What Martial Art Is Best For The Police

Occasionally I like to surf the web and usually I always find a similar question posted on Internet forums and question and answers sites. "What is the most practical martial art to learn for joining the police?"

Well firstly, to answer this, I suppose you have to look at the work of a police officer. If a person is resisting arrest, an officer wants to control the situation by controlling the offender as quickly as possible. Unless the officers lives are in great danger, they don't want to be choking out there opponents, pulling them into a guard position or trying to break there ankles and knees with heel hooks, so styles that are based on this type of fighting are not so important to learn. Also, with most of the equipment that officers carry on them, (guns, batons, radios, tear gas) which are usually strapped to there belts, it would be very hard to perform head high kicks or even bobbing and weaving type defences so that rules out some stand up styles.

If a person is resisting arrest, then as mentioned above, he/she must be controlled as fast as possible, so techniques that involve restraining and control must be learnt. If an officer is trying to control someone while standing and is failing, then the chances are that both the officer and the offender shall at some time fall to the floor. In this case knowing throws and takedowns, but so as not to really hurt someone may be needed in an officers repertoire of techniques, and also knowledge of how to pin someone and control on the floor may be needed. If the officer has another officer with him/her, than they can both control and "cuff" the offender quite easily from here.

Learning how to deal with multiple attackers, may be something needed by police officers. As most offenders usually stick in gangs then knowing how to deal with two or more people may be advantageous for police officers.

By looking at the above (which is just my own rough outline of police requirements) it is clear that officers would benefit from arts like Judo, Ju Jitsu, BJJ or Karate (for self defence not sport) as the close quarter combat control principles that are needed are present in these arts. But as with anything, there is never a guarantee that things will always work out, but knowing the techniques in these arts should allow you more of a chance than not knowing the techniques.