L.O.G. 214 Duty To Intervene

Ready to go, buddy? Good. All right, well, if you're ready to get started, Greg, let's go ahead, and I am, and let's just jump right into it today. Welcome everyone listening, thanks for tuning in. Thanks for those of you who've been sharing episodes with friends, we do appreciate it, and those of you been reaching out.

Today we are going to be talking about what is commonly referred to as "duty to intervene." And I know you probably talk about some of this, at least from a police perspective, but I'm going to try and take a more general approach of what we mean by duty to intervene. So, I think first off, we start by sort of defining what we mean by duty to intervene.

And what we typically mean in a police sense is that when an officer sees someone — another officer, a fellow officer — doing something that may not fall in line with policies and procedures, whether it's illegal, immoral, unethical, or just something that violates policy or procedure, you have a duty to do something or say something, intervene even physically if necessary.

And this is, all kinds of different organizations have this, where we have an ethos, some values or core values, where we hold each other to a standard. And you know, you want to create — a lot of businesses want to create sort of a culture of that where you're allowed to express and tell your supervisor, "Hey, wait a minute, that's wrong. Aren't we supposed to do it this way?" Or your co-worker. And this is something that obviously, I mean, you teach your kids to do that, right? Teach your kids to stand up for other kids who are being bullied, or to say when something's wrong, or not let one of your friends, if it's something you just want to have in life. But it's a lot more complicated than, much more complex than people make it.

Yeah, and it's way more difficult than people realize. It's easy, I mean, just go on YouTube and see all these big accounts that just bash people doing [expletive] in videos. And it's like, "Well, why didn't they just do this?" Or, "I would have done that." And once again, that's when I give the, "Go [expletive] yourself, no you wouldn't have." If you were in that position, you probably would have done the same thing, right? You can opine, but the reality of the situation is going to be much different.

So, there's psychological, sociological, physiological factors in all this, right? There's where you fit in. There's being a new person at an agency or company versus being there for a while. It's being highly experienced, being less experienced. There's a lot of factors that come into play on why people don't say things when they should. But my thing is, when you see some sort of egregious video where it's obvious that someone's so far out of line that you would never do something like that, okay, that's probably true. But it usually didn't start there. It usually started way before that.

And it's hard for me to say to you, Greg, when we're doing something, "Ah man, like you, Greg, like you. Are you sure we should have another round of bourbons here?" Right, right, right. Well, you've never said that to me because everybody knows that's impossible. That's the problem with that one. But, you know, and especially when it's a loved one, a close friend, someone we work with, to sit there and see but he respected a leader. And we always use the phrase, and it's a good one to know, is, "You know what you walk past is what you're willing to accept." And that's difficult to swallow because even personally, I mean, when I set something down and I don't put it away and it's sitting out there, after a matter of time it just stays sitting out there for a while and I don't ever put it away. I mean, because I see it and I go, "That really bothers me," but I keep walking past it. Like, "I gotta unpack that, and I gotta put that in the garage and that over here." "Well, it's fine where it's at right now." Then like three months later, you're like, "I really should get on top of that." Right?

But that's what happens. But in the situations where we're talking about now, people's behavior will continue to do that. Like they're going to continue to push boundaries or do things if they're not held accountable. They're going to continue to escalate sometimes. And why we always try to do that early intervention strategy is because the sooner you intervene on something, the more likely they'll correct their behavior, or the less likely it's going to spiral out, or the less likely they're going to get in trouble for something. Me just saying, "Hey, Greg, I don't know if we should go do that. Why don't we go this way?" It's very different than waiting until we're in the middle of the situation and going, "Hey, Greg, what you're doing is now illegal." It's like, "Well, oh [expletive], you know, that escalated quickly!" If you'd said something back there, maybe it wouldn't have escalated to this point. So that's kind of the general thing we want to talk about. And a lot to get into, so I'll let you start because then I want to kind of pose some questions to you from your experience in law enforcement.

Well, and again, these are subjective experiences. Everyone has something where they can look back and said, "Man, I probably should have said something back here," or you've been in that situation where it's sort of that almost that moral test. But it's not always obvious. The obvious ones are easy, right? It's the ones that aren't so obvious that get difficult.

Well, let me try to show the magnitude of the problem. I'll give you two parallels. Okay, so the first one, I'll depose you. The term "ROE" means something to you; it's meaningful in some way. Can you tell me what those letters are?

Rules of Engagement.

Okay, and those rules are rigid standards of use of force, is that true?

It's — yes, it's a standard of how you're supposed to apply it. They can change based on the situation, as an answer. Sorry, yes.

Yeah, that's okay. But they are a rigid standard, right? Now, you said it and I'll go there, Your Honor, but with this witness, they do change from engagement to engagement, and from district to district, and from mission to mission, absolutely.

Okay, give me an example of how one might view an ROE one day and then have somebody come in and brief you on a change. How might that Rule of Engagement change from one venue to another?

Well, you are — like you just said — you're going to get some sort of brief or some sort of explanation of why it changed or what particular manner of change. So maybe it was, "Hey, we're no longer — you are no longer allowed to fire any type of warning shot." Where before it was, "Hey, you know, this is a checkpoint. You are allowed to, if they don't stop at this point, you know, you can fire a round either in front of or at the hood of the car." Which, warning shot, the dumbest thing, you never, don't ever do them. But you know, you're caught in the firefight, like you wouldn't believe by the way.

Yeah, that's right, you're allowed certainly.

And then that could change. You can say, "Hey, we're no longer doing that. That's no longer the risk of something going wrong. There's no longer worth the benefit of doing that, so we're not going to do that anymore." Or it changes to, "Hey, absolutely no one comes past this point, not only is it a warning shot, but you are allowed to engage because the threat level of the situation has completely changed." But yeah, have you in your experience as a subject matter expert ever — and Your Honor, I would swear, man, as a subject matter expert before I ask this to you guys and, you know, I would never testify. I would have invoked my Fifth Amendment right, exactly. But to answer this question on podcasts, which is a lesser standard. Have you ever received ever a Rule of Engagement that said you cannot fire back upon somebody unless you're fired upon, so they have to initiate the action?

Yes, that's something that it's not uncommon, even now.

So would it be a stretch to say that that's a common thing?

Yes.

Okay, so the idea —

I'm sorry, no, it wouldn't be. It's not a stretch, not a stretch.

Yeah, but the idea is, in all the times you've gone into combat zones, you've received a briefing on a Rule of Engagement?

Yes.

It was a rigid standard. It laid out all of the situations that they anticipated that you would get into. And there were extremes where you could shoot at anybody, at any time, in any situation. There were extremes that went the other way — and I'm taking a liberal license here — that said you can't shoot until you were shot upon. The difference between a Rule of Engagement and the law is the law can't change as quickly as a Rule of Engagement, right? So our laws and our amendments in the Constitution take an awfully long time to change. So what we've done is we've built in our arbiters of justice that look at your actions at that time and at that place, putting themselves in your shoes and saying, "What is the reasonable standard?"

Now I'll go back to you with an ROE: If you violated an ROE, you would be arrested or brought up on charges. Yet they wouldn't convict you of anything unless they did what?

Unless they conducted an investigation and you could say, "In this instance, I had to violate the Rule of Engagement because of what that specific situation was." Right.

So Brian, a long way around the tent, but what I'm trying to say is, folks, before you go and say this is egregious, you gotta take a look at the big picture. So why do we then have these videos? So Brian is going to set up in the podcast notes a number of different scenarios and you'll get to watch the videos. Well, the videos you're going to watch are the most outlandish, the most out of control videos you've ever seen. I would say that use of force, a force encounter, and a duty to intervene probably comes up thousands of times a day, maybe a hundred thousand times a day, and you never ever hear about it. Why? Because most of them are interactions that are lower scale: "Hey Tommy, don't double-dip with your nacho chip into the sauce." "Billy, don't go back in there and take the white-out" — I don't even know if they use white-out anymore or typewriter ribbons — "You know, that's for company use only, you can't take them home." Those type of situations happen outside ex parte law enforcement, out of the courts, out of the corrections, all the time. You do it with your kids, don't you? When your kid colors outside the line, you bring them back in. So almost every Rule of Engagement, almost every duty to intervene, those types of situations happen in society and are straightened out by the people that are close.

So there's two points standard that I always put to something if it's going to fail — and I sent you this in a text about something different just a couple of days ago — the two things that I see failing all the time are leadership and training. Why do I say that? Because what happens is we want these things to be a standard, but if you're not briefing it and not rehearsing it, and that training to a standard, Brian, it's impossible to...

Well, that's fact. And almost as impossible to enforce. That's what we see with it. This is one of those things where it's like, "Yeah, we have a policy for that, right?" Okay, and this is what our policy is, and everyone read it and signed it. Okay, great. "You know the policy, I can show you your signature." No, you [expletive] don't. That doesn't — it's those discussions of what would that look like? How? Not just because otherwise it's, "Oh, let's, look, well, hey, let's just go do your online duty to intervene training. There you go. When in this situation, you must take into account all of the..." It's that [expletive] [expletive] that everyone clicks through anyway. And so, this is one of those things that really can be done in those discussions, to say, "Okay, given this set of circumstances, if this were to occur, what would you do? How would you handle it?" But then show me, explain to me what you would say to the person who was doing that in the moment. Because now that gives me file folders, that gives me some way to do it. Because this was, this is my August — I kind of posed you sort of my first general question, and you can get to it however you want to get to it — but a lot of people will look at these different situations and say, "Oh, that's, you know, moral cowardice. You have to stand up for what's right." Or they'll do that, "Well, you know, they kind of fall into peer pressure," and that can happen. And, you know, my sort of question on this is based on sort of your law enforcement experience, because that kind of generally where we're taking this, but this works anywhere. Is that the case, or sometimes is it the lack of that person's ability to really articulate the situation that they're in? Meaning...

That's a great point.

They know, "Yes, I read the policy. This kind of seems like I'm feeling as if this is outside of this. Something doesn't feel right. I don't like this." But a lot of times what I don't know how to take that policy that I just signed and then apply that in some novel situation because that's the whole key. Exactly, right? Exactly. But we do that, we pass that off as like, "Yeah, we get that." Yeah. So, meaning, do you see that? Because you fall into peer pressure? Yes, you can create a culture of [expletive] lawlessness. You've told stories where you're in morning roll call and Feds come in and start arresting people, guys sitting next to you and take the file cabinet.

Forgot. It happened many times.

Yeah. So, let's do this, let's talk about socialization and how this can work because I don't want everybody thinking that it's not going to get better, because it's going to get better. But we have to have a standard for survival. Absolutely.

So, I remember as a little kid, my earliest memories traveling around with my old man. And my old man would see somebody that was broken down, and my old man would pull over. And I would go, "Dad, what are we doing? I'm afraid. I don't know these people. I don't understand why you're pulling over to help them." And he would tell me, "We're a member of the Good Sam Club." And it was a little cartoon figure with a halo, and it stood for Good Samaritan. And that meant that when you see somebody that needed help, you pulled over and you helped him. And he told me, "I have a duty as a member of this club. I have an obligation to help my fellow man." And I was like, "Oh my God, my dad said..." My dad taught me most of my things that I relate now at the end of his fist, right? But this was one of the things, yeah, that he... And I was like, "Wow, I really like this guy that, you know, the pugilist that, that the drunken man that beats me."

But the idea, Brian, is that if that was part of the culture during the '60s when other things were happening where anti-establishment and hippie and, "I'm fighting this," then we know that even during arduous times that Common Sense can prevail. So, what did that mean to me? Well, that meant that there is a standard that's out there. And when you look at Good Sam, the Good Samaritan... I want you to take a look at the other end of the spectrum. You and I were involved in something, and I have to non-attribute myself, folks, because I don't want to insult somebody. But we're involved in something that had to do with military academies at some level. And the idea was that when we were going through to conduct our assessment of what the seams and gaps are that they needed the training in, the idea is that we had people come up to us hand over fist and say, "The biggest problem here is number one, honor code violations — those violations. And number two, that the values had sunk so low that other people were failing to report blatant honor code violations." And it occurred right in front of them, for the — found the cheating on the honor code part of the test? Yes, which was not — not making that up — which was actually the second punch. So we got hit with the left and then got hit with the right when they came and said, "Yeah, the number one thing they cheated on was the honor code and values test."

So what does that mean? Does that mean that we've spun wildly out of control? Now, what that means is that sometimes we value the letter of the law, and sometimes we discuss that at an on-duty roll call, and sometimes we discuss it over dinner with our kids. And we haven't been doing that in a while. And that form of leadership in our society has waned. And therefore, if I don't get trained on it, Dad taking a knee, or Mom taking a knee, or whoever your significant caregiver is, taking a knee and say, "No, Tommy," or "Judy," whatever you want to associate with, "This isn't how we handle that."

And I'll bring up a temper tantrum. Brian, temper tantrums are important to me. Temper tantrums are when any kid lets out a strong outburst of emotion because they're not able yet, because of timing in their brain and emotions and maturity, to express themselves in a way that we deem as the rest of society socially acceptable. So if you see that kid do the temper tantrum, the first ring of defense is the parental unit or caregiver to say, "Now, Tommy, that doesn't go." But then the society around it going, "Oh my gosh, look at this kid!" And, "Billy, you better never act like that!" Do you understand what I'm saying? So ripples start going out, and those ripples are what create the societal impact that temper tantrums have. And that's why we don't have them as adults because we have to modify that behavior. But if we don't know leadership, somebody's stepping in, there's a duty to intervene, isn't there? I mean, I step into my kid and go, "No, Billy, straighten up right now," and grab them by the collar, however we do it without violence these days, right? But the idea is if we don't have those steps, Brian, observe the tantrum, say, "This is not socially acceptable, this is the right behavior," then we haven't learned a thing.

Yeah, no, that, and that's a good point. I actually tell the story when the Insurgent (my son) was playing around with a bunch of kids at a playground one time years ago and one kid was just kind of overreacting and screaming like bloody murder. I mean, like screaming. And I had to walk in there and step in and I told her — and I was like, I stopped them all from playing, but obviously I was just talking to her. I'm not gonna yell at someone else's kid, you know, especially right there, you know what I mean? But I was like, "Hey, you see how that kid is screaming like that? That is absolutely unacceptable. You cannot ever do that. The only reason if I hear something like that, it's because something has gone seriously wrong and someone's trying to hurt you." Because if I keep hearing — which is a societal trigger — because, yes, and you can tell, like, you could tell all the other parents, like I was saying it loud enough for them to hear, then they kind of keyed in were like, "Wow, they didn't even think of that!" I was like, "Yeah, exactly. Because if you keep screaming like that, I'm not going to notice it anymore, and that's going to be the time that kids are going to get snatched up."

But it's those moments, you know, there's again, there's so much into it. Yet we, and we talk about values and we talk about what that means. They can mean different things to different people. Like you could have your own interpretation of events, but you can boil all of them down into some very basic tenets. And what the problem is, we don't kind of include some of that in what we're doing, because we're so focused on just this little mini thing that we're focusing on. "Well, this is how they use the force in this," and, "That went wrong. They shouldn't have done that. They're a bad person." Because remember, it's not their training, right? The training department's not going to get fired, it's just, "Hey, we blew it right there." But what it is, is, and we just kind of go after that individual. Yes, and meanwhile, that individual was like, you could play the video back for them, and some of the times they won't even recognize themselves doing that, meaning they won't even know in the moment that they're out of line, because you don't in those situations, right?

I've had to have my wife step in with stuff what I was doing, where I was getting heated in situations where, yeah, the person was in the wrong clearly, right? But I didn't need to get that upset over it. And I've had to have her go, "Hey, like, babe, where are you going with this? Like, absolutely not!" And I'm like, "Oh [expletive], yeah, you're right. I'm getting kind of heated right now. I'm gonna go ahead and take a step back." And, you know, having that in those moments, it, that's when it's difficult. But if you don't practice and kind of rehearse that or train for that, you're not going to. Because I have to, I tell her even with conversations we have out, you know, she has to be like, "Hey, hey, tone it down." Like, "Those jokes or comments are out of line in this situation because I don't understand the social cues of where I'm at."

Exactly. So it's just, you still don't.

I know. But that's hugely important.

But the thing is, Brian, that you don't have a teardrop tattoo face, you get what I'm trying to say? And you didn't just get released from prison and go, "I really screwed that up." You're learning, you know, for years. But you're learning a little at a time. And this gets back to the core of the issue of the question that you originally asked me. The idea is, if I was at on-duty roll call tomorrow with your agency, folks, the very first thing I would do is take a knee and tell everybody, "Your peace cannot be breached. You're a law enforcement professional, and a breach of peace and disorderly conduct and all those things that you see around you aren't personal attacks on you. Even if the person makes it a personal attack on you. And your job is to be the moral conscience of the rest of the unit in the world." And if you can't do that without emotion, without physically getting involved, are there times that you have to use force? Yes. What should that force be? It should be the force reasonable for this situation to affect the means of whatever it is that you're doing. Now, that means maybe to restore order for the rest of society, not that you personally have been maligned. Okay? That doesn't mean that you can't defend yourself, that doesn't give a person the right to punch you and attack you and do other things.

But these preliminary strikes that we're seeing — and that's, Brian, what we're saying is we're seeing a preliminary strike where anger raises to the level of rage in such fast time, due to time-distance, folks, that a person lashes out and then goes, "Holy crap, what did I just do?" Right? So those things, anger issues don't get cured, but anger can get better. And anger serves a valid purpose because it sends signals — electrochemical signals, that I just put those words together somehow in my brain — to other people that, "Look, you're getting angry." Why would that be important? Because you're important to me as a social thermometer. So I understand that either my behavior is out of control, your behavior is out of control, or whatever is going on right now isn't going to help the tribe, and we don't want to waste calories on anything that's not survival-oriented. So when somebody acts up in a bar and you get pissed and your significant other says, "No, just let it go," and you're getting angry and you want to step up and say something, that's society, Brian, that's how it's supposed to work. You're supposed to say, "Hey, listen, I'm not going to let that," "Hey, tone it down," "Stop dropping bombs at church," or whatever it is. Just intervene.

Well, no, that, and this is, this is the point of why these things occur and why you have to talk about them. It is a sociological imperative for you to keep people in line, meaning me as a human being. I'm wired that way so that we're all moving in the same direction for the purposes of survival. Because if you get too far out of line, you may get the whole tribe killed. Not, not, it's not like, because you said it's about me and I could get offended, yes, but it's not just about you, it's about everything, it's about what we represent as a society as a whole. So we sort of undermine these situations by not elevating them to this almost seriousness, like, like we oversimplify those. Like, "Oh, well, they just said this, don't take it personally." It's like, okay, you're glossing over, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of, or in books, millions of years of evolution, but just for humans themselves, a few hundred thousand years of how we've been operating.

And so, I think we, we, there are no shortcuts, there's no shortcuts, but we don't, we don't take it as seriously as we take other things because we don't realize the importance of it, because it's something that's seemingly intuitive that we have on board. But we don't, if we don't articulate it clearly amongst a common set of values where we can all point to the sign and say, "Yes, these are the things. Greg, you define it. Okay, good. Brian, you define it. Okay, Bill, you define it. Got it. This is what it means, and this is how we carry that forward. These are the most important things." It's like when we worked with the military, remember, you know, we're doing Insider Threat Program, and then you had the one leader who was like, "Yeah, I'll tell you what, my biggest what keeps me up at night, it's sexual assault on this base." It's like, "Wait a minute, right? We're in the middle of a combat zone and you're not even talking about what's going on out there, what's worrying." And that's because it's an Insider Threat. That's the most important part. Well, how can that happen? How could that happen in an organization with literally codified values, ethics that it all rests upon? Because that's the foundational element for all of these different situations. It's what societally do we want? What does the law say? How did the laws get there? Well, that's a collection of our values and beliefs over time, right? That have been codified. So they're pretty important, right?

And then you are on something that we need to define further. So there's two angles here, Brian. First angle is this: You have a mental Rolodex. For you guys and ladies that are listening that have no idea what I'm talking about, look it up. It's a great search. Business cards and phone numbers, and had phone numbers and contact information in the old days when we had rotary phones and stuff. And so it's a big wheel that looks like a fan, and each one of the little things was alphabetized, so you go to A, B, C, D, E, obviously, and find Brian Marren under M or B, and then or A as Arcadia. And when you open it up, there was all this information.

Your brain is very similar to that. We store information in short term and then long term, and different corticals of the brain, different areas of the brain. So that some are sensory-triggered, then brought forward to, you know, be visually triggered, or some are visually triggered and then they bring together a number of file folders. So your brain can choose between the four or five that are — and these happen in nanoseconds, and they happen just as fast, you know, faster than you can actually think of them. And the idea is so that you don't drop on a white card (come up with a blank, no solution). The idea is that you're always coming up with a potential solution to a newer, novel, external arousal that's close to something you've encountered. Because the problem is, is if it's not close to what you've encountered, you end up on that white card and everything is a gamble.

Which is fine when I'm here at work reading an email and I don't know the answer. Yep. But that's not fine.

A little different in our backyard. Yeah, at night there might be a cell phone. Right, that's the point. There is no time to think, and you don't. So your brain's jamming the information in your head. And so, like you said, you come up blank. And it will.

Exactly. There's nothing there. You've got no response, or it'll fall to some primitive level.

Well, it'll fall to muscle memory. But so, we can train for things where people call muscle memory, which apparently, yeah, now I guess people would be like, "Well, I don't know, you're not supposed to use that term anymore." Like, "Oh, your muscle doesn't actually have memory." And I'm like, "Wait a minute, you thought this whole time that when somebody said muscle memory they're gonna add actual memory in your muscle?"

No, there's a, that's a neurological pathway, just shows how stupid training.

Yeah, right. So people, but what I'm saying is, is you can build a response and build in repetition that way. But you have underlying muscle memory or what's hardwired. So beneath that, that will overtake it if you don't have some pre-planned response. And you can't pre-plan every response to every situation. But you don't need to. What you do is you have to have channels, you have to have lanes in your brain where your brain will go, "This isn't exactly the same thing, but it's cognitively close enough."

Hence, let's give a couple of examples. So, one example Chantal is a genius, he sent it to us, it'll be in the notes, a great article. The number one thing that causes death in the airline industry is when aviation enthusiasts that fly all the time get into a stall and then fail to correct the stall. So everybody that's out there that's listening, they can't see me, I just want you to take your hand and hold your hand sort of flat with your palm down out in front of you. Now, a stall occurs when your hand, now increase the angle at the front of your fingers so they're pointing towards the ceiling at like 35, 38 degrees when you're going up. Okay, all of a sudden you may have an engine stall. So the best way to correct the stall is to drop that nose, now point your fingers down towards the floor, and that will increase your thrust, your lift, and you'll get your engine back on, and you'll save yourself. The problem is that without on-duty roll call training to remind you of this, hint, hint, hint, what happens is to save yourself intuitively, you think, "I want to pull back on the yoke." Why? "I don't want to fall below me, I don't want to fall. I'm going, I'm going down, Brian." And what happens is that's exactly the wrong thing to do, and now you're going to be in a flat spin or some other emergency and you're going to die.

So to your point about the muscle memory fight, which we're not going to get into, but if you want us, we're ready. The idea is that I've said it a thousand times in every training venue, "You can't go out there and make something look like a gun and paint it a different color, but put it in a holster on your gun belt and then say, 'Hey, listen, this is the real gun, this is the taser.'" Because what you do — and I don't care who you are, come challenge me with this one, I'd love to have you on the show — the idea is that you've drawn your gun so many times that it becomes what you define as muscle memory. But then when you go to your less-lethal, which is also a type of gun, and there's another article that Brandon put up there where the young female who is now traumatized, beyond less traumatized than a guy she killed, of course. But the idea was that her training kicked in, Brian, and she reached for the thing in her brain that said "taser," but that her hand had done a thousand times more, yep, and she shot a guy.

So you can't, look, if you're a leader and your trainer and you don't every single day come out of your office and talk to your employees, you're doing them a disservice. You have to model the behavior you expect to create the file folder for the desired outcome. That's leadership. Then you have to offer the training for that. "Hey, one day you're going to be sitting there and a guy in a wheelchair with a folding pocket knife is going to be slowly moving away from a shoplifting, and you're going to come upon that empty file folder. But some part of your intuition is going to say, 'I have to stop this guy somehow,' and you're going to pull a gun and you're going to shoot them. And you're going to say, 'Well, it's justified because he could have done this or that.' Kiss my ass, it's justified." The idea is that when we get afraid, we become little children. We go back to the tantrum, and what did I tell you about the tantrum? Is we weren't able to express our behavior in a socially acceptable way because we're on a blank file. Nobody modeled that behavior they expected from you.

That's what it goes back to, right? In that, in that situation is, is that, you know, if I come up with nothing, okay, I've never seen this before and I don't know how to think my way through a situation. Yeah. I again, fear comes in, uncertainty will lead to fear, and then fear causes us to make bad decisions. And you know, you're angry, you can get turned into rage. But that, that unknown right there of not being able to think through the situation because I'm just relying on some sort of muscle memory or some response to something that I, some conditioned response to every situation. That's what you're relying on. That's how these things occur. That's how you get so wild.

Exactly. It's like you're not thinking through. You're literally not thinking at all. You're just responding. And if you hit that blank file folder, you hit, come up with nothing, you get that Jeopardy theme. And then your brain goes, "I don't like this. I don't like this one bit." And here comes fist, here comes the boots hanging out.

So let's talk about that. One of the capers that you've got on there is a female that's restrained that gets hit. One of the things that will be in the notes, folks, is poor Huron copper (police officer) that strikes out at a person that's being verbally abusive and drunk. But hasn't put up his dukes or done anything that would show a reasonable person that he's about to fight you right now. Have a mental file folder that anger goes to rage. You don't need that. Rage comes upon you. Rage is an emotion that has no purpose in present-day society, but it was there as part of our survival instincts. And anger was a message. Anger's a form of communication. Okay, so what you have to understand is that rage is — no, rage controls the situation through an outburst of uncontrolled violence right now because my brain didn't have another solution available. So what happens is you don't need to have anger to get to rage, and you have to watch the people around you because when it strikes, it'll lash out so quick it'll surprise you.

Now, if you're talking about the training for duty to intervene, I'd love to see the type of training for that that doesn't include an emotional pin register of your folks that you're working with. Because you have to get used to your folks. Look, if they're angry, you can tell me, "Calm down, Joe." But when Josephine isn't angry, and all of a sudden you see the situation starting to go up, you need to take a knee or take a step back. Give yourself the gift of time and distance and look at your team and go, "Look, one of us is about to have an uncontrolled outburst of rage and choke this person or spray them or slap them or do something stupid." So we have to remember that our peace cannot be breached. We'll be fine, we're going to get through this. Now, Brian, I am not saying about a person that's armed with a gun and not following commands and all that other stuff. I'm saying a drunk person is like, "I'll kick your ass!" And the next thing we know, we've punched them, they're down, and we're hobbling on the ground. We don't understand how we got there. And that all the cops that are standing around, they couldn't believe that it just occurred. We're going, "Hey, let's charge every one of those for failing."

Yeah. And you can't get there from here. You have to train it. It's got to be a part of your culture, and it's got to come, your boss has to step in every day. You're going, "I am Chief of Police," you assume I'm going to show up on midnights and talk to the team. If you don't, you're never going to be able to control those things that are going to occur without your view and your leadership.

Yeah, and again, you know, these are, these are kind of, sort of, these are obvious examples, right? When you see it, of where something could have, you know, but, or something should have been done prior to that. But or someone should have stepped in or should have said something. And there's, you know, there's plenty of those examples. But, you know, it gets more complicated when it's something smaller. It's our friend, it's something we work with, you know, it's something simple. You're filling up the rental car that's paid for by the company you work for, and the gas card that they give you, and then you're putting some drinks and some food on that card too with it. And it's like, "Well, okay, well, did they say that was okay?" It's like, "If not, then you can't do that." And it's like that person's the same, you know, it's like, "Oh, well, what's the big deal? You know, it's a couple bucks that, you know, hey, they're not going to even notice because it's all going to the same charge." It's like, "Yeah, but if you're willing to treat someone else's property, what else are you willing to do?"

I, absolutely. And that's, we don't think of it that way in those moments. We go, "Well, that's a different standard." It's like, "No, it's the same standard." Well, whether you're just grifting off some of the old folks in your neighborhood taking their money, or you're Bernie Madoff taking billions of dollars from people, it's fraud. I mean, the dollar amount doesn't matter in the sense that you're of what you did. But we don't look at it that way. We judge them all differently. And if you, because we don't want to put ourselves in something, "Well, maybe I shouldn't have done this," or, "Maybe I took too much here," "Maybe I didn't do that." And that's the thing, it's like, those are the little things that do matter. That's what builds exact cases.

Exactly. And that was, that's how you build a culture. So, yeah. So our forefathers — and folks, don't bang me with "father and mother" and all this other stuff, I get it all, but, you know, just to make sure that it's an efficient form of speech — our forefathers sat down and said, "What are the values that are important to us that we want to protect?" This is what you as the owner of your business have to do to your personnel. So they said, "Well, we have to have a Fourth Amendment." Everybody goes, "We already got three, geez, how many are there going to be?" Right? And they sat down and they said, "Hey, we have to define reasonableness." And they said, "Why?" "Well, because all of our decisions are predicated on what a reasonable person would do in the same situation."

So, Brian, I would go to my company and I would say, "Hey folks, this is your gas credit card. Do you understand that you can't buy chips or Coke or any of those other things?" Because everybody in the company goes, "Yeah, well, we understand that." "Yeah, well, you know what? Tammy didn't, and Tammy's no longer with us. Because she did those things." "Oh, okay." So Tammy's behavior was unreasonable given the circumstances. We're right back to our ROE comment, right? So what's the Fourth say? The Fourth says that, "We're going to protect you from any unreasonable search or seizure by the government." That's a hugely important standard, Brian. So it's a guarantee against all searches and seizures that are unreasonable. There's our standard again. So now we've created a standard. And you go, "Okay, well then why do cops get a buy?" Well, because they put in there that, "Look, you have to be able to have a limited intrusion because you think that that person is up to no good." So they say, "Look, here's the thing. It's okay to have a limited intrusion as long as it's reasonable." So a cop can affect a traffic stop or go up and contact you on the street. And the second part of the standard is, "Look, public safety takes precedence because we want our society, our tribe, to flourish. So we're going to allow certain things: a warrant search, a warrant arrest, or an unwarranted search or arrest in very extreme circumstances."

So the idea of a duty to intervene is incumbent upon the Fourth Amendment. So you're exercising excessive force whenever you don't stop a cop from slapping the person that you stopped because they felt their peace was breached or they were insulted. But Brian, without the leadership component telling you that and reminding you of that and having it as a part of your training, it's gonna get lost in the sauce because of familiarity.

Familiarity, yeah.

Right. And familiarity also makes things seem okay for Joan to do but not okay for you and I. And that's not, it's wrong. It's got to be reasonable for everybody. Change blindness, adaptation takes over and you don't notice it at all.

No, but you bring up a really, really good point there. Because we go into these seemingly gray areas where people like, "Well, it kind of depends on the context and this." It's like, okay, but, "You know, and how you were raised and what your values are or might be different."

No, so what you did right there is perfect.

And especially if it's a law enforcement example, tie it right back to the Fourth Amendment because that's codified. There's no law to support it. There's, there's left and right lateral limits that have gone, that the Supreme Court has come out with different cases saying, "Yes, this applies," "No, it doesn't here," "Yes, it does here," over and over again throughout history. So you have, you have everything there to already rely on. If you tie it back to the law, it actually, and this kind of gets back to the point that I was talking about earlier when I kind of posed the question to you, is that sometimes people get in these situations so they don't know how to articulate what they saw that was wrong. Or, and literally, if I don't know the words to describe how my supervisor stepped over the line because, like you said, maybe that supervisor didn't even really realize at that point where they were at, you know what I mean? Maybe didn't even realize they had gone that far. Can everyone fall into that? Of course. Especially if you've never been called on it before in the past, or never seen what right looked like, or been told how to articulate this stuff.

So using a simple Fourth Amendment example, right, of saying, "Well, hang on here, we're actually going outside the purview of what we're allowed to do in this given situation," makes it clear. So it's not a value judgment, right? Because if I, if I try to, you know, you're going to get offended if I say, "Well, that doesn't align with my values and how," and you're going to go, "Wait, you're saying like my dad didn't teach me, teach me, he taught me how to do this and he showed me this and I went to this place that," you know, it becomes almost this, we get a lot of ego involved, becomes like a, a, but if I have some other way to just describe it, it makes it clear. It makes it much more clear. And then it becomes in the eyes of the law, which is even more so.

So if you were going to conduct training at on-duty roll call, and it only takes a couple of minutes, you say, "Look, you're going to be out there and you're going to see somebody's suspicious. And that person is going to heighten your awareness of them based on the baseline for their emotions and their activities and their behavior. And you're going to want to stop them. Now, remember, you have the right to make a reasonably, a reasonable inquiry and confirm or dispel those suspicions that you have." And that's under Minnesota versus Dickerson. So we're going to bring up the '93 case law and we're going to talk about it for two minutes. Or, the one that most people are more familiar with, Terry versus Ohio, Terry stop. And you get what I'm saying, yeah? Okay, so what we just did is in four minutes before roll call, we gave you a couple examples. We can even act it out with Joan and Bill who are going to get up and say, "Hey, sir, I need to speak with you for a minute. I'm so and so." Okay, we can do that.

Now I'll tell you another one I would do: New Jersey versus TLO. Okay? Look, schools, your kid when they go to school virtually has no protection on the Fourth Amendment, right? Because schools don't need a warrant. Okay, all they need is a reasonable standard. It's got to be reasonable under the circumstances of that search at that time. And guess what TLO says? We don't have to do that. New Jersey versus TLO, folks, says that we don't have to do that. You don't have the protection, just like because a vehicle, a motor vehicle is inherently mobile, therefore you've got a lot less protections. Look, if we did this in Civics class in school and taught the kids the meaning of what they have and what they can protect, they wouldn't resist it when they were on the ground or run or flee. And if we taught cops at on-duty roll call and reinforced it every day, Brian, so what we're saying is leadership in schools teaching our next generation, parents at home teaching our next generation, on-duty roll call. Those are all chances, leadership and training, in limited circumstances to give you a model for your behavior. And all I'm saying is that's a file folder that becomes one of those files on your Rolodex.

And I think those discussions and everything you brought up is actually, it's more — I, those are more important than a policy and procedure. And what I mean, I agree, because when policy and procedure changes, those things don't change. Meaning the law is what it's been since they got to the Fourth Amendment, you know what I mean? So, I mean, you can use that as a framework going forward because you can rely on that no matter the circumstances. A policy or procedure is going to change tactics, detecting some procedures as I always see people talking about this, "And we're going to create new tactics for this." It's like, okay, and then next month you're gonna do something else, and then next year is going to be something different. Then five years from now you're going to look back at this and say, "That was stupid!" Like you look back at tactics 10, 20 years ago and say, "God, those are dumb. I can't believe we did this!" But you think you're doing things right now? All right, got it. Like, what do you think they thought at that time too? So maybe, maybe less emphasis.

Yeah, Plato said you had a duty to intervene.

Yeah, the other, the other part of this too, is, is, whether, yeah, sure, whether it's a police agency or any organization or company, this allows you, you can control this. This is behavior, and these are things that you can control, right? There's [expletive] that's going to happen out there that is outside of your sphere of control. There's going to be things that are played out in the media or social changes or things people say. Great, let them do it. All right? But these are things you can control because I always say any group, like we talk about groups and how to become successful, we talk about leadership and culture and all this. But we define a little bit more in terms of human performance and behavior and how that fits in overall. But you know, organizations that police their own really well, they do really well, right? When they hold everyone to that standard, those are the organizations that they don't come into these conflicts. They don't have them. And when they do, if they do, it becomes clear that that's not part of their culture. And it's more understood by the people. That person sticks out like a sore thumb among other peers, and their peers will turn on them and say, "That's not acceptable."

I agree with you. And that, that's, we should endeavor to get back to a society where, "Listen, I understand your opinion counts, but the whole reason we formed a democracy is that other people are going to champion that as well. So you can't say, 'Well, I disagree with the law.' Well, of course. But the idea is that what keeps us all paddling in the right direction is the fact that you will understand that some things are meant for all of us. And you have to do that, Brian. You have to, you have to have the temerity, you have to have the leadership ability to go into your folks and go, 'Hey, today's another day. I know it's a rough day.'" Yeah, I'll give you an example of that. Right now, the Trump and the 37 counts and this and that, it's got a lot of people thinking. Look, today I got up, I had a cup of coffee, the sun was up. Things are generally going to be okay. It's not unbridled hedonism. This is not the apocalypse. We still have the time to rein things in, folks. Stop thinking everyone's at the end of the world.

Right? You brought up, you brought up Plato, and if you know, people go back and read what Plato was saying about his society and his culture then, and it's going to look exactly what you see play out today on the news, on social media, that people are saying same arguments, same arguments, same argument against the government. I don't, I don't know if you know how correct those things are because they didn't play out for him, right? You know, I mean, what generation hasn't said, "The next generation is the softest, weakest, dumbest," right? Exactly. Well, everybody says, "Yeah, right!" Well, and they're not going to take responsibility even though they're the ones that raised that generation. But, "Oh, yeah, it's not my fault my kid's a punk." Like, "Oh, yeah, it is, actually."

But to go back to that, you know, having those discussions about that and how that plays out, super simple to do. I mean, that's, that's the whole point of these is those are, those are, because you create sort of those thinking points so you don't end up on that blank file folder. That's what we all, we care about in this podcast, is that you understand that when it spins, it's going up. And if it comes up with words and photos and ideas and all that stuff, you'll generally be fine because that means that you've had the training or an experience that's close by. So you come up on the white one, then it's dealer's choice. You never know what's going to happen. And we can't afford that if we're in certain roles. I can't afford that if the doctor is making a call on what drug or medicine to give me or what sort of intervention to give me at the emergency room. So why would I expect a difference between a cop intervening after a traffic stop? Do you get it? I mean, it's that simple.

Well, it really is. And I like, you know, especially I like learning the sort of the values and the written code that any organization has, right? Whatever it is, whether it's, "Say this is our duty to intervene policy," "This is our values," "This is whatever it is." I love learning and reading everything that they're doing and saying because that way, you know, when someone, they come down with something that an organization will come down with something that counters what their own values are. And then you go, "But wait a minute, right here you said this. Tell me how this fits in." Right? And you're keeping people online, you're keeping people in check, right? Accountable.

Yeah, exactly. "You said this, but now you're doing that. Explain to me the, explain to me the distance, what's the difference between your line of reasoning right now?"

On a duty to intervene. There is not, done. Brian, you're holding yourself and your fellows accountable.

Yeah, well, that's, that's, you know, again, it, it, it's not, it seems more difficult than it is because it is more complex than people give it credit for, right? That it's not easy to do it, but it is if you know how to articulate it, right? Meaning if it could, because then it becomes clear. If I have words to describe the situation, well, now it's clear. I can see they're violating this policy. This is how they're violating it. I should, I now have to intervene and do something. Right now, again, depending on the situation, maybe you couldn't affect the outcome. But if you, if you stepped in and did something, one, you did the right thing, so you, you should be fine, right?

Exactly.

But also, you again, you made the point, you tried to hold people to the standard. They didn't want to do it. They couldn't get along for whatever reason. That, okay, got it. But now you know where you fit in an organization. Maybe you need to fix it or where it's broken, or where to go. You know what I mean? That, that's the whole point is that, and we get into that a lot with a lot of stuff we talk about. It's a lot about articulation and understanding. That's part of sense-making. Don't jump to the problem-solving yet. You got to start with the sense-making, right?

Amen.

What is it, what is it that I'm actually seeing here? So, I know we kind of, we, we got into a lot. And again, when you're talking about, you know, how to set up different training like this or the values of an organization or what duty to intervene means, it can get a little complicated. And a lot of what I've seen out there, people talking about it, it's just too general to give you any sort of value. "Remember that taking into account all aspects of it." It's like, "What the [expletive]?" "Every situation may be different." Yeah, so it's up to you to decide how different it is. Thanks. "And how did this, how did this 45-minute click-through video that I just, helped me in any way?" It didn't. And someone got paid a lot of money to make, a lot of money. Oh, well.

But these again, it takes back to what you said about the roll call training. And it doesn't matter what it is, five minutes in the morning is all you need to flip that switch on and get people thinking in the right direction.

So, amen.

Anything else that other than if anyone's going to be in the Topeka, Kansas area in August, beginning of August, we have a course going on. So you can, we got a webinar coming up, buddy. Oh, yeah, yeah, next Monday. So a week from this being released, we have the webinar as well. So if you're not signed up, actually at the Arcadia Cognorati website, you should do that because you can get a free webinar. We already had some people reach out and ask, "Hey man, I saw the webinar. How much does it cost?" Like, "It's free, go ahead and sign up." They're like, "Oh, sweet, I'm right on it!" But we are doing one and it specifically relates around cognitive performance, right? And training and how we look at and how we define it, and the limitations and capabilities of eye and brain. That kind of fun stuff. So check that out. And then, yeah, go to the Arcadia website. Reach out to us, TheHumanBehaviorPodcast@gmail.com. We have a Patreon site as well, and we've got more coming, so stay tuned. We appreciate everyone for listening. Please, please share this with your friends. And any, any last, final, final words, Greg, I'll throw to you.

Yeah, man, I think reasonableness, that's my word of the day. Reason. Make sure your behavior is reasonable.

Yeah, well, yeah, again, according to the value based on a reasonable person.

Exactly. What's reasonable for me, Greg, is, "No, no, that's what I'm saying, you're unreasonable." Your reasonableness standard? A reasonable person. Don't, don't use yourself. Exactly. Go back to the Fourth Amendment. Read it.

Yeah. All right, well, thanks everyone for tuning in. We really appreciate it. And don't forget that training changes behavior.