 1.34) officer injuries per month. Following the implementation, they averaged 2.75 (SD = 2.1) suspect injuries and .71 officer injuries (SD = .9) per month. There was an average drop 1.35 suspect injuries and .6 officer injuries per month following the implementation of the BJJ program.

Just like the data on use of force, the pre and post BJJ timeframes were uneven. To attempt to account for this, we divided the injuries per month by the number of arrests per month and multiplied the results by 100 to produce the percentage of arrests that resulted in injury. These data are presented in Figures 2 and 3. As we did with the use of force data, we added linear trend lines to help reduce the noisiness of the data. MPD was experiencing both an increase in the percentage of arrests that resulted in suspect injury and the percentage of arrests that resulted in officer injury at the time that the BJJ program was implemented. Following the implementation of the program, both trends reversed.

Figure 2. Percentage of Arrests Involving Injury to a Suspect

Figure 3. Percentage of Arrests Involving Injury to an Officer

Before we move on to the officer interviews, we want to caution the reader about over interpreting the results of our quantitative analysis. While the results were positive, it is important to note that our analysis does not prove that the implementation of the BJJ program caused the decreases in use of force, suspect injury, or officer injury. To make a strong causal claim for the effects of BJJ would have required using a true experimental design involving randomly assigning some officers to participate in BJJ and others not. Without random assignment, there are a variety of threats to the validity of causal claims that cannot be eliminated. For example, one of these is called a history effect. This occurs when something happens during the study that produces observed results instead of what you are studying. In the current study, both the COVID lockdowns and the killing of George Floyd happened during the post BJJ observation phase. It is possible that either or both of these events changed how officers and suspects interacted and that this is what caused the reductions in use of force and injury.

Officer Interviews

Our interviews with the officers revealed 3 primary benefits regarding the BJJ program. These were community relationships, officer confidence, and officer wellness. We discuss each below.

Benefit #1: Community Relationships

The officers that we spoke with highlighted the value of BJJ as an alternative to using higher levels of force when out in the street. While higher levels of force can be justified in some instances, respondents noted that their BJJ education provided them with an additional tool in their toolbelt while on duty. That is, in instances that may have resulted in the use of a close-handed strike, baton, or Taser, officers now had the knowledge to use a lower level of force to more safely control the suspect. Respondents believed that the use of a method such as BJJ over other means of force would decrease injuries for both officers and citizens. Indeed, their contentions were consistent with the data we reported above.

As a result of this perception, there was the added belief that if citizens saw officers deliberately choosing to use BJJ over other higher level force options during citizen encounters, perceptions of the police and relationships between the police and the community may be strengthened. Indeed, one high-ranking respondent noted the potential for this exact situation:

“Very often around here, we talk about things a lot, that our officers traditionally have been doing a lot of things that are lawful, but they look awful, you know? So we work towards, how can we deliver public safety services, in a way that's lawful, but it doesn't appear awful? You know...even when you see officers kicking, striking and punching, very often that's covered in their, in their policy...you know, they're, if they're just dealing with hands and no weapons, it's acceptable to use those kinds of techniques. But it still does not look right or feel right or seem right to the public. So BJJ gives us a way to get away from that.”

Of course, this is an empirical question that requires future examination, but it is worthwhile to explore how the use of training methods such as BJJ may improve citizen perceptions and community relationships.

Benefit #2: Officer Confidence

Given the potential for newer generations of police officers to have less experience with physical confrontations, training in BJJ may also be a way to ensure officers are equipped to handle the physical altercations they may encounter on the street. Where many of the skills officers are trained to use rely on repetitive exercises to develop muscle memory, many of the encounters officers find themselves in are inherently more unpredictable. This requires an ecological dynamics approach to development (see Araujo et al., 2009 for an overview), one that emphasizes adaptability to ones’ current situation. Brazilian Jiu-jitsu may provide this more realistic setting for officers to refine their tactical skillset in a large variety of sparring sessions, thereby making them feel more assured in their skillsets. Virtually all officers we spoke to emphasized an improvement in their confidence as a result of BJJ training. This is highlighted by the following excerpts, from both experienced and novice BJJ participants:

“It's hard to put into words, the confidence that jujitsu gives you when it comes to being out here and doing this job. And when you're getting in a fight and you've drilled a certain move, like 100 times, and then it just like, comes second nature and you're not thinking about it and you pull off that move, and you're like, wow, that worked. It was easy.

“Thankfully, I've never had to use it on the streets, knock on wood. But I definitely think if I do have to use it, I'll be more confident hands-on and I'm not as intimidated by somebody, you know, twice my size, when I have to go hands-on for something or if they resist.”

While many of the cadets discussed being intimidated initially at the idea of BJJ, they soon came to believe in the benefits of participating in such a program. The impact of being able to handle oneself in a physical altercation with a citizen extended beyond an officer’s confidence in their craft. It also impacted their mental and physical wellbeing.

Benefit #3: Officer Wellness

Of course, we see that police officers must navigate a myriad of physical health concerns related to their profession, namely those related to the sedentary moments of the job being interrupted by bursts of high activity, the extreme weight imposed by the gear they must regularly wear, and the difficulty in accessing healthy food, particularly for those working graves or night shifts. While many agencies offer a department gym or incentives for maintaining adequate physical health, there can often be constraints in terms of available time to take advantage of such features. This program was put in place for the 2019 Academy, and cadets were required to attend one-to-two sessions per week.

Having BJJ be a mandatory portion of the Academy created the environment for cadets who may otherwise have been tentative about participating in such a program to get involved. Having dedicated time to spend engaging in BJJ undoubtedly allowed the officers to participate fully and without reservation. Of note was the high level of physicality that is required for a sport such as BJJ. Indeed, one former Marine indicated that BJJ was “more of a workout” than their time in the military.

Beyond the physical benefits of engaging in BJJ, many respondents highlighted the mental benefits and rewards that came from their time participating in the BJJ program. In particular, respondents highlighted the value of BJJ classes as a healthy mechanism to relieve stress and frustrations. Understanding that police officers are whole people with lives outside of the police department, respondents seemed to be well aware of the impact and value of stress reduction through participation in BJJ. One senior respondent focused on this concept, detailing that “it definitely helps the officers you know, not just in that hour or two hours of training, but the rest of the day, you have a calm and a peace about yourself. I think it's reflective of not just the way you perform on duty, but how you interact with people off duty, and how you interact with your family at home as well.” It appears that there is some utility in BJJ participation for improving both mental health and physical wellness.

What’s Next?

This case study provided both quantitative and qualitative support for the use of BJJ in the Marietta Police Department. Uses of force, suspect injury, and officer injury all decreased after the implementation of the program. Additionally, officers indicated that they believed that the BJJ program improved community relationships, officer confidence, and officer wellness. As we noted previously, the lack of a true experimental design in the implementation and evaluation of the program limits the strength of the evidence reported here. Further research is needed before we can express with confidence that BJJ training has a positive impact. Even with that being said, our results are promising and suggest that BJJ is worthy of further examination. Our hope is that additional studies using true experimental designs will be conducted in the near future.

References

Andreato, L. V., Lara, F. J. D., Andrade, A., & Branco, B. H. M. (2017). Physical and physiological profiles of Brazilian jiu-jitsu athletes: a systematic review. Sports medicine-open, 3, 1-17.

AP-NORC (2021). George Floyd’s death: One year later.  Retrieved from https://apnorc.org/projects/george-floyds-death-one-year-later/. 

Araujo, D., Davids, K., Chow, J., & Passos, P. (2009). The development of decision making skill in sport: an ecological dynamics perspective. Perspectives on cognition and action in sport, 157-169.

Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Muay Thai, and MMA in NYC. Renzo Gracie Academy. (n.d.). Retrieved March 17, 2023, from https://renzogracieacademy.com/

Brenan, M. (2020). Amid pandemic, confidence in key US institutions surges.  Gallup. https://news.gallup.com/poll/317135/amid-pandemic-confidence-key-institutions-surges.aspx

Jones, N. B. & Ledford, E. (2012). Strength and Conditioning for Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. Strength and Conditioning Journal, 34 (2), 60-69. doi: 10.1519/SSC.0b013e3182405476.

Mourtgos, S. M., & Adams, I. T. (2020). Assessing public perceptions of police use-of-force: Legal reasonableness and community standards. Justice Quarterly, 37(5), 869-899.

President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing (2015) Interim Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.

Saad, L. (2023, July 6). Historically low faith in U.S. institutions continues. Retrieved from https://news.gallup.com/poll/508169/historically-low-faith-institutions-continues.aspx