Latest / State Of Mind Mental Health Podcast / #118 - The Pathway to Violence: Why "Random" Attacks Almost Never Are | Grievance, Isolation, and the Long Runway Before an Attack with Robert Mahoney, MA
Transcript
- 0:00what I found was that there is an actual pathway to violence.
- 0:04There is a scientific pathway that,
- 0:07that irregardless of what the motivating factors are.
- 0:12that these individuals often follow the same pattern,
- 0:16which is sort of a grievance matures into sort of an ideation.
- 0:20That ideation turns into sort of research Then they begin to prep
- 0:25and then they usually have like a real explosion breach as a last ditch effort
- 0:30to announce that they're going to do something and then they kind of do an attack.
- 0:36when you begin to look at whether it's religious fundamentalism
- 0:40or political or racial or it's conspiratorial or all the above
- 0:46and everything in between, you begin to realize yeah,
- 0:49these individuals just sort of died by a thousand paper cuts down this pathway.
- 0:55Hello, everybody. Welcome to the State of Mind Podcast:
- 0:59Tools, Stories, and Truth on Being Human.
- 1:03My name is Mike Stroh, and this is a podcast for living with courage,
- 1:08clarity, and compassion. On today's episode,
- 1:12I am speaking with Robert Mahoney.
- 1:15Hello, Robert. Thank you so much for being here.
- 1:17Can you tell us a little bit about yourself,
- 1:20your work, and what brings you to this point in your life?
- 1:24Sure, thanks for having me. It's an absolute pleasure.
- 1:26So, Robert Mahoney, I'm the CEO and founder of TVTP Solutions.
- 1:31So the TVTP is an acronym for Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention.
- 1:36So basically what we do is we work with all sectors of the community,
- 1:41whether that's education, mental and public health,
- 1:44law enforcement, governmental,
- 1:47general public, houses of worship,
- 1:50the whole...
- 1:51whole kit and caboodle and we begin to do trainings and consultations
- 1:55on how they can approach this sort of targeted violence program problem that
- 2:00we have and move into a more proactive and preventative stance.
- 2:06What we have seen over the years has been sort of an overvaluation
- 2:11of protection and preparedness slash response measures and there has been
- 2:16sort of a devaluation of prevention.
- 2:19And there's a couple of reasons why I think this,
- 2:22but how I got into this field was I was sitting at home in 2005
- 2:28and watching the Hurricane Katrina response.
- 2:30And there were certain things within that response that I just felt were pretty
- 2:36basic things.
- 2:38one of the things that really stuck with me was people who were not able
- 2:41to evacuate the city of New Orleans because no accommodations had been
- 2:45met made for their pets. And I thought like of all the things,
- 2:49like there's not one pet person like in,
- 2:52all of FEMA that, that could have thought about that.
- 2:55And so I, I went to grad school and got a master's in public administration,
- 2:59with a concentration in emergency and disaster management.
- 3:03and have worked in the emergency management field from local county governments,
- 3:08states, and up through the federal doing different plans and things like that.
- 3:11And a lot of what that work is,
- 3:15is bringing people together and just getting everybody on sort of like
- 3:18the same page and taking their expertise and showing how their resources
- 3:24or their expertise could help.
- 3:26another sector and sort of coordinating responses and doing mitigation
- 3:30and all these different sorts of things.
- 3:32But really what it is is relationship building.
- 3:35And as I got further and further into my emergency management career,
- 3:38obviously, you know, we've we've had more and more targeted violent attacks
- 3:42and things like that. And I was just really curious as to sort of what what
- 3:47the tripping point was, right?
- 3:49Like what was the thing that we kept stumbling over and and
- 3:52You know, in a post 9, 9 11 era,
- 3:55we've basically all grown up with the see something,
- 3:57say something campaign, which is,
- 3:59which is just sort of an everyday sort of thing.
- 4:02Um, and in terms of like a marketing campaign,
- 4:04that's probably one of the best marketing campaigns we've ever heard of,
- 4:08right? Like see something, see what doesn't say,
- 4:11but we all kind of know say something,
- 4:13say to who say what we didn't doesn't say,
- 4:15but we all sort of know. Um, and as I started really digging into sort
- 4:21of this violence,
- 4:22sort of thing, I began to realize that we don't really have a reporting problem.
- 4:26We have a coordination problem and that,
- 4:29you know, after each attack,
- 4:32you sort of hear this terminology of random act of violence.
- 4:37And what that does with the public is that moves our minds and shifts
- 4:41our minds over into, there was no way that this was predictable or there
- 4:45was no way that we could have figured this out or,
- 4:49~ known that something was going to happen like this.
- 4:51And so when I started delving into it,
- 4:55I started realizing, well then yeah,
- 4:57obviously then if you're framing it as random,
- 5:02then yeah, put as many protection measures as you possibly can between
- 5:07me and whatever, right? Just put,
- 5:09Right. Yeah.
- 5:10put as many fences, put as many bulletproof glass,
- 5:13put as many doors, put as many cameras and put as many security personnel
- 5:18as you can.
- 5:19because it's random. And yeah,
- 5:21practice. Do the preparedness and the response.
- 5:23Do the active shooter drills, head down drills,
- 5:26all these different types of things every year so that it becomes almost like
- 5:31a fire drill, like it's just sort of like natural.
- 5:33But then like five minutes later after that press conference,
- 5:37after they call it a tragic random act of violence,
- 5:40they start going through the perpetrator's sort of history and
- 5:43you start seeing like, oh, they had a lot of behavioral problems starting in...
- 5:47you know, elementary school or they were having a really tough time
- 5:51at work and people were getting really,
- 5:52really concerned about them. Or they had touch points with mental health
- 5:56or public health or different types of organizations and stuff like that
- 6:01for different types of crises.
- 6:02And then, they also had like a few run-ins with the police.
- 6:05And I'm like, how is this random?
- 6:07Right? Like, how is this? Then why are you framing it one way,
- 6:12basically?
- 6:13saying to the public it's one thing,
- 6:16and yet out of the other side of your mouth you're saying like,
- 6:19oh yeah, there was this huge runway.
- 6:21And so that disconnect and that sort
- 6:26of paradoxical countermeasure messaging got me really,
- 6:31really intrigued of like, all right,
- 6:32well, why don't I start delving into this sort of runway of these individuals
- 6:37and start trying to figure out what is it if it's not
- 6:42Cause it obviously isn't sort of like a reporting problem,
- 6:45like the see something, say something,
- 6:46right? Like you don't get on that many people's radars if there's
- 6:51a reporting problem. And so it went back to this idea of like,
- 6:54okay, there's definitely like a coordination problem.
- 6:56And I think what I found was that there is an actual pathway to violence.
- 7:02There is a scientific pathway that,
- 7:05that irregardless of what the motivating factors are.
- 7:10that these individuals often follow the same pattern,
- 7:14which is sort of a grievance matures into sort of an ideation.
- 7:18That ideation turns into sort of research and the like.
- 7:22Then they begin to prep and then they usually have like a real explosion breach
- 7:28as sort of like a last ditch effort to sort of announce that they're going
- 7:31to do something and then they kind of do an attack.
- 7:35you know, when you begin to sort of look at whether it's religious fundamentalism
- 7:40or political or racial or it's conspiratorial or like all the above
- 7:46and everything in between, you begin to realize like,
- 7:48yeah, these individuals just sort of died by a thousand paper cuts down this
- 7:54pathway. And because different sectors were getting little slivers
- 7:59of information about the individual,
- 8:02And the hyper sort of specialized system that we have created with all
- 8:07of these sort of different programs and sectors,
- 8:10and we've defined their lanes very,
- 8:12very rigidly in the sandbox and everything else.
- 8:15just either they don't look at it as a threatening behavior,
- 8:19or they don't look at it from a holistic standpoint,
- 8:22where it just sort of this one off thing within the context of,
- 8:26you know, their interaction.
- 8:29and they don't know all the other different things that are happening
- 8:32on with that individual. And so when I started TVTP solutions,
- 8:37that was kind of the goal was to sort of bring that sort of knowledge
- 8:42or that clarity to these different sectors of how they were approaching
- 8:48it and what sort of was the real stumbling block here and then begin
- 8:53to kind of break.
- 8:56break down slightly those rigid systematic structures and create something where
- 9:02they were a piece of the puzzle that would in sort of sharing some information while
- 9:09keeping sort of privacy and those kinds of concerns,
- 9:14civil rights concerns there, getting a much better,
- 9:16trying to get much better picture of what's happening and being more proactive.
- 9:21in addressing these sort of issues before they sort of snowball,
- 9:24right? And so much of the system is sort of is designed around this sort
- 9:29of threshold, right? Like you have to qualify or you have to be
- 9:33in certain crisis that crosses over some sort of theoretical threshold
- 9:38and then we can act, right? And if you're only working with a certain sliver
- 9:42of information, right, you may never get past that threshold.
- 9:47Right? So it's like, if you go to law enforcement,
- 9:49they'll ask you, well, is this person doing anything illegal or they'll assess
- 9:54if there's any sort of legal thing that's being done there.
- 9:56If they're not doing anything illegal,
- 9:58there's not a whole lot of resources and that threshold isn't going to
- 10:02be sort of crossed. So there's really not a whole lot that they can do.
- 10:04You go to like mental health and crisis teams,
- 10:07CIT teams or something like that.
- 10:08And, you know, they'll ask you,
- 10:10well, are they a threat to themselves or others?
- 10:12Well, no, not yet. All right. Well,
- 10:14then.
- 10:14get to the back of the line because I've got a bunch of,
- 10:17you know, I've got a stack of people that are,
- 10:19and I've got only so many clinicians.
- 10:21So you're going to have to wait until they cross that threshold.
- 10:24Schools are completely different.
- 10:27They've got so many different sort of legal restrictions on what they
- 10:31can do because most of what they're most of their focus is obviously
- 10:34on 18 and under. And so different privacy concerns,
- 10:38whether it's HIPAA or FERPA or all of those types of things.
- 10:42But also they have a much more insular type of culture where they like
- 10:46to try and keep things as in-house as possible because it becomes very,
- 10:50very taxing if you have to go outside to different resources and
- 10:55get the parents involved and everything that goes on with there.
- 10:58So you begin to sort of see how each of these sectors is just sort
- 11:03of designed slightly improperly to take a much more prevention approach.
- 11:10where they are kind of designed in a way to be more responsive to a crisis.
- 11:17Like they're there to respond.
- 11:19But they're there to respond and trying to thread sort of like this needle,
- 11:22right? And sometimes they don't get the resources there in time or they miss
- 11:29all the signs and they have to bring in a whole bunch of different resources
- 11:34and services after the fact.
- 11:36when they had sort of, if they had just been able to connect some
- 11:39of these puzzle pieces, they would have been able to be far more pro-act.
- 11:43Okay, yeah, thank you. Yeah, it's good.
- 11:45Yeah, sorry about the long-winded nature of that.
- 11:46That was good. That
- 11:49was good. That was good. It touched so much of the start to finish.
- 11:54A couple of questions and maybe sort of choose which one to go down.
- 12:00One is the see something, say something idea.
- 12:04When it comes to...
- 12:07somebody's acting irrationally or you can observe this spiral going down,
- 12:13ruminating about stuff, researching stuff.
- 12:17One recent case in Western Canada was this person,
- 12:22right, who shot up the school.
- 12:24So many signs on the way to that
- 12:26Exactly.
- 12:27moment, right? And just the human resistance to calling a spade
- 12:32a spade and addressing a problem,
- 12:34how does, or how do you see that the human sort of avoidance
- 12:38of those difficult things?
- 12:41playing into this.
- 12:43So I think you're correct in sort of like the human perception of these things.
- 12:48Like why do we, when there's, it's always great to Monday morning quarterback sort
- 12:52of like after the fact of like,
- 12:52Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 12:55~ you see this. So I have
- 12:58also as part of this, I'm a certified behavioral threat assessment instructor.
- 13:02And as an instructor and as sort of an evangelist for behavioral threat assessment.
- 13:08I know that the ethos behind behavioral threat assessment is to sort
- 13:12of not necessarily focus so much on profiles and risk factors,
- 13:16but to focus in on behaviors, right?
- 13:20And so that the behaviors are the things that are the far more telling signs
- 13:24of future aggression or of future,
- 13:28you know, other behavioral issues rather than sort of risk factors.
- 13:33And however,
- 13:35as sort of an instructor and an expert in that field,
- 13:38I can tell you, I hate that type.
- 13:40And the reason why is because in the same way that random act of violence puts your
- 13:46brain into a certain context, behavioral
- 13:48Yeah.
- 13:49threat assessment also puts it into a certain context.
- 13:53And so if you start telling people that,
- 13:56yes, in order to stop these threats,
- 13:59or in order to stop these targeted attacks in this violent nature,
- 14:02Mm-hmm.
- 14:03you have to look at their behavior,
- 14:05then you will automatically begin to look for threatening behavior,
- 14:11right? And so many of these individuals are beginning to sort of head down that
- 14:16pathway of violence off of things that are not threatening behavior or are taking,
- 14:23are hitting them
- 14:24in a way that are sort of not looked at as being precursors to violent activity,
- 14:30right? So, yeah, so like the death of a grandfather,
- 14:31Right, can you give us some, yeah,
- 14:32I guess you were about to, yeah,
- 14:33yeah. Right, right.
- 14:34right?
- 14:35Or the loss of a job or moving to
- 14:41a different city or just all of a sudden not,
- 14:45you know, being on the soccer team or the hockey team for forever and then just sort
- 14:50of deciding this isn't for me and just going away.
- 14:53~ One of the tall, tall signs of sort of the precursors down the pathway
- 14:57of violence is isolation. So an increased sort of repeal away from sort
- 15:02of friends and family and just kind of going in there.
- 15:06And so these types of things, because they aren't threatening or they're
- 15:11not in an aggressive nature, often kind of go by the wayside,
- 15:16right? Okay, they're just having a bad time or they don't want to talk to me or...
- 15:21you know, they're now onto this new thing,
- 15:24right? You hear a lot of parents of people who have committed attacks say like,
- 15:29well, they were really into this thing and I thought it was just a phase,
- 15:32right? Like it wasn't, it wasn't threatening.
- 15:35They were getting more agitated and this is sort of the thing that they always
- 15:38wanted to talk about, but I didn't think it was going to be going down like this,
- 15:43right? And so,
- 15:45Because of that, think that's when you talk about reporting,
- 15:49often get that sort of like, we're concerned,
- 15:52but it's not on a level where we think they're going to do violence to us.
- 15:57And so we kind of just hold it back.
- 16:00Like maybe they're just having a bad day or we'll return to it later.
- 16:03When I go to schools and I start talking about schools or talk to schools,
- 16:08about behavioral threat assessment,
- 16:09I'll basically ask them this question,
- 16:11like, you tell me about the difference between the quiet kid in the corner,
- 16:15who's not a problem, and the quiet kid in the corner,
- 16:18who's, you know, in the depths of isolation and doesn't have any friends
- 16:22and is just sitting there and,
- 16:24you know, just wants to get out of the class and doesn't,
- 16:26it just hates it there and therefore doesn't speak up,
- 16:29right? And it's sort of seething inside.
- 16:34And they can't.
- 16:36Right? And so typically what,
- 16:39you know, when we talk about sort of proactive prevention and just general security
- 16:46in itself, when you go into an environment,
- 16:49now that could be a town or that could be a school or a specific classroom
- 16:53or an office building or what have you,
- 16:55you know, as a security professional,
- 16:58the one thing that you want to do is really try to create calm.
- 17:01And I've created this sort of,
- 17:03you know,
- 17:04~ analogy of sort of Zen security,
- 17:06right? And this haiku of you want to make the water as still
- 17:12as possible so that you can see what's causing the ripple,
- 17:15right? And looking at it from an anthropological sort of way,
- 17:20like our brains and our senses are triggered for the abnormal.
- 17:25Like we don't have enough bandwidth to be taking in absolutely everything.
- 17:30So
- 17:31whether it's a smell or a sound or even a sensation if somebody walks
- 17:36in the room and the whole just the whole room just changes like those types
- 17:40of things. There's like there's something different here and that's from like
- 17:43an evolutionary survival type thing.
- 17:45Right. And so by by kind of putting in I said like you know this idea
- 17:51of like putting in more protection measures or more response measures
- 17:55in there into that environment.
- 17:56What you're doing is you're kind of creating a little bit of noise.
- 18:00So you're not really able to see those ripples,
- 18:05right? And you're more focused on sort of the things that are right in front
- 18:10of your face. And so those, when you're talking about prevention,
- 18:14like those little ripples are the things that you wanna kind of like
- 18:17hit really quick. You wanna tamp those down or figure out what you can
- 18:21do early on to get those people sort of the help that they need or to
- 18:27get them over this hump.
- 18:28so that it doesn't sort of begin to come up into a point where you have to,
- 18:34you have to take out sort of like the big resources and stuff like that.
- 18:38have, know, narratives is also like,
- 18:40we talked a lot about context,
- 18:41like narratives is like a huge thing.
- 18:44And I see this being like a real pitfall within sort of the security
- 18:49law enforcement sort of realm.
- 18:52Even to a certain extent, a lot of the public assistance sort of ~ realm have
- 18:58a problem with sort of like these narratives of,
- 19:00you know, I have this experience where I,
- 19:03I went into a city liquor store.
- 19:05went to go buy something. And as I'm approaching the liquor store,
- 19:09I can see the CCTV camera outside and there's bars in the windows and there's
- 19:14a huge fluorescent light. That's sort of right in front of the door
- 19:18and doors reinforced and I'm
- 19:20you know, I'm able to get that thing open.
- 19:22And then there's like a little alarm that says that the door is open.
- 19:25And I get into this little holding pen,
- 19:28right? And there's a metal detector that's there and I have to go through
- 19:32the metal detector. Then there's an armed security guard who has like
- 19:35one of those wands. So he wands me down.
- 19:37Then I get finally into the store and I can see like the TVs and everything else
- 19:42of me being in the store and what's going on outside.
- 19:45it's again, really harsh fluorescent lighting.
- 19:48and it's floor to ceiling bulletproof glass.
- 19:51And I have to do
- 19:51You
- 19:52like all of my commerce through like a drawer.
- 19:55And I remember thinking in that moment that like,
- 19:58this is the safest place that I have ever been,
- 20:02right? And yet I've never been more scared in my entire life,
- 20:06right? Because the narrative
- 20:07Yeah, yeah.
- 20:08isn't, ~ look how safe you are.
- 20:11Aren't you relaxed? Cause you have all these protection measures in front
- 20:15of you or in between you and whatever.
- 20:17It was like, what the hell goes on here that they felt the need that all
- 20:22of this was necessary, right? And it totally
- 20:24Shit.
- 20:24changes your entire relationship with the space and things like that.
- 20:29And it's not that sort of like school resource officers
- 20:34or police in the schools and stuff like that,
- 20:38or wandering the perimeter doesn't have value.
- 20:42It's just that.
- 20:44The narrative sometimes is a little bit different than what maybe the SRO,
- 20:50the school resource officer thinks that their narrative is,
- 20:53or what it is. Cause I have talked to a lot of SROs and they think that they're
- 20:57extensions of sort of like the clinician,
- 21:01the school clinician or something
- 21:02Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 21:03like that, right? Like come and tell me what,
- 21:06I'm that one trusted adult. You can tell me and we'll keep it confident and...
- 21:10you know, I want to be buddies and stuff like that.
- 21:13And that's not the narrative that the students have.
- 21:16That's not the narrative that the staff have,
- 21:18right? The narrative is, is if basically shit hits the fan,
- 21:22like you are the first line of defense if,
- 21:25if something bad happens. And that's a different dynamic.
- 21:29And when I talk about sort of like that long runway through the pathway,
- 21:35why would I go to an SRO to talk to them about my disinterest in leaving
- 21:39the hockey team or the soccer team,
- 21:42right? Why would I talk to them about the death of my grandfather?
- 21:45Why would I look at them as an advisor
- 21:51to certain relationship problems or if my parents are having a tough time at work?
- 21:57That's not what you're necessarily there for.
- 22:01And so you begin to sort of see these sort of
- 22:04cracks all over the place within just sort of the holistic
- 22:07Mm-hmm.
- 22:08security sort of apparatus that we kind of put in place.
- 22:12And some of that is due to the fact that,
- 22:15you know, mental health, they're hyper specialized.
- 22:18is not their, security is not their forte.
- 22:21So they reserve to law enforcement.
- 22:24Law enforcement is trying to tell everybody,
- 22:26look, it has protect and serve on the side of our cars,
- 22:30not prevent and serve.
- 22:32Okay. And so there's stop asking me about these things that I can
- 22:37do nothing about other than put these people on a list.
- 22:40Right. And the schools are sort of like,
- 22:43well, we've got this great relationship with the SROs and we also take,
- 22:48you know, security seriously and we do our active shooter drills
- 22:52and things like that. So we feel that we're really,
- 22:55we know what we're doing. And it's like,
- 22:58In a certain sense, yes. And in another sense,
- 23:01you have no idea, right? Because you're not,
- 23:04you don't have any kind of concept of care that's coming,
- 23:09that's enveloping sort of how you do business.
- 23:14There's a great sort of story that's sort of non-security related,
- 23:19which is, which I share, which is like back in the late seventies
- 23:23and early eighties.
- 23:24the two most reliable cars on the market was a Mercedes-Benz
- 23:30SL something or other and a Toyota Corolla.
- 23:35people who studied the car industry could not figure out how this was happening,
- 23:40right? Because Mercedes-Benz was sort of the gold standard.
- 23:43You went there, you had an apprenticeship,
- 23:45you had, you know, years and years of training.
- 23:50And you were sort of a master of one thing on that assembly line.
- 23:54And then before the car even hit the parking lot,
- 23:59there was like a 2000 point inspection and all these types of things.
- 24:03And so you paid a premium for that.
- 24:05And here was like Toyota that gave like a 45 minute training sort
- 24:11of video.
- 24:13had no apprenticeship whatsoever,
- 24:15sort of a ~ jack of all trades,
- 24:17master of none. There was no inspection that was done at the end of
- 24:22the line and everything else. And they just couldn't figure out like what
- 24:25the heck was happening that this little car company that was one third
- 24:29the price was being able to be one of the most reliable cars
- 24:34and compete with Mercedes-Benz.
- 24:37And what they ended up finding out was the reason why they were able to
- 24:40do that was the quality. What Mercedes-Benz was the quality control had been
- 24:43put at the, the end of the, manufacturing process where Toyota integrated
- 24:49it throughout the entire process.
- 24:52And basically that's kind of what we are trying to do with
- 24:56of being proactive prevention.
- 24:58have to integrate it into just the way you do business because
- 25:02You you look at any of the cross sector networks that
- 25:08happen, they're usually, you know,
- 25:11the systems are very, very rigid and the networks that cross over are really flimsy.
- 25:16They're usually one point of failure.
- 25:18Somebody retires or somebody gets promoted or somebody decides to just go
- 25:23on to a different project or priorities and the whole network kind
- 25:27of like falls apart, right?
- 25:30So what you want is you want to have this sort of concept that
- 25:33is integrated into just the way you do business.
- 25:36So if a new principal comes in,
- 25:38well, this is just the way we do things.
- 25:40Or if a new chief of police or if a new,
- 25:42you know, a clinician comes on board,
- 25:45like this is just the way we do things.
- 25:46you know, part of that is taking that,
- 25:52I talked about that behavioral threat assessment sort of to model a lot.
- 25:57at least here in the United States,
- 25:59a lot of the behavioral threat assessments are teams are located in schools.
- 26:03And there's
- 26:03Ahem.
- 26:04a real effort to try and get them out of the schools,
- 26:08not because they shouldn't have threat assessment teams,
- 26:12but that they shouldn't be the nucleus to all of these different sectors,
- 26:17right? They shouldn't be the coordinating body that
- 26:21has to connect with law enforcement and mental health and the department
- 26:25of rec and the library association and you know,
- 26:29boys and girls clubs and houses of worship,
- 26:31right? To try and figure out all these different things.
- 26:34It should be a little bit higher.
- 26:37The other reason why they should be taken out of the school is because we're getting
- 26:40data now that is really,
- 26:44really skewed and just absolutely ridiculous where,
- 26:47you know.
- 26:4898 % of all threats within the town are coming from like 18 and under,
- 26:52right? And it's just sort of like,
- 26:54well, yeah, because you put the behavioral threat assessment team in
- 26:57the schools and you're using a metric that's not,
- 27:01you know, holistic enough to sort of look at it.
- 27:04like if, if 98 % of all violent threats are coming from 18 and under,
- 27:09I'm sorry, like children are no longer the future.
- 27:11They're the problem, right? And so,
- 27:14um,
- 27:16There needs to be a way in which in certain towns are beginning to sort of do this,
- 27:20where they're kind of elevating the behavioral threat assessment team into sort
- 27:23of more of an emergency management type structure,
- 27:26where all these sectors kind of come around the table and are a participant,
- 27:31but aren't like the principal coordinating body.
- 27:36How so if we take take an individual case,
- 27:40maybe this person in since I'm in Canada,
- 27:43I mean, we got all the American news,
- 27:45obviously,
- 27:46Right.
- 27:47perhaps not as much as we might with the stuff that happens here.
- 27:50Person person is sort of going down this pathway that you're describing.
- 27:56And I have experience with this with family with severe mental illness and
- 28:02Where's the boundary of intervention and reporting and that kind of stuff,
- 28:07which we, kind of asked you about with the,
- 28:09the human precarious for self deception,
- 28:12right? Or not wanting to see something,
- 28:15say something because you don't want to feel like a bad person or you don't want
- 28:18to make the wrong decision. How,
- 28:20at what point in, a person's journey to an act of violence,
- 28:25how does the
- 28:28prevention determine when that intervention happens and then
- 28:33how do you navigate the inevitability that sometimes
- 28:40you may act too soon, you may act too late,
- 28:42whatever, just that not everything always goes according to plan and sort of,
- 28:47I don't know, re-aligning after that.
- 28:50Yeah. So one of the things that's interesting about this,
- 28:54about this process, about this whole pathway is even how they get on
- 28:58the pathway to begin with.
- 29:00Mm-hmm.
- 29:01And every, everybody in the world,
- 29:05has to have, is basically looking to fill three metaphorical buckets really
- 29:11of identity, purpose, and community.
- 29:13That's what we were always on the lookout for.
- 29:17whether it's something that will fill that bucket or something that will reinforce
- 29:22what's already in that bucket.
- 29:24Because the brain cannot deal with...
- 29:27I coffee all over myself. Okay,
- 29:28~ no, no,
- 29:32sorry, sorry. The brain cannot.
- 29:33no.
- 29:35The human brain finds it completely unacceptable to not know what it is,
- 29:39who they are, what they're there for,
- 29:42or who they're connected
- 29:43to, right? To be just sort of sent adrift is just not okay.
- 29:48And so in the absence of that,
- 29:51like we go and we start searching for those things that will fill that bucket,
- 29:55right? And this can, this you can sort of see in a lot of different ways,
- 30:00but typically what we will do when you talk about sort of interventions
- 30:04is we will try to combat the what,
- 30:07right? So whether it is a ~
- 30:10political thing or religious thing or conspiratorial thing,
- 30:13et cetera, et We will try to combat the what?
- 30:16Like we are going to convince them or change their thoughts
- 30:20and opinions about something through debate or logic or reason or anything else.
- 30:26This often just fails, right,
- 30:29on impact, right? And the reason why is because they are not always necessarily
- 30:36attaching themselves to the what,
- 30:38they are attaching themselves to those intangible things that the what provides.
- 30:42Right? And so it's that sense of an identity,
- 30:45that sense of purpose, that sense of community that is the tying bonds,
- 30:50the magnetic effect, not necessarily the message.
- 30:53Right? And it also is a misunderstanding of how behaviors begin
- 30:59to mature and are created.
- 31:03It's not through logic, it's not through reason,
- 31:05right? And it's not through our thoughts and opinions.
- 31:08Actually what it is is our feelings,
- 31:10which are illogical, irrational,
- 31:13right? And everything else. And our behaviors stem from
- 31:17our feelings about something. Our behaviors then feed into our thoughts
- 31:22and opinions about something, and then we will post-rationalize our behaviors.
- 31:27And so that's sort of like the downward flow.
- 31:31that you sort of get to.
- 31:33We begin to sort of just see, we use the term radicalization when people kind
- 31:38of get locked in, right? And I think that's sort of a loaded sort of word because,
- 31:44you know, it's used in sort of a context
- 31:51of a dangerous context that you've become radicalized.
- 31:55And I think there's a lack of complexity that comes with that.
- 32:01You see this in Alcoholics Anonymous,
- 32:03right? Hi, I'm Rob, I'm an alcoholic.
- 32:06Boom, there's my identity. What's my purpose?
- 32:09Well, I'm here to get clean, all right?
- 32:11And then my community is everybody else that's in this room that also shares that
- 32:16same identity with me and shares that same purpose and is gonna help me.
- 32:19Boom, I'm locked in, right? After COVID,
- 32:23you see a lot of individuals who were,
- 32:25know, public health.
- 32:27professionals and doctorates in public health and things like that,
- 32:31when the pushback began to sort of come,
- 32:33whether warranted or not, they started to become really personally offended,
- 32:38right? Their identity was that they were a doctorate of public health,
- 32:41their purpose was to keep the public healthy,
- 32:44and their community was generally other public health entities and public health
- 32:48~ people. And so they began to take that as sort of a personal attack.
- 32:53And that's what ends up happening when you start going through trying
- 32:56to change somebody's mind that has been sort of locked in onto something through
- 33:01a logical and reasonable sort of way through thoughts and opinions
- 33:05and things like that. It often has a counter effect.
- 33:07An intervention, doing an intervention has a top-down power dynamic attached
- 33:14to it already.
- 33:16~ It works with people with substance abuse because they can't physically sort
- 33:21of get themselves over the line So doing an intervention of all right,
- 33:24we're gonna grab you. We're gonna take you we're gonna get in control We're gonna
- 33:27move you over to this area, right?
- 33:30That doesn't work as you can sort of tell With these people they have attached their
- 33:35identity their purpose in their community to these things So there's
- 33:38an emotional and psychological sort of fixation that happens on these
- 33:42on this stuff and
- 33:44It becomes almost impossible to get off that,
- 33:48that thing, unless you treat it as sort of more of
- 33:54a intercession or an interruption or a negotiation,
- 33:57right? You want to try and level out that power dynamic.
- 34:01The best way to do that is to provide an alternative.
- 34:05So you have to provide a new identity,
- 34:09a new purpose, or a new community or all three,
- 34:12right? And they have to see.
- 34:14that they're going to get basically,
- 34:16if we go back to the metaphor of the buckets,
- 34:18like they're gonna get the same amount of flow into that bucket that they're getting
- 34:23from this other thing. Because.
- 34:24Yeah, sorry.
- 34:25Yeah. So let me interrupt you there for a second.
- 34:27I'm quite fond of AA.
- 34:30And so one thing about the identity,
- 34:33like identifying with whatever it is,
- 34:37as you're describing can be unhealthy for sure.
- 34:40And in this context of the person,
- 34:46I always think it's so helpful to think as sort of sort of moment
- 34:51to moment practically as possible.
- 34:53So
- 34:5516 year old kid gets it in their head that something's happening.
- 34:59So they start to identify with this persona and perception and it becomes them.
- 35:05They get sort of fully, whatever.
- 35:10There is on that.
- 35:10Yeah, yeah, yeah,
- 35:12that is a good word. So then it's parent.
- 35:15one, two, if they have parents or whatever,
- 35:17starts noticing a little bit, as you mentioned earlier,
- 35:20I just thought it was a phase or whatnot.
- 35:22That person sort of gets deeper and deeper in this.
- 35:27I think you use the analogy. So there's see something,
- 35:31say something, and then there's see something,
- 35:33do something. ~
- 35:34Right.
- 35:35How, again, like in your,
- 35:38you just brought up that idea of giving them another option,
- 35:41which is actually kind of what AA does for a lot of people.
- 35:43Mm-hmm.
- 35:44any really helpful intervention.
- 35:46How do we get the person from the place they're
- 35:51in into these other alternatives?
- 35:54Does it have to be hospitalization or apprehension or whatever?
- 36:01you know, like, does that make sense?
- 36:02So,
- 36:03so the data, if we're going to go for the data,
- 36:04Yeah, yeah.
- 36:05so most
- 36:06of these attackers only about,
- 36:08I think it's like six to 8 % of them are meant to are considered mentally ill.
- 36:14Okay.
- 36:15Sure, okay, yeah.
- 36:16The, the, the other 92, 94 % are mentally unhealthy.
- 36:21Okay. So that's bad coping skills.
- 36:22Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 36:24It's, it's all that kind of stuff.
- 36:26And so.
- 36:26Yeah.
- 36:27By offering those alternatives,
- 36:29this is I kind of use more of like,
- 36:31it's like a hostage negotiation more than sort of an intervention,
- 36:33Yeah, yeah, right. Okay, okay,
- 36:34right? Because what you're trying
- 36:35yeah.
- 36:36to do is you're trying to, as you said,
- 36:38like you're trying to display these other options and you
- 36:41Mm-hmm.
- 36:42want them to feel as though they are in control,
- 36:45okay?
- 36:45Right. Right.
- 36:46When you have sort of a substance abuse or you hit that sort of rock bottom
- 36:49and you don't feel like you
- 36:50Yeah, yeah.
- 36:51no longer have control, you need to abdicate that control to somebody else.
- 36:55Yeah,
- 36:55yeah, yeah. Right, right,
- 36:56this is not that same sort of situation,
- 36:58right? And the more
- 36:59yeah.
- 36:59control you try to put onto that person or take away from that person,
- 37:04the stronger they're going to get buried in.
- 37:06like resistant. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 37:09And so with sometimes that messaging doesn't,
- 37:12isn't great when it comes from a family member or even when it's friends
- 37:16or teachers or something like that,
- 37:18because there's just a...
- 37:19Again, the narratives and the context,
- 37:21if my parents are telling me that they don't want me to do something,
- 37:24well, there's a power dynamic there that's relinquishing control.
- 37:28Same thing with teachers, same thing with mental health professionals
- 37:33or law enforcement, right? There's these different power dynamics.
- 37:36And so what you're trying to do,
- 37:38much like they do with hostage negotiations,
- 37:41is you're trying to present these different alternatives and get them to be like,
- 37:45okay, yeah, that makes like...
- 37:47I can see that or I see that landing pad over there.
- 37:50I can go and do that. You know,
- 37:53yeah, we're, we're no, we hear you.
- 37:55You've asked for a helicopter.
- 37:57We're getting the helicopter. ~ why don't you let out one of the hostages though,
- 38:01just to show us that you're serious.
- 38:02Okay. I can do that. Right. And you know,
- 38:04so there's like, there's, there's a leveling of the power dynamic there and yeah.
- 38:09Where, sorry, sorry,
- 38:10where does that come from if they're suspicious of their parents,
- 38:16the school, the police, the mental health worker,
- 38:19So that is part
- 38:20yeah, yeah.
- 38:20of sort of the behavioral threat assessment team,
- 38:22Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 38:23right? So that's,
- 38:24and so what we have had really good success on,
- 38:27I talked to you about sort of like the behavioral,
- 38:29I hate the title, behavioral threat assessment team.
- 38:31So
- 38:32Yeah.
- 38:32one of the things that we've really had a lot of headway with that has been very,
- 38:36very well responded to was relabeling them care teams,
- 38:40okay? And so that opens up a whole bunch,
- 38:44right?
- 38:46What we were getting, feedback we were getting,
- 38:47especially from schools was, listen,
- 38:50before every, you know, at every summer,
- 38:53towards the end of every summer,
- 38:54we have to come in, we have all these trainings and it's,
- 38:56you know, we get all the new standards for education.
- 39:00But then we have like signs of substance abuse,
- 39:02signs of suicide, signs of child trafficking,
- 39:05signs of it, right? And I come in and I'm like,
- 39:08signs of targeted violence and terrorism,
- 39:10like heading down the pathway violence.
- 39:12And it becomes just, it just gets drained in the wash,
- 39:16right? Like
- 39:17Mm-hmm.
- 39:17it becomes all these different risk factors and all these different things.
- 39:21And the feedback we were getting was like,
- 39:23all right, well, I saw something that peaked my interest,
- 39:28but I didn't know if it had to go into this bucket or that pathway
- 39:33or that protocol or that. So I was like,
- 39:36all right, I'm just going to sit here,
- 39:38wait, see if something else happens.
- 39:41and then I'll have a better sense of it,
- 39:42right? And if you have a behavioral threat assessment team,
- 39:47again, you're looking for behaviors that are threatening to give to that team.
- 39:51A care team kind of opens up the windows where it doesn't matter what
- 39:57the concern is. It doesn't matter if it's gonna go into a child trafficking protocol
- 40:01or if it's going to substance or it goes into violence protocol.
- 40:05It gets all, it gets just thrown all into one.
- 40:08one sort of basket, right? And you're just going to be able to address
- 40:11it because it piqued your interest or something you felt that something was wrong.
- 40:16Right? And from a parent standpoint,
- 40:19like you're much more open to if you get a call from your son
- 40:25or daughter's care team at school,
- 40:26then if you are your son or daughter's behavioral threat assessment team,
- 40:30like we want to talk to you about your kid,
- 40:32like there's a, you're going to create that sort of resistance almost automatically.
- 40:38And a care team is good because you can get it from all information from
- 40:42all different angles. So we talked about sort of like the death of a grandfather,
- 40:48that goes into a care team. The breakup of a girlfriend,
- 40:52concerned about somebody having disinterested in the hockey team or soccer team,
- 40:57that can all go into the care team.
- 40:59And the other...
- 41:02way that you want to do this is you want to sort of spread
- 41:05out the responsibility where not you're not trying to make intervention experts
- 41:10out of everybody, but you want to
- 41:12Mm-hmm.
- 41:13try and have as many multi dimensional multi cross sectional nodes
- 41:19as you possibly can. One of the great example was we installed
- 41:24bus drivers into the care teams,
- 41:27right?
- 41:28Hmm.
- 41:29And for the purpose, because it was still called the behavioral threat assessment
- 41:32team at the time, for figuring out threatening behaviors or something like that.
- 41:36What we got back was a report of an individual who was being picked
- 41:42up and dropped off at a different spot,
- 41:44which was sort of unusual, and coming
- 41:46Yeah.
- 41:46to find out that there was some substance abuse that was happening on that home.
- 41:50Again, not really.
- 41:52behavioral threat assessment or violence related,
- 41:54something that needed to be addressed.
- 41:56Boom, done. We found another instance where the family was driving up
- 42:02and the kid was getting out of the car to get onto the bus and the
- 42:05car just looked like it was filled with pillows and blankets and things like that.
- 42:09Sure enough, they had been evicted from their apartment.
- 42:12Again, not threatening necessarily from a violence perspective,
- 42:16but something that they felt that they needed to be proactive on and they
- 42:19got that individual.
- 42:21and that family, the help that they needed.
- 42:23That's kind of what we're sort of looking for.
- 42:25So I began to start working with,
- 42:28when I start setting these sort of these care teams up in these towns
- 42:33is looking at the sanitation department,
- 42:36whether you like it or not, your garbage man and your recycling people know when
- 42:40you've had a party at your house,
- 42:41they know the type of beer that you like,
- 42:43they know it right. Like they see
- 42:43Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 42:45these things on a weekly basis.
- 42:47We had gotten
- 42:49FedEx, we brought FedEx in, to a couple because,
- 42:53FedEx has or had a process if you,
- 42:57for drivers, if they were assaulted or,
- 43:01or had something happen to them or the truck or something like that,
- 43:05there was a protocol to, to, for security that way.
- 43:08They did not have any protocols or procedures if they notice something unusual,
- 43:14right?
- 43:15So some of these drivers admitted that like they wish they had
- 43:19it because they've been on this route for three years.
- 43:22They've never stopped at this house.
- 43:23Then all of a sudden, you know,
- 43:26they're bringing package upon package upon package within a two week window
- 43:29and it's all hazardous material.
- 43:31Right. And it's like, just strikes like what
- 43:32Yeah.
- 43:35is going on the house. Like, you know,
- 43:38so there's something odd there.
- 43:40Libraries, houses of worship, departments of rec,
- 43:43right? We've had instances where these individuals are absolute terrors at school.
- 43:49They're absolute dreams at the afterschool program with Department of Rec.
- 43:53It's a different context, right?
- 43:54Like sometimes just the environment that they're in is just not conducive
- 43:59to the way they learn or there's something going on personally when they're there.
- 44:03And then they get out of that environment and they're amazing.
- 44:07And so you really have to get your team and your ability
- 44:12to get more information as much as you can to make a more informed decision
- 44:18of not only how you're going to do this of inter interrupted negotiation kind
- 44:24of thing, but also like what is really going on in that person's life.
- 44:29Again, they may be not causing a problem at school.
- 44:34But outside, they're going back to a home with substance abuse or domestic abuse,
- 44:38and they don't have any more friends,
- 44:41they're gonna get kicked out of their apartment,
- 44:43or they need food assistance and things like that,
- 44:45but they're just quiet at school.
- 44:47so, therefore, obviously, there's no problem there,
- 44:50right? So I think there's all these different things that get put into this sort
- 44:57of mixing bowl, but how we do it,
- 45:00and how we get people to be more proactive is an interesting behavioral science
- 45:07type thing of like, all right,
- 45:08how do we construct it? of like Toyota,
- 45:11we want this to sort of be integrated in just how we do business,
- 45:15but how do we frame things and how do we develop them so that
- 45:19it becomes something that is almost second nature,
- 45:23right? Like when we observe things.
- 45:25And one of the sectors that
- 45:28I've really started to delve into recently that has a lot of research on
- 45:32how to get people to just do proactive behaviors for safety
- 45:36is actually the transportation sector.
- 45:38There are ~ a whole host of different things between the way in which
- 45:43a sign is created or like how high it's supposed to be off the ground
- 45:48to different types of city planning and things like that.
- 45:52that get people to do things that are safer.
- 45:55One great way that they do is something called pedestrian refuges.
- 45:59So this is sort of like a little concrete island sort of in the middle of
- 46:03a two lane road. And usually you'll have sort of a crosswalk that'll
- 46:07cut through this little pedestrian refuge.
- 46:09And it's just sort of like this little island,
- 46:11probably sticks out maybe six to eight inches on either side of the lane.
- 46:15But that six or eight inches, when you're a driver,
- 46:18is just enough
- 46:20to narrow your scope of vision that you will naturally take your foot
- 46:24off the gas and you will go slower.
- 46:27And so certain cities, you know,
- 46:30that have a main street where people just tear through it or straight away
- 46:33or something like that, they'll install these different things.
- 46:36You don't have to just install the concrete things.
- 46:39Sometimes they have these sort of little large cones type things that they
- 46:44can put up to help that.
- 46:45Other things to do with speed,
- 46:47they found that using speed cameras or flashing your speed to get you
- 46:53to slow down doesn't work really at all.
- 46:55One of the things that they found was if they just print a smiley face
- 46:59or a frowny face underneath a speed sign,
- 47:02that has more of an emotional effect on us than just flashing our speed.
- 47:07we'll actually, if we see a frowny face,
- 47:09we'll actually slow down a lot quicker.
- 47:11than if we just see ourselves being 10 miles over the speed limit.
- 47:15All different types of things.
- 47:16So, and you can play these sort of psychological hacks on
- 47:19Yeah.
- 47:20people. And it's not really manipulation,
- 47:22but it's definitely, you know,
- 47:24if I look at it as sort of more of a contextual placebo effect,
- 47:30schools have tried to introduce healthier meals to limited success.
- 47:35~ And then I heard of a school that just sort of changed the
- 47:38the the architectural the option architecture,
- 47:41right? So they put the healthier items on sort of a top level Near
- 47:46the thing and then they put like the pizzas and the hot dogs and the french fries
- 47:49on the bottom level and just that change in perspective Got kids to
- 47:54eat more the healthier items than going down
- 47:57I have this great story about Grey Goose.
- 47:59Have you heard this story about Grey Goose?
- 48:00Like the vodka, Greggies. Yeah.
- 48:01Yeah, Grey Goose Vodka
- 48:03Bottle. So Grey Goose from France,
- 48:05nobody associates vodka with France,
- 48:07right? And
- 48:09Yeah.
- 48:10somebody, somebody knew the CEO comes in and they do like a larger bottle.
- 48:16They just put a larger bottle so that you couldn't put it necessarily with
- 48:20all the other vodkas behind the bar.
- 48:23You had to put it on the top shelf.
- 48:26And so people got a sense of like,
- 48:27it's French, it's unusual, it's vodka,
- 48:30and it has this tall bottle that's striking to my eye.
- 48:35It must be high quality, right?
- 48:37And then there's way other, and there's just those types of little shift,
- 48:42contextual shift changes that get people to either buy a bottle,
- 48:46a different vodka, or to order a different food,
- 48:50or to slow down naturally.
- 48:53without a whole lot of like authority of
- 48:56Yeah.
- 48:57telling you what to do, right?
- 48:58You just sort of naturally move in these sort of areas.
- 49:03that kind of complexity is, or that kind of attention to detail happens a
- 49:09lot in the commercial sector. I have a huge
- 49:11you
- 49:12section in my talks and stuff like that about Starbucks and about how,
- 49:16you know, things like, you know,
- 49:19wood tones and the music that goes into it and the lighting of what kind
- 49:23of lumens and even the sound they like commissioned a special coffee maker that
- 49:30was loud enough that you knew your coffee was being made but soft enough that
- 49:34you could still carry out a conversation right and
- 49:35Yeah.
- 49:37so all these things like moving the air vent system
- 49:41Yeah.
- 49:41to
- 49:42over the dining area where the tables are so that you get the smell of sort
- 49:46of the croissants and the sandwiches and everything else down in there.
- 49:49This is also just sort of like get you to buy,
- 49:52you know, a warm croissant and a $5 cup of coffee,
- 49:55right? that feels like a lot of detail and minutia to like
- 50:01put into a space. But it's...
- 50:04been very effective, right? Like at its peak,
- 50:06Starbucks was opening a store every three hours,
- 50:10I think, three to six hours, something like that,
- 50:13somewhere in the world. And so these types of things sort of have a tendency
- 50:17to take off. I don't see that sort of level of detail within the security realm
- 50:23or within even the prevention space,
- 50:25right? Of looking at going into a cafeteria and saying,
- 50:29okay, if we put this sort of soundproofing thing,
- 50:33either up on the ceiling or on the walls,
- 50:34we're going to reduce sort of anxiety a little bit more or we'll be able
- 50:39to hear things more. If we change the lighting in the hallways,
- 50:42right, we're going to have a different sort of atmosphere going from class
- 50:46to class or from room to room.
- 50:48If we put different color on the walls,
- 50:51if we have a different smell that's in the house,
- 50:54in the place, all these different things contribute to the context of
- 50:59how we feel and how we interact.
- 51:02never has there been a mass attack at a Starbucks.
- 51:04Okay, there have been attacks at Starbucks,
- 51:07but they've won, like a mass attack has never happened.
- 51:11And these are structures that are basically floor to ceiling glass.
- 51:15I mean, if you go into one, there's no security guard ever.
- 51:18I've never been into a Starbucks
- 51:19Yeah, yeah.
- 51:20that has a security guard. The bathroom is free for the public.
- 51:22So they're just letting people kind of come in and go.
- 51:25You can stay there for as long as you want.
- 51:26And you know,
- 51:28that nobody goes into that space thinking like they're unsafe,
- 51:31right? And checking over their shoulder.
- 51:33And that's the kind of stuff when I started talking about sort of like that
- 51:36Zen security, like these are the types of things that you want to create within
- 51:41the space because you're able to sort of pick up better those little abnormalities.
- 51:46And so you can address
- 51:46Yeah.
- 51:47those abnormalities quicker and it doesn't take
- 51:51a huge apparatus to sort of get moved or get activated or get into place
- 51:57to sort of just shift somebody early on one way or the other.
- 52:02Yeah. All right. As we sort of run out of time here,
- 52:05two questions. I know the, one of the academic jargony words around that is nudging.
- 52:11think. So,
- 52:12Yes.
- 52:12yeah, that's one thing that, or that at least I read some book called nudging.
- 52:16was all about that
- 52:16Mm-hmm.
- 52:17stuff, which was pretty interesting.
- 52:18Two questions. One would be, how do you maintain your tranquility
- 52:23and sort of balance amongst all this type of work?
- 52:27Because a lot of things I talk about on here is how we sort of become
- 52:32the type of person who can do what we do.
- 52:34So that's one question. And one is more of a,
- 52:38an interest question. I contradicting approaches to what happens
- 52:45if there is an active shooter or a threat in a school.
- 52:48So I've, as I understand it,
- 52:51the actually the safest thing to do is to let people escape the school
- 52:56and run from the shooter. Yet all our protocols are locked in place.
- 53:02So I'm curious, could you just talk maybe about that lock in place versus
- 53:07run thing and then to your own personal practices and how do you kind
- 53:11of maintain your balance and focus throughout all this type of work?
- 53:15Yeah, most of that sort of that response stuff
- 53:21is slightly out of my lane, but just because of the complexity
- 53:25of the environment and the design of the school and everything else sort
- 53:28of dictates more how, which one is more appropriate,
- 53:33right? And that's more of a law enforcement sort of thing.
- 53:38I will say to that though.
- 53:41We have spent a lot of time almost over a century of creating buildings with fire
- 53:47codes, right? And how, you know,
- 53:51how much distance of a hallway and where the staircase needs to be
- 53:56and all these different types of things.
- 53:58And the building just does not get made unless,
- 54:01you know, the fire marshal basically seals the approval of the,
- 54:05of the plans. We do not do that for security.
- 54:08We don't do that for, for.
- 54:10active shooter. so oftentimes what you get is sort of like this makeshift either
- 54:15lock in place, throw the tables in front of the doors and throw the,
- 54:18Yeah.
- 54:20you know, close the windows
- 54:21and get your head under the desk or something like that.
- 54:25Because you're sort of, again,
- 54:26we're trying to put a square peg in a round hole at that point.
- 54:32And so I do encourage not that I think that we can go and redesign every school,
- 54:37you know, in
- 54:39in the North America and everything else,
- 54:40but there has to be some type of on new builds or something like that
- 54:46or renovations where either the SWAT teams or the local responders,
- 54:52the first responders to something like this have to have some type of
- 54:56say into how they enter a building.
- 54:59What is the best way to get people out?
- 55:02and as quickly and as efficiently and everything else.
- 55:06Again, that goes back to sort of the behavior things.
- 55:09When the fire alarm goes out, you don't see people necessarily running for panic,
- 55:14right? They kind of have an orderly way in which they do things
- 55:19and they're relatively quiet and they move out very,
- 55:22very quickly and they know where their meeting point is and they take
- 55:26the attendance and everything else and boom,
- 55:29we're done.
- 55:30This is a very different sort of situation,
- 55:32obviously, but by designing certain things or knowing,
- 55:37you know, different protocols,
- 55:39whether if you're on a hallway,
- 55:41on one certain hallway, you evacuate in one different way.
- 55:44If you are on another level, you have to do something completely different,
- 55:48Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 55:49right? And so
- 55:50that, that contextual change is just something that has to be sort of worked on and
- 55:55Mm-hmm.
- 55:57developed.
- 55:58In terms of sort of how I keep myself,
- 56:00Yeah.
- 56:01I
- 56:03don't know. Understanding the complexity of this,
- 56:09understanding that we are dealing with human behaviors,
- 56:13we're dealing with with humans that are struggling,
- 56:17that are doing human behaviors that are not rational and that
- 56:21are not going to fit in a linear sort of logical path and addressing people
- 56:27who may not necessarily be struggling to the same degree,
- 56:30but are in charge of keeping those people and others around them sort
- 56:34of safe and knowing that they also don't follow necessarily a logical approach,
- 56:40especially when it comes to this stuff and that
- 56:41Yeah.
- 56:43it's all emotion, helps a lot,
- 56:45right? Because it gives me enough
- 56:48Patience and gives me enough leash to not get really Wrapped around
- 56:54the axle and upset that these that these people or these sectors just don't get it,
- 56:59right? Like they are operating the best that they can within the sector that they're
- 57:05in within sort of the rules and regulations that they have been given
- 57:09and They are doing their best and it is really up to
- 57:15you know, our leaders, our towns,
- 57:17but then, you know, the people within the sectors themselves to sort of
- 57:22strip the ego a little bit, you know,
- 57:25and the hubris and understand that like the way that you are doing
- 57:28it isn't necessarily wrong. It's just not as effective as it could be.
- 57:33And with a few tweaks here and there contextually,
- 57:37we can get you to where you actually want to be,
- 57:40right? And because everybody that I talk to wants to have a safe community,
- 57:45a more interconnected community.
- 57:49~ they want to be more proactive and get to issues long before,
- 57:54you know, they begin to sort of snowball and,
- 57:57and get everybody scared. And,
- 57:59you know, they just want a safer community.
- 58:02But the, way in which we design things in a logical sort
- 58:07of more systematic fashion, sometimes just butts up,
- 58:12it sort of creates these glass ceilings.
- 58:13and I think.
- 58:15The worst part about having a glass ceiling is that you don't know it's
- 58:18a glass ceiling until it's like you hit it with your face,
- 58:20All right.
- 58:21right? Like, know,
- 58:23and I think that's, that's sort of one of the big,
- 58:26the biggest issues is, is, is just under having that general understanding of like,
- 58:31all right, we're just all people like,
- 58:34and we're all trying to navigate this.
- 58:36We're all rookies in life. Nobody has come back and been like,
- 58:39my last life this way. ~ so.
- 58:41Yeah.
- 58:43We're all kind of working on the fly here and we just want to
- 58:48try to optimize the correct metrics,
- 58:51right? And one of those things with overvaluing the protection measures
- 58:56and the response measures is I often ask them,
- 58:59okay, so what metric are you using to showcase value of that?
- 59:03Like if you spend 250,000 on those things,
- 59:07you're expecting an ROI of 250 plus,
- 59:11right?
- 59:12So what metric are you? Because it can't be just like,
- 59:16well, something didn't happen today,
- 59:17therefore it's working. Right?
- 59:19That's not the metric. So what is the
- 59:20Mm-hmm.
- 59:21metric? And that's the one thing that's interesting because they'll always tell
- 59:24me like, well, there's prevention stuff.
- 59:26Like, how do we measure it? Well,
- 59:27how do you measure that? Right?
- 59:28Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 59:29And so satisfaction and happiness and a general sense of security and connectedness.
- 59:36Like, how much how much money is that worth?
- 59:40in your community. And so they begin to sort of like,
- 59:42opens up the brains and things like that.
- 59:45And like, yeah, maybe, maybe there needs to be a little bit more of
- 59:48a leveling out here of, you know,
- 59:50we've we've we may have overvalued some of these things,
- 59:54because they were sort of logical or reasonable that we thought like,
- 59:58that was the way to go.
- 1:00:00Okay, well, Robert, thank you so much for all your wisdom.
- 1:00:04All your sort of information will be in the show notes for people to follow
- 1:00:09up with you after. otherwise, again,
- 1:00:12thank you so much. hope you have a great day.
- 1:00:14You too, thank you so much. And I hope that your audience got a lot out of it.
- 1:00:18yeah, again, if they want to contact me,
- 1:00:20there's a contact page right on the website.
- 1:00:22And we can do some bespoke services and things like that.
- 1:00:25The one thing that we don't do is we don't take on cases.
- 1:00:28So we're not caseworkers. And so we're more creating sort
- 1:00:34of the protocols to get to the...
- 1:00:38thwart those individuals before they need those caseworkers.
- 1:00:41if we want to do more of the structural stuff or even the training stuff,
- 1:00:47we're happy to do that.
- 1:00:50Awesome. Again, thank you so much.
- 1:00:51Yeah,
- 1:00:52Thank you.
- 1:00:52until next time.
- 1:00:53Thanks for listening to this episode of the State of Mind Podcast.
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