The New Jersey Attorney General has just announced that Gracie Survival Tactics has now been approved as official police training, no doubt to the delight of Rener Gracie. While this might be new for the state, it’s not new for the United States as a whole as California started the ball rolling when they made Gracie Survival Tactics the first BJJ curriculum to be approved for use by officers. Amazingly, not only is New Jersey not the first but they’re not even close. In fact, the majority of states in the US have now approved Gracie Survival Tactics as official training for police officers and New Jersey joins a long list of proponents.
This isn’t just some miracle or fortunate accident either, it’s the result of an incredibly long and difficult push by the BJJ community as a whole, but more specifically Rener Gracie in particular. It’s been a little over a year since Rener first revealed his plan for national police reform in the United States and he’s already well on the way to making his dream a reality. This hasn’t been a solo effort of course, and a great deal of help came from the Marietta police department in Georgia, who were able to provide data to confirm that the use of Jiu-Jitsu for officer training led to a measurable improvement in outcomes for officers, civilians, and the state itself.
The movement has been gaining traction for years now but the last eighteen months has seen an explosion of interest that has only led to further coverage as well. One of the biggest watershed moments is when the push for BJJ police reform was actually featured on an episode of ‘Real Sports with Bryan Gumbel’. Rener Gracie announced the news that New Jersey had approved Gracie Survival Tactics as training for police officers in a post to his official Instagram account:
