L.O.G. 137 Whose Liable

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.

Alright, good morning, Greg.

Good morning, Brian Marren.

So today, we are going to be talking about a conversation about liability and who's at fault, who's responsible in a number of different cases. But this conversation kind of started from a story you shared with me about an Oregon State Police trooper, who got into a shootout with a suspect, was shot like 12 times, has some permanent disabilities, all kinds of other stuff. Horrible situation, right? He was in a pursuit with him, the guy ended up getting out, shooting out with him; he shot him back.

But what he ended up doing afterwards is he filed a $30 million lawsuit against his own police agency, basically saying that the dispatchers failed to alert him that this suspect was armed, suicidal, and had just shot his wife. And so he was saying basically they are liable for not... what he said—I just want to get it clear—what he said was he lacked critical information when he made the tactical decision to chase the suspect. And he said he would not have otherwise made that decision and was therefore exposed and subjected to unanticipated lethal attack and suffered critical, life-threatening, permanently disabling injuries. Excuse me.

Basically, he's saying they withheld information which caused him to make a decision that he otherwise would not have made had they given the information. That suit eventually got thrown out because, I can't remember what they said, but they concluded that they didn't intentionally withhold information from him, right?

So that's kind of just the case real quick. We're going to talk about a whole bunch of other ones and who's liable and where it comes from. But this is what spurred the conversation because it's an interesting one. And it's not the first time that police officers have sued their own agencies. That happens all the time for a number of different issues: "I was passed over for promotion because this," or "someone ruined my career because they said this." That happens a lot actually, law enforcement officers suing their own agency because, you know, we're a litigious society.

But I'm not trying to disregard any merits from any of these cases. It's actually the only way really things change, especially with courts, law enforcement, the judicial system. It's from lawsuits, that's how our legal system is set up. So it's not retribution, we're not doing the lynch mob and, "I'm going to kill you because you did this." It's through lawsuits. And that then informs and changes policy over time.

And so there's, especially when it comes to liability, because you have personal liability, but you're working for the city or metropolitan government, state, whatever it is, whatever government you're working for, you're working for the state. So there's certain things that they are liable for as a whole, meaning the state as a whole that we pay our taxes to. And you have some liability, but only you, then you have something called qualified immunity, where you're immune from some different liability if you are consistent with what you were trained to do, meaning you don't step outside of what you were trained to do.

And these are all things that are in flux, we'll say that, Greg, right? There are standards within different case law, but all of these things are constantly in flux based on new and incoming cases, based on new laws, based on new training policies, all that stuff. So it's constantly changing, constantly changing, as it should. It's adapting to new issues, new threats, new societal concerns, all that stuff. Just kind of big picture legal stuff, is there anything you want to kind of add up to the beginning?

I just want to talk about what you just said in the context of this case, only to open the door to other cases I think we'll discuss today. And I think that you've got to understand that "police investigation was done improperly" is the number one thing that people quote all the time, whether it's the case, whether it's a property room, whether it's a civilian, whether it's a homicide, it doesn't matter.

But let's get in. As a matter of fact, I remember that Bruno Richard Hauptmann, the guy that stole and murdered the Lindbergh baby back in the '30s, I remember that case like it was yesterday, Brian. And the same thing was, "Oh, it was shoddy police work!" Dude, the wood from the ladder in your attic came from a very specific source, and the layout was... I mean, it was overwhelming. So this is an overwhelming case, and this is the kind of case I really like.

The reason I like Nick Cederberg, he's the State Trooper, the reason I like this is he's a together guy. He was a good copper. He's got a girlfriend, fiancé, kind of thing. She was also an Oregon State Trooper, had nothing to do with this case, of course. James Tilka, going through some really bad stuff, had a bad history. He's the decedent, the shooter.

But then, Brian, this is the type of case that I thought this would be great for resilience. Why? Because Tilka, Christmas Eve, goes and buys a gun, buys extra magazines, buys more ammo. You hear what I'm trying to say? You have domestic trouble. Shows up unannounced to drop off his 11-month-old at the parents' house, you know what I'm saying? Okay, everything is pointing to this is going to have a bad ending.

So, he ends up shooting his wife dead in the driveway, flees. The trooper goes after him. Now, everything that happens after that is on record. Go do your homework, take a look at the case. But the suspect driving down a dead-end street, doing the flip, accelerating... Listen, Brian, Stevie Wonder called, okay? You're in a dangerous profession, right? And remember, you choose the profession. But also simple things like this that coppers know and I think you know as well, very, very intimately: this is Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. So, why is the trooper working? There's only two reasons the trooper's working on that. He's brand new and he got stiffed by the other people pulling shift in his car, or you get double time and a half. You get what I'm trying to say, and you want to be out there working.

The other thing is, to quote the famous Tommy Nelson, God bless you, Tommy, wherever you are, "If you're scared, just don't go." And I'm not bagging on Nick Cederberg because I wanted him to be the center of a thing about resilience, Brian, because he got shot 12 times and he lived. You see what I'm trying to say? He pulled through. It's horrible. But what I'm trying to say here is, Brian, basics of the case are that everybody but me did something wrong. Do you get what I'm trying to say? Dispatchers didn't tell me the full story. Tilka is the real shooter here, let's remember that. Hospital didn't do the right...

Yeah, he said like, there's a few other things he'd said in the hospital. This guy was admitted, or he shouldn't have been admitted on some type of psychiatric hold weeks prior to that, that the doctor didn't do it. So now they're liable for this. So it's just another thing.

No, no, no, and the lawsuit is ongoing. So that one is out of the $30 million lawsuit. The one against the hospital's been dismissed. The one against dispatch has been dismissed. You get what I'm trying to say? And now there's just pieces laying on the table. Pieces of a broken life. Pieces of Nick Cederberg's broken life. You get what I'm trying to say? That's my perspective on this one.

Shout out to all law enforcement first responders, anybody that's out there doing dangerous work: oil rig workers, airplane pilots, right? Shout out to all of you. And the thing is that every once in a while, one of you gets hurt and your life is left in shambles. And on this one, the proximate cause of all these injuries is James Tilka, nobody else. Do you hear what I'm trying to say? And so, Brian, I think the further we get away from that, the more we allow—and I don't want to say frivolous, because you've said it succinctly—lawsuits are how we get things done.

Yeah.

Lawsuits are how we have to change this policy. But this one, I think going after everybody, I think it's Occam's Razor, Brian. The simplest solution is probably the solution that we need to go for here. And James Tilka is responsible, not everybody else that was vicariously working on Christmas in 2016. That made sense?

Yeah, and this goes into, I get, I get where you're coming from and I see your point on this, because this goes into the greater discussion what we're talking about of who's liable, right, for something like this? Because now, if you're found to... let's go back, because Canton v. Harris, okay? This was established in the '80s. And it was a woman who was detained by the Canton police. They didn't give her any type of medical treatment. They said there was something going on with her. They basically then she got released. Her family then had to get her medical treatment, found out she needed all this therapy, is emotionally disturbed. I didn't get too much into details about this.

But basically, what happened was they then sued. It went all the way up to the Supreme Court. And one of the things is that what they found is there are... this is the Supreme Court rule that this kind of what became known as sort of the "failure to train theory," right? And said, "The inadequacy of police training may serve as the basis for liability only where the failure to train amounts to deliberate indifference to the rights of the person whom the police come in contact with." So now they, in this case, they said, "Wait a minute, police agencies do need to be liable, right? If your training, your lack of training..." but they clarified it and said, "amounts to deliberate indifference the rights to the persons." And then they clearly articulated it.

And I just want to kind of read some of the footnotes from that case because it's important and it talks about what you can and can't sue against and how litigation works. But what they said, I'll read from it, it said, "For example, city policymakers know to a moral certainty that their police officers will be required to arrest fleeing felons. The city has armed officers with firearms in part to allow them to accomplish this task. Thus, the need to train officers in the constitutional limitations on the use of deadly force, see Tennessee v. Garner, can be said to be so obvious that the failure to do so could properly be characterized as deliberate indifference."

So they referenced Tennessee v. Garner, which we've talked about before, which talks about fleeing felons, to show deliberate indifference. And then they said basically that in general, the record must contain sufficient evidence to establish a violation of federally protected right, inadequate training of employees, and causation between inadequate training and the plaintiff's injury.

Now, this had to do with basically citizens suing a police agency, but that starts the... that holds them a little bit liable. There's different types of liability, there's vicarious liability, there's this what the Supreme Court says, there must be willful sort of indifference to someone's rights. So the idea that was from the perspective of the plaintiff who was suing the police department—they were a citizen, they weren't an employee. But it falls in line with, would that be the next step, police officers suing a police agency? But that does happen all the time.

And in terms of this case, where what this guy is basically saying, he was saying withholding of information. But our discussion then said the officer in Oregon, you know, our discussion led into the failure to train. And so there is precisely legal precedent to where they can be held liable if it's considered a failure to train appropriately, which is what we typically find in all these different cases, right?

When police officers get killed, you know, you look at the big one was that changed training a lot was the bank shootout in Los Angeles back in the '90s, right? Where all of a sudden police officers didn't have the right firepower or equipment to deal with this type of threat. And the whole nation went, "Oh my God, we're not training them to a standard for this threat that we now have." So they assumed responsibility by changing the training, adding more in, getting different weapons.

So it opens up a whole panoply of different things that occur. But yeah, my thing was, well, if specifically to the case we're talking about, was he trained to handle that type of a threat? Was he trained for that job? Because you brought up the point which most people are going to make is, "You chose that profession." I mean, I've been in those shoes before, right? Where I chose that path and then I got there and then all of a sudden things went catastrophically wrong and I went, "Oh, I'm in over my head, this is... be careful what you wish for because you just might get it." But I had to fight our way out of a really bad situation. That was what the Marine Corps deployed, you know what I mean? What we were facing exceeded what we were trained not necessarily to the standard we're trained to, but what and how we trained for was very different from what we got on the ground.

Now, obviously, I didn't want to sue the Marine Corps, even though you can't. But the idea is the same as who's liable, who's responsible for that? And then specifically with police work, because that does fall in the agency, which falls in the city, which falls on our standards, which falls on society as a whole because that falls into funding. Once you start down this path, you know, you can include a lot of people who might be in some way vicariously liable or responsible for that. Does that kind of make sense? I just want to start with a little bit of the case history with the Supreme Court, what they said, and then kind of apply that to the larger discussion as a whole about who's liable, Greg. I mean, does this officer have a case there saying, "I wasn't trained to handle this situation?"

Yeah, so let's go back. Let's... and everything that you said is interesting. I'm a little all over the place this morning, sorry.

Well, let me give you...

So, right now, last week, there are two officers that are in a "trick bag." Look it up, folks. Again, do your research. Because during a transport, a person that they had in the back for a liquor hold, who is too drunk to take care of themselves, and all they were going to do is take them to the detox, died in their custody. Okay? So they were the ones that picked them up and put them in a van and drove them. Now, their defense, and the defense of the prosecutor's charging them with a manslaughter charge, which is really way up there, not negligence, you know what I'm saying? And so the answer is that, "Hey, listen, we weren't trained on this." And then the prosecutor comes back and uses your argument and says, "You knew or should have known better. You've been driving this van for a while. People drive vans, don't give me any crap." Okay?

So this is the balance. So let's go to transport. Well, you just did Canton v. Harris, do you get what I'm trying to say? Okay, which is, in its biggest overarching, is based on not being able to take a look at a person and determine there's something else going on, they're not just not wanting to go, Brian, right? There's a medical emergency. And I would say that you go a little bit further forward, and I could give you a litany of traffic stop cases where the guy runs in, tries to get something at 7-Eleven, comes out, what it is, is he's having a diabetic seizure. And he's trying to get the orange juice, right?

But that case, in its case in chief, has been acted out on city streets for a hundred years. As long as there's been cops in motor vehicles, there's been that kind of case. And the Supreme Court only reaches down and cherry-picks one that's very strong. Yeah, absolutely. I need to make sure that there's a compelling case here so everybody gets my point.

Now, I want to compare that to JIEDDO (Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Organization). It's undergone a number of names, but back when JFCOM (Joint Forces Command) was stolen, my biggest beef—and I'm nobody, I'm nothing, I'm just a person—was that when I would go into a classroom, we couldn't get a proximity. But there were 19 different AT4 (anti-tank weapon) fully functional. "Take it apart and take a look at it." Then I'd go into the next classroom, and there weren't enough chairs for the Marines, so they had to sit on MRE (Meal, Ready-to-Eat) cartons. And we were in the shower room. I won't tell you which Marine Division treated us to that wonderful thing. So people were coming out from taking a dump and taking a shower, and we were all huddled around this dry-erase board trying to do the class. Yet, in the other room that was the IED room, and we couldn't go in there. It was one of every type of Italian landmine, and you could pick it up and take it apart and do it.

Dude, this is my argument: if you were already seeing those components, you were too close. And likely the next thing was all the air was sucked out of the room. So the point is, training is the argument. Training is what did the agency hold as being important. But then there's a clever balance, it's a seesaw, and this is where I want to attack you on this. Okay?

So I'm on a high-speed pursuit. The vehicle is similar to one where there was a homicide at a domestic scene on Christmas. What do you know about Christmas, Brian? Oh, elevated tensions all the way around, right? Absolutely. So now that part of it, I think goes against Nick. And thank you, Nick, for your service. I'm sorry you were shot. This is a horrible situation. But all of the things there elevate this to something different. So my question to you, Brian, is the other side of it is what would Nick have been negligent if he said, "Screw it, I'm the only one on the road and my backup is too far away," because that's what I would have done? You know me. I would have called back, I would have got my bynos (binoculars), I wouldn't have gone down a goddamn dead-end road, and I would have called it in until they woke somebody up and I had a cover car. And I had to do those kind of things before, Brian. You see what I'm saying? I mean, he should have exercised his right to vacate himself from that situation, at least temporarily.

But that goes right back to the training. Is he sufficiently trained in that situation to call that in, right? Because the other side of it, like you said, is if he had done that and said, "You know what, I'm going to hold off. This guy's obviously killed a couple people." We're in a... it's one-on-one. You don't want to be in a fair fight. That's the dumbest thing ever, right? You want overwhelming. But let's say, let's say we didn't know that. What if he let him go? He didn't let him go, but you know, he had continued, he backed off the pursuit and then not got away, but injured or killed another human being?

You know what I'm saying? Then...

Is then he's...

I agree. I agree. But I'm trying to say, let's look, we've done this before. So let's, you and I, play a version of devil's advocate. It's hard because you're advocating for the devil all the time, you bastard. But the idea is, let's say, okay, it's Christmas, and we've got this pursuit. You know, this guy chose the dead end. There's an argument to be made, maybe it's a DUI, maybe he's not from this area, maybe it's a stolen car, maybe it's kids, whatever else. But the idea that when you go alone into a situation like that, and you only have dispatch, and dispatch is saying, "Listen, your cover cars are a long way away," you as the road trooper have to think: one, what's best for society? What's best for me? And what's best for the suspect? Right?

I mean, so, my thing to the argument that the training failed, I would agree with. But I would say that what part of the training are we suing for? Because clearly, when you have a vicarious suit like this one, once, and it was the hospital and it was dispatch... Yeah, it was a supervised one, everybody else. What is that? That feels "deep pockets" to me. And "deep pockets" is that, "Hey, listen, I'm still in pain and I've got a lot of medical stuff to pay for and it's going to take me $30 million, you know, to get out of it, so I'm going to sue everybody." And as a matter of fact, I'm going to sue the news media that showed up because they characterized it as the wrong type of thing. You see where I'm going?

So, what is it that we're saying? If we're saying that officers have to have more discretion on the road, and we'll support that discretion specifically to stop incidents like this, I would be in support of that. So, is that a function of training? You get...

Well, and I get your point, because of how this case played out, meaning he, like you just said, he sued saying, you know, "The dispatch didn't tell me," you know, "I wasn't trained for the," or, he said, "Dispatch didn't tell me, the hospital, this, this was all wrong." He didn't say, "I wasn't provided with a level of proficient training for this situation," because that would have opened up to an argument to where the department would have said, "Well, yes, here's all of your training records and here's the different training scenarios you've gone through and here's this." So, he didn't do it on the fact that, "You know what, I had no idea what to do in this situation where I'm chasing an armed suspect and he's shooting at me." They can go back and then say, "Well, here's all of the different training scenarios you've been through, here's the different training programs, here's what they demonstrate, here's your whole record on how you did." You know, so they would then be able to say, "Well, no, we did."

I mean, there's, because there's no way they don't have to train you for every single potential situation, right? So, you just have to train you to a standard. And if that standard is in keeping with a national standard, it's not like federal, state, local. I agree. He couldn't go back and say, "No, this is negligent on your part because you've trimmed the training budget so much. We only get our six rounds to qualify." Like, it's not something that's so far below any national standard or below any neighboring area, right? That's what he could have tried to show, but he didn't, which means that because it likely didn't exist, right? Otherwise, the attorney would have sued for that, right? So, I see what you're saying is for what he's going after, it does seem like, you know, he's dealing with a horrible situation and he was nearly killed. It's a horrible situation. He was shot 12 times. His life will never be the same.

But, Brian, let me throw this at you. Okay, it's Christmas Eve or Christmas night, the morning too, you know how that's hard to explain, or it's actually Christmas Day. It doesn't matter, but it's a holiday that a lot of people... by the way, Rosh Hashanah, Happy New Year to all our Jewish viewers and listeners. But, Brian, this is a big thing. Yeah. Let's say that it's hours of darkness. He's still working alone as a State Trooper, and he makes a traffic stop, because most State Trooper organizations, in Michigan, it's different. They do criminal investigations and narcotics and stuff. But many times when you see a State Trooper, they do nothing but enforce the roads and do accidents, right, and speeding.

So let's say that he makes a traffic stop late at night, and as he walks up, it's James Tilka. And Tilka guns him down 12 times. Tilka goes off, gets shot by other cops. And now, here we have Nick at the side of the road, he shot and he, he had no idea there was a domestic. He had no idea the vehicle didn't flee, it pulled over for him. It's an ambush attack. We have a totally different circumstance here. Now, we're going to say, "Hey, did dispatch know this guy was fleeing from a domestic? Was dispatch onto it that, 'Hey, wait a minute, you're pulling over a white car with a white male'?" Do you see what I'm trying to say? The detail, the robustness of a BOLO (Be On the LookOut), those type of things come into play here.

I don't see it here. I see that from the very beginning, he thought that the Oregon State Trooper thought, "I had the suspect from that fatal shooting." I think he knew it right up at the beginning, Brian. And I think we don't train to a standard that, listen, if you're outgunned, don't go. Where do we get that? You know, I remember an argument with a colonel that used to be a Chief of Staff for somebody famous, and it was like, "Hey, listen, you know, the house from hell," that was the big thing that was going on because it had just occurred. And he got up in my face and wanted a fistfight because, "You never leave anybody on a battlefield." Yeah, that doesn't mean I can't wait five minutes and get a cover car and, you know, use a body bunker or something to retrieve just a person. Do you understand what I'm trying to say?

So my question here is, okay, I know Nick is in pain. And again, I wanted to use him for resilience because he lived through this and he's still a wonderful guy. Let's not bash on somebody because they sue you because of your defense, right? But at the same token, goddamn, clarify your message. What is it that you want us to change from? It was 2016, it's now 2021. They just now recently, very recently, were the ones that came in and said, "Now we're going to dismiss this part of the suit." So, Brian, lawsuits take a long time. It takes a while.

Yeah.

He's still in pain. Nick, what do you want to pass on to the other troopers? What do you want your legacy to be? Do you get my point? That's what I would challenge him for, you know, is if it's training, what piece of the training was missing? What have you learned since then?

This is part of the overall discussion of responsibility and liability, right? Because that's what you're saying is, is okay, well, you know, because you said it a couple of times in terms of, you know, "you chose the profession, knew or should have known." These are all things that are, these are known risks as a police officer. Anyone who's not even a police officer will tell you that that's a dangerous job, or you're likely to get shot or in a car accident or all of these. I mean, that's just general knowledge. It's not like this is, "Oh, I had no idea this would happen." So, I get that point.

I think, I see what you're saying with what he's doing. What is he trying to accomplish with the lawsuit? And that should be taken into account, you know, with every lawsuit. What is the intent behind this suit? What are you trying to do? What was he trying to do? And is he trying to, because he's in pain, lash out and say, "Hey, you should have been there for me and you weren't, and this, and I was out there alone," kind of? I mean, I see where you're saying it gets more of the feel for that where he's just sort of trying to pass the responsibility on everyone. It's a horrible situation and it's one thing that, you know, it's almost unlikely to ever occur, right, in your career? But it did happen to him. He's lucky to be alive, frankly, because of the situation.

And so now, what should come of it? And I get it, he doesn't really have anything in terms to say, "I wasn't trained for this," but he certainly seems to have not been prepared to handle, you know, everything that comes after. So I could see, you know, that being a, "You didn't train me to deal with this situation, or I don't have the right, I haven't been taken care of since this accident." I could see if there's a suit, right? So, if it's, there's a standard of care, right? If I sacrificed this, this happened, and now you're not taking care of me appropriately, that's, that's different.

But the reason I took interest too in the case is, you know, does a police officer have, are there situations or, do they have the right in some cases to say, "No, you did not properly prepare me for this. You, as a department, at an agency, are liable. I'm not completely liable for my actions because I was unprepared. This is everything that occurred from that, and I'm not at fault because I was not properly trained for that situation." Is that, in general, can that be applied somewhere? And I'm kind of asking you that because...

Right, and you know that the answer is yes, right? But it's also a slippery slope because if you go in and you are going to sue your agency for failure to train, okay, because there's a whole bunch, there's neglect, hiring a person that you know or should know is going to be dangerous. These are all laws that are already on the books.

Yeah.

And I like to go to my good friend Brian Marren, it says, "We don't need a new law, we need to go backwards to look at something like U.S. Code, Title 42 capers, negligent training, negligent retention." That's where most of these lawsuits come from on that standard. It's also the kiss of death. You'll never be a cop again. I mean, you can say what you want, but Erin Brockovich, what did she do after that movie? You get what I'm trying to say? So yeah, you're great because you called somebody out, but you know and I know that that's not a way, Americans don't like that. They like it at the moment, "You're a hero, you're the underdog!" Then after a while, they go, "Hey, wait a minute, right here."

My question is very simple. Look, we had things called unions, and I am not going to bash unions because the guys will show up at my house because I was a member of a union, and FOP (Fraternal Order of Police) is strong, and there's other unions that we were members of. The idea was that there were people that were put into training that were by seniority able to take those jobs, but they were not qualified for the position they were in. And, Brian, when you're dealing with something like, "How many ratchets are on a standard pair of Hyatt handcuffs?" and you can't answer that, and you're the handcuffing instructor. "What's the pre-battery weight of the 20 XL Streamlight flashlight?" and you can't answer that. Do you get what I'm trying to say? "What's the maximum effect range of the nine-millimeter handgun that you're carrying on your hip today?" And you're sitting there going, "No comment." The attorney's leaning over like that.

Brian, what we have is we have a lot of troopers that are going out there with a minimum amount of regulatory training. Yes, federal, local, state or state and local. But this is a one-off situation. How many traffic stops has the State Trooper made that had nothing, okay? Boom, there's a column, meaning nothing egregious occurred, nothing anomalous occurred. How many traffic stops had this Trooper made where the person fled? How many of those flings ended up in that person shooting? You can see the chart, right? So the chart is that the agency's not going to spend a lot of money on spirals that aren't likely to occur, right?

Okay, and so even though Marines were coming back in body bags because of IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices), the balance was still there. Yeah, but we got a lot of guys in country. And you're going to go, "Nobody would ever say that." Yeah, they would say that, Brian. Because what we're talking about is not a zero-sum game, we're talking about training costs money, re-certification, getting experts in there. So my question here again is, how come we can hire somebody as a subject matter expert on use of force to come in for the defense, but here we don't have a subject matter expert coming from Nick Cederberg's defense and saying, "Listen, this was mishandled. These people," and like dispatch, "What did dispatch know? When did they know? And did they transmit it out?"

Brian, I heard some tapes, I went online, went back. Sounded like Nick knew. Yeah, the guy was likely, that this is why the case likely got thrown out, right? Because all that stuff is on record. So if you try to go, I mean, there's the recordings there, the transcripts there, you can tell, you know, that's it. It doesn't fit. Horrible. He's a great guy, you know what I'm saying? I definitely would love to have him come on the show and tell us his thought process, because my thing to you, Brian, is I am constantly just de-escalating. And you know, our principle policy here is always be considering de-escalation. And de-escalation at this point is this guy wants to kill himself and he's not afraid to kill you too. So sometimes we need to corral them in and get somebody else. Because what does it say that you'll trade off?

But this is going to my point of, well, everything you're talking about is a product of training, training that this guy likely did not have. So meaning just exactly what you're saying is that, was he given the tools, the skills, the attitudes, the ability, the knowledge of how to do that? How to take that, that use critical thinking in the moment, advanced critical thinking, to say, "The juice isn't worth the squeeze right now. I'm going to go ahead and let up a little bit on this guy and wait for a cover car, wait for someone to come in, or get some other operational choice, operational layer in there to say, 'What other support assets do we have available? Does this need to end right now?'" I mean, there's the difference between that and the bank, you were bringing up the bank robbers. They knew at some point that the intent of these guys was, "You're going to have to kill us because we're leaving." Yeah, we're not, you know what I'm trying to say, "We've got these weapons and we're not going to give up." So I would look at it closely and somebody might be suspect when I bring that up, but Brian, I think it's the same case. I think it's the same case that a couple of those troopers were out of their league and should have known, "We've got to get out of here and call." And they ultimately did, and it ultimately resolved itself because you got a bunch of troopers there, and they were much more experienced perhaps in this type of situation, and meaning many more bank robberies in L.A. that involves shootings than perhaps Oregon State Patrol troopers getting shot on a pursuit at the termination point of pursuit. You know what I mean? I'm back at that balance again.

Yeah, but I get that. And that's the whole thing that we're talking about is, you know, it goes back to that. We tie everything to training, but does he have a leg to stand on to say, "Well, no, I wasn't..." it's not what he brought up in the suit, right? But would there be something there, meaning who's liable for it? Is it on the agency? Is it on the department to be able to say, "Hey, we need to equip you with decision-making capabilities?"

So, let me apologize. My point was that there's no critical decision training here. Okay? Because if it was, it would have been evident.

Yeah, exactly, it did not show. And that's what we're talking about is so, could he then say, "Well, you know what, you didn't give me the decision-making training that I need," because that's really what all we're talking about.

I think that lawsuit would have gone forward further than this lawsuit went, because he would have said, "Listen, I'm not thinking clearly. Dispatch knew I wasn't thinking clearly. Dispatch sort of said, 'Hey, listen, if you're not thinking clearly, maybe you need to back up.'" Do you get what I'm trying to say? That would have been an operational layer. Okay, what's the supervisory layer? Because at the tactical level, this apparently failed. Thank God he lived through it.

Yes, and my thing is, let's use this as a springboard so some other trooper doesn't have to get in this trick bag, Brian. You see where I'm going? And I think that the communication training, we do police training all the time, you and I. And how many times is the dispatcher in the room? And what do we beg for every time, right? "Bring your dispatchers. Bring your emergency room personnel. Bring your paramedics that are going to be on the street." Why? Because every lawsuit that I've been involved in where I had to come in and testify, all those people are sued, all those people have to testify. So why don't you bring them into training in the first place?

But, and this goes to my, I guess, with the big picture idea of how these things should work. And it's not just with police work, it's with whatever company you have, with whatever it is that you do, right? Is that we kind of take this backwards approach to it. And it goes, "Let's give them the least amount of training necessary to get the job done," is how we're looking at it. I mean, realistically, that's how it's been done.

My thing is, I don't think we've taken a real serious, well, other than police officers who are demanding more or asking for more training, societies have not taken a larger look at how we look at policing and police training and all that stuff. I mean, I know police officers have been the only ones saying like, "Hey, we've been trying to professionalize it," right? Throughout their careers, I've been trying to ask for more and standardize stuff and do this. But I think, you know, the idea is we're doing the bare minimum here, rather doing, "I'm going to give you everything. I'm going to be the best training in the world. I'm going to be the best support in the world. I'm going to give you everything we possibly can. That way you're more likely to always make the right decision at the right time for the right reason. And if you make it for other than the right reason, if you now have your thumb on the scale because you're doing something that you're not supposed to do, it's going to be so blatantly obvious, I can get rid of you right away. You've demonstrated intent." Yeah, you've chosen off the menu. That's what I'm saying. Instead, it turns into this... "Well, we just start suing everyone."

Everyone, and that's what drives the training. You just created a Mobius loop, right? Because you said liability. So are we trying to reduce or manage or lessen liability (insert any word there) of the agency against the trooper? Are we trying to proactively defend against likely lawsuits by having this minimum standard training? The answer is yes. And that's what I'm saying is this is wrong. That's the wrong direction to go because you get, for example, shooting training. You have to train in low light, no light, and you've got to train day time and night time. Why? Because there's so many more liability capers from you shooting, right?

Right.

Okay. Now, you drive every minute of every day as a trooper. You're always out there driving something. And you do your emergency vehicle operation at the academy, and you graduate. And guess when you go back, Brian? When you hit a parked car. Yeah, you got to go back to charm school. What? Yeah, you got to go back for some. So the idea what I'm saying is, couldn't we turn that on its end and say that what we'd like to do, that we'd like to reduce the danger in these situations? And in so doing, you would lessen the vicarious liability and the actual proximate cause of most of these cases. I can only do what I can foresee. So if you don't give me decision-making training, how am I going to spiral this out and think forward and think sideways to who I've got at the scene and what I'm about to do? Do you get what I'm saying? And then the argument's going to be that it's solved in nanoseconds. Then guess what? We have to slow time down. If we can't physically slow time down, that's...

We are getting into a nebulous area. That's a human misconception that everyone has just accepted as, "that's the fact that these things happen in nanoseconds." There's nothing in the world that happens in nanoseconds. Nobody comes out of nowhere. There's no such thing coming out of nowhere. That doesn't exist. It's, it, maybe you didn't observe it, you didn't see it, you didn't sense it, whatever. Nothing comes out of nowhere. So when we boil, and that's, that's, you know, getting into what we would call, yeah, that decision-making training, right? How do I operationalize this information, make the right decision of everything that I know? When everyone out there is boiling time, it's like, "Well, you only have a split second." Then, then what? Because it's not binary. It is not binary. It doesn't have to be that way.

Well, it will be if you force the situation to be binary by thinking that everything comes down to nanoseconds. Yeah. But just let's think of the first two things of this case. It's on Christmas, and it's a domestic. What do you immediately know? What's your brain doing? "All right, I'm already..."

He's the only one in this case that apparently knew what he was doing. Went out, got his gun, got all the other stuff, set up all the situation. So, family missed it. Wife missed it. Everybody said, "She's dead. 11-month-old daughter in the driveway, going, 'Oh my gosh, what the hell is going on?'"

Okay. But my thing is, it doesn't have to happen that way because if we just take a look at the combat rule of threes, you get what I'm trying to say? We said, "Think of the situation. It's late at night. I've got this unknown call that's anomalous, but it's not anomalous for a domestic. And every time I've seen a domestic like this on this type of night, guess what? When the guys fled from a shooting, it's going to end poorly." You know how many have you seen where the guy goes, "Okay, time out"? You know, this was a potential family annihilator scenario, and the guy decided, he did the one person that gave him the most grief. He shot his soon-to-be estranged wife. And then he left to do what? To kill himself. But was he going to go kill himself, Brian? Or was he fishing? Do you get what I'm trying to say? For the next victim? That's what I'm trying to say. If we're not playing those games in training, what are we doing? What's training all about? "Hey, he's got a gun, shoot him." And this guy doesn't.

Well, you just brought in, you added a lot of context, right? Because what happens is in those type of scenarios, or training for that, it's you, all of those extra things have to be taken into account, right? I mean, like, right away, you know, "Okay, it's late and domestic on Christmas is very different than a domestic after the Raiders lose a football game." Okay, those are two different things. You know what I mean?

You know what I'm saying? But the firearms training simulator, yeah, that system, and it has firearms in there, it doesn't have strategic thinking or critical thinking. The second one is, it's called a shoot/don't shoot scenario. You can't get more binary than that, Brian. What I'm trying to say, I'm saying that you don't have to be on a felony stop on an airport runway somewhere with Simunition to talk through what we're talking through right now. And seeing if there were options, and why weren't those options available to the officer at that time and at that place?

Yeah, but and that goes into creating those options and then making those decisions, obviously. Or what we're talking about here, in all of these cases, it's that in the moment advanced critical thinking to figure out what the likely outcomes are, determine the probability of each one, and then execute on those, right? That's what Boyd (John Boyd, military strategist, known for the OODA Loop) was talking about with an OODA loop. Then you continue to update that as you go along. But it's not forcing the situation. It's playing the, you know, "Let's take a larger look at overall what we're trying to do here and not lose the forest for the trees."

I think you're exactly right. But I think we're missing a key point here. If you are going to create the fastest race car on the face of the planet, there's trial and error. If you're going to make the best omelet at a French restaurant in Goshen, Paris, it's, you know, people getting together and going, "Oh my God, voilà, this guy's got it with the, you know, adding a lemon bark to the whatever." If we're trying to get the case for pasteurization, it's trial and error. The only thing we don't do that on is training. We wait till it's the worst possible case. You get what I'm trying to say? And people are laying dead and bodies scattered everywhere. That's not how you do a scientific move forward. I'm just saying that the pendulum swing of police training, and we just keep plugging our finger in the dike and saying, "Let's see what happens next. We'll add this, then that." That Frankensteinian way of approaching critical thinking training in police work is what I'm afraid of.

Why is it so hard to get people to understand what you're saying with all this? And I'm not trying to say like, "Oh, you're dumb, you don't get it." I would actually say the exact opposite is true. As long as you have a little bit of experience, it should seem, you know, easier to see it as, "This is all about decision making." I can't think of... now it's decision making sometimes under stress, or potentially stressful situations, or situations that can escalate to very stressful or dangerous situations very quickly. So, but, you know, all the science and the study and the research is all done and clear on that, and what you can and cannot do, and what a human can process and can't. So it's not like there's something new to learn in these situations.

So why have we not focused on how to make a good decision? How come we haven't, as a whole, there haven't been more people that go, "You know what, we need to focus on right here," not about what weapon system to employ or standoff distance or time and the, you know, coefficient of friction on the tires at that turn, you know? Why do we do all that? But we can't say, because there's a lot of research and study by the big brain folks about decision making and information science and decision science, and it's super, super, super complex, and they realize the complexity. Now, I know those big PhD, big brain folks can do it in a sense, right? But why haven't we approached it like that? I mean, I'm just saying...

You've, maybe you've shined a light, and by the way, brilliant question, and well taken. And we're not going to... it's not a... yeah, I'm not expecting you to give me a free word. I will tell you this, I think you've shined light on something all my career. And Brian, I've been involved with cop work now almost all of my life, right?

In one way, shape, or form. Yeah.

In some way. We're talking the real "thin blue line." People say the thin blue line is that cops will lie for other cops and, you know, they'll go to prison without the cop. Brian, I've seen criminals on duty, and I've seen them off duty. I've seen them work at the library, in the 7-Eleven, and coppers. I've never seen this horse crap "thin blue line." Maybe some agencies got it, and if you do, cut it out, it's a cancer, it's got to go. But the idea is that the thin blue line that we know, all it is, that we think we need to know, because we've got less than lethal, and we've got the San Diego model of the field training officer, and we've got these trainers that are certified, and I've got a certificate for attending training, Brian, that all feeds into the problem.

The problem is that right now, I can get a diploma mill that makes me a doctor. It doesn't make me an inch smarter. But we both know that the idea is that the smarter you are, the better decisions you'll make, and the less force you'll utilize, coming to that decision, finding that decision. And the idea is, we can't keep invoking crap like Boyd and all of these things. I said Occam's Razor at the beginning, when people really don't understand what that means. There are police chiefs that are chiefs of police because they're incredible politicians. There are very few police chiefs that are police chiefs because they're incredible coppers. Think of that for a minute. Okay? Now, right there, I just turned off a lot of people. But that's my opinion. That has nothing to do with the training.

The idea is that sometimes you get to a level that you forget how you got there, and you forget what's important. Why? Because it's a balancing act. It's a balancing act with finance, with budget. I didn't say that that trooper wasn't trying to be the best, okay? I'm saying that he was a politician, he was very good at financial matters. He might not be the best road cop. But do we want the Chief of Police and the Sheriff to be the best cop? No, we want those guys, those road guys that are out there. If you need to get there from here, you can't just do firearms training and driving training and, you know, Stop the Bleed. You've got to think. You've got to out-think a cunning opponent. That's what this is about. That's what's going to take back Afghanistan. That's what's going to put ISIS and ISIL and the Lambda variant of Abu Sayyaf back in their corner, Brian. We've got to out-think them because we can't out-fight them. And now they've got all our taxes, our guns, and give them night vision. So that's the same thing with this trooper on this night. He didn't out-think the shooter, and Tilka almost killed him for it. And that's a hard, that's hard math. So my answer to you, it's hard when somebody shows you you're fat and you're ugly and you're out of shape, you know what I'm saying? And we don't like it. That's what's happening. And that's what happens in this case, in these cases, when we find out that we weren't the Superman that somebody told us we were. I really mean that. I feel for these troopers in these situations. But we've got to get better at training that trooper. And the academy is about rote memorization and about skill building that has nothing to do with decision making.

Would you say that because some of that training in terms of like, let's say, firearms and tactical type training like that, would you say that because police officers become more proficient in that, that it almost allows these situations to continue because they're going to continue to take that option? And when it wins and the bad guy dies, who just killed his family, yay, you know, that we're okay with that as a society, right? He was a bad person. He killed a bunch of people, tried to shoot out the police, and then they killed him. You know, does that, does that end up adding to these? You get what I'm saying?

Meaning, so I'm going to be a corollary, and I think you're right again. And again, we're not out there trying to piss off the cop's administration. We're trying to shine a light into those dark areas that nobody wants to talk about. When I was a trooper on the road, Brian, and I'm talking uniform, and I was out there with my badge and my gun, every single thing that I had on my belt was to hurt you in one way, shape, or form. There's nothing that was on my belt to heal you. You get what I'm trying to say? And as a matter of fact, I had rubber gloves so I wouldn't gum up my, you know, hands and get Hep C (Hepatitis C) or something when I was punching you with my sap gloves or hitting you with my flashlight. And, Brian, it was the Wild West, and it was rough and tumble, and you had to fight him because bad guys were bad guys and coppers were coppers. We're not there anymore. We're in a new breed.

You're saying, "Well, some places are still the Wild West." First of all, let's cut that analogy and let's say that yes, and those places will take a special kind of officer with a special kind of training to go in and solve those problems. But the average officer on the street can go his entire career or her entire career and just be one step ahead of the bad guy using critical thinking, using de-escalation techniques, and never have to get into those situations. I'm saying that that that's where we have to start the epicenter. Now, we don't, we start at an extreme and try to work towards the center. How the hell are we going to get there? I just don't see that. And I think that colleges and universities and training and education, if we want the cop that you keep talking about, this cop that can think themselves, herself out of the situation, is that really what the rest of the nation wants? I mean, I want that.

Yeah. But then that often gets confused, Greg, as, "We need to," "Oh, and it's the same answer everywhere. We got to hire better people." It's like, "What better? There are no better people out there. There's no better person. It's about training and experience and education." Like, those are what make you. Taking that first step, you're a Marine because you went to the Yellow Brick Road, Brian. You can't just pick a guy and say he'd be a perfect person for a Marine. No, but that's what people keep doing and that's what you see. I agree. You know, big stuff with like, trait theory and all that stuff. "Oh, we need this person that has all this." Dude, do you know how many guys that I knew in the Marine Corps that, like, they were in front of a judge and they were just out on the street? And I was like, "Well, you can go to the Marine Corps and straighten your life out." And they're like, "Okay." And they're like, "This is the greatest thing." And they became some of the best Marines and the best leaders. If you would have done your screening on that person, they would have been like, "Keep this person far away from us," right? But they turn out to be the best.

So I don't like this method of, "Oh, well, you know, we gotta, it's better people." It's just people are people, man. There's no better. The test for that is, did they, they voluntarily said, "I'm going to do this. I'm willing to put myself in harm's way for my community, for my country, whatever that is." Or I'm, and it doesn't even, whether it's police work or not, or fire, nurse, or whatever it is you chose to do in life, or when you're choosing that role, you likely already have everything you need, right? You're right. You have it on board. Now, do you need more training and education, experience? Well, yeah, absolutely. It's a continuous process. And we can, that's the part we should focus on this idea. And now you can make it more competitive by increasing pay or benefits and all that stuff, which is always good because it just, it makes, you know, that competition for those really prestigious jobs are going to get fierce and you're going to get really good people that really want it are going to work hard. So I understand all that.

But, you know, I think we focus sometimes on the individual. It's just interesting. I was reading something that someone wrote about this author and all about them and, you know, how at the university it should be, "Why this person should be included more and that person shouldn't be included?" And I sat there reading through it, and I was like, I was just thinking like, I've never really given a darn about some of the authors that I've read. Really interested in what they have to say if it's good. Yeah, I'm really interested in what their work shows or the ideas they have. But why do we care about them? Like, I don't care about Malcolm Gladwell. The people he talks about are incredible, or the stories are, that's where it is. But what do we do? We get obsessed with the person and who is this person that's going to lead us? There is no one. It's like, why do we do that? And I know why, it's just we, as humans, we're obsessed with others because we're obsessed with ourselves, and there's a constant comparison going on. But that's what, why social media is so successful. But yeah, the idea is just we, I think we need to stop focusing on that and just focusing on what are the KSAs (Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities)? What are the objectives? What do we want? That's where training has to go back.

And Brian, for every single time that you watch somebody come on and say, "That's my daughter or son, they're incapable of this crime," but we all know that they perpetrated the crime, right? Or somebody's saying that this person couldn't kill another human being. Shut up, you're wrong. Absolutely. Every one of you has the capacity to torture and murder and maim. You just choose not to in this, in this who you are at this moment. But you change the situation, and I can get you to murder. I mean, that's the idea that we don't want to play that game. We want to go the opposite. We want to go the opposite direction and say, "You can train your way out of this." You really can.

But the training isn't going to be just selection process, which everybody's going to now. And you saw the last 10 RFPs (Requests for Proposal) are, "Give us a better selection process." Oh, okay. Do you get what I'm trying to say? How about once you're going somewhere, it's a training day? That's the idea.

Is, is you're like, "Okay, so you're expecting this person to have these qualities already when they get there?" Yeah, guess what? Your pay is not commensurate with that. Like, it's just not. Unless you've got a doctor or PhD or something, that's what I mean. It's like if this is your entry level or whatever level position, and you want them to already show up and have all of these traits and all these, well, I'm sorry, that's not like you, why don't you just train them to have those? Why don't you just train what you want?

But the idea, Brian, is doesn't it look so much more above board that we say, "This is our criterion. This is how we're going to hire. Look at this panel of experts that we're going to bring in." And you know what? One is going to be great, and one is going to be a murderer, and one is going to be on a pad, and one is going to get pregnant and quit. That's because we're humans. So stop looking for the perfect human and build a better human. Take the ones that you have right now and invest in them. If you spend a little bit of time and a little bit of money investing in the capital that you already have, the human capital that you have, and somebody's saying, "Well, you're never going to be able to bend or manipulate this or that with training." Yes, you are. And you're also going to be able to find out the Brian Quotient is what I'm going to call it now, where I've laid everything else out in front of you. I've given you all the training, I've exasperated myself by telling you this is what the standard is, and now if you choose off the menu, it's on you. Guess what? You're gone. That's where we need to be. And not enough agencies are there. I'm tired of people thinking that I'm bashing cops. I love cops. I love soldiers. I love people that work at Tyson Chicken. The idea is that there's good people and bad people, and the only way to weed them out, Brian, is to have your standards high, maintain those standards, and have good consistent training that's ongoing. It doesn't end at basic training.

Yeah. If your policies, procedures, your process isn't up to par, isn't getting what you're wanting out of it, that's the problem. It's rarely ever the person who's completely at fault for this stuff. I mean, those ones are usually small and they're obvious, right? They're, you know, you can tell that they're so far out of what everybody's going to be doing, it's so egregious that it's easy to spot and you can quash it right away. I mean, those are the cases where it's like that, "This is so obvious because how did this happen?"

Yeah. And then it's on that. Then you realize it's on that person. Most of these things, man, you're just, you're a product of whatever that process and training and education and experience you went through. I mean, that's what I started. Nature and nurture can work in the same environment. It doesn't have to be one or the other.

Oh, yeah.

You know what I'm trying to say? So the question I kept getting in Combat Hunter, "So what do you want? Do you want the country boy or do you want the city boy?" And I would answer the same way every time, "Bring both. Both know any skills. Country boy knows." You put both of those guys together, and you have it. You're never going to be able to overcome the magic that happens. And there's a kid that didn't go to college and didn't get a degree, and he's not a doctor. But you're listening to him on a podcast. And there's another guy that's a doctor and hasn't written anything, and you're falling asleep before you change the radio dial, right? So don't sit there and try to pigeonhole us into the skills. Try to raise the standard of the KSAs (Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities) to a level where you say, "That's attainable, and that is good enough," federally, state, and locally, for our company. And when I say "good enough," I don't mean relying on it. I mean that it lessens the liability by increasing the safety. That's what we're talking about. How could that be so hard?

We're not talking about a thing. Yeah. Well, we have odd ways we measure these different successes or failures. Like, we pick, you know, what programs or what did this do in this domain over time? And what about arrest numbers or this? It's like, you know, that was a whole thing when people, especially during lockdown and everything like that, and all this pushback in different cities about, "Hey, you know, defund the police and let's not have them do this and let's not have them do that." And then people are like, "See, the crime went down." It's like, "No, no, no, no, the crime didn't go down. The statistics went down because you told the police to stop arresting people. Therefore, they found fewer guns, they took less drugs off the street. All of these things you wanted before." I mean, it's just a manipulation of numbers here is what you're looking at. It's just absolutely ridiculous. But I, again, that goes into because that became quantifiable. Well, you can count how many...

Exactly. I can hold it in my hand. Can't die. I can show you, listen, Brian, when they found out that the NHL (National Hockey League), and people are still bitching about this, but they found out about NHL, certain injuries were more common than others. Then they said, "Okay, no more cross-checking." When they found that, right? It's too hard to call and they caused injury. They moved out the goal, right? In football, they changed, NFL (National Football League), they changed a bunch of stuff. Okay? So what we're saying is that when you're at the top of your game, even the best in the business can take a knee and say, "We need to take a look at this and revisit this." This is not for federal, because when federal comes in and mandates it to the states, now you've got a freedom issue. But what I'm saying is, what's best for all of us is a collegiate thing. This is where we have to have the brightest minds thinking, and that has to include the cops. What we're doing right now, Brian, and I'm telling you, we're on the cusp of this. We're having a bunch of geniuses pushing policy down to the agencies. That's not going to work. And you can't have just coppers pushing the policies. Do you see what I'm trying?

Right. No, we have to sit together and we have to say in a clear light of day, "This is what needs to be fixed." That's a good point because you often have, and, you know, all of these sides are generally well-intentioned, right? Most people are saying, "Yeah, we want to fix this, we want to fix that." And that also becomes an issue because I've, we've seen it before where someone has some really well-intended policies or plans or things they want to do.

Wrong. This is going to go horribly wrong. This is not going to work. And then remember when you used to have to take a test to vote, and somebody knows, "You know, a more educated voter." That's a brilliant strategy. How did that turn out? We're still fixing that crap, Brian.

I know, I know. And so, so you can, I mean, that's what happens when you try to do these things at scale too. It can get complicated because we're looking for very specific things. "I want this specific policy in this situation," versus, again, "I'm going to set you up for success the best way I can. We're going to give you the best training to make all of these decisions at any time, no matter what it is." And then you're, it's up to you. The responsibility is, "I need to make the right decision at the right time."

But, again, so, so let's go back to Nick, where we started, Brian. Let's go back to Nick Cederberg. Nick, we're sorry for what happened to you. We're glad you lived. You're resilience epitomized. Folks, anybody that is in charge of Nick, pay him good money so he never has to hurt again. Because he took those bullets so we didn't have to. So that James Tilka didn't kill a bunch of other people that night. So, take care of your warriors. He was a warrior, and I hate using that term, Brian, but you know what I'm talking about. In this case, he was in the arena, we weren't. So, one, take care of Nick. Two, don't let the message die when Nick's case gets thrown out, of course. So, let's make sure that the case of Nick Cederberg never happens again. That this is how we should do this. You get what I'm trying to say?

Yeah.

So, we have a hot wash and after-action review, and then we go in, "Was a policy at fault? Was the training at fault?" Zero in on that and fix it, Brian. If we did that, we would be more like the NHL or the NFL. We would incrementally change over time and be better at our training and better our evaluation process and better at our academies. But are we doing that? What's going back? What's coming back from the front?

Yeah. And I know we hammer it home all the time, is that you can, all that stuff is good and great. The different, you know, whatever, whether it's a weapons thing or driving, all that stuff is skills you need to learn. Good. What we're not still having, you know, a lot of people don't realize is it's the application of those at the right time for the right reason. That's the difficult part. Like, anyone, you can teach anyone how to shoot a pistol really well. You really can. I mean, if they want to learn how to do it, they'll learn, and you can teach someone how to do that. But when, when to actually, you know, pull the trigger on it and how to use it, how to implement it, that's like an afterthought. And that needs to be the forethought before, you know what I'm saying?

That, that you're spot on again. And some of the best people, some of the best skydivers, some of the best white water guides, some of the best, in all of those sports, die at the top of their game when you would look at it and go, "Wait a minute, they should have read this situation." And you know why, Brian? Because they were at the top of the game and they didn't have an oversight. They didn't have somebody walk in and go, "Cool your jets, Turbo. You're about to walk into a shitty situation because you're not out-thinking it anymore. You're just going with that grooving record. You're following."

And I think, you know, that that actually goes back to the Simone Biles case. Oh my gosh, she did make that, she went, "Yep, no, I am about to, if I go," because it would have been easier for her to just continue on doing what she's been doing her whole entire life, go hit that competition, and she might have seriously, seriously injured herself. And she did, and she chose, "You know what, I'm outrunning my headlights. I'm in over my head. I can't take it. I gotta take a step back." Exactly what we're talking about here. I think you're right. I think you're exactly right.

So, okay, but guess what? There's still people divided over Simone Biles, and they're going to be arguing about it for four years to the next Olympics. So we're not going to solve this today. And don't get us wrong, folks, we're behind all of those people that are behind you, making you safe, improving your livelihood. And I'm talking about safety checkers at the Spam plant, Brian. I'm talking about anybody that has to think above and beyond themselves in their roles.

I'm curious as for the people that bash Simone Biles, how many of them were one of the greatest to ever play their sport and were in the middle of an Olympic competition? I wonder how many of them had that experience. I would say probably none. Maybe there's one.

Amazing thing that you just uncovered, that we are so much more likely to use rotten apples and throw them at the crowd than to say, "Hey, here's my hand up, not a handout." Yeah, spot on.

Okay. Well, I think that's probably a good place to wrap that conversation. No, I'm just sad.

Thanks, great podcast, buddy.

Is that, that, you know, these things are changeable. And this is your way out of this.

Yeah, that's what I mean, is that, that's why stop worrying about, "Oh, we got to find the right person, the right tool, or the right." No, it's focus on, it's a focus on developing those people to the best of their ability, to the best of their potential, to bring them, just raise the standard is by investing in those people. It's not, you know, it's not bashing or more lawsuits or so.

Right.

And you know what? If you're going to write on a policy and procedures manual that this is going to be taken on a case-by-case basis and you have the ultimate authority to decide at this and that, then teach me and teach them, teach me what I should do. That's it. I think that our broadcast, this entire podcast, is, show us that you want to fix this because, yes, you can train your way out of it. Yes, you can write your way out of it. And this isn't about creating a policy so you can't sue me. It's about fixing the problem. Fixing what's broke.

Yeah, it's fixing the problem so that you...

And one of the good benefits of that is less lawsuits because they're not going to be required in there. So that's, that's another positive, but not the focus of this, right? You can't focus on, "How do we reduce?" I mean, "Hey, let's do training that just allows us to reduce lawsuits." Like, "Wait, what the..."

That's not an outcome.

You know, that's it. Yeah. We accept it every day.

Yeah, we accept it every day at check-in-the-box training. Yeah.

Hey, shout out to Nick Cederberg. You're a hero, and you're resilient. And thank God that you were there that night. God only knows what it could have turned into. But let's use this example and move forward. Absolutely.

All right. Well, I think that's a good place to wrap on for today. We appreciate everyone for tuning in. Don't forget to check out our Patreon account. We add stuff on there. We do our weekly recaps and some behind-the-scenes stuff that we work on, what we throw up there too, kind of the rough cuts, so that you guys can check it out. And it's value-added for you. So thanks, everyone for there. Thanks for tuning in. Don't forget that training changes behavior.