Left Of Greg 073 Ahmaud Arbery

Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in! I'm Brian, the host of The Human Behavior Podcast. You're going to be watching the video version of our audio podcast. Please, guys, if you liked the video, like it, subscribe to the channel. There's going to be more content down there. If you're already a subscriber, it's a better way for us to get you guys some more stuff. If you have any questions or comments, go ahead, leave them 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 HBP RNA. 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, Greg, we will go ahead and get started for today. This is the first time we will also be live-streaming to Facebook. Whether or not people are going to be watching or chiming in, I don't know, I don't care. We're still recording this like a normal pod for anyone who's listening. We sometimes do this every once in a while. If you're following us on Facebook, it's live-streaming. But today, not our typical Friday topic. Today, we're going to be talking about obviously something that's been in the news a lot: the killing, the homicide, of Ahmaud Arbery down in Georgia, found in Brunswick, Georgia, that took place a couple of months ago but just came to light here in the last week or so. So, Greg, did you want to go over some—

Before we jump into it real quick, obviously, because we're live, thanks everybody for tuning in! It's great to see you. So, when I had to go to town today, these are the masks that I made. This one's red. If you don't have color, and if you're not watching on video, I'm holding up a COVID mask (red) that I made. Remember, everyone deployed. It's also National Police Week, and today's devoted to the memory of current and former police officers that served nationally, and specifically those that died. Just a shout-out to Brian (Marren's) show, he does a great job with it. We don't prepare specifically for the Friday broadcast, so until he sent the invite and said, "Hey, this is the caper we're going to talk about," I had no preconceived notions of the case. We didn't study up on the case. Brian will review it, and then we'll just dive right in.

So here's—I'm just going to go over the basic facts of the case for anyone who isn't familiar with it. But basically, what we had is back on February 23rd in Brunswick, Georgia. Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old guy, is walking around a neighborhood. He is seen by a couple of individuals, Gregory McMichael and his son, Travis McMichael. They see him coming in and out of a home that is under construction, so an unoccupied home. They believe that he is attempting to rob the place.

So, Mr. Arbery leaves. What I want to read from the actual report there is what Gregory McMichael and his son basically began to pursue him. They said he was, what they call, "hauling ass down the street." Then a third man named William Bryan also followed along in his vehicle and tried to block Mr. Arbery during the pursuit as well.

Gregory McMichael told police he thought Arbery was a burglar who had recently been targeting the neighborhood. The McMichaels told police that when they caught up with Mr. Arbery, he attacked Travis McMichael, the guy who showed up with a gun, and then Travis then fired his weapon in self-defense.

So, basically, what happened is Mr. Arbery is chased by these men. They attempt to detain him, they attempt to arrest him, right? And then, in this ensuing scuffle, Mr. Arbery is shot and fatally killed. Those are the basic details of the case. Now, there's a lot more that happened after that in terms of why it wasn't immediately prosecuted, why they weren't arrested, and everything. There's a lot that goes into it; we will probably get into some of that.

But I want to just stick with what just happened right there, Greg, and how we articulate that. I kind of want to be clear on this too, and I'll go first, and where I stand based on reading the facts of the case and the police report that I could get to. It's always hard when it's a national story because you've got to filter through all the crap that's just click-and-paste that every news agency does. Usually, when there are not as well-known stories, it's actually easier sometimes to filter through that. But just sticking with what happened, I would say that, one, the two gentlemen that killed Mr. Arbery had absolutely no right to chase him, to impede his travel, to detain him, or arrest him. They had no right to do that. Whether or not Mr. Arbery did in fact commit a crime, they clearly, I would say, are at fault for what happened and should be prosecuted for homicide. That's where I would stand on this, just reading the facts of the case, just going off of what I saw, that their actions were illegal and Mr. Arbery was likely defending himself from what he thought was some type of attack. But maybe that might not be as clear as it is to me, as it is to some people. I don't know. There's a lot of different opinions going around. This is where a lot of people like to inflate the case and highlight it as whatever issue they're trying to push. So I'd kind of like to throw it to you first, Greg, and then we'll kind of go through the story as the conversation evolves, if that works.

Yeah, so I got a prop. The prop that I'm going to try out for the very first time. I certainly hope that it illustrates my part in the case. What it is, is that this is the hat that I'm going to wear when a story smells so bad that it's [ __ ] (holding up a silly, clown-like hat) and that anybody that touches it is going to get [ __ ] on their hand and need to wash their hands. So enough with the dramatics, but I have no idea how hard I had to find that hat, probably because I couldn't find clown makeup in time with the red flipping nose, Brian!

So first off, I love the hat. I think that can work in a number of situations and capers. Maybe, "Oh, then I touch—"

Yeah, that's going to be a recurring theme. You should keep that near the computer, because I think when we come up with certain questions that we know are completely ridiculous and someone's being—I'll ask, "Maybe you just hold it up?" With that on your spine, girl, let me answer the question. So anyway, I'm a lot like—I'm a lot like Peter Griffin, right?

Yes, more than people think.

Thank you. So instead of Hungry Hungry Hippo, today I'm angry, angry Homer Simpson or angry, angry Peter Griffin. What grinds my gears, Brian, is I want to back up to what you said. You used facts just a minute ago, but when you were telling the story that was going on, you never used the word "facts." You didn't say, "This is the facts of the case." You said, "This is what's being reported," and then you use some other—

Well, I try to get what's in the police report.

Yeah, but what I'm saying is what's being reported. I want to straighten out just one word of lexicon. If we change the story to the story that mainstream says, that Mr. Arbery was jogging, the difference between jogging and walking and running is huge and changes the entire dynamic of the case. That's one.

Number two, the fact of the matter that one of the guys was a former police officer with 20 years and knew the defendant, or a prosecutor, or was this or that, isn't admissible to the fact that this was a home site being built and therefore it was a property crime. If Mr. Arbery was committing a crime—if he was committing any crime, if he was committing flipping trespassing—it's not a death sentence. We are a nation of laws, and there is no way that you can take this quantum leap of logic. Even if he was a burglar, that was a convicted burglar, that was stealing on that day, it's not a death sentence. We have a thing in this country called due process, and people should be ashamed at what they're thinking, saying, and writing right now, because here, Mr. Arbery was not given due process and he died because of the actions of another. That's my starting volley, Brian.

Yeah, and that's good. I think that's why I said what I did starting off, so just so anyone right off the bat knew what angle I'm coming from, because it's important to understand that going forward and what we're going to talk about. Because you—you hit on what some people discuss as, "Oh, he had a past criminal record, he had this, he had that," which everyone thinks pertains to the case, but it doesn't. I mean, yeah, there's a ton of different examples of this, but that had nothing to do with what happened in this situation. You just have to look at what occurred in this situation, and that's why I kind of stuck with, well, what not just what's been proven. Like, we know Mr. Arbery walked into this house because there's a film of him doing that, there's a recording of him doing that. So at most, he was trespassing, at most, during that, because nothing else occurred. And we don't even know that.

Yeah, I don't know if a landscape architect recently said, "Yeah, if you want to pick up some of the resource, anything under six inches, we ain't going to use anyway." We don't know that yet, but we're supposing certain things, right?

Right. But again, quantum leap of logic. I'm with you, Brian. I'm not going to know that, and that's a perfect point, because you don't know why he was in there, what he was doing, or maybe he had—same thing, "Hey, we're going to need a laborer to come clean up. Go check out the house," or whatever. Or something. You have no idea if he wanted to buy a house, maybe he wanted to check the floor plan of the house when it was for sale. So, no matter what was going on there, at no point—so, so here's the thing. So let's fast forward to—or let's go to the point where these gentlemen, whether or not they knew him from previous, or knew anything about him, or had various intent, they started—I saw him and said, "Hey, we think this is going on, so we think this guy's robbing the place." So right there, they then—

Attention on.

—got into a vehicle. That's the first thing you do.

Right.

Yeah, so that's—they started pursuing him. So I want to stop right there and say, what's wrong with this picture already before we get to what occurred?

I got my props! (holds up his cell phone) Good, because here's the thing, Greg. I'm saying—I'm sitting at my house, I walk out on my porch, and I look over and I see a person I don't know, or I do know, walking away or jogging away from a home down the street. What do I now have the—

To grab my guns, get in the truck, and go after him? Like, what—

What was your holding here? Here are my props holding. So for those people out there, one way to—so, you know, I'm scared of everything, Brian, terrible, but I walk around with my cell phone, the shoe phone, and I dial nine-and-one, and my thumb is hovering over the other one all day long. I don't care if you like police or hate police, I don't care if you had a good time with them or a bad time with them in the past, I don't care if you've been pulled over and because your sister-in-law got a DUI you hate cops. I don't care, but escalating this situation by any means other than being a really good witness—

That's right.

—if somebody's coming in my house, we got a whole new deck, a whole new hand that was dealt to us. We're talking about you made the assumption that you're looking off your deck and you see somebody leaving in a situation in a high-speed, on foot. So for whatever reason your attention is drawn to this person because your peripheral vision, in motion, and so now you go, "Hey, I wonder if that person committed a crime?" Maybe you hear a car alarm, maybe you heard somebody scream, maybe you heard glass break. I don't care, but I don't want to conflate the case. But if you're suspicious at all, maybe you arm yourself in your house and go into your bathroom and grab the phone. That's okay, you got every right to do that. But grabbing your gun and going outside of your domicile, outside of your residence, outside of the confines of your compound is ridiculous. One, that's not defense, that's an offensive strategy, right?

The second thing is, if you're chasing me, I don't care what I just did, I don't care if I littered and I felt it was wrong and so I ran from it. If you're chasing me with two other guys in a vehicle and I see a long gun—which is in the record, Brian, it was a shotgun, right? So if I see that, what would a reasonable person do? And those—

My ass—

—my ass! I would have a big ass.

I mean, honestly, no. Put that on the record as well. No, and then that's—and so let's just go right into it there, because then what people are going to say, or what people are saying—

So the idea is on their door, on the fishing channel, Brian.

But here's the thing, is that what people say is, you're going to—because this is what one of the district attorneys who was recused from the case or stepped down said, "You know, there's—they do have some legal ground to stand on," which I would vehemently disagree with, right? Because—

Well, exactly.

What they said is, "You know, there's—alright, so there's a citizen's arrest law, right? There's a few different ones, because they're saying the—what the DA said after stepping down is, 'Said the father and son had solid firsthand probable cause as civilians to detain him. They apparently sought only to stop and hold this criminal suspect until law enforcement arrived.'" Then he brought up Arbery's mental health records and prior convictions, which means nothing. "McMichael was allowed to use deadly force to protect himself, and Arbery may have shot himself while fighting for the shotgun." So, so it's—

Junk! That's—no, no! What I'm saying, Brian, it's—this is actually a good defensive strategy, and remember, we're calling defense. Yeah, because these guys have been arrested for homicide. Next time, folks, that you're in trouble—this is a joke, don't do it—next time that you're in trouble, take an unloaded gun and throw it to a person and when they catch it, you kill them and say, "Oh, yeah, did they escalate it? It's a situation beyond my means."

Brian, what—okay, first of all, let's go back to all law called Stand Your Ground that applies in the state of Georgia. Well, what's that first word? The first word is "stand." You're not driving to a scene, moving from a location. It's "stand," right? Okay, so then the second part is "detaining." Okay, so let's put this in the context of a shoplifter. You're in Walmart, you see somebody shoplifting goods. They take something from the store shelf, they attempt to conceal it. You think that they're going to try to go outside of the store. Okay, no matter if it's a pair of tennis shoes, or if it's a clock radio, or if it's a flipping plasma TV, don't hide, conceal it. If you say, "Stop! Citizen's arrest!" You can't go any further, and the person continues walking. Your level of force, if any, is applicable, which almost is—your level of force to stop the person might be standing in front of them, blocking their path. It might be, while the security is coming, dialing 911. If the security guard is in a fight for their life and it's a felony, and you jump in and assist, that's okay. You're not acting as an agent of police, you're acting as a concerned citizen to make sure things don't get out of control. Brian, none of those occurred. None of those occurred. They showed up with guns. He fought back for his life, and then they killed him, as anyone would.

But, and here's the thing, so because I looked into Georgia's citizen arrest law, right? What it says is, you know, "A private person—so, a citizen—may arrest an offender if the offense is committed in his presence or within his immediate knowledge." That's what the law says. And then it says, "If the offense is a felony and the offender is escaping or attempting to escape, a private person may arrest him upon reasonable and probable grounds of suspicion." So, this gets into a whole other area. But I wanted to look it up because this is from Georgia, right? This is "citizen." And when they cover citizen's arrest, you say, "As a private citizen, you have no authority to arrest anyone without a warrant or with a warrant." Without a warrant, you may arrest anyone who commits a misdemeanor felony in your presence or with your immediate knowledge. So it says, because it goes on to explain it just a little bit, right? "A citizen's arrest occurs when a citizen prevents a suspect from leaving a scene." So, that's what—which is your perfect example for shoplifting, right? So shoplifting is a perfect one. So if I'm the owner of a store and someone tries to steal something, I can—I can legally detain them if I saw them steal something. I cannot let them leave the store, right? I could.

But why are those—and I hate to interrupt you on this, Brian, I'm only getting passionate because I don't want to throw a red herring out there—why were those laws designed, and when? With all of the motion capture and closed-caption television and crime scene forensics and all that other stuff, and better, faster response time? Now, this all predates that.

Right, but it's still a law, so we have to respect it.

Yeah, but the law was that, look, it's likely if this person leaves, I'll never find them again. It's likely if this person leaves, they'll destroy evidence and mock up the subsequent prosecution. We don't have that situation. And I want to touch on something you said. I rarely do, Brian, and I disagree. Folks, we disagree on everything, but the idea is that generally we're all in the same arena, to use an antithesis word, but we're fighting under different auspices. And I'll give you this example. So when we take a look at this situation, and we take a look at the type of crime that was committed, and the type of response it was committed to, what did the people know and what could they have done? And then some people say, "Hey, this guy had 20 years as a cop, so he knew different things." Okay, okay, so if I knew this guy was a prior criminal, if I knew he was deranged, if I knew he was mentally incapacitated or had a mental issue, or all those other stuff, that's all stuff that we'd go on reasonable suspicion or probable cause on the yellow pad. But it's all the more reason—NAACP, ACLU, call me, I'd love to testify—and look, if you're a cop and you're right now going, "Hey, bite me!" Just like a comment I read this morning where somebody came off the top rope and slammed somebody else that made a comment, free and open discourse, you have the right to disagree with me, but you might want to grab your Constitution before you do. All the more reason, Brian, that this person had committed previous crimes and might be the right guy to call the police and say, "My son and I have a pair of binoculars, and we're watching him. He's westbound on Fifth Street." Don't go after him, you're asking for trouble!

That's what I'm saying, is that the things that they're trying to put in as some sort of defense or a reason to explain their actions, there are more reasons to not do what they did, right? Because it has to be a prudent person, it has to be a normal, regular person, one of your peers. And when I say normal and I could say regular, I'm talking about a legal standard. I'm not trying to draw an opinion on somebody. I don't care if you're cross-dressing, wino from Kansas, none of that stuff matters. What it is, is if you're human, and if you had senses, and you sensed that this same thing would happen, another reasonable person would do it, then guess what? It's logical, it's normal, it's going to be reason, and the court's going to accept it. So all of the things that you put in afterwards, Brian, and that's what I'm seeing here, is like, for example, "I recused myself. (District Attorney) Johnson recused herself." Why? Because the guy worked at her office for 20 years. What does that mean? Well, that means that she can't be unbiased. So therefore, if, and remember, folks, I'm coming to this case like 15 minutes before the broadcast, but Brian, you said it at the very beginning of the broadcast, this caper started in February. So all of that legal wrangling that happened back there, it would have happened on a normal case. Do you see what I'm trying to say?

Yeah.

Oh, all of a sudden this case has to be extraordinary, or it would have already been up there, it would have already been a shooting team assigned, there would have already been somebody from this and that, and somebody's going to have you believe that the citizens said, "Justice for this," because I know the caper was at the forefront of the news since February. MSNBC covered it, you couldn't pass the thing without seeing photos and everything else. So why didn't anybody act? Why wasn't there a grand jury?

Well, they knew this case stunk. They knew that something was wrong with this caper. Yes, so they wanted to kind of quietly let a little bit of time and distance go by and then get a little bit of water under the bridge before they did anything. Why weren't these guys arrested? Why weren't they fingerprinted? Why weren't they handcuffed? Any other situation—and stop with the race—any other situation with any other people involved in this would have done the same thing. If this was—you remember that Star Trek episode where they went to the planet and half the people had black on one side and white on the other, and white on the other, and it was from Jonathan Swift, the Big-Endians and the Little-Endians? Put that mask on! Look at this caper, take color away, take everything else away, and now say that it's your son or daughter that for whatever reason went to that house, Brian.

Yeah.

And when they came out of the house, now a band of locals—three is a band in my terms—chase him down, Brian. It stinks. It stinks. And I don't care what the mens rea of our decedent was at the time he was being chased by three guys in cars with guns. Three guys in a pickup truck? I would have gone, "Holy crap!" I would have run. I would have run.

Another thought—if they wouldn't stop me—

No.

—I know, and it seems so obvious to me. Now, Vicki—well, I think one, everyone's going to sensationalize a story for different reasons. There's a number of reasons, like you explained, why things took so long to take an arrest. Part of it, honestly, was the coronavirus pandemic that has everything on lockdown and no one can go anywhere and do like—there's a lot of argument—

Yeah.

—yeah, reasons why then it turned to, "How are we going to handle this case? Hey, I know this guy, and this guy, I can't be a part of. Okay, well we got to get someone else." Like, that stuff all takes time. What it is, is the same people are since I don't—I don't want to get into what everyone's trying to make this into, because I think it muddies the waters and takes away from the actual facts of the case in the conversation.

And unnecessarily.

Right, right, that's—this is a case that is so simple, cut and dry to me, that how could anyone not see it for what it is? But I've seen some interesting comments and people talking about it. And one person, I got to read it to you, this is another—you can put your hat on now, because we talked about some of it. It said, "You know, several dynamics are at work here. Arbery has a criminal past which includes being in possession of a firearm illegally." Okay, so, so if this guy who killed him knew that, that's—that's again goes to now why they did it, why they shouldn't have got involved. I think it's a better argument, or why they shouldn't have inserted themselves in the situation.

Yep.

"McMichaels and Bessie was involved in that prosecution, so meaning he had prior knowledge of the subject. He can articulate the presence of a threat from prior contact behavior will be a mitigating factor." Alright. "This will also play into the hunting or laying in wait aspect of prosecution. I will tell you this, there are people who, if I saw approaching my house, I would shoot on sight. There you go, through legal. These are people who have made threats against me, have attacked me in the course and scope of my duties. And I was listening to that. I'm not going to prejudge this." You already did! "I think there's more information to come out. On the surface, it does not look like a justifiable homicide." Correct. "But if I was not there, so I'll withhold my opinion." This is some of the stuff that—

My opinion, except for all the [ __ ] that you just read that he wrote.

Right, right. And that's the point, is how does it get off the rails? Like, it's again to me, like I said, it seems such a cut and dry case, and people really like to muddy the waters. It even comes back to some other—put your hat on for this one. A comment on one of these places that I saw, they got into how it's going to play out in the trial and all this stuff, but it said, "Did the McMichaels have probable cause to effect the detention of the suspect?" So let's start right there. Did they have probable cause to effect the detention of the suspect?

Well, okay, well, it's yes and no. And I'll tell you yes if certain rules applied, no if they didn't. We don't know what those rules were because we weren't there. We don't know what the prosecution is withholding, we don't know what the defense is armed with. But if we're talking trespassing with the possibility of maybe a burglary that occurred for a jogger, I'm saying no.

Okay, yeah. So, the right to call—

They went to follow them at a distance. They had the right to do all of those things, yes, because they're citizens just like you and me.

Right, right. It escalated. Well, here's the thing, is that now if they would have called police and got in their cars and followed at a safe distance and reported on his position, I think not only is that within their legal right to do so, but I think that's—they're—Mr. Arbery would be alive.

Yeah.

What I'm saying is we could hear his side. We could have him on the broadcast, Brian. We can never have his side of this case because they took it to an extreme. Would you agree with that, at least?

And here's—here's the—here's the problem again with—and I've seen this before in some of these other comments—"The second Arbery defended himself, he was resisting arrest, whether that arrest was illegal or not." That's not true. That's—you have the absolute right to resist an illegal arrest, or you have the absolute right, just like in the military, you have the absolute right to defy an illegal order. Okay, but that's not what we're talking about. So don't be—

We used to call them barracks lawyers, Brian. Yeah. I got the other prop. You know that in the front seat of my truck, right in the center console, is the US Constitution. If you don't know it, then recuse yourself and sit down and shut up, because what you're saying is ludicrous. What if I was going to set this caper up, Brian, and I wanted to win, and I was part of the defense? What I would say is, "This is tantamount to a modern-day lynching!" And everybody would get behind me and there we go. Holy [ __ ], it kind of is, right now. If I was on the other side of the fence, Brian, I would say, "I have the absolute right to defend my house and my community against criminals like this, especially this guy that I dug all this stuff up and figured out that one time he may have done these other things." Brian, we're not talking about coming eye-to-eye with somebody in an alley and looking and going, "Holy [ __ ], this guy used to have a gun at the previous time. I met this guy, I had a fight with a man and this guy's looking like he's trouble and reaching at his waistband." We have none of that. We're trying to create that by typing a dirt hustler, a guy in an elevator. Do you see what I'm trying to say? This is a fantasy. What the evidence shows is clear and concise, and Brian, it can be put into those ice cube trays that we talk about all the time. But the ice cube tray itself is another part of the equation, and whether it's a sunny day or it's cold, or it's in the fridge or it's on the counter, all matters. So you can't sit there and go, "I've written—I've read what the journalist reported, and therefore I'm going to draw an opinion." That's ludicrous. What we're trying to say is, get some training, get some facts in the case, do your homework. And if you do, you'll agree with us that this doesn't pass the smell test. Had it passed the smell test, Brian, we would have had a different outcome starting in February. You invoke the coronavirus, which I completely agree with. But these two guys weren't worried about the coronavirus with their neighbor when they jumped in the vehicle and confronted Mr. Arbery. Were they?

You defend your right to bring it up, and I totally agree with you. And I think there's stuff behind the scenes that caused it to light. But here—here's for the governor to have to reach down and say this smelled bad. Come on.

Oh, I know that.

And then—and that goes into again, your training, education. That's the big thing.

Exactly. Anywhere you're on, yeah. But you're going to get what you pay for, especially when it comes to law enforcement or district attorneys, prosecution, everything. So you—and there's good and bad in it.

Yeah, Brian, I want to—I want to wave this—I'm not going to wave any fairy dust, but I waved this from this magic wand of reason around here. Here's my wand of reason. People make mistakes. People get overwhelmed. There's a lot of capers that are out there. People, take a look at this caper. Mr. Arbery was just another name of what they were led to believe was a criminal that was doing a crime that got in a scuffle with a couple of peacekeepers, right? So you don't know what was going on in the mind of those people, so don't presuppose it. But there's good and bad cops, there's good and bad prosecutors, and there's every degree in between, and there's extremists, Brian. There's extreme views that are out there.

Yeah.

What does a law say? The law says we've got to try to balance that, and that justice is blind, that it's the same for a poor person, or a rich person, or a green person, and a magenta person. It doesn't matter. So—

And that's the thing, that's why when people bring up, like, they go right where do they go to? They go right to, "Bang, oh, this is the event that occurred right here!" No, no, no, no, no. What occurred started the morning.

Yeah.

So because here's the thing, that the contributing factors in Mr. Arbery's death were who were the two jackasses that decided to follow him and kill him. They were the proximate cause.

You're exactly right. Not only the contributing factors, but the proximate cause in his death. So many times, Brian, you and I will break down a case and say, "Hey, listen, you, you, and your actions led to your homicide." It is not one of those cases that was reasonable. And that's the thing, you don't get to have it because then this—this person—

Every both was.

Yeah. The person was trying to argue saying, "Oh, well, yeah, whether the detention or arrest of him by these two individuals was legal or not, he's not allowed to—"

Okay, if you're walking down the street, right, and people try to stop you and they have guns and you don't, and in an ensuing fight you kill them, that's their fault. You didn't bring a gun to the fight. They did, right?

I mean, and so add—add the other side of that coin. God, I wish I had a big old challenge coin, I'd show the other side just for a dramatic crap because we got props now, I guess. And the other thing is, it's a property crime. It's a flipping property crime! Kid steals a radio from your car. You come to the porch, turn on the porch light, he starts fleeing. You shoot into the night. And you're saying, "Well, that never happens." Well, it happened a few days ago, and right now it's in the news because the guy shooting said, "Didn't do anything wrong," and the kid they found at the intersection under the streetlight for a property—property crime. It's for a radio they were stealing stuff out of the car. A person escalated yesterday a situation, and this is on a Friday, folks, do your research and look it up on the news, I don't remember which site I was on, a guy had a 16-year-old car. People came to repo it because COVID problems, the guy couldn't—didn't pay. A man in his 40s went out and shot three people, shot one and shot at—with a D-W, assault with a deadly weapon, perhaps with the intent to kill—that'll be later demonstrated by the courts—to protect his 16-year-old car which is being repo'd, which they made—repo means they sent you warnings, they told you. They said, "You, Brian, these capers happen all the time, folks." Stop and think, give yourself the gift of time and distance. You do not have the right to escalate to a homicide.

What would be a property crime. Even if it's a felony.

The shoe would be on the other foot, Brian, if these two and their neighbor were as Mr. Arbery killed people at a yard that were swinging—he was now running with an axe toward the church. Do you see what I'm trying to plead?

Because he was preventing him from committing another felony, exactly, that was on view, meaning they saw it. Even a police officer, even a police officer, a sworn officer under the color of law, may not make an arrest without a warrant. So he has to draft up, after he makes an on-view arrest, he has to write a warrantless affidavit, and he has to go to his supervisor, who has to go to the ADA and say, "I arrested this guy because I saw them," and they look at it right then and say, "Okay, you have enough to book him and process him." You get what I'm saying? So that's the standard for cops. Why would the standard be different for these neighbors that allegedly saw a crime in progress?

Question. And that's the thing, is that people were going to say, "Well, you know, they were simply trying to do this, and then he escalated." No, no, you were the one—you were the proximate cause. You were the one that said, "I'm going to go after this person and intervene." Now, everything that happens after that, you've got your feet, you're partially responsible for that. If I'm running down the street, or walking down the street, or doing anything down the street, and three guys with guns come out and try to stop me, yeah, I'm fighting for my life because I'm fearing for my life, right? So you—you can't have it both ways. Then when they say, you know, "Oh, I have our inherent right to defend myself"—

Logic, we have this pendulous answer, and wherever you come down on it, Brian, I'm going to come down somewhere else. And I'm going to argue every one of the points that you've got. Now you can't do that. That's not—look, there's the spirit of the law and the letter of the law. But that argument itself is flawed. What that doesn't mean is you get to decide. That means it's got to go up through the Court of Appeals, right through the Supreme Court. They will be the arbiter of facts and decide that yes, this is the right thing. Sorry, I'm still at the office here, I apologize.

So and he—because here's the other thing too, with—and I want this to be clear, because I saw a lot of comments all over the place about people wanting to intervene and do stuff. Is one, you likely have no right to do so, so stop and pick up your phone. That's what you pay—

Exactly.

—we talk about that all the time, right? But two, here's the other thing, because I found this when I was looking up some of these different standards around the laws in the Georgia state law, because you got to remember they change from state to state, and even sometimes cities or counties will have their own different ordinances. But there was a council—city council member in Gary, Indiana, Greg, that grabbed a kid because he thought it was the kid who stole his car two days prior. Guess what? It wasn't. Guess who got charged with kidnapping? That city council member, because that's what they did. So, you don't get to take the law into your own hands. You have an inherent right to defend yourself, always.

Always. But you said it right here, but I want to reiterate, because I want you to go on, you said, "Stand your ground law." You said it right there: stand. I don't have to run away. I don't have to—that's all fine. But that doesn't mean I get to chase someone down and say, "Hey, you did something bad, I'm going to get you," unless there's some type of immediate, immediate threat.

Exactly. Can you—

Know how do—how do you homicides come from road rage? So somebody cuts me off, I'm pissed now that I got cut off. So I'm going to chase you down, risking everybody and my own safety, which you have no right to do whatsoever. And somebody's going to say, "Well, I can accelerate to get the license plate." Show me, show me what law says that? That's horseshit! Okay? You give the best description, be the best witness you can. Pull off the road, drive to the closest police station. If you got a Geo Tracker, use that to find the State Police or whatever that's in your jurisdiction. Because every move that you make after that is going to unjustly put other people in the trick bag, Brian. So now you witness that shoplifting, and all of a sudden you see the property crime. You try to stop the guy, you even grab out and you grab his sleeve, and he pulls away, and he starts running for the front door. Now you got to think, if he runs out and gets hit by a car, dude, you're in the trick bag. Do you see what I'm trying to say? If he turns around with a box cutter and hits you in the jugular and says, "Yahtzee!" you're in the trick bag. So you constantly have to mitigate risk by measuring the cost-benefit analysis of your actions. Anytime you get one person that goes, "And I should follow that guy." What do you think happens when they now grab a gun like that? That barometer, Brian, that thermometer going up now. "Hey, my kid's with me!" Now a neighbor, Jim, "What's up? Where are you guys headed with that gun?" You know, whatever the guy's name is, it wasn't Jim. They'll jump in. Do you see what's happening, Brian? Now that catecholamine cocktail, now all of a sudden the adrenal cortex is pumping, the epinephrine is going all in, you're convinced now, whoo, tunnel vision is occurring, we're convinced now that this is the do or die, that this is the drawn the line of the stand that we've got to take some action. People do it all the time. People get the happy head, the next of it they do is they can't come off the gas and somebody lays dead. Mr. Arbery had the absolute right to defend himself and defend his actions in a court of law. Do you get what I'm trying to say? If it was a flipping criminal, Title 42, Section 1983 of the U.S. Code, he had the absolute right to defend himself in civil court if he was wrong. But these people took Mr. Arbery's civil rights away from him, right when they killed him. You can't shoot somebody for a property crime.

Yeah, and that's the thing, is that you know, we—I think people are very confused on the law, especially I see a lot of people who say, "Read the Constitution," and none of this is—you never read it. Yes, well, it is, but you have to articulate it through other cases or examples that have been decided, and they are now statute and they're now what—

Yes, exactly.

—that's what all our case law is. Because you're thinking, "I—" because like me, I'm all for that, the whole idea of the Stand Your Ground law or the Castle Doctrine, which people want to call different. You're in your house, and sometimes in there it's like, you just said, "Hey, you got dealt this card, you didn't deal those cards. You can put your finger on the scale, you didn't go out. Someone came to you. You have the inherent right to do whatever you feel that level of force is necessary." Now, there's laws restricting, if they start taking off running, you can't chase them. You can't shoot that guy in—

If they leave the curtilage. If they leave the curtilage of your dwelling. If they—if they leave your car in the driveway and try to run, all that other stuff. Go back in the house, lock your door, wait in a bathroom, sit in the tub, a nice defensive posture with your phone on and your flashlights, and legally defend your family from that safe room. That's smart thinking. And somebody's going to say, "Well, I don't have to retreat in my own home." No, but it's a really good sticking strategy, and you know every time we were in a combat zone, Brian, every time that we were dealing with police officers on the street where lives hang in the balance, you and I always tell them, "When the stakes get too high, put it in reverse, and back out of there." We told them, "Don't be afraid to haul ass out of the situation because you'll be alive, and you'll be able to get warrants and go after the person." And what do we hear all the time? We hear that "Tombstone courage." "Well, I don't have any duty to retreat." Yeah, but there's a lot of Silver Star winners and Medal of Honor winners that would have been alive if they were taking a step back right now. That's insulting somebody's memory because they're saying, "Well, you know, he died for all these other people." A lot of times you don't have to. A lot of times there's other things you can do, and praise God for those heroes, Brian. But what we had here is we had citizens that took the law into their own hands, and that's clearly defined that you do not have the right to do that. And they infringed on the civil rights of another citizen that even if he was guilty, even if he was guilty of that crime—

That's how that kind of—that kind of summarized the central kind of theme that I see in a lot of these comments and that people want to bring up what he did or who he was, or this issue, or that issue. And I—I don't know, I just think it's maybe just a little bit of ignorance. And I don't use that term in a negative fashion, right? Like, there's a lot of things I'm very ignorant of, and that's okay, meaning I go to someone for advice or expertise, right? So I think it's a little bit of an ignorance of the law.

Yeah, exactly.

Ignorant of the law, because—because, you know, they say, "Well, he had this and this was going on and he knew him from previous." It doesn't change the circumstances. The circumstance is that, like, remember the gun, remember the gun they found on Mr. Arbery? What was the caliber?

Exactly. There wasn't one. What was it? Stick that he was swinging at them guys? Yeah, he wasn't.

Happening. And then the knife. He had a gun and they—defense rests, Your Honor. That's the thing here is that, you know, a lot of people then say, "Well, I have this right to do this, and so I should be able to stop him or do that." Look, man, like, if I see someone committing a crime, unless they're, you know, someone's beating the crap out of some other human being or killing them in front of me, I'm going to stand back and I'm going to get on my phone and I'm going to eat the popcorn and I'm going to call the police and go, "Wow, this guy's really—he's really raiding that television out of that house right now."

Yeah. "What I was going back from, he's going back to the radio. Oh, no, he's still here. He's loading up the van right now."

Like, to me, there's no—there's no need for you to insert yourself because I want it to be clear that once you—once you involve yourself in a situation, meaning you now made a decision, right? That's different than any decision that one's—someone coming into your house, you didn't get to decide that. You have to react to that. So that the responsibility is on that person. But once you decide to insert yourself in that situation, no matter what it is, once you decide to take action beyond what you're legally allowed to do, or even just contribute to the situation, you now are a contributing factor of every spiral that occurs from this, everything. So, Brian, even if they—let's say, Greg, because let's say it didn't even escalate to this. Let's say they were chasing him in their vehicle, and then he jumped in a vehicle, and now he's running from them, and there's a vehicle pursuit. And Mr. Arbery now is scared because people are chasing them, goes through an intersection and hits a minivan and kills the whole family. Those people chasing him—proximate cause—are the proximate cause of that.

They're exactly right. They're just as responsible as he is. Let me ask you a question. You're a subject matter expert in many fields. You're in demand to speak and teach and do all this incredible stuff in the realm of human behavior, in human form. So let me ask you a couple of questions. One, you're at a red light, and all of a sudden somebody yanks your unlocked door open in your car, sticks a gun in your face and says, "Get out of the car, I'm stealing your car." What do you do?

Yeah, it's yours, buddy.

Here, let me adjust the format. Let me know. I'm going to—

I'm going to get even better roof rack on that insurance claim, because I'm the—

You've just watched, you know, whatever shitty requiem for a—requiem for a dream documentary and you're with your wife and your lovely daughter, and somebody sticks a gun in your face and says, "Give up the cheese." What flavor cheese do you want?

Yeah.

What I'm saying now. Somebody right now has taken umbrage to that because their TV show teaches you how to take your gun, take away a platform from your suburban after you've done a 360 power slide backwards. Look, if the best trained people in the world get killed on the road enforcing the laws, you need to take a giant, giant step backwards and look at the big picture. It's only money, it's only property. When somebody's trying to kill or harm—

CEO of our company. Not—well, first of all, I would be—I'm going to watch that one, but I would—I would definitely jump in and try to defend a choking baby or a downed police officer. Like that. But, Brian, there are certain situations where you just by your mere presence can escalate it.

Oh, yeah. We're the king and queen of de-escalation, I'll be the queen, honest. But—

Well, you know, that's what we want to do all the time. So why would this case be any different? And I got to—I got to tell you a perspective, Brian, can you indulge me?

Yeah.

So, there's a couple of police officers, and they're bad police officers, and they're working for an agency where the police officers rotate from on the road to being in dispatch, and then from dispatch they go to the jail. From jail, they go to the front desk, and they have to do it routinely so that keeps them in touch with the community. They have to work all aspects of it. But these police officers, they start saying, "Hey, I'll volunteer for this jail duty." And after a while, a couple of citizen complaints come up, and the citizen complaints come mainly from DUI arrests, drunk driving arrests, where the people said, "I was sure I had more in my wallet. I was sure that I had my Rolodex. I was sure that I had anything." So now it starts setting a pattern. So we're human behavior pattern recognition, and then the analysis. So what happens is somebody comes to a HBPA expert and says, "Hey, what would you do in this situation?" Because now we've got this ring that's missing and it's worth a lot of money, and we think that it's with this, you know, with these bad police officers. So the lawyer says, "What would you like to do?" So the idea is, "Okay, what's the room setup like in the booking area and everything else? Do me a favor, when these guys are off duty, go in there and scour everything, make sure there's no way that that damn ring fell down below, behind something. It's stuck to the desk." They took out all of the property cages and the drawers and everything else. They made a production. They videotaped the entire thing under good counsel. And guess what, Brian? There was no ring there. Okay? They put everything back exactly as it was. And the next night that these two police officers were working together, they came up and said, "Here's the booking photo that shows the ring. We think you stole the ring. And before we execute the search warrant at your houses and go and find the ring and look at your bank accounts, we want to ask you, did you do it?" Both police officers said the same thing. "I said, 'No, we didn't do it, but if you let us look for it, maybe we could find it.'"

Yeah.

Here we go. Remember what we know already, Brian, remember what we know that I already had. And those police officers went in, and a couple of minutes later they came, "Here you go, Property Room," and said, "Here it was behind a chair." I don't care that they stole the ring, I don't care what the ring was worth, and I don't care that they wronged this poor DUI for self-gain. When they were caught, they complicated the crime by lying about it. They lied about the entire procedure. So, and I'm not saying, "I don't care," Brian. What I'm saying—

No, I know what you mean.

They were caught. Now, these two guys, they never acknowledged—like, there's a big story a couple of days ago about the, you know, "How long it's waiting at justice for this and that." How come these two guys didn't sit there with the investigator and said, "Man, what's the defense to Ron Ron Burgundy defense?" "Well, I got out of hand. That escalated quickly."

Yeah, my thing was, it resulted in the death of this person. It escalated to a level that it shouldn't have been. I would have been the first person to say, "Listen, the situation got the best of me. Next thing I know, we are out there, probably shouldn't have been there. I see my son in peril, I didn't know what else to do. I certainly didn't want this guy to get the gun, so I had a shooting." Do you see what I'm trying to say? Why didn't that story come out? That's what I'm trying to get at with the cop story. When you're caught, Brian, you got to come up and you've got to go, "I caught me at all."

Stop pursuits that we'll all—

That's—I think that we take your lumps. We've—we've talked about that in a number, you know, in a number of different ways, we describe the same thing. And some of that I even said with the whole pursuit thing, "Well, why don't—why don't we make fleeing from the police the most punishable crime, meaning that would incentivize you to stop?"

Example!

Meaning, "Hey, if you admit to everything that you have on you, your sentence is reduced," right? Because that would—that would—that would kind of be a way to incentivize—you know, I understand, I understand it's not perfect and it won't always work, but the idea is, "Hey, man, do 18 months or get in a police pursuit and maybe kill a bunch of people and go through it." You know what I mean? It's like, well, it's—it's if you change it a little bit. But on this, there's—there's a number of different, you know, people want to make this turn this message into something that it isn't, or make a case out of something that really isn't.

Right. Coattails. The coattails theory. "I'm going to jump on this caper."

Which is horrible, because here's what else I saw when I was looking at the case, because there's so much out there on it, is that a lot of the folks in the area who live in that area, at first, because what they heard, they heard there—so they heard a story and they were supporting these two jackasses that chased after Mr. Arbery and saying, "Hey, well, there's other side of the—you didn't hear the other side. You don't know what happened." And then once everything came to light, they all did what—a lot of those people, guess what they did? "Oh, [ __ ], my bad."

So you have no idea.

"Wow, this is very clear-cut." And are apologizing saying, "Hey, I said this, I'm sorry." Not—I think—

Eat their lumps.

But that's the thing, is that we want to turn this now into—because it's like now we want to turn this into, "Look at everyone in that area, if you're from that area, you're a bad person and you're a racist and you're—I'm afraid to go in that area because if I jog, you'll kill me." But what is that—what does that do to the to the thumb—

Sum us all down. Yeomans, it in dummifies American. And I don't think then we get the actual—and Mr. Arbery can—can, you know, whose life was taken from him completely illegally and way too soon for—

For no reason and absconds.

And what is his memory now? We're, "Guys, this is a shitty town. People and shitty cops." Because that's the problem.

You're spot on, and let me ask you this, Brian. You just said it, this is a young guy. Okay, so he burglarized that house. Mr. Arbery stole items from that house. He fled the scene from the house and fought with those guys. Everything else. What's the maximum sentence he's going to get?

Yeah.

Then he's going to—not even go to—get parole, Brian, he's going to get probation. He's going to get restitution. Do you get what I'm trying to say? He's going to have to pay and he's going to be back on the road, loving his kids and his wife and his mother or whoever he's got, because I don't know Mr. Arbery and I'm sorry for that. But the idea is that they stopped all of that. They ceased due process. They didn't give him his legal right to stand in his own defense and face his accuser. They deprived him from all that, of all that. And the U.S. Supreme Court and the Congress and the Senate and everybody else, they can't even put something—how long on death row do somebody linger, Brian, before they pull the switch on something? Because there's appeals. My heartburn with this case and the reason that I—I called [ __ ] from the very beginning of this case is the fact that this guy, Mr. Arbery, was not given his rights. Criminal or not, crack head, meth addict, fighter, rent jogger, a model citizen, it does not matter, because justice is supposed to be blind. And we're all supposed to get our day in court, and he didn't, and that's wrong. And I feel really—feel really bad about this caper because it's emblematic of exactly what you said, other capers in the United States where for whatever reason people try to insinuate themselves into the process just to make themselves look good. Whether your defense or prosecution, whether your home defense thing, "You don't let this happen to you," or something else. Somebody's already going to come out with a commercial for and it's, "It's Justice Gone Wrong," and Mr. Arbery should be here on the show right now to defend himself.

No, and that's—that's the thing, is that we want to turn this into an example of something else other than what it is. Is just come out of it, maybe—well, I think a better understanding of the law would be better for everyone and what you can and cannot do, and to a better look at crime. I mean, whether or not, like, I would just—that's why I go back to assume everything that these guys thought about Mr. Arbery is true. Let's just assume it to be true for the purposes of testing, right? Just, "Okay, he was in there stealing, he was doing this." Like, none of their actions are still not justified. None of them. Like, you don't—

There's none of them.

It's so to me, it's stop right there. It's over. The case is over. Like, you're done. Like, you—you clearly went well beyond.

But you're also an expert and understand, right, the case has to progress through the system. And that the here the—the guys that chased down Mr. Arbery, won't mention their names, I don't even know their names, but the idea is they've got rights too. Yeah, so I will violently protect their rights even though it is a testimony, I think they're wrong and I think they—I think they went down a wrong path and I think they—they made mistake after mistake to complicate it. But let him get through the legal system.

Yeah, I—I do not think that they sat around that day and said, "No, any next flipping jogger that comes into town, we're going—"

"Hey," or, "We're getting Arbery."

"You know what? Yeah." And we're one of them for 20 years.

You know, and that—

And that's the thing, is that good point, because this is where it comes into, like, you just brought up, "Okay, they have rights as well." Yeah, and we want to again, we—every—people fear things that we don't understand, and most people, judging by comments and articles by educated journalists, most people don't even understand the law very well. And I thought I didn't—I thought I had a rudimentary understanding of the law until I start reading people's comments and I go, "Wow, I actually know a lot more than most people." Right. I'm not—I'm not a lawyer, I was never in law enforcement. I've been on both sides of law enforcement, I guess, meaning in the backseat versus the front seat. I've been—I've been on both sides. But the idea is you—you know, they have rights too, like you said. And then we like to say, "Oh, well, this is, you know, what this shows. This is a much deeper issue than we thought, and this is systemic racism on the part of the—" and then you look at these guys and you read about them and you look at their photos and you're like, "You're getting all of that from these two?" This is—I—and I don't feel it's a long—not partially in this case, I almost feel partially sympathetic for these people, not sympathetic for the people that killed him, just meaning like, you—they didn't have any intent that day to kill someone or him. This is a low level of education and training and probably not the best decision-making and not the best critical thinking. That's human performance, right? That's—that's what they lacked. They lacked any type of critical thinking ability, "Later, what-if game?" So, so let's take it for that. Maybe the initial people involved in the case at that local district attorney or whatever said the same thing if they were coming out defending them saying, "Hey, no, it's justifiable, it's this." Same thing, that that's what they lacked, right? So, so that's—that's an—that's an answer to that. Is not, "This is a systemic problem we have in this country." This is learning or training.

Right.

So, so Brian, what would happen—and you're exactly right, that is the central point, the focus of this entire broadcast. Let me ask you this, Brian. If they, without jumping in the truck and chasing down Mr. Arbery, if they would have called 911 dispatch center and said, "Hey, we grabbed a bunch of guns and we're jumping in our truck, we think we have a burglary suspect running down the street." What would dispatch have told them?

"Stop!" They would have said, "Put your guns away, the officers are on their way. Give me the description." There's no dispatch console in the world that would have said, "You go after him. I mean, you stand—yeah, keep your phone. Make sure you take a shotgun, a scattergun, just in case." So the quantum leaps of logic, folks, you're not—listen, without training, you're going to do exactly what these folks did on both sides. You're going to fight, you're going to run and go shoot, and you're going to be unhappy. You're going to be in court. Take the gift of time and distance, go get yourself some training, gets much cheaper.

I don't—I know, I don't—I don't even know how I did not even just think of this. I have a personal example. I don't—I don't even know how, probably brain damage, that's why I didn't think of it. But partially from the wreck. But you know, I was sitting at a stoplight here in Carlsbad a few years ago in my truck, and then literally, sitting at the stoplight, it was probably like 8:00 at night, it was already fully dark out. It was like wintertime here. It's not cool or someone to say it's dark early. So it was dark out at 8:00, and then also was the lighting condition. Right, the brake damage coming to it. So then all of a sudden, literally just BAM! Someone just slams right in the back of my truck, and I'm just like, you know, I get knocked forward, I'm like, "Holy crap!" So I first, you know, did a 360 scan of my area, put the truck in park. As soon as I opened the door and took one step out to go back to what happened, they were already reversing out and then were taking off. What was my first instinct? I jumped right in my truck, and I—and it was on. So I'm in the truck, I got the Bluetooth going, immediately call 911. Right? So I'm calling them, explaining what happened, and it's this road that parallels the Five, right? So it's—it's not like a—it's almost like a service road, but it's not. It's just a regular road, but the Five is on one side and then it goes residential on the other. So there's not a lot of cross streets and there's not a lot of stop signs. And so I'm going, I'm like, "[ __ ]! This guy's flying!" So I get on the gas a little bit. I'm trying to keep up, and I'm telling them where I'm at, where I'm going, and I'm calling it as I go. And then right in front of me, guess what they did? They barely slowed down and blew right through a four-way intersection. And that was it right there. I stopped and went, "Nope, like, this is now—" and I but it—but it took a minute. Don't turn this pursuit into Armageddon. Now, from the time I took off, this time from them was only about a mile or possibly less before it hit me that I went, "Oh, [ __ ]! What am I doing here? I can't chase these guys. Like, what if they kill someone? Or what right? If they kill someone, let's say they kill a family. Like, I'm like, that—that's coming—that's on me then." So I had to stop. I went back to the gas station that was right next to where I got hit and waited—waited for the police. But same thing, like, it took me that minute to go, "No, this is a really, really bad idea." Because our first natural instinct is, "Get him!" Right? "I got this!" But, and that too was also someone hit me in my vehicle sitting there. They didn't hit another car and take off running. I don't know if I would have done that right away.

You know, so opposite side of that. I'm up at Roseville, and there's a place in Roseville, Michigan that was known for underage service. And I was—I made mistakes as a youth. And so cops are raiding the joint, the cops are chasing me. So I'm going through backyards. After about the third fence and backyard, I hit a clothesline. Kids out there, you don't know what a clothesline is? Research it, go study your history. Clothesline completely just clotheslined me, and like a linebacker, took me out of the game. My feet came up, I remember seeing my shoelaces, and I was down and out in Beverly Hills. Cops kept chasing everybody, never found me. I woke up probably 15, 18 minutes later with lockjaw, and yeah, all messed up because I was, you know, a second-year in high school. For the remainder of that month, while I was hurting, I blamed the cops. And finally my dad sat down and goes, "I'm going to beat you, but before I do, I want to make sure you understand why you were the proximate cause. Everything that happened that night, make those choices that spun out of control, it's your fault that you got in those situations." Brian, I would have never considered it that way. And I got the beating of my life. You know, my dad, first Marine Division Raider Battalion doing the, you know, Clarice Starling. But the idea was that, Brian, he straightened me out on it. He straightened me out that wait a minute, sometimes, you know, your safety and security is your responsibility. So even if we went by that back to the Arbery case, what right did they have to intervene on the behalf of another homeowner to do anything more than be the best witnesses that they could? The cops in your neighborhood are great. Do a ride-along. Ask them the questions. Go to your prosecutor's office. Hold people accountable. But for the love of God, get out there and study. Get some training so that you'll at least have an informed opinion.

But then what is this? And what—and then why do people want to—why do people want to do that to you? Like the one comment I read about the guy, he's like, "All I know, if there's someone shows up in my place, I'm going to shoot them. No questions asked."

Brian, it's orbit of instinct. But here's the thing, how can you even make the argument that, "Well, you know, if they tried to detain him, whether that detention was legal or not, and then he got their weapon, they were probably in—they were in fear for their life. Now they have the inherent right to defend them—"

Sign they're going, like you're pregnant.

But like, it's the poop—the poop confirmation bias comes out, and confirmation bias says, "Stop, look, listen, you got to give yourself the gift of time and distance on this one, Brian, because I'm telling you, in the moment you're all amped up, and look, every single thing that's happened in your life to the most extreme—your neighbor a, you know, broke into your chicken coop, your daughter or son attempted suicide, this happened, that happened. Time heals all wounds, and even though you'll remember that for the rest of your life, I'm telling you that if these guys right now, if I could interview any of those guys involved in the Arbery case right now, you know what they would be telling me? They're not going to show that bravado and go, 'Yeah, I did my right,' and all this other stuff. They're going to go, 'Damn, if I could take that back, I would have never got involved in this situation in the first place.'" So if we know that almost everybody involved in a similar situation comes to that reasonable conclusion, let's come to it first. What good did they serve to the rest of society? What thing did they stop that was emotion? Do you see what I'm trying to say? This wasn't stopping a body bomber.

Yes, and Brian, I'm going to say this and again, I'm going to get enemies for it. There were bullies. There were bullies. They wanted their say and their way. What do we know about that? Every time we see a situation where that's true, something spins out of control. Something spins out of control and goes ugly and goes sideways. But you don't have that right. You, sir, do not have that right. And for the greater good of society and community, get yourself some education and training and you won't do that. Go to your cops and say, "What would you do in this situation?" Let them tell you. And unless there's some untrained hick from the middle of nowhere that doesn't have some sort of a training program, I think they're going to agree with us on this one, Brian.

Yeah, and but the narrative gets painted in a different way. I mean, there's the social media—

Yes.

—and it's different now than it was a long time ago. But that's—that's what my issue is usually with these cases, that people do, they sensationalize them or they—they spin it how they want it, and they don't stick to the facts of the case and—

And so—

—so typical guilty of that.

We're both guilty of that. That's called confirmation bias, right? You get your own view because of your ego system. But listen, at least we only do it with opinion-based testimony, we don't do it to conceal what appears to be a crime.

Well, that, and that's the other thing too, is that, you know, why—I don't even know how to phrase it, but like, so typically in a lot of these cases, whether especially if it's like officer-involved shooting or what becomes an unjustified shooting, we're usually the ones going, "Well, yes, legally, maybe, whatever, that—that's whatever the ruling was. But here's what happened, it's a lot more complicated than you think." There's a—

Mostly what chemical burn matters.

Most cases, we're the ones saying, "Hey, there's a lot more at play here. Here's what was going on, and this person said, here's what they thought, and this led them to believe this, which seems unreasonable now, but given the circumstances, was very reasonable." I can't find that in this case. I can't find the point where they go, "Hey, it's not well you didn't see it because—" you know, "in their situation, this was a—" you know what I'm saying? Normally, we're the ones who can deconstruct that and at least explain to go, "Look, this is how this is likely occurred, and this is why." I just don't see it.

You're right on. And here, let's go on the record. We'll be the first one, folks, look it up. We'll be the first ones to quote this because we quote a bunch of stuff and then it happens. But you know, there's three people watching, so they never listen. Tennessee v. Garner, Brian. What's the difference here? All of a sudden, you've got a—in Tennessee v. Garner, you're going to abandon a building site that was being stripped for copper and metal that people were taking out to do something with. And a young kid gets caught by two police officers at the scene. He flees, tries to jump a fence. One of the police officers shoots at a fleeing felon and accidentally hits him as he's going over the fence and kills him. Accidentally or intentionally, I don't care, you read the case, read into it. And that was deemed by every court in the land to be the new use-of-force standard. But now it seems that all these pundits have forgotten this case, and they're trying to say, "Well, you know, theoretically if you take a look at this, it's horseshit." It's like math or it's science. I don't have to go to Japan and learn the Japanese law of math, and I don't have to go to Germany and learn the German law of gravity. This is a simple caper, and I hate to use the term "cut and dried," but I will tell you this, Brian, your—your observation was absolutely true. The physical and psychological and social events that were going on in the head of those three guys at the time contributed to them continuing the pursuit and grabbing the guns and wrestling with the guy. Had it been just one guy, I think it would have been different. Had dad and son not been there, I think it was different. And so doing, we must understand that human performance is such that when the snowball starts going downhill, it's almost impossible to stop, just like rage has to run its course. So had they inhibited themselves through training and education—oh yeah, I'm not getting in the truck in the first place, or not going into the gun cabinet, or instead dialing 911—Mr. Arbery would have been alive to defend himself, these folks wouldn't be in jail right now, we would not even be discussing this situation. That's all I'm saying.

Yeah, and the more it ties in to our blanket, you know, statement that we—we always like to use is that the—the lower your—your training or education or experience, the—the higher or the more likely you're going to, you know, escalate the level of violence, escalate the situation, or overreact to the situation. Because this is an extreme overreaction to what was something very small. But—but I see that attitude permeate in other places too, people that you wouldn't think that, meaning a lot of folks again who are like, "Hey, well, I have the right to do this, I have the right to do that." And sometimes they are correct, meaning, "Yeah, you have the right to own a gun, or you have the right to protect your home, or you have the right to—" But there's limitations, there are very, very clear legal limitations.

So there's a cop right now, and Brian, you and I briefly discussed this in passing. There's a cop right now that got fired from his job because he went on a rant. He has the absolute right, First Amendment right, to say his piece. Anytime your—your words are protected, folks. You got the right to go up there, you got the right to protest. It's called redress, look in your Constitution, you got the right to do it. But certain rules apply, Brian. He was in the uniform of the agency that swore him in as a police officer in his marked police car. When he put that stuff up there, he doesn't have that right. He has the right to say whatever you want to do, but look, dude, you're on duty, you're getting paid by a company—

Yeah.

—that just happens to be a police force to do something. So there are certain rules and regulations that are in place that our legal experts have put there because we voted them into Congress and into government to make those laws. There are lawmakers for a reason, and those laws are on the books and have been, Brian, in our best interest. And guess what? If you don't like the law, Georgia, if you don't like the law, change the law.

Yeah, I'd change the law.

Do you see what I'm trying to say? Yeah, don't put somebody in prison and don't kill a jogger. And I'm not bashing Georgia, we love Georgia.

You know, that's the thing. I've spent a lot of time in Georgia, especially not far from where this occurred.

Yes, no, it's both of us love Georgia. But same thing, what does everyone want to do? "Oh, you know, it's that, it's them, you know, dumb Southerners," or something. And it just—it's like you're applying the same ignorant logic that—that these two people applied. They applied the same ignorant logic that killed someone, and now you're going to use that same way of thinking to go after everyone in that area or that neighborhood. So—so that's the part that gets conflated. I know—I know we don't try to stay out of that because there's enough junk clickbait crap out there for people to read, like, "Oh, you know," and that's fine. We're just going to try to obviously stick to the facts of the case and what's legal, moral, ethical, and—and what you can actually validate and prove. And that's—I know some—some folks are kind of like talking about that. And that—that's the big idea, is that, you know, it gets reported as, "You know, two white men kill a black man," all this. And I'm going, "Well, it doesn't—none of that matters. Just look at the facts of—" Absent that, absent the facts of the case stand true, this is—

Yeah, there's no way. It doesn't interchange whatever color skin you want. That the case is what it is. Absolutely wrong.

And I think when you—but the problem is when you do that, my issue is with it, it's looking through one straw, right? You're looking at one lens, and you're going to see everything through that one lens. And remember, you diminish—you diminish the memory of Mr. Arbery, absolutely. Because he had a wife and he had a family and he made mistakes and I'm ill—and it gets to, "Well, we'll just chalk it up to this one. Let's put that now on this one on the shelf." True. And it's like there's so much more to learn here, and there's—there's—this is a great example of a number of things. But you're just going to throw it over into this category, a bunch of dumb rednecks doing such like—come on! That's stupid. That's—that's as bad—that's as bad as playing the race card. Playing it is gone and a bit. It's the same thing.

So, Fulton County, Georgia, one of our favorite places that we spend a lot of time in. Fani Willis is running for District Attorney down there, Brian, and I'm her only vote from Colorado. And you know what I say about voting, folks, "Vote early and vote often!" So for your officials, wow. Brian, this is—this is—this is going to give a whole bunch of people a black eye for a long time, and it's not fair to anybody, and this is not good justice. So, yeah, come clean. I'll tell you right now if I was a cheap—cheap police officer down there, I would have my P.I.—I mean, officer, rather—come on and save me a couple babies. How many—how many—how many units, agencies, organizations have we told, "Hey, you're going to want to get in front of this. Hey, you're going to want to have a clear message, and you're going to want for analysis later." And they go, "Well, no, we got to protect—" Man, this isn't going to go well, and then, you know, it goes well. Like, it's that—that, of course, that the being open and honest is very difficult. It blows, it's—

It does, but you get—

But listen, listen, it's over right then, though.

Oh, yeah.

It's not like this from Dr. Schmidt after a, you know, face screwing me with—with all of this damage. It's over just then. What? Look, somebody once said, "I'm cheating on my old lady. I think she's on to me. Any other, what should I do?" And I said, "One, don't cheat on your spouse. If you don't love them anymore, go get somebody else, tell them, and walk away." Okay. I said, "The second thing is, if you think that that person is on to you, you owe them for all the great things they did, and your kids, and everything else, to go up and go, 'Mea culpa, I screwed up.'" And go, "Yeah, but I got a lot to lose." What do you mean, "Yeah, but you got a lot to lose"? You don't get to come up there and benefit when you've done something wrong. When you've done something wrong, you drop to your knees, you ask God for forgiveness, and you walk in and you ask your—your fellow man for forgiveness, Brian. And this is that case. This is a simple case of right and wrong. They made a mistake. If they would go right now, "I made a mistake, we didn't have that right," it'll be manslaughter. And guess what? They'll probably not do jail time at all. They might not be able to hunt in Georgia anymore, and it's not going to bring Mr. Arbery back, but it's better than, Brian, what they're going to face on this case, especially when the news media gets behind him and paints them as a bunch of racist [ __ ].

Yeah, and and again, it's—you I don't—this gets into why this is a good example too. Is like, I don't care what your ideology is, right? Yes, maybe let's take it from that lens. Like maybe they were—maybe they—they hate people because based on the amount of melanin in their skin. Now, to me, that sounds ignorant and unscientific and just odd way to look at things, but hey, if that's your thing, that's fine. I care about your behavior, and that's why it's so clear here what their behavior was. So wrong and illegal and shouldn't have been. So, so if we stick to that, I think it makes the issue clearer and it doesn't confuse it. And it doesn't—doesn't make us—doesn't—it's less likely that we're then going to paint the entire areas all, "Yeah, so anybody from that neighborhood is a bad person and anybody on the fence."

I want you to change the time of day now. Let's put it later in the afternoon when your kids are coming home from school, not during a COVID pandemic. Now these guys are out there racing around your neighborhood trying to confront this alleged burglary suspect with guns. The stakes are too high. My kids play in that neighborhood. You don't have the right. Now change it to Sunday in the middle of the afternoon when I'm on my way to church with Shelly or coming back and we're going to meet Bailey and the—to have the picnic. You don't have that right. There's a whole lot of things that you took for granted that you don't have the right to do in that situation. And right now somebody's yelling at the screen going, "Yeah, but Arbery didn't have the right to go to a building under construction!" And look what—look, I'm saying it doesn't weigh—

Brian, it won't.

That's—that's the thing that—

And that's why I brought up earlier, okay, assume all that to be true. Let him be in there casing for—like that's the thing. It—it doesn't change the matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't—you don't get to do this. You don't get to—we can't have people—and which is funny because the same people were saying, "Well, no, they did the right thing," are the same people saying or screaming, "Hey, we need law and order in this country!" It's like, "Wait a minute, you don't—that doesn't—"

In your own hands.

"I smoked for 40 years and I got lung cancer, but I sued the tobacco industry."

Yeah, exactly. "I got into a DUI and plowed into a school bus that I shouldn't have been there. Jackass! I'm going to sue the school and the bar!" Well, that was a Weber watch. I was about, "Oh, hey, that's the bartender's in trouble now." There you go. "Over-served you." Like, because we have a long history of not taking responsibility for our actions, Brian, we're humans. So there must have been some other cause, some other reason that we acted in this manner at this time. And this is one where I'm telling you, walk up to the mic, tap the mic, just hang on and, "Mea culpa, baby!" Yeah, but people don't want to hear that. Even people want something more, that's not enough for, or they don't want to hire outside—

Well, no, no, I mean, meaning even sometimes the people receive it. But what I'm trying to say is you—you said it earlier, and I'll die for those words. I'll die for the U.S. Constitution. I'll die for your right to have free speech and, you know, legal, moral, and ethical. Look, we both took the pledge, Brian. Do you see what I'm trying to say? That we reflect our government and our U.S. Constitution and our soil against all enemies foreign and domestic. You know that this is a perfect case of it. We—we as a country should be constantly vigilant for situations like this and speak out and say, "This is wrong." We shouldn't let it percolate since February and then hurt so many people. And I know a lot of it didn't come to attention because the video hadn't been out yet. You know what I'm saying? Once that went out, every citizen since—

Yeah, but I'm saying, it—it smells because in terms of a timeline, it kind of feels whether it's right or wrong, it feels like they didn't do much.

Oh, yeah, there's a lot of—there's a lot of factors for why, and then people make excuses, and then this, that, the other thing, and they maybe tried to sweep it under the rug or just go, "Well, let's not. Look, it'll go away," which is absolutely insane because—

Well, when the video of him going into this house under construction came out and it popped up, and I started watching it, I'm like, "Alright, at what point does he start, like, I mean, beating someone or—or like hiding a John? Or like what—like what—what's going on here?" This guy walked in. I go, "I've done that as a little kid. Construction sites were always cool because it's cool there's no limitation."

Maybe good find stuff.

Tetra delimitation, Brian, do you remember the companion case? And when I say companion case, I'm talking in similarity. Do you remember the police officer makes a traffic stop? Everything was wrong with that guy in the car. The guy had warrants, the—the license was suspended, the plates were fictitious, all this other stuff. And the guy fled, and the police officer chased him and gunned him down. The police officer wrote a report saying, "Hey, this guy fought with me. I tased him. It didn't work." All that other stuff. Subsequently, a video came out, exonerated the poor guy that's now the decedent that died for no reason. And the police officer was in the trick bag. Had the police officer said, "I don't know what happened, it got the best of me, I just shot, I didn't think." He would be out today with his family. The guy would still be dead, but it was the truth. It was a mistake. He shouldn't have escalated. But that's—that's what we're doing here. We're sitting here now after the fact, and we're trying to recreate it, you know, in a way that pleases more people. And my thing is, don't do that. Don't change the caper and change the perspective to suit your silly needs. Let's look at what the truth is, let's look at the science. Let's compare it to the law, which we all uphold and choose to believe in, because without the law, we're nothing. And let's put these guys in jail. They need to go to jail. And that'll send a clear message to anybody else that this situation—got to look. Let me throw this in, Brian. Do you think those guys ever once had a gun range? Do you think they ever rehearsed with the gun? Do you think they ever took lessons on shooting? I bet they did all of that. Yeah, but what de-escalation lesson did they take? What time did they sit around and say, "If this occurred, practical application, if this occurs, what would we do, Dad? What are we going to do? We're going to chase a guy or call 911?" If you don't do that with your son and your family, you're asking for trouble.

Well, no, and this goes, gets right into the lack of education and training is what most of these situations come down to, specifically training, which is obviously a distinct and different with—with education. And I think that should be the larger issue. Like all of these cases shouldn't come down to—I hate how it just gets come down to, "It's a racial thing."

This is an easy route.

Like, you want to take the easy—like that's—that's such a—

Hold them accountable. We voted them in.

Let's not just—let's just look through a straw. This is, "I'm going to see the world," right? And what it should be is a bigger discussion on, "Okay, what do we want is—is what—who do we want to handle a level of competency for that?"

Exactly.

It's what do we want as an even bigger than that too, but like, what do we want as—what—what should the police force or police in our country be? What do we want? Because that engages community, you know, engagement, say, "Hey, what do we want that to look like? How do we get there? What level of training and competency skills do we want? Do we want to be, you know, 30 years old before you get to go be a police officer?" You don't even want to weigh in with that.

Agree with that. And I say an ancillary issue to that would be, "What did these agencies do, say February, in the community?" I'd had a town hall that night, I'd had a town hall the next day, and every church I would have been there and said, "Yeah, and listen, folks, I'm not going to talk about the Arbery case because it's in progress. But I will tell you this, you do not have the right to defend yourself in this manner at this time." I would have laid it out for folks because Brian, you said, "Ignorant is a problem." And we are all ignorant on certain factors, but ignorant of the law is no defense. So, so educate yourself. And if you can't educate yourself, find out. There's some damn commercial with Jay Leno on about some company defending his computer. And he's sitting there, it's real hard. Jay Leno, the quadra-billionaire with all his cars in his museum behind him. Yeah, something goes wrong with the Bentley, you know, I call a Bentley expert. If something goes wrong with the, you know, that whatever the car is, I don't give a [ __ ] about cars except they're made in a tree. But, you know, if something goes wrong, I get the transmission expert. So from my computer, I'll get the expert. Why would I admonish everybody that's in the audience that's listening to us today? If you don't believe us, go educate yourself on the law, talk to three different political analysts or legal analysts on it, and then come back and you can say you're sorry in an email, we'll take it, friend. This is a clear-cut case where these guys exceeded the rule of law and they didn't have the training or the judgment or the experience for the situation they got into. And therefore, it escalated out of control. They weren't educated, they weren't trained, and therefore they used a greater degree of violence rather than de-escalation.

And yeah, and that goes into, I mean, there's a lot, and we always simplify it as training and education, right? The—the higher your level of training, education, the less likely you are to—you're going to, and the less likely you are to escalate a situation. Now, specifically what that training ends up is, you know, we would—we would get into. But but no, I—I think that that's—those are the important takeaways to me. I think that people could not paint just a picture, you know, on both sides, do this, right? So if someone will say, "Oh, this is just a bunch of dumb racist hillbillies. Look at this, this is a standard because you and I are white, we can't vote on this." No. It's—it's because the problem is also so bad that it gets into now people who do have an influence, people who do have a say, but have no [ __ ] expertise or background, their comments. The Greta Thunberg issue, who, you know, even the climate's out there having a huge conference and she's one of the speakers. So she's up there with all these other experts. Why? Because of her notoriety, and remember that's pop culture.

Yeah.

Not science. It's not going to talk about acne, you know what I'm saying? Experiences with acne in Finland or wherever when she went with the boat. Yeah, and so, so I—I mean—

No, kiss my [ __ ], Greta Thunberg, and vote for Fani Willis, Brian. That's my central message today.

Yeah, I don't know, but the best—that's exactly it, is we—people want to play to the emotion and not see exactly the actions and the science. And if you're going to play to the emotion, then that's what you're going to get. Then guess what? Guess what type of legislation you're going to get? The emotional legislation. And then people are going to get pissed about that, and they're going to overreact to that. And this poor Mr. Arbery, like, this is going to be his legacy. It's is that this is now happy—

Well, this is no—

We'll continue to tell the story the right way, just like we did with Amadou Diallo and all those people, right? We tell the story the right way, and then their memory and the lessons learned live on. But every year, "Walkabout" is—is—is we're going to take away and continue talking about this the way it should be, not the way it's being discussed right now. It's just—it's just—it's unbelievable the comments higher among distance that are just so uninformed and that, "Oh, well, I think it should have been this," and, "I think it's like, what are you coming with? What case law are you referencing with this? What previous example, what we know, what—what legal precedent are you using to base your argument on?" "Oh, none, this is just you made [ __ ] up!" Like, anyway, any idiot can do that. We got to stop that.

But that's, Brian, you're so spot-on. Okay, so every person would have cameras, a journalist. Yeah, every person with Twitter or an account on Instagram is a journalist. Shut up! Every once in a while, take a good dose of "Shut the [ __ ] up" and take a seat back. And you know what, folks? You're saying, "So what gives you the right to talk to her?" 'Cause I'm a subject matter expert. How many—so how many investigations have you been a part of? How many—how many times have you been called as an expert? How many times? You know what we're not doing, Brian? You know what we're not doing? We're not Instagramming, so bad, yo! Do you get what I'm trying to say, in gist? And you know what's rude? Why Brian's laughing. Folks, I have no idea what Instagram is. Do it! Our buddy, Walt, is following along in the Facebook live stream right now, and he's just asked, he said, "Hey, where do you get Greg on Instagram so I can tag him and stuff?" And I'm like, "Okay, so—"

So your closest—you're the closest thing you have to social media is go ahead and hold it up, because you just got it.

My phone? No, no, your poop emoji. This one. (holds up his silly hat again) Closest thing, this is the closest thing you have.

Yes. But I didn't even get—when you got this for me, because this—Shelly and I, this was one of our costumes from many years ago. So I had to dig it out.

You know, no, first of all, love Walt. Everybody get to his show. He's got a great podcast. And thanks for you guys on Facebook that are screaming, "It's live-streaming! It's live!" First of all, Greg has a Facebook account, but I've never been there because I don't do Facebook. Brian's constantly on, what is it? Grindr, Tinder, Instagram, all these other sites. And Brian keeps on me when the bill's there for the—for the company credit card, and I see all these strange destinations in the Philippines, and he goes, "No, no, it's all marketing, social media." It's—I have no idea. As a matter of fact, right now when he says that we're going out live, I have no—I have no idea. Yeah, so no, I—I think that's kind of nice, right? I know that much. I don't want to turn this into another, "You know what grinds my gears?" Everybody, that's what it—

But that's what these devolve into, right? You can only—yeah, that you can only hit the facts of the case for so long. And one day, I want to argue these—these extraneous arguments that have nothing to do with the situation that occurred. That's when it muddies the waters. And—and but that what you do when you do that is you muddy the waters for everyone. So even though a man died that day for it, longitudinally you muddy the waters for a good long time. Six months, eight months, six years, everybody will go back to this case, like they—there's three or four cases out there, I'm not even going to name on the air, but there's three or four cases out there that anytime something happens, everybody goes, "Oh, that's just like the so-and-so case." And then everybody harrumphs and slaps their table, "Uh-uh, just our collective asses!" It's not good.

That's—that's how you get Richard Jewell.

Wow. Great tie-in, Greg.

So I mean, nope, we got it. It's another one of these guys. Time, you're saying that you're wrong. Yes, remember everyone deployed. Brian, I want to let our viewers know that when they read a question that we answer on the air, I hand—so these—I will send you one, you can use a medal in there for you.

Well, Walt wants us to get bobbleheads made and put them on the site to order bobbleheads. That's hilarious, by the way.

You're a bobblehead, we'd fall over because the head would be so big.

Thanks, thanks. We had to go there.

No, I'm like—I'm like the old—I'm like a panda bear, I'm big all over. So I got a big round head and a big round middle section, so I'm not going to fall. I'm like a Weeble. Weebles wobble but they don't fall down. I'm glad to hear that Walt's listening because that—that it guarantees me that there's three people on our list now, you, you, me, and Walt. So God bless you and all the folks in Texas. Well, you got to know, we love Dallas. We're all right, the W had us do a thing for their folks. So get in touch with them too. Alright, I think that's probably, you know, before it continues us ranting for another hour or two.

So yeah, yeah, it was probably before—nothing for a landing. But before the yeah, that the next margarita gets made. Anyway, so thanks for tuning in. Don't forget to follow us on all the social media, hit the like button, share with your friends. If you like it, if you don't like it, I always remember you can exercise the fact that you don't have to say anything. That's always an option. De-escalation. So if you don't like it and you can vote against us by hitting "unlike."

Yes, so appreciate it.

Thanks everyone for tuning in. Don't forget to check the link in the episode details when this gets published. Check out our Facebook, we've got our live webinar series that we're still running for free for now. Everyone hop on, don't forget that training changes behavior.