Martial arts family helps police with free training
Certified instructors offer quarterly seminars at Black Belt academies
BY MICHAEL ACKER Staff Writer
Al ocal family is using its knowledge of martial arts to give back to the police who protect their communities.

PHOTOS BY ERIC SUCAR staff Jack McInerney (center) demonstrates a detaining technique with Marlboro police officers Allan Bilinski (left) and Javier Garguillo (right) during a course held Friday at the Old Bridge Black Belt Academy on Route 516.

The McInerney family opened its first martial arts school in the Parlin section of Sayreville about 20 years ago and has since expanded McInerney's ATA Black Belt Academy to include two additional locations in Old Bridge and Marlboro.

John McInerney, 29, of Aberdeen, operates the Old Bridge location, on Route 516, along with a second instructor, and his mother, Judy, 56, of Old Bridge, who runs the office. His 58-year-old father, Jack, operates the family's original location in Parlin. John's sister, Laurie, 33, of Old Bridge, operates the Marlboro academy.

While Jack McInerney had practiced martial arts before his son got into it, he returned to the art after John started training when the family lived together in Parlin.

John McInerney demonstrates a tactic to police officers from a variety of jurisdictions who attended Friday's course. The McInerney family, which owns martial arts schools in Old Bridge, Sayreville and Marlboro, offers public courses but also runs a quarterly Defense Tactics class for law enforcement officers.

"When I was 7, I got into it after a buddy of mine joined," John McInerney said. "I liked it and I stuck with it. … My dad andmy sister quickly joined right after that."

The McInerneys are certified to train police officers in techniques specialized for law enforcement, since police are bound by a number of laws when they encounter violent suspects, John McInerney said. The methods that police learn help them to make arrests with greater ease and to reduce the chance of injury during incidents.

The family has been running quarterly seminars and providing additional training to police on request for the past few years, McInerney said. The seminars are an opportunity for police officers from bordering towns to be exposed to each other outside of the incidents that they are dispatched to, so that they can execute tactical procedures smoothly, he added.

"We don't charge for this," McInerney said. "We just do this to help the community."

The schools focus primarily on taekwon do, but they also teach basic judo, jujitsu, aikido and others, McInerney said. The different forms of martial arts are taught in order to provide well-rounded training to students, he said.

The benefits of martial arts go beyond the knowledge that practitioners gain through their practice.

"I love it for the self-defense aspect and the physical conditioning,"McInerney said. "One of the most important things that I like [is] the people who are with me. I really like the people I work with and my clients."

The training police officers receive at the academies is not mandatory for the officers, and most attend the seminars in order to broaden their knowledge of self-defense. McInerney said his family has trained police officers from towns in Middlesex and Monmouth counties, as well as from correctional facilities and police departments from as far away as Newark.

"The guys I work with have great camaraderie together, and they just want to help the public," McInerney said.

McInerney cited the challenges that undercover police officers encounter when, for example, they set up operations such as buying drugs or weapons in order to identify suspects. He also noted the difficult work of corrections officers, who encounter large numbers of criminals on a daily basis. He noted as an example that inmates at an area prison attacked one officer, and fellow corrections officers were able to stop the prisoners from causing serious harm, beyond an abrasion to the face.

"The inmates tried to ambush the officer, and they tried to take out his eyeball while he was doing his job ... and these were juveniles," McInerney said.

McInerney explained why he and his family decided to donate their time to law enforcement. He said the intense danger that police officers put themselves in serves as a significant inspiration for him.

"I just have great respect for what the officers do," McInerney said. "That is one of the major reasons why I wanted to work with them. The public really doesn't have an idea of the struggles and the pressures they go through. I just wanted to help them as much as I could."