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Fight, Flight, Freeze: What Really Happens When Fear Takes Over · Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)

• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Murders to Music Podcast.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Aaron.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you guys so much for coming back for another week.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: So on tonight's show, we've got a couple of different things that we're going to talk about.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: First, well, let me just tell you, what we're going to talk about is, you know, last week's episode got a lot of attention in the wake of the school shooting in Bend.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it was about being prepared.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: It was about understanding your role in an active shooter or crisis situation.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: And even if you're not armed, you can still cause a distraction.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: You can still divert.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: You can still save lives if that's what you choose to do.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it got a lot of attention.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to piggyback an episode.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's not going to be the same episode over, but what we are going to talk about is how everybody thinks they know what they're going to do until it happens, right?
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: We all have a plan until that plan goes out the window and somebody gets in our way, gets in our OODA loop, gets into the way that we're thinking and changes everything we thought we knew.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we're going to talk about tonight.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: But before we do that, and in that, guys, it's going to be educational.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to tell a couple of stories and hopefully there's some practical takeaways that you guys can take with you at the end of this that will help you just be a little bit more aware in the world that you're in and a little bit more prepared and hopefully help you out at some point, right?
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's what this whole thing is about.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: But before we do that, I just want to catch you guys up on my week.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: This week has been a little bit of a roller coaster for me.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, as you guys all know, I've traveled quite a bit.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: I've been back in town a week or two now.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I went to the doctor this week.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I've been pretty transparent and open on this show with my mental health and all of that stuff.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I've spoken about the struggles that I had historically with my weight and so on and so forth.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: But I can tell you that I went to the doctor this week.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: And let me tell you this: I don't even like doctors.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like I didn't have a real primary care physician until I came out of law enforcement and had to have one because of all the stuff that I was going through.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: And during that time, I liked my doctor.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: We got along.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: He helped me a lot.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was good.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: But at some point, he needed to stop being my doctor because I switched jobs and so on and so forth.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: But not the point of the story.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: The point of the story is this.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't had a primary care for several years.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I know I'm not the only person, especially Guy, listening to this right now, that thinks they are just going to take this on their own, on their own shoulders, they're going to make themselves feel better.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: They're going to just avoid the doctor.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And just because they don't feel their heart bursting out of their chest, they're not actually going to do anything about it.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: And they're just going to say that, you know, ignorance is bliss, right?
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we do as guys.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I've done for so many years.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: And up until the point that I have a heart attack, it's going to serve me fine.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: But this week I went to the doctor.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I can tell you this: I can tell you that I left the doctor with a terrible point of view as to how the visit went.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I haven't taken care of myself in the last couple of years by seeing the doctor all the time and staying on top of it.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, between, I don't know what it is, but there's weight gain, there's other stuff going on.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: And when I left that doctor's office, my blood pressure was up because I haven't taken my meds, because I ran out of them, and I didn't feel like going back and dealing with Kaiser, blah, blah, blah.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I haven't taken my meds.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: But at the end of the day, my blood pressure's back up nearly where it was when I started this whole thing four years ago.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: My weight is up, you know, I'm getting old, blah, blah.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just one of those things where I left thinking, man, I feel pretty shitty about myself.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why am I even doing this?
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: But then I had to get on the train of, okay, well, now that I've identified the problems, I need to solve them.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't hide from it.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: And the good news is, you know, that I identified the problem before the blood pressure took my life or something like that.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: And not to get all dramatic, but that's what happens.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: You're fine until you're not.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: You're fine until you don't wake up in the morning.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: We all have a plan to keep going the next day and just to take care of ourselves and solve our own problems until something bigger happens on the inside and we die at 52 years old in our sleep, not ever knowing what's going on, right?
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, went to the doctor.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: I got shit to deal with.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's where I'm at.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: But then the next day, I went through some video from some weddings, and I posted a video on my Instagram page for my DJ company.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it's called Streamlinedej.com.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: On Instagram, it's Streamline S E E.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the name of it.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: So at Streamline S E, you'll see me.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that is, in fact, go like the page.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a shameless plug, but go like the page and follow me.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Watch what I do.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of cool.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, so I posted a video.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: I went through a wedding, some wedding stuff, and there's a song called Crazy Rap by Afroman.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: And this wedding, I gotta tell you, this wedding was cool because there was a bunch of people that came up from California, and all the dudes kind of looked the same.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: They were all like good-looking guys.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: They all wore black from head to toe.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: They had like perfect haircuts with the nice fade, and just they were manic.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: They were just they were just good-looking dudes with a cool vibe, like a super chill.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: I've been stoned half my life, but I'm a really chill guy kind of vibe.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I put on a song called Crazy Rap by Afroman.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: And some of you know it, some of you are humming along right now, thinking about it.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: And during that song, like this one dude breaks out and dance, and he is just chill and cool.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm in, and I remember seeing it when it was going on live.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: But then when I went back through my video from my 360 camera, I'm like, ah, let me clip this and throw it out on the interwebs and see if anybody pays attention to it.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what I did.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: I posted it on my Instagram page, and that was 24 hours ago, about 30 hours ago now.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: And in the last 30 hours, I've got 132,000 views on that video.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, I've only got about 250 followers because I don't buy followers.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody is organic, everybody is somebody that has been to a wedding or so on and so forth.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: So for having 250 followers and having 132,000 views, it means it is getting out there.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it's super cool to take what my son and I do as this two-man operation where we just want to go in and make everybody's best day even better and to put it out there, and the rest of the world is getting some enjoyment from it too.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: That was a super cool experience for me.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: So with some downs, some ups, and here we are with tonight's show.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get to it.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: So everybody, everybody out there has an idea as to what they're going to do if something happens, right?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: And there's an enormous difference between what we think we would do in a crisis and what our brains and bodies will actually allow us to do when that moment arrives.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I can tell you this because with all my years of experience in law enforcement and not only watching other people react to critical incidents or crisis or life and death, but it also happening to myself.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I've been caught in situations where I thought I knew what I was going to do.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then in that moment, the will to survive overpowered, and I lost all good sense and could not cognitively function because I was in what we call condition black, where you're helpless and you can't even function for yourself.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I've been there personally, so I understand it.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I've seen it in others, I've seen it in civilians, and I've seen it in the people that I work with.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of these times, these people, and myself included, we are highly trained in these crisis environments.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: We are highly trained in whatever the circumstances we are in, and we know what to do.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: We practice what to do when things go south.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: But just because we're highly trained, we're practiced, and we think we know what we're going to do, when bad things start happening, it's oftentimes we are unable to act.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: We are unable to engage or that motor or that function process to get the job done and to get ourselves out of harm's way.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: We in fact become a liability.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that is something I see and I have seen many, many times over my life, over my career, both personally and professionally.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I want everybody to slow down and think about this for just a minute.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody has a plan until they don't.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: What happens when the plan you had goes to the wayside because something got in your way, something distracted you, something got involved in front of you, or things didn't play out the way you thought they were going to, and all of a sudden that plan you had is ineffective.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what do you do?
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: You either think on your feet, you either roll with it, you either adapt quickly to a plan B, or you find yourself a victim in that crisis state.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that is some of the things that I want to talk about.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, as we watch things happen and play out on TV, we often say to ourselves, man, we see some horrific event and we're like, you know, if I would have been there, I would have done blah, blah, blah.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Or if we see something play out, we're like, man, he should have done this.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Or every time you watch Survivor, you're like, man, I could totally seen that coming and I would have been able to prepare for that.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: But in real life, that armchair quarterback phenomenon that I'm talking about, it's super easy to say what you would have done after the outcome is known.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: But what happens during that crisis event?
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: What happens during that unplanned, unexpected?
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: Your day is going just fine, it's vanilla, and all of a sudden it's upside down, and you find yourself in the middle of crisis, trauma, an event of some kind, a significant life event.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a difference between watching an emergency unfold on TV, on a television show, even in front of you at an intersection.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's a difference between between watching the car accident unfold and being inside of the car.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: That is a huge difference and defining factor as to how you would really respond or react in this situation.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: And hindsight, I think, creates an illusion that the decisions should have been obvious.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Again, that's that armchair quarterback, right?
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we all sit around and we think, man, in hindsight, even in your own life, I should have known exactly what to do.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: I should have done X, Y, or Z, and I would have never got myself, or they would have never been in this position.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Whether it's drinking too much at a bar, whether it's a scuba diving accident, whether it's a car crash, whether it's a situation with your boss, whatever it may be, it doesn't have to be this horrible thing.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: But no matter what it may be, in hindsight, we often say, I would I should have done this, that, or the other thing.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is we don't live in hindsight.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: We live in the moment.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: We live in real life, fluid, dynamic situations that are constantly changing.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: And we have to think ahead of time as to how we're going to react or respond in those situations.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now, an ordinary day can become a life-altering event.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: And we know that.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: We've had experience it ourselves.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: We have our friends or our family where they're cruising along, and all of a sudden something occurs and their life has changed forever.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe even their life has been taken.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: And those situations we are not immune to.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: We are not set aside from experiencing those as human beings, walking the face of God's great earth.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: And and there's a difference between being mentally prepared and actually experiencing that dangerous situation.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you a quick story about me personally, where I was mentally prepared.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: I knew what I was going to do.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: I was well practiced, well rehearsed, and I was ready to take on the world until it happened.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: And when it happened, I nearly died.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna tell you this story, and it has nothing to do with law enforcement, but what it does have to do with is scuba diving.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: So back in about 2013, my son had just turned 11 or 12 and Keegan, and he got his certification for scuba diving.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: And Keegan and I decided we were gonna go dive in the same spot that he got certified, which is in the Hood Canal, Pacific Ocean, between Seattle and Hoodsport, and that's where we went.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: So we went to Hood Sport, Washington, and it was gonna be a beach dive.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when we arrived that day, I brought my other son with me, Justice.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: And Justice wasn't going to go that day, but he decided at the last minute he wanted to jump in and go with us.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: And justice is going to play a critical part in the story here in a moment.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: So stick with me.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: But when we got to the dive site that day, lo and behold, Keegan's dive instructor was there with another class of students, and he was going on some checkout dives with them.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I know his instructor.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: His instructor's name is Mark.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: And Mark and I chatted, and what are you guys doing?
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna dive with Keegan.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, Well, you know what?
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: I got a couple dive instructors here.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't you guys go do your first dive?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then when you come back up, take a surface interval and you go dive with us.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, Bet, that sounds awesome.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so I like diving with Mark.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: So what do we do next?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: So next, Keegan and I get all of our gear on.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: And mind you, Keegan is 11 or 12 years old at this point.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: He's probably weighs 100 pounds and he's wearing 120 pounds of gear.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: He's complete in a wetsuit, he's got all this stuff on.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: The water is about 45 degrees this day.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: There's a light chop and the tide is going out, meaning that when you get in the water, it's going to carry you away from the shore.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: So Keegan and I get into the water and we start walking out across the flats.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Keegan came out of class about two weeks earlier.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: I have been scuba diving since 1999.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: I probably have a couple hundred dives under my belt, and I'm going to go out and dive.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: And this is going to be like every other dive that I've ever done.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to be a lot of fun.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to see some stuff.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to get cold.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to come back up.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to tell stories, and I'm going to build a memory with my boy.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when we get out into the water, about halfway out, Keegan has an issue with his flipper.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I help him and his fin.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: And when I do, and the second air that I'm supposed to keep right in the center of my chest, that falls out of its holder.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that I'm supposed to put everything back in its holder, but in the moment, in the haste of helping Keegan, and we're trying to balance in the water and not fall down, and we both got 100 plus pounds of gear on.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: I take this regulator and I just shove it under a strap somewhere.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's in the center of my chest-ish, but it's not in the place that I've practiced every time.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just kind of shoved, and I'll find it, it's not that big a deal.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: And we continue out on our dive.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Keegan and I swim out to what's probably 60 feet of water, and the tide is going out, and we try to descend.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: We try to go down.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: But when we do, Keegan says, Dad, I don't have enough weight.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I come to the surface, and as I'm at the surface, I'm reaching for some weights that I extra weights I carry, and I'm going to put them in his flotation device to make him sink.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: And as I do this, a wave catches me in the face and it knocks my regulator out, which is not a big deal.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: I practice this.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I get my regulator, I put it back in, and I'm breathing.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, another wave comes, it knocks my regulator out again, and I take on a lot of water.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: So now I have no regulator and I'm choking and gagging on water.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I cough that out, another wave hits me in the face.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sucking in more water.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is starting to suck.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: So at that point, I can feel myself sinking in the water.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: I have no regulator.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's floating behind me somewhere.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Panic is starting to set in.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now I have practiced this.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: I have practiced this scenario in the pool over and over and over again.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: I am a man who works in crisis management every single day during this time in my life.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I do.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: I do crisis.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: I bring crisis under control.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: That is what I've done my entire life.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: It is starting to come to a point of crisis and a little bit of panic in the ocean.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: So as we do this, the scene is this.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: We're 60 feet out offshore.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: We're floating out.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: There's chop, there's white caps.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: I've got my 12-year-old son.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's him and I.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: I have no regulator in.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm starting to feel myself sink.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: I can't find my second regulator because when I go to grab for it, guess what?
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's not in its holder.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's shoved down some strap somewhere, right?
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I start to sink.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I inflate myself.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: I sink.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: I inflate.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: I sink.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: Before you know it, I'm stuck in a lot of water.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Keegan is screaming, help.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: My dad's not breathing.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: My dad's not breathing.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: And trying to get people's attention.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, at this point, Justice sees what's going on.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: My other son, he's on a balcony watching us.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: He renders aid and says, Hey, my dad isn't in the water.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: He's not breathing.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody help him.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: And Mark, unbeknownst to me, because at this time, I know what I need to do in this moment is I need to find my regulator, put it in my mouth, and breathe.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: I know that I need to reach down and grab two handles and dump the weights out of my vest so I float because I'm covered in 14 millimeters of neoprene from head to toe and I'm going to float right to the surface.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: But in that moment, I am struggling to breathe, and my will to survive overpowered my cognitive thought and my body's ability to reach down and grab those.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: In that moment, I felt like if I would have paused long enough to reach down and grab those weights and release them, which would have floated me and saved my life.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is very simple math here, people.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: If I would have done that, then I was going to drown and die.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of pausing long enough, half a second to reach down and pop them, I kicked, I struggled, I panicked in the water, I sucked in water.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the next thing I remember is I was under the green water, looking up, almost limp, going to the bottom.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: I am getting sucked down.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: I am drowning.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that I'm drowning right there with my kid.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: During my struggle at the surface, I remember trying to climb on top of my kid to grab his second air so I could breathe, but I felt myself pushing him under the water.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I stopped, I pushed away from him.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to drown him with me.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm drowning.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I'm a guy that does crisis.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a guy that's been scuba diving a couple hundred times.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: I've practiced this in the pool.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm an advanced scuba diver.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: All of this training that I have went to shit as soon as my plan went to shit.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: All of the training that I had had, all of the knowledge base that I had when I put myself into an unknown set of circumstances, water, crisis, drowning.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a fish.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: I got water in the lungs.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: All these things happened that I mentally had prepared for, but had never been in the middle of that emergency.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: My ability to think went out the window.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the next thing that happened, unbeknownst to me, Justice sees this and he calls for Mark to come over.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: And Mark ran out to the end of a pier and he jumped off the end of a pier.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't, all I hear is a splash, and I feel him grab me and pull me back up through that green murky water.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: And when he did, I can tell you, in that moment, that is the most relief and relaxation I have ever felt.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: I knew in that moment, I've never been more peaceful, and I knew that I was going to survive, that I wasn't going to die.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: Another diver came in.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: He popped all the clips on my gear.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: My gear went to the bottom of the ocean and they pulled me up on shore.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: They cut and they removed my wetsuit.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: I had water in my lungs.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: They called the paramedics.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: They tell me that I need to go to the doctor.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, no, thanks.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: I do crisis.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a badass.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: I got this.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, you're going to drown.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, please.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: That chance was already there.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: I missed it.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what happened.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: And against doctor's advice, against the medical staff's advice, I left that day with water in my lungs and drove my kids home like an idiot because pride and ego got in the way.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I just tell you that story to tell you this that I was mentally prepared that day to handle anything that occurred in the water.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: I was comfortable in the water.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: I am no longer comfortable in the water because my plan went to crap because I had never actually been in the middle of that emergency.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: But how does this play on you in a situation when you're out in life, le living life, you have a vanilla day, and all of a sudden your world turns upside down?
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: How are you going to respond in that situation?
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: When we find ourselves in these situations, our brain is under attack, right?
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a sort of there's a science of survival that goes along with us in these critical incidents.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: And what I it's called fight, flight, freeze.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's some other things that go in there as well, but let's talk about fight, flight, freeze.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: If you go into a fight state in a situation like mine or in a dark parking lot with a suspicious person, or whatever your circumstances are, you go into confronting or attempting to stop that threat, right?
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: You are fighting it, and that's what I did.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: I fought the threat of drowning or perishing in the water for quite some time before I became so fatigued, I just gave in, and that would be my free state.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: I was unable to act, I stopped struggling, I stopped initiating action, and I suggested.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: Come to the idea that I was going to drown that day in the Pacific Ocean.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: Fight, flight, freeze.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Fight, you're going to confront or attempt to stop a threat.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: Flight, you are going to try to escape, create distance, run, get away from, or freeze, you are going to become so momentarily frozen that you're unable to act and you become that liability.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: If you're in a situation where you have, let's say you've been taken hostage or there's a bad guy there, and you are trying to calm the situation, you may go into what's called fawning or appeasement.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that is you're attempting to calm or comply with a threatening person to reduce your level of danger.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: That is another way that our body reacts in these critical incidents, these trying times.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: And you say, Man, I'll never be kidnapped, but is there a chance you would ever be involved in a bank robbery where you're in the bank cashing a check, doing your business, and somebody comes in and holds the bank up, and all of a sudden you are caught up in the middle of the Channel Six evening news.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: That is a real possibility.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: Or at the supermarket or Walmart or wherever else.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: And there are some psychological changes that occur during that fight, fight, freeze situation when your brain is under attack, right?
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: The first thing you're gonna have adrenaline and hormones pumping into your body.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: They could give you unbelievable strength, they could give you unbelievable courage.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna have an increased heart rate, your respiration rate's gonna go up, you're gonna have changes in your fine motor skills and your gross motor skills.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna lose the fine motor skills.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: Fine motor skills.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: What is that, Aaron?
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: That is the ability to thread a needle, take a piece of thread and push it through the eye of a needle.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: But what you will have is your gross motor skills.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: That is the ability to form a fist and punch somebody in the face.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: Your coordination is going to go down.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: You're not going to be able to thread that needle because you've lost your fine motor skills and you're shaking in your coordination and your ability to comprehend, understand, and initiate fine motor reactions is also deplinished.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: Auditory exclusion, you don't hear things.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: Visual exclusions, tunnel vision, you have an attentional narrowing, meaning that the world that you used to see in full 180 degrees is now nothing more than what you can see.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: Looks like you're looking down a barrel of a gun.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: And everything you see out the end of that barrel of a gun is your whole view of the world.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's called tunnel vision.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: Those things happen in real life.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: Altered perception of time.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: What may seem like an hour was really two minutes.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: Or what may seem like two minutes might have been an hour.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: Our ability to remember these things, our ability to comprehend, understand, take in and recall certain sequence of events, all of those things altered or changed during the psychological changes that occur when your brain is under attack during one of these situations.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: And those are all things to think about if you ever get yourself caught there and you end up talking to the police or you end up relaying a story.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's not uncommon for us when we do an officer-involved shooting to not interview the police officer for three days because we want them, we want their brain to relax.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: We want the science inside of them to slow down.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: We want to get their brain working back into a sympathetic, balance with parasympathetic nervous system before we interview them.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes in critical incidents with victims, we'll do the same thing.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: We will wait a period of time.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: We'll get enough information up front to do what we got to do, but then we'll wait a period of time to let them slow down and start to recall and remember and rethink and be able to re-reanalyze the events that occurred that they were involved in.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: But the reality is in the world that we live in, these things could happen every single day.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and sometimes we ask ourselves, why can someone remember one tiny detail but miss something so obvious?
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just because of the way the fragmented memories in the brain work and what you might have seen or been thinking about.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: I recall doing an officer-involved shooting with a police officer.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: He is somebody that you would see in an academic situation, right?
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: It wouldn't surprise me if he got A's on every test.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's the way this guy is.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think coming to prior to law enforcement, I don't think he'd probably ever been punched, probably never been in a fight, never raised his voice or said a bad word.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: And when I did his officer-involved shooting, I recall he had such good memory recall.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: Specifically, he remembers running and taking steps over the trip hazards on the curb.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then there was some loss of memory during the time of the actual shooting.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a mere two seconds later, during the shooting, there was some loss, there was some loss of clarity and lack of detail.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: But he remembered specifically having to jump over this crack and that crack and this crack so he wouldn't catch his toe to, you know, stumble and fall because he had needed to be engaged in this altercation, this fight.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: He needed to save somebody's life.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: But that's just one scenario of somebody remembering a tiny detail.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: And as we go through life and as we try to prepare for these things, we think we're going to be Billy Badass.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: But at the end of the day, we might just get through it.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: But as we talk about it, as we recall these things, remember, you don't have to know it all.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: Just you, you've got nothing to prove to anybody.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: And everything that I'm talking about happens to those of us who are well trained in the professions or in the sports or whatever the scenarios are, and we still can't get it right sometimes.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: Everything that I've just spoken about, and the psychological changes when your brain's under attack, these are human stress responses.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: They're not automatic evidence that somebody is a coward, that you are a coward, that you're weak, that you're incompetent.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: These are not ways to judge people.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: These are the human stress responses that are automatic and are proof that we're just human beings.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: And they significantly vary from person to person.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: As we go through life, there's things called speed of violence.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: And there's when things happen, things can happen very, very fast.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: And quickly a com a confrontation can escalate from words to physical violence, or you know, we recognize the dangers, but we don't really pay attention to them before you know it, the dangers are on top of us, right?
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I spoke about this a little bit last week when I spoke about that marker at 21 feet away.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that is typically the knife response, you know, and the old rule of thumb was if somebody is armed with a knife within 21 feet, you're justified in shooting them.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, why is that?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: They're 21 feet away.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: You are.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: But even the highly trained officer can't draw his gun quick enough because action will beat reaction every time.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: And the action of that person attacking you is going to beat the reaction of you trying to find your gun, stumbling backwards.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: Again, you're in the middle of an emergent situation you've never been in, you've practiced, but you've never actually been there.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: And now you got a guy four feet from you in closing with an edged weapon, and he's trying to cut your head off, and you're trying to get a gun out of the holster, and chances are you're going to get cut in that scenario, no matter how highly trained you are.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just one of the risks that we assume when we go into law enforcement.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: But in talking about the speed of violence and in talking about trying to plan for the emergencies, plan for the unknowns, there is rarely time for a lengthy internal debate while these emergencies unfold.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's something the military uses called the oodaloop.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the oodaloop stands for observe what is happening, orient yourself, what does it mean, decide what should I do, and then act the oodaloop.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: And we get stuck in oodaloops.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's why, you know, some people will chase the same failed technique because that's just what they know.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: They see it, this is what it means, this is what I'm gonna do, and this is what I do, and they just keep doing the same thing over and over again to no avail, and nothing ever comes out of it.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing ever works the way out.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: And they never get themselves out of that situation because they're stuck in their own OODA loop.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: They're unable to think about or make a decision outside of that rigid sequence of events that their brain is always following.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: However, the OODA loop is something that you need to consider when we're talking about action versus reaction.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: Action versus reaction says that if you allow somebody to control the narrative as to what is going on in these crisis situations, in the emergence situations, in that bank robbery that you found yourself in the middle of, and you allow them to remain in control, then they are just going to enact or implement their own ODA loop.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna observe what they got, they're gonna orient themselves.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: What does it mean?
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: I've got no threats, I've got a bunch of victims, a bunch of people laying on the floor.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: What am I gonna do?
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna continue robbing this bank and I'm gonna act upon it and I'm gonna start yelling and screaming and maybe fire a few rounds into the air, right?
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's their oodaloop.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: But what happens when somebody disrupts their OODA loop?
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I spoke about this last week when I spoke about the silver rail shooting, when the bad guy runs into the classroom and the teacher throws the phone at him and then gets into a physical altercation.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: I guarantee you that bad guy did not come into that room thinking, man, some teacher in here, unarmed, is going to try to fight me and take this gun from me.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: That person thought they were going to be in control.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: The teacher already had a plan.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: If then thinking, if this happens, then I am going to do this.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: And with that teacher's if-then thinking, what that teacher did was get inside of the bad guy's oodaloop, get inside of his plan.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden his plan went to shit because somebody else is interrupting it.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody is coming up that is not part of what he had expected, and all of a sudden he's in an altercation.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: That gave the good guy with the gun time to come in and kill, eliminate the threat, decentralize, execute, blow his head off, whatever you want to say, it gave him time to kill the bad guy.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: All because that teacher got inside of the bad guy's OODA loop.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: So being able to disrupt by confusion, incomplete information, or unexpected changes, which is what I said last week, being a distraction, giving the person something else to focus on.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: Just like the other shooting I spoke about in Idaho the last week at the In N Out.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden, bad guy has to turn and face the hero and engage him, which gave other people time to flee.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: We were able to get into that bad guy's oodaloop.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: Know that everybody works this way.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is not something that is exclusive to the military law enforcement or only the highly trained.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody has a way of thinking and doing things.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: And how often do you work with somebody and like, well, that's just his way of doing it?
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's just what he does, because that's his oodaloop.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's what he does, that's his practice.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean it can't be done a different way.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now you have that person that you work with every day that is getting their oodaloop.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: That is just the way they do their expense report.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: But now throw something into it.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: Take the copy machine offline and they can no longer photocopy their receipts.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: Their world is a it's blown up, right?
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: Their mind is blown.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my God, I can't do anything now.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: And they have a hard time readjusting or reorienting to the new set of circumstances put in front of them.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: Just something to think about.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: I guess the message I want you to take away from this is situations can develop faster than people can fully, I guess, comprehend them or think about them.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: So if the situation is in your world and you're getting stuck in your OODA loop, understand that maybe taking a step back, a deep breath, and looking at this from a 30,000-foot view, maybe you will see another avenue.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: You won't chase the same failed technique.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: You'll find a different route in.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of continuing to try the front door that is locked and barricaded, locked and barricaded, why don't you go around back and see if the slider is unlocked and go ahead and go in that way?
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: That is not natural for human nature under a stress environment.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: Under a stress environment, we keep trying the same thing over and over and over again.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: Slow down, oxygenate the brain, and think about another way to do something.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: The ability to think about another way to do something is that if-then thinking that I spoke about last week.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: And one thing that I spoke about last week that I want to reiterate this week is I think it's important for us to live prepared, but not paranoid.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: What can ordinary people actually do in a time of crisis?
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that is something I think is super important.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: And for this episode, I want that to be the educational heart of the episode, right?
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: I want to give you guys tools that you can take away from today and apply this afternoon or tomorrow, should you find yourself in one of these situations.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: And the first thing I want my listeners to take away from this is situational awareness.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I alluded to it last week, but there are times when I believe the block of cheese that you're carrying has more situational awareness than the person carrying it as you make your way through the Walmart store.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think that we walk around sometimes with our heads buried in the sand, thinking that the world is rainbows and butterflies, and we're just waiting to become a victim.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: We should be wearing a bright orange vest that says professional victim across the back and just waiting for somebody to punch our ticket.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the way that a lot of us live every single day.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because we've never had that situation where emergency has unfolded and we've been in the middle of it.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: We've never had that experience.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: How we don't know how we're going to act or how a situation is going to affect us.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, situational awareness, if then thinking.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to just take a habit of paying attention to your environment.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't have to obsessively scan for threats and, you know, look for the devil around every corner.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's not it.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: But just when you go into a place, know where your exits are, use common sense, basic stuff.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: You go into a restaurant, where are the exits at?
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: Theaters, stores, you know, public venues, think about this.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: Shootings, public venues, shootings at the Aurora Theater, shootings at your high school, shootings at your theater, shootings at your restaurant.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: I personally have a story for each one of those.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: And notice unusual behavior.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what is unusual behavior?
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, after a after a million traffic stops that I would make, when I would walk up to the car and all of a sudden things were off, right?
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: You go up to the traffic stop.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Aaron.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm with Gresham Police Department.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: The reason I pulled you over today is for speed and 55 and a 45.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: Is there any reason why you're going so fast?
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: No, there's not.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have your driver's license, insurance registration?
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I do.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: Here you go.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't you wait in the car?
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be right back up with you.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to issue a citation for 10 over.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'll wait right here.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, officer.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: And you go back to your car.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: That is normal.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: A thousand times of seeing that over and over again, it's normal, it's normal.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: But what happens when you walk up to the car and you, hey, my name is Aaron, I'm with Gresham Police Department.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: The reason I pulled your days you're going 55 and a 45.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now, is there any reason why you're going so fast?
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: And they stare straight ahead and they won't look at you.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: And their arms are locked straight out on the steering wheel.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: Excuse me, sir, can you hear me?
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: Is there any reason why you're going so fast?
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then they turn and they look at you.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: That the first five, ten seconds when he's locked out straight, his mind is going.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: There's something in his OODA loop.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: For me, that is abnormal, unusual behavior.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: You as human beings, I don't ex as just civilians, I don't expect, and human beings, I guess if you're listening to this, there's a good correlation, but as you go through life, I don't expect you to be making the traffic stops, but I do expect you to be painted in your surroundings.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: And when somebody is overly talkative, when somebody won't talk to you in a situation they normally would, when somebody's got a thousand-yard stair, when somebody has got dressed overly heavy for the environment.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's 105 degrees outside, and this person is wearing, you know, hoodies from head to toe and a wool mask.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: Those are all clues that there's unusual behavior activity.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: And God gave us the spidey sense to pay attention to that and to recognize and to create distance.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: Distance is time.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: Create distance so we can assess the situation, take it from the 30,000-foot view, and figure out if we are in danger or if our family's in danger or not.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: Avoid being so distracted by life that you miss the obvious changes around you.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: If then thinking mentally prepares somebody for a scenario or a situation that may occur or they may find themselves in, if this happens, then I am going to do this.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: If a fire starts in a restaurant, then I'll identify the safest available exit and I'm going to move away from the danger.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: If someone becomes threatening in a parking lot, then I'm going to create distance and avoid confrontation.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: If I see somebody following me home at night and the same set of headlights has followed me for the last 15 miles, taking every turn, then I'm going to drive directly to the police department and call them and let them know that I'm coming.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: If somebody collapses, then I'm going to check their responsiveness and call 911 and start first aid.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is all if-then thinking.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we do it all the time, whether we know it or not.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: But the important thing to remember is not every scenario is going to be as, I keep saying vanilla, but as plain as a fire starting in a restaurant, you have to get out.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: That is common sense.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: Think about the ones outside the box that you're hearing about on TV that is making local and national news scenarios.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: Last night, a little girl was kidnapped from her home in a nearby small city and they found her 12, 16 hours later in another city when the SWAT team hit a house and rescued her and took the kidnapper into custody, right?
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: Think about the scenarios that are outside.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you hear a bang in the night in your house that is abnormal and unusual, what are you going to do?
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: Where are you going to set up your guard post from?
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: If you're armed, are you going to go down the stairs or are you going to wait at the top of the stairs because all of your family is upstairs and you're going to have a nice fatal funnel to shoot them when they come up your staircase?
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: These are all things to, I haven't thought about it, but these are all things to think about in that if-then thinking.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: We all have common sense as to what we're going to do in the ordinary every day.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: Think about things outside the box that could just be that much closer, get you that much closer, eliminate that much more time to help you save your life or your family's life or the lives of the people around you.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: Build some useful skills.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: Take the CPR, take the first aid classes, learn basic first aid and bleeding control.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: Have family emergency plans.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: Figure out what you're going to do.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: When I had the cartel, when I was working the cartel and had the cartel following me, I made a safety plan.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: I put guns all over the place.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: I told my family, if this happens, then we're going to do this.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: I changed the locks.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: I put up cameras.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: These are all things that I did part of that if-then thinking plan.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: And you guys should do the same thing.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: By all means, I hope the cartel is not following you around, but understand what your emergency plan is going to be for a fire or something else for an intruder.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: You never know when the devil's going to knock at your door.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: And there's something I want to point out before I wrap this up.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: There is a difference between a healthy preparedness or constantly expecting something terrible to happen.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want you to be so vigilant or hyperactive or hyper-vigilant that you are always expecting the worst to happen, right?
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: That is where I was coming out of law enforcement, and that's that's not a good place to be.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, mentally and with your nervous system, that's not a good place to be.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_00: But preparedness should give people the confidence and freedom that does not steal their peace.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: They should have the confidence and the freedom and the ability to understand they can act, they have thought through multiple scenarios, and that their peace with them and their family will not be stolen.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: And as I wrap this up, I want to just leave you with two thoughts here.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, the aftermath of a situation.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_00: Surviving whatever incident you're involved in is only the beginning.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_00: That was only the beginning of Christmas night 2003 for me.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's the emotional reactions that can occur hours, days, weeks, years after the event.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, it took 21 years for me to really wrap my mind around the events that occurred that night.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: And during those 21 years, I was impacted by survivor's guilt, second guessing, repeatedly asking myself, what could have I done differently?
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't enough.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: And memory and perception can be affected not only by stress but by time.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: And over time, we can change the way we remember things.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: Every time a trauma comes into your brain, you have an opportunity to rewrite the way that trauma affects you, good or bad.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: And when that trauma comes in and you have that flashback, that memory, you can add or eliminate things from that that either make it that much more powerful or that much weaker in your system and in your memory and the way that we recall it.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: And we sometimes we rewrite the truth during those scenarios.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that for me that took 21 years is it was hard for me to understand why, why it wasn't me and that I could have saved a life.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: And the importance at 21 years later of having support and therapy and connection and appropriate professional help after the traumatic experience occurred, that was so impactful for me to get back onto the right track.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_00: What am I talking about?
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about Christmas night 2003.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's a whole other episode called The Moose, the Mentor in the Morning.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_00: You can listen to this.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: But in short, Christmas, I had been a police officer.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: Officer for a year, year and a half.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: My wife wanted to go on vacation and visit her family.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_00: We decided to visit her family in Arizona.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_00: The gentleman who needed who was ordered to cover my shift, his name is John Watson.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: John Watson was 18 months from retirement.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: Christmas night is his wife's birthday.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the last thing he wanted to do was cover my shift on Christmas night.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_00: He made that very clear.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: He was ordered to cover my shift, and during that shift, he went to a welfare check.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_00: During the welfare check, he got into an altercation with the male suspect.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: And the male suspect took John's gun and he shot him twice, once in the back of the head and once between the shoulder blades.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_00: And he killed John Watson on Christmas night.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I believed for years that was my fault because if it wasn't for me, John wouldn't have been working that night.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I was in much better shape, and my tactics were stronger, and I would have been able to handle that better.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_00: And John wouldn't have been dead, and we could have all survived to live another day.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: And for 21 years, I held on to that survivor's guilt and I second guessed taking a vacation.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: I have not taken a Christmas vacation since.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that has now been 20, however many years, 23 years ago.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't taken a Christmas vacation since because bad things happened the last time that I did.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: But it wasn't until 21 years later, well after the immediate danger was over, that I understood the scenario that night.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: God had me exactly where he wanted me, and he had John exactly where he wanted John.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_00: John was not alone that night on that scene.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_00: God was there with him.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: And God knew the outcome of that night before John was born.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't supposed to be there.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying God took John's life, but I am saying this was not a surprise to God.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_00: And understanding that I am just a mere human and I have no right to question the authority of God or to second guess his plan or why he had me in Arizona and why he had John there that night, that is never for me to know.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: John was a God-fearing man, and there's no doubt that John is in heaven.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: There is no doubt that that was supposed to be his call.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: But it took me 21 years to understand that I tell you that, that the surviving the incident is only the beginning.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_00: If you get involved in something, you will have a long time of processing it, and you'll have a long time of dealing with the aftermath mentally, physically, court cases, whatever it may be.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_00: But know that you did the right thing in that moment.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: There's three things that I want you to remember.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: One, don't assume you know how you're going to react.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: Until you've experienced that real crisis in that scenario, until you've been shot at, until you've been near drowned, until you've been cut with a knife, you cannot know exactly what your brain or your body is going to do.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: Preparation creates options.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_00: Awareness, training, a simple plan can improve your ability to respond, even though they cannot guarantee an outcome.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_00: Even though all of the preparation in the world, all the training, all the awareness cannot guarantee the outcome.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_00: What it can do is prepare you and it can increase your ability to respond accordingly with if-then thinking.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then third and final, give people grace.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_00: Before criticizing someone's actions to a traumatic event, before armchair quarterbacking, where we started this whole conversation, before armchair quarterbacking them, remember that you weren't standing in their shoes that day.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_00: Your set of circumstances and experience is different than theirs.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_00: Your ability to handle stress and process and what you've seen and the rocks that God has put in your backpack is different than theirs.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: Their backpack might be full and they responded some one way, and yours might be empty, and you may have responded another.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_00: Give people grace.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody wants to be involved in these situations.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody wants armchair quarterbacking or nasty frickin' comments on Facebook or wherever.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_00: I hate the comments on media releases on Facebook.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_00: They piss me off because you get these shitheads who have never lived a scary day in their life, and all of a sudden they're commenting about all the stuff the cops should have or shouldn't have done.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_00: And do you know it's law to do this?
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_00: You guys go back to your mom's basement, get your frickin' Pop Tart and your half a glass of milk and go to bed.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, smoke your dope, whatever you're gonna do, just it it literally annoys me.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_00: I should be giving people grace.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_00: I should be taking my own things here.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, before criticizing somebody else's response to a traumatic event, just give them grace, guys.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: I have spent 21 years in law enforcement, and there's one thing I know that it's life can change in an absolute heartbeat.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_00: We can prepare, we can train, we can think about what we might do, but none of us know exactly how we're gonna respond until the devil jumps up.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: My challenge for you isn't to live scared, but it's live, it's to it's to live aware of your surroundings.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: Be engaged in the world around you.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_00: Have a plan, learn some skills.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: When you see somebody on the news who didn't react the way that you think they would have, maybe give them just an ounce, one ounce of grace.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because everybody thinks they know what they're gonna do until it happens.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, that is a Murders to Music podcast.