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The use of force in law enforcement is a critical and often controversial topic. Traditional methods, such as prone restraint, have come under scrutiny due to their potential for escalating situations and causing harm. As the landscape of policing evolves, there is a growing need for innovative techniques that prioritize safety, effectiveness and de-escalation.
In this episode of Policing Matters, host Jim Dudley is joined by returning guest Rener Gracie, a prominent figure in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and the head of Gracie University. Rener introduces the SafeWrap system, a groundbreaking technique developed to address the shortcomings of traditional prone restraint methods used by law enforcement. With his extensive experience in training officers, Rener discusses how SafeWrap can transform police practices, reduce injuries and build better relationships between law enforcement and the public.
About our guest
Rener Gracie is a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner, a chief instructor at the Gracie University (formerly Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Academy), and co-creator of the Gracie University online curriculum. A member of the Gracie family, he is the grandson of Grandmaster Hélio Gracie, and the second-eldest son of Grandmaster Rorion Gracie, who was among the first family members to bring Gracie jiu-jitsu to the United States along with Carley Gracie, and Carlson Gracie. Rener has spent over 25 years at the Gracie Academy studying under Rorion and Helio Gracie. Rener and his brother, Ryron Gracie created Gracie University, an online martial arts learning center, and developed distance learning packages for their proprietary courses.
About our sponsor
This episode of the Policing Matters podcast is sponsored by Skydio. Learn more about how Skydio enhances public safety and operational efficiency by visiting Skydio.com.
Memorable quotes from this episode
- “Officers are only as good as their training, and in most cases, the training they receive is disastrously insufficient.”
- “The SafeWrap system is like a full-body straight jacket — it’s not painful, just immobilizing.”
- “The SafeWrap is the first and only lateral restraint method that also facilitates lateral handcuffing without requiring prone control.”
- “When we talk about the rise of mental health patients in America today, the ability to protect the subject as much as ourselves is what takes SafeWrap to a whole new level.”
- “If SafeWrap became the new default for two-on-one restraint for arrests in America, we would have fewer viral videos because these arrests are unremarkable. They are boring, they are calm, they are deescalatory, they are communicative — there’s no inciting element to those videos.”
Questions to ask after listening to this episode
- How does the SafeWrap system challenge traditional methods of police restraint, and what are the potential benefits and drawbacks of adopting this new approach?
- Rener Gracie emphasizes the importance of training for law enforcement officers. In what ways can agencies ensure that officers receive sufficient training, especially in high-stress situations where restraint techniques like SafeWrap are necessary?
- What role do you think public perception plays in the adoption of new law enforcement techniques like the SafeWrap system? How can agencies better communicate these changes to build trust with the community?
- Considering the increasing focus on mental health in law enforcement encounters, how might the SafeWrap system be particularly beneficial when dealing with individuals experiencing a mental health crisis?
- What challenges do you foresee in implementing the SafeWrap system across various law enforcement agencies, particularly smaller agencies with limited training resources? How can these challenges be addressed?
Additional resources
- Gracie University
- Gracie Breakdown: Rener Gracie analyses defensive tactics during police UOF encounters, such as the recent incident where an officer Jiu-Jitsu to control a combative armed subject.
- NYPD incorporates Jiu-Jitsu training and SafeWrap for safer ground restraints
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Episode transcript
Jim Dudley: I’m your host, Jim Dudley, and we have a returning guest that I’m sure you will enjoy hearing from. I’m excited to talk to him again. But first, police use of force is often not as simple or easy as it sounds. We’ve seen the viral videos and social media posts of cops wrestling on the ground with individuals for prolonged periods of time—sometimes awkward, ineffective, and dangerous. Sometimes the fights with suspects are over the suspect’s weapons or in an effort to disarm the officer themselves. Well, my guest today is Rener Gracie from the renowned Gracie Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu family and Gracie University, along with his BJJ Academy. This is a return visit; we’ve had Rener on the show, I think, about three years ago, right after the horrendous 2020 impact on policing when force options were being taken away from police and not replaced with other options. Well, Rener’s done a heroic job—he’s trained thousands of law enforcement officers with BJJ to fill the force gap. Great to have you back on. Welcome, Rener Gracie.
Rener Gracie: Thanks, Jim. Honor to be here and glad to see you’re still doing great work.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, my pleasure. Hey, you know, when I see some of the videos that you’re commenting on or recreating, showing some moves on how to avoid those situations, I love the fact that you’re often offering, “Hey, identify this officer, get him in contact with me. I’d love to give him some free training.” That’s really big of you. What’s your feedback on those so far?
Rener Gracie: We actually have an incredibly high conversion rate for officers because I do these great breakdowns, right? So when you have an incident or a use of force, my theory is, man, there’s no better way to learn than from our past. So when an incident takes place where I look at it and believe a safer or more effective use of force was possible, you know, I just want that officer and all other officers to take that as a learning opportunity, much like we do in Jiu-Jitsu. Right? If you catch me in an armbar today, tomorrow you’re not going to catch me in the same armbar because I’m going to modify my behavior. And I feel like there’s so much opportunity for that in today’s day and age, being that so much of police work is being broadcast to the world with body cams now pretty much ubiquitous throughout American law enforcement or several agencies—many agencies. The dash cam footage, security cams, everyone has their phone out, so law enforcement officers are under greater observation today than they’ve ever been in the history of our planet. And as a result, they’re held to a higher standard. And, you know, we also have greater opportunities to learn from tactical errors in uses of force. So when I do these breakdowns, analyzing an officer’s use of force, on one hand, I’m saying, look, if this happens again in the future, here are some things we can take into consideration that might increase a safer or more effective outcome. But also, the officers who were participating in this very use of force that we’re analyzing—if anyone knows them, please send them my way because I want to sponsor their participation in our Gracie Survival Tactics instructor certification program for law enforcement. You know, I never do these videos to try to badmouth or make an officer look bad because I’m a strong believer that officers are only as good as their training, and in most cases, the officers have no choice in the training that they receive. Now, some might say, well, those officers should go get training in the civilian sector on their own. But I’m also a believer that an officer should not have to go pay $200 a month at some Jiu-Jitsu school in order to be sufficiently trained to do their job as a police officer. I believe the agency should provide sufficient training so that an officer can be safe. If you’re going to be a cook, if you’re going to be, you know, a chef somewhere, if you’re going to clean windows—the job that you sign up for should train you how to do the job that you signed up for, right? That’s part of doing the job. And I feel like law enforcement as a whole is missing the mark. They’re giving officers a disastrously insufficient amount of training when it comes to empty-hand arrest and control. And as a result, you see all these videos going viral of officers poorly performing during arrest encounters, be it one-on-one or multiple-officer arrest encounters, which are often some of the most chaotic and inherently escalatory encounters. And it’s really sad to see the injuries that take place or the lives that are lost on both sides as a result of these poorly executed arrests because when I look at it, all I think to myself is this is a training issue—they need better training. And if they had it, it’s likely this wouldn’t have happened.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, and I think the public only sees those viral videos, sometimes often with weapons involved, pepper spray, or a baton, or even a firearm. But they don’t realize that the use of force is likely to come from physical encounters—hands-on or body force. Since we last spoke three years ago, you’ve expanded hugely. You’ve now formed an alliance with the New York Police Department to create what you’re calling the Safe Wrap technique. I’ve seen it—tell us about it.
Rener Gracie: Yeah, so interestingly, about two months ago, I was approached by a large California hospital system, and they inquired about learning self-defense techniques for nurse practitioners and other healthcare professionals when they deal with patients. One of the biggest struggles, besides random grabs and punches and, you know, just aggressive violence that you might expect from a patient who’s not happy with how they’re being treated, or maybe they’re medicated in a way that is causing them to behave erratically—one of the biggest requests they had was, how do we control a hospital patient on a hospital bed in a way that utilizes no joint locks, no chokeholds, no chest compression, and no pressure points? Such that if we’re restraining a patient and they violently resist the restraint hold, they don’t hurt themselves in the process. So there can be no catastrophic joint lock or joint break that occurs as a result of the patient’s resistance to the method of restraint. So this is the set of prerequisites that came to me, and that was a very new set of prerequisites that I had never experienced before. Because in law enforcement, what they say is, Rener, we need techniques to control actively resistant or assaultive subjects, and we have to do it in a way where it’s effective and safe, you know, for the officer and to the civilian to a certain extent. But if the civilian resists our attempts to arrest them with a lower level of force, then we have to escalate the level of force to potentially cause injury so that we can prevent that subject from further assaulting or injuring the officer or someone else. So the idea of escalation of force, right? Where the force can escalate, and pain compliance as a concept in law enforcement, right? Where you put on a joint lock, and if they resist, we put more pressure. If they resist, it may eventually cause permanent damage to their arm, wrist, or hand, or shoulder. All of that is a possible outcome when you use standard pain compliance techniques. That wasn’t good enough for the healthcare world—pain compliance, where if the subject resists, they would hurt themselves. They said, no, for patient safety reasons, we cannot do that. So I’m like, hmm, this is very anti-Jiu-Jitsu. But then I thought deeper and deeper. I went to the lab, which is the mat, right? And I started exploring with different techniques and tinkering with different maneuvers, and I figured it out. I invented a method of lateral restraint where two subjects can control one person using a unique and novel set of grips, holds, positions, and steps to restrain a subject both at the upper body and at the lower body such that they could not escape with any degree of effectiveness, and they could not hurt the users of the system, the healthcare practitioners. Nor, if they resisted, would they hurt themselves in their resistance. And when I stumbled upon this, Jim, I was shocked at how simple, how easy, and how effective it was. So it checked the box for the healthcare institution immediately. I’m talking within minutes of solving this problem in the lab. I thought, wait a minute. If this is that safe and effective for healthcare, and it’s conducted from the lateral recumbent position where the person is on their side, which is medically much safer than prone restraint, I’m thinking, how applicable could this be on the ground for law enforcement officers? So I throw it on the ground, put a mat down, my partners who I was exploring with, we get in the position, and we lock up the Safe Wrap on a grounded, laterally recumbent subject. And they can’t get out, and they can’t hit us, and they can’t bite us, and they can’t scratch us, and they can’t kick us, and there’s no joint lock. And literally, after 20 years of teaching law enforcement prone restraint as the primary method of two-on-one control, I stumble upon this Safe Wrap, and I realize that this is something that has the capacity to completely change the landscape of multiple officer arrest encounters. Standard prone restraint has four fatal flaws: Number one, the subject’s hands are underneath their body, and they’re very difficult to extract because they’re pinned between the body and the ground. Number two, when an officer gets frustrated that they can’t extract those hands, they start throwing strikes. It’s very common that they’ll hit and say, “Give me your hands.” How many times have we seen that? “Give me your hands,” and the person is on their belly getting punched into the pavement, and all they’re trying to do is survive, and they can’t even hear the officer, let alone comply. Another problem is that because the hands are pinned under the body, we can’t see them. So at any moment, the subject can reach down and grab a weapon at their waistband, and it’s concealed from our vision, which means we might have to escalate our level of force if we don’t know what they’re reaching for. And sometimes, incorrectly and unjustly, escalate our level of force if we make a move in that heat of the battle, and the person doesn’t have a weapon, but we thought they were reaching for one. When they reach down, because we can’t see their hands, we have to make an assessment that is largely uncertain. And then finally, the fact that the person can build the house. And you know this because you were a cop, but when someone’s in prone position, they can push off the ground, and they can do a pushup, and they can build the house. And building the house requires us to do one of two things: Either A, we have to escalate our level of force quickly and quite significantly to overcome the resistance that they’ve now presented, or B, we have to put so much pressure on this prone subject that they cannot build the house. Both of these are problematic, and they’re inherently escalatory. If they get up, and we escalate to a taser or a firearm, now we’ve escalated because they got up, because no one wants to be face down on the pavement. And B, if we hold them down with so much pressure that they can’t build the house, now we have the concerns surrounding this idea of positional asphyxia, where by putting so much pressure on the thoracic region, you can affect someone’s ability to breathe. And recently, there was an incident, right? Devonte Mitchell died two weeks ago when he was compressed on his chest by two or three security guards outside of a hotel—one on the legs, a couple on the upper torso—and they were kneeling on his torso, and he never woke up. He passed out and never woke up. And not to mention the fact that when you’re in prone restraint, if someone suffers a medical emergency in prone, nothing changes. You can’t see their eyes, you can’t see their mouth, you can’t really see their chest and the expansion of their lungs. So it’s hard to assess a subject for medical distress when they’re in prone restraint. So if they pass out—we’ve seen many incidents of this—where they pass out, and seven minutes later, when they turn the person over, their face, lips are blue. Whereas in the Safe Wrap position, they can’t do a pushup because they’re laterally restrained. So there is no ground in front of them to push off. They’re in the lateral recumbent, they can’t access a weapon in their waistband because we’re controlling both of their wrists, so we can see their waistband, we can see their hands. And if they reach for the waistband, we can easily control and pin the wrist against their body. We can monitor their face the entire time we’re talking to them. We can see their eyes, their nose, their mouth, and their lungs, and monitor all of that for medical distress. At any given time, if they have an episode, we can render aid immediately, versus waiting several minutes to turn them over, even though they stopped fighting and went unconscious several minutes ago. That doesn’t happen when someone is under the care of two certified Safe Wrap users, and they can’t escape—they’re just trapped. And ultimately, what happens, Jim—and I wish I could wrap you in the Safe Wrap for you to feel this, and you’ve seen the videos that demonstrate this—what happens is when someone is carefully, carefully, and lovingly restrained in the Safe Wrap, with good communication, great composure—we’re talking to my partner, I’m talking to the subject—ultimately, they can’t move. And it’s almost comparable to being trapped in a full-body straight jacket. A straight jacket is not a painful experience; it’s just immobilizing. So imagine a straight jacket for your arms and your legs using these proprietary and novel configurations. Imagine being trapped where you can’t move. How much longer do you fight for? Right? Because we know this: Hope is a function of progress. As long as the subject is making progress—case in point, Rashard Brooks at the Wendy’s during the killing, you know, so many years ago, where he was taken out of the car, passed out in the drive-through line, he gets taken to the ground. Two officers try to restrain him in prone restraint. They’re unsuccessful because he builds the house, gets up into turtle position, reaches back and grabs the taser of one officer, is able to get up to his feet, exit, points the taser at the officer, who then fires rounds, taking the life of Rashard Brooks. My question is, was that a justifiable killing? The answer is yes, it was a justifiable use of deadly force because the taser was pointed at the officer. However, just because the killing was justifiable doesn’t mean it was necessary. Case in point, we go back to the ground control that was flawed and failed. Those officers were not effective at restraining the subject on the ground because Rashard was able to build the house and continuously stay in a strong structure. Because prone restraint was the desired objective of the two arresting officers, he was not arrestable. He was able to get up because prone restraint did not put him in a position where he was unable to escape. When I look back—and again, this is not a Monday morning quarterback as much as it is trying to plan a better future for law enforcement in America—but when we analyze under a microscope that single incident, had those officers had the Safe Wrap training, had they taken the subject down to a lateral position of restraint and not to a prone position, they would have retained control. He would have lost his will to fight because once you can’t make progress because you’re trapped in that straight jacket—no pain, just control—once you can’t make progress, you lose hope. And only when hope is lost does the table of negotiation for voluntary compliance open up. So in that situation, hope is lost. “Okay, I give up. Okay, what do you guys want to do?” “Okay, now we’d like to handcuff you.” And this is what makes the Safe Wrap so unique and special, Jim, is that it’s the first system of lateral restraint that also facilitates lateral handcuffing without requiring the use of prone control. So even though we can restrain and prevent escape from lateral recumbent, once they exhaust their will to fight and they have nothing left, we can, from the same hold, laterally transition both of their hands to their lumbar region on their side and apply handcuffs without ever losing control of the subject and without ever transitioning to prone restraint. This is the first and only lateral restraint method of its kind, and certainly the first and only lateral handcuffing procedure enabled by the lateral Safe Wrap control position. So looking at all of this put together and talking about the landscape of law enforcement today in America, it’s my belief that the general understanding of American law enforcement is to get them to their stomachs as fast as possible and get their hands behind their backs or her hands behind her back. And it’s this misguided belief that has been prevalent and pervasive and ubiquitous throughout law enforcement for the last century or more. It’s this prevalent belief that prone is the place to be that is ruining the relationship between law enforcement and the American public. Because every arrest that takes place that is ineffective because the two officers are not speaking the same language and they’re going to the notoriously unreliable prone position of control, it requires a natural and a rapid escalation of force. So the subject resists arrest, like any of us would do, right? If you’re having your worst day, and you’re either drugged, alcohol, medicated, or you’re a mental health patient who is suffering a mental health crisis and is aggressive, and as a result, they need to be arrested—Jim, that person did not commit a crime, maybe they need the most help. So irrespective of whether we’re talking about suspected criminals or we’re talking about a mental health patient, they both need to be restrained in a way that reduces the likelihood of force escalation. And Safe Wrap does that. One officer goes high, one officer goes low. Together, they take the subject down safely, controlling the head the entire time. And right when they land in supine—not prone—supine restraint, they cross the arms, they cross the legs, they get the person in position number two of the Safe Wrap system on their side. And then from that lateral position, they talk, and they de-escalate. And I’m telling you, if Safe Wrap became the new default for two-on-one restraint for arrests in America, we would have fewer viral videos because they’re unremarkable, these arrests. They’re boring, they’re calm, they’re de-escalatory, they’re communicative, and they’re just unremarkable because they’re so simple and so effective that there’s no inciting element to those videos. Right? You watch it and you go, “Hey, that arrest was conducted with the level of force and with the level of care that I, as a civilian who’s recording with my phone, appreciate, and I think that all arrests should look like this.” So if I put this on my social media, it’s not going to go viral, it’s not going to incite violence in the community because it’s so innocuous, it’s so gentle, it’s so careful. And that’s what I want for law enforcement in America because if we can bring down the tension between civilians and law enforcement, we can work towards repairing that macro relationship once and for all.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, 100%. I think, though, we’re going to have to make a real paradigm shift when it comes to taking a look at approaching a suspect from the side. I mean, the threat, as you know, comes from the front, right? The threat comes from the front, and so in law enforcement for decades, the training said, “Get, turn them around, get them face down, try to secure the arms.” How are you doing that with NYPD and the other agencies? Any resistance?
Rener Gracie: Yeah, great question. There’s been no resistance to a complete paradigm shift from any officer or command-level executive at any agency who has been introduced to the Safe Wrap system in person, in a demonstration of the actual skill and the actual technique. With videos, a lot of people—the videos are more than enough. They watch it and they go, “Holy cow, this makes perfect sense, it’s game-changing,” and this is what it is. In fact, to give the videos as much steam as I could, I thought, wow, I believe in Safe Wrap 100%. This is the future of law enforcement, but I don’t expect anyone else to believe it unless they see it working against resistant subjects. So I went to Santa Monica Beach with my brother, we put down some mats, we took $1,000 cash, we put the cash on the floor right there by the fitness area in Santa Monica Promenade, put the cash on the floor, and we got a couple dozen volunteers over the course of three hours, and we said, " $1,000 cash if you can escape the Safe Wrap.” So we get them on the ground, we put them in the position, and then these people went absolutely berserk. This video is on the internet, on YouTube—search "$1,000 challenge Safe Wrap Gracie family, Rener Gracie.” So you look at this video, and what did you notice, Jim? Those people went 100% to get the cash because they all wanted the money. So this was my way of reassuring myself and the world that, look, this—and here’s the thing: I’m a black belt in Jiu-Jitsu. So in fairness, they look at that and go, “You’re an expert.” Well, hold on. I just invented the Safe Wrap two months ago. Before that, the move did not exist, and I didn’t use any other black belt Jiu-Jitsu skills except for the Safe Wrap. I used one system of control to restrain these people. So while they might try to discredit Safe Wrap because, you know, I’m a black belt, the fact remains that in the video, I only used the system that I’m teaching and that cops are learning all over the country, including at NYPD. So back to your question about people questioning or how the receptiveness has been—when they’re in the room with me and NYPD, you saw those testimonials. I had 50 NYPD instructors in the room. I asked five of them to arrest me. They tried, Jim, and they were unsuccessful. And throughout the arrest, not only were they pulling on limbs in awkward ways, but I built the house, I’m getting up, I’m fighting away, I pulled out a knife halfway through the demonstration and started stabbing all of them, and then it was just chaotic after that point, as you might imagine. So then I switched, and I chose the biggest guy I could find in the room, and I said, “Lay down.” And we took him down, we held him on the ground, we got him in Safe Wrap, and the same rules applied. I said, “Look, here, take this knife.” And I said, “Hide this knife on you anywhere you want.” And I said, “We get to start with any grip we want because I let you guys start with any grip you wanted.” So it was an apples-to-apples comparison of starting on the ground. “How are you going to handcuff this guy?” We get him in Safe Wrap, he goes crazy for 90 seconds. After that, Jim, full surrender. “I have nothing left. I’m fully depleted. I give up.” And then I say, “Okay, well, we’d like to sit you up, but in order to sit you up, we have to handcuff you. Are you going to cooperate?” “Yes.” And then we proceed with our lateral handcuffing procedure. This is all on video. We proceed with the lateral handcuffing procedure, and he gets handcuffed laterally—never gets pronated, never builds the house, never is able to touch his knife, and is never able to escape. In that room, they were dumbfounded, Jim. All of them were dumbfounded. Here they are, teaching prone restraint for the last 30 years at NYPD or more, and in comes some guy—and I’m not even a cop, in fairness, right? So all the audience should know this. However, I’ve been teaching law enforcement for 20 years. I’m a Jiu-Jitsu scientist. So my job is to take the best proven principles of Jiu-Jitsu and the physical right effectiveness of control and leverage and body mechanics and apply those to different fields, whether it be healthcare, whether it be sexual assault against women, bully-proof for children—this is what I do—or GST for law enforcement. So I took my 100-year family legacy of Jiu-Jitsu, answered the questions for healthcare, and came up with the solution that law enforcement always needed but never knew they needed. And I share this with NYPD—they’re dumbfounded. I went to Police One headquarters at NYPD, and I shared Safe Wrap—there’s a video of this on my Instagram. I presented the Safe Wrap to the police commissioner of all NYPD, and he was equally dumbfounded, as well as all of his executive staff, that they’ve never thought of this and that prone restraint was thought to be the destination always. They had it all wrong. And it’s my opinion—and this is a bold statement—that everyone, including Gracie University, who was teaching prone restraint for 20 years, we all have been asking the wrong question. The question was always, how do we get the hands behind the back? Get them on their stomach. The question should have been, how do we position someone on the ground where all of their ability to escape and to harm themselves or us is neutralized, but in a way that allows for the most effective de-escalation and communication with the subject and with our partner throughout the entire process? That’s the right set of questions—not, how do we get the hands behind the back? That was too easy of a question to say, “How do we get the hands behind the back?” Safe Wrap answers a much more carefully constructed set of questions that are much more considerate of all the problems we’re facing in American law enforcement today as it pertains to two-on-one arrest and control encounters. So the answer is no one—I mean, we went on TMZ, right? We went on CBS, we went to NYPD. I presented this to the training sergeant at LAPD, LA County Sheriffs, 4,000 LA County probation officers. Sorry, LA County probation officers—4,000 officers. I presented to their training lieutenant. He says, “Okay, we want this for LA County Probation.” So everyone who sees it is blown away, and everyone who sees it, I think there’s a sense of, damn, for so long, we’ve been going that way when we should have been going this way. It literally feels like an entirely new direction for law enforcement. And so new, in fact, that I patented the system because it’s never been done before. And I applied for a utility patent on the process of the Safe Wrap lateral restraint position. This works in grounded applications; it also works in seated applications. And the patent application also includes the lateral handcuffing procedure for law enforcement and the four-point restraint procedure for healthcare applications, right? Firefighters, EMTs, hospitals, nurses—we’re talking to Phoenix Police, we’re talking to Phoenix Fire and EMS right now—1,500 firefighters. Imagine a city where the firefighters are Safe Wrap certified, the EMTs are Safe Wrap certified, and the law enforcement is Safe Wrap certified. The transition of care, Jim, right? The ability for different members of first responder organizations, even in different fields of service, to communicate perfectly, to transition care perfectly, and all done in a way that protects the subject, not just from hurting someone else but from hurting themselves. And when we talk about the rise of mental health patients and mental health crises in America today, the ability for a first responder to engage in a way that protects the subject as much as they protect themselves—that right there is what takes Safe Wrap to a whole new level.
Jim Dudley: Rener, you’re telling us about the lateral moves. You’re talking about getting them off their stomach, off the front, turning them onto their side. When we are looking at handcuffing now, when you say they are done at that point, and they essentially give up, is that because they’re worn out from their—isometric resistance to the hold? Or do they just, I mean, you said they give up hope. What is it?
Rener Gracie: Yeah, great question. Again, hope is a function of progress. If you were wrapped in a straight jacket for your whole body, and you started fighting and kicking, and you really wanted to get out, let’s say that you were going to go to jail for 10 years if you didn’t get out. So you would do what? You would fight with every cell in your body to escape that straight jacket, that apparatus, with everything you had. But there would come a time, Jim—maybe 60 seconds, maybe two minutes, maybe three minutes—there would come a time where Jim Dudley has nothing left in the tank to fight against this apparatus that is the straight jacket. And at that moment, what would you say to the person administering this to you? You would say, “I’m done. I have nothing left.” Right? So isometric submission is kind of a good way to call it. There’s no joint lock, there’s no chokehold, there’s no compression, there’s no pain. It’s just you’re incapable of removing yourself from the straight jacket that you’re in. And Safe Wrap accomplishes this to a greater degree than any hold ever created for law enforcement or for Jiu-Jitsu application. In Jiu-Jitsu, we have lots of holds that are submissions. So if you don’t cooperate, you get your arm broken, or you get your neck squeezed. In law enforcement, there are many joint locks and many techniques that are very painful and inflict potential harm on the subject. But those are dangerous to use in cases, especially where the subject is a mental health patient and they need more help than they need pain. So the straight jacket effect that is caused by the Safe Wrap—it absolutely gets them to surrender. When we tested this against resistant subjects on Santa Monica Beach, who absolutely wanted that $1,000 cash, they went crazy. And after 60 to 90 seconds max, every one of them tapped out. Full surrender. And I said, “Why did you stop?” They said, “I have nothing left. I’m fully exhausted.” I said, “Are you hurt anywhere?” “No.” “Can you breathe?” “Yes.” “Are you getting strangled?” “No.” “Do you feel pain at any point of your body, like from a pressure point?” “None. I just can’t escape. I’m trapped.” I said, “Okay, would you like to sit up?” “Yes.” “Okay, to sit you up, we need to handcuff you now, you know, for your safety and for ours.” “What are your thoughts on that?” “Please do.” Jim, this is the point. When there’s nothing left to give, you surrender. That’s just true—it’s human nature. And we accomplish that in a way safer and more effective than ever previously done in the law enforcement sector. Now, naturally, as we’re approaching different agencies and communicating this, the idea of a proprietary method of restraint is new to law enforcement. Because I’ve been teaching different holds and submissions and joint locks and handcuffs for 20 years, and there’s been no patent. There’s been no proprietary element to this, to a system. That’s because everything that we’ve done thus far has already been done forever. Safe Wrap, thanks to the hospital asking us to create a solution, brings together a unique series of steps and holds that have never been used in combination, especially for the purposes of handcuffing without utilizing prone restraint. This has never been done before. And under U.S. patent and trademark law, process patents are one of the four categories in which you can apply for patent protection in America and in other countries. A process is any steps or series of steps that are new and solve a problem, right? So you can apply for patent protection. So with this system, I realize that because we are the inventors of the system, and because this system will completely change the landscape of two-on-one arrests in America and around the world when it comes to law enforcement, it was important to me to state claim to the solution that we are responsible for, first and foremost. But it was also very important to me because by having a patent on the Safe Wrap system as a whole, it allows us to ensure the highest quality of instruction and highest quality of dissemination to end users of the system. Since no organization, no company, and no agency can teach the Safe Wrap system without a license to use the Safe Wrap system, it ensures that with that license and with them adhering to the requirements of the licensing agreement when it comes to minimum training requirements, right? And when it comes to proficiency expectations for each of the end users, this is how we’re going to ensure that this technique is not bastardized, right? This system of restraint is not bastardized by everyone using it however they want, modifying and messing it up, and now all of a sudden, lateral restraint is this thing all over the country that everyone’s doing in different ways, and they’re not maintaining that quality standard. So by patenting and requiring a license for use at any institution that wants to use it, it ensures the highest quality standard from teachers and from end users. And I understand that that is also a new concept—a license for the use of a method of restraint. So what we’re doing, and of course, there’s a licensing fee associated with the use of this system that is commensurate with the size of the agency, right? Larger agency will pay more; smaller will pay less. But the key here is that I understand that the whole idea of a proprietary method of restraint and the idea of requiring a license for a particular system of restraint is so novel to law enforcement that what we’re doing is for any instructors who learn and become certified to teach the Safe Wrap system from any organization—law enforcement, fire, EMS, hospital, or other—anyone who gets certified to teach Safe Wrap, their institution can obtain a free license for 12 months to use the Safe Wrap system to teach all of their staff members during that period. And in that period, they can experiment and make sure it’s very easy to teach, very easy to learn, easy to retain, right? Especially if the agency’s only getting four or eight hours a year of hands-on training, which as you know sadly all too well, is disastrously insufficient for general Jiu-Jitsu practice, but it’s what most agencies are stuck with right now. So even at an agency where they’re only getting four or eight hours a year, we provide kind of strict guidelines on the minimum training requirements within that window of time. Within that single training day, we need to have a certain amount of Safe Wrap hands-on training for the agency to be certified, licensed, and for them to—all their end users to be certified in the system. And what happens is they’re able to experiment over the 12-month trial period with the use of the Safe Wrap system. And what do we expect to happen during that period, Jim? I’ll tell you right now. Number one: significant reduction in the use of force as a whole. Because when officers are more competent in their abilities and they feel safer in their own skin, they’re able to de-escalate verbally and avoid physical uses of force at a much higher level. Number two: fewer injuries in uses of force to civilians. So if a civilian is taken down and controlled with Safe Wrap, and they don’t pronate, and they can’t build the house, and they can’t grab a weapon from their waistband, think about how that all prevents the unnecessary escalation of force. By holding them in Safe Wrap, we don’t have to escalate on top of their escalation. Number three: workers’ comp goes down because officers are more effectively prepared to work in tandem to control a single subject. The chance of the officers getting injured during a chaotic two-on-one or four- or five-on-one arrest drops significantly because we all speak the same language. The analogy I like to use is what CPR is to emergency first aid, Safe Wrap is to emergency restraint. It’s one language, it’s a simple, easy-to-learn system, and when everyone speaks that same language, it will mean the difference between life and death in so many use of force encounters. And even better, when the police, the fire, the EMS all speak that language like they do with CPR, it just creates a level of communication that is otherwise impossible across different fields of service. Now, what happens when workers’ comp and civilian injuries go down? Litigation goes down. So the agency can expect to have fewer workers’ comp costs and a reduction in excessive force litigation surrounding injuries in use of force encounters. And then, of course, the natural—maybe unmeasurable but certainly real—side effect of all of this is what? Public relations benefit. Now you have an agency that is operating in a way that is ideal for officers—safe and reasonable force against civilians who are having their worst day. And many times, they need help from these officers who show up on scene. They don’t need to be “give me your hands, taser, taser.” They don’t need that. They need to be controlled but cared for at the same time so they’re not at risk of injury to themselves or anyone else. After 12 months, if an agency’s own evaluation of the system deployed within the agency concludes that the evidence is irrefutable and that Safe Wrap is the single most significant tool they’ve ever given their officers when it comes to a reduction in injuries to civilians and a reduction in injuries and litigation against the agency and those officers, if it’s conclusive enough, they can say, “We’d like to continue now,” and they can extend the license and on we go. If it’s not the best thing, it doesn’t meet or exceed all expectations when it comes to use of force and the general overall reduction in force and reduction in injuries, the agency can say, “Hey, thank you very much. It didn’t do what we thought it would do—no more.” There’s no obligation to Gracie University at that point. They can cancel the agreement. They’re never going to pay for the Safe Wrap license that they use for the whole year. And at least they had a chance to try a new tool out, right? And that’s my promise. It’s so new and it’s so effective that I’m willing to cover the cost for the entire first year so that the agency can experience, without any financial risk, firsthand all the benefits before deciding if they want to continue financially investing in the Safe Wrap system at their agency.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, well, predictably, you beat me to the punch on all those questions—how do you convince the naysayers, how do you convince the people holding the purse strings on budget and training and that kind of thing? You make a great argument there, even to the point of saying the agency can get their $1,000 after the whole trial. I invite you to come to San Francisco PD, meet my sons, Matt and Dan, and get them into the first class. But I want to end with one last question, and it’s actually counter to something you’ve already said, and that’s you don’t want to morph your system, you don’t want to change it. But 80% of agencies across America are small agencies. Is there some form that you teach to single officers to hold on to things until backup comes or a helpful civilian or somebody else? Is there a single-person wrap system?
Rener Gracie: Great question. So first of all, the answer is yes. Gracie Survival Tactics, the whole GST solution that we’ve taught for 20 plus years, ever since Rodney King in the early ‘90s when we created the program—GST is the preeminent Jiu-Jitsu-based defensive tactics program today in America and around the world. Look at that—all these coins and hundreds of others that don’t fit on my flag were given to me by different police chiefs, police commissioners, sheriffs from all over the country. So Gracie Survival Tactics—out of 40 techniques in Gracie Survival Tactics, 38 of those techniques are one-on-one survival and methods of restraint. This is what we specialize in. I can teach any officer, if you give me the time, to survive and to neutralize aggression and to take a subject into custody by themselves. That’s what we do. However, here’s the challenge, Jim: when these agencies are talking about giving only four or eight hours of training per year, you’re creating an impossible equation. You can’t say, “I want every officer to be independently capable of prevailing in a violent use of force encounter against any unknown threat or subject. They need to survive and take that person into custody by themselves.” You can’t make that claim and also make the claim that we’re only going to give you four hours a year to do it. It doesn’t work. You can’t have it both ways. If you want individual officer universal competency for all the agency—for all the officers within an agency—if you want individual officer effectiveness and competency, you need to offer weekly or monthly training. There’s no exception to that—it has to be more regular. But here’s what’s so wild, Jim: when an agency is Safe Wrap certified and everyone speaks the language, such that anytime two officers arrive on scene, they immediately know that in tandem we are going to enter the Safe Wrap system, the lateral restraint procedure—if that’s known universally at an agency—then what happens is this: an officer who is by themselves, right, on a call for service, who gets attacked—backup is three minutes away—the officer is by themselves, the officer is surviving against this subject. Because there’s a universal Safe Wrap system implemented at the agency, the officer no longer has the obligation of developing the skills and the proficiency to not only survive but defeat, overcome, and arrest this person by themselves. All they need to learn is three ground techniques from underneath a larger subject for how to hold on and protect themselves until help does arrive. Because right when the help arrives, we can enter the Safe Wrap system and easily and effectively take that subject into custody. So this is what’s so remarkable, Jim: when Safe Wrap is adopted by an agency as the universal language of multiple-officer arrest, the amount of one-on-one training that an officer needs to learn in order to be independently capable of surviving a violent encounter until help arrives drops significantly. Because once help arrives, they can quickly and easily segue into the tandem application of the Safe Wrap system. So yes, Safe Wrap is a tandem technique, but the prevalence of Safe Wrap within an agency is what reduces an agency’s need to invest in the weekly and monthly training requirements that are necessary for independent officer effectiveness. In other words, people used to think that in order for officers to be effectively interdependent in tandem applications of two-on-one team tactics, they had to first be independently effective at the grappling arts. In other words, you gotta be, by yourself, an army of one first before you can effectively be a capable participant in the Safe Wrap, in a tandem application of force. But with Safe Wrap, it’s not true—it’s the opposite. Because everyone is so interdependently effective and so dialed in when it comes to multiple officers using force against a single subject—because that’s such a reliable and such a universal language at the agency—the individual officers can get away with a lower level of independent competency because backup is two minutes away, and all you have to do is hold on. And when your partner gets here, everything kicks into gear better than it ever has been when we were focusing on independent effectiveness. So this is the breakthrough. One plus one equaled two in the past, and only if you were a good one could you potentially be a two. No—with Safe Wrap, we trained for the two all the time. Two is where we’re born. And because two ensures the highest likelihood of a safe and effective outcome in a use of force encounter by two officers, because that’s so solid, you know that when you’re operating independently, it’s just a matter of time before your partner shows up, and you’re able to enter the system that gives you such effective tandem application of the Safe Wrap system. So it’s a complete paradigm shift—not just in prone versus lateral—it’s a complete paradigm shift with how we approach training these officers. Because if you’re not going to give me the one to two hours a week or month that I would like for independent Jiu-Jitsu efficacy for every officer, if you’re not going to give me that, then what we need to do is completely reassess how we’re using the four or eight hours a year that we’re stuck with. And I believe that a Safe Wrap-centric system within an agency is going to get us the best bang for our buck when we talk about most effectiveness with the least amount of training. And that’s quite a different look at law enforcement as a whole because I’ve been fighting for 20 years to get more training on a weekly and monthly basis with no success—like, right? One percent of agencies are doing what they should be doing in that regard. So rather than continuing to beat the drum that no one’s listening to, I shifted perspective and said, okay, if you guys aren’t going to come to me, I’m going to come to you. And Safe Wrap is that solution.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, for sure. Simplicity, good communication. I hear you when all the critics from 2020 were complaining about the amount of training for officers—okay, give it to us. You know, spend the bucks and make officers proficient in what really is a perishable skill. If you don’t keep honing the blade, it’s gonna get dull and eventually useless. Hey, Rener Gracie, always welcome on the show. You’re doing so many great things for law enforcement. I truly appreciate it—from my own family and across America, the law enforcement agencies, individuals that you’re helping, and coming up with this concept that’s probably going to save—I guarantee is a tough word to say, but I would really insist that we’re going to reduce injuries with this system. Thanks so much for coming on the show today and sharing.
Rener Gracie: My pleasure, Jim. And jokes aside, your sons at San Francisco PD, as you indicated—let them know I’m ready to come up there and do a Safe Wrap presentation for the chief and anyone else who’s willing to listen because they need it as badly as anyone else.
Jim Dudley: Nice, I will. I’ll make that call today. All right, take good care, stay safe.
Rener Gracie: Thank you.
