Left Of Greg 074 What if Im wrong

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All right, Greg. So we're going to start off today with some questions we get a lot. This is another listener question episode. It's actually just a really good one that we come across a lot when dealing with these different situations.

For everyone just tuning in for the first time, hello, it's Brian and Greg here. We talk about reading human behavior and doing predictive analysis and gathering artifacts and evidence in support of a reasonable conclusion based on our observation and what's happening in the context and all this stuff, right? And how to break it down and what you can prove and what you can't prove, and how to formulate a Most Likely Course of Action (ML COA) and a Most Dangerous Course of Action (MD COA). People love it. It's exciting. It's fun. It makes that human behavior piece, and makes observing humans that much more interesting. Right. But we certainly love it, because we're doing it for free. We are on this, we're doing it for free, but how much have we been paid over the years?

I got a new refrigerator box that I'm calling you from next to the... I love the new gray color. Free Wi-Fi at the local McDonald's.

So one of the things that comes up a lot is, "What if I'm wrong?" Meaning, "I'm observing a situation. I see something taking place because we're all about mitigating the event and stepping in before something happens and making a decision there versus when something occurs and then everyone goes, 'Oh, man, I knew that guy was going to do that!'" And we're like, "Wait, stop! Jump in here!" Right?

But that's the whole point, is that I think, and I know, the confidence to make the right decision comes with competence, right? So you got to get training and do that. But you're seeing something unfold in front of you and you're going, "Man, I can step in right here and prevent this situation from occurring." And the big question that's on everyone's mind for a lot of these issues is, "What if I'm wrong?" Because that came up, you know, when we did the suicide prevention stuff years ago, right? When we had someone go, "Well, what if I report this on someone and I'm wrong?" Same thing with the Sexual Harassment and Assault Prevention (SHARP) program, Brian. That's the big thing too. The SHARP program was, "Well, what if I report this person and I'm wrong? That's not what their intent was at all." Or, "What if I step into a situation and I'm wrong about it?" So, the overall theme of the day is, "What if I'm wrong?"

Now, I don't ever have that question because I usually am wrong.

I was just going to say, that's sort of like the mantra of your life, you know? "What if I'm wrong?" It's, "Oh, we're all going to die!"

Exactly. Exactly. So I would say, we'll take it from there. Let's start with a 30,000-foot view and then whittle it down from there, I guess.

No, no, I like that. I like that. And the first thoughts that came to my mind when you called me and said, "Hey, put on a shirt," was the first time I called you and said, "What if I'm wrong?" Exactly. No, that was when I first met you. But I mean, like three minutes ago when you had this wild idea for a great podcast. The idea is we'll be able to do this. We'll be able to answer all those questions.

First, Brian, you've known me long enough that the first thing I tell anybody that I'm teaching during a T3 (Train-the-Trainer) that's going to go out and teach, I tell them, "Hippocratic oath: First, do no harm." Okay? So that's our overarching theme: if you think what you're about to do is going to put your foot in your mouth or foot in somebody's backside, you need to stop. Give yourself the gift of time and distance.

So first, let's set some historical perspective. One of the things is that about five percent of all adults that seek outpatient care are misdiagnosed annually. If you look at just that number, Brian, that's a lot of people.

Three-quarters of a million people.

Yeah. Well, I'm saying at least, you know, me, I'm not good with numbers. The minimum would be that every year there's at least 80,000 surgical errors, and 7 percent of those people die, and a third of those people are left with permanent injury.

Now, it was a study that Sean and Renee Clemens sent. It was interesting reading. And it had a bunch of studies and then a bunch of studies associated with it. So it tended to bear out the fact, estimated that seven to 10 million patients receive inaccurate blood tests. And Brian, I know you're waiting for a very important step. Just got to be patient. Just got to be patient.

But if we just take a look at the perspective of that, that's going to give ammunition or credibility to some poser out there that's saying, "Hey, sometimes people are wrong." Well, I want to go one step further, and then I want to go back and digest what that means. The majority, almost every scientific study that you've seen published in a scientific journal, is wrong. And they know they're wrong. And anybody that's smart, anybody that reads them knows that they're sloppy. They're put together quickly. Most of it is on junk science because the nation touches on such a small group. We don't have a large enough control group with which to come out of the unreasonable conclusions that they make. Okay? So all I'm saying is, let's do that as one chunk, that all of those things are facts. Let's determine. So...

So just one thing to add on that before you clarify what you mean, is because these studies or something come out all the time. There's a new one every week of whatever. Right? Everyone's got to write a paper to get whatever level degree or whatever. They got funding for something. Right? So, a study makes a theory, right? Meaning, you can't just rely on one piece of information or "Hey, look what happened over here!" What it should do is, "Okay, take a look at what we found over here. Let's investigate that further and see if there's more." But it doesn't. A lot of people, and this is where the pop psychology and crap...

Exactly. Exactly what I intended, Brian. You've seen it. This week, caffeine is good or bad. Coffee... Oh yeah, coffee's a diuretic, but it leads to diabetes. Diabetes is going to lose his foot because sugar is good. Sugar is bad. Panda tastes like chicken. No, no, it's everything. It's the same thing. Alcohol is bad. No, alcohol is okay. Well, technically, people who consume alcohol on a regular basis actually live longer than people who don't. And so, we're trying to take something that fits our narrative and find artifacts and evidence to support that versus just seeing where the data goes. So there's a lot in there.

So yeah, I like what you said. I just wanted to kind of clarify it: you can't look at one thing that comes out and say, "Well, there's the answer."

Exactly! What people do, though, people build their business around that, Brian. I've seen people with their business models that are coming across a study that isn't worth the paper that it's written on. And the control group is so small as to be scientifically insignificant. That's all I'm warning.

Yeah, and that's why we always stick to what has stood the test of time. I mean, can this study be replicated over time in different domains? Because that's the way to understand the efficacy of it.

And that's why I'm warning you. Right? Does it actually right there? So, I think we discuss next, and then we'll take the rest of the show to put all this stuff in context. Next, all the way since the Bible, a book that'll be around for a while, a lot of people read it. We've had the Good Samaritan parable, but every single state in the United States has a version of the Good Samaritan Law. Right? It's just like stand your ground.

Brian, there are three basic tenets. And the tenets are that there's an emergency or exigency. And we've talked about that on different podcasts, and folks, what that means is the situation just became critical; you're in the moment. That's the first step. The second one is that the emergency wasn't caused by you. So, just like the stand your ground, you can't walk into somebody else's house and say, "Nobody move!" And then the third is that whatever care that you gave wasn't recklessly administered, and it wasn't grossly negligent.

Now, Brian, if we can agree that that's a good street definition of the Good Samaritan Law, then everybody that's on the broadcast will understand that there's a reason behind Good Samaritan laws: for legal protections for those people that see somebody, and we've talked about that before, that some people walk and they go, "Oh, I don't want to get involved. I may want to say something. I don't want to get sued and all that." You're not going to get sued, and you're not going to get sued successfully because of the Good Samaritan Law. So, "What if I'm wrong?" Well, the first thing is, you're in good company because a lot of people were wrong. The second thing is Good Samaritan laws are specifically for this, because people have been wrong before, in your unofficial capacity, of course. If you're an official, you can't claim this. There's a whole different set of laws under color of law, right? A "copper" (police officer), a paramedic.

And then I think the third standard that we discussed before we just let the three-headed dog, Cerberus, off the chain, is that everybody that's ever listened to one of our broadcasts – and those who are brand new, welcome – there's a two-point standard: probable cause on one, and reasonable suspicion on the other. You only need probable cause if you're a copper going for an arrest, or you're trying to get a warrant for a person, or for an event, or for a place, a house specifically named. Probable cause is a rough standard. Probable cause says I have to have artifacts and evidence in support of a reasonable conclusion, and these facts taken by anybody, a reasonable person would look and go, "Yeah, I think it's likely that we'll find the cocaine in that drawer or the gun in that basket." Okay, we don't need that as civilians, Brian, operating in the world as HR, as a teacher, as a person working at the 7-Eleven, walking on the street. We only need reasonable suspicion. And reasonable suspicion is a lesser standard. And the great thing about it is that it applies in every instance. It says, "Hey, it's got to be less than probable cause, that's the first standard, but more than a hunch." And it has to be based on something specific, articulatable facts, that when taken together with rational inferences, a reasonable person would assume the same things that you assume. So that's a low standard.

So what we're saying is that you and I already have an architecture of artifacts and evidence that support our reasonable conclusions. So we're way up here at probable cause. So even if we don't have all of the facts that we need to get a search warrant or an arrest, we certainly qualify for the lesser standard of reasonable suspicion. So reasonable suspicion, with the legal doctrine of the Good Samaritan, Brian, if you're wrong, you can walk over and hug the person and say, "I'm sorry, I made a mistake." And a lot of people will live. If you're wrong, or if you're right, rather, and you walk away without saying something, Brian, there could be catastrophic effects. So my balancing act is always this Hippocratic oath: "Am I doing the right thing for the right reasons at the right time? First, do no harm."

Second thing is, "Do I have more than just a hunch that something, that a crime is afoot, that something is going on?" And what do I know? What do I think I know? And what can I prove? All of those come into play. And it's not just a hunch, it's something that's going on, and it's not nebulous. So Brian, it's, it starts forming an architecture, an architecture of artifacts and evidence, to support the conclusions I'm making. And I think a lot of that, well, I kind of discussed when we first started, but you know, I go back to remember when we were, actually, you weren't there on that one, but Shelly was. But when we did the family members of a unit based out of the East Coast military unit...

Yeah, I remember the caper.

So, when we were doing the program for them, that was their biggest concern because we were dealing with this—it was like a suicide prevention program for the family members, spouses of these individuals, right? And the idea was just that they were like, "Hey, if I say something, you know, I might ruin my husband's career. Like, it might be, what happens if I report this and he does have an issue?" And that gets into what's going on, and what's going on in the—I think that's more so not on that individual, but more so how that unit or organization handles it, right? Because it shouldn't, in that case, a mental health issue, it shouldn't be squashed and you ruined it. It should be the exact opposite. Right? It's, "All right, you're coming in. Let's get you fixed so you can get you back out the door into the fight." You know what I mean? But that person who's saying, "Hey, what about my husband?" like, they don't have the power to change that, right? And they know some of the consequences sometimes. And I think that's a great point that comes up.

So, let's take that fear away, Brian. Let's take that anxiety away. One, you can't be compelled to testify in a court against your wife or your husband, your significant other. Okay? Second thing is, there's an attorney-client privilege and there's a doctor-client privilege. So what that means is, historically, the law has recognized that there's certain information that you've got to share that might be damaging or damning, and it's giving you an opportunity to do that. Confession can't be used unless it's a deathbed confession. There are very laser-focused rules out there, Brian, to protect exactly what we're talking about here.

Now, here's the thing: let's make a line down the middle of our paper and separate "emergency." And that's why stuff like the doctrine of the Good Samaritan comes up, because what we need to do is, if that person drops down, and I see another person drop down, and I hear balloons going in the mall, I've got to come to a reasonable conclusion there's a shooting, and the active shooter might be coming after me. That's enough to get stuff going. But what you don't want to do is you don't want to put that round peg in that square hole. You don't want to rush to an unreasonable judgment. So if you can take tactical patience, if you can give yourself the gift of time and distance, you can always call a cop or an attorney and go, "Listen, I don't know if I have something here, but I saw these three things, and when I saw them, they were in a place that leads me to believe something's going on."

And the person on the other end of the line can tell you, "So what do you want to do about it?" Or you say, "Well, I don't know what I want to do about it," because that—some people will give you that answer: "What do you want me to do about it?" Exactly. But the idea is that if you bring it to the attention of local law, if you bring it to the attention of your personal attorney (if you have one, I don't, mine is "Will the defendant please rise?" and then they give me one). But whatever those circumstances—and in the old days, Brian, I would have said, "Go to your teacher, go to your priest, go to somebody like that." Nowadays, there are certain people at certain times that I'm not going to do that. Listen, have the wristband, "What would your PEO do? What would Jesus do? What would my mother do?" If you've got that, and you're snapping that, and you're thinking, "Damn, I should do something about it," your gut's probably telling you, which is your amygdala sending a signal through the rest of your body saying, "Danger! Warning! We have to do something about this!"

I think it's right to step in. If you are wrong, yet you had the most perfect intentions, and you didn't have an agenda, and you weren't going to do something to gain an advantage on somebody, the courts are going to look at that and go, "You really, you really screwed the pooch on this one, but guess what? You didn't do anything illegal, immoral, or unethical." And I think that's a good standard to live by, Brian.

It's a great standard to live by. Putting that into practice for a lot of people can be difficult. I think one of those ones that it—my answer to this question, I think a good example of it was when we were teaching the SHARP program and how to identify people before something happens. We had, you know, the whole thing was mentioning something or saying something. We came up with that term, or you came up with the term, the "low-calorie intervention," right? Kind of like in keeping with the "first do no harm." It's, "Well, if I say something now, before it gets any worse, it allows that other person to do the same thing."

So, specifically, I'll keep it to that sexual harassment thing where someone's like, "I'm feeling like this person is sexually harassing me." Bringing it up then, me going, "Hey, Greg, I know you probably didn't mean it this way, but this is how it's been, this is how I took it." Because what that does is a number of things. One, it tells that person that if they really are doing that and that was their intent, "I see what you're doing, and I'm not going to stand for it. I'm going to say something." So you're teaching them how they don't want to go any further, right? What that also does is let that person know how their behavior affects others around them. And so I take it, let's say they were trying to do that or trying to manipulate this person. All right, they go, "Well, I can't do it to this person. I'm going to have to move on." So now it's no longer an issue, and I'm simplifying it. But what it also does is, if that was a mistake, if that's not what that person's intent was, what do you think their response is going to be?

"Oh, crap. I'm so sorry, dude! I had no idea. That was not what I meant." Exactly.

And I think that—and I knew it was—it just I didn't like—I just, I thought you meant—I didn't make that—you say it in a formal way of like making it—you said like not taking the threat. That's the droit de regard (right of inspection) of their methods of doing anything after, altogether, here and now as an education. And as the education goes on, and this is why this association gets, because of, you know, PC culture, or people scared to talk, or people scared to offend someone, you know, that it's like that now, instead of it's gone from people being scared to speak up about serious abuses.

Okay, it. So you could see it in dark places, I'm guessing?

You got it.

And protracted that logic is, Brian, that when we yank a problem out into the clear light of day, when we yank it out from under the bed or in the closet or wherever it lurks, it's much less scary when we all can kick it with our toe and take a look at it in the sunshine. That's an important standard.

And I remember the SHARP classes that we did. Let's go back to the Gatekeeper Suicide Prevention courses. So here we are up in JBLM (Joint Base Lewis-McChord) in Washington. It's you, me, and Shelly, and RP, and a bunch of other folks, right? And what happened is we kept telling them what the results were going to be because we see it in all the classes. People are going to come up, they're going to self-report, they're going to do all these other things. And everybody's like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, just stick to the script, kid." And it's like, "Yeah, I wrote the script. I've seen this before. I know it's going to happen." And what did they tell us, Brian? "You stay in your lane. You guys sit over there in the corner. We got this." What happened at the first break? What happened at every break is here, these soldiers were coming up and going, "My wife, my sister, my brother, I've seen this. I feel like this. I've seen these." Okay. And we knew right there that the interventions were working.

So low-calorie initial intervention is better than having to spend money. Because, Brian, this is one of those problems that we've got to tell our listeners: you're going to spend money on. So how much do you want to spend and when? Do you want to spend a little upfront, do you get what I'm saying, with like training and then doing some practical application and studying what it looks like? Or do you want to do a little in the middle because you had one person that colored outside the lines and you had to stomp on them? Or do you want to pay a lot at the end when you have a disgruntled employee come in or something else happens and it got out of control?

The Waffle House Caper happened less than 24 hours ago, folks, when you watch this broadcast, and Waffle House is always doing something. So a guy over a period of 24 hours defied the rules about the mask, and finally it ended up in a shooting. There were bits and pieces laid on the table that if somebody would have tried to put those together and made a word jumble or a jigsaw puzzle out of it, a reasonable, prudent person would have said, "This is going to end violently." Brian, that's enough. Once you go and you did your ML COA (Most Likely Course of Action) and your MD COA (Most Dangerous Course of Action), and your conclusion keeps coming back, shaking that magic eight ball and it keeps coming up, "Yeah." Okay. With the hair going up, then you've got to do something. And sometimes, if we told people that specific example, when you get that "yeah," you've got to do something. Look, absent the situation, you've got to leave. You've got to do something. You've got to duck. You've got to take some action. And guess what? That's a prudent strategy because something is incongruent. Something's gone sideways. And if you don't act now, it's going to get bad. Well, simple.

And some of them are, are obviously some of these situations get more complicated than others based on what your role is, right? Versus just a person in the store, and you're the one who sees something going on. What are you trying to do? Maybe for you and your family, the decision is to leave, not to intervene in the situation. Now, if your role is, you have some job where you're the one who has to intervene, wouldn't you rather do it?

But the standard is different. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. The legal standard is different. The, I guess the accountability standard is then different. What you're liable for then is different too.

But see, you're protecting your liability, aren't you? Aren't you protecting your liability by bringing it to somebody's attention?

We like to bandy about the word "whistleblower," like, like, your favorite tagline, "Lucy Goosey," we throw it out there.

I hate you. I never said that! It's on your business card. Ask him for it next time you see him!

But listen, I'm telling you, from strict liability, as long as you're getting it out there on the table, "Oh, does anybody else see this? Are we not doing this?" You know, it's like the old slip-and-fall cases. I'm the first one that when I'm going through and I see something at the City Market or the Safeway where there's an unsafe situation, I'll go, "Hey, I don't want to be a jerk here, but man, somebody could hurt themselves." And you know what? One out of 10 times, somebody goes, "Mind your own business, fatty." The rest of the time, somebody goes, "Hey, thanks for saving us all that money." And it's the same person that's "Mind your business" every time. That's Shelly. "Mind your business, fatty." I pull it on my jacket. Do you get what I'm saying?

But you're exactly right, Brian. It's the least objectionable alternative. The first likely alternative is usually the most effective. It's the quickest, it's the cheapest. Why wouldn't you want to try that? Why wouldn't you want to go there? And we're not saying, look, our standard for instructors – and you remember how long we "bird-dogged" (closely monitored and trained) our instructors before we cut them loose – it's three or more artifacts and evidence amongst any of the domains. Take you back to the MD COA (Most Dangerous Course of Action). So we've already abandoned the ML (Most Likely Course of Action), which means sustained observation, comparative notes, comparing the known against the unknown against the baseline. So we've already done all of that mental work before we even raise our hand, haven't we?

So what would you say then? Because you said two things in here that almost seem to a lot of people kind of a little bit dichotomous, I guess, right? That's kind of contradictory. So meaning, you said first, "First, do no harm." Okay. So, but then, "Hey, you have to do something."

No, no, no, no. You're right. You're right. But what I'm talking about is temporal association. So I'm talking about a timeline. So you see a person weaving in and out of traffic, and think of John Candy, Steve Martin in Planes, Trains & Automobiles, "How do they know where we're going?" Do your homework, folks. But think about that scene and think about somebody not intervening. Then think about the juxtaposition, set it right up next to that. Say that you jump in before, you know, the situation that's going on. And so you go in and you go, "Hey, you got to slow!" Well, now what you've done is you've turned that into a road rage situation. Now that's ridiculous, and what you're doing is adding fuel to the fire. So adding fuel to the fire is my Hippocratic oath. That's where you haven't stood back in a position of cover and observed for just a few seconds to see who all the key players are. Right? So, "first do no harm." Don't be jumping in there, swinging, thinking that you're the hero when in fact it was no problem, and all you did is muddy the water. All you did is screw it up for everybody.

Then the second half of that same coin, because they are both sides of the same coin, is that as long as you have three or more objects—artifacts, evidence, hints, smells, tastes, feels—that you've put together, and a reasonable person would agree with you that it's likely that this is in progress, then you still have to come up with a conclusion, what am I going to do with this information? A decision, rather. And the decision can be low level. I can write an editorial to my paper, "You dirty bastards!" Right? Or I can call somebody. Or I can actually step up. I say that the most dangerous situation is you personally going in and going, "Hold on a minute!" That might not be prudent, Brian. So again, Hippocratic oath, "first do no harm." Maybe that's how it's lined up. So, I don't think they're in contradiction at all. I think there are two sides of the same coin, and it depends on that. That coin has flipped, how you're going to proceed.

And I mean, these are all, it's hard to discuss this in a general context sometimes, right? Because each situation is unique, although the same standards can be applied, and the same rules can be applied, right? So the same architecture, even though under separate circumstances. So I think you'd have to layer that on, or put that on whatever the set of circumstances is. And you brought up a good point when you allude to the fact of, "Hey, first do no harm." You know, that's always our thing, is, "Hey, is me doing something right now—if I do something, if I intervene in the situation, if I say a word, if I look over here, if I walk up on it—is that going to escalate the situation or deescalate?"

Precisely.

Exactly. And going back to the Good Samaritan Laws, and going back to this, and where it gets into a gray area, I think is, that's the point. If your intent is to de-escalate the situation, all right, well, what are you doing to do that? And then if you're, because a lot of times people get involved, "Well, he did this, so I want to—" Yeah, I get it. That person started this. They're the approximate cause of the situation. But the second you then went in and said, "Well, now I'm going to go do this," guess what? You're responsible for that now too, right? And your name is going to be on that case law. You're going to be involved in that caper. So I think it's like looking to the start with, "What's the outcome you want here?" Right? What is the intended outcome, and how do we get there? Because maybe it's like, because we always like to say that some people want their say, not necessarily their way.

So you're watching an altercation and someone's running their mouth at another individual. If you go in there now, am I going to add fuel to the fire? "Oh, there's two of you now. I see the way." And so, that's a big thing. I had a neighbor down the street from growing up, he's my parents' age. And in the middle of downtown Chicago, walking into work, a fight is out on the street, basically busted out from this building. And it's a guy beating up on this woman. I mean, literally punching her right there. So he's standing there, everyone's standing around just watching. So he jumps in, tackles the guy, gets them down. Cops come. They, they, they, they arrest the guy. And he's going like, talking to the police about it, going like, "Hey, this guy's just out here just doing this, and I can't believe it, everyone just stood there!" And, they were like, "Hey, look, I know, but you gotta be careful doing that." And he's like, "What do you mean?" He's like, "Look, you don't know how many times we've seen something like that. You get involved, and guess what? They both turn on you." And that woman who was just getting her butt kicked by that guy, now she's beating you up, telling the cops that you came in. And her effort was like—and he was like, blew his mind going like, "I never even thought that." And so in those, I think those are the areas, those are the spirals that unless you have those file folders, you don't see those things coming. You're not, you know, you don't plan for that.

Right. So let's street it up. Let's take it down to street level and we'll use some...

I think that was pretty street.

No, no, no. Let's go even further down than that. If we sit there and we take a look at the situation allegedly that occurred at the Waffle House, and this is another call to training. I want you to think back if you've ever been in one of my classes, and I asked somebody a question and they said, "Could be." Remember that might be the sentence that happened. I don't want to go through that because there's too many expletives in it, but let's do this: this is not the "what if" game. We're applying science. We're using a baseline plus an anomaly to drive a decision. So let's look at what could happen with explanatory storylines to compare it in the Waffle House.

So you always have to go, "What's my desired outcome?" Or, "Was it escalating or de-escalating?" And, "What's my role in this?" So a guy comes in. A guy says, a chef says to the guy at the counter, "Hey, you gotta have a mask. I can't take your order." Guy immediately gets pissed, throws some stuff around inside the place and leaves. No intervention necessary. The guy behind the counter handled it perfectly. If you get up from your table, walk out in the parking lot and go in another thing, it's probably going to spiral into something bad. So you now have a model for behavior.

Okay. Guy comes back this time. The guy that wants the food is holding inside of his inside pocket the mask. He's got the mask, and he comes in, "Hey, I got the mask! You told me to get a mask, I got the mask!" The guy behind the counter, that's the chef, says, "No, that ain't cutting it. You gotta be wearing the mask or I can't take your order." Now it escalates. There's some shoving around, some yelling, all that other stuff. But the guy leaves again.

Third time, the guy comes in. Now it's the same argument. He's not putting his mask on. He takes out a silver automatic and sets it front of him on the counter. Now I want you to freeze. And I want you to be able to spin that ball in 360, that environment right there. You're a concealed carry person. You've got the legal ability to carry your weapon into the Waffle House at this time. You decide to grab your weapon and push your young child out of the way and stand up next to your husband or wife and go, "Freeze!" from behind on this guy, with a bunch of targets in the place. And he's got the gun. Now there's somebody out there, Brian, it's going to tell you, "That's it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to put him down right there."

You got it. And this is that.

Okay. Now I go, because that star cluster just went out with all these different explanatory storylines, all of which end up with a violent, horrific death. None of which are going to get you on the cover of the Denver Journal saying, "Yay, this common citizen!" Then you say, "Okay, well, I'm highly trained, so I'm going to move in close and I'm going to grab the gun away from him." Not knowing that that was his lighter, his gun is in his ankle. Look, there's a thing called 911. Do you get what I'm trying to say? There's a thing called getting up and leaving. There's another thing saying, "Listen, as long as he ain't pointing a gun at me, I'm going to sit here for a second." Do you get what I'm trying to tell you?

"Freeze" is often overlooked. Exactly. And "flee."

But I'm not doing anything. But I'm saying, if you don't have a cogent strategy, if you're not rehearsed for it, you're going to likely be a victim. Now, the other thing we don't want to do is, what has this guy demonstrated the three previous times?

Yeah, exactly. He's leaving.

He's leaving. He's going to have his say. The gun on the counter is him saying, "So you know what I would do if that gun was on a counter? 'You're an idiotic son of a bitch. I am going to make you some rice, and here's your stuff. Hey, listen, I apologize.'" Do you get what I'm saying? And then when he's in the parking lot, "Yeah, it's a yellow Subaru," like whatever. Listen, Brian, you don't have to intercede or intervene at the precise time. Maybe that's the wrong time. That's why we have pursuits that occur and people die. That's why I've seen people say, "Well, at that point, I effected arrest," and that spun out of control, and we had to shoot and kill the guy. Okay. Well, could you have done it five minutes earlier, five minutes later? And the answer is, "Well, I got..." So then guess what? You didn't, you didn't think it out. Well, you've got to think it out. You've got to think it out. You've got to think it out. You acted out. And it's not taking forever and storyboarding it, Brian. It's considering alternatives.

So the Waffle House example you just brought up, I think is a good one that highlights a number of issues, including everyone gets then focused on this. All right. So let's protract that out. Let's say it becomes a national story, and people are talking about it on the news. What you're going to get are these air-quote "experts" right on there. And they're going to go, "Well, you can tell by his demeanor, he set the gun on the counter. And what he's thinking at this time in his mind is that psychologically, because of how he was raised, notice how he did..." And you're like, we're—even if everything that so-called expert said was 100% right, what the hell does that have to do with anything? That doesn't help us act, right? That doesn't help understand the situation to prevent another one from occurring, right? We, I can't pull anything from that and go, "Okay, so now I know that."

Conversely, conversely, you could pull this, Brian, you could say that in the initial encounter, it was between the chef and the guy at the counter. In the second encounter, it was between the chef and the guy at the counter. In the third, where he drew the gun and set it down on the counter, it was between those two. So it's likely that he has a problem, not with Waffle House management or the policy. It's, "I've been dissed by this guy, and I'm going to have my say and my way." Now that can help me figure out an exit strategy. Do you get what I'm trying to say? And the Waffle House has big picture windows, and I swear to God, me and that steak are heading out into the parking lot through one if I think a shooting is going to start. But now I have at least a response that's thought out. I can get ahead in the OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) of the actors that are in the place. I can come up with a de-escalation strategy because I know the guy didn't want to shoot up the place, Brian, because if he did, what likely would have occurred when the gun came out?

He would have shot the place up.

Okay. Somebody's going to argue with that and say, "Well, he did end up shooting." Yeah, but he didn't kill everybody in the place and then put the gun in his mouth and give himself a vent window. So the idea is that you have to use your brain. You have to play these things out in your brain and say, which is the likeliest and which is the most dangerous. And if you ever see the situation escalating towards this one point in the future where, "Wow, both of those are going to touch," not only have you established ground zero where the attack is likely going to occur, but you've also determined the severity. That's where it's going to end. It's going to start and end on the bubble on the "X," and you can prevent that.

Right. And so I think we'll stick to this Waffle House example, because there's a number of ways we can deconstruct it and in terms of a bunch of different perspectives that are in there, right? So you talked about, "Hey, the guy told him, 'Hey, get lost.'" He comes back. "Hey, get lost!" He comes back. You know, they could have called the police at any given time. Every time he could have called the police. Didn't. I get it. You know, people are like, "Well, I don't think anything's going to happen." But I would say, so let's stop right there. You tell someone to leave, they leave and they come back. All right. So that gets into boundaries and testing and pushing the boundaries.

Funny thing is, compare that: what's our company policy and what's our personal policy? Anytime you're in a meeting or discussion or whatever is occurring, and there's an argument and someone gets up and storms out, they are not allowed back in. You have someone follow them to the parking lot too, because you don't know what else was going on. Because that could be, "That's it! Now I'm ready to blow." And they can't prove a negative. But you and I both know that it's reasonable to assume that that would have happened in the Waffle House situation. But that's a rule. I'm trying to say, you would have never had a problem. That's a rule. And people go, "Well, you don't think they'd be like, 'What—'" What does every bar I've been thrown out of—they did not let me back in. I didn't get tossed out and then come back 10 minutes later and go, "All right, I'm good now." They're like, "No, you're done."

He came back in shooting.

Exactly! That's the point. If you tell someone to leave somewhere, to the guy in that horrible story, the Flint, Michigan Family Dollar, right? "You can't come in here with a mask on." They left and they came back. And what happened when they came back? They killed the guy over it. Right? So if someone, if you tell someone, "No, you have to leave here," and they leave and come back, that is a, you know, that's a red flag, right? That right there is enough to go, "All right. So we, in our business, called that an immediate action indicator." Right? So we have pre-event conclusions that we can draw by looking at these different bubbles, these different facts, these different, you know, balls that are floating around in the air. But when we see an immediate action indicator, that's "All stop." That means you got to get on the phone. You've got to get out of that. So I would put that in, because you go back to, all right, if you're sitting in the Waffle House eating, and they tell someone to leave, and then they come back and another argument ensues, that's your point to leave or call 911, or do you—I mean, that's, if you're there with your family, that's exactly the point, is, "No, now is our time. This is it right there. We're not going to wait around. It's not worth it."

The—my meal—I love Waffle Houses. I'm not going to stop going to Waffle House. There's been a number of shootings at Waffle House over the years. Has that slowed us down?

Collier is the only human being I've ever seen go to a Waffle House and order a salad. And when the salad came out, it was black as his heart, you get what I'm saying, with all the mold that was on it. The lady goes, "What do you want?" He ordered the salad. Listen, I go to Waffle House. I go there not to, to, to—I don't go there because I'm happy with my figure, you know what I'm saying? I don't say, "Hey, Brian, let's go to the Waffle House and then we'll go on a marathon." You know, it's, it's probably after drinking, it's probably in a list of poor choices I've made that day.

Yeah. That's, that's, that's not the first, yet another one. That's not the first poor choice I've made that day.

Right. It doesn't mean that if I choose to go to the Waffle—look, if I choose to go to the crack house and I get syphilis or I get shot, I knew the choice. But I don't give up my rights just because I go to a Walmart or a crack house—Waffle House. And therefore you have to be keen about this. You have to think about this. How did I park? Where did I park? How did this guy look when he came in? Was he in a hurry? Did he leave the car running? Those are all things.

And a person's going to—shoot me, Brian—the sniper out there is going to try to poke fun at me. And they're going to say, "Oh, well, I run in for my carry-out order. I always leave the car running." Well, then you're an asshole. That's how those cars are stolen. They're used in another crime. Do you see what I'm trying to say? But you're, you're giving, you're giving that when you do that, you're giving it away. Not just to someone looking and stealing cars. You give it away to Cranky McSmokesalot who's walking down the street and sees a car running and is staying at the hotel across the street. All right. Like that's not—so you open it up. But, in keeping with the kind of timeline of events here, we said there are different ways you can, as a person sitting in there, could intervene or do something. And that's for as long as, you know, "What if I'm wrong?" What if you're wrong? You, you, you wasted half your meal at Waffle House because it was sitting there. What exactly? You know, what's the perfect strategy or what not to do?

Listen, I'm a big guy. You may not have noticed, but on my 600-lb Life episode, you can see me in 360 graphic detail. But when I get up from the table, and usually most of the table comes with me for a while until I squeeze out, I walk up to the counter and I look and I go, "Hey, young man, why don't you calm the eff down?" Okay. Next thing you know, it's not just a chef that's having a hard time. Do you get what I'm saying? I'm trying to figure out what to do with this .380 enema that I'm being given. So you can complicate a situation that is out of your purview, or you can complicate the situation by not absenting it when you should have and leaving. And listen, get the experts there. I'm not young anymore. I'm not as fast as I once was, and it's much better to have somebody there. And listen, if the cops come up and tell the guy to leave and he gives them lip, they've got the right to escalate.

Yeah. Yeah. That's what it is. No, I think that's a point too. And then same thing, you know, you put yourself in the perspective of the guy who had to tell him to leave. He was just trying to do his job. Like, "Hey man, get the hell out of here! Hey, get out of here!" You know, at some point, yeah, he's dealing with work. He's cooking orders, taking orders, doing this, and he has to deal with this. He has to deal with, now that's his home, that's his house, that's his business. He's got a great deal of pride in the food that he's cooking. Right. But you, you even brought up the point there is like, all right, you know, the guy, "Hey man, you got to get out of here." He's busy. He can't actually go do anything about it. You know, he didn't call the police where he could have. But even like you said, like, you know, a gun comes out. It's like, "All right, well, I see where this is." If, if a gun is involved in the situation, just purely statistics, the more likely someone's going to get shot, no matter what that situation is. Like if there's no gun present, no one's going to get shot by a gun because it's not possible. And if the gun is in the holster and nobody's manhandling it, you probably stand a better chance than if the gun is sitting on a table between you or in front of you. So I think it's important to point out those things. Because then, okay, now this has come out. Now he brought a gun to the Waffle House. Like, "Okay, man, while I hit 911 on my phone, I'm going to cook you up the best omelet you've ever had. And it's going to be giant. It's going to take you half an hour to eat it while the police get here." You know?

So, so let's talk about humans behaving badly. So we got a situation where a couple of cops are sitting around a table and they're drinking, and they decide to play the game of Russian roulette. And you remember, that female copper is dead because of it. And the other copper lost his job and he's in the "trick bag" for negligent homicide. And so what happens is that didn't just happen. Somebody didn't just show up at a party with a .44 Magnum and go, "Hey, let's play the suicide game!" What happened is things escalated. And when things start to escalate, you can tell when things are going to spin out of control, when they're going to ramp up. One, alcohol and guns never mix. Okay? Never. Even doing barrel shots is a poor example for saying, "This is a situation where guns and alcohol mix."

Second thing is, you get a bunch of alpha males and females all amped up in the same room and they're challenging each other. That's going to end poorly. Somebody's either going to get a tattoo, a piercing, or going to get shot. And that's whether they're cops or gangbangers. You know what I'm saying? I don't care if we're talking about the Latin Kings to the Detroit Police Department, but that much bravado is going to end up doing something.

So here's a situation where I'm certain that the chef that was in the Waffle House, whether he knew this guy or didn't know this guy, he'd been in this situation before. And 99 times out of a hundred, when he told the guy, "Hey, listen, step off," it worked. This was the one guy, the one person, that one percenter in society that wanted both his say and wanted his way. And guess what? Without training, the chef thought it was still working. And then when he saw the next cue, he goes, "Oh, that didn't happen." That's called denial. And then when the gun was on the table, he goes, "Okay, I still got this." Listen, when you're in a—have you ever been in a skid, Brian, in a car going at a high speed, and they tell you to steer into it, and you don't want to? There are certain circumstances like this that can spin out of control, and intervention way over here at the left of the spectrum is going to be better than being in the emergency room. So you've been shot. "What's your name? What's your blood type?" I just say, give the time and distance, a little bit of tactical patience. You can solve most situations.

I mean, again, because this gets into, we could, we could break that Waffle House case. Now's a good time, folks. This next segment is brought to you by the Waffle House. Or IHOP, their competitor, paid us to do a Waffle House example. As much as IHOP, I have too, too sugary stuff on it. It's all the same, but no, no, that's not the Waffle House. Oh, damn.

Yeah. So,

But, uh, you know, this kind of gets into, you know, we, we, we can articulate and break it down on how all these factors occur, but, and very, do it very scientifically, but, you know, this is the whole point, is we always say, right, create a bias for action. Intervene, do something, say something, leave. All those options are out there. Call the police. Alert, you know, whatever that is in that given context. But, but that, again, that, that kind of goes back to the question is like, "Well, what if I'm wrong?" And I think something like this is that, is a good example of, you know, "What if I'm right?"

Yeah. Well, what if that guy would change it?

Yeah. Cause that's the thing is like, okay, we'll play it out. You know, it's very clear what occurred in this situation. A guy came in, said, "Hey, go put your mask on." "No, I'm not." All right. Gets an argument, leaves, comes back. Now, if he came back wearing the mask, that's one thing. Like, yeah, he's pissed off that he has to wear it, but he's complying, right? He's compliant in what the rules are. Right. But he didn't. He came back and said, "No, here's..." At that point, it's, "What is it worth to you?" Like, how are you going to be wrong? Right?

And I think so. This is a big world of Jenga, Brian. And we took COVID out of it. We took the mask out of it. We took this out of it. This is a rare situation where you got a guy that had a chip on his shoulder, and he wanted to have both his say and his way. He was pissed, and no amount of de-escalation was going to work. It was going to come to a shoot.

And I do that. I look back at, you know, just different examples of when I've seen people getting upset in airports or in line somewhere. Where was the last place was a good one too. There was everyone lined up for food at this, it was like one of like a food truck type thing. There was like four or five people in line. And basically this guy's cutting in line and saying he was there and he's kind of being abrasive to everyone. And he wanted to get up there. So I just, I happened to be there. I turned and looked at everyone in line. I just kind of stepped in. I was like, "Hey man, why don't you just go ahead and order? I just—I voted for everyone in line who I didn't know at this point—and said, 'Why don't you go ahead and get up there and order. We'll all wait. Stand by.'" And he's like, "Yeah, that's right! I will!" And he went up there and ordered his food. And guess what he did? He was still swearing. He was still being an ass. He was still being annoying, but it went from increasing to decreasing now. Okay. Cause he didn't have the emotional capacity to handle hunger. Right? That was not good enough for him. His base emotion or the advanced planning of, "Wow, I should eat when I am hungry." Yeah.

So, so he, it was, it was a classic thing of, this guy, he's not going to stop doing this. So what can we do about the situation? Right? Do we want to escalate or de-escalate it? Do I want to walk up there and tell them to get out of here? Well, no, it's not my establishment and I don't, you know, I'm not willing to lose my life over a spot in line, you know, nor are you willing to risk the lives of everybody else in there. So what you did is you offered a de-escalation strategy. And even though it pissed you off, it was worth the amount of calories you wasted to get the desired outcome. And he, and he got his stuff. He was bad attitude, and he took off and left. And that was it. Everyone else went about their normal day and had a good—like those situations are going to be pissed no matter where he was. And the quicker you get them out of there, sometimes that's the better. Yeah. But, you know, people want to do the, "No, he can't act like that. And he shouldn't be able to." Like, well, you're right. He's an ass. There's always going to be people in society that are going to do that. You're not going to get rid of them. So come up with a better strategy to manage it, right? There's always going to be people who are going to act like that, who lack that critical thinking ability, or lack the understanding of the fact that they live in a society. And if you, if you share, well, for some people, what I'm saying is, don't let this robbery turn into a homicide. Don't escalate the situation.

On Sunday, Shelly and I had to stop at a gas station in town. And it was the first time in nine weeks that we had gone together somewhere and certainly to a gas station. And when I went in, everybody was following the rules. I was certainly following the rules. When I came out, a guy met me at the door at the exact same time, you know, how the string theory is, right? And so he opened the door, didn't have a mask, didn't have his gloves on, and he had a "gat" (gun). And he didn't have a gat in a conventional gun—he didn't have it in a conventional holster. He had it stuck in his waistband. So we, that's a—we were at the door. And I was doing the "Outlaw Josey Wales," you know, when he comes out and he's got the groceries on the wooden porch of the store. And so I, I, I yielded to the guy up and then I stepped back and I gave him the sign, "You're free to do whatever you want." And he gave me the nod and he went in. I went outside and Shelly was giving me the handgun signal. I gave her the four, "Yeah, I'm watching it." And Shelly already had her weapon ready. And I said, "What do you need?" And she goes, "I've got a picture of him. I got a picture of his car. I got a picture of the plate. I got a picture of his gun. He's got a nice dog, and he's acting really nice. I don't think there's a problem." And when Shelly looked at me and said that, I go, "Okay, fine. The guy just didn't have a holster." And we left because it was no problem. And we did everything we needed to do.

Brian, what would an intervention then have done? What would it, what would have me piped up and saying something? Words hurt. And I go, "Hey, slim, how about that gat?" Or, "You should put something on that face." Listen, I don't care if I'm the most well-trained guy in the world, situations change, and I didn't need to do. And you know what, as it stands, Shelly and I, we parked a little bit away and watched the front of the store with 911 with our finger on the one. And the guy came out with a bag of ice and he went with his dog, and I bet he went fishing or something. There wasn't a situation. Don't be the guy that creates the situation.

And that's a, that's a point. And, and, you know, me knowing about your past and specifically your experiences in convenience stores like that, I'm guaranteed, I knew exactly where you went to on that, going, "Oh, this is it! I've been here before, you know, and that's the gun and now it's go time." So, so that's another example of, okay. Even with the past experiences and the file folders and the training to know, "Man, I've seen this before. And when I saw this, people died, and it was a bad day," you're kind of still able to go, "All right, well, continue on about your day, sir."

That's science. So, Brian, that's you and I are able to detach ourselves from the situation and take an objective look. And I think that that's, that's a, that one is even better than what we brought up earlier in terms of, you know, that, that's the point right there that I think a lot of people and a lot of our listeners are at, like, because they might be the one that's going, "Well, this is it! Here we are! And I know that because I've had this experience, and look at what he's doing! You're not supposed to do that! And he's not following this rule! He's not following this rule!" And that's a great one of, "I'm gathering all this artifacts and evidence, and, and then you go, 'Well, what if I'm wrong?'" You know what I'm saying? And so the "what if I'm wrong" question is actually a, what I'm getting to is the "what if I'm wrong" question, that's a good question to ask, right? That's a, there's no harm in it.

And Brian, again, I would say, flip it and say, "What if I'm right?"

I would say that you have the training or the experience to manage the perceptions and observations that are coming in. And if you don't, you need some training. What kind of training do you need? 22 days of training? Probably not, Brian. But a few of these experiences—all those observations I told you about in that doorway took the exact time it took for him to open the door, for me to stand there, and for us to glance at each other for nanoseconds. Exactly.

And that, that's a tacit and experiential knowledge coming through the experience of doing these things and going to training and understanding.

And guess what? That psychological de-escalation of just getting out of the guy's way, let him do his thing, and then watch for him, at a distance, it's a safe thing to do. And he meant no harm, you know?

But this, this is what I was kind of getting to with the whole, you know, "What if I'm wrong?" It's that's, that's the analytical framework: "What if I'm right? What if I'm wrong?" But you've got to ask both questions, right?

Exactly. And you can't—the problem is everyone wants a simple answer, so there is none. Go after a willy-nilly approach, as Brian would say, "Lucy Goosey." You've got to have an architecture. You've got to have the structure. Now, I'm not talking checking-the-box training, Brian. I'm talking enough "mensury" (measurement, discernment), enough information on the ground at the time when you see the things to act on the stuff that you're seeing. But not, it's all like that thing where somebody tells you to go pack sand, and you're driving home and you're all pissed off because you come up with the answer. You know what I'm saying? "Fifteen minutes later, I should have told them this!" You know, it's not worth a damn, and it screws up somebody's day.

So, so I know, because you kind of started off with it earlier. It's because my answer to the question of "What if I'm wrong?" is "What if you're right?" And if you're using that framework, I think at a very basic level, you're, you're at least on the right track for either proving your theory or disproving your theory. So that's, that's what we're getting at with all of these. And that intervention, you always go back to that, that the earlier, the sooner you do it, the easier it is.

Like I got, because I swore I'd never live in another condo again, but we, we, we bought this one a year and a half ago, or whatever it was now, and just because of the location, timing, price, like it magically, just pure luck kind of happened that we could do it. But, you know, I get a letter from the—

417 Terrace Place. All of you that want to drop in and say hello to Brian, please, please, please do it. That ought to liven things up. That just came to my mind when you said that. Welcome.

Yeah, I don't like Mondays. But, that, where I was going with that was I got a letter from the HOA saying, you know, "Someone reported loud—" which is hilarious, like "loud music being played. You're not supposed to do this after 10 p.m." And I'm like, "Well, this clearly isn't me." All right. Especially with a seven-year-old here, like, no, like it's, we're lights out in bed at that time. Like I've heard music before, but just me growing up and having to actually, especially military and different experience, like you have, you're, you're forced to just deal with other people. So I just deal with other people. I'm not the guy calling and going, "Hey!" Or if there's an issue, I try to address it. So it, it was like that, I, you know, care some, I'm pissed, because someone can just report you. And then now you have a report filed with the HOA. So whatever.

So again, went into my email on the way back, it was, which is like, "Hey, not sure, I think this letter may have been sent to me in mistake." So that's, that was my start of the framework, right? Because I'm not going to go, "Hey, you, 'M.F.'ers, who was this? Tell me who was! I want to know!" And I just said, "Look, it's unlikely this was me. I don't know what happened. You know, it could have been a different unit. I've heard music before. I don't know what happened before. This is our nightly routine, blah, blah, blah." You know, and, and "If you can, whoever reported this, please, next time, obviously they're reporting my unit, so they know where I live, just, just come say something to me. I'm more than welcome, you know, blah, blah, blah." And I sent the email off, you know, expect something back. Next day, the lady from the HOA called and was like, "Hey, I really appreciate your email. Thank you. This clearly couldn't have been you." Unlikely, but we already followed up. We checked.

And it was just like, "But you're misspelling it."

Yeah. Well, that, yeah. But, but yeah. So, or she was terrified and the police are surveilling my place right now. But, no, no, but it'll—and listening to the podcast. But, so, so we, so, but, but that, that, that's the point. It was like, you know, my initial reaction is like, I'm pissed because I've had problems before in the past with, with folks like this, with every little nitpicky rule, like in that sometimes that they don't even affect me. I don't like the fact that they don't want kids in certain areas. I'm like, "Come on, there's families here! Like, why would you do that? That's so dumb!" But those are their rules. So it was just an example of like, "Hey, what, what do I—which I should be careful before I hit send on this email. So I don't want to escalate."

What you just said, what you just gave, is probably the best advice. And this is a great way to round out this episode. How many times have you hit "send" on a message and you wanted to recall that message? How many times have you sent a text knowing full well, and then you—I call it sender's remorse. You know, buyer's remorse. I've had sender's remorse before where I fired before and, you know, made fun of somebody and then I said, "Man, I should have kept that in a holster." The idea is, listen, tactical patience, time and distance, observing from a distance, calling early and often, is the best case. I'll tell you what, the coppers will love you. If you keep calling them with a tinfoil hat and telling them about the Bigfoot driving the UFO, you're probably not going to be on their happy list. But if you call them before something like that, and you could have avoided a shooting, or put a felon in jail, or something like that, they're going to love you for it. And don't sweat the small stuff and take the time to celebrate the small wins.

I think that's a, that's a good spot to wrap on. Don't forget, a great story, by the way, everybody, get that address, or should I say it again, Brian? Oh gosh. Don't forget, 12 Shark Avenue in Oceanside, right by Sharky's.

Oh, thank you for that. Giving some geographical background of where I'm at.

Don't forget, folks, Waffle House is having 10% off! I'm kidding. So thanks everyone for listening.

We call it the Big Bang Breakfast. Don't forget to check out some of the links in the episode details. And we've got, "Tell somebody about it. It's free, you bastards!" webinar series too, that we're doing. That's free, which is what I was getting to. We could tell people about that. So check out the webinars too that we're doing. It's all free. It's all good stuff. Don't forget that training changes behavior.