![]() ![]() ![]() “Verbal judo is not the flavour of the month. “I simply used my academic background to put words to what great cops have always done,” he said. More than 30 years ago, Thompson codified what he saw as common sense: using tactical language calmly under pressure to achieve a clearly defined goal – with the priority of keeping officers safe. In the current context of tensions inflamed by a series of police shootings of African Americans and of cops killed in revenge attacks, the use of verbal de-escalation to defuse combustible encounters has rarely seemed so important – or so under threat. ![]() Thompson died in 2001, aged 69, but some police instructors are now once again emphasising the value of communication in avoiding combat, advocating scientific analysis allied with realistic training to prepare officers to handle stressful situations. Instead, US police departments increasingly resembled military units both in ethos and equipment. Making police more restrained was a hot topic after the 1991 beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles, but in the wake of 9/11, de-escalation techniques and community policing seemed to fall out of fashion. “Not anybody can talk a knife out of somebody’s hand.” “Anybody can teach English,” he said in one of his training video from the 1990s. ![]() The father of a tactical communication style known as “verbal judo”, he wrote his first book on the subject in 1983 and became a successful law enforcement trainer. ![]()
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