The Dominican Republic National Police have now adopted both the Gracie Survival Tactics and Safewrap system as their national standard for arrest and control. It’s a big moment for the country, as it has begun to integrate some of the fundamental principles of Jiu-Jitsu into it’s law enforcement practices. It’s also a big moment for Rener Gracie as the creator of both of those ideas, because it signals a step towards police reform on a global scale. Although Gracie has been working on many things at once, this has been one of his key focuses over the last few years.
He unveiled a plan for national police reform in the US almost five years ago now, and he hasn’t given up on that mission. It’s a noble effort that many in the BJJ community have been advocating for, but Rener is one of the few to make concrete action on a large scale. His efforts paid off fairly quickly too, as New Jersey adopted Gracie Survival Tactics as an approved training method just a few months later. Several locations around the US have also recognised the benefits of including Jiu-Jitsu as part of their training, whether that’s through Rener’s methods or their own.
Cities or States are one thing, but an entire country implementing techniques that come from Jiu-Jitsu in to their training is something that nobody could have predicted just a few years ago. Now 140 officers in the Dominican National Police have been trained as instructors by Bernardo Figueiredo and other black belts, and they’ll be passing that knowledge on to over 40,000 other officers in the country. Now people on both sides of the debate over teaching Jiu-Jitsu to law enforcement officers will be paying keen attention to the Dominican Republic over the next few years, gathering data to show just how effective this has been.
Rener Gracie announced that the Dominican Republic National Police had adopted Gracie Survival Tactics and the Safewrap system in a recent post to his official Instagram account:
