L.O.G. 158 A Responsibility and a Duty

Alright, well, good morning, Greg. It's already been a very busy morning and a busy week since we've got a lot going on. We do, so that's why we had a little delay by a week in putting on a podcast episode. So, thanks all of you for tuning in to this one and hopping back on board. But we will continue putting out The Human Behavior Podcast, and we just have to fit it in between the margins of everything else we have going on. But that's a good thing, and it's a good time to have that. So, we're happy and excited that things are opening back up again.

Today's discussion, Greg, is something we've gone back and forth about, but we're going to be talking about school shootings, school shooters, but specifically with some of the legal ramifications. We'll get into it, but a lot of this discussion is inspired by the more recent school shooting last November in Michigan and what happened there.

I wanted to give my thoughts upfront in general about this stuff and the reason why I get so heated and emotional and pissed off and angry. Even our last training course the other week, I kind of went off on a tangent. These federal agents are looking like, "Whoa, dude, calm down. What are you talking about?"

But it's because this school shooting stuff is not nearly as complicated and complex as everyone wants to make it out to be. I think that, if I was looking at security and trying to prevent something like this from happening, a school is a closed system, right? It's not a complex environment. Yes, it's complicated, but there are set schedules, there are set people. It's the same people every single day over time, for years sometimes, K through 12, at the same school, right?

So, you have this behavioral baseline for people. You know what's normal and what isn't normal. You have the ability to conduct analysis over time to interpret and understand trends or conduct predictive analysis. You can do all of that stuff, and you can immediately know whether you're right or wrong. You can immediately test your hypothesis with a low-calorie intervention.

What I'm getting at is all of these school shooters, every single case, to us and the way we look at things with human behavior, they're exactly the same. So, meaning if I took all the things every school shooter said or their drawings, and I put them all in a book, and each one was a different chapter in that book, and I gave you that book to read, you wouldn't know that each chapter was by a different author. You would think that it was the same person because it's the same person, it's the same thing every single time, yet it continues to happen.

Now, reasons why it continues to happen? There are many. Everyone wants to throw in their opinion of why it is, which is why we're having this episode, because some of it falls down to responsibility. It falls down to different legal reasons why some of these things haven't been prevented.

Meaning, I referenced the Oxford Township shooting in Michigan where the kid, Ethan Crumbley, was in the principal's office with the gun in his backpack in that office. Based on everything that they had seen, even just that day, even if they didn't know anything about Ethan Crumbley for his entire life, all they had was observing what they saw that day. It was enough reason to search through his stuff. Had they searched and gone through it, had they gotten directly involved — think about that as an overarching kind of theme — getting directly involved and took action, they likely could have prevented that from happening. They could have saved lives.

This is what frustrates me so much and gets me so angry because still in 2022, even though how many decades of school shootings have gone on, yes, they are statistically almost non-existent, right? They're very, very rare. Meaning if I took the number of schools in the country, multiplied that by the number of days of school in the year, you'd get some number, and then that would be what the denominator, right, or the numerator would be how many school shootings there were. It's a very, very, very small amount. But the impact of them is so significant, it should be the most important thing.

Meaning, it's not like someone being late or missing school for a week or dropping out of a class that has immediate and potential long-term effects. But a school shooting rips a community apart and rips a nation apart. Everyone feels that when they see it happen. It's awful.

So, that's kind of my initial thoughts on it, but Greg, we did want to focus on some of the responsibilities of school, where this fits in legally. Someone could say, "Well, we can't go through and search everyone. We can't do this." And there's always a delicate balance between our civil liberties and our rights versus security, right? We have it really good here in the United States, which is why I think bad things can happen is because we have an open and free society. We're not doing the "can't have it both ways."

We're not doing the Israeli model where, "Oh, you set a bag down for too long in an airport? We're just going to kill you." We don't do that. We don't play by those rules. We have a more stringent standard, people, and we have something called the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, which I'm a huge fan of. So, that's why, but I don't want to get into that kind of, it was just what legally, because I know a lot of administrators maybe feel like their hands are tied, or maybe they feel like they can't do anything, or we don't want to overstep our boundaries. We don't want to invade someone's privacy, then we're going to have a lawsuit or something.

No, no, you're spot on, Brian. We go with what you know, legal. Don't make up new rules. Stick with what works, what's on the books.

So, that's kind of my initial thoughts on this, Greg, and I want to throw it to you to narrow the focus down of everything that I brought up into what we are going to talk about, which is some of the legal side of this.

I totally love that. And Brian, folks, Brian was not trying to be pedantic when he called it the Israeli model. The Israelis have a team that combs the sand around their border every single day, a number of times a day, to find a footprint of somebody that might be sneaking in or sneaking out. And if you set your bag down at a bus stop or at the train station or at an airport, not only are you going to be suspect, and they're going to blow the bag in place, but you may be shot and killed. Certainly, in some areas, if you go up on a rooftop for any length of time, you could be shot and killed. Why? Because they've got extreme security issues there. So, the more extreme the security issue, the less freedoms the personnel that live in that environment are allowed, which leads us to Brian's point about the petri dish. Not that Brian needs me to defend him, but I totally agree with him on this. It's a closed system, which means it's like Jell-O. Every time you poke it, there's a repercussion that you can read.

But folks, write down the word "consequences." There are consequences to your actions, and if you don't understand the law behind the consequences, you're going to be pissed off all day for the wrong reason. So, I had a person write me, and they said, "I can't believe that these students were strip-searched over vape pens." So, we're going to talk about vape pens. This school has a policy against vape pens. It's a written policy, it's been enacted. You can't have possession of it. We'll get you suspended. And guess what? Teachers do have the right to do a strip search. A school can strip search a minor without parental consent or the presence of a parent in any extraordinary circumstance, Brian. So, if they feel the kid's got a gun or a bomb or a Molly cocktail or any of those other things, yeah, I'm sure you have to define what that extraordinary circumstance is.

So, they say, "Immediacy of the harm," okay, "or the threat, the credibility of the source." All of these things have to come to play, so it's probable cause 101, but here it drops to reasonable suspicion, as long as you have a credible source of the information. But a vape pen is a rule. It's like having a pack of cigarettes on school grounds that you're not supposed to. So, what happened is here, you had overreach. Here, the teachers read New Jersey versus T.L.O. and they said, "Yes, I have the right to conduct a strip search." The four-point standard: immediacy of harm or threat, reliability of information, alternatives to the strip search wouldn't have worked. You get what I'm trying to say? "And we followed protocol because the female teacher came in and did it right."

Brian, the big question is, is the juice worth the squeeze when you had two other companion cases? And I'll just throw them in for comparison. You had the companion case in Olathe, Kansas, just a couple of days ago. School resource officer assumes the kid's got a gun. An 18-year-old student tells the student to come with them to the principal's office, and he wants to enact this search policy to find the gun. A kid now knows he's had, pulls out the gun, shoots the resource officer and the superintendent of schools, and then the school resource officer shoots them.

Listen, that was a situation where the school resource officer had the right to say, "You freeze, get down on the ground." There was enough probable cause from the credible source to do his... didn't have to be a strip search to find that gun. But then let's compare to the one that you talked about with Ethan Crumbley. Crumbley's in the principal's office after making credible threats for 18 months, but certainly for that day, and he's got the gun in the bag, and nobody wants to search him. Why, Brian? Because they don't understand the laws and the limits of the laws.

Right. I mean, doesn't that feel that we are not in a... Look, you've got a border exception to the search warrant rule. You've got an amendment, yeah, yeah, yeah, yes. Do you see what I'm trying to say? So, all the laws apply, but if you don't know them, look, you have a lesser expectation of privacy at school. The kid doesn't have the right to really. So, you search in his bag.

So, jump into, because that was going to be what we should really, excuse me, cover first is what is my expectation of privacy in school? Because there's a little bit of difference between public school and private school. A public school is a state institution run by the government, whether that's a county, state, local, whatever it is. It's the state, meaning the government. So, it's taxpayer-funded, so that's a little bit different than the private school down the street, right? So, that's a little bit different just in terms of what they can.

I totally agree. I think you technically would have more rights in the state institution probably than you could in the private school, but let's do it this way, okay? Let's see it from the view of different characters. So, you're the school resource officer. You're a police officer, sworn to uphold the laws, okay? So, you have a whole bunch of freedoms no matter where it is that you're working, whether you walk into a 7-Eleven or a school or an airport or on the street. And if you have reasonable suspicion that rises to probable cause, you have a whole panacea of things that you can do, and people can object, but they can't resist you, Brian. You have the law to stop those people or open a bag or pull over a car or do those. Okay, now that doesn't change much when you come on school grounds. Do you get what I'm trying to say? Because you're a police officer sworn to uphold, and that goes with you everywhere.

But now you're a teacher. Now you're a teacher, and you see a kid outside the school. The police officer has a bunch more freedoms than you to contact that kid if you think something's wrong. You have none, okay? Because you're not on school grounds anymore. So, the law is that the expectation of privacy on school grounds has to be balanced against the substantial interest that teachers and administrators have to maintain discipline on school grounds and classrooms, and that's got to be weighed in that environment where that danger could take.

Right, but it doesn't extend out. It affects the plumbing or it affects the...

On school grounds, exactly, right. So, or how students are acting. It has to affect some involvement or interfere with some day-to-day operation of the school because they're justified to have a legitimate need to maintain an environment where learning can take place. Right, that's in the law. Okay? So, therefore, if you're three feet from school grounds and you're carrying a backpack, a school administrator can't walk across that three feet and then join the same freedoms that they have to search you on school grounds. You get what I'm trying to say?

So, the idea is that you have a bunch of freedoms on school grounds to have a lower standard. A reasonable standard is much lower than in public even. Okay? So, like a person walking down the street with a backpack on, a police officer has to establish probable cause to even go and... Now, you can go up and contact the person, "Hi, how are you?" But the person can say, "I'm Mickey Mouse, kiss my [expletive]," and walk off. You don't have anything. But in school, that doesn't apply, Brian.

So, the idea of rushing to the search for the vape pens and going to the point to have people get down to their underwear, then shake out their underwear in front of the female nurse seems ludicrous to me. Do they have the right to strip search? Yes. But did this meet the standard that we're looking for, the reasonableness standard? No, because they could have kept all those people in there. They could have called, they would have taken longer. "Hey, I need you to come down, pick up your kid, find out if they got a vape pen or whatever," or just take the thing saying, "Hey, we think it's a credible source. We're sending you home for the day." You get what I'm saying? Have your parents contact her. There could have been an alternative, and that's the whole idea. Was there an alternative to the strip search? And did they try those alternatives, Brian? And look, they didn't try anything in Ethan Crumbley and people got shot. What are we thinking here, right?

So, you have those two examples are opposite ends of the spectrum, right? One where they knew their rights. Well, they... So, in terms of the vape pen one, right, they knew what they could do, they understood the law, and then they just wielded it in a manner that was unreasonable, I would say, right? It didn't meet the standard of what that... They didn't meet the standard of the intent or purpose of that law, right? This was for something that, yes, it's a rule, you can't have a vape pen, but in three months, that kid turns 18, and it's totally legal for them to do that anyway. You know, it's just a different case.

Now, the Ethan Crumbley case where he's showing violent threats, or saying violent threats, he's got the drawings that he had out and the screaming for help, and the gun, and this, and all these indicators here, he's acting out and he gets sent to the principal. Obviously, that's the time when that law should be applied. So, in that case, it's the opposite where they maybe they didn't understand that law, they didn't know the rights they had, for some reason, didn't feel that it was necessary to exercise the rights that the school has. And I wouldn't even just say the rights, I would say the duty, the duty to protect the students.

I love the duty. I think that they're responsible, and they were negligent in that case because they didn't do... It goes back to, they knew or should have known given what was seen, that that's more than enough to at least pull him out of class, search him, search his locker, get his parents in there, and "You're not going back to class today." Now, maybe you're coming back tomorrow, maybe we do an investigation and you're fine, but you're not doing it today. And this is that, that's the point, is it goes beyond just what rights they have and can wield; it's what duty do they have.

Right, right.

And there's the difference, Brian, I think there is the difference. So, New Jersey versus T.L.O. is the law we're talking about, folks, look it up. Brian, I'll post it on the site so you can take a look at it. But the idea is that it's got a two-pronged test. And so, anytime you're talking about a school search, it says it's justified in inception. In other words, the search itself is legal on its face, and then it's conducted in a manner that's reasonably related to the scope and circumstances that started this whole thing. So, for example, it's the elephant in the matchbox. If you're looking for an elephant on school grounds, it's unlikely you're going to find a matchbox. So, what are you doing looking at [a matchbox]? Do you hear what I'm trying to say? So, that's an easy one that everybody out there can understand.

So, let's look at this. Is a crime or a school rule being violated? This is the problem with the vape pens, because it was a school rule. The second thing is, we have a particular person or group of people that we suspect are committing a crime or a violation of school rules. We met that on vape pen, right? Then the suspected criminal law or school violation has physical evidence that's associated that may be lost if we don't intervene. Now, we don't want the destruction of evidence. You get what I'm trying to say?

Yeah.

And it's likely that that evidence is found on this person or this group of people. So, we're all doing great on the vape pen, okay? But the need, Brian, the need to do the invasive search. And again, when we say strip search, the argument here is, "Were they naked? No. Did any teachers raise their buttocks? No." But even me going down to my underwear, okay, and you're saying, "Yeah, but the kids swim at lunch so they're in a swimsuit." Yeah, you get it. Yeah, but you're not the arbiter of that. You don't decide. I decided to put the swimsuit on you, but in this situation, had it been a knife or had it been a gun or had it been bullets for a gun or an incendiary device, I don't think it would have ever made the news because it's all legal. But when it was a vape pen, right, which is clearly in that New Jersey versus T.L.O., because it's a thing, and it's a violation of school rules, this is where we go back to your private school. Private school can tell you, "Kiss my [expletive], you're done," because they have those rules. In a public school, you have to follow the law, and so the law gives the teachers the right to keep order and maintain order and in four school violations. But, Brian, did they need to go that extreme on this one when clearly we have to take a look at Olathe, Kansas, where the officer had every right in the world to expect that it was going to be gunplay, and it was in fact gunplay? Come on, we don't want to wait that long, or Crumbley. You see what I mean? On a spectrum.

Go back to the Kansas one real quick and explain that.

So, the Kansas school resource officer is a sworn police officer that happens to be working at a school. He's armed, okay? He's a savvy street cop that took additional training to be allowed to be in the school to protect the school. Now, his primary goal is that when crimes — not violations of school policy, like a haircut — okay, he's when there's criminal activity, he intervenes. So, he gets word that this student, this 18-year-old student, has been talking crap and is carrying a gun. So, he goes over, tells the kid, "Hey, you gotta come with me, we're going to go see the principal." At that point, he had every right to pat that kid down for the gun, but he doesn't. He waits till they get to the principal's office and introduce him, says, "Hey, I've got witnesses that say this kid's got a gun." And then the kid goes, "Jiggers," it's up, pulls out a gun and shoots both of them. Okay, so now the school resource officer has to escalate his level of force and shoots the student.

So, my thing is, that's one extreme, Brian. That's an extreme where, listen, clearly you had the probable cause to bring the kid down to the student's office. A pat-down search would have likely stopped the inevitability of the shootout. Okay, there are consequences when you bring a gun to school. Then we got Crumbley, who was on the other end of the spectrum, Brian, where he felt no consequences. He felt fine operating in his environment and bringing a gun to school and doing all this stuff. Why? Because every time he was caught, his parents backed him up. It was clear on the record, and his school administrators didn't go far enough even though they were obligated to check his bag. And then in the middle, we got a school that's trying to do the right thing, the vape pen school. You get what I'm trying to say? And they went way over their authority.

So, why is it that we understand that now we have to have an AED (Automatic External Defibrillator) in the schools to start a kid's heart, that we're whatever the fentanyl counter-drug is, like Narcan (Opioid Overdose Reversal Medication)? They're having that in schools. They've got no problem with that.

Yeah.

Shields and trauma kits, and so, but we still don't understand New Jersey versus T.L.O. We still are wrong. And what you said, a word, so, "obligated." What is it that a school is obligated to do? Because, again, when these legal terms are defined, they are meant to be used as a framework to lay over a decision-making process or why you did something or articulated. They are somewhat, they're clear because they're written down, but they're open to interpretation because they have to be open to interpretation, right? So, here's that. Sorry about that, my head just ripped it right off. Really shrunk. No, yeah.

But they're not, they're not when you listen, I just want to clarify one thing that you're saying to make sure everybody understands, Brian is not telling you that there's a spirit of the law, right? There, but what Brian is saying is it's open to interpretation. That's what the courts do every day. The courts come in and say, "Here's the charges, here's the suspicion, here's the..."

Exactly.

...Yeah, or where it gets, where someone says, tries to push back on or something, something goes to Supreme Court, they say, "Okay, here's where you went wrong in interpreting this law, or here's where, yes, because under this precedent, what you did fits underneath this law." So, that gets adjudicated differently. But what I meant by that is like, we just listed out all these different reasons of why someone, the reasons for conducting a strip search on a student, right? You just listed all those out, and what a search is, and what that means. But what is the school obligated to do? Because this is my issue, is that, they're obligated, do they have a duty to protect the students in that school? Yeah.

Yeah, right.

Because we have things like fire drills. You have to go through a background investigation if you want to be a teacher to make sure you don't have some prior criminal conviction that could affect what you're doing. There are all these different things. So, there are different ways we have, protocols in there.

Exactly.

But what is it like? Because that's, are we not, has the legislation and what those rules are not caught up with the times, or what is it like?

So, T.L.O., New Jersey versus T.L.O., is an '85 case. Yeah, so it's in the time frame where people knew there was a need for it. And let me go back to the street for a minute, okay? There is no requirement for the school to notify the parents that a search is taking place and that they're contacting a kid. But wouldn't you say that it's great school policy? Whether or not the search was properly accomplished, that's a legal thing, but wouldn't it be great to know that the students' parents are going to be notified as soon as possible, or a call was made? So, just because there's not a legal standard to do it doesn't mean you shouldn't. You see what I'm trying to say? Yeah. Because what you can do, right, and stem off all these problems.

But let's talk about this in context first, Brian. You went to a bus station and you put a quarter in and you put some items in a locker at the bus station. Now, the bus station locker has less expectation of privacy than your home. Your home has a whole bunch of protections, but it's got a ton more than your school locker, because your school locker is school property on school property in the school building. It's so, so the law says that any juvenile that's in a school — and it's different again when we go up above juveniles to like a college setting, Brian — but the same rules apply because in a collegiate setting, if it's a public school, the standard is still probable cause. What I mean by that is, you've got to balance the expectation of privacy against the interests of the teachers and administrators in maintaining discipline on the school grounds. They have a legitimate need to maintain an environment that is safe and where learning can occur. So, when the law says that, that becomes a standard.

So, in the school bus terminal thing, or in the bus terminal thing, a cop has to have probable cause. They have to go. They're going to get it. No such standard on school grounds whatsoever. Your bag, your pocket, your person, your kid, okay, even if they're only violating a school policy. You get what I'm trying to say? And what do we see? We see Denver schools have a walkout because the kids disagree with it. Yeah, it's all good, you're a kid, I get it, but there's a law that governs that. So, sometimes we get so hooked up in the egregious conduct of the people that are playing it that we don't look back to the law.

So, that's why I get pissed off about Crumbley, because the school knew or should have known that he had a gun, and they should have checked the bag, and they didn't. They were obligated to check the bag, and they fell short of their duty. Okay? So, then we got Olathe, Kansas, where everybody did everything right, but they did it a little late in the game. Yeah, the guy fired off some rounds. And then we got a little preliminary and a little draconian, in my terms, where the vape pen. You see the balance that I'm trying to create? And the reason is, I want every one of our viewers and listeners to come to their own reasonable conclusion on this. The conclusion is, Brian, the law is very simple. It's very simply written, but the interpretation of the law by a person that's not a barrister or quickly without going to a judge or an attorney, you can get a legal opinion from attorney Brian and say, "We are faced with this situation. What would you do?" And the attorney's going to go, "Let him go. It's a [expletive] vape pen."

Well, that would have been, what is likely to occur from not searching this or not doing this? Well, I think in the case in Kansas, we talked about, "Hey, someone talked about this person having a gun." Or the Ethan Crumbley cases, everything is putting out. Those are so serious where it's like, "Hey, Susie has a vape pen." Okay, well, one, that's bad for your health. It's against school policy. But that doesn't affect the other students, that's not a threat to their safety. It might be a threat to her health, but that's your choice. But it's also a threat to the school rules. That's the way they viewed it. And everything violated the rules, and the rules apply to everyone, and they apply to everyone equally. However, the enforcement of those rules are different based on the situation at hand, and based on what the potential breaking of the rule is. You know, you're not allowed to bring a gun to school. That's a very different rule than, "You're not allowed to bring a vape pen to school," right?

So, let me piss everybody off. Let me piss everybody off and go to George Floyd. Okay? So, if they had another way of handling George Floyd, because you've got people out there right now going, "Yeah, he's a prior felon, he doesn't care." He really violated his constitutional rights because he had due process. You see what I'm saying? So, what I'm saying, if you're a cop or a security guard or a teacher right now, and you take a look at the situation and then, and the inevitability doesn't have an outcome where it's immediately going to get a riot in the school and violence and all those other things, because a rule violation could, like, the Z thing with the Russian support for the Russians in the Ukraine right now. It's a letter Z. And so, an Olympic person had that on her tunic, and they said, "Oh, we're going to strip you of this, and you'll never play in the Olympics." Look, that's a rule violation, okay? And as bad as it is, it's like giving the Nazi salute or doing the mustache thing and thinking you'll get away with it, Brian. There are consequences for that, but the immediate consequences don't need to be a strip search. And you have to follow that balance.

If it's like, for example, people don't understand because they're not paying attention to the right news sometimes, I'm not calling anybody out, but listen to what I'm saying. There are school shootings every week. For example, there was a school shooting yesterday where three students were shot, and it was a drive-by.

Wow.

Cars drove by. Football games are a big one. Honestly, rounds. Those are always happening.

It's not, they don't get sensationalized or make them. But it's not a targeted shooter, right, where it was an internal threat. It's a fight between two groups typically or two people or a crime of a robbery.

The high school football, the football season is like the deadliest time because there are all kinds of shooting in parking lots. They happen everywhere all across the United States. It barely ever makes news. So, now we're talking late. Now we're talking that there's a specific set of laws that if you prostitute or use drugs or have a gun on school property, whether school's open or closed, whether within a thousand feet or whatever your jurisdiction is. That's what I'm saying, Brian. We don't need more laws. What we need to do is understand the enforcement of those laws and what the consequences of that enforcement. If we underreport and undervalue threats, credible threats from witnesses. Like, there's a case that's going on that might be a companion case that you want to add to. There's a poor girl from a publicly funded school, and I believe it's in Florida, but I'm probably wrong, but it's one of those states that touch Florida. And the young girl's Instagram, no idea what that is, was hacked, and the person put credible threats on Instagram as if it was that female. So, the coppers came in, they arrested her, they searched the house, kept her in juvenile detention, and it was horrific, Brian. Yeah, but listen, the cops were on the side, right on this one, because they had credible threats. That's the Florida school district right now that's calling and the idea... Sorry about that, gosh darn spam calling. I can't shut it off because I'm the only one in Colorado with a landline.

But the idea is that that poor girl endured, Brian, what she shouldn't have had to endure, but on the obligation of the balance between the interest of the school and safety and security and in a safe work environment and where learning can occur unimpeded, it was the right call to make. So, listen, somebody's going to pay because there's some lawyer that's going to take the case and make a good argument, but that's going to weaken the law because look at what we did with the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooter where he kept pushing him around to different places, right? Because he had a mental illness that nobody addressed and he had all these signs. And then he ends up shooting. Brian, you said it at the beginning, we could name that tune in three notes. Why? Because they all start falling into buckets, and that's why Langman and all these other people are making money writing books about it and having their podcasts about it, Brian, because they can show us the buckets. But the idea is, we're not doing anything with it when we actually hear, feel, smell, or taste a credible threat. We're taking too much time with the gosh darn vape pen and not enough time saying, "Son, we have to open your bag." And that's what I'm trying to say here, is that we've got echelons of security that are already set in place, but nobody's afraid to pull the metaphor trigger, Brian, because they don't want to violate somebody's rights. This is one of those times where we have to take a step back and say, "What's good for the greater number of people?" And once we go from reasonable suspicion to probable cause, you have to act. You have to act first and you have to act fast, or you're going to have trouble.

I know you agree with that, but how do we get, how do we make that obvious and palatable to the schools that are failing, or that are trying their best?

And so, that's, I don't want to come across as bashing this, you've got so many other, what are the day-to-day problems in a high school in the United States? Oh my gosh, there's a lot. There are people, there are kids being kids, fighting, and there are threats all day long, right? All day long, there are people not showing up for class, there are people staying later than class, there are kids who don't even have their families, don't have enough money to feed them. Like, there's so, and then let alone what are we teaching them, and what are they actually learning, and how are we measuring that? So, it's not that I'm trying to downplay any of those issues or say that this is so glaringly obvious. It's not glaringly obvious. It is from us, from the outside perspective of what we do and how we do it, but it's not glaringly obvious to a lot of the faculty and staff and administrators. They feel like they're under attack.

Well, they are because, you know, some teacher steps in and then they decide to search the kid's bag, and he doesn't have anything. And then that kid is on TikTok that night with his parents complaining about this, that, and his civil rights were violated. And now that goes viral. And now that teacher is getting threats. Like, it's an insane world. But, you're going to have to put up with that stuff.

Noise, noise, right? It didn't happen as much and at the scale that it does now today, but it's always been there. There's always going to be the parent that comes in and, "No, there's nothing wrong with my kid," and their kid's the biggest [expletive] in the entire school, and everyone knows it, right? But that's always been there. So, how we deal with it is that prioritizing this stuff, like, I even get what they're saying. I would understand the reasoning in some aspect of why we want to be hard on this vape thing, because rules are rules, and we enforce every rule, and I get it, right? We don't agree with that. We don't, we weaken all the rules, and I agree with them. Right? You have, if you have a standard, you have to hold everyone to that standard, otherwise that standard is meaningless, and just take it off your list of things that you have. Take it off the platitude on the wall if you're not holding people to that and holding everyone to that equally.

So, but things aren't black and white, right? And you do have, you do have the authority and the power to exercise and enforce things as you see fit. So, maybe in that school, it's more serious of a threat because more, more kids in that school have access to firearms. Okay, well, that's an environmental, that's something in that environment that's unique, maybe to that area where that happens. So, that's a, no, you can use that in your decision and your reasoning why you did something, right? And then you could do that for the vape pen search. They just, I think they went too far with what they needed to do, you know? But I don't think they thought in the moment that they absolutely, I guarantee you, and that's why you have to give the gift of time. What am I doing and why am I doing it? What are the likely consequences? And what you don't hear, when these things come out, is that school has like the worst vaping problem out of anywhere in the state, and some kid died three years ago because he was vaping too much nicotine. I mean, there's usually a legitimate reason for how you go down that path, and it starts small, and someone has to go, "Wait, about what are we really trying to accomplish here?"

And I think that that question alone is, "What are we trying to accomplish here?" And so, that way, when the kid makes a credible threat of a kid that might have a gun, okay, what are we trying to accomplish here? Well, the immediate safety of every student in the school, right? That has to be. Now, immediate doesn't work on the vape one. It's like, "Okay, can we talk about this this afternoon with the student if we know they're doing it?" What they're doing is breaking a rule, but it's not, it's the rule, not all rules are as, have the same, treated equally. Yes, they have the same level of severity to them, right? And when you try to wield the same, I think, the same power in a different set of circumstances, that's typically when you get case law, right? Typically these things come out when it's, "No, you went too far in this case," or, "You know what I mean, because you're trying to apply this standard to this situation, and the merits of this situation didn't warrant that response," right? It didn't necessarily.

So, but, and this is not as complicated, I think, as it sounds sometimes.

So, let me give you a couple of complications, though, Brian. Here again, our age difference is going to create dissonance, and I'll give you this example. When I was in high school, if the girl got pregnant in high school, she dropped out of high school, and there were schools and areas for wayward females, because it was a different world. But guess what? We didn't want anybody getting the idea that pregnancy out of wedlock. Listen, Brian, that was Detroit 101. Yeah.

Now, let me give you this. Lon, my dear neighbor Lanny, was born and raised in an area not too far from Gunnison, Colorado, and he gave the same experience as my dad and a lot of my friends' parents that I know now, and that was that on the way to school, they carried their Browning 16-gauge or their single-action 20-gauge, and they hunted coyotes or bunnies or pheasant for the family table on the way, and they kept it in their locker at school, and there was never any problem with it. And that's why movies from that era, like, what's the movie about the two killers that go and get the family at night? (e.g., In Cold Blood, Truman Capote thing). That's why back then, people had the popcorn, and you had to be a certain age to see that movie, and they never showed any killing. They just told you what happened in the film, and the idea was, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe that." Brian, we came from an era where we don't truly, meaning my age, don't truly understand that the average 11 or 12-year-old is probably sexually active when they never were, probably has access to a pornographic communication or influences with drugs that we never, ever had. I remember the kids smoking dope for the first time when I went to Metro Park outside of Detroit and actually seeing marijuana and thinking, "Oh my God, I saw film on that. Look at those evil kids."

Yeah, we only knew. Right, right, right, right.

So, the law has been around for a long time. This law for New Jersey versus T.L.O. has been around since '85, and it's been challenged every day of every month of every year since then. But common sense rules tell us that reasonable suspicion has to build to probable cause, and then I would add the extra step of even though it's legal, what are the likely consequences of my action or inaction? You get what I'm saying? So, I think I'm agreeing with you, but I'm just asking you to also understand that there are people like me out there that have to study a little harder because we don't understand, "What's the matter with kids these days?"

No, that's a great point. And I think that highlights another issue with passing, "Hey, this is now going to be the rule." Well, man, that doesn't work in some areas, right? So, you can go to in some, especially in major cities that have crime issues, like, within that area of a school, like, having a gun or drugs or something like that, it carries a higher sentence for that illegal activity in that immediate area than it otherwise would, because they've declared this is a school zone area. Kids walk up and down here. And so, even outside the actual footprint of the school, in that area will be an enhanced, some sort of enhanced law that says, "Within this area, we're saying because they don't want dudes selling dope out on their front porch right in front of the school." You know what I mean? They don't want gang shootouts going on right there. So, they've got to give the kids a chance.

Right, right, you're exactly right. You want to create that environment. But in Gunnison, that wouldn't work because people are like, "Wait a minute, we all have rifles, and we all hunt in here, and that's no." You. So, what works in one... So, you can make this law, and everyone will slap the table, and everyone will go, "Yeah, well, that makes perfect sense. Duh, we should do that. This will help." But then when you try to apply that to other places, you go, "Well, that doesn't work here." "Well, no, this is the rule." It's like, "But wait a minute." It's like, right. You can't, the same rules don't apply in the same way in every single area. There are differences, right?

And that's why your earlier point was well taken that, listen, when you talk about how the law is adjudicated, that's where you clearly look at it, and the jury and the judge and the lawyers, that's their job to pick out those shreds that fit in those threads for whether that fit, and they don't. But my issue, and that's the legal side of finally when it goes to court and it gets argued. That's your best case, that's like the scientific peer review process, right? That's where they're going to go battle it out and do that. But what I'm talking about is more so on that individual level, at these administrators, teachers, at these schools where they don't have a good understanding of, they might know the rules, but how do you apply those rules? How do you enforce rules and laws? And we're talking about that, that's what we're talking about is, it's difficult, but it takes everything. Everything in our legal system is based on, the reasonable man theory, the common sense approach, what's the, and which is important because you have to be grounded in, okay, what are we really trying to accomplish here? What's the overall intent? What is the purpose behind this rule? The purpose behind the vape pen rule is very different than the gun rule at a school. Like, completely, like, night and day, not even the same sport, let alone the same ballpark. You get what I'm saying? But if it's in the list of the 25 rules we enforce here, it can bleed together, and we go, "Nope, now you all got to take your clothes off." It's like, "Wait, what?"

When should you be looking at that then, Brian? I consider you a subject matter expert and a peer. And when I ask you, when we look at it after it's occurred, isn't that a little too late? Yes, of course. So, where should we intervene? Because sometimes it's the...

Well, we always obviously always bring everything back to training, because you can be told, I can brief you on the rules, Greg.

Yep.

But that's not enough. I have to explain, "Here's an example of when you would use this. Here's an example when you wouldn't use this."

Yeah, but we're not doing that. What we're doing is we're running around with paintballs in school showing an active shooter drill. Yeah, and piling up chairs so they're not trying to say. But because we don't go to the...

No, Greg, teachers in Oxford Township, they had their ALICE (Active Shooter/Intruder Response) training 10 days before that shooting.

So, there you go. Alright, we got our activities, we got our shooting training. They did it. And this is why it pisses me off so much is because that's a perfect example of, "Hey, they went through this training a week and a half later, kid brought a gun to school and killed a bunch of people." So, it's pretty easy to go, "Well, this training didn't work. This doesn't help us in this situation." But did that happen? No. People go, "[expletive], we need more." This is junk. This is what we're talking about. Our conversation right now has more value to a teacher and administration. Now, maybe I'm just completely full of myself, some arrogant [expletive] that thinks that. But this conversation...

Yeah, this, thank you, Brian. You're generally not that guy, so go on.

So, no, but this conversation is a perfect example of all you would have to do is come up and have someone from the school brief and go, "Look, here's an example, vape pen situation, where we went wrong. Here's the example, Ethan Crumbley, where we went wrong. Here's an example, do we find one where we went right? This is how we apply these rules." Meaning, this is the end. We briefed that, we briefed, you understand ALICE, that's all a teacher or administrator, whatever, need. They go, "Oh, I get it now. Here's what I'm going to do."

Said, "We have so much in-service and pre-service training," yeah, that "where are we going to fit four hours to do constructive training like you're talking about?" Part test training. Brian, you have a totally different, they have days and weeks. So, what I'm saying is that you could make a case that the school is negligent because the school is not creating adaptive learners and advanced critical thinkers. And I'm talking about from the student level, because you don't want to burden the student with thinking that there might be a school shooter. Well, you know what, all of that time you're spending, the kids are reading more than you think they are. They already know there's that possibility, and your kid may be thinking of being a shooter. Why? Because I haven't been listened to and I've got this whole thing about bullying. Bullying is, is, exists all the time, and I see a kid that committed suicide because of bullying, and everybody says, "Well, we're going to pass Mason's Law or Julia's Law or do any of this other stuff." What you guys are doing to try to make yourself feel better, feel better, and I feel horribly emotional for what you're going through, yeah. But listen, the same bandwidth for criminality, the same bandwidth for school shooter, insider threat, suicide. These are broken humans that are reaching out and asking for help.

Yep.

Now, Ethan Crumbley's asking, he literally said, "I need help." [Expletive] paper next to his guns and his people dying and shooting, "I need help, please." But do you think that was the first time that he did it? Nope. Just before he pulled the gun. And the same thing when your kid comes home and you're asking them, "How was your day?" and the whole kid's demeanor is changing. People tell me all the time, "There were no articulatable or perceivable pre-event indications." Then go to the autopsy protocol. You take a look at those things. You take a look at the kid cutting, or you take a look at the kid that's dehydrated, or you take a look at the kid that dropped out from the school. There is rarely if ever a person that doesn't have a list of grievances before something happens, right? And if you don't build then the time to read them, or you don't know what you're looking for, Brian, then you can miss them. And then guilt steps in, and you can't afford. Your human ego system does not let you look back and go, "I saw all the signs, Brian. I saw every one of them, and I neglected them." What would that make you? How would you live the rest of your life? Do you see it? So, your protective chemicals in your brain that build on endurance, the human performance side of your brain, want to keep you alive. Okay? It's counterintuitive to want to kill yourself. Do you understand? So, those signals must be out there. We just have to find and read the wavelength. So, my thing is, application of law means you've already read the wavelength and you're now there, and now you're on the bubble, Brian. Yeah.

And I think this misunderstanding or not fully understanding the law will lead you to fear it. So, they fear it in a lawsuit against them because they don't know the law. If you know what you can and cannot do, and you've trained for that, and you understand policy and procedure, and you can articulate, "This is why I made that decision," there you have a leg to stand on. That's it. They can't come after you if you fall underneath what was a legal precedent. Now, they can get a bunch of people together and say, "Well, now we're going to change it going forward."

Well, great, then change it. Good. Cool.

Exactly. That's what you want to do. When you've changed...

Yeah, and call. Let me know what it is, and all the noise is different. I will change our rules to match the law accordingly. And that's it. And I think that's the problem is we're not giving, we're not giving these, the teachers, administrators, all that stuff the confidence and the competence they need. Now, they're going to push back and say, "Well, we also don't have the resources to handle every kid that says something and does it." Okay, I get it. Then you be prepared to reap the whirlwind because you can't say that that's what you're saying. Then there should be a national outcry where every teacher in one of these major metropolitan cities just came out and said, "Look, we cannot do this. This isn't about our pay or our benefits. This is a broken system. This is an all stop right now because something bad is going to happen." Well, that'll get some attention. You get what I'm saying?

The idea, exactly. So, when you're saying, "Listen, I'm not going to pay attention to the car ahead of me without a blinker or that doesn't have a license plate light or a tail light." I'm willfully going to do that because justice is misapplied, and therefore it's going to give a greater chance for those that the justice has been previously misapplied to, to live their lives without this additional scrutiny. Get it? Yeah, I get the argument, but then what happens when the rear-end fatal occurs, and the insurance company comes looking and understands that your agency was the one that didn't enforce it? If it's not equally enforced, then guess what? It's not enforced at all. And so, what I'm trying to tell you is the same thing applies to schools. The Ethan Crumbley case is going to change school shootings because of the lawsuits. And when you go all the way back to Sandy Hook, you take a look, and they continually sued the gun manufacturer and finally got a huge payout from the gun manufacturer. Folks, it's your kid. Okay? It's not the gun. It's not the gun manufacturer, and I'm going to get hate mail for this, but it's your kid. Like, if your kid commits suicide in the garage through carbon monoxide poisoning, okay, you're not going to sue the manufacturer of the automobile. Okay? But the idea is that, Brian, we have to take a common sense approach to schools. Schools are very dangerous places. They weren't always, but yeah, they kind of were because there were movies backed by Sidney Poitier and The Up the Down Staircase and all these other films about kids in trouble. And what's the one with gosh darn, the Natalie Wood and James Dean and the kid with the knife at the Griffin Observatory? That whole thing was about the kids gone wrong, and we can't control our kids in school.

And you made a point the other day, "Why doesn't this happen anywhere near the numbers at colleges?"

Why? Because kids have matured, grown up. Their brains have changed. That's what I found. That's the whole point. Any one of these that has ever happened, and let's say we, you stopped it, and that kid, well, they grow up, and their brain starts to form, and they either, maybe they fix themselves, become successful, maybe they just do whatever, it doesn't matter. But maybe they get help. If you get, but, and even if they don't, the likelihood, once they get past that horrible [expletive] years of, like, 14 through 18. For all of us.

Yeah, for everyone. They suck. It's supposed to be shitty. It's not a good time. That relationship that you just made with your words, if I was sitting down with Nico and Andrea years ago, that's the words that I used with them. "Everything blows. You're going to have your heart broken. Your first date is not going to be the one that you marry all the time." If you can get them out, if you can get them out past stage 18 and doing something like, well, they're less likely to go out and do that in society. I mean, they really, really are. Like, after that point, they really have to put effort into wanting to do something like that. And normally, they're found out. Normally, they're found out. You're exactly right.

So, most people will grow out of it. I mean, hey, remember, I don't want to say the place or his name, remember the kid in one of the courses not long ago at the place you keep going back to? And he was kind of an odd person, and he had an odd story, an odd story. And I said, "Hey, why don't you go tell you wherever?" And he sat down at a group of two, two big, jacked, burly SWAT guys. You know what I mean, totally outside of what this kid is. Just had a conversation. We started talking, and he's like, "Look, man, I was the kid with a lot of problems."

Yeah, exactly.

And it was me, and I was in myself mentally going to a bad place, and I didn't have friends, and I didn't do this. And he's like, "I forced myself to change, and I force myself to talk with people, and I force..." And, you know what, man, that's a success. That kid did, he did it on his own. He made a choice. Who doesn't? Now, I know there are a lot of different contributing factors to that stuff in different circumstances for different people. Is if I can push that along and get them to go, "Hey, once you get out of here, things are going to be a little better." It's like the little insurgent, I tell her. She goes, "Well, that's unfair." I go, "Yeah, I get it. I go, this is completely unfair. You and I get to have to play by different rules. You have to do certain things that I don't, but I also have to do certain things that you know." "Well, this is unfair." "We'll get used to it because I'm going to be in your stuff all the time, and I'm going to be asking you questions, and I'll be going, 'What's this? And who's that? And what are you looking at? Let me see your phone.'" So, now after having that fight for a while, guess what? It's no longer a thing. It's now normal to her. And the longer you do that, the less likely it will be that you get that phone call, Brian.

And I'm telling you, that student you were talking about at one of our courses, is no different than we were teaching at JBLM (Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Fort Lewis McCord, and having people come up when we were talking about the, countering the effects of suicide and being able to call out people that are likely to. And people would come up to us at the break and go, "That's me. How do I get help?" Listen, your child, your co-worker, your brother wants to tell you that they're having a bad time, but we get so wrapped up in the present that we don't slow time down, give ourselves a gift of a new perspective, and say, "What's on your mind? What's on your heart?" Brian, if we stop to do that sometimes, we'll increase the fidelity of our marriage, we'll improve our relationships with our kids, right? Am I lying?

It's like, you gave the analogy, I can't remember where you first used it, but I started using it, the old Popeye the running dialogue, always complaining about something, and then the modern day is that movie Office Space, red Swingline stapler, "I'm going to burn this place down." Is all humans, yeah, we all have a running dialogue. Everyone has one. So, if I had the ability to literally stick a micro something in my ear, point a microphone at you, and hear what your inner dialogue is, I'd go, "Oh, I get it. I see what you're doing now." The pulse of your brain, right? What I'm saying is that person is on transmit constantly, constantly. So, I've got to try, and how do I tune into your inner dialogue? How do I know the difference between a kid who brings a gun to school because it's cool and he wants to show his friends and he got a new whatever for Christmas because his family are hunters, and then the kid who wants to bring a school and shoot someone? Oh, those are two different people. They're going to give off two, they have two different running dialogues. They're going to give off two different signals. It's the same thing with the freaking vape pen. What is this person? I get it, I get it, and we're beating that vape up only based on the fact that there are so many... Look, we've got teachers sleeping with students, we've got, right, inappropriate everything. And other students assaulting, fighting people.

And the problem is that when we make those equal arguments, Brian, we're going to miss the person that's the broken little snowflake, the crack in the Fabergé egg. Yeah, that's the one that we've got to spend our time on. And if we look, we spent a lot of time finding the class high average and the person that's going to go to the knowledge bowl and all that other stuff, right? But that wasn't why don't we clearly, neither of us, but why don't we take a step back, take a look at the laws that are already in place, and conduct realistic rehearsals? If all your rehearsals are at bang, then guess what? Some of the times you're going to win, and some of the times the bad guy's going to win. But if you move that dial back, Brian, and you start talking about pre-event indications and a level of seriousness, and you talk about reasonable suspicion and probable cause, your life is going to get easier, and you're going to stop a lot of bad things from happening.

One day you're going to step out of your front door, and a meteor splinter is going to hit you right between the eyes, no matter if you turn left or right. But almost everything else in your life is predictable and preventable.

Right, and preventable, I would add both of those. Yeah, that's, that's true.

Hey, look, real quick, Brian, I know we're coming in for [time]. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's take a look at Kip Kinkel. [Expletive] to his parents until he got a gun and then used the gun to kill his parents. Cleveland Harris locked a room from their parents because they illegally bought guns and stored them in their rooms. Adam Lanza, "If you don't buy me a gun, these are the consequences of my action." Listen, the kid in Marjory Stoneman Douglas, the same thing, couldn't wait to buy their gun. Look, I couldn't wait to buy a gun because I had these visions of hunting and being able to take down my first deer in the Upper Peninsula in Michigan, and I had planned on my entire life. I didn't plan on an extended tubular magazine so I could go to my school and erase all the hate or something. So, Brian, your thing about perspective is well taken. I'm just saying, folks, you've got to step back and take a look at the big picture. What likely spirals are.

Yeah, you're getting into the parenting aspect of this, which is obvious that most of these kids had horrible parents. If there's a parent listening to this podcast right now, they probably don't have the kid with the problem. You know what I'm saying?

I don't totally agree with that. If you're allowing the school to raise your kids, thank God for our school system. Yeah, thank God for our schools and our parents and our resource officers. People don't think we're bashing our cops and our lawyers and our judges. What we're just trying to do is shine a light on some of the apprehensions that people have that force them not to act, and the laws that allow people to think they can act to what end? I would ask.

I agree. So, we covered a lot. I'll put the links to some of these cases episode details for people to check out, and I know there's so much more we could get into with this, but I think, hopefully, our comparative, our comparison with these different types of cases offered a perspective that maybe you didn't see or hear before, or kind of opened up your eyes a little bit. I go, "Okay, I see what you're getting at here." We don't need to look for something new, we need to master the things that we already have right now.

Totally agree. Absolutely.

So, I hope, hopefully, that that did that. We did cover a lot. Do you have anything else to add, Greg?

If you're in a school environment, teachers and administrators can search you without either permission or a warrant, and they don't have to call your parents. Folks, if you're mixed up about that, look up New Jersey versus T.L.O. And you know what? Show up at your school and ask questions. I love parents that show up and ask questions.

Right. Yeah, but be prepared for the answers, right?

Yeah, but only do that if you have kids at the school. That's probably a good one. There's a lot going on right now where people are going to drive to Ohio school board meetings, and they don't even live there, and they don't even have kids there. And you're like, "Totally good." Okay, you guys, we could use a little less of that in society. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in. Brian, I don't know how to broach the topic. I'm sure you have on the site somewhere or on social media, but we got interviewed by two wonderful folks on "The Behavior [expletive]." "The Behavior [expletive]," yeah, I'm sharing that. But please, I'll put that link in there too. If you guys want to listen to a good one with "The Behavior [expletive]," they're not our word. No, that's them. I even felt bad. I said, "Poster," like, "Can I call them [expletive]?" Oh, you know, and we had another good one with Adam Pyre, and this time, his good friend Paul Fortune. So, that's another good one. So, folks, please, if you like it, say something.

Yeah, so we'll share all that, check that out. And then, of course, we always have the Patreon site, which has even more on it, and all kinds of episode extras, behind-the-scenes stuff, and some cool info that we like to share with just those who support the show. So, everyone, thank you so much for tuning in. We do appreciate it. Share it with your friends. Please leave us a review. It does help. But only a good one. We don't need constructive criticism. We're doing fine.

Well, I'll take constructive criticism, but not just, "I don't like these guys." There is no such thing.

Alright, alright. Thanks everyone for tuning in. Don't forget, the training changes behavior.