I found this conversation with Lieutenant Kevin Dillon (ret) about police combatives training super interesting.  Kevin served for 25 years as a police officer, SWAT team member, and detective commander before moving on to become a full time trainer for police departments so he speaks from authority on this topic!

In this episode we talk about his closest calls on the street, how police departments train their officers to fight, degrees of force and escalation in combatives, how to talk somebody down, strategies and tactics that anyone can employ to keep themselves safe, and much more.

It’ll help you get into the mind of a cop’s head and understand what he’s thinking about when he’s pulling you over for a speeding ticket, as well as use police ‘tricks’ to verbally de-escalate a potentially violent situation.

In fact I think the verbal de-escalation portions of this interview are incredibly useful; unfortunately this is an often overlooked area among martial artists who spend an inordinate amount of time practising their punches, kicks, chokes and locks to win a fight without ever thinking about how to avoid that fight in the first place!

Regardless of whether you’re a LEO (law enforcement officer) or a civilian I think you’ll find this useful!

Here is a rough timeline of what Kevin and I talked about on the podcast if you want to skip ahead…

00:50 – His scariest incident as a cop

04:28 – Training for real life

10:38 – How much combatives training do cops get and how much do they really need?

20:55 – Degrees of force and the force continuum

24:37 – Verbal de-escalation

32:21 – Stress and divorce rates among police officers

36:01 – On Killing, by Dave Grossman

39:05 – Violent video games and new technology

52:05 – Improving communication skills

56:04 – Are new police recruits too untested?

66:35 – Strategy vs tactics

To hear this podcast episode in full, you have a couple of options. The first one is to just press play on the embedded player below – easy as 1,2,3! The second (and better!) option is subscribing to The Strenuous Life Podcast so that you don’t miss out on any future episodes. To do this, you just need to click on your chosen audio player that is compatible with your device – one click and you’re on your way!

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Or as promised, the embedded audio player is below: