L.O.G. 166 Perceptions

All right, well, good morning, Greg. As we have been, the last few weeks, recording these on a Friday morning, which seems to work well for us. I've been busy again, and thanks to everyone listening. We appreciate everyone listening, sharing the episodes, and reaching out to us with different questions and podcast ideas. So we've got some good ideas coming up. Oh, another one I got to tell you about. We'll talk about that after the show, Greg. Remind me of that because it's, guess what, Bath Township, Michigan. There's something coming out. So one of our listeners reached out, brought a cool one.

Today, what we're going to be talking about, we're going to be talking about several cases, but two of them in particular. I'll give a quick, brief synopsis of it right now, and then we're going to break down what actually happened. Because as you listening know, a lot of times, especially what's first reported in a news story, is not always what actually happened, or they paint it in a certain light to pander to some emotional reaction, and it turns into clickbait. Which is sad for everyone involved in the actual story, because one, it's missed, and then we start having feelings, emotions, and then legislation or something that might come from that which has nothing to do with what actually occurred.

The first one is actually Wayne County, Michigan, Greg. I believe the town was Roseville. Just a couple of weeks ago, or no, I'm sorry, a few days ago. All right. Basically, no, it was, I'm sorry, I'm screwing up, but a couple of weeks ago, a guy by the name of Frank Robles, there was a traffic accident. And a police officer shot and killed a man who confronted him with an armed knife after the traffic crash. So what was reported was there's this traffic crash, police show up on the scene, they're the first ones there, obviously trying to assess the situation. Guy's holding a knife. Police officer feels like his life is threatened and ends up killing him at the scene. So that's kind of what gets reported. Obviously, we're going to get into what really happened here shortly.

But the other case that we're going to be talking about, sort of at the same time, in parallel, is the one from a Target store in Florida where some teens robbed the store. They stole some Pokémon cards, I believe, some food, some pizza or something as well, and they leave, and then are subsequently in an altercation with police in the parking lot where the police officers shot and killed one of them. I believe one has died. I think the other ones are still alive. But obviously, that's kind of how the story got reported as "Cops kill kid over Pokémon cards." Which, although that makes for a wonderful headline, is not really exactly what happened.

So we're going to talk about these two cases, like I said, several others, and it's kind of going to go around the theme of what we talk about: second and third order effects of your actions, and things that no one accounted for or planned for or thought that would happen, even though you could predict some of the potential outcomes in these situations. So I'll throw to you, Greg, to which one you want to start with and where. But they all kind of go around this theme of: one, who's really responsible for what happened? And two, the second and third order effects, reactions. And of course, three, which is always out there, is how these things get reported versus what really happened. And I always put an asterisk after that, you know. Everyone wants to say, "Oh, it's the media, the media this." It's like, okay, this is how humans are. Think about any story you told or some gossip your friend told you, and then you start repeating the same junk without even knowing whether it's true, without even verifying anything. So yeah, sure, the media can get blamed, but it's humans. This is how we are. We go, "Oh my God, this is most of what happened." We don't take the time to actually look into what were the contributing factors. So we'll kind of, that's my preamble, I guess, Greg.

Yeah, yeah, that's a great lead. And I, I would say that I had to learn the hard way growing up when it was a legitimate news story. But back in the days, when you had to read the news, there were pages and they would say "advertisement" on them, but they looked a lot like the articles, Brian.

Yeah, you mean, yeah, now there's no such need to do that.

Okay, yeah. And so, this morning, headline, "18 Times That Taylor Swift's Shoes Predicted A Stock Market Increase." Whoa, first of all, why are you not immediately informing me of any Taylor Swift news?

I, I, I stand corrected. That was the wrong person to choose when we talked to young Brian (Marren). Ryan (Marren) used to date Taylor Swift, everybody. We'll get to that.

But the idea, Brian, is that we are so used to gossip. Gossip is a huge part of how humans learn. How humans stay in relationships. How humans learn about others and break up from relationships. How we teach each other. So you got to really be careful here. But I think a central theme is the gift of time and distance. What that means is that I have a hammer in the basement, and I've designated it as the Hammer of Truth and Justice.

Well, there you go.

And Shelley's locked it away. I don't know where it is in the basement, but I know that it's there. And every time that I see somebody pipe up on the news or in print news saying words that are translated to, "I'm not educated on this matter, and your job is to educate me and bring me up to speed," that's the kind of rhetoric, Brian, that just drives me up a tree.

So I'll give you an example on this. Try to find, folks, the guy's name, and I'm sad he's dead, I'm sad when anybody dies, is Frank Robles, R-O-P-L-E-S, from Roseville, Michigan. Wayne County. So what happened just a few hours ago, Brian, that's why the confusion, a couple of hours ago, the officer who shot and killed Frank is Chad Lee. He just got exonerated by a shooting board in Macomb County that said, "Hey, listen, he didn't do anything wrong." I mean, he did something clearly, but it was authorized in this instance to reduce this, drop this guy from the count. Now, listen, Frank Robles may have a family. I'm not going to do the research, that's your job, meaning the person that's listening. Frank Robles may have been undergoing a temporary break from reality, Brian. But what he did is he set in motion a chain of events that led to his own death, and he's singularly responsible for his own death. And he's also responsible for the danger that he put others in that morning. Chad Lee's future as a police officer, the semi-driver of the truck that he rammed into to begin this event, which appears not only on its face, but from the artifacts and evidence, to be a protracted attempt at killing himself. That's what it feels like.

So that's what it felt like when I called you right away and said, "Hey, let's run on this story a couple of weeks ago." So this is what happened: As Frank Robles was driving down, what was the street, Greg? It's a big, major road that runs through Detroit and the surrounding suburbs and all the towns in there. He drives his car directly into an oncoming semi-truck. So what we learned was this was an attempted suicide. So he now gets out. Police show up at the scene. They're trying to assess the situation. You can find the body cam footage, I think maybe we'll look at that on the Patreon side.

Yeah, that's a great thing. Let's break that down. We'll do that on there if you want to get into that.

But they show up, they find him. He's standing there. All of a sudden, you could tell even the police officer's looking around, checking the scene, going, "What's going on here? Here's this guy standing there. 'Hey, are you okay?'" He said, "No." And I think that's probably, that's likely what caused the police officer to take a second look, thinking this guy is a victim of a car accident or needs medical help, to, "Oh, he has a knife in his hands." And then so he says, "Officer gives him commands to, you know, drop the knife, drop the knife." He doesn't. He kind of lunges. You can tell in the video, he moves forward towards the officer. He's got the knife in his hand. Officer ends up engaging and killing him on the scene. And then the autopsy revealed he also had slit wrists, I believe, and was bleeding from them as well.

So we call that, what the term would be, suicide by cop. This guy wants to die. So he obviously tried once, failed. Now he's, or twice actually. He's slit his wrist. He's rammed his big vehicle into a semi. So he still obviously has this intent in mind to die today. And then he did, he ended up doing that. But you know, first anytime something with suicide, mental health [expletive], we talk about that all the time. We have the most empathy for anyone like that. If you're struggling, we just, the podcast that was released this week with Joseph Reid about broken people. So I always try to empathize with this. But in this situation, it's [expletive] you, I mean, because the second and third order effects of what he did is destroyed that community. Because not only did this officer whose life is completely changed, career in jeopardy possibly forever, the community shattered. Like you said, the driver of the truck was just driving to work that morning to a job site, delivering whatever he's delivering, and going, "What the hell just happened?" All of these people. And then because there's an accident investigation, there's, excuse me, a crime scene investigation. They have to lock down the streets, causes everyone delays, traffic getting to work, interrupts everyone's days.

And a young girl walking to high school, walking to a school just blocks away from where this occurred, because of the extra traffic, because of the crime scene shutdown, because people aren't paying attention, they need to get to work. She's running across the street, and guess what? Someone hits her with a vehicle on accident. Likely not paying attention. Clearly they didn't see her crossing the crosswalk, as I believe where it happened. And she is now, is still right now, I didn't get any other updates when I checked this morning, fighting for her life because she has a traumatic brain injury and she's in the hospital.

So the investigators, just so you know that we're not just throwing chicken bones on eight. I'll put the links in there. Look it up for yourself, folks. But the proximate cause of the accident that put this poor girl in intensive care, where she's been since this incident on life support, the investigation shows that because the roads were closed, some people tried to squeak around in different routes, and because they weren't at their best on new routes, not paying close attention, they hit her. Now, listen, if you talk proximate cause, Brian, Robles is the proximate cause of that incident. Now, we're not vilifying Frank. Frank had a bad day, and Frank's day was so bad it ended in his life. What we're saying is your methodology, your choices that you make. And that's really what ties these two capers together, Brian. That's what turns a shoplifting into a homicide. And that's what turned this attempted suicide.

Look, here's my problem with just a Frank Robles caper. When it came out, I notified you almost immediately. Because there was no video, there was no noise, there was nothing except for "Roseville coppers gunned down," yeah, of course, "old fisherman."

Yeah, do you get what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's exactly what it came out. Because he had a fishing knife, and he was a fisherman, and all that, "Hey, he loves fishing and everything else." Listen, folks, you can't go through somebody's life, well, you can, you can, and we do, but you can't go through somebody's life after Ed Gein ate his neighbors, dug up people from the cemetery, and made lampshades out of their bones, and go back and go, "You know what, Ed Gein in eleventh grade, Brian, nicest guy you ever met. We played soccer together and brought home that trophy." You don't do that. You don't get to pick and choose what Frank ended his life on. When he was in trouble, look, there was a great story overnight, and I wish I had the story for you, Brian, but coppers had to kill a mentally deranged young man that was off his meds. He had some problems, had a weapon, and assaulted the officers. And afterwards, the poor guy's dead, and the poor officers were traumatized. But they went to the mom, and the mom said, "I'd rather my son be in a mental hospital getting treatment right now than being on a gurney in the morgue." Yes.

Okay, yeah. She is somebody.

Right. She came to grips with it, though, Brian. She didn't jump in and say, "Hey, police this," and then things happen. She wished it would have been different. We all wished it would have been different. But in this case, where push, push, push. Look, Frank is as surprised as anybody. He lived from the accident. Oh, you guys see that in the video that now he's walking around at the scene. And let's do that on Patreon. Let's know how we would break down because then he's got, he's got the knife in his hand. He's walking towards other people. But he's not walking towards him like, "Hey, listen, I'm going to stab everybody in the forehead." He's walking around like he's in a daze. And all of a sudden, he catches up to him, "Hey, I'm still alive. What's next?" So now we've got the wrist, we've got the wrists that are cutting. That didn't work. So now we've got a sense of exasperation in Frank. So he's manic, he's broken, Brian, and now he's searching for something, and who shows up? A cop.

Now, let's go to the mindset of the cop real quick and think, what's the cop there for, Brian? It's a traffic accident. So what's his first fourteen file folders? Set up flares, call for an assistant, who's going to write it? Is Michigan State...?

Can you check your connection there real quick? Sorry, it's just getting kind of going a little bit. I can still hear everything, just kind of a little, little...

Yeah, I apologize. I'm not sure what's causing that, Brian. But the idea being that here on the scene, the only one that knows what's going to happen next is Frank Robles. And all of a sudden, the copper sees the knife in his hand. He's going, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, you need to stop this." And Frank doesn't, Brian. Frank had myriad opportunities to change the trajectory in those last few minutes of his life, and he chose to die, Brian. That's an important standard. Even now, Brian, that's what I said. You go and try to find the real story. All the sensationalist [expletive] is still on whatever search engines you choose. And you know what's not on there, Brian? What's not on there is, "Hey, it appears from all the events that Frank Robles was trying to kill himself and caused this unfortunate chain of events."

Yeah, and that's what it is. And he's ultimately responsible for this. But, you know, you go into the second and third order effects. Yes, he did. Did Frank Robles want to die? He didn't want to kill a little girl walking to school. He didn't want to drag a police officer and, I mean, what if he didn't want to injure a semi-truck driver? This is just what he, he didn't, he lacked some organization and he lacked some critical thinking, and he couldn't work his way out of the situation. And yes, it gets reported differently. And so it's one of those cautionary tales. It's like, let's take a look at really, really what happened here. And that's not unlike the Target shooting as well. Because it gets reported as "Pokémon cards and police officers kill someone." Well, what these kids did is put a bunch of ski masks on, I believe. Some sort of mask on. They're not like a covered mask for, for, you know, some that you're required to wear, it's still in some places, but it actually covered themselves up, go in, steal a bunch of stuff, come running out. I think they, they had already called the police. I can't remember what the witness description was or something. So the police were there almost immediately. And then you're showing up, or you're in the parking lot. You're putting your grandma back in the car, Greg, because you went to Target to get her stuff that you do every week. And then the next thing you know, you're caught in the crossfire because some kids decided to go in and rob a place and then come running out. Because if you're up on the picture, arriving on the scene, you don't know what happened. Dudes in ski masks come running out. Did they just do an armed robbery? Are they going to shoot their way out? And what they ended up doing is what? They didn't comply with commands, they tried to flee, and they drove their police, excuse me, they drove their car directly at the police officers there. That's, okay, well, deadly force is authorized if you're trying to kill someone because that's a weapon. A vehicle is a weapon. And you know, there's that sets off all these events. So now all those store employees, everyone who's in the parking lot, their life is forever changed. Now, maybe they don't want to go back to Target. Now grandma's scared to leave the house. I mean, this is what occurs from it. And then that all happens, and then it gets reported as "Teens gunned down over Pokémon cards."

So, so let's, let's talk about that for a minute. So here's another one, Brian, where I want folks to do their own research to try to find the real article. Because this is weeks old, and there's still not an article that's clear and sane. The videos are out, the investigation's in full swing, and Brian, we just have to have answers, and we're not getting the right answer. So listen, this is the first news piece that came out, and it was from the professional news people on television. At the same, they said, "Some teens stole Pokémon cards and pizzas, and then deputies fired shots outside the Target store. This deputy-involved shooting is being investigated by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. It's their job to find out if the deputies rightfully pulled the triggers and to determine if this shooting was justified."

Okay, so first of all, Brian, the driver was twenty. That's not a teen, okay? That's a fact. The second thing is, we still don't know because it's not being publicized by the news, and the police are saying, "Hey, it's under investigation. Go to the, you know, Osceola County detectives or whatever." License plate's covered up. License plates allegedly didn't fit the car. There's word that the car may have been reported stolen. We don't know that yet. The twenty-year-old driver of the vehicle was in, ready, backed into a spot and had a gun. That's not been reported by anybody. That's fact. That's happening at the scene. They drove when they left, and the people that fired the shots were in fear for their life and fired into the car.

Now, here's where I say training changes behavior, Brian. Because yes, they hit the driver in the chest, and the driver's dead. So he chose to drive at those folks. Okay, the people chose a getaway car. I'll tell you right now, felony murder rule. They could charge the people that did the shoplifting with the death of their own co-conspirator, Brian.

Right, right, for his death.

So you're worried about these other things. I'm saying that coppers were on the way. Why? Because Target called, and Target said, "We got some guys with masks that are rushing into the store." And they didn't know what they had. They didn't know they had somebody that was going to take popcorn and a [expletive] Christmas tree ornament. And that's my problem with it. It's right here. Those choices, Brian, so made those choices.

So all the cops that made the choice... No, no. And this is, there's a couple points to make. Well, there's several, but on that point, yes, as they set that chain of events into motion, this is what they chose. Like you can't, they should be the ones responsible. Every single person in that car. These are people that we should save. You don't, you don't get, you don't get to live in our society. Sorry, you gave up that right when you caused all this. And the thing is, now we're going to vilify the responding officers. Now, you can also make the argument, "Okay, this was a property crime. They didn't, why are we escalating it to this point?" Yep. Did the police officer's actions somehow escalate the situation? Maybe. But, and the investigation will find that out. But the whole point is, given that set of circumstances, given that time of what's happening, you can't necessarily, it's very difficult to determine that on the ground. I can't go, "Okay, it's a bunch of punk kids stealing Pokémon cards. They're on camera, we got the license plate, we can investigate this, no reason to chase after." You don't know that at the time. Mostly, you get what I'm saying?

So most of our listeners, most of our viewers, Brian, especially the loyal ones, know that I'm an orphan. And so when you talked about my mom taking my mom, there's a Target in Montrose. And when we take mom, you know what we do? We pull right up in front and Shelley diligently gets around. Not anymore, she's dead. It's a lot easier carrying her around because she was cremated, but back then. We still don't know. Yeah, we still. But Shelley would open the door and help her out. We'd use the FJ (Toyota FJ Cruiser) because the FJ was usually easier to get there.

Brian, I saw the video and I replayed the video over and over, and I imagined my mom and I walking into that store, Shelley and my mom walking in that store. That's the first thing I'm going to say. Second thing is, don't be fooled that there were Pokémon cards and pizza. In Brookfield, Wisconsin, just a few days ago, they had four men assault a man that came out with the Pokémon cards. And the man they assaulted was a concealed carry permit holder, and he pulled out his gun and the attackers ran off. And these beatings and thievery are happening around the country. Why? Because now that's the hot thing, Brian. And you sent me one yesterday where if you would have read it, it would have been, "Police assaulted a guy in a car."

Yeah, it turned out they were arresting a vicious carjacker.

Yeah, they were attempting to arrest the carjacking suspect in the stolen vehicle. Another one said, "Man gets assaulted on traffic stop." Okay, technically you're correct, that was a traffic stop. Did you want to explain why the coppers had a town hall in Osceola County, in Kissimmee, however you pronounce it, and they tried to talk about this very incident, the Target Pokémon card shooting? And one of the Orange County residents in Florida raised their hand and said, "All you have is one camera view, and it doesn't tell the whole story, and we're talking about children here." No, we're not. "And the items that we're taking are minimal." Lady, you don't know what you're talking about here. I am back again, "I'm not educated on this matter, you tell me."

One, I agree, nobody should die for a property crime. But the cops didn't unduly escalate the situation. They attempted to make a traffic stop, which is completely in their right, on private property, which is owned by Target, with an illegally parked car that was backed and revving the engine, and then pulls forward quickly and not only rams into people but rams into other cars. Brian, that was a choice the police officer didn't make. And these aren't children, Brian. When you take a gun, you're no longer a child. When you walk, you may have the mind of a child, you may have the experiences of a child, but you get what I'm trying to say, you just came into the arena and said, "I'm here for the professional game." And these cops were professionals, Brian. They didn't want to kill anybody. You know what, I know one cop in my career, and I've been around cops my entire life. My daddy was a cop. Everybody in my family on both sides of the law had run into the cops, much like you, Chicago. But the idea is when we think about this, is I only met one cop in my entire career that used to go, "You know what, Reem, this might be the night, this might be the night I get to shoot somebody." Like one guy. And that guy was unsafe at any speed, Brian. I mean, this, this is what ties these two together. Roseville chose what he was going to do, and Osceola County, those teenagers and the twenty-year-old chose what they were going to do.

Yeah, and there's, we talk about perception a lot, and we talk about it, well, I mean, we talk about everything from a physiological level of perception, how human perception works, and how horrible it is. And then you get into perception in, sort of, I guess, a sociological perception of how different groups are perceived, different people are perceived. And then how something like this, a news headline, could influence your perception of events. And then we've all even had, even sort of the philosophical discussions of human perception, of what it means, and how orientation and perception are probably the two most important things to understand about humans, I would say, in the world, because everything relies around orientation. Orient what you orient towards is what you care about, what you look at is what you care about, your environment, and then perspective, predictive analysis. And then perception is how you perceive the events that are unfolding, your environment, everything that's going on, using your five senses and everything you've learned, and how corrupt our human perception can be, all of us, some less or some more. But everyone, no matter how logically you try to look at something, evaluate a situation, analyze something, you have cognition biases, you have perception biases, you have things that are fighting against you that, yes, knowing about them and understanding them will likely help you to not fall into that trap. But there is no way to avoid that, right? This isn't that you, there's no training that gets rid of your cognition biases. You can't do that. You can understand because they were on board for survival.

Right. Yes. Listen, we had much less to attend to in our lives, and the sense of urgency was only for those things that would cause fatalities. So we're very skeptical about any light, motion, and edges in our environment. That doesn't mean to cause me immediate deficit.

No, and it's so funny because you just said that, because I don't know why I didn't send you this, there was like an article last week I saw, and it was, it was sort of a joke, but it was almost like an Onion or Duffel Blog article about, you know, college papers or something like that. And it's like, "Once again, anthropologist finds out that people used to just sit around and not do a whole lot back." They're like, "If you weren't hunting or sleeping, you kind of just hung out." And it was hilarious because it's like, "Oh, they passed the time," and "I'm studying this tribe in Africa, and they sleep a lot, they hang out a lot, and do nothing." It's like, "Yeah, because everything that we're wired to do is geared for survival." So if we're in a situation we don't need to use it, that's good. But now everything is competing for our attention. There wasn't anything back in the day to compete for our attention as much. So now we're constantly on with this. We don't realize how it affects our perception.

So I did just at least want to mention things like perception and functional field of view. Now you're right on, because it all plays into this. And the perception in the moment of those individuals, of the suspect, of the police officer, perception of everyone around there. Because one guy did, there was one witness in the Target one, who thought he heard, "Yeah, the suspect started shooting. All I heard boom, boom, boom. Then I heard the return fire of boom, boom, boom." That's completely different than what everyone else said. So is that guy wrong? Well, that's how he perceived the events to occur.

And if we continue to weigh the amount of media buzz against the coppers in this, "Vilify and fire these coppers," is that what we're going with now, is the sheer weight of the alleged evidence against somebody, Brian? I mean, that's not how our legal system works. We have to have more respect for it.

I agreed. But here's where we get into what we do. And someone will say, and this is my issue with when, a lot of, I don't think a lot of agencies, like law enforcement agencies or even corporate entities, do a very good job of communicating these issues and communicating all the concerns that they, and it's, you can see the contempt on their face because they're so annoyed at these questions. And they're just, you can tell it's just that they, because they want to shake people in the public, go, "You don't understand." It's like, "No, they don't, so [expletive] explain it better!" Because here's the thing, like the, where I was kind of going with this is, you know, people will say, "Well, you never could have predicted that would have happened." And that's not true. That's not true. But here's the thing, a lot of us don't know that that isn't true. It's like, "Well, what do you mean? You're going to tell me that you could have predicted this girl getting run over on the way to school because of an accident that happened down the street?" And yes, yes, yes, you can. It's happened.

And does it happen? Let's say it's just a water main breaks at a major intersection, and now the precision on the city services side pop up, they start blocking off traffic. And what does that do to everyone's day, driving their kids to school? "Now we get to find a new route. Now I'm running late, which means I'm going to be driving faster and be paying less attention. I haven't run this route before so I don't know it well." And then boom, that's when those things occur. That's when it's never, we talk about all the time, it's never, "Well, Greg, I had a wonderful night's sleep last night. I woke up, had a nice jog. I had a great healthy breakfast and I had a cup of coffee, and I walk out and I see this going." No, that's never when [expletive] happens, man. It's always during times of extreme stress or extreme boredom, extreme chaos, or nothing going on to where you're not attending to your environment properly.

So let me throw this at you, and thanks for being the Mr. Science today because I'll tell you what, that puts things into perspective for me when I'm thinking about what we're saying. Because sometimes, Brian, a lot of stuff hits the cutting room floor. We never edited anything, folks. But because we don't go into it assuming everybody is thinking at the same level we are, meeting with the same background and experiences, right?

Exactly. No, we, I just said communication for the police. You've got it. We do that too. What happens when we get in this conversation autonomically, then people go, "Hey, we didn't, we weren't really tracking after that. What was between this and that?" That just happened with our recent guest when I made a comment about two books.

Oh, that's right. Piglet.

Yeah, that I absolutely love.

And he's like, "Holy crap, those are real, real books." Yeah, they really are. So, Brian, last week, this last week, because it's Friday now, two deaths occurred within twenty-four hours. One on the East Coast and one on the West Coast, both where kids were digging in the sand. A thirteen and seventeen or nineteen, I believe, that were digging in the sand on the beach, having fun with others in the presence of others when the sand collapsed. And before they could get them out, both of those people died. In the instance of the thirteen-year-old, they got him out, got a pulse, got him breathing, but there was no more recovered brain activity. On the older kid on the East Coast, not so lucky, and both died. Brian, both of those incidents happen every year in the spring and summer. But we still look at him just like a shark attack and go, "Oh my God, nobody could have predicted it." Okay, stop.

Now let me also tell you that the other side of that coin is getting into the [expletive] when you don't have the right to get me into this [expletive]. Normally we talk about this on road rage. Drive recklessly and act like an idiot because it creates a chain of events that are going to cause an accident you'll never see. So I'll throw two at you real quick. Georgia Taco Bell. And the reason I want to read the article on it is remember that the Georgia Taco Bell employee allegedly went back in during this argument over a food order, and this is early morning hours, went back into the store and retrieved their AR-15 and came out. And then gunfire rang out between the two groups.

I'm sorry, real quick, I didn't, because I didn't get a chance to look at this one. The employee went into, employee went back into Taco Bell and grabbed their assault rifle that they had in... I don't know, is that like a Georgia thing? Like you're allowed to bring your AR to work or something like that?

Listen to me, so while the cops are investigating two hundred yards away from that investigation, gunfire rang out in another South Fulton fast food restaurant, this time a McDonald's. And the news says, "Be advised, two different crime scenes, neither of the situations have anything to do with it." Oh my God, Brian, think about what we're talking about. Look at me clearly. I go to fast food, you know what I'm saying? I don't do it when I'm with you or with Shelley, but I sneak away sometimes, you get what I'm trying to say, and buy six Arby's burgers or whatever this [expletive]. No, I don't, folks, but by the way, you can tell Arby's doesn't have burgers. But the idea, Brian, is that we all go to fast food restaurants at one time or the other for the convenience, usually early morning hours. It's not fair to engage me in this running gun battle.

Now I'll counterpoint that with Sunday. Thinking of my mom again. My mom loved flea markets. And if it was Hummel related, folks, if you know what a Hummel (figurine) is, my mom and my aunt were the Twin Towers when it came to Hummels. So here you got people in Houston's arguably largest flea market, Brian. Thousands of people shopping on a beautiful Sunday in Houston. And two teams of people get into a verbal argument. The guns come out, and now five people are shot, two are dead, Brian, in the center of the Sunday Houston Flea Market where you and I would take our loved ones and walk around looking for the wicker chair. Think of that for a minute. So when we talk about this guy that got into the accident, Roseville, Michigan, that didn't have the right to endanger others. And then we start talking about these kids, "Remember, they're children, Brian," that ran into this Target store in broad daylight and caused this mayhem. All right, I would put these all in the class of, "You don't have the right to do that to me." And if we think just a few days ago when we were talking about the Whites that escaped from prison, they happen to be Whites too, so that's a, I guess there's a pun. But the woman being dead now. Listen, Brian, they were staying at a hotel where other people stay at the hotel on their way to Disney, let's say. Do you get what I'm trying to say? You don't have that right. So I think, when you think of the law, stop thinking of the poor innocent victim in this being the criminal. Start to align and break down the incident so you can figure out who caused what, why, and where. Now, is Target responsible because they had these Pokémons out there? There should be a barbed wire.

No, and we go to that, "Oh, this poor kid or something." Yeah, because those incidents do happen, it's just they're so rare. That's what, that's what they make the movies about, the documentary about, is that case where someone was wrongfully convicted and they happened because they did, they do mistakes because we're humans. Yes. And but, you know, you, when you can't, you can't equate that to every other case that's out there because ninety-nine point nine percent of all other cases are exactly what they were where the person is responsible for it because they did something wrong. So, and that that goes into our perception of these events. But like, you know, this is why I gave it kind of from the perspective of the news headlines and then you walked through each one of those cases and gave the actual facts that happened. You're like, "Well, that, that sounds, that sounds completely, completely different. How can it be?" And part of that is too, is, you know, everyone's rushed to find out, "Oh my God, what's going on?" And we get listeners right now, and I appreciate everyone reaching out who constantly, "Hey, aren't you guys going to talk about the most recent shooting in Buffalo and all this?" I'm like, "Why? Why? One, the investigation isn't complete."

Two, it's no different, most important facts.

No different than anything we've ever talked about again, including to the point where it was completely preventable and people knew about it.

So let's do this, Brian, let's create a graduated cylinder for our desks. And this is for you folks that are listening right now, graduated cylinder. Oh, I'm sorry, back to high school. Well, Brian, listen, when you're an orphan, you get a lot more time on your hands. So the graduated cylinder's up on my desk, and I made it out of one of those things where you put dimes, nickels, and quarters in, you know what I'm saying? Have you ever seen one of those banks where it organizes your changes?

Yeah, it's very simple. It's plastic.

They're cool. So this is, and what I'm going to do, Brian, is I'm going to take a marker and I'm going to go across there and I'm going to say, "Stress fractures visible." That'll be my lowest level. Then the next thing is, "Social media leakage." That'll be my next thing. Shows up to school in a completely inappropriate outfit and is the school loner that everybody would point at because of their bizarre behavior. I'm not talking about unique hairstyle. I'm not talking about Ryan liking music that nobody in your school likes. Okay, I know quirky, I was a quirky kid.

Yeah, everyone was, in some way.

And add now to that, the fascination for weapons, the hate speech rhetoric. In this event, it happens to be racist, not unlike Dylann Roof, the church guy. But Brian, that's not all of the issue. You've got broken humans. There's eight billion people that are available to do this, think about that, on the planet. So when we have one out of eight billion that acts out and does it, it's remarkable because it's so rare. But if you look at those coins, everyone shares those same graduated cylinder achievements and thresholds, every single one of them. So it's no different than the Oxford shooter, it's no different than the Columbine shooters. And this guy, just a little bit different in his methodology. And you know what scares me most about these incidents, Brian, is that the availability of video makes other people look at it and go, "[Expletive] it, it's checkout time. Why don't I copycat that?"

You get wrapped up. It certainly does, especially when you're live streaming it and you can find that recording and you can see it from a first-person shooter perspective, just like the video game you've been playing. But the other issue I have with all of that is another facet that, I would say that's a new part to all of this stuff. But listen, people live stream their pursuits. We've seen that. I know that you and I talked about where they're around the pursuit, going, "Hey, the cops are right behind me."

Yeah, and they learned that from, they learned that from news choppers that used to follow up exactly the right time. And then remember the, the guy, can't think of his name right now, that was the news reporter, the weatherman with two different names in the bad background, and he went and he killed the newsman.

Yeah, East Coast, North Carolina or something like that, I can't remember where.

Yeah. And then the broken human that jumped out of the car and shot the guy while he was doing it, then got in a pursuit. So, Brian, it's not unprecedented, that's not what I mean. But what I'm talking about is on both sides of the issue now that was important to the news media. Listen, police don't do the perp walk because they don't want to stimulate other people into thinking that's cool. So why are we still allowing the news media, Brian, to make a circus out of those type of issues? And it's not free press when you're reporting just this horrible tension and anxiety-producing information.

And here's my take, and this is in no way a thought-out, take on this. This is kind of right now in the moment, but I have thought about it in the past, I think you got to come up with like a cogent message for it. But, you know, when everyone looks at these situations, we got to understand why this would happen or we want to place blame on something. And everyone just picks something that they think that it should be or it must be. So it must be because he's a white supremacist. It must be because he had guns. It must be because he was treated and he was bullied when he was a kid. It must be because. So there's all of these things. But what people forget about this is, let's, like you just said, let's go back to the person. Because my hypothesis would be, Greg, let's say, let's say you just, you snapped your fingers and there was no such thing as different skin colors in the world and never had been. Okay? So just that, nothing else has changed, just there's no skin color. Would we still have all of the wars and fighting and hate and discontent? Absolutely, absolutely. Would this kid still have done this for a different reason? Yep. You know what the reason would have been? The reason would have been that morning when he went to Appalance and put his quarter in the gumball machine, he got an orange gumball instead of the blue gumball. And that was it. That was, and here's what we forget about all these people that carry this out, like the [expletive] sense of entitlement you have, the narcissism you have to think that you're owed something and that you can go out and do this because you've been wronged. Dude, you're [expletive] eighteen years old. You haven't done a damn thing in the world. Okay? And the other thing is, like, I mean, people forget this. He's a piece of [expletive]. It doesn't matter if he's, he would have come up with some other reason to do it whether it was race or religion or whatever ideology. He was radicalized and broken. It's [expletive] because he found something he was looking for. And all you got to do is go through any one of the things that any of these people say, and none of it actually makes sense. And none of it is in line with any specific viewpoint. It's ramblings of a complete [expletive] [expletive]. And this is the problem, and this is why we don't ever prevent them, Greg. We don't ever prevent them because now we go, "Well, we got to combat white supremacy." Well, yeah, of course, like, racism is a horrible, awful thing. It's a horrible part of the human condition that's been around for a really long time, and we haven't cracked the code yet on how to, how to, how to get people to do it. But we're [expletive] getting better. And it's horrible, but it's disgusting when you see someone who just, you just ignorant person who just blames someone because of the color of their skin. You're like, "You're a [expletive]." But then treat them as that. Treat them as that. Treat this kid as the narcissistic [expletive] that he was, and he did an awful thing. So, I, I just, who totally got it.

There's conversation about, no, there's, there's no way to rehabilitate him or Dylann (Roof) or any of those, those people. Remember the shooters, years before they yanked him out, they said, "This is the kid most likely to do a school shooting." Happened the same thing with this kid, Brian. Violence is a language. Yes, violence is an ideology. It is the way to get immediate notice and sometimes can be the first and strongest instrumentality of a change. And I agree with you, and I feel your anger, Brian. It's easy to see that this is, you hit an emotional tip because they're all the same. And you and I had an incredible talk a couple of days ago with the person that will remain nameless for now, during a complete side business deal. And the person said, "You know, people ask me all the time, are these school shootings preventable?" And then he paused, three, two, one, and we're smiling already, and he said, "Yes, absolutely." And you know what, that was our marker whether that phone call was going to go longer, Brian. Because I'll tell you right now, there's people out there making their living right after this thing on the East Coast that, I think it's going to jump on it. On LinkedIn, my only link to other humans, Brian, is LinkedIn. Somebody was hawking their book, "Hey, of course it's going to happen. Take a look, you better start reading my book." Of course it's that hammer of truth and justice, Brian. It was jumping around in a box in the basement. Because see, that's what pisses me off. You want to do something, you want to do something about this, you're exactly right. Shine the light on the problem. And the problem is, we have broken humans in society, and if they don't get the mental health that they need, this will never end. And because they're becoming less sophisticated and more organized, we're going to see more.

It's easier to learn how to do it. It's easier to, to pull something off, I think, for a number of reasons. You know, but, yeah, it just goes back to, I mean, this kid is eighteen years old. What we've seen time and time again with all these folks, if you can get them to not do that in out of high school into their twenties, guess what happens? Your likelihood of violence, anger, rage, it goes down. That's why, that's why what you're supposed to be, like, I don't know if it still is, but you had to be twenty-five years old to rent a car. Like, you could own a car and get car, your car insurance rates go down as you get older. Why? Because you're less likely to, I mean, that, that, you're left with, you can put it on an actuarial table. That's what insurance co-underwriters do. So why can't you do it with anything that we're talking about? And that's what, when you get into this horrible analysis of, "This is why he did it." Well, one, you're not him, so shut the [expletive] up! You didn't talk to him either! You don't know why he did any of that stuff. There's a lot of reasons, and it, it takes away from the real problem and it takes away from us solving it when you do that. When you politicize these things and make it all about this issue, well, now we're never going to solve it because it's just about this issue. So now you've made it, you've got to pick a side whether you're for that issue or against it. It's, it's, it's horrible and it's hard, and you see it over and over again.

I, I absolutely feel your frustration. So Target jumped in to solve this problem and said, "No, we're not pressing charges. We want to bow out of this gracefully. We're, no, we're good." Okay. Second thing is, they put signs on all their stores, "Hey, we're no longer carrying those cards. If you want them, you got to order them online," all this other stuff to prevent further violence. Brian, that's, we're getting sued for other [expletive] anyway, I'm sure. But that's a coward's way out. That changes nothing. You can't change human behavior by taking those things off of your shelf. That just is going to create somebody else that's going to sell two times as many and have them on their shelf. Violence has to be addressed. And we're now back to a level of violence that I didn't think that we'd get back to where municipalities and cities and people, Brian, there was a shooting at a White House just a couple of days ago. And the shooting was, now, I think when they go back to it, I feel when they go back to it, you're going to see that the shooting had to do with the workplace violence issue where a guy had gotten fired, came back, but he was sitting at the bar, got out of hand. They called the cops, he shot the security guard, the cop shot him, and the poor woman in the scene that made me again, again, think of my mom and my aunt with their hats and the feather and the old thing. They said, "This is such a nice steakhouse, and all we came here is for a quiet meal, and now that's a homicide." It's the Louis Vuitton, you have that right. You don't, you do not have the right to do that. That's, that's the, what was it, Lou Bee's Diner, back in the eighties or seventies? Whatever was, no, any man, glass window.

And so, and that then changed legislation and gun laws and this and, but is it still happening? Yeah, so we didn't fix the flipping problem. But, you know, [expletive], I forgot where I was going to go. You were so angry about that.

Angry, angry, Brian came out, focused. No, it doesn't have diabetes, but he doesn't have a sugar problem. So, it's, I didn't want to get into that one too much because we get into to that as, as sort of this, "This is why these things occur." This is like the ideological difference blaming. Let's stop victim praising. Let's deal in facts, Brian. If we deal with facts and we deal in science, and you deal with demonstrated intent. Because when you talk about perspective, when you talk about orientation. Listen, every one of those bad guys had a chance to say no. They had a chance to sit down. They had a chance to comply. They had a chance to go, "You got me." And they didn't do it. And now coming out and saying the next story will be that Biden inspired the shooter.

Right. You're right. Yeah, it's, it's that helps.

Yeah. And you know what, there was that movie, remember that crappy movie with Eddie Murphy, loved Eddie Murphy in almost everything, but where every time he said a word, a leaf fell off the tree? Well, think about it if that was true in life, where every time you said a word, a leaf fell off the tree, all of those words of rhetoric and [expletive] that don't need to be out there on the line, they're not helping anybody. Remember what Alito, I think it was, that said about, and probably wrong, about pornography? That you. So I'm saying that those are my arguments. My argument's always going to be for science, unless I'm proven wrong. My own argument is always going to be for facts. Bring the facts forward. Broken kid. He was going to spin out of control. They prevented it by a year because he was going to do it at school. And he chose what, Brian? A place he goes to all the time.

Yes, he didn't choose a random store. No, he went to this store all the time.

Yeah. So that's, that's, I mean, I guess that's kind of our comments on that case for now.

Yeah, we need to, we're going to talk about the wagon. So how did that start? That was my fault. Let me go ahead and take the blame on that one. That was all me. Said, "Hey, you know, we weren't going to talk about this." And then I said, "But let me tell you what my thoughts are streaming out." It is frustrating because it seems, and I get it, and it goes back to what I just called people out on, I have to call myself out on, is what seems so self-evident to me needs to be explained clearly. And that's why I said, "Well, here's kind of my hypothesis. I haven't really formalized anything or talked about it in a way that I put my thoughts together on it." But what that is, is we all look for some explanatory storyline for why something occurred. And so we go with the lowest calorie thing, "Oh, it's obviously because of this. I've seen that before." "Well, it's obviously because of his access to guns because we see that all the time." And it's obviously because he was, "You know, abused as a child because, you know, I know what that can lead." Everyone picks their point and they go, "This is what it is." And you're like, "Maybe it's all of that. Maybe it's none of that." I mean, really, don't, don't overcomplicate things that you don't need to. Because just look at who this person was. Look at their behavior. Look at how they treated others. Don't care what they said. You've got, okay, we're going to go after people with Tourette's now because they say awful things all the time, but it's not what, they don't mean anything by it. They can't help it. What are they doing? What's their behavior like? I mean, that it's with all of these cases. And so to bring it back to how to understand this, that's difficult to do in the middle of the situation. That's why I would say, I was saying, stop and think about it and compare it.

Brian, there were three shootings and a stabbing during graduations or graduation parties, all of which, one of each of which, responded in at least one person being fatally wounded and killed. Find those articles, and those articles pull at heartstrings. Those articles don't say the Rick Moranis defense and whatever that Ghostbusters was where he comes running out with the colander on his head and cop asked the firemen, "Hey, what went on in there?" and says, "Cougar at a party, damn thing went nuts." Look, evil is around you all the time. People that are broken and are going to do bad things. So you've got criminal type, you've got negligent type, you've got accidental or incidental because they've got a mental health issue. Brian, we got to start teaching everybody, look, these are fun events, don't bring the gun to the wedding. And it's not a sign outside saying not to bring the gun to a wedding. If you're carrying a gun, don't drink too much, you get what I'm trying to say? If you got a sharp pointed object in an argument, put it away because you're a human and you're likely to use it to slash the throat or stab the person you're arguing with. It's about human behavior. The more we know about human behavior, the more we know predictive responses, and the more you can, you can come up with, and you can mitigate it, you can identify, well, because you can identify potential other, potentially other outcomes or things that are happening. I go back to what we'll talk about on the Patreon site of the video of the police officer in Michigan in the case we talked about today where he showed up and you can tell just because his body camera went forward. He did a double-take, because you can see the double-take almost like where he went, "Wait, hang on." So he knew right then and there, "This is not, this is, this is, this is a different traffic accident. I agree with three hundred I've showed up at in my career. This one is different." And then out comes the gun. Then out comes the situ, like, and I'm not saying he did anything wrong. In fact, he didn't, because they did the investigation. He did what was, he was trained to do. It fell within their policies and procedures and escalation of force. It fit the legal definition for the authorization of deadly force to protect himself and his fellow officers. So it's not that, but it's, it's a perception issue, you know what I mean? Like, how, how can I sit there in the moment and come up with potentially other outcomes for this situation? Not saying that's easy, but it is absolutely one hundred percent achievable. You can do that. That's the whole thing. You can predict these likely things. Right?

You just, graduation, it's problem season right now. Okay, what do you think is going to happen? Is there ever going to be parties, drink too much and die, get in car accidents, DUIs, all that stuff? Absolutely, that's about to happen right now. We're in that time period in just because it's May into June. So let me make a prediction, Brian. In the next couple of weeks, there's going to be a homicide or a homicide-suicide when recently the four divorced persons are trading custody of the kids in a public place. And one of them's going to lose their mind and kill the other one or kill both of them. Now, we know that's going to happen. We know that there's historic precedent for it. We know that those are high-stress moments. Yet what happens is we're diligent, and we're safe, and we protect each other. And then what happens when our guard gets let down? Why? Because humans have a tendency towards entropy, we're complacent, we get complacent. Hey, I wear my gun in the same place I wear my badge. So if somebody sees that, this, back when I was on the road, I don't carry a gun anymore, come get some. And I did it so if I had to reach for my gun, somebody would take a look and they would go, "Oh, this guy's likely a cop," and not shoot me in the head. So what happens later, Brian, is all of a sudden you just got to run into town and pick up that pizza. "Ah, [expletive], I'm going to grab my gun, not my badge. I'm going to throw it in the center console, Brian. And then the later thing is I'm not going to bring my badge, but I got my gun in my shoe." Brian, we're all guilty of that. What I'm trying to tell you is as a society, we can't get complacent when it comes to reporting incidents. We got to take a look at the incident and we got to warn people, listen, when the engine light comes on, check your oil. What does that mean? That means it's graduation season. The first thing that's going to happen is six graduating kids are all going to die in the same wreck because they were out screwing around and hit a tree. Then at the graduation ceremony, somebody's going to drink too much or take pills and they're not going to show up. They're going to be found dead in the room. And then the parents are going to fight and there's going to be a shootout. And then, Brian, we can predict it. So if you can graph it, you get what I'm saying? We pay people to predict what's going to happen with the stock market. I guess they're sometimes right or something, they're usually wrong, but the idea is the long-term effects of it are that these things pay and these things don't. So that's what I'm telling you, man, you got to look around you. Just like cop shootings, Brian, cops are so much better now at what they're doing. But that doesn't mean that every incident has to result in the shooting. Let's talk about that on Patreon as well too.

Yeah, because I'm not saying that the cops did anything wrong in these instances, but I'm saying that we're never going to get out of the "cop shoot" mentality if we stay in the "bang, bang, you're dead" binary.

You know, when the force escalates, you need to be here. And whenever here, you need to be here. Escalation, Brian, is not the milieu. The execution escalation is a product of the scene, of the suspect, of their intent, of everything involved. De-escalation has got to be like, like fighting racism, it's got to be part of your DNA. It can't be a thing, you can't go, "[Expletive], let's run and get that anti-racist spray now." It's either part of how you, it's either, and it's part of your culture or it's not, and you got to fix that.

No, that's, that's a great, that's a great point. The anti-racist spray analogy is funny because that's exactly how we are as humans. It's, "Okay, now we have to go get this toolkit. Now we have to go get that thing over there." No, you don't. You already possess the ability to accomplish this. Like, use what you have, and then make it part of everything that you do. So it's not a thing.

They're going to [expletive] on me for this too, and I'm always wrong on numbers, folks, because not only do I have coprolalia, but I have the disease where you can't see things in order to use the numbers. I don't know where. But the idea is when, and now you forgot my chain of thought. Oh my God, I need coffee. But the idea is when you read the news and Congress is passing a bill for twenty-seven million dollars or two hundred seventy million dollars, I don't know where to put the decimal, but the idea is it's to so cops can get free training and how to deal with people that have closed injuries like PTSD.

Okay, listen, we're not going to do anything about PTSD and helmets and identifying those soldiers that need the extra thing. What we're going to do is we're going to say, "Hey, those cops, those first-line people are killing them at a higher rate than..." Well, and that's just, that's exactly what I'm talking about with how we like, I think it is, it's like, "Oh, we'll just get them to do this!" Like, that's what, it doesn't address the [expletive] issue, Jesus! Like, you need more training.

And Brian, yeah, we need training and electricity because power lines come down during storms. Everyone says they need more training until it's time to go do training and they just buy a vehicle instead, or everybody's out of money.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You've had more money now than ever, and yet you don't. "Oh, our budget." Okay, your budget's higher than it's ever been in the history of this place being here. But okay, build that new training academy.

Yeah, there you go. Now the thing is, points. Let's trade coins. Coins used to mean something. They're meaningless now. Keep your coin. You know what, give it to a hobo so they get some coffee. And I can't call it a hobo. You can't. That's an old-school term. Specific for like, I thought it was that we didn't specifically have to deal with like ones that would ride around on trains. I thought that's what the origins...

You don't even know what experiences are.

I do. I had a train set as a kid. Okay, HO (H-O) scale.

And a small HO (H-O) scale train. Yeah, absolutely it is. There's millions of train tracks I've sat at, I've sat at in train crossings for hours of my life if you put it all together.

So my brother, Jeff, used to put HO scale trains in his mouth. All the time. I don't know, I don't know why. It must mean something else. He could try it. He loved trains, I'll tell you that. So we'll tell him about the hobo next time I run into, I think that maybe that's why he loved it, it wasn't about the trains, it was about the people riding the thing. It wasn't plugged in. Oh God.

So that spiraled off the tracks there, Greg, we apologize.

Analogy.

So, we'll, we'll get into those videos. We'll do that on the Patreon site. So folks, you can come check that out on there and how we break stuff down. Those are quick little tutorials that we give and we do other discussions on there. And again, for those of you who do follow us on there, we do appreciate it. Thank you. For those of you who are reaching out, we do appreciate that as well. And we have, just if you send us your ideas for this, for topics or for things to do, we'll do it on there.

And since we talked about graduation, I saw someone made a funny comment about it's kind of graduation season right now. So they said, "Don't forget to take some photos. When you're taking your photos, do it without your significant other because when you look back, you're likely not going to be with that person." I thought it was funny, it was good life advice. Make sure you get some without that boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever you call it in your life, because you're young and you just graduated and things may change.

So the wife and I just went over thirty years right there. So anyway, we've been together longer than that. Yeah, so.

Yeah, you had to mention Shelley, did you?

Yeah, I want to make sure everyone knew who you're talking about.

Yeah, but she's not proud of it anymore. Exactly. Now it's like she's telling people, "No, no, we've only been together for like, it hasn't been that long. It's nine, it's kids."

We don't have kids. No, we're just dating. We're just dating. You know, I'm still feeling them out.

So, hey, you haven't even commented on my name on the show.

Oh yeah, I saw that earlier. Bringing up "Dog Sitting SME." You are watching Ember again, and yeah, we'll talk about that next week. She's finally sleeping over all night. Ember, our Rhodesian Ridgeback, is the sprinkler every time she comes over the house. She vomits on absolutely every hard surface. She's eating something that's bothering her. That sucks.

But, yeah. Well, anyway.

She looks like me now. She's even wearing a jacket. And she's wearing red because it's Friday. Remember, everybody deployed. Absolutely.

Thanks everyone for tuning in. We do appreciate it. Share it with your friends. Reach out to us at humanbehaviorpodcast@gmail.com. And don't forget that training changes behavior.