Left Of Greg 071 Dont turn a robbery into a homicide.

Hey, everyone, thanks for tuning in. I'm Brian, I'm the host of The Human Behavior Podcast. You're going to be watching the video version of our audio podcast. Please, guys, if you liked the video, like it, subscribe to the channel. There's going to be more content down there if you're already a subscriber, and a better way for us to get you guys some more stuff. If you have any questions or comments, go ahead, leave them below. Check out our links down below to get a hold of us and to actually find out more places where you can get more information about this. Please like it, subscribe, follow us on Facebook at HBPRNA (Human Behavior Pattern Recognition and Analysis). Remember, all these cases that we discuss, and all these discussions that we have, are through the lenses of what we call Human Behavior Pattern Recognition and Analysis. So, please like it, share it, tell your friends about it, and we hope you enjoy the show.

So we'll just go ahead and get started here, Greg. Good morning.

Good morning to you. It looks like pretty soon here, states are going to start slowly opening back up a little bit. We can kind of see what happens from that. But we said, "World be damned, we're staying shut. You're not welcome here."

As you should. As you should.

We'll go to, sorry, it was the Cincinnati area. I don't know if it was actually in Cincinnati, but it might be a small town outside of there, to discuss a little issue that happened which we found rather amusing, but speaks to a criminal mindset and then our response to that. And cognitive performance is basically about performance and how we interpret events based on what we think is true.

Yes.

Let me balance that, because I can only speak to a certain amount of things in my life. I'm only an expert in a very, very narrow bandwidth of life. But I've been in thousands of police pursuits, okay? On both sides, but mostly on the police side. But what I want to say is, never have I had this situation, and that's why I thought it was so novel, and we needed to touch on it, Brian.

Okay, so we've got these teenage kids, right? I'll just kind of read it from the article so I get what's been reported accurately. So it started in the Hilltop Shopping Plaza on Hamilton Avenue, this in the Cincinnati area. Officers, it was 2:00 a.m., officers are checking on a business there. And then from the report it says, "A vehicle entered the parking area and the driver sounded the horn on several occasions to gain the officers' attention. As the officers approached, the occupants of the vehicle were seen exiting the vehicle and ran around the vehicle." I believe that's referred to as a Chinese fire drill. People call it that, or where that came from.

I said, "I just delete that. I'll probably edit that out."

No, no, no, we're just nowadays, Brian, we correct ourselves on air and we'd say, "It is, in fact, a fire drill."

So, they ran around the vehicle, got in, and sped off. So then, police give chase, start to pursue the vehicle. They ran the license plate; the number came back stolen. Then these kids came up through an intersection and struck another vehicle, and crashed into a utility pole. They tried to run, but agencies were already on hand. They captured the kids who ran off.

What it came to is these kids were out joyriding in a stolen vehicle, and the reason why they went over to the officers and honked and got their attention, then sped off, is because they thought that the officers would not be able to give chase due to the COVID-19 precautions and six feet of social or physical distancing. So, okay, hilarity ensued.

Yeah, at that point. So, first of all, roll tape back just a little bit, because all the coppers that are on the call right now, and folks, do your homework, listen: "joyriding" is a bad word in the cop scenario. Receiving and stealing stolen property, driving stolen vehicles, stealing a vehicle—those are all felonies. So "joyriding" is a lesser included offense that prosecutors can plead down to. So it's the "boys will be boys" defense, "Your Honor." It's a fancy, I don't want to slam him.

Right.

By the same token, they had enough mens rea (guilty mind), they had enough forethought to steal a ride and go driving around in a stolen car. Not only that, now they go, "Hey, look, there's the cops!" So now they're taunting the cops going, "They can't touch us!" I can imagine the guys in the car, not unlike that, what is it? Super Troopers?

It's...

Yeah. Or the guy who's going, "If you're a cop, you have to tell me!" Everybody at home is going, "Jocularity, jocularity, this isn't funny!" Listen, it is. It's tragically funny, it's ironically funny, yes. But there's a point, and the point is, if you were out driving with your family coming home from work, or you had a lunch break from the emergency room where you work, and you're going back at 2:30 in the morning to start your shift, you could have been the one hitting this intersection. If you're already fragile or you were unseat-belted, all bets, what could have happened, Brian, if there was another pedestrian? Do you get what I'm trying to say? This could have turned fatal, and we never think that. We always think that we're going to see the danger and then we're going to be able to react to it.

That the danger is going to come, quote, "out of nowhere."

So, let's get into, because we're going to talk about a few other cases and things that have been happening recently. I say, stick to what you said: "the performance." So I want to take your different perspectives and the mindset of the criminal, the police officer, and then what? To me, I'm neither one of them.

Well, I'm a reformed criminal, right?

I don't know. How does that work when you're out on...? No, you haven't been reformed. What I'm saying, the third perspective would be just the average person. Like you just said, "We all laugh, 'Ha ha ha!'" But what could have happened? That's the point. That, yeah, that could have been a woman pushing her kid across the street in a stroller, and then now they're about at 2:00 in the morning. But yeah, they get the point.

So. Who want to get into exactly...? My thing with, "Ma'am, show me where he touched you."

Yeah, I did. The idea here, though, Brian, is if we just drill down and focus on one thing: why were they at the mall? They were at the mall not because the cops are at the mall. They were at the mall looking for other kids to show up, "Look, we stole a car!" Where are you going to go? Even though you're going to go, "We're going to go to the mall," it doesn't matter that it's 2:00 in the morning.

That's right.

So they went to the drive-through at Taco Bell, which is open 24 hours. They circled around there, but they saw some "heavies" that would shoot at them. Do you get what I'm trying to say? And they didn't want that kind of play. So then they drove to the mall and said, "We'll just show some other kids."

And folks, you're going, "Well, how can you prove that?" Let's say, 35 years of experience doing it and seeing it all the time. But the idea is that your objective lens has to be open. Open your aperture and think, what were you doing at that age group? So these kids didn't mean harm, but they didn't understand the cost-benefit analysis of hitting the gas pedal when the red and blues came on, Brian. And that's treacherous and dangerous. If I had a kid that age—all my kids are in their fifties, you get what I'm trying to say—and there are nice, neat cages in the basement.

Those are locked with sawdust, aren't your children, your neighbors, or somebody's children? That's not funny, but it is kind of...

The idea here, though, Brian, is I would sit down with my kids, and I would say, "Listen, there are people that don't make the types of decisions that you do. They don't engage their analytical brain. They don't think of advanced critical thinking. And those kids are going to show you a gun and they're going to say, 'This is, I found this gun, and it's my dad's, and look, it's loaded!' And that's when you say, 'No, go,' and tell somebody. Someone's going to say, 'Hey, look, I cracked the Calamari sled, and it's free! Look, nobody's going to find us! We'll just dump it behind the thing!' And you're sitting there, you're doing the 'Should I stay or should I go?' Your catecholamine group is jumping, and you're going, 'Because it's exciting and pinpoint pupils!' You've got to tell the kid, 'No,' okay? And you know, somebody says, 'Yeah, but they're going to sample drugs and illicit fornication and all that.' Well, I guess they are if you don't guide them and be there with them for some of that decision-making."

Well, yeah, and this goes into using the analytical framework: Most Likely, Most Dangerous Course of Action (ML/MDCOA). Because that brings another thing. I mean, who hasn't done stupid stuff when you were a kid? Everyone has. I don't think I made a decent choice in my life 'til I hit 30, and that was like once, and I'm hoping to do it again.

I married Mikayla. Done. You made one good decision.

So here's the fire drill comment. So here's the thing, though, it goes into how we look at it. You can't always just assume, "Yeah, it's going to kill you," but it's not "a kill you." It's not just about, "It's a," but it doesn't have to be. Okay, because there are so many unintended consequences, right? This is part number two. So it's not just that, "Hey, this could have killed someone." These kids are going to get in trouble. What they did was technically commit several felonies. Not going to get Charlie complicated. Those felonies as well, right? So, that's, but hey, this is one of those thankfully no one got hurt. But this can happen. Anything, because it just reminded me too of lost. Go up the rental vehicle cost. It did. Yeah.

And I'm not just talking about that. I'm talking about even when you're making the decision to do something. We just heard the story about the kids who were killed when they went up to do ding-dong ditching someone, and they take off for their life. This guy, the homeowner, so angry, he chases after them and then...

Right.

So here, Brian, we have a situation where there are kids between 14 and 18 inside of a car, packed into the car. They were doing an overnight, a simple overnight, Brian. They're doing an overnight, and they're all sitting around, and they're doing like a truth-or-dare kind of thing. And then one kid says, "Well, you know, I dare you to prank call somebody." And the other kid said something tantamount to, "Well, how about we ring that doorbell and run?" I've never heard the "ding-dong ditch," but I get it.

Yeah, yeah.

And so they all get in a car, and they drive to a location because they know this house that they want to do it at. What they don't know is how that spiral is going to turn out. The guy could have shot them at the door. The guy could have kidnapped them and kept them in his basement. The guy could have jumped into his car in rage and raced them down, and not thinking clearly, rammed them. And now that guy's in for involuntary manslaughter or voluntary manslaughter. A bunch of the kids are dead. The one kid said he saw his buddies dying. He's going to be traumatized all over a prank.

So there again, Brian, all I'm saying is, training changes behavior. So early intervention by a parent saying, "Yeah, think about it. You like the bag, the bag on the porch with the poop in it? It lights the house on fire. Now it's a homicide."

You got it.

That's what you know.

You're absolutely... But I'm going to keep it to again, what we bring up is, you don't know where that spiral is going to go. You never know.

But you know, most likely, most dangerous... Most likely it's a funny prank, it's going to live with you, it'll be on your Facebook wall when you're older, and you'll tell your own kids about it. The most dangerous has to be discussed. If you don't discuss it with your children, they'll find it on their own. And Brian, that discovery learning with the skin needs...

Yeah, so let's get into the actual mindset or the head of the kids at the time driving the car, the police officers, the person on the street, right? Because those kids in the car, honking the horn and then taking off, were probably at a pretty low level of intelligence here if they thought that the police weren't going to chase us. They might, but can you imagine the cops looking at each other going, "We're getting punked"?

Yeah, they're on the cell going, "Yeah, boss, you're not going to believe this!" And cameras on everybody. You know, they yelled that just before the baby...

For sure, for sure. But then it goes into, "Oh crap, now we're being chased!" "Oh, we didn't write this!" This was "at bang" (in-the-moment) thinking. They didn't have a plan. But you can tell by their actions it's not like they said, "Hey, we're going to go up there, we're going to get them to chase us, then we're going to take a left here and I'm going to loop around this way." It was everything was "at bang" thinking. There was no critical thinking, not a single one. It's, "Hey, we're going to go do this!" There wasn't a thought after that, "Hey, let's go taunt the police!" After that, they never expected anything. So what happened when they start getting chased? "Oh crap, now they're outrunning their headlights!" Literally at this time, right?

They're driving outside of their performance or skill level. They have no idea of the performance level of the vehicle, or the maintenance level, or how new the tires are, or if it had an oil and filter change and stuff. So what I'm saying is, you've got to take the 30,000-foot view and look down at that. If I was going to counsel those kids during that pursuit, if they called and they said, "Hey, The Human Behavior Podcast guy, I stole a vehicle, and I'm about to flee from police," what I would have told them is, "Park the car. Take your chances on foot. Stop immediately."

Do you get what I'm trying to say? And get out. You need to run or give yourself up, because you're going to stand a much better chance. But then you've got to think about the spirals for running. "Now I'm running. I get hit by a car that didn't see me. Now I'm running and a homeowner thinks I'm trying to do harm, and now it's at night, and I run into a backyard, and there's two Dobermans. They got my name written on..."

Yeah. So what you've got to do is you've got to stop, and you've got to roll the tape back, and Brian, you've got to create explanatory storylines. "What happens if I have I seen this incident before, and did it end poorly?" And if it did, that goes in a bucket, exactly.

In this case, exactly how I was describing it or trying to. It's like, what happens next? If this is the action I'm going to take, what are the potential outcomes of it? Because something that simple can get you to go, "Oh, wait a minute, maybe we shouldn't do this," or "Maybe I should take a different route."

Because you can throw that right back to the police, right? They go, "All right, they see this happening, and they go, 'All right, we're going to give chase!'" Well, what are the...? If that is all I'm focused on is chasing this vehicle, then I'm outrunning my headlights. Balance exactly what comes next. Now you go to that person who's sitting in their car at an intersection, or walking on the street, or whatever. And what you see, the lights on, you hear the sirens, because that all would have been taking place. Yes. So then you have to sit there and not just get roped in and go start staring at it, go to a piece of candy, look at the movie. It's, "Hey, what's going to happen next? Where are they going? Am I right now...? Do I need to get myself and my family out of this situation?" Yeah, because something is going to occur, and am I at the epicenter you're not in control of, or am I in the safest spot I can be right now? You go.

So I think that goes for everyone's perspectives, not just get roped in to say, "Hey, I'm that 'at bang' thinking, right? I'm just going to completely react to everything." It's, "Where are these spirals heading?" And I think that's the important...

I'll throw another spiral at you, Brian. One that most people don't orbit and don't think about. Years ago, a trainer saw a suspicious vehicle, hit the red and blues. It was what's now affectionately remembered as a tourist S-H-O (stolen highly sought-after vehicle). The fastest pursuit in my life from the border with Detroit to Mount Clemens, traveling at speeds 130 miles an hour. It was insane. And so there was a point that it was like, I got to bail, because the weight of the general public and my safety just wasn't worth their dues, because I had no other probable cause other than this guy driving this S-H-O, like it was stolen. I think. So what ends up happening? He cracks up Mount Clemens. It's a homicide. And he had a dead body in the trunk. Hence, he didn't want to stop.

Now, I've had the exact same situation, a high-output sweat, and it's a guy that just wanted to run from the cops and had no warrants, his license was in order, and it was his car. So you don't always know what you're getting into, but you can't use the ends justification. You know what I'm trying to say?

Okay. No.

Neither can that kid. Their kids can't say, "Hey, listen, I'm in the trick bag now because I stole a sled and I'm in this ride, and so what I'm going to do is I'm going to hit that pedal on the right and I'm going to hold it down until something happens." That's not good thinking, and it's not balanced thinking either, because when cops get ramped up, no matter how many pursuits that they've been in, you get tunnel vision, you get focused lock, and they're only thinking about the mission.

Yeah, apply that to keep going down that, to the criminal driving the vehicle. But I also want to say that the criminal gets that, but there's a third party: the pedestrian. And the pedestrian takes out and starts eating the popcorn going, "Holy, did you guys see that?" And then they step out from the curb. They don't know that the car is used in a homicide, or they just robbed a bank, or it's kids joyriding. I hate the air quotes, but the idea, Brian, is normally those exciting things draw us, they titillate us. So now we're going to go out to the curb. And if our kid does that, do you get what I'm trying to say? If the shooting starts and all of a sudden we've got to see and be a part of that, and you're going, "Nobody would do that."

Louisiana, look at the tapes, folks. Do your homework. There's the tapes of the two coppers that got shot. I don't know if it's Louisiana, Alabama, Arizona, Brian, where they're in front of the house. No, no, no, this was just like a month ago, I'm sorry, and one of the coppers died and one's still in critical condition. I apologize, folks, don't have the article in front of me. But the idea, Brian, is the guy stood over the cop that he killed and was firing rounds, and you can see from the video in the street, the live action video, you can see people running to the scene to watch what's going on, and pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, all the shooting. What would a prudent person do? One: cover. Do you get what I'm trying to say? Two: dial 911 and have your finger over the one. But, Brian, those are critical thinking skills that go out the window when all of a sudden that chemical cocktail comes in.

Yeah, where we're going, "I've got to peek, I've got to take a look at what's going on." That's another lesson, Brian. Training means sitting down with your family around the kitchen table and going, "Hey, let's watch this incident for a few minutes." And it doesn't have to be the graphic gore or anything else. "These coppers are the most highly trained people in this community. They were ambushed and they were shot by this guy, and watch what the people are doing." And then ask your kid, "What should they have been doing?" Do you see what I'm saying?

Yeah. And it doesn't matter how old. I would say do that to your daughter. I know you do your training with her, but no matter how old my kid is—and Nico's like 35—when he comes by, I'm going to talk to him and Bailey about that and say, "How did that impact you?" Those are the type of discussions that used to happen around the kitchen table all the time, and they don't with social media.

Well, right. And that's developing that skill set, that mindset, and taking it from each perspective. Because from a performance perspective, anytime you've dropped, so you can handle your vehicle all day long at 35 miles an hour, or 55, maybe even 70 or 80, depending on where you live and how fast you drive. You get better and better, or with your performance, it becomes easier to learn the vehicle that you're in the longer you drive it, right? Things change. But here's the thing: the second you step outside of something that you haven't done before—I don't care if it's making dinner, and it's a new recipe or something you've never done—I don't care if it's driving that vehicle at 100 miles an hour. Anytime you're there, you're already in a category where you don't have the file folder, right? No, new. It's a novel situation now. And you're not this time, you're not doing that in like a training environment.

Right. With fire extinguishers, Brian, and aligning your suppress... You're doing it in real time.

It's like the same thing when people look at these speeds and go, "100 miles an hour's like, you don't understand how fast 100 miles an hour is." 100 miles an hour is incredibly, even like, I've done that stuff on the track in controlled conditions. And when you do that real time, dude, your performance is not as good as you think it is. It's not just like, "Oh, I'm just going a little bit faster than I was at 60." No, no, no. It's so, anybody, that goes for anything, because, and you've got to remember the chemical cocktail, Brian. So just like being in front of a one-armed bandit in Las Vegas, the thought of almost winning is just so seductive to your brain. So what happens is your neurons and your axons and your dendrites are working overtime now, going, "Oh my gosh, I almost lined up those three pairs or those three apples!"

Well, in the car, I was saying in that the world's fastest pursuit that I ever had, I was saying that, "Look, I'm gaining on this guy. I've got this guy." And finally, somewhere in the middle of Sterling Heights at night, I said, "I can't keep this pace in good conscience, because one of us is going to die." I slowed down, parked the car, got out, and I had to regain my composure. And my engine is melting, my rotors are... Do you understand what I'm saying? I've got heat coming off the hood and everything. And now it dawns on me, I can't get myself into that situation again. I was the best driver I knew in those conditions. I had thousands of examples, and I look back and I said, "What am I thinking? What are you thinking?" And so you've got to do that, you've got to do that mental bounce, Brian. Our human performance and our ego are constantly in a battle, saying, "Hey, try." How many people, Brian, have you seen die trying to take a selfie? Okay, make a whole show about that.

So then you and I had a video of a "copper," thanks, Sean Clemens, sent it to us, a copper that was chasing a pickup truck. And I'm not bashing cops, I'm not bashing anybody, I'm talking about human performance. So the pickup truck driver is driving into oncoming traffic, accelerating. He's demonstrating human behavior that is putting him in a risk category much higher than what the initial call was. Some other sworn law enforcement officer saw this person in the U.S. Park Service, or somebody, and gave chase for speed, let's say. Now these speeds that they were going at were well over a 100 miles an hour, and the guy attempts Tactical Vehicle Intervention (TVI). In other words, the police officer attempts to hit the vehicle. Well, I used to be a TVI instructor, Brian, but that was historical perspective. I can't speak about that today. And I'm not qualified to teach it today. I doubt. But teaching it at 100 miles an hour, I would say that physics and gravity, do you get what I'm trying to say? The internal, when you're talking about the types of spins, the centrifugal and centripetal forces that are pulling inside and outside his bad situation, and somebody ended up dying.

So I'll fast forward to the law that says, "If you knew or should have known that your conduct or your behavior..." And that applies equally to the bad guy and the copper. The question is, what about the other people on the street? I sleep at night thinking that when I was going through Sterling Heights, there were no other cars on the road but a few scout cars. But my heart of hearts knows that what if something would have happened? What if I would have? What if there would have been a dog on the road, Brian, and my unconscious mind said, "Swerved slightly"? I wasn't in control.

Right. Yeah. So that, I'll kind of hit it real quick on a lot of this stuff that occurs. So you had that diminished performance. Now there's a couple ways to look at it, because you can go back to Yerkes-Dodson, and as arousal in your environment increases, eventually your performance score is going to decrease. As initially it increases, but I want to clear that, yeah, I want to be clear about what that means. Right?

So you have things like channel capacity and adaptation, change blindness, sequencing, all that stuff. But you can only handle so many polyphasic skills at a time. So a perfect example is driving a car, trying to talk on the radio or do whatever else you're doing, even just to change the radio station or look at your phone. Those are all polyphasic skills. So a normal operating environment, you're right around seven. You can talk, people text, look around and drive. I mean, it's diminished performance, but people are still able to do it: pick up the cheeseburger, take a bite, grab your coat. But under those times of extreme stress, extreme boredom, that number drops to three. Right? So that's where the "drop, roll, shoot, move and communicate" all that stuff comes out. I know people have talked about that before. But the reason that is, so that's what you can get, is that it sits under a survival situation. What your brain thinks is a chaotic survival situation. So it shuts out all that stuff. It doesn't care about, it starts taking that blood and moving it to our major muscle groups, increases your respiration and your perspiration and all that stuff. But the idea is to initially increase your performance so you can only focus on a couple things at a time.

But here's the thing, because back in the day, we only had a few... we didn't have race cars. We had a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

That's the whole thing here, too, is that you were only traveling at the fastest you could run, at the only speed, or the only, I guess, the speed that you could process your environment that wasn't more than something going 35 miles an hour, a top. I would say 20 to 35.

Right. So that's what your eye and brain can perceive. Anything past that is so foreign to humans, because you haven't evolved yet. This is new to rock.

A thrown rock, a thrown spear, that's what Brian is trying to tell you. And that comparison, nowadays, your brain hasn't assimilated all of these new speeds. And so now with cars that are faster than ever before, our human performance, Brian, isn't commensurate with...

No, no, it hasn't met it. So if you set your vehicle topped out at 30 miles an hour, I'd say you're probably good, and you can push that, right? Meaning even like when there's accidents and people slow down and they look at it and start looking at those speeds, they slow down. You're doing that autonomically because your brain can't process information that quickly, especially...

The internal warning says that the amygdala is screaming, "Danger! Warning, Will Robinson, slow!"

Same thing, you've seen also the sudden traffic jam where you had to kind of hit the brakes kind of hard. And what are the things you'll notice is you won't even realize it, you'll maybe reach up and turn the stereo down or something like that, or you'll stop talking if you were. That's your brain going, "All that stuff out! I need to focus on what's going on in front of me!"

So that's how these things occurred. This is why things come out of nowhere, or "I didn't see it coming," because your brain was so hyper-focused on the six-degree functional field of view that you front of you that it can't take in any of that stuff. That's why these kids might not have even seen that vehicle that they hit. They might not have even seen it because they were so focused on getting away and what they were doing that this thing came. And even though it was in their field of vision, they could have seen it in a point of it, they don't—you don't have enough attention span to actually take that in, to process it.

So I recently bought... Grossmont, is that right, again? And I recently bought his book on car sales, on merit, which was just...

Yeah, which was really great stuff.

But the idea is, I'm just poking fun at it. The idea is that if you take a look at strictly human performance, Brian, there was an instructor legend back in driving, Don Manwaring. And Manwaring was with the Fraser PD back in the old days when everybody carried flintlocks. And one of the tests that he would conduct—and nobody does anymore, and he didn't know why he did it, that's a great thing, he didn't understand the science that I told him about the Doppler effect and how auditory exclusion happens—what he would do is you have a scout car full of young coppers and a scout car with an experienced veteran driver. And he would tell the people out on the freeway, "Listen, we're going to do the freeway speed limit, and I want you to raise your hands when you know that we're being followed by a police car with the lights and siren, but you have to look straight ahead, and all you can do is look out the window." And then what he would do is all of a sudden you'd say, "Okay, everybody look behind you." And the scout car behind us was on our tail, push bumper distance away from the trunk, with the siren blaring. But the Doppler effect doesn't allow that until we slowed down gradually and pulled off. And now all of a sudden you hear a siren, but coppers are convinced that siren is screaming at you. And bad guys are convinced, "Oh, we heard the lights and sirens all the time!"

Brian, your brain can't process it. It can't fire on all those cylinders, and something's got to give. And if something gives, it's your peripheral vision, and now you don't see that kid on the curb.

Yeah.

Or now you don't see that pole that's now a homicide, or a suicide. Do you get what I'm trying to say? Intentional or otherwise, because you're going to park in the brig at Bridgestone. That's what I'm worried: that the people uninvolved in these are at as much risk as the criminal or the copper.

Yeah, and that's it. This is why we get these situations, or they say, "Hey, don't turn this robbery into a homicide." Right? Well, that's how it occurs. It's just cognitive performance. It's your human performance.

And so one of the things, because you brought it up too, when you said, "Hey, man, I had to pull back, I had to pull over, and then I realized, 'Oh my God, my vehicle's literally just melting in front of me! I was pushing it so hard!'"

Too hard!

That's the whole thing. How do you deal with it in this situation? And that is when you have to take that exercise, that tactical patience, take that breath, start looking around more and realize what's happening, being in the moment, and figuring out as you go along.

We always give, that's what we're doing these pods too, Brian, you're exactly right. It's going to lead you in the analogy from, "How do you get from JV to varsity?" And that's... I always use the one from the Marine Corps when guys were doing a heavy ruck run or march or something like that, especially a ruck march over the little mountains here in Southern California. But some guys would say, "Oh man, when it gets tough, you just got to look down at your feet and put one foot in front of the other." And you're like, "That is... that's JV, man. That's the worst advice. That is the worst." When it gets really tough, that's what you do: you start looking up and out and make sure you're looking around and processing everything that's going on, because that's how you do the training. That's what you need. And what's going to hit you?

Okay, good. Take it from Brian, folks, because you've got to understand that the Marines in the West Coast used to go from Pendleton all the way up to Stumps on a road march. Do you get what I'm trying to say? And so if you think about that, that it's an all-day drive, that this guy knows what he's talking about. He's telling you you've got to force that aperture open, because if you don't, your human performance is going to continue to dwindle until everything that's happening to you is going to be outside of your control. And nobody wants to...

That happens even with... I get on Mikayla for that all the time, even just like she's rushing to get out of the house or do something, grabbing stuff, grabbing the dog and the leash and the car keys. And she's frustrated because Harper's going crazy about something. It's like, "Hey, stop, stop. Take a deep breath. Put something down, or separate these tasks. You're going to walk right out and get hit by a car, you're not going to see something."

You're exactly... It's the whole... This is why I've forced her to back in everywhere. It's not, "Got to park tactically and always be ready to go." No, I'd rather her pull into traffic, not back into traffic. Or pull out forward into the street, not back into it. Just, you've diminished, you can't see out of the back of your vehicle. So it's just, it's simple things like that. But your brain...

Love those.

Your brain won't pause, Mikayla, and say, "Be advised, we have a peripheral vision."

No, that's not going to happen.

And it's only going to happen with training and experience.

So it will happen to those... You take a guy like Junior, one of our good friends, who'd walk around the vehicle and check the tire pressure and do all these other... Every morning when we were headed to the range, we had our coffee, and we're like, "Hey, Jr., we got to go!" He would never deviate from that. But guess what? You didn't get in traffic.

Yes. And it's either...

Right, right, that guy.

And so you have to, folks, you have to commit a certain amount of time to your day to say, "What training do I need in this event?" How many times when the green light changes for your the traffic with you, do you just hit the accelerator? No, timeout, right? You have to look and make sure you know. So those little skills, Brian, those micro skills that we teach, it's really important.

That's exactly it. And that's why we even have people on, like when we had Michelle Paladini and John McCaskill talking about exact levitation and mindfulness. And you're going, "What the hell?" It's like, no, that's the same thing. If you get up in the morning when your alarm clock goes off, and you jump out of bed and you're racing in the shower and doing this, you're already at bang (in-the-moment). If you're up and you take five minutes for yourself to figure out your own performance, whatever that may be, well, that's the same thing. So I want to just, just trying to get, understand that this is affecting a person on their daily life who goes to a normal job. It's the same thing if you want, it doesn't matter what your pledge...

So, Brian, I want to give everybody a memory and emotion link for exactly what you're talking about. So let's talk about McCaskill or Paladini or Anzalone or any of the incredible guests that we've had on that talk about mindfulness and how to train your own brain. Well, listen, next time that you go and you're going to take out your trash—you know how you reach in, well, not Brian Marren, but most normal humans would go into a closet, get a trash bag and replace the one that they had—not Brian Marren, it's called a window. Yeah.

So when you take that bag out and you're going to put it in, do you know how that bag defies all known physics when you open it up? It's like shredded and wrinkled, and you're trying to pull it open, and then you've got to shake it before you put it in. That's you every time you see a novel situation. Your bag is empty, and as a matter of fact, it's atrophied, and it's all wrinkled like a prune. So you do that daily, too. There's things that task you, and you know, you've been on the computer and I've been on Zoom all day, and gosh, my focus, I can't look at one more screen. So what you've got to do is you've got to take the time, Brian, to open up that bag before you put it in that can, or it's not going to be at its peak performance. So if you're not at peak performance, then you're that garbage bag trying to be a garbage bag, the best garbage bag you can, but you're not going to hold, and you're going to spend a lot of time cleaning up the coffee grounds and the stuff that's laying around. The reason that's a memory and emotion link, folks that are listening or watching, is next time you pick up that bag, you're going to think about that and go, "Am I performing at my peak performance?" And if you're not, open up that bag. You've got to open up that aperture, Brian.

Yeah. No, that I like the trash bag analogy, and it reminds me of the trash bag chicken from Iraq. Remember that? That's where they go get a fried chicken, big full sack in those black trash bags. Are so good, though.

Exactly. Do you remember that we are not a leader? Did we get that? We got the... We wanted juice, and we were coming... Right? So the guy gave us gallons of the fresh pineapple juice. Both of us said the room-temperature pineapple juice and the bees and the wasps were following us back to the hotel room. Oh, oh, the horror! Yeah, yeah.

So no, I like the trash bag analogy. It's good. And the performance perspective gets into a number of areas. I know we've kind of, we've seen a number of them, just several in the past few weeks. This happens all the time where you had a law enforcement officer killed deploying the spike strip. Oh my gosh.

You're staying on the pursuit kind of theme, I guess, because I like the pursuit analogy for human performance. That's right. A pursuit is a test. It's a test of human performance. Just like at the very elite level, it's an internal impediment, but the observers like no other competition. But if it's life or death consequences, not gore, for the bad guy, for the cop, or the community at large. So I think we don't give it enough credit, because it's something that happens a lot, and you don't understand what we're talking about. All of these events are pushing the limits of human performance. I don't care if you're Michael Jordan or whoever, this is the absolute peak that a human...

Just one second, Brian. Do you know that Jordan, when he's at the top of his game, and when he's on the greatest game, scoring of his life, and everything, okay, a drone hovering above it is amazing. Yeah. So do you remember that every once in a while a player would fall down and the ball boy, the towel boy would have to come out and he'd have to wipe out the area that was wet. He was in an elite league with the best players in the world. And if towel boy made a mistake, people were going to get injured, people were going to remove, and we're going to lose games. So millions of dollars, and protracted hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts and everything else were on that towel and on that kid. So we don't think in terms of that, do we?

No, not at all.

I'm looking at this human performance: that spike strip kid, that young copper, is the one that's running out to throw the spike strip down to stop the vehicle. The person is already at tunnel vision that's driving the car. He's already exhibited poor choices that got him to that situation. And his endurance is gone, because they don't ask for a spike strip the first second of a pursuit, right? They try to go through other means. So it's like a de-escalation process. They say, "Well, let's do this, let's chase for a while, then let's get these guys ahead of them and let's see if we can TVI (Tactical Vehicle Intervention) and all this other stuff." So usually it's the last thing in the loop, and the person's already demonstrated, the criminal is already demonstrated that he's not going to pay attention to the rules.

Now you put a copper out in front of a speeding vehicle with a person that's not making sense, and we're going to throw this item out in front and then pull it back real quick before the other cops get over. That's what people don't understand. You have to deploy it, Brian, then you've got to yank it back, or all the other police cars will drive over the remaining spikes, get it? No, people don't think about that. And we've had three in a month and a half. Coppers, good, decent coppers that were doing their job, folks, that went out there. Administrators, if this is your policy, you've got to get better training. You've got to think about getting behind that vehicle rather than getting in front of their vehicle. It's a missile. It's saying, "Here's the catcher's mitt," with that, "go out and catch that missile." That's my opinion.

No, it is. And that's what I'm saying. Because these things become, "Alright, hey, this is how we deal with this situation." "Oh, this isn't too hard. I'm throwing something out on the road, then pulling it back." No, that's like looking at a professional basketball game, looking at Michael Jordan, "Oh, well, that's not that hard. I can go out there in the yard and do some of this stuff."

Do you remember the first time you did a shuttle run? I was prepping for West Point, and I had to go to this arena, this gym. And they go, "The first thing..." And I was in the best shape of my life, folks. Up that shape of Marine's like... And they said, "The first episode is the shuttle run." Have you ever done a shuttle run? I was seeing the heat monkeys. Do you get what I'm trying to say? I was going, "Oh, I'm going to hurl!" And that was like event number one, just to set the stage. That's the same thing, Brian. We think this can't be that hard. "What's going to happen?" But you know what? If we keep seeing these deaths, so these young coppers that did it, and somebody out there is going, "Well, there's a bunch of other situations that you don't know about." Hey, I know about this: that copper ain't going to get more dead. And you've got to do something because there's a next copper. But do you think pursuits have abated, Brian? Have pursuits eased just because there's a COVID virus? No. Bad guys think pursuit is a way out.

We've got to change, and we've got to change it two ways. We've got to change with training and the administrators, but we also have to change it with the laws. We have to change that. Remember when I said earlier about the mentality of saying, "Hey, it's joyriding?" There's no joyriding there. You killed a guy, that's vehicular homicide, and it might have been premeditated murder if the guy veered towards the copper. Maybe he said, "Hey, I'm only going to veer towards the copper in his heart and his mind." Brian, the criminal said, "I'm just going to veer towards him to push him back so he doesn't throw that spike strip." Do you think he's in full control of that car going at that speed after ramming through intersections and stuff? It's a lose-lose.

It is. And this gets into that kind of policy that I know a lot of places will take, "Hey, we might have to back off a pursuit," or they won't do them in areas like, like the one that recently happened, just right out by me here a couple months ago. A Marine was killed at night. Started in Oceanside. They started chasing the guy. He gets on the 5 South, southbound in the northbound lanes, going. So he's fleeing south. So that's an immediate no-go, they don't follow. But they had air on it, so they don't want to allow an incident, and I don't mean because you were chasing, even though there was no one technically behind him or not in that lane, I'm sure Zooming, they got in the proper lane going south in the southbound lane. But he, same thing, caused an accident and killed a Marine who was on active duty. And of course, the suspect survived.

But it's just that those things occur. And now you have these policies of, "What do we do then when someone takes off?" Because, one, you can't let criminals get away because then they'll just know, "Oh, we'll always run because they know they're not going to chase us." But when is it actually worth it? And I would think that there's a lot of these situations occur from incidents that it's not worth it. It's not the guy who just kidnapped someone that we've got to chase him down because there's a kid in there, or we're trying to stay on them, or a multiple homicide suspect who's absolutely, whether he's speeding in a car or walking down the street, is an absolute threat and danger to society.

Yeah.

Right. You have to make those calls. But a lot of them are just like, it's not worth the risk. The risk to the community at large and to the officer, don't you forget them. I'm sorry, but it's not worth their life. This person was not worth that officer's life. There's just not... There's a very narrow bandwidth. If it's a cop down or if it's a choking baby, I'm ready.

I get what I'm trying to say. But I totally agree with you on that. And I would say this, because I don't want to spiral too far from our central focus: performance. Right? I will do this, Brian. I will say that somewhere out there is a techno genius, and you've got DARPA, you've got IARPA, but you've got these agencies. There's no way you're telling me that I can shut down the transmitter on your back that you transmit to other insurgents with the snap of the finger now, but I can't shut down the vehicle that's fleeing in front of me? Why? There's got to be a way.

I think we're getting to that with the technology because all vehicles are run, like, you can... That's how, I mean, and that's a lot of vehicle newer model vehicles are stolen now too, is you can gain access through technological devices without ever having a key or having to pop the window or door or anything.

We see that in the rentals, folks. If you want a laugh, watch Brian and I, no matter what airport that we get off at, when we're going to go to training, we go, "I get the rental sled, the death sled." And the very first 15 minutes aren't doing this, "check the sled." Our first 15 minutes are going, "How do you get the window down?" You know what I'm saying? Right? It's like hieroglyphics. We've got to call a scientific expert that read Sanskrit to figure out, "Hey, how do I put the emergency flashers on?"

Now, it's always the back doors, always the problem, for some reason. The rear tailgate door. I don't know what it is. It's like in a different spot, different location. Doesn't work unless it's in park or off or this, and you're like, "Jesus, I just want to put my crap..." I'm spending so much time looking at that center console which now is a television the size of the LED I got at home. And I'm calling, "Hey, look at all these wonderful features!" You know, it's ridiculous. If they can spend money on that, Brian, they could say the cops' lights, and we're talking about all the lives of the community people too, because that driver doesn't have the right to drive recklessly or carelessly and impact my life or my family's.

No, and I know we're keeping it to the performance, that these situations do lead to policies and laws.

Right. And so, yes, what should it be? Sometimes good ones, right? Yeah. Changing focus as to like, "Hey, you know what, this is now, now maybe if fleeing is now your charge, that is now, hey, that's the worst thing you can do," right? Because, hey, you've less of a charge if you're just staying, "Oh yeah, I just did this."

More return. He is. But receiving and concealing, which I can plead down to nothing, or you're talking all these charges are going to be added on at the end, and the chances you might kill somebody. And somebody right now is going to go, "Yeah, but if I get out of the stolen car, a copper is going to be at a heightened level of arousal." But now you press on the accelerator and what's going to happen? Yes, we're talking that inverted-U hypothesis. And guess what? When you get to the perpendicular point, both of you aren't thinking, and now you've got a chance of getting killed by the cop, or killing yourself, or killing a civilian. You don't have to run.

Yeah, that's what you got to think. I'll post a link to something in the episode details where folks can kind of check out the Yerkes-Dodson (Law/Principle of Arousal and Performance) that we mentioned. But you know, it's been around over 100 years, and it was around before that, it's just they articulated a way, and people try to have their own way of articulating it. Look, it's very simple. You don't have to write a new book about it or do a new video on Boyd's OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) that you don't understand, pointing at the yellow pad, but you could say those, "Observe, Orient, Decide, Act," really well.

No, no, but the book was broken. But that has... that brings us into another aspect of what Boyd was talking about with the OODA loop. We've had questions and stuff about the OODA loop, but this gets in that mental performance. So everyone is in that. And if you discount Yerkes-Dodson that we're talking about, is you get to a certain point, you can't handle anymore. So exactly, if something's, meaning if something's thrown at you, there's another issue. Something else has to go. Something's going to go. At some point, your performance or vision or hearing or something is going to go because you can't process all that at once. So I think that's kind of a great comparative to modern-day Yerkes-Dodson.

Folks, go out to a batting cage, I know that your community's got one where they put the balls in, and you can adjust it from hardball, softball. And you're up there at bat. Do me a favor, do that and find one of your friends that has a newborn and hold the newborn up over home plate. And the more that baby gets pegged with the ball, the better its reflexes will get, and sooner or later it'll catch the ball. No, no, you're going to have baby mush, you're going to kill a kid. So don't do that, don't do that. And by the way, that's a joke, baby mush. Let's add the Trump inject and bleach and stuff. It was a flippant, jokey idiot.

But the idea is that, dude, that was a two-year-old, a four-year-old. No, Brian, first of all, you've got to get to the point where the kid's going to process the incoming information. The second thing is you start slow, you start small, then you build the skills. So training changes the behavior, and the kid's able to process the information and do the hand-eye coordination and catch the ball. And guess what? Now the success, the drugs are dropping into the brain. "Whoo hoo! You did it!" They want to do it again. That's what we have to do with your human performance. When you see an incident that's an MDCOA (Most Dangerous Course of Action), you've got to learn to take cover and hide and run and get away, or prepare for the fight, or do whatever it is that your job entails doing. And that's going to stop domestic violence, workplace violence, all those other things. You've got to put those tea leaves, Brian, you've got to put those pre-event indications together. And I'll tell you what, in a pursuit, you have very little time. The gift of time and distance at a hundred miles an hour is a lot less. And that's what Boyd was trying to talk about. And yeah, if you can settle down your own brain and understand your own human performance, you can get into the OODA loop ahead of the enemy, of a trained opponent, and actually be making decisions that are more complete and more efficient.

Brian, that brings it back to kind of what I meant when earlier on when I brought it up and I said everyone is so used to being at "at bang" (in-the-moment) thinking, and this is more about thinking and mindset. And that's why I reiterate, because even though every type of training has gotten so much better—it's better in 2020 than it was in 2015, it was better in 2015 than it was in 2010, it's better as we continue to improve—yet why do we still see these mistakes in performance? It's because we don't do the critical thinking stuff. Right?

So that's why I said those criminals weren't doing it. They were at "bang" (in-the-moment) going, "Hey, let's go mess with the cops! They can't chase us, we'll just take off!" There was no traffic, only their world, and they never took another thought after that of what could happen next, or "Am I going to get in trouble?" No one ever did that. But that happens to law enforcement, right? The guy going, "Oh, well, hey, I got to go chase this guy!" There's never a thought after that.

Now that's the person then standing on the corner of the street, staring at police lights, hearing a siren, going like, "Wow, look at that, there's a chase in front of me!" Never going, "Hey, you know what, I might be in danger where I'm at, I might need to move." So people pulling over to the right and the one driver going, "Woo hoo, it's, they're getting out of my way so I can drive!" Never anticipating that the emergency vehicles are behind them.

That's Brian, how many times does a state trooper have to get killed where traffic doesn't pull over to the left and clear that lane? How many times does a flagman on a construction zone get hit? Now they've had to put lights and flags and people with dust and pollutants and dollar signs because our mission—what we perceive as our mission—is more important than yours. And folks, we've got to come off the gas on that one. Give the time and distance. We've got to take a big look in ML (Most Likely) and MDCOA (Most Dangerous Course of Action). If we don't, and we don't pair that with good training, with experienced training people...

Yeah, and I think for folks just listening right now, it's just that, "What's the next step?" Is you can't just be that reactive thinking, like, "Hey, where is this going to lead? Where is this going to lead to next? What's the next thing that's going to occur?" Can you do that in the moment? Absolutely, you can. Absolutely, 100%.

So either we've not made a living out of this, we've been making no money making other people a lot of money for a long time, with the comment from your great friend in Saudi Arabia, this woman that said, "I'd like to be considered for that program manager's job. Do they understand that we're not getting that?" Yes, if you want to do it for free, get on the podcast. And just like, you know, we don't pay. They come on here, right?

Oh, I thought... Never mind.

So no. I had a reporter call me. No, but that's just, you know, sitting there and being in the... Look, if you're reacting to a situation because you've been trained for that or whatever, you have your training that's going to take over, so to speak, right? You recall it. That could be protocols, procedures, policies, it could be actual, whatever it is. You're driving a vehicle, whatever the training is. So mentally, you have to be thinking, "Well, what's going to happen next?"

So tell me, if you don't pair that pursuit driving, the emergency vehicle operation, with a scientific, validated program about what's happening in your head, and I don't mean while you're driving, because that would be "at bang" (in-the-moment). I'm talking well before it. And then have a legal update and a medical, and what's going to happen, and what's the stress load on my vehicle, and what's the brake fade on this particular car that I'm going to be driving that night? And who's the last person to check that? All of those things are how you live a full life and be an expert at life and not make silly mistakes that are going to get you squashed.

Yeah, no, I think that's a good point, because we continue to see these, like I said, it's amazing how many, especially specifically with what the spike strips were, you know, every story's part of that. Every story's the same, and I know...

Yeah. You know, and I'm not bagging on that tactic or technique or procedure. If it's something that's been used and tested, and this is what we're going with it, I don't want to do it that way. It's not to go, "Hey, we just need to change this." To me, it's all the same. It's the performance that, it's how they process their environment and why they made those decisions, and what the critical thinking that was involved. So much as I don't care about what the method is that you use, I care about... Look, to me, these situations are all the same. It's that something happened in a performance and a cognitive performance level that caused this to happen.

And folks aren't thinking of the felony murder rule, Brian. If that copper was killed, and you were the proximate cause because your pursuit that started it was the reason the copper was out there throwing the spike strips, you're going to be charged with murder. And you're never, ever, ever not going to be caught. They will not stop until you are caught. Pull over, raise your hands, put your hands at two and ten, and go, "I screwed up." You've got a much better chance in a legal system.

Yeah. Well, then it's the same with the guy who chased the kids down in his car for ringing a doorbell and running. It's what 911 is for. And 911 would have told the kid, "Relax, it's a doorbell prank, but we'll come by anyway." You don't have to escalate a situation from zero to sixty and get a whole bunch of people killed for nothing. That guy's life is ruined, his family, his car, the owner of the car that the person had, and now the lawsuits are going to start. "Hey, you had my kid over for an overnight and you weren't managing." Do you see what I'm saying? Everyone once friends...

Everybody in that community, that community was just destroyed.

This right over an error in judgment, which was basically overwhelmed by events and lack of critical thinking ability. And you've got it performance. I mean, that's ludicrous. Now a whole community is destroyed, people's lives were lost over this stuff. And it's just, it's just a most versus ringing your doorbell. I mean, it's in all these cases that it's the similarities. We've seen all that's what we say, "Hey, these cases are all the same to us." And that's what we mean at that precisely, because the fundamental, the architecture that created the situation and the poor choices that led to the death of another, or of the person that was involved, all come down to the same set of, "Hey, there was no advanced critical thinking. People didn't do the explanatory storylines. They didn't determine the ML (Most Likely) or the MDCOA (Most Dangerous Course of Action) before they got into it." And that stuff, we can help them with, Brian.

All right. Well, if you've got anything else to add, I think that's a good place to kind of bring it in for a landing for today.

Sounds good. Remember, my call sign this week will be "Blossom." Don't forget, everyone, training changes behavior.