L.O.G. 130 Arriving On Scene with Gilbert Tucker

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. On the show, we discuss different topics through the lenses of what we call Human Behavior Pattern Recognition Analysis. If you'd like to find out more about what that is, please check the links in the episode details and go to our website to learn more. Please don't forget to follow us on social media—the links are also in the episode details—and hit the like and subscribe button to help support our work. Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you enjoy the show.

Well, good morning, Greg, as we get a "recording in progress" morning, which I still... that voice still haunts me a little bit every time I click 'alt-u-tude'. So, today, we actually are bringing on a guest, our friend, Gilbert. We can jump into what we're going to be talking about with him, but I kind of wanted to frame it a little bit and talk about some of these areas, because Gilbert's in an area outside of a major metropolitan city as a first responder in that area. Since it is that summer travel season, people are moving around the country, it's a perfect time to have him on to talk about some of his experiences for a number of different reasons, right? One, because we think, "Oh, you know, I'm outside a major city, it's a little bit safer out here," which isn't always true, right? There are other types of risks and stuff involved, and we often miss those things. So, I think it's a good time, especially of the year, to have him come on the show.

Well, you know that Shelly's parents are traveling cross-country from Detroit as we speak. Last night, they were in Illinois; tonight, they'll be in Kansas; tomorrow night, spending in Salida; and then two weeks in my Rogue Manor West. So, when I'm not drinking and trying to choke myself out... No, they're wonderful. They're actually the outlaws that are the in-laws. But the idea is that them, like many other Americans, are traveling, and they worry about the big city. They worry about, "Hey, Lisa, I'm stopping in Dallas," or "I'm stopping in Denver," or whatever. They don't think for a minute that in between those areas, that's where a lot of the time and the danger exists, is kind of fun. I mean, I'm not going to, of course... So, no, I've got it too. So, actually, when this episode comes out, I'll be shortly after that on the road with my other direction—in the other direction—to Chicago. So, that should be an interesting road trip. But either way, great vacation place: Somalia, Chicago, Detroit... you know, all the places we'd like to travel, Brian.

Well, on that note, I think we'll just go ahead and introduce Gilbert. Hey man, thanks for coming on the show and thanks for joining us today.

Absolutely, thanks for having me.

We're long-time listeners and fans of Gilbert and the way you think. So, for the people that don't know, why don't you give us a couple of minutes of background?

Well, I appreciate it. I'm a long-time fan. I go to work and say, "Yeah, I got another Greg-ism for you. Listen to this podcast. Hey Donnie, guess why you can't play airplanes? You're colorblind!" [Laughter] No, so I've been involved in the fire service for about nine years now. I started up in Gunnison, actually, and currently working in Northeast Colorado, about two hours away from Denver. I don't know, I met you, Greg, through Nico—probably through your son, Nico, for anyone who's not an avid listener and doesn't know about Nico. Probably six years after I met Nico, I finally got to meet you. I heard all the war stories and all your room with all the challenge coins and everything. I thought, "Man, this guy seems pretty scary. I don't know that I ever want to meet him." Turns out you're a big teddy bear. That's true.

Well, thanks, man. We appreciate you coming on. And you always... for those listening, I know there's a bunch of you out there who reach out to us and share stories, which we love and appreciate because it helps kind of inform the episode and know that we're on the right track in some areas or gives us ideas for other topics to talk about. So, you're definitely one of those people, which is why we wanted to have you on here, because you've got all kinds of different interesting stories, and you always ask great questions about, "How do I transfer that over into training? What does this work?" So, there's a bunch of stuff we can get into, but I'd love for you to start—and you can keep it as vague as you need to keep it, because I know there's kind of ongoing stuff with some of the stuff you're talking about—but you know, you had an interesting story that you came to Greg with and then immediately told me, and I was like, "Dude, this is incredible!" So, if you wouldn't mind, we'll start by you sharing that story, and then we can kind of jump into it.

Yeah, so a few years back, we got dispatched for a structure fire in one of the outlying towns. It was one of the towns that's actually in our fire district, but we also mutual aid with the entire county that we're located in. We're the only career department there, so we're called in a lot, but we always work with our... Let me start again. If there's a fire in the county, pretty much every department is dispatched to it, and we'll talk about that a little later looking at the notes about the challenges with being in a smaller department. But, so we get dispatched out for this fire. You know, it's a good 15 minutes away from town, going "emerging 75" (referring to a speed or emergency response protocol) where the fire engine tops out, at least where I work. We get on scene, the initial crews that got there went to do a primary search right away because our model—we end up with an ambulance on scene, which can drive much faster than the fire engine. So, they went and did a primary search real quick, found a victim, pulled him out, realized he had a gunshot wound, and kept him to the side, covered him up, let the command know so we could start that investigation right away so law enforcement could get involved. And as we got the fire under control, everything knocked down, we realized that he had—I don't know if it was all the guns he owns or not, or owned or not—but quite a few different guns around him. And so, my interesting way of thinking—I don't know, I'm pretty sure everyone came to the same conclusion—that you don't need all your guns if you're planning on fighting the bullet. Was he waiting for an ambush for us? What was going on? We all kind of assumed he was waiting to ambush us. I'm figuring, you know, we're 15 minutes away by the time we got dispatched, who knows how long the fire had been going before we were dispatched? By the time we got there, smoking, the thing was, he'd just been like, "Well, not going to make it," unfortunately, committing suicide.

Yeah, and so that's a crazy story. As you're telling it, I'm literally sitting here, "Oh my God, you're showing up to the scene and you find that!" You get that kind of sheer relief, like, "What the heck just happened?" or that incident, "Whoa, this! We were never expecting this!" as you're showing up to a call. You walk in and see just the guy with a gunshot wound, but guns everywhere. So, immediately, it's like, yeah, like you said, "Well, if I'm going to commit suicide, I don't need all of my guns, right? I just need one." And then, what could have happened here? What were all the spirals? So, that obviously intrigued us, and Greg and I had kind of a discussion about it. So, I'll let Greg kind of jump into that stuff, because that's not an unusual thing, right?

First of all, let's stage it. The reason that Gilbert is a little bit off his mark this morning is, Brian, we're wearing the same shirt! Have you even noticed that? How weird is that? So, that's got to freak anybody out. And we're all wearing a version of red, so I'm worried about that. That is... that's scary. I wore the same shirt as well, the one I wore. Oh God, this is terrifying! But listen, this happens across the nation. And what you have to think about... and by the way, the airplane is coming over right now from the government, the DHS (Department of Homeland Security), to warn me. Fire officials, paramedics, government officials, Atlas Energy—just about whatever you have that has a marked vehicle and a uniform—some people consider you a government official, a revenuer. And so, Brian, you remember when we were doing the training outside of, let's call it, Atlanta, Georgia, that there was the incident where the guy was getting evicted, so he started the fire to get the fire department at the scene, and then started shooting? That happened again outside of Dallas. So, it's not unusual. And what we're listening to is we're talking to a subject matter expert that's seen many fire scenes, that's seen many suicides over the years (referring to Gilbert's nine years experience). But this one was patently different. How was it different? It appeared as though it was likely that the person had staged the weapons in a manner that they were going to make their last stand and was overwhelmed for whatever reason and decided to take their own life. So, why would we do that? One, home—the castle—that's where we get the Castle Doctrine. Two, listen, "I'm going out, so that means absolutely everything around me is going with me." That's why I burned down my own house. It just happened in California a couple of weeks ago, Brian, with the, you know, the rail yard where the guy destroyed everything. Listen, "scorched earth, I'm not coming back." So, I don't worry about damaging these things around me. The idea, though, and I think what's most important here, is that Gilbert and his crew respond to dozens of fire calls in a week. Okay, you don't have that at the top of your list that this might be the last one because it's going to be an ambush. And I'll give you one: Mountain Star, a little place outside of Vail, Colorado. We had to go up there for a burglary that turned into an arson that became a suicide. And the person was an avid shooter, so he had a room dedicated to his shotgun shells, and he had every manner of 12-gauge shell in this room, and they were all going off when we were there. And I remember Tom Leake, my subject matter expert on the side, saying, "Oh, don't worry, a bullet that goes off in a fire doesn't have a direction and distance to kill a man." And it's pop-pop-popping, windows are busting out and everything, and I'm like, "Well, I'll see you in half an hour." Yeah, exactly, "You can stand there and you can prove that." But in that instant, there were hazardous materials that caused the danger at the scene. Gilbert, what you're telling us is that, you know, sometimes when you go to the scene, you're not expecting that it's going to turn into a show. And I would assume that that happens pretty often with you.

Yeah, yeah. And I kind of saved this to set you up a little bit of the backstory that I found out after the fire. The victim in the fire had been pretty upset. You talked about, "We weren't able to see this coming," that type of thing. So, after listening to you guys for so many podcasts, the victim had had a family member die, I don't know, a couple months before. I believe his mom had died, and a year before, another person had died. And we got back to the station and were like, "Man, he was real upset when his mom died. I didn't but never saw this coming." And I'm like, "Well, maybe that's when I reached out and talked with you guys." I was like, "Well, maybe we should do something about this, like maybe, you know, pay attention to, 'Wow, this guy's a little extra upset.' If we get called there for something else, maybe we should just be a little more aware that, you know, you might blame us."

And you're not just talking about grief; sometimes you're talking about vengeance. And when we talk about rage on certain podcasts, listen, this person lived out in the county, and we tell everybody else, "If you're going to live out in the county, specifically in a place like Gunnison, then listen, you reap the whirlwind. You better have an extract kit, an evac kit, and a fire plan—all that other stuff—because it's going to take a long time for the 'gov' (government) to get to you," right? Because we only want the government when we need them. Yeah, it's fun, right? Or the paychecks coming to us. And so, a person could look at the death of somebody else or the loss of a favorite car or building and say, "It's that damn fire department!" And you know, when you live in a small town, things like that happen. You know, I know everybody in town, so if I say something stupid on the air, I hear about it when I go to the City Market. Gilbert, I bet it's the same way up by you. You know that it's small enough that people know who you are.

Absolutely.

And you know that's got to be on your hit list. You know, we talked about back in the day about having a "pass down log," and I think a log, a clipboard that's got notes on it. Now, you folks all have your Twitter and whatnot, but the idea is that listen, we had a "nut book," a "96 book." You know what I'm saying? You don't want to call anybody a nut, I know that sounds bad, but back in the day that's what, you know, people were called—bums and nuts and those... Yeah, I'm not proud of it. But the "nut book" was, you know, "be advised if this guy calls about airplane strikes in North Romulus, he wears a colander on his head and he's a little bit off. He calls this and it's never, you know, it's unfounded, but that doesn't mean that the one time that you go to that call it's not going to be the real thing." But what I'm saying is that before you go somewhere, you have to know... Look, a Santa Claus in California a couple of years ago showed up at the Christmas party with the intent to kill rival gang members. And that's happened with Santa Claus showing up to kill family members after a divorce. And Gilbert, I don't think the people in your profession, fire professionals across the nation, and even if they work in a big city, I don't think they consider that as part of the job, that "I may show up and there may be a sniper. I may show up to render aid," and it's part of a protest, right, Brian? I mean...

You brought it up earlier, Greg, and you said, you know, "It's a symbol of some government official or whatever," right? You are now the object of my anger, rage, vengeance, whatever it is. And it doesn't matter what it is. Like you even said, something with an energy company—same thing, because it's official, right? That person, it's cognitively close enough that they go, "Oh, here they come!" And it's just yellow lights on a lift truck because it's a lineman who's working on the power, and the guy's like, "What? I'm not a cop, fireman, Fed (federal agent), anything!" But it's close enough for that individual. And again, like you said, there are so many examples of that kind of stuff happening, where the person shows up to, "Hey, I'm here to fix whatever," and then they get shot or killed or whatever. And I think that's a good point to bring up: anyone in those roles, even just a security guard who's unarmed, but you're wearing a uniform and it has a badge, you now are—to that guy running from who just robbed the place—you're a cop, dude! It doesn't matter whether or not you have the power or the authority to do anything, or even armed, you now are. And it's the same thing with firemen too. And like you said, it's that not thinking that kind of, in a tactical sense, because you don't have the training and experience to go, "What else could this be?" But you guys all recognized it when you showed up and went, "Whoa, this is a little odd here." And I know we felt that cortisol and went, "Holy crap, this could have gone really bad!" I've had that feeling before where we kind of lucked out on a situation. Oh yeah, so...

And Gilbert, listen, how many miles would you guess of major freeway do you guys have to service because of your location?

Um, Chief sees this, I don't get the answer right... Would you agree with me that it's many miles, both directions?

Let's see, probably 40 miles of interstate. Okay, different highways in and out of the... Now, the interstate heads from a major city center into Denver. So, I would assume that there are times that you have calls that turn into other things, like a DUI accident where it's a fatality and the drunk driver, who always makes it, decides to flee. Well, now you have a crime scene, or you have a mobile meth lab, or you have a person that's transporting drugs. I would assume that that happens to you rather often, more often than the people that live in outlying areas think. Is that a fair statement?

I'm sure it does. We don't see as much of it firsthand, because, you know, we get there and someone's injured in some sort of way or wants to be checked out because they don't want to get the DUI, and they think if they go to the hospital with us, they're not going to get a DUI. But, you know, okay, so they can drive to the hospital.

You also would have... you also would have the argument where a person's going to say, "Hey, listen, I wasn't the driver of the vehicle," for whatever reason, right? I mean, those are commonplace. I would guess more... and when I say commonplace, I mean, just as much as you have an injury accident, you're going to have one out of five or ten of those that's going to be a nefarious activity, or a stolen car. I just had one from Gunnison—a Gunnison stolen car. You don't get them often. Rolled over in the canyon, and the person that stole the car hasn't been charged yet because they're still in the hospital. So, you're going to encounter criminality sometimes. Sometimes a grow operation at a house fire. Sometimes people that were doing something illegal at a campsite, and it turns into a forest fire. Isn't that a fair assessment? And if the answer is yes on that, Gilbert, I would say that firefighters need the same level of that type of training as a law enforcement person would.

Absolutely. We do encounter, like I said, probably more than we realize because we're mission-focused on the victim, on that sort of aspect of it. But also, there are times when it's blatantly obvious. You know, you do a Narcan wake-up on someone and you say, "Hey, what have you taken today?" And they say, "I don't do drugs." And you're like, "Really? Because you weren't breathing, we gave you this, it only does one thing, and now you're breathing again, right?" So, yeah, it's something we run into, like I said, probably more than we realize we do.

And this is a good point about what we kind of brought up: the traveling through, you know, across country. You've got to manage your expectations on if something happens to me, Greg, when I'm driving across country. What kind of help and support am I going to get out if I'm outside of a major metropolitan area? It's going to take some time. And just like you said, you only have so many resources; you're sharing it with the entire county, and you just got a call about something else. That may be that... that's why sometimes, I mean, Greg, remember the time I came up to Gunnison and drove up there, and there was a truck on fire? I think the brakes had overheated, it caught fire on the side of the road as I was coming over one of the passes right there, not far from... I can't remember exactly where it was. Actually, I think it just crashed into Colorado. But whatever, I'm just sitting there like, "You know, the guy was out there, everyone was away, it was safe, but I'm just like, 'That's going to be what, 20, 30, 40 minutes before someone's even going to be able to be there!'" I mean, it's just like, we don't... people who grow up in a city or around that area kind of take that stuff for granted, and you're going through and it's just there's, it's going to take some time to get out there. And, you know, one of the reasons we brought this up is important because even what's been happening recently too in the news: there's a big one out on the East Coast, Greg, and I know about... I mean, this involved some sort of sovereign citizen type group. But same thing, they're on the side of the road filling up with gasoline, and it's one state trooper, I think, or police officer out by himself, and it's just this literally massively armed group of individuals. And just one police officer, or whatever the situation is, it's just like, it can spin rapidly out of control very quickly if you're not thinking your way through the situation. I mean, is that a good way to kind of sum it up for us?

Well, yeah, and think of it this way too: you had, they identified themselves as a faction of Moors with a specific title in that group. As a sovereign citizen group, (they have) been around for a long time. Right? And back in 2016, you'll remember a Moorish sovereign group ambushed six "coppers" (police officers) and killed three in Baton Rouge. Later, a year later in Orlando, they shot a copper and then ran over another one trying to get out of there. So, now, here's the idea: you see at the side of the road, like anybody would, any first responder, you see the vehicles pulled off to the side and people filling up with gas. You know, you're going to stop. Then the next thing you know, these are the exact type of people that don't like you, don't like the Fed (Federal government/agent), don't like the government, anything else. And again, Gilbert, you know if you've got a marked vehicle, I don't care if it's a cable truck and you're wearing some kind of uniform, people routinely associate that. And here's an additional question: how is it that our DHS, how is it that the Fed didn't know that a group that claims they have a thousand to five thousand members that get a million hits a year on their site, didn't know that these people were traveling to and from? And listen, we have a sovereign citizen group in Gunnison, Colorado, you know? So, you don't have to go far to find that kind of stuff. No, it's not here at Rogue Manor, you bastard! But the idea is, yeah, it's not that, it's not that far away. And, you know, Gilbert's stretch of freeway runs basically east and west—it's kind of a northeast to a southwest, but it's east to west across the state. And, you know, anytime that you've got big vast expanses of open, you have stuff that... I'll give you an example: the car that was stolen in Gunnison, the person had a firearm in the car. That's a very common thing for Gunnison. But now what you've got is a stolen car, Brian, which is a property crime bumping up to a potential felony. And if that person finds it when the coppers pull them over, maybe a homicide. That's how things happen, and people don't plan for that escalation of violence. And I would tell you, Gilbert, and you know this, we've got training that's coming up in Valparaiso in just a couple of weeks, and, you know, it's like pulling teeth to get fire professionals to come to that training. Now, you attended training, what would you say to somebody that was, you know, a fire person looking at this training and saying, "Maybe it's not for me," you know, "the human behavior training?" I would say...

Well, obviously, I'm a big believer, so I would say it's absolutely for you. The number of situations that we're walking into where, you know, you're dispatched for one thing, by the time you get there, it's a kinetic scene, it's changing. So, someone on the phone saying, "Yeah, my family member needs help up," and you're not going "emerging" (emergency lights/sirens) 'cause you're like, "Oh, it's a lift assist, not a big deal," right? It takes you an extra minute to get there or something. And by the time you get there, they've realized that, no, they don't need help up; they need CPR or something. And now they're mad at you because you weren't there sooner. It's that type of thing. You don't want to walk into that situation and then realize that you're in that situation. If you can start getting the information ahead of time, you know, see the person at the door screaming and realize they're not screaming in panic, they're screaming in anger. That's like right there.

Exactly, yeah. You had it. And we've had other discussions with folks before too, Greg, and it's that, exactly what you're talking about, is you're pulling up and going, you know, you're already going through your checklist in your head because that's what you're trying to do. You're going, "All right, what do I need? What do I need to put on the cart?" Everything in your head, all just for patient care, for your... what your job is, right? That's it. I mean, that's what you're thinking about, right? And then you just gave the perfect example of knowing when someone's out there screaming, whether they're screaming because they're angry at you or they're screaming because they're just panicking and freaking out because of the situation inside. Those are two completely different scenes you're walking into, so that should adjust how you respond to that, right? I mean, that's a great... I mean, that's what we're talking about right here, because, you know, that's how these situations occur. That's how you show up and miss everything and walk in, and it's a horrible, tragic day. It never starts with, "You know, I got a great night's sleep, I woke up, jogged, had a cup of coffee, had a nice healthy read the warning order." No! There, we talked about this exact situation on the way there. You know, no, this never happens. It's, "Dude, we've got... I've pulled a double shift, we've got 17 calls. Another person is screaming, crying. I ran out of some of the equipment I'm supposed to have because supply didn't have it because they have budget cuts." Like, that's when those things occur. It's when all of those contributing factors—because our attention is fighting for all of those other things—we don't ever see what's in front of us. And like you just said, taking that, you know, I always say SILLS (Stop, Look, Listen, and Spell). Stop, take a big breath in, look around, go, "What is really the situation?" Because this dispatch told us one thing, but we all know when we show up, that could be something completely different. And so, just having those, that one-second pause, like you said, to make that observation—that's the difference between life and death. That's it right there.

But I want... one second, I want to make sure that I caveat this before you go on, Gilbert. We're talking about fire and police and professionals and training. Look, there's somebody that... Yeah, and that person that delivers a pizza is going to get robbed because the person that called had nefarious intent, and they're going to show up and literally have a gun in their face, "Give us all your money! Oh, and by the way, give up the pizza!" If you don't consider it before it occurs, if you don't rehearse it before it happens, the seconds that it takes for you to actually realize the denial phase, that "Oh my God, I'm in a life-and-death situation," it's a game of nanoseconds. Gilbert, you don't have to be a fire professional to be in a situation that's going to cost your life. Domestic (issues) spill over into the workplace every day. So, being unprepared mentally that something is about to occur in a routine situation could cost your life.

Absolutely. And I was thinking about this the other day, actually, I would argue that the training looking for anomalies in your environment has more carryover as well under the fire side. Because you go into a structure fire and you're looking for anomalies. You just... your mindset in the back of your mind should be, "Should I stay or should I go?" Yeah, there's a warehouse fire, I believe, over on the West Coast a few years back, and there's a group of guys on the roof getting ready to ventilate, you know, check out the roof, see if it's involved yet. And if you watch the video of it, they just suddenly go bailing over to the side, and as they're bailing over the side, the roof collapses. And it's the "should I stay or should I go?" That morning, the captain, I think it was a senior guy, said, "Hey, just, you know, when you're up there on the roof, remember, trust your instincts." He didn't know what clued him off, from what I've heard from going to trainings. He didn't know what clued him off, he just said, "Something's not right. Run!" And it was that quick: they started moving and the roof started going, and they were able to get off. Wow.

Yeah, but think about that. Your brain, for example, if we just talk about amygdalic responses, sending out, you know, 50,000 messages to sample the environment to the one message that comes in, and it's doing that for a reason: to sense danger. But what we do is we sometimes think—and I use the term "routine" on purpose—we sometimes think that it's going to be a routine situation. No situation is routine. And when you show up, you guys aren't armed the same way the coppers are. Coppers have a phalanx of defense systems: they can call other coppers, they have less-than-lethal force, they've got high-powered weapons, you know, they can call in air assets. What do you got, Gilbert? You know what I'm saying? You've got a couple hours out of Denver. What's in your kit and the training that you and your group share?

You know, absolutely. We do have our, you know, bulletproof vest or our tactical helmet, that type of thing. But that's not... we don't wear those routinely. Those are, "Hey, PD (Police Department) needs you to stand by for this. There's an active shooter," that type thing. All right, well, we're going to put that on in case we end up in the wrong spot and they are headed our way. But for the most part, we have a couple guys that are tactical medics that go in with cops, but the rest of us, ideally, are not going into the... to the hot zone, right?

And you just... I mean, you brought up that perfect example. I already got goosebumps and talked about the firemen who recognized that. And, you know, that's the thing about what some of the stuff that we talk about is your unconscious ability to sense that danger is going to be far faster and greater than your conscious ability to do it. So, what we're talking about is attending to the right things in your environment, having that, you know, respond... like if I'm so overwhelmed by what's happening, I'll never miss that, right? So that was someone—and I'm just from you recall, telling the story, I'm inferring what likely occurred, right? I didn't read anything about this or talk to the person involved in that specific case. But the idea is, something in their experience triggered that unconscious awareness, that amygdalic response that Greg said, "No!" They can't even recall or know what it was, right? They didn't consciously observe that; something picked up. Okay, that comes through a lot of training and experience. So, the... and from not being overwhelmed by events, because if that individual was yelling at people to go do this and talking on the radio and carrying something all at the same time, they likely never would have picked up on that. So, a lot of times, just attending to our environment correctly, which is why I kind of brought up your perfect example of showing up on the scene of a call and you're already doing that mental checklist, right? You're going through everything that you need to do. And sometimes, because that's what our job is, we get so hyper-focused on that, we don't take the time to really take in the scene and what is that scene safety and all that stuff that we're supposed to do in these situations. So, I love that because it's a good thing to stress, you know, something triggered that response, unconscious awareness, and they went, "Holy crap, let's go!" And that's why Greg and I always like, "Hey, no matter what happens, if you learn all of our information or none of it, just trust your instinct in that situation when it's telling you," because so many people, because of our profession, because of our experience, we've trained to push past that. I mean, you're a fireman, so everything in your brain screams, "Get the hell away from that fire!" But you've had to go through training to go, "No, no, we go towards the fire," right? So, you're already primed, you're trained to push past your normal human reaction. So, now I have to kind of recalibrate that, right? And I have to get that baseline of what is a normal human reaction. Is that kind of... you see what I'm getting at, Greg? Like, it's kind of like a different way to look at it now.

But what you've got to do... look, every spring, every spring we get the same calls. Every spring, you read the newspaper and it's a police, a first responder, somebody like that, that drowns trying to save somebody that's drowning. And you look at it and you go, "Well, how can that happen?" What it is, is that we were taught to overcome the stress response and to the sound of battle. And so, by doing that and not giving ourselves the time and distance—and literally, we're talking about the gift of seconds—to look around and see what's actually happening, we suck, run in, and we die. Just a couple of days, you know, Brian and I were warning people about the Fourth (of July) and the fireworks, and what happened in California: the guy's bringing a ton of fireworks up in a "vic" (vehicle), and they call fire and the state police and everybody else, and 19 people are injured. Thank God nobody was killed. That was a vehicle-borne IED (Improvised Explosive Device), you know? So, what we have to do is, in our professions, we not only have to train spirals, we have to create explanatory storylines and look at likelihood for danger. If we don't... And Gilbert, Brian, and Gilbert and I had a discussion about restraint. You get a suspect that's out of control, he's flipping out, and the coppers don't know what to do with the person. What do they do? They put them down. Sometimes they kneel on the person depending on their training. They put different restraints on it, and the person dies—positional restraint hypoxia, asphyxia, those type of things. And Gilbert and I, Brian, we're talking about that sometimes if you've got a backboard, or sometimes if you've got, you know, the... they call the ambulance. They have a way of transporting somebody much more safely than the coppers do, because coppers are going to have to fight a guy to get them into the backseat, then they're going to have to hobble them or tighten something so they don't kick out the windows and create a situation. Then you've got to fight to get the person back out of the vehicle. So, all I'm saying is, if you can predict those things are likely to occur, you can come up with cost-effective ways to limit those, to mitigate those, to, you know, talk somebody down or even not working. So, yeah, you have to use a different way.

And then also just comes from perspective, right? Like a paramedic or fireman is going to show up and they're looking at a patient, where a cop is looking at a suspect, a criminal, like someone who just did something. I mean, so it's almost a head-butt. Doesn't know... which guy the paramedic and which guy that could break... Oh, 100%. It's not locker broken because, you know, it's not violent.

And that's why I brought that up, is because I... both sides of that coin. That means, you know, the paramedic or fireman is less likely to see the person as a threat because they see it as a patient, right? So, they're not going to expect those things. And then on the other side, the police are more likely to look at this person as a suspect instead of like they've now kind of crossed that line over into a patient. And then now this is what you... I mean, that's just... it's... I think it's a good way to kind of say why some of those things occur, of course. So, if I was going to warn you that, you know, on a pass-down log, that certain addresses have been partying all night and there might be a problem, I'm also going to tell the local fire. And that's why you've got to have a regional training, Brian. If I've got a violent, combative suspect, I do not want to hurt him anymore, because when he's throwing punches, using a PR-24 (police baton) to block is going to hurt him, and that's going to result in a lawsuit no matter how careful you were. I'm going to spray them and then I'm going to hose them down and shove them in the backseat. I call an ambulance. I charge the person for the ambulance. I don't get the vehicle destroyed. And then the crew that comes with the ambulance, the paramedics and the fire people, know about positional restraint hypoxia or asphyxia. They know how to prepare against, you know, a collapsed airway or something else. So, I'm not going to injure a person, Brian. And somebody right now is watching me is going to say, "Yeah, but that's pretty expensive, Gilbert." When I talked to you about that, the idea was sound as long as you had a backup in case it was a cardiac collapse or an airway, right? Yeah. I mean, so, and I don't care what the cost is, Brian, when it comes to something like that. I think if we sat around and figured out the cost, let's say it was five thousand dollars for that transport. What's an average payout on a lawsuit for a broken arm or abuse of the suspect, or, you know, the worse? Yeah, so, my thing is, I think it's part of the spiral of what we're talking about, Brian. Looking at these type of situations that might happen. And Gilbert, this is all on you. You're going to have to go back. There are people in your unit that are like people that we have to deal with in our unit that are saying, "I don't understand why we're talking about this. It'll never happen." Until you talk about it, and then a month later, you're in the trick bag, right? So, how do you fight that every day, Gilbert? How do you fight that people don't want to do what's best for them sometimes?

Really, it's just persistence and doing the right thing when it comes up. You know, you might have a paramedic that doesn't want it, like, "Hey, we don't need to take him in the ambulance." And you say, "Hey, you know what? I'll take this call. We'll throw him on the monitor. I'll take this call. If something goes wrong, you're in the front seat, we'll pull over and we'll handle this." It's not a... And I'm saying that hypothetically, I'm very lucky. I have a real solid crew that isn't too keen on passing stuff down to the basics that shouldn't go down those basics. But that's really what you have to do is be persistent with it, and, you know, try and explain that this is what's best in the situation, try and make them understand. And look at it, the way I look at it, is emergency services across the board—police officers included, some people won't believe me—but we're in the game of chances. We try to get chances, we take chances to give chances. Exactly. This person that we're arresting might be, or that we're taking in for the police because they're combative or need medical attention before they can be processed, we're trying to give them a chance to turn their life around, right? They're not always realizing it as a chance at the time too. Yeah, and most of the time, 99 out of 100 times, you're not going to have an effect, right? But not too long ago, we ran... we were doing a business inspection, and the guy was starting a drug rehabilitation group. And we got to talking to him, and he was someone that we had met years before. He caused quite a scene in town, and was like, "Man, I've been driving... been driving a truck since I was 18, and I hadn't been sober since I started driving a truck. And that night, you know, I realized I have a problem, and now I want to help other people." That's the 100. But that's, you know, that's the victory. We gave this guy a chance, and now he's hopefully going to give someone else a chance at what Dr. Rob Kelly was talking about. Me, yeah, I was standing up and trying like no one's listening to me. Well, that one guy helped him, another guy helped another guy.

No, that and that's it. That's a great point because we just... it just came out this morning, is our most recent... we call, you know, the... just titled the podcast, "You Never Know," because that's the way we look at things. And it's just kind of a mindset too, just like you said. It's good, both sides of the coin, meaning you never know that the guy you just bumped into and spilled the coffee on is like, "You know what? That's it!" And he's killing everyone in that place. But he also, like you just said, "You hold the door open and help someone out," or, "Let me buy you this real quick." And then that's the one thing that that person needed to keep. Like they were thinking, they were contemplating suicide that morning, and you just changed their life in a different direction. And you guys are on the road, I mean, especially as, you know, law enforcement responders, you're dealing with those people every single day. So, that's always a good point. And I use that for everything. Like you just said, you're showing up and you see someone screaming, "Are they angry or are they upset at the situation?" You don't know what else is going on inside that house until you walk in and you've got to figure it out. And that's... that can be potentially dangerous. And like you said, the odds are in your favor most of the time, everything is what it seems to be. But what we're talking about is those situations of when they're not what they're supposed to be, when something's off. And sometimes people, sometimes people recognize it, and then, you know, it's good, and, you know, they react in time. And some people don't, they walk right into those situations even though it's screaming at them. And we're always the ones to say, "Look, it's not on that person. It's just that's how humans are, that's how we all are." We get in that Mobius loop of, "This is my job, this is what I go do." We don't ever stop to take that second. So, I always, you know, those are really good examples too. And I know you had... I kind of wanted to get to as well as I think Greg, you said you had some questions about memory or something you wanted to talk about in terms of...

And I want to throw, I want to throw one back to Gilbert, Brian. I had to walk off there for a second. So, Shelly had, early in her career, she got her FOP (Fraternal Order of Police) Officer of the Year award for going into a fire. And Shelly's fire was like a clown car. It was a pregnant woman and each one of her kids, and her kids were like the ROY G BIV (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet) color scale—all different ages. Do you get what I'm trying to say? So, she had the pregnant woman and the baby and this and that. Before fire ever got there, Shelly ended up bringing the whole family out of the fully involved fire. Shelly lost all the skin on her face, she lost her eyebrows and a bunch of hair and shrink-wrapped because cop uniforms aren't built for anything but looks back in the day, do you get what I'm trying to say? So, she shrink-wrapped her police uniform to her, and I had to go to the hospital as well. And I was thinking about something you said that people don't often understand. You said that first responders and emergency personnel... Listen, firemen don't drive around all night long looking for a fire, and paramedics don't drive around looking for a cardiac arrest. So, the idea is that sometimes the coppers are going to be the first people breathing life into that until you subject matter experts arrive. You know how many times a cop's given birth in the backseat? You know, helping the birthing patient. And this again, Brian, and the reason I bring it up to Gilbert, this again is the reason that when we have a training like the one coming up in Valparaiso or anywhere, that the firemen should be there too. But we don't get that, we don't get the buy-in. They're going like, "Oh yeah, I get it, but, you know, I'm a copper, you know, I carry a gun, I do that," or "I'm a former whatever, and now I'm PI (Private Investigator)." Look, if you're going to give CPR or the Heimlich maneuver, or you're going to spill across in your day-to-day a traffic accident or a fire, you should have that level of training. Because if you don't, that's going to, you know, the God, Buddha, Vishnu, Allah like to put just what you can carry on your back. And so, they're going to wait till you're out camping and the next tent is going to say, "Hey, we have a cardiac arrest." They're not going to wait when you're on the rig and call 9-1-1. So, I know that you're prepared, Gilbert. How do we get everybody else in your neighborhood prepared for that emergency? And Brian, that just... that just hit me because I think of that, you know, I hate fire. And as a copper, I remember there was a fire at the Lafayette Trailer Park. Trailer fully engulfed, and the woman's outside on her hands and knees screaming, "My babies! My babies!" I went in, got all burned up, and her babies were dogs. And so, I got the "bit" (bitten) out of me dragging those dogs out because they didn't want to go, they didn't know what to do. Do you get what I'm trying to say? And I went outside and I wanted to "slap jack" (hit) the woman because, you know, she scared the hell out of me by saying her babies weren't (human). If you're not prepared, you're not going to respond. And human performance, I think, is as important as human behavior, right?

Yeah, and I would even go a step further. We... I've heard you guys talk about this before, but it's not just first responders that need this training, it's everyone. You know, being able to recognize walking into the store, walking into Walmart, walking in... just being able to do that. If people would listen to the podcast, pay attention, I think we... well, I say "we," I think you guys would be able to change a lot of lives, change a lot of outcomes that don't need to be the way they are.

But it wouldn't be... we would not be able to do what we do without our viewers and listeners, and people like you that write us these convoluted questions and ask us and put it, yeah, and share the stories and share your personal stories. We would not be able to do it without the Gilberts that we've met along the way. And I apologize for sidetracking that, Brian. But Gilbert asks another question, and Gilbert, your question was: "With the stress response, how do we debrief so we make sure that the emotional memory doesn't get skewed, that we're actually telling the real story?" Is that a fair assessment of your question?

Yeah, and that got brought on. We had a... well, it was a close call. Me and a couple other guys on my shift didn't realize it, but we were seconds away from being in a real bad situation. We were in a bad situation, we were seconds away from being in a real bad situation. Quonset hut, bunch of the hemp dust and all that. And the fire went from something that we're like, "Oh, we'll just use a fire extinguisher on this, we got this!" to Chief panicking, telling us to get out. And a little bit more in between there. But as we were coming out the door, the back large, you know, sliding door on the Quonset literally blew off. And luckily, it was on the other side because it was the same style door on the side we were on. And we had no idea. We didn't hear the explosion. We didn't hear the engineer blowing on the air horn when Chief initially said, "Get out." And from where we were sitting, everything looked pretty like the conditions hadn't changed in there. That's why we didn't get evacuated on the first, you know, "get out," because we're like, "Chief, what are you talking about? Let us, let us put the fire out!" And so afterwards, we're like, "Man, what happened?" Well, I know I got made contact with you, and, you know, I said, "Hey, Chief, sounds pretty serious. We need to get out." And then after that, it was, "Well, how did Kevin end up on the ground? Did I... excuse me, did I pull the hose as I was leaving and drag him down?" And even though he was the furthest one in, he was the police affected by it because he was lowest to the ground. Because when he got pulled over, he just started crawling and went, you know, trying to piece it together afterwards. We all had different memory of what happened. And so, how do we effectively review that, like nobody knows exactly how the story went out? I'll let Greg start off on this one.

Yeah, here's the thing, Brian. This is amazing because you and I were just talking about, yeah, okay, so you know how you've got emergency management in every city and state and federal agency across the nation now, and there's Level One through Level Five, and everybody's got to go through a different level of training? And the problem with that is that all of them presuppose certain things: rollover with a hazmat (hazardous materials) vehicle on the freeway, natural disaster, a national disaster with a terrorist strike at, you know, Twin Towers, something like that. And that's why this emergency management system is set up, is so people do the right thing. And then what do you do? You show up and you put on your vest, and you're the Public Information Officer, and you're the resource management and this and that. And those are great. But, you know what? They never talk about what you're talking about right now: "How do I get a..." Well, those are called human factors. And Brian and I only deal in the science of human factors. So, the first thing is, you've got what is called your working memory. And working memory used to be called short-term memory, but we've grown, we've evolved, and we understand. The idea is that's in the moment for making sense of the words coming out of people's mouth. That's why it's short-term. It's not only short in duration, but it's only been around about ten thousand years. So, you can assign in an emergency situation: the words coming out of a person's mouth have meaning to you right now so you can survive the encounter. Moments after the encounter, you won't be able to recall it. Even if it's seen in a film where you said, "Oh my God, that line was funny," you already start editing it when you're talking about it. And then when you go to the first commercial, you go, "Oh my God, that scene..." When people talk about it, they'll get it wrong. Why? Because why do we watch films over and over? For the best parts. It stimulates our cortisol or our dopamine and makes us happy or sad. So, short-term is fleeting. You cannot rely on it. Long-term is split into very different types of knowledge. You've got declarative memory. Declarative memory is the stuff you learn along the way: "Two and two is four," you get what I'm trying to say? "A car runs on gasoline, not on tree bark." And somebody's going to go, "Yeah, well, certain cars run on tree bark." Well, that's an anomaly I'd have to learn; it would become part of my declarative memory. Then you've got procedural memory: "I pee in the toilet, not in the closet, Marren, when you're drunk." I still know how to drive... you know, ride a bike many years after I've exceeded 300 pounds and shouldn't be able to drive a bike anymore, right? Then you've got the semantic memory, that's like a fish, "I think of water." I don't think of a fish in the air, even though there are flying fish. Why do we talk about those? Because what you're talking about, it's episodic memory that's made up of all of this. And if you don't have a recorder, if you don't have a listener, if you don't have a person to do a hot wash before your after-action review, you're going to lose that stuff. You just saw me looking around on my desk. I have one, two, three, four, five different ways of recording right around my desk within arm's reach right now. Why? Because things are fleeting. And the valuable thing you're thinking about, even during... Brian and I will do podcasts, and none of this is scripted, so we'll be jotting down notes because we know that that memory will be gone. And you go, "Damn, I had a great..." What was that thing? I'm telling you, hot wash is different than AAR (After Action Review). So, let's do that real quick. Hot wash is the things that you say right away, "Did you see that blow? Holy! That's going to be memorable. Let's make sure that we record that now so we don't forget it: the time, when did that occur, who was doing it?" And you're going to say, "Hey, listen, everybody pitches in when there's a fire." Yeah, I get it. But if you don't have a recorder—and what I mean by a recorder is the timestamp on the dispatch—"We had an explosion. Timestamp that form. We'll be back in a moment." You get what I'm trying to say? If you don't have everybody working towards that, then what happens is during the hot wash portion, your emotional memory comes through, and you remember things from... you don't give a damn, no offense, but you don't give a damn about the fireman standing next to you, and that guy was scarred for life by the door blowing off the car or something like that. And you go, "Did you see how I had to react to Tom getting almost killed?" What I'm trying to say, we write the script for us because we're the most important person in our universe. So, you have to have a clear-minded person that's trained to record and put those things together as a copper for subsequent prosecution, but as a fireman because you need to understand the sequence. And you don't have to always understand the exact time. It's like history, I don't give a damn about the year in history, but I can tell you the Magna Carta happened before the Civil War. Do you know what I'm trying to say? So, you guys have to be a little bit closer to that. And I would say that the key to it is, I take a hundred photographs—well, more than that—every day to keep an idea. And when I can't take a written record of it, I take a photograph, so it's going to spur my memory when I come back, and I can call Brian and go, "Oh my God, where did you see what I saw at Walmart?" So, Brian, I know you've got stuff to add to that.

No, that... and that's why Greg said recording like that could mean a lot of things. Like, if you can just even that... that's why the phone stuff is that you use the technology for what it's meant to use for. Like Greg said, take photos of everything, take a quick voice record, "Hey, I saw this, I did this." Like he's talking about with dispatch, take notes if you can, like as you're pulling up, whatever, whatever it is. You know, you can just write that down in your own experience because what's going to... what really happened and what you think happened are going to be two different things. We had, you know, not long ago, we just walked through a whole scene with a sheriff's deputy out in California saying, everything's like, "Look, this was the body cam footage," and he sent us that, "My memory of the event is very different of what it shows on this camera." Like, yeah, that's how memory... it's a perfect example to explain to people: what you feel and think to be real is what you think happened, but it's going to be slightly different. So, you focus on the major... what I always say, "What were the major muscle groups? What were the big things that occurred that you can recall? What did you hear? What did you smell? What did you see?" And then, like Greg said, some sort of a timeline, right? "What was that before or after this? Oh wait, I know it was after that explosion because this occurred." And once you start putting it together in big muscle groups like that, it's easier. And then you can go to each other and say, "Well, here's what I've got. What happened with you?" "Oh, that's when I said to you, 'Well, you know what? That's right. That happened after the explosion because I recall this.'" And then the person goes, "Oh, you're right!" Because your memory wants a complete picture. You don't get that at the time. You don't get that like when you're observing things, you miss stuff. It's just that that's how it happens. But your brain doesn't like that, and so it'll just jam whatever in there and go, "Yeah, it was a..." Suddenly, a light gray shirt becomes, "No, he was wearing an all black shirt!" But then you're like, "Well, how those are so different?" Because that light gray was close enough to like an off-white that someone else called it white. Now one person's reporting he was wearing a white shirt, one person's wearing a black shirt. Yeah, that's human perception bias, and there are limitations to it as well. So, we can do all those things. You have to do the best with, like I said, major muscle groups, writing it down, recording it. Like I like that word, like Greg said, "recording," because that could mean anything: a photo, a radio call, a napkin. And that's the best thing about the radio stuff, because if it's, it's getting recorded, right? So, all you've got to do is just say it over the radio, and there's a copy of it at this time, the time that it says, you know, "Brian, we did that all the time." You're running and gunning, you don't have time for anything. So, you're trying to tell them, "Timestamp this because, you know, blue car leaving to the left might not be involved." You know, and you're doing it in the moment.

And Gilbert, that's very close to what you're going to be doing. And remember, there are pressure prejudicial signals that are coming in. Dispatch's message to you is prejudicial because they're going to say, "Hey, we've got a structure fire here," or some mention of arson, or a suspicious situation that immediately gets you thinking in a specific way. Then you've got incongruent signals. We had a fire here in town, and it started because people were smoking some "kind bud" (marijuana), and then the garage started on fire, which started the house on fire. They had every reason to lie about the origin of the fire. So, you show up on the scene, if they're telling you something that's incongruent based on the evidence for subsequent prosecution or insurance purposes, or just the investigation to make sure it wasn't intentional, you have to have a record. And if you don't have that "rope" (Record Of Proceedings), that recording of proceedings that's going on, then you're going to be left behind. So, the one thing I want to make sure that you get to, Gilbert, is I'm talking hot washes. You guys taking a knee right around the vehicle when it's safe and going, "Okay, what did everybody see? Good, good, good, good." Then the detailed after-action reviews: everybody has to compile their notes and bring what they know. Now listen, if you're bringing hearsay evidence, "Well, I remember dispatch saying this, and when I showed up at the scene, I found a can or something like that." That's okay. But when you say, "Yeah, when I remember Tommy saying this, and then Billy said it, and that confirmed..." No, that's just a bunch of people sharing the same innuendo, right? And then it becomes fact. It doesn't become part of the "rope" (Record Of Proceedings) unless you can verify it: "Who said that? Where was that person standing? When did that occur?" That's what a fire investigator is going to need to know after the incident, right? And especially if it's going to cause property damage, is going to go to insurance companies, and injury or death may require a prosecution for any number of criminal activities. So, I hope that is what you were thinking.

Yeah, no, that's what I was trying to get at. Was again, like when we... when I emailed you guys about the, "Hey, how do we prepare for this?" "Oh, keep a list of potential houses, you know, that people might be mad at you or might be not quite there." Yeah, that's really what I was looking for, is just some way that we can specifically, and other other departments, can look at it and put together something that's happened a year ago.

I would say, and I want to throw something too, Gilbert. I'm going to ask you to do something that's spontaneous, and I'm sorry to put you on the spot. But one of the things that you said is that you had an epiphany moment because you were on a type of a call—I'll let you explain it—and you were thinking, "Man, you know, I should be doing training. I should be doing this and that." And it dawned on you that what you were doing is exactly the preventative stuff that we talk about. Do you remember that comment?

Yeah, we were doing a business inspection, and not the fire service's favorite job to do from everyone I've met. You know, it's not the action, the fire, not what you signed up for, but it's one of the responsibilities. And I had the epiphany, I was like, "Man, this is as close to 'Left of Bang' (a military term meaning to identify and address threats before they escalate) for a structure fire as we can get realistically." Going in, saying, "Hey, that extension cord, you know, you can't use that to run that appliance all the time, especially because that extension cord's about, I don't know, gauges on wires, but that's a really small gauge wire and that's a really large appliance, and you're going to burn that extension cord up, cause a fire, blah, blah, blah." We can't do that in people's personal homes. That's their kingdom, their place. If they ask us to come down, we can say, "Well, we can give you recommendations," that type of thing. But we can't just say, "Hey, we're going to come knock on your door and check your house out, make sure your wiring's up to spec." So, for a structure fire, between that and, you know, public education, "Hey, don't use your extension cords permanently," that type of thing, "Kids, don't play with lighters." That's as close as we can get to truly being Left of Bang on a structure fire or on a fire of any type.

And it's so simple, you know. Listen, there's somebody out there right now that's using a hibachi or a coal grill on the deck of their apartment or their house or in their garage because it's raining, and they never once thought about confined space entry or the secondary ignition potential or all those other things. And when we talk about it right now, right now somebody's turning down the radio because we're not talking about sex or, you know, some other stupid thing. But those truly, Gilbert, what you struck upon during that epiphany is the answer. The fire alarm, that smoke sensor in your house, is more important than many other things, you know, more important than the phone to call 9-1-1, because it may give you the gift of time and distance to get out of there before something happened. A terrorist can't attack you without access. So, simply closing a gate or locking a door, or not putting your keys in your Geo Tracker and letting somebody steal it from your driveway, that's Predictive Analysis 101. And it took you some training, but you came upon it on your own during that moment. And I think, to me, Brian, that was telling that Gilbert graduated.

Yeah, yeah. No, and I don't know about that. He gets the coffee mug. Those are simple things that we talk about with a lot, and then especially with folks like you. You know, one of my biggest things I always, always say is, you know, people like, "Well, what am I supposed to look for? What is it? This? I always deal with the same person. How do I know this guy is going to be the same thing he's always been, or this is the guy that pops off and does something?" And I always look for that, you know, either escalating behavior and then some sort of trigger event, right? There are some people that are just a pain that, like, even in a rural area, you will deal with some of the same people over and over again, right? And they're just... that's who they are. They're always getting calls for whatever reason, and they're just, they're soaking up the county resources, right? And that's... they're just a drain, and we have to deal with it, right? And, you know, it's like, "How do I determine if it's just that person who's got all those issues, and they always are, or this is now the time that they're going to fight it out or shoot it out or something?" And I always look for, you know, that escalating behavior. You know, what else has changed in their life? Are they continuing to do the same thing over and over again, which is normal, that's what humans do? Or is it starting to get worse? It started with, "You know what? This guy would just shout a lot," but now he's actually, "These are physical assaults, not just verbal assaults." And then, "You know what? He started throwing this this time. He never did that before." Those type of changes, you know, if I can see that, I can literally almost plot it on a graph as it's slowly increasing. Absolutely, that means it's going somewhere, it's absolutely going somewhere. Then, or any of those people coupled with some trigger event like you talked about, the guy was like, "Well, you know what? I actually found out his mom had died, and then someone else you'd care about died." Those are huge, huge, huge life-changing events, especially if you're in some sort of, you know, fragile emotional state, right? And you're already having a hard time. And then one of those things happens, that's the time that you now spend that extra time, you now take that extra step. You go, "You know what I mean?" Those are the types. And I know that's a little bit simpler to explain it than to see sometimes. But that's why Greg and I always do the yellow pad, "What were the last three interactions you had with that individual? What were some of the things you saw? Well, they did this, they said this, they said this." And then you went, "You know what? Now instead of just talking about their... the aliens are occupying the land, they're actually making threats towards me now." That's different, that's very, very different. So, those small, subtle changes over time, hard to notice, but they're out there. And then you've got to, of course, then what you're going like, "Well, yeah, I saw this, but then the other two times someone else was dealing with that patient." Yeah, that's when those little talks around the firehouse and after work about, "Hey, you remember this? Remember that guy?" That's when those little communication meetings of, "What else have we seen?" That's where the magic happens. That's when you share that, you find that out that someone on some different shift or some different area saw something that linked the two together. And now that's... that's the missing piece of evidence in the counter case, Greg.

Exactly. And I'll give you this, Gilbert. One of the cop things, a rule of life for all cops everywhere, anywhere in the world: the minute you pick up your microphone and go, "Dispatch, where's my wrecker?" (to tow the vehicle in front of you), they're going to pull up and you're going to have to say, "Disregard." You're going to sound like an idiot because God has a wonderful sense of humor. Buddha, Vishnu, Allah... "La-la-land." Well, it's the same thing when you're responding to an alarm. You get a lot of fire alarms that are false alarms. Coppers get a lot of burglary alarms that are false alarms. The minute that you take for granted that it's not going to be what you think it is, you're in the trick bag. Walk around hyper-vigilant. You can't walk around paranoid, but I tell you one thing, the best cop I ever learned from on the street was Dangerous Dan Demiser. And I was in the south end driving around, and I'm going up and down the side streets looking at backyards, seeing people on the porches. And I drive by and I see him in full uniform having an iced tea on a porch in the south end. Now, his car's backed all the way up in the driveway. And I go, "You lazy bastard!" So I get out and walk. And I learned, "Oh my God, this guy's been here for 30 years. He lives across there. He works at General Motors. That's the neighbor." What he was doing is he was doing a patrol. He was getting out of the vehicle. I highly suggest you doing that. The coppers that just had that rail yard shooting had been in that building months before doing a rehearsal completely unrelated to it. Gilbert, when you're doing those business checks, when you're pulling over to the place that's got a lot of alarms, when you're going in and saying, "Hey buddy, your place is locked during the night, can we get in just so we can look around in case we have a response?" All of those things that you do, Left of Bang, are what's keeping you safe and keeping your community smarter. And those are outreach too. That's when the community goes, "Wow, that's a Gilbert from the fire department. I like to cuddle that guy's jib." That's the kind of stuff that I think our listeners need to know and should start doing more of.

Absolutely. And, you know, with that, for the most part, we have a great community that, you know, they might not be happy. They might, "Well, the last, you know, it's been that way for 20 years." "Well, sorry, bud, we must have, you know, the other shift must have overlooked it or we overlooked it, or I just learned that the code book is about five books." That are, "There we go." And about that being a piece. And, you know, nobody knows every single page of it. So, you know, "Hey, we're just something I learned this year." But for the most part, they're, you know, compliant and grateful for it. But every once in a while, you get that, like, it's like, "Yeah, okay, but this is still my business. You probably shouldn't be here." "Okay, okay, remember that?" "Yeah, remember that when you're dialing..."

Yeah, exactly. We can't be that way, but don't you want to sometimes?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, the guy...

And Gilbert, what I love about you, you're a wonderful person, a great parent, presumably a good husband. But the other thing is that you're always talking about the peaceful resolution to things. And persistence is one of the ways. Gandhi, you know what I'm saying? "Be the change." And I like that too. And sooner or later, you're going to win over those people on your shift or they're going to throw you out with tomorrow's garbage. So, one of the... one way or the other. Yeah.

Well, I appreciate that. We appreciate you coming on here, man, and sharing the stories. It was good. You know, I do... you brought in some great points. And I know if you're thinking it and wondering it and having these experiences, obviously we have other listeners that are too. So, they're going to appreciate that too. And I just, it's a good reminder for folks who aren't in that area like that. Just because you're out in like a rural area, and it's beautiful and it's gorgeous, and your trip... like, they have a whole list of other issues, and they have a wider area to cover. So, it's just kind of one of those reminders about how it can be different. But sometimes you get a false sense of security in some areas. I don't... that's what I always tell people anyway. But, yeah, we appreciate you coming on, man.

And I appreciate you guys having me. And hopefully, you know, someone can take something away from this. You know, that's exactly why we do it. Yeah, if one it's free, you know. So, if you hear something that you like or you don't like, maybe it'll be the catalyst for change, and hopefully that change will be beneficial for you and the community.

Yeah. Don't forget that training changes behavior.