Left Of Greg 022 Tactical Patience

Hello everyone and welcome again to The Human Behavior Podcast. As usual, I'm your host, Brian Marren, and it's just going to be Greg and myself today—of course, Greg Williams. Today, we are going to be discussing more HBPR (Human Behavior Pattern Recognition and Analysis) topics, specifically focused on what we have written up here: tactical patience. All right, how to create that time and distance. So, that's kind of going to be the focus of it. But before we get into that, of course, always guys, want more information, always www.arcadiacognero.com. Follow us on The Human Behavior Podcast YouTube channel. These are on there, it's The Human Behavior Podcast on iTunes. You can go to the website, you can go to our Buzzsprout, all that stuff. All the links to everything is on the website. But we're also obviously on Facebook, Instagram. We write Medium stories that Greg works on for the lessons learned, are all posted there. So, get on there and clap for our stories. So, maybe they'll give us a dollar or something. We can get something—

Something better than just a whiteboard and a couple of your first paycheck, Marren. So, on that, and I know, Brian, you wanted to give a shout out to some of the folks that, Brian, for all our listeners, all our viewers. We hosted training last week up in Sterling, Colorado. Sterling's on the east side of Colorado, up by the Nebraska, Kansas borders, Wyoming to the north. It's incredibly beautiful. As a matter of fact, the first time—oh, yeah—first time I ever bunny and bird hunted with my old man in Colorado was in Sterling, Colorado. We went, oh yeah, we went out on a pheasant hunt back in the day. We are going to Pendleton, of all places. You know, it's our old alma mater. And so, on the way through, we mentioned friends out there, and I just want to say the training was incredible. We have never been so graciously hosted as we were. The university, the college up there, Brian, is Northeastern. The Director of Security up there was Trenton Swartzer. He was the one that offered the venue. The Sterling Fire Chief, Chief Ritter, set everything up for us and got everybody there. Manners, Kelsch, and Swingle from the police department there, and from Colorado State Patrol, we had Sergeant Mark Thornhardt. I know I'm butchering his name, but Mark with a 'C', what a great guy. All of Logan County had—so, people from the emergency room, the people from the fire departments, the people from the P.D.s and the S.O.s. We had Crisis Intervention personnel—everybody. And this is exactly when it goes right. One couldn't have done it without Gilbert Tucker, former fire department here in Gunnison, now fire up in Sterling. His wife, Callie, is actually a Crisis Intervention psychologist. It just went swimmingly. And guess what? All the right people showed up. All the right people walked away with some training, Brian. And thank you for saying that. I love that type of training, that in-person regional. And these folks, they—I gave them everything I had, and they were wonderful.

Well, and plus, anytime you get a group, a mix of those groups, you know, we often get in those training mindsets where it's, "Okay, you know, hey, let's put on my active shooter ball cap and train like that. Hey, let's get on my suicide prevention cap and train for that." Where you don't need to have all that, right? If you understand, if you're understanding human behavior pattern recognition analysis. So, when you have those groups together, you know, whether we're—it's a like a community-wide group, I mean, exactly. It increases that effectiveness of everyone on their job. They all had that speak—that same lexicon, and it just, it's better for that whole region, that whole area. Everyone who gets that training, it's great. I love those classes because you have different perspectives, right? And that's where that's where you create more file folders and more experiences. So, so now that that police officer or fireman walks away with something they didn't know that they learned from the school psychologist. And now that school psychologist learned something they didn't know from the fire department police perspective that were there. It just creates that—I mean, it's amazing when you're there. Now, you're absolutely right.

And you know, everybody, like, for example, there's no doubt that the Logan County Communications, there were some personnel that didn't know somebody on the fire department, and a tactical commander, unit commander, might never have met anybody from Colorado State Patrol. So, you know, that there's networking that goes on in every one of those little breaks, and there's just such a great amount of discussion in the margins. So, you know, when learning occurs, it's a wonderful tool. One of those spirals from each different area is what makes that—it makes it unique to your area, in specific. I always love those because they're the takeaways are that much better than us just showing up and saying, "Hey, here's a system, here's how you use it. Now, go do great things." When you have as much of that community involvement, it just makes it so much better. So, I appreciate all those people that showed up. Thanks to them, and hopefully they're tuning in. I know some of them signed up at the website and are probably going to be watching or listening to this. So, thank you guys for coming out and supporting and everything. So, today's topic, like I mentioned, we're going to talk about tactical patience. So, I have it written up here on the board, for those of you watching it. So, for those of you listening, we've got the little board behind us. We can write up notes on. As you can see, I have the writing of about like a fourth grader, but I read at like a seventh or eighth grade level. So, I'm doing okay, I think. I think I'm starting to think that like one of my legs is slightly shorter than the other, 'cause I always write on an angle. Probably TBI related.

Well, that's a whole separate podcast. I would venture more on the alcohol-related side, but I don't want to speculate because I can't smell you right now.

Yeah, that's true. We'll keep that hand shaking a little bit right here as I'm trying to write stuff down. So, today we'll get into tactical patience. So, I think that's a term that is actually a little bit more common lexicon nowadays, somewhat than the first time I heard it 10, 15 years ago, it kind of in the military because that has a specific kind of definition. So, I've got some notes too. But Greg, why don't you go ahead and give us your definition of tactical patience?

Yeah, and we can talk historical perspective and I've started what and why Val Van Helsing is a melon-head. But the idea is, let's go right to the source, first and foremost: using the gift of time and distance to control when (capital W) things happen. You have the ability to manipulate the optimal—and you consciously manipulate the operational tempo—so you have the technical and tactical advantage. So, what that means is that you control the speed and momentum of contact, and whether you do contact or not. Those are things that now you control. By utilizing that, Brian, you can be predictably unpredictable. Therefore, your opponent, your enemy, your adversary—depending on what audience we're talking to on that day—they have to adjust at your pace, your time schedule, when you do things. And that keeps them off-balance. And it's not unlike a prizefight or martial arts, and it applies to everything, not just military. So, if I was talking to kids on a playground, I'd say, "Look before you leap." If I was talking to an EMS, I'd say, "Listen, there's very few times when your personnel have to rush into anything. Don't be the first guy at your homicide." So, tactically, it doesn't always make sense to be in a hurry. And it doesn't mean to move slowly, Brian, just to make sure. It means using time as a weapon. It means that we're using time as an insurgent denial tool, a criminal denial tool. We don't let them have the benefit of the upper hand in any, in any contact.

Right. And just to kind of build right on what you're saying, the word tactical is in there, but not in the sense of military or law enforcement tactical meaning. Because this works in the boardroom, this works when you're interviewing someone, this works as you're in a negotiation, that you go, "You know what? Maybe I don't want to jump on this right now. Maybe I can slow down this battle rhythm, going back and forth, to regain the momentum in the situation." So, I'm not reacting to my—it doesn't—we use that, but it could be talking to your kids, right? It doesn't have to actually be, "Don't think of it as opponents I'm trying to do you harm," but the person across the table from you. It might be, "Hey, you know what? I might let this one slide a little bit because I'm going to come up—I'm going to gain a little bit more advantage by slowing down this pace of this negotiation that I'm in." Right? Or this conversation.

We both utilize English as a second language, but both of us did go to school. I'm a product of the Detroit sister school system, your product of the Chicago school system. So, we are not the Rhodes Scholars in the room. But I will tell you this, if we take a look back at journalism or interview techniques, or if there's anybody from HR that's listening to us, remember the term "pregnant pause." And while you're talking to somebody, if you just—and wait for a few seconds, they'll fill that void. Because people want their say. They very rarely want their way, but they always want their say. So, even if we were talking about talking, even if we were talking about a simple interview technique, and you said, "Your kids look at your kid and go, Tommy," and then doing the pregnant pause, that's a form of tactical patience. So, I would actually separate it. And we don't, because what we don't want to do is have the murder board and have the Marines sitting there yelling at us about what "atmospheric" means. But you could have a functional definition that included technical patience as well. Right.

And then that's what it's a perfect word, I think, for more the kind of civilian side: a technical patience versus that, that's a technical level that you're talking about right here. If we're dealing with someone, another human being or a situation, I'm on that tactical or technical level, right? This isn't in a planning process. I mean, you put it into your planning process, but we're just talking about it topically right now. And one other, you know, thing I do kind of add on to the definition, which actually, I think it was an Ellen Spiker, who said it during one of the objective evaluations of combat profiling when, you know, for when you were training with the Marine Corps—we were training the Marine Corps. And the idea was also, you know, using tactical patience to avoid committing too soon or going to kinetics unnecessarily. Okay?

So, just so you know about the V.A. Spiker, I just jotted that down as you were talking, and it's amazing because when you think about that, we're on the same sheet of music there. So, psychologically, clinically, avoiding committing too soon, making a psychological commitment or a cognitive commitment that this is in fact my suspect, or that crime is afoot. But also failing, or choosing not to commit your resources. We don't have a lot of money, we don't have a lot of budget, we don't have a lot of personnel. And so, if we do that, and it's a feint, or it's a, you know, some sort of a trap or an ambush, then we'll have all of our resources committed, and we won't be on solid footing. So, it's brilliant that you brought that up. Shout out to V.A. Spiker, we love you.

Yeah. And so, one of the one of the other things I know you've kind of commented on it or written about it, and it's this is tactical patience would be, all right, so we're going to slow down, we're going to take that pregnant pause like you defined it as. I don't know if you can say that in 2019 anymore. I'm not—that might be offensive to someone. Who knows, exactly.

But our original term was "knocked up pause." Yeah, this is much better. It shows that both of us, if we're progressing or learning, we're learning that the knuckles are slowly coming off the ground. I'm not dragging them as much anymore, but they are so hairy.

So, one of them was, it's kind of a, you know, largely attitudinal, right? This is an approach, a mindset, almost, right? So, there's a lot of talk about like, you know, fixed and growth mindset, and how people accomplish certain things. And this is kind of what we get, it gets into. And for, especially for anyone with this type of background, but it's a, "What do you mean by if you'd say, hey, this is largely attitudinal? All right, I have to, so I have to adopt this in the way I look at everything." Yes.

Okay. Let me give you an example. Let me give you two—let me give you two brief ones. And again, I always assign homework. There's two great vids that are out there, and they're horrific. One is a female getting pulled over for equipment violation on a pickup truck. I'm sure everybody has seen it. If not, later, we'll put the link, thanks, Brian. And then one is Butch Bandar sent us a while back and Sean, virtually at the same time, were the guys hanging on and surfing next to the police officer—or surfing next to the car because the driver decides to drive away from the traffic stop. Now, let's talk about both of those. First of all, the Axon and GoPro cameras aren't designed to film officers behaving badly and watch you die. So, stop, think about what you're about to do. Specifically to the officer that was involved in the tasing, multiple tasing, of the older female. Training changes behaviors, old boy. One, you knew the female was so you could get a warrant. That's why you apply for an arrest warrant, and you could take her anytime, day or night. Yeah. Didn't have to execute it at that time in that place. And you're going to say, "Well, she had done it for six or eight months." Well, then clearly, it wasn't important to do it at that moment. What she did, she was guilty of contempt of cop. She pissed you off, which is evidence that after you pursued, you left your siren on. You went immediately to escalate the violence when you drew your weapon system. You turned the traffic stop into a felony. But, you know what? I'm not going to judge you from here in the cheap seats because I wasn't at that time and at that place. But you will be judged. And when you're judged, they'll look at it and they'll say there was a complete lack of training, and you give every officer a bad name by performing in that manner. You may have saved the choking baby the day before, and you may have given her and saved a life that night. So, I'm not bashing you, but I'm saying you failed to exercise tactical patience on that traffic stop. Many other things could have happened. You could have decided to tow the vehicle with her in it. You could have followed your department policy and procedures. You could have blocked the vehicle front and back using road spikes so she couldn't drive if she was going to be unsafe, and then let her linger at the scene till she got tired, and then offer water and have her follow you back to the hut with Hansel and Gretel, and then throw her in the hoosegow. But what you chose to do is you chose that at this moment I'm going to draw the line. And what happened is, it looked bad for everybody, and it was—I believe that there was a demonstration of negligence in training and supervision at that scene. The second one: a copper went up, clearly, at the violation. He had the right license plate on the vehicle. He knew who the offender was. He knew the name of the offender. So, saying, "I'm going to hang on to this car," is that superhuman catacomb right before your limited system says, "No fear! I shall hold on to this car as it's going," and then trying to draw your weapons system or your Taser while of driving. All of that's going to end poorly. Listen, I had to call off pursuits, and I was the same guy initiating. When I was initiating pursuits, the "boots of truth and justice" everybody going, "Damn, that guy gets into more pursuits, he's getting more felons." And, you know what? Sometimes I chose poorly because I was younger. I didn't know like the Bible says. I was thinking with the mind of a child back then, and I pushed pursuits a little too far. You know, thank God nobody got killed, didn't kill a nun, car full of babies, something like that on a way to gosh, I'm an attorney romance, how to deliver babies apparently. But the idea is, when I grew smarter and I saw the ways, and I started learning the law, and I started applying the department policy and procedures, I understood that sometimes you have to call off a pursuit for the benefit of the general public, for the benefit of the driver, for the officers, or you can get in a trick bag and somebody's going to get killed. Then they're going to say that you chose to pursue arbitrarily and capriciously. Arbitrary and with caprice is bad, bad. That's a Title 42, Section 1983 caper, and you're going to lose money and you may go to jail. You're certainly going to lose a job. And the system is going to pay the plaintiff. So, why not avoid that by giving yourself that gift of time and distance and going through that three-quarters of a second sympathetic, parasympathetic nervous system and going, "What are the likely spirals from what I'm about to do—say, enact, put into motion?" And if the balance isn't there, and we're talking about a moral and ethical dilemma, if it's not there, maybe we need to disengage, break contact, take cover, de-escalate the situation, call for a cover there, Brian. Myriad choices. Okay? And somebody's going to say, "Oh, you weren't there, you don't know." Yeah, the old lady really had you up against the boards, pal. Do you hear what I'm trying to say?

They know that. And that's it. It's you brought up one good point that we absolutely should hit on. It's kind of why we have a hard time, you know, actually doing this. Why, why does that happen where the police officer latches on to the moving vehicle, just like you said, of a known offender that they already got his plates, they already have it on. And, you know, why that that stuff's have to happen? And I've got, you know, plenty of examples that, especially as a young Marine, I mean, we came across out all night. Came up to this checkpoint in the middle of Ramadi, Al Anbar province of Iraq, to check the—it was a checkpoint to 95, but it was an inner large intersection. And normally that time of day, it's 7:30 in the morning. Yeah, there's vehicles on the road, there's people going by, and it's just dead silence. There's no one out there. And so, we have to bound across to go link up with this other team. And we're looking, going like, "Gee, this looks really odd. I've never seen this before. Well, let's do it." So, two at a time, two for me and my buddy, we go running across that street. And guess what happens? I mean, it's just Fourth of July at us. I mean, medium machine gun fire, A.K.A. fire, just hit all over our feet. And we went, "Well, that was—we got across and went, that was about the dumbest thing we've ever done." So, there was a complete lack of tactical patience. So, why is it that we get in that? What I mean like you said, "Okay, I'm the old you're the old sage graybeard that can say, 'Well, son, you know, you should have known this and picked up on the pre-event indicators.'" So, why didn't, even though I saw that coming, why do I still hit that gas pedal?

So, let's talk about external influences for just a second. And I'll tell you a funny cop story—tragic funny, not funny ha-ha. Some coppers were going to go up north after their midnight shift, and coppers wanted to celebrate with some cocktails at the location once they got there. So, they were all tired when they were driving—external factors. Those factors are making us make worse decisions. We're not thinking critically, we're not planning right. So, as they're driving up, it's starting to get dark. So, they've driven all day from day shift to afternoon shift. Yeah. Now they're coming back up on midnight again. The trailer loses a tire, goes into oncoming traffic, and center punches a car on a major freeway. So, now they have to deal with that situation. Trailer's off to the road, they can't do anything with it. They take their camping gear and walk into the woods and, lo and behold, find what appears to be a nice little campground. They're going to handle this in the morning. So, now the critical thinking is really out the window. So, they didn't exercise the tactical patience to have a plan—PACE plan: Primary, Alternate, Contingent, Emergent. So, they set up a campfire, a makeshift blazing inferno, and they sit drinking and singing all night long. And then, when they wake up in the morning, they figure out that they're on the playground of a roadside mobile home park. And all the patrons in the mobile home park are petrified because there are these bozos [referring to the officers] who have turned their backyard into a campground. They had no idea. Well, you can imagine what that does for the local flora and fauna and how well we look on that. What happens is our judgment is clouded. If we go clinically and scientifically, we get what's called confirmation bias. We really think that what we're seeing and feeling and smelling and tasting at the moment is the only thing in the world, and every other conclusion is irrational or ill-founded. So, therefore, our brain reinforces it with chemicals, saying that's "on dendrite attach." And we think that we are actually in the right in every one of those situations. So, when we do that, we're actually offended when somebody does or says. I'll give you another perfect video that they can look up. Do you remember the gentleman that gets out of the car, and it looks like—I'm bashing cops and I'm not. I'm going to be a copper or a first responder or L.E. (Law Enforcement) or any of that other stuff. Be the best you can be. And if you blow, say, "Hey, I blew it!" And walk up and fix it with money or training. So, the copper makes the traffic stop on that little pickup truck, and the driver gets out and reaches for the cane because he's elderly and can't stand up, and they shoot him. The copper on the traffic stop—[Sound of gunshots]—wholeheartedly is going to be the department, I mean, pretty far. Why? Because it's nighttime. And at nighttime, our demons show up. And now we're on a stretch of road, and the last thing you're going to, you know, run into the bad guys at night. And this is all playing on me. So, my catecholamines are kicking, and all of a sudden, I've got my limbic system that's firing. My prefrontal cortex is now [working] slower than the rest of my brain because I'm starting to process the information, and it's, "Leaving everything, you got it. This guy's leaving, and I'm going to stop him from leaving. That's not a cane, it's a gun." So, tactical patience means that if I'm not in full control of my cognition, if I'm not fully in control of my advanced critical thinking, I may be a danger to others or myself or my family. I'm not to bag on Heimlich maneuver again, but for the love of God, you get a little bit excited, you eat too much damn food, tactical patience. Now you're in the trick bag, and your windpipe is obstructed, and somebody's got to give you a chest compression or a slap on the back. Same thing. We think that everything is so important that we're going to speed to get there quicker. And now we're texting while we're speeding. And Timmy came out of nowhere. All of those have undesirable outcomes. And an undesirable outcome can be linked exactly back to tactical patience.

No. And then that's great for everyday life. It's going to, you know, pick someone up at the airport or drive you at the airport, or getting there for your flight. Yes, it sucks sitting in an airport waiting for your plane. It's boring. But bring a book, listen to a podcast, listen to this podcast while you're sitting there. But get there early enough 'cause I used to do the same thing, right? We get those patterns where I've flown out of, you know, the San Diego Airport 9,000 times. Yep. So, I knew that what time I had to leave my house to get there, whether I was checking a bag or not checking a bag to get in. So, I spent no extra time there. Yeah. Until until I almost missed a very, very important flight, that very important test. Yeah. You've got to be patient.

So, listen, Brian, do you remember the time that we were at—I think it was DIA (Denver International Airport), but it might have been Atlanta. Timing and space are blending together with so much travel. But you and I were there, and it was either a lightning strike or an electrical outage or some insurmountable natural or national disaster that occurred. And the flight was going to be delayed. And the guy walked up, the business class guy walked up, and is giving a ration of crap to the booking agent, the flight attendant. "How, where am I suppose—what am I now?" It was as if she caused it. And I'm polished. Okay, we don't think like that. But we must do a tactical patience study, a limited objective experiment. Next time you're at Safeway or City Market, when the person in front of you to the checkout line moves ahead, stand your ground. Hmm-mm. Let them move up a little bit. They're putting up the cantaloupes, you got to weigh them. Stand your ground. Don't move up the step. What do you think the people behind you're doing? Oh, yeah. They're all like bat-crap crazy because they listen, time doesn't matter. There's only one number of time. You can't save time. You can't, you can be much more efficient with your right, but you can't save it. So, the idea is that use that gift of time and distance to save a life. Pay it forward, pay it backwards, pay it sideways. But by slowing down—and we're not talking about moving more slowly, for example—do you think that you think better in a gunfight when your toe-to-toe with an opponent or when you're safely behind cover and you're doing a tactical reload? Exactly what I'm trying to say. So, your life may be hanging in the balance here, or you're going to have 12 jurors, and they're going to break down that life very slowly. And they're going to say, "But didn't you have time?" "Well, I didn't think I—" "Well, you didn't think." "Well, we know that you didn't think." Harrison Ford, what was that movie where they said, "You did not think, sir?" Reason, the British court system in the—yelling at him after the terrorist attack. It was a, yeah, Clear and Present Danger or one of the Tom Clancy's. They're all the same story. They're all the same. Wouldn't happen to start in Ireland or England or Scotland. Yeah, yeah, we love somebody. Do you get what I'm saying, Brian? I mean, a kid walking to school, we have to teach him tactical patience. Pursuing a suspect on foot, tactical patience. Hey, do you want to be first around that corner? Do you want to go safely around that corner? All right, run where you can't put your light. Don't put a soldier where you can't put a bot or a missile. Yeah.

Exactly. It's not outrunning your headlights and exactly stay on the tactical side. Don't go running in your own death. I mean, that happens all the time where it's horrible where, you know, average people on the street, law enforcement, first responders, military, it happens to everyone after the highly-trained people is that they become a contributing factor to their own death.

So, because they don't do it knowingly, Brian. No, no, no. On the broadcast right now, the police officers, when I'm talking about a fellow copper, I've made a ton of mistakes myself, right? I don't think that that copper with that female was being malicious. I don't think the cop hanging on to that car was a coward or stupid. I'm saying that they did their jobs very well, but what I'm saying is because of their lack of training and the lack of tactical patience, as you have written up, they compounded a situation, and they created a dangerous outcome. And that's not acceptable. We have to hold ourselves to a higher standard. Teachers and lawyers and doctors and police officers, certainly, we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard. And an understanding that your body is going to violate the principles of tactical patience is the first step. You have to understand the normal human reaction time to an incident is three-quarters of a second. During that time frame, your parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems already cogitated through the problem, and it's thought about all these angles. It's followed a couple spirals. In that nanosecond, it's already decided what it wants to do. But you're the vehicle. You're the final person before that goes. And so, if you build into every exercise tactical patience, sets that program running at the back, and you say, "Okay, I am not going to commit until the situation is advantageous for me," then you're going to save a lot of money. And that's actually perfect, just how about how to implement something like this. You hit it right there on the head. When you when it comes to training, so much scenario-based training, I think, it's a lot better. Even some of the, I mean, you get on YouTube, there's some people doing some crazy stuff that people think is going to work. But whatever. But as a whole, right, that kind of tactical training stuff that guys like you and some other folks were developing in the 80s and 90s, like, is now starting to come to its—it's kind of becoming more so the standard where we're getting people are getting better at it. And that's the thing is that what we still don't build into that, right? We're just like Sean, who's always on the podcast, always says, "Hey, man, everyone wants to go to the range and shoot guns, everyone wants to go to the gym and lift weights. No one wants to train the brain." And that's what it is. You can put this into, "All right, stop right here. Stop. Tactical freeze," like we do during training. "All right, what are your options here at this point? Yep. What are your options right here at this point?" And just like you said, it's that cost-benefit analysis of what I'm going to do next. All right. This decision, you know, most likely, most dangerous course of action. Where is this going to lead to? MLMDCOA (Most Likely, Most Dangerous Course of Action) of this. All right. And then go, "Well, if that's the—if this could potentially, you know, increase or escalate the situation, do I want to take this path? Is it necessary with this person?" Right. "Is it the guy that just shot up a bank and is running around shooting civilians on the street? Then I must act now to save to save to save someone else's life." Or is this, "Hey, this is the old lady who didn't—whose vehicle isn't properly registered and it's probably shouldn't be on the road because it had some accident or whatever?" What's the cost-benefit here of actually pursuing this?

I love the reason you say "cost" because when you make mistakes, you're going to pay. If you're on the side of right and you make an honest, knowing mistake—again, I don't think any of those cops were being malicious—no, you'll survive, you'll do fine, and you'll move forward. But if they can show that you were arbitrary and capricious, or you retained a subject that wasn't thinking critically, your agency's going to pay. And you may be paying for a funeral, and that would be the ultimate insult. You have to frame it. The human brain is going to respond predictably to certain external schema. When there are confounds in the environment, humans react in a very specific way. So, knowing that going into it, your hands-on training, your actual part test training and practical application should include those. Now, you, Brian, remember back in the day, we've been together long enough, I was doing that gig for EA Sports on what was at that time called "Operation Anaconda." I don't remember what it is now. I think that's a Call of Duty. And so, what I tried to encourage them to do, parallel at the exact same time with the beginning of the IAT, is to show the outcome. So, for example, we were working on technology, right? This yet. So, when you brought up the by knows in real time, on the by knows, you actually saw a guy out a thousand meters in the village. You remember, Brian, when the avatar would run and get on a motorcycle, all of a sudden, a motorcycle in front of you, and there'd be a real human actor? So, we were playing with all that stuff. And the idea was, let's take it to the next step and have CNN or MSNBC or Fox News—whichever one that you watch—pop up so we could see the after-effects of that strategic corporal. So now, all of a sudden, Corporal, you decided to do this, this, and this, or officer, or EMS, right? And then, let's see how it went. And we go to the big screen, and all of a sudden, on the big screen, it had said, "Seven people died today," and it could be "preventable accident" or whatever. So, if we have those discussions about drinking, and we start thinking about the gas tank being the prefrontal cortex, and going back through the limbic system to the most primitive part of the brain, if we have too much to drink, we make poor decisions. If we have too little time, we make poor decisions. So, the luxury of too much or too little time is, we have to control it. We have to manipulate it. And we have to never act until it's advantageous for us. There are rare exceptions, Charlie, baby, do you get what I'm trying to say? That's "officer down" right in front of me, and I have to, right, or to, you know, drag them in to cover something. But they're so rare as to be exceptional. Right.

And even within those situations, you can still, right, you can still make a better tactical decision about rushing right into it. So, even within those chaotic situations. So, we're now past the planning process of tactical patience, of, "Hey, how should I implement this? What do I need to do? Can I take a second here?" Right. Now we're actually in that chaotic situation, Greg. And I think even even then, it's taking that pause and, you know, you don't want to be reacting to the bad guy. You want them reacting to you. Well, you know, you talk about guys always, "How about, oh, you got to be on your on the X, you walk into an ambush, and you got to get off." And it's like, "Well, yes, if you missed everything," all right, which means you missed everything, exact revenge indicators. And now you're in there. Well, you can still be ahead of the left of that next bang, right? You can still, you know, increase your chance of survival, increase your chance of success, just utilizing that tactical patience and—

And do you remember the room—do you remember the room that was designed non-attribution, that everybody goes in and nobody comes out? You and I were, Shelley, if you remember. And our interview was, "What what benefit is what this training?" And they go, "Wow, there's some times you can't do anything, and everything is going to fail." Yeah. No, you plan and you're rehearsing, you're strategizing, you train, and you take into account the most likely and most dangerous course of action you will likely choose. And the better choices you make, you will likely have an easier path going down. And then, even if something goes wrong, you'll have mitigation strategies. That's why we plan. That's why we plan and rehearse for emergencies. Not everything happens on the bang at bang, you know, that's where everyone likes to start to rarity. You know, there's one time you're going to walk outside and the guy next to you is going to get hit by a part of the Skylab. Do you get what I'm trying to say? Even that, even if they have some warnings, that's right. You know, I just don't want people to think that they're not in control of their destiny. Yes, in many aspects, your personal safety and security is your responsibility, and this is certainly one of those aspects.

Yeah. And that's why it comes into kind of looping back into where we said it was attitudinal, it's a mindset of tactical patience. Okay, is how do I slow down this? Do I need to react to this right now instantly, or can I give myself that gift of time and distance, right, and back off a little bit to go, "Hey, you know what? What other options do I have available?" And that's why I said it's useful anywhere. It's useful dealing with your kids. It's useful dealing with—it's just someone at work. You're in a meeting with someone who's being difficult, or you're getting amped up because once you start, like you said, once you start getting all these external and internal factors affecting your catecholamines, you're starting to get upset because things aren't going your way. This person is being non-compliant, whether that is an officer talking to someone on the street, or that's you literally pitching a, you know, an idea to a client. Yeah, and it's not going your way. What starts to happen? Well, now I start to that arousal in my environment increases, right? So, now I start going, "Hey, man, I'm getting upset, I'm getting heated. This is a—he'll understand. He doesn't understand speaking the truth. He doesn't understand what I'm saying." You know, you're right on. And once you start to feel that, you know, with once you have that training, like we always talk about, it's that once I once I start that starts to go up, I start to feel it. I get hit—that cortisol hits my stomach, it's immediate. First thing I do is, "Well, we're going to take a few deep breaths right here, okay? And I'm going to come up with a better course of action," because right now I might want to put that guy's head through the wall, but that's probably not going to work out well for me because where it's my outcomes, or yes, my desired outcome, and can I get there from here? You know, and that that's the perfect point is what is your desired outcome? And a desired outcome should be, do what's best, what's in it for you, what's best for you. So, if yeah, if you're that law enforcement officer pulling someone over, all right, this ends peacefully. We all go home. Maybe that person goes to jail, but I go home to see my family. Or you're in that boardroom is, "Hey, I get this deal. I get him on board with what I'm saying—him or her on board with what I'm saying—and they see it my way. And now I'm—I've got that paycheck to go put food on the table for my for my family. And maybe I've gained an ally. Maybe I created a stalwart ally rather than an opponent."

Brian, you and I both jumped out of perfectly good airplanes before, and sometimes got paid to do it, not very much. And I will tell you this, if you sneeze while you're burning towards the drop zone, you've gone 50 to 70 feet in the nanosecond it takes you to blink. So, imagine that you're doing that in your car. Imagine that you complicate that by having a drink, or you complicate that by texting. Once we take our eye off the prize, once we no longer have our eye on the ball, what happens is we're no longer in control of our tactical patience. And therefore, everything that happens is blind luck. It's a crapshoot. So, the best laid plans have to include a component for tactical patience. And it's part of the five combat multipliers. And that's why we taught it that way. There are certain things that are going to make your lenses of Human Behavior Pattern Recognition and Analysis much cleaner, much clearer, and you're going to answer the questions and ask the right questions, okay? And one of those key components is tactical patience. You cannot, you cannot get there from here without the gift of time and distance. Right.

And I think I forgot to mention that, of course, at the beginning of this episode, but this is one of many what you've called combat multipliers, right?

Brian, Sir. Combat multipliers. This is one of them. But, you know, because they were originally, you know, generally taught to military and law enforcement, they were called combat multipliers. But yeah, they're not—it's not necessarily about combat, right? These are just—listen, The Art of War, Confucius, you know, The Tao of Pooh, The Tay of Piglet, all good writings have had it. Anything Mattis wrote on a napkin, do you get what I'm trying to say? And yeah, in a drunken tirade. Those are things you remember. The Mattis-ism. And I'm going to butcher it, and he's going to punch me when he sees me. He's going to donkey punch me right in the chest and knock my air out. Do you remember he came up with the, "Be nice to everybody, but I have a client plan to know everybody—" No, "Girl with respect." Yes. And do you remember the lawyers jumping on that one? "Well, well, well." So, you remember it's 5.35? That was that was where many of this was housed back in the Special Operations Training Group day. The lawyers got a hold of that, and it was, "Be kind to every personnel when you did," and it turned into a paragraph. You're not going to remember a paragraph, but you're going to remember "tack pay." And tactical patience means you got to slow time down until you're in control. If your enemy is playing pinball with you, and that means an adversary across from the boardroom, you're going to lose money and you might lose the deal. You know, slow time down until you're comfortable with the operational tempo, then proceed. Simple.

No, and that that's a good way, that's a good way to kind of put it right there is just implementing it as a plan, too. Right? So, if I am going into these events, whether that be, yes, a traffic stop, a sales pitch, a meeting, you're talking to your kids and you want to find out if they're telling the truth or not, where they're going tonight with their friends. All right. I got to implement one of the things I can implement, some tactical patience. It's like, "All right, well, at this point, I can do X, Y, or Z." Right. I do that cost-benefit analysis. If I go down this route, what's likely going to happen? What is likely going to happen if I choose to make this decision? Yes, maybe there's a better decision. And this can all happen rapidly. It doesn't take a long time to think it through. But if you're not thinking it through, you're never going to see the potential downside of it. And with my training, it's so important, right? Meaning for the real event, it gives you realistic conundrums that you have to overcome. And by overcoming those conundrums, oh, those hardships in training, it prepares my brain to be more elastic, neuroplasticity, when I do involve a situation. And that includes an M.M.A. fighter in the ring. Yeah. That includes a Cub Scout or Boy Scout trying to sell water bottles or magazine subscriptions at the Gunnison Car Show. So, it does not matter what you're about to face, it's prudent planning to make sure that you have tactical patience on your side. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a kind of a good way to kind of wrap up that topic of tactical patience. But yeah, one of the things it is, is we keep hitting on that training is because so many different, and I'm not knocking anyone's system, you know, until I go through it, but I don't knock anyone's system. But, you know, a lot of it starts with, "All right, guy pulls a gun on you." It's like, "Whoa, wait a minute, wait a minute, like there's—where's the calendar that proves that there's a hundred things that happen to to make that situation occur?" Why don't we start back there before untenable situations occur? Yeah.

What happens is people that make money on your fear. People that out-drive—listen, you know, I don't carry a gun, if I need one, I'm taking yours. But there's few people that you can say have the ability to pull something like that off. So, you in a situation, just because you have body armor, just because, you know, you have the greatest whiz-bang equipment, just because you're the one holding the Halligan tool, doesn't mean—I may I give you a brief example of this. I was working with a guy that we'll call D.C., and he's a lieutenant, he's retired now. And it was Halloween, and we were going down the street, and there was a call, "Unknown trouble." "Unknown trouble" is always a crap sandwich. It's going to go sideways, and it's terrible. So, D.C. and I go towards the house, and immediately my erector pili muscles are standing on end, and everything is, "Should I say or should I go? If I go, there will be trouble." We get up on the porch of the place, but we've got a call stacking up, and there's a "man with a gun" re-just occurred. So, we want to make short work of this because it's not worthy of our time. All right. I remember, it's oh, yeah. And he went to knock on the door with his Streamlight SL-20X. I looked at the house, and inside the house was this hue. It was like sunset, and it's pitch dark outside because we worked midnight shift. And all of a sudden, I noticed that the drapes in the house—it's happened only one other time when I was with William Atkinson, we're in California, and there was an earthquake. I've never had an earthquake before. All of the curtains and all of the stuff all of a sudden started moving and getting smaller. And it was like I was watching some sort of the animation take place. And right there, D.C. looks at me, he goes, "I got this." And boots the door. What we didn't know, it was the house was fully engulfed in flames. Energized gases had overcome the family that tried to make the 9-1-1 call and hung up. The minute that the oxygen reached the fire, it reached flashpoint. And Danny and I woke up across the street. Yeah, they didn't even know where we were. We had been blown so far that the fire department, other coppers were looking for us. And I remember I had no eyebrows. Do you get what I'm saying? Yeah. I had about this amount of hair, though, and a lot more hair back then. I looked like a gorilla. But the idea was that we moved too quickly. We were not in control of the op tempo. And giving ourselves fractions of seconds would have come up with a better plan. And guess what? Thank God the people got out, all right? And thank God that, Brian, we didn't—some hair we didn't lose much. But we failed to follow through with our own gift of time and distance, and it almost cost us our lives. And guess what? You can't do that. The more often you do that, right, the more often you're tempting fate, you might not walk away. Right.

And that's no different than the story I just told the bus just sprinting across the road. Well, exactly. "Let's just go do this." It's like, "Well, well, hey, hang on here. That almost got catastrophically horrible for us." And, you know, by God, Allah, Buddha, Vishnu, some whoever was looking on down on us that day, you know, we made it out. But that's the thing. And that's why I always, I like giving, you know, relevant just any examples. And it's always, especially because we travel so much, it's always an airport or planning a flight. And yeah, I guess what? It sucks getting down there for the 6 A.M. flight, the first flight out. But, you know what? If something goes wrong, there's—I got three more flights available. There's less traffic at that time. So, I actually don't have to leave as early. There's not as manic as he is.

Yeah, no. And that's the thing, is you try to make those, "Oh, I could just do it here," you're not exercising tactical patience. So, if one thing goes wrong, it now it sets in a chain of events where everything else is affected by that. But just, you know, "Hey, I'm going to give myself five extra minutes here. Hey, I'm going to get down there a little bit early here." Those are that's exercising tactical patience. That's why it's mental Jenga. Do you remember that game? It's a kid, we had that little character, and you had to put him on a chair and put him on the ice, and you had the little mallet. You had to knock out each block of ice and try to keep the kid on there.

I have no idea what that was.

Family. Okay. We did a lot of games. You bastard. But the idea is that in any of those that stress patience, it does not mean that you're not moving quickly from position to cover to position to cover. It means that you're much more mentally efficient and cognitively in charge of time as a potential weapon against an adversary. And if you're not in charge of it, someone else is. And guess what? Then you're dancing. Then you're playing pinball.

No. And that that's, I think that's a great point to kind of wrap on. And because that goes to any situation. I don't care if you're in the board or on the battlefield. If you're not—everybody, you just said it right there. If you are not using that time effectively, if you are not accounting for that, someone else is, right? If someone is, and if it's not you, then you're losing that battle or situation or sales pitch.

Or a classroom or on vacation or, you know, your kids' first day at school. It doesn't matter what the situation is, the parameters of the situation. What matters is a gift of time and distance and training. Training certainly will enhance that by training, changing behaviors.

Absolutely. All right. Well, unless you've got anything else, I think that's a good point to wrap on. We just wanted to hit up tactical patience, just another little tool for everyone's toolkit who's tuning in and watching. There's plenty more on the website, arcadiacognero.com. Again, follow us on iTunes. You can download all these podcasts, listen to them on your drive into work or to that as you're rushing to the airport or sitting there waiting on your flight, hopefully because you got there with plenty of time. You can listen to us on iTunes and The Human Behavior Podcast. Go ahead and download them on your phone, and it's free, Brian. That's free. Yeah. Check out all the blog section on the website too is all lessons learned and then on our Medium site as well. So, I think that's—we'll just kind of wrap it on that. But we've always got more houses to be burglarized.

Hi, somebody walked by.

Yeah, I'm not worried about. I think so. I got I got to go chase that person out. I'm going to let them get nice tactical patience though. I'm going to let them get down the street before I bolt after them.

Oh, we did that. So, all right. Thanks, everyone, for tuning in. Everyone stay tuned for our next one.