OF THE COURSE
IS VERBAL JUDO?
ARE THE BENEFITS OF VERBAL
YOUR DEPARTMENT NEEDS VERBAL
IS THE TRAINING AGENDA FOR VERBAL
ARE "OPEN" CLASSES IN VERBAL
VERBAL JUDO is a tactical communication training course.
Dr. George Thompson Ph.D. is the President and Founder of the
Verbal Judo Institute. He has applied his diverse experience,
including ten years as an English Professor, as well as five
years as a Police Officer, to create an internationally
recognized training program in Tactical Communication.
VERBAL JUDO is offered as a 2-day
training program. The principles and tactics taught enable
graduates to use "Presence and Words" to calm
difficult people who may be under severe emotional or other
influences, redirect the behavior of hostile people, diffuse
potentially dangerous situations, perform professionally under
all conditions and achieve the desired outcome in the
GOALS OF THE
- Increased Officer Safety
- Enhanced Professionalism
- Decreased Citizen Complaints
- Decreased Vicarious Liability
- Decreased Stress
- Increased Court Power
- Decreased Cynicism
- Increased Morale
WHAT IS VERBAL
Verbal Judo, or Tactical Communication,
enables officers to further preserve law and order while
maintaining their own and the public's safety by using Appropriate
Presence and Words as force options.
Verbal Judo is the principle of
Judo itself: using the energy of others to master situations.
It contains a set of communication principles and tactics that
enable the user to generate cooperation and gain voluntary
compliance in others under stressful conditions, such as
hostile suspects, upset or frightened victims, or any action
which places the officer and the community at odds with each
Verbal Judo teaches a philosophy of how
to look creatively at conflict, offering specific, powerful,
and usable strategies to resolve tense situations. The
presentation is geared primarily but not exclusively, to law
enforcement situations. You will learn to respond to
situations, rather than react to personal feelings,
understanding how to deal with difficult people using conflict
management tactics to defuse confrontational encounters.
The course has precisely defined
training goals that address concerns of importance, both to
administration and to individual street officers:
SAFETY: Officers use
words to prevent confrontations from becoming violent
situations, reducing the potential injury to officers and
ENHANCED PROFESSIONALISM: Officers
recognize the impact their words have on the public and use
language appropriate to each encounter. Officers perform well
before the audiences they encounter, thus creating a positive
REDUCED VICARIOUS LIABILITY:
Officers who handle citizen encounters skillfully and
professionally are less likely to generate complaints and
lawsuits. Officers trained in Verbal Judo will be able to
describe their reasoning and explain their actions according
to professional principles.
This two-day program is designed for
officers whose duties require them to resolve tense
confrontations peacefully and safely. Verbal Judo is the top
rated law enforcement communication course in the country with
over 600,000 graduates.
WHAT ARE THE
BENEFITS OF VERBAL JUDO?
Verbal Judo teaches a philosophy of how
to look creatively at conflict and use specific strategies and
tactics to find peaceful resolutions. These skills are
beneficial to officers in their duties because dealing with
the public is often difficult and trying emotionally.
Maintaining a "Professional Face" is crucial if
officers are to remain under emotional control and be able to
effectively find solutions to potentially violent encounters
without escalating to physical force options. Further, where
there are times that such physical force options are indeed
necessary to protect both citizens and officers, such force
must always be part of the professional process so officers
are protected within the four arenas: with our peers, on the
streets, in the courtroom, and with the media.
Departments can expect that once
its officers are trained in Verbal Judo, they will know the
How to use Words to achieve
professional purposes and how to resist using language
to express personal feelings.
How to control themselves inside
so they can exert control on the outside.
How to employ empathy and
"The Art Of Representation" to become Contact
Professionals, maintaining self-control and staying in
contact with the needs of the department and their
audience - the public.
How to effectively deliver words
that are on target by first understanding the receiver's
point of view. This includes two distinct tactical
approaches for dealing with difficult people: the
"Eight Step Traffic/People Stop" and the
"Five Step Hard Style".
"The Art Of
Translation", to ensure that what we say is
actually what we intend, and "The Art Of
Mediation", delivering words in the form of a
personal appeal, to achieve voluntary compliance from
people who are under temporary emotional influences,
ranging from despair and fear to anger and prejudice.
How to read others and diagnose a
How to use the four appeals of
persuasion and the twenty-four principles of street
- The five conditions where words demonstratively
fail and officers must move beyond words to physical
DEPARTMENT NEEDS VERBAL JUDO?
Every year local government spends
millions of dollars on defensive tactics and weapons training
for law enforcement officers. In some cities the bill for
ammunition alone reaches six and seven figures. Every year
millions more are spent by local governments defending
themselves in lawsuits brought against their officers for
unnecessary use of force. Officers are often injured or killed
in confrontations that escalated beyond the power of control
holds, sticks, or guns to control the situation.
Of the six "force
options" available to police officers - Presence, Words,
Empty- Hand Control, Chemicals, Batons or PR-24, and Firearms
- only Presence and Words
can promise a non-violent resolution to street encounters.
In addition, only these two have the
power to reduce vicarious liability suits, improve citizen
relations, and increase officer safety.
Officers to date have received little or
no specific training in the use of Appropriate Presence and
Words as force options. Daily, officers must attempt to
GENERATE VOLUNTARY COMPLIANCE from difficult people, and we
should train our officers in this most difficult and important
The cost of neglecting such training
will be measured in blood, money, and public opinion. Our
officers must be as competent with words as they are with
WHAT IS THE
TRAINING AGENDA FOR VERBAL JUDO?
Enforcement & Public Safety Personnel
Five Goals Of The Course
Of A Professional
Goal Of The Peace Officer
Force Options Used To Achieve This Goal
Habit Of Mind Necessary To Achieve This Goal
Art Of Representation
From The Receiver's Point Of View
Survival Truths Of Communication
Karate Versus Verbal Judo:
And Physical Demonstration
"Five-Step Hard Style" Of Persuasion
To Recognize When Words Fail And
Prepared To Move To Action: S.A.F.E.R.
Three Arts Needed To Be A Peace Officer:
Translation And Mediation
"Thin Blue Line" Defined
Four Appeals Of Persuasion
Forty-Six Principles Of Disinterest For Action
The "Tactical Eight-Step" Car/Person
OBJECTIVES AND INTRODUCTION
There are five primary goals for
teaching Verbal Judo to police officers: 1. Officer Safety, 2.
Enhanced Professionalism, 3. Less Complaints, 4. Less
Vicarious Liability and 5. Less Personal Stress. Officers are
safer when they use their words to achieve a professional
purpose rather than express their personal feelings. The most
dangerous weapon an officer carries is the "Cocked
Tongue." He must use words as tools not weapons. Mind and
mouth disharmony causes violence. Everything we teach in
Verbal Judo can markedly enhance an officer’s ability to
look good and sound good, as well as be good. How we do, what
we do is often the difference between success and failure. We
teach officers how to deliver "bad news" to others
with dignity and respect. This stress on the "Art of
Delivery" results in officers generating fewer complaints
from their interaction with the public, and hence generating
fewer lawsuits from their actions. Departments trained in
Verbal Judo have seen reductions of up to 80% in complaints
from the public, and an untold amount of dollars saved in
lawsuits. All of this results in less stress for the officer
and the department.
An in-depth definition of
Professionalism, defining its central goal - Generating
Voluntary Compliance: its force options, stressing presence
and words as the first two, its necessary habit of mind --
MUSHIN or a still, unbiased mental center; and its new name,
The Contact Professional, who is an artist at representing
something other than himself. In this Module we define and
show how to become the consummate Professional.
The Peace Officer works in an arena of
verbal assault, and in this section, we teach officers the
theory necessary to understand how to perform a
"Professional Self" before the public. Knowing more
about communication than the people they will meet enables
them to become who they have to be to handle the difficult
situations they will face daily. The module stresses that 93%
of an officer’s effectiveness lies in his "Delivery
Style", not his message and we show officers how to use
their "Style" more effectively and safely.
Here we teach officers the difference
between an offensive attacking style of language, Verbal
Karate, and the professional re-directive power of Verbal
Judo. We define our terms and demonstrate technique over brute
power in a physical demonstration. We will illustrate Verbal
Judo in action through the "Five-Step Hard Style"
form of persuasion using real street examples. If the officer
uses the five-step discipline, he CANNOT LOSE IN COURT. We
teach the limits of words and how to reach their maximum
NO OFFICER IS SAFE IF HE IS TALKING WHEN
HE SHOULD BE ACTING. Hence, we teach the five times when words
fail -- summed up by the acronym S.A.F.E.R. -- and show
officers how to evaluate the threat and to move to other
appropriate force options.
Police Officers are the great PERSUADERS
in America. Here we teach the three arts necessary to change
the way people may want to behave when they are under the
influence of liquor, drugs, rage, stupidity or greed. How to
influence difficult people to think better for them than they
may naturally desire is the sum of the three arts.
To show officers how to verbally
"hook people up" for their own good, we teach the
four basic appeals of Persuasion and arm then with 46 or more
principles of disinterest or flexibility taken directly from
cops on the streets. Knowing the four appeals enables officers
to remain flexible in their approaches to persuasion and more
efficient in their use of words. Knowing the ethical and
verbal principles help officers stay centered and focused on
the goal of generating voluntary compliance rather than
reacting to personal feelings.
In this section, we teach the
"Tactical Eight-Step" a safer and more powerful
approach to car or people stops, one which elicits far less
resistance and misunderstanding and sounds professional and
strong throughout. Put together with the "Five-Step Hard
Style", these two disciplines arm officers with a
TACTICAL ADVANTAGE they have never had before. There is a
better way to do business, and this is it!
"OPEN" CLASSES IN VERBAL JUDO?
Verbal Judo courses are conducted at your
department training site. Occasionally departments will
provide open seats for outside personnel. Hit the "Course
Schedule" icon at the top of this page to find available
training opportunities. Call the Verbal Judo Institute, (888)
966-7421, for information and registration.
1997 - 2012 Verbal Judo Institute, Inc.
George J. Thompson, President & Founder