Left Of Greg 037 Rage its whats for dinner

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Alright, so on today's episode, Greg, just you and I. But today, we are going to actually be trying to answer a question that was posed not directly to us in a hypothetical question. But the question is from Chief Hank Stawinski. I hope I'm pronouncing that correct, Mr. Stawinski, of the Prince George's County Police Department. The question he said to the media, "My detectives have to answer is: How does a confrontation lead to a homicide in 15 seconds?"

So that's what we're going to talk about today, specifically about rage. But to give a quick background on the situation we're discussing: just this past Sunday, November 3rd, at a very crowded Popeyes restaurant in Maryland, I think right outside of D.C., 20-year-old Kevin Davis was stabbed to death by another customer who confronted him about cutting in line. So he was stabbed over cutting in line on these new chicken sandwiches that Popeyes is on another limited run on.

So real quick, the details of the case, obviously, this just happened, so this is what's been reporting in the news so far. One report in a newspaper said that Davis, the victim here who was stabbed to death, had been what they described as methodically cutting his way through the line for about 15 minutes before the suspect confronted him at the counter. And then what the Chief had said is that only 15 seconds elapsed from when the altercation started to when it ended with the stabbing.

And so a couple of things: there was no evidence that the suspect and the victim knew each other, and they found a knife in the victim's possession after the stabbing, but investigators don't believe he brandished it during the confrontation. So there's a whole bunch of stuff we're going to get into, and I think it's, you know, just to go into probably what everyone's curious about, is what the Chief actually mentioned in his news conference: it's something we have to question in terms of how we're interacting with one another as a society. Is how does a confrontation over cutting in line lead to a death? That's a great question.

I'm going to kind of admonish him slightly, being a law enforcement professional for so long, that I'm sorry, you're the ones standing in front of the damn cameras. You're the one that's supposed to be able to explain this to everyone, not confuse us and not scare us. But that's where we can come in, I think, and explain just exactly how these things happen. Not in terms of why, in terms of motive and all that, but this is how these things can occur. So I think, is that a good way to frame?

Nice, it's perfect.

And the only words you didn't use, Brian, is "flash to bang."

Yeah, yeah.

And we're going to... But look, just in the last couple of weeks, how many episodes have we seen? The female hit with the blender and seriously injured, teeth knocked out, horrible photos that are online, in an argument over a sandwich or the quality of her milkshake or whatever. It doesn't matter what it is. What the problem is, "flash to bang," and "flash to bang" is relatively zero nowadays. And it's very quick, very simple reasons that we can talk about.

Yeah, and real quick, just to understand the term "flash to bang." That's used in a lot of different ways to describe things. So you could think of when you see the lightning flash and then when you actually hear the thunder, right? That's "flash to bang." It tells you how far away. The longer it takes you to hear that bang from that flash, you know, the farther I am away from that incident. Well, that's no different than a lot of times you can see the muzzle flash of a rifle then hear the bang of it going off. That tells me how far away that person is that's shooting at you as a good rule of thumb.

But what we mean is the flash when this incident starts to the bang—bang is that this guy's getting stabbed, there's a fight, there's a homicide, there's whatever the situation is. So these are happening relatively quickly. So the "flash to bang" is so fast. 15 seconds in this case.

Menacing. But good.

Right. Well, we get into, and that's where a lot of people do training at that part, that "flash to bang," right? Which is why I included the detail of apparently this guy's been moving through the line for 15 minutes because what we deal with is everything obviously prior to that. But I think that's a good way to frame the discussion.

And Brian, I, I, I richly, freely, and openly will make up words to fit what I need to fit. I'll have to. And everybody in our audience understands immediately "flash to bang." They get it, okay, you do what I'm trying to say. And you, you gave this detailed, clinical response to it, but I'm a street guy when I come up with that term, and it's certainly not a term borne out by scientific study.

No.

But we need it. We need it on the street because you have to understand how quickly these things can happen. So I think first, let's separate anger from rage. Anger, like rage, is an emotion. Anger, strong, physically felt emotion. Of course, we talk about people seeing red, that heat of passion, all the stuff that we trained to look out for in our classes. You know, it's things in our little environment, things that will impact your baseline, and things that you have to account for and attend to, and they're all caused by brain chemistry. So it's the important thing for our listeners to understand is they occur due to brain chemistry, whether it's a real or an imagined challenge to our baseline or to our environment. So whether it's actually happening or it's not, it doesn't matter to your brain. Your brain equates a challenge or a threat in the same manner and then starts pushing out chemistry to prepare you for the response.

Now, rage is anger that's uncontrolled and uncontrollable. And so we liken it to that intermittent explosive disorder, yes, clinically, because you cannot control once you get to that threshold. And the reason I wanted to bring that, Brian, and I know you're, you're chomping at the bit to hit on that. You have to make sure everybody feels anger, but it rarely goes to rage.

Yes, that's a great point because that rage would then be tied to a very primal reaction.

Exactly.

Would that be a good description?

I think, because rage is a perfect description, you said, it's uncontrollable.

So, so every, like you said, everyone experiences anger. Every human being experiences anger at some point in their life. Very few times does that lead to rage where you cannot control your emotion.

Exactly. And, and, and I would also, since we're on the topic, let's talk about both sides of that coin and where that comes from. So rage, like road rage or rage in this case that we're talking about at the Popeyes, where all of a sudden this "flash to bang" that primal reaction is there actually for good, right? It's originally there for survival situations.

Where is that? Exactly.

So we have to remember always a clinical, scientific, historical perspective. We try to do all of them. So whether we remember the term "going postal," not used that much anymore, okay? But that started off from the workplace violence, post office shootings. Yeah. Then we had drive-bys, then we had road rage, then we had school shootings, then we have disgruntled employees again on killing sprees that only annihilate a family. It's a Mobius loop of generationally acting out based on this out-of-control anger. So control, therefore, is a locus, a center, a point. And all of us acquiesce, all of us understand as humans and in society that there is this central point of a location for what is socially acceptable behavior. And then what happens is when we feel challenged or threatened in our environment, a rage is anger spun out of control, instantaneous, that we can't, we can't slow it down if we don't identify the cues pre-incident. So therefore, training can help us identify it. And then anger's okay. Anger's to help settle discussions, and anger doesn't mean violence. It can foment violence, but it doesn't mean it, right?

See that even online today, if you go online, I'm sure there's anger management courses everywhere, even in small town gun shops. And yeah, the judges are handing out, "You have to go to anger management." And then there's some check-the-box course somewhere. But what you don't see is you don't see rage management. That's not a thing.

No.

So we have to separate anger from rage, then we have to separate rage from the behavior, because one can be filled with rage and then act out, and that behavior is the acting out. Okay. And you brought up—and I'm taking notes here, so—because you brought up a couple good things. But also, when you said we can't, we can't slow it down, so that's a, that's a great, that's a great distinction like you started off with with the term, you know, separating anger from rage, right? We all feel anger, but like you said, hey, we can slow that down, we can back that off. One can talk someone down who's angry. When you reach that point where you become overwhelmed by the situation and you turn to rage, your brain is acting primarily. It thinks...

You don't turn to rage. Rage turns you.

Better, better description. A better description. Yeah.

Yeah.

When you get to that point where you're your mind thinks that you are in that survival situation, there's a whole bunch of different reasons why you go to that rage. You're now in that system. And I know that's, that's the one, one of the books we recommend is "Why We Snap." We talked about rage. A guy, I wrote it down, R. Douglas Fields, he's a neurobiologist. He tries to write that and explain rage and goes, "Look, there's these different reasons why it happens and there's different triggers, but it's a very primal trigger." So I think I like that we, you know, we can't slow it down. So that being said, at "flash to bang," how does this happen? How are people standing in line for chicken? What are the—because there's no, there's no one thing that makes this occur. What are the contributing factors that lead, that, you know, like we always say, we got two trains on the track, right? How do they, they actually intersect? So what is a nexus where it leads to in what? Because I, I look at these and go, "Well, I'm sure this hit occurred over a longer period of time than 15 seconds."

Yeah, yeah. But you, you hit on it. First of all, you know, folks that are listening, folks that are watching, we jump around because that's how humans are. We have these flashes of emotion and then the questions and their response. And all you got to do is just sit back for a minute, pay attention. Rage is almost never a primary emotion, okay? Right. Anger becomes the primary emotion, and then rage is never this knee-jerk reaction to a provocation. There's always events that precede it, there's always emotions that precipitate it. And if you can identify those cues, then through training, if you shake your tail, the behavior or at least be prepared for it, like people could have read it in the line. So you said something that was hugely important. Go back to the near the beginning where you said that this guy had been moving up and sneaking in line and jumping ahead of people in line for a long time. So first of all, other people could have seen that if they understand baseline. But more importantly, that guy was getting bolder and bolder. And to talk about Boulder, Colorado, the kingdom of Boulder, people every year coming to Colorado, and they want adventures, and they die taking a selfie. They die on the road because they think four-wheel drive means you can go the speed limit in snow and ice, right now, okay?

Well, what causes that, Brian? And I would tell you and the Chief, that every single time you survive an incident, your brain chemistry goes through, "I got that. I can do it again." And each time that you do it, you get more careless or reckless because you're doing it without measuring the emotional toll and the physical and the chemical toll in your brain.

Wow. Yeah.

Changes every time. So what happened is, as he was moving forward and nobody challenged him, now all of a sudden he gets to the person that stabbed the young guy to death, he gets to that point, gone, "Damn, nobody's going to challenge me." And the adrenal cortex is pumping, and the drugs are gone—and we'll talk about that in a minute—the epinephrine and the norepinephrine. But they become virtually an insurmountable barrier. And now he's been going, "I'm almost there. I'm going to do it again and again and again." External arousal, such as fear, provoke anger. So here he's feeling a little bit of fear, but not the kind of fear that would make us slow down on the accelerator, not the kind of fear that would tell us, "Hey, be careful out on the ice, it might be thin." The kind of fear that makes the episodic saliva go away and we get a little bit excited and we want to say, "And another thing," just like in the domestic violence incident, you see what, right? And so there's this sort of crescendo of coma cocktails in the brain that are doing one of two things. And you've got the adrenaline and the noradrenaline and the epinephrine and the norepinephrine. And what's their idea? Their idea is to present to you a menu of available choices. So one is meant to desensitize you so you can get your head lopped off, so you can just kneel down and take a shot to the back of the head. And we've seen the videos and we've seen the people, and people go, "How would you do that?" Because part of your brain chemistry tells you submit, just don't fight it, just go numb. And then the other part of it tells you, "Okay, I'm ramping up. I'm not going to take this, I'm going to stand up and I'm going to fight."

And here you have a situation where the guy, the stabber, the aggressor, the assaulter, he's up at this threshold coming in, and the guy at the front of the counter probably says something like—and they'll review this and figure it out—and he goes, "Hey, where do you think you're going?" Okay, now that starts putting those emotions going, right? And now that fear, that expectancy, that arousal, that anger has to be answered. And before anything, "flash to bang" is gone. Because remember, you spent 15 minutes getting to "flash to bang." But this poor chap at the counter doesn't know it, and the next thing is, "You talking to me?" And the knife comes out. The next thing is, we have the rage manifests itself in an episode of violence. And while we can accelerate the rage in nanoseconds, we can't come off of that, that accelerator in the same amount of time, we can't.

Okay, so I'll, I'll try and put it in what my perspective would be. So let's start, like you just said, the guy who's trying to cut in line. Oh, he's kind of somewhat—because you liken that to people dying taking selfies and trying to do more than their performance allows on the road, and they get a car, a human performance limits you, but they exceed their expectations. So yeah, usually I would liken that to after, you know, my first deployment to Iraq, a heavily, heavily kinetic, horrible, horrible time. I came back, and although still in the military, and I was still getting that, you know, adrenaline dump and excitement from all the training that I was going through, I went out, I bought a Harley, right? So, and I would ride my Harley through California, and there's a few places, windy roads, and it's fun, you get down. But, but I rode my Harley. Now, I actually bought a Harley because that was actually my mechanism to not buy a street racing bike because I knew I would kill myself and did not want to be put in legal trouble. So a Harley was much cheaper than just mainlining adrenaline. So, so yeah, well, so but, but I'd hit corners, and then, you know, some of them I remember I went, and I'm going into this corner, and I'm going, "Oh, crap!" Like, I'm hitting that, cortisol's hitting, and I'm getting like, I don't know if I'm going to make this turn. And I lean hard, I mean, I'm talking like sparks flying out the back of my bike, dragging on the ground, and boom! I pop up and I hit that corner faster than I ever thought possible. And I was like, "Man, it was exciting." Obviously, I got a little adrenaline dump, I had that dopamine afterwards, I was feeling good. I was like, "Damn, I hit that." So that now, the next time I come across, I went, "Wait a minute, I hit it at this speed before, like, I know I'm good up to that point." Yeah, you know, the first time I approached that, that, that turn, it was at 20 miles an hour. Then, "Oh, I got a little bit more comfortable." Then, bikers at 30. And then that time when I was going too fast, I hit it at 40, it still made it. So now 40 is now my baseline. So I would liken that, would that be similar to what the guy in line is doing?

So let's do two things real quick. First of all, as a sniper, by the way, glad you didn't just smoke in the glass, dude. I mean, you, you could have been on crack coming out of that. And because they don't understand how those emotions overtake us, and this is why we got to do better for our veterans, for our law enforcement, and first responders, because Brian, they felt the same way that you did. And it's all about emotional maturity to a point. So let's talk about this for just a second. As a sniper, you understand that you have to zero your weapons and your optics, right? Okay, what would happen if, if we have three rounds and we're trying for a minute of angle shots, what would happen if I chase the shot group rather than tactically and technically just did the math and walked on my crosshairs? You're never, you're never actually going to get to it. You're never going to find it, you're never hit the target you want to hit. So you're going to chase, and you're going to spend a lot of rounds, a lot of time, a lot of money, and never get from here to there.

Yeah, that was the Harley Davidson. That was you continually chasing that adrenaline rush that day. And you look, folks, I know the different names for the chemicals, but I'm not going to sit here and talk about electrochemical neurotransmitters. It's just an impression. I'm going to talk about that emotional maturity. Emotional maturity is the result of facing and overcoming obstacles. You did that, but the problem was you were still immature. You didn't have resilience yet. Resilience is doing that well, doing it over and over, but learning lessons that you can apply to the next obstacle. So what you were doing as that young Marine is you're chasing that shot group. And your bosses at the time said, "Listen, we're going to have more motorcycle training and you can't drive a motorcycle on post without training and you have to wear an orange vest, remember that? You have to wear a helmet." Well, was that a measured response to your emotional maturity?

No, it was actually, and, and but that's great that you brought it up because they do require that to register that I'm on base. And I always tell people, it's the greatest thing you could ever go through because it actually teaches you the dynamics of a motorcycle, which made me drive faster.

That's cool. Yeah. But you know what they missed, Brian? You know what they missed? We dealt Chiefs of Police and industry leaders of this all the time in the boardroom. What you lacked as that young Marine, and what they lacked, is an effective de-escalation strategy. Right? So whether we're talking about from stress or anxiety or suicidal predisposition or homicidal fascination, what happens on the street and what happens with our young officers on the street now is you are titillated and excited by these repeat exposures. But the problem is nobody sits down and therefore puts them into context so they become resilient. So that's the skill that grows into something that you can use to de-escalate, where you're going, "Okay, I'm going 141 miles an hour in this pursuit. And while this is cool, I need to slow down because I've exceeded my brain's ability to process my environment, and I may kill myself, I may accidentally kill the suspect, or I may spin out of control in an intersection and kill society."

Yeah, so so I see how those are related, those two separations you just talked about. But then what is that? How does that lead us into rage? Because that can go into obviously performance, and you talk about emotional maturity. And so I'm assuming what you're getting at is someone who, if you your body elicits that rage response very quickly for these situations, you lack that emotional maturity?

Yeah, it's so psychologically, Freud would go back and tell you that anger and then rage—because he made sure that he had different Ice Cube trays like I do for both of them on the shoulders of giants. I think Freud stole some of my stuff.

Who died before you were born.

I'm pretty—I believe it, that bastard. But the idea is that whenever you're, whenever you perceive real threat or perceived threat, yeah, either of those because they're two sincerely different things mentally, emotionally, physically. What happens is you feel that your ego is under attack. So, so that guy that stabbed and acted out, you're thinking, "Are you defending them?" While I'm defending them from the Elmer Fudd-ian proposals, yeah, from the, you know, I hate when people talk about reptilian and triune brain and all heads. None of that matters. We're not that guy anymore. What happens is all of a sudden my ego is threatened, and I go, "You think that's funny?" Do you remember what's the film with Joe Pesci where he's sitting there in—yeah, we don't know if Goodfellas, we don't know if he's going to shoot you or he's going to hug you if it's a joke. What happens, you feel your ego is being threatened and you lash out, and there's nothing in between. So hence, the "flash to bang." So training and emotional maturity, and for example, when I talk about training, people tell you, "Hit the training button." Yeah, but you're not listening to me. Training allows me a strategy, a part-test training or practical application. And if I can't get it at home or from a priest or from the soldiers or from the police academy, I don't have it. And therefore, when I go into a situation where all of a sudden I feel my ego's being threatened and the chemical cocktail is brewing, I've missed those anticipatory signals, and therefore, I'm right in the incident, and I'm going to fight it out. Okay. If I know that it's coming, I can do something to stop, and so can you, Brian.

Okay, so let's put it—let's go to the guy. And I think that we're doing this a couple of days after this happened. I think they have now arrested him, and he was there with a female. They fled in the vehicle after. But yeah, let's put ourselves in his shoes, right? Because you know, let's say you're standing in line for that chicken sandwich, right? So what is, what's going—because I have already talked about it, but let's, let's kind of what we can psychologically from a cognitive performance perspective, go, what was going on in his mind as, you know, while he's standing there waiting for his food? Because he's standing...

So let's do this, Brian, I'll challenge you on this one. It's not fair to say challenge because you're such a bright guy anyway, but you saw this coming. The last question I would pose you first, and chief of police and officers out there and lawyers, is this suspect, and I don't know his name yet, Brian, yeah, is he, was he in the right frame of mind or can he claim diminished capacity? The fact that he fled, the fact that he left, means he knew right from wrong. He knew what he had done is wrong, and he knew he couldn't unring that bell. If it were you or I, and I'm not the Jean Valjean defense, if it were you or I and we knew, "Of course I was going to hit, right?" Now if you knew that you did something wrong and you looked around and said, "Oh my God, what have I just done?" You would have stayed at the scene, tried to give this guy first aid. Right?

Right.

I can't say I did it. But this guy wasn't armed with that emotional maturity. This guy was still right in the high from the adrenaline, and a guy chose to escape. Do you get what I'm trying to say? So that self-preservation, and self-preservation means he was still thinking during the incident. So, so I know it sounds dichotomous, but it's not. Brain chemistry is going to force you to do that rage, but you were in charge of keeping those under control. So it's your fault.

So he's, yeah, okay. Responsibility. Yeah. More responsibility as a human in society. Right. So he's sitting there, and all of a sudden he's going, "Ain't this about it?" His eyes were already to the front of the line. These other folks, he's been like, "I can see it, I can smell it, I can taste it." And if anybody who's been at Popeyes, this new commercial on Popeyes where they're coming up with that Thanksgiving Cajun Turkey, okay? Every single time that I see that, I leave the office and I roll out to the kitchen, I'm trying to say, because I can't stop it because those chemicals are in. Now imagine he could smell it, he could smell it, he could see it, he could feel that, he could taste it. And up until that point, he's bested every challenge. I'm sure that somebody else in line said something to him. You go, "Well, here's what his resistance built up and it'll and built up." Well, and that's what I'm saying. So let's, and obviously we weren't there. We haven't seen any video. No. No. This is a hypothetical question. What is it likely that he saw this person throughout the time he was standing in line cutting line? Or do you think he was right there standing there, then all of a sudden this guy jumped? Yes.

Yes. And so now the victim may have seen him before this, and the victim may have come up with the strategy, "I'm the guy that's going to tell you something." Yeah, well, the suspect just saw this guy and didn't identify with anybody as a human. That's why I made it easy for him to stab. And, and of course, this wasn't his first rodeo. I'm sure that when they go back, they'll see that this person has made poor choices in other aspects of their life. But all of a sudden now, you're confronted with that your father, your stepfather, the schoolteacher, the person that molested you, do you get what I'm trying to say? The unfaithful spouse. That's what the stabber faced. All of a sudden that person took on all those emotions.

Well, that, you know, and therefore it became inevitable that they were going to stab. Well, then that's the reason why I ask is because he's standing there waiting in line. He's going along like he's supposed to. Yet he's, you know, and the reason why, but hypothetically, is he watching this guy cut in line and getting angry at him before it's even his turn? So that way when the guy cutting in line all of a sudden jumps in front of him, I'm just saying what does it go into? Yeah. If I don't like the wall or a person behind the counter or someone in there watching the situation going down, would I be able to identify these things in each—absolutely, or the situation as a whole and go, "Hey, you know what? This is leading to a really bad place. Let's go to a different Popeyes."

Yeah, yeah. And Brian, you hit it all right there. But back up just a second and slow it down, give yourself the gift of time and distance. Once you saw that line, once you saw the tensions rising, you as a trained human behavior profiler, right, would have said that, you've said, "Michaela, we're going somewhere else." You would have predicted that this was a likely outcome. Whether someone was going to die or not, it was still good, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether there's a man robbed. There's no word on who's going to... And you absent yourself from the situation, you increase your chances of a long and happy life, right? But another person that was detached from the situation could have seen it coming from behind, for example, and seeing the whole thing unfold and would have said, "Hey, this is probably bad. Dial 911 and hover your finger over the button," right? But I think the actors lacked a sufficient amount of situational awareness. So even though cues were present, they missed the cues. Your untrained, uneducated brain, and yes, I am challenging the folks out there, if you don't learn it in school and you didn't learn it at home and you're not learning it from church, you don't have it. So therefore, when it occurs to you, it's already too late in the process. And you got one guy in rage and one guy thinks that he can still talk it out. And what happened? And this whole thing about, "Well, the other person was found with a knife." Do you honestly think when you're a jet, you're a jet till the end, you think this was West Side Story? This happened in nanoseconds. It had—and that's where the sheriff called it out or the chief of police. 15 seconds is way too long. I'll guarantee you it's much less time than that. Nobody stood there and, you know, beat their chests and said, "Well, I'll tell you this, man." If the knife was out and the knife was there, and that's what we have to avoid as a society, and the way to fix that is training. And part of that training has to include empathy. A coping strategy for the bad guy and empathy for society to sit down and go, "Listen, we can talk this out. We don't..."

That's, I think, yeah, and I think to bring up again what he said is, is, you know, people like to say, "Oh, you know, as a society, where are we going?" Well, okay, well, I'm going to counter with every other statistic that says our society today is safer and our life is easier than any generation ever before. So what's your, what you're saying, that's not... good. They were going to land on them. The fact you never, you never heard about this before, even though it was still happening, you know, everywhere. Little shootings, school shootings. Well, go to 1925, the Bath Township in Michigan, you know what I'm saying? So, so it's been going on for a hundred years. But, but so I don't, I don't, I stay, I try to say, do my best to stay out of those arguments. But the idea was what you brought up was those people standing in line, I want to put myself in those shoes because the, the thing you brought up without training, you don't have a file folder, right? So yes, even though we see this on the news, even though we read about it, even though we don't equate those things when we're in there in the moment to go, what could this possibly turn into?

Yeah, it's okay. But the training, you're still, you're spot on, and I don't want to miss that. The training is both sides of the coin. The training is for the people to be able to express what's happening and emotionally without doing it at the end of the knife. And the training is also for society at large to learn the pre-event indications of violence so you understand that these things are about to occur and you can de-escalate them. So, so if I was going to talk to the guy with the knife, I would say, "Buddy, training is going to teach you that if I identify these thoughts and feelings inside you that are always preceding your rage attacks, because I guarantee this wasn't his first time: rising irritation, tensing in your neck muscles, shallow breathing, tightening of the chest, showing of the teeth," all the stuff we teach in class, teach him how to identify those and then circumvent them, how to change his brain's chemistry. On the other side, I would teach the guy behind the counter, I would teach the people in line, because they're all culpable, right? They knew or should have known that this was occurring, and they should have been able to take a look at this situation just like a cop or a first responder or a soldier or anybody, even a politician, they should have been able to say, "Listen, if I act first and act fast, I might be able to save a life." And you and I know that that's not happening. We're not doing enough to identify why the training is important. We think that adding more security or adding armored guard or adding an alarm to my car is going to solve the problem, and it's not. And as a matter of fact, technology exacerbates the problem because we're not dealing with it on a human level like we are talking about it today.

Yeah, and, and that's, that's, that gets into, you know, obviously if you're getting a high level training, you should be able to identify some of these things. And you need to learn how to think of this. And I always put myself in that person of the shoes standing in there. And it's, and I think you just go back to, all right, is this something I can identify for what right before it happens? And two, is it worth my life to stay, stick around and get a chicken sandwich and run the risk of something like this happening? Because like you just said, yeah, it's easy for me to go in there and go, "Hey, you know, let's go somewhere else," because I see how we're sitting. Yeah. Bad.

Yes. Any more sitting there, and I got, I got like a family and stuff now, so I got things to lose. So I don't know, I, I love you, Brian, but don't, don't flatter yourself. There's nothing there. I've got listen, Brian, let me equate you with this. What did Freud call when he, what he said when he called you there a minute ago? We, I have the text, I'll show my, my listeners, my lawyers. Listen, we bought the Powderhorn Ranch in Colorado sight unseen from Detroit. Shelley and I went out. There's a long story. I'll read about it one day. You can find it if you, if you're a sleuth. I found it years ago, though. And so for $1.4 million, we funded $140,000 with $1,400 down and 38% interest. But, but we had the ranch for 13 years, and it was absolutely wonderful.

So this first look at the ranch, I'm looking with first look glasses, you know, and everything is beautiful. Oh my God, it's a pool and a jacuzzi, and there's 14 guest cabins, and this and the outbuilding and the lodge and the hall and all a limitless future. Shades. Then I go into the first cabin, and there's a rat eating a wall and the mouse crap, and the toilet doesn't, you know, flush. And then I got to go to class and get a water license, yeah, a partial flume and do all this. So all this stuff, you know, all of a sudden like reality hit me. So I'm under the pool and trying to figure out why the pool filtration system isn't working, and it's leaking all over hell. And remember, you're an hour from the closest paved road, and an hour from that paved road to town. So you have to have advanced critical thinking, you're going to fail, you're going to die. And I'm laying under there, and I see these holes in this huge PVC pipe. And each one of these holes looked like some angry gnome had drilled into the piping system. So I called the previous owner, who's a gem—and "gem" is a good call sign—and I say, "What maniac hacked into those lines?" And he said, "Every year at the end of the year, because we get so many below zero days, I would take a drill with whatever bit that I had in the top of the toolbox, and I would drill through all the lowest points in the piping to let that water drain out so it wouldn't crack the pipe. Then every year I would use JB Weld and have one of these kids go under and patch that hole."

Okay, so, so listen to me. You are given this amazing inside of your skull, and I want you to think of it and equate it to a toolbox. And in there, there's things like a Phillips head screwdriver that is completely different than a standard, right? But if you take a two-pound sledge and that Phillips, it can be a chisel. Yeah. What happens is human beings that aren't being trained, those tools are for our choosing those tools because they're available in the moment. And in that moment, if you choose that two-pound sledge and that Phillips head, it's going to break when you need it the most. And that ashtray you're making for your mom on Mother's Day or whatever is going to come out and look like ass. And what happens is training helps us unpack what's going on in here, and then we can use those tools in a real setting or in a virtual setting. And guess what? That's learning. So that's how we build emotional maturity. And then when we go out in the real world and try it for real, that's what builds resilience. So these people in that Popeyes Chicken were so focused on the end state, getting it, going home, that they couldn't see what was right in front of them. And these two characters didn't understand that the toolbox was already in motion. And they were on that inevitable two-railroad trains coming, just like the old welcome motives were coming. And there was these valuable seconds ticking away, the gift of time and distance, where somebody could have lived through it.

So you admonished the Chief earlier for saying, "Hey, listen, you're supposed to be the guy that knows, don't use hate, death, and fear. Don't come up and scare us." Yeah, I agree with that. But I also challenge society, "You knew better, you knew better. You were standing there, you saw it." Yeah, yeah. "And you let it go too far, and now you can't unring that bell." That to me is the saddest part of this story. Somebody died that didn't have to die over a chicken, over a sandwich, over, over lunch or dinner.

And, and I, I would agree with that. And I think that, you know, all right, so you talk about responsibility, right? Because there's a difference between, you know, so whose fault is it and who's responsible for it, right? Yeah, there's a lot of things in your life you can't control that aren't your fault. Things happen that aren't you didn't cause it, but, but accidents, right? Yeah. But then when does it, but, but you know, it comes to a point, and since we're talking about resilience and rage and all the super mental performances, like, hey, man, it might not have been your fault that an event occurred, but you're responsible for your own safety. You're responsible, I mean, in some sense, even in a legal sense, for the well-being or care of other members of society, right?

Yes.

To the point where you have to—the Bible says, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Of course I am. But of course I have responsibility. But even in a legal sense, if you do nothing, you can in some places be held responsible. Good Samaritan laws are like that. Yes, I can look the other way and keep, you're not expected to, you know, jump on someone who has a gun or a knife or whatever. But at some point, everyone in there accepted their behavior and allowed it to, contributed to the outcome.

Yes. Listen, even if it was merely in brain chemistry, even if it was merely in axons and dendrites, even if it was just in the emotional, look, energy never goes anywhere, energy changes forms. Do you understand what I'm saying? And so in that store, on this day, at this time, that energy was turning fetid, it was turning evil, and it was going a different way. And humans a thousand years ago or, you know, two thousand seven hundred years ago or twenty thousand or two million years ago, would have sensed it. They would have said, "Hey, listen, you Grog is angry, we got to get out of the distance of the club swing." But we've evolved past that. We, we think that we're trying to out-think the situation. And I guarantee that the lobby looked like this, Brian, I guarantee everyone waiting in line was doing that. How many people didn't even notice it? Come on.

And, and that bothered you so much you just talked? I did. Because they, yes, in reminding me of a situation which I had forgot about when we started this and when we said, "Hey, let's talk about this podcast," which was now, I know, sorry about that, but I got something tomorrow. So but I wanted to record this now. The thing I forgot about was a similar situation where I was with other people I didn't know, standing in line for food. And there was some guy who was drunk, annoying. He was annoying everyone in line, he was annoying the people that worked there, and everyone was getting pissed at him. And he was obnoxious to the point where I just assessed the situation, looked around and said, "Hey, you know what, man, why don't you go ahead and go in front of me? Go up there and just, just go right now." And what does he need? This guy has got the attention of people working there, and it switched from everyone being annoyed to like, "Hey, let's get on board and let's get this guy out of here and on his way so we don't have to deal with it anymore." And in that situation, versus escalating it and causing something like that, that simple thing right there is, I mean that, dude, you just epitomized the de-escalation strategy. It's human service, it's you survive. Although I'm not doing it because your outcomes-based training got you there, no matter what your motivation was.

Yeah, there's another instance where I don't care what the motive is, yeah. Say what your intent was pure, and therefore the moral and ethical thing to do at that juncture was to do the right thing for all the right reasons. And I'll tell you what, if there was the gift of time and distance and, and I'd like to be able to change things, I'm Father Flanagan when I'm on the ground. I can slow time down and that's why I've gotten this far in my career. Had I been in that situation, it would have been like, "Whoa, whoa, hey, don't need to turn this into a homicide. Everybody, free chicken, it's on me." I don't care if I'd have been fired, I don't care what. There's always a strategy to think it out rather than fight it out. There's always talk it out rather than act it out because people want their say, not their way. But what happened here is because we missed the signals, Brian, the folks on the ground missed the signals, it was inevitable. It had to turn out that way.

And that's, that's the point I want to, I want to hit on, which is why I started with the question of, "How does a confrontation lead to a homicide in 15 seconds?" And I wanted to make sure that's a, that's a clear answer of what can happen. And when you, when you explain a person experiences rage, rage is that very primal reaction that you and I think we define it as, you know, you cannot control. So it's not anger, it's not something you can take a deep breath and walk away from.

You know, what professional has said when you get to that once again, it's impossible. It has to run its cycle.

So, so yeah, so that's how this is no different. This homicide is no different than a road rage incident that turns into a fight or a car accident. Right? It doesn't always lead to death, but these are all situations that we see every day. And that's why I also threw the point of, okay, well, you're telling me that science says, yes, this can't happen. You can go from flash to bang in 15 seconds or a lot less. You can do that in a millisecond, in under a second, right? You can have that flash to bang of rage. But I think the point was, and why we brought it up and talked through it a little bit, was the point of this guy, you know, it's detailed in the story, he's walking around in there for 15 minutes trying to do this, which means people in there had time, had to observe it, draw a conclusion, and initiate an action.

Brian, the question would be, "Why did this guy use a knife?" And my answer would be, "Because he didn't have a gun." Yeah. 'Cause he... that's it. And then your question, if, "Why didn't he use a gun?" It would be, "Why didn't he have an atomic bomb?" Yeah. Once rage started, it would bring that in. Even if his pocket was empty at this point, that was going to be a horrific beating, probably would have ended in a serious bodily injury or death. Yeah, because the brain's chemistry is so narrow focused. The laser versus the flashlight. In this incident, if you can't come off that accelerator, and your point is well taken, sir, the gift of time and distance, there was time to make an observation. Put down the phone, smell, look, listen, feel. And if it feels like something's going wrong, go to another restaurant, order out, do that Grubhub. There's strategies, Brian. Yeah. If not, what's going to happen is we're going to look, and three people were killed on the streets of Chicago this weekend because of this. And if you don't have a coping strategy, you can't draw anything other than that knife. If you would have had the emotional maturity and some training and some education and some mentorship, then you could draw—I'd rather have your insult. Do you get what I'm trying to say?

Yeah.

I'd rather it turned into a fistfight than it did a homicide. But there was, and there still is, no de-escalation strategy. And that is society's responsibility in this next, you know, millennia is coming to grips with the fact that technology hasn't taught humans how to treat other humans with respect and dignity.

No, and that's the way. Yeah, and, and that's another good point because I always like the, you know, what can I do in that situation? What's the, what's the takeaways from all these? Is that one, it's not going to stop happening, the rage. And if anyone who's ever experienced or seen someone who is in a literal fit of rage, they're not, they're not, no talking to them. There's no, they are going to finish whatever it is they're doing unless, unless you physically are able to stop them, kill them, whatever. But, but that when you see someone in a, for those listeners who have similar, in a fit of rage, going, there's no conscious thought right there.

Yep.

That's your primal thing that can occur. That's inside everyone. And that's why I brought it up at the beginning, is that the other side of the coin is we're hardwired that way for purposes of certainly survival.

That was when it was a fear environment, yeah, where there's very few cues and danger could come upon you rather quickly. That's why it's triggered in nanoseconds, is because all of a sudden when that saber-toothed tiger comes. Yeah, that's right. But we didn't have a sufficient amount of mental acumen change that went along with societal change. Do you get what I'm saying? So, so this technology, I remember my first trip to Afghanistan versus the second. And the second time, everybody had GPS and a phone, including Afghan villagers. That was right. You said that your experiences in Iraq were so kinetic in your first deployment, right? And all of a sudden you get out of that cycle and you go back, and now you're walking down those same streets with the same lenses of that kinetic deployment that you had. So if you don't have a de-escalation strategy, everything's going to be a threat. So we have to be able to control our own human performance, and the only way to control our human performance is to train the brain. That's the only way.

Okay, well, I think that's a, that's a pretty good spot there to kind of bring it in for landing unless you had anything else to mention on this specific incident.

I have to apologize to the estate of Sigmund Freud. Other than that, but I'm only going to do that if they, if they approach me in writing. So I think, I think, you know, you're the first person but, you know, that said, that said, accused someone of stealing your words, these scam artists prior, prior, prior to you being born. That's, that's a whole different podcast we could do. But their rage won't work. We'll talk about these incidents, you know, again, because they continue to. And we're not making fun of this, folks that are tuning in. Brian, I think they're smarter than that. They've got to understand that this is our gallows humor, our way of venting. Rage is absolutely something that can be trained to de-escalate, just like any use of force. The less I know, the more likely I'm used to much force. It's a fact of life, right?

Right.

I'm always the, the less training or education or experience I have, the more likely I'm going to go primal because that's all I have. When I open the toolbox, I only got one thing that I was going to say, I only got that, that, that drill bit to drill into that PVC pipe, and that's exactly your story. And after the fifth or sixth year, why not just some backwoods hillbilly back to you smoking the crack and Harley, we get it from somewhere. So, you know, just chasing that high constantly. So thanks everyone for tuning in. Please talk about it, like it, share it. Don't forget that that training changes behavior. Hey, don't forget the subscription drive. It's free, it's a button click. Go to the website arcadiacognarada.com, hit subscribe. We've got some stuff on there that you're going to want to be a part of. So get on there and get involved in the conversation. Thanks again.