L.O.G. 225 Dr John Peters

Well, we'll go ahead and just jump in and get started and welcome a very special guest today, Dr. John Peters. We really appreciate you having on the show. Thanks so much for deciding or agreeing to come on here and talk to us.

You're quite welcome.

Yeah, so it's important to note, Brian, that every once in a while in podcast world, you get a chance at your dream podcast guest. And because we couldn't get them after The Human Behavior Podcast's initial shot there, I'll pass it to you, John, to kind of tell our listeners—a lot of them are in law enforcement or the training world especially—but tell us a little bit about your past and kind of why we have you on the show and what you do. Then we'll get into kind of how you know Greg, I'm sure there are some good ones in there that our listeners would love to hear.

Well, background-wise, I have always been interested in law enforcement since a fairly young age. I think part of that came from my martial arts training, where one of my instructors was a police chief. After high school, I went to work for the FBI in Washington as a clerical employee, and taught self-defense through the FBI Recreation Association for a period of time. I became an active police officer in Pennsylvania, which is my native state. I worked as a patrol officer, a deputy sheriff, and finished my undergraduate degree while working full-time. Then I went on to graduate school.

After my initial graduate school experiences, I went with the police department in a suburb of Boston, where I was a staff executive, which was the civilian equivalent of a deputy chief. I ran an administrative bureau, directed planning and research, and wrote policies and procedures. From there, I went with a research firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts, made up mostly of Harvard and MIT PhDs, and got a real taste for research. On a research assignment to the West, going to California, I got to see how well California police officers were trained. On my way back, I'll never forget it, I was on a TWA airline, and I was flying over Kansas. I got the idea of starting a training business, which I did. It was a defensive tactics institute. In that company, we did handcuff training, flashlight training, self-defense training, baton training, what have you.

And that's how I met Greg. I published a book on defensive tactics with flashlights in 1982, and the academy director at Macomb Police Academy in Michigan somehow obtained a copy of it, liked it, and brought me up. I started a long association with Macomb, and that's how I got to meet Greg and started a long association with him. And here we are.

Yeah. Sorry, Greg, you're on mute there for the first time in a long time. I have a different situation here. You can explain that later. The John Peters books, listen, everybody knows no Wiki, and everybody has had books on tactics. The greatest thing about Dr. John G. Peters' books was that you could go to him, and it was handcuffing and speed cuffing. It was not only the principles, not only the how-to, but why and when, and when not to, and what the legal ramifications, what the medical ramifications were. So, whether you were straight baton or side baton, or you were ASP baton, or whether you were handcuffing or speed cuffing, or flashlights using them in a variety of defensive impact tools, the idea was that John really winnowed it down to what a copper needs, and what he needs to write in a report, and what he needs to understand.

And John, I would argue that even with Koga and all the other stuff that was out there in the market, the Bruce Siddle 'old side of the house,' your stuff was the beginning of how to write a book that's going to last a challenge for coppers. I truly believe that. Back then, Brian, I know Macomb reached out to John and said, 'We don't believe any of this. Come show us.' And John, that's pretty fair, right?

That's fair. That's what I was told. In fact, we went out in the parking lot outside the service academy building, and John Bruins, the late John Bruins, who was the academy director there, said, 'I don't believe this stuff.' I'll use the word 'stuff.' He said, 'Show me.' So, I put a couple of people in the car, dragged them out of the car, and he goes, 'Well, that really works!' Yeah, it does work. And then I just kept coming back.

But I think one of the things—I worked features for three years, and I really learned during those three years what worked and what didn't work. I mean, who cares which way the keyholes are facing? Nobody cared when you're rolling around on the ground. You just wanted to get cuffs on. Right? There are no demerits if you get the keyholes facing the wrong way on the street, but what you do get is to go do this another day. So, I took kind of a pragmatic approach, I think, to things. And your kind words about the books really underscore what the focus of it was: to put the tools that officers were using on an everyday basis really in plain English, and let them understand their nuances. There are ramifications to everything, and there's also good stuff. So, that's really the focus of our training for all those years.

And you know what I see—I'm sure you both have seen it—is you get, especially in law enforcement or military or whoever, any type of group of folks who might do a lot of different martial arts or fighting, boxing, whatever it is. And then they want to take that and go, 'Alright, we can use some of this stuff in our job.' Right? There are certain things, but there's no direct translation. That's not how it works. Because, you know, the opponent isn't—you're the only one that has to follow rules. Right? When you watch even those UFC fighters and stuff, they're both playing by a set of rules, the same set of rules. Well, that's very different than a police officer interacting with someone or fighting with someone or someone resisting. They don't have to play by any rules, but you have to play by all of them. So, what you see is kind of this: not everything that works in the dojo, on the mat, is ever going to work on the street. And I think that's what everyone now is trying to really focus on. It's like, 'Well, what does work?' So, I'm curious how you kind of found your way through that. I mean, because that's the ultimate test right there. You show up to a place, and someone says, 'I don't believe you.' And you're like, 'Alright, well, I'll show you.' And then usually after that, everyone goes, 'Well, damn, that worked pretty well.' So, how did you kind of figure out what that was, going from a martial arts background, training kind of more traditionally, to how do you use this in a real-life encounter situation?

That's a really good question, Brian. And I think what helped was, as I said, my Jujitsu instructor was a police chief. He was retired military; he taught combatives in the Army. And he was a very no-nonsense guy. If it didn't work, he didn't use it. And he kind of instilled that into us that, 'Look, you can have all…' He called it the 'flowing robes.' You can have the 'flowing robe boys' go all over the gym. But he said, 'You know what killed the flowing robe boys was a handgun.' So, he said, 'We're not looking at it from that perspective. We're looking at it in close hand-to-hand combat, what works, what doesn't.' And we have to modify some of what Harry taught us because Harry was coming from the military and, like Colonel Rex Applegate, who wrote the book Kill or Get Killed, I mean, that was sort of Harry's mentality. So, we refined some of this stuff in the field. And I still remember one time I swept a guy, and he hit the sidewalk like a pile of bones, and within a nanosecond he was back on his feet and punched me right in the mouth. Well, experience will teach you some things, and I got taught that day that probably wasn't going to work anymore. So, you refined some of that.

But I think a major influence in my background was when I was fortunate enough to study under Takayuki Kubota (who invented the Kubotan). Kubota taught over in Japan; he taught at the police academy. And in Japan, he taught what was called Taiho-Jutsu, which was police arresting arts. Now, you have some organizations in the United States today that call themselves Taiho-Jutsu, whatever, and they have a rank system and you can get a black belt in it. But traditional Taiho-Jutsu, there was no rank system. So, when I hooked up with him when he developed the Kubotan, and then we became business associates for a long time, he really honed my skill set. And he could do in one or two moves what I may have been teaching five or six moves. He just streamlined it. And he said, 'Why do that when you can do this?' And of course, he's legendary. He's still alive today and still teaching in Glendale, California. But he just had remarkable insights. And of course, his style of combatives, anybody who came in contact with him immediately knew this was the real deal. And I think a lot of the flashlight techniques came from original Kubotan techniques that came from original baton techniques, and it was just an application, a transfer of some of those with some modifications to other pieces of equipment, and they worked well.

Yeah. And Brian, just so you know, Tak Kubota, you can still go out and challenge him because he's on the mat, he's not a theorist, and he will be happy to choke you out. He was the one—you hear me sometimes, Brian, in class say about, 'If your third move isn't the final move,' and you see me demonstrate that a lot, that all comes from Kubota. Because Kubota was, in fact, going in and winnowing stuff down to the essentials. And when John first told me about him and started showing me, John, you remember you had like some Super 8 videos just to go along with the type of stuff that he would do during training, and I was blown away. And I go, 'Hey, don't I know that guy from The Killer Elite?' Well, in addition to all of the stuff that he does on the mat, he's also staged some of the best fights and been in some of the best films. But he's always been the most humble guy.

And his 'stick Kubotan' tie-in was perfect during that time for police work because the early days of police work were 'take your Kel-Lite,' which was an aluminum tube with a headlight from a car on it, and just whack and whack your way out of every situation. And you had to live through that too, John. You saw those early days where more was more, rather than any duty to intervene or using less energy to get your mission accomplished. I think before Graham v. Connor came about, it was a little of the Wild West.

You mentioned the Kel-Lite. That was developed by Don Kellar when he was a deputy sheriff at L.A. County Sheriff's Department. And I've become very good friends over the years. In fact, Kellar predicted in the early 1980s that heavy-duty flashlights would soon become dinosaurs, and mini-flashlights would take over. And what's interesting in talking with Don, I went to him and said, 'Why don't you make a small flashlight that looks like a Kubotan?' So, if you look at the Mini Maglite, the barrel and length of the light is the same as a Kubotan. And Tony Maglica, who founded Mag Instrument, he came up with the idea, 'Let's just reduce the Maglite and put that head on it in a very smaller version.' And that was the start of the Mini Maglite. And we all know where that went, and all the variations today from a number of companies. But the techniques that applied to the Kubotan also applied to the Mini Maglite, and it just made it so easy to use.

Well, and even for searching. Brian, I apologize for cutting in. Brian, you've got to understand what it was like being around John Peters. So, here we are in the age of crack cocaine, causing people to kill for an eight-ball jacket on the street. It was just a different time. And John comes in and says, 'Why are you searching with your hands when you can search with this flashlight and this Kubotan?' And so, as you ran it over the outer garments, it would click or make a noise, and you knew there was something in the pocket. Those things weren't being taught anywhere.

I remember John coming into Macomb, and everybody had a different holster because it's a Regional Training Institute. And John, wearing a one-piece yellow jumpsuit, so there would be no mistake about who was teaching the class that day, went from the first student in line all the way to the 35th. And remember, there were some that were basic training, some were 10 or 12-year vets, and some were supervisors. And he went up, and he grabbed the holsters he didn't like, and he ripped them off and handed the holster with the gun back to the person that was in the training. And I sat there, my chin hit the floor, and I said, 'I'm going to follow this guy because clearly he knows what he's talking about.' Because, John, you remember that there were no security holsters. There were swivel holsters and pancake in the 'reveal' where you press the button and the holster opened like a clamshell. Brian, you know, that's amazing to me.

Yeah. And it was really interesting. We had a firearm disarming and handgun retention program, and we did almost exclusively instructor-level programs. So, we trained people to go back to their agencies and conduct training. So, what we taught them had to be right because not only was the person in front of you relying on the information to be accurate, but then the people back home were relying on the guy who we just trained to have it right. So, it's kind of like going down a big pyramid, and suddenly, you know, we may have trained 10,000 people, but they went out and trained a couple hundred thousand people. So, what Greg just said—I remember speaking at the Texas Narcotics Officers Association about that very thing: take your Kubotan or your mini-flashlight, rub it over the pocket, rub it over the ankles, stick it in the pocket, lift it up. If you have a mini-light, put it in, light it up. And the response we got from that a year later, many people said, 'You saved me from getting stabbed with a reverse hypodermic needle.' Because that was the game back then. They'd reverse hypodermic needles, stick them in their pocket, knowing the cop would just thrust his hand in there and get stabbed, and who knows what would be transferred at that point. So, we had stories from people around the country, literally. They'd send us letters. One guy in Wyoming said, 'You know, I hated the drill in handgun retention class. He said, 'I just was so out of shape when I went through that class, but,' he said, 'I got in a bar fight a couple weeks ago, and I remember you saying, 'Just hold on. Pull it up, pull it up, hang on, don't give up.' And he said, 'I saved my life,' basically, based on that technique and what we instilled in people. And I don't care who you are, money can't buy that. Right? And it just works. And that's what we're still out there teaching today. And we're still out doing things to help people survive this horrific cultural demise around not only the U.S. but the globe and how they're attacking law enforcement today.

So, you've kind of brought up a number of issues there, and a number of things that I see. And like Greg even brought it up with the whole holster example of you ripping off the holster. It's like, 'Okay, well, you've got to know what it's going to look like in a realistic situation.' So then what do we do as humans? We, alright, 'Well, let's engineer something.' But let's get the better light. Let's get the better holster. Let's get this better, which is all necessary. And I see it as kind of a comment that you're going to do that. You're in a profession of people that care about what they do and are going to put some time and effort into it and always think of, 'Hey, maybe there's a better way to do this.' But we often fall back on, 'You know, there's a better tool,' or 'a better fighting system,' or 'a better weapon,' or 'a better holster.' You know, what is this thing?

And so, I'm kind of what I'm interested in, especially with you and Greg on the call, but with your outside experience, our listeners are always used to hearing me and Greg, so that's why we bring other people on the show, right? But the idea is, what, over that time that you've seen—because things progress. Tactics get better, gear gets better, weapons get better, technology gets better. But what are the things that still you see that aren't getting better, or maybe now need to be addressed that didn't need to be addressed 20, 30 years ago? Is there a change in that? Because you can see that over time with the different generations of people kind of coming up and who you're training. What are those things that have changed, or what are the things that are still relevant?

Well, there are a number of things. I think the thing that has changed the most are criminal prosecutions of law enforcement officers. You know, 20, 30 years ago, you heard maybe one or two of those incidents in a couple of years. Pop would go rogue and go rob a bank. I mean, there were things like that. Or maybe he would take a woman who broke down along the road and take her off in a dark area and have his way with her. And, you know, people would get prosecuted over that. But today, I think the vulnerability of the regular patrol officer on the street to be criminally prosecuted is extremely high.

Having said that, I think it's incumbent upon all officers to quit looking for the magic pill. There is none. It's like management. You get management study after study after study and, 'Oh, be the servant leader, be this leader, be that leader.' Those are all good ideas, but at the end of the day, it comes down to that individual person. So, let's quit looking for the magic bullet, and let's study and become very, very good at what we can do. Because today, there are more restrictions on officers on their uses of force and what they can do.

But I'm finding over the years that training has been diluted in many, many places. We're hiring officers today that aren't always looking for a career; some are just looking for a job. And if they don't like it, they'll move on to something else. Whereas when I got in the business, and when Greg got into business, we were there because we wanted to serve the community and really make a difference. And as advertising-oriented as that sounds, that's really what we were doing. Right? You had to perform. And one of the things that I think today is people are looking for the easy way. 'Oh, give me the Taser. You know, I can use a Taser. Guy gives me a finger bang, I shot him.' Wait a minute, what happened to your personal physical skills? Yeah.

And back in the day, we would work people on the mat and tire them out intentionally. And we found that when they were so tired, they'd get back up, and they had to rely on technique because their strength was pretty much weakened at that point. And when you have diluted strength, you have to rely on technique. And it's that technique. And we put people on the ground; we handcuffed them. You go to a handcuff class, you'd get handcuffed hundreds of times over three days. Today, when I teach basic-level handcuffing, they're complaining after an hour and a half on, 'Oh, my wrist hurts,' 'Oh, this,' 'Oh, that.' I go, 'Look, you've got to undergo some of this because you've got to know what's going on here.'

And I think over time, police chiefs ask trainers, 'Hey, I've got all these injury reports after your training program. People are taking time off. They're filing injury claims. What are you doing down there?' So, HR put pressure on the police chief, and put pressure on the instructors, and said, 'Hey, back it off, soften it.' Excuse me. And people did that. As they did that, a lot of the physical skills that we were accustomed to are not what they once were. And we're bringing people in today many times who've never been in a fight, who have never been punched in the mouth. And I go back to when I was in high school or even elementary school, if you had a problem with one of your friends, you duked it out at recess time, right, lunchtime. And you would walk home friends, or you were done. Today, if you yell at somebody, you yell at a kid, 'Oh, that's domestic violence,' or 'domestic terrorism,' or 'it's a terroristic actor.' It's some law. So, kids today, which isn't all bad, you know, they may be more respectful, but the problem is the first time you get punched in the nose should not be during a traffic stop because you're just going to lose it. I mean, the best-laid plans just evaporate when you get into a fight. And at that point, you do what you have to do to survive, and every cop knows he or she really needs to win because the alternative is not good.

And Brian, I have to bring up again, which John is talking about in a number of ways, is so important to this generation. So, de-escalation. John is the one that invented and trademarked 'Speed Cuffing.' So, John did that because 'flash the bang,' the less time that you've got wrestling around with somebody and they're restrained—because it is only a temporary restraint—the less likely you're going to cause an injury to that person. That's so logical and makes so much sense. We're not doing that anymore, but that's because he had that discovery background that said, 'Let's do a study. Let's test these things.' Right?

And I'll throw one at you, John. I don't know if I can say the agency, so I won't say Wayne, Oakland, Macomb. But the idea of doing the pursuit driving out at Selfridge, if you remember those days, and precision driving, pursuit driving, emergency vehicle operation. So, I was an instructor out there, and we got the call back to Warren, and they said, 'What are you guys doing out there?' And it's like, 'Well, we're doing these evasive operations so it lessens the damage to the public, and to private property, and to public property, and it will save lives.' And they said, 'Yeah, but you're going through tires and tire treads so fast, and we have to change them, so we're going to disallow that program because those tires are not budgeted for being changed until next year in the amortization. We're going to pull that.' So, when people, Brian, ask you, 'Why do I only get my driver's training as a copper in the academy, and only then again when I get in an accident?' Because an administrator is looking at the bottom line.

And so, you know, the handcuffing injury… John also pioneered the use of early arts and capsicum and chemical aerosol sprays and manners to utilize them to again reduce risk, to mitigate risk. And the idea was, the first time that I took all of John's DTI (Defensive Tactics International) instructor certification and got everybody from the administration in the same room, the deputy chief stood up when he knew what the display meant and what the 15 minutes that I had was going to be about. And he said, to quote him, 'Get that bug spray out of here!' and turned and walked out of the room. And that was the end. I didn't put on my presentation; we didn't get that. And then guess what, Brian, two years later, the lawsuits mounted up to where now they came in and said, 'Okay, hey, let's bring that program back.' Why is it, John? Why is it we're our own worst enemies? Why is it that we have to leave blood on the mat before we learn something as coppers?

Well, I think historically, policing has been reactive. There's a myth that we're proactive. Everybody talks about, 'Oh, let's be proactive!' Well, in some situations, you can be that, but you're really reactive. And a big piece of this, I think, is it's not their money. You know, if a company had an employee who was poorly trained and that employee got sued, and the employer got sued under the doctrine respondeat superior (let the master answer), and there was a judgment, well, that company now has to sell X number of widgets to make up for that judgment. In government, you don't sell anything. You get the money from the public through the budget process, and it's not my money. That's a huge part of it.

And also, a lot of organizations don't understand that training is an investment, not an expense. Right? Especially this. I mean, so we see that in the private sector. But now what's happening? The private sector is some of those companies, they'll pay top dollar to have all kinds of folks come in and talk and try to train their employees. And even if it's junk, they'll do it just because they think you can get them an advantage. Right? So, they're saying, 'Okay, that's an investment.' Whereas this, especially with tax dollars, it's like it's all about efficiency, and we've got to… it's got to fit into this spreadsheet. And my opinion has always been like, good training is rarely ever efficient. It's not an efficient process. It takes time. And especially when you get a group of individuals, meaning, 'We've got these three things we're going to learn today.' Well, maybe I suck at the first one, but I'm good at the next two. But you're really good at the first one, but you suck at those two. Like, it's just, there are different skill levels involved in all this. But everyone boils it down to it.

I was actually on a government program too, which will remain nameless, but as one of the instructors, and everything came down to hours, time. It was like, 'Well, no, you will spend this many hours on this skill set.' It's like, 'Well, that doesn't work.' Like, this group only needs 30 minutes. They don't need an hour and a half on that. But that group over there, they need three hours. It's not going to… we're not going to be done in 30 minutes. But if it doesn't fit within that mold, then it becomes, you know, people don't want to do it. You get that lazy. It's like, 'Hey, just check the box, hit what they're doing.' And then you don't see the effect of that until you're in that situation, and it's too late. I mean, then it's… you're absolutely too late. If you didn't invest upfront, you're not going to become that, you know, Superman or Superwoman in that moment. You're just not.

And so, that has always sort of bothered me. And what I look at it as is, and maybe you can speak to this over your career, as it's become so procedural that, yes, we're hitting every single line item in there, but is there actually knowledge and skill transfer in that skill set that they learned, or did we just check that box? Because it's so mandated and so procedural on how we do these things that it becomes just a checklist. But you know, when you're walking up to a situation, you can't just say, 'Oh, in this situation I use option A, subset B.' It's like, no, no, it can be, it's more complex than that. I don't know if you see that as well.

Yeah, I call it the 'checklist syndrome,' right? Where it's just a checkmark on the box. And you go to a lot of institutions today, and they have developed a program that's really kind of become a 'canned' program because they keep using it year after year after year. And the focus is on the checkmark in the box, where the focus should be on, 'Is the person competent?' Competency is something that isn't really being measured very well, even though some places say, 'Oh, we give them a test.' Well, how do you know if they passed? 'Well, I looked at them.' Well, no, that's not good enough. Give me a quantitative number. How did that person pass?

And I'm involved in a lesson plan study right now where we're looking at hundreds of lesson plans in public safety from all over the United States. And surprisingly, over 90 percent of them have no competency measurement. It's just, 'Here's the information.' So, we may have information transferred, and I say 'we may' because some people still may not get it. But if it's a skill-based set and you have to have skill, how are we testing to know the person is competent? And that's what's lacking in a lot of these situations. We do it in firearms, and as Greg said, we do it in driving. But do we do it in other areas as well?

For example, I went through two Master Instructor schools with Taser. I've never tried Taser from the holster in either one of them because the focus was on, 'Can you shoot and hit the aluminum foil?' Well, now wait a minute, we have to get it out. And there have been about 21 or 22 weapon confusion cases in North America. And I'm convinced it all goes back to training. And if the training were what the training should be, you would draw that weapon from your holster while wearing your duty rig. I was fortunate enough to be one of the experts in one of the lawsuits against Johannes Mehserle (M-E-H-S-E-R-L-E) out in California. I was involved in the criminal—this was a civil matter—but I remember talking to the academy instructor, and I said, 'If I went through your academy from day one, how many times would I draw a handgun until I graduated?' And he told me, 'Probably, if you did everything we told you to do, about 5,000 times.' I said, 'What about a Taser?' He said, 'Maybe once.' So again, I think trainers and administrators need to take a step back and say, 'Okay, it looks good on paper, but so did the F-111.' Right? How do we measure that it's effective?

Now today, there's a big emphasis on de-escalation. I think that's great. I think it's the wrong word, but it's in the lexicon of law enforcement, so I think we're stuck with it. Yeah, we can talk, we can try to de-escalate. But we have to take it to the level where maybe hitting the guy with a baton, or even shooting him with a handgun, is a form of de-escalation.

And I don't see it going. People look at it as, 'This is the de-escalation tactic.' And it's like, 'No, no, that's an outcome.' And so, if the outcome was to de-escalate the situation as a whole, not just this person or thing, it's, 'What would we do?' So, like you said, in some of those cases, there was a recent one, and I know he was cleared, where a woman was pointing a gun, firing at all the people in the intersection, then pointing at herself and pointing at people. And the police officer, first one showing up at the scene in his vehicle, just 'boom,' knocked her over, hit her with his vehicle, and then got out and arrested her. Because it's like, people like, 'Wait, he hit her!' It's like, 'Well, she was an immediate threat to every single person.' Absolutely.

But you're both talking about something that's been lost in law enforcement for a good long time, and nobody's searching for it, and that's what worries me. John, you said it when you said, 'information transfer.' Information transfer isn't training. That's not skills transfer. And when Brian and I were in a room, and we were talking to some high-end 'monkey mucks'—and again, non-attribution because we've never worked there again—but the first three questions out of my mouth when they got done talking were, 'Can you explain Title 42, Section 1983 of the U.S. Code?' Cricket. Then I said, 'Well, do you understand the definition of deliberate indifference?' Crickets. I said, 'Okay, was your officer acting under color of law?' Same thing. And we got these blank stares, and I was like, 'Look, we can't help you. We can't help you if you're not going to help yourself. You have to understand,' like, for example, 'You don't want somebody mistaking their gun for the Taser. Don't put it in a holster on their gun belt and make it look like a gun.' I mean, there are such simple rules that apply.

But what happens is we're trying, first of all, to—even with some of the virtual and some of the augmented reality—we're trying to match a situation that may never occur again rather than improve our critical thinking. And we're also trying to accelerate everything so it's 'at the X,' we're 'on the bubble,' we're 'in the moment,' rather than saying, 'What were all of these pre-event indications that could have helped us formulate a plan to mitigate it or avoid it altogether?' Am I way off on that, John, or am I somewhere in a group?

No, I think that's absolutely accurate. I mean, we're finding somewhat of a gulf, I think, today between the people—the boots on the street—and sometimes the administrators. Not in every case, but in many cases. And I know when I went from the street, I used to say when I was on the street, 'Do those guys upstairs know what it's like to be out here anymore?' And I got upstairs and I said, 'Do those guys…' Yeah. Right. There has to be some common ground there. I mean, like a Venn diagram, you have force, so you have administration, you have budget, but there are a lot of things that will overlap. So, you know, when you're talking to administrators sometimes, Greg, and they're worried about liability, 'Oh my gosh, you know, this guy just punched this guy!' Well, okay, what would you have done? I mean, what's the option? Right? I mean, you had to subdue them. Hitting him with a car, that was a great idea. Is a deadly weapon, absolutely. Did it kill him? No. Right. And that proves that the use of force continuum was valid. The idea of you get the officer choices and the officer uses choices that are within those realms.

You know, Brian, because you had one rule of law and you had escalation of force in the military as well. But it's different in combat than it is… completely, completely, completely different. Actually, there are far more differences than there are similarities in that case. But, you know, and one of the things which you both brought up, and what we're talking about too, where you see a lot of errors in training, is that measurement and assessment because it's there. The measurement and assessment is focused on the training. It's like, 'No, no, how we have to measure and assess how this works on the street in real life.' That's the true test. I mean, your thing can work great in this sterile environment. That doesn't mean anything. I mean, it has to be in the application in a realistic setting. That's the only way you can measure it effectively. And that's the big thing too with people learn, especially when they're doing martial arts or some type of fighting. You're like, you bring something up and then you get punched in the face and you go, 'What? Never doing that again! That didn't work.' Right? We've all had those moments. But yet we still sort of train in that manner of, 'Then you do this, and then this happens, and then it all ends.' It's like, 'Well, no, it's… it's more complex than that.' We don't bring that sort of complexity sometimes into our training events.

Well, I think a big problem today is there's not a clear distinction made or taught to officers between what is a force option versus what is a force standard. That's great, you can operate under the Fourth Amendment, but you may have 15 different force options. You have verbal, you might have kicking, you might have a baton, you may have a Taser, you may have pepper spray. Who knows what your options are. Those options are all on a menu. I always liken it to going into a restaurant, they hand you a menu, everything on that menu is a force option, right? But those options have to be used within the guidelines of the force standards. And I'm finding a lot of officers don't know the difference. They don't understand the force standard. Yeah, and that goes back, I think, to the trainers.

And I think today we have trainers who try to do their best, but at times, egos and personalities get in the way. Or somebody says, 'I'm going to put my name on that.' Well, maybe you put your name on it, you're not going to change. Because if Greg says, 'Here's a better way to do it,' now it can't be the 'XYZ plus Greg method.' So, you built in barriers right away. I think trainers today, first of all, have to go to training a lot. You can't go to a 40-hour school and come out and say, 'Okay, I know everything.' Right? You've got to go to training all the time. I just updated my training resume yesterday, and I've already over 200 hours of training this year that I went to, not that I gave, but that I went to. Right? And you've got to stay current in the field. And the field today is not just 'thump and bump.' If you're teaching defensive tactics, you've got to know what the legal side of this is too. You've got to know what some of the legal outcomes are.

And just going over a case, you know, telling your students very quickly, 'Well, you know, here's Armstrong v. Pinehurst.' And it only applies to the Taser. Now you need to go back and read the case. It applies to all defensive tactics, it doesn't just apply to a Taser. But you've got to get educated before you can educate the other people that you're training. And I think there's a knowledge transfer that's not existing today. If Greg's at the academy and he's going to get, you know, sent out to patrol or promoted to detective, and I'm coming in to take his place. He leaves on Friday, I come in Monday. Well, what should have happened? He's leaving on Friday, but I should have come in two months ago to train with him, to understand what he's doing, what he's saying, to get that transfer. Because I may come in Monday morning and say something totally different based on something I was told that's inaccurate. So, I think it's incumbent upon all trainers today to stay up in that field, whatever your field is, and know the good, know the bad, and know the ugly. And the scar tissue is what makes you stronger, and that's where resilience truly comes from.

John, I'm with you on this. And this is my—and here again, I'm going to 'piss off' the industry—but this is what my problem is with AI when it comes to shoot/don't shoot and the FATS (Firearms Training System) system and some of the other things. Okay, what you've done is you've taken a computer that can augment and support and make training better from a human trainer to a human officer on the street. And what you've done is you've relegated it. It's going to determine what the standard is and what the decision points are and everything else. And the problem with that is that's not how reality works. All those branches, all those taste, smells, sight, sounds, all those idiosyncratic things that occur as you're pulling up or as you're walking up, or as you're hearing the call from dispatch—those matter. And when we say those matter, and we testify in court that they matter, and we write them in our report, but then we go into the trainer and guess what's absent? We've got a folding chair that says 'cover and concealment,' and we don't equate the radio call, and we don't have the human emotion content. And when we do, they say it's more important than having a legless vet in their spray flood and having your weapon have recoil than it is making it hard but solvable and saying, 'What are you thinking right now?' As an FTO (Field Training Officer), John, I would say that you took a trainee and said, 'What are you thinking right now? Tell me about the process that you're thinking.' Then you did 'Buda door' (breaching a door) and ram a car. Am I way off again?

No, I think that's absolutely right. I think we're not training people, and we're not educating them. And there's a difference between education and training; it's very, very different. Right? I think the educational piece we're lacking many times. You know, as you said, 'What were you thinking?' We're talking critical thinking here. We're trying to get behind the wall. And I asked the officer, 'Hey, what was going through your mind at this point?' Because what you did, I wouldn't have picked in a thousand years. But if that officer can explain it and justify it, why not? On the other hand, if you say to somebody, 'What made you do that?' 'Well, I don't know what else to do.' 'What? Did you think about this, this, and this?' 'No.'

And again, we can take a lot of these labeled shortcomings and we can take it right back to, 'You've got this many hours to see somebody and make them proficient.' Right? Exactly. Here's the problem: we still have states in this country where you can be a sworn police officer for up to a year before you go to the academy. Unbelievable! Whereas barbers across the country—it'll vary a little bit by state—you have to complete about 1,500 hours of training. The listener right now, ask yourself, 'How many hours of training in my state am I required to do to graduate from the academy?' 450? 600? I bet it's not 1,500. Right? So, we want to pretend that we're this really highly skilled, well-educated profession when we're really not. You've got to couple the training with the experience. Right? That's where your FTO comes in. And the FTO has to be good. And the FTO really has to take a position, 'Look, I'm not here to get invited to everybody's birthday party.' Exactly. 'I've got to do what I've got to do.' And look, there's no nice way to terminate anybody. There just isn't. But, you know, sometimes you have to do it. Right? You're doing everybody a favor, including the person you're terminating, because that person may not have the skill sets. And if you don't terminate them, they could get killed. Another officer could get killed. And we don't want that to happen either. That reduction in risk is equally balanced and weighted as the intervention of training on the front end.

Yet, we're not looking at that when we come to budget talks and we sit around the table with the town manager. You know, 'How much are we going to pay out?' And I work for agencies that did—I work for agencies that said, 'If you come in and you make a use-of-force complaint against it, we have $6,000 to $10,000 that you can adjudicate at any point during the conversation, just to make this human go away. Here's the letter. Make them sign it and pay them off, and we'll have an account.' Now you go to that same agency and say, 'It's going to be $6,000 to $8,000 a day to train your agency on whatever,' and they don't want to hear it. Or, 'What's the limit on training?' Brian and I go back and forth. I'll send them a text on the training where it's, 'In three hours, become a use-of-force senior instructor, and you can go back to your agency and teach something.' Okay, I wouldn't understand any of the case law in that time if I was allowed to read it, pre-read it before the course. So, why are we 'dumbing it down?' Why are we saying it's 'the single most important thing right now'?

And I agree with you with the terms 'de-escalation,' but that's the lexicon. De-escalation and duty to intervene are being thrown around, and most of the folks, one, don't know what they mean, and two, don't know how to fix it. They don't know how to get ahead of it. And education, first of all. I mean, Jeff Steffel wrote some great documents back in Michigan during the time that I knew John in Michigan. And Brian, what Jeff Steffel did is he took the most important case laws that were coming down in Michigan and saying, 'This is what it means to you on the street. This is what you can do. This is what you can't do.' This way. We don't have that anymore. We don't have that mentor-mentee relation and FTO is getting through that big 'ass book' and making sure that you've discussed all the topics. And I just don't think that's the same.

And John, the emphasis on understanding the medical implications of the move that you use, that's what's hurting people as well because they're saying, 'That's a chokehold!' Well, it's not a chokehold. Or, 'This is an arm bar!' Well, that's not an arm bar. And so, what happens is you've got less-than-experts purporting themselves to be subject matter experts in a highly technical and ever-changing job. We don't do that anywhere. We don't do that with LASIK surgery. We don't do that with bus routes. But when it comes to police work, we'll allow it. And it's just, it's maddening. That's why, like, Brian and I, folks that are listening, Brian and I got to talk to John last week, and it was like 'old home week.' It was amazing how many things that we'd seen and how many important cases had gone by. But John, you have to agree that the benchmark rulings in most of those cases are as valid today as when they were written so many years ago. And those people knew what they were doing, and most coppers on the street don't know them.

Yeah, I think there's a focus on efficiency, 'Let's get them through.' I think it's going to get worse: a personnel shortage almost universal across the country. I was just at a meeting a couple of days ago, and somebody said, 'Well, what would you tell a young person today about law enforcement?' I'd say, 'Run!' Yeah, you know, what other job can you want to aspire to where you can get shot and killed, maimed for life, paralyzed, criminally prosecuted and sent to jail, civilly sued, and lose your house for $50,000 a year?

And even if you start at $85,000 a year, it's still not—yeah, exactly. You guys both talked about this sort of reduction in risk, and the… and cost is a big part of it, but cost is always there, and you're going to pay either way. I mean, years ago—so these numbers are a few years old—but when I was talking to folks from Chicago who deal with the city, it was something like they budget over $50 million a year just for police lawsuit payouts. Right? That's just in the budget. And I think that year they went over $100 million, so they went over twice as much as a payout. It's like, 'Well, how much of that, you know, could a good training program, investing in your officers, reduce some of that?' Well, I mean, even if it's one percent, what's a million dollars? I mean, whatever that is, you're getting back. So, the cost is always there. It's where we choose to spend that money. And if you're not doing it upfront, then you're going to do it in the long run. Right? It's going to cost you more in the long run.

And you brought up all of those issues facing people today, and how that changes and the way to look at it. You have to almost be crazy to want to do something like that. And a lot of folks I see are scared. So, when we're scared, we get fearful. We, you know, when we don't understand something, we naturally fear it. So now it's like, 'Okay, I've been in doing this business,' or 'I've been in this game for 30-plus years. I don't want to rock the boat. I'm on my way out.' You know, 'I don't want to do anything here.' And a lot of these cities you see too, especially, I think they have more power than they realize. I think they have the ability to change some of this stuff more than they think. A lot of them just aren't working together, especially between elected officials and the police officers in that agency.

But, you know, you're talking about especially a city, the people you have working for that city, that's who runs the city. I don't care if you're a sewer worker, I don't care if you're a police officer, whatever your job is, it's important to the operation of everyone who lives in that city. So, it's like, you have to, if you want to take care of your city, you have to take care of the people that work for the city. And if they don't have that buy-in, they don't feel like they're part of it, you're never going to… you're never going to feel 100% in. So, you're always going to have one foot out. Right? You have to protect yourself and your family. So, are you even doing your job to its full potential sometimes just because of the attitude and the culture and the way it's talked about? It's like, it's impossible. So, there's just… and it's sort of me looking from the outside, I guess, looking at all these issues and going, 'How do you cut through that? How do you navigate that?' Right? Where do you start? You know what I'm saying? That's my biggest thing. It's like, 'Alright, anytime I'm addressing an issue, it's like, 'Okay, what can I control right now? What can I do with it that's within my span of control?' And if you start there, sometimes the task is a little less daunting, or at least somewhat manageable. But there are all these factors. And so, I'm curious as to how do you see as a start or a way to do something to make change or to see or wade through it? Because, you know, it's like a pendulum swinging. It got a little crazy out there, and now it's swinging back the other way in some areas. But from your experience, what do you see as starting points?

I think the starting point has to be developing a culture within the organization that goes from top to bottom, where you make training and education exciting and you want people to do that. You know, we've all—trainers are excited about whatever they're teaching—but how many times have we walked into a classroom and the guys who have 20 years in the job, sitting in the back row, hold up their newspaper and basically challenge you to make me put that down or my newspaper? Well, I can't change a knucklehead. I just can't do it. But hopefully, I can educate that person and create an atmosphere where people are going, 'Hey man, this is great stuff! Let's go do this!' And get them at least interested in it because they're going to be the same people who will be first in line to complain about something. 'Amen. Well, they didn't teach us that!' 'No, they offered that class, you sat in the back with your newspaper held up, didn't pay attention.' I think that's a good start.

And I take everything back to organizational culture, and it goes to the leader. If the leader is not interested in developing people with critical thinking skills, if the leader's not interested in developing a culture where he holds people accountable, if the leader is not interested in creating that culture where education and training really take precedence, that's one thing. The military is good at doing training, training, training. You get that as almost part of your DNA by the time you get out of boot camp, and they take every moment to somewhere do some type of training. It's the expectation. But in law enforcement, it's, 'Oh, I don't want to go do that.' 'Oh, that'll be boring.' 'Oh, that'll be…' 'How come he's a trainer and how come he went to…?' Who cares how he went to train if the guy has information or the lady has information to share? Listen and try to use it. Training is out there. Training is given. But a lot of times people just blow it off, and they blow it off because the culture of the organization doesn't make it important. So, to really answer your question, Brian, I think it goes back to the leadership of not only the agency but of the city. And I often tell people, 'If you can spend $126 million to settle a lawsuit, give me 10% of that.' Right? People for life. Right, right, right. And they just laugh at you and they go, 'What?' Because it's not their money.

Yeah, it's hard for people to kind of realize that. That's why I brought up, it's like, 'You know, this is an investment, it's not an expense.' And the issue with the military versus law enforcement, you know, the military, that's all they do. They sit around and train for things that may or may not ever happen, ever. And then every once in a while, they get to go do something. Right? Whereas law enforcement is the exact opposite. They're out there doing something every single day and occasionally get to some training after their initial. And I think that just dynamic of looking at it is a big problem because we try to do stuff too, you know, 'low calorie' stuff. Your five minutes in the morning before you start your day, that does more for you than sometimes going through a very intensive, long course. Right? Because it's right there, it's at the front of your brain, it's something you're going to go do today. And building that in, like you said, that culture. And even you brought down a price point, we're the same way. It's like, 'Give us 10% of that,' and that's all it'll take. And then people go, 'Well, no, it's not.' It's like, 'No, literally, for pennies on the dollar, for a rounding error in some of these cases, do you understand how much you could increase the effectiveness and the response and the type of individual you have at your organization?' And once you start, what happens, that longitudinally over time, that person now they are taken care of, now they want to stick around. Now you're not recruiting new people, you're hiring from within, you're promoting from within. Now you're good. I mean, that's what people—those small investments just to change a trajectory a little bit. Well, the beauty of changing trajectory is over time is where you really make back that investment. And it's always hard for people to see that.

Yeah, but you also build trust. I mean, you build trust not only within your agency and your personnel and with management, but you're building trust with the judges and the court system and the prisons and the community. And that's hugely important. You can't put a price on that. You know, you're right. And I think to add to that, you need evidence-based training. Evidence-based practices. This concept of 'best practices' is just… yeah, 'best practice' means what you were doing was wrong, and now this is the best practice. Well, with the best practices, tomorrow there may be a better practice, so now your 'best practice' is obsolete.

Again, what agencies need to do and trainers need to do is evidence-based stuff that's proven. You know, the British said it best a few years ago, they said, 'The Americans adopt a product and then they test it. In the UK, we test it first and then if it passes, we adopt it.' We kind of get it backwards over here. That's so true. All of us have, at one time or another, 'drunk the Kool-Aid.' I later found out it was bad Kool-Aid. And the only reason that happens is the person telling us didn't do his or her homework, or didn't understand what was being told to them, and they just accepted things at face value. You know, the one thing that Greg talked about early in this podcast, I was challenged, 'Does this stuff work?' Yeah, it works. I know it works. I'll take you out of the car, I'll put you on the ground, not a problem. The training you guys do, same thing, 'Look, it works. We can show you that it works.' But in a lot of places, it's just lip service. 'Yeah, so we're fine. Yeah, that'll work fine.' 'Oh, by the way, guys, if you see somebody using excessive force, you have a legal right to intervene.' Great, now I know I have a legal right to intervene, but I don't know what 'excessive' is.

And then even if you did, 'How do I intervene? What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to say? Who am I supposed to say it to? Tell me how to do this.' You know, that's the hardest part of it. And the first time I do, now I'm branded a snitch forever. Right?

And we just… we just had a whistleblower on a podcast, and he said the same thing, 'It was the right thing to do. I had a moral obligation to do it, and it ruined my career.' So, how often do you think he's going to repeat that behavior?

And, you know, Brian, I hate platitudes, but an old John-ism is, 'Not everything that can be measured matters, and not everything that matters can be measured.' And the idea is that John made a living off of going in and being an expert witness in use-of-force cases and how things like excited delirium or positional restraint hypoxia—all the words that you can't use now because people think they're wrong, but they're not sure what they really mean. But John, you made your living on clearing that stuff up and being able to walk into a jury or a bench trial and say, 'These are the things that you need to consider.' And I think that's an important facet too. This is not stuff that you've just had in theory and went up on a shelf with your books. You're in practice all the time; you're constantly teaching, learning, or on the road for defense counsel or for a prosecution. Tell us a little about that. How do you still stay relevant now, this long?

Well, that's a really good question. I think it comes down to my personal belief system. I want to help people; I want to make the profession better. And there are a couple of ways to do that. And one of the ways to do that is to go to training myself. Another way to do that is to write, because when you write, those words are going to be around forever, so you take extra time to make sure that what you're saying is absolutely correct. And I think that's a big part of it. The third thing is take your ego and put it in a trash can because the minute you think you are better than what you are, you've closed out all potential learning, all potential input, and now you really start believing your own stuff. Right?

And part of that is you have to acknowledge the shortcomings in the profession. I had a hard time when I first became an expert witness. A city asked me to help them out on a case, and I said, 'Well, I'd be glad to do that.' And they said, 'We want you to be our expert.' And I go, 'What's that mean?' I had no clue. After a couple of years, the same lawyer for that city came to me and said, 'You need to take plaintiff cases.' And I said, 'I don't know, I don't think that's a good idea.' He goes, 'No, there are bad cops, and cops who do really stupid things.' And he said, 'You're going to become biased, and you don't want that.' Well, I learned so much more about policing on the plaintiff side than I ever learned on the defense side. For example, lack of training, bad policy, bad discipline. You look at this stuff and you go, 'How did people operate like this? How do you do this?' So, you point that out. So, I think keeping an open mind, and that openness has to be 360 degrees.

Yeah, you can always refuse a case, and I do. I refuse a lot of cases. I refused a case not too long ago where the defense attorney called me and sent me the file overnight, full retainer. I watched the video. I bundled it all back with the check and overnighted it back and said, 'I can't help you. Your sheriff is going to jail.' 'What do you mean?' I said, 'He is going to jail,' and he got convicted and sentenced to the penitentiary. So, you have to—a friend of mine in Baltimore, a retired Baltimore Internal Affairs Commander, calls it, 'You've got to call balls and strikes.' And you have to call balls and strikes. Right? Yeah, it's that simple. And although sometimes we don't like to do it, it really has to be done. So, when you evaluate a case, I don't care if it's in your own agency, I don't care if somebody brought it to you and said, 'You know, here's what happened.' Well, the truth is going to be somewhere in the middle. Right? And you have to look at it. There isn't anything such as a 'good case.' There are always problems somewhere. And there isn't everything that's always a 'bad case.' Right? You know, the guy did something right, or the lady did something right. But you've really got to look at it, and you've just got to admit sometimes there are shortcomings. You know, the administrator might not be the best, the city manager might not be the best. The collective bargaining agreement may have hobbled everybody so much that they can't do the training they'd like to do. There can be a lot of reasons why budgetary constraints could be a problem.

But every cop knows this: if you took your son or daughter into an emergency department, and the doctor who looked after your son or daughter and, let's say, had to perform a procedure, and your child died or was severely injured, and you filed a lawsuit, and you learned through discovery that the doctor had not yet been to medical school. What would you have done? No one—gosh, yeah—no one would even question suing that doctor. How could a hospital bring in somebody? But the doctor said, 'Look, I'm scheduled to go to medical school in three months.' There's no difference there than the officer who's out performing sworn duties. He says, 'Oh, but I'm going to the academy in three months.' Paul Harvey did a broadcast—I was fortunate enough to be on that broadcast—and one of the things that highlighted in that broadcast is that police officers have one half the power of God. They have the power to take a life. The most important half of that equation they don't get.

And I think when we frame things like that, again, we go back to that culture. Administrators have to know they're managing quite an array of people, backgrounds, personalities, and cultures. And you want to have the best-trained people. You want to have the best thinkers out there. You want to have people who can think on their feet. You don't want to have an airline pilot on a vertical descent looking at his part, 'What are we doing now?' Right? No, you want somebody to pull that thing up and get going, save the lives. And I think that's the emphasis today. And we're quick to buy into things. 'Oh, yes, he said this.' 'Yeah, okay, well, have you read the study? Did you pull the study?' Right? 'Should we read it?' So true.

We just had an expert witness symposium in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago, and that was a point that was made by one or more of the speakers: just because somebody said it, just because it appeared in a magazine, doesn't mean it's accurate, doesn't mean it's viable. And even if it is, it may not be viable where you live. Right? I remember I was a cop on the East Coast. First time I ever taught in Vegas, it was in the fall of the year. I'll never forget it. I had the academy staff, and I said, 'Look, here's a technique that, you know, if you stop a guy and you're out in the road, and I put the guy up against the car,' and they said, 'I can't do that here.' I looked at him and I go, 'You don't have cars?' And the academy guy goes, 'Uh, you don't know what it's like out here at 118 degrees in the summertime.' Right? 'If we brushed against the metal of a trunk or a quarter panel, that guy would scream, jump up, and we'd have another set of problems.' And I thought to myself, 'That's interesting. I never thought about that.' Well, then when I was teaching up in Barrow, Alaska, that's another set of problems. Right? I'll never forget the late Police Chief Victor Szygan (S-Z-Y-G-A-N), and he was, I believe, the chief in Menlo Park, California, I think it was. Anyway, he started the Blazer program that was popular for a while. And I interviewed him when he was chief in Connecticut, and I said, 'Why would you leave California to come to Connecticut?' He said, 'Well, you can't be a national consultant if you only worked on one coast.' That Vegas experience taught me that too. Every place is different. So, you've got to have the wherewithal in your people and your agency to recognize that what worked in Washington D.C. may not work in Butte, Montana.

And Brian, if you'll indulge me one more John's story—and John, I know I'm pretty forgettable, but I've got a hundred, at least, more waiting in the wings for future episodes. But Brian, one of the things that John found in Barrow, Alaska, and other parts in Alaska, is some of the handcuffing methodologies wouldn't work because above the guardrail there was another four or five feet of snow. And so, when you had somebody and you were trying to handcuff them, and they had their back up against that wall, and they were only facing you, how could I safely apply the first handcuff? Because we all know that that's where the danger starts right there. It's the most dangerous point, is that application and spin that person around safely and get them handcuffed in that small area. And John worked that and worked that and worked that and got a viable option for it, and it's still being taught today. John, so when I look at that maneuver every time I see somebody do that, I think of you being 'fronted,' you know, 'sniper up,' and in Barrow, going, 'Yeah, copper, what do you do in this?' And you thinking your way through that and saying, 'How about this?' That's magic to me. I'll never forget that.

Well, we actually refined that. Jerry Hamilton was an instructor, the defensive tactics instructor for the Idaho State Police, and he had asked that question also. And he said, 'We have snowbanks that are 30, 40 feet high on the side of the road in upstate Idaho.' So, you take that and you couple it, and then you say to yourself, 'Okay, what about the guy who just backs up against the wall and says, "Come get me!"' Right now, this is way before Taser, but you had to come up with something. So, you had to think a little bit outside the box, but you also had to field test it before you really announced it to people because you had to make sure it worked. Right?

You know, I go to, like I said, I go to quite a bit of training, and I know you guys do too. And sometimes I sit in the back and go, 'Are you kidding me?' Not all training is good training. Right? And there's a concept that I want the listener to really take with them today, and that is, 'Practice does not make perfect.' Right? And somebody out there is probably thinking, 'What are you talking about?' Well, it's simple: if you practice it wrong, you're just good at doing it wrong. Perfect practice makes perfect. So, it's incumbent upon all of us to always practice and do it to the best of our capabilities because someday we're going to be called upon to use it, and we're not going to have time to think about it. We're just… Right? And I can't tell you how many times I've heard people say, 'Oh, practice makes perfect!' And if I can, I usually go over and say that that's not true.

Yeah. And you brought it up earlier in the episode too, we're talking about, because I know when you're talking about anything physical and hands-on, and you know, whether it's handcuffing or defensive tactics or anything like that, there are some safety precautions and things you have to do there. But you also have to sort of… I want to fail when I'm doing, when I'm in training. Right? If I do something wrong, I learn so fast. You know, you're like, 'Okay, I'm never doing that again,' because I learned it. I got a little pain, and I got a little understanding, and now I'll actually never make that mistake. So, even if it's just, you know, what not to do, you can really get that in and focus on that in training versus, you know, what's set up to, 'I want to teach you everything and then, "Good job, you got it right on your practical application!"' It's like, 'Okay, we'll keep going.' Then do it until they get it wrong, and then make them think. I mean, those little things in training, what you just brought up is perfect. It's like, 'Did they do it, or did they do it right, or did they just do it?' I mean, because you make an excellent point, Brian.

And I think to add to that, another part of that Venn diagram, if you will, is not every technique works all the time. Right? But we have a mindset that if we learn something, it'll work on anybody. Exactly. I was at the Las Vegas Police Academy again, back in the early '80s, and they had a retired pro football player on the patrol function. And he told me one day, he said, 'Your wrist lock won't work on me.' And I said, 'What?' He goes, 'No, you won't be able to bend my wrist.' So, he gave me his wrist, and I couldn't bend it. He said, 'You only bend it if I let you.' And then he stood on a metal chair and held his arm out straight, and he said, 'Go ahead, do a couple pull-ups.' So, I grabbed his arm. It didn't even move. Oh, jeez. And I did three pull-ups on his arm. He goes, 'I'll let you do it during the training, but just so you know,' Wow. 'We were on the street, none of this would work on me.' His wrists were so big. So, yeah, it was so strong. And I took him aside later, I said, 'I learned an important lesson here today, and I appreciate your graciousness.' And he just laughed, and he goes, 'You're not the first one.' He said, 'When I went through the academy, I told them that too.' Yeah. But I think we get into a mindset sometimes that when we go to training or we're taught something, it'll work on everybody. No, it won't. It may not. Pepper spray doesn't work on about 10% of people. But we come with this expectation, 'Oh, if it worked on me, oh my God, that was the most painful thing I ever experienced, that everybody's going to feel that.' Right? Not so much. It comes back to the trainer and the program to highlight those exceptions to the rule.

Yeah, that's a terrifying story too. I'd be like, 'Alright, but that's the stuff that should keep you up at night.' Right? Yeah, that's where training comes in. You educate for the things that you can predict, you train for the things you can't.

Well, at the Tuscaloosa Police Academy, it was in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. General Summerlin ran that academy, and there was a plaque on the wall that said, 'Let no man's soul cry out for lack of training.' I thought that captured the whole purpose of training. And General Summerlin, I believe, was a one-star in the Alabama National Guard. He was a retired captain from the Alabama State Patrol, and he ran the academy at Tuscaloosa at the university. And as many accomplishments as he had, he was the most humble, most respectful guy whose sole focus was on the troop. 'We've got to make sure the troop comes home at night. We've got to make sure we train the troops appropriately, and we've got to make sure they know what they're doing.' And that plaque, I took a picture of that plaque the last time I was there, and I thought, 'Boy, that just says it all.'

Yeah, that's magic. That's great stuff. And folks, when you listen to this, when you tune into the episode, pay that stuff forward. Get your yellow pad out, re-listen to the episode, write those 'gems' down, and get out there and do something about it. Don't just vacillate. If you're not going to have forward motion, neutral gets you nowhere. You've got to move on this information. Absolutely.

And I'll tell you, you guys are doing a great job. You're moving it forward. You're some of the most creative people in this industry. And I know, Greg, we go back probably 40 years.

Yes, sir.

And you're still out there. Brian came from the military. He's as eager and as creative as they come. You guys have a great team, a great organization, and the fact that you're taking time from your overly busy schedules to do this podcast, it says a lot about both of you being dedicated to this field to help people. And all anybody can do is thank you along with myself. That means so much.

Yeah, I really appreciate that. New favorite guest now for me, Greg, because they actually came on the show and thanked us. That was pretty cool. Everyone else normally, I'd say, 'You're welcome for my time,' but you didn't know.

But just a throwback to that 40-some years ago, John, John trained some of my earliest black belts at the dojo in Grosse Pointe. And John, you'll be happy to know that Brian Williams and Lynn Williams, it's their anniversary today while we're doing this. And all of those black belts—Dale Kelly and Donnie Desandre, Craig Baldry, Shelly—all of them want to make sure that I thanked you for that early work and that you were the only one that put me up on my tiptoes. I was your dummy, if you remember. So, I was the 'uke' (receiver of a technique) the entire time. I remember. But just so you think that no good deed goes unpunished, I was sitting on the mat at the Albuquerque Police Training Center, and we brought Kubota in to do a special segment on the Mini Mag. And he brought me out—not you—he brought me out, put me in the center, and said, 'Fold your arms under. Don't let me get your arms.' So, I knew what he was going to do. I knew he was going to grab my wrist. So, I hid my wrist so he couldn't get it. He took that Mini Mag, hit me right in the center of the top of my head. My arms came out, and I reached up, and he grabbed that wrist. And the rest, you couldn't hear me scream for the applause. Oh my gosh. So, there is a payback. That's poetic justice, my friend. Hilarious.

Well, we very much appreciate not only what you're doing, but especially for coming on the show and talking about some of the things that you've seen. And I'm sure we'll get some great feedback from this episode. And maybe if there's something specific down the road, we can hop on and dive into. I think that would be a fun conversation. But we really do appreciate you coming on here, John. And Greg, I'll let you say something and give the last words to John.

Yeah, I think that's a good idea. So, folks, every once in a while, you get to meet your heroes, and you get to see him in real life and follow him around and watch their career. And I've always been honored to know and follow John G. Peters Jr. and all of his great work. Brian will have a bunch of links in the episode details. You've got to look them up, folks. Look them up, listen to what he's saying. And 'tabula rasa' (clean slate), start over, get a clean sheet of paper, and start over. Brian, that's what I would say.

Well, to wrap this up, to all the listeners out there, we're just trying to keep you alive and make your job better. And having the knowledge in our head doesn't do any good unless we share it. And these two guys are sharing it. They've given you a pathway to learn. They've given you a pathway that you may have never thought you'd experience in your career. I grew up in a little farm town of 800. I never dreamed in my wildest dreams that what I did would take me around the globe training officers in a number of countries. But I want you all to remember something: you have the power within you to keep on the educational bus, to keep on the training bus. And you're doing it because if you heard what I just said, you're listening to this podcast. You're interested in your career. More importantly, you're interested in these professionals and what they're doing. Never get off the educational bus. Always do everything to the best of your ability. And most importantly, stay in touch with guys like this because they will not lead you wrong. And we all have to stay up on things, otherwise we become stagnant. I thank everybody for your time. Thank you for what you do out there. Thank you for protecting the communities that you protect and serve. And most importantly, stay in touch with these folks because they're not going to give you bad advice. Thank you.

I appreciate that, John. I'm going to—I'll leave that as any remarks, that as I really very much appreciate that. So, thank you. Thanks to our listeners out there, and don't forget that training changes behavior.