Professor Freddy Trillo spent 30 years in law enforcement in South Florida, including SWAT, and now teaches jiu-jitsu to police officers. In 1992, as a rookie in Opa-locka, a small department with one of the highest crime rates in the nation, he stopped a driver who ran a stop sign. The man charged him, slammed him onto the concrete, mounted him and punched until his eyes swelled shut, throwing away his radio and handcuffs and dragging him by his gun belt. A level three holster kept the gun in place, and Freddy decided, "I am not going to go out like this," holding on until help arrived.

A couple of years later he watched Royce Gracie win the first UFC and knew grappling was what his police academy training had been missing. He started in 1994, drove close to two hours each way to train, and describes himself as the first police officer in Dade County to earn a black belt. Freddy explains how jiu-jitsu let him control resisting suspects without injuring them, why he walked up to tense situations calmly and close, how he worked to change a state curriculum built on striking, and why words matter in court, as in saying strangle rather than choke. Today he runs his own academy, open full-time since 2014.

In this episode

• 0:00 Welcome
• 1:05 Meet Professor Freddy Trillo
• 3:06 His jiu-jitsu lineage
• 7:25 A rookie in Opa-locka, 1992
• 9:27 Street sense from the park
• 12:32 The traffic stop that turned violent
• 17:51 Refusing to give up
• 18:54 The holster that saved his life
• 23:07 Watching Royce Gracie at UFC 1
• 26:12 Finding a jiu-jitsu school
• 29:29 How jiu-jitsu changed his police work
• 35:53 Changing police training culture
• 41:08 Staying calm in confrontations
• 46:13 Use of force and the courtroom

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