L.O.G. 183 Ambushed

It makes a lot of sense. If we're going to classify this, let's talk about intentional, unprovoked attacks and ambushes. I would classify my remarks to you, because we're in a position where we did not prep. We discussed a police incident, and I would say, take yourself back. We've both been in the game a long time, and you remember the TV show that was on, To Catch a Predator. At some surprise moment in the show, the guy that was the host, Chris Hansen, came walking around to the person that was sitting at the kitchen table of what he thought was a 13 to 15-year-old boy or girl with a handful of condoms and a handful of candy, and some ether or whatever they brought. They would always bring some kind of booze or something. That was a demonstration of intent, right?

But the point was that everybody would say, "Well, how is it that these people don't just punch you or flee or anything else?" The nature of the show was an ambush. The nature of the show was not unlike our dear friend, Rina Freeman Watts, when she was on The Jerry Springer Show. Apologies, I'm a little dehydrated here, folks, but the idea, Brian, is that they would come out and go, "Oh, by the way, your wife has been cheating on you with this guy," or "Your husband's been cheating on you with this..." Ambush attacks! The entire show is based around cheaters, on ambushes.

You can go over those, Brian. The point in each one is, it's like an insider threat attack. They've got a distinct advantage. Why? Because you control the time and the place. You control the context within which it's going to occur. I was trying to explain yesterday to somebody that it was almost like a trapdoor spider. Somebody came up; they started talking to us about one thing, and their intent was actually at the IACP to get us to come up and buy something at the booth. And it's like, "Timeout! We're here for a completely different purpose. We're certainly not check writers for an agency."

But, Brian, that same ambush style works because what happens is, you don't expect it. When another human comes up to you in the context of, let's say, a restaurant or a parking garage or an apartment, you're immediately disarmed psychologically because the person, if they're carrying a bag or doing something else, you're expecting a standard street contact: "Hey, how are you? Is this the entrance? Hey, is that your car? You left your headlights on." Why? Because your brain doesn't sense the danger in a potential environment.

And you just hit it right there because the context matters. You know, in that given context, you're only expecting certain things to happen. Like you just gave the perfect example of us. We were walking up to other vendors and people at this place wanted to find out, and they immediately went right into their sales pitch. We just said, "Hey, hey, hang on. Right now, I'm not here to buy anything. We're another vendor, but just wanted to find out about your..." and it changed the dynamic. The idea is there because everything, and you gave the grocery store example, you're assuming this other person is there for the same purpose, the same intent that you have: to shop, to buy something off the shelf. So you automatically categorize them right there. They're likely there for that purpose.

So why is it—and trapdoor spider again—why is it that we as humans let our guard down, where historically absolutely everything about us being human is to sense danger in an environment? The idea is that a person has to engage in subterfuge. So if it's a police call, somebody's going to call and say, "Hey, there's shots fired," or "There's a domestic," or whatever else. The coppers are going to show up, and the person that's standing there, they're going to assume you're the reporting party, you're a witness to an event. And then that person comes up and says, "Hey, I'm glad you're here," and then pulls out a weapon and starts shooting.

So the time-distance gap and the amount of time it takes you to recognize that you're in a situation allows them to get those first couple of shots off, which then is disorienting, Brian. There's a tremendous amount of anxiety in the moment with the shooting, and then it's easy to take your eyes off the prize. So, the thing that you have to think about is not motivation, it's intentionality.

If a person decides that they're going to place a bomb, that person says, "I'm going to shoot at the patrol. I'm going to anticipate where the patrol takes a knee or takes cover, and that's where I'm going to place the bomb." That's how we find IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) in places, and that's how we train Marines and soldiers. What is it with a sniper? A sniper only has a certain amount, for example, the distance from the muzzle to the terminal ballistics of the weapon system isn't infinite. To get a kill, even with multiple shots, you generally want to hit a certain part of a person, and that's not easy without a scoped weapon. So you can actually do the calculus and figure out where it's most likely that sniper is going to be.

We suspend both of those things when we're dealing with an insider threat, which is a kind of ambush, because now we let our guard down. We're going to pull up at the scene, and we're going to have a significant amount of time between getting out of the car and being engaged in the firefight. Why do we think that, though, Brian? We think that because our life allows us every single day to relax in place. The more that we relax in place, the more that these things don't come out of the closet and surprise us, like the Jack-in-the-Box. The more that that happens, it desensitizes us to those specific situations of intentional violence you should see coming.

I'll give a brief description of the case for folks. Do your homework; we're on the road; we're not going to be able to bring up a lot of stuff for it. But there was a female that was stopped. The female had warrants. The two coppers arrested the female, and she said, "Hey, I've got a couple of Rottweilers or Pit Bulls at home; they're going to tear up the place. Would you mind me putting them in another room?" The coppers, being good coppers, said, "Yeah, absolutely." They will not anticipate any danger, not calling Animal Control, not telling a woman, "You have to call somebody." I apologize for this situation.

Number one, she's a female. We disregard danger signals with females if we're male officers almost immediately, almost routinely. We can do a whole episode on that. Stay relaxed, take her in. The dogs come running out of a room. She says, "Hey, maybe I should get them on a leash." She's still handcuffed during all of this, right? And this is, again, subterfuge. What do I mean by subterfuge? I mean camouflage is a form of mental, psychological subterfuge. The words that you say, the way that she set up the situation: "Now we have dogs; now your attention is divided; now the two coppers are trying to pay attention." She reaches over, grabs a nine-millimeter, and starts blasting, even though she's handcuffed. Why?

You said it: it's context-relevant, it's context-dependent. What you just did is, remember the magic trick where you pull the tablecloth and all the stuff? So she's walking around doing that: "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain," doing that right in front of them. They never anticipated for a minute that she may get away.

So, where are places for ambushes, Brian? If I'm doing a prisoner transport, that's a place where my senses have to be heightened. If I'm taking somebody to jail for a warrant, that person's going to try to get away: "Hey, I've got to throw a piss, I've got to do this, I've got to do that." Why? To distract you, to get an advantage. I mean, sports are based on subterfuge: "I'm going to look one way and pass the ball the other way." But as humans, we let our guard down in those situations. That's where a fatality could occur.

Well, you open up the door, metaphorically, because you talk about a time-distance gap, which has to do a lot with recognition and what you're doing. In that situation specifically, okay, while we have her in handcuffs, okay, this is routine. She's being completely planted. But then it's one little thing: "Hey, can we stop here? Hey, can we go inside? Hey, can I check on this?" Because once you're in there, the number of possibilities of things that could happen inside of this person's home versus on the road, on the side of the road when you pulled them over, there are only finite things you can do. Once you go to that new location, once you go to that new place that they're comfortable with and you've never been to before, they've just completely changed the dynamic of the situation. I just leveled the playing field, but they now have the upper hand in that situation.

So what do we call that in gamesmanship? We call that home-field advantage. And then what we've also done is we've exponentially increased the complexity of the game. Handcuffs limit most, and that's all they do. The vehicle now is not in play because we brought her out of that and put her in our vehicle. Here we set up all these situations for tactical advantages. We have policies that cover them. We've done it a million times, we do it in training. And then all of a sudden, Brian, that tangent comes in: "Hey, can we just stop by my place?" And you know what the answer is all the time: "No, we can't."

"Hey, can you just loosen the handcuffs? Hey, can you just do one of these things?" Look, I'm not trying to pull a George Floyd (referring to positional restraint) with all the other stuff. What I'm trying to say is this is a classic case of the female bamboozling those two coppers. The minute she thought she saw that she had the tactical edge, what did she do? She put the sharp edge of the wedge in and gave it a boot. Listen, these officers and the female are all still alive. But, Brian, you and I, over the last couple of years now, have seen coppers getting killed in these same type of situations where they weren't so lucky. So how do we prepare ourselves for those situations? How would we counsel somebody else?

And so that's... You brought up the example of a police officer getting called to a place. The person standing out there, "Oh, this is likely the reporting party, this is the person that called." It's no different than when we were down here at the hotel, and there's someone walking through the parking lot with a bag. "Okay, they must be staying here at the hotel." That guy was not staying here at the hotel. Remember, he was making his rounds. I don't think he was staying on planet Earth, Brian. I don't think so. I think that was Benadryl. But we automatically, like I said, it's a heuristic. We automatically categorize that into, "Okay, you're also a guest at this hotel like I am." So now I've already said, "Okay, you must be doing the same thing I am."

That's the way our brain intends to cut corners, to conserve calories. We take a look at an animal, we take a look at a dog, or we take a look at an elk or whatever that we're, for whatever reason, trying to attract or attack or do something to. We take a look at an elk; we understand the elk's olfactory system is much greater than ours. Hunters have spent billions of dollars a year on camouflage clothing. Then what they want to do is break up their contour. Then what I want to do is break up their smell because what people don't understand, if you've never hunted an elk before, is you hike all day long to get into the realm of the elk. Then when the barometric pressure changes late in the day, all of a sudden those currents change, and now the sweat from your body is going the opposite direction, and the elk goes, "Humans! Boom!" They blow and they're gone.

So what do you have to do, Brian? We have to stage a certain amount of things that happen to create an ambush. Now, let's look at that compared to an unprovoked attack. All of a sudden, you come in, and you did it the other day, you were talking about a domestic. The husband or wife or significant other has now gone in handcuffs. "Hey, as much as I hate to do this in front of your kids, I've got to take you to jail." And then the brother-in-law said, "Well, you ain't going to jail today, not in my house!" And now he's on top of you.

See what happens, Brian, is sometimes our brain avails itself of an opportunity. So when we talk about danger and opportunity, sometimes we're talking about danger being a bad thing, an opportunity a good thing. This is one of those times where the roads converge, and danger and opportunity is a bad thing. "I'm looking for a way out. I know I have that warrant; you don't." Then all of a sudden, you're being the nice person, saying, "Hey, listen, we're going to have to confirm this. We'll bring it down to the station." "Oh, yeah, I get it, I understand." And now I go with the subterfuge again: "There's a lot of people named John Smith; that's certainly not me." "Let's get this done." And what are you doing, Brian? Tick, tick, tick, you're buying time to set the conditions for you escaping.

Now, what's that going to be? "I'm going to throw a shoulder into you when we're in the stairs. As you lean down to get me into the car, I'm going to try to grab your weapon or your gun belt, or I have a concealed weapon, I'm going to try to use you against you." This has got to be a function of how we train. Every situation can't be deadly or dangerous because we'll tune them out. But you can't also have non-kinetic scenarios every time.

Exactly. And I apologize for shortening that. You and I both know a former Ground Branch, a former Secret Squirrel, former special operator that only goes by a series of numbers and letters. That person had how many handcuff keys on him at any one time? You know exactly who I'm talking about. An item made into the sole of the shoe, and he had one that was for his belt, and he had one that he carried around in his mouth. It was like, "Dude, do you get arrested a lot?" And he's like, "No, but I'm rehearsing because there's going to be that one time when somebody's going to take me, and they're going to try to kidnap me, and they're going to try to violate me. So I pull these pranks all the time, and I try to get out of it." Well, if that guy does it all the time, Brian, there's some ne'er-do-well somewhere that's going to do the same thing. And we're not just talking about hiding a handcuff key; we're talking about getting out of the handcuff to get to a gun to shoot you or stab you. You see what I'm saying? The stakes are different.

And so, you brought up something that we talk about a lot: identifying danger and opportunity. You're kind of, as we say, almost two sides of the same coin, or depending on the perspective. What might be danger, what you see as a potential dangerous situation, to that criminal or person, that's their opportunity. So I don't always have to look. It's not just about, "Hey, looking for the danger." It's, "How do I deny someone the opportunity? How do I diminish your ability to gain some opportunity over me?"

I just immediately thought of the one, because we're seeing people going on, and people want to get into breaking down body language and posture and all this stuff, that's great. But simply looking around and being what people call situationally aware, will that reduce the likelihood of someone...? Yeah, it probably will. It will. Just like they don't even know... Remember, who was that? Was he the Air Force Colonel back in like Spain, in like the 60s or 70s or 80s? Whatever. I've got to read back up on the story because they keep forgetting. But the idea was there was this separatist movement that was planning these different attacks, and they were going to kidnap this guy. But every morning he would get up and go out and look under the hood and check everything. And they're like, "Damn, this guy's all over it. We can't get to him!" Interview him, and he's like, "I bought this shitty car, and it leaks oil all the damn time, and so I've got to go check the oil every freaking morning because I might actually get to work." And he had no idea any of this stuff was going on. It's almost like a Mr. Bean episode, or whatever the other guy was.

But that situational awareness (SA) alone is useless. Increasing, heightening your situational awareness is a wonderful tool. But, Brian, the situational awareness bubble doesn't extend just around your head; it's not like playing football with a football helmet. It's the room in the hallway and the elevator. For example, folks, if you want to ambush Brian and I today's the time, and this is a shitty hotel to do it in. Why? I feel like Kennedy, and we're across the street from the Plaza here. When you get into a restrictive road, you've got to make a series of turns. The roads around here are ridiculous, that could happen. The parking lot's ridiculous the way it's set up. We could easily be victimized. But we come into the lobby, and there are transients coming in and out that don't stay at the hotel. And there's one effing elevator. The building goes up seven floors, and there are seven floors full of people here because there are three conventions in town in this triangle that we're at. And so you're on the elevator constantly all day long just to get one floor to the next with people who aren't staying in the hotel. Brian, it's easy to get ganked when you're in that situation. So just heightened awareness is not going to cut it.

You get where I'm going? And you're saying, "Okay, are you giving us a philosophy of defensive perimeter and all that other stuff?" What we're saying is, you've got to think your way out of the situation. So I'm in a conundrum because I've got only one elevator out of three banks of elevators that work, one single elevator for all these people. And you're saying, "Yeah, just use the stairs, fat boy." No, because where would you ambush somebody? Obviously, that's going to drive the thinking person to the stairs. So what Brian and I have had to do is we've got to come up with uncanny ways of surprising even each other on when we're going to show up, where we're going to show up, and how we're going to get there. Why? Because all somebody has to do is look at that and say, "They're coming here." Think of a police car, a marked police car, marked officers. We're called, we're going to hear them coming with the siren, we're going to see the red and blues. Then they're going to pull up at the location where we requested them. Brian, that's all the component parts of an ambush, isn't it?

Yeah, so you as a copper sometimes have to take a knee, or have to circle around the block, or have to send in an unmarked unit, or have to park your marked cruiser with no lights on and look with binoculars. And people are going, "Yeah, well, we don't have time for that." Well, then you [ __ ] going to get shot in the head. And I apologize to say it that way, Brian, but your exasperation with the inability to change your tactical and operational procedures to suit a very specific type of ambush are going to get you killed. And look, this female shot him up at close distance, and thank God she missed. But the Dallas coppers' shooter didn't miss. Do you get what I'm trying to say? We could go over a series of other shootings that we saw, the tape that you and I had to laboriously go through just two days ago from, I believe it was Connecticut, Brian. And here in the mountains, and the screams and all those other things, those are unsettling.

You're saying, "Well, are we making fun of those coppers that got in that situation?" Not at all. What we're saying is they're a function of how they were trained. And the more situations that they went to when they didn't get ambushed, actually makes us... we as humans, that's the problem is because most things are what they seem, and most people are who they say they are, and most do fit, and the puzzle pieces always go together. It's hard to see the one that's out of place.

I think it's kind of to your point, and that's where the complexity comes in, and that's why we don't stay focused on some type of single indicator, or "You've got to look for this." It's, "Well, what's the danger and opportunity in this environment?" And not just for me, but from someone else's perspective. How would they do this? If this were going to be the worst-case scenario, what would it look like? What else would I see here? What's different comparatively on this one versus some other time that I've seen this before?

It was a perfect example; just go right back to the guy with the backpack. The hotel was out there in the morning too, very different. The guy in the morning, when we walked out, he was standing off to the side of the parking lot by the fan, and kept looking back and forth. But from his angle, he could see sort of like behind the hotel where there was one entrance off the street, and then the other that came in right here. And it didn't rise to that level because it's, "Okay, no cover or concealment, nothing in the sunshine to look around." And so it's like, "Okay, he's likely waiting for a ride, and he doesn't actually know which entrance it's coming in because he's got to flag them down. From his vantage, he can see those entrances. He's not doing anyone. No one here at the hotel is in any danger from this individual right here."

It's unlike versus the guy yesterday, going from one parking lot to the other and sprinting across the road and moving. Oh, tell everybody how fast he was able to geographically use the natural lines of drift to get to where we saw him first and where he ended. He somehow, without sprinting, broke a land speed record to cover that amount of distance in that amount of time to the point where he was then posted up at a very specific spot against the wall of the hotel where he could see out, and not only could people see him. It was in sort of that negative space. We watched him move from across it from the time it took us to walk out the door, to get to the car, load our bags, get in the car, and boom! He was standing, like, 100 feet in front of us in that spot. Mission focused, back in the negative space. I mean, every danger cue in the world. And there was no way you could have covered that ground without, one, being very familiar with the terrain in the area and knowing exactly where you wanted to go. So whether he either saw that spot, knew how to get there, like it was quick. This guy's got some training in him, and training could just be his experience running those streets. This is his area of operation (AO) that he operates in, and he knows every nook and cranny. But it was very clear that he knew every nook and cranny.

It's not like everyone's driven behind someone before and went, "Oh, this [ __ ]hole's lost!" They have no idea what they're doing. Because you go, "Oh, they're slowing down, turn signal goes off," and you're going, "Okay, you draw a reasonable conclusion: this person's likely lost." And then you go around, and you look, and they're looking at their phone and at the buildings, and you're like, "Okay, that makes sense. They don't know the area." But that's very different than someone who's intimate with that area. He's creating opportunity, right? He's looking for opportunity, and we're looking, which would be almost danger for us. We look at it from that way. But there are definitely two sides of the same coin, especially for an intervention strategy: "How do I determine what this is? Is this an opportunity to exploit a situation, or is it exactly a dangerous one?"

We've talked before because I personally know of three situations I was involved in where a security guard was killed stopping a shoplifter, and the shoplifter didn't want to go to jail. Two involved edge weapons, close proximity. One involved the person driving with the person on top of the hood, then running them over and killing them. Now, you would think, "Wait a minute, the stakes are too high. Nobody would do that." Anybody would do that! You're pressed with the likelihood of going to jail, you're afraid, you escalate. That fear turns into violence, and the next thing you know, you've killed the security guard.

The other two involved edge weapons, where close in, the person said, "Take your hand out of your pockets." In both incidents, the person had a box cutter and said, "Yeah, the box cutter I'm using to get into these items, I'm now going to stab you in the neck with." And those people died. They died DRT (Dead Right There). So you have one in a parking lot, two off-duty security guards that died inside the store. Now, if we want to break that down, we could break down the psychology of the offender. But I would tell you this, those are when the stakes are the highest.

So when the person is telling you, "As soon as we get up to the sally port, these handcuffs come off. I'm going to knock you on your [ __ ]." And I would tell them, "Hey, you're going to get your shot at the title; we're almost there." You see what I'm saying? Handcuffs are coming off, whatever's going to happen has happened, Brian. Those aren't unprovoked, and those aren't surprised. But when that person's going, "No, no, no, sure, sure, I understand this," that person is trying to calm you down with words, with time. That's when you should start heightening your awareness and going, "Why is this person being so absolutely cooperative?"

It's counterintuitive because you talk to a copper that's been around for a good long time, or you talk to a soldier that's doing surveillance. The people that scare me the most are the ones that are attending to doing the speed limit, wearing their seatbelt, doing everything right. Why? Because the fix is in. Something's wrong there because nobody does that. And you're going, "I do that." Yeah, do you do it every day? Have you done it in every encounter? So the idea is, you have to heighten your level of awareness. For example, we know that you don't want to be in a fatal funnel when you're clearing a room or when you're on a traffic stop. But why would that be different when we're talking about a handcuffed person transporting them through that door? Because when we go through the threshold of the door, all I've got to do is throw a shoulder, or tie up your legs, or one of those other things. And you're going, "Well, that's pretty low-level." No, that's how an ambush starts. That's how a homicide can start.

And look at what your brain tries to do for you some of the time. Think of it, if anyone listening right now, if you're thinking, if you're talking to someone, you're walking into a place, and if you've ever walked through the door, opened a door and took a step in, and you kind of fumbled with your words for a second when you're in conversation and almost forgot about what you were saying or thinking, and you didn't realize why it happened, and then you're like, "Oh, I'm sorry, what was I saying?" You go, "Dude, that's your limbic system going, 'Hey, I'm [ __ ]! You're about to, we're about to walk into the unknown for a second and do it!'" And so we override that all the time.

You brought up stuff like, we don't need to get into full geographics and understanding it, but when you're going into someone's anchor point, their home—which case law says in New York could be a cardboard box on the street—I'm terrified. When going into someone's house, it's almost like you are there, they have all the advantage. They could do anything. They feel more comfortable in there, and if you're in there and all of a sudden they don't want you in there, it can turn violent real quick. And that's just any type of something that I have ownership of. So that would be literally my hotel room right now. That's not my home. So psychologically, this is my home where I live. We've been walking around behind you, by the way, don't worry about that.

So, like, we're trying to get out of restraints, what's that all about? They're searching the room; they're tossing it. They aren't going to find anything. They've been following me the whole week. I told you, the whole time we're at the conference, I'm getting nervous about getting arrested. I flushed everything in my pockets; it was just business cards. But there are so many police officers that just assumed I was going to get arrested.

There's a perfect example: you and I were in a conference full of the executives of the police industry, and yesterday you walked around with me, and I introduced myself as Eric Estrada from CHiPs. About every third person that I talked to gave me access to their holiest of holies, getting in close to them with distance and talking. And you're saying, "Yeah, but everybody knew you were joking, and we're at a conference." No, you and I were doing limited objective experiments all over the place, and we were able to bamboozle people long enough to close that time-distance gap.

So what we're trying to say is if that works, and most people are who they say they are, look at the threshold of your door. When a person comes, and you say, "Well, we have the Ring doorbell, Brian." Yeah, but there's so much case law about the front door and about your porch and the relationship there. Why? Because that's an entrance to your most holy place. And you see what I'm saying there is that we have to take a look at that. When we talk about kids, when we talk about abuse, we say, "Hey, kids, don't let anybody touch you where your bathing suit would touch, unless it's a doctor, your parent, under these situations." What do we do? We set it out for them. We set out that "when," and we set out that "what right looks like and what wrong feels like." But then it comes to a bunch of adults at an area or a conference, and we suspend that. And then we have all the Ubers going up to the front of the building at one location, and we have everybody standing for one elevator in the parking garage and getting their tickets validated.

Folks, we love IACP, and we're very welcome, but think about the irony of what we portrayed.

No, that's a perfect example. We go against our own guidelines and we don't practice what we preach, because we fall into that trap. The parking garage example: you had to pay your ticket before you went and left at the one console for the 30 people in line. We're standing there in line because, granted, we're at an International Association of Chiefs of Police conference. What is the first thing I say when we were rolling there? I was like, "Man, if someone wanted to really make a mark, if someone really wanted to make a statement, this would be the place to do it." And how is the security there? It's terrible! I mean, it's just... but we feel that false sense of security. Why? Because there's probably, I think everyone from any Texas agency had their firearm on them in the conference. So we have this security. But what are they there to do, Greg? That wasn't their role there at the time to do that. Their role there was to be a vendor, a customer, someone one time a year. This is just super simple.

Exactly. And so now we're standing there, 30 people deep in that line to go pay that ticket. You're the only one standing there, literally pulling security for everyone in line. We're joking with everyone, laughing, but I'm like, "Hey, I'm getting real nervous right here because anyone can have access to this, and this is one of those times where you can't get out of the area, there's nothing you can do."

And the pylons and everything else had created a fatal funnel where we would all have been ballistic jelly.

And everyone's going, "Well, you can't think..." It's like, no, that's how those things occur. That's how an ambush works because everyone has that sense of security, and that's why it's so powerful and so easy to do. To conduct something like that, you don't need a high level of organization, you don't need a high level of sophistication. I don't want to worry or give anybody any ideas, so we're always transparent about this stuff. But I've talked to you many times about it. We let our guard down when we're teaching. Why? Even though we're up and out, and I'm down and in, we're up there, and we're skating without a net, Brian. We're up there, and we're performing because it's got to be entertaining and educational and everything else. I told you many times, coming in or out of that or going into something, we're very vulnerable, we're very susceptible. And then when we start getting into that, and we're motivated and everything else, we try to have a personal security detachment, but folks, the reality of the situation is we don't sometimes. Now, we're not going to tell you when we don't, but we do not have that.

I always look at Brian and I tell him, "This is it. This could be the day that that happens." Now, we're really lucky because when we travel, we've got some good friends that drop in to provide that for us, and they're the most dangerous humans on the face of the planet.

We're really doing is we're playing Plinko. Because of the times that we don't, we're hoping that that rotor spins and you don't hit on the fuel and the spark at the same time.

That's a perfect example. That's a perfect example when we do that because we have to. And then we always try to have a sort of a plant, and they're one of our own, who we go, "Hey, so-and-so is here to help us out." But they're really just watching us. Their job is to walk around the room, go get coffee, smell, feel, taste the danger in it because we're not afraid of the people in the class, we're afraid of somebody knowing, "Hey, those are those guys. They're showing up here," and nothing would be better than a victimizer.

Well, yeah, and of course, it's like, "Oh, you guys are teaching all this stuff, of course, I'm going to try and pull something." We've had people try to pull stuff before, but usually it's pretty obvious too. But the idea is, it's like, "I'm going to test you." It's like, "Dude, I'm in the middle of teaching you something." But it's us showing, like being transparent, like you said, "Yes, it happens." So what can you do about it? You have to think about that every time. We try to put someone in there, literally, as if we're some billionaires that needed a security detail. But yes, you still need to have something. I don't care who it is. It doesn't have to be someone that has the ability to fight and shoot and do all that. It's someone who's going to let us know, "Hey, I'm noticing this."

Perfect. It scared me straight when we started in earnest, and you'll remember this because we've got a lot of water under our bridges here, Brian. But I remember being in Iraq, and we were at the place where we had to sleep in where Saddam Hussein had that dog, the canine training area. We actually had to sleep in where the dogs would sleep in because we needed some overhead cover, and it was filthy, and it was horrible, and it was smelly. But when we were at that facility, there was a cop training facility and a horse cop training facility, you remember the one I'm talking about? And inside of that, in Gulf Arabic and Farsi and Urdu, they had our training—our Combat Hunter training—with the photos and duct tape together, in their language. It was like, "Holy [ __ ]!" Combat Hunter, the ink wasn't dry, Brian, and we're in country, and here there were remnants with the fact that they knew who we were.

Yeah, the same thing with the sniper manuals. They found a lot of that stuff, I think it was out at 29 Palms where they found that they're doing it, and where that originated from, and where they had someone in there.

Yeah, so look at the size of my fat head. Do you hear what I'm trying to say? And I stick out in a crowd everywhere I go. It's not like the Schwarzenegger movie where he goes to Mars, Total Recall, and he's got the woman's suit. Of course, I dress like a woman; I'm okay with it, I'm at home with it. But traveling, those are those times that we're susceptible. So it's almost like that for coppers, and cops always have a very dangerous job that they go into, but soldiers did as well. Soldiers exposed themselves to greater risks in certain geographic areas and during certain atmospheric conditions. I mean atmospherics in the sense of rubble, bullet holes, don't feel, smell, taste of an area. And when you think you are going to expose yourself in those areas, that's when you've got to tighten up. That's when you've got to be putting...

Alright, so that's the poking or pointing that out; that's kind of the easy part. Because the hard part is, "Well, how am I supposed to do that? What is that?" If I'm going to that scene, because you brought up the perfect line towards the beginning where you said, "Look, our brain does this. We categorize things into things that we've known before because it has to conserve calories. It doesn't want to burn the extra calories; it doesn't want to take the extra time." And we're wired that way. There's nothing you can do about that other than habits of thought, habits of action, so that things will pop out to you without you consciously being aware of it. Unconscious awareness is much faster for recognition than conscious awareness.

What I mean by that is, putting in the process and understanding this thing is having that thought process, "Okay, what if it isn't? What if it isn't a choking baby that call that came across? What if it isn't? What else should I likely see?" Awareness that you're petrified, that's what I'm getting. This takes away the fear of it, and it's a game to your brain. So now it wants to play the game. Now you start doing it as a habit. Now it becomes unconscious instead of consciously having to think about it. And then that unconscious awareness, that recognition, is so much faster in the environment. "Wait a minute, the call was what? Oh wait, that doesn't make any sense for this."

So I think that's the heart of it, right? That's the problem, that's the complexity area. It's like, "Okay, great, you guys are sitting here talking about all this stuff. How the hell am I supposed to do that? What am I supposed to do?" I would rather almost take a specific situation because it's easier that way than just generalizing it and going, "Well, I agree. Think about this." In this situation, what could I have done? Like we talked about the parking lot here at the hotel. I almost have a running dialogue in my head. We already have our plan; we plan everything out so that we don't worry about it. And if it's easier to shift things, "Hey, you want to slide left? I know you're ready to go. Cool. So instead of 8:30, we'll be down there at 8." That's good, because then you can base everything off that. We always intentionally discuss those. We intentionally say, "This is the place that could happen. Let's be more careful."

So what I do is, literally, I'm in my hotel room, throw all my stuff in my bag, make sure I have everything. I have that running dialogue. "Alright, I'm going out in the hallway of this shitty hotel." And then I'll start noticing things like, "Oh wait, that smells pretty good out here. They must have just cleaned." Or, "Okay, now I'm getting this [ __ ] up this shitty elevator again." And I get in this shitty elevator. Right now, the anomalies will pop out. "Oh, that guy was in here fixing it because there's transfer evidence over there where it was open, and it wasn't there before." And then, "Okay, now I'm going out of that, I'm going out of the hotel." And then boom! You see a guy 150 meters away bolting from one parking lot to the next. That doesn't make any sense. But the idea, that running dialogue, is almost an easy comparative baseline.

Two amazing things that came out of there. First of all, I'm going to take this lamp home with me. Look how good my hair looks. It's nice. It really looks good. Contrast. I look pretty good here. It makes your hair look darker because it's a light shade behind it. Okay, I know what I'm going to do at home. Denise Percival did my hair. Thanks. (That's Lanny's wife).

Part two: we rehearse not showing the recognition signal when we see each other. So when you're coming down the stairs, and I'm in the lobby waiting, when I get on an elevator and you're already on there, nobody would know. Nobody would know that we're together. The only place we link up is a car. We take two different locations to the car. We stand around waiting as if we're waiting for an Uber, then go over and meet each other. The idea is that spontaneity gives us a chance, a second, a nanosecond, to hear or see something plotting, or somebody thinking we're alone.

When you take a look at any of the situations, for example, I'll give you a concrete one that you can use tonight if you're working on the road. If somebody's fumbling around and digging around and thinking around, and you're starting to get nervous, tell them you're getting nervous. Say, "Hey, listen, every time that you reach under your console or reach into your pockets, I'm going to ask you to stop that because you're making me nervous, and I'm afraid you're going to attack me. And if you attack me, things are going to go bad fast." You're not challenging a person. You're not saying, "I swear to God, if you come up against me, I'm going to fight you." You're not saying that. You're trying to de-escalate it by going, "Look, you're scaring me, and when I'm scared, I'm going to use force to defend myself." When you say something like that, the person is going, "Well, they're on me." You get what I'm trying to say? They're in on it. They're going on.

Again, listen, you're on a camera, you're recording. When I say to the coppers, they're thinking other things, I'm telling you: be transparent in your actions. "You're under arrest right now. I'm going to handcuff you." "Okay, now you handcuff the person." You double-lock them and say, "These temporary restraints are for both of our protection. I'm going to seatbelt you in the back seat. Please don't act up because neither of us needs the hassle." Explain to them the process. If a person is going to choose a spontaneous attack, they're going to do it when you're most vulnerable. If it's an ambush, you're already in it anyway. You're already in the kill zone, Brian. You're on the bubble. So what do you have to lose to be transparent and talk your way through it? I like to explain to people right away, "This is where I'm at. You're frightening me."

The other thing that people never do: I called for a cover car all the time when I was on the road. All the time. And people go, "Ah, you know, he's calling for a cover car." Yeah, you know why? Because I don't want to call for a morgue pickup or the medical examiner in a situation where somebody's acting squirrely. Get somebody else there. The more people you enlist, even the crowd around you. "Hey, listen, folks, I'm trying to contact this guy. I don't know who he is. That's not his vehicle; it's mine, and he's holding my bag. So could somebody call 9-1-1?" Look around, enlist the aid of others, Brian. Make it verbal, make it vocal, make it deliberate. People are saying, "Do you drop into a karate stance?" Well, yeah, that's not what this is about. What this is about is being aware to the point that you could predict the most likely areas where danger is going to do, and engage in the mitigation strategy.

I would say your example that you said, of it almost like a way to de-escalate a situation, psychologically and just environmentally, like when you say, "Hey, look, I think you're reaching for something, and it's kind of getting me scared." That's a real-world, actual application of John Boyd's OODA Loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act).

You're exactly right! It's like, not this YouTube "Observe, Orient, Decide, Act" that's meaningless junk. That guy was a flipping genius, and he didn't understand—he didn't understand he was onto something, though he wrote it. They got the guy, invented an energy maneuverability theory. But please tell me, tell me on the range what OODA Loop means.

No, but that's the idea. You just got in psychologically and said, "Look, I laid it out on the table. I know what's going on. I'm being honest and telling you that I'm getting a little nervous right now." Because that person's nervous too. So now they're going, "Oh, crap. Maybe instead of that, if I start poking the bear, poking the bear, poking the bear, what's going to happen?" I've got to expect that. But if I go, "Hey, man, I'm offering you the olive branch right now, we can..." Seriously, Brian, what is that? The amnesty box. "Hey, listen, if you've got a gun or a knife, that could complicate things. So please tell me about it now because you're freaking me out a little bit here, and I need you to calm down into a situation where I'm comfortable because it's not that anxiety is going to build and somebody's going to get hurt here. I don't want that. I want to go home tonight." Tell that person that, and they're [ __ ] [ __ ] when they start doing that and they start fostering... now I can relax because I go, "Okay, that's..."

Because the trapdoor spider, Brian, the trapdoor spider doesn't get edgy. They don't get anxious. They don't betray their affiliations. They lie and wait until you've made a mistake. I don't want to be that person. So I'm going to drop the rock in the pond early, see the ripples go out, and see what kind of feedback I'm getting. So I have to turn those potential dangers into an advantage, and I have to do it early on so the person knows that I'm in on it. They know that I'm tuned in to the right frequency.

And without breaking down certain specific situations, it's hard to give more examples. But I look at it as literally a habit of thought. How do I think my way out of this? What's the next step? What can I do? And that's whether I'm trying to get the waiter's attention because they screwed up my order and they cooked something wrong or didn't put something in or left something out. It's the same concept: "Hey, look, I don't mean to be a pain in the [ __ ], it's just I kind of said I want it this way. I'm not sure if you heard that." And then what do they do? Then they're like, "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, let me get that, we'll take care of it." But you come the other way and you go, "Look, man, I [ __ ] told you I don't want any damn whatever on here!" How do you think you're going to get treated? It's just the entire DNA of every situation.

Well, and that's the thing. But it's like looping back to the ambush, I don't want to ambush the server with a bad attitude, and I don't know where that's going to spiral out to. Let me insult the people of the fair city of Dallas, and we love it here. "Dallas is in Texas, folks." You'll hear that many... I'm still not 100% sure what that means. We had it explained this morning. I loved Todd, but I was like, I still don't have a good understanding of what that means because all he said was, "Well, it's just different."

The President of the United States was here during a complicated time in American history. He was on a route that exposed them to many elevated shooting positions. He also had an uncovered vehicle with all of the security being separated away, and no ballistic panels covering them from those angles. So, if there was the perfect storm of getting shot, John Kennedy, sadly, was on that boat.

I also want to talk about the Dallas situation where they had the parade and all the coppers were shot. Every one of those coppers is a hero. But think about this: if you were going to shoot six or eight cops, what has to be present? An event big enough that those cops are there, and that they're checked out because they're the greatest, smartest, defensive security force on the face of the planet, and they got bamboozled. They got a guy with an assault rifle that got him access to a situation, an ambush where he had the advantage. So if you're looking around, and you're at the Macy's Day Parade or whatever else, I want to call something horrific that's going to happen. And what about a school shooting? Because kids with plastic trays and a nickel milk aren't going to fight back, Brian.

So the idea sometimes the situation should call to you and go, "This is ripe for one of those advantages. The intent to harm me in an ambush situation or in an unprovoked attack is heightened, so I'm going to heighten my awareness." And when I say awareness, I mean critical thinking skills, understanding of the geography of the situation you're in. And Brian, we had a person say the other day, "Well, I just don't want to walk around paranoid all the time." And then a fireman echoed that same thing. We're not talking about being paranoid. We're saying that certain times during your day or your week, you're more susceptible to falling prey to this. So those are the times that you have to rise to meet the standard. If you don't, it's like how you dress today. What's my biggest thing in these last few weeks? Because we've been on the road all this month, in airports, and these people walking around with flip-flops. I'm going to be climbing over your charred corpse to get out of the plane because you're going to be sitting there like Androcles trying to pull the gosh-damn pin out of your foot. You know, the little stick in his paw that hurt him, and so he stopped, and everybody else won the race. It's the tortoise and the hare.

Seriously, I think there's a few stories in there. This Gray Goose? That's all it. You brought home some of that tequila from last night? I didn't see you order that to go.

Alright, so folks, I've got to tell you this, I love Mexico, Mexico City, Mexican heritage. Sam Trembitas straightened me out on the difference between Mezcal and Tequila. I've never had tequila in my entire life. We tried it last night. If you've never had it, don't start, because what a past. I was on a street panhandling, I broke a window, I brought a knife into a church. It was horrible for me.

Swinging a cop! Yeah, I took his swing. I'm just angry all the time.

All the time, Bart Simpson. People got hurt back then. Oh folks, it's another mega episode! This is a mega episode.

Oh, great. No, and it looks great. I completely forgot where we're at, though. Going back to, because a lot of these stories that come out, it's actually related to a law enforcement type ambush, and sometimes it's an ambush where the person isn't law enforcement, but the person who thinks city code enforcement has been there for too long. Exactly. So the idea is, that's part of why we failing to anticipate the danger of an upcoming event or situation, and failing to take into account that you may be the intended victim. Balancing that out with, "I don't have all the time in the world, so when are those times I do need to raise it?" That's the ebb and flow of life; that's how it works.

Nothing ever happens when it's, "Hey, I got a great night's sleep last night, had a nice workout, beautiful, amazing breakfast, just had a great cup of coffee, and there I was standing." It's like that [ __ ] never. It's not what... that's never when it happened. It's, "Dude, you're never going to believe this, and I had this going on, and this had happened, I was talking to my wife, and so we were in it, and we were upset about something. The next thing I know, this guy's pulling up, and he's..." And it's like, yes, that's when those things occur. So I can try again. Nothing comes out of nowhere.

Related, like many other studies and reports are going to say, "Hey, there were no pre-incident indications." Yes, there were. The reason you reported that there were none, you didn't see them. So be mature and adult enough to understand from your perspective. Look, Brian, how many times do we teach people about bombs in a roadside bomb? You couldn't see it when you looked straight ahead down the road. Change your perspective. There were some of those that were so simple, if you literally come up around the other side of it, it would have been sticking out because they didn't bother to... Oh, the guy, the guy peeing in the bottle in the car that I could do... Oh my God. So this guy, we're sitting there, you're running into the Starbucks to grab us some coffees, and I'm sitting there watching this guy in this parking lot. There's not a lot of vehicles in there. He's back in, like 25 feet from me, and he walks around to the back door of the vehicle, and he had to piss. So he opens the door to block anything from that area, and he's facing into the vehicle, clearly peeing in something. He literally never looked behind him. The whole area was exposed. I was parked there. Another person, there are people walking down the street, he's standing there. You just got a hockey game; there were 100 people behind him. Yeah, there were like 100 people walking to the Dallas Stars. And he was so focused on the area that he thought people were coming from. He literally never bothered to turn around until he walked around the vehicle, and I'm still sitting there like, eyes open, like, "What the heck?" And he goes to get back in, makes eye contact with me, and realizes what just occurred. It was such a perfect example. And the Human Performance bottle came from that car! That's where that bottle came from. That's why you paid extra for that!

No, no, no, that's my bottle. I paid extra for that. I got the bottle. I swapped out when he went into the hockey game. He had no idea. Oh my gosh.

Hey, it's been a long day. So we got our point across, I think. This is that... listen, this one-hour episode isn't going to change the rest of your life unless you allow it to. Training changes behavior, which means get the training so you can rehearse these types of things. And don't walk around "hanked" all the time. You can't be hyper-alert and hyper-aware all the time because it'll kill you.

And it goes back to, you're talking about how much the context matters, and it's huge. Is this the most likely thing that I'm always going to see, or is this the Most Dangerous Course of Action (MDCOA)? How many times do we talk about that? Imagine the Most Likely Course of Action (MLCOA) is a train on a track. Yes, it has some turns and ups and downs, but it's pretty much on a track. A train has to go from point A to point B; it can't do all the things a bus can. So now you have MDCOA, and it too is on a track. And you know what? There are some places where these trains come together. If you're seeing the nexus where MLCOA and MDCOA meet, that's your danger zone right there. That's the point where you better stop everything because your brain hates divided attention. Make sure that you're observing the situation from a covered position, concealed and covered if possible, and guess what? With a backup. If you do that, you're going to diminish the amount of times that you're exposed and vulnerable.

So the context matters. Recognition is about a time-distance gap. It is. You can't slow the rotation of the Earth, so you can't slow time down. Time is time, and you're never going to... People say, "Oh, I can save time by making all the meals on a Sunday." No, you're not saving [ __ ]! You're just ruining your Sunday!

Well, yeah, it's just a trade-off. It's not saving.

It's the Greek, is this Kronos or Kairos? I said that just this morning. No way. No, I would never say that. That's so smart. Remember where I was coming from this morning? I was chasing a guy around the parking lot. You were... I think that was you at one point in the parking lot. You were being his lookout for whatever it was you were doing down there and earning a couple extra bucks on the road or something. "Hey, I'll wash your window, moose stuff!" What's moose stuff?

Well, where do you want it to be? There you go. Thank you. That pond over there.

People actually see what we're like when we're punchy. Alright, man, well, we did cover a lot, and yeah, there's a bunch in there. But I think it's, those things are rare and significant and powerful because if you're the one sitting in an ambush, you have all the advantages. So look for danger and opportunity. How can I...? Maybe I can't see any danger in my environment, but I could limit your opportunity if there was. Your park, where you stand, how you allow access to yourself, the idea of cover being a mobile and moving opportunity. These are all great things.

How much different do we see today coming back from that recording that podcast? Because we didn't take the freeway, and we took the opposite direction in on the side streets. I mean, imagine your mom exiting at that location. If you didn't have heightened awareness, you could be a victim in no time.

Yeah, hey, if you're not against it, I think maybe we close out this one for all our listeners and viewers, and maybe do a couple of minutes for Patreon, kind of a secret handshake talk? Do we have time for that?

Yeah, we can definitely do that because we have stuff we want to cover on there. If folks are listening, we do have The Human Behavior Podcast Patreon where we do some extra video stuff or little tutorials or things that we'd like to share, go in-depth on stuff that we just don't want to get into too much detail about. If you're listening, like with the questions, our Patreon subscribers get to reach out, ask us questions, we answer them, and we either record stuff or talk to them directly. It kind of helps clarify some of the things we obviously, for a number of different reasons, don't get into too much detail on some of this stuff: one, either because we have inside baseball knowledge; two, I don't want someone to use the information to gain an advantage in a very illegal, immoral, or unethical way; and just for different safety and security stuff. But a lot of you listening know how to read between the lines and know what we're saying.

So, first of all, I'm not buying him a T-shirt. It was $49 for an IACP shirt! I just want them to know. Let's just go buy like a Hanes Fruit of the Loom T-shirt, and we'll make an IACP logo and put it on there. We'll get a sticker and put it on there, iron it on like a magic mirror.

I'll meet you in your room. Thank you. Thanks everyone for tuning in. We do appreciate it, and don't forget that training changes behavior.