A police chief in Muscatine County is now certified to train law enforcement jiu jitsu.

West Liberty Police Chief Eric Werling took the Gracie Survival Tactics course in Fort Dodge recently. He is now a (GST) – Level 1 Instructor.  The GST – Level 1 course is Jiu Jitsu is specifically geared towards law enforcement and corrections.

“I’ve known officers who have taken Jiu Jitsu (outside of work) and they felt it helped them when they had to go hands on during a use of force situation,” Werling said. “I also wanted to get an officer from our department certified because Ju Jitsu has been shown to decrease taser deployments, decrease officer injuries, decrease suspect injuries, and decrease cost to the department (due to those injuries). Jiu Jitsu provides an additional force option for officers that is focused on energy efficiency, weapon retention, and distance management to gain control a suspect and generate compliance without the use of striking techniques, tasers, spray, etc.  This is especially important for a small department where one officer is on duty and back up may be several minutes away.”

The course was one weeklong, had a written test and a practical teaching test.  The officers had t learn the Jiu Jitsu techniques and terminology and also had to learn how to teach the techniques to other law enforcement officers.

Werling hopes to use his new certification to train his officers first. If other law enforcement agencies are interested in this, Werling said he would have them observe the class.

“Based on the guidelines of my instructor certification, I cannot train other departments,” Werling said.  “However, I hope to show other departments the benefits of the certification and encourage them to send someone to training. This would allow us to team up to train both departments and possibly further our certifications, and the amount of tactics we could teach.”

Werling feels continuing education for his department is essential for the job. Werling is also a firearms instructor. He got certified as a firearms instructor 12 years ago.

“Education in general is important because it keeps police officers up to date on several topics: Iowa law, drug trends, safety, case law, etc,” he said.  “Having officers with certifications allows us to provide specific services to our own department.  For example, I am a firearms instructor so I can instruct and put officers through handgun qualifications with their duty weapons. Without this certification, we would have to reach out to another agency with an instructor and ask them to provide this service. This can be problematic because it can generate overtime for the other department and coordinating schedules between different departments can be difficult. Having our own certified instructors allows us to schedule training as we see fit and at a time that works best for our department.”