NCJ Number
204592
Journal
Police: The Law Enforcement Magazine Volume: 28 Issue: 2 Dated: February 2004 Pages: 52,54,56
Date Published
February 2004
Length
4 pages
Annotation
This article describes the Close Quarter Battle--Level I Instructor Course, offered by the Phoenix-based Police Combative Academy.
Abstract
In the Close Quarter Battle--Level I Instructor Course (CQB), students learn how to be victorious in close quarter, hand-to-hand combat. The course begins with a 3 minute round of body sparring between students and instructors in a 6X6-foot ring. The goal of the exercise is to teach students a lesson about their own strengths and weaknesses and to dispel myths about the length of the typical office-suspect confrontation. The curriculum covers topics such as ground fighting, weapons retention, weapons disarming, edges weapons, fighting stances, multiple attackers, joint manipulations, effective pressure point tactics, weapons of opportunity, offensive mindset, target selection, and how to override a suspect’s central nervous system. The Program lasts for an intensive 5 days and has over 50 hours of instruction. One of the main goals of the program is to teach the concepts of leadership, honor, duty, responsibility, and police ethics; in fact, the course was recently added to the College of William and Mary’s MBA requirements. The instructors of the program are very selective of the students they admit to the program because their students will be responsible for bringing the information back to their police agencies and for teaching other police officers the lessons learned from the CQB Program. Achieving instructor certification from the Academy is no easy task. Students must pass a number of challenges under real-world conditions in order to earn a CQB Certification, making them highly prized within law enforcement circles. The program is open to all applicants; there are no weight, height, or size requirements. The CQB Program has been adopted by many agencies throughout the United States and Canada and has received medical endorsement from James St. Ville, a prominent Phoenix-based orthopedic surgeon, bio-engineer, and member of the Police Surgeon’s Academy.