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Tactical Duty Knife: use & defense for officers

Your complex world is sometimes very simple...
...defend your weapon or lose your life.
Sometimes only a knife can help you do that.
 

Focus:  All commissioned/sworn/reserve officers of any rank

Length:  8-hours

Pre-requisite for the Duty Knife Instructor: TRAIN-THE-TRAINER course

Our vision?
Practicality and effectiveness balanced with restraint and reasonable conduct that is defensible by any officer in any venue.

You carry a knife. 
Most officers carry at least one, and many carry more than one. 

If you are the average officer, although you use the knife frequently for utility purposes, you carry the knife with the intent of "last-ditch backup."  Many officers flatly state, “I’m going to use my knife if I need it to survive.” 

This begs many questions:

• Have you ever thought--really thought it through--about exactly when you will actually use the knife?

• Have you ever thought about how--and if--you will to get it out, get the blade locked open, keep it in your hand while doing all of this, and then employ it when you are under the most vicious attack you can think of (maybe never wanted to think of)?

• Have you ever thought about how you would actually employ the knife against another person in your defense?

• Have you ever thought about the aftermath--what will likely happen to you--following the knife use if you hit the suspect 20-30 times before he stops trying to kill or disarm you? 

We have...that's our job. 

We listen, research, think, apply, and work out
the best ways to keep you alive and employed...
...even in the worst scenarios you can think of.

We teach the only comprehensive, objectively reasonable limited employment of the knife by officers--solely because of the inevitable political implications that will arise the moment you realize you are still breathing...and maybe he's not.  When and how you use this agency authorized cutting tool (if your administrators know you are carrying a duty folding folding, it’s authorized), and how you articulate the decision to employ a knife in your defense, should be a high level concern when the specter of civil--and maybe criminal liability exposure rears up. 

What this training is NOT:

• We DO NOT teach "Rambo wanna-be's"
  or turn your cops into slashing "Police Knife Fighters."

• Our classes are NOT a "green beret camp"
  for  police officers.

• We DO NOT teach civilians how to "knife fight."

• We teach NO Filipino/Escrima/Kali/martial arts/military "knife fighting" to police.

This is responsible police training
that inhibits and helps
prevent primitive knife employment by your officers.

This is not a military knife course where multiple stabs and disabling slashes are touted, modeled, and trained.  This is not a “Cop Knife-Fighter” class where “knife fighting” is taught.  That would be ridiculous—officers don’t FIGHT offenders with knives.  There are no "knife on knife" drills or scenarios like every other "police" knife training course.  Rather, our training is governed by a knife employment philosophy is a professional, considered, practical, rational, realistic, and ultimately defensible method of an officer’s desperate defense need being met with a folding knife.  Officers are taught a method of knife employment that is restrained while simultaneously being effective.  This is the only course of its type, where the knife is understood to be a weapon of last resort, and even then, to be utilized in a limited manner that is justifiable and defensible in ANY venue.

Our Training is Based
on Actual Incidents & Circumstances

We continually conduct research into the actual incidents and circumstances where officers have employed duty knives in defense of their lives.  We have asked every class for the last 20+ years if any officers had ever been attacked and/or injured by a knife, and then interviewed that officer to determine the actual circumstances of that assault.  We have conducted officer-murder studies, dating back to 1980 to determine the actual circumstances in which officers were murdered--including those by edged weapons. 

When you attend our training, it will not be based upon how some martial artist in some isolated school thinks "it" will be.  Rather, you get the benefit of knowing what officers have experienced in the past, paid for with their blood--and, sadly, sometimes with their lives.  We apply the latest training methods to the lessons of the past combined with current trends to bring you unprecedented training relevance. 

A Comprehensive
Police Knife Course

Cutting Edge Training, L.L.C., developed this course to meet the highest standards of physical, legal, and practical survival training.  Its focus is upon the safety of officers and their agencies in all aspects of carrying, deploying, utilizing, and employing the knife:

• Safe utility use:  Officers are trained to safely use their knives to prevent needless and possibly serious, even career threatening injuries in every day situations.  Worker's Comp injuries from knives are avoided through proper utility use.

• Safe emergency rescue use:  How a victim is freed from seatbelts or ligature is covered to prepare the officer for safely and efficiently freeing a subject from their bonds without the risk of further injury.  Unless the situation is so pressing that additional lacerations are reasonable, cutting the flesh of a victim while freeing them may lead to needless civil liability exposure.

• Real world knife defense:  We looked at how real officers in the real world are really attacked with knives and other edged weapons, then built real world defenses for these attacks without martial arts, without complication, and without the need for a professional fighter's abilities and attributes to be successful.  This training is intended for your average officer to be successful in the worst-case scenario.

• Reasonable "police" knife employment:  Knife employment that is first, objectively reasonable, based upon the totality of the circumstances known to the officer at the time, and second, is justifiable in every post-use of force context there is.  It doesn't make sense to save your life and then be sentenced to 10-20 years in prison as an ex-cop because a jury doesn't like "how" you used your knife to save your life...  We teach you how to use the knife to save your life in a manner that is, in itself, justifies and shows that your actions were reasonable based upon the offender's actions, as well as the latest requirements in articulating that force to survive both the criminal and civil processes that are sure to follow the employment of the knife. 

Background:  CUTTING EDGE TRAINING, LLC, is proud to be a strategic partner with BENCHMADE Knife Company, Inc., in bringing the most rational, court defensible duty knife training to law enforcement.  Each company recognizes the advantage of combining the best-made duty folding knife with the best training in the defense and use of a knife possible for the U.S. and international law enforcement community. 

For years, both CUTTING EDGE TRAINING, LLC, and BENCHMADE Knife Company were receiving an increasing number of requests for “knife training” from both law enforcement and from the military.  In late 1999, the Director of Training for CUTTING EDGE TRAINING, LLC, Mr. George T. Williams, approached Benchmade with the idea of creating a training knife.  Because so many officers carry Benchmade products on-duty, it was natural that Benchmade be the company to create the training knife for these specialized classes.  Mr. Les DeAsis, the owner of Benchmade Knife Company, set his talented designers to work, creating several models for testing and modification. 

After a year-long period of rigorous testing and redesign, the training knives were deemed ready, and in early 2001, the “Trainer” was introduced to the marketplace.  These training knives have proved to be invaluable to officers and the military in their training efforts.  They have since been employed by thousands of officers across the US in CUTTING EDGE TRAINING's  "Duty Knife" courses to bring a level of realism that was unreachable prior to their manufacture.

This course is the required pre-requisite for our "Duty Knife Instructor:  TRAIN-THE-TRAINER" course.

"As a law enforcement instructor-trainer and author (The Thinking Officer's Guide to Police Defensive Tactics) I am constantly on the look-out for a new and improved defensive tactics mousetrap.  George T. Williams' Duty Knife course not only provided a new mousetrap, it provided the cheese.  This course will change your view of knife usage in the field."                         --Perry W. Kelly
                                                                              International Police Trainer,
                                                                    Author, and Attorney