New Trend in Policing?  Big City Mayor Bans Warrior-Style Training for Cops

Last week the mayor of Minneapolis Jacob Frey ruled that his city’s police officers will no longer be permitted to attend “warrior-style” training… not even on their own time or their own dime, according to David Griffith, a contributing editor to several police magazines including POLICE Magazine. .

“Frey has no background in law enforcement. His pre-political history reads as follows: professional runner, a lawyer, and a community organizer,” said Griffith.

“With that background he thinks he knows what’s best for police. I’m a journalist who has covered law enforcement every working day of my life for more than 17 years, and I will tell you the most important thing I know about police work. I’m not a cop, and any knowledge I have about your profession comes from the men and women who have actually worn the badge,” Griffith announced this week.

Griffith also said in his message for POLICE Magazine that Mayor Frey believes he can read the local papers, listen to those who are anti-police advocates, and talk to some leftist politicians about police officers’ shortcomings and voila he and his minions have become experts on police work.

To Mayor Frey, Griffith offered the following proposition:

“Let’s run you through an approximation of what it’s really like to be a cop in 2019. We’re going to send you through the police academy. Then some random day six months, or two years, or five years from now, we’ll rush you into a use-of-force simulator. Before entering, you will be given all the information an officer arriving at a scene receives.

“A few seconds after entering the simulator, you will have to decide whether to shoot a man. If you decide wrong and shoot him unnecessarily—according to the press and the activists—you will be investigated, called a murderer, targeted for retribution, possibly prosecuted, and definitely sued. It will cost you your career, your reputation, and maybe your home—even if the shoot was legally justified.

If you choose wrong the other way and the simulated person shoots you. Well…then an agitated street criminal is going to actually spray multiple handgun shots at you from 10 feet. You’ll be wearing body armor, so you may get lucky and suffer no injuries. But you could die. Or more likely you will be wounded and suffer some permanent disability. And if you get it absolutely right in that simulator, then your big reward is you get to go back to work for the next 20 or so years. You will probably also still get sued.

In today’s era of terrorism, organized crime street gangs, illegal aliens who kill, rape, burglarize and pedal drugs – not to mention human trafficking – the current state of the art simulators are the closest approximation of what it’s like to be a cop involved in a gun battle in 2020, according to Griffith.

During an interview by Conservative Base’s editor Jim Kouri, a police academy self-defense instructor, Vincent Musiek, said that too many governors, mayors, county executives and other politicians are lacking what should be common sense. “If cops are trained in martial arts such as Israel’s Krav Maga, Japan’s Jiu-Jitsu, Korea’s Hapkido and other fighting systems, they will be less likely to use impact weapons such as firearms, batons, tasers and other impact weapons,” said Sgt. Musiek.

Another political leader, this one in Virginia, isn’t satisfied disarming law-abiding Virginians. The now Blue State of Virginia, which is almost entirely run by neo-Marxist and socialist Democrats who support infanticide and child murder, are proposing a new law, Senate Bill 64 (SB64),  which will be taken up by the Democratic-majority Senate beginning January 8, 2020.

Governor Ralph Northam is leading the charge to turn Virginia into state where no citizen is allowed to defend herself against the tyranny of the government.

The law would instantly transform many martial arts instructors and firearms trainers into criminals. This includes instructors who teach kickboxing, Brazilian Ju-Jitsu, Israeli Krav Maga, Mixed Martial Arts, Kickboxing, and other unarmed combat systems from Japan, China, Thailand, and other nations.

Under the proposed law, all forms of self-defense training — including hand-to-hand martial arts training — would be considered “paramilitary activity,” even if the training consists of private classes involving just one instructor and one student. That’s because every form of martial arts training imparts skills which could be used to cause injury to other persons.

In fact, according to the language of the law, just “one” person learning such arts is a felony crime, which means that watching a DVD on Krav Maga would be a felony crime.

This new law should demonstrate to U.S. citizens the real plan of the Democratic Party: disarming the American people. In truth, it has always been about criminalizing the rights of Americans to defend themselves to practice self-reliance. The local Deep State minions in Virginia obviously don’t want Virginians to be able to defend themselves against violent criminals. If you had the capacity to do that, you might also be able to defend yourself against the violence of ab oppressive, corrupt government, too.

Video: In altogether too many cities in America, officers’ fear of retribution by anti-police members of the public or the press has caused a withdrawal from proactive policing. Stop and Frisks are down. Traffic stops are down. The police have become responsive—firefighters with guns—going from one call to the next without proactively seeking out criminals or criminal activity on their own. The obvious consequence is the emboldening of violent criminals to engage in ever-increasing levels of criminal activity. POLICE Contributing Web Editor Doug Wyllie sits down with Below 100 Executive Director Roy Bethge to discuss the issue of de-policing in America.

David Griffith has been editor of POLICE Magazine since December 2001. He brings more than 25 years of experience on magazines and newspapers to POLICE. A Maggie award-winning journalist, his byline has appeared on hundreds of articles in POLICE and other national magazines. 

Jim Kouri, CPP, is founder and CEO of Kouri Associates, a homeland security, public safety and political consulting firm. He’s formerly Fifth Vice-President, now a Board Member of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, a columnist, and a contributor to the nationally syndicated talk-radio program, the Chuck Wilder Show.. He’s former chief of police at a New York City housing project in Washington Heights nicknamed “Crack City” by reporters covering the drug war in the 1980s. In addition, he served as director of public safety at St. Peter’s University and director of security for several major organizations. He’s also served on the National Drug Task Force and trained police and security officers throughout the country.