Left Of Greg 026 Andrew Pollack Why Meadow Died

Hello Andrew. Brian, thank you so much for taking the time to hop on here with us. We really appreciate it.

Thanks.

You're on. I'm Brian, and this is Greg Williams. We are business partners. Just to kind of give you a little bit of background and intro, you and us have kind of a similar mindset and mentality, just because of what we do for training. It's all what we call Left of Bang training. So we do what we call human behavior pattern recognition and analysis. What we train people is how to prevent catastrophic events from happening. It's been a huge success in the military, private companies, and all over the world. So, just so you know, not to take up too much of your time, but that's what we do. I thought it was important to kind of get a hold of you. The way this is, just so you know, I'm going to do a separate audio intro for everyone listening, and same thing for video, so we can kind of just go ahead and start this discussion.

I really appreciate you coming on here, Andrew. The reason why we reached out to you, kind of just like I explained, we have a mutual interest in how things we think things should be resolved, especially when it comes to something like school shootings. I think the best way to tell the story of how we reached out to you is Greg, my business partner here and subject matter expert on human behavior, kind of sent me a text and said, "Hey, buy this guy's book and try and get a hold of him." So I'm like, "Okay, what's this all about?" So I don't know if Greg, if you want to kind of share that story of how that came to be real quick.

Yeah, sure. Andrew, thanks for being on the broadcast. We want to do everything right. Sorry for your loss. We think what you and Hunter and a lot of folks have done is a great thing. I want to make sure that everybody understands what that is and how to get a hold of your book.

On September 11th—which I hate flying on September 11th, but it seems every year I'm destined to fly on September 11th—I'm coming out of Philly and the hotel always gives you a USA Today. So I go to the opinion page and I'm reading, and Andrew has this incredible story that epitomizes Left of Bang thinking and saying, "Hey, listen, here were all these cues, and when these cues came together as clusters, anybody could have seen that something bad was about to happen and nobody did anything."

So I get to the bottom of the page and I read your name. Sadly, sir, I don't follow social media. I'm not like my partner Brian. I'm usually out in under a podium teaching. I don't understand Twitter and all the other stuff. I wrote Marren a message. He's in San Diego and I'm just landing the plane. I wrote him the message as I'm flying over the field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania—very poignant in my mind. I said, "Get a hold of this guy and see if he'll talk to us on the pod." First thing I did at Denver Airport is get a copy of your book, which I've got to tell you, it's an incredible read.

First of all, your co-writer's credentials and the stuff we know about them is amazing. So that's the first thing that we liked. The second thing that I just absolutely loved was it's common sense. "Hey, look, take a look at these facts." The problem I feel sometimes nowadays is, as a "copper" (police officer) I spent 27 years on the road as a copper and the first thing they tell you is, "Don't let the facts get in the way of a perfectly good story." What you did is you took these facts that you cannot look away from and put them in order and said, "Hey, what do you think?" So Marren was lucky enough to reach out and get you on this.

Yeah, so thanks again for hopping on. Kind of just like I said, just jump right into this. We've got a few questions for you and then we can kind of see where it goes from there. But now, because of what happened to your family and your daughter, you're now a subject matter expert on school shootings, right? You didn't want that job, you didn't want that title, right? Because of these situations, you are... well, there's folks like us out there who are subject matter experts, and have been studying this for a long time. So, I just took that so listeners can understand what part of this problem are you addressing? What is your point with the book and what you're trying to do? What is the problem that you specifically want to address?

Well, the biggest problem I've seen when I dug into it more, first, mainstream media doesn't want to report the truth of what happened. I just... you always hear the President talking about it, but I witnessed it firsthand with the release of my book, being on a tour in Manhattan, D.C., and all over. The only station that really wanted to report the truth was Fox News. So only parents that watch Fox News will really know the truth and the facts of what happened in Parkland. So that's number one.

Number two, it was mostly what led up to it was the discipline policies in place throughout the whole country, and lack of it, and supported by, you know, the public school systems have been infiltrated by unethical liberal bureaucrats that spew this type of "kids don't need discipline, let's end the school-to-prison pipeline." It just creates a chaotic, unsafe environment for kids. Parents need to wake up because there's Democratic presidential candidates that are pushing these policies into schools, just like now in California. Gavin Newsom passed a bill, it's illegal to suspend disruptive kids. That's a law now. Any parent, regardless of your affiliation, your party affiliation, how can you think it's right to put your kid in a class where other kids can be disruptive with no consequence? So this is what's going on throughout the country. This is what I uncovered, and this is what led to one of the things that led to my daughter's murderer being allowed in the school and never being arrested, which a lot of people are pushing for all these background checks.

A background check wouldn't have made a difference with my daughter's murder unless they would have removed those policies of arresting kids when they make threats. Background checks only work if you arrest criminals, you enforce the laws that are already there, and then a background check works. It wouldn't have made a difference. You could see it had happened. And also with that Dayton shooter, everyone knew he was an evil kid. He threatened kids' lives in school, he had a rape list, never arrested, so he passed his background check. So background checks only work if kids or people are held accountable and it's put on their background.

Yeah, sure. I think one of the things that's ironic here is as I was reading your opinion, and writing feverish notes to figure out who you were and what part of the problem you were addressing, on the same opposite page or two was Newsom's bill that was coming up. There was an announcement on it. It wasn't remarkable to me that it was like he never read the Promise Program. He never read the excerpts of the book that say, "Hey, look, take a look at what happens." Listen, you're not going to be able to prevent everything that occurs. There are going to be some people that slip through the cracks. We see it in law enforcement and security and in military, and even the best-laid plans. But the idea of completely turning a blind eye to facts is ridiculous.

I think that's happening on a large scale where people are trading their legal, moral, ethical opinions because they want to get ahead. Some people are going to use your book to get ahead because they're going to say, "Hey, this is part of my agenda." Some people are going to argue with the outcomes of your book, which I don't understand how, exactly. But we face the same problem. Just briefly to tell you, we go and we talk to schools because schools are part of what we do. They're not all of what we do. We do battlefield to boardroom. We do corporate partners. We do Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines. We do Tier 1 units and police stations and first responders. The idea is that when we come to schools, it's the most disheartening, because after we do our pitch to emergency services, they go, "Hey, let's get on this. This is amazing." When we do it to the schools, the schools go, "Well, we don't want to rush into anything," and they have what we call this "wait-and-see" attitude. It crushes my spirit.

Well, the problem I see with a lot of these school boards is that they don't know anything about security. They shouldn't have anything to do with it, right? It should be a whole another department that's looking into the security in the schools, whether it's locks, whether it's single-point entry, whether who's arming different personnel in the school. All that should be taken away from school districts across the country, just like they did with TSA. There should be best practices for schools, and it's getting worked on in Congress. I know people doing it because they don't have a clue what's going on, and there needs to be an organization that leads the way like TSA did with the airports in security with schools throughout the country with safest and best practices.

I completely agree with the best practices. You cannot argue that these problems have been around long enough that people know that these work better than these. And we don't want analysis paralysis. We don't want this information to atrophy on a shelf somewhere. The idea is it does just that. In between each catastrophic shooting emergency, people are dying, wholesale slaughter. Then what do you see? You see everybody go out there and they yell their platitudes. But then in a week, those things go away, and it's not that important because now we move on. What I love about you, sir, and what I really respect, is you said, "This is my job now. This is my life since February 14th. This is my mission." And we both applaud you for that.

Well, I owe it to my daughter to hold every single one of these scumbags accountable that let this happen in Broward (County), and that's what I've been doing since I got involved and helped run DeSantis get elected because he's a great governor. He ran on his campaign of holding public officials accountable. The first week in office, he removed the sheriff for his failed policies. He changed, he changed the policies of his deputies from "shall go in" to "his deputies may go in," and that played a factor. He (the sheriff) was removed. Recently, the deputy that didn't go into the building, that hid behind the wall while my daughter was getting murdered, he's been brought up on felony charges. He faces now losing his pension. They dropped a grand jury investigation onto the school board. He signed an executive order into these diversionary programs of not holding kids accountable. So a lot of things are going on in Florida for accountability, but still what I stress to parents is, and I put it in my book Why Meadow Died, is ultimately parents are responsible for the environment they put them in. And that's what it's all about with me. The President, I'm friends with him. He could wave his wand and make every school safe. He would love to do it, but he can't fix local-level school boards. Your governor can't, or your senator. It's only the parents who could make a difference.

That's a great point, Andrew, and to kind of caveat on that is that we always say it's your security is your personal responsibility. You have to take charge of that. You have to take ownership of it in your community, in your school district, right?

So, I was just saying to the viewers and listeners right now, I would suggest, if you're going to look up Andrew, the first thing I saw is when I went to YouTube and I searched Andrew Pollack, I saw that talk of you speaking at the White House. I think it was only a week after Meadow died, and that shows who you are and where you come from. So, it's very powerful and very emotional. But then when you get into the book, and you see how you did this, this is done almost like this is like a research project that you... it's very clinically done. So when you do that, the point you were trying to make is this isn't a Republican and Democratic issue. This is a country issue. This is what we need to do for our kids. This is insane.

So it kind of brings me to the next question: When did you and I know your son Hunter is heavily involved as well, and your wife, your whole family I'm sure, but when did you and Hunter decide to really kind of take this on the offensive? Was there a moment or is there something that happened that you just said, "You know what? No, now we have to not just be on the news, we have to take this and I have to look into every detail." Was there some moment?

Well, I don't think any father wouldn't do what I did for their daughter. These people in Broward are just the most unethical, toxic people you could ever be around. They weren't transparent, and I knew they were just lying pieces of garbage that brought these policies. They wouldn't accept... If they would have, like a man came up to me, these people, and said, "You know what? We recognize this situation, we see the problems that were in the school district and will make the changes, Mr. Pollack, so it doesn't happen again," I don't even have to write a book. I don't have to keep doing what I'm doing. But they can't do that. These people, the sheriff couldn't do it, the deputy couldn't do it, the superintendent couldn't do it, no one in the school board could do it. So it leaves me to make them, hold them accountable for my daughter, and that's what I'm going to do.

He had the option, even the District Attorney, if you could believe it, who signed on—he's trying the case against the murderer—the District Attorney, so he signed on with the superintendent and the sheriff to these, to the Promise Program, these diversionary programs of not holding kids accountable. The D.A., and when we had a meeting with him, I wanted to give him the opportunity to accept responsibility, and he said he knew that this program was obstructing justice, but he didn't want to do anything about it in fear he would be called a racist. This is what he said to me in private, with my attorney there, with all the parents, kids with... And this is the District Attorney in Broward trying the case for murder. So it's a lack of accountability, this is what that is. It's a lack of testicular fortitude.

Andrew said a bunch of things that made a lot of sense, and that's why we're promoting the book so strongly. Because read it, and then formulate your opinion, because we're what you do now is you Twitter whatever manifestations come into your mind without ever thinking of the outcome or doing any research. Whereas you did it the opposite and you said, "Hey, listen, I've got an emotional tie to this, but I want to make sure I'm on the side of right." I think it's important to be on the side of the right. I think it's important to do things like you said, responsibility, accountability, and transparency.

The problem is that not every school system... We're going to lose work, I'll tell you right now, for half, because some of the people that we go to, they don't want to see the truth. When we come and we do an infrastructure check on the facility and we work with their people on the ground to create a training methodology so they can understand Left of Bang thinking and predicting and analyzing things so they can mitigate it or stop it in its infancy before it even turns into a problem. A lot of times we get the nods in the right direction and they say, "Well, you know, we're going to wait and see. We can't do this." We heard all the excuses, you know, "It's too expensive." They don't understand you're going to pay one way or the other. And then it comes down to the accountability. Nobody can come up and say, "Mea culpa. I was the one that was at the steering wheel the night that the Titanic hit the iceberg." Nobody wants to do that in America.

I think it's fantastic that you're taking accountability for every word that comes out of your mouth, because what you're saying is you're saying, "This guy is responsible, and this guy's responsible. I'm going to hold them accountable." How many people are doing that? Everybody's pointing fingers, and that's why guns—and here I'm going to get a bad rap too—but that's why guns and high-capacity magazines are less of the problem than the shooter, than the person that was walking into that school, the person that had all those years to make that plan, and nobody called him on it. Nobody, you know, there were so many red flags with this.

That was dropped. And you know, you're talking about different districts. So Broward County, where is Ground Zero, where my daughter was murdered. We got a bill passed after, and in that bill it was named after one of the coaches that ran into the building unarmed, Aaron Feis. So it was called after him, the Aaron Feis Guardian Program, which is where teachers or personnel could go for training. It's not like the media... In Florida, it's 150 hours of intense training and it's voluntary, it's a volunteer program that teachers can do. In Broward, they still can't figure it out how to get that done because their hiring pool is so small that they won't, they can't hire anyone. They won't let people do it. But meanwhile, there are school districts that take it serious, where they're training the right people, probably like what you guys see to be in a situation. My daughter was on that third floor, and this guy reloaded, I think, five times while he was in the school. He could have been finished at any time while he was in the school, but no one was there to help my daughter.

I'm a big proponent of the Second Amendment because my daughter ended up being a victim. She was... No one came in. They all called 9-1-1 and no one came to help her. So no one's taking my guns away, and I'll go down. Whoever wants to say my kids will never be a victim like my daughter was, my sons, my friends, my family. And I take my Second Amendment seriously because I saw what happened in that school when five deputies stood down and hid behind their cars and didn't go into buildings. So it's important. And training's important, right? Policies are important. And none of those things were in place in Broward. That's why the sheriff lost his job, that's why his monitors were fired, that's why the superintendent's got a grand jury investigation against him. And parents, don't just think you're going to put your kid in a school and all those things are there. Parents, it's on you. I'm saying it, and that's the important message.

That's what you're yelling out, is that this is your responsibility. Don't rely on the government, the police. Look, they've got other things that they have to do. We have to take the ball and we have to run with it. This is our problem that we have to fix, right?

So, Greg and I study all these attacks, not just school shootings, terrorist attacks, suicides. This is what we do because we do everything. We study all the precipitating events, right? All the pre-event indicators to go, "Look, this is where you can tell this is leading." Our goal would be that the kid never makes it to the school with a gun because it's already been identified so far Left of Bang that it's not even a problem. Now, maybe that person, that broken human, can get the help they need and become productive members of society, right? And that's someone else's job, that's not what we do. But what's amazing about your case, as I go through the book, is that this is one of the worst in terms of how many pre-event indicators there are. I've seen some bad ones before, a lot of the cases people don't even know about. But the way you have it documented is there is not one, I don't know how you could look at this and go, "This is an enormous problem. We can't ever let this happen again," just like you said that week after, when you were at the White House, and you said, "How we had 9/11 and then we haven't had one since. Why didn't we have one school shooting and not have one since?" So I think that's an interesting takeaway in the book, which is why I would love for people to actually read it, because it gives this very, very clinical diagnosis or clinical response to every single thing that happened. And that's what we need, though. We need level heads talking about it.

Of course, you have emotional capital. The reason that I left the Beltway and the reason that we formed Arcadia, and the reason that Brian and I do this, and the reason I've been committed to saving lives for four decades now, is we've had the blood of officers on our hands. We've held fellow soldiers and sailors and Marines who died when we were in Iraq and Afghanistan. We've been deployed outside the wire with the troops and seen the stuff that happens. Americans have to understand that, but we, we, you know, we do not want to see it because looking at the problem means that it might happen here, and you're not going to dodge the bullet. This problem isn't going to go away. So that's why, you know, Brian, I fired off a burst message to him and said, "Find Andrew and let's get him on," because we want to hear his story, and more importantly, we want to put the book out there. Because if it does nothing else, it'll start and keep that discussion on everybody's fingertips, on everybody's tongues and toes. I think, Andrew, that's one of the important reasons that we want to join the pod, is because the more play that you get, the more people that are going to dig deep and find out what it is. And to us, that's truly important. That transparency is an urgency.

You know, when I got into this, was it really political? I just wanted to find the facts, and what I said was, I want to look into keeping our kids safe, our teachers safe, whatever that may be, the policies. But I don't want to be in a gun debate. I'm not an expert. I don't want to debate guns, just fix the schools and focus on doing that. That's why, as you mentioned before, 9/11. There was no gun debate. So just because I didn't bring the gun debate into it, I was labeled Republican, conservative, pro-Second Amendment guy, which is kind of despicable. But now I own up to it. I don't care if someone wants to call me conservative. I am conservative, but I didn't go into it with that mindset. I went into it just to keep the kids safe, keep the teachers safe, what's the best practices? I don't want to debate guns because you... I don't want to argue with people for 200, 100 years about guns. Exactly. What can we do right now to fix the schools? And they label me Republican, pro-Second Amendment.

Right. Hold on, just a couple of weeks ago we were having a discussion with somebody—and I won't say the state or the person because that'll cause a maelstrom again—but they were listening to our pod and they know our stance on, "It's all Left of Bang. If the shooting starts, you must accuse." And we will not allow that to happen. We push it so far Left of Bang that you're able to mitigate it or stop it before it occurs. And this person says, "Well, you got to talk about which side you come down on the gun debate." And I said, "No, we don't, because we're apolitical. We're talking about science, all science all the time." And that person told me, "Well, those folks from Sandy Hook are going to tear you apart." Now, listen, when did it happen that either you are with my opinion or you're the Antichrist and everybody hates you and wants to throw rocks at you? I thought this was America where we also had the First Amendment and you had the absolute right to share your opinion.

I live it with this liberal left because they wouldn't... I had CNN canceled on me, MSNBC, ABC. I did a video with them, they never played it. None of them wanted me to go on. I have a bestseller. I've been on almost the top ten on Amazon for over a week, which is really unheard of, books don't last that long. I can't ship them out, they can't print them here fast enough. We'll keep an eye on it. Yet, they don't want the truth out. And okay, so then who are you hurting? You're hurting parents from finding out the truth if they don't, unless they watch Fox News.

Well, you're also hurting the kids. You're also hurting the kids because kids are much smarter and they're much more exposed these days to these issues. Kids won't be able to do a 360 on the issue and take a look at all these things and see some of these pre-event indications that you have in the book. The book is an incredible opportunity to let the scales fall from your eyes and see the problem as it actually is.

Yeah, I would. And that's why I also brought up that clip from you speaking at the White House, Andrew, because you're very clear about why you're doing this and why it has nothing to do about Democrat or Republican. It's... This is you simplified it to what it needs to be. So I know that, I know the book kind of just came out, but what surprised you most about releasing the book? Anything? What's been the biggest surprise for you about the whole situation, getting out on the offensive and talking about this stuff and getting on the news? What's been the biggest surprise for you?

Oh, that I'm near the top of Amazon, so yeah. I think I surprised everybody: the publisher, the printer, the agent. But the surprise was that the liberal mainstream media didn't put me on now to tell the truth. That's... I thought because I was there when they wanted me in Parkland. I was there for them, giving them their interviews, you know what I mean? But when I wrote this book and I reached out to all of them, it was crickets. None of them. And they canceled on me. So I guess it wasn't important for the liberal left to really see the truth of the facts that are in this book. That surprised me.

You're not a guy, clearly, you are not the guy to let that stop you or slow you down. I mean, the great thing is you can tell by my accent and I can tell by your accent that we're both from somewhere in West Virginia. You've got that attitude. I know where you're from, I knew where you grew up, and the idea is, thank God for you, sir, because a lot of the people feel that pressure and they drop off. And I'll tell you what, I'm going to do this and I'm going to die teaching and I'm going to die flying somewhere to teach somebody how to stay safer. You can't let any of that dissuade you from pushing this book out there and getting everybody that can to read it.

The only other person's book that Marren and I were reading during the same time period that yours came out is Jim Mattis'. Both of us worked under Jim Mattis before in our careers, and your book, no pun intended, trumps that because it's something that you can use to go forward and fix things in your own community. And I want to underscore that for everybody that's listening. We've got a viewership, and it's not CNN and Fox News size, but we do have people that listen to our audience. And this is a book where you can do something in your own community. You can take these lessons learned and you can move out smartly and fix things.

Well, what I'm saying, parents, you have no excuse anymore, right? Since this book is out, to say, "I'm the last guy that could say I didn't know what was going on in the school." That's my thing. I tell parents, "No, I don't want to hear it that you can't believe your kid got bullied, or you can't believe a teacher got beat up, or you can't believe they stole your kid's iPhone." All these things that are going on, like there's a good chance your kid won't be shot, but don't subject them to that type of chaotic environment if you don't have to. There's options. In Broward alone, enrollment is down 2,000 students this fall. You can't get into a charter school or a private school because parents are figuring it out, what's going on in these schools, and they're going to do what's right. And the only people that could fix this in the country are the parents and grandparents.

That's exactly, absolutely. So we're a country of laws and we're a country of rules. And we elect people not for their opinion, but to share our opinion. As Americans, if enough people are behind you, things will change. And you're a catalyst for that change. You should be very happy.

And that's something, Andrew, is that there's people out there who share your opinion, even our work within the school system, and obviously we're not going to name anything, but there's frustrated people like yourself that fight and they got to play that game going up against exactly the people you're talking about. So I guess kind of just, you know, last question for you would be, what's the next challenge for you? What keeps you up at night? Where what's your plan next with this? I mean, I know you just released the book and you're trying to get it out there and get as many people to read it, but what's what's up next for you? What is it that you want to challenge people?

I have this grand jury investigation in Broward. Oh God, I'm heavily... I want these people held accountable, all that led this to happen. I have my civil suit to hold these people accountable, and I wrote, I have a screenplay signed for a motion picture where I could expose every single one of these people that failed by name, which has given me an incentive. In the movie, they told me I can name every failure, every person by name in the movie. So yeah, that's an incentive to me to expose these people and hold them accountable and make them a national disgrace for what they did, what happened to my daughter.

Oh, yeah. That matches psychologically, Andrew. Psychologically, the reason that we don't want to name the shooter...

No, no, no, no, no.

I'm following you, but what I'm saying, in America we've gone, the pendulum swung the other way. They tore down Sandy Hook. They were talking about tearing down Columbine. The problem is that they're seeing that as an active move to erase hate and to stop bullying and to stop school shooters. It's not going to do anything. Psychologically, it's not going to do anything but make that person that doesn't want to do anything sleep better at night and go out and buy some ice cream. What we need you and the people that are listening to do is to keep fighting the good fight every single day. You get up and say, "Grab my yellow pad, what can I do today to make schools safer? What can I do today to make our nation stronger and smarter?" And we're committed to that. That's why we're doing pods like this. That's why we're reaching out. And thanks, because those are the important things. The important things are what you do and what you say and how you live your life. And whether people disagree with your method, whether people think you're incendiary, Andrew, you're doing it. You're up there every single day doing it, and you're out there saying, "Come get some." And we truly appreciate that.

You know, I say a lot, a word that's haunted me is "accountability." And to me, I live it, I see it in my head, accountability. I dream it. And to me, it's everything for my daughter to hold these people accountable in any way I can, with this book, calling these policies out is holding these people accountable that put these policies in our schools, the sheriff that failed, all these policies. And then now it's on the parents. I can't say, I can't say it enough now. It's your chance and you have to do what's right. Just, and that's it. Do what's right just for your kid. And you know what? I'm going to leave something with you guys. You know, I have a good relationship with my rabbi, and a lot of these schools and parents, education is not just about your child making a living. You got to educate the soul too when it comes to children, and that's missing. So, you know what I used to do with my daughter, and every parent could do it? You put your phone down and just take a walk. Take a look around the block with your kid, with no phones, and you'll see how much you guys can discuss and develop just by hitting each other back and forth with talking with no phone. Take a walk with your kid, and they'll let you know what's going on in their lives.

That's absolutely right. And we're both parents, and we're both fathers, and we're both husbands, and that hits me right here. That's the animal message because you can't unring that bell. You cannot go back now. As hard as you're working to go forward, we're not going to allow that memory to die. So we're going to do our best to help everybody that wants to know your story, to hear your story. So I appreciate you coming on. Everyone listening, it's Why Meadow Died. You can get the Kindle version right away. I don't know if there's still a backorder on the hardcover copy. You can get the Kindle one, but which is, which is good news that means people are buying it. So we really appreciate you, and thanks for coming on, Andrew. We'd hope you come on again, sir.

No problem. Again, we'd love to have Hunter on.

Oh, thanks anytime, guys.

Thanks for helping me get the message out. Appreciate it.

Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thanks.