Left Of Greg 032 Graffiti

Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in. I'm Brian, I'm the host of The Human Behavior Podcast. You're going to be watching the video version of our audio podcast. Please, guys, if you like the video, like it, subscribe to the channel. There's going to be more content down there. If you're already a subscriber, it was a better way for us to get you guys some more stuff. If you have any questions or comments, go ahead and dig in below. Check out our links down below to get a hold of us and to actually find out more places where you can get more information about this. Please like and subscribe. Follow us on Facebook at HBPRNA. Remember, all these cases that we discuss and all these discussions that we have are through the lenses of what we call Human Behavior Pattern Recognition and Analysis. So, please like it, share it, tell your friends about it, and we hope you enjoy the show. Thanks.

Alright, I'm ready, buddy. Alright, so I'm just going to start a little bit differently, but same thing. Alright, so, start off with another Remo-ism, a Greg-ism: you don't have to speak the language to read the writing on the wall. So that's a great start for today's topic of graffiti and what we're going to talk about: symbolism and iconography in it.

So, graffiti is important. Why? First off, another Remo-ism: if I take the time to write something down—whether that's on my Facebook page, on a wall, you know, scribbled in concrete that's starting to dry—if I take the time to do that, it's important to me. So, you might not care about it, but it's important to me and I'm sending a message. So that's changed over the years throughout history of mankind, from early cave paintings to modern-day PowerPoints. And what I'm talking about, graffiti, it kind of encompasses all that. So, I think we'll be able to start with it there and see where it goes.

So, graffiti is important. Messages are important. Message clothing, stickers on your vehicle—all that stuff sends a message. So, I guess we'll start at a 30,000-foot view here. Greg, why is that stuff important, because there's a lot of noise, there's a lot of it out there, especially with social media today, there's even more. So why is that stuff important?

Well, when Combat Hunter came around, before that it was called Urban Hunter, and before that the idea was mulling around in the back of Mattis's head, and he reached out to a couple of key players: one, Colonel Clark Athene, and the other, a colonel that worked for the Marine Corps War Fighting Lab. And those guys reached out and tried to get expertise in a number of different fields. And one of the things was that I had already had a fully mature program called Pretexting and Profiling.

And the idea, very simply: a pretext is a reason to contact a human being or a vehicle. And whatever that pretext is, as long as the pretext is legal, the eventual stop is legal, and then you can find information, you know? So, from law enforcement...

Yeah, I apologize, because you need a reason to go up and contact a person. You can't just...

Yeah, right. But just so you know, and you touched on something very important that was since, and the same in the dojo. The dojo was looking for these things: does a guy have a certain type of tat? Is the bulge in the pocket there? There were different idiosyncratic human behaviors that are likely cues, and most people, because they're subtle enough, disregard them. So, we're saying, "Don't disregard the minutiae."

So, the idea was that, well, hey, these domains already exist, so why don't we just modify them for the combat profiling piece of Combat Hunter, which was very easy. And you remember those, it's six domains. So, when it came to atmospherics, the atmospherics were simply iconography or symbolism or symbology. Look those up on your own, folks. But the idea was those visual images or the symbols or whatever representation, if they were taken collectively, they could be associated with a person or a movement, or specific...

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then when we went in there, we said, "Okay, these were clearly atmospheric indicators," meaning that when you saw them, or when there was an absence of them, that could help you draw a reasonable conclusion about an area or a vehicle or a hallway or an elevator, for example. And then it came down to a couple of the chuckleheads afterwards saying, "Oh, we have to go backwards and we have to add a whole new section in that six domains about iconography." No, no, stop. Atmospherics is a panacea of all of those things that may influence the scene that you're in, that may influence the environment. Does that make sense? So, it's...

So, great.

I'll give you an example, Brian. And I don't want to spiral out of control because we want to stay laser-focused. Let's talk about the difference. I'll suggest that there's a difference between public and private graffiti. I'll suggest to you that there's graffiti when I'm busy sitting at the bus station and my hands are getting cold and I just scratch something along just to waste time. Then there is a message, there's a difference between Banksy and the art house movement, right? And a message that I might get when I'm behind a power box in an alley in an urban center. So, that's the importance. The importance is what message you're receiving, what channel that's being transmitted on, and can you use it as a comparison for human behavior? Because graffiti is a language, violence is a language, right?

Yes. Graffiti is a language. Tattoos are a language.

That's what I'm getting at.

Okay. And that's a good way to look at it, too. So, let's frame it as graffiti is a language, and now, what falls under graffiti? Because I like putting the, I like using that as an umbrella term, right? Graffiti, or now there's symbolism, iconography. So, people go into, "Hey, this is the meaning." There's people that study that—they've spent their whole lives—is the meaning behind this symbol, and this is what that means, which is great, it's great information. But sometimes, if the person who wrote that symbol didn't know that, then it doesn't necessarily mean...

You said exactly what a brilliant observation, Brian. And I hope that it's not lost on the people listening or watching. For example, the Nazi cross, the twisted iron, as well as the swastika, used by the Chinese thousands of years before for a completely different purpose. So, don't pigeonhole yourself by saying, "This means that." You have to understand the context and the relevance, and then measure it against the baseline to determine what it is, and then conduct a couple of interviews to say, "Hey, what's with this sign?" And we do that all the time. We call it "graff" in the business, G-R-A-F, like the graff speed. And Brian, when we're walking around on the radio, you know that we'll talk back before they, "I got some good graff over here." Then we'll go and we'll have to determine the likely relevance of the graff. It doesn't mean anything unless it's processed. It's like a latent fingerprint, it's useless unless you process it, then tie it to a suspect, and then tie it to the environment.

Okay. So, that's a good, another good way to get laser-focused on the two. So, graffiti is, because I, because we can put it under tattoos, clothing with certain messages on it, the sticker... yeah, I like using that as a term of under graffiti because it's all symbols and iconography, but the word graffiti makes more sense to me. And here's the thing: everyone listening, everyone who has Facebook or LinkedIn or Instagram, you all are graffiti artists. You're graffiti...

That's right.

Yeah. So, it's no different than what you post on Facebook is called your wall, right? "I post this on my wall," and you'll write a message or a saying or post a picture. Well, that's, to us, from a human behavior perspective, that's no different than taking the old rattle-can out there, going behind a building and spraying your message on there.

And so, there's a great photo that went around the internet. I love it because it says it's spray paint on a wall. It says, "Things I hate most: number one, lists; number two, graffiti." Really irony! And I was like, that's the funniest thing I've ever seen. If I was going to get a tattoo on my forehead, that would be the one.

Anyway, can I relate a funny story about a rattle-can observation?

Please do.

So, we're at a location in the northern part of California, and I refuse to divulge the location, but certain people were shipping out to a very dangerous spot. And so, we had to go to a local place outside of the base and go to a store, and I can't remember if it was a Target or Walmart or whatever else. And we're in a hurry because we had to have a certain amount of IED simulators in location for these troops for this long and arduous process they were going to go through. And nobody had the IED simulators back then, that early. The only thing was the real things, and they weren't letting you touch the real things, remember that? We could go and see them, but we couldn't take them out in the field. So, we had to make our own.

So, if you recall, we had driven out there in the rental sled, and we were lined up at the Home Depot. That's exactly what it was. We're lined up at the big table at the Home Depot near the checkout, and everybody was in line with the shopping carts that we'd put together, and we said, "Okay, this is the first thing, take this. This is the first thing, take that. Then take this." And we're doing this en masse. And the guy at the checkout, and his, like, manager and a door greeter, were watching because we were in quite a hurry. And we grabbed a couple of baseball bats, you remember? At the store next door, it was a sporting goods store. So, we have all this stuff laid out, and as we're going down the list to make sure we had enough stuff to make these convincing, working IEDs for the unit to find, we also had a camouflage room. So, if you recall, we told the guy, "And we'll need a couple of cans of spray paint."

Now, why we're building these mock bombs in front of them, which the components could have been real—they were the real thing for the real thing—we didn't mix up the explosives, exactly. So, there was no HME. They never asked us what it was for, who we were, anything else. But I remember the manager stepping out and going, "Whoa, hold on there. We're going to need to see some ID." And IDs were scarce back then, if you recall. And my thing was, I was going, "Hey, do I bluff this guy?" And I go, "Hey, what's with the ID, pal?" And he goes, "Well, you're getting those spray cans. And graffiti is such a... man, tagging is everywhere." They weren't worried about the bomb components. They weren't worried about any of the stuff we were going to do with the baseball bats and the riot masks. But that spray can.

And you know what's funny? I love that you used the term graffiti because graffiti has been called graffiti, and has been around, you know, 2,500 years longer, before the birth of Christ. You know, you get what I'm trying to say? The idea is that it's not generational, right? It's not something... yeah, it's not a fad, and it's not going anywhere.

Well, and that's, I hit it from the historical perspective real quick, too, is that that's where it starts, right? So, you know, graffiti, all this stuff, what you're doing on Facebook, what you're doing on Instagram, your Yelp review is no different than something that was done thousands of years ago. Remember a few years ago, and the articles came out about the ancient city of Pompeii, and they found all this graffiti. And guess what it said? "The food here sucks." "Scribbler built in." "The wine here was bad." "I hooked up with so-and-so here." "This guy is a jackass." All this, exactly, that stuff we do today was done 4,000 years ago, over 3,000 years ago. And it's no different than, you know, and I always give the example, too, when we're teaching, you know, you've got to use a PowerPoint and people like images and all that stuff. And a PowerPoint presentation is no different than a cave painting. "This is what's important to me, I want you to see it." So, that's where graffiti, that's where I like to see it.

Same with tattoos. And this isn't a knock on anything, I've got tattoos. And you're sending a message, right? Each one of those things tells a story. Now, what the relevance is or how important of that story is, is going to be dependent from one person to the next. But, yes, I can, I can, so I can't jump to conclusions, but I can draw likely conclusions or reasonable conclusions and expected behavior out of someone based on what they're telling me, based on what they're showing me. Correct?

So, that's why I think... I think you have two things there. So, and again, when we say like two things, what we're doing is we're saying there's either a difference with a distinction or a difference without a distinction. And these are our subsets, let's call them scientifically, inside of this order that we're calling graffiti. So, for example, if it was art, pardon me, if it was art versus messaging, to me there's a difference.

And let me give you an example. If you remember, if you remember, we were tagging up inside—you shouldn't make that last rocker—we were tagging up that place down along the border in Texas, and we were trying to make it look as realistic as possible of an outpost for an area so it would appear as though the area that these people were about to get shipped into, so we're very, very carefully making sure that the graffiti we put up mimicked the area there. Anyway, this small select group was going, going, when they got there, there wouldn't be culture shock and they'd be the same. Or, I know building file folders. So, they had sent somebody out to help me. The person they had sent out to help me was from a federal police agency that was close by, and that person was an expert on graffiti. And so, they walked by and when they were going by the walls, I remember them saying, "Okay, well, this is abstract, and this is bubble, and this is representative of what we would have called old school. And then you have sharp. But if you take a look at this, these are fat caps." And I stop for a minute, and I go, "Okay, that's the most amazing thing in the world." And I started actually writing them, "Let me tell you how. I mean this, sir, don't do this, sir." "What does any of that mean?" "Oh, nothing. These are just subclassifications of the type of lettering or paint or whether, for example, when they do what they call the brush, the brush means that the finished product looks more like artwork than that." And I go, "Okay, but how does that help you pick the guy?" And they go, "No, it doesn't. We're just telling you these are so..."

Oh, yeah, you're giving me the Dewey Decimal System, right?

You know, it's very simply: is this dangerous or is it not? There's no...

And that's, that's a great point. And I'm glad you said you're giving me the Dewey Decimal System. What does a Dewey Decimal System—which no one probably just hit a parked car, going—so that in the library to find and classify books on section so you can find what it is you're looking for. That's a classification.

Yeah, so it's a more rapid...

...than going from the first book to the last, right? It's a way to classify different types of material. Alright, let's put it in a box so we can understand it, and this box feeds over here, and then you get a set and subsets, right? So, we do that with all kinds of things and that's important, right? But that system isn't going to help me understand what it is on the wall I'm looking at. And that's why I started this by saying, "You don't speak the language to read the writing on the wall."

And that goes into what you are talking about with atmospherics and how graffiti or tattoos, message clothing, stickers on your car, add to the atmosphere, right? The phenomenon or the mood, and we're not talking about the barometric pressure, right? Just the feeling or mood, right? So, I grew up on the south side of Chicago, so I know when I went from one neighborhood to another neighborhood, that atmosphere shift would tell me, "Okay, this is probably more of a high-crime neighborhood. This is a poor community," right? So, if you've had those experiences, you know if that's like, so what's going to change? Maybe some of the buildings are a little bit more unkempt, the grass a little bit overgrown, cars are older and beat-up, there's graffiti here, there's less advertising or the advertising for different types of products than there are three blocks over, right? So, that's all an atmospheric shift that leads you to believe that. So...

And let's put a fine point on that for our listening audience and readers real quick, Brian. Okay, so, because on this block the weeds are growing and there's more graffiti on the wall and there's a broken window that hasn't yet been fixed and there's an abandoned car that has yet to be towed, it means nothing about the folks that live in that area. What it means is that they've got enough on their plate.

Yes.

They haven't taken the time to go out and do that. Perhaps they don't have the money to get a string trimmer like your gosh-damn golf course where you live. It means nothing about the people that live in those homes, about their value judgment or about their character.

It's exactly. They might, they might not be able to do that because they're working three jobs, you know? And so, what you've got to do...

For example, that ties in great, Brian. And I were zooming down some back streets to meet my brother, Brian Williams, in Saudi Arabia. We went by, and we got graffiti... (What is your legal counsel? What we talk about.) So, let's put it this way: do you remember when we went down the wrong street and we went by that place that looked like, like where they're going to chop off a bunch of heads? And we took photos of the graffiti. And then we went back, and we talked to an expert. And the expert says, "Okay, I'll tell you what this says: 'This is the guy's phone number. It says this is a greatest place for a lube job in this area.'" So, it was advertising. It shows advertisement for this guy's store where he was going to do roofs. So, you can't just look at something and go, "Wow, it's a little dingy here." They live in a desert, folks. Do you get what I'm saying? That's, that's a great way to understand perspective and the context in which you actually view.

So, to us, all that graffiti, I'm like, "Man, I know when I turn the corner and all of a sudden I see a bunch of scary-looking writing on the wall," because it's in Gulf Arabic and I don't know what it says. You can pick out a few symbols or a few words that you know, hopefully, but you don't know what it completely says. And then, obviously, we always take photos of it and go back. But you're looking at like, "Hey, this is all..." And then you go back and the guy's like, "No, this is how people advertise. Look, this is Ahmed's barbershop. Here's his hours. Here's number. This is Joe." It's like, "Oh, okay." Well, that man...

And you can tell where you are, Brian, like, for example, if we're in San Francisco and we're headed to Oakland, you know, we're in San Francisco, and the people that are walking with us while we're going to the coffee shop look and go, "Oh, my gosh, that's the most beautiful street art!" And the stuff that I was seeing, if we were in Detroit, I would already be getting the whitewash and ready to clean the fence. You know that differentiation. And I think that level of anonymity, like where do you most see graffiti near your house, in order to sit on the cardboard box in which you're often painted the poster to the left of me and the dog so I tell them apart, you know?

But think about it, sometimes the only graffiti that people will see is in a train, on a train car that goes by, or at a train station. Why? It gives you a degree of anonymity and time to paint on something when you and your peeps are hanging out. So, the level of graffiti, how well it's emblazoned, how much time was the time it took each one of those, and, Brian, the multitude of colors. I mean, go to your local Walmart and say, "Hey, what's the most common color of paint that's used?" Gold. Why? People are huffing. What's the next most common? Black or white. Because people are using it for whatever sign of parking. So, if you see something that has literally all these colors of the rainbow—Rainbow Road showed up that day and all that other stuff—well, that's a level of complexity that's going to beg the question: A, is this an art project? You get what I'm saying? What message is here? Where did this guy go to get all this paint? How did he have this time? How did he get up? Was he on a ladder at some point or rappelling, like you see the ones that are on the overpass on California and the Five? And you immediately wonder, on the 101 or the Five, you go, "How did the guy get there?"

Well, that was part of the challenge. The challenge was you have to tag a tag, meaning you tagging is where you leave part of your identity in the message for the folks at home. So, you would tell some young kid that wants to be in a gang, "Hey, you got to tag the 911 Posse and you got to do it on this street in Crenshaw or whatever." You get what I'm trying to say? So, that's a challenge. But we wouldn't know that if we don't do the, "Hey, what's the baseline for this area? What are the artifacts or evidence? And how do they compare against that baseline?" And, Greg, if you're listening, EMS, if you're listening, you got to start taking photos and you got to start asking the questions, "What does this mean to me, today, in this area, on this call?"

Yeah, no. And that's a great way to help decipher it, right? So, we do this, obviously, Human Behavior Pattern Recognition and Analysis. So, this is that analysis portion. So, don't jam the square peg in the round hole, right? So, one, there's a lot more literal graffiti what people think of, a paint on a wall somewhere in cities, there's more out there than I guarantee 99% of people realize, right? It's usually found in certain areas, alleyways, back areas. So, now you've got the difference because you brought it up, so let's just hit it right now because we're still on that actual spray paint kind of. You alluded to different gang activity for tagging is public versus private graffiti. Yes, though messages that are out there, like you just said, I see it on the Five, on that, you know, on the exit sign. So, I'm going to climb the wall, hopped over, did it in the middle and I got up there and they tagged your set or their clique or their crew on there. That's a public, that's, that's, that's a message intended for everyone to see. They want everyone to see that. So, now, what would be an example, then, of what you just said about private graffiti? Now, how do I do that?

I'll recall an incident where Teach Atkinson and I were south of the border in California. I will admit to nothing. So, but as we were coming back, Teach pointed out a couple of key graffiti points and we started following the graffiti. And if you recall that we later talked to the ICE and the U.S. Border Patrol guys. Border taggers, the graffiti was specifically set up so somebody coming from south of the border into California in their areas would be able to follow them to specific things. Right? That's like the old code down in America's Southeast where you could tell, carved into the wall, that this lady would let you have some handouts and you could sleep in this guy's backyard. He wouldn't call the cops and it was no vicious dogs. Those messages were intended for people migrating into the United States to do so with writing, not words. It was more symbolism than symbology, and there were some words to it, but again, they weren't, it was not a PhD dissertation. It would say, "Here are these things, this is where you don't want to be. If you go up here, you could get caught." And we followed them for a good long time. And if you recall, we were like, "Teach," you know that, and he was like, "We're not going to talk anymore," but you know. So, that's one example. So, those were intended to be private messages.

Yeah, from one group to another group, or one person within a group to another person within that group. And understand that stuff is still taught today, like you look at tradecraft, you know, spycraft of intelligence, you know, folks in intelligence community assets, like that's still done. Okay, the chalk mark here means there's a drop here or a meeting in two days at this... everybody can buy and the pin no one sees, ever notices it.

And you'll remember Teach educating us on that that day. I didn't want to go too far. Teach, if you're listening, God bless you and your new daughter Henrietta and your lovely wife. But Teach, with his tattoos, he stopped us in the hallway and he said, "It's just like my tats." He says, "I have public and private tats." He said, "These tats are the ones that I like to show the public. These are just for me, these are symbolic only to me."

Well, that's exactly the same with graffiti, Greg. Some of those messages, you know, when you have a thing that says on your car, "Hey, my kid's an honor student at," you know, Pleasant View High School or whatever, okay, that's your proud, you're showing, you get what I'm saying? The old thing was Wall Drug back in the day, if you were traveling across the American West, Wall Drug was this attraction. And what would happen is if you parked at Wall Drug, even to get gas or to go in and see what the largest ball of twine was or whatever, or the largest jackalope, what they would do is they would tag your car with his bumper stickers. So, then it would be a form of the advertising. So, you have to look at that.

Do you remember Greece? We came out, and on Shinya, and there was the signals that warned the people that the cops were going to be there. And they had the red flags that were coming out. So, you know, we're going to have the Mara...

Once, once again, I get sent to all the bad places. Get any degree strips.

But yes, I was going to tell you, it was when we're at that fine restaurant in that. Do you remember when they regaled us with all the gold and not the proper tea? I was probably inside a hot area at that time without a... you probably have many scientific studies. So, but that point, Brian, the point being public versus private, detailed messaging versus artwork, hastily thrown up versus, you know, this guy had a bunch of time to do it. Each one of those is hugely important. And hey, graffiti is transient sometimes, it changes. Do you know that marking over a piece of graffiti could cost your life? So, you need to make sure that you're taking accurate records of those, just as you would tattoos, just as you would a scar or family.

And I want to get to because you brought up the vehicle sticker stuff. But, real quick, just to go back to that graffiti and spray paint on the ground. Anytime, I've always lived in cities or gone around. If I see that stuff that looks like a gang symbol or someone marking their area, just a good... take a picture and remember something about a memory notion like, "Okay, that's the, that's the silver, triangle gang, because that's what they always use, silver, and it's always a triangle involved." So, anywhere I see that, I now know their territory, right? And that's just walking down the street. And then you come across something like that with that, that "X-ed" out. I go, "Look, I have nothing to do here. I'm not law enforcement, I'm not engaged, but I may be walking into an area that's in the middle of some type of gang turf war, and I don't want to. Do I need to be here?"

And I'll give you another one if you want to take a look at, like, we get these all the time. Same questions from coppers when we travel around the country teaching: "Hey, I had a string of car burglaries and we found out that most of the cars were unlocked, no damage was used, and the items that were taken was the change and the CDs out of the..." whatever CDs were, these things you put in the radio. And we've told people all the time, "Okay, you've got a low level of sophistication, you've got a low level of organization. What it is, it's some neighborhood kids that are out after hours grabbing the money." And then the same thing with the graff, rather, they would put the graffiti up on the wall and it would be a swear word or it would be a swastika, something marked out. And people would go, "Well, what do you glean from this?" "Well, in our history, that means its neighborhood kids were out wilding and they did it laughing when they wrote that thing." And you've seen that recently with some kids got in trouble and did the same thing. They were just like a bunch of punk kids being hooligans, and they put a bunch of swastikas up, and they're not...

But what did the neighborhood think? Well, the news media, "Hey, we have, we are afraid."

Yeah, we have this...

Oh, yeah. And which, which that's a horrible image. But when you look at, you investigate it, like those kids were being kids and it's not a reasonable conclusion. And they weren't part of some group doing something. What they did was absolutely wrong, and they clearly don't understand their history and they mimic something they didn't even know, they didn't even, they were acting out.

Right.

Yeah. And so what happened, though, is I think in those instances, now all of a sudden the community is in an uproar. Next thing you know, it's got the articles on the news saying, "Oh, this is terrible." And all, people don't need to be afraid for those types of things. No, to understand that it's a level of education, and it's a gap though. Nobody was watching their kids that night.

They're out wilding. They were out doing stupid things. And when I use that term, I don't mean anything by that term, other than my dad used to call it, "being on the wild." Even the neighborhood kids, my dad would walk out with a beer in one hand and his white T-shirt and no shoes or socks on, and his blue jeans, and he would smack somebody upside their head and say, "You kids are wilding, time to get home." And we would go home. Do you hear what I'm trying to say?

Yeah, it was.

It was out about.

Yeah, that's a very similar recollection I have of my father, except he had no pants on, and I was being brought home by the Chicago Police Department. Exactly. And they were pissed because they had to deal with me, which means they weren't dealing with actual real criminals out there.

So, everybody, the average person doesn't know the difference, Brian. The idea is that, do you know FTO programs are incredible? Back in the day there was no such thing as the FTO program (Field Training Officer program) for law enforcement. What would happen is they put you with a senior guy that would hopefully not get you killed. I remember my first senior guy, with a big wad of chew in his mouth and chew stains all over his uniform. He said, "Don't touch the radio and don't touch the car keys." You know, it was my good advice. But there's a lot of coppers that are hitting the road right now and don't have perhaps the social experiences. Perhaps they've never been in a variety of baselines. Maybe they haven't traveled. Maybe they're not polyglots, they don't know different languages. And I didn't even know what "polyglot" meant. I know, Greg, just before you look it up, the doctor said I'm good.

The idea is, imagine that kid being in that squad car, that young male or female, and their field training officer saying this and then the other, "You don't want to go up and go, 'I've never seen graffiti in my life. I'm more flip-flopping than I am hippie, so I don't have this cultural message or the sociological message.'" So, what happens, Brian, is we think that everybody knows that. We think when we call the coppers or dispatch, they're going to know what these pieces of graffiti mean, or this, whether it's public or private. And if I told somebody that, they're going to go, "That's not always the case."

Oh, yeah. And so, all, all good points. So, let's get to the vehicle stickers. We'll stick with that specifically for a little bit, just because I know a lot of folks, like you said, are driving right now, listening to this. So, you can see it right now. You can look out your window, start identifying vehicles. Look at what they have put on there, because each one of those has meaning. So, I was, you know, common ones you see is when you do like stickers of, and I've seen it, just like, you know, you've got the mom and dad and three little kids, or, which, by the way, we're completely against.

Yeah.

Look, I get it, you're a target and kidnapped. You're telling everyone in the world what's going on and the names are on there. Or you see it when you go down like south or in Texas, like that, I'll see like two M4 stickers and then a little pistol, like Glock stickers, which means that's the mom and the dad and the three little kids. Same with the "baby on board" back when you were a five, six years old, running around with a beard on your...

Yeah, I still had a pacifier. I did. But think about that, what that stuff can be misutilized. You're really proud, but it's giving me personal information about how, and in the years now of identity theft, you don't want to do that. You don't want to broadcast that sensitive information. And you don't see it with, and I'll be the first to make fun of like guys, I know military guys who would try to like, "Hey, man, you want to be the gray man, you don't want to stand out." I'll go, "And then you go out to their vehicle, it's like 'Combat Vet this,' blah, blah, blah."

Come on. Like, dude, you tell me that you like to go hang out in Moab, Utah, that you are a marathon runner, that you are a combat veteran and here's what unit you're in, you got this award.

Like we got everything we got in the trick bag in Luzerne. Don't simply, like, we're working out a guy's from the parking lot. And all we did is we walked around and we said, "Here's your chain of command. This is the people's name. He has the car they're driving. We don't have to go and run the plate. All we got to do is see that vehicle again in town." And they got all bent out of shape, you know, "Secure area." And, "Well, it ain't secure if the fat guy was taking photos of your thread." And the idea was we didn't mean to poke anybody in the eye, but the idea of what you project to the world, certain people are reading.

And when they asked me that, first of all, don't get all bent out of shape about bumper stickers on a car. The car might be a stolen friend's. Wake up! It might not be their car. It might be...

That's a great one. You should tell, tell the story, the Marine Major.

Okay, so you remember that one, and we were sitting outside of some dingy place doing a surveillance. And then all of a sudden, the radio crackles and it was a great guy on the radio said, "Hey, one coming your way." And so, a vehicle pulled in on the back. And this was during the workup for Iraq. A lot of things were going on during that time. And here, the entire back of this vehicle was emblazoned with anti-U.S. government, anti-U.S. military, anti-war, and anti-monster, you know. "I'm tired of this, we're not going anymore, we don't believe in this," and all that other stuff. And it was like, "Holy Moses, this is interesting." So, I told everybody on the net, "Hey, I'm going to follow and stop this vehicle. When it stops, I'm going to talk to the driver and contact him."

So, what we did is we followed him around. And then when he pulled into a place to get fuel, I walk up and a guy that pops out is in his Marine Class As. I don't know what you call your dress uniform, but clearly he was going somewhere that was very important to him, and he was in a hurry. And I walked up and I said, "Hey, the messages don't fit." And right away he said, "Not me. My wife's car. And I've been deployed so many times."

Yes. "Tired of it."

"This is her way of lashing out." Okay? And you don't have to look too far to look down over the USS Cole during that same period. You remember the guy that was a government contractor? USS Cole, "We cried, they cheered," or whatever. It was some very simple message. And that almost went up to the Supreme Court. Right there, "We're going to deny him days." And it turned out his son died on the USS Cole. And yes, I get it. So, you can't jam that square peg in a round hole. You don't know. That's the point. The point is that you can't make these obtuse comparisons without artifacts and evidence to support reasonable conclusions.

And guess what the tale of the tape is what we do. We go up and flash our ID and say, "Listen, we're social scientists. I'd like to ask you a couple of questions." You know what, 99 times out of 100, people say, "Yes!" We say, "We saw these behaviors. What do they mean?" And they engage us in conversation. Every once in a while, we get a, "Go screw yourself." Every once in a while. And guess what? It fits like a hand in a glove on the observations we've made prior to that. We could tell you which people are going to tell us to go screw ourselves.

So, I, we tell you that if you make those observations, one, record it for posterity. Make sure that you get that photo. Two, go to a resident expert. Don't, don't go to some guy and he says, "Yeah, I saw one of those down by the Walmart," because that guy's not going to help you decipher it. And three, if you've got a place like NCIS or one of these law enforcement places, RMIN for example—Rocky Mountain Identification Network for our information network for coppers—send them that stuff. Send an email and say, "Hey, local cops, my name is Jeff and I live," you know, I got to put it, I forgot it. Now put it in the details of those hosts. There's a national one you can do, too. They said, "We're submitting right now. They just don't know what this is." You see?

And okay, so my thing is that it's just like the fight with Wicca. You know, a person saying, "I'm Wiccan," and it has nothing to do with witch thing. Do you get what I'm trying to say? That Satan is, it's a, "No, 'Hail Satan!'" If you don't know what you're talking about, what you can do is mix metaphors, you can mix information, destroy an investigation or an observation or a conclusion. Well, don't fit that round peg into that square hole and don't be in a hurry to get to an unreasonable conclusion.

Right. And that's, that's a good point to bring up. So, especially with the bumper stickers and different stuff people put on their vehicle, like, we all do, we draw conclusions based on it. But we always have to do that, "Well, maybe it's not that," or, "If it is this, what else should I see?" So, and we always say, "Be careful of people about putting that stuff out." Yeah, I get it, you're proud of your family, your kid doing this, but now you just gave me, I have some information about you. So, I can walk up to you and, you know, it's like when you see that like, "This truck protected by Glock," you know, "Second Amendment," whatever. I can walk up and say, "Oh, he's got a gun." Now I'm, "Alright, this guy likely has a gun on him or in that vehicle." Now I can go approach and say, "Hey, what's up, man? What's your favorite Glock 19?" Because that's what you got. And now I'm caught. Now you and I are in a conversation together. We don't know each other and I've got you. You're not even aware of what's going on. It could be getting more information. They're going, "He must know this guy." And you don't want to be rude. And guess what? That's a street crime right there ready to happen.

Brian, I want you to, I want to remind you of something that you probably forgot because this was sort of a hastily called podcast today because we are on calls. Do you remember the incident out west where the guy had a sign with all of the information on it, the hand-lettered sign, that was standing in the intersection? And he was waving at all the different people. And you told the other folks in the car, "Hey, listen, pull around so you get a photo." And one of the newer instructors said, "What are you talking about?" You said, "If this guy took that much, right, the Magna Carta on it."

Yes. Do you remember what it was? Yeah, I can't. I'm in a total blank, but I know exactly what I said something similar out here by me.

But that was on a road, that was on a trip, we're on a trip. And the idea was that this message said what the guy was going to do and all the other steps were laid out on this. And it was a warning. And nobody else, everybody was beeping and some people were actually slowing down and giving him money. And it was a threat. It was not a veiled threat, it was a well-written, well-organized scheme of maneuver where this person was saying that, you know, "Get out of my way because on this day and this time, I'm going to do dangerous stuff." And had we not flipped around, had we not had photos, everybody else missed it because what did they see? They saw what they wanted to see. They saw, "I'm hungry, he's got a sad story."

Yes.

Yeah. If you don't take the time to read that...

Well, that's why I always read all those signs. Anytime you see the bum on the side, your natural reaction is to look away. "I don't want to make eye contact because then he's going to come up and ask me for money." But I make darn sure that I read exactly what's written on there because it might be a message demonstrating my intent to do something that is illegal or a threat to me. So, you always have to read that stuff.

This is for the people that like to turn this into a study project: go do your homework. There's a specific one where the guy used the F-word, "D.R.A.F.T.," about being drafted into the military, on his jacket. He hand-lettered it on there, walked into the draft board, ripped up his draft card, and, oh my gosh, it went to everywhere. It's like burning the flag. Burning the flag is a message, but guess what? It's protected under the First Amendment. Okay? So, that's...

I don't agree with it.

Yes. And that's what I'm trying to say, Brian, don't sit there and look at that. If it's not offending a person, if it's a threat against a person, sometimes the stuff that you're convinced is illegal has nothing to do with the law. It's inconvenient, yes, and it's embarrassing, but it has nothing to do with the law. However, there are certain messages that people put on that are a natural selection. You get what I'm doing? When they're going into Columbine and saying, "Hey, listen, I'm going to kill a bunch of people." Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, one had "Natural Selection," the other had "Wrath." And these are messages that were portraying the anger that they felt alone, meaningless, but when combined with other evidence on that morning or tied together with other evidence accumulated over a period of time, everybody and their brother knew something was coming, and nobody did a thing. How come it is, Brian, that we go around to these places and everybody says afterwards, "Hey, if we were going to pick the person that was going to act up and act out..."

...against that guy? Well, yeah.

And that's the idea, that's part of what goes into graffiti is that what we always say: humans are constantly, we're constantly on transmit, right? We're constantly telling the world, our environment, how we operate. We have to, we, what's important, an identity, yes. Everyone wants to have their identity, they want to have their say. "Look, this is what's important to me." And we start doing that by everything, the clothes we wear, the words we use, the words we choose not to use, the slang terms, how we use everything.

Yes, they say, "We want to be unique and different." Then we pick a person out of the magazine and say, "Make me look like that." Hey, we say, "We want to be unique and different," and we end up looking like all those Goth people in a room. And it's cool. Choose what you want to choose. What you're doing in privacy or at home with your own business, and if you take it into public, God love you, as long as you're not hurting somebody. But those messages lead up the rich fabric, the granularity, the fidelity of those observations that we make, Brian, are what makes us Human Behavior Pattern Recognition experts rather than these posers that you see on these sites all the time. For example, if you just talk about body language, body language one-dimensional is a huge thing, and you're not going to determine anything by just saying that move at that time means that you were stressed. You're going to determine more based on the entire context of the situation, not just, "Oh, I scratch my nose when you asked me that question."

Like, there's, there's that, that's why we always start big to small, right? That stuff up, when you've understood everything that's involved, you, if you don't understand how you process information, there's no point in learning how to read body language.

It's a Sergeant Major at that place near the "hair for you letters." We weren't at the FBI National Academy of weapons training battalion, but the guy coming up and saying, "Hey, we're doing this all wrong. We're at 3,000 meters moving to 1,000 meters, moving to 600 meters, and then all of a sudden going down on Patrolling Street. Why don't we start sitting in the room across from the guy?" You clearly were asleep during my entire course. The other thing is if you can make those observations, limited only by the fidelity the optics you're carrying, you can save a lot of lives by seeing those things with a drone or seeing those things with some other platform before you send a young U.S. soldier, a coalition force member, in to get blown the heck up. So, my thing to you is, stop trying to out-think the game. The game is that life and humans are constantly bombarding you with information, and all you've got to do is you've got to pay attention to the little things.

You know, somebody trying to draw the reasonable conclusion about why I'm always carrying the pink phone. You hear what I'm trying to say? And the idea is that we're dealing with people in an environment where they're always wearing camouflage ghillie suits or wearing flat black. So, I'm stupid. I'll never lose my pink phone. And if somebody tries to steal it, I'll go, "Hey, you got a pink phone, too?" And they'll freak out. Nothing means anything unless you take it from the perspective of the person sending that message. And guess what? If your radio is on transmit and mine's on receive and it's on the same bandwidth, I'll be able to read it. But if not, then I'm tuned out and I'm not going to read, I'm going to miss key signals that might save my life.

Right. And, Greg, that's why it's important as you might not like that message or you might, "Whatever, this guy is an idiot or a jackass." But you don't have to agree with the message, but you have to take it into consideration and put it into context: what is it that they're trying to tell the world?

Right. All these lenses, yeah, through all these lenses, and say, based on the totality of the information that I'm receiving at this time and at this place, it's likely that this is happening. And if it's an MLA (Most Likely Course of Action), you're probably fine. If it's an MDA (Most Dangerous Course of Action), well, you have to act first and act fast because it might be your life you're saving.

Right. And so that goes into not jamming the square peg in the round hole, right?

Yes, yes.

Oh, message clothing is a big one. But then you see guys wearing like the Affliction shirts or whatever, "I'm a fighter." And it's like usually the guys that I've met that are the biggest badass fighters in the world, they don't wear that stuff because one, they don't want people to know, because then people are going to try and fight them, you know. And, "Oh, I can take this guy down." But it's, "Is this guy for real?" Whatever. And the other thing is, too, about that, and especially because we talk about tattoos, and people get them, and that changes culturally over time. Tattoos now are far more accepted or commonplace than they were even just 10 or 15, 20 years ago. I mean...

Exactly. Greg talked about his tats. And Greg's not like Queequeg from Moby Dick. Greg's more like Disney because he's got like Daffy Duck and all that all over his back for...

I got a dollar bill riding a unicorn.

Exactly. But the idea of the message is you can't, I can't, like, a book is simple. But then you read Jonathan Swift and you find out that he wasn't saying what he was saying. It was what he wasn't saying, or these double entendres that are in there. So, if you're convinced that as soon as you see that, that license plate cover—you know, the surround on a license plate—it immediately draws your ire, maybe that was the intent. Again, that it was on a running car. You have to take a look, and if you're looking, Brian—you use this all the time—if you're looking through a straw and making your comparisons, you're less likely to come up with the actual answer. Your conclusion is going to be faulty. And if you build something on sand, it's going to collapse.

Right. And then those are all kind of great points to kind of bring it in, I think. So, you know, we started off by saying, "Hey, you don't have to," you know, "I don't have to speak the language, reading a wall." Same thing, I don't have to be an expert in symbolism or symbology or tattoos or clothing. I don't have to be an expert to get an understanding of what the message is. This person, who said, "I can read it and understand that language." Like, what becomes threatening graffiti versus non? What's a threatening tattoo versus not? You know, all those things have different meanings based on the person that's that, like you said, and the time and the place and where you're making that observation and who that person is and what the message was meant by it. We know guys that like, you look at some of their tattoos and there's people who are really into symbolism, they're like, "Those are like horribly racist tattoos." And they're like, he's like, "No, this is like my family thing from 500 years ago that back then had a completely different meaning and now people have taken a new meaning."

It's, you know, okay, so does my behavior, does my behavior indicate something? See, it's right. You show, and a T-shirt's fine, it can show whatever it wants to show. But does my behavior and that T-shirt and the baseline walking into the Walmart, does that now add up to an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement)? I think that's where you're at, Brian.

Yeah. And that's it. So, I know we kind of covered a lot, but I like using that term "graffiti" because it's everywhere. You post stuff on Facebook and Instagram, you read other people's posts. That is, they've never even think about it, that's a form of graffiti. That is people sending the message to the world. If I take the time to do that, now, even though it happens all the time, there's people who do it a lot, there's people who send or are on social media a lot, there's people who use it very little, there's people who don't have it at all. But if I take the time to do that, I'm telling you, this is what's important to me. This is very important to me.

I want to give you a comparison, Brian. You receive, just answer honestly, you receive how many texts from me in an average day?

I don't know, a dozen, at least.

Right.

Somewhere right around there, depending on the day. But, you know...

I have no clue what those little icons mean. But it's hilarious watching you, it's like watching a monkey figuring out an iPad, it's hilarious. So, what I do on my texts, also, I write a text like an email. So, it's every single, you know, semicolons, I'm an idiot. But when I send it, I always just go to the bottom and pick three or four random messages because I had no idea what the hip kids know, the emojis are. So, sometimes it'll come out and somebody will send me back saying, "Do you know what you just said?" It's like, "Oh, shut up, we were using that a long time ago." Or, "I just sent it at random," which is what I do. And that doesn't...

We could, we could save that for another podcast, getting into why even those, why these emojis and memes and GIFs and all that stuff are, are the reason we have that is because when you're texting someone, you have no context for what they're saying. So, you have a question. So, we come up with little emojis and kissy faces and this so you understand what it is. "Oh, this person's meaning it in this way." It adds context. It's why communication is so difficult over text sometimes. People...

But we could save it. In-person training.

Yeah, it's all over, for... Exactly.

If they're not in the room with the people, then you're never going to understand all the nuanced messages that are going by through humans.

Alright, well, I think that's a good spot to wrap on. So, appreciate everyone tuning in. Thanks. And remember, training changes behavior. Great. See ya.