L.O.G. 154 Dont Turn This Robbery Into a Homicide

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.

All right, Greg, well, good morning.

Good morning.

The mornings are getting earlier.

They're getting early. It's what happens when I wake up at 3:00 a.m.

And time to wake up. Do you want to just record that now?

Yeah, let's do that. Thank you. Right now, folks, I have my pajama bottoms on.

Yeah, just so you know.

Oh, you're wearing pants. Sorry, I didn't know. Well, for the first time in a long time, I didn't know we were being formal today. I guess it is a little cold there today. The garage door frozen to the ground. That's five below. Couldn't get out of the garage because it was frozen to the cement. That's a good one. That's amazing.

Well, today's topic is going to be, of course, we're titling this, "Don't Turn This Robbery Into a Homicide." And we take that saying from many perspectives, meaning let's not needlessly escalate this situation. That could come from the criminal literally robbing a place, trying to get some money out of the cash register. We've seen countless times throughout history where all of a sudden that escalates, and then that kid shoots someone and they die. Now, they went in thinking they were going to get some money out of the cash register at the 7-Eleven, and they're going to jail the rest of their life for a homicide, right? So, we see that all the time.

But we also take that from the perspective of even law enforcement as well, or the average person, right? When my wife is upset about something and she's letting me know she's being upset, there's no reason for me to come off the top rope and go, "Oh yeah, well, I don't like it when you..." What is that going to do during that argument? All of a sudden, it's going to escalate that situation.

So, we'll get into a number of examples, but some of the stuff that we've seen a lot recently escalating, I would say, I don't want to call it like vigilante justice because it's not really like that, but it's people who otherwise typically wouldn't fight back are fighting back in this situation, usually with guns, right? So, we give the 7-Eleven clerk example, where typically someone coming to rob, they're scared, they let the person have the money, get out of there. Or you're seeing a lot more of these situations where people are firing back, where they're then pulling out a gun and getting in shootouts with criminals.

We can jump into kind of where that comes from, but I want to hit you with the general idea for this discussion, Greg. I'm kind of interested: what is it, one, what is it inside of humans that makes us either take a step back and go, "Okay, you got me here, go ahead, take the money and go," or, "You know what? Hey, let's take a step back and let's take a breath," or the opposite of, "Oh, you know what? You're going to do that? Watch what I'm going to do, and I'm going to one-up that situation."

So, it's kind of like, what is it that causes that? Is it in that moment, is it so dependent on the circumstances of the situation? Is it a conscious decision, is it a choice that I make, or is it a reaction due to the training or life experience I have? And when I use the term "training," I use it in a general sense, meaning I don't have to go to a formalized training school. I get up at a certain time every day. So, what happens over time, even whether or not I want to wake up and get out of bed? What happens over time is I've trained myself to wake up. I do it without setting an alarm. I mean, that's an example of training, right?

So, I'm kind of trying to—I'm interested in what it is in that moment that causes us to make those choices, because I don't want to overstep. There's a lot of complexity in all these situations. It all has to do mostly with the people involved, plus the circumstances of the situation that make this, plus their intent and their point of being there. So, there are a lot of factors, but I kind of want to get into what that is. If that makes...

You covered a potential panacea.

Mm-hmm.

Let's call it that way. So let's...

Yeah, drill down on that.

Yeah, put some meat back on that bone.

So, first of all, "Don't turn this robbery into a homicide" is a famous line from a Detroit caper so many years ago, Brian, and it's as relevant today as it was then. Everybody, just hearing that line, knows exactly what we're talking about – the type of case. As a matter of fact, from the same era is "Give up the cheese," cheese being whatever it is that the person with the gun wants. And you decide at that moment in time what the cheese is, which leads us to your question.

For this episode, I think if we take a look at inevitability. Humans are hardwired, and when we grow, we become soft-wired, which can, with training, become hardwired over our lives. Most of the stuff that we need is already given to us, even at birth, and it develops as we mature. But what I mean by "inevitable" is that you've been berated now for almost two straight years, saying, "There's no cops, they've defunded the cops, there's total anarchy on the streets, it's absolutely horrible. You're likely to get carjacked." Now, I want you to think about that. That's been the message we're ingesting. We've been eating that food for the last two years, regardless of whether or not it's true where you live. You know exactly what I got you.

So, let's bring out our ice cube tray. Now, I can tell you something about Gunnison [Colorado]. The first top-left spot in the ice cube tray is the concealed weapons permit. So, this coming Monday in town is a concealed weapons permit class. You've got to do this before class, right? And I'll tell you right now, it's packed. Every single person I talk to in Gunnison is talking about going to get it. And Gunnison is probably never going to need it, but for a mountain lion or something, maybe.

Yeah, of course.

But you know, if you shoot a mountain lion, no judge is going to go, "Well, you were carrying a concealed weapon." Right?

Right.

But if you get in a trick bag, the cop is going to go, "Hey, let me see your concealed weapons permit." So, here you're in a situation where the fear of the unknown has driven people to start taking the classes and likely buying a gun to carry a gun that they may not have.

Now you also got a bodega owner, a 7-Eleven clerk that's going to college on their free time. That person is going, "Well, I swear to God, I don't want to die. I don't want to die in the street. I got to make a living. So, in addition to my mask every day, I'm going to carry my gun to work. I hope to God I never use it."

Then you've got what I call the JD, my buddy from back on the road. And JD was always like, "This might be the day I get to use my gun."

Yeah.

So, Brian, in our society, we got a few people that are too overzealous and carry a footlocker with them everywhere they go, thinking that it's going to be some sort of apocalyptic shootout. Then you've got to look at the Samaritan mindset. I'm sorry, go ahead.

No, no, because you—those are a couple different types of people, right? Which I agree with. And I do want to reiterate, you brought that back to fear. Meaning, the same thing when I see people carrying all kinds of different weapons, they're all decked out. I'm like, "Jesus, man, you have more firepower on you than I have had on some combat missions. What do you think is going to happen right now, today, here, right?"

And if you're doing a street contact, isn't that a little over? You know what I'm saying? Like the Gerber poleaxe with the automatic taser. I mean, do what you have to do to get to sleep at night, but the idea is once you take your game out on the road, that's a different story. Now we've got a whole bunch of those ice cube trays built. I would say that good Samaritan is one very close to the last. And of course, we could banter about this. And then after the good Samaritan, you've probably got the person that's the legal-carry person that's put into an awkward situation that now they trained for that situation their entire life, never anticipated they'd really use it, right?

Yeah.

It's like piano lessons. I mean, I took piano lessons. Mr. Palestinic molested Jeff and me all the time from the Catholic school. But the idea that we went to—back there at Lutheran school, actually—but the reason that we took the piano lessons is because my mom had a piano. So she was like, "You know, we had a piano that was handed down, it's an old upright." Yeah, one of us is going to play the piano. Jeff and I never sat around and said, "We're going to be the next Tchaikovsky. We're going to create this stuff." We did it out of the fact that my mom wanted us to do it.

I think you're more of a Chopin than a Tchaikovsky. But thank you.

More about that from the Peanuts, uh, but the idea Schroeder. The idea is that a lot of people have, in the course of their lives, carried a gun because of their profession. Diamond or bond dealers, they routinely carry when they're delivering.

Yeah.

Now, do you think that any of them, even though they've done that, do you think that any of them thought that, "Hey, listen, tonight's going to be the night for a shootout?" No. And let me draw that back to make my point. Two cops were killed in Germany. They made a traffic stop late at night on a suspicious vehicle. Before they ever got out of their car, the people from within the vehicles used their scoped hunting rifles to shoot both of those cops dead, immediately in the head, immediately killing them. Those cops never in a million years thought that this car that was full of poachers, that was full of dead animals, was going to go to deadly force. They may have thought they had a DUI. They may have thought a suspicious person. They may have thought a stolen car. Brian, they never thought when they came out of the garage that night, "Bill, this is the night that we may be murdered." Do you get what I'm trying to say?

So, the reason I'm saying that is inevitability. Now, all of a sudden, you've got all of this criminal activity—alleged or real. You've got the hype that's from the media. And now all of a sudden you're working late at night, and somebody pulls up and jumps out of the car to run in, purportedly to rob you, maybe for the Alka-Seltzer. You don't know what it is. And now you're confronted with a situation where you go from zero to 60 in nanoseconds. And your brain's chemistry always sides with what your brain's chemistry is: danger and survival. It never looks at a situation with reason. No, no, no, no, no. So, why do we, why in class, do we always bring up opportunity, Brian? Because that's the part your brain never goes to. You know, that's your comment, "Give me 60 seconds and I'll change your fucking life."

And people go, right? If they pause, you got a chance. I've got my wedge in the door. Yeah.

That's it. You got the crack open.

But I like how you bring this back to inevitability because we—inevitability and survivability. But inevitability is this. Would that—what everything—this is where things sociologically compound these problems because it gives us the feeling like, "Oh, all this is inevitable. It's going to happen." How many times did people say, "Oh, no, it's going to happen." And that's the problem. That attitude is, "No, fuck no, that's not true. You have the ability, you have a chance, you have—you chose." And this is where that mindset gets into your drives, your decision-making so much. I totally agree. This is why you brought up the person who goes, "Man, I carry a lot of cash because I go around collecting these vending machine money or whatever. I got to carry a gun, and I hope I don't ever have to use it," to, "I'm going to train my ass off because it's going to happen. I'm going to be out there someday." It's like, "Dude, you don't even have a job or role in life or anything in society that puts you in these dangerous situations. You're putting yourself in that situation."

You never bought a suit. You never bought a gun, right?

Right, right, right, right. You're right, exactly. That worked on your resume, but you bought a gun. The choice. So, this is where it comes down to choice, and which leads to responsibility.

But the idea leads to inevitability.

But that's the thing, right? You're actually, you're greasing the skids for that.

Yeah.

And there's people that have done that. I've seen that happen in combat situations where I was like, "Well, that did that needlessly escalated here. Why did we—did all those people die because if they had to, or because of these factors that you contributed to? Like, what really went on here? And we're 8,000 miles from home, and we set up this house of cards."

Yeah, easily blown over. Do you see it? And Brian, some of that's unconscious. Do you understand that?

Well, that's what I'm saying. Some of it is playing with fire, and your curtains start on fire. "Gosh damn it, it was inevitable!" That's what I'm trying to say. And that's why I bring up the training aspect. And what I mean by life experience is a form of training. You know, if I got taught the whole time as a kid that, "Hey, when you get out there, someone's going to do this to you, and you got to be ready for this. When you get out there, someone's going to test you." Okay, well, there's good thinking that way, right, of understanding that there's opponents out there. But if I'm constantly being primed that something is going to happen to me and I need to be, then that's where the inevitability kicks in. And I like that you brought it up because we haven't really talked about inevitability. And I think what people take for granted, or think is so self-evident that things are going to be inevitable, they don't—that's the way of thinking I think all of our podcasts are trying to counter. Things are not inevitable, right? You can change. You can manipulate space-time.

Okay. If a particle can be in the same place in two places at the same exact time.

Exactly. You can affect the situation. And again, these are—each one—each situation that we discuss is unique on its own, and that's where the factors come from. But there's so much they can set patterns.

Yes. How come it's HBPRNA? So, let's talk quickly about patterns. And Brian, what you just brought up is what I coined the expression "sociological adaptation," right?

Right.

And we did a whole episode last week, and we just barely scratched the surface. So, the sociological adaptation of inevitability from a person that says, "Tonight I'm going to likely get carjacked or robbed, so I'm going to be ready for. And I swear to God, if they do it, I'm going to shoot them." Okay, that is a form of preparing your mind for a situation and creating an inevitability out of a situation. Now that kid comes in, and you know, he's acting squirrely. You already got your finger on a gun going, "This is it, this is it." You're talking yourself into this situation.

So, let's flip-side that for just a second. We talked about the two cops in Germany shot down by poachers that no matter what, the poachers were going to get in jail. A life sentence is out of the question for poaching. Come on. They were probably going to get a fine, and they were probably going to get some jail time, but they took two lives. They turned it into a double homicide, Brian. So, those cops weren't thinking that way. Why? Because sociological adaptation. Police officers historically didn't have to think about that. The Dallas cops during a parade that got gunned down, do you get what I'm trying to say? They didn't think that somebody was going to bring an automatic weapon, an assault rifle, to a flipping parade.

So, let's talk about Bill Pogue and Conley Elms, two game wardens that get a call. They go to the guy, and the guy goes, "Yeah, they're camped out over there. I think they're poaching." They go and contact Claude Dallas, and Claude Dallas shoots them dead. Just weeks ago, a month and a week ago, two cops were given a dog call at a hotel. The hotel patrons were saying, "Hey, the dog's barking, could you do it?" The guy does the right thing at the hotel, he calls the cops. And what are the cops doing? They're sitting in their car, Brian, and they're going, "A dog call on January? Holy crap." They go over to knock on the door. What are the people inside the room thinking? "Oh my God, the cops are onto us. They know we got warrants, drugs, and guns." And what do they do? They execute both cops.

Yeah, yesterday was the one-year anniversary of the two FBI agents in Florida.

Yes, I believe. Oh my gosh.

Yeah, it was a child pornography case, right? Or a child sexual assault case. So, they're going, "Whatever, we're going to seize your computer. We're going to get some photos. We're going to take the guy in custody, get his prints, do all this other stuff." He may or may not be there. When you conduct that preventative predictive analytics in your own brain, you can change the chemistry of your brain and create an inevitability. Let me show you one quick example. This is going to be a great day. Happy Thursday, Brian. Do you want to start at six? Let's start at six. You know, which is five your time, which is four, whatever. If you predispose yourself to think like that, like we do all the time, or Shelley walking by and smacking one of us in the head and say, "Hey, celebrate the small wins! Let's go!" You know what I'm saying? You're going to have a great day. If you get up and you go, "It'll never work. We're all going to die. This is going to be terrible." Then guess what? You're going to have a crappy day. You're going to put your jacket on slow, you're going to drive slower, you're going to hell. When you meet the people, you can create your destiny.

Yeah.

And when you ingest that type of information constantly, right, and that's social media—I mean, I know you're not on there—but the stuff I follow one is horrible because everyone, I just wish you got a bump in the algorithm for just originality. I don't give a fuck what it is. It's just if it's original, you should get a higher bump because what everyone does is just repost the same stupid video of someone getting shot or this, and none of the descriptions are of any use. And it's, "Hey, see, keep your head on the swivel. Things can come from anywhere. You never know." It's like the biggest shitty platitudes. And I'm like, "How does this guy have 300,000 followers?"

He's a member because of that. It takes just as little sense to write it as it does to read it and go, "Spot on, man! It's another one! I told you! See?" It's literally a lesson. Instagram is a lesson in fucking confirmation bias. It's so bad. It's right there. That's a beautiful one right there. I will write that down, but we got to use that one.

This is—but it leads to exactly what you're talking about, is that inevitability if I go around with that thought in my head. But here's my thing with that: I believe then you are—you are then a contributing factor. You then bear responsibility.

You are.

Yeah, but we're not seen. Now it's becoming this us versus them, you versus me. "Well, he—you, you started the situation." Yeah, that fucker started it, but that doesn't give you the right to escalate the situation. What did you do? What did you do to help? What did you do? What did you say? What did you fail to do?

Exactly.

And you were responsible for that. And that's the thing. Like, and even if you go to those classes—because you brought up like the concealed carry—most places you have to go get some basic form, and you know, it's going to cover some of the legal aspects. What do they cover? Times when you can do something. Right? It's like, "Here's when you never caught the black and white, the margins, right?" Did they ever talk about the complex situations, the things where or hit you with, "Here's when you cannot do it"? Hey, there's a lot to learn legally before you ever draw that firearm. I mean, because you're the people who think that they're going to be fine during these situations and want that type of chaos. No, man, sorry. You short-term, you might. In the long run, that's not good for society. It's not good to have. Let's talk about walking around like that.

So, Brian, shout out to my dad, who's long dead, a former Marine that taught me everything I know about Human Behavior Pattern Recognition Analysis. And any of you posers out there that try to link your name close to ours and try to talk about all that you've done with situational awareness, show me one thing that you didn't steal from me, bastard! But my dad—what my dad said, Brian, is, "If the dog wouldn't have stopped to take a shit, he'd have caught that rabbit." And I'd say that, "You got to pull over." And we'd pull over in his work truck, and I'd say, "What the hell are you talking about?" He said, "This thing caused what happened, and if it were not for this thing, this would have never occurred." Right? I go, "Holy Christ, this guy's making all the sense in the world, and he's talking about shitting and dogs." Right?

So, the idea is that in certain—like, for example, I'll tell you this, and people aren't considering it, and Brian, we've beat this for two years now. If you're a concealed carry person, you are just as likely to get shot as the person that's the active shooter. Why? Because when a cop shows up or a security guard shows up and sees you capping with a gun, they assume, even wrongly, that you're the active shooter. Even if you're a police officer. It happened in our Aurora, Colorado, active shooter incident. The good Samaritan was out there, gunned him down. First responding cop said, "Oh my God, we got a cop down!" Boom, shot him. So, you literally—even the Vancouver police officer living in Washington up in Seattle, right? He interrupts a robbery stop, he had his own problem, right? And a cop pulls up and sees him with the gun and just assumes from the information he got. Brian, when we are either a participant or an observer, we change perspectives. And a minor change of perspective can change the rest of your life. You can read the trades and come out angry. You can read People and come out happy. You can read NPR and want to put armor guard on your windows. Don't allow others to influence your reactions. Go back to baseline plus anomaly equals decision. Why did we create that? We created it because it's the simplest algorithm that your brain already understands. Your brain is predisposed to sense danger in an environment, that's what it was built for, and the lowest caloric intervention of the human to survive in that situation. So, your first instinct isn't to fight your way out. Okay? Your first instinct is to avoid confrontation. Do you see what I'm trying to say? But if you think confrontation is inevitable, you're going to escalate, even if you escalate unconsciously. I hope I—

I mean, no, and I feel that any time someone just says the phrase, "Well, it's going to happen," it's like, "Well, yeah, with that attitude, it will."

Yeah.

I mean, you're literally greasing the skids to create that situation. "Hey, it's going..." When we say that it's going to happen, it's—and that's why we always stick to likelihood. I mean, are things more likely than others? Yeah, absolutely. Are you—I remember just listening to your interview on the VA's Born the Battle podcast. Check that out, anyone, if you haven't yet. I shared all that. But Greg was on the Veterans Administration podcast. But Tanner brought up my example from some of the podcasts. I always talk about gas stations, and you were like, "Well, that's Brian, he gets stuck on gas stations." And I use it to highlight that point: it is—it's not inevitable. It's just you're more likely to catch a stray bullet at a gas station than you are in your backyard, you know what I'm saying? Or more likely there than at the grocery store. Why? Because gas stations get robbed more than grocery stores. People meet at gas stations, people have arguments there. The one in Houston just a few weeks back where someone got shot at the gas—two people were meeting and fighting over some issue and then started shooting at each other. And one guy gets shot who's just filling up his gas. That's what I mean. It was 5:00 p.m., by the way.

But let's put it this way: I was born and raised in Detroit, you're born and raised in Chicago. Certain places now, if we go to them—Philly, Miami, maybe, L.A.—if we decide late at night to go to the drive-through, okay, we may be inviting trouble. So, simply conducting a pattern analysis, do you get what I'm saying? What's been the pattern? Well, the pattern has been that, you know, to blank fast food place, the "King," if you know what I'm saying, or the "Arches" or something like that. I guess we're fucked by saying that anyway. But the idea is that at any of those places that you saw the recent shootings, you had insider threats where people wanted to rob because they wanted more money, so they set up the armed robbery and it went wrong. Okay? You have people that were robbing the drive-through. You had people that said, "Hey, there's Jimmy at the fast food place, we were going to hit him anyway for our turf war." Okay?

So, if you consistently and constantly go to those places, sooner or later, it's possible that you'll encounter armed gunplay. So, there's our ice cube tray again. The good Samaritan just happened to be taking the exit from the freeway to get gas, and they're involved in that. The legal carry person is smart enough to go, "Well, I'm certainly not going to go to the drive-through during these times of day or when it's busier when I see a lot of cars and people hanging around the parking lot." Do you understand that you can create your destiny by either failing to anticipate the danger, conducting predictive analytics, or just going around looking for trouble? What do they always say? "When you look for trouble, sooner or later, you're going to find it."

Well, you're going to find it. That's the thing, which is why I can't stand the argument, "Well, I'm—this is a free country, and I get to do and go where I want, and I shouldn't have to." It's like, "No, no, you're absolutely right, it is." But you—there's also the fact of what's happening every day in every city. Like, if you want to not take that into consideration, then I mean, that's just like saying, "Yeah, well, I shouldn't—I don't—I shouldn't have to wear these gloves and this face mask on this heavy machinery when it's spitting sparks back at me."

It's a free... yeah, you're right. You are absolutely right. I am no longer wearing a welding pad.

But that's what I'm saying, it's the same thing. It's like, we—you know that this is a likely situation where you could—where there's an increase in potential danger, and you made the decision to go there. Now you—so, that argument of, "Well, I should feel free to go." Yeah, that's great. But that's not the world, right? So, you can't force your way on the world without expecting some sort of repercussions, right? It's going to be blowback. You have to take that into account. And it's like, "Well, I'm going to go do that anyway." It's like, "You really want a cheeseburger that bad at 2:30 in the morning? That's really on the top of your list of things to do? Okay, you reap the whirlwind though."

But you invited it, you're contributing to open the door, and you're adding to the inevitability.

Yes. So, if you push the cosmos hard enough, Brian, yeah, yeah.

It's going to say, "God has a wonderful sense of humor, and every once in a while he likes flicking you behind your ear."

And you know, it's basic physics: every action has an equal and opposite reaction, right? At some—at some point, you know, what you do in that—in that moment is your decision and your choice. And you made it. You may not have realized what the outcomes were going to be, but that you're still—

So, neither did the—neither did the 15-year-old kid who walked into the 7-Eleven with a gun, trying to get some money. He knew what he was doing was wrong. He knew he was responsible for it, and he made that choice. Did he fully understand the consequences? Unlikely, right? When that—that's why when we say, "Don't turn the robbery into homicide." When that happens, what are they doing? They're in there crying when they get locked up, going, "I didn't mean for that! And this—you don't understand!" It's like, "Yeah, look, you swam in open waters, and you got bit."

You just talked about confirmation bias.

Yeah. Because we aren't allowed to pick and choose our role in the greater scheme of things, even though you can control your personal destiny and your actions influence others. There are other things at work. So, other factors came in. He put you in his book of choices, and his book of choices were, "All I want is the money. I want the 12-pack. I want to get back in my stolen car without a driver's license and go get high or whatever, whatever that script was that's running in his head."

Now, you've got your own script, Brian, and the world has a script that's running parallel to that. When that kid walked in the door, there were myriad choices. And if the kid continues to push the envelope, waving the gun around, do you get what I'm trying to say? I'm making decisions, you know, "Give it up or I'm going to shoot." Or, many robberies where it's a shooting right at the beginning. Shooting and announcing their intentions. Maybe at that moment, the thing to do is run or hide or fight, you know, to use the common thing. And maybe part of that is shooting to kill, because you fear for your life, right? But the reason there's a legal standard, okay? The reason it's not vigilante justice is we're a nation of rules and a nation of laws. We are. So, you can't tell me that—let me give you one example, and then folks at home, eat it up.

NRA has a dozen publications that they put out, okay? And every one of the publications has the same section called "The Armed Citizen." And in that, "Armed Citizens," they say, "Family and so-and-so stopped the home invasion by shooting the intruders. They were found later a guy getting carjacked pulled out a gun, an Uber driver did this and that." And they talk about all these people with concealed carry that were legally carrying that killed or injured or stopped the robbery by shooting the opponent. Ten years ago, absolutely everybody was after those, going, "This is wrong! You shouldn't glorify this! This is terrible! Let's not talk about that," you know, "because we don't want to live in that society." What changed? Now, all of a sudden, we're saying, "Hey, look, that Uber driver fought back, and it's on the cover."

Yeah, no, you—that's definitely true is that the narrative has changed to where it was, you know, people didn't like the fact that it would just be, "Hey, man, why don't you just give up your money in your wallet or your car or this? Like, it's not worth it." And you're contributing to—now it's, "Hey, hell yeah, this person." And it's—and it's usually in the less violent cases where someone's robbing or something, the lady working there hits them with something, or the old veteran World War II Marine knocks the guy out, and we all cheer and hooray, and like, "Yeah, this is great!" And it's rare. But, you know what I mean, it used to be like you think like it was that rare thing. Now, now it's almost we're celebrating it. And what—what becomes inevitable after that?

That's called ultimate justice, just so you know. Ultimatum justice is that you are now glorifying that homeowner, that business owner. Everything, that's not your job. That's a job of police. Your town, your city, hires the police to do that job. And guess what? When you shit on the cops, or you take the money from them, or the prosecutor's not going to prosecute a case, all of that weakens the fabric of that society. And no matter how domestic, no matter how—

Right. And even when it's—even when it's something, a situation, you know, I saw the one from a while back where the guy went and killed his daughter's boyfriend because he was like pimping her out and he was human trafficking. It was just a horrible piece of shit as a human being. And everyone went, "Yeah, he got what he deserved." Okay. But we—we have fucking rights in this country. Yes, that guy's a piece of shit, but we have something called due process. And everyone, like, if you—if you're okay with that, if you're okay with someone taking away his rights, even as a criminal, and he's given up, then then then it's okay to take away your rights. Then someone can come in and take away yours at their own will whenever they want. And that's fucking—

And that's not ultimatum justice. That's called Coliseum justice. Yeah, I'm creating these as we go. Because three kids in a southern state alleged that their father or stepfather was abusing them. They murdered him. They beat him to death. And now in that area, they have 400,000 signatures so far in a petition to let them go. Listen, it's not your job. You elected the officials. You help those officials enact the laws. Now, what you must do is stand by the legal process. And if that takes a month, a year, or whatever, then guess what? It's a procedure. You have to stick with that procedure because what we're doing is now we're voting in the forum. And you know what most people get wrong, Brian, in the Roman forums when the thumb was up, the thumb was down. The thumb was down didn't mean that you were going to kill the person. The thumb was down meant, "Let that person go." The thumb was up was, "You're okay to kill that person." That person in the stands was voting this way. You don't—you don't get to do that in America. That would be vigilante justice. Do you see what I'm trying to say? Now, what are we going to have that today you're faced with a double homicide, and folks, your vote is going to say how long you're going to spend in jail? Horse shit! That's not what we're going to do. But Brian, we're allowing that by glorifying these people fighting back.

And you said—you brought something up that I want to hit on just a couple minutes ago because you said, "A minor change in perspective can change your life." But, you know, I'll be the first one to say, because that's a lot of what we talk about is perspective and taking that person's perspective, sometimes in a very literal sense. You're observing something, take five steps to the right and look at it from a different perspective. You will see something differently. But absolutely, I always caveat that with, you know, psychologically that's actually very difficult to do, right? I see the world my way. I don't know everything Greg does. I haven't seen and experienced and touched, tasted, felt everything you have. I don't see true. Right? So, it's incredibly difficult to do, to really, really understand how someone else sees the world or see it from a different perspective. But which is why I always do like, "Well, we'll start small," you know what I mean? Meaning, "Have you ever felt this way?" Okay, well, that's the way this person is feeling right now. Now, maybe they don't deserve to feel that way right now, or maybe that's the wrong way in the situation, according to you. But that's where they're at mentally right now. And those small steps, even that can be difficult because what do we always do? "So, I don't understand why someone would do that." Okay? If anyone—if you ever make the statement, "I don't understand why," that's great. I love statements like that. I make those all the time. I'm claiming ignorance in an area, right? I go, "I don't want to—I don't know this." Right? But what do we do after that? And people go, "Well, I wouldn't. I don't understand why I see that, so it must be that." It's like, "Wait, you just claimed ignorance in the first half of your statement, which is great. I mean, you're open to learning and willing and understanding what you don't know, right then, so stop saying everything else after," right? You caveat it with, "I'm a subject matter expert in this."

Yeah.

So, that's what I mean. But you get my point of that perspective-taking, like you're talking about, it is some people can do it intuitively, right? But that's a—psychologically, it's a very difficult thing to do. So, you must force yourself to do it.

That's the beauty of training and education, not training or education in this instance. So, I have read and had a subscription to Cat Fancy magazine. Never. We never had a cat until we went to the ranch, and this was long before. Why? Because I needed to get into the head of the person that read Cat Fancy. What were their interests? What were the types of things that they talked about? Cigar Aficionado. That's my big joke. Why? What are the things that are important to them? What are the types of ads they're reading? What are the type of commentary that they're making? The Gunnison Country Times, reading the gosh darn letters to the editor and getting inside of the head of a person from Crested Butte, Gunnison, or Texas that comes up here for the season and wants to change all the rules. Like Lake City. Lake City was a great one for the people that came up and bought multi-million dollar homes in Lake City, Colorado, because there was no electronic stoplights in the entire county. Not one. Not one red light, green light, yellow light in the entire county. And the first thing that they did is they came to the town council meeting. And as undersheriff, you sit in on those. And the person would come up and go, "Well, I think we need a stoplight at Main and Seven." And I was the kind of guy that was like, "Okay, let's close off all the street to driver traffic and allow pedestrian traffic so people can walk into those shops and get to meet people," right? You know me.

Yeah, so how did I get those perspectives? I got those perspectives sometimes with a lot of scar tissue. Boxing. I did not understand boxing, and I was really good at martial arts. So, I tried to learn boxing, and I boxed. If Dave Orbex is out there, still sorry to this day, I would get into boxing matches in Joe Rasman's backyard. He would stand on the porch and turn the porch light on after school, and we'd be out there boxing. We'd have the manual and the rules and everything, trying to understand that. Why? Because getting inside of somebody else's head and taking a walk around in their slippers or their pajama bottoms, you understand more. And therefore, you can—you can at least associate the pre-event indications that you're seeing with a behavior. And once they match the likely behavior, you're probably okay. What's always a danger sign? When it's incongruent. Any time the behavior is going to be incongruent, then you're probably going to have trouble. But how would you know that if you don't have a baseline? You know, people always say, "Well, baseline plus anomaly equals decision. You talk about that all the time, and that's just so obvious." Is it? Have you used it today? What's your standard for comparison? Don't come and play with me if you don't understand what that really means, right? Because that's that—for these posers, again, to go back to the posers on LinkedIn and, you know, that are charging people big time for their shitty, shitty, repetitive echo seminars. You know what they haven't mastered yet? They haven't mastered baseline plus anomaly. They don't understand how critical that is, Brian. You said change perspective. What did we teach the common Marine, the average Marine on the streets of Iraq? We taught them, "Listen, if you just move a few feet to the left, look at how much you could see." And it saved a lot of lives. So, sometimes those simple epithets, sometimes the simplest logic, can help you save a life. And what we're talking about is, "Don't turn this gosh darn robbery into a homicide," because guess what? If that person's predisposed to shoot, and they say you fumble, that's the thing.

That's kind of one of the other things that I want to talk about because I'll tie it back to what you brought up earlier about fear of the unknown. And I've always said it in different ways too, like, human beings, we hate uncertainty. We fucking hate uncertainty. We want to know, right? I want the number six, and I want it super-sized, and I want it right this time of the day. I want—I mean, the same thing, like, that's why I create a habit for everything that I need to get done. I have to create a checklist. I have to have certain things out because—

That's why patterns are formed before habits.

You're right. And I have tasks in the water, right? I have to do that in order to be efficient throughout my day. But the idea is, it decreases uncertainty. And that uncertainty, especially in those situations, right? We fear the unknown. So, you know, in those type of chaotic situations, it is an unknown, even if you've trained somewhat for some type of event that you're facing, there's some percentage of unknown in there. If you have no training, it's all fucking unknown, you know what I mean? Depending on where you're at is how many and how much life experience you have, right? So, Greg, you're walking into a 7-Eleven right now in the middle of an armed robbery, okay? There's only a little bit of uncertainty in there for you because of your life experience, right?

But both sides of that.

Yeah, that's what I mean. But the idea is like, because you've been involved in so many of those cases, you go, "There's only so many things that can happen." And you know that. But that's for you. Everything else comes from this. And what do we do? What happens when fear sets in and uncertainty sets in? That survival mechanism in our brain kicks in, right? That limbic system starts kicking, and it's all about, "Well, I'm suddenly in a survival situation." And I'm like, "Are you really though? Like, is this really a life or death situation, or is it inevitable because of what you're having—"

You manifested it. Yes, as one. And if you've manifested it as such, like give you the Frank and Danny Click example. One time, we're in—I don't know if I should be using these names, but folks know that I love you, and I'm using your name because there's statute of limitations on anything we're talking about, not this. No. We're on a pursuit, and Frank Click is driving, and I'm on the radio and jotting down notes. And we're coming up on an intersection that's notorious to get four tires off the ground. Do you get it? Yeah. You know, the light's changing. So, my job as the passenger: "Light is changing. It's not clear! It's not clear! It's not good! Not good!" And Frank looked at me afterwards and said, "Thanks for telling me, but I got this." What are the mathematical chances that me and another car were going to meet in that intersection at the same time? And I said, "Well, that's actually the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and if you want me to explain that to you, I can tell you." Because what you did is, we were all in on that one.

Yeah, he rolled the dice.

He didn't have a choice. He was convinced that at our speed, it was unlikely we're going to impact another vehicle. Okay. Well, I saw a video of a motorcycle fleeing from the cops a couple of weeks ago, and that guy had that same thinking, and just came apart at the seams, right?

The Danny Click example: Danny Click would shoot, and he had this position where he would press with his head. Imagine laying on your back, having your weapon at your chest. He would press his head that lifted his body just with his head and his neck, and he would shoot upside down and backwards from that position. And he was great at it. I'm telling you, these were two of the best cops I'd ever met in my life. But what happened is, they let their confirmation bias create within them this need, right, this psychological and physiological need to be good at that situation. Yeah.

And when I think back of it, I think of martial artists. I mean, a martial artist taught me, and in our dojo, we put up two folding chairs, and we put a heavy bag between the folding chairs and compressed them together. And you had to go up and you had to kick hard enough with your right shin and then your left shin to lift that bag up out of those chairs every time you kicked it. And if you didn't, everybody in class was going, "Go! Go!" until your shins were bloody, and then you couldn't even walk, and then they had to help you off the mat. And I think back to those days now, and I apologize to my karate class, I get why I was doing that. But what we were doing is we were creating—we were putting all our eggs in one basket for that one time that we had that one kick in that one situation. That's what you're doing when you buy that gun, you know what I'm saying? If the likelihood of an encounter is so high that you need a gun, my question to you is, should you still go? Okay? And if it's so dangerous where you're going that you need to carry a gun, and you still have to go, I would say then rehearse those situations and decide now what's going to happen, right? Decide now because when that situation confronts yourself, Brian, I would challenge you, do you remember the video we were talking about with the guy in the driver's seat where the GoPro is showing him getting ready with a car, and then he ultimately shoots, and they show the cab of the vehicle? There's a driver. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, we'll put that—you've got insight on that that nobody else is going to give you. So, Brian, let's put that where—let's do that. So, we'll talk about it right now, but just to everyone listening, go to the Patreon site because we'll do an actual video breakdown of that. So, if you're listening, there's always links and stuff to the Patreon site, right? So, the video breakdown. But anyway, go to talk about—

So, I don't want to talk about that in great detail here. If you're a listener and you're a frequent listener and you're on Patreon, Brian, let's save that specific incident because there's a lot of things that folks didn't see and there's some things that they force themselves to see. Let's see it in Patreon.

Well, it's—but to tie into the example of what we're talking about here, it's the guy's—it's a kind of—they call it a road rage incident. And he's basically shooting while he's driving down the freeway near Miami. At some point, there's very clear video of him inside the vehicle shooting. It's from his own vehicle, so the perspective of it is incredible. But I'll put the link in the episode interaction between two drivers. "Don't turn this robbery into a homicide." Now that's, "Don't turn this trip to the store into a homicide," Brian. I want the folks at home to write that down on the yellow pad and just leave the robbery part out. "Don't turn this blank into a homicide." Do you get my point? And we'll talk about that on Patreon. But for right here, for all our loyal listeners and viewers, and we love you and please keep giving us the thumbs up, however that's done in social media. The idea is, let's don't turn this trip to the hospital into a homicide. Let's not turn this trip to the mall into a homicide. That you should always be thinking about that. And if you're good enough at predictive analysis, you should be able to avoid and mitigate almost all of that danger and exploit those opportunities.

Yeah, so that should be your training. "Well, I hear so much about situational awareness." Situational awareness is okay, but everybody's like, "I stopped using that a long time ago because I don't know what it means." But you—to talk about what you just said is a perfect example, because you're talking about—we talked about inevitability. Okay, if you're going to grease the skids, what do you want to grease them for? What's where do you—where do you exactly—where do you avoid that to go? It's where are you—where are you going to grease it towards? What—what? You know, it's like the old they get the—what are they called—the diverters on the train tracks, right? That's the switch flips and you can the train can either go to whichever stall at the station. You know what I'm saying? You have multiple lines coming in. But the idea is, well, which direction do you want it to go? And if that's where your inevitability is leading towards, that's where it will lead towards, right? So, if it's towards a positive outcome, it's de-escalating a situation, well, then you can—you will do that. If you're constantly looking for that reason, you'll find it. You'll eventually find it. Like you said, "You keep looking for trouble."

I will tell you in this one, maybe another statute of limitations. We had a horrible situation along 8 Mile on the train tracks, where everybody that knows the incident will remember it. And the car was cut in half, and so were the poor people in the seats there. There's a link there. Yeah. And Brian, I was completely okay with what was going on there and having to give the life-saving first aid, knowing some people weren't going to make it. And getting the rook to set out a flare pattern—I don't mean to call somebody a rookie, they were the newer officer—and this was a mess, and it was a big mess. And right in the middle of it, a person came up to me, and I'm putting on a tourniquet, and I'm looking around for the limbs, and I'm doing this other stuff. And they had this thing in their arms, and they go, "Hey, do you mind if I take this?" And I looked at him and I go, "I guess not," you know. And the person walked up later during the investigation, which took a couple of days. That was one of the lanterns that was at the train intersection that during this horrific crash got ripped off. Just one of those old ones that's red on one side and green on the other. And I don't know, they cost like tens of thousands of dollars. I didn't know that. And so, this guy that had just walked up and saw one on the ground was like, "Why did I look good in my den?" Because I was so focused down and in. Brian, I never considered up and out. I rogered up to something at one. I had no writer responsibility to do. Two, I was probably committing a, you know, an aid in a bet. And three, it cost the railyard a bunch of money, and I felt like shit. Why do I bring that up? Because of all the stuff that I trained to do, I never, ever, ever, ever considered a person coming up and going, "Can I get an autograph in the middle of a firefight?" Yeah. Do you see what I'm trying to say? So, if you think you're the best, and there's a lot of people online that do, watch them, watch some of their shows, you know what I'm saying? "Here's the ink pen to the jugular while you're fighting off with the Bible in your left hand." There are so many things that are out there, buddy. I'll tell you this: avoidance is cheaper and pays a greater dividend than training to fight and looking for a fight. Training to fight and training to win is great, I'm not saying that. But what I'm saying is then going on and creating the inevitability factor, you're doing yourself a disservice and you could lose. I mean, people in Vegas do that all the time. They're convinced.

Yeah, and out there like, "Oh, shit. Well, you tape a hammer to each hand," yeah. "What does the whole world look like?"

And we're doing that, by the way. So, I had that conversation. We know a good friend, Kevin Castle and his wife, Tila, down in I think it's Alabama, that they own property and they actually do hog hunts.

Oh, nice.

So, you know my final hog hunt is machete duct-taped to one hand, the naked two-pound sledge in the woods. The only thing I'm wearing is boots, and I'm going out there, and it's just me and them. There you go. That'll be my final sendoff.

Yeah, so we kind of covered a lot in the episode here. And I like that you kind of brought up inevitability. I didn't know you were going to go there at the beginning of the episode, and that's a good way to look at it, I think, is: are things really inevitable? You know, and that's anytime I see anyone commenting on any ongoing situation, I love, especially when it's about the economy or something like the housing market, and people are suddenly experts, and I'm like, "Are you like a multi-millionaire that owns property all over the world?" No.

Okay.

So, the idea is like, "Oh, I got a—I got a great one for you." Actually, it just happened, is that my own comment just reminded me of it. You know, we got the house we moved into, it's an older home, it was just remodeled, but there's still little stuff here and there that's got to kind of get done, you know, normal stuff. Like, insulation in the attic is the same insulation that's probably been in there since the 1950s, so it's got to go, right? It's got to be cleaned out and then you put new stuff in. And the way it works, there's like the attic split a little bit, and there's a small one above where the room I'm in right now. So, the guy comes over and says, "This is how it works." Is this—I go, "Well, you know, I want you to give me—give me the quote for this part of the house right here." I go, "This part right here, I think I can probably do this. You know, it's not big. I can just clean all that stuff out, and I can put the insulation."

They got a stop—look right at me and goes, "Hey, you've done another clean-out before?"

And I smile, literally hit myself right where I just like, "Yeah, buddy. So, I'm going to have you go ahead and do this part too." "Again, probably a good idea, huh?" And I'm like, "Exactly!" Because the way he said it was exactly what I would say to one of them situations. "So you—you've done this before?" And they'd be like, "No, I bet." "Okay, why don't we—what do we—what do we throw that in the estimate too?" I was like, "Yeah, there's a lot here because I don't see what he sees," right? I see it as, "Oh, there's just some stuff there, and a vacuum. I can rent one of the nice big shop vacs from Home Depot, I can do this. I can give you something like me. My brother will knock that out in no time, in a half a day." And he just looked right at me and was like, "But I got it." But that's the idea is—is, you know, the change in perspective there and the inevitability, right, that you brought up.

Don't get us wrong, when you force something or create the inevitability that it may occur, the outcomes may surprise you. Slow time down, give yourself the gift of time and distance, and it's always better fleeing than it is fighting if you have the choice. If you have to fight it out, fight like an injured animal and win every time. But I'm telling you that don't take everybody else's word for it. You have a lot to do with your destiny.

Yeah, I think that's a good place to end. And also, I did write down my own comment: "Instagram is one big example of confirmation bias." I love that, by the way. It's going to be my new quote of the day. So, so there's that.

So, if listening, please do check out the Patreon site. Greg and I'll do that video breakdown, yeah, exactly what he was talking about on there, this road rage incident. But check out the episode details. The link will be in there for that video so you can check it out. And then, yeah, go to the Patreon site. We got weekly stuff coming up there. We got more coming on there as well on some of the case studies and video breakdowns. So, hop on there, it's only a few bucks, and it supports the show. And we do appreciate those of you that are on there, and always reach out, leftofgreg@gmail.com.

Greg, yeah, yeah. We also have that cool upcoming training in Atlantic City. Please make sure that anybody ELI [executive-level intelligence], federal law enforcement professionals. Yesterday, Google. Yeah, let's reach out.

Any—any we have several coming up. Most of them, I guess I would call them closed courses in that sense, but that doesn't mean we can't get in there.

It doesn't mean you can't get in. Just send me an email if you're interested, and I will send you details and ask you some questions, and if it works out, we can make it happen. Absolutely. So, good point on that. I'm bringing that up. Thank you, Greg. And if you don't have anything else to add, everyone—

It's called this shit here, but we knew that was going to happen. My ducks should be showing up here in the morning here pretty good, by the way. Folks, Marren's Meth Lab is what they named the new facility that Brian is sleeping in.

Well, that's what the—this is away from the main—that's what that's surveillance that's been watching me this whole time. But I got to tell you, Brian, we're all thankful that you got to move in. The house looks beautiful from here. So, thank you so much. And thanks everyone for tuning in. Don't forget that training changes behavior.