Latest / SpaceTomatoes / Robert Mahoney on Humanizing Violence Prevention S2-EP17
Transcript
- 0:00So if you have these bus drivers or delivery drivers making these reports, who actually analyzes that on the other end, determines if that's a real threat or not.
- 0:09And do you foresee like AI becoming a part of this in the future and analyzing these threats?
- 0:15I, yeah, so.
- 0:17Please say no.
- 0:19Please say no.
- 0:22As an expert in the field, I, I, I say.
- 0:30All right, everybody.
- 0:51Welcome back to another episode of the Space Tomatoes podcast.
- 0:55I'm one of your hosts, Havoc.
- 0:58I'm the other host, Alex.
- 0:59Hello.
- 1:00Welcome back.
- 1:00Hey, all that stuff.
- 1:02Today we have with us a special guest, Robert Mahoney.
- 1:05He is the founder and CEO of TVTP, which blew some bits off my hard drive just now.
- 1:15I was going to say the company name, but I'll go ahead and turn it over to you and you can
- 1:18introduce yourself and your company and kind of what you guys do.
- 1:22Yeah, sure.
- 1:23So thanks a lot for having me on the program.
- 1:25It's an absolute pleasure.
- 1:26So as you mentioned, Robert Mahoney, CEO and founder of TVTP Solutions.
- 1:32So that's an acronym that stands for Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention.
- 1:36What we do is we are sort of an educational and consulting service.
- 1:40We go to municipalities, we'll go to school districts, mental and public health institutions and programs and law enforcement agencies.
- 1:49and discuss and sort of train how prevention should work.
- 1:57And I think we'll probably get deeper into my definition of what prevention is
- 2:02as opposed to what I believe right now,
- 2:06sort of an overvaluation on protection and sort of preparedness slash response type stuff.
- 2:13And as sort of a part of that sort of training and consultation, we let them explore how sort of radicalization works, how people sort of become pathologically fixated and then sort of believe that violence is sort of a good expression of their frustrations and their grievances and the like.
- 2:42and then how that is a very definitive pathway and what types of behaviors go along with it.
- 2:50And really trying to pop this framing of random acts of violence.
- 2:57And what that sort of framing does is it puts us more into a defensive mindset
- 3:03and it also focuses our attention on certain things that aren't threats
- 3:11and diminishes things that actually are behavioral signs that somebody's struggling
- 3:16and could lead down to a pathway of violence.
- 3:19And so long story short, that's kind of what we do.
- 3:22And we try to create coordination protocols and networks amongst all of those different sectors
- 3:31so that everybody is kind of moving with one concept of care around individuals that are struggling.
- 3:39All right. So I guess, you know, as part of that, I imagine you're holding seminars, you're holding training sessions, events. Are these lengthy, like weeks long or are they day long, you know, quick sessions or how does that work?
- 4:01So it's a combination of we're kind of bespoke in that sense. So depending on the level of training that you want or what type of consultation you need, if you just want people to sort of get on the bus of this is a more human centric way of preventing these types of attacks that pays dividends in a multidisciplinary sort of way.
- 4:25we can do a one hour sort of session or a three hour or a half day sort of sort of session if you
- 4:33want sort of more technical stuff of hey these are our response plans this is how we've been
- 4:39sort of attacking this problem um is this are we are we too defensive should we go more proactive
- 4:46what types of things in the plan should we do we can also do that where we kind of draw the line
- 4:53is when people, you know, clients or prospective clients come to us and say, hey, you know,
- 5:00we have an individual that we're sort of worried about. Can you examine, you know, their file or
- 5:05something like that? And that's like, no, that's not what we do. We do not take on cases. That is,
- 5:12we have individuals that we've sort of partnered with that have that technical sort of classic
- 5:18inter intersession or interruption intervention type skills, um, as well as how the management
- 5:27at the end of, and I think we'll probably go into, you know, BTAM or behavioral threat assessment
- 5:32and management, you know, that, that M in that acronym is a highly clinical sort of speciality.
- 5:39And so we, we can teach people about behavioral threat assessment and we can go right up to that
- 5:44point where, you know, somebody has a case and they're looking for, for some type of clinical
- 5:50intervention and then progressing to the management. So that's where we sort of draw the
- 5:56line in the sand of where we can go. How do you, how do you make, uh, so just thinking about this,
- 6:05it seems like a really complex area, right? With, with a lot of moving parts,
- 6:11personalities. Anytime you've got a personality involved, it's, it's, you know, and two,
- 6:17it becomes a very challenging thing, right? So how do you, how do you in a brief period of time,
- 6:24you know, a half a day, let's say, let's give it a full half day. How, how do you meaningfully
- 6:32adapt someone to be able to look for signs without causing them to go into what we all know
- 6:42is a psychological you know trait that humans have where once you're taught something you start
- 6:48looking for that thing and finding it where it may not exist yeah i i think that's a it's an
- 6:57interesting point and it's an interesting aspect of my job in that most of the time,
- 7:06people are already doing that. They just don't recognize it. So, you know, through evolution
- 7:12and anthropological sort of the way we've sort of are hardwired, our senses are designed to look
- 7:21for abnormalities, whether it's, you know, from a sight or hearing or a sense of smell or taste or
- 7:27something like that. And so those are all of our defensive mechanisms. And you can probably include
- 7:32sort of like a sixth sense as well. If you enter the room and there are certain environmental
- 7:38factors that are within that room that make it just uncomfortable. And so really what we're doing
- 7:45is we're just pulling on that thread that's already there, right? And we're sort of amplifying
- 7:51people's awareness to things that they are already aware of, but aren't necessarily
- 7:57factoring in or aren't processing in the right way. And so to your point of sort of recognizing
- 8:05things that they think are a threat, but aren't a threat is more a case of that's fine. Like we all
- 8:15make mistakes. We don't want to sort of put the lid on that. If there is something that is
- 8:21happening, whether it's in a space, you see something, you smell something, whatever,
- 8:25we should have an open sort of process by which that concern can be elevated to somebody with
- 8:34some technical expertise. So you don't want to stifle that sort of stuff. What you want though
- 8:40is if there is a concern and they report it, okay, who's there to analyze what that concern is?
- 8:48And then how does that interact with other things? Whether it's other social programs,
- 8:55or if it does need to be elevated to a law enforcement issue, or if it's a mental health
- 9:00issue, or things like that. And so even in a short space of time, what we really are doing
- 9:08is trying to just reframe the issue where we're not focusing so much on the, we're looking at the
- 9:18what, but we are processing sort of the why and how individuals have gotten to that point. And if
- 9:25their behavior is something that is concerning, if it's concerning to you or if it's concerning to
- 9:31you know, other people, how do we report that?
- 9:36And then what is the coordination about what, what do we do about that?
- 9:42Are these government agencies that you work with or are they mostly private
- 9:46civilian type?
- 9:47So we take clients of all kinds. Typically we, we,
- 9:52we shy away from the federal government just because certain and federal
- 9:57programs that are getting like federal funding.
- 10:01that can just be a little bit of a hiccup on, you know, how we do things.
- 10:07So it's typically more localized where we'll work with like a particular municipality.
- 10:14We might have a few people that represent the state that are sort of in the audience.
- 10:20Maybe some state police or state departments of health or education or things like that.
- 10:26But really, most of our clients are kind of like the general public.
- 10:31or institutions that are sort of within the public realm.
- 10:38So you wouldn't consider like the Department of Rec
- 10:42to be sort of under that like government kind of sanctioned umbrella,
- 10:46even though it kind of is,
- 10:47but they see people in a very different lens
- 10:51and interact with them in a very different way
- 10:54than your traditional law enforcement and things like that.
- 10:58So, you know, Departments of Rec will work with,
- 11:01We had a good session with FedEx a few years back where we realized that they didn't have a process for suspicious activity with their drivers.
- 11:12Where if you were a driver and you were yelled at or you were assaulted or somebody came at you, they had a process for that.
- 11:20But if you were on that route for 10 years, never delivered a package to this house before or delivered it once every three weeks.
- 11:28and then all of a sudden you're there every single day and every single package has like a hazardous
- 11:34material thing they didn't have any process for like hey there might be something going on at this
- 11:39house um we go to uh libraries libraries again are great meeting grounds for for individuals a
- 11:47lot of people will from a community standpoint will will go to the library so we've done trainings
- 11:52for that houses of worship
- 11:54excellent partners
- 11:56in houses of worship
- 11:57excellent partners with
- 12:00sort of like small
- 12:02business associations
- 12:04getting them involved
- 12:06and obviously sort of like
- 12:08your veterans groups or your social
- 12:10sort of groups
- 12:12for different types of individuals
- 12:14within the community
- 12:15interesting
- 12:18it almost
- 12:19and this is going to be
- 12:21a very huge oversimplification, right?
- 12:26Obviously, I'm old.
- 12:29So, you know, varying degrees of old.
- 12:32I'm up there.
- 12:34So I remember back in the day, you know,
- 12:38there was a method of policing that was commonplace
- 12:44and almost everywhere used it.
- 12:46And it was broadly defined as community policing.
- 12:51Where officers were out in the neighborhoods they were you know you find them at a park playing ball with kids You find them in the libraries You find them you know just kind of cruising down the street maybe you know hanging out with people and talking with them et cetera And largely all police forces at this time now look more like they ready to be
- 13:13airdropped into Afghanistan. And they view every single person out there as a strict and total
- 13:19enemy. And in some ways I can, I can understand a little bit of that, I guess, in some ways,
- 13:30but it almost sounds like what's being done here is privatizing community policing. Um,
- 13:36I guess how, how, how does this parallel into, um, so, okay. So in your, in your stuff, right,
- 13:53you're doing these threat assessments, you're helping people understand behavior, uh, behavioral
- 13:58patterns, clues, signs to look for, and then to initiate some action, right. Which is largely
- 14:05labeled voluntary and i'm going to do the finger quote thing voluntary because we hear that all the
- 14:11time and it's anything but right right in your case you you are a privately held company correct
- 14:17yep right and you're self-funded or do you have funding and grants for all funded okay so self-funded
- 14:24so that's a great thing right that's a great start but in the literature that i've read you also have
- 14:29a point where it's hand off to law enforcement, right? Which makes sense. There's not a bad thing,
- 14:37right? I mean, if you get to a point where it's like, this is a problem, there's a very serious
- 14:41problem here, and we've got to hand this off. I guess the question that I have is,
- 14:46what is the follow through on that, right? Because we all know, engaging an officer comes with a very
- 14:55high degree of risk. We've seen it in the news, you know, mental crises end up in dead people
- 15:01when it should have been, you know, a trip to the ER or, you know, some other management method,
- 15:07right? So, so what process do you have to try and minimize that? How do you track that? And how do
- 15:14you gauge statistically how much of that is occurring that wasn't occurring prior to your
- 15:22efforts. So a lot there. So let's, yeah, no problem. Well, I'll try to take a step-by-step.
- 15:33So one of the things that I think is prolific throughout, you know, not just the U.S., but just
- 15:42in general with human beings is a lack of understanding as to what the drivers are for
- 15:50our behaviors and our thoughts and opinions. And one of the things that we don't realize,
- 15:57we sort of realize maybe subconsciously, but not consciously, is that feelings drive our behaviors
- 16:04and feelings inform our opinions, not the other way around. And so because of that, we don't
- 16:13operate in the world in a sort of linear logic fashion. We don't operate with reason on a lot of
- 16:23different decisions and we're not logical. And because it's more emotion that's sort of
- 16:29driving our decision making and our opinions and thoughts on things. And there's actually a great
- 16:37study on, on just this fact where, where they pulled where they, they had people who were first
- 16:45time electric car, uh, buyers rank like their top 10 reasons why they wanted to buy an electric car.
- 16:54And a lot of the top three were things that were more emotional, looks cool, like the performance,
- 17:00um you know feel i i feel rich when i'm in one like those types of of more emotional sort of
- 17:08things and things like environmental impact were down in sort of like the you know seven to eight
- 17:14range and so after one year they came back to these same people and they asked him the exact
- 17:20same question you know why did you buy an electric vehicle and environmental impact went all the way
- 17:26up to like number one or two. And what they deduced from that was that it's actually our
- 17:33behavior that creates a thought and opinion about something. And then we sort of post-rationalize
- 17:41our feelings for it. And so the actual physical act of doing something or the feeling or the
- 17:48sensation that you get when you are looking at something or you enter a room or you feel something,
- 17:55that makes your behavior that influences your behavior and then your thoughts about sort of
- 18:01that individual or that business or that you know that car right so there's a fundamental
- 18:09sort of misunderstanding of what the drivers are for behaviors and so this is a huge thing for
- 18:15behavioral threat assessment like you have to understand sort of what types of behavior not
- 18:22only what types of behaviors you're looking for, but what might be the major driver of
- 18:28those behaviors.
- 18:30The reason why I think we have become more police-oriented or more surveillance state
- 18:42sort of, you know, and moved more into that sort of modality has been this idea, one, the framing
- 18:53around it. I mentioned earlier, you know, random acts of violence. When you use that framing,
- 19:00you put people in sort of a box that they are sort of just playing the worst bingo game that
- 19:08has ever been played and they are just waiting for number 36a to be called and that's it your
- 19:15time is up and so if i'm within that that box of framing it makes sense logical sense
- 19:24and and also behavioral sense from a feeling standpoint why you would take sort of a hard
- 19:32right turn and say, yeah, go put as many protection measures as I, as you possibly can between me
- 19:39and whatever, right? Cause we don't know, cause you said it was random. We don't know
- 19:44who any of these people are. So, so yeah, I want to have more cameras up here. I want to have,
- 19:50you know, a bigger police presence. I want to have all of these things because you've basically
- 19:55told me that, you know, at any given time, you know, something bad can happen and we would have
- 20:01no idea who that individual would be. And so you can sort of see that process of, yeah, let's focus
- 20:11in on putting more protection measures. Let's focus in on putting more rapid response teams
- 20:18in case something does happen, they can get there as fast as possible. The paradox to all of this
- 20:24is that that narrative is counter to what you hear after an attack about those institutions
- 20:33knowledge of that individual, right? You always hear this character arc of, of the individual
- 20:42that committed the attack of being concerning behavior at school or neighbors had complained
- 20:48about, you know, things that they were doing.
- 20:52They may have had touch points with mental and mental health
- 20:56or other types of social programs or something like that.
- 20:58They may have even had touch points with law enforcement.
- 21:01And I think that disconnect has really created sort of a logical breakdown
- 21:11in how we design systems to help that.
- 21:18And we've actually tried, we've basically created, you know, have you ever heard of the term latent error?
- 21:25For those who haven't, it's basically you've got active error, which would be me sort of like bumping into my mic or stubbing my toe on my desk.
- 21:33But then latent error is sort of an examination of did I put that microphone and my desk in a spot where the probability of me hitting it or me stubbing my toe went up higher?
- 21:45and when we're talking about sort of framing and narratives and things like that what i try to say
- 21:53is that there is a value to those protection and response measures however it is overvalued
- 22:01um and there needs to be a balancing that needs to happen with prevention measures none of this
- 22:10violence is random if that individual was on a bunch of people's radar and people within the
- 22:16community had said, hey, we're concerned about this person. They need some help. So the latent
- 22:23error that we've sort of created is this hyper specialization system where we will focus in on
- 22:30one risk factor or one part of the problem. And we will have a system that sort of has their lane
- 22:38very defined. And we have seen states and municipalities have analytics where they know
- 22:48if you are a first time, for example, recipient of food stamps, they know from the month,
- 22:54week and day that you're going to come back and have a housing assistance issue. Right.
- 23:00But the hyper specialization, I only take care of the food stamps and I only take care of the housing things. And so you end up shifting the responsibility to the person sort of in crisis to sort of navigate through these things.
- 23:19even though the system knows the probabilities of what's going to happen over that sort of
- 23:28theoretical corner. But the person is just basically trying to get food on the table.
- 23:35And so it is, in a way, we have sort of handcuffed ourselves into a process
- 23:43where we have developed certain thresholds of response,
- 23:49where that concerning individual,
- 23:52even though there's a bunch of touch points
- 23:54for mental health or law enforcement,
- 23:58well, they're not doing anything illegal.
- 24:00So law enforcement really is not going to sort of step in
- 24:03on a prevention or do an intervention.
- 24:07That's not what they're designed necessarily to do.
- 24:10Mental health will probably ask,
- 24:12Are they a threat to themselves or others?
- 24:14And if you say, well, no, I don't think so yet, but it looks like they're getting more and more agitated.
- 24:19They might be heading down to say, yeah, all right, well, you know, I've got X amount of clinicians and I've got a stack of people that actually are.
- 24:28So they're going to just have to get to the back of the line, right?
- 24:31And so you sort of create this systematic approach that is looking as if this individual is going down sort of a logical sort of step by step and that eventually they will pass over that threshold and then logically we will be able to respond.
- 24:56And that is the real sort of shift that I try to get these municipalities and the general public in general to sort of understand how we've come to this point.
- 25:14The narrative, too, also when you add in more of those protection measures and response measures and things like that, that also has a counter narrative.
- 25:26So I've gone in front of SROs or school resource officers many times, and they're great people, and I have no problems with them, and this is not a knock on any school or anything like that that uses SROs or security guards in general.
- 25:44It is interesting to hear the narratives that the SROs think about themselves as opposed to the narrative that students and faculty have of the SROs Where the SROs think that they are an extension in many times of the school counselor
- 26:07right? They look at themselves as somebody who is there to be a pal and a friend and a trusted adult
- 26:16or a confidant or anything else. That is not the narrative that students have. The students,
- 26:24the narrative that students have is when shit hits the fan, you are here to provide security.
- 26:33And I am not going to go to you to tell you about problems that I'm having with my boyfriend or my
- 26:41girlfriend. I am not going to go to you to tell you that my dad lost his job yesterday or that my
- 26:49grandfather died. Right. And so you, the narrative that sort of gets put in place oftentimes is not
- 27:00the narrative that is perceived. And I can give on top of that SRO narrative, I can give you an
- 27:06example of a personal thing that I've been sharing, you know, off and on for a while now,
- 27:13which is I went into a liquor store one time and as I approached the liquor
- 27:17store,
- 27:18I could see the CCTV cameras and I could see bars on the windows and I could,
- 27:23I went through a reinforced door and then I immediately went into like this
- 27:27holding pen where I had to go through a metal detector.
- 27:29I get wanded by an armed security guard.
- 27:33I go into the front,
- 27:35the store,
- 27:35which has got this really harsh fluorescent light.
- 27:38I can sort of see the TVs that are showcasing me in the thing.
- 27:42And then outside,
- 27:43it's floor to ceiling bulletproof glass and I have to do all the commerce through a drawer right
- 27:50and I remember having this sort of like epiphany while I was in there where I was like
- 27:55I'm in the safest place I think I've ever been in my life and I've never been more scared in my
- 28:01entire life right and the reason why is because the narrative shifts from a human standpoint of
- 28:09not like, oh, look at all these logical protection measures that this place has put up. Aren't I
- 28:15safe? It's what the hell goes on here that they felt the need that all these things were necessary,
- 28:23right? I don't feel safe or secure or anything. And you just want to get out. And as a security
- 28:32professional, that's kind of like the worst thing you can do to your environment. Because as I
- 28:38mentioned sort of anthropologically we are attuned to those abnormalities right for our own sort of
- 28:44survival and without getting too too zen on it but i do have this nice haiku that i often share with
- 28:52audiences where it's like as a security professional you want to make that water as still as possible
- 28:59so that you can see what's causing the ripple.
- 29:03And by putting all this noise into the environment,
- 29:10whether it's logic or not,
- 29:12it creates a lot of disturbances, right?
- 29:16There's a lot of disturbances in the force, so to say, okay?
- 29:20I go to schools or businesses or law enforcement agencies
- 29:25and I pose the question to them,
- 29:28You show me the difference between somebody that's sitting in the corner that's not speaking, that doesn't cause a lot of problems, that doesn't seem to have any friends, doesn't interact with really anybody, who's just quiet and reflective, compared to somebody who has the exact same traits that's in a death spiral of isolation.
- 29:53and you can't, right? And so what you do is you focus in on what the immediate thing
- 30:02in front of your face is. And that oftentimes reprioritizes things that you might need to pay
- 30:13attention to that aren't being paid attention to. And what ends up happening with these individuals
- 30:18that sort of commit these attacks and you start going through their sort of life story
- 30:24and their character arc is you begin to see things that are sort of innocuous one-off
- 30:31instances that began to sort of pile up.
- 30:36And you began to sort of, they started to compound onto one another.
- 30:41And what's interesting about seeing these things is that a lot of those instances aren't threat-related.
- 30:53They're not violence-related.
- 30:55And I mentioned a few, like the breakup of a boyfriend or a girlfriend or losing your job or death of a family member or something like that.
- 31:04Those aren't things that you would go, oh, the behavioral threat assessment team needs to know about that, right?
- 31:12Or I need to share that with the SRO or the local cop that's walking through or the security guard or something like that, right?
- 31:21And what ends up happening is because we've sort of created these thresholds systems is that these things are sort of left to fester.
- 31:31And because we have sort of have an imbalance of our ability to do actual prevention as opposed to this inflated sort of protection and response sort of modalities, we are trying to sort of thread the needle of if something gets to that point, we'll be able to intercede it.
- 31:57And we've seen time and time and time again that there's only so fast that you can go for response.
- 32:07There's only so many protection measures that you can put up before it doesn't feel like a school, it doesn't feel like a business, the whole town feels like it's under martial law.
- 32:18There are just certain things that you can't do, or if you do, you're going to have limited success.
- 32:31I'd say today, at least now, still, I don't think it's legal to do that, right?
- 32:38Not entirely in the way that potentially some people might like to.
- 32:45Right.
- 32:45So, so another question on that, right? And this one, this one keeps coming back into my head, right? And I don't see how, how it could be. I'm sure you, you deal with it. I'm sure it's, it's a question that comes up, but it's, I think it's a very pertinent and critical one is who gets to decide what an extremist or extremist ideology or threat or intention is.
- 33:09And I'll just go through some history. We've seen Muslims in general, anyone that practices that religion, you know, is Islamic, become by default terrorists.
- 33:22We've then seen through previous changes and political narrative winds and shifts that, you know, next thing you know, evangelical Christians could be terrorists.
- 33:33And then we've seen where people that just have a very bad taste for government and are quite vehemently against government in general become extremists.
- 33:48Yeah.
- 33:48Whereas none of those things, not one of them actually deems anyone an extremist, not in my eyes.
- 33:56Right.
- 33:56So how do you deal with that when you go and these winds are shifting and the next thing you know, an entire subcategory of the populace becomes like, oh, we need to scrutinize these guys and now we've got the tools to do it.
- 34:13and you start looking for, you will find those patterns.
- 34:18You could take the most normal, perfectly aligned individual,
- 34:26and if you stare for long enough, you're going to start finding these.
- 34:29Yeah, yeah.
- 34:31And so I think your point is well taken, and it is 100% true.
- 34:37And one of the things that we try to get our audiences to reframe is to not look at the what, but to look at sort of the behaviors and the why.
- 34:54and so understanding how people and this is like a really bad term and i i wish i had i i need to
- 35:02spend some time to come up with a different term because when you start saying like radicalized
- 35:07people begin to sort of think of sort of like the mujahideen or or or um you know different things
- 35:15as you sort of like mentioned right like you become radicalized i use it to sort of describe
- 35:21somebody who has attached themselves to something, not because necessarily of what the message is,
- 35:30but because of the intangibles that come with it. And that all of us in general are looking for three
- 35:39metaphorical buckets to fill. And that's identity, purpose, and community. And we search for those
- 35:49types of things all the time, whether it's to reconfirm that we're still within a community,
- 35:55or we still have an identity or a purpose, or to go and find one, right? Because the human brain
- 36:03finds it absolutely abhorrent and unacceptable to not know what it is, right? And so in the
- 36:12absence of that, we go start looking for a magnetic north. We have to attach ourselves
- 36:17to something. Um, and you sort of see this throughout life. You're like, you'll see something,
- 36:23you know, obviously teenagers, they're, they're growing up. They want to, they're trying to find
- 36:27their place in the world. They have some struggles of identity and, you know, where they are
- 36:31community wise and purpose wise. You find this after, um, you know, if you have a life event as
- 36:38an adult, whether you have children and it sort of changes your trajectory, um, you change jobs,
- 36:43you change to a different city. You get out of the military. Your entire life has been sort of
- 36:49regimented for however long. Now all of a sudden it's on you and now you're no longer an officer,
- 36:55right? Or you retire, you spent 30 years as a plumber and you've done one week of retirement
- 37:02and you sort of are beside yourself. Like you don't know who you are. And so things like religion,
- 37:10things like different political parties, a combination of the two, they fill those buckets.
- 37:20They fill those senses and they feel that emotion. What you end up finding when you become
- 37:28sort of radicalized is that that becomes your entire raison d'etre. You sort of have a more
- 37:38focused down sort of reality prism where anything and everything that comes at you or a reality
- 37:47filter gets filtered through that prism and then fills those buckets, whether it has something to
- 37:53do with that subject or not. Right. And this goes back to sort of my thing of like looking at people
- 38:02either logically or looking at people more from a human centric and emotional standpoint.
- 38:07These things that we put into those buckets or that we get attached to, they don't have to make logical sense.
- 38:15okay and i think what what you mentioned of sort of like ice of making these sort of groups and
- 38:24and focusing in on them as if you know everybody that is under that religion or is under that
- 38:32political party um has these sort of same same philosophies or ideas is looking at it too much
- 38:41in a logical sense. They're looking for a sort of logical debate to be able to, and they think that
- 38:50they can change thoughts and opinions and that that will flow upwards to behaviors which will
- 38:56flow to feelings I sorry shit flows downwards okay It feelings behaviors thoughts and opinions It doesn go up And so I see a lot of friction with isolating certain groups for targeting or
- 39:18an attention that is put on there because it is a logically easier thing. They don't believe what
- 39:26I believe, or they don't look like how I look. And therefore that sort of difference from a logic
- 39:34standpoint, you know, I can insert myself. Um, and so I think that I like to tell my honest is
- 39:41do not get wrapped up in the, the, what get wrapped up in more of the, why, why does it look
- 39:50like these individuals are latching onto something. Is there, are they becoming more
- 39:55distant? Is the environment that you're creating in your classroom or your business or even your
- 40:01town not allowing for them to express themselves or for them to find a type of identity or a
- 40:12community or purpose or something like that. And that's where you're sort of, your interruption,
- 40:18or your intercession sort of needs, needs to be. And I think this is sort of like, there's,
- 40:27there's a difference. I don't use the term intervention. I don't like to, I've, I've moved
- 40:31away from it. So I use more interruption or I use more intercession. I use negotiation a lot
- 40:37because I think when you have, when you attach yourself to something and it becomes sort of like
- 40:44your identity, you get a purpose out of it, you get your community from it. And it becomes who you
- 40:51are. When you do an intervention, and even when I say intervention, that's a top-down power dynamic,
- 40:57okay? That is something that sort of works with individuals who are sort of having a chemical
- 41:02addiction, right? Where you come in and you go, you know, hey, Steve, we found you last night
- 41:09sleeping in the gutter. We are taking control of this. You have lost control of your life,
- 41:15and we are going to sort of take control of you and move you in a different path.
- 41:22That sort of works because the individual kind of has sort of an emotional thing, like,
- 41:29I don't want to be like this. I want to get clean. And there's a movement towards that.
- 41:34If you use that strategy to somebody who has been radicalized, that's a personal attack. That isn't you trying to offer me to something better. That is you telling me that you just don't like what I am, what I associate with, and what my viewpoints and what my thoughts and opinions are.
- 41:58right? And so actually what happens is that I'm going to dig in my heels. I'm going to dig in my
- 42:03heels and I'm going to become more distant and more disconnected to you, to everybody at this
- 42:08school or to the office, to my family, whatever, because you are now personally attacking me.
- 42:15And so in what most interventions or most the general public and how we approach individuals
- 42:22that are sort of, that we are concerned about, we try to do that sort of top-down approach. We try
- 42:27to do a logical debate of trying to introduce facts or data points or something like that
- 42:34so that we can change their opinions and then that will change their behavior.
- 42:38Again, going up rather than down.
- 42:41People are only as faithful as their options dictate.
- 42:44And we've had a number of attackers who have written in their manifestos and things like
- 42:49that before their attack that they sort of know that what they're going to do is wrong.
- 42:56They express regret. They express condolences to the families that they're eventually going to hurt, to their own family for the pain that they're going to cause. And that doesn't make logic sense. If you know that what you are doing is going to cause this amount of damage and harm, jump off.
- 43:16right no i can't well you don't have a chemical addiction why can't it is a psychological and
- 43:24emotional like necessity right like i said we cannot not know who we are and so what you have
- 43:34to do is you have to approach it as you are providing options those other options and you
- 43:39are trying to look for things that can fill that those identity community and purpose buckets
- 43:45at an equal or greater rate than whatever it is that they are going, that they have attached
- 43:51themselves to. And it's almost like, yeah, go ahead. It sounds like what you're describing
- 43:57is a person who feels they don't have options. They don't have another route. There is no other
- 44:03road. And again, while I understand that piece of it, right, I guess my main concern is there
- 44:11are a lot of people out there that don't fit into molds. We are all individuals. Uh, you know,
- 44:16I've, I've known and may have possibly been the kid that was quiet and didn't say much and had
- 44:24a distaste for authority, even in my school life. Uh, and, and, you know, very few friends,
- 44:32uh, didn't want to talk, didn't want to talk to you. Uh, you know, that kind of stuff.
- 44:37You're on the list.
- 44:38I'm totally on the list. Yeah. Anti-authoritarian. Yeah. Yeah. So, but, you know, there's, there's nothing inherently unhealthy about those things for certain individuals or personality types.
- 44:53So I guess, again, my question is, how do you make sure that you weren't stomping on the right to life, individual choices and liberty of the people who are genuinely just like, yeah, this is how I feel.
- 45:12And I don't, you know, it's not a problem. It's just, you know, and if anything, what you're doing is further cementing the way some people may feel.
- 45:23Well, I'm hoping that my approach doesn't cement, doesn't like sort of isolate those people. I think it's what I'm hoping for.
- 45:32But again, some of them may want to be isolated. They don't want that help. They don't want to be like, you now have an appointment with the school counselor, where they go in there and the next thing you know, they're like, well, see, exactly. I have a distaste for authority and now here they are shoving me into a room with someone trying to force me to talk about stuff. And I've got nothing to talk to you about. And so you've now furthered that as opposed to helping with that, right?
- 46:01Right. And I think when that happens, that happens because you are focusing in, you know, putting a touch point of, you know, if they're quiet, if they are, they have a disdain for authority and things like that.
- 46:18But their behavior isn't threatening to anybody else or they're not – they are – and again, this is sort of where you have your own biases being put upon somebody else, right?
- 46:35Sure.
- 46:36And so the teacher may not necessarily agree with that or the other students might necessarily not agree with that.
- 46:44But what we are trying to break away from is judging upon your own internal biases and looking more at is this individual showing signs of struggling, right?
- 47:00Right. So, you know, if you are perfectly content, just sort of being a quiet kid doing your work again, I may want to just have a touch point and just say like, hey, how are you doing? All right. You're like doing fine.
- 47:14okay like right like you it's not everything just because they're quiet or just because they have a
- 47:23certain political view or they're part of a certain religion means that there is there is a
- 47:30an element of causation right like there's a pathway because you you have attached yourself
- 47:36to this you are going to then for do x right and that's that's breaking that logic sort of
- 47:44pathway for people is that your own biases get put into that. And with behavioral threat assessment
- 47:51and with looking at behavior, what you are trying to do is trying to make sure that those individuals
- 47:57along the way know that if there is an issue or if they are struggling, or if people around them
- 48:04think that they are struggling, that there are avenues for them to express that.
- 48:10Right. And expanding sort of the elements of what goes into that of that concern.
- 48:22And so one of the big things that we've done, that we've moved away from, is when we have institutions that want to implement behavioral threat assessment, typically schools, we tell them do not, under any circumstances, call it the behavioral threat assessment team.
- 48:42right because again the same framing sort of thing with random acts of violence and what it does
- 48:51when you say that you have a behavioral threat assessment team and you want people to come that
- 48:56see threatening behavior they're going to wait until there's a threatening behavior
- 49:00right and that is often too late so we've actually had a lot of success with calling them care teams
- 49:08where it broadens out what sort of goes into that.
- 49:17So it could be the breakup with a boyfriend and girlfriend.
- 49:20Just a touch point.
- 49:21You doing all right?
- 49:21You need any help to get you through this little tough time?
- 49:24Just let me know.
- 49:26The death of a grandfather, same thing.
- 49:29Being kicked off the soccer team or just quitting
- 49:32and thinking that that was a little bit unusual
- 49:35and just wanting to see if everything is okay.
- 49:38Like that goes into a care team.
- 49:40That doesn't necessarily translate into a behavioral threat assessment team, right?
- 49:45And I think part of, even though I use targeted violence and terrorism prevention in the company name,
- 49:53because I decided that that was kind of like the worst case end factor.
- 49:58using sort of looking more at behaviors, using the term care team, those types of things,
- 50:07it's multidisciplinary. So I don't necessarily know if that individual who's struggling that
- 50:12sort of has been left to sort of have those struggles fester is going to go off into substance
- 50:18abuse. I don't know if they're going to go off into depression and potential suicide. I don't
- 50:24know if they're going to go into violence. And quite frankly, like it's not for me to say that
- 50:30certain behaviors that you can't have like all three, right. And that there isn't a, you know,
- 50:37that I'm only, this only applies to, to one thing. When we instituted, um, some of these care teams,
- 50:45um, for the purpose of sort of recognizing, you know, escalation of behaviors to, to potential
- 50:53violence. One of the groups that we brought in was bus drivers, right? The school bus drivers.
- 51:00And what they ended up finding, like the actual active proactive intervention or intercessions
- 51:09that were done was there was a family who the kid was getting picked up and dropped off at a
- 51:16different spot all of a sudden. And he was wearing the same clothes to school every day and things
- 51:22like that. Sure enough, there was sort of like some substance abuse that was happening at the
- 51:28house and he wasn't staying there. Didn't have anything to do with targeted violence, right?
- 51:32He wasn't violent, right? Just there's some family struggles. And we were, by doing that proactive,
- 51:40having that proactive sort of a broad approach towards it, they were able to get that family
- 51:45some help. Same thing. I found another kid in another district coming to the bus stop,
- 51:50The back of the car is filled with, you know, mattresses and blankets and everything else.
- 51:56Sure enough, they check it out.
- 51:58The family's been evicted from their apartment.
- 52:00All right.
- 52:01Again, has nothing to do with violence, but sort of left.
- 52:04but these people are in need, right? And there are assistance programs for those individuals that
- 52:10they may not be aware of or they could take advantage of. And so you really sort of broaden
- 52:19people's scope of what it is that you're actually trying to do. What you are trying to do is sort of
- 52:26break that system of care that we have where it's hyper-specialized and has these benchmarks and
- 52:33thresholds for qualification for action and creating more of a concept of care where you are
- 52:40getting to, you're going way upstream and taking care of those seemingly one-off innocuous events
- 52:49so that it doesn't become sort of a death by a thousand paper cuts and the ball starts rolling
- 52:53and you're trying to catch up. And as you have to catch up, you have to have stronger and stronger
- 52:59and stronger intervention sort of methodologies.
- 53:03And we are trying to have sort of make it almost as easy as possible
- 53:08to get individuals the help that they need that may not even have to go to
- 53:14or aren't even contemplating violence.
- 53:19I would imagine the success of these programs depends a lot on what data is collected
- 53:24and how that's analyzed.
- 53:26Yeah.
- 53:26so if you have these bus drivers or delivery drivers making these reports who actually
- 53:33analyzes that on the other end determines if that's a real threat or not and do you foresee
- 53:38like ai becoming a part of this in the future and analyzing these threats i yeah so
- 53:45So as an expert in the field, I, I, I say no, right.
- 53:58I say no.
- 53:59As an expert in the field, I also say they will do it because it is a path of least resistance,
- 54:07right?
- 54:09When you started talking about data points and things like that, that is one of the biggest
- 54:13hurdles psychologically that I have with sort of my audiences is ROI. So I talk about value and how
- 54:23protection is sort of overvalued. One of the things I try to explain to my audiences is that
- 54:29we as human beings are terrible, like literally dog shit at assessing value. It's the reason why
- 54:38the Price is Right has been on the air for so long
- 54:42is because it's a never-ending loop
- 54:44of people who have no idea
- 54:47what an all-expensive paid trip to Cancun is worth
- 54:51compared to a 14-cubic-foot refrigerator
- 54:56or a 56-inch TV.
- 54:57We have no clue.
- 54:58We have no barometer of how to do that.
- 55:03And so when you have that subjectivity,
- 55:05um data also has a level of subjectivity and so prevention has a very difficult term way of
- 55:15collecting sort of tangible quantitative data that says you know this is this is working there's a lot
- 55:24of qualitative data you can poll people and they can say yeah this feel like i feel way safer with
- 55:32this methodology or I feel a part of something when I'm here or I enjoy being here and I feel
- 55:38totally safe. But it's like, what kind of data point can you put into an Excel spreadsheet
- 55:44with that? And so what you have with these protection measures and response measures is
- 55:52you have an actual cost. You believe that if you spend $250,000 or $1 million or $2 million
- 56:03on response or protection measures, that you are somehow getting that return on investment.
- 56:13I would say that that's highly dubious and nebulous at best because what metric are you
- 56:20using to validate that data right well nothing happened today so therefore it's working
- 56:28right like i don't i don't see the equivalency um and so no and without like a constant steady stream
- 56:37of you know violent actions in a certain area right we'll say a school uh how do you judge that
- 56:48It was coined random acts of violence. And at the end of the day, the reason for that is not necessarily because it's random. It's because it's infrequent.
- 57:00Right. Low probability, high consequence.
- 57:04Right. Like you're looking at probably needing 100 years worth of data to get to a point where you could statistically analyze that in a method that would be kind of valuable, I think. And that's probably not doable.
- 57:23My concern with AI use is exactly one and only one thing, is that takes the care out of it.
- 57:33It is a cold, calculating machine.
- 57:36It doesn't care about circumstance.
- 57:38It doesn't care about external factors.
- 57:42You can plug them in and assign them a weighted score, but that is not the same as a human being being able to sit there and understand why, when, how.
- 57:53But I'm sure someone would argue that it takes out the bias and feelings out of it as well.
- 57:58Absolutely. And I think one of the problems that I've sort of seen when I'm on these panels with some of the AI people and things like that has been this thing around like contextual intelligence.
- 58:11And that, you know, you talk about AI with it's cold calculating data sort of probabilities and things like that.
- 58:20And going back to sort of our anthropological human sort of things, we're taking in eye movements, we're taking in, you know, how you're dressed, how you smell, just that sixth sense.
- 58:33Like those are, those are things that's contextual intelligence, right?
- 58:39There was a great sort of example that I heard about, you know, the difference between having like a conductor on a train and having just sort of like, you know, a bot sort of machine or something like that, handing out tickets.
- 58:56and they kind of came up with a scenario where you,
- 59:00you have a tourist who accidentally just gets on the wrong train.
- 59:04Right.
- 59:06And you can go to the conduct that tourist can go to the conductor and say Hey I trying to get to X spot Or maybe they don speak English or you having a tough time
- 59:17You're using Google Translate or something like that to try and explain what happened.
- 59:23A human being sort of can evaluate your body language and everything else and sort of give you the benefit of the doubt.
- 59:29that you're probably not there to sort of scam the train company or anything like that.
- 59:36And they probably will take your ticket, they'll sign it,
- 59:39and they'll probably give you instructions,
- 59:40hey, just get off at the next stop, get on the train that's going the other way,
- 59:45show the conductor this ticket, and you'll be fine.
- 59:49I don't think that AI has that necessarily capability.
- 59:53No, it doesn't.
- 59:54And when you have something as concerning or as important as sort of what we've been talking about, I think that there is a real pause that people have to do with creating technological solutions to psychological problems.
- 1:00:17and an over-reliance on that AI is going to give you the right answer
- 1:00:26or give you the correct contextual intelligence for that report
- 1:00:32that you then are obligated to then act upon.
- 1:00:38And that runs into a lot of legal stuff.
- 1:00:42hey, something did happen and AI told you you needed to act and you didn't because of your contextual intelligence.
- 1:00:51Now you're going to get sued.
- 1:00:53All right.
- 1:00:54AI told you to do something.
- 1:00:56You did it because it didn't have contextual intelligence.
- 1:01:00And now you're getting sued again because nothing did happen.
- 1:01:03And so I really have, there is definitely a very big disconnect because it, again, it sounds logical to have this very powerful sort of technological thing that can sort of help you.
- 1:01:22But without having sort of an end goal to work back from of why you want to implement it, you're sort of letting it go to its own devices.
- 1:01:35And you are sort of relinquishing your responsibility and your control to this thing and just operating as sort of like its servant rather than it being your servant.
- 1:01:49and I think that's really a highly dangerous thing especially within security that that we do and I
- 1:01:57think one of the things when we talk about sort of civil liberties and the importance of that
- 1:02:01I do really think that sort of elevating or balancing out sort of that that three-pronged
- 1:02:10holistic security approach of of prevention protection and and preparedness
- 1:02:16basically helps you with keeping civil liberties. Because again, if you focus more on protection,
- 1:02:25that is more surveillance, right? That's more, we got to see what you're posting. We got to see
- 1:02:32what you're looking up online. We got to see where you're going and everything else. And it sort of
- 1:02:38lends itself to that because, oh, if we don't know where these attacks are going to happen or
- 1:02:45who's going to be in them. We have to have these dossiers basically on everybody and we have to run
- 1:02:52it through our AI simulators or we have to, right. And so we're going to get out that.
- 1:02:58Right. Right. So you can sort of see how like, okay, if we, if we create, if we balanced it out
- 1:03:05where we had, you know, a very broad view of, of what we are looking for, we create these sort of
- 1:03:14environments where people are reporting things not for sort of like retribution or some type of
- 1:03:22punishment to be put in, but more that, hey, we've all got sort of skin in the game and I don't want
- 1:03:29to see you suffering or in pain just as much as I hope that you don't want to see me in pain.
- 1:03:35And I was just like, yeah. Coming from a place of empathy as opposed to, you know, again, we,
- 1:03:42the second you start bringing up terms like you know violence and terrorism prevention right uh
- 1:03:50at least for me the second that comes up uh a lot of my empathy starts to diminish
- 1:04:00yeah i just heard the words i don't even know what we're going to talk about yet but
- 1:04:04that empathy for whoever this target is right we'll just call it a target it doesn't mean like
- 1:04:11it's a target. It's just a person that is, you know, of focus, right? Area of focus instead of
- 1:04:19target. My empathy is already diminished just because I've heard the words violence and terrorism
- 1:04:25in there and radicalized. Yeah, exactly. Radicalized violence, terrorism, all of these things take,
- 1:04:32again, it is psychological, right? And the psychological point of it is you start to hear
- 1:04:37those things and that empathy diminishes, right? Yeah. And we also have this thing with empathy
- 1:04:43that's kind of interesting where we'll, if you have substance abuse or if you are depressed or
- 1:04:49something like that, we have actually a tremendous amount of empathy for those individuals, right?
- 1:04:53Like we will go sort of to the ends of the earth to try and help those people because we know that
- 1:05:01they are struggling, right? When you start seeing people who are radicalized or have their tinfoil
- 1:05:07hats or are, you know, causing, you know, causing sort of, you know, concerning behavior
- 1:05:18or disturbances or getting more and more agitated and things like that.
- 1:05:23We kind of go like, okay, like Paul, like get away from me.
- 1:05:27Right.
- 1:05:27Like we don't have that, that, that same empathy.
- 1:05:31And I think the reason why we don't is we don't see those signs as signs of struggling and calls for help that we do with others, right?
- 1:05:45And so there's a misinterpretation and there's a, there is a line of, of psychological thought that, that, you know, a lot of these behaviors, um, are very similar to those with suicidal ideation where individuals with suicidal ideation will sort of test the waters to see what they, what they can get away with and who's going to come to their aid.
- 1:06:06Right And there there are people who believe that subconsciously because these individuals kind of know the path that they on is kind of destructive or is taken over their lives and they don know how to separate from it that they begin to do these
- 1:06:24sort of like spikes in behavior that sort of, they are calls for help of like, Hey, this is crazy,
- 1:06:32isn't it? It's crazy. I'm saying this, it's crazy that I'm doing this. Aren't you going to come and
- 1:06:38ask me about what I am doing. Right. And when we don't, when we isolate and when we push away,
- 1:06:48that, that tells the subconscious, okay, I didn't, I didn't cross that, that threshold. I didn't hit
- 1:06:55that. I didn't break through that ceiling. So I have to go up even more. Right. And I have to get
- 1:07:01more at people, more agitated. I have to get people more concerned. I have to get people
- 1:07:06more afraid before they go and do something. And I think that there's that snowballing effect where
- 1:07:14with each elevation in behavior, you actually become more and more isolated because people
- 1:07:20are not interpreting those as calls for help. They're interpreting them as sort of through
- 1:07:26their own biases as somebody who's a nutcase or hopeless or something like that.
- 1:07:32man no i i like it so i think we're getting close to a good place to wrap up although i think we
- 1:07:42could probably spend another you know hour and a half doing this i i have you know plenty uh but
- 1:07:49being cognizant of time as well um i do think it's it's a wonderful approach right i think
- 1:07:55flipping the script and really looking at like how do we get people help how do we how do we
- 1:08:02show them that there are roads they can go down, et cetera, is of paramount importance,
- 1:08:08right?
- 1:08:08Across the board, I would say.
- 1:08:11And, you know, I will go back to that statement about community policing.
- 1:08:15It's almost like we're, you know, we've militarized the police and now we have to fill the gap
- 1:08:20that used to be community policing with, you know, privatized entities.
- 1:08:25I still think they should undo that.
- 1:08:28But, hey, you know, that's for policymakers who are-
- 1:08:32want to bring back nightsticks and blackjack i i honestly i'd take it over plate carriers and 13
- 1:08:39yeah boots so well yeah it kind of goes to the i you know i've gone to um there's an interesting
- 1:08:44thing with with security so that i use this example um when i talk about you know that that
- 1:08:52liquor store example i do a contrast with it where um if you go on college campuses you'll see sort of
- 1:09:00like these blue emergency towers, these sort of like telephone booths kind of things. And
- 1:09:06most colleges now have an app for all of their students to sort of download and you can
- 1:09:13have it geolocate you. If you're being chased, you know, they can find out, you know, where
- 1:09:19you're running to. Some of them, you can live text an actual officer if you're noticing something.
- 1:09:26um some have even gone so far as to allow students to post put up their their um school schedule so
- 1:09:34like if you're on the third floor behind one corner and room 327 if you send out an alert
- 1:09:40instead of it just being the building and having them kind of like trying to figure out where you
- 1:09:45are it'll go oh well there's a high likelihood that he's in room 327 because on wednesdays from
- 1:09:5111 to 1, this is where he's going to be. So by far and away, way superior than just this
- 1:09:58standalone sort of phone thing, completely obsolete. And so a lot of colleges were like,
- 1:10:07all right, it's obsolete. We've moved forward in technology. We're going to take these things out.
- 1:10:11And the students basically revolted that the college or the university was not taking their
- 1:10:20safety seriously that they're like by removing these things like what do you expect us to do if
- 1:10:28we see something what do you expect us to do right there's like a weird visual thing that was with
- 1:10:34them that had a very strong narrative and you said it makes people feel safe but there's also the fact
- 1:10:41that look you know you're you're cruising around you've got your phone in your pocket it's locked
- 1:10:47and something starts to occur and I see that blue pole 30 feet away,
- 1:10:53which is going to be faster?
- 1:10:55Unlocking my phone, opening the app, putting in the details
- 1:10:58or pressing a button or running and hitting that panic button.
- 1:11:03And so, you know, I can't fault them for that.
- 1:11:07No, and I think, and I don't know either,
- 1:11:10but I use that as sort of like this weird paradox of security narratives, right?
- 1:11:16You see something that seemingly is obsolete but has a huge amount of importance as to the narrative of how you feel within that space.
- 1:11:28You go into the liquor store and you have the direct opposite.
- 1:11:33Right. And I think that paradox is really interesting and is something that I don't think a lot of security people give a lot of credence to or don't elevate the value of those sort of more intangible things that we operate more on that sort of logical and that people will follow a reasonable path and things like that.
- 1:12:03Yeah, no, we're definitely emotionally driven beings without question.
- 1:12:11Mm-hmm.
- 1:12:12Yeah.
- 1:12:12I do, but still, I want to reiterate, I do think the approach you're taking is a good one, right?
- 1:12:19Obviously, there are concerns.
- 1:12:21Anytime you start talking about these types of things, it conjures up the DHS initiative with the same acronym.
- 1:12:30Absolutely.
- 1:12:30And the CP3 and in, I think you'd be hard pressed to find an individual that didn't come to the conclusion that those were abjectly not successful as well as potentially creating an environment where that might be found where it doesn't exist, I guess, right?
- 1:12:57individual rights, liberties have to be accommodated. You're taking it from a privatized
- 1:13:03standpoint of education and how to spot and how to offer assistance, how to identify
- 1:13:10what can be done prior to this becoming an event And I think that admirable I really do Yeah Knowing a lot of the people that were in CP3 and having dealt with them and things like that and DHS as a whole the giantness of DHS
- 1:13:31And again, this kind of goes to what we were talking about, sort of like Leighton's error of how the system can sort of create more problems for itself than what it's trying to do.
- 1:13:44I know a lot of the people at CP3 and worked with them for a while.
- 1:13:51That shift in mentality, this is a sort of a break off of that.
- 1:13:56There were very dedicated people that were in that unit that were getting people sort of on board with this train.
- 1:14:05what it had been before it got labeled CP3 and the hiccups and the things that sort of got it in hot water and in trouble.
- 1:14:16Hiccups.
- 1:14:19There's a term for it.
- 1:14:21There's a term.
- 1:14:23I would have used a different.
- 1:14:24Yeah.
- 1:14:25But we've kind of gone through sort of how the way in which you frame it, right?
- 1:14:33And when I talk to law enforcement, I do give them a little bit of a leash because on the side of their cars, it says protect and serve, not prevent and serve, right?
- 1:14:44Their lane is very defined.
- 1:14:51And their roles within that lane, they have to operate within that system, right?
- 1:14:58And if that system is too rigid for the complexities of the prevention mission, then so be it.
- 1:15:08But what you don't want to do is try to insert that square peg in a round hole and have them do something that they are not designed to do.
- 1:15:19Or properly trained for.
- 1:15:20Right.
- 1:15:21And so, you know, I hope that people are getting that this approach and this philosophy is palatable, far more palatable to people, that people see a value to it.
- 1:15:41And that, you know, they would like more institutions and more of their community entities and things like that to look at developing or augmenting this approach rather than sort of falling back on sort of like, well, if it's violence, then it must be for the police.
- 1:16:07Or if it's a mental health issue, it must be just for them, right?
- 1:16:10And so there's a little bit, it's not as simple as that.
- 1:16:16Awesome.
- 1:16:17Awesome.
- 1:16:18All right.
- 1:16:19Well, this has been a great session.
- 1:16:20We like to ask our guests one question.
- 1:16:23We prepped you for it beforehand.
- 1:16:24No gotchas.
- 1:16:26And what that is, is throughout our lives, you know, we encounter an individual that has a great impact on our lives.
- 1:16:33Could be a sixth grade science teacher, could be an author, historical figure, could be mom, whatever it is.
- 1:16:40So who would you like to give a shout out to?
- 1:16:43I'd like to give a shout out to actually, if I could take some artistic liberty and shout out to three people that are all kind of in the same realm.
- 1:16:54Frank Luntz, George Lakoff, and Rory Sutherland.
- 1:16:59All three of those men, when I got introduced to them, they all are sort of in the language framing thing.
- 1:17:08Some of them are more political. Some of them are more social. Some of them are more business. But really what it did was it really opened up my eyes to how just reframing certain words and things like that changes the context of everything.
- 1:17:24Right. And whether it's changing estate tax to death tax or whether it's changing, you know, the context of I heard this one place, Indian Indian Street Food Cafe.
- 1:17:42And all they had to do was because they had all these like expensive Indian teas and coffees and things like that.
- 1:17:50nobody was coming in for that. So they just put Indian street food and cafe, and it completely
- 1:17:57changed the context of everything. And so much of what I do, as you've sort of found out, is trying
- 1:18:04to rearrange and reframe the things to look at problems and see if the solution is just a
- 1:18:11contextual thing, rather than something that, you know, as we've talked about, has like a
- 1:18:18technological solution to a psychological problem. And so those three guys and their writings and
- 1:18:25their things have paid huge dividends in what I do. Awesome. Awesome. All right. And then let's go
- 1:18:34ahead and plug you. Where can people find you? What do you have going on? What are you working on?
- 1:18:39So I can be found at tvtpsolutions.com. So that stands for targeted violence, terrorism prevention.
- 1:18:45pretty much everything that we do is on the website so you know there's a contact page they
- 1:18:51can contact me and we can start working on what the best fit is for you if it's sort of a virtual
- 1:18:57training or if it's an all-day training if it's some type of consulting service what have you we
- 1:19:03also have developed a bunch of these sort of like educational videos to help people sort of
- 1:19:08understand our approach to to prevention and behavioral threat assessment and then all of
- 1:19:14our interviews that I've been doing. So this interview will be up there when it goes live.
- 1:19:20And then, you know, I highly encourage anyone who's interested or in talking about this or
- 1:19:27wants to get in touch with us to please do so. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you very much for
- 1:19:35giving us some of your time and thank you for giving us some of your time. We really appreciate
- 1:19:40it. You know where to find us. We're everywhere. Uh, we are on fountain.fm now. Go check us
- 1:19:47out there. It's basically Spotify with a value for value approach. It's podcast two. Oh,
- 1:19:52check it out. Um, and remember wherever you are, whenever you're watching this,
- 1:20:02have an amazing day. Thanks for coming by Robert. See everybody. Thank you.
- 1:20:10Thank you.