L.O.G. 123 Where Do We Start

Hello and welcome to the video version of The Human Behavior Podcast. I'm Brian Marren, the host and creator of the show. As always, I will be joined by human behavior expert Mr. Greg Williams, who the show is affectionately named after.

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All right, Greg, ready to get started this morning? Good morning to you.

Good morning.

All right, speaking of where to get started, I guess we're just kind of continuing on the last few episodes that we did, specifically talking about the big topics of police reform, where it's at, and what we think of it. This is based off a number of high-profile incidents that we talk about. So, this is kind of like the, I guess, the last in that installment, Greg.

I know we're looking at bringing in some other folks to be on the show and talk about a bunch of issues, but we're going to jump into this today. Today we're talking about solutions and where to start and what to take into account. So, I'm going to go ahead and I'll just kind of start off with a few opening comments, Greg, and then we'll go from there if that works.

Perfect, buddy. I'm looking forward to them.

All right, well, one of the most difficult parts of implementing a comprehensive solution to a very hard problem is knowing where to start. Determining a starting point for reform must take into account a number of important factors, including things like cost-benefit analysis, barriers to entry, the likelihood of success, funding, second and third-order effects of our actions, and most importantly, time.

I say that time is the most important element for two reasons. One, due to the enormous amount of social pressure that is generated over high-profile incidents that we discuss, policymakers feel the need to rapidly implement reform. This knee-jerk reaction approach does not allow for a proper analysis of the issue, let alone the proper analysis of implementing a new policy.

This type of reaction also leads to the second reason why time is the most important element to take into consideration. That reason is, what will the effects of this policy be 20 years from now? As I've said in previous episodes, we are just now dealing with the results of failed policies from the past. Things like mass incarceration, heavy criminal charges for drug possession, adoption of military tactics and equipment, and the procedural mandates that force police officers to make decisions based on political policy rather than personal judgment, have all led us to the point we find ourselves at today.

So, on that note, Greg, where do we start?

Yeah, so first of all, stunning. I love that we always talk about time, and we talk about the gift of time and distance. You talked about cost-benefit analysis, Brian. I would add cognitive task analysis. I know you didn't say it just for brevity, but it's the same thing.

Listen, we don't even know what the problem is. We're just wrapping our hands around the problem, and already I'm seeing that they're spending millions of dollars on this new reform. Okay, so who are the team of experts, Brian, that sat down and said, "Here are the three most important factors?" And you know what? Because time is a factor, what's going to happen when this new team of super cops that are out there has to shoot the first black kid with the gun on the street? Do you get what I'm trying to say? It unravels all of those policies, Brian, right? Because nobody thought about, "Hey, listen, we have to tell the public that when we come in to change this, this is going to change too." We don't think about those spirals.

I'll give you a perfect example that just hit me while we were talking: Tennessee v. Garner. Tennessee v. Garner changed police work forever—1985.

Yeah, real quick, jump in here. Give us a quick, quick explanation, a street explanation.

A couple of coppers go to an abandoned house on a call. A kid's there stealing copper. The kid runs through the backyard to get away from the cops. There was no law that said you couldn't shoot at a fleeing felon. As a matter of fact, it was encouraged. I'm from that era, and we used to have what's called a dump pouch to dump all the brass and reload as you were running and shooting at felons. Okay, so technically, the kid was a felon, but he wasn't hurting anybody, and it was a property crime. He goes to get away. The coppers, who can't chase him because they're physically out of shape as well, they think nothing is wrong, and the world at that time thought nothing was wrong with gunning him down. A kid dies for copper from an abandoned house.

So, Tennessee v. Garner comes along and changes how you do it. You can't shoot from a moving vehicle. You can't shoot at a moving vehicle. You can't shoot a fleeing felon. You have to have probable cause to escalate that level of violence. But, Brian, it took the world—specifically the way the United States goes, sooner or later the world starts catching on too—but the world of police work certainly changed how you did business on the street. But guess what, Brian? It took 40 years. We're still feeling the effects of it. It's still the law of the land. But it didn't just start one day, and everybody goes, "You know, ding-dong, the witch is dead," you know, we all danced around the yellow brick road. It took 40 years of hard learning and people going to jail and the wrong person getting killed and everything to get better, to get back where we needed to be. And those effects are still visible today.

So, for somebody right now, Brian—and I think they should play your monologue again at their city council meeting—for somebody right now that's saying, "Hey, we're going to implement change, we're going to change this." Look, we all understand that defunding is going to do nothing but just letting the most brazen of dangerous criminals run the streets. We don't want that. Nobody wants that. Nobody in Minneapolis or Wisconsin or Atlanta.

And it doesn't just let the most brazen criminals; it then starts to do what? If you've got that 20-60-20 split, right? (referring to a population distribution: 20% criminals, 60% average people, 20% police). You've got criminals all the way over on one side, police all the way on the other, and then you've got the kind of offenses most people sit in the middle. Well, if you let all of that—that 20% or 10%, it's a smaller number than that, I've just used that for illustration purposes—but the most brazen criminals start to do even more and more. Well, that starts to influence even like the kind of lower-level criminals around them now. They start stepping up instead of being in somewhat fear, right? So, it gradually gets worse over time.

And add this, Brian, you're touching on something that nobody wants to talk about: COVID also has changed the way business is done.

Yes.

I'll give an example from firsthand experience. Gunnison County, for example, can't take COVID into jail cells, and they can't transfer prisoners to the Montrose facility. So, even on some calls, like a DUI, they're going to give a ticket, park the car, drive the person home. Do you get what I'm trying to say? Rather than do the normal enforcement method. Well, let me tell you, that's little Gunnison. People, specifically recidivists, the hard-hitting felons, they've seen the change. They've seen that cops aren't willing to tangle with them. They see that there's no place for them at the end, and that the world has changed over the last year. So, they're getting more violent.

The crime—listen, I'm not talking statistics, the same amount of cops die, that evens out like the lottery, that evens out like Wall Street—but what I am saying is people take advantage of situations, just like during the Dust Bowl, just like during the Wall Street crash, all that other stuff. Criminals right now are not afraid to tangle because they understand there's a different kind of law enforcement. So, if we base your math, your algorithm of police change, on this time, it's going to change in a year, and it's going to change in four years. What are we going to do then, Brian? Are we going to go back and go, "Well, we really didn't mean that law that we implemented"? You can't do that. That—it's not how it works.

And that's why I think time is the most important factor, because of what you just said. Even with talking about different types of statistics, it takes time for us to see the effects of these policies. It takes a long time sometimes. Even though we see this immediate gratification of something—"Oh, this stopped because we implemented that policy"—it's not always the case, and you still don't know.

That's why when you get things like corruption, corruption doesn't just—it doesn't just affect right there at the time someone's being corrupt. It takes generations, right? It takes decades and years to really, one, build back trust, to really truly get rid of it, to really feel the effects of how that occurs, right? So, this is now where we're at, we're dealing with it. So, that's why I always frame it as what we're seeing now is the effect of something from the past, right? It's not happening right now. It's not something that blew up. It's not some random change that occurred all of a sudden the stoplight turned green and all this. This has happened. This is something that's happened over time. So, we need to look back in order to look forward, right? We have to go, "Well, how did we get here? What were the factors?" And we've outlined a whole bunch of that in the previous episodes especially. So, if you're just listening to this one now, just go back and listen to the last three episodes, and we discuss all of those.

But the idea is then I now have to look at all those things. So, I brought up a cost-benefit analysis. What are the barriers to entry? What if we start too small? What if we go too big? These are all good questions that we need to ask in terms of where to start. When talking about where to start, because there's so many opinions, because there's so many stakeholders in this, there's a lot of noise. People should have their say, right? They get to have their say about what they think should be done.

But my big thing to focus on is—and we take, obviously, we take everything from a training standpoint of how to train to change this—but my focus would be, here are the areas in police work that you can focus on, because politicians come and go, right? The wind changes direction, and everyone wants someone from the left, and they want someone from the right, then they want to be tough on crime. But it's because it's just an emotional knee-jerk reaction. Typically, we have little understanding of a lot of these policies. You can't fully understand every policy that's out there or every topic. You don't need to have an opinion on it, but it's just too much. There's way too much. So, that's what we're supposed to use our subject matter experts for. But the idea is, those things can change. Attitudes within the community can change overnight because of social media posts, right? So, that stuff changes in the wind. But this is why we get down to policy and procedure and things that you can codify, write down, and train to, because that's where you can implement change. You can implement change that will have an immediate effect on the ground and a long-term effect. So, that's where I always like to—I've got this big—it's this problem is like the universe out there spinning, right? I've got all these planets rotating around the sun. I've got all kinds of stuff out here, and it's like, "Okay, well, where do I want to jump in and start?" And I always say, "Start there," because you can affect change at the street level, tactical level, operational level, and overall strategic level, and that will change over time. That's why I always vector into this is the approach I want to take to it. Does that make sense?

You're spot on. What I would say, Brian, is I'll answer your question, the question you posed to me. I'll answer it. I just had to frame the where and how, because I think those two things are inextricably linked.

So, I can only speak from experience. The very first thing that happened when I moved to Colorado, Shelley and I came to Colorado to open up The Dude and Guest Ranch in Purgatory (Durango) to retire, but it didn't. Oh, thank you to the listener that sent in the photo of that. That was pretty cool. That was so cool! Greg painted that sign. So, thank you very much for that. That's me with the Powderhorn Ranch brand, and Greg and Shelley. But what a blast from the past. So, Brian, we had to work while the ranch was being prepared. A real estate deal like that doesn't just go in a day. It takes months, and it ended up taking 18 months.

So, I have a police station that was looking for a Chief of Police, and they were looking specifically for an interim Chief of Police, which means they had their eyes set on this person they were going to hire them, and it took a lot longer than they thought. So, I inherited—and I'm not going to name, because I don't want to go to federal prison. I'm not going to name the agency, or say something like Vail Valley to narrow it down, or anything—but the idea is, it's a progressive agency along the I-70 corridor. I dropped in, and here they handed me this thing: "This is the way it's always been done." I go, "Okay, that's cool."

So, I met with the town council, met with everybody else, and said, "What are the number one problems?" Well, I'll give you just a couple of those problems: black pants, military boots, leather jackets, gray gunmetal gray police cars. Do you get what I'm trying to say? So, well, now we have an issue with perception, perhaps. So, the very first thing that I spent money on in the agency is getting baseball cards made up. So, everybody that was a copper (police officer) on the agency had to wear the new uniform, which is a lot less militaristic. They had to be in a position—they were the batter, they were the catcher with the wad of chewing gum in their mouth, they were the pitcher. Do you know what I'm trying to say? The idea was it was stats: "Where were you born? How long have you been with the agency? A quote that you like." And we passed them around, and any kid in this city (again, I'm not going to say the city) that could put together the team—all of the baseball cards, the nine—there were a total of nine for this episode, got to go to dinner anywhere, and all the coppers would come by and have their pictures taken with them and everything else. Everybody goes, "Oh, that's really happy, touchy-feely." Now, it was so you could look at the card and go, "That's my personal policeman. I need to know who that cop is that's working this area." Because I agree, Brian, with our policy that we will take training door-to-door if that's what it takes and get you out of your house and demonstrate it in your driveway. So, that was the first phase.

The second phase was to ask everybody what the problem was, and the problem was illegal immigration. "Okay, what do you mean?" "Well, I can't go anywhere without having bilingual this and that and the other because of illegal immigration." So, I go, "Okay, that's your problem." So, I went and did my own investigation and found out that the three biggest hotel chains and the two biggest ski resort companies there—I don't want to tread on ground and get sued—all employed illegal aliens for all of their workforce. There wasn't a person that I could go in there without a terp (interpreter/translator) because I didn't speak Spanish to do the interviews with. And I talked to the people, and their HR people said, "What are we going to do? We got them all here. It's the cheapest way to do business, and we've done business in the valley this whole time. If your cops would stop arresting them and if ICE would stop coming in and deporting them, maybe things would be better."

So, I said, "Okay, so here are the tiers of the problem." And I went to the city attorney, and I said, "What are we going to do?" And they're like, "Okay, they're illegal, we got to deport them." "Well, wait, do we?" So, what we did is we came up with a plan, and we came up with the U.S. Department of Interior and the U.S. Border Patrol and everybody else that was in the community and said, "We're going to stage a pancake breakfast, and we're going to advertise the [expletive] out of it, and it's going to be bilingual. Please come. No strings attached. Anybody can come to this." Because what we're going to have is these speakers. We're gonna have the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), we're gonna have a speaker from immigration, we're gonna have all these people to tell you what you can do, what you can't do, how the emergency room works. "Will you get arrested if you take your poor kid to the emergency room?"

So, we did it all at this pancake breakfast. The Chief of Police talked, the fire chief talked—a great guy, Rusty or Dusty, whatever his name was—everybody talked, and we had interpreters and translators and pamphlets and coloring books, and everybody felt the anxiety go away. "Look, if you call the police for a domestic, you're not going to prison. If you get pulled over, don't flee because you're not going to prison. You're not going to get deported." But what do you think we did the next month, Brian? We had a hit list. And I apologize to use terminology like "hit" or "police force" for those people covering their ears right now, but that's just the terminology it was called. What we did is we compiled a list of prior deported felons that were dangerous, and we put it out to the community just like wanted posters and said, "Here are the people that we're going after. You will see immigration and uniform police all over next weekend because we're going to spend 36 hours and round these guys up." And we did. We had the buses parked, we had all the—and guess what? The community was like, "Okay, we're okay with that." So, we targeted police work. Do you get what I'm trying to say?

So, we allowed certain things to occur, knowing that on the greater scheme of things, the community would support these, but they wouldn't support those. We trained the officers that there were ways to adjudicate capers and put bad guys in jail, but to defer other things that were going on. Brian, for the 18 months that we implemented that policy in that place, it worked. And I can only imagine that it's still working in some capacity now. So, that was instrumenting—implementing, rather—change at a local level, starting small, but addressing the problems the community had and only using targeted police work to get where we needed to go. Not bothering the working man, not bothering the skier.

No, and that kind of brings up the point too, of what I even talked about at the beginning, which isn't—I mean, I know that those policies—one, can that work at a local level? Because the first thing everyone does is what? "Oh, that's great for that time and place, and that worked there, but you can't do that at scale!" Like, you one—yes, yes, you can! Two, you don't want—first of all, you don't need to. Like, that was the whole point: start with one neighborhood. That's it! Yes, that's it! Start with one neighborhood. And if you can do it in one neighborhood, you can do it that whole town, or if you do that whole town, you do the whole city. I mean, that's the whole point. Didn't you do that in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Yeah, well, yeah, on the ground doing that with Village Stability and other programs.

That's the thing, is we could take those—those are the lessons learned we need to be taking and implementing here. A different case over there because there was no strategy, because administrations changed left and right, there were no clear policies there. But that's a different story.

And the other thing, this is the U.S. So, we're not leaving anytime soon; in fact, never. This is where we live. So, you actually can do that. But that brings up why I also put procedural mandates force people to make decisions based on political policy rather than personal judgment. So, you were able to sit there, get everyone on board, and say, "Okay, what do we really want to do here?" But then there's going to be someone now that says, "Well, no, that's a crime, that's illegal. That person has to be arrested too." The idea is this crime is not black and white. It is legally in terms of sentencing, or in terms of court procedures, or "this is a crime and this isn't." There are guidelines, sentencing guidelines. But meaning, you don't have to do—does a prosecutor have some sort of say over what they're willing to prosecute and not prosecute? Absolutely.

Right, and that's the key person in that neighborhood, Brian. The prosecuting attorney of a neighborhood, of a village, of a city, of a town is the most critical person to get on board with these changes.

You're exactly right, because that—that's a huge, huge—one, that's a lot of power and authority that they have right there, and responsibility, a huge amount. But that's the point, that's with their level of experience and where they got to. They're supposed to be able to make that call based on the totality of the circumstances to whether or not even prosecute charges. So, why is that important? Because this is exactly what we're talking about. What you did is say, "All right, let's remove all of this right here," and say, "Yes, even if those are crimes, how serious are those crimes?" And like you even said about people going, "Well, they're in here working, and they're taking these jobs." It's like, "Well, yeah, it's because there's a demand for them." So, the simple supply and demand is going to take over. Let the market decide, right? And look at what happens. Okay, so now if this isn't going to occur, we don't have to go after everyone. Let's just focus on that small percentage.

And that's important to bring up too, is because that is a small percentage, meaning recidivism is huge. Meaning, like, it's something like 10% of criminals commit 90% of the crimes or something. Meaning, you're more likely to—there's only a small percentage that is doing the worst of the worst and doing it over and over again, versus just the total of all crimes committed in the United States. And that's important to understand that what you went after right there is that targeting example. Where do we want to use our everything we have, all of our resources, to get the most bang for your buck? Well, I don't have to go for everyone.

But that goes into what I was getting at, the whole about policy and procedure. So, because things have become so policy and procedural oriented, it's, "What's—no, I have to arrest this person. It says here, this policy says when this occurs, I must, I must arrest this individual and take them to jail." That's what. Now, then after the fact, the prosecutor can come and say, "Oh, we're not going to prosecute those." Now, here's the problem: if you don't have that plan at the beginning of what you're going to prosecute, what you're not, now you're wasting that police officer's time. You're getting him or her possibly in a trick bag, getting in a really dangerous situation, only to find out that, "Well, we're not really going to do—papers are going nowhere." Like, now you've just wasted—maybe you've wasted time, you've wasted money, you've wasted resources on that police officer's unit, and he or she didn't even know that that was going to happen on the back end. So, this is where that communication comes into play, and where do we start?

Well, but let's go to that point. Your point right there was well made, Brian. Okay, so you started with recidivism. When we talk about recidivism, folks, that's just a person that offends repeatedly.

Yeah.

And the idea is that that's where our laser-focused warrant service, all that other stuff, should be. Why, Brian? Because we're not talking about a person that's shoplifting. We're talking about violent, convicted felons that reoffend violently. What are those numbers? Well, the best study that I could find was two years ago, 64% of them within a few years of their release are going to be caught up in another violent felony. Those two words go together in this instance: violent felon.

So, are you saying that we can laser-focus police work? Listen, we're always going to have to have things like traffic control. So, saying traffic stops are out—listen, vehicle driving is inherently dangerous. Yes. We can't allow things like drunk driving, just like we can't allow things like domestic violence, because those are the ones that spin out of control. Look at this weekend, what a violent weekend.

Yeah.

In Colorado Springs, and there was another one in Baltimore or Boston—I always get those mixed up—with the birthday party, and another horrible situation that involved a shooting. So, listen to me, folks, why can't we, Brian, why can't we say, "This is our hit list"—and again, I apologize for the vernacular—"but these are the things that we as a community hold as being most important, and we will show up at the town council or the city council meeting, and we plan on holding our police department, police chief, and prosecuting attorney accountable, including our judges, who we can vote out." Do you get what I'm trying to say? It's not like a college professor that has tenure. Why can't we start there? I'm saying that if we have a cogent message that people want to get on board, not this ultra [expletive] knee-jerk reaction—pardon my language—every time somebody gets shot, now it's "Say the name," "Do the march," "Do all that other stuff." Listen, I'm sorry, those people are dying too.

Yeah, but they're not moving the needle.

No, we're doing nothing but having emotional angst and destroying property, spending money on symptoms, not the cause.

Yeah, that's addressing the symptoms and then also not understanding the cause, and then also where you—the outrage and the protest and all that is, you're supposed to use that as a tool. That's not the end. That's not what you do. That's meant to be attached to a message or a policy change or some action or some overall different strategy. You don't just go post something on social media about it. That doesn't do anything, right? That's a—that the outrage, it's supposed to be used as a tool.

But one of the things you kind of brought up and just kind of dynamized, is targeting violence versus targeting crime. Two different things almost, right? Targeting what—what are violent behaviors versus criminal behaviors, right? Like you said, and sometimes it's not as easy as we're making it out to be, but there are—you can start with only the most violent types of crimes and criminals, right? And that's, obviously, we're talking about because today's topic is where do we start. So, this is why I get into here: policing, court systems, prosecutors, all that stuff. Those are easy, easy, easy, low-calorie ways to start, because one, those are all the people that are the most educated in our society about the problem, right? Meaning they understand it because they're living it every day. And you can also write and codify different policies and procedures easier for there. Like, you can't make a community policy saying, "No, as a member of the community, we will do this or think this way." That's just not going to work. People are going to do what they're going to do. But here, where you can make a change, I think that's a good place to start.

And starting that way is identifying some of those barriers. And I know we're already talking about those barriers, right? Yeah. What are those barriers to entry? Well, one, the individual—if the District Attorney isn't working with the police hand-in-hand, you have a serious issue right there of how we're going to commit this policy. And with the community saying, "We're not going to go after this, but we are going to take—" "We won't take this."

Exactly. But look, listen, look at the strides last talk that you and I had. We talked about how organized sports do it, and that's a model we could follow. I will also tell you—pardon me, this minor earthquake here—I would tell you that we could also look at the dope policy. My generation, any amount of marijuana was illegal. It's still hard for me to understand that you can drive around smoking a blunt anywhere, and nobody cares anymore. What a change! But it was a change. Okay, and some people would tell you that it's a positive change, and it's certainly a moneymaker, Brian. So, let's put it in perspective with what I was telling you about that one community in Colorado.

So, now I'm involved in another community in Colorado. Here, that community has a lot of those same things. It's a destination resort that's got skiing, it's got hotels, it's got all this stuff, and it's got two—it's year-round, trust me—but it's got two major seasons: that spring-summer season, right, where people are trying to get out of the hot Texas and come up and party, and they don't want to be in Oklahoma. And then you've got that winter season, and then everything else is shoulder season, like with wildflower festivals and biking and hiking and stuff. So, people are outside all the time, much the same as in California here, right? But the idea is that to work here, it costs a lot of money. It costs a tremendous amount of money to live here. I know that even going to City Market to buy your groceries is a big expense.

So, now we have this conundrum: the low-price college worker that we want to appeal to to come in to be our guest attendant or a gate agent or clean the rooms or anything can't afford to live here. Right now, what's happened is, illegally, the people have said, "Okay, I'm going to put eight people into one bedroom in my house," right, and rent them out, or, "I'm going to allow a little house that doesn't have the sanitation, right, or the electrical hookup that's in an extension cord." Well, what's happening, Brian? It does impact public safety. So, now it also impacts the motel in town where the person goes, "Wait a minute, I'm playing by the rules and paying taxes and doing all this other stuff. I can't get somebody to stay at my place long-term." Do you get what I'm trying to say? Because you're illegally doing—well, listen, that's got to come to a head. And when it does, people have to calmly, rationally look. Having a protest down the street saying, "I can't afford to live here," is not going to move the dial, Brian. It's not going to do what we need to do. And sometimes the person that's the business person that says, "Hey, I'm running a hotel, I don't want to accept this because I'm going to lose business," sometimes we have to balance the scale to see what's best, not only for today but for the future.

I saw a commercial last night, drove me nuts, and said, "Live in the moment." Kiss my ass. "Live in the moment." That's why we're in this problem.

Yeah, we have to do it, Brian. Do we or do we not have—well, you forecast. Before you can live in the moment, you have to have policies and procedures and a process, whether that's your own personal one or something else, to allow you a movement going forward. Otherwise, you're just YOLoing everywhere, right? We're just living in the moment.

Yeah, yeah. That's great. Is that resilient? No. That's called the unbaked hippie.

It's called walking through your environment, just reacting to whatever is going on. Best of luck to you.

Well, that's a perfect example of what we mean by knee-jerk.

Yeah, and wind blows, I go. And that's why I also kind of brought that up, is because you want these fast solutions, and usually that's not the best answer. Because if you don't take the time to study and research and figure out what's going to happen, you don't know where it's going to end up 5, 10, 20 years from now. And that's what we need to focus on. Where do we want this to be? Where do we want it to be in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years? We want our kids to live like—I mean, that needs to be the focus.

And I understand that there is a lot of social pressure, because humans are naturally emotional creatures, especially the larger the group we get in, the less reasonable we are, the dumber we are, and the more emotional we are. You can look up all the research on that if you want, that's pretty much how it works. And so, what we end up doing is also, Greg, it's like we go after a person, right? We go, "Let's get rid of the mayor. Let's get rid of that police officer. Let's fire the police chief. Hey, let's take—"

Well, even what we're talking about, I think people take it the wrong way. Say, "Let's go after the most violent offenders." They go, "Oh, let's take that drug kingpin down. Let's take down the leader of the group." Here's one: "Let's cut the head off the snake."

Oh, yeah. How does that—how does that work out for us? I'll tell you, you can—we can prove it right now, folks, we no longer need DEA, because El Chapo has been captured and he's in prison. So, you wanted El Chapo, he's the head, he's the guy, Brian. Well, there's no more terrorism anymore, we got Bin Laden. Well, I've been lobbying, so thank God we've lived these last few years without terrorism. Shut up.

And what's the number one thing that we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan, Brian? Killing was—it was like it was free, it was like it was a contest. "Kill these terrorists." Here's the topic: you remember the cards that they had, like the 100 people on, like this high HVT (High-Value Target) list, this kill-capture list, especially in Iraq. And here's the thing, as they're going through that list, they kept capturing and killing people, the list still stayed at 100. I mean, they just kept adding people to the list. So, it's like—

So, that's the warning for targeted police work, right? When you have targeted police work, you have to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. What is our mission and who's on the ground? What is our desired end state? Brian, if you don't know the desired end state, what we are is in this Mobius loop of mission creep. Because guess what's going to happen? That machine has to be fed. You got to feed the beast. Listen, those billions of trillions of dollars that we're spending in a foreign country to support the war, you're not going to have a contractor just go, "Okay, timeout, that's enough." Do you see what I'm trying to say? They're going to have to find a new thing.

So, reestablishing those mission boundaries. "I want police to stop the shootings on my street, but I don't want him to shoot my kid. I want him to come in and stop the illegal drag racing that's creating—I can't get business into—my families aren't coming here anymore, there's people dying on the street. But I don't want you to arrest my kid. I want to stop police pursuits, but I don't want you to chase my kid." Brian, it's not pendulous. We create the pendulum effect. We have to do is we have to sit down, we have to say, "This is what we're talking about. Are you pro or are you anti?" And we got to be in it. We have to have skin in the game for the long haul. This will not be solved this year.

Okay. Right.

And we want to take down this statue, but we want to put up this statue. Wait a minute, we're really quickly putting these memorials out there, and I don't want anybody to die, and God bless everybody that has, and I'm sorry for it, but the more monuments that you're putting up to this one thing, the more divisive you're making our nation. What you got to do is you got to stop that, and you got to take a look and say, "How do we fix? Where do we start? How far do we want to go? What do we want to invest to creating a solution?" And two parts of it: cost-benefit analysis—if it's too expensive, Americans are never going to go for it. Cognitive task analysis, which means, what is it we're targeting? And I know I'm misusing that word. I'm doing it on purpose for our cognorati that are listening. But, Brian, what will the community accept?

When we get to the point where the community just has figureheads, we're not going to get anything done. But if we have the autocrats, or if we have a community that's led like Boulder—police don't have police, Boulder has agents, and they're an accredited police force, and it's really wonderful because nothing happens there. But then the little girl that got murdered in her sleep that's still all over the news, the little cute chick—can't think of her name—that happened in Boulder. So, bad things happen. The recent shooting of the City Market (Kroger), whatever that was involved in, it was right down the street. So, if you want to change the perception of police, you got to change not just the look of police. We're having that in Crested Butte now. Crested Butte has a Black Lives Matter contingent up there. They had a four-hour meeting, and one of the first things they wanted to adopt is changing the way that the police look. Okay, that's part of it. I did that too, and that police agency was talking about. But softening the look of the police is only a huge part of it because we need police presence to keep the bad people out of the community. We need the police to make contacts so the people know who they are. But we also have to have a system of checks and balances. And that is, if we have a community advisory board, Brian, they're not trained in, for example, police tactics or the law, how effective are they going to be? Do you see what I'm trying to say? We have to stop the emotional side of this. We have to approach the clinical: how would a scientist approach this problem?

Yeah, and there are different initiatives to do that. But again, whether or not they're good—some may be great, some may be awful, some may be short-sighted, some may be very, very well thought out—it's not, a lot of times it doesn't get thought about, is how do you integrate that with things, with a direct, while addressing or taking into consideration all of the other issues, right? Because if you start doing that, like a specific example: "We want the police to dress and look differently." Okay, well, but why? Meaning, what's—what are you trying to get out of that? Like, start there. What's the—meaning, what's the end state? Like you said, what's the result you're going for with that decision, versus, "Let's just change up the way they look." There has to be a point there.

And you know, to go back again too, we talk about like, "the cutting the head off the snake"—"Let's just change everything, let's get rid of this one." Is that—you know, that's part of the reason why we have a lot of the issues that we have. We used to go after crime and criminals and criminal networks and everything, right? We keep looking at it that way, of, "Let's work our way up to the top and get rid of this guy or girl or whoever's running the show," right? And then what happens is you end up creating instead of one highly organized gang or, you know, you now have everyone breaks up after that, and you have 10 new gangs with young kids running it, in charge of things, versus some highly organized criminal outfit with people with experience. And that is a good lesson learned that I don't think we really focus on. That's what happens when we just try to keep taking our head off the snake and take out the leadership and do this. It doesn't really have the effect that we want.

And that goes into, like you said, different, "Okay, let's get a new police chief who's going to come in with all these cool ideas." It's like, "Well, hang on, I don't really know if making these small little changes unless it's part of a larger plan or a different approach." You're just—you're just kind of rolling dice and hoping for the best and thinking this might work. And I again, this goes back to, "Why are we doing this? What do we want the end state to be?"

You're spot on with that one, and I can give you again a personal example. I only know what I know, Brian, so I'll tell you that a lot of the people that worked with me over the years in my capacity as a law enforcement officer didn't like my policy when it came to hiring from outside the agency. And I know, as a matter of fact, even Shelley—Charlie and I have very, very deep arguments about this. My thing was, corruption corrupts absolutely, right? And power corrupts absolutely as well. So, what happens in an agency is, over time, you don't see it, but there's a groove of a record that begins, and that groove gets deeper the more that the road patrol guy becomes a corporal, now he's a sergeant, now he's a lieutenant, now he's running day shift or whatever else. The agency starts to take on the look of the individuals, and that's wrong. The agency should take on the look of the community. It should respond to the needs of the community, and it should listen to the words of the community. So, I always say, "Hire from outside, have a community go look for the person that they want, have those people compete in some manner, and then hire the best qualified." Boy, did I look like an ass. But the idea is, if you're a police officer and you think that the community doesn't know what's best for it, you have to rethink where you're working. That's all I'm trying to tell you. Because, you know, everybody gets what they deserve.

But that's kind of what, and we talked about this on other ones, that that's my biggest issue is we look at the leadership, or we look at a person, right? You just said it, it takes on that agency—and that could be a company, that could be a city, or whatever it is, it takes a restaurant, it doesn't matter.

Yeah, yeah.

It takes on the look of the individual, or the personality of that, or—and that might be great when you have that really great person that everyone loves who's in charge or something. But if you allow that to continue, then it's going to be someone else, and that's going to change the culture and redefine how things are. But that's my approach with all of this, Greg, is take—take the human out of it. Let's take all of that junk out of it. We're not looking for someone with all of these different leadership traits and specific experiences, and I don't know, some leadership certificate from some Ivy League institution, or something. Like, that's what we think. And, "Oh, they're a good person." Like, it should transcend all of that. The policies and procedures and the approach to it, that process should be what it's about. Here's what it is.

So, now if you're going to bring in your own personality traits and your biases and your different life experiences to that process, right? And hopefully that will improve it. But the idea is, this is what it is, this is what we're all on board with, this is what we agreed to. If you don't—if you're not carrying yourself in this manner, if you're not bound to these policies and procedures, then you're gone. And it's going to stick out if you have negative personality traits, if you have implicit biases that are horribly wrong or often. It's going to show if you have a sound process and you have sound policies. And that's what I mean by that.

And that's when it goes to—I mean, you look at the military and even law enforcement, they're good examples of this, because every military, the U.S. military and each branch, has its own code of ethics, its ethos, its values. And you have to learn those. Everyone talks about all the different leadership that comes in, and some people are more natural at it, and there's training and there's education in it, and there's this, and everyone gets experience in it. But it goes back to, they're written down for a reason. Are you following this list of values? Do you exemplify these traits that we want? Because it's—because it's listed out right here. Are you showing these or not showing these? So, it takes the individual out of it, meaning, it's not—so, they're—meaning, they're really good leaders, right? Right. Look at, they're showing every single one of these leadership traits, and this is how they do it. That's incredible. That guy or girl over there, they're showing none of these. They're clearly a bad leader. The idea is, go back to what you have written down. Don't rely on the person or, "Oh, they're a really great speaker, so they must be really good at their job." It's like, no, just go back to what you have written down.

You're spot on. The other side of that coin and the same logic: take the human and the emotion out of it, Brian. In 10 years, are we going to look back at the cases that we've put on the television this last year? Are we going to be as proud then as we are now? I would argue with you that we've created some damage that it's going to take years to fix, because what we've done is we've made such a pendulous move just to show so there. Do you get what I'm trying to say? So, somebody told me, "Hey, 400 years of struggle and finally we got the answer to it." Well, if you invested 400 years and that was your answer, I feel sorry for you, because there's a lot of work left to do. And I will, shoulder-to-shoulder, work with you on fixing it. But every time that we do one of those emotional ones just to make us feel good, Brian, we have to come back and fix it at a later time. And in the news, the news media will cover that in a 46-second blurb. It certainly won't be a headline.

Well, case law is never good law. Case law always comes from the worst possible sequence of events. And I'll tell you what, we're not doing ourselves a favor by picking and choosing which ones that we do, Brian. We will be ashamed sooner or later.

No, and that—you brought up the point of Tennessee v. Garner at the beginning of the episode, and that's the whole thing. I mean, the kid was trying to flee over a fence, he wasn't armed, he got shot in the back. And everyone went, "Hey, hang on, what the hell are we doing here?" And it literally takes these catastrophic events like that where someone loses their life to go, "Hey, wow, this has really gotten out of control," or, "We shouldn't—this shouldn't be. This person has due process, they have rights, and this is now violating their rights." Because for the last—because it was 1985—well, for the last 100 years, that's how policing was done in the U.S. It was, "The guy's running, let's shoot him." But no one—it took until 1985 for someone to go, "What the hell are we doing?" And then everyone looked.

Right, right. But it certainly didn't take the police. The police certainly didn't go, "Hey, what are we doing here?" Do you get what I'm trying to say? No offense to the police, the police are following their orders. But that's what I'm saying.

[Expletive] Nuremberg.

So, that's what I'm saying, right? You get what I'm saying? No, I'm so violently in agreement with you. You know why? Because police work was tough back in the day, and we had to fight our way out of it. We couldn't think our way out of it. We had big metal flashlights, we had sap gloves and slapjacks and dump pouches for more ammo because we accepted that, Brian, and we unknowingly fed the beast year after year by accepting that. Once somebody stepped back and said, "I'm Martin Luther at the church door." Once somebody stood back and said, "Maybe we can think our way out of this. Maybe we can change this, the way it worked." And there you go, Tennessee v. Garner is one such law, there's many. Police work improved, Brian, and you know what? They weren't hiring cops for their brain 100 years ago. They were hiring a cop that had to be at least six feet tall, at least 185 pounds. They had to be ready for fisticuffs on the street. We've changed, culture, society has changed and improved. We have to continue that procedure by not backsliding, by looking at the core values and saying, "What's our desired end state next for the next five years?" I'm in total agreement with you. Why can't we approach it that way? And why does the news media seem to want to—oh, I don't know, the bans? I know you never want to hear that, Brian, I'm sorry, I don't—the whole, "Oh, the media." Like, I don't—that argument's been around for hundreds of years.

I don't know, but not—but that doesn't make it any more right. That it's not that it's right, it's just about the defense attorney.

When you start talking about stuff in the media and an autopsy and saying the kill shot and doing those things, what you're doing is you're whipping people into a frenzy that are going to act. There are certain people—look, the less education that you have as a copper, the less worldly you are, the higher level of violence you'll use for the same problem. And I don't think communities are any different.

Yeah, these are complicated topics that someone's trying to provide a simple answer for you, whether that's a politician or a newspaper or a news show. They're just going to—"I'm here, I'm just going to siphon this really complicated issue down into something I can put on the tip of your tongue," because it's that simple. Go after yourself. But those things have rarely ever been covered in depth. I mean, occasionally you get it, but then what is it? That's the big, long, 15-page story that shows everything, but no one wants to read that.

So, it's a Pulitzer Prize winner, Brian, but nobody's ever read it.

Right, no one's ever read it. And I think—Cameron was going with that—no, what I was going to bring up was not so much the media and how they cover it, I don't care. It's about where to start, right? So, all of these examples that you brought up were small-town issues. And so, you go to a place like Los Angeles or Atlanta or Chicago or New York or Boston, or any big city, even if you've got 100,000 or 200,000 people in your city, not necessarily 10 million or whatever. Everyone goes, "Well, how do you do that at scale? We need comprehensive reform." It's like, "No, you start. You take one neighborhood, and one—one precinct at a police agency, one. Just one." That's all you have to do, is one. If you can prove your concept in one, on one street, in one neighborhood, then you can start to worry about scaling it. Because that's always the biggest thing. And I mean, even when we talk about with different folks, and, "Hey, this is how you attack it." "Yeah, but you're just—how is this company, just your small company, with this big force, how are you supposed to scale that?" Like, stop. You haven't even fully understood what we're talking about yet, and you're already talking about scaling. Just stop there. And I think that's important. We've proven it over and over.

But the idea—the idea is that even some of the places we talked about were like, you know, I gave the example from Chicago the other week about the guy doing cognitive behavioral therapy on all of these, a great plan, former inmates as they're coming out, basically these different criminals. And yeah, let's say it only affects a few of them, but those positive effects last generations. Because now you just took their life and you sent it on a new direction, and that means that affects everyone they know in their life and their children and the next generation. So, you don't—the problem with these, like we said, those knee-jerk reactions, is we're not taking into account those second, third-order effects—the next generation, the next years in that neighborhood. So, if you just start in one, you can slowly grow it from there. You gain that foothold, and, "Okay, this worked for this block. Let's get the next block on board. Let's get the next block on board. Let's get the next block on board over there," right? And we talk about it from a police and prosecutor type standpoint, that's where you can make that change in those neighborhoods, and you just start with one. Once you have that one on board, you let it go and let it continue. I mean, you have to continue to nurture that. So, now, like you said, over a 20-year career, yeah, it didn't seem like much at first. Definitely not the first month, definitely not the first year, definitely not two years. It really was kind of tough. But wow, I look back in 20 years and, "Wow, that entire area is completely different now." I mean, that's what you're looking for.

Well, let me give you that example, Brian, and I'll ask you to follow my example with your own. You're born and bred in Chicago, and I'm born and bred in Detroit. So, I will give you an example of on the streets of Detroit today: you have communities that are banding together that have markets, they have areas where they're growing vegetables, and you've got craftspeople there, homesteaders out there. They've got what—but people right now are going, "That's the rebirth of Detroit." That's what Detroit—that's what built Detroit back in the day. We were trading with the indigenous population, and we had the farms and the homestead, and this guy had this thing, and he said, "Wow, wouldn't it be great to have the internal combustion engine to facilitate this?" So, they've taken a look back to take a look forward, and it's working. Okay, if it can work there, it can work anywhere.

And the final thing before I throw it to Chicago: I sound like I'm anti-police. I love police. I love the best police officers and administrators I've met while I was on the road and since. I hate shitty cops and bad cops, and that's the ones that I'm talking to right now, because all you are doing is giving the entire profession a black eye. Get out of the way and let this change happen. So, Detroit is showing that they have the wherewithal, Brian. What about Chicago?

Well, it's the same issue, I mean, Chicago has always been—still sometimes is—a corrupt city, and that corruption lasts generations, right? It doesn't change quickly, it doesn't heal quickly. It takes a long time. So, these are all issues that need to be taken into account. But the whole idea of where do we start and where do we go, right? Because you brought it up at the beginning, as if we're starting here at this base community level, then it can go to a city level. But I again think it's—it's got to start with, to me, the police reform is the policy reform, right? To me, the police reform is the prosecutorial reform, right? What are we—what are we trying to do here? And that affecting that change on the ground doesn't have to take a lot of calories, right? It's a new way to approach. It's a new way to look at things, which is hard because change is difficult, right? The successful reasons why we get here also are our biggest hindrances sometimes, right? The what we've done before in the past is what gets in the way of us going forward in the future. So, walking that balance between what lessons are learned, and how do we learn from it, and how do we come up with new ideas that aren't just going to fail miserably and lead to some other policy. I think that's everything that needs to be taken into account.

Brian, I would say two things to yours, because I agree with the direction that we've been going. One, we got to get rid of the term "reform" and we've got to change it, for example, to something like "improvement." Because if we spend more time, if we spend more money, if we raise the bar, we will have people that will achieve that, just like the Olympics, and they'll go past that. That's what we want. We want the best and the brightest on the street. We have to pay more money, we have to educate them more, we have to train them more. That's my line, and the same for anybody that wants to come get some.

My second part of that is that you have to take a look at how much—this is like dieting. You can get the quick fix on television, and at the bottom of it, it says, "As long as you have a healthy workout regimen and diet, this will probably work, and you'll lose about three pounds a week." Or you can go for something like liposuction or cold this and that and the other, which may or may not work. What you have to do is take a look and say, "Do I want to diet, or do I want to get a healthy lifestyle? Do I want to increase my longevity, or do I want to get in better shape? What is it that you want?" And then go after it. And I'll tell you, there's no pill that you're going to put on your tongue other than arsenic that's going to give you immediate results. Arsenic will probably work, you'll probably lose a lot of weight almost immediately, I should say. But I'm telling you, Brian, stop thinking scale and start thinking intervention, because the intervention that we can do today can save lives tomorrow, and we can build incrementally to make it better.

Well, that goes into my saying of—well, I mean, such as mine, but—"Think inside the box."

Oh, I love that.

It's—this is where I—it's like when whenever we go into any area or work with any group, organization, I don't care who it is, they're already the experts at what they do. I don't—I'm not going to never come in and tell people, "Well, this is how you should do things." I always say, "You know, this is—and there's the good thing and the bad thing is, take a look around the room, that you know all the answers are in here." That's a good thing, because we don't have to go search for a minute. Sometimes it's a bad thing, because you take a look around and go, "[Expletive], this is all we got." It's like, "Yep, that's all we got. So let's go forward with it."

And that's important to look at because like you just said, "Let's not call it police reform." I kind of see where you're going with that and I get what you mean, and I always go back to, "Think inside the box." What do we have right now? What has worked before? What do we need to do that we can either continue doing, do better, change, or modify, and then get better results out of it? And that thinking inside the box is, you know, because that goes to thinking inside the community, thinking inside the city, thinking inside this, because otherwise you got what you got: the Department of Justice coming down saying, "Oh, I'm going to start pointing fingers, and we're going to start lopping heads off," meaning, "We're going to cut the heads off the snake, and we're going to change this and get rid of that." Here we go. You're going to lose a lot by doing that, and just because the federal agency comes in doesn't necessarily mean they have the right answers for what works locally on the ground. Because they could come into the example you did in Colorado, Greg, they can come in and say, "Hey, man, that's illegal! You're supposed to arrest that. Absolutely."

Do you know, we have to define what a win looks like, and we got to listen to Shelley and celebrate the small wins, because if we don't, what we're going to do is we're going to say, "The problem's too big. We're going to make a knee-jerk fix that's going to make us do the 'so there'," and we're going to walk away from it. It's going to be the same problem next year, next month, and then hours now.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, again, to loosely answer the question of where do we start, I think it really is those policies and procedures at law enforcement and your local District Attorney. When do we start? Today. And it doesn't have to be all in today, Brian. It can be a little at a time. It's always one thing at a time, right? One problem at a time, one step at a time. I go back to—

[Outro Music]

—you had read the book on, I think it was by—was it by Eric Haney, who documented the start of Delta Force and their first mission in Iran to rescue the hostages that went to [expletive]? And one of the Delta guys went on the ground there. When they called the mission, with scrubbed inbound helos (helicopters), "Hey, we don't have this, there's too many storms," all this, whatever happened. Then what happened is they were refueling on the ground out there, and then there was an explosion, they cut a fuel line, went off, all this, all the problems that happened, right? So the mission was scrubbed before those things actually went. But so one of the guys goes, "All right, well, this is scrubbed, this sucks." Got back, got on the C-130, sat down, and just took a nap. He's like, "All right, well, this mission's over. I'm going to sleep." It's the middle of the night, whatever, right? So he falls asleep, he wakes up, and the airplane is on fire. So he has no idea what's going on, no idea what happened outside, but the C-130 he's in is on fire. So he gets up, jumps up, runs over to the door, and immediately jumps out, goes into it like he's going to do a parachute fall and just bam, hits the ground 10 feet below or whatever. He gets up, goes, "[Expletive]!" Runs away from the plane as it's going on fire. And the guy was asking him, "Well, wait a minute, like, what happened?" Like, "Well, I thought that, you know, we were already in flight, we were out of there, we were in the middle of the air. And then, you know, the airplane was on fire, so like, you know, things have gone wrong. There was no one in there, so I got out." And he's like, "Were you wearing a parachute?" He's like, "No, I wasn't." He's like, "So you jumped out of the plane you thought was in flight without a parachute on. What were you thinking?" He's like, "Hey, man, one problem at a time."

I love that story because it's the ultimate, like, "Look, this is what's happening right now. Let's deal with that, and then we can go from there." But I think where to start is those policies and procedures, and you got to get those people involved to take a look at how we can deal with it. And I think at a local level, it can really be done, and it's hard to get specific about it because each one is a little bit different. Like I said, Atlanta is different than Dallas, which is different than Los Angeles, which is different than Tulsa, which is different than North Macedonia—shout out to them—Nice, France, and Greece, our friends in Japan, and our friends at the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police), and of course, down under.

But Brian, you're exactly right. The idea is that things will change, even left to their own devices, the cream will rise to the top. But the torrent, the turbidity, the turbulence that we're feeling in America right now should go to change, and it should start with the policies and procedures. And I'm telling you, if you want to instrument change in your small community, first things first is the prosecuting attorney's office. Go there. Give them the marching orders, "This is what we want, and this is what we don't want." I don't think they're getting enough criticism because they do internally in cities and then they go, "Okay, fine, we'll stop prosecuting these."

I mean, and then that leads to then the—again, the situation I talked about at the beginning—then the police officer's going, "Wait a minute, this guy's—I know these guys. These guys are brutal dudes in this neighborhood. We have to put them up. We have to lock them away. These are the same guys I'm locking up all the time that are doing all the crime in this neighborhood." And the prosecutors are deciding, "No, we're not going. This is now what we're going to do. We're not going to prosecute these." It's like, "Well, you're not taking into account what's happening on the street, right?"

So, and even if they are, Brian, they have to be the public information officer for that community. They have to come out and they have to tell the parents and the victims and the parents of the victims, they have to say, "This was my ruling. This is what I decided to do, and it's in the best interest of the community." And guess what? If it isn't, vote them out. They're voted in, vote them out.

Yeah, that's a good point to kind of end on there, unless you had any other—

No, I love your background. I love your background. It almost makes me want to order a coffee mug from The Human Behavior Podcast. That's beautiful. Did you build that entire sound studio yourself, or for those of you just listening—

Okay, I have a Zoom background up for Greg, and I'm in what appears to be a studio. So now I have this, and it actually looks like I have—there's a chair in the photo, and it looks like I'm almost sitting in the chair. It's really funny. So that's pretty cool.

All right, well, thanks everyone for tuning in. Please, those of you who've reached out with questions and everything, please keep them coming. TheHumanBehaviorPodcast@gmail.com. I do answer them. Sometimes it might take a little bit of time when I get slammed with stuff, but I will absolutely answer your questions. Thank you for all the feedback we've been getting. Don't forget to follow us on social media. We have the Patreon account that we're adding stuff to. We got all kinds of free content on there right now. You can find that link—all of those links actually—in the episode details below. And then also, if you could give us a rating and review, five stars, hopefully, that would be really appreciated. And if you enjoyed the show, please tell your friends about it. Don't forget that training changes behavior.