Rodrigo Faro, Pedro, Joaquim and Gui Valente with the Miami-Dade Police.
On Tuesday, Aug. 12th, the Valente brothers, Pedro, Gui and Joaquim invited Rodrigo Faro, a Brazilian TV celebrity and host of the Sunday show, “A Hora do Faro,” to visit the training grounds of the Miami-Dade Police.
The brothers along with Troy Lee, a VB Brown Belt & MDPD Sergeant, took Rodrigo on a tour throughout the SWAT (SRT) training facilities and demonstrated how the Valente brothers, Rio de Janeiro natives, are helping prepare the Miami-Dade Police to fight crime in South Florida.
The TV special will air next month in Brazil and on channel Record International to over 150 countries.
In a conversation with GRACIEMAG, Gui Valente talked about teaching Jiu-Jitsu to the Miami Police and how was the visit of the Brazilian celebrity to their school.
GRACIEMAG: Tell us about the work the Valentes brothers do with the Miami Police?
Gui Valente: Our work with the Miami-Dade Police (the largest police department in Florida) started in the year 2000. Since the focus of our Jiu-jitsu has always been self-defense, through my older brother, Pedro, who was the first to start teaching here in Miami, this has always attracted many officers to train with us. Since then we have taught classes for police officers of almost all departments here in South Florida.
GRACIEMAG: Do you guys have any specific self-defense program for it?
Gui Valente: In addition, our youngest brother, Joaquin, who majored in Criminology with a specialization in public safety, has developed a training program that covers everything from the part of our defense program and specific attack to the police until all the psychological area of a possible confrontation or police approach.
GRACIEMAG: Rodrigo Faro is a big celebrity in Brazil. What did he think about the visit?
Gui Valente: Rodrigo Faro never trained BJJ but demonstrated that he can learn quickly after a short lesson we gave to him during the interview. He said he came to us because the idea of the show was to find the most successful Brazilians in Florida, which was an honor for us.
