Image from new NYPD training video that show prohibited arrest and control technique. (Photo: Instagram Screen Shot)
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A leader of the Gracie martial arts family has called restrictive new arrest rules for NYPD cops an “absolute disaster” — and warned they could lead to more deaths.
Rener Gracie, the grandson of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu founder Hélio Gracie, posted a series of videos raising real fears against the City Council’s anti-chokehold bill that also prohibits officers from pinning suspects by the back or chest, including the use of jiu jitsu "mounts." The law even criminalizes any inadvertent sitting or kneeling on the suspect's chest or back.
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“When you remove the safest control method, you force them to use the less safe tools that they have,” said Gracie, 36, including “violent alternatives,” even firearms.
He said “with absolute certainty” that the new rules will have the “opposite effect in New York” on keeping safe any suspects — as well as cops — calling it “a very dangerous situation,” the New York Post reports.
It could leave officers “so fearful” of new laws they will “instead go to a Taser or prematurely to a firearm in order to control someone during an arrest,” said Gracie, a black belt for almost 20 years.
He attacked a “knee-jerk reaction” by a “roomful of suits at City Council” who have “ever been arrested or been in a real street fight.”
“My Administration is steadfastly committed to empowering State and local law enforcement to firmly police dangerous criminal behavior and protect innocent citizens,” Trump said.
The revamped policy, which takes effect Feb. 1, bars police from pursuing suspects for traffic infractions, violations or non-violent misdemeanors, police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said.
“It’s absolutely ludicrous that you have an officer with pink hair and nails longer than their fingers,” one Manhattan officer said. “We’re a police department not a hip hop department. Let’s go back to being police officers.”
“My recommendation for your consideration is we go for a six-month window,” said Matt Giordano, executive director. “We would go to six months of the last use.
If the court grants the motion, BPD must maintain compliance with the provisions for one year before the court can terminate these sections of the consent decree.
The report concludes: “When a consent decree is truly warranted, it must focus on the most urgent concerns. The violations should be clearly identified and fully supported by rigorous evidence."
Monitors tracking civilian oversight, one of the largest remaining roadblocks in reaching full compliance, called it “a mess” that was being cleaned up, and advocates applauded the work done by the department to come so far, so fast.
“We have seen a significant propensity for criminal suspects to elude traffic stops, often driving extremely dangerously despite no officers chasing them,” the Bureau said in a statement.
