Krav Maga for Public Safety Cyclists

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by Gail Boxrud
Krav Maga Minneapolis

DEA Agent Don Canestraro led a team into a suspected drug house in Minnesota a few years ago.

They knocked, forced open the door with guns drawn, but the suspect inside did not comply with their commands. He backed away nervously and then appeared to reach for something out of their vision. Another agent started to ease the slack out of his trigger, as the encounter intensified. Then Don employed a Krav Maga technique called the educational stop, a simple technique that stuns the suspect without injuring him.

Don used his open hand to push the man back, palm to his chest, and fingers to his windpipe. This move knocked the suspect into the wall, and he fell to the ground, where they handcuffed him.

A tense encounter that could have justified shooting the suspect, based on his actions. The suspect turned out to be unarmed, but scared and confused. He was hard of hearing and didn’t speak English.

Canestraro, now retired, started training at Krav Maga Minneapolis in 2008, when he was still an active agent. He trained consistently for three years, and then off and on, for another five years until he moved to Washington DC. He retired from the DEA after 22 years of service.

“Krav Maga is a practical, easy-to-learn defensive tactics system essential for street survival in today’s high risk environment,” Canestraro says.

The ramifications of shooting a suspect for any law enforcement officer, even justified, are huge. Every move will be scrutinized by the department, the public and in the worst case scenario, a jury.

That is where Krav Maga training can potentially help, by giving officers simple, intuitive hand-to-hand skills for those encounters in which an officer cannot shoot or doesn’t want to shoot, says Avi Moyal, Chairman of the International Krav Maga Federation.

Moyal travels around the world as the lead instructor of the largest Krav Maga organization, teaching IKMF Krav Maga to law enforcement agencies of all kinds. An equally important part of that teaching, he says, is getting feedback from those departments on the threats they face and the solutions they need to do their jobs. These problems are worked on by Moyal and the IKMF’s Global Instructor Team of experts in Israel, to develop simple techniques and improve their law enforcement curriculum. That information is shared with departments around the world through the IKMF’s instructor courses, workshops and seminars.

Krav Maga was originally developed for the Israeli military back when Israel first became a nation. Everyone had to be a soldier, so it had to be simple, intuitive and effective for a smaller person fending off a larger attacker. The training incorporates stress and multiple attacker drills that are built around real-life situations.

Saint Paul Police Sgt. Murray Prust attended his first Krav Maga training at a seminar with Avi Moyal at Krav Maga Minneapolis in 2010. He was hooked, and said he had never trained like that before. He subsequently completed three levels of the IKMF’s Law Enforcement Instructor training, and helps teach for Krav Maga Minneapolis.

The system is modern, and constantly being updated and adapted to the many civilian, law enforcement and military sectors. IKMF instructors take the training to environment: cars, buses, air planes, ships, theaters, night clubs and bicycles.

As an IPMBA instructor and BRRT team leader, Prust helped Krav Maga Minneapolis instructors Gail Boxrud and Dante Pastrano develop their program: Krav Maga for Public Safety Cyclists.

Krav Maga for Public Safety Cyclists training focuses on those situations when they are more likely to be attacked: slow speed patrols in crowded areas. This training takes you “from bike to fight” by combining IPMBA dismounts with Krav Maga law enforcement techniques such as protecting your gun; defending against common strikes, grabs, chokes, knife attacks, both while standing and while on the ground; and gun threats and helmet grabs.

“The awesome part about Krav Maga with bicycles is that it can be applied to civilians, medics and police officers with only a few tweaks,” Prust says. “All of my police instincts would tell me to ditch the bike if I was involved in some type of dynamic encounter.” But the bike can also be a great tool for self-defense and police work.

“With Krav Maga, we introduce techniques that help you protect yourself, and may allow you to use a lower level of force to control the situation,” Prust says.

Krav Maga Minneapolis instructors Gail Boxrud, ranked Expert 1, and Dante Pastrano, ranked Expert 2, are certified by the International Krav Maga Federation to teach civilians, law enforcement, VIP protection, women and children. They are also certified Security Cyclists by IPMBA. They developed a series of Krav Maga on Bicycles seminars for civilians first, then worked with Prust to develop the law enforcement version. They started teaching the workshop at the annual IPMBA conference in Saint Paul in 2012 and have offered it each year since.

They look forward to delivering this effective training to the 2020 IPMBA Conference, June 1-6, 2020, in Dayton, Ohio.

Photos by Raymond Cervantes, Fort Worth Police Department.