L.O.G. 113 Color Vision or Colour Vision

Hello and welcome to the video version of The Human Behavior Podcast. I'm Brian Marren, the host and creator of the show. As always, I will be joined by human behavior expert, Mr. Greg Williams, who the show is affectionately named after. On the show, we discuss different topics through the lenses of what we call human behavior pattern recognition analysis. If you'd like to find out more about what that is, please check the links in the episode details and go to our website to learn more. Please don't forget to follow us on social media; the links are also in the episode details, and hit the like and subscribe button to help support our work. Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you enjoy the show.

We are live. It says we're live. Okay, we're live. That means we are live. So, for those of you who are just tuning in to the audio version, don't forget that you can follow me on Facebook, and when we go live on there, you can get in on the conversation.

To jump right into it today, we are joined from across the pond in the UK, Chris Engladue, and he is a law enforcement officer over in the UK. So first, Chris, thank you so much for jumping on here and joining us today.

Thank you for having me, sir. Yeah, good to talk.

Yeah, so basically, just for everyone listening, this kind of started out with, I believe, a LinkedIn connection by Greg, which turned into an email, which turned into a discussion back and forth via email, which was one of the most fascinating ones we've had in a while. Greg, we're through it in there. You know, sometimes we get involved in these, and then when you wrote like four, five, six paragraphs, and it was all detailed, and I was like, holy crap, this is amazing. Then Greg, of course, I knew, was already just taunting and pecking on the keyboard, looking stuff up, doing his research.

But it had a lot to do with, well, in particular, vision, right, and how that affects different, you know, different standards, different medical tests you have to have for different professions, how you see what you see, and a lot of it relies on colour, and not just your eye prescription, and what you can fix and what you can't. There's different standards in place, and this is not just with vision; this is with all kinds of different medical standards for different professions, especially when you get into military, law enforcement, first responder, those types of careers, right? Because you have to have a certain standard that, let's say if you were just an HR professional in the workplace, you don't need to meet that standard because you don't have the requirements for that job, right?

So, there's kinds of gating mechanisms in it, and a lot of them have been around for a while, or they're there for a specific reason, and some are just there because it's based on something that's always been there, and no one's ever changed it or challenged it. Although we're going to be talking about vision today, one thing to throw out there that I know some people have been affected by it, was here in the U.S., if you're, I forget which type, diabetic, if you're born with diabetes, you can't serve in the military because they, you can't be relied on for like your insulin shots to always have that stuff like that. There were different federal law enforcement agencies that were like that. It took someone challenging that to change, to realize, to go, "Hey, wait a minute, this is a, this is kind of an antiquated gating mechanism we have here. This is, we're beyond where this rule was placed years ago, and so now we can change that."

So I kind of want to just give a little bit of background for the listeners. But before we get into that, Chris, if you don't mind, tell us a little bit about your job over there in the UK, where you're at, and kind of what some of your duties are.

Yeah, I'm a sergeant in Leicester, which is in the East Midlands of England. I work on a neighborhood team, so effectively, it's that classic British bobby on the beat with the big hat, walking around, shaking hands with people, and telling off children. Although I work in the city center, so it's mainly the homeless and drunks, which replace the old ladies. But yeah, I've been doing that for coming up three and a half years now.

I run quite a small team. In the UK, policing-wise is slightly different to the U.S. I'm responsible for a number of cops, but also officers that are called Police Community Support Officers, which work alongside us, but they don't have the same warranted powers that police officers have. So yeah, I mean, I look after an area of Leicester called the Cultural Quarter, but I'm also responsible for a group of officers who look after sex workers. So my role is very varied: licensed premises, public housing (sorry, lots of residential blocks of flats or apartments), businesses, and then I look after the classic red light district as well. So my bag is very varied.

And I'm sure you get some good stories. To be actual, to be actual and factual and honest here, Brian, that's exactly why I reached out to Chris in the first place because I had to clear up a couple of local warrants in the red light district for overpayment in one case, an underpayment in another.

But you know, Brian, I think it's important too to say, "Listen, Chris, we get letters and we get emails" (letters, look how old I am). We get Instagrams and everything from people. I don't even know what that is. But they ask questions about things like, we get one about situation awareness related, then we get one on human behavior, and that's probably the largest net is the human behavior questions. Then we get a couple from that Armed and Dangerous film where the guy goes, "If a guy's lying to me, can I shoot him?" We get a couple of those, you know, because people see that and ask us, or send a picture. They'll send the blurriest, out-of-focus, horrible picture that's darn near night, and they'll go, "Tell us what you see here." It's like, okay, don't get it.

But everybody listening, Chris's written work was so detailed, and you asked such specific questions. We love that. So if you're listening and you're wondering if we answer questions, Chris, did we answer your question when you wrote it, and did you expect to get a response? I think that's important too. Probably not, I would guess, right?

No, definitely not. No, I've had a lot of one-way emails that never tend to come back.

Yeah, yeah. I would tell people, I always tell people, "Be careful when you say, 'Oh, I'll email Greg.'" You should be careful with you. Careful what you wish for, you.

I love that. I just, I'm sitting there and Marren's talking, true. I got the new lamp and the gigantic chair, and it's 3:00 in the morning, and I'm just hunting and pecking, typing away because I get excited. That shows that people are truly thinking because there's two parts of what we're really good at, I think, Chris. The first part is human performance that leads into human behavior, and the second part being the human behavior that drives everybody, right, that drives all things. Your question was precariously perched right on that line because it had to do with maintaining your job and your livelihood and everything else in a number of jobs that are restricted to certain people. Then the other half of that is, hey, listen, is this a legitimate concern, right? And Brian, I thought that was the most interesting, is this legitimate?

Yeah. So let's, on that, let's just, let's jump right into a little bit, and one of the questions you brought up had to do with vision and vision tests, and kind of their accuracy, what they're meant for, what they're meant to gauge, and the purpose behind them. So a lot of this stuff, I'll speak to my experience. Military, same thing, you had to go through different, you know, your initial medical screening before you ever even shipped off to boot camp or anything like that, right? You know, there's all kinds of weird medical tests, you know, they poke and prod, and then, you know, make you read certain things, then look at different, try and pick out numbers in these different colours.

I always say, I got to do all kinds of different stuff because it was right after 9/11 in our country, and they really needed people, so the standards start to kind of fall on that. Because I remember going through and taking some of them, and I gave an answer, and then the doctor was like, "Hey, why don't you try that again?" And so I was like, "Oh, okay, that's the wrong one." So, not to, hopefully no one gets in trouble over that, I'm sure not, but I was allowed through what I probably shouldn't have been allowed through in certain areas, but we made up for that, hopefully.

So one of these is different vision tests where they test like, you know, differences in red and green colours, your day and night vision, what they call colour blindness, which is actually kind of a detailed definition and often kind of misunderstood. Then just like your prescription, what you can and can't read in it, you know, are you nearsighted, farsighted? That can be fixed through different, through different methods, usually like wearing glasses. You're allowed to be off this much if you are corrected vision to this level. So, Greg, I'll just kind of throw to you first, why, why is that important, and specifically what we're talking about in police work?

Yeah, I like going to the science. First of all, going back to Marren being chosen by the Marine Corps haphazardly is what we like to say.

You did score high on the blood alcohol content.

You did. I nailed that, I must tell you. You were probably in the top. He went, "Ooh, Marine!" That's why the Army wouldn't take you.

But no, so let's talk. I mean, God, Buddha, Vishnu set us up for a bunch of survival circumstances, wanting us to thrive in our environment. So we had things like rods and cones. Rods that picked up light even in low light and no light conditions and helped us make out our surroundings. Our cones, which is our colour vision, the confluence of those two helps us see things, whether we're in a cave or venturing out to go fishing or gathering or hunting or whatever. That's fantastic.

And then historically, colour perception is a critical part of comprehending that world now that we're outside of the cave from that survival standpoint. Things like, "My skin is turning red; that might be a sunburn. I have to do something about it." "This meat is turning black; it might be tainted, so I might not want to eat it." "There's blood trailing away from the thing that I stuck. I want to track it. Wait a minute, that's not blood; it's merely this fluid or whatever," right? So there's a whole bunch of scenarios where you can see that we were designed to have one more tool, not the only tool, to help us survive. I think that's where the rub is, Brian. I think the scientific rub when we start talking about colour deficiency is the fact that there's so many other sensors that my body has that can help me perform a job. Does that make sense?

Yeah, no, and that's kind of where it comes from. So when it gets into stuff like understanding these colour tests, Greg, like the red and green, and Chris, you can jump in here too, why is that test important? Or why do I have to go through that? Why did you guys have to do that? Why did I have to do that? What's the point there?

So I'll pass it to Chris, but the very first part of that is, Brian, that there's certain things that maybe we should be excluded from. For example, back then we were talking about survival. Well, today's survival could be something like LEDs, a Light Emitting Diode, and they routinely use red and green. You know, now there's a dodge that says, "I need to know where the traffic light is." Listen, if you've walked around your neighborhood for five minutes, you'll figure out the code there, you'll crack that code. But I do agree that things like LEDs and other things might give you a disadvantage over somebody else vying for that position. Now, Chris, would that be fair? What's the role you think across the pond of having that colour vision test for your position?

Well, there isn't a colour vision test for standard policing anymore. It was removed, I want to say, in 2003, following a bit of work done by a think tank over here, and they realized that, evidentially speaking, colour's not that important, or it's not going to be fatal to a successful prosecution at court, sorry. So that was removed. The only time you can have any colour vision issue, or you can't have a colour vision issue in the police, is if you're a monochromat, which means basically seeing black and white, and most people, they are very few and far between. I think it's something like one in 400,000, if that. So there's not many of those people about.

So the evidential side is, you know, null and void. Now that's gone. Where it's still pertinent in the UK is when you're going to armed policing because, obviously, the police in the UK aren't routinely armed. We walk around with a stick, kind of hairspray, and bad intentions, pretty much all in handcuffs as well. We'll need them occasionally. But we do have a very small, sort of, armed wing, which respond to very similar jobs to what we go to, but obviously, when the danger is just a little bit more that the unarmed colleagues can't go to.

Chris, real quick, can you give a little breakdown of kind of how that works? I know you're structured with, you know, everyone's at one level, then you have certain like, you have, they call them like AFOs and then the ARVs and the MAST. Like, there's different units, not unlike we have here in the U.S. But your initial unit, obviously, they aren't armed, or all officers are unarmed, and then you have to get special training, correct, even just to have an armed presence? Or how does that work?

Yeah, well, when you join the police in the UK, you have to undergo a two-year probationary period. So everyone who comes in as a regular officer has to do that two years. Then once you've done your two years, that's when you can branch out into the other areas. So if you want to go into investigation and be a detective, you can go that way, or if you want to go to neighborhood policing, you go there. Everyone starts off pretty much answering the emergency calls, 999s, and then that's where you learn your trade, as it were, and then you move on to your specialisms from there. Armed policing is one of those specialisms. So it's a sideways move; it's not an upwards move, it's a sideways move. But the AFO (Authorized Firearms Officer) route, it's quite a tough route to go down. The selection process is really difficult, and then once you've gone through the selection process, if you're offered a place, of course, the course is 11 weeks, and that's to do with weapons handling, tactics, searching, loads of other stuff. It is really tough to get through. The attrition rate, I think, on the course is at least 50%, so there is quite a big drop out just on that.

Okay. So, I know that that's a big difference, and then as you get further in, you can, can basically continue that, right? So now you're, whatever that basic level armed officer is, then you can go into like the counter-terrorism units and kind of continue training, correct?

Yeah, no, that's exactly right. Yeah, there's, you can, especially once you specialize, you can specialize further. So there's effectively, you can go, like you said, into the counter-terrorism world, so where you can learn to repel out of helicopters, you know, storm planes that are on runways, and take action. It's that quasi-military role, which is, it sort of branches into what our special forces would undertake. But obviously, they're not as close as what the police are, so they sort of bridge that gap between the military and the police when it's required.

Okay. Yeah, so, and then obviously, each one of those levels you get to, there's obviously more and more stringent requirements, I'm sure, with experience, time, and then probably qualifying standards. I'm assuming that just as you climb that kind of branch in those units, it gets more and more selective, right?

Yeah, it definitely does, and the fitness tests go up. Then once you get through, you have to qualify to certain standards, and obviously using different weapon systems or what have you in tactics, you have to be able to demonstrate an aptitude for those roles, and if you don't meet the standard, you go.

Okay. So one of the issues that happened with you as you were making your way through that kind of area was, not really your performance, we'll say, in terms of your physical performance, and I'm sure your shooting ability and all that cool stuff, but it was something that you basically have no control over, right? It had to do with your vision. So kind of explain what happened there.

Yeah, no. I filled out my application form, which was the first stage. I was successful on that, and I was invited to the medical. I passed the hearing test, I'd already done the fitness test, so passed that. Then I did the eye test and fell flat on my face with the colour vision. I knew I was colour-blind before I started, but I had a feeling that I would get through because I'd done part of the test previously so I could do my police driving, and I got through because I was told it was the same standard.

However, when I went back for the firearms medical, I was put through some more stringent tests and failed them all miserably, and then was ejected from the process. I couldn't really understand why, so I asked a few questions of the medical team at my previous force where I used to work, and was told, "Go speak to firearms." So I spoke to firearms, asked them, and they said, "Go and speak to the medical people."

So I ended up speaking to, there's an organization called the College of Policing in the UK, and they basically set the standards for everything over here. So, you know, entry requirements, physical standards, what have you, they're the people who sort of own all of that. So I asked them, and then they came back with four reasons as to why someone who's colour-blind can't be on firearms. Three of them I knew were rubbish anyway, so I managed to sidestep those. But the main one that they brought up, which on the face of it does seem quite reasonable, is that if you're colour-blind and you're required to take shots, it's called a critical shot in the UK, which is effectively if a senior officer says to you, "You know, a critical shot's been authorized, and it's the guy in the red jacket." If you're colour-blind and you confuse red with brown or red with green, you might make a mistake or fail to act at all, and then somebody dies and it's not the right person. It could be a large number of the public, or it could be yourself or your colleagues because you either fail to shoot because you hesitated, or because you shot the wrong person. So on the face of it, that sounds like a very reasonable argument. However, I've got a few issues with it, and I'll email Greg about them, and...

Oh yeah, right there.

And I, I would have you say, you know, maybe to the average person who knows nothing about law enforcement or training or firearms or the eye and the brain, that would seem reasonable, right? Well, yeah, you don't want to shoot the wrong person. But when you're telling me this mythical scenario that they've come up with, I'm sitting there just like, "This is crap! This is total rubbish. This is BS, man!" Like, that's a ridiculous scenario someone made up. But I could see that coming from someone outside who doesn't know any better. Absolutely, I could see them coming up with that, being completely logical, and I understand that. But once you get into how this actually works, well, one, are you just going to go off of, "Hey, shoot the guy in the red jacket"? Like, that seems just such a random description of a human being for one off the top of the bat. But that's kind of where you started. So, I know you had some issues with that, that's where your email thread started to Greg. So we can start here wherever you guys want. Greg, I'll cast you and kind of start off, why is that ridiculous? Why does that not make sense, and why should we, what, let's, let's pick that apart a little bit.

Right. Well, just, let's not let facts ruin a perfectly good story if we start there. First of all, for all our viewers and listeners, thank you. Being colour vision deficient, it's the inability to distinguish colours, not the inability to see colours. So that's an important standard. Then whether you're talking about protonopic or deuteronopic colour blindness, that means that you're losing sensitive cones, either red or green sensitive, and you might not be able to distinguish the colour red. This strikes one in 12, one in 14 people, red being the colour rather that most people that have a deficiency, theirs is a red deficiency. So that's where all of these stories derive from.

So, Brian, I like to go back to the science of the origin story. So when they start fighting and saying Chris can't go to that training, what they're going to say is, "Hey, listen, you can't tell that your hamburger is cooked well enough because you can't tell the red difference." Okay, well, there's a thing called a meat thermometer, and I'm quite sure that it works a little bit better than the average eye because people undercook meat all the time.

Then they'll say, "Well, listen, the guy in the red shirt, if that's the sole descriptor you're going to use to escalate to a lethal force scenario, I think your standard needs to be revised." You know, and the other thing is, unless you're in kinetic combat, I can't imagine somebody telling you, "Hey, you're cleared hot to shoot another person." You know, and then they'll give you the time and distance gap. Look, unless you're like working at a casino and your job is to exchange chips where I can see immediately that if you had the wrong chip and it didn't have a number on it, you might have a problem. But then I look at ramps going into a business and handles on showers and toilets, and I say, okay, if a person has a deficiency, what they do is they increase things around that person to make it easier for them.

And Chris, I'd like you to specifically talk about one thing that is in all the stuff that I read, research material, which was about a Taser (Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifle), and where they said, "Well, you won't be able to see the colour spectrum, so how will you use the targeting method?" Can you talk about that, and again, anything additional to that?

Yeah, no, that was part of the initial argument from the College of Policing, and they said that people who are red-green colour-blind, yeah, specifically red-green colour-blind, won't be able to see the red dot of the laser on the Taser, and also the sighting systems that the AFOs use, they're holographic, so you won't be able to see the crosshair because it's red.

The Taser, we've actually sorted that out now. People who are colour-blind in the UK, or police officers (not people), can carry a Taser. That's something that's been amended and changed. But they said that the red would blend into other reds or to other greens or what have you, other colours, and it's clearly just factually incorrect. And the one thing that they didn't do, and this is the thing that, without being too blunt about it, really grips me, is that they never put a Taser in the hand of somebody who's colour-blind and done that, you know, very basic, rigorous testing. Can you see that? That question was never asked. It was all hypothetical stuff, and what they did, they got a colour vision expert to go away and say, "Yeah, people who fail colour vision tests will struggle to see red in certain circumstances, ergo, they can't see the red dot of a Taser or the laser sight on the Taser."

So, yeah, it was just those sort of things. It's like the working laboratories bear no resemblance to the reality of the actual, the real world, and the never the twains you'll meet apparently in policing. However, in other areas, they tend to, and common sense, sort of reign supreme, but for some reason, it doesn't seem to with regards to colour vision and policing in England and Wales.

Well, you nailed it right there when you said the laboratory doesn't necessarily replicate real conditions, and that's huge because, rightly so, this is where a lot of this stuff started, right? You got to go, okay, well, there's certain vision requirements. What do the scientists say about it? What is the lab performance? What's the baseline for that? And if that works, it works, and if you never get a discrepancy or no one ever challenges it, then it just becomes, hey, well, this is why we do it.

I mean, you're getting into such an area, like I have in my background right now, I mean, you can see, I have a flag, I have our Arcadia logo, and I have a little pennant from USC. They all have red on them. They're all three different shades of red. If you asked me what colour any of them were, I'd say red. Like, it's, you know, it's that, you're, you're almost splitting hairs here on what has seemed to become kind of an arbitrary, you know, an arbitrary gating mechanism to get in. Like, it's just there because it's always been there. So, Greg, I know.

Yeah, no, you're right on something. And remember when we're talking, Brian is a subject matter expert in long-range precision gunfire. He's got a bunch of different histories in a bunch of different areas, and he split a bunch of wigs in combat. So we have to make sure that when we're talking about this very situation, if I was going to talk arbitrary and capricious, which this standard seems to be (and folks, do your homework, look them up, it's a legal standard), my thing is, can you help me, Chris, understand how many times your armed snipers were directed by their supervisors to shoot the guy in the red jacket this last year? How many times?

If I was to round it up, it'd be less than zero.

Okay, so if we multiply by zero for each answer, protracting that out, you'll understand the absurdity of what I'm talking about. So, Brian, I want to make sure that the viewers and listeners understand why we're fighting for Chris and against this colour deficiency hoax or myth. It's because if it was founded in science and you could show me research...

Can I go back to one thing? When we were doing a bunch of work with IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices), I had to deal with a bunch of scientists, and the one rigor that they put into the testing process was part of the control group had to put their hand in warm water, part in cold water, and the third group in no water. And they said that would equate to the stressful conditions of combat when we were about to go into kinetic Iraq. And it was like, okay, I don't know what world you're all from, but we've got people that are being exploded and shot and killed and are committing suicide. We have all these external stressors and this external stimuli that we can point to and look at, things like that we brought up episodic cortisol. Brian, you'll know that how many times that we did those tests.

Well, I'll believe that scientific study, and I'll even follow your theory if your hypothesis is sound, and it's based on research that I can get from another source or a situation that's occurred that's very popular that everybody can look and say, "Hey, the dye has been cast with this." But everything I researched and everything I looked up, and the same with Brian, we couldn't find a case. There was no case. So what I mean by arbitrary and capricious is, let's not put something in there and say, "This is a new gating mechanism that we just came up with because theoretically this situation could arise." Well, that doesn't, that doesn't pass a smell test for me.

I'll say no, it's, it's, it's really tough one because it's not the one talk. It's really easy. The standards for testing in the UK for armed policing, they were made slightly more, well, made a lot more difficult about two or three years ago, which was partially my fault. So if anyone does come across this and they could get firearms, all good firearms, it's probably because of me, so sorry about that.

But there are AFOs around the UK who are colour-blind because they got through on the testing, because the testing that's used is no good. The Ishihara test, which Brian was speaking about earlier, that only detects red-green colour vision problems. It doesn't detect blue-yellow. So if you've got a blue-yellow problem, then you'll get past that test, and then you'll not be required to do the other tests. However, people with blue-yellow colour vision issues have worse night vision apparently. So that in itself creates more problems, right?

So yeah, and the other tests that they use, what they desire to do is obviously identify and categorize your issue. However, what they tend to do is the people with the least severe problems are weeded out. So people that should be suitable according to the standard that's in place get weeded out. However, if you've got a really severe colour deficiency, it won't pick it up, so you'll get through. So the people that shouldn't be getting through do get through, the people that should be getting through don't. And these are tests, the Ishihara has been going for like 80 years. It's not changed in 80 years. So it's, why are we using something that's 80 years old? We don't use eight-year-old firearms.

How did you do on the Ishihara test, Brian?

Yeah, I was just saying, I just, I hopped on that. Everyone listen, I'll have that link up in the episode details. You can hop on there and take it. But I scored a 50 on that right before I got on this podcast. I took it, which I knew I had the red, same thing, that red-green. I was like, "Yep, I remember this." And you know, military use it for a number of reasons too. But I think the point of me talking about my experience with it, and I had another guy, Josh, following along right now live, who said, "Yeah, the same thing happened to me when I went to the military." You know, and I had one good eye and one bad eye. Like, basically, he said, like, "One eye I see in HDMI, and the other one is like, you know, the old AV cable." And then, same thing, I'm completely colour-blind, but I think they also know, like, hey, this is kind of a ridiculous test. It doesn't actually affect things on the ground because otherwise, I mean, our NODs (Night Observation Devices) or NVGs (Night Vision Goggles), well, they used to be, they're a little bit different now, were all green. And then, you know, you had, same like you just said, like, you had red optics and or green night sights on different sidearm stuff. So it's like, well, no one's, I've never known anyone who put it up and just said, "Oh, I can't see the sight." Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, I don't get, like, I've never come across that before, ever. And so the interesting part is that it's still in place, and like you just said, these are the tests they use.

But so what, tell me, kind of like what happened because you obviously, then you started researching it, you went back and said, "All right, are there any cases where this comes up? What's, what's the standard here? What's the precedent and why we're using this?" What's going on? So you kind of started, obviously, did your own research, you compiled all this information, you looked into it, what did you start to find as you kind of put all that together and then tried to go back and present your case? Kind of what, what happened there with everything?

I literally did the hard yards. I rang the 43 police forces in England and Wales and asked to speak to all their firearms teams, and I found a good number of AFOs up and down the country who were colour-blind. So they were all really helpful. I wanted to talk to you and say, "Oh yeah, it's a load of rubbish, don't worry about it." You know, this sort of thing makes no sense. However, if you actually get them to sit their head above the parapet, and for very obvious reasons, they don't want to because they don't want to lose their jobs. I want to say lose their jobs, they lose their position on the firearms team and go back to being a regular cop, not be sacked because that wouldn't happen.

So it was very much sort of anecdotal evidence that I had. It was me on my own basically. What happened was I ended up at an employment tribunal because I tried to argue that the standard wasn't necessary or not required. I said if you can pass the initial firearms course, which is that 11-week course we spoke about earlier, that course will weed you out if you're not good enough, and if your eyes aren't good enough for that course, then you'll get caught out. And ultimately, I was unsuccessful with that.

But a really good sample of evidence that I tried to bring in, and that was sort of kicked into long grass quite early on at court, was Western Australia Police. They're routinely armed, just like they do in the States, but they've removed all colour vision tests in, I want to say, in 2003 again, and they've reported absolutely no issues at all. I mean, I've done some digging, I've spoken to them on the phone and email, and nobody has got any issues at all. There's not been, no one's been shot incorrectly in Australia based on the colour vision deficiency of a police officer over there.

I would see two things that we have to address, Brian, based on Chris's testimony today, and he's been forthright, forthcoming, transparent, and it's a great issue. But there's going to be people out in the audience that are going to go, "Hey, this is sour grapes. He couldn't get into this special position, so he's pissed. He wants to create this new area where he can go into."

The second thing is, the second side of that coin, perhaps, is that I want you to think for a minute, just fiscally, just financially, just fiduciarily, of what that means of taking a trained person that passed all of the tests. But now the standard comes back and says, "Well, if there's a colour deficiency and you can't pass this test, you're out." Listen, we're talking in the U.S. right now about restructuring police departments and defunding or creating a difference in the training. You're talking about having these wonderful experienced veteran officers like you that don't qualify for a position, and they might lose you. And folks, we're not talking that Chris can't drive and he's mowed down citizens. We're not talking about that he poured milk in a bowl and thought it was a spaghetti sauce, and his old lady punched him in the head. We're not talking about these mythical unicorns and tilting at windmills. We're talking about something that hasn't moved the dial. It hasn't shown that it was dangerous or deadly. It doesn't affect NVGs, doesn't affect NODs, or thermals. You can do your job, right? I mean, there's no other aspect of your job that you've failed in except this. Is that a fair statement?

Yeah, no.

Okay. So what do you say, and I apologize, Brian, what do you say when somebody might come up with the point that, "Hey, sour grapes, spilled milk. You're just pissed that you can't go into one of those specialty jobs. It's not going to..." No, that's for you, Chris. Yeah, Marren's dealt with, Marren's dealt with rejection all his life.

I have. All right, for you, Chris, what if somebody came up and said that?

I would understand it because it does sound like sour grapes. I'm not going to deny it, and I'll be honest with you, there is a little bit of sour grapes. But it's not the fact that they've said no to me, it's the fact that they've said no to me but not actually giving me a real reason and not allowed, first of all, for me to demonstrate suitability, and second of all, to back it up with evidence. All they've brought up to me is anecdotal, laboratory-based evidence.

I mean, I don't know if you know, but colour vision standards, as far as I'm aware, came in following a train crash in Sweden, I think it was, in the early 1800s. And a train went through a set of lights, crashed, and crashed into a village, I think it was, killed a good number of people, and obviously the driver died. From that, they decided that the reason why the train driver didn't stop at the lights was because he was colour-blind. Now, no autopsy was done on the train driver because there's not enough of him left to do it, right? They just made an assumption. And a chap called Holmgren, who was a visual specialist at the time, all of a sudden, created some colour vision tests. Now, this is me, my X-Files conspiracy theory, but he might have made a little bit of money out of developing colour vision tests and selling them to the rail industry. So there's a lot of people, and again, this sounds like sour grapes, I know it does, but there's a lot of people have an interest in colour vision testing because if you don't have colour vision standards for certain areas, then you don't need the tests, and if you don't need the test, you've got nothing to sell. But again, that's just me being...

No, that, that's, that's a great point for, you know, one, going a historical perspective, hey, this is where it started. And then now look at it today, fast forward a couple hundred years, this is where it's at now. This is what happens when those policies get into place. And this is where I go on, on, you know, an even larger level with different selection processes or barriers to entry. Your standards, you have a place, like it should be, what's the operational standard, right? Meaning, like, what are you going to do? Can you accomplish all the shooting and the driving and all the different physical requirements you have to do to do your job? And then if you don't meet one of these odd medical things, it should be, well, how do we get you there, right? Because you clearly can possess the skills, the knowledge, attitudes, aptitudes, abilities to do this job, so it should be, well, how do we feel? I mean, because people come up with all kinds of different ones. I mean, there's different, like, here in the U.S., there's all kinds of ones, especially federal law enforcement agencies, like, "Oh, you got to have a college degree." It's like, okay, well, you're automatically, you're ruling out a bunch of people who are highly qualified, have the experience for that position, but didn't go to school. What if they didn't have access to school? Would they have the money to do that? What if they didn't, you know? I mean, now you've got someone who did, and they're already a step ahead, even though they're younger and don't have the experience. It's like these weird arbitrary ways of doing that. And I think now because of cases like yours and other things that come up, you have to challenge it. Someone has to challenge it and show good cause, and then for people to go, "Oh, wait a minute, yeah, let's take a look at this." But like you said, if there's someone in there that has some sort of financial interest in keeping that going, well, now you've got a whole bunch of issues you're up against, and someone's like, "Hey, man, you're not taking away my paycheck because I've, you know, my whole life revolves around this."

Well, yeah, think of this too, Brian. Chris, one quick note on that. Brian and I have traveled all over the United States and talked and lectured and had seminars, and the hardest nut to crack is schools. Right now, during COVID, not a lot of kids are at school, so not a lot of school shootings. But back during the school shootings, which are always happening in the United States at one point or the other, we would go in because a parent called us. We didn't do a cold call. We didn't show up in your area, knock on your school door. But a parent called us that had attended or seen one of our other training programs and said, "This is the thing that we need, the human behavior, human performance thing for our school so we can reduce the risk posed by a school shooter." So we would go in, we'd do the program, and every one of the parents was like, "We want to do this," when the kids are involved and the teachers and everything. And then the school board or the superintendent, or whatever the supervisory layer, would come in and go, "Yeah, it's great. We love what you guys are doing. We just don't think it's going to happen here."

What that type of linear thinking is what you're getting from your folks. So if you drew a line on a yellow pad and you drew just one very narrow V spike coming up off of that line for the people that, they can't see me at home, what you're saying is in the life of that school, the school shooter is that narrow little line that goes up there, and it'll almost never happen. Liken that to your "shoot the guy in the red shirt." The problem is that that's where all of the risk lies. Do you get what I'm trying to say? So in real time, when we're talking about a school shooter or we're talking about something that has huge volumes of science behind it, that makes sense. But in yours, we're on a unicorn timeline, do you get what I'm trying to say, where we falsely made those? So I feel bad about that, Chris, and what was the board's answer? Is it a definitive answer, or can you go back once more information becomes available?

At the minute, it's definitive, and it's a firm no. Part of, or one of the reasons why I think I was unsuccessful when I ended up at the tribunal, was just because I had very little, all the evidence that I gathered was coming from me, and I'm not a subject matter expert in policing, I'm not a subject matter expert in visual sciences. And the Friday before my hearing, the Bataclan shooting happened in France, where basically a terrorist walked into, I think it was a concert, and shot loads of people. So straight away, people, they were worried, they were worried about it. So yeah, it was, it was a tough ask. I lost my train of thought a little bit now.

Chris, was there maybe another reason that they gave you, that you've been drinking?

Yeah. Where am I? Sorry, where am I? Where am I?

No, no, no. But it's good what you're saying is the definitive answer, the week before, happened, those things tainted it. So you don't think that they're going to look at this problem again, even though I would opine that the sports industry in the U.S. and the UK are looking closely at this issue every day.

You know, I think they are going to look at it, but it boils down to money and it boils down to interest, and there's not a lot of money about at the minute, and interest is elsewhere. And there's myself and a couple of other guys who work for the Police Federation, which is effectively the police union, who keep banging the door and kicking it out, and there is interest amongst chief officers because they're worried that they're going to lose a lot of AFOs, because they're in post at the minute, some of them have got, you know, in excess of 20 years in post, and to lose those people and all that experience is, you know, they're not going to be able to replace it. And when 95% of your armed staff are male, and you're talking, what's it, between 8 and 12% of 95% of your talent pool is going to be unavailable for you, you're never going to replace those numbers.

And armed policing is massively under-subscribed in this country because of the amount of risk it carries. A lot of people are nervous about doing it. Here, if a police officer shoots somebody, you know, that six months of their life can be on hold. And some guys, there's a chap called Tony Long, who shot a man called Adel Rodney dead in 2005. It was a legitimate shooting, nothing wrong with it at all. He retired a few years later, and they dragged him out of retirement and tried him for murder for that shooting, and he was found not guilty. But the irony of that is he's colour-blind as well. So, yeah, and he's had a very eventful career in terms of police shootings in the UK. I think he shot four people, three of them ended up dying. No issues with any of the shootings, it's all justified, and he was one of the people who worked in implementing the current tactics that the police use now. And those tactics derive, as I said before, from military tactics, from the SAS (Special Air Service), the 22 SAS. And if you want to be in 22 SAS as a counter-terrorism specialist, guess what? You could be colour-blind.

So, and the police are doing the exact same things. That's the thing, is that, like, at least with the military and a lot of stuff, is there's always like where the jokes are, "Well, there's always a waiver," right? And that's the, that's the point, is that here's the requirements. If you don't meet one of them, you can get a waiver because what that means is a board or some individual or individuals sat down, looked at the specifics of your case, and verified whether or not that had an effect and went, "Oh, no, you're good. We'll write a waiver for that. That's fine. Normally, it wouldn't meet our requirement, but I've, I've now understood it. You've, you've stated your case. It's on here." So that seems more applicable.

But a lot of the stuff that we're talking about too, I think there are some generational differences that are finally starting to change. Because you look at different, like, even like, okay, you got vision requirements, there's age requirements for certain stuff. It's like, well, maybe 20, 30, 40 years ago, yeah, that, that made sense. But a lot of that, not anymore. You got guys in their 40s right now that can outrun, out-shoot, out-lift guys in their 20s, and they have 20 years of experience behind them. You know what I'm saying? Like, all of that stuff is changing a little bit. And so now some of those requirements, like, well, maybe we don't have to have this maximum age at like 35 for this. Maybe we can bump that up to 40 now, or 45, because people are living longer, people are working longer, people are healthier, people, physical training has gotten a lot better at a greater scale. So all of those things start to change a little bit.

And I did want to throw on one thing that one of our listeners and our friend, he was on, Andy Brown, he's got a great book called Warnings Unheeded. But he was on, and he said, his response was good, "I wonder if Taser or any red dot industry, optic or anything, have they done any testing with colour-blind users because it's in their interest to prove that it works and is used by all?" So I don't know if you've looked into that. That's actually great.

As far as I'm aware, they haven't. But I'm sure you guys probably use this already, but the new Taser that's coming out, the Taser, I'm going to call it Taser 7, has a red dot and a green dot, and apparently the green dot is more salient for everybody. So yeah, that's the advantage that's what's making. But it's a factory thing, isn't it? It's a tooling thing. If you need to put a blue light on it for, you know, 10 people who work in a city in the UK, you could do that. But again, it all comes down to the cost, doesn't it, and who's going to pay for it? But yeah, I mean, as far as I'm aware, Axon (who only make Taser), they've not actually specifically looked at colour vision. But they are changing what they do, so it could be that they are.

Good to hear from, good to hear from Andy Brown. We love you, Andy.

Hey, Brian, one thing I want to bring up that Chris said earlier to put a fine point on it. The reason that Chris was talking about the males and females in law enforcement work is because males are the lion's share of the people that have colour blindness. It's very rare in females. So if they're in a male-dominated job, you would exclude males from something that they could do normally by using the colour vision, and it would set up an unfair advantage perhaps for females versus males. So there's another legal standard that would be absolutely unnecessary if this wasn't so arbitrary.

And I would ask, because we have a long reach, you know, we're number 10 in Japan, number one in North Macedonia (love our folks out in Greece). If you guys know what cases, ladies, gentlemen, write in so Brian can send that information along to Chris, and we can have him back on the show and say, "Chris, you bastard, you hid the infamous case of the bakery murders." Because let's be realistic about this, this is a tremendous amount of anxiety with you, a veteran decorated copper on the streets that loves your job. You're not pissed at your job, you're not trying to get extra money. As a matter of fact, most people don't want the position that you're trying out for because you associated stress with it.

And I would say Brian is a professional shooter. I mean, there are no such standards for U.S. Marine Corps snipers. Brian said there's none for the U.S. Army snipers.

No, it's, the military stuff can get away with that, I think, because it's military, you know. Some, and some requirements are actually less for certain things because you're not, you know, it's like here in the U.S., you're not going up against U.S. citizens who have constitutional rights if you're in the U.S. military, right? So it's a little bit different. But I'm curious, Chris, you know, you went through everything, you tried to find, did as much research as you could, and you didn't really find any, you couldn't find any cases where this was a factor or some determining factor or where it really made a decision or what happened. But what would their, what would the evidence be to like keep that standard? To say, "No, this is what you have to pass." Do you, what, what's their argument, so to speak, as to why that's there? Or do they have one, or is it just there because it's always been there?

It's there because it's always been there. No evidence that I'm aware of. It's all about hypothetical risk. It's that one in a million chance that you could get it wrong, and to the layperson, you think, "Yeah, that's absolutely fine." When I had my tribunal, I was asked a question, and it was something along the lines of, "Okay, you're an armed police officer, you're looking up at a balcony, and on that balcony, there's three men. One's wearing a red jacket, the two others wearing brown, and you can't tell the difference between any of them. Would you pick the right person?" And what I wanted to say was, "Well, can we talk about that example properly, or did you just want a one-word answer?" And it was just the one-word answer, so I said yes.

But that scenario, I mean, again, to everyone who's listening, you know, that sounds quite reasonable. And to me, I mean, I've done a lot of soul-searching with this, thinking, "Can I actually do this job? Am I capable of doing it?" And I still think yes. But that scenario is just completely, it's so narrow that it's completely unrealistic. It talks nothing about, well, first of all, what mood was I in when I woke up this morning? Did I fall out with my wife before I came to work? You know, how have I been at work? You know, what's the nature of the job? Where's the information come from? What sort of briefing have I had when I'm traveling to this incident? You know, what's the information that's being told to me? Where's the information come from that this guy in the red jacket poses a danger to the public that's so great that he needs to be killed instantly? Okay, who's passed that information? Does that come from a member of the public? Because if it has, we're probably not going to trust it anyway. If it's come from another police officer, he's probably there so he can say, "It's him."

It's like so much inflation. One of the issues I have with the colour vision standard is it's treating people with colour vision deficiency as a faulty machine. That if you put this information in, because the machine's faulty, the end product that comes out is going to be wrong. But it doesn't work like that. People are just massively complex machines, and it's, sorry, it's hard for me to describe how I do something because I've been doing it for over 40 years, and I've always got by. I've never had in my policing career, or in life in general, the only time I've ever had a problem was, basically, "Don't ask me to pick out a tie for you because it won't match your shirt." It'll be pointless. In normal life, it's never been amazing, which amazingly comes up more often than "shoot the guy in the red jacket."

Yeah, absolutely. Well, no, and you know, this, again, I go back to this hypothetical example as a perfect example, they asked you a horrible question, okay? Like, if right now if you're watching a football game, whether that's American football, European football, whichever one, if even if everyone was still wearing their, you got two teams all wearing the same uniform, even if they all had the same number jersey with no names on it, would you be able to tell the difference between different members of that team? Well, absolutely you can. There's, there's physical description.

And to go back, especially for police work here, like, I mean, you're going to want to go off of the colour of the clothes they're wearing, dude. You know how many times someone robs the place, runs around back, takes that hoodie off, drops those pants, and comes walking out because they're dressed? I mean, it's just such a completely arbitrary way to look at it. And it seems just like no one's putting any thought into actually taking the time to research it, use a practical example, try to set up, I mean, just ask someone, try to set up an experiment to fool you, Chris, put realistic standards out to where, all right, would you be able to make the right decision in this situation? And it's going to be yes, of course you are. Like, they come down to this, like, you know, odd, what shade of colour the jacket, like, no one even notices that stuff anyway. Even when you called in, even the first responding officers are probably going to get some of that description wrong anyway too. I mean, there's always that error in there. So I mean, I, I don't, it just seems like an odd way to go about it.

And that's a great point, and I'll go back to a job that I went to on my last set working. So, what day were we on today? Wednesday? I think this probably happened on Monday. One of my colleagues was assaulted in the city center, and he presses his panic button, shouts it out, and the description is "gray top, black trousers, white trainers, six foot." Actually, it was "black top, gray trousers, black trainers," and he was about five foot four. So, I mean, that's from a police officer. Right? So it, you know, I mean, colour itself is completely unreliable.

There's a piece of work that I managed to get a look at by a Professor called, I think it's called Michael Webster, and the work that he did, he showed that there's a 30%, I think it was, variance between colour naming in the colour normal. So one guy who passes all the colour vision tests could say it's yellow, and another guy who passes all the colour vision tests could say it's red, and that's quite a big difference between yellow and red, and that's in the colour normal. So why are we relying on colour when it is so inherently unreliable?

There's loads of things that can impact it. If you stand under a street light or a sodium light, you know, that changes the colour completely. If you come from a different part of the world to me, and the UK is a massively multicultural society, if somebody comes from another part of the world and they say, "Oh, that guy was wearing purple," but their version of purple is actually my version of green, you know, and that causes a problem straight away. So yeah, it just, the fact that the reliance is so heavy on colour, and I know for a fact, it's we don't rely on colour. The standard says that we do. But speaking to operational cops, I'm talking police constables, AFOs, up to chief constables, the people who run the organization, they say that never happened, it would never happen because it's too dangerous. And you work on information, you don't work on the colour of a piece of clothing. It just makes no sense at all. But because that standard's there, and people feel the need to defend it, and you don't defend it but go and find out if it's right or not, and then challenge it. With firearms being so under-subscribed as well, if there's a chance that you could get 10 more applicants into that role, then surely that investment there is worth it.

Yes. So I'm nobody, I'm nothing, but I've been teaching enhanced optics and observation as part of our courses for it'll be 38 years August 15th. And Brian has been with me for a long time, and he's seen me teach, and he's taught with me. And we've talked about the eye and the brain and the linkages. And the fact of the matter is, in all the stuff that I've written, it's always the three things that make things visible to humans is light, motion, and edges. We talk about rods and cones. We talk extensively about aberrations in your vision and how your brain makes up things, whether they're there or not. But I can't think for the life of me in that entire almost four decades of work and research, Brian, where we've ever brought up colour as a distinguishing factor with the exception of when we were talking cultural significance, where a colour may be really significant in an environment, and then guess what, the differences are so minute. So I would go back to that standard too. I would say the legal standard is light, motion, and edges. That's what drives your central or your peripheral vision. And there are so many other factors that are more important than colour, and specifically this brand of colour deficiency.

Yeah, I agree with that. We've got even people following along, Sarah's following, saying like, "Hey, I'm, she's in graphic design, and so she's like, look, you when someone says a colour, and it's completely something else, you know, everyone literally sees it differently." So it's just such a, again, a kind of an arbitrary way to look. Like in that job, it's, you know, her, her paycheck probably relies on that. When someone says red, they mean something different. Well, I got three examples in my room right here, you know, what do you, what do you want? And that's where it comes in. So it does, it does seem like it's an odd standard.

But again, I'm sure, it sounds like you're the, or maybe not, are you the first person to challenge this?

Well, no. In terms of firearms, yes. There was a chap who retired a few years ago, a guy called Rob Webster, who joined the police in, I want to say, in the late 70s, and he was upfront about it when he joined. He says, "I'm colour-blind." And he went through his career all right, and then he went for an advanced driving course, and then when they did the eyesight test for the advanced driving course, they discovered again that he was colour-blind. So they put him behind a desk effectively, and he went to an employment tribunal as well. And then eventually his, I think his employment tribunal, is what ended up or resulted in the standards being changed because I initially tried to join the police when I was much younger in 1999, I think it was, and got rejected initially because I was colour-blind. Then I applied again in the 2000s and managed to get in because the standard had changed, and that was probably because of Rob's court appearance. Excuse me. Yeah. So yeah, I'm the first person to whinge about the firearms thing, but I know since me, AFOs have been caught out, and they've lost their jobs or lost their tickets effectively, and then gone to the ET (Employment Tribunal) again.

But what we are finding is happening is that they're getting discovered, their employer is having a bit of a wobble, and then pulling them from the job, and then actually going, "Oh, no, you've been all right for the last five years, haven't you, since you've been in post? Yeah, go back." And then so they're effectively U-boating through the organization, but they're demonstrating that they can do the job absolutely fine, and I've spoken to loads of them who said, "Yeah, absolutely fine, no issues at all."

Yeah, it sounds like you said back in 2003 or 2004, you know, there in the UK for the regular police, they kind of said, "Well, this is actually, we don't need this. This is not used anymore." And then, you know, if Australia is starting to do it, it sounds like it's starting to go that way. So maybe your case can be the one to take it to that next level because, again, this sounds like to me, it's just like, "Oh, man, they just, they just don't know what they don't know." They're going, "Look, this is the test, this is very serious, this is involving firearms, it's involving life or death. Like, we can't," you know. So I get those arguments, but those aren't, there's no, there's no evidence to support those claims. Is the problem. It's, it's anecdotal, and it's not even a good anecdote, right? It's not even, it's the train crash story, "Oh, you know, after the guy dies, wow, he was colour-blind." Sounds good to you guys, all right? Sounds good 200 years later, this is how it is.

But I always, I appreciate that you went back and even looked into that because this is how those things start, and the second, third-order effects don't come about until decades or centuries later to where that started, and then the science forms from it, and then a business forms from it, and then we find out, "Oh, wait, this is kind of junk. This doesn't work anymore." You know what, that doesn't apply here. So that's constantly in flux. And then, but if you only know it from your angle, well, no, this is what the rule is, this is what we got to do. I mean, how many different type of, you know, so bureaucrats, so to speak, have we all been in front of or heard before that went like, "No, but the standard is this." And we're going like, "Yes, I know. We're saying that's the problem is the standard, or what this issue is, it's not, it's not this individual, it's the way we're measuring and assessing this person just doesn't really make sense."

And I would caution us too, that we're generally, humans are generally a smart species that learns from their mistakes. And so if this was a significant problem everywhere, you would have a scientific body of research to pull from that would show it. Good ideas stick around, and when things are dangerous, they stick around. That's why you're not reading a lot of material about goiters or hunchbacks not being allowed as 7-Eleven clerks or whatever else because there's no body of research and no reason that would come up. And this one to me, when you wrote it, the reason I was so excited by writing you back, and as soon as I talked to Brian that morning, it was like, "Hey, you got to see this Chris thing!" And I even asked Brian, "You remember, Brian, I said, let me take the first crack at this one." The reason I was so excited is because there is no valuable, valuable research that we can pull from. And even the sports industry is way behind that. You know, they got so many more issues, concussions and all the other types of stuff. But coppers, man, you got to take a look at this. If you're an agency at an institution, you're going to pass up a great guy like Chris or some other person because of an unfounded fear of a hypothetical event.

Yeah. I mean, the thing, the colour vision thing that really grips me as well is, armed cops in the UK are cops first and foremost. They're police officers, and they're using the exact same skills that they use prior to carrying a gun. A lot of firearms teams, when they recruit, they make a big point of saying, "You are still a police officer, and you're doing a police officer's job, except you can obviously escalate slightly more than somebody else can with a Taser or a baton." And they seem to have lost sight of that a little bit, and it's a shame because there's a lot of good people out there. I mean, this might be slightly biased, but I've spoken to a lot of cops who aren't on firearms with colour-blindness, and they're all good people. A lot of them are the ones that I think are the better performers because there's something about them that they do things in a slightly different way. They couldn't tell you, it's a tacit knowledge, isn't it? They don't know how they're doing it or why they're doing it. It's like, you know, I say to you, "How do you ride a bike?" You can tell me how to do it, but you wouldn't be able to do it based on that.

And they're missing out on those people, and those people will be absolutely (not all of them, obviously) but the ones I've spoken to would be really great in that role because they've got that motivation to do the job properly, to do it well. And like I say, it goes back to that faulty machine, isn't it? We're not faulty machines, we just see things slightly differently. We get to the same end result; we just go about it in a different way. And the fact that it's hard to verbalize how we do it, I think that's part of the problem, and that's why people go, "Well, you know, you're not past that test, and if unless you can show us how you do it." A big thing in the UK with the colour vision thing is to demonstrate coping strategies. I don't know what they are. I'm sure I've got them, but I couldn't tell you what they are.

No, that's another great point on top of it. So, I don't want to take too much more of your time, but is there anything you have like next, where you can go with this, or something you're planning on doing, trying to appeal again or gather more evidence? You know, someone out there listening, "Hey, I know a case from France where an officer did that." You know, we get random, like you, I mean, we get those type of contacts from people, and people reach out. So is there something you're looking for, or the next step that you're taking?

I'm just, we're just continuously pushing it. I think there's a definite feeling amongst the chief constables in the UK. We're split into 43 different forces, and each one's got its own chief constable. I think amongst the chief constables, there is a real appetite to look at this because they have to provide an armed function. They're not providing the armed function that they want at the minute because they can't get the people, and they're at risk of losing people, and they don't want to. I think a lot of them, particularly my Chief Constable Simon Cole, who's colour-blind himself, from my conversation with him, he doesn't believe that the risk is there. So I think at that very top tier, there is an appetite to do something about it. But again, it comes down to money, it comes down to time, and it comes down to priorities, and it's probably not a priority at the minute.

So I just keep with two chapters of the Police Federation, Guy Corsay Donald, who's the vice chair and the firearms lead, the chap called Steve Hartshorn, who've both been fantastic with this. They're constantly asking people, kicking doors in, really pretty much bullying people into listening, which is good. And then there are three other people as well. We are constantly asking the question, and I'd like to think at some point in the near future there will be a bit of movement because, like I say, I think we're going to get to a point where we're going to lose a lot of AFOs through retirement, a lot of AFOs who are going to get retested and then get removed from position, and they're not going to be able to fill those roles. Our terror threat at the minute has just been reduced, but it's still, an attack is likely, and if an attack is likely, you need a response to it. If that response isn't coming from the police, you're going to be waiting a hell of a long time for the SAS or the military to turn up.

Yep, that's a, well, that's, that's a great point. Greg, unless you've got anything else to add on top of that before we wrap up here, I think that was a good.

Yeah, it's a great place. My thing is, stop looking at the differences, start looking at the similarities. If we're talking about a performance issue, Chris, I wouldn't be there if your performance was substandard or it was somehow inhibited. Brian and I wouldn't even have taken this on. Know that we're here for the long ball, we're here for the long fight. Please use us. We'd like to, we'd like to help in any way we can.

Appreciate it. More than likely we'll do.

Yeah, and if anyone out there listening, please write in to thehumanbehaviorpodcast@gmail.com, or get a hold of us on a bunch of different social media. You can find everything in the episode details. If you've got something that you've heard or know, "Oh, hey, there's this study out there," or "There's this situation that came across," and I know some, it might be the one that helps where they can look at it. And like you said, this also seems like that case where, just the research hasn't caught up to what's happening on the street, right? You know, it's just, it's just not there. Where, you know, I mean, it's like, it's like anything, we get, we're stuck in our ways until something comes along and has to really, really change it. And then we go, "Oh, wow, that was kind of stupid," you know. But that does take time. But I think because of technology, because of conversations like this, and people being able to share that information easier now, it's kind of happening a little bit faster, where maybe before, they would have just told you to go pound sand, and that's enough, and you're never going to hear from again. So.

Right. Final thought for me, I just can't abide as an empath thinking that there's some little boy or girl out there that has been tested and somebody says, "Well, you know, you have a colour deficiency, so therefore there's nine jobs that you can't do." I mean, you know, we have to turn that around and go, "How can we fix this? How can we change this so that little kid can realize their dream and be a copper in the same district that you're working, Chris?"

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I had that conversation as a child. I remember finishing secondary school and having a careers chat, and I said, "Oh, I'm colour-blind. Can I join the police?" And the careers advisor went, "No."

Okay, wow. Yeah. And then, but the same thing, right? And then, and then, yeah, I know that that's great. It takes people to kind of push through those barriers, and once they kind of fall over, everyone goes, "Well, yeah, that was kind of dumb. I guess we won't do that again." And then we do it in a different way. But it's constantly evolving. So I appreciate your time, Chris, man. Thanks for coming.

Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. And it was a good chat.

Well, hopefully we'll have you back on again as an update, and maybe something pops up, but we'd love to have you back on sometimes.

Awesome. We really appreciate that, man.

So everyone out there listening, don't forget, follow us on social media, hit the like and subscribe button, all that good stuff. If you enjoy it, share it with your friends. Reach out to us if you have any questions or comments. And don't forget that training changes behavior.

All right, man, that's done the live stream. That was awesome. Really appreciate it. That was a thank you. That was a good conversation, man. That was actually really interesting. I took a bunch of notes. So, I'll, whatever happens, I'll publish that one next Tuesday. So when that happens, I'll send you all the links and everything like that, and then you could share it with whoever over there. I'm sure most of your mates are probably like, "Dude, we've heard enough already, Chris, come on!" I'm sure, I'm sure a lot of them have. But I know how that goes, you know? But when it changes, they're going to go, "Ah, you know what, yeah, you, I guess you were right. Good on you for," you know, everyone's just tired of hearing it, I'm sure. But it gets out, and then we do have like an international audience, so like, like I said, it, it can spread around, and then maybe it gets big near you, and a bunch of people listen to it and go, "Hey, damn, they made a pretty good point there. Let's take a look at it." You know, or someone can send it to like, you know, some academic researcher that has to do with it, and they'll listen and go, "Damn, you know what, that doesn't make sense. I can write a, I'm a PhD, I can write a paper about this." And, you know, maybe something like that will help seriously.

Fingers crossed.

Yeah, that's just, it's getting that awareness of it.

Yeah, as we say in the States, "Touch wood." Yeah.

Oh, wait a minute, that's one of yours, isn't it?

So they're all lost.

Yeah, they started there. So, I appreciate it, man. We got to, hopefully we can, we can get over there to London sometime. So we're, we're establishing this network. My goal is to, when we hit it big, as these guests we've had on, we go to where they're, where they live and we do like a live show, podcast thing there. So we'd love to come to London and do one and throw back some drinks and go to Leicester and check out the area. We want to go to Australia and down to Texas and all these North Macedonia. Greg was serious, we have those random police officers in North Macedonia follow us, listen to us, and go, "Hey, we're dealing with the same stuff here." It's so cool because it's like completely random, you know? So, hey.

And it sounds good. Please, please, Chris, tell, send us a message if you get any feedback, you know, that we might not be tracking. Hey, positive or negative, please send that to us, and we mean it. We want to round the bases and come back to this in a little time to see what's happened.

Yeah, I mean, I did have an update, but I didn't share it just because I'm not supposed to know about it. Okay. But the national lead for firearms in the UK, a guy called Simon Chesterman, he is the Chief Constable of the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, and basically all they do is guard power stations effectively, but they're all armed. He's looking at this, and I've been invited to go on the national working group for the colour vision and firearms thing, but I've not had the invite yet, so I didn't mention it. I've been told it's coming, but I've not actually seen it yet. I won't have my notice until I get the job offer. But, yeah, fingers crossed, that's going to sort of move things along. He's a good guy, but he's, again, he's one of those who doesn't want to put his head above the parapet and take the risk. But I can hopefully get in there and steer him a little bit. So once I know that that's happened, I'll come back to you and let you know.

I just, like, you just created a second podcast right there.

Yeah, there's a whole perfect cop. There we go.

Come back from that, and hopefully, that gift that keeps on giving.

Yeah, exactly. No, that's it. That's, Brian's (referencing an inside joke). But listen, we also want to come over and have you show us the ins and outs of the red light district because that's still there.

Definitely. Google Map it, Kent Street in Leicester, you can't miss it.

Kent Street. I'll have to check that out. I'm writing that down now. Yeah. All right, man, well, I appreciate it, Chris. Thanks so much. We'll be in touch. I'll, like I said, I'll send you all the links once I get everything uploaded, so it'll be beginning next week, like Monday or Tuesday, I'll send everything to you, and then it'll be out, and then we'll check it out and listen to it.

So I hate the sound of my own voice.

Hey, don't worry. That's the first thing when we start doing this, you had to get, get used to where you're like, "Oh God, I hate that." And then you eventually just don't care anymore. You don't notice it.

It's like Brian without his soul. He just doesn't care.

I just don't care. It's not there. Once it's there. I appreciate it, man. Thanks a lot.

No, brilliant. Thanks a lot. Thanks, guys. Take care.