jonathan@aardvarktactical.com, Author at The Debrief with Jon Becker

Episode 41 Transcript

jonathan@aardvarktactical.com on October 3, 2024

Episode 41 – Inside the NYPD Emergency Service Unit (ESU) Jon Becker: There may be no US tactical and rescue unit more well known than NYPDs emergency service unit, or ESU. Featuring a mission set that ranges from high angle ropes work to water rescue, from high risk search warrants to hostage rescue, and from CBRN response to counterterrorism, ESU has sometimes been described as 911 for NYPD. My guest today is Joe Bucchignano. Joe started his emergency service career in 1997, working as an EMT and completing paramedic school in 1999. Joe worked as a full time paramedic until 2003, when he joined the New York Police Department and spent his first seven years assigned to the 52nd precinct in Norwood section of the Bronx. In 2010, Joe was selected to join the ranks of NYPD's emergency service unit, where he spent the next 13 years of his career. During his tenure, Joe's assignment included patrol in ESU, truck three and truck one, being an adjunct instructor and medical instructor at ESU Specialized training School, and he finished his career as a full time member of the ESU apprehension team. Joe also served with New York Task Force one, a joint police and fire urban search and rescue team, which is part of the FEMA Urban Search and Rescue response system. There, he deployed several times to natural disasters within the United States as a rescue and logistics specialist. Joe retired from the NYPD in June of 2023 and now serves as an assistant paramedic coordinator for an EMS agency in Westchester County, New York. He's also the founder of Crisis Zone Consulting, a multidisciplinary training and consulting company that works with public safety agencies, private entities, and individuals to enhance their organizational and individual emergency preparedness. I'm excited to share my chat with Joe because it gives us an inside view of one of the world's premier units, including how they train, how they operate, how they manage, their ridiculously diverse skillset, and the lessons learned from a career in ESU. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Joe Bucchignano! My name is Jon Becker. For the past four decades, I've dedicated my life to protecting tactical operators. During this time, I've worked with many of the world's top law enforcement and military units. As a result, I've had the privilege of working with the amazing leaders who take teams into the world's most dangerous situations. The goal of this podcast is to share their stories in hopes of making us all better leaders, better thinkers, and better people. Welcome to The Debrief! Joe, thanks so much for being here with me! I'm excited to talk to you today! Joe Bucchignano: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks Jon! I really appreciate the opportunity! We've been trying to do this for a while, so I'm glad that we finally found some time to get together. Jon Becker: Yep, 100%. So talk to me. Why don't we start with, like, you know, give me Joe's career arc. Joe Bucchignano: I mean, realistically, my career arc goes back to, like, when I was 14 years old. That's kind of when I started getting involved in EMS. I grew up in Yorktown, New York, a suburban community of New York City. And at the time, I had to do some community service, and not for, like, criminal reasons, but for religious reasons. And at the time, my neighbor was the captain of our local voluntary ambulance corps. And, you know, he kind of said, hey, you know, we have a youth group program for high school kids. Why don't you come check it out, see if you like it, you know, and you can do your community service through there. And that just – That got me hooked, you know, that was kind of my start into emergency services kind of as a whole. And so I did the volunteer ambulance stuff kind of all through high school, and finished up the EMT school right before I graduated high school. And I had all these anticipations of going off to college and doing the pre med thing and the medical school thing, and just spent a little too much in year one at college doing things other than studying. And so the college thing didn't really work out for me. And so I came back home and went to paramedic school. Finished up medic school in 99, and started a career in paramedicine. And unlike other places or parts of the country, here, especially in New York and in the areas surrounding New York City, the paramedic stuff is really not a career. It's more of a launching pad for people to go into other career fields related, whether it's nursing or PA school or law enforcement, fire department, there's just more of a career path in there. So I can remember back in fourth grade, I had a friend of mine at the time whose father was a police officer, and he had brought in this book to school one day. It was a book by Samuel Katz that was NYPD life on the streets with the NYPD's emergency service unit. And I checked this book out, and I was just enamored. The guys and girls in that book, they were just like gods and goddesses to me. I was like, man, what a cool job. I would love to do something like that one day. And so I was working as a paramedic, and I just kind of took the NYPD exam more as a fluke than anything else, kind of take it and, hey, see what happens. And I got a letter from them, like, hey, you want to come in for start your process? Yeah, why not? Might as well. Doesn't hurt to do it. And next thing I know, like, six months later, it was like, hey, we're offering you a job. And so I made the transition from working full time ems as a paramedic into the police academy in July of 2003. And I graduated the police academy right before New Year's. So my first night out on the street, like so many other cops that have graduated, at the end of December, was, you know, New Year's Eve and Times Square. Jon Becker: Oh, God! Joe Bucchignano: Yeah. Thrown to the fire, so, yeah, that's. Jon Becker: Losing your virginity to a gang range. My God, man! Joe Bucchignano: Yeah, the job really knows how to just throw you right into the mix, so. But, yeah, it was a great experience, you know, like, definitely one of those, like, iconic moments. Like, you know, here you were. Here I was, like, six months ago, just working as a paramedic, and then here I was six months later, like, standing in Times Square New year's Eve. Never experienced anything like that before. I was not growing up, other than going to Madison Square Garden for, like, ranger games, I was really not much of a city dweller, so it was overwhelming, to say the least. Jon Becker: Yeah. Six months ago you're a paramedic, now you're arresting Times Square Elmo. Joe Bucchignano: Oh, yeah, it was. It was good, you know? Jon Becker: So what made you select into ESU? Like, I mean, so it's. It's a lifelong dream. You do seven years ish in 52nd precinct. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah, I was in the five two precinct, which covers, like, Norwood University Heights, you know, by Marshall Parkway in the Bronx. So I ended up there, like, right out of the police academy and did my initial field training there, and then did mostly patrol there. I did some small condition stuff in one of the units, and then did some highway safety stuff, believe it or not, just writing tickets. So I kind of went from that, and ESU had a – And they still do to this day. But in order to apply for ESU, you have to have a minimum of five years with the department before they'll even let you apply for it. And so I waited, and ESU typically puts in one class a year. So the day that I hit five years of service, my application was, like, filled out, went down to the personnel office down at one police plaza, dropped off the application, and then there was basically an ESU, for lack of a better term, hiring freeze. So I sat there in purgatory for two years, three years, until they finally had put in the next class. And I got picked up in that class in 2010. So it was, the great thing about the NYPD is just there's something for everyone. There's so many different units. And I mean, you can go from being, if you enjoy photography, they have a film and TV unit. If you are an artist, you can go and do profile sketches and so on and so forth. So there's just so many units. But I really had, from the day I entered the police academy, my mindset that that was where I wanted to go. It was just that type of work, especially with my paramedic background, that just really attracted me to that unit specifically. Jon Becker: So you get to ESU and where do you go? Joe Bucchignano: So my first assignment was a squad three emergency service. Squad three, which is up in the Bronx, basically covers I the 40, 41, 43, 45, 47, 49 in the Bronx, which is essentially the South Bronx, from kind of the Manhattan border all the way through the South Bronx, all the way up the east side of the Bronx, up to the Westchester county line. So I started out there in squad one on the scooter chart, worked with some real senior guys, some great guys, definitely got immersed into the ESU life, and those guys were just really great at welcoming me and kind of getting me spun up. Because realistically, I think it's like anything else you go through. You know, at the time, the school was about seven months long. You go through seven months of training. When you graduate, you get to a truck and you realize you don't know anything, you know? And so now you're really learning. Once you get out to a truck and you start doing, you know, Esu patrol stuff. So I spent the first couple months there on a scooter chart, doing a kind of a flip flop of days and four to twelve tours. And then maybe six or seven months after I got to the truck, I went to steady midnights and I spent a – my whole time in truck three on, on, or the remainder of my time in truck three on midnight. And then from there, I transferred down to truck one. When I had about maybe six or seven years in the unit, I transferred down to truck one. The opportunity kind of was presented to me by the truck one lieutenant at the time, and truck one is known as the Hollywood truck, you know. And so I kind of said, like, yeah, I mean, I like change and trying different things and going different places. So I was doing a training stint at the time with two of the subunits that the department had created to help out with some of the counterterrorism efforts, which was the strategic response group, or SRG, and then the critical response command, CRC. So we, myself and four or five other guys were kind of tasked up with training up these new units and very basic kind of tactics and active shooter response. They were outfitted with long guns and helmets, plate carriers. And so we kind of working them through some team tactics stuff and deploying long guns in kind of a CQB environment. And so maybe my last year that I was officially assigned to three truck. That's what I was doing. And then when that kind of wrapped up and finished, I ended up down in truck one in Manhattan. So that was a different flavor of work. Truck three was a lot of what we called perp work, a lot of tactical work up there in the Bronx doing midnights. We had a fair number of highways, and because we were kind of out there on the road, we would sort of be first at a lot of pin jobs, we call them, which were, you'll see the NYPD's got a ton of vernaculars. I'm going to try not to go crazy with the vernaculars, but it's like a whole other language in a language. So we would get a lot of vehicle extrication calls on the midnights, especially on the highways, and you would get the occasional jumper, a lot of emotionally disturbed persons. So that was kind of the bread and butter work up there. Truck one, definitely a different vibe, different environment. Truck one covered Manhattan south, basically from Battery park all the way up to 59th street. So just kind of the south edge of Central park there. And that was definitely more rescue oriented work. A lot of water jobs, a lot of jumpers, a lot of rope jobs. So definitely a different type of work. Not as much, you know, tactical work. Then I was doing up in truck three, and then, yeah. Jon Becker: Good for those that don't know, like Manhattan. Like that's basically the south end of the island, right? It's the end of the island. And it's surrounded by the rivers and high rise buildings. Joe Bucchignano: East river on the east side, and you got the Hudson river on the west side. And that's basically the heart of, you know, new York City. When, you know, if you're a tourist and you think New York City, that's, that's truck one's area. And, you know, that's why it has the nickname of the Hollywood truck, because, you know, that's where a lot of news agencies are as well. And so, you know, being in truck one, you constantly ended up in the paper or on the news or something like that. Jon Becker: Yeah. And for those that are uninformed, like the World Trade center is in truck one's area. Joe Bucchignano: Yes, that's correct. Jon Becker: Wall street is in truck one's area. Joe Bucchignano: Wall Street, Battery park. Yeah. Times Square, Empire State Building. All the major iconic, you know, Statue of Liberty. So all the major iconic kind of tourist spots really are sitting in truck one's area of responsibility. Jon Becker: Literally every New York postcard is located in truck one. Joe Bucchignano: That's a good way to put it. Yeah, yeah. Maybe with the exception of Yankee Stadium. Jon Becker: Yeah, yeah. Fair, fair. So, okay. And just for, you know, I'll periodically pull in NYPD vernacular. So EDP, emotional, emotionally disturbed person. Joe Bucchignano: Yes. Jon Becker: Which is I'm sure we're going to use regularly because EDP is a frequent topic with ESU. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah, it's definitely the bread and butter of a lot of what we do. Jon Becker: Yes, it is. So, okay, so you're. You do truck one for several years, and then what makes you want to move to a…. Joe Bucchignano: So, you know, prior to that, I got pulled down to our specialized training school out at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn as an adjunct instructor. But more so, I have a knack for PowerPoint and lesson plans. And so, like anywhere else, you know, when they see that you have a strength in something, they want to utilize that. And so I basically went down there to kind of just help out on the administrative side of the school with kind of updating a lot of our lesson plans and training programs and stuff like that. And so I went down there, did some adjunct instructor work for about a year, and it was partially missing being on the street definitely played a part in me wanting to get out of there. And then it was also some differences of opinions that I had with some of the command staff there that, you know, an opportunity came up for me and an offer came up for me to go up to the apprehension team, and I jumped all over it at the chance. I had done a rotation with the apprehension team back in what I say, maybe 2012 or 13, I had maybe two or three years in the unit, and we can get into the A team and how it operates and what the rotation means and stuff like that. I guess later I'd went there for rotation, had a blast. Absolutely loved it! And then after my rotation was up, went back to truck three and then continued my time in ESU. And when the sergeant that was in charge of the A Team at the time, who's still the sergeant in charge of it now, reached out to me, and he basically said, hey, listen, we got an opening up here. We would love to have you. What are your thoughts? And I said, I'm packing my bags, you know, basically, when can I start? You know, put me in, coach. So, yeah, so I made the move up to the apprehension team. And I gotta say, like, you know, throughout my whole career in ESU, I worked really with some. Some great people. And everywhere I worked had things about it that I absolutely loved. But those last two years or so of my career, two and a half years up at the apprehension team, was really the best two, two and a half years of my 20 year career with the department. Jon Becker: Well, if you look at ESU as an elite selected unit within NYPD and a sought after unit, the A team is certainly, even within ESU is this unique small cell that does this very interesting job that we'll talk about. I mean, it's, you know, out of, you know, whatever, 18,000 NYPD cops. There's a dozen guys in the 18. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think, you know, like, I'm never one to throw around the word elite when it. When it comes to the unit. I mean, I think that there's, you know, there's some guys there that have done just, you know, some real amazing things. And every cop has. You know, the thing about ESU, really, is you spend any amount of time in there, and you're going to be tested. There's no question about it. Not just necessarily on a tactical assignment. It could be anything. But you're going to be tested, and you're going to have your moment in the sun. That's normal for everyone. The thing with the A team is that we were not necessarily better than the guys out in the trucks. We weren't any more elite than the guys in the trucks. The advantage that we had was that we were very singular focused. Our whole job, there was just tactical work, and that was it. And specifically the execution of search warrants. And so because we were kind of singular focused, we were able to just devote 100% of our training and attention and everything else to that one single task that we did day in and day out. Whereas when you're in the truck, I mean, the litany of things that you're responsible for and have to know and have to be competent at, just, it grows exponentially from there. And so that was, like, the biggest benefit that we had was that kind of just laser focus and singular focus on a very specific task that we were given. And that's kind of what made us maybe a little bit more efficient in the way that we did things was just because we were doing the same things kind of day in and day out. Jon Becker: Yeah, it's interesting because, you know, even. Even people in the law enforcement community, people who, you know, I know that are well versed, don't really understand ESU. It is – Of all the units that I've dealt with and all the units I've interacted with, it is probably the most mysterious. Not because it tries to be intentionally mysterious, because it is very difficult to put it into any box that makes sense in any other police department in the United States. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah, it definitely is. It's very unique in terms of the mission set that it has. And historically, ESU, for the most part, was a group of relatively silent professionals. It was very frowned upon. I can remember when I was a new guy in truck three, and I had posted something very innocuous on social media, and I immediately got called out on it. We don't do that. We don't advertise what we do. We don't look for pats in the back and so on and so forth. And that was a big learning lesson for me. And so there really hasn't been, I think, more so lately, especially with them being in the spotlight a little bit more in some of the bigger assignments that have happened that have kind of hit news, whether it's local or national. Obviously, after 911, that was a very big moment for ESU because they lost the most number of guys. Out of the 23 police officers that were killed, the majority of them came from emergency service. And so I think that kind of that silent professional mindset as well as you see these guys walking around or driving these trucks with these big utility bodies on them, and they're breaking out tools, and you're like, are these guys plumbers? Are they handymen? Are they tactical guys? We can't quite figure out what these guys do. And the real funny part about that is it wasn't until a few years ago that the sergeant who is running the specialized training schools, he's been in that position for a while and a wealth of knowledge. He said, we really need to do kind of an orientation with people that want to come to the unit before they even go for an interview, because a lot of patrol cops don't even understand the work that we do. And we would get, you know, you know, guys and girls that would end up, getting, you know, making it through selection, and they would join, you know, they would go to the specialized training school for their initial train up, and, you know, they would at one point maybe say, what do you mean? I got to get in that water? I didn't know you guys did that. And it was like, how do you not know that we did that? Like, you applied to come to this unit. You don't know what we do. And so, you know, there were police officers just within our own department that had no clue what we do. And now we get people that show up for that orientation, and they, they go through the videos and the PowerPoint, and they explain to him, hey, this is what's going to be expected of you as an e man. And we get people that say, nope, not for me. Thanks, but no thanks. And they walk out and we'd never, you know, never hear from again, never see them again. So, you know, it's just funny that even with their own department, that that holds. Jon Becker: True. Yeah, but. But I mean, to be fair, Joe, like, there, there are a certain number of phobias that human beings have, right? Confined space, high places, somebody shooting at you, water, darkness. It is literally like animals. ESU's mission is almost like a who's who in fears and phobias. And it's fascinating because when you look at the mission set and you look at kind of the origin story of the unit, it is unique. And I use that term as a guy who's done this for 38 years and dealt with thousands of tactical units. There is no, the closest equivalent I can come up with is LA sheriff's, SCB. And even there, they're split into different teams. Right? So it's, I guess it probably. It probably merits going back to the origin story. Right? So ESU's formed in 25? Joe Bucchignano: So the. The official ESU as we know it, know of it today was, was officially formed April 16, 1930. Now, I'm not an ESU historian. There's guys in the unit who are much better historians than I am. So I'm going to try to do this some justice. But if you go back to 1925, there were emergency automobile squads. There were two of them, squad one and squad two. One was based in Manhattan, two was based in the Bronx. And just like to the origins of ESU, the whole purpose of these squads was to really assist the police officer on patrol, just to be able to bring individuals that have some specialized, we can call it training and access to some specialized or not so specialized equipment. To be able to essentially be problem solvers. And so those emergency automobile squads were started up, and it was maybe a year or so later that the police commissioner at the time saw that the benefit that these emergency automobile squads kind of offered to the department. And so they added a third squad. And I want to say, by 1926 or 28, they were up to ten squads kind of spread out throughout the city. And at the time, they were dealing with things like, you used to have horse drawn carriages in New York City at that time, and I'm not talking about the Central park tourist ones as a means of normal transportation, that when a horse ended up in the water, who do you call to deal with that? Building collapses and aided cases and stuff like that. At the time, it was really more of a unit that dealt with the unique stuff that the police department didn't know how to deal with. They said, hey, we got to take a group of people and give them some training and more importantly, the equipment that they need to be able to deal with some of this stuff. And so that was kind of really how they started. And by 1930, April 16th, was when the emergency service division was formally created. And at the time, there were 20 squads at the inception of what is now today the emergency service unit, which falls under the Special Operations division. But that was the origins. And in addition, I think at the time, there wasn't tactical training. These guys, they got training in machine guns, but you're talking, like, Tommy guns. We have old ESU photographs from way back then of these old school, rugged e men on the back of the 1930 Mac with Tommy guns. I don't think that there was much of an emphasis on tactical training at the time, because obviously, we're talking 1930. Their emphasis was more geared towards what comprises a lot of ESU's work, which is just mitigating incidents or situations that the average cop on patrol either doesn't have the training or doesn't have access to the tools and the equipment that they need to do it safely. Jon Becker: The origin story is also in the era of Al Capone. This is the, you know, this is the mob days of New York City. And, you know, the Tommy guns were probably just to equalize what the suspects were carrying. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, I think at the time, you know, I think you can look back to, like, ESU's first major gun battle. You know, that as far as I know, was documented in, like, 1926 at something known as the Tombs, which is the correctional facility in lower Manhattan, with a couple of escaped prisoners that resulted in, I believe, two or three deceased perpetrators and one or two deceased corrections officers and stuff like that. Prior to the emergency automobile squads, I can remember reading stuff about the machine gun squad, which was, I think, even a precursor to the emergency automobile squads, which was all guys coming back from World War one that joined the department, and they had some, you know, military experience and some exposure to combat. And they were there as a kind of a counterterrorism effort at the time, you know, to protect the ports of New York. Jon Becker: Crazy! Joe Bucchignano: Yeah, it's wild. Jon Becker: So almost 100 years later, you know, 95 years after the formation of the emergency services division, let's talk about the current structure of ESU. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah, so ESU as it stands today, I mean, you know, definitively, to give it a number count, I know at its highest, we had about 400 people in emergency right after 911. I think that number now is down closer to maybe the 320 number somewhere around there. So I think it's safe to say between 300 and 350 somewhere in there. The unit is based out of Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, New York. It's also where the aviation unit is. So you have your administrative offices out there, the specialized training schools out there. We have individuals who are assigned to the school full time as subject matter expert instructors in the different disciplines that we have. And then the admin office is responsible for all the regular admin stuff. Payroll and roll call and the executive staff and stuff like that. The unit itself, the trucks, there's a couple of distinct, different sections of the unit. So you have the trucks. There's ten trucks throughout the city. Each truck covers a certain geographic area of the city. And then within that geographic area, there's a certain number of precincts that they cover. So in Manhattan, you have truck one and truck two. In the Bronx, you have truck three and truck four. Staten Island is served by a single truck, truck five. Brooklyn. Because Brooklyn's a pretty big and dense borough. There's three trucks that cover Brooklyn, six, seven and eight. And then nine and ten cover large. I mean, queens is enormous, like truck ten. Service area east to west is huge. But truck nine and ten cover queens. Truck eleven is not an official truck, but it's stationed out at Floyd Bennett Field. It could be staffed by the admin and instructor staff that's out there. And then you have the apprehension tactical team, or the A team. And you have the weapons of mass destruction unit, which turns out of Manhattan. So they're their own separate entity as well, especially at the height of white powder envelopes that's kind of where they were created from the initial hammer teams that were created to kind of specifically just deal with hazmat related stuff. So that's kind of like the overall structure of the unit. You know, within the trucks you have subspecialties. So every person in ESU gets the same initial training, the same initial school. You know, back in, in 1930 or 1928, whenever the first ESU school was, was officially created at the police academy, I think it was in 1928, but it was. It was two weeks long. And that's – You had two weeks and you were. You were a member of the emergency service division. And the school now is. It's eight months now. So that's just how much things have grown. And as the responsibilities and the equipment improves, obviously to accommodate all that, it now takes eight months to train up an ESU officer. So besides the initial training that everyone has the same base level of training. You have individuals who are tactical paramedics, you know, individuals who either came into the unit as paramedics, such as myself, or individuals that went to paramedic school after they had graduated from STS. You have members of the counter sniper team. So, you know, those individuals are usually spread out throughout the trucks. You have individuals who are energetic breachers, individuals who are divemasters and repel masters and hazmat specialists. And so you have, you know, everyone has the same base level of training, and then you have individuals that maybe have some specialized skill set that they can use, you know, for certain incidents that might require that. Jon Becker: But at a base level, every member of ESU is a diver, you know, an EMT, a physical extraction specialist. Right. Whether it's vehicle extraction or getting somebody out from under a subway, Cardinal has a base level of tactical and high risk entry training, has ropes training. And ropes in New York is the George Washington Bridge. It's not ropes. Three story building. It's skyscraper. It's like vertical axis. As a guy who grew up in LA, you go to New York and you realize vertical access. This is a very different meeting in New York. But like, the breadth of the skillset is really like in most other parts of the world, you have fire doing the extraction part. You have maybe somebody else doing the water part of it. I think that is one of the things that makes ESU so unique. And even within the individual trucks. Like, one of the things I love about ESU is it is the land of absolute understatement of everything. Joe Bucchignano: It is a playground for adults. Absolutely. Yeah. It's just the amount of equipment. It's ridiculous. You know, like, I mean, the big trucks have well over a million dollars worth of equipment on each one. Jon Becker: And that's a perfect example of how ESU understates everything. So you say, oh, truck one. Right? So somebody in their mind is picturing a pickup truck, and that's what constitutes a truck, but that's not what constitutes a truck. What constitutes a truck in NYPD? Joe Bucchignano: So the truck. So the term truck gets confusing because each emergency service squad is referred to as a truck as a whole. So, like, when I say, oh, I worked in truck three, that's, you know, emergency service squad three. But then each squad has what is called the truck. And the truck is essentially a heavy rescue truck with an armory on it. That's essentially what it is. And so there are eleven of those spread throughout the city. So each squad has a heavy rescue that acts primarily as a support vehicle to bring extra manpower and equipment to jobs that are more than just an atom car job. So the atom car is the Ford F 550 with the utility body on it that you routinely will see out on patrol. And that truck is, I don't want to say like a quick response vehicle. It's just, it's out on the road, it's on patrol. It's usually going to be showing up at an incident first. And it has a decent complement of equipment on it to, you know, for the two individuals that are staffing that atom car for the day to get a job started, especially a job that might require more personnel or more specialized equipment. Jon Becker: So on any given shift for ESU, you'll have an atom. An atom car. Joe Bucchignano: An atom, generally speaking, yeah. Throughout the city, generally speaking, you're going to have what we say is like truck across the board, meaning that all ten squads are going to have, you know, two individuals in the truck, two individuals in an atom car. And then if there are additional people now, you start to get, you know, a boy car. So a boy car would just be two additional, you know, ESU individuals that are staffing a second, you know, utility style vehicle. And now when you have an Adam and a boy car working a certain. In a certain truck, now, instead of maybe covering ten precincts, maybe they'll each cover five. They'll split up the responsibility for that geographic area a little bit. Jon Becker: So I think one of the things that helped me understand ESU in the times that I've interacted with you guys and tried to understand the unit is to think of it in terms of Legos of different colors, and we'll talk more about this as we get to load spread. But it is. The mindset of ESU is very much like we need a variety of different color Legos, you know, different skill sets, and we're. We're going to place those Legos all over the place. But all the Legos will work with all of the other Legos. So a guy on truck ten could work with a guy on truck one. And although they might have little local flare differences, they're going to do stuff the same way. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah. And that was a testament to the initial training and the importance of everyone getting that same kind of base level of training. And it was not uncommon for guys from truck ten to work with guys from truck one or vice versa. Because if truck one was running short for a day and they only had maybe three people that were assigned for that day or for that tour. Well, we're flying in someone from another truck. Maybe truck ten has five people working, so there's an odd person out. So we're going to fly someone from truck ten down to truck one for the day just to balance it out and be able to stamp both those vehicles. So, you know, yeah, absolutely. While everyone has the same base level of training, I will tell you that, you know, being someone that. That came from truck three, which did not do a lot of the style of work that truck one is known for. When I, you know, first got down to truck one, you know, I was in a very, very senior squad down there, and the three senior people in that squad were all guys that had been there for ten plus years, some longer. And, man, I had a lot of learning to do because I didn't do a lot of what we call man unders, you know, people that get struck by subway cars and now they're trapped underneath the car, and it's either, you know, a body removal or an aided rescue. And so these guys were moving at 100 miles an hour, and I just was trying to keep up because they were a finely tuned machine. And truck one gets a lot of train rescue jobs. And so I basically, even though I knew the basics of it, just the speed and the precision at which these guys worked, it was a whole new experience for me. And that's one of the great things about the unit and being able to, because it's a citywide unit. New York City is very diverse, and neighborhoods are very different, and different neighborhoods have different, different problems. And some have more water than others, and some have more trains than others. And some are more known for getting motor vehicle accidents and out in Staten island. When you're dealing with animal jobs, now you're dealing with deer. You're not dealing with deer really, other than maybe in parts of three truck up in Pelham Bay park there. So now you're just dealing with things that are not the norm for you. And I know for me, I always took comfort when I was working with someone who was assigned to that truck, and we got something that was out of the norm because it was like, man, you're the subject matter expert on this. I don't care if I've been here for ten years and you've been here for three. I'm going to just let you run with this because you've experienced this before and I definitely have not. Jon Becker: Yeah. It is an interesting aspect of ESU that there is this diverse mission set within a very diverse city. Both. I mean, you get out into queens and you have a very difficult, very different problem than you do in South Manhattan. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah. Jon Becker: Like, it could literally be a different country and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah. I mean, different cultures different. And especially when you start talking about, you know, barricaded subjects and negotiations and the different, you know, maybe cultural norms for a certain group of people and being able to manage that, it's a challenge. You know, it is a. It is a challenge. Jon Becker: Well, so why don't we. Let's talk about, like, within a truck, you know, using the truck in the collective. Now, let's talk about the mission set of a truck. Like, what that truck is responsible for in its geographic area. Joe Bucchignano: It's really responsible as a patrol omnipresence and. And as a, you know, an asset that responds to request for service. So, you know, as a patrol omnipresence, um, generally speaking, you know, the atom car is out on patrol, and you are driving through, you know, the different precincts that you're responsible, you know, for covering, and you're in a marked vehicle in uniform. So you are a patrol omnipresence. And, you know, while ESU does not handle arresting people and writing, you know, summonses and more normal police functions, you're still out there, and you can still get flagged down for things that are, you know, not necessarily within your role of responsibility, but you're still a police officer, and so you're still kind of expected to at least deal with that until the patrol units get there to kind of take over the scene from you. But realistically, the primary role within a truck is to respond for requests for service so the saying in ESU is that when the public needs help, they call 911, and when the police need help, they call ESU. And so you're driving through different precincts and you are responding to requests for service. And you're also, you know, if you're driving through the 40 precinct, you're listening to that division radio, and if you hear the 40 precinct going to something, maybe it's an EDP with a knife, maybe it's a dispute with a firearm, you're going to start heading over that way. Because like I said, you're still a law enforcement officer. You're still a police officer. We all wear the same patch on our right sleeve regardless of what's on the left. And so you're there to just support and back up, you know, the patrol cops that are out there doing a very difficult job. So, you know, that that's kind of really the main mission set or role and responsibility within the truck. There's other things, you know, related to equipment maintenance and, you know, internal training and maintaining quarters and all that other stuff that is kind of unique to ESU, you know, because of the armories inside the trucks. Like, we don't have cleaning staff like, like a precinct does. So you're responsible for cleaning the toilets and the kitchen and all that other stuff. Our setups are definitely more of a firehouse style setup with our quarters. So that's kind of the day to day stuff within a truck and the mission set. Jon Becker: What's the work schedule like? Joe Bucchignano: So we do well, at the time, I think since I've retired, it's changed. But at the time, you either were assigned to the scooter chart, which was a week of days and then a week of four to midnights on a 52, 53 schedule. So you were constantly rotating your days off, or you did steady midnights with a rotation. Certain units either had. When I was on the a team, we had kind of a Gucci schedule. It was Monday to Friday, you know, which obviously within law enforcement is kind of unheard of, but, you know, it was well welcomed at the end of the career. So, you know, some units had a Monday to Friday schedule or maybe a piece of the weekend where they had off Friday Saturdays or Sunday Mondays, I believe. Now they've to try to help retain some people because that schedule is not, you know, ideal for home life and stuff like that. I think now they've gone to a steady chart where you're either working steady days, steady four to twelve s. You know, there's pros and cons to both. You know, Manhattan was very different from the other trucks working in truck 1, truck 3, the 4 to 12s. And the midnights were busy. And the day tours, they were not as busy. There was not as much going on in the outer boroughs during a day tour, whereas truck one was historically busier on day tours because you have to consider the influx of people coming into Manhattan for work, that the population density increases tenfold during the day. And so a lot of truck one's work was during day tours. And the four to twelve s were generally on the, you know, on the quieter side. So, you know, the nice thing about having that flip flop was you kind of got a taste of both and different types of work, which I think made you very well rounded. Jon Becker: And just from, like from a mission set for any one of the trucks, like, obviously, anything tactical that happens is your responsibility, right? It. If any kind of tactical situation, barricade, whatever hostage situation is going to become an e issue problem, you know, but kind of walk me through some of the other things that, you know, as you get to work each day, there are a number of things on the menu. What does the menu look like for ESU? Joe Bucchignano: Well, the menu is pretty diverse, so I guess I could start by talking about the things that we would just respond to, like, automatically once you hear it over. So ESU is on sod radio, special Operations division radio, which is ESU. K nine, aviation, harbor, scuba, all are on Sod radio. And so Sod radio is where we got dispatched on. But then we also had the capability within the trucks and the atom cars to also monitor division radio. And so anything that came over either Sod or division radio, that was a unconfirmed. So in New York City, everything's either confirmed or unconfirmed. And generally 911 calls when they first come in, until an NYPD cop gets there and puts eyes on the problem, all these things are unconfirmed. And so. But if you heard an unconfirmed jumper, unconfirmed water rescue, unconfirmed pin job, unconfirmed active shooter, you know, things like that, like those jobs, that unconfirmed building collapse, those were kind of, hey, we're going to start going and we're going to monitor the radio and we're going to listen for updates. Obviously, if the job is confirmed by precinct units showing up on the scene, then we're going to continue in on that. And if the precinct unit gets there and it ends up being an unfounded, then they could just put the cancellation over, and then we would just kind of resume patrol. So those were the jobs that we kind of automatically responded to every single time. The New York City police Department gets about 80,000 EDP calls a year. So those were not necessarily, and we get assigned every single one of them. And so those were not necessarily responding automatically just because you might have 3, 4, 5, 6 EP calls, like, in your queue at any given time. And so it's just impossible to obviously respond to six simultaneous EDP calls that you're holding. But if it was an EDP with an indication of a weapon or an EDP that was a jumper or something like that, then those, we would start to just head over that way, start taking a ride, monitor division radio, listen for the updates for patrol. And this way, if they get there and it's something that. That they are going to be requesting us for, we're kind of that much closer in terms of a response. So EDP's animal jobs, even the routine, very mundane stuff of individuals who are either locked out or locked in of an apartment, or if the patrol cops need us to come by and secure a door for them so they can resume patrol, or they lock their keys in the car or drop their keys down the sewer grate. Like, we have all of the tools to be able to solve all of those problems. And so a lot of the tools that we have can be used to either maybe recover a gun from a sewer grade that was just used to murder a police officer, or that same tool that we have to do that can be used when that police officer drops his keys or his radio down the sewer. And, you know, hey, can you just give me a hand and get that thing out so I don't have to tell the boss kind of a thing. So there's an overlap, you know, in terms of, while some of this stuff that we do would be considered to be, I'll use the word mundane, or like, man, you're taking a guy that went through eight months of trading, driving around a truck with a million dollars to get keys out of a. Out of a grate. And, yeah, on the surface, it looks like, why would you do that? But the reality is that it's those mundane tasks that we do kind of day in and day out that really help to prepare us for the incidents where like that having that experience or having done something like that before prepares you for something that's much more meaningful in terms of the resolution. Jon Becker: I also think that, you know, the one of the things I've consistently heard from everybody I've interacted with ESU is that ESU is a, you know, and, you know, you pointed this out to me. It's not the emergency services unit. It's the emergency service unit. Right? It is a unit that provides a service to the police department. Joe Bucchignano: We provide a unit, a service, you know, to the police department. And in turn, you know, in turn, that service is Isdev, you know, provided to the citizens of the city in New York. So, you know, it's. We are a full scale unit that provides a service, and that's what we do. We just bring individuals that have some more training and access to some more equipment than the average, you know, cop does on patrol. And we are there to provide a service because, you know, even something as mundane, I'll use that word again, as a police officer that is stuck guarding a door that maybe a super or the fire department, you know, or someone broke a door for a legitimate reason, and now this door is insecure and there's no way to lock it. Well, you know, we have drills and, and other hand tools on the trucks that we use for, you know, structural collapse and other things that could be also used for that purpose. And so, you know, if we have the ability to secure that door, that means that that police officer is not going to be stuck sitting on that door for 12 hours. That means that police officer is now going to be back on patrol, patrolling the neighborhood, responding to calls that maybe are a little bit more important than just having that cop tied up, you know, guarding a door so nobody goes in and steals items from an unsecured apartment. So there's always while some of this stuff, and, you know, I was just as guilty at times of saying, like, why are we doing this? Like, this is silly. Like, you know, I have all this training and all this equipment and I should be handling, you know, you know, things far more important than going in and securing a door. But, you know, when you look at it from a bigger picture and, you know, I think as you get more mature in the unit and you get more time there, you understand that stuff like that. Like it matters, you know, and, and it has a bigger effect than you realize that it has. Jon Becker: I think, culturally it's huge, right? If the focus of the unit is providing service to the patrol officers, there is a service mindset and a humility that comes with that. Right? If you're showing up in the middle of the night to help somebody secure a door, you're a lot less likely to end up with a mindset of, well, you know, with these super, super elite warriors and we're way more important than everybody else's. You are part of the team. And I think that from a patrol standpoint, they're much more likely to want to call ESU because they do have a relationship with ESU that that, you know, ESU is providing them service, and it's a partnership. It's not a, you know, an ivory tower. Oh, look at those guys. They think they're important. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah. I mean, when I first got to truck three, you know, the senior guy that I worked with on midnights, there had been an ESU for a long time. In fact, he was in transit rescue before the merger. So he had been in that kind of world for a long time. And in full transparency at the time, it just didn't make sense to me. We would go and we would meet up with these patrol cops one night. It was social hour and coffee and this and that. I'm a junior guy. I kind of went along with it, obviously. You know, I like looking back at my career and, you know, there are certain things that, like, that absolutely make me cringe in terms of, you know, when I was young and cocky and thought that I was this, you know, super elite, because everyone always tells you, oh, you're a part of the elite emergency service unit. An elite and an elite. And when you get told enough times that you're elite, you start to believe it, you know? And I know that I absolutely went through a phase where, you know, I had an attitude that I was just better than. And I think there's a difference between, you know, having that attitude that you're better than and then just being, you know, confident and having expectations of the guys and girls that you work with. And I think the big thing that really kind of changed it for me was when I was four, this opportunity to train up these subunits because I got really emotionally invested in giving these guys and girls just a good training experience with the limited amount of time that we had to train them. And then at the end of it, I kind of sat there and I'm like, well, wait a minute. We're giving these subunits this quality training that really goes into detail onto why they're doing certain things and we're really promoting certain things, but we're not doing that for our guys. And so I was able to kind of, like, channelize that, that desire that I had to, you know, just to better individuals and police officers and then start to kind of channel that attention or that energy into, like, hey, what can I do to help the unit. And so, you know, like, just getting back to the original point, like, the guys and girls in ESU are some of, like, the best humans that I've ever met. You know, they just – They come to work every day, and especially some of the individuals who have been there, like, what we call the dinosaurs, right? The guys and girls that have been in the unit for 20, 30 years and are still out in the atom car every day. Like, my hats off to them. I mean, I give them a lot of credit, and some of them are just so dedicated to service that ethos. And their day to day is just about helping cops. And I think that as a calling and what these guys and girls bring to the table, it really is admirable. Jon Becker: I think a lot of that is a function of culture, too. It's a function of not only the culture of the unit, but it's also a function of selection. Right? Like, it's picking. Ending up with the right people is frequently picking the right people. What is – Talk to me about ESU selection process. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah. And so just to, like, touch on the first thing there, I always kind of make the joke that, like, within the NYPD, there's a lot of things that we don't do right. But I think one of the things that the department does right is the culture of being very welcoming to people, and especially individuals, police officers from, you know, from outside agencies. And so, you know, my time in ESU, there were plenty of times where we would have police officers from other states, other countries stopping by truck one. Hey, I heard about this place. I want to check it out. Or units from SWAT, guys from other departments that would come up to the A Team and say, hey, we want to see how you guys are doing things. And we maybe have some questions about hydraulic breaching or tactical operations and elevated structures, things that we were used to dealing with. And it was always so funny afterwards, talking to guys offline, and they would say, man, you guys are unbelievable in terms of how you welcome people, because if you came to our city, no cop would pay you two cent. They would just, whatever. Yeah, great. You're NYPD. We get it. So I think that culture, just as a department, and now you kind of get down to the micro view of now an individual unit, and having that culture kind of be already in, instilled in you once again, police officers in Times Square, like, how many tourists are they dealing with day in and day out and taking pictures with people? And for a lot of them, you're almost like, a celebrity just because of the NYPD's reputation in film and everything else. So I think that translates over. But to get to the question about the selection process. Jon Becker: Hold on one sec, let's go back to that, because I think you actually raise a really interesting issue. I've experienced the hospitality of the issue and feeling like, you know, they never had anything to do the whole day and everybody was there just to be nice to you. And so, I've seen that. I've seen that at the school. I've seen that at truck one. I've seen that at the A team when you were there, there is very much a culture of warmth, you know, up to and including attending the Macy's parade with ESU. But while I was at truck one, one of the things that Tommy Longa said to me that I thought was very interesting was a New York police officer has to be able to talk to people. And one of the things that strikes when you go to truck one is it's not at an ivory tower station somewhere in the middle of its own area. The trucks are parked on the street in the neighborhood. And the biggest thing that struck me while I was there was the people walking by, you know, oh, hey, Tommy, we're going to bring you cookies. And, oh, you know, hi misses Rabinowitz. And, like, this whole interchange between the department and the community. You know, we in LA, we talk about community oriented policing, but watching the way that NYPD officers are interacting, because you have no choice. Right? You're embedded in the neighborhood. You have no choice. There has to be this interaction. But it struck me when I saw that, and one of the things that Tom Longa said to me was, that's a big selection criteria for ESU, is you got to be able to talk to people. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah, absolutely. And that experience is definitely is unique to truck one. And I can't speak for a lot of the other trucks. I mean, I've flown to other trucks and I've worked in other trucks. I have not spent much time out on the apron at other trucks. But I know that from my time in truck three where, you know, I was on midnights most of the time that I was there. And who's wandering around at two in the morning in the Bronx, you know, it's usually not the person that's waking up for work the next day. So we didn't have that kind of community interaction. And especially, like, you know, geographically, where truck three is located, it's just not a heavily residential area right there. But when I went down to truck one, very different, you know, like, why is there a box of milk bones in the garage? Like, what is that for? Oh, that's for when people walk by with their dogs. And I'm like, we could feed dogs here. This is great, you know, so it was definitely, like, it was definitely, for me, it was a culture shock because you would stand out on the front apron and the same people, especially on a day tour, like walking by to go to work or people that lived in the Gramercy neighborhood there and stuff like that. Truck one was very involved with the Gramercy Park Block association, and so we were really, really a part of the local community there, maybe more so than a lot of other trucks. And I don't want to speak for other trucks because obviously, like, never being assigned to the trucks, you know, I don't know what their experiences were like, but I know just from truck one, you know, you were a part of the community and you got invited to community events and, you know, they would have every year, 911, you know, they would have memorial services, and there was always a good showing from the local community and stuff like that. But I think the being able to talk to people is an interesting thing that you bring up because I think that is what sets us apart, really, from a lot of other teams across the country. And the unique thing about ESU is that everyone in ESU is a negotiator without officially being labeled a negotiator. And we can get to that later. But in terms of selection, you know, as I mentioned before, before you can even apply to come to ESU, you have to have a minimum of five years with the department. And so that kind of sets the foundation or the groundwork where it doesn't matter really what precinct you're in. Obviously, the busier precincts in the city, you're going to just have more experience. And along with that experience comes experience talking to people, you know? And so, you know, we're looking for individuals who, who, you know, come from precincts relatively active. You didn't have to be, listen, I was not, by my own admission, I was not like a superstar cop in the five two, you know, I did what I had to do every day, and I came in and did my thing and I had the dream of going to ESU, you know, but, like, police work was not exactly my forte, nor was it something I never had the aspiration of going to, like, a detective squad and, you know, being a big investigator one day or anything like that. But one of the things that I felt that I was good at was talking to people. And I think that really came from my, you know, my paramedic background where I was, you know, interviewing patients day in and day out, you know, talking about whatever ailments they had and so on and so forth. And so, you know, what ESU is looking for is really kind of motivated individuals who preferably worked in busier precincts doesn't mean if you worked in a slow precinct that you were automatically disqualified individuals that were active as police officers. Because again, to go from it could be very difficult if you worked in a slow precinct and did not have a lot of experience to now get thrown into the ESU world where you are responding to, you know, some of the worst of the worst and some of the most critical incidents that, you know, that the city sees. And now you're expected to be the guy or girl to resolve that incident and hopefully to resolve it either peacefully or, you know, without any added or unnecessary, quote unquote, drama that might go along with the incident. So, you know, that's really what they're looking for. And that all happens through, you know, there was a time, especially, you know, when I first got into ESU and the time before that, that getting into ESU was really having either a hook or a crane. You know, like having somebody that was already in the unit that can kind of vouch for you definitely helped. And it was almost at a time where it was almost necessary, like you, you had to have somebody from within the unit say, yeah, I know this guy, know this girl. They're a good guy, good girl, whatever it is, they get the stamp of approval. So that now still carries weight. I don't think it carries as much weight. That whole mantra of, oh, you need a crane to get into ESU. That's not true anymore. We pick up plenty of people that don't know anyone in ESU, and it's their first experience or exposure. So obviously, physical fitness is a big part of the job because it is physically, I was nothing specimen of, you know, physical fitness. But, you know, like, you have to have a base level of physical fitness because it is very physically strenuous between diving and obviously, tactical work and, you know, doing six, seven, eight story walk ups and carrying the equipment and all that other stuff. And so these are things that they kind of, you know, test in the initial, you know, selection process. One of the other things that they do, and it goes back to what you said before about phobias, is they actually test you for certain phobias. And so you have to crawl through this real tiny dark tube into this rock pile and drag a mannequin out. And what they're really testing is not only your physical ability to do it, but also, hey, are you claustrophobic? There's the balance beam, which is essentially you are tied into a high wire and you have to walk across an I beam. It's 20 or 30 ft, maybe 20 or 30 ft up in the air. You have to walk kind of touch thing, turn around, walk back, and that's a test. Your fear of heights. So they do look for individuals that have certain phobias, because if you're afraid of the dark, you're afraid of the boogeyman in the dark or you're afraid of heights, you're not going to make it through the initial training. So that's the initial selection process you put in your application. There's an oral review board, there's physical fitness testing, there's some of the phobia testing, there's some shooting testing that all kind of collectively goes together. Then they're going to look at obviously your CPI file, your background, your disciplinary record, your sick record. They're obviously looking for people that don't have significant disciplinary records, people that have very good sick records, because ESU is not a unit where it's frowned upon if you're just calling out sick to call out sick, because obviously the trucks have to get staffed and they have to get manned. And so looking for people that have very good sick records as well. And then obviously if you bring a special skill set to the table and it could be something silly like, hey, I'm a certified locksmith or I worked at a bird rescue, or like people who are EMTs, volunteer firemen, people that have military backgrounds, all those special skill sets. You're bringing now something to the unit, you're bringing something to the table, elevator mechanics, whatever it might be, that is bringing now an expertise into the unit that the unit can now exploit and benefit from. Jon Becker: That's really interesting. That's a very interesting perspective. Talk to me about school. You get selected into ESU, you've got eight months of school, school ahead of you. How does that break down? What do you, what do you learn in what, you know, what's the kind of rough order? And how do you build the skillset that is required to be in ESU, man? Joe Bucchignano: Yeah. I don't envy the sergeant at the school that does scheduling because that is a task and a feat in itself. After kind of seeing behind the curtain of, of how all that works out. An average ESU class is anywhere from 35 to 40 individuals of, you know, from police officer up through lieutenant captains and above. They don't go through the full school. They will go through certain parts of it to have an understanding of ropes, hazmat tactics, scuba, more so from an oversight scene management, scene safety kind of perspective. But everyone from police officer up through lieutenant goes through the full school. And so those 40 or so individuals will get broken up into four separate groups. So you figure ten people, twelve people per group, depending on the size of the class. And then. Excuse me, and then each group is now going to go to a certain discipline on a rotating basis throughout the eight month schooling. So realistically, within the eight months, you're talking roughly eight. And my weeks, I might be off by a week or two here, but anywhere from eight to ten weeks or eight to eleven weeks of firearms and tactics, you're looking at four weeks EMT school, you're looking at, I would say four to six weeks of ropes and jumpers because those kind of go hand in hand. You're looking at four to six weeks of hazmat and CBRN, you are looking at like a week of structural, structural collapse. So some of the, you know, the structural collapse rescue technician training, you're looking at time dedicated to, you know, maybe another week or so of confined space trench rescue, another couple days of vehicle extrication and train rescue. And you're talking weeks of a lot of the ancillary skill sets that kind of overlap into a lot of what we do, like animal control torches, hand tools, power tools, pneumatic tools, hydraulic tools, lock picking, protester locks, all of that stuff as well. You're looking at maybe I want to say the dive program is two weeks. The first week is like Padi, open water and then week two is public safety diving. And then you have another week, week and a half of surface water rescue and ice rescue and then more time allocated to small boat handling for zodiacs and John boats and stuff like that. So they have to fit all of that within that kind of eight month timeframe. Helicopter operations, helicopter rappelling, fast roping, some of the more fancy stuff that we're doing, familiarization with all of the specialized equipment that we have. So the bearcats, the bears, the MRAPs, the TCVs, just the endless amount of specialized equipment that we have, you at least get a familiarization on it within sts, more so not to become familiar with its operations, but just the capabilities that are out there and to have an awareness that this equipment is available to you because after you finish sts you show up the truck day one, more than likely you're going out in the atom car that day and whatever comes your way comes your way. So just having a familiarization and an awareness to the equipment that's available to the unit. So that's essentially what the eight months kind of covers. I mean the major disciplines, obviously tactics, hazmat, technical res, all the aspects of technical rescue, ropes, EMT and then scuba water rescue. I think I hit them all. But those are kind of the major disciplines. And then there's obviously the smaller ancillary offshoots of all of that. Jon Becker: That's really, it's an amazingly broad skill set. And, you know, I think one of the challenges has to be trying to maintain expertise too because once guys are out in the trucks, yeah, you're doing stuff and you're picking things up. But like if you're, you know, like you said, if you're in the Bronx, you may not be doing high angle rescue stuff like you would in Manhattan. How do you – how does ESU maintain this expertise when, when guys, you know, are, you know, assigned to a certain place or like you go to the A team, you're not doing any rescue anymore. So it's. How does that happen? How do you maintain that expertise? Joe Bucchignano: And, and that's the challenge. You know, like the challenge with ESU is that any particular discipline, take tactics for example, has, you know, four full time instructors. Ropes has three full time instructors, let's say. And then Hazmat has three or four full time instructors. When you have a unit of 400 people, you know, how do you, you know, how do you expect two to four people to do not only in service training, which you think about it, if a particular school is a month long and an STS is eight months, they are basically dedicated to four months out of the year to just doing new ESU, you know, school training, like ESU recruit training basically. And then, you know, they need time as well to re-up for the next class and everything else. And so, yeah, that's the challenge. Right? So there's a couple ways to, I guess, combat that. It kind of starts at the individual and the truck level where you have to take some self motivation within your truck or within your squad to do some training. And one of the great things about the unit is because there is such a diverse set of skill sets out there in the truck. When I was in truck three and truck one, if we decide to do medical training for a day, hey, I'm going to take lead on that because I'm a paramedic, so I have that background. And then maybe the next week, generally speaking, like truck based training, there was no official schedule for it. It was just on the individual squad to say, hey, we're going to do some training today. Saturdays or Sundays, I think it was Sundays was what we call trio training. So the way the patrol works with supervision is you have a citywide north supervisor and a citywide south supervisor. Citywide north covered the Bronx and Manhattan, and then citywide south covered Brooklyn, Queens, Staten island. And so, you know, generally a lieutenant could be a sergeant covering that position, but usually it was a lieutenant. And that lieutenant would say, hey, we're going to do trio training this morning. We're going to meet at truck two. It's going to be truck one, truck two, and truck four, let's say, because they're all kind of bordering trucks to each other. And this is what we're going to do today. And they would pick a topic and they would pick someone to kind of, you know, run that training for trio training that day. And that was kind of some dedicated training that was kind of, you know, run by one of the supervisors. So you had your truck training at the squad level, and then you had trio training that was a collective of two or three neighboring trucks getting together at the kind of, you know, discretion of a lieutenant saying like, hey, this is what we're going to do today. And then you had refresher training that was sponsored or run by the school after. So generally speaking, if, let's say the scuba section had a month break, maybe their next STS group to do scuba was coming in in a month. So they had a month of downtime. They would send guys and girls down to the scuba section for refresher training. So generally speaking, like most ESU guys got refresher training yearly on tactics, on ropes, on scuba. Hazmat EMT was recertified every three years. So those were kind of the major disciplines where you went for some ongoing refresher training that was sponsored by the unit of. There were opportunities for guys to go to training with outside training venues and training companies and whether they were federally funded programs out in New Mexico or Alabama or something like that, or we didn't do a lot with private training companies, but we did some stuff with some private training companies. The problem was with a lot of that training is that we're limited in the number of people that we can send to that. So the expectation was that, hey, if you went out to this training in wherever it was, bring back what you learned and share that experience with the rest of the unit. So, yes, we were out doing a lot of this work every day. Doesn't necessarily mean that we were good at it or we were doing it right. And that is the importance of the ongoing kind of refresher training. I think that one of the pitfalls that we fell into by a lot of our executives was the thought that drills were training. Oh, we're doing a drill, so that counts as training. And my personal perspective on drills were, they were great for testing your current capabilities, and they really should highlight the areas that we need to focus our training on. They were not training because at the end of the drill, if we completely botched it, we would all shake hands and turn around and walk away. You walked away defeated, like, well, we really just messed that up. What are we doing to fix it? And that was never really addressed. And so we do get involved in a lot of drills, and the drills really highlighted maybe areas that we were deficient in, and then we would hope that those deficiencies would be addressed by the school during the ongoing refresher training yearly. Jon Becker: Why don't we? So now we got a pretty good sense of what everybody's doing and how the unit works. I mean, you were there for a long time, you know, thousands of operations under your belt. Like, let's talk through your lessons learned. Like, you know, give me. Give me the lessons learned from ESU. You know, Joe's version. What, you know, what if somebody. If you have an opportunity to sit down with a tactical unit and go, here's what I learned at ESU. What's that list? Joe Bucchignano: So Joe's version might be. Might be controversial, but I don't shy away from controversy. So, you know, I think the biggest thing that I learned is, you know, there's always a plus, a pro and a con to things, right? So talking about, like, our operational tempo, you know, I guess we could start with that. And I'll bring this specifically to the apprehension team, you know, because that was my last two, two and a half years within. Within the unit, but, you know, at the apprehension. So ESU as a whole, collectively was executing somewhere in the neighborhood of 700 search warrants a year, with the apprehension team executing, like, 87% of those. So, you know, our op tempo there was right around 500, 500 plus search warrants a year. So the apprehension team was a full time sergeant, seven full time members on the team and then three to four individuals that rotate through on a three month rotation. And so one of the guys that's currently still serving on the A team, he's been there over ten years. So you consider over ten years doing 500 search warrants a year, we'll say 400 if you count in vacations and days off. That's still over 4000 live search warrants that some guys have done. What I learned from operational tempo is that, number one, I always like to focus on the downside first is your operational tempo doesn't necessarily mean that you're doing things right just because you're walking away every single time unscathed. And I think that keeping that kind of in perspective and that humility I think is important. ESU always had a pretty good culture of being honest with itself at more of a micro level. Meaning after any big job, it was always customary to get together at the back of the truck afterwards and kind of have a powwow. Hey, let's talk about the good, the bad and the ugly. And certain individuals didn't really want to hear about or talk about the bad and the ugly. We just wanted to focus on the good. And that's obviously a bad way of doing business because it instills very false sense of maybe competency, and that's dangerous, you know, so, you know, for me, especially when I got up to the, to the A team because it was a smaller unit and, you know, because I had a very good working relationship with the individuals who had been full time members of the team before I got up there. You know, we kind of adopted a culture of focusing more on the bad and the ugly and not so much the good. And, you know, one of the things I always would say to guys that were rotating through the team from day one was, you know, listen, we're going to nitpick every single search warrant that we do. And yeah, we're going to acknowledge the good stuff that you do, but we're going to focus a heck of a lot more on, you know, the bad and the ugly because that's how we learn and that's how we get better. And, you know, if we're nitpicking on really little things, take it as a compliment because that means that all the macro picture stuff, all the big stuff is like really, you know, you're knocking it out of the ballpark there. Now we just really want to refine what we're doing to get as close to perfect as possible. And, you know, in my opinion, there's no such thing as a perfect OP. There's always something to learn from every single incident that you go on, regardless of how great you think you did. So, you know, the reality is keeping the mindset that you could do 1000 search warrants a year with a girl scout troop if nobody ever gives you any legitimate opposition, nobody that's committed, willing to exploit a mistake or cracking your tactics or whatever it might be. And so just volume of work in itself is not a true measure of success. The real measure of success is when you are challenged by an individual who is willing to exploit a crack in your tactics or mistake that you made and what the outcome is. After that, there were plenty of times where I could say that we just plain flat out got lucky, and that was it. There was no skill. There was no nothing. You know, with some of these incidents, it was. It was pure luck. I mean, there were plenty of times where it was skill and it was based on, you know, lessons that we learned before that maybe we made certain adaptations or changes to the way that we did things that. That resulted in a much better outcome. But, you know, that being said, there were plenty of times where it was really, it was just pure luck. And so, for me, one of the big lessons learned is just because you're doing something a lot doesn't necessarily mean you're doing it right. And you need to be honest with yourself, whether it's as an individual or as a unit, as a team, as an organization, to say, hey, did we just get lucky here? Or was this really skill? And if it was luck, what can we do? How can we adapt our training or equipment, our TTPs, to avoid maybe this not going so well or running out of luck in the future. So that was definitely like, one of the big lessons was coming from a unit who has an op tempo that might be running two or three barricades simultaneously while the A team is executing back to back to back search warrants and everyone walking away from those incidents, there's definitely a lot of skill involved and a lot of experience that goes into resolving these things, but there are also the times where it's, hey, we just got lucky, and maybe the way that we normally do things doesn't work for every single situation. And I guess that's kind of rolls into the second lesson learned there. I don't know if you want to talk about or address anything with the first before I continue on here into the second. Jon Becker: I think the one question I had is a little bit on kind of debrief process, you know, like, your views on best methodologies of doing after actions, obviously, candid, immediate. But what other tips and tricks did you learn? Cause, I mean, at 4 or 500 search warrants a year, that is a ridiculously high op tempo for 13 guys. It is unique. Even among other tactical units. The A team search warrant volume is higher than, for instance, combined LAPD and LA sheriff. So, like, what are your lessons learned in an after action there? Joe Bucchignano: Yeah, I mean, I can talk about the way that we did it, you know, especially, and more specifically the A team. The way that we handle our debriefs is after we finished all of our hits for the day, the debriefs were rather informal. So unless you did something, like, real egregiously dangerous, where then maybe the debrief was not so warm and fuzzy, we would stop, pick up breakfast on the way back to the office. Then we would just sit around the table, and the debriefs and the after actions were kind of a level playing field. So it was, regardless of rank, seniority, time of the unit, whatever it might be, everyone was kind of held to the same standard. And I think for us, the A team was a full time sergeant, seven full time police officer detectives, and then we would get three or four truck guys or girls that would rotate through the A team for three or four months. And that was a chance for them to just get a kind of immersed in a lot of tactical experience and see a lot of different things and kind of learn from the 18 members that obviously we're doing this every single day, day in and day out on top of the level playing field in terms of rank and seniority, I think the other big thing that we really tried to set the example of self critique and taking responsibility for your actions. So for me and some of the other guys on the team that were more senior guys in the unit at the time, we all had over ten years in the unit, which in the span of a 20 year career is half your career. For us to sit there and start up these AARs and say, yeah, this is where I screwed up. This is what I did wrong. This is what I should have done, and this is why I should have done it. And I think that was important to kind of set that tone where, you know, hey, there are these guys who are senior guys in the unit, pretty well respected overall, permanent members of this team that do this every day. And here they are basically admitting where they felt that they had screwed up or could have done something better or whatnot. And so I think that really set the tone to kind of have these guys that in girls that were rotating through to start kind of following our footsteps in terms of doing a good self critique of themselves. So it wasn't always us saying, hey, you could have done this better. You should have done that, you should have done this, you should have done that. Instead, it was them saying, yeah, I screwed this up, and this is what I did, and this is what I should have done, and this is why I should have done it. And the other benefit to that is it just shows that the stuff that you're teaching them, that it's kind of sinking in. They're retaining it because they're realizing certain things in the moment that they're realizing afterwards that maybe they should have done differently and why they should have done, why they should have done it differently. And understanding the why is such a massively important part of this. But, you know, for us, that was the big thing, was level playing field self ownership for your mistakes, regardless of how long you had been there, you know, or whatnot. So it was kind of setting that example. And then we would, you know, use not only our own personal observations as teaching tools and critique points, but we were body cameras, you know? And so the body cameras were just an excellent tool for us to be able to go back and say, like, hey, see how you're set up on this door? Like, you know, maybe next time consider doing this. Or, you know, hey, you see where you're positioned here? Or, you know, you went left, you should have went right. Obviously, when you got the, you know, the guy that would say, like, I didn't do that. Oh, let's go watch the videotape, you know, like, yeah, see, you did that. You know, oh, man, I didn't realize I did that. Okay, we'll let it slide, you know? So utilizing some of the resources that we had available to us as a teaching tool just so we could keep on getting better, I mean, that was really, at the end of the day, it was all about just getting better, doing the job better, being efficient, proficient, being professional. And one of the most gratifying things about the A team was you would get the seven of us that work together consistently. We worked pretty smoothly together, because you're working with the same guys every day. You start to learn guys' body language and their verbal cues and stuff like that, just the way that they operate. You get used to it. You get accustomed to it. Obviously, that makes for a very good flow state when you start doing a lot of the search warrants that we were doing, which were primarily no knock entries. You know, when you get three or four individuals now rotating into the team that you've never worked with before, and you just see the progression from week one to the end of month three or month four, however long they're there for, just to see how they really – It's kind of like the general progression was like month one was just getting them kind of just up to speed with just real basic stuff, you know, like, for a lot of them, you know, especially in the trucks and especially working the scooter chart where most, you know, guys and girls go to when they first graduate sds, you're not really doing a lot of search warrants. Most of the search warrants are happening, you know, 06:00 a.m. and if the trucks are doing a warrant that maybe the apprehension team is not doing, it's usually the guys and girls that are working midnight. So they kind of get the volume of the search warrant work outside of the A team. And so a lot of these guys and girls that come rotating through the team, some of them have never done a search warrant in their first year in ESU because it's just. It's never come up in their area or an emergency search warrant just never popped up when they were working. And so for a lot of them, it maybe is their first time doing a warrant. They've been on dozens of barricades, but obviously, that's a different, you know, operational tempo then. You know, for us, the way that our team worked our tempo for. For search warrants, because we were doing no knocks, was different from the way that we were doing barricades. But for a lot of them, it was seeing where they started. And then by month two, they were getting more comfortable and the mistakes were less. And now we were just really fine tuning that. By month three, the debrief points were now very, very either minute, minuscule, nitpicking stuff. You know, once again, just to always try to get as close to perfection as possible. You know, so just seeing that progression over a three month period, it just – We saw how the deep, brief stuff really helped. You know, like, at the end of it, at the end of the rotation, they would say, man, just sitting down after these hits and talking about them and seeing, you know, talking about, you know, what was good, what was bad, what could have been done better, and how it could have been done better was such a great learning experience for everyone, even for the guys that were on the team for a long time. There's just always something to learn from every single operation you go on. Jon Becker: But, you know, with that volume of work, right, doing 500 search warrants a year, I think it would be very easy to get sucked into the trap that, like, we do this all the time. Why do we need to debrief it? Why do we need to, you know, you've got a huge volume of work. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah. And like we said, you know, like, it's. You could do 500 search warrants a year and without opposition. You could take a Girl scout troop and do those 500 search warrants. If nobody's really willing to give you legitimate opposition to exploit a crack in your tactics or your techniques or your procedures, it is that. 500 search warrants. Any real measure of. Of success? In my opinion, no. The measure of success is when you are tested by someone who's maybe willing and committed and see how you fare after that. I think some of the – Going back to what was discussed before, I think there were definitely search warrants where we just flat out got lucky. We got lucky. There was no question about it. A lot of what we did in the way that we mitigated some of the warrants that kind of went sideways was definitely based on our experience and skill that we kind of brought from our past experience. And, you know, we were always learning. I mean, even in the short two years, two and a half years that I was there, we made a lot of changes, and it's, you know, we would, we would go to something and, you know, we would do a warrant, and it just would not. It just didn't look right. It didn't feel, feel right, and we would come back afterwards and, you know, hey, how'd you guys feel about that? And it was a collective, like, yeah, not. Not so good. Okay, well, what do we do to fix this? You know, how do we – What can we do differently that's gonna make us better and not put us in that position again? And so, you know, there was just always something to learn. I don't care if you do five warrants a year or 500. It doesn't matter. There's always, always, always something to learn from each and every single one. They're all unique. And so I think, again, when you're nitpicking the little stuff, I think that means that the macro stuff, the big picture stuff, is being done good enough to the point where maybe it doesn't require discussion. Now we can start really focusing on fine tuning. Jon Becker: So let's talk about training culture a bit of. So, I mean, obviously, unit culture for debrief is one thing. Training culture is a different thing. And so I'm kind of curious. You know, you spend time at the schoolhouse, you spend time, you know, in 3 and 1 and 18. What are your thoughts on training and the way that we are training our tactical law enforcement currently? Joe Bucchignano: I think so. I think collectively, just broad blanket statement. I think we're lacking, like, significantly. Now, there's some teams that train more than other teams, and that's great. And I think it's finding that balance between operational experience and training. And so you could have a team like ESU that has a lot of operational experience but maybe doesn't do as much on the training side. You know, like I said, the a team a little bit different. You know, Monday nights were kind of our dedicated training night where we would come in once a week and we would work on some isolated skill. Usually, you know, especially in the very beginning when we got a new rotation, we were very heavy on training. So, you know, I think when it comes to training, you know, collectively, you just look at law enforcement. Now, I guess we could start with patrol officers, because I think within the tactical community, there's a little bit more emphasis on training. I think it's a little bit more accepted. I think guys are more motivated to train and stuff like that. But the benefit in a city like New York is you have a unit like ESU that's available 24/7, 365. We're a full time unit that's on the road 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And so, you know, we're generally showing up to incidents pretty quickly. You know, you go to other parts of the country where, you know, maybe you have part time regional or multi jurisdictional teams that are going to take time to assemble and show up in an incident, and maybe there's one or two patrol guys there that are kind of left holding the bag until they get there. It's interesting, you know, like, I had done a – I don't want to call it a study, because it was by no means a study, but just a little survey maybe a year or two ago of police officers from, like, different parts of the country kind of saying, like, hey, you know, how often are you doing active shooter training or refresher training on active shooters? And, you know, I got everything from the most common answer, yeah, we get 8 hours a year. You know, we get one day a year. Okay, 8 hours. By the time you show up, by the time you go through all your safety procedures and maybe PowerPoint and this and that and lunch break, and everything else, that 8 hours really gets watered down to 5 hours of training a year for something like responding to an active shooter all the way to other guys that went, active shooter refresher training. Hey, what's that? We haven't seen that in years. Once again, we talked a little bit before about the difficulties of training a unit of 300 to 400 people with only four people maybe assigned full time as instructor cadre to a certain discipline. Well, now, you take the NYPD. Let's look at the macro picture as a whole. Now, you have a department of 35,000 police officers. Even if we said that, you know, 25,000 of them were individuals in the rank of police officer. Detective sergeant, lieutenant, how are you doing? Ongoing refresher tactical training for an agency that has 25,000 people that you have to train on top of everything else. Logistically, it's a nightmare. And so I don't even know. Well, I shouldn't say that. I do know how you can accomplish it. You just have to dedicate the manpower and the time to do it right. So that's the easy answer. In my eyes, that's the easy answer. Hey, this is an important skill set that individuals need to know, and so we're going to dedicate the time and the manpower in order to make this happen yearly. But logistically, probably not feasible or possible. So I think that a unit like ESU is, you know, microcosm of the bigger NYPD, meaning you have individuals within the unit who are very training oriented. They enjoy going for training. They eat up training anytime they can get it. They're self motivated self initiators to do training within their truck or their squad or whatever it might be. And then you have other individuals who just kind of shrug their shoulders and what do we need training for? We do this all the time. And it kind of goes back to that first point of, just because you do it all the time, it doesn't mean that you're doing it good. And if you're not willing to really sit down and be honest with yourself, your organization, your team, whatever it is about, hey, maybe we're not as good as we think we are, but we can get better. We just have to dedicate the time to getting better. I think that's the important thing. You could have all the, you know, the cry precision this and the night vision and the lasers and all the fancy toys and tools and everything else. But, you know, if you – For lack of a better term, if you suck at the basics, all that fancy stuff means absolutely nothing. In fact, it's usually more of a hindrance than it is a help, you know, and equipment will never take the place of tactical, you know, officers or police officers who are truly problem solvers. And I think that's one of the things that really sets ESU apart from a lot of other teams, is we have a lot of equipment. There's no doubt about it. We have all the armored vehicles you could think of and everything else that goes along with it. But I think what sets us up kind of different is our ability to. Going back to before, our ability to talk to people and our ability to problem solve. And that's where something as simple and mundane as, like, you guys are like dog catchers. You go around doing animal jobs. Yeah, absolutely. You know, so now when I've used, you know, an animal restraint pole or loaded up, you know, ketosis to tranquilize a dog 50 times before in a non tactical environment where the stress level is relatively low, now when I'm doing it at three in the morning, hitting a gang spot, you know, with a four dudes inside with guns, and they got two pit bulls that are guarding the place, like, managing that problem. I've done it 50 times before in routine fashion. This is nothing. This ain't my first time doing this. Just the dynamic and the environment surrounding that problem is obviously a little bit different. And there's other considerations, but that's where us having this wide skillset in this wide day to day experience, doing the mundane, it pays off in dividends when that mundane is now a part of a bigger, more kind of complex problem. Jon Becker: Yeah, but also, it's interesting because as you talk about that, it's stress inoculation, too, right? Like, you've done this, you tranked a dog enough times that that's not a stressful event for you. And so everything else that's happening, you know, I recently interviewed Brittany Loney, who's a performance psychologist that works with soft units. And we talked a lot about stress inoculation and how not tying up your cognitive space with stuff that, you know, shouldn't be stressful allows you to perform at a higher level. And that strikes me as the same is true here. Joe Bucchignano: Absolutely. And that, and that stress inoculation goes across such a wide, you know, array of things that we do, because a lot of what we do is stressful. You know, scaling the Brooklyn Bridge, you know, for the first time is stressful. And, you know, going under a subway car when there's electrified third rail and like that's stressful. And all these other things that we do, you know, non tactical are all stressful. And I truly believe that the more that you're exposed to that stuff, you know, the more that you get conditioned to it, the more that you're inoculated against it. That just leads to better decision making. And I think that that is one of the biggest benefits that we have, you know, is especially when you first get to a truck and you're out in the atom car, you're, you know, you're usually with someone that has some experience. And so, you know, the first time you show up to that barricade and you take control of that door and you knock and start talking to that person on the other side of the door, you know, this time it's not training in John Jay. It's for real, you know, and there's now consequences to the things that you say and everything else. And it's for me, I found the more stressful part was knowing that I had a whole team of people behind me from the senior guy in my squad all the way up through maybe the duty captain that was working that day, listening to every word that I was saying, judging, evaluating and everything else, you know, like, that's stress as well. And so that's where, you know, the volume of work that we do has a benefit because, you know, now maybe in your first year, you'll have handled, I mean, between barricaded, emotionally disturbed persons and cell extractions and jumpers and all these situations where you're just talking people to mitigate a crisis. You're going to do that in your first year a handful of times, if not two handfuls. So you start to get that confidence and it becomes you get a repertoire that you start to find what works and what doesn't work. And obviously you're also learning from watching other people and maybe more senior people to see how they kind of handle these incidents. And so all of that just kind of plays into the bigger picture, that it translates over into the little mundane stuff, translates over into the bigger things that you have a better grasp on generally your own emotions. Jon Becker: That's a really good way. Really good way to put it. Just a couple more things I'd like to hit on with you before we call it a day from a training culture and training mindset, there is a lot of crossover taking place between law enforcement and military training right now. And there's certainly been a lot of opposition and the whole rise of the warrior cop thing and counter militarization and all that. But you see, in the tactical culture, there is, I mean, obviously there's a great deal of experience coming back with 20 years of fighting wars and all of that. What's your read on kind of the way we are training tactical units right now. Joe Bucchignano: So again, pros and cons, you know, and I think individuals from the military community, especially those individuals from tier one units and special mission units, have a lot to offer. You know, there's, there's a level of real world experience there dealing with deadly force encounters that the average law enforcement officer will never experience nor has ever experienced. And so, you know, for example, I've never been involved in an officer involved shooting. So I am definitely not the person to stand up in front of a class full of people and talk about what to expect in, you know, in a deadly force encounter. That's never happened to me. So, you know, I'm not the one to speak to that. But you take someone from a tier one or a special mission unit that has been involved in close quarter engagements, and there's a lot of learning that can be taken from that. I think especially in the realm of command and control and deconfliction and large structure clearance management and stuff like that, I think there's a ton that we can learn from military guys and girls coming back and sharing their experiences and stuff like that. I think the downside is, unless you were a police officer, and especially policing in today's day and age, which is much different from what it was even five or ten years ago, there is nuanced stuff that is very, very specific to how law enforcement operates, how we should be operating and how we should be conducting ourselves. And, you know, the whole goal of a tactical team is preservation of life. And it's not just preservation of innocent life, but it might be the preservation of the life of a suspect. And so I think there's a very fine line and a very fine balance between the quote unquote warrior cop and the individual who has the skills and the mindset to, to do a job when it needs to be done, but also realizing that it has to fit within the letter of the law and that it has to fit for the situation at hand, that we're not, we can't just go out there and just start shooting and killing people and stuff like that. That's not the role of a tactical team. And this is going to lead me to another point. But I've had some experience training with some of the military based training companies out there, and I've learned a lot. In fact, it was going to – One of those courses was my tactical awakening. It was like, here I was, younger guy in ESU and thought I knew everything because, well, I'm an ESU man. We do 1000 search warrants a year and barricades and we do all this stuff. And I have all this experience. And then I went to a five day tactics course that was given by a bunch of, you know, former tier one and special mission unit guys. And then I realized, like, how much I didn't know, just like foundational principles and stuff like that. And so it was really eye opening for me. The problem I had with it was that some of these stuff was definitely too much on the warrior part of it where everything was like, kill, kill, kill, shoot, shoot, shoot. And there was no de-escalation there. There was no nothing about incidents where maybe deadly physical force is not applicable for a situation. And so I started being a little bit more open minded to thing. I think that the training companies that are out there that are military based training companies that also incorporate active and retired law enforcement in their training programs, to give that perspective as well, deliver some of the best programs that I've seen. There's a large training company that I've done some work with that they really pick from a cadre of both the military side and the law enforcement side because there's teaching perspectives from both that are very applicable to law enforcement. And some of this stuff is very, very nuanced. When you're doing debrief points that the military guy might not realize or understand that, hey, before law enforcement breaches that door or as they're breaching the door, maybe they should announce that they're law enforcement police and that's something that maybe they never had to do overseas. Whereas for law enforcement, that becomes a pretty important debrief point, that if a team doing a search warrant doesn't announce who they are and now they get engaged by an individual, that individual might use an affirmative defense that I thought my house was getting broken into. So if there's castle doctrine or something like that. So I think training companies that dive into or that delve into the experience of both military tier one special mission units as well as law enforcement individuals that have a lot of experience from the SWAT, tactical, and bringing kind of those two worlds together, I think they deliver, like, phenomenal products from a training perspective. Jon Becker: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, a lot of it is what you're looking for, too, right? Like, if you want to learn to shoot proficiently. You know, there's probably no more proficient shooters in the world than we have in our miss special mission units like that. From a skill standpoint, it's staggering. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah. And even from the civilian sector, I mean, there's individuals that have no law enforcement background and no military background who are some of the best shooters in the world. And so I always, when I get into the conversation with people about individuals and teaching and teaching stuff that's either with or within their wheelhouse or outside of it, I always tell people like, hey, you don't have to be a law enforcement super duper SWAT guy or Navy SEAL or Delta Force to teach something as simple as fundamental marksmanship. But now, when you get into applying fundamental marksmanship in a CQB environment where you're adding additional things that are now out of that individual's wheelhouse, now that's where that stuff really starts to become applicable for me. I'm never an advocate of people who teach things that they've never really done in real life. We never ran nods. You would never, ever, ever see me teaching a nods class. I can go out now and take a nods class and immerse myself in it and become as proficient as maybe the next person running night vision, but I never did it for real. I'm not going to turn around now just to make some money, say, hey, you know, we're going to do a night vision class because I'm just teaching notional stuff without any real world kind of backing to anything that I'm saying. Jon Becker: Yeah. One of the things that is interesting about ESU is it's very, like your approach is very. I don't want to use the word vanilla, but I can't think of another word. Like, it's not sexy. Archaic. No, it isn't. But the thing is, it isn't archaic. Like when you. When you talk about the why with guys, there is a specific why, right? The use of tear gas, the use of explosive breaching, the use of nods, things that units think are very sexy and want to go hunt. And then you have a conversation with ESU and it's. It's very, you know, it's hydraulic breaching and it's very bland because it's safe and it's been proven safe. And there does seem to be almost this, like, counterculture within the unit to kind of the latest, greatest influencer, you know? Look how cool this is. It almost feels like the unit is kind of like, yeah, no, we're not cool. We're just very professional. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah, I mean, absolutely. So, once again, I always look at pros and cons, and so just to touch on both of those, I think it's a testament to the unit, the fact that we mitigate a lot of incidents every single year without night vision, without utilizing energetic breaching, without utilizing chemical agents and stuff like that. And a lot of these incidents we resolve by simply talking to people like that. There's no super secret playbook. It's just we're good at talking to people. And so we're able to continually resolve incidents without utilizing a lot of this extra stuff. The downside to that, and this is, this is the struggle with this, is that sometimes our success, because it is the norm, it becomes the expectation. So now, especially the higher ups in the department who are not within the special operations division, not within ESU, when you start to request, utilize certain things like chemical munitions or, or energetic breaching, they turn around and they say, well, what do you need that for? You guys do this all the time. You've never had to use it before. Why do you need to use it now? And obviously, the risk aversion light starts going off because no chief wants to be the first one to give approval to do an energetic breach or to utilize chemical munitions. And then something goes wrong, and then it's obviously going to be on their shoulders and they're going to have to kind of answer for it. Regardless how much stuff rolls downhill, they're still giving the ultimate approval and authorization for it. And so one of the, especially the environment that we work in, very dense apartment buildings and stuff like that, we have to consider cross contamination. We have to consider the effects that an internal energetic breach might have on neighboring apartments and stuff like that and everything else. And so these are obviously factors where I think professionals, you do stuff when you need to do it, you don't do it just because you can. And so for us, it was a lot of these incidents. We did not feel that this added stuff was necessary. I was always very adverse to night vision guys that I worked with. Oh, we need night vision. We need night vision. We need night vision. Me, it wasn't so much a, what do we need night vision for? We've done this for X number of years without it because I see the use for it and I see the benefits to having it. You know, it's New York City, but we still have areas like Pelham Bay park and Central park and Casino park in Queens and these large wooded areas that get pretty dark at night, you know, and we've had incidents where individuals have run off into the woods, and now, you know, we're hunting through the woods with white light, which is obviously not ideal from a tactical perspective at all. But my issue with the night vision comes back to what we were talking about earlier with, how do you maintain training for a unit of three to 400 people? And now you add a skillset like night vision that guys and girls are not going to be utilizing on a daily basis. You can't just say, like, hey, yeah, throw on some night vision and turn off the lights in the garage and walk around and there's your truck. Training like that, that doesn't work, and that's far more dangerous than not having it at all. So I think that if we had a methodology or a means of providing that necessary ongoing training to complement specialized equipment like that, then it might be realistic. A team of 20, 30 guys that are full time, that maybe do 100 operations a year and have a lot of time to spend training and perfecting that. Yeah, it makes sense. Like, absolutely, I'm not anti night vision, but for us and for our purposes and for the maintenance of just being proficient at its use, that was why I was against it. And it was like, hey, until we can figure out this training stuff, we have no business at all utilizing something like that. So the problem, like I said, comes into now when you encounter a situation where maybe this stuff is warranted. And I think I can think of two incidents off the top of my head, and one was a search warrant. When I was on the A Team, we had gotten some intel from an outside agency of an individual in Brooklyn who was threatening to do a mass shooting inside of a supermarket. This was shortly after the mass shooting that had happened in Buffalo, New York. And so he had made some indications of wanting to do a similar attack, kind of a copycat sort of a thing. And so it ends up getting kind of pushed down through our intel division, and it ends up on our desk as an emergency search warrant. And so the challenge to it was the structure was a three story brownstone, and the target of the search warrant lived in the basement, which had an internal staircase that led up to the second floor. His mother lived on the second floor of the location. And so, doing our kind of scout stuff before going to execute this warrant, we determined that the only breach point into this structure or into the first floor. The warrant that we had got was just for the first floor or the basement level, I should say, of this structure. And so it was a single breach point. We didn't have another option other than an outward opening door with three locks on it. And the individual had posted photographs. We had photographs of this individual with an AK-47. And so we started game planning this about how we were going to handle the situation. And our initial thing was, hey, we're just going to do a surrounding call out. You know, we're going to get perimeter and containment. We're going to initiate our call out procedures. We're going to have all of our guys behind armor and observation team up and the whole nine, and we're just going to call this guy out. It's not worth us rushing in there just to get into a gunfight. And so that was the initial plan, which quickly devolved after that, because we had gotten intel after that that his plan was to do some harm to another individual that was inside of the location prior to committing this planned mass shooting. And so now we started to look at this as a, well, if we initiate surrounding call out and he kills this third party inside of this location, now we're kind of holding ourselves responsible knowing this. And so it became a very delicate balance between, hey, are we going to do a surrounding call out and put ourselves in a position of advantage, or are we going to do this as a – We had a no knock endorsement on the search warrant. So it was like, hey, are we going to do this as a no knock entry with a dynamic entry, almost in the perspective of considering this like a hostage rescue, just because we did not want this individual to kill an innocent third party inside the location. And so the breachers, in fact, I was one of the breachers that day. And so looking at the target door going, man, that's a heavy outward opening door with three locks on it. Like, that's not an easy breach. There's really nothing for us to hook up a chain or a strap to, to do any kind of a pole. And so we are now kind of stuck doing this with manual tools between hydraulics or a halogen. And so we said, hey, you know what? This is a good situation, or this is a good scenario for us to use explosives like we have energetics. I was one of the explosive breachers in the unit. And so based on all the circumstances, the type of door that it was, the difficulty we knew that we were going to have getting through it in a timely manner, and the fact that it was an exterior door. So we were not worried about internal overpressures in an apartment door right across the hall and all that. Other stuff we said, hey, this is the perfect scenario for this. We went to the duty captain that was working, and he was on board. Yeah, this makes sense. Everything you guys are telling me, this makes sense. And it made it way up the chain. And once it hit a certain level at a certain individual, it was like an immediate, like, no, you guys don't need that. You've done this before, so on and so forth and everything else, and was, like, shot down without any other consideration. And so that was one of those incidents. Where did it work out? Like, yeah, I'm still here with no extra holes in my body, but the individual came and opened up the door as we were trying to breach it. Cause that's how long it was taking. And so, hey, that only worked because he made the conscious decision to come to the door with nothing in his hands and open it up for us. Had he made the conscious decision to give his ak, come to the door and start shooting through the door? I mean, you know, like, I might not be sitting here right now having this conversation with you, but, you know, the way that it was looked at afterwards, we were very defeated as a team. Like, that was collectively, we were like, that was garbage. Like, that was not good. That was cowboyish. That was totally unnecessary, completely put us at risk for absolutely no reason when we had these tools available to us. And in the eyes of the individual that made the decision to deny the energetic breach, it was, see, everything worked out of. Everything worked out and got in his car and drove away, you know, so, you know, yeah, it's a testament to the unit that we get this stuff done and, you know, yeah, I use the word archaic because we don't have the latest and greatest with everything. Some stuff we do, some stuff we definitely don't. There's definitely teams out there that have, you know, a lot sexier gear and equipment and I access to certain things and everything else that we don't. But I think that's a testament to the unit, the fact that we are able to be successful without it being due to luck, but instead just being due to skill and experience that so many of these incidents every year are resolved simply by talking to people. The vast majority of our barricades end up in involuntary surrenders, and I think that's really amendable. Jon Becker: 100%. Yeah, I mean, that's the funny thing about the current modern dialogue about SWAT teams is SWAT team shows up and it's going to get more violent. And you look at ESU, you look at LAPD, deep platoon, you look at SCB, that's the exact opposite of what happens. A professional tactical team gets there, the situation slows down, it becomes more deliberate. You know, it de-escalates. It's more negotiation. It's, you know, I think, it is a testament to ESU's professionalism that that still is very much the mindset. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah. And, you know, I think that a lot of people that are not in the tactical community don't understand that. You know, the body armor and the armored vehicles and the chemical munitions and the impact rounds, like all of the tools. Tools that we bring to a situation, to an outsider, they look escalatory, but they are all completely de escalatory in nature. You know, if I'm behind armor, maybe I don't have to shoot a person that's shooting at me. If I'm sitting in an armored vehicle and the nine millimeter rounds are just plinking off the side of it, like, okay, we're safe in here. Let's try to resolve this without using deadly physical force. But, you know, I think, again, there has to be also the mindset that, yes, we can resolve 99% of the incidents through our regular, conventional means, but we have to be prepared, ready and willing and equipped and trained to deal with that 1% that falls outside of that spectrum, that, you know, committed, trained individual armed with a long gun, body armor, like, not willing to, you can talk as nice as you want, use every trick in the book that you've amassed over your career and everything else. It's not going to work, you know, on that one percenter. And so, you know, those, I think those are the incidents that really kind of set, you know, set you apart. And those are the incidents I used to tell people, like, hey, we're going to train for the 1% because that's going to make the 99% of the work that we do easy. It sets you up for success. That that 99% we're going to be able to handle with no problems at all. Yeah, maybe we'll be here for a couple hours, but eventually it's going to result in a voluntary surrender, and everyone's going to go home and be happy in that feeling of accomplishment, knowing that we're able to resolve an incident just through verbal de escalation, utilizing some negotiation techniques and stuff like that. But it's not the answer 100% of the time. And I think that is the problem is when you encounter an incident that gets resolved purely on luck, but the upper level or the executives look at it as just another win. And then they go out and they tout the equipment and look, oh, this ballistic shield got shot and it stopped the bulletin. Well, maybe that guy didn't have to be there in the first place. Maybe if we had utilized chemical munitions, we wouldn't have had to put one of our guys in a situation for his ballistic shield to get shot. So that has always been my critique, is our level of success that we have. It's not always the answer. That's what we should strive for. We should always strive for the lowest level of force possible to resolve an incident. And if we can resolve an incident just through negotiation, fantastic. I mean, that's a win. And I think I used to tell people it's a lot harder to talk someone out of a crisis than it is just to walk up and punch someone in the face. Anyone can punch someone in the face and use physical force, but it takes a lot of skill and patience to take someone who is on the edge of a crisis and kind of talk them back to reality and then get them to submit to you. That is far more powerful than any tough guy. Macho. Yeah, I punch this guy in the face, like, whatever, nonsense. So I just, it's a very, it's something I'm very passionate about. It's a sticking point for me that, that we let our success is, it's a fantastic thing that we should be touting, but it's also a very big downside. It's a very big negative, because, like I said, it just becomes the expectation. Jon Becker: I think that's a fantastic place for us to stop. Joe, where can people get in touch with you, see what you're doing, all of that? Joe Bucchignano: Yeah, so I'm not really super active on the socials, but, you know, I retired in June of last year, June 30th, on my 20th anniversary, and I started up a company, crisis zone consulting. Just trying to share some of the lessons that I've learned over the years. And just give agencies, and whether it's public safety agencies like law enforcement or EMS agencies, businesses, private entities, or even individuals, just good training, just based on some of my experience. So you can find my website,. I'm on all the socials as well, under the same name. You can find me there. I'm going to start getting a little bit more active there, so please feel free to reach out through the website if I can ever offer up any assistance or advice or whatever it might be. That's what I'm here for, just to continue service in my retired life. Jon Becker: Joe, thanks, man! It's great spending time with you! Joe Bucchignano: Thanks, Jon! I really appreciate the opportunity!

Episode 40 Transcript

jonathan@aardvarktactical.com on October 3, 2024

Episode 40 – The History of SWAT in Texas and TTPOA

Jon Becker: The evolution of special tactics in the United States is a complicated story whose roots lie in the violent social and political environment of the late 1960s. Highly unusual and televised events like the Texas Tower Sniper in 1966 and the Munich massacre in 1972 created the need to develop specialized units to respond to events that were beyond the capabilities of normal patrol officers.

While Southern California often receives most of the credit for the development of special tactics because of the efforts of LAPD D-Platoon and LASD, it's important to understand that the West coast was not the only one who were looking at special tactics.

In fact, by the early 1980s, there were numerous regions who were all following parallel paths of development, albeit in different stages. In these regions, tactical associations began to form that were focused on sharing information and training among agencies.

One of these was the Texas Tactical Police Officers association, or TTPOA, which was formed in 1984 and this year is celebrating its 40th anniversary. As such, it seemed like a perfect time for us to do an episode on the history and evolution of SWAT in Texas, as well as the history and impact of the TTPOA.

My guests today are three influential figures in TTPOA.

Lieutenant Dan Colosanto is the current president of TTPOA. Dan is a 30 year veteran of the Garland Police Department, with 28 of those years spent on the SWAT team. Dan has worked in patrol, narcotics and SWAT and is a graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point and an army veteran.

In February of 2021, Dan earned a master's degree in homeland security with a concentration on counterterrorism for the American military university. Dan was the SWAT team leader during the May 3rd, 2015 ISIS inspired terrorist attack in Garland, Texas. Dan also serves on the intelligence and terrorism chair for the NTOA.

Paul Ford has experience spanning both the government and private sectors. Paul's diverse roles include being a police officer, instructor, writer, publisher, developer of police training, and sales and marketing executive. Paul began his law enforcement career in 1985, assuming roles in patrol, SWAT and as a detective. Paul spent almost a decade on the Austin, Texas SWAT team, serving as the unit's training coordinator and team leader. He's the recipient of more than 60 commendations, including three for meritorious conduct.

And in the 1990s, Paul played a pivotal role in reshaping and expanding TTPOA, where he served as a secretary, vice president, and editor of Command magazine. His dedication earned him the association's prestigious, Excellent award in 1999 and in 2001, Paul transitioned to the private sector where he has held positions at defense technology and is currently the vice president of sales and marketing for CSI. Known through their brands, CTS and pen arms.

Sandy Wall is a true legend in Texas tactical community. Sandy spent 28 years with the Houston, Texas Police Department, 22 of which were on Houston SWAT. Sandy is a recipient of the TTPOA Excellence Award and the TTPOA Lifetime Achievement Award and the National Police Association's top cop for the state of Texas. He has also received the Houston Police Department chief's commendation for valor and the Officer of the year award.

Sandy has served three times as the president of TTPOA. He's also written two books, invented the wall banger system, and has taught and testified as an expert all over the United States. This is a really enlightening discussion and I hope that you enjoy our conversation about TTPOA.

My name is John Becker.

For the past four decades, I've dedicated my life to protecting tactical operators. During this time, I've worked with many of the world's top law enforcement and military units. As a result, I've had the privilege of working with the amazing leaders who take teams into the world's most dangerous situations.

The goal of this podcast is to share their stories in hopes of making us all better leaders, better thinkers, and better people. Welcome to The Debrief!

Guys, thanks so much for being here today! I'm excited to have this conversation!

Sandy Wall: Great to be here!

Paul Ford: Thanks for having us!

Dan Colosanto: Thanks for having me!

Jon Becker: So, you know, I set the environment in the intro, but, you know, 66, Charles Witten climbs the tower at the University of Texas and we, you know, starts the active shooter craze. 72, we have the, you know, the Munich massacre at the Olympic Games. And it kind of sets an environment where special tactics teams start developing all over the world. In Texas, Houston SWAT forms in 74, if I'm remembering correctly, Sandy?

Sandy Wall: That's correct.

Jon Becker: Kind of set the, set the early environment for me. What was that like? Because a lot of you guys got, well, you got there pretty early. What was it like as this is evolving?

Sandy Wall: Well, I had the luxury of knowing several of the original team members. In fact, we have an alumni association and February 10, we will bring all of the surviving members of the original 1970, 14 together. And it's going to be a big deal and we're going to, we're going to celebrate those guys. But having talked to many of them, they were picked, handpicked throughout the city, the city force at that time, there's probably about 1502 thousand officers in Houston and they were hand picked for their talents.

Most of them were Vietnam veterans. And it was just a mindset that those guys were used to combat and I. And, you know, bad situations, and they would handle it better. They put them all on an airplane and sent them to Quantico to train with the FBI. And when they came back, there were. There was 24 people picked, and that that manpower level stayed the same for years and years and years.

In fact, it's not much more. Even now, we have a relatively small team. But those guys that, when they got off the plane and I made it back downtown to the police station, there were 24 police cars, unmarked, waiting for them, brand spanking newt, and they headed up keys. It was like a super proud moment that they had a take on car and. But having said that, the. The city was all in on it, but they had to buy their own uniforms. Their weddings were bought by the city, but they had to buy their own boots and, you know, ancillary things that kind of come with it, the individual equipment. And they made some horrific mistakes right at first, but the city stuck with them.

I think they burned down at least three houses in the first two years. The most horrific event we had, an officer was shot by three escaped convicts that were holed up in an apartment over the east side of downtown. And a patrol officer tried to make the initial approach on him, and they shot and killed him. And his body was laying in the front yard, and SWAT got there and they started receiving fire, and the decision was made to use gas on them. And they, back in those days, they didn't know the difference between hot gas, meaning like riot grenades and indoor gas.

So they threw outdoor gas inside a structure and burned it to the ground. They brought it to a resolution, but the city ended up having to buy that apartment building. But it slowly evolved. Those guys weren't quickly. And by the time I came on the SWAT team in 1979, it had only been in place four years. But those guys were so squared away and had learned so much. And the things they taught me were state of the art at that time and just a credit to their ability to adapt, adjust, learn from their mistakes and improve. And as a result, the team continued to grow.

Jon Becker: So when you come on at 79, how many teams do you think there are in the state of Texas?

Sandy Wall: How many SWAT teams? Yeah, you know, I think Dallas was just getting formed. They were probably came on as 74, but at a different level. I don't think they had gotten to the position that they were at now. I would guess maybe two or three. Houston may have been the only full time, and that's what we were. When you say a full time SWAT team, a lot of people think, well, you're dedicated, swap, but you do other things. You have ancillary duties. We did. I mean, when you went to work, the first 2 hours were working out and the rest of your time on that ship was trained. We didn't have ancillary duties unless the president came into town or there was some special event, but that's all we did.

Whereas a lot of teams, they would call themselves full time SWAT, but they had to do patrol, they had to do warrant execution, they had to do different other things. And that was one of the things that was, I guess, a benefit to us in terms of being doing just one job. But as a double edged sword, if you screwed it up, we really didn't have many excuses because the city was giving us what we asked for.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I think at that point. So that's – You guys are farmed in 74, deep potatoes farmed at 71. There are probably less than a dozen full time SWAT teams in the United States in the early seventies because even agencies that were forming teams were forming counterinsurgency teams or riot teams that also did SWAT stuff.

So I think, yeah, you guys were definitely one of the earlier teams, especially earlier teams to go full time. So you get on the team in 79. So NTOA was formed in 1983. TTPOA was formed in 1984. Give me the environment, you know, as Ttpoa is formed. Talk to me about that early, those early days.

Sandy Wall: Well, I actually didn't have much personal involvement in TTPOA when his first storm formed. I got to give credit to some Dallas guys that kind of got that initiative, and they came to Houston, asked if we wanted to be part of it. Another guy on our team, the guy by the name of Paul Day, represented us and helped, I guess, you know, carve out some bylaws and some rules that the organization would operate from.

But it was one of those things that wasn't truly supported by their departments, so they had to do it in their off time and weekends. And it was just really, really difficult for guys that are carrying out a full time job, maybe raising a family, maybe working extra jobs to make ends meet, and then now they're having to devote time to this fledgling organization that's trying to get started.

So it really didn't go very far until a guy by the name of Paul Ford got involved. And he had the vision and the foresight and the leadership to see what this organization could be. And so that was a few years later, and then that's where it really took off. So for those first few years, it was just kind of bouncing around. It's kind of a neat idea, a neat concept, but wasn't a whole lot of people fully on board?

Jon Becker: Yeah, I think it took several years for NTOA to even really take a foothold, even though John and Mike had really leaned into it. It took him a few years to actually get it off the ground and really start doing training and some of that. So, Paul, you get to Austin SWAT in 1989? My memory.

Paul Ford: Yes. 89.

Jon Becker: So how long is it before you are involved in TTPOA?

Paul Ford: It's probably two or three years. I mean, I had heard about teach POa. There was a. There was a guy in the Austin SWAT team who had taken the initiative. You remember him, Sandy. His name was Dale Toler. And I think Dale was like a regional director or training coordinator. So one of our guys was involved, I think. I went to the first TTPOA conference in 1992.

I met Tom Shelton, who was the president at the time. He was editing the magazine at the time. And from there, I just steadily got more involved. Submitted some articles for the command that Tom was publishing at the time. Started going to the conferences at the same time. I had gone to an NTOA conference around 92, 93. I went to an NTOA conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and all the greats were there.

I mean, John Coleman was there, Sid Heal was there, Ron McCarthy was there. I could go on and on and it was like a moment where I was able. I can make a comparison between what I saw in the TTPOA and what I saw in the NTOA and both in, like, not just the organizations but the people. I mean, the caliber, the presence, the quantity and the quality of the information that these guys were sharing. It was a stark comparison to me of, okay, this is the TTPOA and this is the NTOA.

And kind of where we needed to be going, you know, what, the ground that. The ground that we needed to make up and catch up. Because I was, you know, I'm from Texas. I'm proud to be from Texas and I'm, you know, and I was proud to be associated with the TTPOA at the time. But it was a big difference.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I think people forget that, you know, in. In 1984, the Olympics came to California, they came to Los Angeles. And if the Munich massacre is the catalytic event that drives the development of special tactics teams, the 84 Olympics is the gasoline on the fire between La sheriff's SEB, LAPD platoon and FBI, specifically HRT and the LA office. There is a massive amount of money that gets poured onto special tactics. In southern California, you saw this very rapid evolution of tactics and skills, and you had those teams spending a lot of time with the european counterterrorism team 22, SAS, new form, GSG 9.

And I think that for a while there, the West coast got this kind of acceleration as a result of the 84 games. That didn't happen in other parts of the country. But with the advent of NTOA, I think you started to see that seeding the other regions, which is kind of exactly what you just described.

Paul Ford: Yeah, I was also able to make the connection then that, you know, about tactical community. TTPOA existed, but we really hadn't come together yet as a tactical community. And I felt like I started paying attention. I could see what was going on in California. I could see what was going on in Florida. And Florida teams also seem to be very advanced. They seem to be strict about their standards, about PT, about selection process and things like that across the board.

And I could see that the thing that California and Florida had in common were strong associations, a tactical community that grew from those associations and from there it seemed that for me that for Texas to rise, for the Texas boat to rise, that we needed to have a good tactical community as well. And we had the vehicle, we had the teachboa, you know, we had the framework for it. It just hadn't all coalesced and come together yet.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I mean, just for further historical context, 91, we have the Luby diner, Luby's diner massacre with 23 people killed and 27 injured in Texas Lubbock, if I remember correctly.

Sandy Wall: Colleen.

Jon Becker: Colleen.

Sandy Wall: Colleen.

Jon Becker: Colleen. Which then kind of creates a little more impetus. And then 93, we have the Waco siege, which obviously creates all kinds of tension, both good and bad, for special tactics worldwide. But also in Texas, even though it wasn't a Texas op, it was an FBI op, it certainly put the focus of the tactical community in that part of Texas. 90, Sandy, when do you actually, when does Paul first lure you into involvement with TTPOA?

Sandy Wall: I was. I remember like it was yesterday. It was 1995. We were down in Arlington, Texas, at the time, the SWAT athletic competition, what we call the. Back then they were called the police Olympics. I think they're still in organization, but they ran that TTPOA didn't have anything to do with it. And we went down there and competed.

I know Austin was there, Dallas was there, a lot of the major teams in Texas. And after the competition was over the next year, it was going to be held in Houston. And I had already met with a representative of the police athletic Federation and showed them what we could do for them. And so I had a nutshell of how it was going to run.

So they asked me to step up in front of the group and tell them about where this is going to be next year, what it's going to be like. So I did. And after it was over with, Paul comes walking up to me. He said, hey, we need to talk. And that's where I got the spiel. And he was basically saying, look, I can run the organization, but I need somebody to be the president. I'll handle the magazine, I'll handle the money, but I need somebody to grab this thing by the horns and run with it.

And I'm looking at him like, I don't know what you're talking about. Top four or five jack and cokes. Somehow he convinced me to do it, and so I wasn't elected yet. I had to go to the following meeting, which Paul hosted there in Austin. And we had our winter conference, which at the time was the only thing we did.

And it was just mainly a few lectures, and I think maybe they had one class off site that was about it. It was probably not more than 70, 80 people there, SWAT officers. And we had the election right there. And they elected me. They said, Paul said, Sandy's going to run. And everybody. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's in. At least the ones that were still sold were voted for me. And then they hand me this shoebox with some papers.

And, of course, I soon realized the organization is invalid. I wasn't even elected by the bylaws, the way they're written. I was supposed to be elected. We had lost our incorporation status with the state of Texas. We didn't have a 501 C3. They were telling me we couldn't do that, which I found out later we could, and we did, but. And we were broke, looking at Paul like, what the h*** can you get me into? And so that's the rest of the system.

Paul Ford: Okay, so, yeah, the truth was, Sandy, that there wasn't any money to handle. We didn't have any. And handling the membership consisted, did consist of that shoebox that you got and all those pieces of paper with people that probably hadn't paid dues in two years and couldn't figure out. I couldn't figure out, you know, who was an active member or not. So we were. I mean, yeah, we had the foundation for a tactical community, but we hadn't really organized it yet, Jon.

Sandy Wall: We had to pass the hat at the meeting or at the conference in order to pay the hotel bill so that Paul didn't have to go to jail.

Jon Becker: Yeah, so, you know, there are moments in TTPOA lore that even in California I hear about the passing of the hat. In the basement of the Ramada Inn is one of those moments. Paul, do you try to defend yourself there or just go ahead and admit to it now?

Paul Ford:

We had to have that conference to kind of just break even to pay for a magazine and to pay for what we spent at that conference, we had to have that conference, the registrations. You know, I tell you, Sandy, at the beginning the magazine was a big expense for the association, but it was. And I think maybe today magazines are not as big a deal, or having a newsletter isn't as big a deal for a tactical association, I think, as it was back then.

But back then it was kind of the standard. If you're going to be a tactical association, you're going to have a publication. You know, the Florida SWAT association had a magazine. NTOA, of course, had tactical edge. When Cato formed in California, one of the first things Ken Hubbs did was to have a publication to go along with it. And it was the way that we communicated. It was our platform for communicating and informing. But it was also the suck of money that came out of the association every quarter.

Sandy Wall: I would agree with that. And I would say it was the face of the organization that gave us some credibility. And I can remember going into corporations around Houston trying to, you know, get some money. And the first thing I do is slap that magazine down in front of a CEO or somebody, and he'd look at it. It was very professionally done, at least by the standards at the time.

And he thought, wow, these guys, they got their own magazine. You know, they got officers, they do training around the state. Wow, they must. They have their stuff together. Little did he know we were sliding by the seat of our pants. In fact, I can remember Paul telling me, Sandy, we need to do a class and get some revenue. I cannot afford to publish the next magazine until we do. And then now we're scrambling, trying to put together a class.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I think that is a recurring theme among all the associations. It's easy in a modern information environment to forget that in 1992, 93, 94 there was no Internet. There was no – You just go find an article. The way that information was shared in the tactical community was through TTPOAs magazine, Florida SWATs magazine, and NTOAs magazine. And the number of people that belong to multiple associations just so they could read. The magazine was. Was a pretty high number.

Sandy Wall: Yeah. It's funny you should mention the Internet. I told a funny story. When we were all waiting to come online, there was this new thing called the Internet. And I could see these websites popping up, and I didn't know anything about how to do them.

So my point man, it was on my team, and of course, all the guys on my team, I just basically directed them, you're going to do this and you're going to do this. And so I made John our treasurer at the time to take some of the load off Paul. And then I also said he was kind of a techie guy. And I said, you're going to put together a website for us. And so he took me over to a webmaster and we sat there for like 2 hours in his office, and they're talking french. I don't understand any of it. We leave there.

I said, John, do you know what to do? And he said, no, but I'll figure it out. And the next morning, he came into the SWAT office and he looked like crap. I said, what the h*** happened to you, John? He said, I've been up all night building this a website. And I said, do we have one? And he said, come here. And we went over to our little computer that I had borrowed from a little company called compact Computer back at the time that was started in Houston. I had to take the CEO's son out and let him shoot a machine gun to get the computer. But we got it and we powered that thing up and I'll be damned. We had a website and I wanted to kiss him right on the mouth. I didn't, but I wanted to.

Jon Becker: I'm gonna need a rentals, so. All right, so that's like 90. What are we at? 97? 96? 97?

Paul Ford: I think we're 95. Yeah.

Dan Colosanto: Yeah.

Paul Ford: I think when Sandy and I started talking was 94. And by the time things started coming together and we started actually putting out a magazine and talking about the next competition and a conference in Austin was 95.

Jon Becker: So when is the first big TTPOA conference?

Sandy Wall: Austin, Texas? Tell them about it, Paul.

Paul Ford: Yeah, so we had gone to, and this is the part where SWAT guys are competitive. And either if you're on the same team together or you're on different teams in the same association, you're competitive. And we had gone to, I believe, college station up there near Texas A and M and had our conference.

Sandy Wall: We went up there.

Paul Ford: It was a good conference, but it was a small conference. And we were four or five of us on the way back, and we just got to talking in the car and a guy named Kevin Yates, so it's on, the Austin SWAT team, said we're. We're going to make all those guys look like, you know, second place next year. We're going to have the best conference that disassociation's ever had, and we're going to raise the bar, and that's what we set out to do.

I told Kevin when he signed that contract at the hotel to commit to all the things we committed to that. I was, again, terrified that we wouldn't be able to pay for it, but we did, and we ended up having a huge conference, and we had great instructors and huge attendance, and it was fun. We did fun stuff. It was a pivotal moment, I think, for TTPOA, that 98 conference in Austin.

Sandy Wall: To add some numbers to that, John, a big conference before that was about 100, 2130 people. Anytime you went over 100, you were doing good. If you got the 100, 2130, that's excellent. Paul went over 400. That was like a phantom leap, you know, we just couldn't believe it.

Jon Becker: So that is when, you know, that is when TTPOA makes its quantum leap and becomes, you know, one of the biggest conferences in the world.

Sandy Wall: At that point.

Jon Becker: I mean, yeah, that was huge, the number. Yeah, so that's 99? 98?

Sandy Wall: 98 I believe it is. And in 99, we had it in Houston. Of course, Paul's talking about the competition I'm getting with my guys. And we said, we're going to do this even bigger and better. We're going to go over 500. And we did. We went out to clear Lake and we had it at the Hilton out there, right on Galveston Bay, and we went over 500, and then it went to Dallas.

And of course, Mike Finley's involved by them, and he's like, we're going to beat Alliston and Houston and we're going to make this even better. And I think he went to 600. It was just. It was just as it rotated around, every city wanted to do it bigger and better than the city before, just because of who we are. And, you know, that we're always willing to beat the next guy.

Jon Becker: Well, I think it speaks to the culture, TTPOA, and that still exists, right? There still is this, you know, although. Although it is an association, there's an internal, healthy cultural competition that is constantly going on, even among the regions in Texas.

Sandy Wall: Dan could probably speak to that.

Dan Colosanto: Yeah. So at the winter board meeting, we have the different regions, and there's a huge competition as far. I mean, they won't say it out loud, but they're always. I know there was. When I was the region director in region seven, I was always in competition with the region director of region two in Houston. And we'd go back and forth. I remember one meeting, I think it was. Hugo was the, was the region director down there, and he went first and he's like, yeah, I made whatever amount of money he made.

And I went, man, I said, I've made so much money, I don't even know how much, but I know it was more than Hugo. I made it to be like a penny more. And he got mad. He was super competitive. But there is that competition among the regions as to who's bringing in more money and that sort of thing.

Sandy Wall: And of course, all that money's from classes. Those guys gotta go out and work and make those classes happen.

Dan Colosanto: They're working. That's not. I mean, as I like to say, everybody thinks the SWAT fairy comes down and waves her magic wand and these classes happen. I mean, there's a lot of work that goes into not just getting the instructor, finding a place to do the class, and then putting on the class, making sure it's run safely, and everything gets done. And then comes the real hard part, which is taking care of the rosters, making sure the guys are getting the T Cole credit, making sure everything is right for the record keeping and that sort of thing. And it's an administratively heavy load.

Jon Becker: So I'm hearing you say that, Dan, it sounds like you're no longer using Paul's shoebox strategy.

Dan Colosanto: No, we're a little bit more advanced than the shoebox at this point.

Jon Becker: It's. Yeah, some traditions.

Jon Becker: Just a little.

Paul Ford: I guess we always hoped it would get there, Dan.

Dan Colosanto: It's there.

Jon Becker: So, Sandy, before we more modern ERA TTPOA, I want to go back and just kind of early evolution of special tactics in Texas. You and I have talked in the past about things that were drivers, and one of those was the relationship between Houston and the tier one teams. Can you talk about that for a minute?

Sandy Wall: Yeah, absolutely. I would say before we really started developing that expertise with those guys, we were pretty much a surround and negotiate, you know, call out, gas them out. We would call ourselves a hostage rescue, but I can't think of any that we – If we did it, we didn't do it very well because we didn't know what we were doing, and we didn't have, I didn't know anybody in San Antonio or anybody in Austin or anybody in Dallas, so we just didn't have other expertise that took to call on.

So we're figuring this out as we go. And I call it inbred training. We're learning from the guys that were here before me. They're just passing it down, the mistakes, and we're trying to get better at it. But somewhere along the line, and my memory escapes, who actually, if they reached out to us or we reached out to them, but at the time, the economy was not that good and we had a lot of older buildings in Houston that were going to be torn down or needed to be torn down.

And somehow these guys from Fort Bragg, everybody knows who I'm talking about, came down and said, we'd like to develop a relationship with you guys, and if you'll go out and show us these buildings, introduce us to the owners, and we'll negotiate the deal. We'll bring people down here, we'll train. You can train with us.

In fact, when the deal is over, you can send a team up to Fort Bragg and we'll train with you up there. And, you know, I grew up in the Vietnam era, and I just wasn't a real big, I guess, not that I didn't like the military. I wanted to join the army, but after Vietnam, I had a just sour taste in my mouth and I was thinking, you know, what really can these guys do?

And then the first time I went out with them and I went, oh, my God. They were showing us stuff that I hadn't even imagined, and they were showing us how we really should be training and operating. And of course, the force multiplier with that is we're spreading them to the teams around us. After these guys would get on their C-140 and fly back to Fort Bragg, we're taking all this knowledge that we learned, we're splitting it around to other guys, and everyone is getting better.

And then, of course, it wasn't long we got involved with TTPOA, and not only are we sharing what we knew, but we're bringing in guys that had now retired from that unit of, and they're kind of got their own shingle hanging up and they're, you know, a gun for hire now. And they're going around and teaching what they were teaching the operators at Fort Bragg. They're teaching the law enforcement now, and we're bringing them in and it's just, I can't imagine.

And nothing to take away from the seals because the SEALs came to, we learned from them as well. We just had more of a relationship with the Bragg guys, but both of them tier one operators, we learned so much and I'm telling you, they probably save lives, not only the hostages but ours because we would have screwed it up trying to, you know, what we – To be what we eventually became.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's interesting because you see the same thing in the west coast, you see the same thing in Florida where, you know, the tier one teams develop out of Munich and on the heels of Munich and, you know, 84 Olympics happens. Everybody's engaging with, with the SEAL teams, they're engaging in bright with the guys in braggest and you just see this kind of catalytic effect of law enforcement working with military units and military units come to law enforcement to learn about urban environments, law enforcement is going to military to learn about tactics. And it just creates this kind of synergistic relationship that I think makes everybody better in a hurry.

Sandy Wall: Yeah, I would add to that, I recently wrote a book just kind of based on my career, but a large portion of it is my SWAT career. And in the book I tell a lot of stories of our interaction with those guys and almost every story ends with the title, these guys are crazy because, I mean, the things, the, I guess the safety limits that they were willing to push even in training, we would, like, really? Are we really going to do that?

Like, yeah, I can remember once they crashed a little bird and it was at night, they crashed it and they had two operators on either side. The little bird flipped on its side, had two operators pinned underneath it. We're running over there trying to get this helicopter off these guys to get it. The other two jumped off and hit the target. And while we were over there trying to save these guys lives, underneath the little bird, these guys are hitting the target.

And when they came back, I'm like, what the h*** have you guys been? They said, well, we hit the target. I said, like a helicopter crash. And he said, well, that's what we'd have done in a real deal. And then I look at him and I realize these are guys at a level that I can't even imagine. I mean, we would have called a real world event, stopped everything and focus, not them.

If that's what they would do in a real deal, that's what they did. And I mean, I just, it was a mindset that I don't think I could ever, I know I could never get to. And they were at a level I can never get to. But, oh, my God, did we learn from those guys?

Jon Becker: I think another catalyst for development, explosive entry, starts largely in Texas. It happens in a variety of places, but it develops pretty quickly in Texas. And I think that's because of your relationship with Alan Brosnan, right?

Sandy Wall: Yeah, Paul, you probably speak to that. Yeah.

Paul Ford: Allen was one of the early supporters of the association. He would come and he would pay money and advertise in our publications. He would submit articles. He came to our conferences for free, and he would provide this training. And he was a close friend and a strong ally of the TTPOA all through those nineties as we were developing. And I think by and large, Alan is, has done the same thing all over the country.

He's a, you know him, Sandy Dan knows him. He's a really interesting person and a very unselfish person. And he was also one of those, one that, you know, he fits in and that he wants, he wants to, he wants to help you. He wants, you know, you to rise, you know, to, to another level. Just like the tactical communities in California and Florida were helping Texas to rise up in the nineties. Alan was the same way, and it was just a great relationship.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I think there were a handful.

Jon Becker: Of people that kind of nationally were populating knowledge. Allen Brosnan, from teased being one of those, Sandy, Paul, who were the early movers, I've heard you refer to the Fab five, you know, Houston, Austin, Dallas, San Antonio and Abilene. I get that, right?

Sandy Wall: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. You had Mike Finley. We brought him on a little bit later, but Mike hit the ground running and took off and did great things for the association. Shannon couch was in it from the very beginning. He was there before me or Paul, although, you know, he, being from Abilene, a smaller town, and kind of out in West Texas, he was limited. But that guy was always there. He was always a hard worker. And somehow, he, if he said he was going to do it, he did it.

And then, you know, you get over San Antonio, you got a guy named George J. Hamp, several other guys, Eddie, Moe, the list goes on and on. But they were not as active in the association back then as terms of like, being a regional director or a board member. But when we needed them to host a class or host a conference, they stepped up and they did their part. So, yeah, those are the names that come to mind for me. Paul, can you add?

Paul Ford: No, I would just say that, number one, it was Shannon couch and Abilene. Mike Finley, yourself and myself. But we had departments that supported us, our commanders, and our rank structure. In our departments, they were behind us. They let us take city time to do TTPOA business sometimes. And we had teammates who were like, okay, you're the guy that TTPOA, but we're your team.

So we always had guys within our unit that were pitching in the, and kind of forming a cell around us to help out. Definitely couldn't have done all the things we did, just the four of us. But I think it's those four, those four guys that were kind of, you know, making the call to action in those first three or four years.

I mean, we were really having to like, hey, you know, join the TTPOA, you know, do something, host a class, you know, send an article in for the command magazine. This stuff isn't free, you know, it costs money to run this association, you know, so, I mean, those four guys were the ones making the call to action. But as the herd kind of grew, you know, we started kind of snowballing, got a lot of momentum.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I mean, at some point, TTPOA is bringing in national level experts, Sid Heal and Ron McCarthy and the guys that are kind of leading the charge nationally. You are pulling them in, and then it's not long after that that you are becoming the national experts. Right?

And Sandy Wall is teaching all over the United States and testifying all over the United States. Within a period of about ten years there, there was a massive transition from a fledgling organization to one of the strongest associations in the country.

Sandy Wall: Yeah, I would agree with that. And then we relied a lot on the NTOA. Right? At first to bring us talent like the Ron McCarthys and the Sid Hills and those guys that came down. And then we started branching out into the tier one groups and the black ops guys that were coming in, and then we started developing our own cadre, and we relied a lot on Paul Howe for a while, and he had already retired from the army and helped us out a lot.

But now the association, although they still bring in those world class guys and those guys with those experience that only a person that has been over in a hostile environment and had to fight your way in, do the job, fight your way out, and they're going up against trained soldiers instead of idiots, like a lot of times we do.

But we have a talent base now within the association, and I'm super proud of. And some of the things, I guess, that I'm just as proud of not only what I did for the association, but I brought in a guy like Paul Hershey who became a president of the association and took it to the next level. And then a Gary Heath. Those guys were all from Houston, so they were, I guess, learning from me not because I was doing it right, but what probably what not to do, but then became a leader within the association to take it to the next level.

And as I've told Dan more than once, because he gives me and Paul a lot of credit and you know, okay, I'll take a little bit of it. But we were about building a foundation and as you guys know, there's no structure that can stand if it's got a crumbling foundation. We built that foundation, but those guys built the tower on top of the foundation and it's still going up. I mean, every conference I go to, I'm amazed at what they've done with what we started with.

Jon Becker: So let's talk about that for a minute. So Dan, you're the current president, TTPOA. Talk to me about the current TTOA.

Dan Colosanto: All right. So right now we just, we're on our third website. Had to throw that out there. We have, so we're kind of in a transition getting from the people from the old one that's come back. So we're at pulled some numbers for you that you asked. We're about to be about 2000 members right now that we have signed up, that we still have people signing up because of the new website.

As far as the conferences go, I think the biggest one we ever had was 700 last year we were at about 600 registered, but we had about 1000 attendees. We've been staying pretty steady at about 1000 attendees. Now between signed up people and people coming to the vendor show, we had about 600 last year.

So I know one story they told was vendors. They had like 13 vendors at the first conference. And on TMPA podcast I told them, I said yeah, well, and this is true, we had 13 in the lobby because they wouldn't fit in the ballroom. So we were – Andy Atkins does a phenomenal job with that. We had about 200 vendors last year and we have 97 sign up now. So we're on track to stay around 200 plus. And the vendor show for us drives the train, talking about going to different places. We need about 50,000 sqft for a hotel to have the vendor show. And if they don't have that, we have to try to find another spot. So we're kind of, there's not, you'd be surprised. There's not many places that have that.

Jon Becker: No, it's nationally that, yeah, that is a true national level show. I mean, there are shows that regard themselves as national level shows that are not as large as the TTPOA conference, and it is certainly one of the top two or three in the country consistently.

Dan Colosanto: We had a waiting list last year. We'll probably have a waiting list again this year.

Jon Becker: That's fantastic! Talk to me about training. I know TTPOA does a lot of training both at a regional and association level. Tell me a little bit about what TTPOA is currently doing training wise.

Dan Colosanto: So training wise, we have, the last I checked, we had about 84 classes for this year. For this year into next year, we had probably, we did probably over 150 last year. The regional directors do that. They handle most of the year round training. They're kind of the glue that kind of keeps everything together. As far as the training goes, we have a myriad of instructors. One of the things we do as an organization is our goal. Our mantra, if you will, is we provide training. That's our mission.

The agencies and the end users decide how they're going to do it. We've been talking about explosive breaching. We offer explosive breaching from all the big three people that do it, from Alan Brosn, from Phetheme, Mister Cherry. He does it. And we provide that training. Same thing with tactics. We have army guys, we have Navy guys, we have officers, we have our own cadre guys that do it.

Same thing with shooting. We have world champion shooters and we have our own cadre guys. If you come to this year's conference and you want to shoot and you don't shoot, it's your fault because we have several world champions. We have Ben Stugger, we have Matt Pranka, we have Dan Brokos, we have, I mean, Rob Vogel. I mean, we have all kinds of instructors during the year we've had, Rob Latham has taught up in region seven, so we're bringing in all these instructors. So you have your choice.

And the good thing about it is the region directors can reach out to their regions and say, hey, I can call up and go, hey, I need a class from Sandy Wallace, or I need a class on tactical basket weaving. And we will find the guy or the girl and we will have that class. So those guys do a good job. Like I said, they're kind of the glue that keeps the organization rolling throughout the year. And I think we're one of the only associations that do off site training like that continuously throughout the year.

So those guys stay pretty busy because, like I said, it's not just putting on the class and bringing the instructor. That's the easy part. The hard part is all the admin work that goes along so that these guys get the credit for the training.

Sandy Wall: Phenomenal!

Jon Becker: Yeah, it really is. I mean,that is a full time training business that is, you know, turning out thousands of students a year. And the idea that it grew from, you know, literally everything is in a shoebox is kind of a staggering concept. And the thing that blows my mind.

Sandy Wall: It's run by volunteers. None of these guys get a dime.

Dan Colosanto: We all do it at our own.

Sandy Wall: Time for the right reason.

Dan Colosanto: One of our things that we talk about and we talked about with the NTOA was like some standard stuff. So there's. There's base for basic SWAT in Texas. There is a. The course has to be a minimum of 60 hours. And there's certain topics that have to be covered within. Within the class. You can go over 60 hours, but it has to be a minimum of 60. And some of the class, it's like team composition, SWAT history, legal liability. I think gas is in there, too.

Some other gas insertion and less lethal. And then you can kind of freelance after that. But those. There's specific topics, and I may be leaving some out, but there's specific topics that need to be covered. But the one thing we discovered was, and that's for T Col, there is nothing for advanced SWAT. Now, we've been doing advanced SWAT and most guys would agree, most of our regions, it's hostage rescue based. So it's hostage rescue topic.

So what I tasked the, our training advisory board with at our winter meeting is, hey, we need to come up with a set of standards for advanced SWAT. Hey, it's got to be 40 hours. And these are the topics that need to be covered. And put that through to TCOL. So we get an actual T Col number for advanced SWAT. So now we can say, look for in Texas for basic SWAT, you got to have this class.

And these are the criteria for advanced SWAT. You have to have this class. And these are the criteria because those are the big two that we do. And a lot of the guys that do those classes are volunteers. We're lucky the agencies let those guys come on their training time. And it's very for us. We really try hard to make the training inexpensive, as inexpensive as possible.

Jon Becker: I think one thing that's unique about TTPOA is some state associations find themselves in the middle of the political dialogue about setting standards, about the way law enforcement interacts with state government. And it does seem to me that you guys have made a conscious choice to stay out of that.

Dan Colosanto: Yes, we have. Again, I'm lucky I have these guys. They mentioned Gary Heath. Gary Heath's the one who got me. He jumped me in, as they say, at one of the Dallas conferences. So I'm lucky because I'm standing on the shoulders of giants. I have these guys to rely on. I call them a lot. Hey, if I'm screwing this up, please call me and tell me that you're doing something stupid. I kind of joke with Gary Heath and call him the special assistant to the president, because I've called him many times ago, hey, I'm about to do this. And he goes, maybe you should do this instead. Shannon Couch is on the board. He's our secretary.

And so I have him to rely on a lot of times, but none. And I'm going off of what was done before me, and we never got into that. We never got involved in that. And I don't think that's something that, as long as I'm the president, we're not going to get involved in it, because our job is training. Our job isn't getting involved in politics. We don't do that. We just don't. I don't think it's a good idea. We have too much other stuff to worry about getting guys trained and getting some guys, because there's a lot of agencies that can't afford it. We have a tremendous number of guys. You'd be surprised.

I mean, Sandy and Paul know they pay their own way. I mean, not everybody's that lucky where their agency pays. I've had guys come to class going, I paid my own way, paid my own hotel, paid for my own ammo, and I got a soft spot in my heart for that. And I'm like, all right, well, we're comping your spot to this class. We'll refund your money because you had to pay this other stuff.

So it's very important for me and the region guys know, hey, listen, you know, you got a guy like that compass spot? Cause that's part of our deal. As the 501 C3, we donate a lot of training. We give free spots out a lot to agencies that they just don't have the budgets.

Jon Becker: Well, I think you touched on something that is an essential role that the associations play, which is Texas is one of the largest countries in the world. Even though we see it as part of the United States, it may see itself as an independent country, and it's a mixed bag of large full time teams and very small part time teams. And I think an important role in the association plays is to bring the lessons learned from the full time team, from the national level experts down to teams that otherwise might not have that opportunity.

Dan Colosanto: Yeah, and I think we do a really good job of that. The big five, they play a major role in instructing for us. And I think one of the other things that I'm proud of is I think if you go across the regions and you go to a basic squat, you're going to get the same stuff. Pretty much. I mean, there's different ways. And what I'm fond of saying is, hey, what we can do in Garland, they may not be able to do down in Laredo. You know, what they do in Houston, we may not be able to do.

So some of that stuff also depends on what resources you have. Not everybody has a bearcat. Not everybody has a rook. Not everybody has these tools. So you have to give them other options to still solve the problems are the same, but we have to give them, our challenge is to give them options to solve these problems. Maybe not without the same tools that other teams have, because they still have to get solved.

I mean, the barricaded guy is the barricaded guy, no matter where he's at. And it's, you know, I mean, the way you're, the way to resolve it is probably similar, but you may not have the same tools and resources as others to do that.

Paul Ford: And I would say, looking from the outside now as a, you know, as a person in business, as a non police officer, but someone still involved with law enforcement, what I see now is in the nineties, yeah, we were able to get people to have PT tests and have a real selection process to choose your SWAT team.

But what you guys have done now seems the way that teams approach a mission, their tactics and their technology that they apply to it, that's what you guys have got everybody on a one sheet of music in a really big state, a lot of spread out geography in a lot of people, which is quite amazing for me.

Dan Colosanto: Yeah, it's a challenge, but I think the technology piece is huge. But again, it goes back to not everybody has the same technology. And before I forget, I do want to mention one thing. We talked about the magazine. The magazine's all digital now. We stopped mailing it out, but it's still there. But it's the trend that everybody else is going to like. Sandy said, you don't find many published magazines from the associations. And our while I was at shot show.

Paul Ford: I did have somebody put in my hand CATO field command color publication. So not to be competitive with CATO, but I just let you know that.

Dan Colosanto: Yeah, well, you know, I think, as you said, it costs money to publish the magic. Trying to – That's right. Trying to save a tree. Trying to kind of put that money somewhere else.

Jon Becker: Well, you do raise a valid, interesting point, though, is the stronger associations now, Dan, seem to have a higher level of integration than they've had in the past. I know that you and Brent Stratton from TTPOA and Chris Aquin from Florida Swad. And you guys are talking, Nick Sprague and RMTTA are talking more regularly, kind of at a national level. Talk to me about that.

Dan Colosanto: Yeah, that's. I'll give props to Nick. He kind of set that up. We had our first, it's been maybe last year, we had our first Zoom president Zoom meeting, and we're kind of doing it on a regular basis now. So all the presidents that can make it, we have a Zoom meeting discussing different things. As far as you know. Hey, how are you doing vendors, how are you vetting instructors? What do you guys do for the membership? What are your bylaws like? We're kind of getting on the same page as far as that stuff goes association wise, which is really good, and it's good to meet with those guys. And some of them are starting associations.

So the bigger associations, like us and Cato and Florida are trying to help these guys out. Like, hey, this is what I would suggest. It kind of reminded me of Paul and Sandy story, the one guy's like, yeah, we're trying to do this. We got this hotel. And, you know, I go, man, I would start with debriefs. Just get some debriefs. Get some people over there before you try to expand into the, you know, a larger, a larger deal.

But, you know, they – The story is the same. I mean, the way they're starting out, it's the same. It's the same thing. But I think it's important that we're all meeting and discuss because the problems are the same. It's just the people are different. They're running into the same things.

But I think it's, you know, at least as far as tactics and the way things are going, you know, we can, we can talk that out and figure out, hey, this is what we doing. What are you guys doing? But again, it goes, it goes like my analogy in Texas, you know, what we can do in Texas, they may not be able to do in California or Colorado. And what they do in Colorado, we may not be able to do so. But it's still good to talk that out. And I think the important thing is that we are all together talking about things and the issues that we're each facing and the challenges, because in a lot of respects, they're the same.

Jon Becker: Yeah, 100%. And although tactics, although the political will changes geographically, tactics don't. Right. Like the challenge is, you said America's America. Like everybody is faced with barricades, and I don't care what state you're in, there are barricades. The more teams and associations are sharing information. You say these analogy raise our polls and raising all boats. Everybody is getting better by sharing information. There is not an overabundance of quality information in the environment. So the more you guys are interacting, it seems the better the entire community gets.

Dan Colosanto: I agree 100%.

Jon Becker: So, Dan, if people want to learn more about TTPOA, how do they find it?

Dan Colosanto: Go to the website,. If you go up there now, our conference stuff is up there. 40th anniversary. We're hoping to make a big splash for the 40th. So everything's up there now. All the information for the conference,. you can sign up, join up. You don't have to be from Texas. We'll let you come from the outside. We don't even charge you extra for that.

Jon Becker: So is that true even if you're from California, though?

Dan Colosanto: I like Brent. Brent's a good guy. So we kind of made a little agreement. We kind of made a treaty. So it's all good. So we let those guys in. But, yeah, everything's on the website. Brand new website. Thanks to Aaron, Marco and those guys,. All the information about the association is right there.

Jon Becker: So Sandy, is that this is the last year that you will be involved or be on the border with TTPOA? Is that the truth?

Sandy Wall: That's the truth. All things good things must come to an end. And I recognize that there's other people that can step up and do and offer something new, fresh ideas, fresh energy. And that's a good thing. When I left HPD SWAT, I was probably still a decent operator, but I'd lost a step, and I knew that, and I had other things I could be doing that were probably more beneficial in the long run.

And it's same thing here. My time has come. I'm just so grateful to the guys for letting me hang around even after my usefulness was over. But I'm stepping away from the board. I will still always be there. And anything I can do to help the association, I will, because it has paid untold benefits back to me for whatever effort I ever put in.

Dan Colosanto: And I did talk them into being the emcee for the, for the banquet.

Sandy Wall: So one last hurrah?

Dan Colosanto: One last hurrah. Absolutely.

Jon Becker: I love it! Well, I feel like an appropriate place for us to wrap up would be to go back to each of you guys. And what do you think looking back now over the evolution of TTPOA? What do you think people need to know about TTPOA or about the evolution of SWAT in Texas that we haven't covered? Paul, you wanna go first?

Paul Ford: Sure. Yeah. I think the thing that inspired me and the thing that continues to inspire me, I'm amazed when I, when I go to my own department here in Austin and I see who those guys are, what their capabilities are. Same goes with TTPOA. I'm amazed when I go to the conferences and see what you guys accomplish every year and you seem to top it. My parting word would be is that it's going to advance. It's going to continue to get better. It's gonna, you know, your capabilities are gonna continue to increase, but only if we have this kind of community.

Only if we have this kind of, you know, interagency association where people can share, people can learn from each other. It's gonna get, it's gonna get, it's going to continue to get better and more sophisticated, more technology aided. So whatever we did for the last 30 years, I don't know, but it's gotten better. And congratulations to guys like Dan and Sandy who've stuck with it and continue to push it uphill.

Jon Becker: Dan, you want to take us next?

Dan Colosanto: Yeah, I think it's a great organization. As I said, we're still trying to build. My goal was to obviously make it better than it was when I started. And I have no doubt that the people who come after me will make it better than whatever it is that we're doing right now. But we provide some good training, it's affordable, and we're out there as an asset to these agencies that need help with training. So I think we have nowhere to go but up. Hopefully.

Jon Becker: Sandy Wall?

Sandy Wall: Well, I'd like to finish with the way I started talking about the original SWAT team in 1974. Those guys were handpicked and selected and volunteered to do a job that they had no clue. And they got a little bit of training from the get go, but after that, it was trial and error, and they learned from their own, and they weren't getting any extra pay. They were doing it for the right reason. They didn't have an association to call on. They didn't have outside instructors that were coming around and spreading information and showing expertise. They learned by trial and error, and they pass it on to guys like me.

And then I met a guy named Paul Ford who changed my life, and we started trying to build this association who other guys had started, and we took it to another level, and then guys like Dan had taken it to another level. But I will say this, that before I got involved in association, I didn't know anybody in Austin or San Antonio or Dallas or anywhere El Paso. And now every city of any size, I've got somebody there that I know, and a lot of them I've met, and if nothing else, sat in a hospitality suite and we talked about, when you all do this, how do you do that? Or, oh, my God, never do this, because this did not work out well.

And you're like, what happened? And then you visualize, God, that could have been me. I need to go back and learn from this. So that's fostering those relationships, fostering those ideas, and bringing all of those smaller agencies up to a level that they could have never imagined, if not for their association or for this association and learning and the exposure that it's given them. So hats off to TTPOA, and everything is done for me, and I just can't say enough. And God bless you, Dan, for still carrying the flag.

Dan Colosanto: Thank you, sir! Hey, you're still going to be advisor to the president, even though you're not going to be on the board.

Sandy Wall: I'm here for you.

Jon Becker: Well, guys, thank you. I mean, I hope you realize that The contributions that each of you made not only made officers in Texas, but officers all over the country safer. And, you know, let's hope that that dad is going to take this to an entirely different level, and the guys that follow him will be the same.

Dan Colosanto: We're going to hope that Dan doesn't screw it up. He's going to try hard not to.

Sandy Wall: You got it, brother.

Jon Becker: All right, guys, thank you so much, and thanks for being with me!

Sandy Wall: Jon, thanks for the opportunity!

Paul Ford: Thank you, Jon!

Episode 38 Transcript

jonathan@aardvarktactical.com on October 3, 2024

Episode 38 – The Emergency Mind – Kentucky State Police SRT Jon Becker: In late August of 2020, the Kentucky State Police Special Response team attempted to execute search and arrest warrants on a family compound in Johnson Holler, a heavily wooded and very rural area of Kentucky. The suspect, who was being sought on a potential murder and drug related charges, had hiding locations and weapons throughout the compound and had built a series of hardened firing positions from which to attack officers. In the 48 hours that followed, the team would have two officers involved shootings with two different suspects, all on the same compound. This event would stretch the team and its resources to their limits. Yet the team rose to the challenge, yielding a successful outcome despite almost impossible conditions. This case provides numerous lessons learned and teaching points about rural operations and the dangers of unexpected challenges. My guests today are Sergeant Heath Ayers and Trooper Logan Smith from the Kentucky State Police Special Response team. My name is Jon Becker. For the past four decades, I've dedicated my life to protecting tactical operators. During this time, I've worked with many of the world's top law enforcement and military units. As a result, I've had the privilege of working with the amazing leaders who take teams into the world's most dangerous situations. The goal of this podcast is to share their stories in hopes of making us all better leaders, better thinkers, and better people. Welcome to The Debrief! Guys, thanks for being here with me today! Heath Ayers: Thanks for having us! Logan Smith: Yeah, appreciate it! Jon Becker: Why don't we start with just kind of overview of the team? Like, give me a little understanding about how Kentucky State police special response team works. Heath Ayers: So we've got a full time team. We cover the whole state from Mayfield to Pikeville, which is west to east. We can go as far as north and Covington, all the way south of the Tennessee line. We are fully operation 13 guys. We are on call 24/7, 365, fully outfitted with multiple armor vehicles and a lot of really nice gear. Jon Becker: What's your, what's your typical operational temple in a year? Like, how many ops does the team usually see? Logan Smith: I think it fluctuates a little bit. I would say we're pretty close to hitting 100, 100 plus each year. But it's different. It's not always barricades. It's not always hrs. It's a lot of help with the drug guys and our desi units and stuff like that. So it can fluctuate. Jon Becker: Yeah. What I mean is most of your work kind of warrants, arrest warrant type of stuff, or what's, what's most of the work? Heath Ayers: Yeah, I would say we do a lot of pre planned warrant services, both search and arrest warrants and then barricades. Jon Becker: Yep. Makes sense. So set me up how this Johnson Hollow event starts. When do you guys first get involved in this incident? Logan Smith: We actually. And that's kind of the tricky part about this whole incident. We actually didn't even find out about this case until July of 2020, so it was kind of thrown on our lap. But the actual Knox county sheriff's office, where this took place, they actually dealt with this back in December of 2019. So you can kind of paint your picture there of the timeframe. And they originally had the contact with the suspect, and what makes actually started the case from there. But we actually, as a team, didn't. We didn't even find out about it until July. Jon Becker: So Knox county, what. What happens in January of 2020 that Knox county gets involved with this guy? Logan Smith: Okay. The Knox county sheriff's office had been working a drug case against this guy, and basically he was involved in narcotics methamphetamine. And they had some tips. They were all just trying to do a search warrant on his residence. And this is the middle of nowhere, Kentucky, if you're familiar with the show, Harlan, and all that kind of justified thing that's kind of there you're dealing with. But we were in Knox county, and he just – When the sheriff's office shows up that day to serve a search warrant, they don't locate anybody at the actual residence. And as they are looking around, they're searching the wooded area, and they actually run into the suspect there. And he's on a four wheeler in a ghillie suit, and he actually has an AK 47 style rifle strapped to his back. So they kind of challenge him there in the woods. He gets off the foiler, takes the rifle off his back, turns towards them. There's no exchange of gunfire at the point, but he does take off running in the woods. So they just kind of hold back, from what I can tell and from that investigation, and that's when they actually kind of pursue him just a bit. But then they start noticing all these fortified shooting positions and different ambush spots he's got up all over the mountain. Jon Becker: So they make a decision that they're going to terminate. Logan Smith: Yep. Jon Becker: Engagement with him. Logan Smith: Correct. I think there was just two of them at the time. And they just backed out. And basically, unfortunately, they really didn't notify KSP at the time. So even then, that was kind of a – They could have called us then, possibly. They could have notified the actual local post there. To get some troopers involved. But, yeah, they just kind of kept that to themselves at the moment. Jon Becker: And so, like, just, you know, to give context, because I grew up in a city in California, so I don't think the average person understands how rural this part of Kentucky is. So give me some context as to what are we talking about property sizes? What are the towns like? Logan Smith: I would just picture it as that kind of that one like town. Very rural areas. Most of these houses are tucked up in, tucked up in these hollers or tucked up in the side of a mountain. And very, I mean, it's just very, very rural. You're talking probably each little town probably doesn't have but a couple thousand people when you're dealing with these smaller little communities in that area. And unfortunately, it's just very poverty driven, a lot of low income in the mountains, and you're starting to cut out the coal business as well. So you're having to deal with people that just don't have a lot. Jon Becker: And from a local law enforcement standpoint, like, okay, you got a town with a couple thousand people who's policing that town? Logan Smith: Well, that's kind of the case. Is your, your departments, even then, the local PD's and even your sheriff's office and that kind of thing, they just don't have the manpower. They're in the same battle as everybody else, so they just don't have the bodies. So thankfully, KSP is a little different. We aren't kind of your typical highway patrol like you see with other state agencies. And we actually do a lot of rural work. So we're answering calls for service. They're just, there's not a lot of highways running through Kentucky other than 65 and a couple big ones, but there's just not a lot. So we're actually answering a lot of calls for service in these rural counties, just like a typical sheriff's office or PD would. Jon Becker: But you are talking, like, rural hill country here. Logan Smith: Oh, yeah, yeah. Backcountry forest. Yes. I mean, yeah. And that's why I kind of mentioned justified because I think that's a show that probably everybody can relate to or have seen on Netflix, that kind of thing. And that's really what you're dealing with. You're dealing with that rural atmosphere, lots of elevation and big woods. I mean, you're talking Daniel Boone National Forest and all that. So it's very, very rural. Jon Becker: Yeah. Okay, so skip forward now. July 2020, SP gets involved. Logan Smith: Yep. We get the call basically post hand there. They get the call and they start their investigation. And basically it's at this time, they still haven't really talked with Knox county sheriff's office, but they've already started working up their own investigation in regards to the drug involvement. And so they're starting to talk with their CIS and they're getting all this information about the drug activity, obviously. But now they've actually received information that possibly the suspect has killed another individual with a 22 and kind of hit him in the – hid his body in the woods. Basically, after all this information, they actually do start relaying a little bit of mess relaying a little bit of information with that Knox county sheriff's office. And that's when they build their case and start getting some arrest warrants and search warrants for the suspect's house and that property. Jon Becker: So we're working a drug case, but quickly building a murder case. Logan Smith: Yes. Yeah. And they had all intentions on it. I think everything they were receiving from the CI was pretty accurate at the point. At this point. And just based on their, the guys tendencies and after talking with Knox county sheriff's office, they were, he was a pretty bad dude. Jon Becker: So eventually they do get ahold of Knox county and find out that they'd had this prior altercation with them. Okay. Logan Smith: Correct. Yep. Jon Becker: Okay. So then when, when does the team become involved here? Logan Smith: We, shortly after that, they kind of started working the case and realized how, how dangerous and kind of the scope of it. And we actually found out about the case. Right? Early August 2020. So we're talking several months after the fact. And that's when we're actually getting a lot of information from post level detectives and they're starting to share all this information and we start kind of getting our game plan, getting all our ducks in a row to actually scout and do our due diligence, I guess, on this particular incident. Jon Becker: Yeah. Because, I mean, I'm guessing even scouting a location like this is going to be difficult because in a town of 2000 people, a couple of cops rolling through with a camera is definitely going to attract some attention. Logan Smith: Yeah. You're not, you're not going in these areas any marked cars. It's just everybody knows when the nod cars in the holler are in that area and they're all calling their buddies, they're all friends, they're usually all relatives. And that's just, that's just how that area operates. Jon Becker: Yeah. I guess it's another aspect of kind of the rural south that you don't think about when you live in big cities is that some of these are, like family compounds. Logan Smith: Oh, yeah, exactly. This particular instant, not to jump ahead, but his parents lived literally probably 50 yards behind him, and then an uncle lived within another 50 yards beside him. So we're on the family farm kind of thing with. And that's just what we knew about. We're not talking cousins and that kind of thing that live across the street and all that. So, yeah, we're right there on the family farm, and everybody knows everybody. Jon Becker: Yeah. So. So, you know, I mean, every single call is a giant domestic disturbance where, you know, you're going in there to arrest a member of their family. Yeah. That sounds just lovely. So, all right, you guys start. You get tasked with this thing. How do you scout this? Logan Smith: Thankfully, we're pretty lucky. And if you think in rural kentucky, a lot of us are outdoorsmen, we know kind of what to look for. Thankfully. And we actually utilized our aircraft branch early on because we wanted to see if all this intel with him possibly living in the woods and having those fortified fighting positions like the pitchers from the Knox County Sheriff's Office showed us, we were kind of hoping that we would be able to kind of pinpoint that area that he was hiding in and then using that bird to possibly just give us some. Some points to actually, like, focus on. So we originally started with that, and at the time, it was just. The foliage was just too thick, so we couldn't really see a lot. But I – We really relied on just basically maps and topos and stuff like that. So it was really important for our guys to really focus on the terrain, the terrain features. And just by that intel, we could, for the most part, kind of pinpoint a certain area that if he was actually living in the woods, it would kind of have to be this general area based on the elevation and where the flats were and that kind of thing. Jon Becker: The pictures you got from Knox, like, I – As I'm reading this incident and kind of thinking through it, I'm picturing, like, a house and the guy living in a house, but he's not living in a house, right? Logan Smith: No, his house is right next to the road, but it is a trailer, but he was actually living in the woods behind the house in supposedly, like a tent. And it was at that point, that's all the kind of information we had. All the intel just gathered was a tent of some sort. And those pictures that we got from Knox county sheriff's office kind of show several different tents. And as you can tell from those photos that was in January. So basically, there's no foliage, there's no leaves. There's no ground cover whatsoever. So you're actually seeing all that area with no foliage covering it up? No, nothing like that. So it was really just more of just tents and tarps and that kind of thing. Jon Becker: And fighting positions and hills and trees and relatives surrounding them. Logan Smith: Correct. Jon Becker: Yeah, it sounds really easy. I don't know why you guys. Yeah, it's basically sounds like trigonometry did to me in high school. Heath Ayers: Right. Logan Smith: And those fighting positions is not just kind of a makeshift something you do. I mean, he had actually put some time and effort into it with a actually, like, four by fours and actually using stones to stack up and camouflaging them with, like, tarps and different stuff like that. So, I mean, he was. He was definitely committed, and I think his intentions were accurate. Jon Becker: So, I mean, from your perspective, is he building those fighting positions knowing that eventually law enforcement's gonna come get him and so he's gonna need to be able to engage in a protracted gun battle with the police? Logan Smith: Yeah, I do. I really do think that that was probably most of it, and I think just someone like him and any drug user, I think they're just paranoid people in general. So whether it was for us and he had made statements that, hey, he's not going to jail, he'd be willing to shoot it out with law enforcement, it was either that or even other addicts or drug dealers, that kind of thing. It could have been something like that, too. But I think it was just. That was definitely his intentions. Jon Becker: And I'm assuming, going in, you've probably already run intel, I'm going to guess, because he's in a rural Kentucky, he owns a gun. Logan Smith: Oh, yeah, 100 of them. Yes. I would say several. Everybody we deal with, it's kind of the whole you got the gun hanging in the back window kind of thing, and that's everyone. You just expect everybody to have a gun, and that's perfectly fine. But, yeah, when you're dealing with someone like him, he's definitely going to be armed. Jon Becker: Okay, so we move forward September 2020. You guys have done your scouting. You're gonna execute the warrant. Walk me through that. Logan Smith: Okay. We had basically, we completed all our scouts the best we could, and that was using the aircraft. We did a couple different drive bys, and like I say, that was in all unmarked, very quick, just trying to get a lay of the land, and then kind of starting to plan where we put our QRT where we put, where we stage all our equipment and that kind of thing. But basically after we had gathered all that and decided what we were going to do, we actually had to kind of hold off a little bit for manpower issues. So we mentioned we're a 13 man team that cover the entire state, and we would have liked to actually probably hit this almost immediately after getting that intel. But we had guys that were actually out for just vacations, trainings, and that kind of thing. So that was one thing that kind of held that off. So when we, when people kind of probably wonder why did it take so long for these guys to hit this? Number one, that was an issue. But it was also this guy wasn't actually really out in the community wreaking havoc. He was actually just kind of to himself, but he was dealing drugs. And then the possible case of him actually murdering somebody, that was kind of raising flags. But it wasn't like he was actively out in the community causing trouble. So that's kind of why we held that off a little bit, just for manpower. And basically after our, basically after all our scouts and all our information, we just, we knew this was something that we were needing all hands on deck kind of thing. Jon Becker: Makes sense. Logan Smith: But to get, get to your question. So we basically decided that we would need everybody, number one. But we ended up putting our QRT staging location about, probably about two or 3 miles from the actual target. And we were going to plan on infilling a Woods team or actually two woods teams at about 08:00 a.m. that morning. And the reason kind of for that is through those photos, we had already decided and already found out that he very possibly had some early warning devices, whether it was like fishing lines and coke cans kind of thing, hanging in the woods. But also we knew of these fortified fighting positions and that he was actually living and knew that farm, if you want to say, or that area like the back of his hand. So we wanted it to be daylight. We had the capability to run MVGs and that kind of thing. But we were just making sure that we could actually see and not have to deal with school buses, traffic, and we could actually get off that main road and get in the woods. But we dropped off the two woods elements and then we actually dropped off basically an observation unit that was going to be standing across the road just kind of watching the house at that time. Jon Becker: Got it. And so your, your woods teams give me how many guys? What are we doing? How are they equipped? Logan Smith: We had basically two woods teams, and obviously this time of year, there's tons of foliage. It was very green. So we were all outfitted basically in our camo, like our tropic gear, face painted gloves, that kind of thing, with hats and all that. And we were also, each of us had our rifles, binoculars and that kind of thing. Because basically our game plan was hopefully we were going to be able to clear as much of these woods as possible, either locate these tents, clear them, and then basically collapse down on the house and just basically serve a standard search warrant on that residence. So that was kind of the best case scenario for us at that time. And while we were actually going to be in the woods, we were basically just hoping that our other team that was across the road, just basically being an overwatch position, we're going to be able to find our suspect coming in and out of the house, that kind of thing. And then we were going to collapse on the house at that point. And then we would also have that containment on the backside of that house as well. Obviously it didn't work out like that, but it never does. Jon Becker: So, search warrants for the property or the house? Logan Smith: We had search warrant for basically the house the property, which was, I think, give or take approximately 30 acres, and then actually his uncle's house and his parents residence as well. So basically the entire property and everything on it. Jon Becker: Got it. The whole compound, correct? Logan Smith: Yep. Jon Becker: In this case, I think the word compound is an appropriate work. Logan Smith: Yeah, I believe so. Our game plan there was basically to kind of, we were going to work together and try to just get up on top of the mountain and use that, use the actual terrain as we could see it on our maps and that kind of thing. And basically get a group that was moving more on, like, kind of the lower level and then another group to get really, really high and basically kind of parallel each other across this ridge, basically, and kind of get to the point that we thought, or the area that we actually thought that we could actually pinpoint the possibility of him actually having these structures or these fighting positions. Intense. Jon Becker: So try to give me as best you can. It's hard to describe property in a forest, but what's the shape of this thing? Are we in a canyon or a hauler or what's it look like? How much elevation gain is there? Logan Smith: You're definitely in what we would call a holler. And basically it's just these houses are just right off the road. So his house is probably ten yards off the road and directly behind his house. It went straight up, probably another 20, 30 ft, and it kind of flattened off and it kind of just staggered like that, kind of like that stair step all the way up this mountain. So, I mean, we're thinking probably 700 ft elevation, give or take, here and there with. With different levels of aggression, I guess you could say, on that. But, yeah, it was, I mean, very, very hilly, pretty rough terrain and thick at that. So we're always dealing with that as well. Jon Becker: And just for the more urban audience, give me a definition of a hauler. Logan Smith: Basically, a holler would just be just a small area that runs in between or runs up a mountain. So the lower area that would run up kind of like a drain going up a mountain or a hillside, kind of where it's flat enough to where people can actually build houses and have, and put a foundation to put these trailers on, that kind of thing. So usually it's a one lane road going up into this area with houses kind of staggering on each side. But this particular one just basically was. Had just enough room to fit his uncle's house, his house and his parents house. And then it went straight up into the hillside and the mountainside. Jon Becker: Got it. And what are we talking for? Like, what kind of trees? What's the foliage like? Logan Smith: Which, that time of year in Kentucky is usually really, really thick. So you've got all your lower undergrowth, which is actually coming off the ground. It was really, really thick and green and leafy. And then you got your just big mature trees, so you've got your walnuts, your white oaks, your maples, that kind of thing. So the big mature trees that are, number one, they, they're all the foliage, so you're blocking out a lot of the sunlight. So it's usually, it's pretty dark in the woods at that time of the year, so you're not getting a lot of sunlight through, but just that undergrowth, that's what caused that undergrowth to really flourish. And so it was really, really thick, actually, on the ground level. So you're getting big mature trees, you're getting that undergrowth, so you're probably visibility. I mean, it varied, but a lot of times, I mean, you could see 30 yards ahead of you and then everything else, you were just having to really be cautious and clearing what you could see and moving around different objects and that kind of thing. Jon Becker: Yeah. And you're trying to move in with stealth, too. Right? So it's like, you know, not breaking branches not making a lot of noise. Logan Smith: Correct. And like I said, we're trying to do this. We didn't really know if any of this stuff existed outside of the photos we had. So, yeah, we were just really trying to be cautious, be patient, and. And really be stealthy just to try to move through these woods knowing that that's not our territory. That was his home. That was his home court, as we could say. And he knew everything, but it was our first time in those woods. Jon Becker: And so your goal being shrink the problem to the house if possible? Logan Smith: Correct. Yeah, I think at the end of the day, during our brief, like, best case scenario would, we would clear the hillside, the mountainside behind his house, not locate him or anything in the tents, and then we would actually just collapse down and I perform just a standard search warrant surrounding call out and slow play it from there. Jon Becker: And the rationale being that if you just hit the house, he's just going to disappear into the woods anyways, right? Logan Smith: Correct. Yeah. And we would have some containment and be able to deal with him if that were the case. Jon Becker: Got it. And you have search warrant and arrest warrant or just search warrant? Logan Smith: At the time, we had both. I think we had, actually a search and arrest warrant on. Jon Becker: Got it. So he's going either way. Okay, so how far, like, your infill point versus the house? What's the distance and how long does it take you guys to cover it? Logan Smith: I would say our actual infill location was probably a quarter of a mile from the house, just around a curve to where we couldn't actually. So you couldn't see the house or anything like that. And we strategically actually infilled in a certain area just to keep even neighbors from being able to see us get out. But, yeah, I would say a quarter mile from the house. And then our observation team, we got them on here as Charlie, but they basically were a couple hundred yards off the house, on the other opposite hillside across the road. But, yeah, that was. We tried to stay off the best we could just from that actual target. Jon Becker: And then you said you had a QRT team. I'm assuming, like, quick response team that if you have an issue, that's going to be your QRF, for lack of better term. Logan Smith: Yes. Correct. And they were probably about, I would say, ten minutes away at the max, and that's with armored Bearcats, armored suburbans and that kind of thing. So they were basically just standing by and hopefully we were just going to call them in. Hey, we're. We're collapsing on the house. We'll hold security on it until you guys get here, and we'll just conduct our surrounding call out. So that was kind of the plan. And then while we were actually moving through the woods, the best we could, if, like I said, if our observation team actually saw anything different, then they would be able to relay all that information through radio traffic. Jon Becker: Got it. Okay, so you're on one of these containment teams. You're on the other one, right? Heath Ayers: I'm actually on the QRT. Jon Becker: You're on the QRT. Got it. Okay. All right, so. And how big is the QRT at this point? What do you guys have? Heath Ayers: So the QRT has got five operators, and that's also with assistance from k nine handlers. Our lieutenant was there at the time. So it's not just operators. It's got a few different people that could operate vehicles for us. Jon Becker: Got it. And you're going to be, you know, either the team that's going to come in and conduct the search once they collapse on the house, or if things go sideways, you're. You're the responding team and dealing with whatever happens. Heath Ayers: Yes. Correct. So if the actual mission took place, that they could clear the woods and then contain a. The house. There's multiple structures there, so we could fall in and pick up those securities on those different residences as well. Jon Becker: What's the distance between, like, his house and his parents house and his uncle's house? Heath Ayers: I would say the distance from the uncle's house to his house, maybe 100 yards. Jon Becker: Okay. But I'm assuming that is not a flat. Hundred yards, you know, with a walking track between the two. Heath Ayers: Actually, on that one, it was a straight shot. Jon Becker: Really? Heath Ayers: Yeah. Jon Becker: Okay. Heath Ayers: Yard to yard meant flat. It's nice and flat, which isn't also an issue because that house can see that house. So we have issues with cover concealment, and also holding security on both properties. Jon Becker: Got it. Okay, so you guys are infilling and getting close, and what happens? Logan Smith: So we had our main team, and, like I said, pushed to the top of the mountain, and then the lower team was kind of pushing that flat that we could see on our topo maps. But, yeah, as my team was actually on top of the mountain, the team on the flat actually encountered what they were just calling a tent, and they couldn't see much of it. They could just tell it looked like a tarp. And basically, when they informed us that they had actually located something, they actually started relaying their coordinates via the Garmin, their Garmin phone app. Okay. And then we just used those coordinates to punch them into our watches and actually started to backtrack to them and try to set up some type of el ambush on that location. As we were actually backtracking, trying to get towards them, they had said that they had heard a foiler start up and head up the mountain. So while they were sitting there and while we were trying to move to them, they actually encounter a male individual on a four wheeler. And he pulls up next to the side of what they call in this tent. And they're relaying all this as well over comms, but he gets off. They can't really id the guy. It's just through that thick foliage. So they're just kind of trying to get what they can get. And he ends up walking in the tent. So now we know we've actually got. They've made contact with somebody, at least visually. So we're trying to actually get to them the best we can and obviously being pretty quiet and moving through them woods as well, hoping not to encounter anything else. But once they actually receive contact, we try to just work to them and set up that good solid ale ambush for them. Jon Becker: So does this, the suspect on the four wheeler do that?. Does he see them or do they just see him? Logan Smith: Nope. He did not see them. So he pulls in, not aware that anybody's around, and he just hops off the four wheeler and walks right in the tent. They had mentioned that they could smell marijuana coming from the tent. So we think he just went in the tent and was just smoking some marijuana or something like that. Jon Becker: Got it. Okay, what happens next? Logan Smith: Okay, while we're. While we're moving to them and we're trying to get set up the best we can. And anybody that's listening knows that tactical l we're talking about. We're trying to set that up on this location. And as we're doing so and trying to get guys in position, we actually, there's another male and female and a dog that just come walking through the middle of the woods. So we had no idea where they were. We don't know where they came from. They were just walking down a trail, talking and walking this dog. Well, we obviously, everybody holds and is trying to relay that information. So as soon as they get to the 10th and they both go in the tent as well. So now we've actually got three people in this tent, or tarp, whatever you want to call at the time now to deal with. And we couldn't id any of them, other than just knowing that it was two males and a female and a dog at that point, as we're trying to get set up, I'm kind of more in an observation point to where I can actually use my binoculars and I'm trying to watch. And the female comes in out of ten a couple times, but you could barely, you could barely see much of anything just because the foliage. So you're kind of looking through that thick vegetation, and you're catching just glimpse of her coming in and out of. So, next thing, I actually see the male come out, or one of the males, and he's looking, he's kind of looking around, not really paying attention to anything. But it was a little odd. Cause he started kind of scanning the area, I thought, and he goes back in. So I'm kind of telling the guys, be like, hold tight. Stick what you got. He was kind of scanning around, but I really didn't think much about it. And then he comes out just a few seconds later, and he's actually holding two pistols. So I tell the guys, hey, he has two pistols. He has one in each hand, and I'm trying to relay that to everybody. And he's actually, now he's actively kind of searching, scanning through that wooded area. So still, we don't know if he saw something or heard something, but at this point, we're on high alert. And he actually starts at that point, walking through the woods towards some of our woods team members. So he's got the guns behind his back, and if you can kind of picture he's got a gun in both hands. He kind of puts them down to his side, and he's kind of slowly scanning around the woods, kind of bending down. He's trying to see through that foliage, too. So he's kind of creeping through the woods, but I can definitely tell that he's actually looking at something in one of our guys. So they actually get ready, and one of them actually challenges him. So immediately it's Kentucky state police, drop the guns. And about simultaneously to that, the guy actually raises two pistols, kind of dueling pistols. And that's when he engages our trooper engages and actually hits him. He falls backwards, and he actually gets right back up almost immediately and kind of leans up. And that's when a couple other troopers also engaged him to eliminate that threat. The worst case about that is when he actually raised his pistols and was. And we started engaging him. Shots were fired from the tent, from the other suspect. So we've engaged this guy simultaneously that we're getting engaged from the tent by another guy, and then him and the female actually run out of the tent, and while they're running away, he's actually firing rounds at us over his shoulder, kind of as he's running away from us. Jon Becker: The second male? Logan Smith: The second male, correct. Jon Becker: So first male's down. Logan Smith: Yep. Jon Becker: Guy with two guns. He's down. Logan Smith: Correct. Jon Becker: Second male shoots at you from the tent. Then he and the female start running, and he is engaging at, you know, shooting at you, basically. Over his shoulder. Logan Smith: Yes. Yeah. With the female in tow. So from my perspective, actually, I was. Even through our interviews, I actually thought that the first male that came out with the dueling. Duel in the pistols, I thought he actually was the one that engaged us. I was so focused on him at that point that I really thought that he had shot. But later on, we come to find out that, no, they were actually coming from the tent, from that other suspect. So later, kind of in the investigation, I think the female actually admitted that they had thought they had heard something. Whether that's true or not, we don't know whether the main suspect actually had the other guy go out and kind of do his dirty work for him, thinking that maybe there are some guys wanting to rob him or who knows at that point. But, yeah, we'll just never know. Jon Becker: Was the dog barking? Logan Smith: No dog. The dog never barked. So it was just a puppy. It was just a little dog. But, no, we never really. Never really heard the dog got it. Jon Becker: So it wasn't the dog that tipped him off. You know, I was wondering, like, did the dog. Logan Smith: Yeah. Jon Becker: You guys up on scent or something? Logan Smith: No. And as you know, that happens a lot. But, no, the dog. The dog had no idea. Jon Becker: Interesting. Okay, so this guy and the female now run off into the woods, basically. Logan Smith: Yep. Correct. And as he's running off and engaging, we actually kind of do, like you're taught shoot, move, communicate kind of thing. And he's obviously got that female in tow. Right. He's kind of got her by the hand, dragging her behind him, is what it looked like from my point of view. But the female actually kind of shoots off right back, kind of going towards behind the ten area, and he continues running, shooting, and we actually try to engage him through that thick foliage and try to eliminate him as a threat as well as he's running down the woods. Through the woods. And we just. At that point, he actually kind of engaged another, got into a little gunfight with another one of our guys. It was kind of on that far end of that l kind of our last man, and at that point, we kind of lost visual of him, and we kind of just held there for a second just to kind of get our bearings about us, kind of have that tactical pause, I guess you could say, and making sure everybody's okay, everybody's accounted for, and just kind of reevaluate our situation at that point. Jon Becker: Yeah, because it wasn't scary enough. Now, you've lost a guy that shot at you in the woods on his property. Logan Smith: Right, knowing what he's got all over this hillside. So. And obviously, I didn't have that viewpoint of it, but after talking with our other guys that were actually that observation team, they're sitting on the other hillside across the road from this guy's house, and they're just kind of hearing our radio traffic prior to all this. And next thing you know, they're hearing gunfire and they're hearing suppressed gunfire along with unsuppressed gunfire. So you can only imagine what they were thinking at that point. But that basically went immediately. They did exactly what they were supposed to, and their job was to activate the QRT quick reaction team and send them our way. So, kudos to those guys. I mean, they did their job, and they basically got us guys down to us as quick as we could. So they were kind of in no man's land, and I hate it for them, but they were. They couldn't help. But their only job at that point was to call our QRT and let everybody else know what's going on. Jon Becker: Yeah. So you guys are on the hillside, you know, in the woods, having just shot a suspect. Shot at another suspect. Don't know whether you hit him or not. He shot at you. The female has split and headed somewhere. The male has continued deeper into the woods, shooting at your last man in the L. And now you've lost basically both of those two suspects somewhere in the woods of Kentucky with a gun. And, yeah, I'm going to guess from the QRT standpoint, this is getting spicy really fast. Heath Ayers: So the issue with that part of Kentucky is radios can only go so far, especially direct line of sight. So with the people in the woods, they had a direct line of communication with the observation team, but they did not have direct comms with the QRT. So everybody at QRT had no clue any of this was going on. No communication other than just small updates. And then until we had the message to launch, that's when we found out there was a gunfight in the woods. Jon Becker: Man, this keeps getting worse, doesn't it? Logan Smith: Yeah. I mean, I could just imagine myself, and I talked to one of the guys, and I – It's just kind of that helpless feeling for them was they knew we were in a gunfight. They knew we were in some type of battle, and they could just hear it echoing off that hillside. They didn't actually know our exact location, just kind of where they thought it was. But, yeah, those guys, they felt pretty helpless. But I'll give them credit, man. They did their job, and they got guys to us quick. Jon Becker: And even from a nav standpoint. Right? You guys don't even. Even the two woods teams probably don't know where every. Every member of the other woods team is. Logan Smith: Yeah. And we were trying to kind of keep that line of sight between each one of us. But, yeah, when I say thick foliage and when we're engaging this. This guy, I mean, if anybody's actually been in deep, thick woods, which I'm sure a lot of listeners have, and when it's got thick foliage, you're just catching bits and pieces of this guy running off. And I guess the best thing about it, I guess, and unfortunately for him, I remember him specifically having some khaki pants on and no shirt and that kind of thing. So he kind of stuck out, obviously, running through that green foliage. But you just don't have good shots. You're just trying to catch him in that open area and try your best, actually get contact with him and actually just whatever you can to eliminate that threat at that point. So it just really, really thick. We could see each other, but not very well. And like I said, when all that gunfire was going on, you just. You kind of had that second step back and be like, hey, I hope. I hope everyone's okay. We just didn't know. Jon Becker: So what do you guys do next? Logan Smith: Basically, we kind of had that, like I said, kind of that tactical pause. So once we confirmed everybody was okay, we basically kind of collapsed down, made sure that the first individual we engaged, we made sure that he was no longer a threat and secured him. And then we actually pushed, a couple of us actually pushed over to that far lithe, the other trooper there that kind of got in that last engagement with the suspect. So we kind of pushed to him to make sure he was okay and basically get his. Get information from him. Hey, where was he at? What was his last known? Which way did he go? Because at that point, we had all lost. Everybody else had lost visual, but him. So we basically just kind of took a second, got our wits about us again. And basically at this time, we've actually got a bird in the air. And thankfully, and we'll get to this later, kind of. Your kind of. One of the pros is basically he, our pilot in command at the point and actually the head over our program for that. Our aircraft branch is a former team member, so he knew what we were dealing with. Not exactly, obviously, because he wasn't on the ground, but he knew what we were kind of expecting, what we were wanting from him. And he actually was flying over, doing his best to utilize his flir to actually try to locate these individuals that fled. Obviously, I mentioned earlier that foliage, especially with big mature trees, is just. It's really cutting out on all that flir and all that imaging he can actually get. But thankfully, he did actually end up locating what he thought at the time was two individuals. So basically our. The female split, like we mentioned earlier. So female went right. He kind of continued down that ridge, but our aircraft branch was basically saying, hey, I've got. I do have a heaton signature. I do have somebody on this hillside looks like they're land prone kind of thing. And so we kind of just basically move up into a better position, kind of trying to maintain that good tactical l. And then he actually says, and it's in the PowerPoint there where you get the. We got some video of it where he's actually identifies it actually being, hey, I think it's the female. And actually it's a dog. It's not another man. And he actually can see them coming down the hillside. So immediately he's kind of walking them to us through comms, really. We haven't seen her yet, but. And we're kind of trying not to give up our position the best we can, but we're trying to actually verbalize to her, hey, state police, show us your hands, come down the hill, that kind of thing. And then finally we do end up seeing her coming down. And she was cooperative, the best she could be, I guess, and what you kind of would expect. But we were at least able to get her down the hill, detain her as well, and at least know. All right, now we've got two of the individuals. Now we're just missing the other male suspect, but that flir. And we can get to that later on. Our kind of what came out of all this. But with him being a prior team member and having that capability, it actually located her fairly quick and eliminated. Just one other problem we were having to deal with. Jon Becker: Yeah, that's, you cut your problem in half. Logan Smith: Yeah. Yeah. Jon Becker: Which is not a bad deal to take. Logan Smith: Yeah. And the footage is good. I mean, it was pretty clear. But you can tell just by the folded. You're. You're kind of catching bits and pieces. So he. He did a great job. And then he tried continually find the other male too, but it was just too thick. And he just wasn't catching anything else. Jon Becker: Got it. So now you've got the female in custody. Is she cooperative? Logan Smith: Yeah, she's pretty cooperative. She's obviously distraught, as you can imagine. And she wasn't, I don't think, involved, obviously, or had any ill intent towards any of us. She was just caught, literally caught in that situation. But she was tore up. We were trying to get as much info as we could on who the individuals were. Did he say anything? Did he have any guns on him? Just kind of your basic information. But at that point, we just kind of were detaining her and we went ahead. Cause at this point, we're really close to that tenta. So we needed to clear that structure, I guess you could say, before moving on to the next chapter, I guess. So we actually just got our containment and got our. Our wits about us and actually end up trying to clear that tent to eliminate that and kind of focus all our attention towards the direction that he fled. Heath Ayers: Got it. Jon Becker: And by now the QRT is rolling up on you guys? Logan Smith: Yes. Now they're rolling up. Now we're in the middle of the woods, right up on a hillside that they know of basically a direction, but they don't know exactly where we're at. So they're actually just pulling into this guy's driveway at this point. And we're not as we're not sure if he's fled back to his house. We're not sure if he's went to the uncle's house or what. So they're having to deal with that, with those issues as well as we're trying to deal with issues we've got up on the mountain. So. And he may be able to walk us through that a little better than me just because I wasn't there on that particular. Jon Becker: So you guys roll into the driveway. What happens? Heath Ayers: So we get the message to launch. We start heading that way. We know that we have the main suspect's house to deal with, but the main house that we're going to first take down is the uncle's. The observation team. Early in the morning, did observe a couple suspects, subjects. They couldn't id them correctly. They couldn't possibly id that there was two males, female, walking back and forth from the suspect's house to the uncle's house, back and forth. They couldn't positive id. So we had to take that into account when we launched and initially set up on the uncle's house. So, once we set up on the house, the observation team comes down from their position and pluses up our armored car, and we do a surrounding call out perimeter, set up the perimeter, do a surrounding call out, and start working our process to try to get possibly the uncle and more people out of the house. Jon Becker: Got it. And who comes out. Heath Ayers: So, ended up the uncle was not there. But a couple different people came out that we had never seen on any intel reports, didn't see that day. And after our process was completed, we cleared the structure, and we could not find the main suspect or the uncle. Jon Becker: Got it. And do we – Have we gotten any information yet as to who's been shot in the woods and who's run off into the woods? Like, I'm assuming you're thinking it may be your suspect, but what do we know at this point? Logan Smith: And it just so happens that me and another one of the guys on the team were the ones that actually headed up the scout and. And had kind of the initial information and gave the brief to the guys. So I immediately knew that. That the original. The first male that we encounter was not our actual suspect. He was just someone else we had had to encounter. Right? So I knew at that point that not necessarily knowing that the other guy was our main suspect, but we did have another male that had ran off that kind of matched that description. But we were at least able to later id the male, deceased male and then the female. And then we actually got them off the mountain as quick as we could. Jon Becker: Who is the deceased male, out of curiosity? His uncle or. Logan Smith: No, it was just a. I guess a friend at the time. I think it was actually the female's boyfriend. Jon Becker: Got it. Logan Smith: So I think they were just friends or acquaintances, I guess. Jon Becker: Picked a bad day to take the gun into the woods. Logan Smith: Yes. Jon Becker: Okay, so you guys are clearing the house, QRT cleared the house, don't have the uncle. What's next? Heath Ayers: So we end up moving from the uncle's house and move up to support capacity into the woods. Jon Becker: And do you guys, at the point that you dismount and head up into the woods, do you have a pretty good sense of where your team is, or are you guys still kind of scattered. Heath Ayers: They did a really good job of communicating the lay, the land, and also the best infill spot for the QRT to transition to. I will say that the clearance of the structure was not a fast procedure. It was a lengthy procedure rightfully so, with all the unknowns. But the other thing that we also had with the QRT is it was the lesser seniority guys. So the five were the kind of the five lower. So it was kind of new to our qRT as far as experience level in seniority. It did take a little bit of time, so it made the woods team guys be in the woods for even longer. But once we cleared that and moved our infield spot, we moved up into the woods tried to support them best we could and get some type of laid land so we can start clearing more of the woods. Jon Becker: Okay. All right, so you guys are sitting up in the woods, waiting for them to clear the house. Are you still hunting the suspect? Logan Smith: Yeah, just a little bit. Basically we had. So basically we cleared that initial tent that they had went in and came out of, and then we actually went to the last known position that our last trooper, and they got in that little gunfight. So we actually found where that position was. We could see bullets hitting the tree where they had hit the tree. We could see where he actually slid. It's almost like he tried, he was trying to run up the hill, but it was just too steep, and he slid back down. As he was engaging. We didn't see any blood or anything like you would, you would hope, I guess, for in that case. But we kind of at least had a decent, decent travel, I guess, where he would win. But unfortunately, literally, as soon as we started that initial track, or kind of was trying to find that track and find that path, we encounter another tent. So now we've got another structure that we didn't know about that was only 20, 30 yards away from us, and we just never knew it was there just because how thick it was. And now we're kind of thinking, oh, well, now he's, he just made it in this tent, and now he's probably rearmed waiting for us, that kind of thing. So now that's in the back of our head. So we basically kind of slow roll it again, slow back down. And we're actually, as those guys are coming up the hill to us, we go ahead and have one of them just grab one of our robots. It's kind of in a backpack, and we bring it up and actually utilize it to clear that tent. Jon Becker: He was just rolled in with a little robot. Logan Smith: Yep. Yep. Tried to roll in a robot just without having to stick our head around the corner, obviously knowing that he's got all these ambush spots. So we were being extremely cautious at this point. But you're also just to get a timeframe as we're getting late into the evening. And in eastern Kentucky, that time of the year, you're obviously losing light earlier in the day anyways. And now you've got this thick foliage. So we're really starting to battle the nightfall. And so now in the back of our heads, we're thinking, hey, we've got a whole bunch of issues and a whole lot of problems, and now we've got darkness to deal with as well. So we kind of have another little powwow. Kind of just sit back and let's talk this through and see what our next step is going to be. Having to deal with that. And unfortunately, a lot of us were not prepared for this op to last that long, so we were kind of just one of those things we'll talk about later. But we, as you get in your head, you're thinking, hey, we're going to infill. It's going to be over in a couple hours, and we'll be eating lunch together. Now, we're – It's getting dark. Several guys don't have MVGs. They didn't pack them just because they weren't expecting to be there till dark. Now you're running out of snacks, food, water, anything like that. You've packed. So we've got a whole bunch of issues really mountain up right now, and it's causing a lot of trouble. Jon Becker: Yeah, but, I mean, to the credit of the team, you guys are recognizing that this is evolving on you in a negative way. Right? It's very easy in these circumstances to just keep chasing the guy into the woods and put yourself in a worse and worse tactical situation. So you guys are taking the pause to go, hang. Hang on a minute here. Like, it's getting dark. We don't have MVGs. We're hungry, we're cold, we're wet, whatever. Logan Smith: Right. And, yeah, that's just kind of our ATL and our TLs just making those decisions because you're obviously, you want to go after this guy. You want to. He just engaged. You just had this incident, right. And you want to push that limit, but just knowing what you can do and what you can't, and we actually already had. Obviously, as all this is unfolding, we're getting command staffs being notified. We've got basically every k nine in the state headed our way. We've got every trooper in the post district on scene at this point, at least on the main road. We're having them get on every other road around there. You're kind of blocking off, hoping maybe they just encounter him, maybe they see him running, maybe a neighbor calls him in kind of thing. So we're trying to do our due diligence on that aspect as well to provide some type of containment. But you're also dealing with a ginormous portion of woods with no house anywhere. So really, our search area at this point is just too large. It's too big, and we've got too many other issues to really push the envelope at this point. Jon Becker: What did you decide to do? Logan Smith: We were waiting on our critical incident response team, and basically we call them cert, but those guys are great. They basically work every single officer involved shooting in the state, and they do a really good job. So they work every agency's officer involved shooting. So obviously, once they realized that we were in an OISDE, they went ahead and came up on scene as we secured it the best we could and kind of started to do what they could with a little bit of light we had left and simultaneously that as well. We had actually notified FBI regional SWAT that, hey, we were going to need some relief and let them know of the situation and what we were going to be dealing with. Jon Becker: And regional FBI is Louisville? Logan Smith: At that point, I'm pretty sure it was, but I'm pretty sure it's Louisville, but I'm not 100% sure. Jon Becker: So, I mean, what's their ETA when you put out to them? What are they giving you for an ETA to get there? Logan Smith: I think they were around 4 or 5 hours, I believe, so we actually. We knew they were coming, thankfully. And we've got a good working relationship with those guys, so that's a blessing. But. So we've got our CERT guys on the hill as well. They're starting to realize, hey, we can do what we can do now, but we need to be off this mountain. We've got a armed suspect still on the loose on his home turf, and we're just not going to be able to do anything under darkness. So we basically actually back them out. We leave a couple troopers there, a couple SRT members, to kind of maintain security and basically wait for that regional SWAT team to show up. And basically, it was kind of a handoff of that area. Jon Becker: Is the suspect that the deceased suspect been evacuated or is he left in place? Logan Smith: No, he was left in place. And basically that was a call that the command staff made, I believe, just basically due to the. Due to the incident in general, just all the moving parts and for Cert to get an accurate investigation, they didn't want to. They didn't want to pull him off the mountain. And also, we didn't want to bring EMS or anybody up there. So we were going to, if we were going to kind of exfil, I guess you say, him off that mountain, then we were going to have to do it. And they just decided, hey, if we're going to. If we're just going to hold and maintain security throughout the night on this area, just leave him here and provide security. And that's what we did. Jon Becker: Yeah, it's 100% the right call. I mean, trying to split the team's attention even further. How many of the guys on the team were engaged in the shooting? Like, how many shooters do you have at this point? Logan Smith: Let's see. At this point, we have got three shooters. Jon Becker: Now, are they going to pull those three shooters off or are they going to leave them on the problem? Logan Smith: And I take that that's four shooters. So we've got four people engaged him or gazed into gentlemen that afternoon, but they are basically the way that works. Those guys were pulled off a mountain so they weren't left to deal with. Holding that, maintaining that security while FBI showed up. So it's kind of good thing on our team leaders just understanding, hey, knowing what they've been involved in and just getting them off X. Right? And just basically, hey, good job. You did what you had to do. Now let's go back. Let's get back to that safe area where you can kind of decompress a little bit. But, yeah, usually anytime we have an officer involved shooting, they are put on an admin leave, that kind of thing, and we go through our process with that CERT team to where they're doing their investigation. Jon Becker: Got it. So we start off with 13 operators. We just lost four operators to the OISDE. A QRF has collapsed, and now you're starting to pull the team off the mountain. What time do you guys tender the scene to the FBI, you think? Logan Smith: I'm not exactly sure the exact time, but I would say it was after midnight. I'm pretty sure it was just after midnight when we actually pulled off. So we started at. We infield at 08. And then we were kind of falling off the mountain there, the best we could. Jon Becker: A little after midnight, 16 hours on scene, and an OIS and a lot of woods and. Logan Smith: Right. And I don't think I mentioned it earlier. We're talking late August in Kentucky. And if you're not familiar with that weather, it's usually extremely hot, extremely humid. And August is usually one of the hardest, hottest day or hottest months in the year for Kentucky. So we were just dealing with a whole lot of different issues, and that's when I kind of say we're running out of that water. We're having guys kind of start having some issues, and we're trying to address it. And now. Yeah, we're just trying to. We're just trying to get back to where we can start reevaluating our situation. Jon Becker: Yeah. And, you know, I grew up in California, so I don't really understand humidity, but. But you guys have a pretty good handle on making rain fall sideways in the air on a hot day from what I've seen. Okay, so FBI takes over the scene. They secure it. Logan Smith: Yeah. Basically, you hand off that scene to them, and we kind of give them just the down and dirty on what happened. And then also kind of, hey, we're. We're gonna go get some shut eye, and then we will come back and relieve you guys, and then we'll just kind of get our game plan for day two. So, unfortunately, our day isn't over. We've got our CERT investigation to do, as well, just because of the officer involved shooting. So we basically all regroup. We actually go to the original staging area that we had that had a. There was an office building there we could utilize, and then that's where we go. And they actually take our pictures. That's when they take pictures of the guns. Actually, anybody that was involved in that shooting, you count all your rounds. Actually, they do. The whole team, but they count all our rounds that we had on us. And then they actually take those rifles that were used in that first office involved shooting. So now the four guys that were involved no longer have their primary hk 416 and suppressors. Jon Becker: Got it. So we started off with not enough resources, and we are continuing to lose them as the day goes on. Logan Smith: Yeah. Yeah. With that giant team we have known. But, yeah, we're doing what we can. Jon Becker: It just keeps getting worse. Okay, so you guys go through the investigation, hopefully go home, get some sleep. When does this thing that you're basically just holding security overnight? Right? Nobody's nobody's hunting the guy. You, you just kind of lock down the scene as best you can, trying to just neutralize it overnight so he hopefully doesn't escape your containment. Logan Smith: Yes. Correct. And, yeah, we were, we weren't more or less, yeah, we were not actively searching for him at this point. Yeah, we're just holding basically containment and security on that original scene. And the game plan at this point was, hey, we're going to get some shut eye. We'll get some rest. We'll be right back out here first thing in the morning. We'll relieve FBI SWAT, and then we'll hold security while CERT does their investigation, get this other guy off the mountain. And, hey, we'll re evaluate, kind of catch this guy later. Hopefully, he gets pinned up. Hopefully just let the intel do its work at that point. So, I mean, that was the plan. Jon Becker: And what happened? Logan Smith: We go back to the hotel. Eventually everybody gets back there with us after FBI shows up. So we relieve that scene to them. Obviously, a lot of the road units and stuff, they stay on scene, but we get back to the hotel, get some rest, and the next morning, we had a couple SRT members that weren't involved in the original incident. They start going to the scene and they're going to relieve FBI as they're actually showing up on scene and kind of on the road. They meet FBI SWAT coming down the hill as they're kind of coming up. So there's a little bit of a panic button being pressed because now we're worried about, hey, containment. Where's that security element at? And basically, it was just as a miscommunication on our part, and we take full responsibility for that. But I think we had a couple, we had a couple canine units. Troopers had worked their way up the hill as well because they were going to be part of that relief. And as soon as they got there, FBI thought it was okay for them to come off the hill. And so at this point, hey, we're kind of scrambling just a little bit. Not a giant issue, but we were kind of worried, hey, we don't want two canine guys up there by themselves. So those guys are scrambling to get back up on the hill and try to basically provide that security. Jon Becker: So the team gets back on the hill. Got a dog, boy, got two dogs now on the hill. They have the Ken and handlers have the dogs with them. Logan Smith: Yes, they do. Yep. And then we've got basically. So now we've, we've got that containment secure now. And there wasn't an issue, thankfully, no problem. But now we've got CERT involved, and they're actually standing around just doing their investigation. So we strategically set up guys around that perimeter, and they're basically just holding it while CERT does their thing. Jon Becker: Yeah. Provide physical security to this, to the crime scene, basically. Logan Smith: Exactly. Jon Becker: Yeah. So they CERT, sir, gets in there, they do their work, and what happens next? Logan Smith: One of the members, Heath, I'm not sure if you were on that hillside at that point. I'll let you just go ahead and talk about that. Heath Ayers: So we show up the second day. We meet our canine units from post level, and it's half the team is on the hill. This morning, half the team is getting breakfast, resting, and while we are setting up 360 security for our CERT team to be able to preserve evidence, the male that had ran the first day comes walking back from the second tent towards the first tent, and one of our perimeter units challenges him. At that point, he doesn't exchange any gunfire. He immediately turns around and runs the way we were looking, to the left, which would be downhill from our current position. Jon Becker: So he's obviously, he's come back to his house, basically coming back to his tent in the woods, I guess, assuming you guys had left or something. You challenge him, and he just turns and runs? Heath Ayers: Yep. Correct. Like, and when I say challenge, the perimeter unit did a great job using cover concealment. And when he got close enough, he challenged him by saying state police. And then he just turned around and. And ran. Jon Becker: And ran down the hill. Heath Ayers: Correct. Jon Becker: So is he running towards the houses? Heath Ayers: He's running actually towards the uncle's house. Jon Becker: Got it. Okay. I'm starting to build a picture in my brain. All right, so then what do those team members do when he takes off? Heath Ayers: So after we hear that challenge and it's communicated on the radio, we ended up getting in a line just for fields of fire, and we just held. We saw the last known that we saw him, and then we communicated that to the other half. The team that was eating breakfast at that point. That's when they were launched and drove from their hotel to our location. Jon Becker: And they get there and do what? Heath Ayers: So they set up at the uncle's house and decide to infill behind the uncle's house on a fourler trail back to our location to try to possibly flush a suspect or locate the suspect, because that was the avenue of his exfil. Jon Becker: Got it. How are they going to. I mean, how are you guys deconflicting fields of fire at this point. Like, this whole thing just seems like a three dimensional nightmare as far as, you know, uphill, downhill houses. Like, the deconfliction of fields of fire just sounds terrifying to me. Heath Ayers: The good thing about this lay the land is there is a lot of elevation change. So if they did encounter him on that hillside, we would be protected by our terrain. Jon Becker: Got it. Heath Ayers: And likewise for the team on top of the hill, if we encountered him on a flat, then it would be above the other team. Jon Becker: Got it. Okay. Okay. Logan Smith: And basically, when, obviously, I was one of the guys that was back eating breakfast there and just basically everybody recovering. So, yeah, we scramble. And basically, it's another kind of all hands on deck scenario. And that was command staff like, hey, even though you guys have been in this incident the day prior, we need all the bodies we can get. We just encountered the guy again. So that was just decision that was made at that moment to pull the four. Jon Becker: Even the four shooters. Logan Smith: Correct. Jon Becker: Okay. Logan Smith: Yes, correct. And it's just a manpower thing. Jon Becker: Yeah. Ultimately, you're. You're putting the other nine guys at great risk if you leave four people out. Logan Smith: So, yeah, a great decision by them. So. Jon Becker: But they don't have rifles. Logan Smith: But we do not have our primary HK-416. So now those four guys are pulling out the mp seven s, and they no longer have a suppressor. So we had weapons, and we were. And those are. Those are great firearms. But, yeah, we infer that wooded terrain maybe not the best option, but we. We did the best we could and dealt those cars were just dealt a – That way. So we end up starting there, like Erra said, right behind that uncle's house. And our game plan was just kind of trying to backtrack and try to encounter the suspect hiding or in that position of that tackle position, trying to wait for the other guys to push towards him. So we were just hoping that maybe we would have. We would kind of cut him off as he was coming back to the house or whatnot. So that was kind of the game plan on why we decided to go that route. But that was also part of the issue because we were actually starting to encounter all these other fortified fighting positions. So that's when we start seeing, hey, well, there's another tent. Now we've got to deal with that then. Now there's this. This. A bunch of rocks stacked up, man made. Obviously, we got to clear that spot. So. And we had a canine with us, and we'll get to that later as well. But the canine wasn't a usual handler and dog that we dealt with. We had used him in the past, but, yeah, he hasn't done a lot of work like that. Jon Becker: He's patrol dog. Logan Smith: Correct. Jon Becker: Apprehension dog or tracking dog? Logan Smith: Apprehension. Jon Becker: Okay. Logan Smith: Yeah, apprehension. So we were just kind of keeping him back in case we did encounter that, that runner scenario or just needed to send him on that on if he was hiding kind of thing. But so we're working our way back, and the next thing we know is we have a rifle laying right in the middle of a four wheeler trail. And that was really the odd thing. Two is we already knew the four wheeler had came up this four wheeler trail earlier or the day prior, but now we have a. It ended up being a 22 rifle scoped rifle, and it was laying just perfectly placed right over the trail, the four wheeler trail. So now we're stepping back again, thinking, okay, well, he's drawing us in. He's wanting us to walk up to this rifle just for an ambush. So we kind of backtrack again, get a game plan on how to handle this, and we kind of end up working a different way to get around that and basically realize that, hey, it's secure. And really kind of, to this day, we don't know why the rifle was placed that way. I don't know if it was a way of knowing for him that nobody was back in that area or had been back that trail because they would have picked up the rifle. I don't know if that was a way of him just knowing that nobody was up in the tent. So I don't know if he placed that there, the date prior or if he just lost it. We don't really know. Jon Becker: Yeah, or is he laying guns? You know, that'd be my concern, is he's laying guns, you know, from fighting position to fighting position, so he can move to location to location. Logan Smith: Correct. And that very well could have been his option or his intentions as well. Jon Becker: Yeah. Okay, so when do you next encounter him? Logan Smith: Okay, so we actually. All right, we do our deconfliction process. We know we're actually starting to circle back and. And kind of get on that blue on blue area. So we basically deconflict that the best we can as we're coming back on each other. And then once we do link up, that's when we decide that we're going to go to that last known area and basically conduct our track. Heath Ayers: So now that we have all of our guys back, we have a last known that's marked visually and with a GPS coordinate. We move to that location and set up a tracking formation. I'm actually in the tracking formation, and as we are getting the tracking formation set up, I'm scanning and I visually locate the suspect in a bunch of downed trees. We've got a process to that. And when I realize that people are not quite set up yet, I go ahead and just challenge the suspect. And at that point, he gets up and starts running away from us towards the uncle's house, his house, his mom and dad's house, and the rest of the post personnel. All of our support capacity is all downhill from us, and that's where he's going. Jon Becker: Oh, boy! Logan Smith: And just to add to that they found that last, that last known, as I keep saying, and, and where he had kind of slid down that hill and from that point where they actually made contact was probably only, was it 2030 yards from that last gnome, is that correct? So he kind of bailed off out of sight and he had pretty quick, so he didn't go very far, at least just for, to paint that picture. Jon Becker: Got it. Got it. So he's now popped up again. He's running. When do you see him again? What happens next? Heath Ayers: So we end up chasing him. We pursue him, but with that thick of a woods, down trees, we have a lot of different little small creeks flowing down. It's not conducive for in a foot pursuit, especially, especially with tactical gear. Jon Becker: Yeah, it doesn't sound like foot pursuit ground. Heath Ayers: So to paint the picture, half the team is in a tracking formation. Thankfully to our team leader at the time, he did a good job taking care of his guys and the guys that were involved. The first day, he tried to stick them in a location that they could do more of a security position for the evidence of the first days incident. Yeah, so they're, they're kind of put up there. Hopefully, they won't get into anything else. But as the situation unfolds, this guy circles backs and we're on the lower shelf and those guys are on the upper shelf. So we're running parallel with each other again. So as that formation moves into a tactical l, the people that are up doing the security position start running parallel with the suspect and us. So we're able to have that tactical. Logan Smith: And before we jump ahead too much, as I was talking about, hey, this, the canine, the handler we were utilizing at the time hasn't really operated with us. And this whole backtrack is, which we had just done, obviously wasn't a quick process either. So we're talking several hours in that, in that August heat again. So they actually had sent the canine after that fleeing male. And just a note for the listener is he wasn't armed. He didn't have anything in his hands. That's why we did what we did. And we didn't, we weren't running after this guy, but we were pursuing him, trying to keep him just in sight. That's kind of what you're just having to do in that situation. The canine was deployed and he did not engage the suspect. He just ran beside him. So now we've got a dog on the loose that did not engage our suspect. And now this suspect is running downhill kind of towards his residence, towards his uncle's residence and to those other containment troopers, which we do not have comms with. So we're on a different channel, I guess our team is, and the road troopers are on their own channel. So at this point, they just know and they hear the holler and all that, but they really don't know what we're doing on top of the hill. Jon Becker: And so you've got an armed suspect. I mean, you don't, haven't seen a gun in his hand right now, but we know he's armed, closing on an unsuspecting population of perimeter officers. Logan Smith: Correct. And it was pretty shortly after that initial contact that he's actually comes out of the woods there and he is challenged by the troopers. So they actually have visual of him. And as soon as he's challenged by them, he shoots back up into the woods. They didn't pursue. They did a great job. They knew their role and so they just held what they had and they didn't go chasing after him. And that led our guys kind of continue to push towards that last known once again. So at this point, everybody's lost visual of our fleeing suspect. And we're just basically now trying to slowly work through the area and hopefully, hopefully identify the guy and make contact once again. And that's when your guys, your two guys that were on top of the hill that are paralleling and kind of watching, watching this play out below them. They get to a point to where they can actually see mom and dad's house. And we can tell that there's actually troopers behind mom and dads as well. So we're kind of trying to see that area. We're like, hey, he hasn't gone this far because they probably would have challenged him or saw him at this point as well. He hasn't came uphill and got high ground on us because we would have seen him, we would have been able to challenge him. And so that's when we made a decision to just drop over that hillside just a little bit, to kind of see down into that little. That little valley area. And as soon as we did, it wasn't just a few seconds, and we actually identified the guy laying kind of in a fetal position, kind of tucked up under a bunch of foliage, and he kind of stuck out like that sore thumb just because he didn't have a shirt on. He just had those khaki pants and all that green, green foliage. So immediately we picked him up, and then it actually worked out really well because we actually noticed a tattoo on his shoulder. And that was the same tattoo we knew from our brief and all our intel. So we knew, hey, this is our guy. It wasn't the uncle that we didn't know where he was at. We were actually able at that point, hey, this is our guy. We've idd him, and that's just kind of one of those things. It was just why we thought of that or whatever, I don't know, but we were actually able to ideem, so that worked out really well. Jon Becker: And what do you do? You guys challenge him? Logan Smith: Yeah, we – There was two of us. So immediately we wait for support, and me and him actually start slowly working our way down towards him, utilizing cover of the biggest tree, I guess you could say that we had. And at this time, he's not. He doesn't know we're around, so we're trying to just maintain that noise discipline and just move towards him. And as soon as we get to about the tree, that last point of concealment, I guess you could say he actually kind of is laying on his side, facing us. So we're a little bit uphill above him, but we can see his chest. We can see he's kind of laying fetal towards us, I guess you could say. And he raises his heads up and makes eye contact with us. So as soon as we know the gig's up, he's made the eye contact, we immediately challenge him. Hey, Kentucky state police. Show me your hands. Show me your hands. At the time, he had the hands, which he didn't have anything in them for what we could tell, but they were kind of together at his waist. And then he goes, as he's looking at us, he doesn't verbalize anything, doesn't have any motion whatsoever. And then he just slowly starts reaching over his right side. Behind his back. And that's when we decided to engage him to eliminate that threat. Jon Becker: You have a gun? Logan Smith: He did not have a gun. No. We got down there to him. Obviously, we held what we had on high ground as that other element pushed towards him, kind of maintaining that good tactical well. And once we got up there and secured him, he didn't have a pistol, but he did have a – Where he was reaching, he did have a holster. So I'm not sure if he had just lost it when he's running or if he thought he still had it or if he was kind of won that suicide by cop. I mean, at this point. Jon Becker: Yeah, at that point, who knows, right? It's so far down the road that, you know, he had plenty of time to put his hands up and obviously made a conscious choice that that wasn't going to happen. That's a h*** of a story. How. I mean, how's it in for you guys? Obviously, it's suspect now. Secure. I'm going to guess there's probably more searching that's going to take place and everything else, but how does your day wrap after that? Logan Smith: At this point, I think all of us are just. Obviously, it's a crazy few hours there. I think we're a little relieved. Number one, knowing that we've got our guy. And he did match the same description as what we had on the day one. But we also knew that we had an uncle missing from the other house. And then we had to just deal with that whole investigation with CERT and deal with the evidence and that kind of process. The day's not over, and we actually just pretty much just relieved from the scene and let SIRT come in and basically take over that scene at that point. Jon Becker: Got it. So, guys, let's walk through lessons learned here. And obviously, it's a profound event. A lot of moving parts here. Talk to me about what went right, what went wrong. Give me your kind of after action view of the lessons learned. Logan Smith: Yeah. And I'll just – With that after action, it's just. It's so important that you actually sit down and have an honest after action with your guys. There are so many moving parts. We were so short handed on top of that, it just being insanely difficult terrain and all that. You gotta have that conversation. And sometimes it's tough, right? Sometimes it's not what you want to hear, but you just have to have that conversation with your guys. And thankfully, we've our senior guys and our TLs and ATLs, they've always done a really good job with just kind of humbling each one of us. But when it just gets down to it, I mean, there's always things you did right and there's always things you did wrong. It's just a matter of admitting those issues. And just to go just through some of the pros, just to start, is kind of our intel gathering. And it's kind of funny wrapping around to that now is because the guy that actually got our, all our intel package together from post, from the get go, saw how we operated and he did such a good job with that. He's actually on our team now. So, I mean, if you look at that now, I mean, he saw how we operated. We got a firsthand of what kind of guy he was and what kind of detective and package he put together for us. And now he's on our team. So it's kind of cool. But they're not always going to be right with their intel packages. So it's important for your guys to do their due diligence on their end too, and just try to check off those boxes. It's not that you're the, you don't trust those guys. It's just, hey, we're going into it too. We're going to see if we can find a hole, you know, something you didn't think of. And it was good for us, so that was really good. And then we didn't mention it in the podcast, but I got on here like a sixth sense, and it just goes back to trusting your gut. We had one of our guys that was one of our main guys doing the plan, doing the brief. And he sat back with me one day and was like, man, I don't know what it is. I just don't feel good about it. And this was prior to any of it, he just said, for whatever reason, I've got a gut feeling that it's not, it's not going to go as we want. It's not good. I don't know why. And it's just, it's that 6th sense, but it's don't disregard that for fear. It's trust it, share it, and it kind of gets everybody else. Hey, maybe we need to be on our toes a little more on this guy. Maybe it's, maybe there is more to it. Jon Becker: So when he said that, you guys leaned into it and took a deeper look. Heath Ayers: Yeah. Logan Smith: And he was a senior guy, been on the team for 12, 13 years, had seen a lot, right? So coming from him, you took notice, right. It was kind of like, that's odd for him to say that. And whatever it was that made him have that feeling he was right. He was right. Yeah. I mean, yeah, no kidding. And then, like, decentralized command, you've probably heard Jocko or somebody talking like that kind of stuff. It's basically that you're all. All of our operators have that tactical authority to act, but your thinkers first and your shooter's second. So when those two guys that were on top of the hill made that decision on their own to, hey, we're going to start paralleling these guys at the end, on that second day, that wasn't a decision that somebody told them to go do that. It was, hey, we can't let this guy get. Get high ground on us. They. We've got actually control this. So that was just a movement they made on their own, and it ended up working out and they ended up having to be the guys that made the last shot. But we didn't have anybody telling them that we just trusted, hey, they're going to do what they need to do and go on. And that's just. It's a testament to our team, I think, in the way we train and the guys we're actually bringing onto the team, and we just trust them. We trust that you're going to make the right decision. Jon Becker: Yeah, that's really smart. Logan Smith: And just land NAV and communication. We're really good in rural operations, but that's our bread and butter as we talked. So just understanding those maps and kind of pinpointing, hey, this is probably one of the only few places on this mountainside that he could have a tent or he could have a little flat spot to have an area he's living in. And looking back, yeah, we were pretty accurate on it. Like, we were pretty close. It was a lot of ground to cover. Yes. But at the end of the day, by doing that and understanding those topical maps and discussing that stuff through Rouhaups training and that kind of thing and showing that stuff, I mean, it really helped us out. And then the communication aspect is that's a whole lot going on. And thankfully it worked out. Jon Becker: Yeah. I think one of the things that you said that is really troubling is that the QRT can't talk to the obs who are able to reach the team. But because of the terrain, I think it's very easy to forget that terrain can literally take away your ability to communicate. And so I think the fact that you guys had coordinated on the front end and had a pretty clear idea how you were going to move. Probably decreased the likelihood of you ended up on a blue. On blue, you know, where your guys got downrange of you or uprange of you. Logan Smith: Yeah, no doubt. And just to continue on that, just uniforms and camo. I mean, just knowing what environment you're going to be operating in. So it kind of goes back to the, hey, though, the black tactical gear. That's not always the best option. And unfortunately, some of these departments, even in the city, get stuck having to utilize that equipment because that's all they got. But then they're in a wooded area that just so happens to be a couple acres next to a urban environment. So, I mean, but that's just kind of one of the things that, like I said, it's just we're really good at knowing what to use and what to wear and that kind of environment, and then just preparation. You're training in those positions, in those environments, and then your physical fitness, just being able to do so. It's a long day. You're packing all kinds of gear up and down this mountain, and… Jon Becker: It's hot. Logan Smith: It's a lot, and it's hot, and it's, you got the humidity to deal with, and you got all those other factors, and unfortunately, you're just gonna, if your physical fitness is bad, you're gonna go down. It's just your stress levels and everything is just gonna fall back on you. Jon Becker: Well, if nothing else, I mean, as you start to fatigue, your decision making is gonna begin to fail, too. Logan Smith: And just always I got on there, just always, like, improving your positions throughout that encounter. We were always kind of that shoot, move, communicate kind of thing. And you're always looking for a better position to be in to where you're a better teammate. Right? You're better support for your guys, or you're in a different position or different angles to where you can see more, communicate more, whatever you need to do, but it's just, don't get stuck in the mud. Always be willing to move and just be ready to evolve with the situation as you see it. Jon Becker: Talk to me about info, like the way that you guys are gathering a lot of information. How are you disseminating it? What are the lessons learned from the – As you were getting information, how you're sharing it within the team? Heath Ayers: Thankfully, we had a very senior heavy team at the time, and they've planned a lot of ops. We disseminate information on a brief, primarily, but as we get information through our scouts. That is always passed up and down the chain to those that are going to be in different roles. The briefs are very, very long, very deep, and if we have questions, we are going to get answers. If we have questions that need to be answered, we're not going to pull the trigger on operation until we get those answers. And we disseminated that information very clearly the night before. Logan Smith: And I'll just add to that, like on that communication aspect is you just, there was some miscommunication, number one, with us, an SRT and FBI. And that's kind of like that was, that's on us. That was completely ours. We just didn't give, we didn't give those guys a very good game plan for day two and they were doing exactly what they thought they needed to and end up. We kind of left that area unsecure for just a minute with some guys that, with some canine guys that just weren't capable probably if there was a situation was to rise. But it's kind of that communication on that and then it's also goes into like our communication on just our land NAV in general and being able to communicate. Hey, this is the GPS coordinate we're given on a location. Hey, we need you here because this is where our situation is at now. And we had some issues there. Basically when we were trying to link back up with that first woods team on day one, a GPS coordinate was sentence via the iPhone. Well, it wasn't completely accurate and it gave us, it took us a little longer to find them because they weren't coming directly from like a Garmin device. Jon Becker: Just because the difference in a resolution between an iPhone nav and a Garmin now. Logan Smith: Correct. And when you're dealing with a large wooded area with lots of foliage. Jon Becker: Yeah, yeah. Logan Smith: And you don't have that direct line of sight anymore. That little bit of difference can, I mean, it could have threw us on top of the target. It could have threw us in some bad spots. But it's just something that we know that, hey, if you're going to use some type of GPS coordinates to relay that kind of stuff, make sure you're using either the same device or something more accurate that's actually built for that other than just your phone, that's kind of jumping all over the place. Jon Becker: Yeah, yeah. That makes a lot of sense. What are kind of give me the kind of cons, negative lessons learned, things that you maybe that drove changes of behavior after the, after the event. Heath Ayers: So we discovered a few on the issues with the GPS devices, the differences, and then the miscommunication with FBI. We brought up some in the start of the podcast that some of the guys were planning on a short operation. So instead of packing their MVGs, we had to push a little bit the issue with daylight and start making some changes there. And then preparation. We're talking really hot days, really humid days. We expected a shorter operation. So we did take water and food, but didn't take quite enough. So you started to see some guys get dehydrated, exhausted, and we're already a low man team, so we don't have a lot of support. So that's a couple of the cons. The other cons on the second day, the guys that were in the officer involved shooting the first day had their rifles taken from them with their suppressors. So that was a huge issue in the second day shooting, because when we heard the shots, we couldn't see our guys. But it said it was all unsuppressed gunfire. Jon Becker: Oh, boy! Heath Ayers: So our thought was – that was just coming from our suspect only where. And that's where we learned that we need to get suppressors for not only our 416s, but also our mp seven. So we've made that adjustment. Jon Becker: Now I have nothing else. Just to be able to differentiate between you and suspect fire. That's a really good point. Heath Ayers: Some other things that we have learned with the cons is now we have a dedicated team dog that is full time to our team. One of the operator runs the dogs, he takes care of the dogs, he trains with the dogs. But we've also added to that four post level guys that are training with SRT. And if we have an operation that we need an extra dog, one of those four is coming with us. So we've added that capability. Obviously, the lack of manpower in general is always going to be an issue. So we're trying to bump those numbers up. aircraft, they're able to get aircraft, another camera on another bird, the exact same type. So now we have, they can switch out Hilos in a long, lengthy operation. Two pilots can fly in flock for a couple hours, and then that they can switch out while they're refueling, resting, so, so on and so forth. Jon Becker: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Logan Smith: And I would add to that, too, is kind of that con is just understanding what you're expecting out of your guys, and especially out of guys that aren't used to training with you. And that's kind of what we did to the canine. It was no fault of his own or his dogs. We kind of set him up for failure and we expected something out of him that he had never put himself in or we had never exposed him to. So when that dog failed, it wasn't the dog's fault or the canine handlers. We just pushed the limit and didn't step back and, like, take into consideration, like, his thought process on, hey, can you do this? Are you, are you, are you comfortable doing this? And that kind of thing? So when that all unfolded, it was kind of like, yeah, that was dumb. That dog had been out here in the heat for hours. We were just expecting too much. And that's kind of the FBI thing is we just, we didn't have communicate well and it wasn't a problem. Thank goodness. But that was our fault. We didn't communicate that. Hey, we were. The tech guys are going to really attack guys and it just kind of, it just fell on us and we take full responsibility for that. That was – Could have went bad, but it didn't, thankfully. Jon Becker: Yeah, fortunately, no, I mean, there's a hundred ways this op could have gone bad, and you guys managed to pull a very successful operation out of what should have been extremely ugly situation. And, you know, you guys should be really proud of your team for this because this is a hard operation and, you know, nothing but respect for what you guys did. So, guys, thank you so much for doing this with me, you know, fantastic! And I'm glad everything turned out. Heath Ayers: Appreciate for having us! Logan Smith: Yeah, thanks, Jon! Appreciate it!

The Emergency Mind Transcript

jonathan@aardvarktactical.com on October 3, 2024

Episode 37 – The Emergency Mind – Dr. Dan Dworkis

Jon Becker: My guest today is Dr. Dan Dworkis.

Dan is a board certified emergency physician, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the Keck School of Medicine at USC, the founder of the Emergency Mind Project, and the chief medical officer at the Mission Critical Team Institute.

Dan performed his emergency medicine residency with Harvard Medical School at the Harvard affiliated Emergency Medicine residency at Massachusetts General Hospital Brigham Health, and holds an MD-PhD in molecular medicine from the Boston University School of Medicine.

Dan is the author of the Emergency Mind wiring your brain for performance under Pressure. He's also the host of the Emergency Mind podcast. I'm excited to have Dan on The Debrief because he not only has a unique blend of scientist and practitioner, but he is someone who has spent a great deal of time and thought deeply about how our minds work in critical incidents. Additionally, through his work with mission critical Teams Institute, he has looked at how those principles apply to tactical operators and first responders.

I hope you enjoy my chat with Dr. Dan Dworkis!

My name is Jon Becker.

The goal of this podcast is to share their stories in hopes of making us all better leaders, better thinkers, and better people.

Welcome to The Debrief!

Dan, thanks so much for being here today, man! I'm really looking forward to this conversation!

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Absolutely, Jon. Thanks for having me!

Jon Becker: So why don't we – let's start with kind of your bio and background, because I think it's relevant in this case to where you end up with the book.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Yeah. So I am an emergency doctor, and these days I'm out in Los Angeles, but going back a time a little bit, sort of how I got on this path. Right? So I actually started more as a scientist, figuring I would do mostly science and stay away from anything, people or anything related, which I was clearly and thankfully wrong about.

But so I ended up doing an MD and a PhD in molecular genetics, which is a weird combo. Thought for a while I was going to be building medical devices as kind of a career, and then somewhere along the line, absolutely, absolutely fell in love with the emergency department. I think most of us in medicine have some moment where you realize you are just a certain shape, you're just cut out for a certain thing, and that's just like you're shaped in a way, and the universe is shaped in a way, and that's just how it fits together.

I have this very strong memory of being pretty junior medical student, and it's like three in the morning and I'm on a trauma rotation and I'm just, I just, I just can't stop thinking about the ER, man. I just want to go down there. I want to see it. And I conned my way out of whatever it was I was supposed to be doing and went down to the ER and just kept doing that and kept doing that over and over again. Just absolutely fell in love with those folks who were down there.

You know, these are the people, you know, on the civilian side and in the medical side. These are the folks that are there when things, you know, go bump in the night. They're the first, they're the first line. They're what catches whatever comes in. And I just loved these folks and the energy and the chaos that they brought to it. Decided that be my path, kept training in it, and then over the last, geez, I don't know, seven or so years I've had a career out here in Los Angeles, mostly attached to what's now called LA General Hospital, which is one of the busiest ers in the country, doing a combination of medical care and teaching junior your doctors and thinking more and more about this concept of how do we apply knowledge under pressure. Right. How do we really function at the cutting edge of emergencies?

Jon Becker: So, La General Hospital, previously county USC?

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Correct. The artist formerly known as LA USC.

Jon Becker: Yeah, yeah. Which if you don't know LA, if you get shot in LA, you're probably going to now, LA General Hospital.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Pretty high chance where who's catching you?

Jon Becker: Yeah. If you're, and if you're lucky, you're going to.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: There are some great hospitals out here, but we're the, you know, we're the flagship of trauma. Absolutely.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Yeah. If nothing else, because of the volume and, and intensity of your job out there.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: I think also, you know, they're there like a lot of teams, there are self reinforcing cultures and cycles. Right? If you're a team that, that is in the middle of it, that is prides themselves on their ability to handle chaos and resuscitation and, you know, high complexity medical and traumatic care, then you tend to attract people that want to perform in those environments, that want to be part of that. And so it's a pretty good virtuous cycle from that perspective.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I think it's kind of the doctor equivalent of working at a ghetto station on graveyards on Fridays and Saturday nights. Right. The guy that seeks out the emergency department at La General is the guy that would work that station. You're looking for the edge. You're looking for the difficult case and the dangerous and the high risk and the high volume.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Yeah, we're a little weird. Yeah, I'll take that.

Jon Becker: Yeah. That's also what makes for really good ER doctors. So when did you first get interested in kind of human performance questions? What was the triggering event for you?

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Yeah, I mean, so I'm really lucky that I have a background in training martial arts, right? I was really lucky. My parents put me into that when I was a young age. It was a karate school. Right? There wasn't. We didn't really have like jiu jitsu and Muay Thai and sort of mixed martial arts back then the way we do now. But it was a karate school and a great teacher. And so from a pretty early age, I had this concept that there's a difference between knowing something in theory and being able to do it in reality.

That was part of my growing up, because if anybody's ever been done any martial arts training, it's very easy to say, here's how you do a particular move, and then it's a lot harder to do that when somebody's punching you in the face over and over again. So there's this gap that's just blindingly obvious. And when you're on the wrong side of the gap, you literally get hit in the face, which is a very strong teacher.

So I had some of that mindset coming into emergency medicine, but a lot of times medicine, we don't necessarily train with that in mind. Right? Like the standard sort of medical system trains you a lot about the what and a lot less about the how. So, you know, here's your knowledge. Here's your knowledge. Here's your knowledge. And then you're sort of left on your own in a lot of ways to figure out how to apply that knowledge specifically to these high stress, you know, high complexity cases. There are some pretty vivid memories for me that, I mean, ultimately, Jon, the answer is that I failed. Right? I failed.

And then I got interested in figuring out why, right? Because you go into a room like this and there's somebody and they're suffering and maybe they're in cardiac arrest or they are, you know, choking on something or their oxygen levels are super low and you have to act on it.

And the first couple times I did that, I got stuck. I'm not going to say I went, like, totally into vapor lock, but it was pretty close, right? I didn't know what to do. I had all this theory, all this stuff in my head, and I couldn't figure out how to get it out of my head and into my hands and into the patient. And that sucked. That sucked wildly. You go home from one of those moments and you're like, holy s***, this human being suffered because I couldn't perform at the level that I wanted to perform at, even though I know, theoretically, how to run that case. Right?

I understand what the theory, I understand the medicine. I understand how to do it. I couldn't figure out how to get it from my head to my hands. Why is that? And that sort of set off this flag for me that was like, oh, well, I remember feeling this when I was really young doing martial arts, too. So there's got to be some parallels here.

Probably, there's stuff that other people had figured out. And that sort of impetus with the fire underneath me of not wanting other people to suffer because I couldn't play at the level I wanted to play at, is really what started this whole idea of, how do we apply knowledge under pressure? It certainly wasn't that well thought out of a question when I started. It was more of like, Dan, why do you suck so much? Right? Trying to suck less.

But over time, thankfully, that got sharpened and shaped a little bit into this concept of, like, how do I, and really, how do any of us apply knowledge under pressure? How do you build teams that are able to succeed in times of crisis, stress and emergency, which is really the. Pretty much the central organizing question for my life these days.

Jon Becker: Yeah, one of the things that I'm constantly looking for on the debrief are people that are kind of immediately tangential, you know, immediately adjacent to tactical operations, because there are a lot of parallels between a sniper having to take a difficult shot on a hostage or a team having to make a high risk entry or a tactical leader having to make a decision or a medic having to deal with a multi.

All of those things, the performance issues that underlie them are the same. They are the same. The underlying. I just interviewed Rich Devinny, and the underlying attributes of what makes you a good er doc is in many cases, very similar to what makes a good DEVGRU seal. It's just applied in a different direction.

And so when I first listened to some of your work and read your book, it was just really clear that there's just a lot of overlap here. And what I like about it is that you clearly have given a lot of thought to it, and it's not, I don't know, listening to interviews with you, reading the book, it's not an intellectual exercise for you. It's a very emotional. You can feel that it resonates for you in a way that I think makes it probably a little more profound.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: You know, I've had the. The fortune and the. No, I'll go ahead and I'll call it an honor. The honor to work with a lot of different groups over the last many years, some of which are our warfighters and allied warfighters, and some of which are firefighters and folks in aerospace and all sorts of stuff like this. And, you know, what you're saying is really true. This is nothing like we need to bring intellectualness and theory to this because we got to figure it out, because it's a problem that matters.

But when we don't figure it out the right way, this is real life. This is blood. This is somebody not coming home or us not being able to bring somebody back. This is real. Right? And you're totally right about that. This isn't a theoretical exercise you're running on paper because you want to increase the, you know, percent you take home from something or I other on the financial side. Like, you know, you're doing this because this is real life.

Jon Becker: Yeah. It's not just quant math. Right? And I think one of the things that's very difficult, spending my entire adult life in this industry, it's very difficult to articulate how real everything is. Like, how every decision that people make has a life in the balance. And it does, I think, is one of the things, actually, that isolate in a lot of cases, or special operations warriors, our tactical operators, our first responders, is this understanding that they're doing something that is so critical, much like an ER doc, you have somebody's life in your hands every night you work, and a mistake has a really high cost, and that drives a certain amount of pressure, internal pressure, external pressure, and a certain emotional footprint that I think is difficult to articulate.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Yeah, I think it's interesting what you said a few seconds ago about how it's the same structures in the person applied in a different direction. I think there's actually two complementary pieces to that. One is the person. What do you think and feel, and how does your brain work, and how do humans brains work under pressure? And we can talk about that a little bit, too, but the other is the fact that the problem sets are actually somewhat parallel to each other. I think this is what you're getting at right now.

The challenge that you're facing, to me has this very specific shape when you talk about an emergency, and it doesn't really matter what the emergency is. In the book, we talked about three factors, and I've actually added two to my list since then because I think it's worth talking about. What is an emergency, and why do we care if you're not even doing medicine about this?

To me, the things are impact, pressure and uncertainty, and those are the core, like you said, high stakes life, death or catastrophic loss. In terms of impact, this isn't, do you get the coffee order right? This is real bad things happening. Pressure is this mismatch between resources and demand on those resources. Often that's time for most of us.

There's just not that much time to make these decisions or to make these plans for it. You know, my friend and mentor and sort of co conspirator, Preston Klein, talks a lot, about 500 seconds or less being the timeframe that we all work a lot in. That number comes from sort of back ending into if you stop somebody from breathing about how much air do they have left in them before bad things start to happen.

And that's like an optimistic number, right? That's like you've prepared to stop breathing and you're stopping breathing and like, you know, you're getting ready for it. That's not like a, your lung is damaged already or something else is going wrong with you. So it's a pretty optimistic number.

But anyway, there's a pressure mismatch between what you need to do and what you have available to do it. And then there's huge amount of uncertainty. You don't know the problem, you don't know the solution, you don't know both of it. There's so much uncertainty that we operate in, and I would typically add to that also this idea of complexity. We work in really complex systems, human interactions, human environment interactions. These aren't simple, straightforward decisions. There's hidden consequences and higher level approaches to it.

And the last thing I'd throw on that list is liminality. And I think that's what makes part of our work so interesting and weird. Right? You cross a line, you can't undo it, right? Liminality says you've crossed some boundary and you're now in this alternate world that's different than the world you left, and the only way out is through.

So the easiest way to think about this is you've launched a plane, the plane is in the air. The plane has to land eventually, right. You have to come out of that. The only way out is through. You either land the plane or you crash the plane. For us, it's the same way comes out a lot when you're putting an airway in, right?

The person is not breathing. They're in this liminal space that the only way out is through. You have to secure that airway somehow or they die and you mash all those things together and you get this real, really unique environment. That is what an emergency is.

And so I think it's worth talking about the operator, to use that term, whoever's actually in that space. Also the situation itself. And there's so many parallels in there between all of these different worlds that we're walking into. I realize it's a huge tangent, maybe not what we're talking about, but that seemed worth putting in there.

Jon Becker: No, it's actually a very interesting tangent. I'd like to push on it a little harder.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Yeah.

Jon Becker: So go back through that. Go back through the factors for me one more time. What creates an emergency?

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Absolutely. And I don't know if this is, I don't know if this is what creates an emergency or this is just when I look at emergencies, they have these things and you can sort of backend into it with it. So impact, pressure, uncertainty, complexity and liminality.

Jon Becker: Yeah, that's really interesting way to characterize it. And liminality is actually that. You taught me my new word for the day. I try to learn a new word every day today. Not solid liminality. No, I think, it's a really interesting point because like you said, once, once the plane leaves the ground, the plane has to either land or crash. There is no, you cannot, you can, you can delay that decision till it runs out of gas, but then it's not a decision anymore.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Sure.

Jon Becker: And so, so many of these decisions that you're having to make in, in the circumstances that you're in, the circumstances that our clients are in. One of my favorite quotes is there was a rush song and one of the lines in the rush song from the great prophet Neil Peart. Even if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. And to some degree, liminality is exactly that. Once it begins moving, you've got to either land it or crash it.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Yeah. I think that when you look at a lot of the different types of teams that operate in these environments, emergency or otherwise, one of the things that does sort of draw us together that we have in common is that some teams operate never in emergencies. Never. They're never emergency teams. They just do standard stuff. Sometimes they'll hit one or two of these factors, but they'll never operate in a world where all of these things are going at once.

But for those of us that are what I call, what I guess I'd call like a crisis native team. Right. Where we believe that we function in crisis and emergency. That's part of why we exist. We go back and forth between these two worlds all the time. Right?

99% of our day, even in the ER, might not actually be an emergency. But at any point in time, all of a sudden these five lights turn on and you might be right there, right in it, right in the middle of it with no warning. And so you don't really. You don't only have to function in that space, you also have to function back and forth between the normal world and that world.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And be comfortable with the fact that you don't get to decide when you enter that world.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Exactly. Yeah. Lucky you got a little warning.

Jon Becker: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But realistically, it's like, and I've heard you describe it or you describe it. Heard you describe it and I've heard other ER docs describe it in the same way that I've heard kind of tactical operators describe it is, yeah, you're going to, the flag goes up, you know, you have two minutes. Take that two minutes, use it wisely, center yourself, get your bearings, start the process, try to accelerate your brain into the problem before the problem gets there. But realistically, it's – You've got two minutes. You know, you don't have five days to plan.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, you sort of think about some of the problem sets that we work right. So we'll often get, you know, a radio call and, hey, there's a, you know, gunshot wound to the chest, victim coming in, you know, ETA three minutes, bad vitals. And it's a kidde. And you're like, okay, that's all the information you get. What are you spinning up? What resources are you putting into play? Who else is sick around you in the pod that you have to shift resources from? Given the doctor nurse ratios that you have, how do you devote the right resources to this? Oh, and by the way, there might be actually three people instead of one person. Like, okay, what are you going to prepare for?

And that at least gives you a minute to sort of, like you said, to accelerate your brain into the problem. But also, it's not just you. It's your whole team. Right. How do you get your whole team on point, fighting the same battle, doing the same set of things? The opposite from that is the second problem set that we often face is what you would call, like, a zero notice event. Right?

The code blue goes off somewhere in the hospital, meaning somebody's heart has stopped and somebody's hit the button. And one of us leaves the ER with a bag of gear, sprints upstairs, and goes to take care of that person, and they lead what's called a swarm team. They'll basically assemble whatever team is around and available and have them work the problem set together, which is really kind of a different and separate problem set, because in one case, you have your team who you know and you train with and you operate with another team.

You're leaving your environment and assembling whoever's there to do the best that you can with it. I mean, almost all of us have stories about responding on planes or, you know, I ran a cardiac arrest in a hair salon once. I was just walking by. Like, there's just, like, things that happen, and you're sort of like. You have these zero notice events that you just snap into that. Into that emergency space.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And it does. When you look at it from that perspective, it is kind of two different. It's the same skillset, but it's two different variants of the skillset, because one is known resources, known capability, and unknown problem. The other is unknown problem and unknown resources and capability.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Spicy.

Jon Becker: Yeah, to say the least. So let's dig into the book a little bit. So the book talks about five major areas, and I'd kind of like to go in and just push on each of them a little bit and just. Just kind of massage them out. So just to give a roadmap of where we're going, the five are applying knowledge under pressure, handling uncertainty and imperfection, supporting critical decisions, building from core values, and balancing competing forces. Why don't we start with applying knowledge under pressure?

Dr. Dan Dworkis: I think it's worth taking a second first and being like, why did I write this? And what's the point of this? Right? Like, why does this book exist? And part of the answer is, it exists because it's what I wish I had when I was coming up. Right? You know, you go through these cases and you go through those moments, like I talked about, where you don't perform at the level you want to perform at, and you go home and you somehow have to live with that, right?

And, you know, if you're lucky, you're going home and you have mix of people around you, some of whom understand what you're going through and some of whom live outside of that world. And you do normal human things. You know, you do the laundry and you eat dinner, but in your mind, you're like this human being suffered because I wasn't there the right way. And it's a bridge that's so hard to cross, so hard to communicate about that.

And I, you know, I'll be honest, I struggled with it, right? I really struggled with it. I sat on stuff I should have processed and didn't, and it built up and built up. And, you know, I would come home and beat myself up about these things. And there wasn't a lot of logic in terms of how to train to get better at it. And I wrote this book hopefully to at least provide a starting point, a set of questions, a set of ideas to folks who are going through some parallel journey like that on some path. It certainly is not, you know, an exhaustive and perfect map of how to do things by any stretch of the imagination. It's much more of a starting point in conversations, in a seed.

And so usually when I talk about this, the first thing I say is that although it looks like maybe I'm talking to somebody about this and I'm the one giving the knowledge, the reality is we're both on the same side of this problem set. Right? And so if you're listening to this, you're on the same side of this problem set with me. And we're both trying to figure out how to apply knowledge under pressure.

So my hope is that whatever I say in this, if you have better ideas, that you reach out and tell me, because I need that and my patients need that. We all need me and you and everybody to be sharper about it as we do it. So there's some cool stuff in this book. Like, you know, I'm a little biased, but I like it. There's some cool stuff in there. But to me, I think the most important fact piece of it is that it is incomplete. It is a starting point, not an ending point, about all this.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And it reads that way. I mean, it's interesting because it is certainly, I mean, there's a lot. There's a lot to the book and a lot of depth and understanding in the things that you have researched and you have figured out. But there is a theme throughout of trying to figure it out. Like it's, you know, there's a lot of talk in the tactical community. The difference between post traumatic stress and post traumatic growth.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Yeah.

Jon Becker: The book actually feels like post traumatic growth to me. It feels like you being unhappy with your performance, struggling with it, and then finally, you know, like, learning your way out of that feeling. And how do I. How do I get better every day? And then how do I share that information?

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Yeah, John, that's just about the nicest thing anybody's ever said about the book. Thank you. It feels like post traumatic growth. I'm gonna write that down. That's great.

Jon Becker: It does. No, I mean, it's – The thing is, like, sometimes you read books and it's like, here's all the s*** I screwed up, and this is what I should have done, and it doesn't have that. We can get better, and I am getting better. And I think one of the things I really liked about the book is, and all of the interviews that I've heard with you is this kind of notion of, like, I'm not happy with my performance today, and my performance is going to get better.

One of the podcasts I listened to, an interview with you, you talked about when a patient dies, putting your hand on a patient. And I would love you to tell that story, because I think it is, from my perspective, it reveals a lot about you and your thought process.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Death and suffering are realities of the world that you work in as an ER doctor. Right? We're very aware of the critical difference between performance and outcome in a lot of ways. Right? Outcome is what happens. Performance is how well you do your job, how well you live up to your capability and abilities. They are, in our world, not perfectly correlated. Right? You can perform at your absolute best, and it's just that person's time and they still die. Or you can fumble every which way and get lucky and the person lives. Right? And either way, you still have to learn from what happens, and you still have to get better at it.

So one of the thresholds and sort of rituals that you come to figure out as you're training is, what do you do when somebody dies? Because it happens to all of us. Thankfully, it's not all the time. Thankfully, we save way more people than we lose. But it does happen. So early in training, somebody gave me this, introduced me to this rubric that I now use and that I've taught generations of ER doctors with. And it's to take a moment, this person in front of you has just died. And there's a realness to that, right? There were ten people in the room before and now there's nine. And that's real.

And there's so many other things going on and there's such a draw to sort of move to the next thing and to just keep running because there's other patients that need you and there's other things that are happening. And what we do, what I do is to slow myself and my team down and take a moment and just take a moment and think about this human being that used to be there.

And you draw it out, you think about them and you put your hand on them. Usually it's on their foot, because that just happens to be where we run most of the cases from, for various reasons. Put your hand on them and you say, thank you for teaching me, sir, I'm sorry. All I could do for you today is to learn. I'm sorry. All I can do for you today is to learn.

Jon Becker: That is such a profound statement. Is such a profound statement on both sides of the. I mean, it is almost by definition setting your brain for post traumatic growth. Right? I'm sorry that the trauma that you went through and that I went through has left you here and me only able to learn. But I heard that story and it hits me exactly the same way that it did the first time he hit. It is just such a profound statement.

And I think it's worth people taking a moment to think about, because so often the guys that we work with and the guys that are in our audience are in that same circumstance. They're not able to rescue a hostage, they're not able to save somebody in time. They're not able to stop somebody from being in a fatal car crash or save them after a traumatic event or whatever. And what I liked about that the first time I heard it and what I like about it now is it is that moment.

Two things that you're doing. One, you're preparing your brain to move past it in a constructive way. But two, you are also conditioning yourself that you need to learn from every single one of these events.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Yeah. It doesn't stop there. Right. You don't get to tell that person, I'm sorry. All I could do for you is learn and then not learn to. Right. That is, to me, unforgivable in some sense. Right. I can't, as a doctor, I can't promise I'm going to save everybody. Unfortunately, I can't even promise I'm going to relieve all their suffering. Medicine is pretty d*** amazing, but we can't do everything. And I really wrestled with that.

So if I can't promise I'm going to save them, and I can't promise I'm going to make them better. What can I promise them? What makes this worth going every day and throwing yourself into this pit over and over again? And to me, the answer is, I can promise them that I will learn, that I will do my best, and I will learn, and I will never waste their suffering. I will never waste their suffering.

Jon Becker: Yeah. One of my mentors, Mike Hillman, who was one of the original guys at LAPD D-Platoon, says, never waste a crisis. Right? Like, never. Never waste a tragedy. Never waste a crisis. You know, something horrible happened to someone, to you, to you, to everyone. Don't allow that to just be thrown away. Use it to find strength, improvement, knowledge. And it's interesting because that is the context of the book. The stories throughout the book are stories of you failing. Right? Not necessarily failing and losing a patient, but failing to the standard that you're holding yourself to and then coming back and going, all right, why did that happen?

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Yeah. And I think that's, you know, it's hard to talk about still, right? But, like, most of us carry around these images in our head of people that we've lost or that we couldn't do the right thing for, whether it's people we work with or our patients.

Yeah, I think you nailed it. I wrote this for them because it's a way to honor them, and it doesn't fix it, and it doesn't make it whole, but it doesn't waste their suffering because it's too d*** precious of a fuel. Right. It costs so much to put together, and you have to use it. You have to get better. You have to get your team better on it.

Jon Becker: I think it's true in all. First response, whether it's tactical situation or medical situation, I think that there are a. You know, there is an abundance of suffering all the way around. Right? The people in the event, the people responding to the event. You know, one thing that I was on a podcast recently talking about shootings, and one of the things I said is, you have to understand that nobody leaves the same that they got there, right? The cop that shoots somebody who righteously needs to be shot. Right? Like, assume best case scenario, the guy really needs to be shot, and it is a perfectly righteous shooting. His family is still affected. Everyone around him is. It creates a ripple in their world, in every single person's world, that resonates.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Yeah. So one of the ways that we talk about this a lot that's useful. I think a useful idea behind this is expensive learning and cheap learning, right? So what you described, what we're talking about when we're really dropped into this, talking about the death and the suffering, that is expensive learning. That costs a lot, right? That's learning at the expense of lives, learning at the expense of suffering, of challenge and hardship.

And one of our jobs collectively as tribes that do this kind of work is to derive from that cheap learning for the people around us. Can we tell the story about it in a way that teaches the next generation of people so they don't have to make that same mistake? Can we talk about what happened in a way that allows us to grow and build from it so it amplifies the good effects of it? And can we produce cheaper learning all around for it?

To me, that's a really cool way to think about it because it provides an impetus. That part of your job is making derivatives of what happened, which is not super obvious all the time. Some of the time you're like, oh, the teachers do the teaching, the operators do the operating. But actually, it's all of our jobs. If you're in this space to train and build and make everybody around you better, if you really believe that your job is to never waste suffering, then it's on all of us to be instructors at the same time that we're operators.

Jon Becker: That is a brilliant way to put that. I always use the analogy of rattlesnakes. The first guy that found a rattlesnake got bit by it. And if he didn't tell anybody, the second guy, the third guy, everybody continued to get bit by it. For the guy that gets bit by the rattlesnake, that is an expensive lesson, right? It might cost him his hand. It might kill him, right? That's an expensive lesson. To the person he tells the story to. It's free, right? Like, unless the story is being told to his wife, like, the next guy he meets is like, hey, man, this is what a snake looks like. Don't pick it up. It bites you.

There's zero cost in that learning for that guy. And part of the reason that we created the debrief, part of the reason that we've done a lecture series, is so much of this knowledge is just paradigm based decision making. It's just knowing if this happens. If you find a long cylindrical object with a rattle on the tail, don't pick it up. I've never had a construct with, to teach it the way you just did, though it's expensive learning and cheap learning. And I think that the book is a lot of expensive learning for you. That is almost free learning from.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Exactly. And that's the point. That's exactly what I wanted to do with it. Right. Was to capture some of that and hammer it into something useful and pass it on to folks as a starting point. Something that gets you forward ahead of where I am from it. And I think this gets to one of the other key points we talked about, not wasting suffering.

And I think that part of the way you do that and the way that you transmit this learning gets back to this like incredible maori idea, which I'm gonna butcher the pronunciation of whakapapa. Right? The idea that you are the summation of your ancestors dreams and hopes. And today the sun is shining on you and it's your job to move the chains forward. And it won't always be your turn. It was their turn once, and it'll be somebody else's turn after you. But while it's your turn, what the f*** are you gonna do with that, right? How are you gonna live your life?

Jon Becker: When it's your f****** ball forward?

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I think that's like part of the joy of this is, you know, we've all chosen to be in this weird space, this extraordinary world that's different than the average set of human experiences. We're doing things expensively, we're suffering, we're learning from it.

And we have the ability, as we're in the moment of that sun and moving the chains forward, to leave the earth a better place after us for the next group of people that are, you know, the next John and the next Dan and the next, you know, Jody and everybody else who's out there behind us, who's coming up, who's gonna be better than you and I were at our jobs, hopefully because of what we do, because they get cheaper learning, because they don't also have to get bit by the d*** rattlesnake if we do our jobs. Right.

Jon Becker: I. Yeah. And one of the things I love about kind of the modern information environment, right, whether it's podcasting or publishing, you know, web publishing is the cost of information. Like, like Dan, Dan's book doesn't get published 40 years ago because he can't find a publisher that's willing to put enough money because it's not going to be a bestseller. Right, totally.

And Dan and John don't have this conversation because they can't get a network that's going to spend money for the 5000 or whatever people that are really going to care about this in the world, I think.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: And we swear too much and we're too ugly for television. I get it. Yeah.

Jon Becker: I mean, I don't want to lump you in. You could have just stopped at swear too much. That's fine, Dan. We'll just move on, I think. Yeah. It's interesting, because I said in the intro that one of the things I like about the work you're doing is it's very clear you thought about this at a very deep level. Right? This is not just like, oh, hey, here's a way to not make a decision, or here's how to not screw this up. You're thinking about this not only from a future generation and cheap learning, expensive learning, but also the way you dissect the problem, I think, is very interesting.

The way you split the book up is interesting in that it's not only like making decisions and, you know, you spend a three of your sections are really about decision making. Right. But it's also what is affecting, what are the external forces on the decision, and then what informs decision at a core level, what underlies it.

So why don't we – Let's start with the decision making thing and just push on it a bit. Totally. Talk to me. Let's start with decision making. Applying knowledge under pressure. Because one of the things that you articulated beautifully is you spent all this time in medical school. You have the skills, you know exactly what to do, but now you have a patient in front of you who's dying.

You know, he has X amount of time left to live, and you have to bring that knowledge to bear and execute in the time he has. So, like, he walks in the door with a timer on, and now you have to harvest your brain and skills within that timeframe. Walk me through what goes into making a decision under pressure.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Yeah, there's so much in there, and I think it's worth, for a moment focusing on the moment of actually making a decision. But hopefully, then we'll zoom back out to the whole context, because there's stuff that happens before, after, and the next day that really influence your ability to make that decision.

Jon Becker: Let's just do it in that order. Then take me from the beginning. Walk me through it.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: When I first did this and first started really digging into this, all I did was think about the moment of impact. All I did was be like, how do I make the moment of impact better? And after a while, I realized that is actually too narrow of a question. If you've been in one of these high stakes moments. You recognize that we all get peripheral neglect. We get tunnel vision. We zoom in on one thing. We have to remember that there's a context and everything else out there, a very visceral memory for me, of having an unexpected cardiac arrest happen.

And I'm working it and assembling the team, and we have defibrillator pads on the guy, and you go into the defibrillator, the zappy thing, and you're charging it up, and you're getting ready to press the button. And the button is a big red button that has a lightning bolt on it. It's very clear that's the one you're supposed to press. And I couldn't find it. And I'm looking at this machine that's the size of two hands, and I couldn't find the big red button with a lightning bolt on it because I'm so hyper focused. Eventually, I found it. We shocked him, and he did great. That's the end of that story.

But the point is, I do this all the time. I train people how to do this, and still all of our brains have the same firing patterns in a lot of ways, and still I couldn't find it in the middle of it. And you have to slow yourself down and think about it. But I focused so much on the moment of impact that I neglected, temporally everything else that's happening before and after, just like you hyperfocus spatially a lot of times when you're under pressure.

So when I zoom out and think about this broader, to me, it's a loop. Prepare, perform, recover, evolve. Right? And you run that loop over and over and over again. Prepare, perform, recover, and evolve. And I actually think it's useful to take a second outside of emergency medicine and to think for a moment from a sports analogy, right?

So I do a little bit of work with the New Zealand Hurricanes, a great rugby team. If you just imagine them for a minute as a rugby squad, performance for them is game day. And you can get really granular. You know, maybe it's like doing a particular move or, you know, a particular situation, but really it's game day. Is their moment to perform. But if all you did was game day, game day, game day, game day, what do you think would happen to that team?

Jon Becker: Yeah, you're right.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: They'd fall apart. Their performance would suffer. They'd never make it to the next level of anything. Right. We know that's not how sports teams train. We know that. And if a sports team did that, man, you just think about what the chatter would be like on sports shows about that team that only did that. Everybody be like, you guys are idiots. But that's pretty much how we train a lot of the times. Perform, perform, perform, right? And somehow we think we're immune to it. Well, we are not.

So instead, if you zoom back out and think about it again, prepare, perform, recover, evolve. So preparation for that team is practice. And it's not just randomly doing things right, it's specific practice done deliberately to improve performance with metrics, with coaching, with watching, and with a plan.

Then you go to game day, you do the game day, and then after that you have recovery. And that recovery is what? Physical therapy, exercise, stretch, rest, like caloric intake. It's really letting yourself return to a baseline. It's discovery. It's asking yourself what happened watching the game tape, going home and resting, taking time out of that crisis mode. And then you get to evolution. Right? Okay, well, what do we do wrong? What do we do right? What are we going to do better?

Let's watch that game tape. Let's think about what happened. Let's dissect and really make sure we understand to the best that we can what went down and what's the gap between what went down and what we want to happen next. And that informs our next practice, and that practice informs our next performance, our next recovery and our next evolution. And you spin that wheel, and that is the virtuous cycle of applying knowledge under pressure when we do it, right?

So you take that whole framework and you map it back to an emergency. Right? Well, what's the thing I'm performing at? What's the decision I have to make? Okay, so one of the most important decisions for us is whether or not to intubate a patient to take their airway. Okay? That has all of those factors we talked about earlier. It's impactful, right? You have to breathe to live.

So if you take your airway and you don't do it right, they don't breathe and they don't live, that's bad for you. Right? It has pressure. There's a certain amount of time within which this decision has to be made and within which the skill has to be executed against. There's uncertainty because as much good as your planning is the phrase, the enemy always gets a vote.

Well, the patient always gets a vote, too, and their disease process gets a vote. There's other stuff that's happening that you don't understand and that you can't understand until you've already crossed that line. There's complexity, because the human body is an incredibly complex system with interlocking, interacting parts that have higher order complications to them. And there's liminality, which is that once you make that decision, you have to follow through with it. You have to move them all the way through and secure an airway in one way or another. Right?

So it has all those features of it. That's why I think it's a useful framework as a microcosm of what we do in emergency medicine. So everybody's probably seen it on tv, right? You know, like, okay, let's get prepared to intubate. And you get the tube and the thing and put the thing in the other thing, and it works out science. But, you know, so how do you make that decision? Right?

If that's performance, that decision and that skill set, that physical skill set, and that intellectual decision to execute on that skill set, if that's performance, what's the rest of the cycle look like? Okay, well, preparation is training, and you break it down into components. There's the physical skill set. Can you actually achieve the operational and technical skill required to perform this task? Well, that looks like.

Okay, here's how it does. Here's a mannequin. Get after it. Here's a harder mannequin. Get after it. Here's a harder mannequin with more challenges. Here. I'm going to give you this other thing. I'm going to hand it to you backwards. I'm going to hand it to you upside down. I'm going to yell at you while you do it. Right?

And you're really training the task itself. It also looks like the theory behind it. Endless, endless versions of tactical decision games. Endless versions of what would you do if this happened? Hey, watch that other person. They're doing this. How would you respond in their shoes, dissecting things and going forward and backward and lateral thinking to it. What if that patient in room three went down right now? How would you intubate them? Right. This constant back and forth that we challenge ourselves with. There's the moment of performance.

We'll zoom back into that in a second, but I'm going to avoid that for a moment. There's a moment of recovery, which is, okay, you've just intubated this person, and what happened? Are you okay? Did you stab yourself with a needle while you were doing it? Did the patient survive? What are your next skill sets that you need to immediately operate to make sure that they stay okay? Evolution. How do you get better at this task? Tomorrow than you are today. Right?

How are you going to learn from this intubation and make sure you and your team are better prepared to intubate the next person that comes in? Or was there something that went wrong, like the piece of equipment broke and your next job is to go fix that piece of equipment to make sure you're back on and ready to fire again. Right?

And you're spinning that cycle over and over again. So this whole deep, rich context exists within which you make one critical decision under pressure, which is, should I intubate this person? Does that make sense as sort of like a plan to go off of.

Jon Becker: It's interesting. It's actually a fantastic framework, and it's kind of like a derivative of the Ooda loop. Right? It's a fact. It's a fantastic. Because it, as you're describing that, I'm picturing that cycle as a series of russian nesting dolls.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Sure.

Jon Becker: Right. So there's prepare, perform, recover, evolve right now with this task that I'm doing, but then there is a larger, more macroscopic cycle to that. So it's like, you know, if you. If you think of it in terms of a tactical operation, yeah. You're doing this thing right now. You're breaching a door. You know, you're preparing for that. You're figuring out what you're going to do. You're performing it. You're, you're, you know, either. Either clearing the way and then making movement and then, you know, learning from that experience.

But there is a greater, you know, cycle that's also in play, that is that same cycle. Like you are thinking macroscopically, we need to improve this set of skills. And as you're describing it, also, I'm seeing the kind of contrast between skills and training, learning to do something and education learning why you would do those things. Right? Understanding the why as opposed to the how. And all of that is going into preparation and all of that is underlying performance.

And, you know, if you think in terms of a team that is constantly having to perform, which, you know, an ER doc that's working really long hours, or, you know, a small SWAT team that's constantly having a high operational tempo, and you are going to perform to the exclusion of other things in a way that will eventually just degrade performance.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: And sometimes you just have to. Right. Sometimes you just have to. Right? Like, if you have a high op tempo because you're the only ones on call and you're it, like, you just have to go right. Like, we had a man, we had a day recently where we had a very tragic, super tragic infant death. And we were working on this infant for such a long time, and we just weren't able to get them back. You know, it just, I mean, there's – That's pretty brutal.

And, you know, my team was pouring their hearts out into this kid and the family. My family screaming as normal. And it's just a lot, right? And we're just making the decision to stop. You know, we've looked around the room and, you know, we've said, listen, folks, we're about at the point where we are running out of what our skills allow us to do.

In a moment, I'm gonna look around the room and I'm gonna ask everybody, what do you see that I don't? What do you see that we haven't tried? I need ideas that we haven't done yet. Give everybody a minute. You go around the room. Everybody, like, do you see it? Is there anything we're not doing? And you're just around. Everybody's like, no. We're like, this is it. Okay?

And we're making this decision to, you know, to pronounce this child dead. And my charge nurse taps me on the shoulder and says, dan, there's a seven year old with a gunshot wound to the chest coming in in 1 minute. You need to split your team, finish this, and get ready for that, kidde.

And, you know, this family that is suffering so much needs us to be in that room. Needs us to be consoling them, needs us to be there with their kid. But this other kid's family needs us just as much. And there is no recovery in that moment. There's no grace in that moment. There's no anything other than go to room, whatever, and get to work.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: And the reality is we live in. We, you know, we operate in these worlds that do require that, and they require you to sacrifice of yourself to do that. And this is hopefully a theme that we're going to get to for some of our conversation. And this something we've been working on a lot in the mission critical team institute is the difference between service that requires sacrifice and service without self destruction. And those two things are often conflated and confused. Right?

A lot of folks from the outside of this world who aren't part of one of these tribes think that sacrifice is equivalent to self destruction, and it is not. It is not. We are prepared to sacrifice of ourselves to do our job, to hold the line, to protect our communities, you know, to keep the blood in the good people and out of the bad people, however you want to say it. Right? To do the stuff that we do. But that doesn't mean we have to self sacrifice. Excuse me. It doesn't mean we have to self destruct. Right?

And those moments where you are called upon to operate at such a crazy op tempo, you have to really distinguish them from the moments where it only feels like you have to operate at that tempo. Basically my point is, are you not recovering and not evolving because you really don't have time or because you just don't like doing it?

Jon Becker: Yeah. And it's funny because as you were saying, that's exactly what I was thinking. Right? Is the difference between self sacrifice and self destruction is recovery. Right? It is recovery that is that difference there and evolution. And so if we're constantly, if we're constantly in that fight, right. If we're constantly in that fight, we're not recovering, we're not evolving. And as you say that, like, there are circumstances where you don't have a choice, right? You don't have a choice.

But the kinds of people that are drawn towards those situations are also the kinds of people that enjoy those situations and as a result, tend to keep themselves in those situations and never take the time to recover and evolve. Right?

I have several friends who have just deployed and deployed and deployed and deployed and deployed. And they're like, well, you know, we need to go. And it's, you know, it's one of them put it best. It was Tom Satterlee at the point that the glass is empty, like, you don't have anything to give. You're not helpful in the fight when you're destroyed.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: You know, it's – There's a thing that happens. I feel like the name for it is paradoxical arousal. I'm not sure if that's, if I'm calling out the right term for that or not, but it's basically the point in time in which you spend so much time in that world that that's the only world that feels normal to you anymore.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: And it's so much harder to go to the grocery store and do the laundry and have a conversation with your loved one. And it is in. It is so, it feels so much easier to just go back into the space. Right? I remember many times, certainly one of them being the early part of the pandemic, when thankfully, it wasn't as bad as we thought it was going to be. We were seeing reports of doctors dying and we sort of figured this would be our time to sacrifice of ourselves. I remember so clearly that it felt so much more comfortable being there than it did at home.

That is a real warning sign that your balance isn't quite right in there, that you need to really dig into your teams and get support from the other folks that understand that, that aren't going to tell you things like, just go take a walk, you'll be okay. Like, no, you need more than that. Right? Like, you need a community that understands what you're saying and that can be there for you to support you as you're going through that stuff.

And sometimes you need more than that. Sometimes you need therapy and you need help, and you need all sorts of things like that. And there's no. So there's nothing other than strength in recognizing when you need that and going after it.

Jon Becker: But I think as leaders, we need to be cognizant of that. Right? We need to have the macroscopic view of the people that work with us. And even as teammates, we need to go, man, this guy is grinding himself up here. We need to get him out of the fight and into the recovery and evolve.

Yeah. As you're describing, I'm thinking of, like, I do iron man, distance triathlon, and it's like, you know, exercise makes you stronger. Too much exercise destroys you. And it is that same thing. Like, if you don't take the time to recover and evolve, you're not. You're not preparing for the next fight. You're just dragging yourself to the next fight.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Yeah, I think that's a great way to put it. That is, but. Okay, but we got to talk about performance, right? Cause we're sort of, like, talking about this whole structure of everything else around it. And we haven't really, like, we've set the stage for performance. We've talked about all the other things around it, but we got to dig in a little bit because I think it's important, and I want folks to come away from this with some things they can start doing right away.

So one of the things that we do the most when we're training this kind of stuff is the idea of applying graduated pressure. The model for this is a wedge. There's often things in training environments, in operational environments, that have what you'd call a step function of pressure. You go from some pressure to enormous amount of pressure. Right? Or you go from a little bit of hardness to astronomical hardness all at once.

And that's challenging for a number of reasons, but one of the reasons that it's challenging is that things break and you don't know why. Right? When you're trying to apply a skill that you are insufficiently trained at in an environment which is too fast paced and too challenging for you, things break and you don't know why. And that violates our underlying rule of you have to learn from everything.

So if you don't know why things broke and you can't get better from it, then something's wrong. Right? You know, I, well, at the, at the moment I have a knee injury so I have not been playing jujitsu, but usually when I play jujitsu, right, you see this, when you have a junior person go try to throw a move against a more senior person and it doesn't work and they have no idea why. By they I mean me. I have no idea why it didn't work, you know, so frequently. But the antidote is to instead apply graduated pressure to use a wedge instead of a step function.

Alright, well, so what does that look like? Well, let's go back to the idea of intubating. You're going to train that skill, that decision. Well, first you're going to break it into components. Okay. I'm going to take the tactical piece of actually putting a tube in a place and put it on one side.

Then I'm going to take the intellectual piece of. What are the medications I need to give to get that person's physiology optimized for the procedure? And I put that over here. Then I'm going to take, well, what about the post intubation care? Right after I put the tube in, how do I take care of their heart and lungs afterwards?

Jon Becker: Cool!

Dr. Dan Dworkis: I'm going to put that in a third bucket and I'm going to make as many buckets as I need about all the skill sets. I'm going to make sure that each one of them is ready to go. And you're going to do it in a low risk, low stake environment. Right? So again, you get this idea of a wedge. So if high wedge is full tempo, full, everything going low wedge is somewhere in the middle and that might be simulated environments.

There might be just one on one, high pressure discussions with a senior. Maybe that's going over things on a mannequin or, you know, in a shoot house or doing something like that where you're doing it in a much more controlled environment. Then you also have ultra, ultra low edge, which is low fidelity simulation, talking things through, tabletop exercises, stuff like that.

But the idea is that you take a skill, you dissect it. You do the pieces of it, and then you build it along that wedge on purpose until you're ready to deploy it when it actually needs to be done. And one of the commandments of this, right, is that you know where you are on the wedge and you're not just randomly doing things. Okay? You're not just mixing in.

All right, I'm going to do this skill on a mannequin, and then I'm going to actually go intubate ten people over here using medications that I've never tried before, and then I'm gonna go back and do it once. No, that doesn't make any sense. Right? You have an idea? Today, right now, I'm practicing this. I'm gonna do this, then I'm gonna expand it to this. Then I'm gonna expand it to that.

Jon Becker: Yeah. It's crawl walk, run.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: It's crawl walk we're on. But sometimes you got to go back and crawl better because you didn't get it right the first time.

Jon Becker: Right.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Then you go back to walk, then you run a little bit, then you go back to walk, then you crawl, then you run, then you. Right. It's not necessarily a linear progression as much as it is. There are multiple points of time on a wedge, and you can use each of them constructively. Right?

So know what you're doing. And the second commandment of this is anytime you steer step function of pressure and complexity, try to put a wedge in there. Where in your team can you apply a wedge to that scenario? Can you build something in the middle that allows people the chance to practice that thing and learn from it so that when you get there, you're optimized to do it right. And if it doesn't go right, you have a better chance of understanding why it didn't go right.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Now that makes sense. Yeah. It's kind of like, instead of crawl walk, it's crawl crawl with your arm around somebody. Crawl with a walker gradually to take the big step out of it and make it a series of smaller. I mean, ultimately, everything is kind of a step, right? But, like, make the steps as small as you possibly can make them, and feel free to move forward and backwards in that process until you have mastered things before you do take that next big step.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Yeah, well, I mean, again, this isn't rocket science, right. But, like, how do you learn something in jiu jitsu? How do you learn, you know, an arm bar or a guard escape or whatever it is, right? Okay. You do it slowly, you understand it, then you go back with your partner, and you each run through it a few times. You make sure you understand the positioning of everything, how it's supposed to work. Then you speed it up a little bit. You figure out what breaks, and you go back, you do it again.

Then you speed it up a little bit more. You figure out what breaks. You go back, you do it again. Then later on that day or that class, you try to apply the move in real life, you know, roles, and it probably doesn't work. And that's okay. And you figure it out, and you go back and you do it again. Right? Like, this isn't rocket science, but we don't do this in medicine. Sometimes we just throw people into the deep end and things break, and you don't know why. And that to me, is often avoidable if you put some work in ahead of time, in the preparation and performance phase of it.

Jon Becker: Well, what's interesting, too, about that is that when things break and you don't know why, you can't recover from it because you don't know what happened and you can't evolve from it because you don't understand why it broke.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Yeah.

Jon Becker: There are times a cycle at each step.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Yeah. And there are times when you just don't know. Right. You just don't know why something didn't work. And, like, okay, but that should probably be the minority. And you can at least get after some of those things that were leaving there, otherwise.

Jon Becker: Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. So, okay, so we've gone through kind of the macroscopic cycle. We're to the, like, the performance portion of the program. Talk to me about handling uncertainty and imperfection.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Yeah. So I, you know, we are imperfect, right? We are all imperfect. I like to say I'm an imperfect person. Medicine is an imperfect art, and I practice it imperfectly. And if that's true, if all of that's true, the outcome is a little rough around the edges sometimes. And your job is continually to get better. Right? Your job is to get better. Your job is to learn. Your job is to keep pushing so you don't ever eliminate the uncertainty, though. It doesn't go away. You never reach a point of life where everything is certain and everything is perfect.

And if you're chasing that, you're probably pointing yourself in the wrong direction. Instead, your idea is, how do you function within uncertain environments? One of the things we talk about is the idea of bounded versus unbounded uncertainty. All right? Which is a really important distinction. So bounded versus unbounded uncertainty.

And a good, another sports metaphor here is basketball. So if you're playing basketball, you understand that your team and the other team is going to be five people. And you understand there are some rules to the game about how it goes. And when your group of five people gets on the court, you're not going to be facing a bear with a laser on its head and, you know, 16 sharks. You're going to be facing another group of people and they're going to be acting in sort of predictable ways, doing things that are maybe uncertain within that context, but it's really bounded, right?

So if you can figure out within the realm of uncertainty parts that are bounded, then you can train for and operate in those environments, right. If you can do that, then you can function more quickly in those uncertain spaces because they're ones that you can prepare for and activate ahead of time. So what's a good example of this? A common emergency is somebody having a seizure. Right?

Now, you can have a seizure for any number of reasons. It could be neurologic, it could be biochemical, it could be drug induced, it could be all sorts of stuff. But ultimately, no matter what reason they're having a seizure for, the problem is you got to keep them breathing when they have a seizure.

So the issue is you don't actually need to know the reason why at the beginning. You just need to do the stuff that helps them breathe while you're waiting for the rest of the certainty to appear, while you're waiting for the rest of the case to materialize, while you're waiting for more information to come in, make sure you're not getting stuck chasing uncertainty. That doesn't matter.

Jon Becker: One of the things we talk about in tactical decision making is you're never going to have perfect information. And sometimes the ability, sometimes you have 70 or 80% of the information you need to make the decision, and that's when you should make the decision. You can't wait till you get to 100%. Even if you get 100% of the information, it's already too late to make the decision, right?

But it's very easy to get your brain stuck in do loops where you're chasing some fact, some little piece of information that really doesn't drive the decision. It's just something, it's an off ramp that your brain takes and chases around.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: In circles because you want certainty. We tend to like certainty. Certainty is comforting. And to operate in spaces where we are uncertain is challenging. It's a skill, right? It's a skill that we're doing. So to have the ability to do that requires us to understand when, to not care about uncertainty, which is kind of a weird thing, right? So that requires enough of understanding of the context of what's happening, but even without the context, it just, you have to, you have to have your basic set of moves.

One of the EOD guys explained it to me this way. You want to use seconds to buy minutes, right. You want to do things that set yourself up for success, no matter what's going to happen next in those couple of seconds, that allows you to get more information coming in. So I don't really care why the guy's seizing at the beginning. All I care about is, can we get oxygen on him?

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Can we get him in a place where he's not going to hurt himself? And can we get iv's established, can we get things that are going to make my next moves better when I figure out what those moves are? Right. Another great example of this is in a cardiac arrest, right? I'm not sure. Sometimes you have to shock somebody, sometimes you don't, depending on what their heart rhythm is. Right? But either way, you have to put defibrillator pads on them to even have the option of doing it.

So at the beginning, your job is not to eliminate the uncertainty. Your job is just put the pads on them, get yourself one step further down the line to the next place where you know how to operate and figure out the next move from there.

Jon Becker: Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense. So how does that – Okay, so knowing, bounded and unbounded, how does that drive the way you approach a situation?

Dr. Dan Dworkis: One of the other sections is operating from first principles, and one of the biggest concepts, actually forget if it's in that section or not, but is the idea that there are dependencies in the way that things work. Right? So airway, breathing, circulation, why do we care about it? Usually in that order, although the march algorithm might be a little bit different. There's some other stuff that we won't talk about.

But assuming for a moment it's airway, breathing, circulation, you have to get oxygen into your brain to live, oxygen has to come from your lungs. Has to go from your lungs to your blood. Has to go from your blood to your brain. But to get to your lungs, it has to go through your airway. Right?

So if your airway is compromised, breathing and circulation don't matter. Even if they're perfect, they're never going to work. Right. If your breathing is compromised, your circulation doesn't matter because it's never going to work. Right?

So there are realities that underpin the way that we do stuff. And if you're able to hold those realities and operate from those principles, then you can approach these unknown situations in an order of operations that actually makes sense. Right?

So, okay. Somebody comes to me, they're down. I don't know anything about them or what's going on. All right, well, I'm going to make sure I work on their airway first because that's usually the right answer. Right? And you're moving, you're using whatever you know about the underlying reality and you're making the situation better as you're going forward with it.

Jon Becker: Well, it's just like major hemorrhage in a mass casualty. Right? Like, you know, step one, stop the massive bleed because that's going to, that's going to, they're going to die faster from that than they are from, you know, not having an airway, and they will die faster from not having an airway than they will from a circulatory problem.

And I just recently interviewed Claire Park, who's a doctor in London and former army doc, and she helped her write this ten second triage program that they were implementing all over the UK. And it's that thing, it's like the first thing you're looking at is are they walking? Because if they're walking, a lot of the stuff that's upstream that's going to kill them doesn't matter because it isn't doing, you know, we know it isn't that. And it's interesting because I think we are, we don't spend enough time thinking about these kinds of questions.

You know, in tactical law enforcement, they talk about priority of life or safety priorities, you know, and, and people say, well, you know, why would, why would you risk an officer's life, you know, to save a hostage? Because it's already pre decided that the hostages more valuable than the officer is and the officer is more valuable than the suspect is. And as a result, like those, those are, those are bounded. Right? We know, yeah, we know that. We'll make that.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: You can put some bounds on it ahead of time that allow you to, like, what are we really talking about here? We're getting in a cognitive load theory, right? We're saying that our brain has a set bandwidth and you can divide that bandwidth into buckets. There's the cognitive load that you're actually using to do the task that you need to do. There's the extraneous cognitive load that goes to other stuff in the environment, like people yelling or something itching you or something like that, that doesn't have anything to do with what you're doing.

And then there's German cognitive load, which is the part of your brain that's active trying to learn how to do a task better. Your job is to put as much cognitive load forward into the problem as you possibly. So you eliminate extraneous cognitive load and you separate out german cognitive load to training, leaving everything possible to actually solve the problem. So when you're describing that, putting bounds around uncertainty by making decisions ahead of time, that is decreasing cognitive load going anywhere other than the problem set well.

Jon Becker: And it's one of the things that's talked about a lot in our industry is front sight focused, right. You become front sight focused or front sight fixated. You know, you standing there in front of the defibrillator trying to find the red button is, is front sight focus, right? And the way you resolve that, that is your brain saying the load is too high. I'm going to ignore everything but this one thing, because this is the thing I think is important. And it doesn't mean it is the thing that's important. Right?

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Correct.

Jon Becker: Hopefully it is the thing that's important. Hopefully it is, you know, the suspect's hands and whether he has a gun to. But sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's something that isn't helpful. It's staring at the label on the defibrillator when you should be looking at the red button. And I think that we don't spend enough time thinking about that cognitive load and how we utilize the bandwidth that we have.

I interviewed a guy named Earl Plumlee, who's a medal of honor winner and had a just unbelievable shootout in Afghanistan, was given the Congressional Medal of Honor for it. But one of the things Earl talks about is they had trained the basics so much, right, the sight picture, shooting skill, reloading, that when he's in this horrific gunfight, and I would suggest you listen to the episode if you haven't listened to it, because it is – When I heard the story, I'm like, that's an action movie.

And I still don't believe it. It's that kind of story. And as he's describing it, though, one of the things he talked about was they were so drilled on the basics that they didn't have to do that. And he said, at one point, I'm in the gunfight and I see the brass coming out of my gun and I realize I'm too focused on my gun and I move my focus back to the attackers. And it's because he said we didn't have. He said, I resented when they taught me to do all these things. I resented everything that they taught me, and I hated the fact that they drilled these things over and over again.

But in the middle of this crisis, I was so good at the mechanical skills that they didn't matter. I didn't have to think about them. Right? You've intubated so many times that you only notice the physical act if it's something extremely unusual, which frees up that bandwidth, which frees up that cognitive ability and prevents you from becoming overloaded.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Yeah. I don't know that we reach that level of expertise often in medicine. The things that we do. I mean, I guess there are things that we reach that level of expertise with. I don't know that intubating is one of them. I think that there are pieces of it that we reach that level of expertise with. Where you are, you're so into it that you're just doing the first couple motions automatically, like the way that I would respond to somebody who's seizing in front of me.

Now, I spend a lot of my time these days training junior doctors, and so I'm watching the way that they step forward into that problem set and start working it. But I think you're right. Like, you reach that level for some pieces of it. Maybe that just means I need to train more.

Jon Becker: Well, I mean, I do think that there are things that, you know, things like mechanical skills. I think you can build that level of proficiency. Right? You build that level of proficiency with driving. Right. When I started racing cars, of course, I tell the story. Like, the first seven laps on the track, I got out and laid down like my head was spinning, my brain was on fire. I had too many things to think about.

By the time I'm winning, all I'm thinking about is the guy in front of me, and I'm not thinking about driving the car anymore. Because the mechanical skills have progressed. Right. The reloading of the handgun, the basic skills. But that doesn't mean that you can do that with more complicated things. Right?

So much of medicine is you're having to diagnose complicated problems, and in a tactical situation, you're having to diagnose. I mean, you think about a Dev Grusille entering a hostile facility in a hostage rescue. Like, his brain is processing thousands of data points. And in many cases, what separates the one that is very good at it from the one that isn't very good at it is that ability to prioritize, that ability to recognize the stuff that matters. So you can't solve it all, but you can become extremely proficient at the skills part of it, which at least takes it out of your bandwidth.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Yeah. And I think that you can do a lot of work to eliminate the unnecessary pieces of it. Right? I think that's a really important piece of it, which is that, like, even as you're training to get better at a task, you should also be training to eliminate the unnecessary ways that you fail. Right? And that's a constant battle in systems that are imperfect, that are almost antagonistic in their ability to screw things up for you, but you have to be always taking things away from that. Right?

There's a story I tell in the book about, you know, we had just done this really incredible, very challenging intubation of this very sick woman who had a bunch of lung disease, and her oxygen level is really low and was very challenging task, but we succeeded at it, and we're getting her up to the ICU only to find out that her oxygen levels start crashing. Something's wrong.

Get her back in the room. Let's get her back on the – Figure everything out. The punchline is nobody had double checked that the oxygen cylinder under the bed was full. Moving her to the ICU on an empty oxygen cylinder. Right? So you did the hard part. Right? And you still get tripped by the easy part because it's an unnecessary opportunity for failure. Can you actively get after and eliminate those things that'll make your performance much better as you're learning how to do.

Jon Becker: It – which is preparation. Right? Like that. A lot of that is preparation and creating systems that are failure resistant. It is creating. Whoever is supposed to check that oxygen cylinder checks it all the time, and it's never empty, so it's never a failure point.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: But this is so interesting, right? Because there's an answer to this problem set that we're describing, which is now you have a checklist before you move somebody from the ER to the ICU, and it has ten things on it, you got to check these critical things. And that's an answer. That's an answer that's usable and worthwhile in some cases. But you can't create an exhaustive checklist for everything, right? Training versus education.

There's just no way for you to actively predict every single thing that's going to go wrong with any degree of certainty. Go build a checklist for it and fiat and mandate from above. This is how we do everything in there. We don't want automatons. We want educated operators that are able to improvise. Because once you enter those liminal spaces, you're going to find things that haven't been thought of before. And if it's not a checklist and all you do is checklist, you're going to run into some issues in there.

Jon Becker: Yeah. I mean, I'm sure you read Atul Gawande's books, right? Like it? Yeah, there is. Checklists are fantastic for things to prevent you from forgetting them. But one of the things we went through when we went through ISO certification is one of the things you try to identify is all the ways that you can make a mistake that will lead to a failure in the product, which is impossible.

But the exercise of doing it, you start to realize, okay, well, these things can go wrong, and the whole goal is to intercept those things upstream. Right? It's to make sure that not the doctor is making sure the oxygen cylinder is full, but that there's a guy whose job it is to make sure that everything mechanical is at a certain level, and he is the one that's running the checklist and regularly, every day. Okay. It's kind of like fire extinguishers, right?

Somebody's inspecting the fire extinguishers because when you need the fire extinguisher, it's not the time to figure out the fire extinguisher is dead.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Yeah. But there's also the idea that when I'm leading a team, part of my ethos has to be, okay. I might not be the one checking the oxygen tank, but my job is to tell this story about the oxygen tank so that everybody else is like, ro, right? What are other things that are like that? What's the oxygen tank in this situation? How can I make the feel a little better for it? You think about the idea of the principles of leave no trace camping. You're going to leave the campsite as good, if not better, than when you found it, and hopefully better than when you found it.

So I want a group of, I want a team that leaves that emergency department better than when they found it. Every shift, every time. I want that to be the ethos of what we're practicing for it. And that story is part of how you get to that. You're like, hey, this thing happened. What do we do about that? And you don't stop at the answer of fill the oxygen tank because, like, sure, but like, what's the underlying thing?

The only thing is we didn't have a culture where everybody checked that ahead of time. We didn't have the right space in there where people were really digging into it. We're proactively going after it, and we're trying to make that happen in a sense that really mattered. And. That's not. That's not quite wasting suffering, but it's getting pretty d*** close to wasting suffering. It's certainly not doing everything we can to learn from what's happening and progressing in that manner for it.

Jon Becker: So it's also this notion of interrupting failure as far up the funnel as you can. Right. It's trying to catch it before it is something you're having to think about. And I don't think there is enough attention paid to that, because when you go back to the limited bandwidth we have available, if you're spending your bandwidth on stuff we could have prevented, and through simple inspection and mechanical means, we are decreasing the likelihood that you're going to perform. Right? If you're having weapon failures in the middle of an operation, we've added chaos that we didn't have to add.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Yeah, yeah, I think that's very fair. And there's a medicine concept that basically is like – Basically like healthy people in healthy communities supported by healthy systems is what our goal is. Right? And I think that maps pretty well to what you're describing, which is that we want operators capable of performing in crisis, surrounded by teams that support them as they perform in crisis, wrapped up in systems that make it easy for them to succeed in crisis. Right?

And when you have that construct and that chain and everything else, then you have the ability to really, really, really push the boundaries of what's possible. Then we're getting towards what excellence looks like. And the further you are away from that vision of it, that's where you're starting to bend the curve wherever you can to try to match that. Your individual ability to change that situation might differ depending on your spot on the team or your seniority or your whatever it is.

But whoever you are on the team, you probably have the ability to make the environment right around you a little better for the people, a little better for the team, and a little better for the system. And I think that is part of our job. Right? Our job is not to solve every single problem. Right? We didn't design, like, to your point, we didn't design the weapons, we didn't do the things. We don't have to be a master of everything, but we have to, if we really want to perform under pressure, we have to be a master of the local universe. Around us such that we are always improving our situation and always making it easy for ourselves to do the right thing, or at least easier.

Jon Becker: Yeah, but you raise a really interesting point which ties into the book, which is this notion of balancing competing forces. We are always under attack from 100 different directions. And I think that does make us. It makes it difficult to perform at an optimal level.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things we talk about in that section that I think is so important is the forest and the leaf idea, sort of going back and forth between micro focus totally devoted to one concept and a macro view of the whole field and everybody that you're doing. And we've talked about this idea a couple of times when it goes wrong, right terms of, like, hyper focusing on the, the defibrillator button.

But that idea of, are you really spending your energy on a specific, tiny subset of some problem, or is your energy better spent in that moment with a. With a tactical overview of what you're doing? And realistically, most of us in these worlds have to go back and forth between those two views. Right?

There's a certain skill set that we do. You know, a central line where you're really threading a several millimeter thick wire through just slightly larger than that catheter in order to put this large line into the person's, you know, jugular vein or femoral vein or whatever. And that is slippery and hard and requires your entire attention to get it right. But not everything is like that. And you really have to go back and forth between that and the whole system. Am I doing the right thing? Should I be doing this in the right way? What does this patient need? What does the patient, room six, when I'm in room eight, need? And how do you balance back and forth in that?

And one of the things that we work on in order to get better at that skill is this concept of basically heads up, heads down, heads up. Right? So if you're about to go heads down into a thing that you know is going to take your attention into a single point and focus, you want to try to get in this pattern of heads up, heads down, heads up.

So right before you go heads down, you take one last look around and make sure everything is as best as it can be, and this is still the right thing to do. You let your team know you're going heads down. Probably that means transferring command or prime in the room to somebody else. Right. Then you're doing your task heads down.

And when your task is done, you make a super conscious effort to go immediately heads back up and look at everything else that's happening. You cone your focus in, you cone your focus back out. It's a easy and predictable way to fail at zooming back out after you've been hyper focused. Right? So can you drill that and pattern that and work on that to eliminate that chance of failure?

Jon Becker: Yeah. It's not unlike. One of the things that is taught in shooting is the idea that after you engage, after you shoot, the idea of coming back to a low ready and looking around. Right? And it's that same thing. You are moving from the sights, from the immediate prospect, the immediate thing that you're threatened with, because that's going to get your attention, it's going to hyper focus your attention because of the adrenaline and everything else, to, okay, gun down, look around, zoom back out. Right?

So it's to the equivalent of heads up. And I think that's a really interesting way to describe it, is, you know, you are making a conscious decision, and even, even as a physical practice of physically stepping back, putting your head up, like physically looking around the room, gives you that ability to regain some, at least operational perspective from the tactical thing that you were engaged with. Yeah.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: And we've been focusing mostly in this conversation about the individual operator level, less so on the team and the system around them. But when you think about how a team does this, what's implicit, what does a team need to be able to do when one person goes heads down to accomplish a skill that needs that, the team has to know that's happening. They have to be aware of the shift in focus, they have to be aware of the shift in leadership, and they have to transition well and skillfully between those two points.

So we talked earlier about intubation. Right? Intubation is a very highly skilled event. Typically, there's a different person who's running the intubation than a person who's running the resuscitation as a whole. We divide and conquer in that way for various reasons. But when it's the person who's actively intubating, they need to make certain sets of decisions. They need to pass command back and forth.

And if the person who's running the show has to go back them up, which does happen sometimes, then the whole rest of the room needs to know. Oh, actually, now John's in charge. Dan's going to move to the head of the bed and take over the intubation. So how do you run that piece of it? Not to sound like a broken record. Right?

But the answer is, prepare, perform, recover, and evolve. You drill it ahead of time, you operate on it, you return command back to the person that needs it afterwards. That's your recovery phase. And then one of the things you debrief on the other end of it is, hey, we had a situation where we had to transfer command partway through a really challenging situation. Did that go okay?

Jon Becker: What can we learn from that? Well, and it's also. It's also, you know, understanding that that is a limitation of human beings and making a conscious decision to affirmatively take that. Like, I remember when we first had our kids, we. It was right after the Tommy Lee incident where the kid drowned at Tommy Lee's house.

And there was all this talk about, you know, well, how could parents not be watching their kids? And my wife and I made a conscious decision that anytime we were watching the kids, one of us was watching the kid. It wasn't both of us. We were never both watching the kid. One of us was watching the kids, and we were going to affirmatively hand it off.

So it's like, I'm handing you, you know, I'm going inside the house. You have the baby. I have the baby. And if there wasn't and I have the baby, then nobody had the baby. Right? Because the kid drowns in the pool. Because nobody's watching the baby, but everybody thinks the other person is.

And that's kind of what you're talking about, is this notion of like, okay, I'm going to go and hyper focus on this one task of intubation, or I'm the guy setting the breaching charge. Somebody else has to take over the larger perspective here and maintain as a team that the whole team doesn't lose focus. Right? The whole team doesn't become frontside focused.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: So one of the many interesting problem sets that we get to work on as emergency doctors is often, as an ER doctor, you'll be the only doctor in an emergency department. And depending on the size of the hospital, there are times when you'll be the only doctor in the entire hospital. Right? So you're surrounded by an incredible team of nurses, an incredible team of techs, people that are getting after it and want to do good work and are amazing folks, but you're the only doctor.

And so when you go heads down, there are no other doctors to hand command off to. So you have to be incredibly skillful with your team in order to say, okay, here's what we're going to need to have happen as much as possible. Let me clue you in on what I'm thinking. And part of your job in that situation is not just to be able to do the skill and be able to run the resuscitation, but also to elevate the level of everybody that you're playing with. Right? Because they're all going to have to play up because you're heads down doing a thing that only you can do.

So you need them to be able to do all sorts of other skills. So there's this incredibly. And, you know, the times that I've been fortunate enough to work in those kind of environments, the people have been amazing. Right? Just awesome! And it's an incredible situation to work with. It's also super challenging. Right? You have to be paying attention to these crazy number of variables. Everybody's doing things they might not necessarily be comfortable with or have done before, and everybody has to play up.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Well, I don't want to run out of time with you here. I want to talk, kind of jump ahead a little bit and talk about kind of your work with MCTI. Why don't we start with the definition for those that don't know MCTI. Kind of what it is and what they do.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Absolutely. So the mission critical team institute, we existed at the request of mission critical teams, which are small groups of what we would call indigenously trained operators who make life or death decisions in timeframes that are often 500 seconds or less. That is what you do, and that is what I do, and that is what I would imagine a lot of the folks listening to this do. The indigenously trained part is the part that sometimes trips people up.

So that's worth talking about for a second. What that means is it's not something you can learn from a classroom room. Right? You can go to school to understand the ideas, but you are trained by people that are actively doing it. There's a long line of folks that are doing the job, that are then training you to do the job, and then eventually you become the one training the next person to do the job. Right? That's what that piece of it means.

So emergency medicine would certainly qualify under that characteristic. We make life or death decisions. You go back and forth between the ordinary and the extraordinary world. Like we talked about earlier, the mission that we have called the s three mission, we exist to promote the success, survivability and sustainability of these mission critical teams. Those are really three different and incredibly important things. We got to be good at our job, but we got to live and we got to be able to do it for a long time and train the people that are coming behind us.

Jon Becker: I first became aware of MCTI through their work with one of the tier one units and another national level asset. What's your role within MCTI?

Dr. Dan Dworkis: So, I am the chief medical officer of MCTI, building out at the moment the mission critical medicine group. So, applying these concepts back to medicine and really expanding a lot of the work that I've done with the emergency mind project into more of the small group teams operating under pressure in medicine.

Functionally, that means we work with medical teams that operate in mission critical environments and also the other direction, mission critical teams that are performing a medical skill set or operating in a medical capacity. So we do some medicine and some, you know, not otherwise specified.

Jon Becker: Got it. What is your work at MCTI taught you that you think would be valuable for a tactical audience to know? Like, kind of, what are your top lessons learned out of MCTI that you think that our users could walk away learning?

Dr. Dan Dworkis: The biggest thing is pretty abstract, so I'll try to pair that up with a slightly more, you know, grounded version of it. But the most abstract thing is that the problem sets that you are facing are pretty similar to the problem sets that other types of mission critical teams are facing. And we are stronger together than we are apart. Right? S

o if you are trying to figure out how to balance the stuff that you're doing, trying to figure out how to apply some of these concepts we've talked about, one of the best things you can do is get together with other high operating teams and talk through some of these ideas, because you're going to find stuff that fire's doing that law enforcement never thought of. You're going to find stuff that NASA is doing that ER, doctors never thought of. You're going to find when you approach these problem sets from various directions, you're going to get just absolute high output growth and power from it.

Jon Becker: It's one of the things I love about what NCTI is doing. I've interviewed several people that are on the periphery of what we do. Bob Kuntz is a nuclear submarine commander, Gareth Locke, who is working on diving air, trying to eliminate human air diving. And every one of those conversations, I walk away thinking, man, I had not even. I didn't think that they understood that the way that I understand it or the way my end user listener understands it, it is fascinating. You can't be a prophet on your own village, but frequently the village that you think would not have a profit for you does, you know? Yeah.

It's the guys down the river where you're like, those guys don't know what they're talking about. Sometimes they really do. Sometimes, you know, sometimes there are lessons to be learned about business from airplane pilots.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Listen, one of the big concepts I was taught coming up is that the room is always smarter than any one person in it.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Right. So that's true. Doesn't matter how smart of a doctor you are, the room collectively is smarter than you. They're better than you. And your job, leading resuscitation is to get your entire room facing the same problem set and working. Working on it together. Right? That makes the difference between life and death more than almost anything. Same thing's true when you think about these mission critical teams. Right? Collectively, we are smarter than any of us alone.

Jon Becker: But I think it is a challenge for many of us who are alpha males and who are in positions of authority and positions of responsibility. You are very inclined to believe that because you are the doctor, it's all on you. And so you have to be the guy with the answer as opposed to being the guy who finds the answer.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: I guess I'm a little lucky in that sense that medicine is so d*** hard, right? So many things go wrong and you lose so many things that it disabuses you of the notion pretty d*** quickly that you are invincible and, you know, capable of having all the answers. Right? You know, you. You talk to a family of a. Of a child that died when your team did their best and did everything they could, and the child still dies. You know, you don't walk away from that thinking that you have the answers to everything in the world. Right?

You walk away from that, realizing, all, right, I'm gonna do better tomorrow, and I'm gonna look everywhere I possibly can to get this team better than where it is right now. My suspicion is that a lot of folks listening to this, like, you know, I hope you haven't gone through that piece of it, but probably you've gone through something parallel and you've walked away from a situation being like, wow, that was. That wasn't where I wanted it to be.

Jon Becker: But I think one of the things that separates people that go through trauma and never recover and people go through trauma and are better, is that introspection. It is that moment of, what can I do to not feel this way again? And the willingness to seek counsel, whether it's technical counsel, emotional counsel, or just somebody that understands. I think we do have to humble ourselves and be willing to recognize that we don't have the answers. And ultimately, the team is always stronger than the individual.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: And it's a weird, fun balance, too, right? Because you have to be humble. You have to be able to look at yourself and be like, I am imperfect. And then you also have to be able to be like, I am going to charge into that next room as fast as I possibly can and do what needs to be done. This is what I always tell my residents when I'm training them to run cardiac arrest for the first time. I'm like, you are humanity's best hope, right? You are the sum total of everything that humankind has ever invented about medicine at the tip of the spear, and it's you today.

And it's imperfect because we're not there yet. We haven't fixed all these problems yet. And it's a challenge and it's going to suck. And you're not going to do everything you want to do. And you have to believe that you are humanity's best hope when you walk in that room. You have to somehow balance both of those.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And it is a difficult balance. I think that's a good place for us to stop because I think you and I could probably talk for about 14 hours.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Yeah, absolutely.

Jon Becker: I want to get to our five final questions, but before we do that, how can people find your work?

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Absolutely. So the emergency mind project is out there. It's really easy to find. It's and I am, which is the easiest way to reach me. The mission critical team institute is out there also. We are, and you can connect with us and look us up through all of that. And we're always, always open to talking to all sorts of folks in this world.

Jon Becker: What I'll do is I'll add those to the notes to the show notes so people can just click on them. All right, let's do the five rapid fire questions. This is a way I like to end with all of my guests like you, who I think can make us smarter short answer questions. First thing that comes to mind, whats your most important habit?

Dr. Dan Dworkis: My most important habit is pausing and reflecting. Right? Recognizing that the first thing I think, ironically for this rapid fire question section is that the first thing I think of might not actually be the real answer and separating out the stuff that happens from what I actually want my action and beliefs to be.

Jon Becker: What's your current favorite online resource? Website? Podcast? Like, what's your latest intellectual jam, so to speak?

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Yeah, I've been reading a lot of this stuff around red teaming lately. I think that's been super fascinating, that's drifted a little bit into some business stuff. I've been listening to invest with the best podcast, which is a bit of a weird resource and probably not something that a lot of folks in the tactical community are hitting on.

But you look at these people that have built these incredibly efficient systems at how to do stuff, and how did they get from inefficiency to efficiency? There's a lot to learn from that group in terms of how we can build the systems around us better.

Jon Becker: What's the most important characteristic of an effective leader?

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Curiosity. Coupled with that sense of never wasting, suffering.

Jon Becker: What's something you've changed your mind about in the last few years.

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Man, how long do you have? There's so much. I mean, I think one of the big ones that we talked about earlier was the sense that performance is a moment separate from the rest of the context about it. I really thought if I just pushed better, harder and faster, I'd get things done. And now I'm so much more interested in and curious about the rest of that loop about, you know, prepare, perform, recover, and evolve. That's made a big difference in my ability to do the job that I do.

Jon Becker: Final question. What's the most profound memory of your career?

Dr. Dan Dworkis: There's a hallway, a brick lined hallway that heads into the ER at Mass Gen, where I did most of my training. And, you know, mass general is like a million years old, right? Those bricks were probably around before anesthesia was around. It's only a slight exaggeration because it's an old hospital. There's a sense of history to it. There's a sense of purpose to it.

And that hallway leading into the resuscitation area, when I first started doing that work, I'd get really nervous walking in there. I'd be like, how am I going to perform today? How am I going to do this? What am I going to do? And I made a conscious decision at some point to every time I walk through that hallway, getting ready to go into that space to think about, there's this one line from the hippocratic oath which says, into whatever house you enter, may it be for the good of the people within.

And I made this decision that I would say that to myself when I walked down that one brick hallway. I am not perfect. I don't have to have everything exactly right. But I will swear that when I walk into this space into my home in the ER. It will be for the good of the people in there. And that is how I'll judge myself. And if I do that, that's how I'll judge my life as a human being. And that hallway image is just, like, seared into my brain from doing that walk so many times and making that commitment over and over again to try to bring something good to the people in there.

Jon Becker: Dan, I can't thank you enough for doing this, man! I am glad you made that commitment, and we are all better because of it. So thank you so much for being with me today!

Dr. Dan Dworkis: Well, Jon, thank you so much!

And for the folks listening to this, I just want to say again what I said at the beginning, that we're on the same side of this problem set. Looking at it together. You know, I need your help and your ideas, and so do my patience. And I'm looking forward to hearing from you all.

Good luck out there!

Episode 30 – Being a Tactical Athlete with Kelley Starrett

jonathan@aardvarktactical.com on October 1, 2024

Episode 30 – Being a Tactical Athlete with Kelly Starrett

Jon Becker: My name is Jon Becker.

The goal of this podcast is to share their stories in hopes of making us all better leaders, better thinkers, and better people.

Welcome The Debrief!

Kelley, thanks so much for being here, man! It's great to have you with me!

Kelly Starrett: Absolutely. I can't wait to see what we get up to today.

Jon Becker: So why don't we start just for the uninformed, why don't we start with the quick Kelly Starrett story of, you know, how you got into PT and, you know, kind of started to become what you've become.

Kelly Starrett: I tell you, we set the wayback machine. I have been obsessed with going fast, taking chances from a little kid. I think if we frame this correctly, without opening up this can of worm for everyone I had. My father was basically the great Santini, was an f4 fighter pilot, college quarterback, but absent from my life, alcoholic, fighting his own demons. I am one of a proud generation of lineage of Irish kids from county Cork.

And I'll say that there is just a lifestyle of generations back of bad father son interactions. So sports for me, I think early on becomes validation. Sports becomes a way of understanding myself and having – I have a high genetic drive to move. So I'm always down to train, always down to compete. I love it.

So that sets up sort of a lifestyle in a life where I'm raised by a single working mother. I grew up in Europe and exposed to all kinds of crazy sports. I'm becoming a kayaker, I'm riding my mountain bike and racing, and I'm playing soccer. Like it's my job. Lo and behold, I end up becoming a professional paddler, I'm a river guide. In college I teach kayaking and I'm a river guide and I end up making the US canoe and kayak team with a friend.

We paddle two man canoe and it's like with that sport where they hang the gates over the rivers, you know, and you see it in the Olympics every once in a while and it's literally like standing in a cold shower ripping up $20 bills. It's the worst sport. No one's there. You're never going to get famous. We got, you know, our pictures in the paper with a power bar sticker. We made $50, they would send us $50. I mean, we were just rich.

So the problem with that is that. That, and I think a lot of people will relate to this. It was an era in the late nineties where we had embodied and embraced the models of training, which was, we'll outwork everyone. That model was sort of really prevalent.

Can we perform more work than everyone else? And the person who works the hardest and doesn't break tends to win. There's no conversations about nutrition. There's no conversations about range of motion. There's no conversations about sleep or down regulation or soft tissue health or can you even access this position? Or how are you breathing? No, no one's looking at these things. We're looking at the clock. Did you go faster? Yes. No. Good. Do that again. Whatever it was, burn yourself down.

So I ended up paddling myself right off the national team with a really bad cervical injury. So suddenly I couldn't turn my head. I had a flaming hot nerve root. My hand was going weak. And it's completely an artifact of twisting and rotating and having the paddle on one side of the boat eleven times a week. Plus training, plus my body finally just raised its hand. After weeks of my months of my hands starting to get a little weak and tingly, and sometimes I couldn't hold the paddle.

And like everyone else who went through this phase or had this happen to them, suddenly I was like, give me the prednisone, give me the cortisone, give me the needles, take out my kidney. What do I need to do to get back to my job? And my job at the time was to race Whitewater. That was my job.

So suddenly my job is taken away from me, and I start asking because of sort of my background and my understanding. Very interested in process. I've always been interested in the technical aspects of things. I start asking difficult questions. Did anyone know this would happen? Yes. This usually happens during high volumes, right before team trials. People get injured. Okay, what do we do about it? We don't have anything to do about it. We just hope we can get further next year.

Hey, I looked around. Every woman on the national team has had shoulder surgery. So should my daughter in the future, if she wants to make the national team. Should we just have a preemptive shoulder surgery now? Should we just do that? Let's just go ahead and fuse everyone, or let's go ahead and have the label thing. Is this the cost of doing business, truly, or is there anything that we can control that might mitigate some of these effects? And that's really the great question, sort of the hypothesis.

So that leads me end up going to physical therapy school where I wake up and I'm like, I've got to figure this out. Because my experience was the reactive medical system. And look, my stepfather's a physician, my grandfather's physician. Physicians are amazing. And if you have trauma or surgery, we want them. We want really the best ones.

But my experience of having pain and no one looked at how I paddled, no one assessed my range of motion, no one looked at my capacities. No one asked me about my training in nutrition. There was my experience as an athlete was completely divorced from my experience in this medical system, where I went into this, got sucked into this hallway that had nothing to do. It was like someone was speaking classical Greek over here. It had nothing to do with my life, nothing.

The way I was training, nothing. The language was completely foreign and ultimately didn't solve the problem. What solved the problem was not doing the thing for long enough that my young body could heal itself, that everyone can relate to that.

And so here we are. I go through physio school, and in my first semester of physical therapy school, because I'm already olympic lifting, I'm already seeking very much and recognizing that there's gotta be hurls here that allows me to understand complex human physiology. That's why I'm in classical physical therapy school. And I chose a heavy manual therapy school where I could put my hands on people, help them get into the shapes and positions. We weren't talking about shapes and positions.

So my first year of physio school, I discovered Crossfit. And remember, this isn't crossfit as we know it. This is early, early Crossfit, which is, you should be competent with kettlebells and dumbbells. You should understand basic barbell training. We should be running more. We should be doing basic tenets of strength and conditioning.

And what we found, my wife and I remember, we're multiple time national champions. Julia's a world champion. We found that we weren't very strong, we weren't very skilled, and we weren't very fit. We found these big, glaring holes in our operating system. And so early on, I was like, this is amazing. And it really felt like the camaraderie and training, that the suffering together felt like the team. The working out felt like the team.

Meanwhile, I'm overlaying this physical therapy piece, and I'm suddenly realizing I have the greatest diagnostic tool in the world. To understand your condition tendencies, to understand your holes in your system, understand your inability to achieve native and normal physiologic ranges.

So as I explained this to my mother in law early on, she said, you mean it makes the invisible visible? And what I realized then was that I had a perfect real time diagnostic tool to understand the sport. And thats not what we were doing. Strength conditioning. We were all about the physiology. Did you get stronger? Did you get fitter? Great. That was our goal.

But suddenly we realized we could repurpose that to understand how your range of motion was changing and how your capacities were changing, how having a kid or being on a red eye or wearing body armor, playing a sport changed your skills, your ability to access your native ranges and control in those ranges.

So we start working on sort of, hey, how can we now? I'm graduating physio. I'm seeing people at the gym. And we start by putting out a video a day for a year back in 2010, trying to help people level up. And the athletes I'm working with and I'm starting to now be invited in places to help them untangle these complex sort of human movement phenomenon where we're seeing, and more importantly, everyone, I think traditionally in the sort of two thousands was thinking injury prevention.

And the sucker's bet on injury prevention is that it's impossible. But what we can do is actually play offense. You think you're working at the limits of your capacity, but you're not. You're working at the limits of your physiology currently, your range of motion, your skill. It turns out there's a whole lot more that we can uncover. We can actually have you be able to do all these things and show up for your family intact, or have more movement choice, or have less pain in your movement choice.

And by opening up and force focusing on range of motion, do you have access to your native ranges? Can we improve? Prove your biomotor output, your force production, your wattage, whatever it is you that's important for your skill. We got injury prevention in the background because in order to do those things, we had to talk about sleep, nutrition, hydration. We had to talk about how you're moving and the way you're training. We had to talk about mindset and all of those things.

And lo and behold, what we start to see is that there's this real integration between sort of who owns position and who owns pain. It's the athlete, who owns performance, it's the athlete. And now we have a way in a safe space to uncover all of the problems.

And so if you're wearing body armor all the time, guarantee your thoracic spine is going to become rigid and stiff. And you're going to do all of your moving through your lumbar spine because you're wearing body armor. Where do we solve that problem? Because when you're 19 or 20, you can do that all day long, but then suddenly when you're 30, you can't do that all day long, you know, now your back is hurting. Why is my back hurting?

So the place to understand that and to see how your body's changing day to day, week to week, what your skills are, what's moving and not moving is the gym. And what we've done now is, you know, we keep, we – I created a the IP of our book, original book. Becoming a supple leopard is really about creating a model of understanding complex movement behavior. And that's what it is. And what I do is take that to Olympic bobsled or rowing or warfighters or swimmers.

And I just keep trying to break the model and test the model in these different places and say, hey, where does the model, does the model explain what I'm seeing? Does the model allow me to predict future movement behavior? And then can we communicate with it? And when we pulled out this reactive emergency of medicine, what we were able to do is have a real conversation about what does pain mean, when do I activate that EMS system?

And what is on my sort of shoulders to manage that isn't requiring necessarily just bourbon and ibuprofen, there's got to be some other techniques. Because what we found is that not only could we get more out of the people we were working with, and we saw that because we were winning world championships and setting world records and people were feeling better and doing higher volumes, but also we found that we were able to extend the careers of some of the best people we were working with.

And if you have all the institutional knowledge and by the time you're 40, you're actually worth a d*** at your job, but your knees and back hurting, you can't be deployed, or you can't do the thing, or can't knock down the door because you're worried about your neck, then you suddenly we've lost this. The most rich, the most experienced person in the team, because the model wasn't set up to support them. So that's what we've been doing.

And then again, we see a lot of dirty laundry from the all blacks, the niners, the english national soccer team, irish national. We just – I get access to a lot of people saying, hey, we're trying to go faster and have people be more resilient and come out of this thing less harmed. Can you help us do that?

Jon Becker: Yeah. And I think it's interesting because it's one of the advantages I have in my day job is I have access to so many units, so many teams that you see how people solve things. You see what works, you see what doesn't work. You create a laboratory of your own, which with, you know, I first became aware of your work through kind of crossfit and that, that community.

But there were several things that stuck out when, when I heard you speak that just felt different. It felt non-traditional medicine. You know, traditional medicine is this kind of mindset of, you know, well, you see the doctor and the doctor tells you do this, or you see the PT and he tells you do this. And there's a couple things that I really love about your approach. One of them is that it is the athlete's responsibility, like you own your own body. It is not, it is not. You're not going to a PT to say, here, fix me. You're going to a PT to teach me how to fix me.

Kelly Starrett: It is the primary weapon system.

Jon Becker: Yeah. It's fascinating, though. It is a very different approach. The other thing that struck me very early on in listening to your work was this concept of access to positions. And it's a unique approach because we don't tend to think of that. We tend to think of movement in single plane movements, you know, bicep curls and, and leg extensions and quads. Yeah. In what…

Kelly Starrett: Arm day.

Jon Becker: What struck me when I listened to you was like, you know, you were talking about being able to squat, being able to get up off the floor, being able to put your arms over your head. Where did that first click for you? That position was ultimately what mattered.

Kelly Starrett: Yeah. I appreciate you identifying that as salient to this conversation. I remember sitting in my second year of motor theory, motor learning, in grad school, and I was presented with a study about monkeys and how the brain was working. This might have been like my third neuro class, whatever. And what we saw was, or what the research said is that when a monkey reached for the chip, a certain pattern of activation happened in the brain. But if you move the chip somewhere else, it was completely different movement pattern.

So the brain lit up in a different way. And it turns out your brain is wired for movement. It's not wired for muscles, it's wired for problem solving and learning a certain specific movement task. And once you start to understand that, then we can start to say, well, what is it about the foundations of all of these strength and conditioning pieces? Why do we do pull ups? Why do we press overhead? Why do we do handstands? What is, what's similar about all those things, about a kettlebell s*****, about a barbell s*****? What's similar and different about all those things? Fundamental shapes?

And suddenly what we recognized was that we had these bookends of movement that were start position and finish position. And when I started asking people, well, do you have access to a good starting position? Because that's certainly going to make it difficult for you to end up in a good position or effective position or a position that gives you more choice or better access to your physiology. Right?

Pain, no. Pain aside, if your starting position is tweaked, if your finished position, if you can't put your arms over your head, it's going to be very difficult and you're going to put your arms over your head, by the way, you're just going to bend your elbows, rotate your shoulders, and end up, you know, in a pseudo overhead position. And what we hadn't done for athletes is we hadn't said to people, this is what you should be able to do. What we did instead was constrain the environment with movement tasks that forced us to live in those positions.

And the reason, one of the reasons that CrossFit, for example, there's a lot of great training modalities. One of the reasons Crossfit was effective and kettlebells was effective and olympic lifting has been effective is that it forces us to express normal native range of motion. You have to be able to have full interrotation of the shoulder. You have to be able to get into a front rack on a barbell. You have to. So we have this sort of classical ballet of movement.

And if we, what we found is that when we could go after and create standards for starting positions and finish positions, reference shapes for the body, then suddenly we were able to untangle very complicated movement related problems for elite Olympic lifters, elite swimmers, because the body and hang on with a second, the shoulder, for example, doesn't do that many things. The shoulder, your arms go up over your head, it goes out in front of you, goes out to the side, and it goes behind you. That's all your shoulder does, right? There are multiple systems. You might be bending your elbow when your arm is out by your side. You might be bringing your hand down like you're drawing your side arm with your hand by your side, but that's still arm by your side.

And so what we suddenly realize is that people who couldn't do the thing started adopting shapes that allowed them to solve the movement problem. But those shapes were just less effective. Those shapes didn't handle speed load, those shapes didn't handle load. Those shapes didn't handle volume. Those shapes were force dumps and torque bleeds and decay in position.

And so when we started getting sort of more aware of the universal principles of these shapes, sort of the rules that run the road of cardinal ranges, but also the rotation required to create stability in those ranges, we suddenly realized, I can go into any sport on the planet, any movement on the planet, and see those root shapes expressed.

And let me give you a different model for understanding what strength and conditioning really is. And hold on. I know a lot of people listening to this have been training their whole lives and love to train, but what I'm saying is, if we take the squat position right, can you squat? Can you squat with something that you're holding onto in the front, like a sandbag or a goblet? Can you squat with something on your back? Can you squat with something over your head? But that's just changing the angles of the squat. What really matters is, can you squat when it's heavy? Can you squat fast? Can you squat when and express control in this shape?

When you're fatigued and you have to do more than five reps, you have to do 20 reps. If we run around this block and then I have you squat again, I'm going to see cardio respiratory demand start to really rare its head suddenly. Then if you and I are competing, whoo, we start to see a little stress pressure in there, and then we're going to start to.

So what I'm saying is, if I can't elicit errors, degradation, I can't challenge you with the limits of your capacity to maintain your shape with all of these different tools, then what I see is, hey, I'm really going to have blind spots because you're like, well, I squatted, and yet I had this problem. I landed and my knee went in, or whatever it is. What we suddenly see is if I can create a person who has movement capacity across these different domains, that's a really stable way of challenging.

So if you're doing CQB, and again, I haven't gone through any of these programs, I've just watched a lot of it. Oftentimes you go through and the first thing you do is you're given, what? No gun. We're going to go through the room and then we give you a pistol and then we give you a long gun, but there's no ammunition in it. Then the doors start moving and then there's people in there. And what you see is that here's the fundamental skill.

Can I move safely and communicate through the building? Then I start to add complexity. And I'm looking at your ability to maintain the integrity of the same skill by adding and challenging. And now there are open demands and now there's uncertainty. Well, that is literally what we're trying to do in strength and conditioning. We're trying to create basic root patterns and then we add complexity to challenge your, initiate your challenge, your ability to maintain that shape.

So if you come to the gym with me, I'm going to find a load speed, time, duration, volume, that's going to make you begin to wobble to speed, wobble to load. And what I'm really doing every day is making hypotheses and testing my hypothesis. With your ability to get this amount of work done with, by making the sort of the least amount of wobbles, can you self correct?

And now what we've done is just layered in a ton of skill into this conversation of you being a more effective mover. We've added a layer of diagnostics to the whole thing and now we have this closed loop where I'm saying, hey, I see you started. You could go slow and press overhead, but as soon as we added speed and some breathing hard whoop, your technique changed.

And now we can become curious about what that is. And in the context of that training session, we can minister to your positions, we can minister to your skills, we can restore your shapes, we can start to untangle some of that stuff.

So the next time we have a more effective learning response or more effective adaptation to the training we're doing, it's not just about, well, I obviously just need bigger muscles. That's not what it is.

Jon Becker: Well, what's interesting about that, those so crawl rock run is a mindset that exists in the tactical community for every skill that you learn, right, you are going to learn to hold a pistol, then you're going to learn to point a pistol, then you're going to learn to use a trigger and all of that. I recently interviewed Tom Satterlee, who was a 20 year command sergeant major from Delta.

And one of the things Tom talked about was, when you get to the unit, we're going to teach you how to shoot all over again. You're going to learn how we shoot, you're going to learn our methodology, and we're going to drill that into you to the point that you have correct form no matter what you're doing, because then your shooting will not decay under pressure. This is exactly the same thing. We're going to, you know, be able to access shape, be able to access mood.

Kelly Starrett: Wouldn't it be the same thing?

Jon Becker: No, it is.

Kelly Starrett: That's what's – You, everyone who's gone through. Look, my favorite thing of working with warfighters and tactical athletes is that they're the best in the world at learning new skills. They can acquire new skills faster than anyone else.

And so if you're saying, oh, you already possess this knowledge and language and experience, then you just have to reapply it and reimagine the entire sort of training conditioning space as something different, and suddenly it becomes skill limited, which is exactly what we do when we learn a new skill or going down the fast rope or going through a hall or going to the shooting range. It's all skill limited. And when the skill starts to decay, what do we do? We keep practicing? No, we're done. You've. You've tapped out today.

Jon Becker: What's interesting about that, though, is, is in this space, like, even, even among units, that, that. That's how they train. I mean, that's the, you know, I was trained to shoot by some of the best firearms instructors in the world, and everything was very deliberate.

But when I learned to work out, I learned strength. I learned whatever. This was not the mindset, right? It was not. It was not accessing position. It was, oh, you know, this. I bench press, be able to, you know, be able to lift a lot of weight. And what struck me, as you were talking about it was, if my movement patterns are poor, I'm going to, or.

Kelly Starrett: I can't access my movement.

Jon Becker: Or I can't access them. Either way, I'm going to adapt my movement to accomplish what I want, but in the process, I'm going to position my body poorly and damage my body.

Kelly Starrett: Hold up. Let's not say poorly. Let's say less effectively, because if this is your only solution, I want you to use it, but I want you to have more choice, better access, more movement solutions, and you may not damage it. You, miss, may lose, you may suck, you may not ever achieve your best. Your tissues may be so bomb proof that there's never a pain or damage component to that, but you're right that when I use a system poorly over time, it's easy for that, more easy for that system to become overworked or for me not to, or my brain to become sensitized to how I'm using it, and that is a problem.

Jon Becker: Well, and realistically, if you're using the sights on your gun wrong, you're not shooting as well as you could.

Kelly Starrett: You've said it. And that's exactly right. And so, especially since we're saying, hey, we're working with a lot of men and women who are no longer 20, there's patina. You know, people…

Jon Becker: I like that word. It isn't rust. It's patina.

Kelly Starrett: Patina. You've been aged, you know, and some of the world here is you cannot control for all the variables. So all of a sudden, what we see is you got pulled in through a door, you had to fight someone, you stepped through a fell through a wall. You suddenly see that there actually is a whole bunch of trauma and things that happen to the people that are working, but what can we control?

And that suddenly means that, wow, if you can't bring your knee to your chest and your hip is missing 40 degrees or a third of its range of motion, which often happens, you're going to solve that problem somewhere up the chain. And that somewhere up the chain is your low back, your knee, your ankle.

And suddenly what we recognize is, man, its not just about how much weight I can bang. Its about how do I create a durable, self diagnosing, closed loop movement system where a side effect of that is I become stronger? A side of that, I have been to some pretty amazing places and seen things where 40 year old warfighters are doing heaving s***** balances on pressure plates. And I'm like, what does that have to do with anything related to carrying a pack, stepping over a wall, being able to grab the fast rope and do that over it has nothing to do with it.

And I think what we saw, and I think it's a feature, not a bug, is that we added a whole lot of complexity to the training domains of warfighters and tactical athletes or operators. And suddenly what we saw was, well, this feels very sophisticated, and this feels very complex, and it makes me feel like I'm training. But still no conversation about position. No sensient, sort of benchmark conversation there, you know?

And what we find is that when we just start with shape and position, then we can be agnostic that. You like to train a certain way. I like to train a certain way. That's totally fine. You know, they, you know, I just was at a place in Quantico where they, you know, they call camp. Do what you want. So once you come through, you go to the gym, you do camp, do what you want.

And the idea there is the men training there at camp, do what you want, can go into the gym, and they're like, I like to bodybuild, I like to Olympic lift. And it doesn't matter what you do, but what we're not sort of done is created a normalizing language of, hey, I see that you don't have access to your basic physiology. If you and I are having lunch, my elbow doesn't bend to come up to my face. You'd be like, what's wrong with your elbow? And I'd be like, well, nothing doesn't hurt, does not limit me. I just use long forks, right? And suddenly, you know, you're like, dude, that's a really strange thing. I'm like, it's fine. That's your hip, that's your ankle.

But the problem is you can function well enough without having to be able to bend that elbow fully. And so suddenly we end up with a complex movement related problem, like below back pain or knee pain or somethings going on with the neck or the shoulder. And we don't even know where to begin to parse that out. It's always complex conversations about pain or, hey, it's always surgery.

And now there are a few licks to the, to the chewy center before you have to go get a surgery. And sometimes surgery is absolutely the best option because there's been trauma, you've been blown up, something has happened, you got shot, you need surgery simultaneously. Man. If we can begin this conversation of self care, of position, of restoration, of creating the most durable person who has the best access to their positions, given the demands of their job, you'll see that you can come home and not worry about playing with your kids, or you can go be deployed. You know, I was out at the CIA and having a dinner with a senior leadership, a lunch with a senior leadership, and what they had started to do was to assign a dollar value to the training for every one of their operators.

And so in order to get people to actually give a d*** about someone's shoulder, someone's back, they were like, oh, you have trained, and we've spent $1.72 million to train you, and now you are an asset. We can't be deployed. So people are like, okay, that got the peoples attention. How do we bring resources and change the game so we can keep our $1.7 million warfighting machine deployed on the front line?

Jon Becker: Yeah, no, and it's a really valid point, because by the time you get to an elite unit, you have spent a great deal of time the government has spent a great deal of money. You are, you are a professional athlete, right? You're a professional tactical athlete in the same way that, and have value to the team and to the organization.

Kelly Starrett: That's right.

Jon Becker: That, you know, in the same way that a professional baseball player has value to their organization. You know, somebody in Cirque du Soleil has value to their organization.

Kelly Starrett: That's right.

Jon Becker: You know, an operator has value to the team, but it's very easy for the organization to lose sight of that. And, you know, it strikes me as you're saying this, that one of the things is because we don't understand this frequently we're going to engage in modalities that are probably going to amplify our problems. Right. If you can't binge your arm and that's because you don't have normal range of motion while putting on 25 pounds of bicep is probably not going to help you to rack real good naked. Yeah, exactly.

Kelly Starrett: At home, when your friends are deployed.

Jon Becker: Yeah. When you can't. Yeah. While your friends are deployed and you can't pick up your shoes anymore.

Kelly Starrett: That's right.

Jon Becker: When did you first, you know, I know that you've worked with a lot of professional teams. You've worked with a lot of tactical units, which is one of the places that we came back into each other's circles. But where, when did you first start working with, with law enforcement and military tactical units?

Kelly Starrett: I think probably started to be involved in, and around 2010 was sort of the first time, I think I, you know, I've been out at, you know, highway patrol working with our local, you know, Berkeley SWAT teams. You know, realizing that these conversations, you know, I started to be invited in because this current system wasn't working to people satisfaction.

And I think what's salient here is we had came out of a tradition of, we'll call it a fitnessing, fitness strength, not strength conditioning, but fitnessing, where we said pain is a medical problem. And that was our type one era. That was our first association, because if I step into a room, I was just in a room full of coaches this weekend in Connecticut, really talented coaches, really superstars. And all the coaches, I said, who's pain free? Not a single hand goes up. I said, who describes themselves as injured? And two hands go up.

And so there's a, I've been in rooms where I have 100 teenage kids and I'm like, who's pain free? And not a hand, single hand goes up. And the parents start snapping their heads around. They're like what? What? You know, the coach goes up to the starting pitcher is like, what do you mean you're not pain free? He's like, my elbow hurts every day. Coach, you just never asked.

So if we tell athletes that pain is a medical problem, then we'll wait until it's so bad that I can't do my job or occupy my role in the team or occupy my role in the squad or occupy my role in the family. And thats when ill initiate emergency help. And then all the coaches who are working with those athletes have now been disempowered because pain is a medical problem. And so we all just pretend like it doesn't matter or hey, it got better when I warmed up, or we'll just work around the problem. We just wont bench today. Well do something else, right, you're going to knock overhead, just going to landmine. Instead of saying pain is a request for change.

And one of the things we'll do, let me be clear, everyone, is that if you've got a bone sticking out of your legend, go get help, right? If you have night sweats, that's a medical problem.

Jon Becker: That's a medical problem.

Kelly Starrett: Yeah, you've got something that smells and feels like rabies of the shoulder, go get some help so we all can care. So we laugh at that. But, man, you know, you sprain your ankle, you're like, I sprained my ankle. It's fine. I'm just gonna be cool. But your back tweaks and you're like, holy crap, I have six herniated discs now and I, you know, I'm gonna be paralyzed. We don't even teach people how to desensitize, decongest. We don't realize that a lot of the tools that we have help manage this, including restoring native range of motion, basic the range of motion.

Every physician, physical therapist chiral agrees we should have can be part of me understanding that this pain I'm having is a feature and a check engine light. And the same way, if you imagine the amount of care and feeding of your weapons, you shoot a bunch, you go clean, you break them down, you oil, and now apply that same level of care to your body and you see that they are not commensurate. People are doing no input because the body seems to work really well because it's so durable.

Now we start to add in, you're a vampire, you operate at night, your nutrition isn't great because you don't have access to, you know, fruits and vegetables. I've been at Fort Bragg. They had to fight to keep pies out of the vending machine one day a week, and they put fruit in there. That was a dessert, and that was a big deal. I was out on the east coast working with a team out there, and they had to finally built a kitchen for all the kids out there, and they had to fight with the Navy to not put in the deep fryer. You'll see that people now are recognizing that, hey, the burden of this has to be on me, the operator, the warfighter.

And now people are starting to look for those tools because they are recognizing that they want to come back more intact. They're seeing their brothers and sisters have these gnarly, gnarly surgeries. And what we recognize is, I cant control all the variables, but I can begin to control some of the variables. Like, you know, we're seeing a lot less drinking happening because the drinking is interrupting the sleep, the drinking is making me less effective for the next few days afterwards.

And so men and women are using drinking as a celebration, as a memorial, as a time when they're rested on r and r, not as a coping strategy, because they're recognizing that that coping strategy was actually making these sets of variables and complexities even worse.

Jon Becker: Well, and I think a lot of times, it's simply ignorance, right? It's not understanding. Nobody sits down with you and goes, hey, when 20 years from now, when you retire from this unit, you're going to have all of these problems unless you take care of your body. In fact, we create exactly the opposite incentives.

We say, well, Kelly, if you're hurt, then you're going to go on light duty status, or you're not deployable. And so are you hurt? No, no, dude, I'm good. Yeah. You know, no matter what, we can't tie his shoes anymore. But Kelly's good to go, and, you know, he can still bench press 300 pounds. So he's obviously very healthy.

And I think it is kind of redefining the way we look at health and fitness and trying to interrupt earlier in the cycle, because by the time guys are retiring from units and having six, seven surgeries be, you know, in their, in their terminal week of training, they're getting, you know, six different surgeries to try and put their bodies back together, it's too late. We've got to interrupt this cycle early on, and we've got to teach guys, really, this concept of complex movement behaviors and access to position.

And everything you were doing is simply giving you the ability to go from x position to y position quickly, strongly, effectively, and, and whether that position is a shooting position or, or a climbing position or whatever. You know, all of these things are just, you know, running is just a series of hops from foot to foot. Right? Like it. It all does come down to these really basic positions. How when you're, when you're working with units and teaching this, how are you teaching position? Like, is there, is there a kind of library? Is there a Kelly's Alphabet of body position? Or I – How do we think about that?

Kelly Starrett: Yeah, my whole brain works around pattern recognition. So that's – I'm always saying, like, the way I've understand the world, the way I can, you know, pick up new information, is how does it relate to everything else? I really need to see how these systems interrelate. And what we do is we sort of break these foundational aspects of the body around the hips and the shoulders into seven kind of key shapes that we call archetypes. They're the root shapes.

And when we assess the archetype, what we're really looking is the fullest expression of the shape. So overhead is a good example. You know, overhead is that arm is straight up and down, thumb backwards, no bend in the elbow. And I actually can create rotation and isometric kind of force in that position. My arm is straight up.

So if I'm pressing with my arms out to the side, that's still overhead. If I'm pressing landmine, pressing with my arm out in front, they're still overhead. But it's not the fullest expression of what overhead is. So there are often times when people have degenerative changes or have had trauma or surgeries. We might never train in those positions of fullest expression, but we will work on maintaining the available ranges.

And now what we have is a way every day of saying, well, what did I, what am I training or doing today? What's one aspect of this movement system? I can look at the – But I could strip all the movement out of it and say, let's talk about quads. And we could do soft tissue work on the quads, right? We could get your quads to be less sensitized, to be. Generate more force, to have less doms. We could do that. But you use your quads for a lot of things.

So let's figure out the shapes that your stiff quads may not allow you have access to. So anytime we can put context to the shape and what's cool is I have taught on every continent except Antarctica, and everyone knows what bench press is. Everyone knows what a pushup is. Everyone knows what pressing up overhead or doing a handstand or hanging from a bar is. So we have this universal language at our disposal, which is the foundational language of strength and conditioning. If we drop into any college, any national team across the planet, you'll see things that look like back squad and front squat and bench and blah, blah, blah.

You'll see that you're like, oh, there are universal shapes that are represented in this movement selection that everyone chooses. Why is that? Why is it that the, you know, the, the Olympic lifters bench press? Well, it turns out, taking the shoulder into extension arm, elbow behind me like a run or the bottom position of a dip. It's the one position that the Olympic lifters don't do in their normal daily training. So they have to train that shape and train that position.

So when we start to give people easy self assessments that they could do every day for one position or one aspect of a position, and we tie that into the days training, suddenly we can choose one aspect or one position or one movement that we trained and say, hey, let's look at it. The all blacks, they were like, it's dorsiflexion Tuesday.

So they would look at ankle function on Tuesdays and they would ask, what is it, all the things ankles does, it points, it flexes. And then they could say, hey, let's spend a little bit of time restoring or mobilizing or improving those positions and then well get the rest of it tomorrow. And I think when we start to put position and positional restoration as part of the language of training, then everyone is looking for it.

And so when we go press overhead today, part of why I'm pressing overhead is to see how easily I can press overhead, how all of this deployment in the back of this van and wearing this body armor and wearing all this kid and nods has changed my ability to put my arms over my head. So now suddenly I have this great diagnostic tool where I can begin to understand what we call session cost. Session cost is this idea that whatever we engage in has some kind of cost on the body. Could be central nervous system readiness, it could be position, it could be stiffness, it could be just my ability to handle high volumes, whatever it is.

So when we say things like recover, I'm like, you're not really recovering because we were on our feet for 22 hours yesterday. There's no way you're going to recover by what it's going to take you a few days to recover. So how do we reduce the session cost so that we can keep training volumes high? And it turns out that when we engage in a set of behaviors that allow me to focus on high level performance, keeping an eye on my range of motion minimums.

My minimum competencies allow me, in the safety of the gym, to look at nutrition and sleep and readiness and range of motion. Then suddenly it becomes a lot easier and very manageable to work on one piece of the system today, and we'll work on another piece of the system tomorrow.

Jon Becker: So talk to me about those seven kind of, you know, basic positions that you mentioned. What are they? What, what should I be able to do?

Kelly Starrett: You should be able to do everything a human being should be able to do with their shoulders or hips. So start with that, right? And the formal expressions of that are arms overhead. We call that overhead, the overhead archetype. Arm out in front, right, from reaching across my body to grab a seat belt, you know, to having control out in front, controlling someone, doing jits, grabbing someone, tackling someone, from my shooting postures, you know, when I, from my draw to finding a stable position with the long gun, the pistol, those are all front positions.

And, you know, we see that, like, what's, what's the joke? You know, where you throw your elbow out and the sidearm is sideways and, you know, that is a totally crap position where you're very unstable. You know, you can't find a very replicable position if you related. And what's fun about understanding these principles of movement, for example, this front rack, is that if you're reloading, the way I've seen people teach to reload, you crank that arm into full external rotation. That's a full stop that.

So if I grab the pistol and fully externally rotate it right when it's out in front of me, it's right in my eyes. That's a fully, extremely rotated position with my arm out in front, in a bent position that looks like, wait for it, climbing a rope that looks like plank. And so suddenly you're like, oh. Not only do the principles of sort of movement, the movement theory of why we teach, the techniques we teach overlap the physiology of the body, but also those principles attract better transference and better adaptability to the skills I want.

So it's not just even, do I have access to my range of motion? Do I have access to my tissue health? Am I pain free? But the way I teach you to grab rings and create rotation, when you do a pull up, right, pull up ring, suddenly means that you can grab something out in front and create a more stable position. You can create a more stable shooting platform, you can create better grip on the rope. You can create better grip when you're grabbing someone, and suddenly all of the techniques that we're training isn't just about, well, this is overhead, and this is overhead, but I now have a model of creating stable, functional shapes wherever my body is, because I have these principles.

So we have the bot arm behind the back, like a dip, and then we have arm out over the side. So we have overhead archetype, front rack archetype. We have the hang archetype with arms out to the side, either bent or straight. And then we have this press archetype, like the bottom, bottom position of a bench press. And what I'll guarantee you is, if you come and see me, because you're like, Kelly, I need a workup. I'm going to see you deficient in all these positions.

So the question is when and where are you going to work on these positions? And that ends up being the most salient aspect of the conversation. Where do I self assess and where do I do this stuff? In my crazy busy training schedule, my crazy busy life, where I get home and I still want to be a human with my children, right? I'm not constantly just, you know, noodling on my life. Where do I do that? Well, it turns out the training environment is a really wonderful place to do that.

Jon Becker:

But you need to understand that that's what you're doing, right. You need to be focusing on ensuring range of motion, ensuring the ability to reach position. And I think too often we're, we're driven to do bicep curls and not understand that if we're, you know, if we're elbow out and we're trying to adapt because that hurts or that's awkward because we lack range.

Kelly Starrett: Is your sidearm. In front of the side of your body because you can no longer reach it on your side? That's what we're talking about. You don't have enough shoulder extension, so now you're reaching for your sidearm. Your elbow can't even come back, so your elbow flares out and you're like, I can't reach my gun there. So now you have to move it forward two inches so you have a better draw. That's what we're talking about.

And if you, again, the example of having as much movement choice as you can, and let's just go on record as saying, now you're hypo hydrated because youve been in the back of a c 130 for 4 hours waiting, or you don't want to take a pee in the cockpit or whatever it is, suddenly i'm like, oh, all you had on the flight line was a little Debbie snack cake to eat. Yeah, you better eat that right.

Suddenly we start to put in nutrition, sleep hydration, and we have tissues that cannot tolerate less effective loads that are going to be more brittle because you're not getting enough protein or enough micronutrients or fiber. And, you know, you just went on a mission and you can't go to sleep till three or four in the morning. You're having a hard time calming down and, you know, you've got to go back to work tomorrow.

So where are we also talking about the behaviors that get you ready and allow you to buffer all of this training and suddenly the training, you know, I'm legitimately asking how strong do you need to be to, you know, I bet you're strong enough to do your job. But when we start to really ask are you durable enough to handle the load, the time, the domains, the all the other stressors on top of it, what we start to see is somethings going to give and your brain is going to start to throw signals, trying to get you to pay attention.

If you're hypo, hydrated, under resourced in nutrition, stressed and poorly slept, throw an alcohol in there. Let's go ahead and just identify that your brain is going to be more easily sensitized to silly bullish where, hey, that little back tweak because you broke your back or you fell on the ladder or whatever, something happened, you twisted your ankle, you're going to see that your body brain is going to be a little bit more twitchy and those things are going to start to throw error signals a lot earlier.

Jon Becker: Now that makes a lot of sense. So if Kelly's designing the strength and conditioning and health program for a tactical unit, what does that look like? You are now in charge of the FBI hostage rescue team or delta or LAPD SWAT or La Sheriff SWAT or Berkeley SWAT. How do you begin to build that program in Kelly's mind?

Kelly Starrett: The first order of magnitude is here is to say, we don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We're doing a lot of right things, right? We are. We have smart men and women leading these things. But what we can start to do is, for example, run some of the lifestyle pieces, start to establish minimums, vital signs benchmarks.

For example, you know, one of our nutrition benchmarks is that we want you to eat 1 gram of protein per pound body weight, and I want you to eat 800 grams of fruits and vegetables every day. Why? I'm interested in you having all of the, keeping your lean muscle, having all of the available ability to turn over your connective tissue. Right?

I find that when people get enough protein, they are more anabolic, they lay less crap. And what we find, honestly, is that we learn this in our high performance environments. 1 gram is actually pretty reasonable. And what you're seeing is that you're like, well, I'm a professional athlete and you dress up like one, but then you eat like a teenager and you're not really paying attention to these things. I need you to have enough micronutrients and fiber on board so that your brain and your body can do what it needs to do to make connective tissue and joint health.

And what we find is that, boy, those two limits, people aren't hitting those minimums. So now by establishing a benchmark we all can recognize, man, I'm way below my minimum for the last three days. I got to get back. Right? Oh, hey, I start making decisions about, yeah, I better eat a protein and some berries for breakfast, otherwise I'm not going to hit my goals during the day. We start to clean up a lot of sort of poor behaviors. We start to plan ahead a little bit. We start to make different choices. Availability of food for, you know, snacks on the break room.

Suddenly, were we're all gotten on the same page of were trying to get you to eat more fruits and vegetables, get more fiber in and get, and more protein in. And then if you want to be keto or carnivore or do some special thing because you're some elite person, then you can do that any way you want. You are vegan. We can even do it that way. But we now can start applying that same level of thinking to sleep, to steps and walking during the day. We can apply it to range of motion.

So we start to establish sort of some minimums and then the training that everyone's familiar with. You know, we can slow down. You know, there is this idea that we need to be the most explosive, powerful people we can. And I would argue that if you are strong and could occupy your positions well, you're probably going to be able to do your job well because you're not sprinting down and cutting and trying to, you know, you know, catch a football in the super bowl. You know, what I'm, what I'm seeing is we can start to ask, let's look at your conditioning, right? Let's look at your pathways.

One of the things that we find, for example, is that everyones talking about being explosive. No one is sprinting anymore. So if I took a bunch of middle aged operators to a hill and we sprinted, everyone would get injured, wed be pulling hamstrings, wed be pulling achilles, wed be rupturing everything. So we start to ask well what does that sprinting look like? Look? Could be, look like jump roping. It could look like hey, we're doing assault bike Max effort pieces. We're doing on the, you know, we're on the rowing machine, we can constrain but we can start to look at energy systems. Do we do a short piece with intervals? Do we do long piece? Are we getting sprints in there? And now we can start to say, well, how many training sessions do I get a week?

And where in this training cycle, which may not be a week, may need to be ten days to two weeks long. Where can we start to put in these exposures to these positions, to these shapes, to these energy pathways? And all of a sudden it looks like strength and conditioning again, but were just a little bit more meta around it.

Jon Becker: So were more intentional. And instead of building based on body parts, were now building based on energy systems. And based on signaling a body, like sprinting being a good example of signaling.

Kelly Starrett: Your body, you can do ten strict pull ups, getting to twelve strict pull ups. Does that make you better at your job? No. So what really becomes interesting is okay, well what do our tests look like? So are we, you know, if I've got to run and you know, be able to handle this load running, then I better be running regularly, right, I better be working on my skill of running, but not just going out and doing junk miles.

You know, I think, you know, I've seen some of the O courses in the world and if we just got everyone out, not on the O course just to, just to test on the O course, but if we went on the O course and we ran between sections and on skill and we worked sections, the O course is such a beautiful test because what were really saying is under high cardiorespiratory demand which was induced by running, I need you to have control of multiple body shapes with different sort of task demands that are going to require you to have whole full hip flexion and be able to jump and land effectively.

And so through the O course. The reason it's such a beautiful diagnostic tool is it allows me to see in real time what's going on, but all we need to do is sort of put some skill back into this. The other thing that's happened, and I want to be very clear about this, is that we've all fallen in love with strength conditioning because it's really fun and you can measure progress.

But if my job is to go break down doors or go clear rooms or, you know, do whatever I need to do with my job. Then the training answer is, does this make me better at my job? Yes or no. And what we've found is, as we do sports specific training, which is training with teams or individuals during the season, the only goal of strength conditioning in that moment is to go ahead and improve the performance of the athlete on the field. That's really simple. So I might make a whole bunch of decisions of not doing things because the only thing I care about are outputs, right?

So if we're doing full formal strength conditioning, it looks great. You're too. And you cant play soccer. You can't do your job because you're too sore. The training that you're doing is making you worse at accessing your shape because all you do is bench press. And now you cant put your arm, you can't, you know, grab your bra or tuck your pants in or put your arms over your head.

What I can say is, hey, that bench pressing is not making you better at your job. So that's sports specific training. Sports preparation training, which is where we all should be, is sort of this idea, especially in this warfighter tactical group, is I'm always using the training to enhance my positions, to reinforce my skills, to find blind spots that I may not be able to see because my sport is untraditional. In this situation, your untraditional sport is your job. That way we're tied in. What's happened with strength conditioning is that it's suddenly, if you're training like Jeff Adler or Matt Frazier, rich froning, you're not going to be able to do your job. A, you're not 19 and B, you can't handle that volume and still be fresh enough to do your job effectively.

And we see that sort of tug and war between. It's really easy to be in the gym, but it's much harder to show my competency on the range or be better teammate or work on these other skills. And one of the things that were trying to do is say, what's the minimum effective dose in the gym now where I can leave feeling better and feeling primed and I've restored positions, she shapes and loaded myself so that my job is easier.

And that's where we need to sort of be a little bit more clear in our understanding of why I go to the gym. You know, some of the best teams on the planet who are doing your job that youre talking about, they do a commando skill every day. Love that! You better shoot, blow something up, fight, do jiu jitsu, you gotta do something every day.

And I would argue that we're spending a little too much time in the gym trying to have gigantic muscles and not enough time on our skills when we could go to the gym for 20 to 30 minutes, work on a single lift, do some conditioning, get the h*** out of there. Right? Use it as a time of, like, hey, I didn't come out beat up and fried. I came out feeling better.

Jon Becker: Yeah. But it's a big shift in mindset, and it's a much more practical, functional fitness mindset. Right. It is. You need to be able to do this fast. You need to be able to do this, you know, with a heavy load. And I think it's, we have all kind of grown up, especially if you played sports in high school, college, whatever, that, you know, well, we're going to bench press. You need to get to the biggest number you can get. We're going to squat. You need to get the biggest number you can get. And that's easy because it's quantifiable. Right? Like, I can write on my whiteboard in my gym, okay, well, I did.

Kelly Starrett: This shows progress tomorrow.

Jon Becker: I did this. And now in my, what I don't realize is I no longer jump as far I, you know, I no longer jump as high. Like, I'm not training the energy systems that I need for work, but I'm training the energy systems that, you know, look good naked or that I've been trained to do.

Kelly Starrett: That's right.

Jon Becker: And I think that one of the things that I think really is unique about your work and why I do think it makes sense for teams to kind of dig into it is it begs a different selection process. Right. It begs a different training process and.

Kelly Starrett: Gives us more insight into how durable someone is, how they can problem solve their movement selections. What it does is it opens up a lot more understanding of why someone can't do something or why someone's having a set of skill issues or why someone's knees always hurt after the run. If I could immediately drop in a couple behaviors for everyone, let me give you two behaviors that will change your life.

I want you to sit on the ground at home for 30 minutes a day. It means while you're watching Netflix or why you're answering emails, I just want you to sit on the ground. What you're going to find there is that, man, you're really uncomfortable because your hips are so stiff. And what, the first order of business in any of this is exposure.

And so if I see you sitting on the ground. You can do 90, 90. You can sit cross legged, you can kneel, you can side saddle. One of the reasons is I need you to spend more time getting up and down off the ground. That's an important skill. But also the simple tissue exposure in those positions is going to tell your brain, here's a position I value, and I'm starting to have exposure in these positions.

So when you need to fidget, fidget. But if you just start to do that, what we've just done is done 30 minutes of very intense positional intentional work in the background. And, you know, I think you would find that that would go a long way. My second thing is im borrowing from our friend Steve Magnus, whos an incredible coach. Jayde FW just frickin walk.

I would put in 30 to 60 minutes walks in five days a week for 100% of this group. That means on your lunch break, I want you to put your body armor on. I just want you to walk around the compound. I want you to get more zone two work in. You can walk fast, you can walk slow, you can carry a load or not, but I need you to move a lot more in this way. And you're going to have stronger feet and better feeling better, and you're going to be sort of under the demands of that thing, walking around.

And if you are walking around enough between, you know, day to day and your kit, great, you check that box. But now we know that you're walking. But if you are saying, hey, I'm blown, I need to do something. What does that something look like? Zone two. We're going to put big aerobic base. We're going to make sure that your energy systems are tuned up, and the fastest and easiest way to do that is walk. Then we can start layering in smashing yourself complexity. We can do nose only, we can do breath holds during that walk. We can make it super gnarly. We can do vision drills.

But all of a sudden, if you do those two things for me, you start walking a little bit more, 30 to 60 minutes every day. If you start sitting on the ground for 30 minutes, you're going to find that you're going to start to feel better, and you're going to start to decongest and handle all of this gnarly load that's sort of going on in your body in the background.

Jon Becker: It's funny, you know, I've heard you talk about the way that kids move and the way that kids behave and the way the kids play, and.

Kelly Starrett: You couldn't do that. I don't even know what we're talking about. This, you couldn't handle the number of falls, the sitting on the ground. You'd be broken by noon.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's crazy because you, like, you don't realize as you get older, I always say that you get old because you lose flexibility, you lose strength, you lose balance, and you lose endurance, right?

Kelly Starrett: That's right.

Jon Becker: And we, those are just things. We go away. You know, we don't, we don't sit on the ground anymore. Like, you don't sit and play. Like, when you're a kid, you sit and play on the ground all the time. You're getting up, you're getting down, you're climbing on things. And I, in the process, you're reinforcing all of these physiological behaviors, and you're telling your body, hey, you need to hold on to my ability to get on the ground. You need to hold on to my ability to sit on something and not go numb.

All of this you need to pay attention to. It's funny because the older I'm getting, the more as I'm reading more work like yours, it really is largely signaling, it's telling our bodies we have to be able to do these things. The way we live actually does the exact opposite.

Kelly Starrett: What you are hinting at is two important things. The key to adult learning is repetition. So how much repetition does it take to learn a new skill or to reinforce a skill or to keep a skill sharp? It takes a lot. So we all agree that. So I go to the range every day where we are always shooting, doing all these skills.

So apply that to your squatting. Apply that same thinking to your running skill. Apply that same thinking to any of the training modalities you see is, oh, I'm not getting enough reps in. When we begin to, you know, start to ask that, the question about, well, how is my environment supporting my movement choices?

Suddenly we realize that whether it's our fault or we inherited environment, we suddenly realize that we're really only using a few words day to day. I sit, I walk, I sit, I walk, I sit, I walked. And that doesn't take that ankle into full range of motion. That doesn't ask my body to solve a balance problem or a movement problem. I'm not bringing my knees to my chest at all. And so if the body is capable of writing Shakespeare sonnets with its movement solutions, you're only using three words over and over again. Sit to stand, walk, sit to stand, chair, walk. And what's going to happen is your body is going to adapt. It's going to get practice at those shapes.

All right, well, this is what we're doing now. Were sitting and were not loading fine. We're going to be really good at that. And then when you go stand up and need to extend your hip or put your arms over your head, you're going to see that there is indeed a session cost to this environment. So sitting on the ground was a simple way of saying, hey, lets go ahead and give us a little bit more language by exposing some of our tissues and position shapes to a little bit more diverse sets of movements.

And honestly, a lot of what happens in the gym is just the formal sort of, hey, every single day we're going to brush and floss because we're going to touch some of these fundamental shapes. I have three things that I teach everywhere I go. I'm like, and you get to do one of these three things, firefighter, police, SWAT, tactical, doesn't matter.

In the morning, I want someone to do a hip spin up, I want someone to do a shoulder spin up or I want someone to do a ten minute breath practice. You get to choose. And the if you Google Kelly Starrette and my morning routine, you'll see my hip spin up there and my breathing practice, you Google Kelly Starrette and shoulder spin up. Those things are there. But the shoulder spin up and hip spin up are good examples of, hey, we may not be touching these ranges for the rest of the day, but at least let's give your brain some exposure to these shapes.

We're going to squat all the way down, we're going to get into shapes that look like lunges, we're going to kick the leg out to the side, we're going to close the ankle down, going to make the hamstrings under tension. And if you did that for five to ten minutes in the morning with your cup of coffee and you did nothing else but paperwork for the rest of the day, I guarantee you'll be in a better position than if you hadn't done those things.

So really the next sort of behavior piece here is where and when are we putting these essential aspects. If the only time I'm going to put my arm over my head is on the obstacle course or in the pull ups, that's maybe going to give me some grief. But at least I'm thinking about, hey, I probably should hang from a bar every single day.

And in this group that wears body armor a lot, you should be hanging every single day from a pull up bar. I don't even care if your feet are off the ground. But you should spend and try to work up to three minutes of taking some big breaths hanging. That's going to do more for your neck and back and shoulders than anything you can imagine.

Jon Becker: So just literally hang from a bar for three minutes a day.

Kelly Starrett: Just hang for a bar. And you don't even have to do three minutes straight. You can do break it up, go do a set of push ups in between, come back and hang. Go break it up, do a set of squats in between, come back and hang. So suddenly there are, because we work like my bob sledders look like my bobsledders. My crossfitters look like crossfitters. Runners look like runners. Rowers look like rowers.

And guess what?

Men and women who carry guns and wear body armor look like men and women who carry guns and wear body armor. You could be like, I know what you do for a living. Look at your shoulders. And so you could suddenly see that the domain, the sport, the environment, shapes the person very much. We can get away with it for a long time, but our helicopter pilots are going up and down wearing a huge, heavy night nod system, and after a while, they have a hard time with that. Same thing with our fighter pilots who are. We're losing fighter pilots because their hands are going numb.

So how is it that something changed? Was it that I just aged? Well, that's the slow rot idea of aging. That's no one was looking at how well they breathe. Can they turn their head? Does their back work the way their back should work? Can they even create extension in their upper back? One of the things that we're trying to do, and if you go to our app, I've created a movement assessment there.

Again, our app's free for a couple of weeks, but go take the movement test on the app, and you now suddenly have all the diagnostic language you need to be able to understand. Do I have key access to my positions? And when we start to layer that in again, what we then have is a person who now knows what minimums are, begin to understand their patterns, and can start to program administer to that.

And when we do that, for months and weeks and years, we start to see a really different person emerge. A person who is more tolerant of crappy environment, crappy positions, a person who, look, if you're coming to this conversation late, then one of the things we will do in the gym is, well, just slow you down. We just do a lot of tempo work, which means we squat slower, we deadlift slower, we press slower. And by going slower. We know your tissues can probably tolerate some of those things.

We'll pull out some of the speed and our people who have been injured or people who have sort of arthritis or, you know, hot spots in there, we just slow down. So we'll still be loading and we'll still be training. And I'll guarantee you that if we just slow down over time, we can still have massive, massive stimulus and still you can do your job because what's the goal here? To be able to do your job well.

Jon Becker: And it's interesting because one of the things I've done long format triathlon, Iron man distance triathlon for 25 years. And the training methodologies have changed. Like, it, it, originally you were always training at a seven or an eight on a scale of one to ten. And now the mindset is much more training to five and occasionally training to nine. But we haven't really seen that. I mean, you see it in Crossfit. You haven't really seen that make its way into normal strength and conditioning training for most people.

Kelly Starrett: And there's very little conditioning in more normal strength and conditioning. Let's just be clear about that.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's strength, right. For most guys it's strength. And I think it's worth talking a little bit about, you know, speed of lift and kind of mindset in lifting because I think people fall into either a, well, the majority of people end up falling into a fast rep. You know, I can move the weight fast, gotta have power kind of mindset.

But that brings with it a certain injury risk. It brings with it a certain, you know, I try to always think in terms of what am I telling my body? I want it to be able to do, right? What are you signaling to your body? Like, hey, you need to be able to, if you're lifting at the same speed every day and similar weights every day, then thats kind of setting that threshold. What are your thoughts as far as a good mindset for strength and conditioning training?

Kelly Starrett: That we can use speed as a diagnostic tool. That if your speed, so all pain aside, all injuries aside, that we can use speed. You should be able to do these things fast, right? That's one of the, one of our conditions of a healthy normal joint is that it moves quickly, that we have healthy movement tissues. They move quickly. And what, you're absolutely right? I should be able to do that. But let's go ahead and say that speed is the sport of skill.

So if you're skilled. That skill will carry the speed. And what we see a lot of times that we just add speed. Do the drill, El president, for example, and watch what people do. But you know, they just like turn around, they're shooting fast, they're not accurate. What you see is there. The first thing they added on top of poor skill was speed.

And what you got was exactly what you got, sloppiness. So if we realize the way most of us are drilling, you know, you know, the kid who taught me to, the sergeant major who taught me to shoot from the Orange squadron, man, I did very slow drills where I was like, wow, I see the truth of this. You know, why I'm pressing on target seeing my sights so slow. And if you just add speed into your movement patterns, you're going to get exactly what we get. Speed wobbles, crap, inconsistency.

What are you teaching your brain? So, yes, I would say a normal joint should be able to jerk the shoulder. I should be able to jerk something overhead. But we start to see suddenly that if you don't have access to your range of motion or aren't skilled, as soon as I start layering in that speed, boy, we're going to start to see a lot of variability in the movement.

Remember, what I'm trying to do is say, hey, here's what I'm practicing. And I should be using all of these tools to challenge my ability to maintain that position. So I say to my daughters, for example, when we do something like floor press, both my daughters do a lot of floor pressing for water polo. You know, they go down slowly so they can arrive and teach themselves to arrive in a good position and they can go up as fast as they want without flaring the elbows or doing wonky stuff.

So we can use speed as saying, hey, I want you to add as much speed as you can to maintain your position, but if you don't have a reference of what good positions look like, then you're just going fast, right? And that doesn't necessarily get what I'm after. And I, again, would still say I would rather you be able to bench 100 kilos under good control than bench 275 bouncing off your chest and flaring your elbows out.

Jon Becker: Yeah, yeah. Especially because if, if you are training good form, good control, you're a h*** of a lot less likely to get injured when you do go fast.

Kelly Starrett: If you get injured in the gym, shame on you. That is the only safe place in the world. That is the only controlled environment you get. Your life is not controlled. When you get home to your partner your life is not controlled in the drive to the work. Your knife is not like the gym is the only place we can have absolute control. And you're absolutely right that when we start to expose, you know, speed components in the real world, that's, that's where we see injury. We always say speed kills and speed is the ultimate arbiter of how skilled you are.

If your skill doesn't handle under, under speed load, then I'm like, it's an incomplete skill, but that doesn't necessarily mean I can't. Should I be developing those things in the gym once again, are you throwing your rifle as far as you can? Is that the test? You know, that's not the test. The test is for you to be able to move effectively, to have movement choice and to feel good. And I would argue that we don't necessarily have to cherry pick a thousand great exercises to make Olympic javelin throwers for people who are in body armor knocking down doors.

Jon Becker: Do you, is there, in your mind, is there a set of, of kind of, you know, does Kelly have Kelly's tactical operator workout list that is, you know, these 20 exercises or how, as you're working with a team, how are you helping them to build a system that is inclusive of all of the skills?

Kelly Starrett: You know, I was lucky enough to go out to Air Force pararescue out in Tucson. Tucson, long time ago. And they had just got their first waits as a high performance group. You know, the pararescue didn't have a gym. They were just sort of monkeying around and they finally got some squat racks in, they got rogue, they got some plates.

So one of the first things we want to do is say, well let me see your environment. What tissues? What, what, what are your available ideas? What are your available resources? One of the things that is important is if you don't have the resources to have a full time strength condition coach, then we all need to be able to coach each other.

That's an important aspect of this thing, that we're going with someone and someone's giving me feedback in between sets or working on things or, hey, I see that you, you know, and we're suddenly the same way. We would be coaching or teaching each other in our job. We are now coaching and teaching each other in our weight room, you know, because every human being eats three meals a day, they think they're all experts in nutrition. Isn't that weird? And because you've, you've been doing bicep curls at home since you were twelve, does not mean that you know anything about strength and conditioning.

So, you know, what we need to do is go ahead and look at the environment and say, well, what do you have access to? You know, what are your, what are your tools? Is it just sandbags and kettlebells? Great. Well, let's, let's make sure that we're engaging in enough exercises, you know, where we're challenging one or two of these patterns every day, where these shapes are you in? The biggest deficit I see right now in training across the board is that people do not take their hip into extension. So you don't get into lunge like shapes very often.

And so what we're seeing is that your inability to bring your knee behind your b***, knees behind b*** guy, what's happening is that that is making you less effective in your squat, starting to load your back, starting to load your knees and universally in, you know, I was working with a coach named Travis Mash and he had a really high level, he's a high level Olympic lifter. He's an Olympic lifting Olympic coach. He had an athlete who had some knee pain.

And when I said was, hey, coach, look at her volume, look at how she's training and look at how much time she's spending with her knee behind your b***. And it was very little. Even in her warmups when she would lunge, her knee would never come behind her b***. So all we did was start to program some rear foot elevated split squats, some pressing from a split stance position, just, you know, ideas around pushing a sled or getting that hip into loading and extension.

And lo and behold, not only did her knee pain go away, but everyone's back pain went away in the gym. And so what we can start to look at is, hey, I see that you're not in this position or not doing these movements.

Let's make sure we're beginning to add those things or be thinking about them as almost like vitamins. So even if we were squatting today, I'm a huge fan of squatting, single leg, double leg, whatever you want to squat, however you want to squat. But maybe we also need to get into some big lunge shapes and do some isometrics there or we need to foot throw that foot up on the rear foot, elevated split squat or bulgarian split squat and make sure that were actually loading that back leg a little bit just to keep that, that tissue loaded and that brain being able to access that position. And if you started to do that a little bit more, you're going to start to see that things feel better and you can go faster.

Jon Becker: So it strikes me that we talked about full range of motion and shoulder. Let's talk about full range of motion in the hip because as you were saying, made me realize we hadn't.

Kelly Starrett: Yeah, we have three fundamental shapes. One is the pistol shape. So getting into a single leg squat, wherever ankle is at full flexion and your knee is to your chest. So that pistol shape, I don't care if you can get in, actually do a pistol, a single leg squat with your leg in front of you. I care that you get into that shape because that's how you go up and down over high obstacles. You put your foot up on something or you lower yourself down off a, you know, a loading ramp or something high. That's a pistol shape.

So suddenly we can say, well, what shapes are allowing me to be in this position? Well, something that looks like either a full range of motion ass-to-grass squat, or I'm doing something that looks like step ups, right where I'm loading that pistol or loading that shape or touching those positions. We've got a squat hinge archetype, because the difference between squatting and hinging, like in a deadlift, is just the degrees to which your knees are bent.

So it's the same movement at the hip, but one of them has a straighter leg and one of them has a bent leg. And then we have a lunge archetype. So those three shapes sort of end up encapsulating anything that the body needs to be able to do. And that means that we're not just squatting in one position. We're narrow squatting. We're wide squatting. We swing kettlebells, we hinge, we pull. There's a lot of exposure in those positions. And again, what is it you like to do? You love kettlebells. Great. Let's swing kettlebells. You like to front squat. Great!

You like to gobble squat. I'm a huge fan of sandbag training because it's so gnarly and you, it's so hard to carry this load and has such kind of durability transfer that most of my heavy squatting is done with sandbags. And, I feel like that just is one of those ways where I can touch a lot of shapes and build a lot of sort of armor because I have to pick the thing up off the ground to squat it well.

Jon Becker: And in the process, you're also accessing all of the stability muscles, right? All of those little tiny things that we don't think about when we're doing, you know, leg extension.

Kelly Starrett: You're wired. You're wired for movement. You're not wired for tiny muscles.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And it hadn't, until you said it, it hadn't really struck on me. Like, we don't really care that we can bicep curl. We care that we can pick something up.

Kelly Starrett: Ultimately, that's the truth. And I more care that when you have to grab something or something quick happens, that you don't tear your biceps playing pickleball. Right. I mean, that. That is a real injury. We're seeing. We're seeing a lot of people tearing their biceps playing pickleball or you tackle someone wrong or, you know, I want your elbows to work like elbows. That's why we still do curls. But I'm caring about that. Your elbows can do.

Jon Becker: What your elbow are supposed to do well and realistically, reactive sports are the bane of the middle aged man. Right? Like basketball.

Kelly Starrett: The most dangerous sports you can do. Right. Like pick up basketball.

Jon Becker: Basketball and pickleball. Pickleball, yep. Like anything that is requiring you to change direction rapidly. Volleyball, it seems to be where everybody blows an ACL or, you know, everybody tears.

Kelly Starrett: You notice that top gun, they're all like 19 and they're playing on sand. That's what I'll say.

Jon Becker: Exactly.

Kelly Starrett: And ideally, that would be a great way for us to begin to have some exposure to some of these positions that get us out of the gym, to get us interacting, get us working as a team, is playing more games. If we all just went out to the field and threw the frisbee around, you'd be shocked at how many different positions and cutting and lateral you felt through some of the sport playing.

One of the things that I try to do is saying, hey, the gym is a great place to compete. It's a great place to touch positions and shapes. Let's go out of the gym and go compete. Let's go be humans. Let's go play some pickup basketball. Let's go. If you don't like basketball, again, there are a thousand other ways where we can play and compete, but I think we could put in a lot more fun exposure. Breathe hard, get some camaraderie, get some sunlight on our faces by going outside and playing some games.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, to go back to what we previously talked about. It's. That's how kids stay fit, right? Kids just play. They play kickball and they chase each other and they play tag and I think we. It hadn't struck me until this conversation, but we go from multi planar movement and kind of unpredictable lateral movement to very vertical. Even in our exercise, you know, we're running in a linear way. We're doing, you know, isolated muscle exercises. We just, we start to give up our ability to move sideways and to move unpredictably.

Kelly Starrett: Go take an eight pound medicine ball. Doesn't have to be heavier. Six to eight pound medicine ball. Take one of your best friends, go outside and throw it back and forth for 20 minutes, you'll be dead. Throw up against the wall. I catch it, you throw up against the wall, play games with it. I throw it over my head as fast as I can. You run to it, you throw it back. We both run to it. Like there's a thousand ways where we can be moving differently and using and exposing and playing and getting all of these inputs in again.

One of the mistakes in strength and conditioning, because it's so easy to codify it and quantify it, is that we've spent so much time in there when we could be doing other things, we’re not the first people to say this. One of the greatest throwing coach in the whole world is a guy named Bonder Chuck. And Bonderchuck would say, hey, I need you to stop benching and trying to put an extra kilo and let's go get another 300 throws in. Thats the most important skill that we could do, is actually go throw the thing that we're doing to get paid on. Let's go through a different weight. Let's go through a different object.

Dan John will coach. Dan John, who has just been such a mensch in this field for so long with his elite athletes, they just do very simple things. It looks like front squad and back squad and strict press and push. Press and bench and they heavy swings and some lunges. That's it. Then they go do their sport a lot.

And I think, you know, what you, what we forget is that we've made it so complicated in there with so many things, but if we have these basics that we run on forever and ever and ever, and then we go do our sport, we'll be much better off than what we're trying to do in the gym is build these gigantic race cars and then, you know, doesn't get us what we want. Yeah, it's not getting. Are we better send worse? We've been running this experiment for 15 years now really formally in the world. Are we seeing fewer injuries? 80% of marine force recon retires on full disability. I feel like we can do better.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I know we can do better. And, and you use the race car analogy. I mean, we're building drag cars, right? We're not. We're not building road cars, and then we're taking the drag car out and we're trying to drive it on a road course and wondering why we want that toy.

Kelly Starrett: I want your body to be that Toyota Hilux that's in every austere, that Nissan rat patrol. That is your body. That's the. That thing goes 100 miles an hour, and you can roll it down a cliff. Right. That's. That's really what I'm interested in building.

Jon Becker: Well, especially in an environment like a tactical environment, where so much of what you are doing is unpredictive. Right. It is reacting to somebody you're chasing. It's going over an object that, that you have not seen until you got there. It's. It's moving through small, confined spaces. It's putting your arms into unusual positions, you know, fast roping and shooting.

And what I love about this as an approach is really what you're building is the most robust machine you can, because then when it gets hit with an unexpected force or an unexpected movement, which it's guaranteed to in tactical work, guaranteed, you're not. You don't have an arm that can only do a bicep curl. You have an arm that you throw and catch and, and do all these different movements.

Kelly Starrett: The number one way that the pararescue men were getting injured was getting the litter out of the helicopter because they couldn't get in a top down, perfect deadlift setup position. They're all squatting down the litter. Then they've got to get as organized as they can to lift that litter out. And that was the number one thing. So how do we do that?

Well, we work on bottom up setups. We teach them to get as organized as they can, picking up sandbags off the ground, and we give them more movement choice by restoring range of motion in the hip and the ankle. Lo and behold, we can get athletes, those guys, into better positions to lift that and pressurize and stabilize to lift the litter out of the helicopter. That's what we're trying to do.

Jon Becker: And at the same time, we're building power, strength, flexibility, and agility all at the same time. We. Right. It isn't like we're going to go do a strength drill and then we're going to do a flexibility drill, like accessing these positions, having the ability to move is enhancing all of that, every time you do it.

Kelly Starrett: My biggest fear is tearing my achilles. I'm 50 years old, I don't have Achilles problems, but I've just seen enough Achilles tears. Take down some really amazing people. So you know what I do every day? I take a bunch of collagen and I jump rope. I push a sledge. I'm obsessed with making sure that I am springy, so I jump every day. There's a jump rope. Part of my training every single day is, is hopping side to side, jumping back and forth. I push the sled so that I have to be kind of loaded in my hip as an extension where people tend to tear their achilles. And if I rinse, wash, repeat that for the next 20 or 30 years, I think I'm going to dodge that bullet.

So if you go to the gym and do a two second warmup and then immediately just do three dumb mid range exercises, you've really squandered a lot of time to uncover and to develop skills and to learn ranges and to feel better. Right. To be able to put some of these basic things in as part of that hour that you may have. And a lot of us have jobs where we, training is part of our job mandate.

We're given an hour and a half or given an hour to train every day. And if it's just a five k run every day, no wonder, you know, there's just, it's such a rich environment in order for us to go play. And again, did I feel better and more complete when I left the gym? That's the goal.

Jon Becker: So from your perspective, I mean typical for, for a lot of guys in this industry is, you know, a short walking warm up and then you know, an hour of strength or they'll run. If, if you were going to build that hour out of, I know that there's going to be variability in it, but like it sounds like you are an advocate of less exercises, of a greater range of motion. What, like what does Kelly's hour for a tactical operator look like?

Kelly Starrett: Well, again, I need to, the problem with making a statement like that is I don't know you, I don't know what your training history is. I don't know what your movement patterns are. I know what, what, what tools you have available. But in that hour Im doing some kind of really good warmup. This may be the only chance I'm getting to get my heart rate up. It's maybe the only chance I get to sort of touch some of these end ranges.

So Im getting hot and sweaty and really preparing my body and I'm going to choose maybe one lift and then I'm going to do some assistance work that looks like a little bit like bodybuilding and conditioning mashed up and then I'm going to ask myself what position did I struggle with today or what hurts? And I'm going to work on that a little bit and I'm going to get out of there. You know, suddenly when you do that, we don't need 3 hours in the gym.

I'd rather you get to the gym five or six days a week and spend 45 minutes in there or 30 minutes in there. Then these monster epic sessions where you're just standing around. There's a lot of time wasting in the gym and we can be doing a simple couplet and triplet. Choose one body part. I deadlift heavy once a week, once every ten days, something that's heavy in there that might be working up to something where my speed drops or I get some triples or I'm like, oh, that was enough. Or I did something on the clock.

I think what you can suddenly see is did you press overhead? Did you touch every one of these positions that I'm talking about in the basics at least once every week to ten days. And if we rinse, wash, repeat that, put you on basic linear progressions, add a little bit of load, challenge that with some, you know, some cardiorespiratory in between. One of my favorite things to do for old people and I'm talking to you out there is if you're not 19, you're an old person.

Jon Becker: Is that close to home? If you do.

Kelly Starrett: Trust me, if I like to put a big aerobic piece in between my lifts. So to set of you standing around waiting for that three to five minutes to recover between your front squat sets, your back squat sets or your trap bar deadlift sets. Let's go ahead and get on the bike. Let's get on the rowing machine. Let's get it, let's get some, let's get some breathing in there. One of the reasons I like that is that I like to do doubles and triples a lot, but I smash them in between some heavy conditioning. And what that does for me is that over the course of 20 minutes, I might be doing ten doubles, right?

Ten of, you know, two reps of something heavy, power, clean, heavy deadlift, press bench, whatever. But that because Im breathing hard on this other side, I'm getting in a lot of work. I'm also getting really hot. I get lots more repetitions under the bar, lots a little more exposure. And that breathing hard ultimately limits my total force exposure because I'm breathing a little bit hard. So but don't get me wrong, this can be murderous.

So we're going to go over to this bike, and I'm going to have you push 400 watts for a minute on the bike. That's going to blow you up your quads, and then we're going to go over here. I'm going to have you just hug and sandbag. Hug this 100 pound sandbag or 200 pound sandbag for a set of three to five.

And I guarantee you're going to die by the time we get through 20 minutes of that. You're like, okay, I'm done. Perfect. Let's go do some bodybuilding. Let's go. Let's do something, vanity. Let's go touch a position, some mobility. Let's get the h*** out of here. Let's go do our job. Do that kind of thing. You're going to feel better and, and continue to get better and better and better. We don't have to train every energy system every day. We have train every body part every day. We got months and months and months to develop this stuff.

Jon Becker: Yeah, that's so counterintuitive, you know, like we've, we've been trained like, oh, well, you know, you're going to be on the gym, bro, you know, push and pull, or, you know, calves, abs and forearms and chest and buys and I, and it is very counterintuitive to think, you know, you're going to do a couple of exercises and you're going to lift heavy and you're going to do small amount. You know, you're not going to do a set of ten or twelve. You're going to do couplets or triplets. I mean, it is a very counterintuitive approach based on what we were taught as kids.

Kelly Starrett: 100%. And that's what's really fun is, you know, there are great programs out there. John Welborne, one of my favorite programmers, really respects that. Hey, we're going to just do one or two lifts and then a lot of couplets of conditioning where we get in a lot of assistance work. We get a lot of our assistance work in the guise of conditioning. And that's what's really great, is that we can be getting the tendons and ligaments full of blood, we can be feeling better. We can work on some of this vanity stuff, but we do it as assistants, work to the main lift.

And I think if the average person just chose one main lift a day and then did some assistance work in some conditioning together, you'd be shocked. Or you'd prioritize your conditioning because I think most people could actually get a lot better at conditioning across. And again, gamified. Now you're pushing the sled. Now you're on the bike. Now you're on the skier. Like, let's just get you some different exposures. You know, you give me 20 to 30 minutes of conditioning, then we go over and hit a lift. Let's go home, you know, we'll get the rest of it tomorrow.

So a great follow everyone, is Joel Jameson. If you don't follow Joel Jameson, he is just an expert and he's been working with fighters forever. He is the preeminent expert on heart rate variability. Joel Jameson is one of my favorite followers. And you'll see that if I can improve your conditioning, I can actually improve your work tolerance and your ability to clear lactate and fatigue more effectively.

You know, the reason I want you on the assault bike is the range of motion is tiny. And we can go fast and we can do brutal pieces there and we can gamma fight. And you go, I go. And we can slam balls in between or swing a mate. It doesn't matter. What you see suddenly is I now I'm prioritizing the conditioning and my rest in between.

The conditioning is some sort of assistance work. Bicep curls, pull ups, it doesn't matter. But when we start to do that sort of thing, we suddenly have a system. If all I do is condition my legs, my arms are going to go because they are not used to sucking up lactate, they're not good at that. And what's going to happen is that my upper body is going to be pre fatigued.

So even though I'm generating all of this lactate and lactic acid at the leg level, if my upper body isn't good at sucking that up, then I'm basically going to monkey with my force production of my upper body. This is why we love seeing upper bodies and lower bodies being conditioned together. Well.

Jon Becker: And if you think about what we are asking our tactical operators to do is frequently, you know, do some big macroscopic movement, running to a location, climbing over things. And then…

Kelly Starrett: We're at shouldering is in the.

Jon Becker: Yes. And then, but then we're asking them to do a very refined small muscle movement, like squeezing a trigger. We used to run a SWAT competition every year, and one of my great joys was to make you do something heavy like, you know, throw, throw a sandbag repeatedly so that you'd, you know, get nice and lactic and then have to go shoot something precise. And it was amazing how many couldn't do it?

Kelly Starrett: Yeah. Isn't that crazy?

Jon Becker: What? Couldn't do it. They would get there, and the hands are shaking, and guys that would shoot pretty well otherwise just didn't have the conditioning. To then be able to effectively shoot.

Kelly Starrett: HRT, you got to run up a big flight of stairs and then do something. You know what I mean? Like, isn't that what the. What the game is? And so we suddenly. What we can say is, well, typically, I need to have my heart rate high, and then I have to do this very fine motor skill, and that looks a lot like biathlon in the Olympics, where I'm skiing, and then I have to shoot.

So now I can start to ask you, why isn't there an assault bike on the range where you're breathing really, really hard and then doing some conditioning, and then during your rest, you got to shoot, and we can start to expose ourselves in really safe ways to credible learning environments. If all you do is shoot when your heart rate is down, there's no pressure and no skill. That's not. That's not what it's about.

So what's fun now is that. Excuse me. We've created a lot more richness in our training, and it's intellectually interesting. And you and I are competing because we're going to go peak wattage, most accuracy. And you and I can do that back and forth until our wattage drops or our accuracy drops. Right? Like, suddenly we can. This is. I'm looking forward to training. It's one more thing that makes this so rich and so fun. And what you'll see is direct correlation to being better at your job.

Jon Becker: Well, and you're also building team culture. You're building camaraderie. You're having fun. You know, you're. You're having social interaction. Like, from a wellness standpoint, it is light years ahead of, you know, go bang iron in the gym by yourself.

Kelly Starrett: Yeah. You know, one of the things that we spend a lot of time thinking about is, you know, culture of these. Of these high performing teams, whether university, NFL, a local team here that's pretty great is the Niners. Two years ago, the owner, Judd York, brought in a full time chef year round, and the guys could stay year round and go to the park and be fed by the chef year round. And guess what? You had a bunch of 22 year old millionaires who didn't know how to eat and feed and cook themselves, but suddenly would show up at dinner, breakfast, lunch, and someone would be there and feed them whole foods.

And guess what happened? Not only do we have athletes eating better, more regularly, and not just sort of eating pizza and whatever they could grab what was easy, they also ate together. And they also found a reason to come back around. All of the high performing teams I've ever seen eat lunch together every day. And then if they can't eat lunch together every day, they, the C suite guys and girls try to eat. I try to have them eat lunch together at least once a week.

But, you know, go out to CAG and you'll see that those teams all sit together. They don't sit with another team. They sit with their team. That's what they do. We eat together. And it's such an important driver. Now you can apply that same lesson to your family. You should be eating dinner at least three nights a week in spite of what's going on, the chaos, because that family is a high performing team.

And what you're hitting at is now all of this richness of trust, of vulnerability, of exposure, of practice. I know what happens when it gets heinous for you. I know what your condition tendencies are. And it's not just when we're doing our job. It's because we have practiced and practiced and practiced together. Man, we can support each other. I start to see, hey, you're super beat up or volume. We now have much tighter sort of control mechanisms in there. And what we have is a much better culture. You're absolutely right.

Jon Becker: And that culture, you know, control mechanisms is a very good word because it, we conform our behavior around the culture of the organization that we're in. Right. I always use an example when I'm teaching culture. I use the example of, you know, you have, you have a set of rules for your buddies. You have a set of rules when you're with your grandparents. You have a set of rules when you're at church and those rules are different from one another. And the rules from your buddies doesn't necessarily apply at church. Right?

And so, you know, the behavior of the organization is driven by that culture. And if the culture is built around wellness and the culture is built around, we're going to play together and we're going to eat good food together and we're going to spend time together, then when you start to pull off reservation, right, we start noticing, hey, Kelly's eating by himself. Kelly's not coming to lunch. You know, something's going on in his life.

Kelly Starrett: That's right.

Jon Becker: We have those warnings much earlier. It's kind of like accessing positions right at the point that you can no longer squat or you can't get off the ground. Like, you have a physical problem, and you need to deal with the physical problem before it manifests itself by you jumping off a curb and breaking your leg. And that's, you know, that, I think, is a big lesson in what you teach is this kind of setting tripwires around position and movement.

Kelly Starrett: That's right. And now suddenly we're able to bring in nutrition, and if. How do we get together and celebrate? Is it always drinking? Do we go play together? How do we interact? How do we talk about, you know, failure? You know, one of the things that we want to do in the gym is fail over and over and over and over again because, and we want to be able to fail safely. I want to get to the place where I die, couldn't do the skill, fail, drop, and I want to be able to be vulnerable.

I want you to be right there with me. Because suddenly those, those small dramas, it means that when we go out and, you know, we had a silver squadron out once, and I, they were assaulting a bunch of buildings in our, in the Bay area. They're all derelict from the old bases. And I went out and watched them do first pass on buildings that they had never seen before.

And guess what? That was gnarly. They had crisis actors there. I jumped in as a crisis actor. I killed a bunch of friends that day because it's impossible for them to run a perfect CQB operation in a building they had never seen before. And I was like, oh, this is the real world, where basically we got to take all these jenga pieces and put them into strange places and they don't fit.

And, you know, the second time you've seen that, once you've seen the house, the second time, you know what the house looks like. It's not the same thing. So the idea here of really being comfortable with, then the feedback, what did I learn? How does that go? We just apply the same thing you're doing with your job to your body, to your nutrition, to your health, and we just let that run for a long time.

And literally, things that look like we're untenable start to clean up. You know, that we have better connections, we have better, we feel safer at work, we have better interpersonal skills. And suddenly, you know, our job becomes this place where we go to get healthier so that we can come back to our families. But I've had all of this meta awareness training, of dealing with failure of complex personal interactions, of communication, of training, of nutrition. And I take that back to my family, and that is a revolution. And how we approach all this, which.

Jon Becker:

Then leads to happier, healthier people, which then leads to better performance and better longevity. Like, it really is a system that you have to nurture all the parts of it in order for it to work correctly.

Kelly Starrett: Yeah. And that's okay. In my worldview, the strength condition coach is at the center of the wheel because no one actually has more contact with the person than the strength ignition coach. I know your movement history. I know what you're working on. I know what your injuries are. I know what your family looks like. And I can turn up the dials or turn down the dials. Hey, the frying pan's not hot today. Let's just make sure you're moving through full range, you know? Feeling better. Oh, you're. You're cooking today. We're gonna. We're gonna load it up, and let's go heavy, right? Like, I can suddenly say, hey, your knee is starting to hurt a little bit. Great!

Let's see if we can work on it here. Oh, we weren't able to solve it. Let's kick it up the chain. That, for me, that person is the center of the. The whole cog, because we are the only people who can truly understand what's going on with that person, with their readiness, with their range of motion, with their nutrition. It gives me a perfect sort of center point to be able to touch so many different things and then bring in experts if I need that expert, if I need that help.

And then what we suddenly have is we have a diagnostic model where if any of the strength condition coaches you're working with should be able to tell you exactly what your problems are, where you're going. You know, should that person be on the team or not? That's how powerful this environment is. It gives us a chance to really understand ourselves, understand fueling, rest, recovery, all the things that we know that make durable people. The strength and conditioning place is that, and we haven't fully sort of realized that potential there.

Jon Becker: So if I'm a team leader, I'm a team guy. Like, talk to me about resources. Where can I go to get smart? You know, obviously supple leopard. Good place to start. The original, you know, the original stare.

Kelly Starrett: I would even. Right now, you know, one of the things that we did was our last book is built to move. And I would say, look at built to move because there are some pieces in there. It's not exercise, but there are some pieces in there that make the foundation for all the behaviors that we use to support athletic movement. We'll call that. Right?

Or people have to use their bodies for a living from nutrition and sleep and decongestion and those things. And that would be a great resource for you as a simple place of saying, hey, look, there's a lot of this unskilled care, unskilled behavior that we could start to put in. Like I gave you an example of upping your protein and eating more fruits and vegetables, right?

Those are two examples from the book that really transform lifestyles and make a lot more durable people. What you suddenly also start to realize is, well, who is programming or understanding our needs were based on what needs you may have to go out and get some help. And people like John Welborn is out there.

You know, people there are probably really good smart and strength conditioning coaches. You know, you, you're going to have to bring resources back to the unit. That's one of the things you're going to have to do. And use this as a live experiment of, hey, I've started to toy with this and this really made a big difference.

We believe in the sanctity of this model called test retest share. If someone, we have this decentralized approach where suddenly you're like, dude, I didn't drink for a month and my sleeping got better. I'm like, huh, let me try that. That's really interesting. Hey, I started tracking my sleep with an oura ring and this is what I noticed. Hey, maybe I'll get an oura ring or, hey, why are you drinking that right now after training? Well, I don't know if I'm going to be able to eat again, and I want to make sure I got this window covered. So suddenly we have smart men and women who are out there working towards the same thing and they're trying to bring resources to the group. And I think that is the way we decentralize things.

Jon Becker: Which again, goes back to culture, it goes back to creating.

Kelly Starrett: Everyone is working to solve and improve the environment. And, you know, you're absolutely right. You know, three m had that famous thing where everyone was responsible for two innovations a week or something like that, right? And if everyone's solved that issue and that's, that's how good teams work. Teams are like, here's what I own, here's how I can get better. Hey, have you tried this?

Suddenly, man, I'm telling you, this is the old model of just like, we're going to do as much as we can and suffer in silence versus, wow, this is the place. You know, we, I have worked in a group where the paramilitary organization had only had a red team or a red team and a green team. They didn't even have someone. You were either on duty or you're off recovering to go back on duty. There weren't enough people to have a red yellow team. They couldn't even try to get four groups. You know, there weren't enough people there.

So if someone goes down on that organization, who, there's a real impact Berkeley swap, they would, someone would get injured. The whole budget would go out the window for the whole year because, you know, someone goes out on disability, and suddenly they can't hire another police officer. Everyone's doing overtime. You see, suddenly that it's a competitive advantage to be thinking differently about, hey, we're here. How are we going to feel better and use this time at work to actually put ourselves into better positions, do our job, and to be better family members?

Jon Becker: Well, especially in an environment where right now most teams worldwide are at about 70% strength. So if they're rated for 60, they've got 42 to 45.

Kelly Starrett: I didn't know that.

Jon Becker: That's, and it's not uncommon in a tactical unit right now that if they're rated for 60, they have ten guys on long term IOD.

Kelly Starrett: I have seen and believe strongly that we are going to have more demands on these groups in the future than less demands on the groups in the future. So we need to be thinking about, how do we get more people in the pipeline. Yes, but how do we retain the people in the pipeline? And that, I think, is a real opportunity for us to be doing.

Jon Becker: It is a lot easier to take somebody who's already trained and retain them than it is to bring somebody in and train them. Whew.

Kelly Starrett: Yes, it is. You know, I want the person I've been working with for ten years. But if your knee, you know, like, just because, you know, you're always inflamed and you don't have range of motion and you're stiff, there's just a lot of things that we can do to actually support you. And again, theoretically, your job, this is just a job. I just want, I understand it's a calling, and people love this, but your goal is to show up again for your family and to come out of this as unharmed as you can.

And there's a lot of overpressure and helicopters and crazy things that happen, and you may not be able to come out unharmed. So how do we minimize that and build as much durability as we can. You know, one of my friends was in four helicopter crashes. He's like, after the fourth helicopter crash, the military thought that was enough.

And I was like, enough. Like, isn't it one helicopter crash enough? He was in four helicopter crashes, you know, and so, you know, at some point, you recognize realistically, I'm like, hey, bad things happen, that that's going to be the case. So where do we not only build in durability, but then also come back and say, hey, how do we put you back together in this context? We have those resources and abilities.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Kelly, I so appreciate you taking the time to do this, man. I will. We'll link in the show notes to everything that we talked about as far as I additional resources and obviously link back to you. Is there anything we forgotten, anything you guys are working on that you want to share or talk about that people may not be aware of?

Kelly Starrett: You know, one of the things that I would encourage you to do is if you go to, we have a 21 day sort of on ramp for our built to move challenge. And I'm not saying this to you. I'm saying this. I want you to bring your family along on your health adventure. And that I want you to be the node of health in your community. And that means your family, that means your kids, it means your aunties and uncles. You know, that means your brothers and sisters who don't live and train and think they think you're a mutant and you are.

But there's a real opportunity for us to say, here's what I've learned at work, and I'm going to transform my community through it. We have always believed the highest calling of sport is to transform and transmute those lessons of high performance into our families, into our households. And I want you to do the same thing. And I want you to bring everyone along on your wellness fitness performance journey.

And the easiest way to start to see the change is like, well, most of us are actually not with our teams 24/7 we're with our families the rest of the time. So how can I turn and start to pivot some of these things and use the lessons I'm learning at work to have healthier kids?

Jon Becker: I can't think of a better place to stop than that. Kelly, thank you so much, man!

Kelly Starrett: My pleasure! Great to see you, my friend!

Episode 27 – Lessons From an Office Down and Traumatic Hostage Incident – Orlando_ FL

jonathan@aardvarktactical.com on October 1, 2024

Episode 27 – Lessons From an Office Down and Traumatic Hostage Incident – Orlando, FL

Jon Becker: In June of 2018, two years after the Pulse nightclub attacks, Orlando police officers responded to a domestic violence call. As officers attempted to contact the suspect, he fired a shot through his door, striking officer Kevin Valencia with wounds that he would eventually succumb to.

The suspect then barricaded in his apartment with his four children as hostages. This event, which would last more than 24 hours, proved extremely difficult and required the resources of both the Orlando Police Department SWAT team and their partners from the Orange County Sheriff's SWAT team before finally reaching a tragic resolution.

My guests today are Captain Jonathan Bigelow from the Orlando Police Department and Sergeant Chris Eklund with the Orange County, Florida Sheriff's office to discuss the incident and share their lessons learned. This episode will be dedicated to the memory of Officer Kevin Valencia.

My name is Jon Becker.

The goal of this podcast is to share their stories in hopes of making us all better leaders, better thinkers, and better people.

Welcome to The Debrief!

Guys, thanks so much for being here! I appreciate you taking the time to do this!

Chris Eklund: Absolutely.

Jonathan Bigelow: Thank you for having us, really!

Jon Becker: Why don't we start with your personal backgrounds, Chris? Why don't you tell me about your history? How did you get here?

Chris Eklund: Well, actually, I'm kind of a thousand miles away from where I was growing up. I grew up in Massachusetts, graduated from college, and started realizing after a little short break that it was time to find something real to do with my life. Being from Massachusetts, I didn't really have any relatives who were in the law enforcement world.

My parents had moved to Florida a couple years prior right when I got out of college. So I decided to come down to Florida and started the arduous search of trying to find a place to work. It actually applied at the Orlando police Department, was summarily denied that position.

Jon Becker: We still love you.

Chris Eklund: Yes, thank you! And being from Massachusetts, I really didn't have a grasp on what being employed by a sheriff's office was, because in Massachusetts, it's a process server or work in the jail type of thing.

So I never really even looked at the sheriff's office, and I was actually approached by my neighbor, who was good friends with the sheriff of Orange county at the time. Asked if I had applied there. I hadn't, so I did. A short period after that going through the process and things like that. My neighbor brought over his wireless phone and said, here, talk to your boss. Next thing I know is getting offered a job at Orange county. That was 1999.

Jon Becker: Give me context on Orange county. Like, how many deputies? How big is the department?

Chris Eklund: Right about now, we're sitting about 1650, 1700 sworn, probably another 800, 5900 civilians. We cover about a population of about 1.4 million these days. It's a 1003 square mile type of an area. Basically surrounds the Disney area, the Disney corridor type areas like that on the north end. Part of it spans to the south in a different county. So we have all that to deal with, all kinds of tourism and things like that. A wide variety of people coming and going.

Jon Becker: Give me context from a team standpoint. Tell me a little bit about the team.

Chris Eklund: So the team is, we're a decentralized team. So to say that is to say that we have a part time contingent that's made up of 15 operators and some senior leadership. So two team leaders, two squads of operators, then a lieutenant and a captain.

And then we have about another 23, well, actually more like 26 part time operators who do another job besides just being on SWAT. And then we have six tactical medics that are assigned to us, that are deputies. They're not fire or anything. They're prior paramedics and things like that that make up the team.

Jon Becker: So full time, I mean, full team strength is 40 ish.

Chris Eklund: Yes.

Jon Becker: Got it. Jon, talk to me about you. Where'd you, where'd you grow up? Give me the brief history.

Jonathan Bigelow: Yeah, I was born in Michigan, just outside of the Detroit suburbs of Detroit, and moved down to South Florida in the early nineties. And my parents got a transfer there for work. And I attended Florida State University, went there, realized I was, I guess, when I started high school down in South Florida and became a part of the Explorers program down there, that I always knew that I wanted to be a cop.

So I went to ice. I went to college at FSU for criminology and came back, started working in Parkland, Florida, as we all know, that was put on the map, you know, several years ago with that whole incident. That was my alma mater, worked there for a couple years.

And then a buddy of mine from college said, hey, are you doing anything? I'm like, well, I'm working here. He's like, why don't you come up here and work? I said, okay. So I applied for the Orlando police Department, and I was hired. I started there and just after 911 in December of zero one. So I've been there ever since. And, you know, I'm very fortunate to have the career that I've had so far.

Jon Becker: Talk to me about the team.

Jonathan Bigelow: Yeah, the team is, man, I almost get teared up when I talk about the team because such good group of individuals. We're a part time team, 45 to anywhere to 45 to 48 operators. We got some techs in there, two ER docs that are phenomenal from our level one trauma center embedded in our team. Got a lot of resources. I served on the team for 13 years on the incident that I think we're talking about today is I rounded out my career as a deputy team commander, but just overall, pretty busy. Team Metro, or I guess you can say the city jurisdiction of Orlando is our department sizes at the time of 2018 was somewhere in the low eight hundred s, and now 2023, we're almost cresting in the mid 900.

So we've grown some, some size and we're covering some, you know, 300,000 people over 114 sq. miles. And we got a lot of territory that we're covering. But I'd like to tell people the easiest thing to say when you talk about Orlando, because everybody knows Orlando for Disney and Universal and stuff like that, but our peanut butter is in Orange County's chocolate.

Jon Becker: I don't know whether that was a good description or a little too graphic.

Chris Eklund: I wouldn't have said it.

Jonathan Bigelow: Take it out.

Jon Becker: Oh, no, it's going to stay. Okay. So let's start with the incident. Give me date. Give me context. How does this thing kick off?

Jonathan Bigelow: Yeah, so this is a crappy scenario. I'd like to, I guess, start by saying on June 11th, 2018, that, you know, cops are cops, and they do everything with the best of intentions to get the job done and to resolve problems and save people's lives. But on this case, in this scenario, we ended up losing somebody and one of our few that have been lost to crime and to evil. I guess what you can say.

But in the early, in the late, I guess, late night of that evening on June 11th, as we responded to a domestic call, the officers met with the victim, a female victim, saying that her husband had beat her and, you know, was threatening her, and she vacated the apartment where they were staying at the time. And it's just right outside. It's in our southwest area of town, and it's near universal studios, just to give some operational direction of where we were in the city.

So we were sitting there. They responded to this call, and they realized that they had felony charges. And one big thing that she had said was, I'm going to fear for my four children. And the officers that responded were like, well, why? You know, okay, so he deprived you of your phone, which gave us our felony, and you. He beat you, which is a domestic violence thing in the state of Florida and probably anywhere in the United States.

Okay, what else? You know, he might have guns. He's on probation for 45 years for arson and. Okay, okay. You know, he had all these little red flags. Well, where does he – Where would he keep a gun? Oh, he keeps it. Keep it in a car, in a closet or. These are the things. And she gave some of the circumstances, but she kept hitting home about how she was in fear for her, for her children.

So the officers, you know, they sought some assistance, and I guess it was a slower night in Orlando that night. So they all rallied up and tried to go make good, make contact with the individual, the suspect, if you will. We're not going to name them, but they were provided some keys, they did some homework, realized that there was no gun in the car. Apartment was dark.

Now to lay out the apartment kind of sucks because it was a, I say a standard apartment complex building where you have two different rows of stairwells on a large structure that was three levels high. And the room, their apartment was on the middle level on the second story, and it was deeper off at the parking lot. So they're at the door and they tried to make contact with the individual to take him into custody, and that's when things went south.

Jon Becker: Got it. So initial call is just a DV call that kind of gradually getting more and more red flags as you go on. Apartment building. This is the second floor of a three story apartment building. Two stairs coming up. Kind of describe for me, try to paint a picture of what the layout of the apartment building is. It's a long, straight hallway that all the apartments come off of. Or is it more like townhouses?

Jonathan Bigelow: Yeah, it was a rectangular building as a whole. So on either side, if you just say north and south, you have stairwells that will traverse up all the way on either side, east and west of the actual building, that would bring occupants to those respective build of their apartments.

So then on each floor you have four doors on each hallway. So bottom floor you have two on the left, two on the right. Go down a little bit. Two on the left, two on the right. And those are the respective room. You know, the doorways to these apartments, and they're probably about anywhere from two to three bedroom apartments.

Jon Becker: Okay, makes sense. Go ahead.

Jonathan Bigelow: So it was just the distance from the, I guess the challenge is from the parking lot, where, you know, easiest line of travel would be from point a to point b, would be park up, walk up, traverse those stairs, get to the second floor, pass a doorway to one occupant, somebody's apartment, and then go to the target apartment, which was, in this case, on the right, on the backside of the apartment was sort of like a steep incline of grass and, you know, almost like a gully. What would you call that? I don't even know.

Chris Eklund: It's like a retention area and separates two different apartment complexes.

Jonathan Bigelow: So there's no easy way to just say, park up here and go here. There's no easy way. Whether you go up one stairwell or not, you're getting to the same.

Jon Becker: Yeah. You're ending up in the funnel no matter what you do. And there's no easy external access.

Jonathan Bigelow: Yeah. The only difference is, if I go up from the parking lot side, I'm not. I'm not exposing myself to the windows on the side of the target location. So the target location only looked out in one direction, which in this case was. We'll call it the east because it was sort of southeast, but it's the east.

Jon Becker: Got it. It's the patrol officers. Get there, they make contact. What happens?

Jonathan Bigelow: Yeah, so make contact with the victim, get the story, get the keys. They have keys in hand to go inside and try to make contact with the suspect. And they brought troops with them. Knock on the door several times to no avail. Nothing's happening. It's dark, but the car is there. So they don't think that suspect left with the four kids, but they say, hey, you know, let's do a due diligence. They try to insert the key in the. Into the key lock and turn the key, and there's some resistance there.

And in this case, I think officer Valencia, even we hear him on body camera saying to one of our. His partners, and, yeah, yeah, I think somebody's holding the lock.

Jon Becker: All right.

Jonathan Bigelow: So they try again. And they, there was a command decision made to boot the door, you know, kick the door in. So he reached around or turned around, I should say not reached around, but turned around to almost like mule kick the door to reverse and looking over his right shoulder. And when he – Mule kicks the door, that's when I – He was trying to kick it one time, and then the shot rang through the door and caught Kevin over in his face, and bullet wrapped around his head and someone dropped him.

Jon Becker: Suspect fired one round.

Jonathan Bigelow: Yeah, suspect fired one round. Right. Blindly through the door and ever ceased.

Jon Becker: To amaze me, man. Trained cops will fire 20 rounds, not hit anybody. Suspect fires one round through a closed door and ten range. Yeah, it's terrible. So, okay, so he goes down.

Jonathan Bigelow: So he goes down. And the assisting officers, one of our team guys at the time had. Had brought his patrol rifle with him. So it's like, okay, you know, not for enough, but you knew what, you suspected something that where you're bringing your patrol rifle with them. And we, you know, we don't have a policy where we have to ask for authorization to. To bring our long guns with us on certain calls.

So hats off to him for saying, hey, I might need additional weapon firepower. But, yeah, he had his rifle with him, sees Kevin go down, and he immediately returns fire into the. Into the closed door, into the. Into the apartment to the target location. I think he fired about five rounds. So he and his thinking. I talked to him after the fact, and Manny says he's like, yeah, I just, you know, he shot. I was like, I'm going to end this right now and get cover for him because we want to rescue Kevin and get him out of the case, but we can't do that if we're under fire.

So it was pretty instantaneous, his reaction. He goes back and says that it's probably the worst decision that he ever made. And I'm not here to talk about, you know, I guess the decision that he made or did not make, but he was fearful that those rounds could have impacted somebody else. Unintended as, but it serves the purpose. And they at least were able to extract Kevin out of the, you know, further down the hallway towards the landing of the stairwell, the top of the stairwell where they brought him down into the. Near the parking lot where they assisted in medical aid, and I extracted them to the hospital. So that's where we stood.

Jon Becker: So at what point does it is at that point they make a decision to push the red button, get you guys there and.

Jonathan Bigelow: Yeah, I don't, you know, the watch commander at the time, after all that, after the, probably the radio chatter happened, and shortly after that, it was, we're sounding the alarm and the team's coming. So we got that. We got the page shortly after. Right about 01:30. We were paged out in the morning, that following morning. So I guess it would be June 12th, right? June 12th, yep. Which is not a good day, as you like to say, yeah, mid June is not a good day. Two years prior, we were just dealing with pulse, but something about June in Orlando.

Chris Eklund: Hot on my side.

Jonathan Bigelow: Yeah, it's warm. It's warm. It's definitely warm. We got the page for the call out and said, officer down. That, honestly had been the first time that I had received a page saying that an officer was involved in something where we had one hurt and injured and shot. Officer down. I come across, and I was like, man, this is gonna stink.

Chris Eklund: Go badden.

Jon Becker: How long did it take you guys to get on scene and get set up?

Jonathan Bigelow: From the time the page out, we have always said, hey, we're going to have a 45 minutes response time, but time that page out. And the time that we were pretty much deployed after our meeting and team brief and had some assets in place was probably over that. Probably an hour, hour and 15. We were right about that, or about that time, but we're just shy at that.

Jon Becker: Patrol. Officers are holding down, basically holding a perimeter.

Jonathan Bigelow: Yeah, we didn't. The patrol didn't vacate. They held, and they, you know, they continued their commands, and we took over from there.

Jon Becker: So is the suspect engaging patrol at all? Is he responding? Is he negotiating ?

Jonathan Bigelow: Radio silence from him? One shot. Nothing. No movement. Nothing.

Jon Becker: And no sign of the kids?

Jonathan Bigelow: No, none. None. So, obviously, mom is in our custody around the corner. She hears some shots and she's concerned, but after that, nothing, you know, trying to call, no response.

Jon Becker: So what is the next milestone as we're moving through the project or through the problem? What's the next step that that happens?

Jonathan Bigelow: So the problem when we get there. How about that? When the problem when we get there is, okay, what do we have? These are our charges. What's the structure? What's the target location look like? What communication do we have with him, if any, which was none. What are we – We know we – Or we suspect we have four kids inside that are possibly being held by this. We know we have an officer down that he's willing to shoot through the door to not go to jail. But we were like, all right, is he holding them hostage or what's their status?

So we immediately said, okay, well, let's treat it as a hostage situation, because we had no other reason to believe it wasn't. And we started deploying assets into an emergency hostage rescue team, and then we developed a deliberate hostage rescue team. We started doing the perimeter as far as relieving patrol and looking at the status of the occupants, surrounding the target location, evacuating them, and then in the midst of that, we came across an apartment on the next stairwell to the north, again, mirroring image of the target location that we were at.

And they said, yeah, you can use our apartment. We said, can you leave it unlocked? And said, yeah, use it all day. You know, we'll be over here, basically. So we just had our deliberate hostage rescue team just running, repping rep after rep after rep of saying, make entry and figure out a plan they were developing or hostage rescue plan as they went, and just rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsal after rehearsal.

I remember initially staying there with them. I was the deputy team commander, I guess the forward team commander at the time, just saying, okay, you guys, team leader, you got it. Start working scenarios. Start working rescue at the front of the front bedroom. Based on the fact that we had a mirror image of the apartment that we are going to, we could say, okay, if the hostages are located here, but the suspect is deeper and we've accomplished the mission of hostage rescue, not what are we going to do? How does that work?

If we make entry and we get two officers down, what's how we pushing forward to the next, you know, to accomplish the mission to save the additional hostages, you know, so you just keep running scenario after scenario after scenario in a compressed time of, I need you to be ready in 30 minutes. So it's like, imagine having a whole hostage rescue training day of one specific location about small structure, small target location, and saying, I need you to run every scenario possible right now with failed breach. With failed breach and officer down.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it sucks. Yeah. No, but I mean, it's, you know, given. Given the choice of having an opportunity to rehearse it repetitively or going in blind, rehearse wins every day.

Jonathan Bigelow: 100%. Well, then you also have, okay, take a breather, switch places with the emergency hostage rescue team, who is just sitting there blind, who have been provided, like, a map of the general apartment layout saying, in case something happens, be ready to go. Well, what are we walking into? Hey, go take a rep, go walk through, and then we're going to swap back and do more rot. So you just have this constant on and off of teams switching to do and plan and rehearse.

Jon Becker: It's a great strategy, though, is, you know, set up a QRF and be ready if something kicks off unintentionally. But in the meantime, go plan the deliberate, and once the deliberate is planned, put them into the QRF role, take the QRF guys, get them delivered. Now you've got two teams that can relieve each other that you're giving yourself some options in the future. You're maneuvering in time. You're buying a future option of having two teams that are prepared for the problem. So what's next? What happens?

Jonathan Bigelow: So after, I mean, after they kept rehearsing and rehearsing, rehearsing and we're trying to establish some sort of communication with the suspect, one thing that we looked at was, all right, what, what are some other avenues of approach? The problem with this structure, and, I mean, it's just a crappy layout, and it's really not uncommon. It's probably super common across any jurisdiction, is you got one point of entry, one point of exit. It's the front door.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Jonathan Bigelow: Okay. The intel that we had was, I think neighbors provided this, was they believed that they heard furniture moving. So we were like, okay, so now we're dealing with entry a as pretty much the only point of entry on a second story structure as barricaded. Well, that hinders your, you know, deliberate or emergency officer rescue.

Okay, so if it's barricaded, it's already, the door is already locked. Are we going to go up there and manual breach it? Well, let's do explosive. Let's try to do a dynamic explosive breach. Well, at the time, the Orlando police Department didn't have its own explosive breach program for our SWAT team, so we relied on Orange County's explosive ordinance disposal unit.

So we called them right away. We also looked at the structure, and we said, okay, well, there's windows to the east side of the structure. There's several of them, but we could exploit those by going through those. What about ladders? Well, that takes time. Well, how do you break and rake them? Okay, that takes time.

So there was just a lot of different options. We were like, oh, let's get the seminal county sheriff's offices, which is the county just north of us. They have a regional asset with a moor system or ramping system that would reach up, and they were quick to respond. They came out and we're like, we looked at terrain and was like, that's just not conducive to actually hold the vehicle. That would allow us to run up a ramp, brake and rake, and make entry through a big a** window. I guess if you could say.

Chris Eklund: Yeah, yeah. I think just for context, that Mars ramp system sits on top of a passenger van, if you will. So it's a road vehicle with however much weight on top, sitting now on the sloped wet retention area. That just wasn't feasible.

Jon Becker: Yeah, that's not going to happen right, it's going to slide down. It's going to flip over. It's not something you can use as a platform to make an entry.

Jonathan Bigelow: It's creating a bigger problem than the problem that you already have. We said, okay, well, what other assets do we have in the area? And we've always had. Well, since my experience has always been a great working relationship with the Orange County Sheriff's office, specifically with their SWAT team, you know, I mean, Chris and I are known each other. We probably competed each other as soon as I came on, which he's been on longer than I have.

So we knew that they had this regional asset, or this asset, at least to their agency, which is a rook, which is…. How would you describe that?

Chris Eklund: It's an up arbor and bobcat with a lot of great attachments.

Jonathan Bigelow: Which we've trained on it before, and they brought it out once. Once they had, and they did their training, they're like, hey, you might need this one day. We'll bring it out to your site and train on it all day. And then sure enough, and we're like, man, this is great. And it offers an ability to raise a platform that can deliver four to five operators, you know, up to a second story level.

So it was, it was perfect. And they were like, man, we'll bring it out and we'll drive that thing out wherever we need to go. And it was going to work. And we used it actually to break and rake the large window, which ended up being, hey, that's our backup plan for entry. We're going to deliver these five, come down, suck up another five, raise the thing, the platform again, and deliver another five as they. As they do work.

Jon Becker: Got it. That's giving you now a secondary entry point to either put two teams in or, you know, if it is barricaded in a different direction.

Jonathan Bigelow: As the primary team would be working, to say, hey, I need you to. Whatever you encounter as far as barricaded door furniture, you know, you need to be moving men and move that stuff out the way.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Jonathan Bigelow: And make do, make entry, get more resources, get in there.

Jon Becker: Got it. And just from a mutual aid context, I think you kind of touched on it, but this was not the first time that you had met Chris and this was not the first time that these two teams had seen each other.

Chris Eklund: No, no. We had trained. We trained together quite a bit as two teams coming together. I think we both probably practiced somewhat different methodologies and used different tactics from, we don't work to integrate with each other, but we can certainly get on the same job and assume different roles at the same time if we had to.

Jon Becker: Yeah, well, and I think it's kind of a recurring theme on the podcast is that it's very rare that two teams are willing to integrate just because they're not constantly training together. And there are subtle differences in tactics and movement and everything else, but the value of you trusting their operators and them trusting your operators and leadership to where you could divide a problem, even if you're willing to put the other team on a perimeter around you, is in a situation like this where it's going to go on for a while and it's going to get worse. It's invaluable.

Chris Eklund: Yeah, I agree with that.

Jonathan Bigelow: Yeah, 100%. And I always say this, I'm fortunate enough to at least go around and talk to numerous operators on planning and critical incident management, stuff like that. It's who you're able to call when you need to call. Do you know those people don't pick up the phone and be like, hey, we had a problem with each other.

Our relationship was shaky last week, but now I need you. It's like, yeah, they're going to come help but stop, bury the hatchet and move forward. Have those relationships fostered and growing and I don't know, I don't know how else to say it other than neighbor.

Jon Becker: It's trust. Right. In the end, it's trust. I'm going to guess that the explosive breaching component, this was probably you calling Chris or some two other guys in the team. Hey, man, I need explosive breaching. We're in route.

Chris Eklund: Yeah, that's usually how it works. Up through the years I came on the team in 2002, I've gotten to know so many of their operators just from when I was a part time guy, you know, in regular work and doing those kind of things and form great relationships. So it just bleeds over into the team as to what's going to happen after that.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it sets the culture.

Chris Eklund: Yeah.

Jonathan Bigelow: Yeah. So we had their explosive ordnance unit with us. They make charges they made. So we said, okay, we're going to end up wanting to explosive breach this door and we might end up wanting to have a secondary explosive entry on a wall of an adjoining wall of the apartment that we occupied to the other side of the target apartment. And we said, we also want to use a huge charge to create a portal that people that operators can walk through. Right?

Jon Becker: So if that's going from the adjoining apartment into this, the subject apartment.

Jonathan Bigelow: Yeah. So if target, if entry a is barricaded. And the breach would go. I have no doubt the breach. And the breach ended up going, the breach works on the door, but we encounter resistance from stuff blocking our way simultaneously. I want another entry point into that, through the adjoining wall of the apartment next to it, which we occupied, while also inserting somebody else on the opposite wall, which creates almost like that, that blue on blue, if you will. Blue on green.

However you want to talk about that, you know, friendly fire aspect of, hey, we could insert ourselves by doing that into a crossfire situation. And we started to realize that it was fine so long as we managed our, our fields of fire, you know, and identifying, if you – If this happens this way, you are not responsible for this half moving in.

Jon Becker: Yeah, yeah. You just used allocating fields of fire because you're. You're basically allocating a field of fire to eliminate the potential blue on blue.

Jonathan Bigelow: And if you hear something over here, don't pop your head around the corner to engage because they're engaging.

Jon Becker: Yeah, got it.

Jonathan Bigelow: So it was a pretty, I call it a ballet, but it was a pretty intricate plan. And I never had. And this will come into later with, with Chris's thing is, I never had the ordinance people, they built the charge, they put it on the door and I said, okay, good, thanks. Is it working? Yeah, it'll work. I said, all right, now take it off the door. And they're why I said, that's our only point at, we're calling to this person to come to us. And if he opens the door, is it going to cause him to go, well, I don't want to go out to that.

Well, what's going on here? And then rabbit back in and say, nope, that was our last opportunity at our first chance to end the scenario. So I never had that. So it was an intricate part about, okay, we're going to execute this hostage. First, you go, go, go. You put the charge on, back out. Go. More diversionary tactics, break and rake of windows, sounds all sorts of nonsense. It was a intricate plan to say, okay and all. And they were just sitting there on standby.

But I'll hit on one point that you talked about with the relationships is the cool part about Orange County Sheriff's office and their, their SWAT command staff is we had early on in the morning when we called for our city bus service to come down and act as a rehab because in June in Florida, in Orlando, central Florida, it's probably already starting off at 85 degrees in the morning at 05:00. And I'll get up to 103 quick.

So we said, hey, we're going to need rehab for our resources that are on site, meaning cooling station, so that we could cycle operators through just to have a chance to sit down and take a breather and get some AC is there. Two of their commanders came by and they, they sat with us for hours and they didn't say, hey, we should. You should consider this. What about this? They were just there. What do you need? What do you need? Always. What do you need? What do you mean we do?

And we said, hey, this is our plan. This is what we're thinking. Boom, boom, boom. And we laid it out like, what do you think? And they're like, man, I don't have anything for you. That sounds like an excellent plan. That's probably what we would do. And we were like, okay, cool. But they're, I guess I tell that story because they were there from inception of sort of like quasi planning.

Jon Becker: Yeah, well, just having the value of an objective opinion from a different team who looks at it differently is. I mean, it takes certainly humility on the part of your team to be willing to look at another team and say, hey, what do you see here? But it just speaks to the relationship between the two teams that you're not. You know, sometimes surrounding sheriff's office in city can have an adversarial relationship or it's them.

It's, I think one of the key stories here is that this relationship was so good that they're with you as you're planning and you're looking to them to kind of just murder your ideas. What are we doing wrong? What are we missing? And I think it also speaks a lot to the culture of the Orange county sheriff's department to be willing with their commanders on site and just go, just tell us what you need. We're here to help. That's fantastic.

Jonathan Bigelow: I think in our area in central Florida, we're definitely lucky for that.

Jon Becker: Okay, so you got a bus coming, which, I mean, there's another interesting lesson learned there. From the beginning, you guys identified heat and fatigue as a potential. And bus is a pretty novel way to keep your team cool because it holds a lot of people, has really good air conditioning, and there are a lot of them driving around. Was that a pre existing relationship that you guys had made with the transit company to be like, hey, can we borrow a bus?

Jonathan Bigelow: Yeah. I mean, the, what's called links. Links is the county bus service. Those administrators, those security personnel that work with that, that are just top notch, they've always been, hey, what can we do? You know, prior to this incident? How can we help you? You know, we want you to learn our buses, how to turn them on, how to drive them, how to open the doors if something happens on this bus, you know, so they're just.

Again, so we've trained on those buses. We know a lot of contacts at that government entity, and they were just. They've always been willing to help step up. So for us to call and say, hey, we just need you to bring a bus with a driver down here, and it's just going to sit, and if it sits too long and gas runs out, we need you to bring another bus. And they're like, yeah, okay, whatever.

Jon Becker: That's awesome! Okay, so what's our next step here? Team stage? You've got a plan. Breaching plan. Assistance from Orange county for breaching. What happens next?

Jonathan Bigelow: Nothing. It sucks to say it, but, I mean, attempts to negotiate, attempts to contact. I can't tell you how many times that we delivered. Throw phones to the front door, near the front door. We ended up deploying listening devices that turned out, we suspect, to be just inadequate and inept and outdated. That didn't work.

Jon Becker: It's a recurring theme. Don't feel bad about that one.

Jonathan Bigelow: No. So to no avail. Just nothing. Nothing happening. So we were trying to get eyes and ears in the inside. So then we reached out. Well, how do we get eyes and ears into the inside of this apartment? So we said, well, we don't have the technology, but this other multi jurisdictional that Orange County, Orlando and several other agencies contribute members to, which is like a narcotics task force, I guess, in the area, they have technical capabilities where they have, like, pinhole cameras, listening devices and people.

So we said, all right, so we have a charge on the wall, the joining wall, the adjoining wall. Let's put pinhole cameras through the wall and try to see, get eyes into the interior. And we called those people out and they're willing to come. They brought their equipment and their people to do it because we were like, oh, we're not training this. We don't know how to do it. What you need? So you guys, we'll provide you cover into the apartment that we own. Oh, by the way, you go over there and drill a hole in the wall and insert a pinhole camera. Don't mind the fact that.

Jon Becker: Don't make too much noise.

Jonathan Bigelow: Don't mind.

Jon Becker: Yeah, don't make too much. I'm the last guy that came and knocked on the door. But, yeah, good luck.

Jonathan Bigelow: Just forget about all that. Do what you need to do. Hats off to them. They did a phenomenal job under the…

Jon Becker: That's a really ballsy. That is a really ballsy tech. That is like, yep, no, I got this. I can drill really quietly, so.

Jonathan Bigelow: And they did it. After several attempts, they were able to get it through and for anybody to think about. Well, I just need you to drill through some drywall and I. And insert a pinhole camera into somebody else's wall. Oh, yeah. That seems like a probably 5, 10 minutes task. I think it's better half of an hour.

Jon Becker: Oh, yeah!

Jonathan Bigelow: And I'm like, I'm trying to. So the poor decision that I made was, I'm going to mask your. Your movements, if you will, your. The sound that you might generate, sawing or drilling or whatever. I'm going to mask your movements by exterior sounds from my APC in the sound of, you know, just wailing the siren.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Jonathan Bigelow: And it was just a bad decision. I was like, we don't. We can't hear because now, yeah, they're. They're covered, but I can't hear if that action reaction counteraction happens, you know?

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Jonathan Bigelow: If he hears something and it causes gunshots, I'm not gonna be able to hear it now. I can't affect a deliberate hostage rescue based on his actions. So it was a, I don't know. I don't know. A good cover sound, other than you need to be really quiet when you do that and perfect it prior to actually executing it and see how much sound you're making and to know what you can get away with come time. But we didn't. We didn't have that, so I was just masking sound. And anytime we would do movements, whether it was the throw phone delivery, whether it was the song through the wall is just wailing the siren. It was probably the worst decision I ever made.

Jon Becker: Got it. What would you do now?

Jonathan Bigelow: I would train on putting an element in some room, in some training environment and saying, all I want you to do is listen for sounds cutting through this wall. And when you hear something, say, I hear you. I hear you. And then, hey, guys, on the other side of the wall, guys, cut through this wall. If you hear, I hear you. I hear you. You need to go back and rethink how you're going to do it.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Jonathan Bigelow: And just train it over and over and over again, because that's going to be your job when I need you. So hey, you on the one side, you're the suspect. You on the other side, you're the good guy. Do your job.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Get your stealth on.

Jonathan Bigelow: Yep.

Jon Becker: Yeah, got it. So about what time are we at – Give me, kind of, you know, approximate timeline here?

Jonathan Bigelow: 01:30, 02:30, deployment 02:00 to 03:00, 02:30 to 03:00, deployment. We inserted those texts around noon. Keep in mind that we swapped out the cell, the throw phone, the old throw phone technology, three times. Our third time ever.

Jon Becker: From the suspect.

Jonathan Bigelow: Nothing.

Jon Becker: He doesn't. He doesn't make a noise, he doesn't pick anything up. He doesn't answer the phone. He is just self indisciplined.

Jonathan Bigelow: Yeah, there were some comments about making some posts or trying to contact the media somewhere early on, but that hadn't gone away. It was just nothing. Nothing. So when you talk about.

Jon Becker: And nothing from the kids, no sounds? No childhood sounds? No.

Chris Eklund: I think there was some – At one point after we had gotten there, there was some information that the one thing that they did hear was the suspect say, hey, don't go in there. That came over a listening device or something like that. But that was the only, to my knowledge, the only communication they got at all inside the apartment.

Jonathan Bigelow: Yeah. So you're talking about four young kids, you know, early, like, I don't ages.

Chris Eklund: One to twelve.

Jonathan Bigelow: Yeah, twelve is the max. So getting up early in the morning, you know, wanting to eat, wanting to play, wanting to watch Barney or, you know, whatever, on TV. Yeah, 1, 6, 10 and 12 year olds, you know, these kids are not going to be silent. And we even commented on that. It was like, okay, I have a six year old, I have a two year old. They're not quiet.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Jonathan Bigelow: You know, but we don't hear anything, so no one hears that.

Jon Becker: Making you think, maybe he's killed the kids already.

Jonathan Bigelow: There was a lot of talk about that. There was a lot of talk about they're probably already dead. But we didn't want to believe that.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's difficult because you want to rescue the kids and you want to believe they're alive and that's the whole reason that you're there. And there's nothing to indicate that that happened, except that they're extremely quiet, which certainly points in that direction. I can see where it's conflicting.

Jonathan Bigelow: Yeah. So it's 100% conflicting in that she's adamant they're there, we're there to affect a hostage rescue, which we said, hey, this is why we exist, right, to save these kids. And also we're there to say, you just shot our guy. You're going to jail.

Jon Becker: You're going to jail.

Jonathan Bigelow: You're coming with us. One way or another, you're coming with us. Which brings up a, you know, this thing. But in essence, we're at, you know, we just go on and on and on.

Jon Becker: Yeah, so you guys, at this point, it's noon. You've been on scene for 10, 11 hours through the middle of the night.

Jonathan Bigelow: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Guys rehearsing. Guys are getting tired.

Jonathan Bigelow: Several times the rain came. Rain came and went. Food came and went. Water came and went. You know, as a team, as a. As a deputy team commander, you walk up to your team leaders and you go, hey, I need you to really focus on. On your guys, making sure that they're operationally sound. Yeah, I need them here.

All right. I know Kevin's, you know, been involved in something. We don't know his status. Focus on the mission at hand. This is the mission. We need to save these four kids. Okay. What are we doing, boss? What are we doing, boss? Hey, I know time seems like it's standing still and they're working. They're working in the command post to come up with what we can do. We can only plan, and when the command comes down to, say, execute, we need to be able to go.

So we just need to focus on what we need to do here, which is plan to be prepared. But then you just, as time goes on, you just see life just draining from them. No, we got this. We got this. Hey. And I individually walked around and said, are you good? I mean, operator after operator after operator, are you good? Look me in the eye. I need you. No bs. You tell me. No, sir. I'm good. I'm good.

Jon Becker: Yeah. It's an interesting, as a leader, it's an interesting quandary, right? Because, like, the guys have been there a long time. They're invested in it. They're doing everything they can to be alert and attentive. And the longer you wait there, the less likely it is to pop off, but the more likely it is to pop off.

So it's like, I need you guys be really attentive. Even though you've been here for 12 hours and at any second, this guy may come running out the door, guns blazing. You have to be ready. We may say go on the QRF, you know, but about noon, you're starting to kind of do the math.

Jonathan Bigelow: Yeah. So now about noon, we do. But then also we insert the camera. We get the camera inserted. Finally, we get the inserted camera. Going after, I think, the second attempt. And that's not a knock on them, but we get eyes in. You see, it's dark. We see a ceiling fan spinning. It's totally dark. No movement whatsoever.

And, okay, so now we know sort of some of the layout of the land. There was a door closed to the master bedroom, which will come into play later with Chris's thing. And it just said, all right, not this is. We don't see moving. No one's moving. And this, that's not right. So 5 hours later, it's, all right, well, you know what? Let's try to get some more eyes inside this place.

So we develop a plan based on sort of that, that entry plan with that rook. We said, okay, well, if you're going to give us the go to insert cameras in camera balls, we're going to insert some camera balls in this. We're going to say we're going to take out that big window that we want to use and exploit as a method of entry in case all h*** breaks loose and we're not able to make entry a or half b, I guess what you can call it. And we're going to take out that double pane two window with the rook and that element.

So they go up there, they say, okay, take it out and insert the camera. So they do, they go up there and they break out that big a** window up there on that, that one side, and they insert the camera balls, and they insert two. And they land right next to each other. Go figure.

Jon Becker: Of course.

Jonathan Bigelow: And one sees the wall, which is awesome. It sees nothing. And then. But one does point down the hallway, which shows it's dark. It's all the doors are closed. So again, nothing moving. But that's around the 05:00 hour. And at this point, it's like, okay, again, we could use. We use that as a, I'm doing something to spark a reaction. Gains us intelligence, gains us that point of entry. We're prepared, but no, no reaction. No suspect reaction. No, hey, get out of here. Hey, you know, no shots fired, thank goodness. But nothing.

Jon Becker: No drones at this point. No ground robot, no secondary tech.

Chris Eklund: There were some drones flying on the outside. I think that was all nuts. Inside of SWAT type drones, that was more agency level type command post, gathering information.

Jon Becker: Got it.

Jonathan Bigelow: So about, man, right after that, after we gained that entry, or I guess access to that window and then inserted those camera balls is shortly after that, we said, listen, we're done. Our people are taxed. We can't stand in here. Anymore, do nothing. Not that we're doing nothing. We work to work, but we were. That's where we're at.

Jon Becker: Yeah. At that point, you guys have been there for.

Jonathan Bigelow: It was 16 hours.

Jon Becker: 16 hours. Yeah, 15 hours.

Jonathan Bigelow: 15, 16 hours. So we said, hey, you know what we need? We need to make the call.

Jon Becker: So you reach out to. Well, Chris's team is already there, basically.

Jonathan Bigelow: So, yeah, they're there.

Jon Becker: So the leadership is there. Right?

Jonathan Bigelow: The leadership's there. I think the team's there. They made the call. And the problem is, okay, guys, you know, we delivered the message of, hey, we did what we could. We're here. We were prepared. We were ready. In your eyes, you may think that we did nothing, but we were ready. But we're transitioning now.

So once they got that message, they thought, oh, they're going to come right in and, you know, five minutes, I'll be out of here. Little did we know, like, almost an hour later, our actually, team is actually moving because the transition just takes that long. It's kind of messed up. Not messed up in that it shouldn't take that long. It just.

Jon Becker: It just takes that long. Yeah, yeah. It's just, you know, going out, replacing position by position, and handing it off and briefing what they see and everything else is a lengthy process. Seems like it should take five minutes and takes an hour.

Chris Eklund: Yeah.

Jonathan Bigelow: So when Chris showed up, I was like, hey, buddy, good to see you. But, yeah, I'll be back. Enjoy.

Chris Eklund: Yeah, so this was interesting for me. I had actually gotten a call that this was occurring literally right as I was walking out of the gym. My commanders called me and said, hey, this is going on over here. So I drove over, probably parked about a mile away, probably between, like, universal studios and where the target location was, just in a parking lot.

You know, for me, I think one of the worst times to be on a call out in Florida is when you're going from nighttime into the morning. You know, that dark today, and then the heat comes with the humidity.

And so I'm thinking that it's going to be a relatively early kind of transition. And I sat in my truck until about 06:00 at night when they finally paged us up. One of the things about it is that the – My team knew what was going on. So kind of instead of guys just off doing random things and getting a surprise call, they sort of knew it was coming. Just nobody knew when.

Jon Becker: Yes. But guys. Guys are not, you know, they're not going to the gym. They're not going for a two hour drive. They're, they're staying close and being ready.

Chris Eklund: Yeah, yeah. So we got the page out and of course by that time it took me about two minutes to go from where I was to the scene. I got to the command post, jumped out of my truck. My lieutenant was there who I've worked with for. I came up on the team with the guy. So, you know, very good relationship. Basically he hands me a floor plan that's provided by the complex. He says here you go. It's flipped, so opposite direction. And he says how many people do you need? I looked at it real quick and said ten. He said okay, there's really no exigency right now, but this is kind of what were going to do.

And I hadn't had the information about the apartment yet, so I took that floor plan, flipped it over and drew it in reverse. I'm not a big floor plan guy. I don't like to give out floor plans. Back years ago, guys would have a tendency to figure out the direction they wanted to travel prior to even going inside the door.

So, you know, and we've had I don't know how many bad floor plans drawn, you know, so the last thing I wanted the operators to be thinking about is well here I go left, the shows go left, but really I'm going to go right. And you know, I'm real big into the mindset of the operator so I didn't want to cloud that in that process.

Jon Becker: Makes sense. That's an interesting approach!

Chris Eklund: So basically operators started showing up and we had our team brief and you know, snipers were replaced. Our snipers went to their snipers platinum. I had met with John. I think we probably talked for maybe three minutes. It was, it was pretty quick. As far as the conversation goes. We didn't talk really much about his plan or things like that that were going on and we met actually between the command post and the target location.

So we're kind of in no man's land at that point which is an interesting dynamic because in John's position he's kind of going back and forth. He's got control down range. As a forward commander, you're a lieutenant. But he can go back and forth. When I go down, I stay there. So it's a different kind of one of those differences we were talking about in the teams and how we function and things like that.

But so Jon had told me that they had the apartment. So to get to that walkthrough apartment, we had to basically walk by the target location. You know, so kind of literally saying, hey, what's going on? To a bunch of their operators is we're walking to go do that. Our immediate action team had gotten into place and replaced their immediate action team.

So that was kind of getting the ball rolling. But now we're going to see the apartment first. Look. So where Jon was doing all of these rehearsals for all that time, we're now coming into it.

Jon Becker: Franchise for us.

Chris Eklund: Right.

Jon Becker: We've reset the whole problem, basically.

Chris Eklund: Yeah. So we're turning back the time. Right? So we went up there to the apartment. John was with us. I had a one of our Eod guys with us. And we started just looking at the apartment. We do hostage rescue training a lot we did back then. So we knew kind of the general choreography of what was this was going to look like. But it was nice having this apartment that was the exact same layout.

So as we went in there and started to look at it, as you walk through that door that Jon had mentioned, that one door that goes in, basically it opens kitchen, straight, living room, sort of straight and left. But right there on the left is the entrance to the master bedroom, which there was information that suggested that he had gone in there.

So as we went in there and looked at it, the floor plan in and of itself wasn't difficult. But one of the first things that happened is as you walk into that master bedroom, which was an in opening door, immediately, almost on your left is an out opening bathroom door.

Jon Becker: Oh, so the two doors are in conflict.

Chris Eklund: Well, they are, but again, it's an out opening door. And what if the door is locked and there's information to suggest? So, you know, this guy's probably going to try to put himself in a good position of advantageous, which to me is that bathroom, if he's in that master suite kind of area. So having that kind of dilemma, one of my breacher was there, and I said, what are we thinking about this thing?

And his first question was, well, can we IDC the door? So I looked at the EOD guy, I said, hey, if he's got the baby in the bathroom and we IDC this door, what do you think? And he was like, I said, okay, nevermind. That's all I need to hear, right. I don't need a full disclaimer.

Jon Becker: He's doing the math, and he doesn't like the math work.

Chris Eklund: Yeah. So. And you know, I'm not an explosive guy, so I'm listening to him, right? So then I said, well, ballistic breaching would be great on this thing. You know, out opening door, we can stay out of the threshold. It'll be quick, so on and so forth. So I make a phone call and try to. That county to the south of us, at the time, all of their patrol supervisors had shotgun breaching capabilities in their cars. We didn't have it on the team.

So I made a phone call to try to get it, and was given a very definite, no, you can't have that. So I tried to plead my case a little bit. And about the fourth, no. I said, okay, we're going to have to get away from this. So I went back to the breacher. I said, okay, if you hit the door with a ram on the doorknob, maybe it'll push the doorknob out of the door, would just pull the door open. Now there's a hole. There's no engagement. And he says, okay. I said, well, give it a shot. So now we're in somebody else's apartment. We're about to put their bathroom door.

Jon Becker: In somebody else's apartment, destroying their door.

Chris Eklund: So he lines up on the door, door lock mechanism comes out, goes right into the bathroom. Beautiful. And the makeup of the door, because it's just a – It's an apartment interior door. The force of the hit actually folded the door past the door, stop on the jam. So now it's literally stuck on the wrong side of the door jamb.

So the next plan was, okay, Jon, I want you to take the ram and throw it through the door and make a port in the door. So that was kind of the plan. With that dilemma, I had walked through more of the apartment gone to the back bedroom, looked in the closet back there. There was a walk in closet back there. And it was interesting about this that I remember, and I always come back to it, is it was stacked with stuff. I mean, it was just clothes and boxes.

And, I mean, the door opened, but you could. You weren't putting yourself inside there. You would have literally had to start taking stuff out close from the door and then worked your way to the back, if that's what you wanted to do. So that was kind of one of those interesting things about that.

So we had established a plan. You know, we train hostage rescue for known and unknown locations. And basically the plan that we had come up with, which, again, not talking to John, our primary entry point was going to be through the wall. We were going to use the explosive breach that was on the wall. The window that they had ported was certainly in the mix with that along with the walk through door. But I didn't have a whole lot of information on what was on the other side of that door yet.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So that's inward swinger obviously.

Chris Eklund: Inward swing. Yeah.

Jon Becker: And so we've heard these moving furniture.

Chris Eklund: Right. So inward swinging potential. Right.

Jon Becker: Yeah. There may be a giant pile of dresser behind it.

Chris Eklund: Right. Right. So that that wall became the primary entry point and I had actually worked it to where we were going to do a known location response to the master suite area because that's where the information was that he was in there. And then I was going to run an unknown contingent through the rest of the apartment to try to get as much access to it as quickly as we could.

Jon Becker: So two entry teams, one going direct to the split the bedroom and then the others trying to clear the rest of the…

Chris Eklund: Yeah. So that that wall put us more towards the front side of the apartment but was pretty central in the apartment. Right. So about that time, once we kind of wrapped all that, we moved over to the door or over to the target and started again. Now we're relieving the deliberate team, Jon's deliberate team. And guys are like, hey, let us leave the parking lot before you do anything. This is the conversation we're having.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Of course.

Chris Eklund: I recognize that kind of stuff because they've been there 16 hours. One of their cops has been shot, you know, so it's, a tough thing to want to let go of.

Jon Becker: Yeah, sure.

Chris Eklund: But still, I think is as weird as we SWAT people are, you know, those conversations still happen. Like, hey, wait till I leave the apartment, the parking lot, you know?

Jon Becker: Yeah. It's also just gallows humor.

Jonathan Bigelow: Right.

Jon Becker: It's like, you know, you don't know how long it's going to take.

Chris Eklund: Right.

Jon Becker: You know, as you're leaving, it's like, God, if these guys go in there and in 5 seconds resolve this, you know, I'm going to hate them.

Chris Eklund: Right.

Jon Becker: Right.

Chris Eklund: Yeah. So like I said, my team got there about 06:30. I started to move over to the target location at now 07:30 because I knew that living room window had been breached. As I'm walking to the apartment, I had two operators grab a dumbbell robot because I wanted it thrown in. That window was one of the first things because I wanted to get recent eyes into the apartment.

So I had two operators go around and do that. As they did that, I also called and had the explosive breach put back on the main entry door. I wanted it back there. I understand why Jon took it off, but I wanted it there.

Jonathan Bigelow: You know what? I'm sorry. I don't mean to interrupt, but I think. I think I screwed up. I think I screwed up our timeline. I want to go back and let me know, interrupt you, Chris?

Chris Eklund: Absolutely.

Jonathan Bigelow: But I think this. It should be noted that this event, the patrol event, started on the 10 June, that late night hours of 10th June of 18. SWAT response was the 11th, early morning of the 11th. So we never made it to the 12th.

Jon Becker: Got it. Yeah. Sorry. We said it started on the 11th and transition to the 12th. It actually starts on the 10th and transitions to the 11th.

Jonathan Bigelow: Yes.

Jon Becker: Got it. I realized you guys were up for a long time. They just kind of run together.

Chris Eklund: Sorry.

Jon Becker: Okay, so, Chris, you were setting us up. You were replacing the charge on the main entrance.

Chris Eklund: Yeah. So we put that explosive charge on. So now we have the explosive breach charge on the wall. We have the one on the door, and, of course, we have the rook with that living room window. And if I kind of draw the picture, if you're looking at the backside of this apartment building, if you go from where that master bedroom is on the front side, you basically have a small bedroom window, then the large living room picture window, and then two bedroom windows further left, if that makes sense. Just a, cause I'm probably going to talk about some windows here, and just to kind of give some context to where I'm talking about.

Jon Becker: Walk me through that one more time.

Chris Eklund: So, if you're looking at the back of the building, where the target location is from, basically where the stairwell is, the breezeway, you have a standard bedroom window. The next window to the left, as you look at it, is a larger living room window. Then there's two windows further to the left that are also definitely bedroom windows. Does that make sense, kind of drawing?

Jon Becker: Bedroom living room. Bedroom. Bedroom.

Chris Eklund: Yeah. Right.

Jon Becker: Or bedroom living room. Bedroom with two windows.

Chris Eklund: Yeah. And I only say that just because I'm going to talk about some bedrooms that were getting windows and things like that. So just kind of draw a picture, if I can, mentally. But totally. So, yeah. So that charge goes back on. We have the plan with the known location, unknown location, split to the wall, and that dumbbell robot that we threw in, we were able to confirm that he had essentially taken all of the stick furniture that was in the eating area.

So a dining room table, some wooden chairs, some of the other furniture from the living room, things like that, and kind of pushed it up against the door, which was a tight confined space. Anyways. I mean, it was a short hallway foyer entry into an apartment that was now jammed with furniture.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So Jon's suspicions, like their team suspension, suspicion of this was accurate. There's stuff piled across the door and the door is not a valid entry point.

Chris Eklund: Yeah. So kind of what was happening simultaneously to that is the rook team had the platform on and they put a team of five, uh. Cause they wanted to start probing this master bedroom window. So they start going up and again with the information that he was in there, they go up to that window and as the platform raises, they start looking in the windows. They don't see anything inside the window as far as the suspect or any kids or anything like that.

But they do confirm that the bathroom door is closed. And so kind of draws my attention back to the issues that we had at the walkthrough apartment dealing with that. As they are doing that. There was a – So we had gotten this, we had had this rook for many years and we had just upgraded it. And one of the upgrades was that the new platform was larger, but it was also somewhere around 1000 pounds heavier.

And we had probably had it back for a couple of months. And as the five operators are up on the platform dealing with this window, basically there's a hydraulic release which causes the platform to kind of jerk and fall forward.

Jon Becker: Oh God!

Chris Eklund: Yeah. So one of the operators actually fell and they ended up extracting him. He had hurt his back.

Jon Becker: So they fell off of the platform.

Chris Eklund: He fell on the platform. But the way he fell, it was. It injured his back when it's the.

Jon Becker: Platform with the shield on it, right?

Chris Eklund: Yes.

Jon Becker: So he falls, basically gets thrown into the shield. Thrown into the shield.

Chris Eklund: Yeah, that'll do it. So they ended up extracting him with his injury. So he's out. And of course I'm hearing this all play out in my mind. So again, you know, as soon as I get that little brief instance of negativity, like it's not a thing anymore. So now if there's any consideration of putting operators up into the living room window, my confidence at this point in that hydraulic release with five operators on it again and repeating the same thing is not in existence.

Jon Becker: Yes. Falling off a cliff.

Chris Eklund: Yeah. Right. So now I'm really dealing with that wall and that door entry is my primary thoughts. So they had done that and there was a few conversations happening outside. Of course, when you get on one of these things, all of your operators come up with every possible idea that's known to man as to how we're going to fix this thing.

And again, kind of as soon as there's a little bit of a negative that outweighs the positive for me, like, maybe we should do an explosive breach through the floor of the ceiling from the apartment above and just kind of right into the bathroom. Well, what if the ceiling falls on the baby? No, that's not a thing.

Jon Becker: Right.

Chris Eklund: So I'm kind of playing all these different ideas, getting, you know, bounced off me and things like that. And they put the ram on, on the rook now, and they move over to the far left window as you're looking at it, which is going to go into a bedroom that would be at the deep end of the hallway in the apartment.

So the rook operator, that plat that. I'm sorry, that ram has five cameras on it, one up, down, left, right, and straight ahead. And as he pushes the ram through the window, it actually catches the leg of a set of bunk beds. So there's a set of bunk beds kind of in the corner, and one of the legs, basically, is going straight down the center of the window the way it's set up in the room. So the ram kicks that leg, the bunk beds fall to the floor, the top, and falls down to the bottom. And the operator comes up on the radio, and he sells the command post. He's going to be giving him a call.

So I kind of give a little bit of time for that phone call to happen. And then I called the rook operator on my phone, and I said, you got kids, don't you? He said, yep. I said, okay. Probably no sooner that I hung up the phone with him, I get a call from my lieutenant. And that conversation is, do you want to go soft? Do you want to go hard? And I said, well, we're going to go hard. He says, okay, start putting it together.

Jon Becker: So kids at this point are dead.

Chris Eklund: Not confirmed, but they didn't move, right? So now we're talking life preservation at this point. So he says, okay, start putting things together. And I walked over to my team, and we had talked through this a bunch of times, and I had the talk where I looked at all of them and said, who's not ready to do this? Which they all were. And I said, hey, you guys want to go soft? Do you want to go hard? And they all said, we're going to go hard. I said, good, because that's what I told the lieutenant.

So we started putting things together. We had our final assault position, which was going to be kind of almost towards the top of the stairwell going to the second story, and now were going to go up, turn right into that adjoining apartment and then turn left to step through the wall. And then I had a secondary team who was going to come up the other stairwell and be basically responsible for that main walkthrough door into the apartment.

So now we're kind of about, you know, quarter to nine at night. So we've been working this thing for probably 2 hours and 15 minutes or so and get one kind of, one kind of final conversation with the command post, make sure everybody's good. I said, yep. And he goes, okay, on you. So I line my team up towards the top of the stairs, give a countdown for the breaches. They go off with just that little bit of tiny bit of, you know, separating both of them, not both going off at exactly the same time. I give the countdown, I give our call to initiate the rescue. I was the third person up the stairs.

And as I turned right into that apartment for like two steps through the threshold, I was completely blind just because of all the dust and everything from the, from the explosive breach as I came through and was able to see, I saw my number two operator who's turned around looking at me, which is obviously not the desired effect, and he says, failed breach.

So I said, no way. And I literally moved him to the side and looked around the corner and it was a breach. But what we didn't know is that the wall had, the interior of the wall was not like any interior wall I'd ever seen. I mean, it wasn't just 16 inches on center. It was two two by fours, 16 on center with cross braid pieces and everything else like that. I mean, it was pretty robust for an interior wall.

Jon Becker: So that's a structure wall.

Chris Eklund: Yeah, yeah.

Jonathan Bigelow: Holding like whole nother level of apartments above it.

Chris Eklund: Yeah. And I'm a SWAT guy. I'm not the builder guy. So, you know, so I stuck my head out of, of the apartment door and I look, and they had a successful breach on the other entry door. The door was literally just kind of. It was off hinges, but it was there because of all the stuff that was there. They pulled that out. And right about at that time is when I got on the radio and called the command post.

And, you know, you never forget when you tell somebody failed breach on a real life operation. And even they would say there, like, the air just came out of everybody back at the command post. So a couple of things that happened. We made the decision that we're going to start moving the furniture out of the way.

Some people have talked about just rushing through the furniture and things like that, which it wouldn't have been effective based on what he had there. So they start basically methodically pulling furniture from the other side of the door out into the hallway. The two operators that I had go into the apartment first that were going to be the first two through the wall. I basically told them, you guys go downstairs and set it out. You're done. For a little while.

Of course, they looked at me like all good operators would and said, we're good. I said, that's fine, just go downstairs. Because in my mind, they were just about to go through a wall following an explosive breach on a hostage rescue, on a guy who would shot another officer and things like that. And then it was failed. So just like the air came out of the command post, at some point these guys are going to have a crash, too. And I just kind of wanted them to go just away.

Jon Becker: Yeah, just before the adrenaline. Adrenaline dump.

Chris Eklund: Thank you.

Jon Becker: Where the adrenaline dump hits them and.

Chris Eklund: Right, right. And, you know, I have no reason to even say that it would happen, but it was just a thing. So they started working the furniture, got that pulled out, and that was probably a total time, maybe 20 minutes ordeal, something like that. And while that was happening, we had put teams of two back on the platform on the rook, and they were launching 40 millimeter gas rounds into the apartment, some tri chamber. I'm somewhat of a fan of, you know, those closed doors with the closet and right angles and things like that to where you can affect those closets and things like that.

So by the time it was over and we had gotten all the furniture out to where we were going to make entry, pretty much every door or every room in the apartment had been affected, with the exception of the hallway bathroom.

So we started to make an entry. First thing we came to was the master bedroom door, which was closed but unlocked. So that came open, actually, I'm sorry, I'm confusing my doors. That master bedroom door was locked and closed. I called a breacher up to work the door. And this is a guy who has hit thousands and thousands of doors.

And this was another one of those times where reality struck and he literally drew the ram back and threw it at the door while he was running out of the threshold. I've had conversations with that guy after, and it was just. It became a real thing. You know, you hit so many doors and there's no reality.

But again, coming back to Kevin being shot. It became a thing. So that's kind of what really drew my attention into the mindset of operators and things like that. Over time, the door came open and that master bathroom door that opened out that we thought was going to be such a problem just popped right open and there was nobody home. But now we had to go and continue to look through the rest of the house.

So we moved up into the living room to a point right where it went into the hallway. The first door on the left was cracked. Closed, but cracked. The bathroom door was on the right towards the end of the hall that was closed. And then the bathroom, the bedroom door straight at the end of the hall was closed. Before we entered into the hallway, I again had brought one of my grenadiers in, had him put, I think, three or four rounds of 40 millimeter through the bathroom door. One to see if we get any kind of a response to just to kind of fill that final last spot.

So we're literally standing in the living room shooting into the bathroom door that's about 15ft down the hall. So we had no response there. Moved into the first bedroom on the left, another set of bunk beds that was kind of opposite wall. One of the male kids was up top. The second male child was on the bottom bunk. They had both been shot in the head. We continued to move down the hall, got into the bathroom. Nobody was there. Made entry into that last bedroom straight where that initial set of bunk beds had gone down. And that's where we found the twelve year old daughter and the one year old daughter both shot in the head.

The only thing we had left at that point was that closet in that bedroom that hadn't been cleared. Operators moved over to it, turned the knob, pushed it open and it opened about six inches and it was stopped. The operator looked and it was basically the suspect's foot was stopping the door. We. I called in a breacher came in. He worked the hinges and the guy had. Was self inflicted gunshot wound to the head of. Pretty recent.

Jon Becker: Coward.

Chris Eklund: Sure. But it had. It was. We were certainly in the apartment at the time he shot himself.

Jon Becker: Oh, really?

Chris Eklund: I would guesstimate it was probably the time that we were firing the 40 mm into the. Into the bathroom is when he did it. In fact, some of the operators heard a small pop. They thought it maybe was a gas canister or something that hadn't gone off yet. But by all best estimates it was probably him in the closet. It was a pretty small caliber hang. I think it was a 32, something like that. And he was inside that closet.

But again, I kind of come back to the fact that thinking about that closet before on the walkthrough and then finding him in that closet.

Jon Becker: A little bit of foreshadowing.

Chris Eklund: Yeah. Yeah. You know, and kind of one of the things that I kind of talk about when we, when John and I do this is, you know, from what we got out of this is when you do these walkthroughs, which are a great luxury, try to look at just the bare walls. Don't see it for what it is, but see it for what it could be. Right. So that closet being jammed packed full doesn't mean the closet over there.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Chris Eklund: Is jam packed full. You know what I mean?

Jon Becker: Yeah. The neighbor being a hoarder does not mean that the suspect as a hoarder.

Chris Eklund: Yeah. I mean, it might have been a great place for another explosive charge, thinking differently, you know, potentially knowing he was in there. So. Yeah.

Jon Becker: So why don't we talk through. Because, I mean, obviously there's a lot – There's a lot to this. Let's talk through some of the lessons learned here. I mean, do we know have any approximation as to when the kids were killed?

Jonathan Bigelow: I think based on all the looking back and reviewing some of the CAD notes and stuff like that, when I think pretty much after the initial volley, the shot fired by suspect, Kevin going down, Manny returning some fire and then extracting Kevin, then working on him, is calls initially came into the comm center saying, hey, there's stuff going on. And our reaction to that was, well, yeah, we were there for.

Jon Becker: There were shots fired.

Jonathan Bigelow: There were shots fired. That was us and him and, you know, back and forth. What I think they determined was or they suspect, I guess you could say, is one of the occupants, whether it was below or above or whatever, like a good four minutes had elapsed before. Hey, I just hear. Heard shots in the apartment, like above or below.

Jon Becker: Got it.

Jonathan Bigelow: And it was a. They described, I think. I think they described it as like a cadence type. I heard a couple. And then I heard a couple. Yeah.

Jon Becker: Went into one bedroom, shot both kids. Went in the other bedroom, shot both kids.

Jonathan Bigelow: You know, and I think the – I think even the medical examiner had said they had, you know.

Jon Becker: Yeah. You guys never had a chance.

Jonathan Bigelow: No, no.

Chris Eklund: And it was a thing for me and I know for my guys. I mean, it was. It was apparent that the kids had been dead for some time. Right. So.

Jonathan Bigelow: So that hit home, I think, with my team. We debriefed after the fact and they were just torn. Well, one, not only because it's like, why did Orange county get to come in and immediately start doing work? And that's like, guys, what are you talking about? That's not our play. That was on them.

One, I don't like to say this a lot, but It's – I don't feel bad. I guess I do feel bad. We all feel bad for the fact that four. Four kids, you know, lost their life to an evil maniac. But I don't feel bad that my operators didn't get. Have to witness what his operators did.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Jonathan Bigelow: You know, that's. It's just a whole nother level of just that socks to deal with. So imagine being on scene for 17 hours, and then you witness.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Jonathan Bigelow: And then you saw that, you know, so which horrible.

Jon Becker: So, yeah, in many ways, it was. It was merciful that it wasn't your team.

Jonathan Bigelow: Yeah, I said, so we debriefed, and they said, you know, a big thing was, well, we didn't get the win. We didn't get the win. There wasn't like, who said? And I reverted back to some of the early training that we did where we did a hostage rescue scenario on a kid daycare. And the scenario instructor said, you know, put this scenario together where ten kids end up dying and the self inflicted, the hostage takers just killed themselves.

And we ended that scenario with a deliberate, you know, emergency hostage rescue. And we were like, wait, wait. We didn't even get to kill the hostage takers, and everybody's dead. What is this? And they were like, he's like, well, whoever said that you're ever gonna do that, be able to win like that? So I was like, man, that's – It's deep when you realize that.

And I think Clint Bruce, who was like, he delivered a lot of speeches, but former Navy SEAL, you know, talks about. He's in former Navy SEAL, and he talked about how it's. We always win. It's. It's not the always win factor. It's not. We're always victorious. It's the – Whether you define you are victorious, you're winning as you are victorious, or you realize what you came short of, you fix those problems, and you'll get beat another day a different way.

But, so I just said, guys, we were there. We were prepared. We were ready. If we had green light, we would be go. We'd probably encounter the same problem.

Jon Becker: It's an interesting training question. I was with the team recently that they were doing a medical exercise and had a teammate, and they had to medevac the teammate, and they get him to the mock doctor, and the doctor was like, he's dead. And the team was like, why would you do that? I'm like, why? He's like, cause that's a real possibility. And they then subsequently had a horrific event. Oddly enough, the same guy shot very badly.

Fortunately, he survived this time and in the real world. But it's an interesting question for teams that are training because you do tend to train to victory because everybody, you want to win.

Jonathan Bigelow: Yeah. Don't kill my guys. Don't kill my guys.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Yeah. Like, my guys all survived and everything worked out fine. And unfortunately, you know, that isn't always the case. And in this case, there's not much either team could have done. I mean, maybe you could have gotten the suspect a little bit sooner, but he was – He already had a plan that was. He was going to execute no matter what you did. So it is very frustrating.

Chris Eklund: Yeah. And I think, you know, always the training.

Jonathan Bigelow: Right.

Chris Eklund: I mean, to John's point, I just finished a hostage rescue evolution with my team and set up a scenario, and they weren't winning it like, they won it because they had the opportunity to save. We used dummies that, you know, real that put out blood and things like that, and it puts it on a clock to how soon you stop the bleeding and things like that.

Oh, well, and, you know, so that they have the opportunity to win and that they can stop the bleeding and, you know, get them to greater care and things like that. But they're shot. Like the victim and the suspect are shot when they get in the room by design, because can you now transfer from that thought process of we always go in, we positive target ID on our suspect, we shoot them, and then we, you know, set up and evacuate the hostage. Well, okay. Can you go in there and transition to medical care?

Jonathan Bigelow: Right.

Chris Eklund: Because those are very real things, too.

Jon Becker: For sure.

Chris Eklund: You know, we always do the best we can to try to, you know, cover as much of the structure as we can on these hostage rescues and get operators there and, you know, create dilemmas for the suspect and everything like that. But it's still a period of time, I think there was an incident not too long ago in a bank where there was a hostage rescue, and they played it back on. Body worn from an explosive breach to first shot on the suspect was 1.8 seconds, which is pretty good.

Jon Becker: That's amazing!

Chris Eklund: Yeah. In that time, the suspect had three victims on their knees in front of him. He was able to shoot two of them. So, I mean, it's an interesting thing. The other thing is, I think that we – How do we know what we have a hostage scenario? We all SWAT guys. I mean, that's what SWAT teams do, is they're there for hostage scenarios.

And, you know, it's a very black and white way to look at it. When you say, well, you gotta have a hostage and you gotta have threats and you gotta have means to carry out the threats. Well, kids in an apartment for exit. I mean, at what point do you make that decision where something has gone wrong here? You know what I mean?

Jonathan Bigelow: So with their own dad.

Chris Eklund: Right.

Jon Becker: Yeah. With their own father who has not threatened them.

Chris Eklund: Right.

Jonathan Bigelow: Who's not said anything.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Chris Eklund: So you have no threats. You know, there's a weapon in play, but you don't. I mean, you obviously know that it's been in use before. Right. But, you know, when do you draw that? And I say it to my guys all the time, this is not a black and white world we live in. It's very gray.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Chris Eklund: So those conversations have to be had with commands and say, hey, listen, we might not have this thing, but have you thought about this thing? You know what I mean? And that's kind of one of the big learning points that I take away from it is how do you look at this? And, you know, could it be, is it absolute or is it implied? You know, things like that? Do I need to have a gun to have means to kill somebody?

Jon Becker: Well, and you raise a really valid point, which is, I think it's very easy, like we were saying earlier, you know, training to victory, training to win. It's very easy to create a training scar where this is what a hostage situation looks like and it always plays out this way. And like you said, one and a half seconds, shoots two victims. Like, it doesn't always play that way. What do you think the best way to resolve that from a training standpoint? What can teams do in training that you think helps to counter that?

Jonathan Bigelow: That's a good question.

Chris Eklund: I mean, it's definitely a question that I think deserves some thought. But I would tell you that we always try to train our teams for the best victory and the best win. We want to be able to say that our teams are the best. So we create this performance that makes us kind of believe that. But when they come under adversity, I mean, I know that when my team has come under adversity, it's always better on the other side.

So I don't know if there's an answer to where you're creating losses, and then they come out better. Of course, you don't want them to be so beat down that they can't. They don't ever believe in themselves. But there's a fine line between what's reality and what's not. You know, we often run hostage rescue with no port and covers or break and rake teams working at the same time.

And it takes forever for the operators to get to that room if they don't know where it is. You got to kind of remind them, hey, we're going to have other assets in this thing. You know, we're just a small group of guys right now running CQB reps for hostage rescue. You don't have those other assets in place that we're going to have that will help us win this thing? You know what I mean?

Jonathan Bigelow: Yeah, I mean, I can't. I don't think I could say more on that. That's pretty good. The scenario sucked. I mean, John, when you talk about what are the. Some of the problems that we encountered or how we tailored or, you know, identified shortcomings and stuff like that, we looked at second story apartments, you know, just the target location. Okay, this sucked. We really never trained or thought about this location before. Let's acquire equipment, let's acquire training and tactics on this specific.

So if you could think about the most horrific type of target location, I guess you could say is like, this is gonna suck. Train on that. You know, relying on outside resources and it's. It's not to knock again, you know, those that came to assist, whether it was the listening devices or the explosive breaching. But I – relying on outside resources, when you have the ability to in house train those and. And be able to communicate without those on a tactical level, hey, stand up your own. And that's what we've done since then.

I think Warren county has done since then as well, is stand up our own explosive breaching program. Get that equipment that is necessary. What about those listening devices? Train those people on your own team.

And so we don't have to call in those and put those in harms a way that not necessarily we have the time to dedicate that and then just overall, I think the underlying thing is, man, we stretched our guys way too long into the fatigue factor. We were operationally not ready should the call be said, hey, go go, go. So that was a failure on our board to say, we got to give this up sooner, you know, so recognize that fatigue factor. And I think now it's max, 12 hours. And that's max.

Jon Becker: Yeah, yeah.

Jonathan Bigelow: Set the hard cap and that. I mean, that could be 8 hours. I mean, we're in Florida, you know, I couldn't imagine doing this in Wisconsin.

Chris Eklund: When it's cold or.

Jon Becker: Yeah, hold.

Jonathan Bigelow: You're looking a four hour operational window of people outside standing there waiting.

Jon Becker: I interviewed, I actually, the guy that's going to be keynote Jon Becker: t the NTOA tomorrow morning, Bob Kuntz, who's a submarine, you know, submarine captain, and he talked about how there are just certain things they call trip wires that when that happens, we change this. So, you know, if another vessel gets within a certain distance of a submarine, then the submarine has to change course, period. No questions, no ask.

It's an interesting question whether there should be a tripwire for teams, because it does also take the emotion out of the situation. If you say La SDSEB was recently on a barricade for 42 hours before they handed it over to LAPD and the discussion afterwards, well, why'd they hand it over? And the other discussion was, why'd they wait 42 hours? Right?

It strikes me that if you are a team commander setting a tripwire or your team where, if we get to this point, were going to transition the problem, it doesn't matter what state it's in – It doesn't matter if it looks like it's coming to fruition, we're transitioning the problem.

Jonathan Bigelow: Yeah, I think we hit on that before. I think when we talked previously that, like, retribution should not be, oh, I'm good. We're. No, it's going to be our team that take this guy down. We're not in the business of retribution.

Chris Eklund: But one point that may even actually.

Jonathan Bigelow: Be the tripwire, and that might be like, hey, you guys are too invested, you know, because of what happened. That might be the trip wire.

Jon Becker: Yeah. I was just in a meeting with a bunch of SWAT commanders, and this was a topic that came up is you have a good relationship with your local team. One of your guys gets shot, what do you do? And it was, it was split, you know, but there was, there's certainly an argument, and the argument I would make is that if an Orlando officer is killed and Orange county kills the guy, it is easier to defend that Orange county, even if the guy needed killing and was going to go the hard way, no matter what, it is easier to defend both from a civil liability and a press standpoint to say no. We stood our team down and handed the problem over to a different agency that was not emotionally involved.

Chris Eklund: Yeah.

Jonathan Bigelow: One thing that I also think that needs to be hit on is we had the ability, we had the luxury, I would say, of having that extra apartment, that mirror image practice on it and all this. And it was almost, we even. I remember saying this to guys, this is somebody else's home. Don't damage the apartment. Right?

As you walk through. Don't, you know, come on, guys. All right. Bad. Hey, we're talking about lives. So if I were to do it again and we had the same setup. We had the same setup, or the breaching through the wall is the failure on our part. Was not. Tell the explosive breachers, hey, put the charge up. All right. You think it's gonna go? Yeah. All right. Now.

Chris Eklund: Good.

Jonathan Bigelow: Set it up. Ready to go. Now go over to that apartment, cut the wall on that same side apartment. Walk away, see what you're worth.

Jon Becker: See what's there.

Jonathan Bigelow: Yeah. Investigate. Oh, that's gonna cost money.

Chris Eklund: All right.

Jonathan Bigelow: Money or lies? What are we doing? Go do it. And they would probably come back saying, we need to change.

Chris Eklund: It may not have been the same wall, but, you know, I know cases where they've actually peeled the wall back and then they go to work the target wall, and it's concrete on the inside. I mean, but it's. It's just a matter of, you have to look at those things. I would never do another charge like that again. And not, and I don't believe that our breaches would not peel the wall back, but it would certainly be a conversation of, hey, let's look and see what the inside of this wall looks like to give us a better idea.

Jon Becker: Another thing that i've heard teams do is, especially during the problems that are during the day, is go back and pull the original blueprints, call public works, call the city building department and say, what do we have? Are there blueprints available? Because that does give you at least where there is structure in the building. What else did this change for your teams? Or do you think should other teams should be thinking about.

Chris Eklund: Well, again, and I talked about it kind of when I was going through the scenario. You know, the mindset of your guys is huge, especially for a team leader perspective. And, you know, even operators, if your guys aren't somehow locked on or you haven't seen them not locked on yet, and then you witness that those are real conversations to be had, like I said, that breacher hithenne a thousand doors, zero defects, you know, and he's a guy who looks like a breacher, you know, like, he's that guy.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Chris Eklund: But making sure that there's a real understanding of what's going to come out of this and what the reality is now. Right? I have a tendency to tell all the guys on my team, hey, there's always somebody on the other side of the door with a gun. And I tell them that all the time because I want them to be ready.

But, of course, however many times there's not, then they stop believing me. Right? But that's just kind of the idea, and I think that's one of the biggest things. And again, that kind of spun me into really paying attention to the operators from a mentality perspective. Like, where are they at right now? Are you really good? If you tell me you're all right, you're probably not good. Right?

Like I say, you know, the other thing is, we immediately went to shotgun breaching after this. You know, you go to these teams, and I've done. I've had luxury to visit a lot of teams who have a lot of stuff, and there's always people who are like, well, they have it. Why don't we have it? And basically what I've come up with is people have all the equipment they have because bad stuff happened there.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Chris Eklund: You look at, like, the LAPDs or the SEBs or things like that that have no wants for any equipment, and it's because they have so much happen there. Right. NYPD, ESU, same way they have it all. So it's kind of a double edged sword. I mean, if you can forecast all the things that you want, that's great.

Jon Becker: But I think it's also a place where other teams, lessons learned, come in hand. It's one of the rules that I play in my day job is we work with so many teams that we see what's working, we see what's not working, and we see that there are certain tools that are, you know, they're a one trick pony, but when you need that trick, like the shielded platform on a rook is an example of that where, like, I'm going to use that every day.

But when you need that, you need that. Like, you really need it. And I think it is. I don't think we spend enough time, like you said, forecasting ways that can go wrong. It's an interesting kind of contrast in the culture of SWAT teams because on the one hand. Everybody believes in Murphy, right? Like it's an open joke. Right?

Like, you know, I don't care how many times you do something, it's not going to work. That, you know, the rook, you could have trained with that thing a thousand times. That platform was only going to release on an op at an inconvenient time. But it is intentionally making yourself uncomfortable, intentionally testing the limits of your training. I had interviewed a SEAL commander recently who said he used to make his guys run high risk CQB runs at the end of really long days.

Jonathan Bigelow: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Like, okay, let's all pull it down. No, we're doing this one more thing right now, and you need to be really.

Chris Eklund: Sharp because they never happen when you're first waking up and you just had your cup of coffee and things like that. Yeah, of course. And I think, you know, Jon and I have been doing this debrief, talking about this for three years, at least. And, you know, it's things like this where people can kind of get that information. Like, I know I've taken stuff that I've learned and heard in debriefs before and directly applied it to what I'm working with right now because it dawned on me right then, this is not a win. Like, we don't tell this story, I think, because it's a great scenario. Right?

Jon Becker: No, it's terrible.

Chris Eklund: But I think there's a lot that people can take away from it. And see the. You know, John talks earlier about, you know, he calls it a ballet. And when we do the debrief, he actually put a picture of a ballet happening. And I'm like, okay, well, for all of you in the. In the class, you know, imagine there's marbles all over the floor of this beautiful ballet. And that's what happens to us when we take it. You know what I mean? So you kind of read into those real. What's the worst possible thing that can happen here? You know? And I think we could draw a lot from that. Other people's experiences.

Jon Becker: Yeah, yeah. Well, I think that's kind of the premise of the whole show. Right. Like, that's. That's what I'm trying to do with this thing, is so many of the decisions you make, you make because you have a paradigm and you recognize, oh, this is like this other scenario, and you can't have too many of those. The ability to look at something complicated and see patterns in it is one of the things that makes great leaders great leaders. And I think it's critical that you are a student of the game and constantly trying to push your knowledge.

Chris Eklund: Well, yeah, and I think that's huge because we all, as a types want to be the ones who solve all the problems. I have yet to find anybody who has thought of something recently that hasn't already been thought of. It's happened before.

Jonathan Bigelow: I think at the end of the debrief that we do, we really try to hit home. It's like no matter who you are, no matter how many resources you have or how many training hours or how really, how good you really think you are as a team, we're not here to say that you're not. But really take that, identify your team status by looking at, take that hard, look in the mirror and let me. Are we really that good? Because we had that. We thought we were that good. And then we got. We're handed a problem that sucked. And not that we didn't tackle it, but, well, we got challenged.

And then train realistically, train hard. Train different contingencies, trains transition. Get your technology in order and just, man, think of a thousand ways to have suck happen to you and then train it really in order to move that operational needle in two degrees in the right direction.

Jon Becker: So I think that's a really good place for us to stop.

Jonathan Bigelow: No, you don't. No. Because you know what? Kevin was a warrior. I'll tell you that. He hung on, man. He hung on for several more years after that. 2018 was his incident, and he finally succumbed to his injuries, 2021. So I just like to give a shout out to Kevin. There's a contingency of officers that do an outstanding job. They walk his kid to the first day of school every year since. So, you know, we lost one too early, too soon, but he was a great one. So just like to maybe possibly end it with that.

Chris Eklund: Absolutely.

Jon Becker: That's where we should stop. Thank you, boys!

Jonathan Bigelow: Appreciate it!

Chris Eklund: Thank you!

Jonathan Bigelow: Thank you!

Episode 42 – Building Elite Tactical Performance

jonathan@aardvarktactical.com on October 1, 2024

Episode 42 – Building Elite Tactical Performance

Jon Becker: My guest today is Brittany Loney, the founder and CEO of Elite Cognition. Brittany has almost 20 years of experience training high performing operators from communities as diverse as elite warriors, professional Olympic athletes, high level coaches, and corporate executives. She also has over 14 years of experience training special operations forces and was the first cognitive performance coach embedded with the United States Special Operations Command, tactical human optimization, and a rapid rehabilitation and reconditioning program, also known as Thor 3.

Her work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, peer reviewed academic journals, textbooks, success magazines, SOCOM, softcast, and various other programs. In addition, Brady has been a panel member or guest speaker at Global Soft Week, Special Operations Medical Association, SOCOM's Wellness Week, Air Force Air Education and Training Command Learning Professionals Consortium, women in SOF symposium, and countless other professional conferences.

Brittney has a PhD in educational psychology and learning systems from the Florida State University, an MA in kinesiology with an emphasis on sports psychology from California State University, Fresno, and MS in exercise science from Florida State University and a BS in criminal justice from Texas State University, where she was also an NCAA Division one basketball player.

Brittney lives her profession, spending much of her time working out ultra running, hiking, paddling, boarding, and researching neuroscience, performance, and cognition. I was first introduced to Brittany by some of our nation's best tactical operators. Her work with US SOF units is unique in its approach to improving operator performance through physical, cognitive, and emotional training. I'm extremely excited to have her on the podcast because the broad scope and structure of her work will actually lay a foundation for several episodes to come on improving operator performance.

I hope you enjoy my chat with Brittany Loney!

My name is Jon Becker.

The goal of this podcast is to share their stories in hopes of making us all better leaders, better thinkers, and better people.

Welcome to The Debrief!

Brittany, thanks so much for being with me today! I'm excited to talk to you!

Brittany Loney: I'm excited as well! Thank you for having me!

Jon Becker: So why don't we? I mean, I read your resume in the intro, but let's kind of start with Britney's origin story. Like, how do you get interested in cognition? And then how do you end up working with tactical operators?

Brittany Loney: So way back in college, I was playing basketball, and I got four major head injuries that gave me brain damage on scans. And the last one, I was told by the neurologist that I'll never play basketball again. And I had thought basketball was my present, my future. It was really all that was ever on my mind.

So I ended up seeing a counselor. At the time that my coach made me go see, I was very reluctant at first because I was always that athlete in the background who was thinking, the cognitive isn't for me. That's for people who can't physically hack it. You know, any excuse.

I mean, I was, you know, an arrogant 2021 year old. And then I get some sense knocked into me. I go see a counselor, and I really did need it. And he introduces me to performance psychology. And at first I was like, no, thank you. And I did tell him exactly my words of, that's for people who can't physically hack it. And he looked at me and he goes, guess what, you can't anymore. And I was like, well, touched. That was a good response.

So I will go and research whatever you want me to research now. So I go and I research performance psychology. And I actually fell in love with the field. And my coach at the time was awesome. She kept me involved with the team and she had me take the freshman and I could start practicing these new techniques I was learning about performance psychology, and I had them start with imagery and mental rehearsals and those type of things.

And I actually switched my complete trajectory of my career. I wanted to be a defense attorney ever since I was little. And I gave up that. I finished the degree, but I ended up going another route, and it was studying the brain and how it performs best. So I went to grad school in that direction, and I actually tried to join every service, and I was denied by every service because of my head injuries. I mean, it made sense, but I always had this draw to the military.

I was in JROTC when I was in high school. Like, it was just, it felt like who I was. And then when I was denied, I kind of gave up on that aspect as well. I was like, well, I guess I'll work with athletes. But I went to a conference and it was while I was in grad school, and they were looking for people to work with the army. And the army had just started up their army center for enhanced performance. It stemmed out of West Point. And I got hired on. I actually left grad school early and I told them, I'll finish my dissertation while I'm there. And they're like, no, you won't.

Ten years later, I did end up finishing. It was a lot more delayed than expected, but I went to Fort Bragg, now Fort Liberty, in 2010, and that's where it all started. And I really fell in love with the field in that community because I was working with people I really respected and I respected the service. And it instilled this character based performance because my site manager was very much on the character side. So that's where everything got launched, was from head injuries to changing a career field to a conference. And then I was at Fort Liberty.

Jon Becker: Well, I think one of the things that, so we share a common friend that introduced us, who's in one of the world's most elite units, put it that way. And one of the things that he said when he first said, og, you've got to talk to Britney is he said, this is not psychology to make you forget how your mom acted. This is psychology to make your brain work function better. It started me on this deep dive about performance psychology.

I’m familiar with it from athletics, I’m familiar with it from racing cars and that. But it's a really interesting field, and I don't think that the majority of people, even in the tactical community, are aware how much effort us SOCOM is putting into building better warriors.

Brittany Loney: Yeah, they're putting a lot. They're putting their money where the mouth is. They started, gosh, probably before I even got to third group. I was actually the first performance psychologist with third group, and during that time, it was thor three. And there was no Potif at that time. And everything was just kind of fizzling upward of, you know, where this thing could go.

And then when Potif came, it went across the branches and it went across also the different disciplines of strength and conditioning, performance, dietitians, physical therapy, and then became cognitive performance. And then it built from there to spiritual performance and behavioral science and, yeah, it really, really expanded. And they're putting a lot of investment into that program.

Jon Becker: For those that don't know, what is Potif?

Brittany Loney: Preservation of the force and families, it is the performance, human performance, and also behavioral aspects of how do we preserve and enhance the performance of the force and then also including their families in that.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So the idea being build the best warrior, we can support them as best we can and try to make them last and also hopefully allow them to leave service and resume a normal life unbroken from what they've done.

Brittany Loney: Exactly. Exactly.

Jon Becker: I think it's probably not a bad idea for us to give a big picture look at your work and kind of what the objectives that you drive towards when you're working with a team or unit, what are the big picture objectives in what you're trying to do with each unit you work with?

Brittany Loney: Yeah, so we're a brain centered human performance program. You can think of cognitive performance in that way, whereas typically and historically, human performance programs put the physical body at the center. And it made sense, but we kind of flipped that a little bit, and let's put it the brain at the center. So what we're looking to do is build performance capacity through skill development.

And then we're looking at the mission, and how can we help someone acquire those skills in a way that they can apply the skills in a mission relevant manner? So we're always looking, what is the end state that this person is trying to reach? And then how do we help that person sustain reaching that performance capacity for 5, 10, 15, 20 plus years versus reaching that performance capacity and having only a couple years in them because of the op tempo and the stress and everything else that comes with the cost of this type of career.

Jon Becker: So from a building the skills standpoint, building performance capacity, let's push on that a little bit. Why don't we start with cognitive skills? What do you mean by cognitive skills?

Brittany Loney: So I would look at what does the person have to do? And like a strength and conditioning coach, if they're working with a football player, they will look at a running back very different than alignment in terms of physical capacity. They have to build up. And we do the same with the cognitive aspects. Some cognitive skills include observation and situational awareness, memory skills, dynamic decision making, critical and creative thinking, judgment, all the things that we tend to want our brains to do better. We call these the hard skills of our program.

So we're looking, what does this mission require, and how do we train that person in a cognitive way to get better at that, just like a strength and conditioning coach would do with the body.

Jon Becker: So I know that until not that long ago, we used to think that your cognitive capacity was your cognitive capacity. Right? Until UCSF finds neuroplasticity as a concept where you can reshape the brain. We used to think, well, if Britney's a 72 IQ, that's what she is, and that's what she's going to be. So this is all really new emerging science.

Brittany Loney: Yes, it is. I mean, it's past 15 ish years where we've realized the brain can change itself, and it changes itself with neuroplasticity and neurogenesis. It literally will create new brain cells. And change the chemical connection between those brain cells, and that impacts how we function and behave as human beings. A habit in and of itself is a series of connections that are now like four lane highways, and you no longer have to think about doing them.

But if you want to change a habit, how do you get the weeds to grow in and start developing a new trail system that you can start traveling over and over? And you, literally, when you're doing that, you are rewiring how the brain is functioning, and then lifestyle is impacting our neuroplasticity. I always give the analogy of heating up the brain, exercise, nutrition, sleep, make our brains more plastic, so that the cognitive training that we provide will actually take and take to a level that will show functional results on the battlefield.

Jon Becker: So when we're talking about, like, I think we tend to think of our cognitive abilities as kind of fixed, right? You don't think, oh, I'm going to teach myself to be more observant. But you can.

Brittany Loney: Yes, yes. If we couldn't, we'd be in trouble because, you know, whatever we're born with as babies, like, I don't know, I didn't come out of the womb a observational Jedi. I don't think anyone did. I think over time, we develop these cognitive skills even from the smallest thing. When you mention observation, our observation skills developed from the time we were a baby.

And if you think about putting a baby on the center of the floor, you could think of a niece or nephew or your own kids, and you've got the sunlight shining through the blinds, and it's moving a little bit, and the baby finds it very engaging, and you'll just see the baby watch the sunlight coming through on the floor.

But then if a loved one walks through the door, what do we tend to do? We reorient the baby. And actually, at that point, we're teaching the child how to observe the environment. What is more important than another thing? And our observation skills have developed not just from training, but also over our lifetime, according to what our values were and are currently.

Jon Becker: So it's funny, as you're saying this, I'm thinking of John Boyd's Ooda loop.

Brittany Loney: Yes.

Jon Becker: Right. Which is widely accepted tactical. You know, pretty much any tactical community teaches you to loop. And the funny thing about it that has never struck me until right now with this conversation, is the only part of that that we really focus on. Training is the action. Most of the time when we are training tactical units, we're training them to act. We're not training them to observe, to orient, or to make the decisions.

Brittany Loney: I would say until now, we have the programs and the science that backs it up, and it made sense to train only the action when we didn't know that the brain could literally change itself. But I think we're progressing in the tactical space, at least where I've been, and the organizations that I know of are starting to consider.

Yes. How do we train this? We can train this. We've seen the differences between the groups, and now they're starting to invest the time in the three steps that come before that action, which are actually the most critical steps, because those are the steps that are determining the action.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And from a tactical law enforcement standpoint, it's usually, it's usually not the action that gets cops in trouble or gets them killed. It's the three steps prior. It's the ability to orient and the ability to observe what's going on and to make the right decision. But yet we do tend to, especially in tactical law enforcement, focus on just, we're going to make the team shoot better, we're going to make them move better, but we don't tend to spend a lot of time on, we're going to make them think better, we're going to improve their sensory systems. So it's an interesting observation. Like I said, it hadn't hit me until we started talking about it.

Brittany Loney: Yeah. My dissertation was actually on dynamic decision making and developed a model based on research that was available at the time. And a lot of it is similar to the Ooda loop. The first step of the dynamic decision making model, and there's four steps total, is attention allocation. So think that's like, observe in the Ooda loop. So what you pay attention to relevant and irrelevant information will determine how you anticipate that situation unfolding and how you will anticipate responding to that situation.

So we allocate our attention, and that is something that's very trainable. That's where we spend most of our time, because that's where 76% of errors in situational awareness actually tend to happen, because the person primed the wrong mental model anticipated what was happening incorrectly, because they didn't have the full breadth of information available or they were actually considering irrelevant information in their decision making.

So then after we anticipate, our brain pulls up a series of responses that we have access to at that time. And for experts, it's between one and three. If you get more than that, you tend to go into over analysis in that second, and then we execute that particular decision and all of that is actually housed within what we call long term working memory.

And think of that, just what is the information in my head, the training and experience that I currently have access to. Now you have a lot of training and experience in your head, but you don't always have access to it. And what limits the access to the information in any given moment is what your internal environment is doing.

So think of this as your psychophysiological state, your mindset, your state of stress. All of that can actually degrade what mental models pulled up and the quality of the access to it. And really that's where we see a lot of movement in helping people with dynamic decision making is not only in attention control, but also in teaching someone the self regulatory skills that and seconds, they can get themselves from redlining and back to an area where they can take in the environment in a broad way and take in everything that is relevant and discard what is not and then get back on track with the right decisions.

Jon Becker: So let me just walk through a scenario then, because I want to kind of illustrate that in a couple of different ways. So I always use the analogy of a rattlesnake. I use it to explain debriefs. The first guy that found a rattlesnake was bit by the rattlesnake. If he didn't tell anybody. The second guy that found a rattlesnake also got bit.

But the first time he's bit by the rattlesnake, he doesn't recognize it's a rattlesnake. So maybe he picks it up thinking it's, you know, it's a friendly animal and it bites him. So now he knows rattlesnake and he has a paradigm for rattlesnake. And so much of tactical decision making is paradigm recognition. It's pattern recognition.

It's, you know, this is, this thing is long and cylindrical and has a diamond shaped head and a rattle on its tail. It's a rattlesnake. But if he walks in and looks at the rock next to the snake because his attention is focused on the wrong thing, he still gets bit by the rattlesnake. So that attention, focus. This first step of that is we have to be looking at the right things, the things that actually matter. Is that correct so far?

Brittany Loney: Yes.

Jon Becker: So then we've got to take it, we have to look at the right thing. So we're going to look at instead of the rock next to the snake, we're going to look at the rattlesnake and then we have to apply the paradigms or the patterns or the previous knowledge to recognize the threat for what it is. And then we have to make a decision on how to deal with the threat before we can even take action. I mean, that is observe, Orient, decide. Right? It's the beginning of the Ooda loop.

But I – All of that has to happen in the case of a tactical situation in milliseconds for us to be able to effectively neutralize a legitimate threat or not act on one that isn't a legitimate threat. The toddler with a squirt gun versus the hardened gang member with a Glock. Are both people with guns. They're just very different situations.

Brittany Loney: Yes, that's 100% how you explained it. And that also lends the importance of outcome based. And scenario based training is without that, if you're just training actions in isolation, then you never get to go through the Ooda loop. And with scenario based training, that's where you're truly creating those paradigms that you talk to. And then all the other experience on the street will factor into that.

And if you have a poor experience, if you don't do something to help override it in a way, then that can become your primary response in the next situation because it's primed and ready. So there's also mechanisms for when the experience in the field, actually, or on the street doesn't go right in training or in reality. How are you then coping with that? So then it doesn't keep happening, and that same mistake doesn't occur over and over.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it strikes me there that there's a couple. Without even get to getting to your own internal regulatory environment, there's a couple of potential training scars there. Right? If you've had a negative experience where you didn't do the right thing, you've now primed your brain to do the wrong thing again.

But also, if you've created training scars in the way you train. I think back there was a shooting. California highway patrol, I think, had been training. I think it was highway patrol. It was a state patrol organization. They had a shooting, and the officer drew his gun, fired two rounds that were ineffective, and put his gun away. And they went back and they said, well, why would he have put his gun away without reassessing? Well, because the way they trained is they fired two rounds and put their guns away.

And so when he defaulted to what he had to, the training scar he had created under pressure, that was exactly what happened. So it strikes me that if we're not really paying attention to the way we're training. We might actually be training bad responses and increasing the likelihood of an error.

Brittany Loney: Yes. This is where, if you've read on combat, where Grossman talks quite a bit about what the military did, and then I think he also did some work with police officers to help mitigate some of those training scars because they were noticing the same type of thing. Is this the automatic response was the thing that they trained the most – And usually what you train is what you experience more than in reality.

So, yeah, you can create unnecessary training scars. And it's not that you. You don't want to avoid making mistakes in training. I mean, you don't want to, like, intentionally go try to make one. But you also. That lends to the importance of how do you correct that mistake in training right after it has happened so it doesn't become the primary blueprint for that person, because you want to be in that stretch zone where failure may happen, because that's the only way you are going to get to that adaptive capacity, is training in that stretch zone. But that stretch zone is also where failure can be highly likely. It's just how does that training then be delivered so that we can make that a correction in terms of what the brain will refer back to in the future.

Jon Becker: Which is interesting, right? Because, like you, you become a better skier by falling down. And it is very easy. I remember when I first started racing cars, I had this morning, the first two days of testing were terrible. And I had this morning where I didn't go off the track. I felt like I was a God. I mean, I was. No problems, didn't go off track, didn't spin the race car. I'm like, I got this. And I walked in, sat down with my coach. He's like, how'd the morning go? I said, man, I nailed it. Like, I never went off track. And he goes, yeah, because you're slow.

And I said, well, what does that mean? And he said, being fast is being on the edge. That's the point. If you never are on the edge, you don't get any better. So we do, in training, need to push the limits. But then the next step is when we spin the race car. We need to debrief, do an actor after action, and actually learn the lesson. And I think that's a place that we tend to make a lot of mistakes. We make the mistake, but we don't come back and go, hey, you know, what happened? Why did it happen? How do we correct it?

Brittany Loney: Yes. And the thing that we've added into those debriefs are a mental rehearsal. You might not be able to replay that whole scenario and go through it again, but you've had your effective debrief. It's not then leave. You've learned your lesson. It's take the moment before you leave that debrief and do a mental rehearsal of you getting it correct. And we actually encourage people to do that about three times. It doesn't technically override the memory. It just helps to imprint the correction just as much as what the error had happened.

So that's what I would say needs to be added to debriefs. Our time for really quick doesn't have to be long and drawn out. A quick mental rehearsal of where did the critical error occurred, and have them rehearse getting that right.

Jon Becker: So I roll in, and I shoot. Don't shoot scenario and accidentally shoot a hostage. Obviously, we need to have a conversation about why I shot a hostage, but then step back and visualize yourself making the correct decision at least three times. Just run the scenario again and teach your brain, hey, this is the way it's supposed to look.

Brittany Loney: Yes. And with the focus on the attentional component, because when you're running it back in that shoot, no shoot, and you shot the hostage, you're probably seeing the exact situation that you just had, which is now known. And when you went into it, it was an unknown. And usually the root of that particular error of shooting the hostage is probably a sensory error, an attention error.

So that's where I would really make sure it's not just about going in and having the correction of. I don't pull the trigger on that particular person in the environment, but my attention is at the level of where I can pick that information up correctly. To not shoot the individual. Cause you don't know where they're going to be next time.

Jon Becker: It's funny. Same racing coach is in a track, and I'm struggling with a really high speed turn. It's, like 155 miles an hour. Turn. And the car is really on the edge at that speed, and it's scary, and you feel like you're going to lose it. And I'm going through it about 145. And he's like, it's 155 miles an hour. Turn, turn. And I said, yeah, no, it's 145. He goes, no, it's 155. I'll go drive it in your car and show you it's 155.

And we finished for the day, and he's like, okay, before tomorrow, what I want you to do is, before you go to sleep tonight, I want you to lay in bed and I want you to picture yourself driving that turn and looking down, and there's no speedometer in a race car.

But he's like, I want you to pretend there's a speedometer and I want you to look at it. And it says 155. Every time it says 155, pitch yourself there. Look at it. I'm like, yeah, okay, this is bullshit. This is never going to work. But I did it, like, five or six times, got up the next morning, went through the turn at 154 miles an hour and felt no different. And it was the first time that I was like, oh, this is. This isn't voodoo science. Like, this. This actually works.

Brittany Loney: Yeah, and it works if you work it. Sometimes people just, I'll go check the block and put in my three mental rehearsals. But, like, really do it hastily so there's a quality component to it. And if you don't truly give it a shot and, like, go all in. Yeah, you might not see the benefits because you're just going through the motions. And one of you ever got anything out of going through the motions in any task.

So, yeah, having that quality mental rehearsal and then also trusting yourself in that next moment to be able to be in that stretch zone. And actually, the stretch zone is also known as the adaptability corridor, and it is where you build adaptive capacity for being able to respond effectively in very dynamic, ambiguous environments.

Jon Becker: So talk to me. That was our second point. So you beautifully segued. Talk to me about adaptive capacity. What does that mean?

Brittany Loney: So there's really three different aspects to adaptability, and you have intellectual adaptability, which would be, can I effectively reorient my thinking based on new information that I didn't have when I initially made up my mind about something? And then we have interpersonal. Can I flex my communication and my interpersonal style to the situation at hand to be effective, even if it's not the dominant way I like to be? And then self regulatory would be another component. Are you able to regulate yourself so that you can react effectively?

And then, I know we didn't really speak about this, but there are two different forms of adaptability. There's proactive and reactive. A lot of times when we think about adaptability, we think about the reactive kind. Can somebody respond effectively to the changing environment? But actually, a lot of the ability to respond effectively happened in planning, and not that the plan was executed exactly as it is, because usually it's nothing, but the active planning actually prepares the brain and gives a mental blueprint that helps the person respond off of.

So it's not that the plan was the thing that worked. It was the active planning created additional adaptability because the person actually thought through those different courses of action as they were planning things out so well.

Jon Becker: That’s really interesting because you tend to think of planning as like, oh, yeah, we're just going to figure out how we're going to go there. I had never really thought about the fact that you, I mean, I guess in a plan you are rehearsing the operation, right. As we're thinking through what we're going to do, we are not only rehearsing what we're going to do, but we're also considering the contingencies.

Brittany Loney: Exactly. You're, if venting it right then and you're creating, you're starting to create the mental pathways for these if thens, even if that's not what you initially thought was going to happen. And maybe that wasn't the primary plan, but even if it was, subconsciously, you're actually starting to create your pace plan and get your alternative and contingency and emergency actions ready to go. Whether you were thinking you were doing that or not.

Jon Becker: You slipped in a term there that I think some people won't know, which is pace.

Brittany Loney: Yes. So it's the primary alternative. Who's the c. I just contingency. Contingency and emergency. And it's usually used with communication where you have your pace plan. But I think when you plan well, you actually start to create pace plans for various actions because you started to create these threads of different avenues, you could actually travel as the environment unfolds. What tends to happen, though, when people think the planning is just about the plan, they become married to the plan. And that's actually when you start to see some rigidity.

So I'm not saying, you know, the answer is always in the plan. The answer is always in the act of planning. Hopefully that distinction makes sense.

Jon Becker: Yeah. No, so simply the act of planning, right? It's kind of like education, right? Like you go through an educational process, like, you know, doing. I am never again going to use trigonometry, but using my brain to do trigonometry changed my brain. Right? It made my brain operate differently. They say in law school, you're not going to learn how to practice law, you're going to learn to think like a lawyer.

And I think it is that the process of planning is forcing you to go through those contingencies. It's funny because I've had the privilege of going out on ops with a lot of the world's most elite units. And the one consistent thing in the really good units is the level of planning and discussion and contingency planning is staggering. I sat through with a national level asset for another country, a European country, through their warm up brief and then their actual op.

And the brief was, here is the photograph of the local trauma center. Here's where you drive in. Here's what the emergency room looks like. I thought, man, this is a really high level of planning. But the more debriefs I hear, the more I find people don't know. They get there, they're not sure. And it's just, you're just kind of laying foundation for your brain to turn to when you, when you know, when an emergency happens.

Brittany Loney: Yes. And then I think you mentioned the part of the photographs and I think a large part of it, especially in ambiguous environments, is, yes, there's a ton of unknown. We already know that. But sometimes people use that as the cop out, not to plan. Well, there's just so much that's unknown. I'm not going to plan.

But planning is also about what are the knowns. Get an image of the little things. They might seem very little, but as you're learning the knowns and it might just be the layout of something, you're starting to actually degrade the stress response that's associated with so much unknown because you have something to fall back on.

And as the situations unfolding, your brain starts to tack things onto the knowns that you had from planning as well. So you're actually in some way reducing ambiguity. Actually, that is what you're doing by just those little things that are the knowns will go a long, long way.

Jon Becker: So we're reducing the number of variables like in a chaotic environment, right?

Brittany Loney: And anytime, even if you can reduce one, you're going to free up more cognitive load to adapt.

Jon Becker: Because all of those things, every unknown, when something goes sideways, every unknown is where the chaos comes from. And your brain is, we're talking through this. I think of a flashbang. The real effect of a flashbang is that your body all of a sudden has 8000 things to listen to and takes that minute to go, hold on, what the h***'s going on? And just stop everything. What's going to happen in a chaotic environment, right? Your brain is going to go, hold on, hold on, hold on, and try to solve for all those variables. So everything you can solve for your brain doesn't need to consider when things go sideways.

Brittany Loney: Exactly.

Jon Becker: That makes a lot of sense. So continuing then on kind of building capacity, you touched on interpersonally. What does that mean?

Brittany Loney: Interpersonal adaptability would be how you are behaviorally communicating doesn't mean you're changing your personality, because a lot of times people go, I'm not going to change who I am and this and that. You're really just flexing your outward demonstration of how you're communicating, whether it be voice, tone, volume, use of gestures, those type of things. So you're communicating in a way that one is effective for the situation.

So how you communicate in an emergency situation is very different from non-emergency. And sometimes we'll try to apply emergency communication to non-emergency situations, and then that's where everybody, you know, just terms that person a hole of the team.

So there is a distinction there, but then also having the wherewithal of the social awareness. And you can even go into the Ooda loop on this. You're having to observe and orient to that environment in a social manner to figure out a what is my best approach in this situation? That may either deescalate what the response has to be or at least keeps it from escalating one step further. So it's really adjusting how you are in that environment in terms of really emotional intelligence.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Well, I think you see this. You can look at any of the great catastrophic events from law enforcement that have driven national policy change. And George Floyd being the one that immediately comes to mind. Chauvin was emotionally way overmodulated and was still addressing the threat as though it was going to kill him, even though at one point, George Floyd is unconscious. So it is that recognizing that every situation requires a different response and being able to tune that response emotionally to the situation you're confronted with.

Brittany Loney: Exactly. It's really hard to interpersonally adapt when you yourself on a stress level, are incapable of modulating that because you're at such a heightened state. And in the example that you just gave, it almost sounds like you got stuck in act and didn't go back through that Ooda loop to observe and orient to know how.

Now, how do I respond? It was an action. That was the initial reaction that became the perpetuated action.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And I think that emotional state drives so much of our physiological state, too. Right? Like, it's the ability to adapt to varying physiological loads. Like, it always strikes me you hear a pilot whose plane is on fire, and they have trained it so long that they're on fire and barely going to make the runway, and they sound like they're reading a grocery list as they're giving commands, because they have built that skillset to control themselves emotionally. And it's always fascinating to me that you see people that have that adaptive ability in their emotions.

Brittany Loney: Yeah. And just if you look also at the time and simulators and, I mean, the expansiveness of being able to practice that emotional regulation in situations that were very close to what they also faced, I think that's critical as well. But when it comes to emotions and physiology, you really can't separate them. They drive each other. There's a reciprocal relationship. Our physiological state will drive our emotional state, and our emotional state drives our physiological state.

We know that there's a hormonal signature to every emotion, and we are always experiencing an emotion, whether we're conscious of it or not. And that emotion, there is no way you can extract emotion from decision making. It is impossible. We are emotional beings, and many times when I hear, I didn't make that decision on emotion.

As humans, we actually need emotion to be able to make decisions without emotion. We're actually horrible problem solvers because we don't know what to prioritize. So rather than looking at as something that degrades decision making, it's how can you regulate your emotional response? So it's in the place it needs to be so that you can actually make better decisions.

Jon Becker: So it's kind of a self regulatory component. It's controlling physiology and emotions and creating an environment where you're going to perform optimally.

Brittany Loney: Yes. And that's actually what we term a top down and a bottom up approach. We will teach everyone who comes through our training. The bottom up is the breath control, which most people by this point are very familiar with. You have box breathing. You have even five inhale, five second exhales. There's a whole host of different types.

And we use biofeedback to help someone train to see, well, what technique is best for me, because my technique that works best for bottom up self regulation for me is probably very different than yours, Jon. There's going to be some overlap, but we'll use the biofeedback to help inform that.

Jon Becker: It's a really interesting concept to think that us special operators are sitting around looking at heart rate and other biofeedback factors and learning the mechanism that works best to control their physiology and emotion. Like, it's – I think that it would surprise the majority of people to hear that that is a skill set that we're practicing. I mean, people hear breathing, but I don't think the majority of people believe it, but it sounds like in your work, you guys have not only not only believe it, you're relying on it heavily.

Brittany Loney: Yes, and we're using a top down approach, too. So we'll rely on it heavily, but without exclusion to the way that you interpret the situation matters. And we all have habitual ways of which we interpret the world around us. We create narratives, and we tend to overlay the same narrative across many situations. And in some situations, it's effective. However, in other situations, it might be highly ineffective. So we actually teach all of our operators, we call them the five critical perceptions, and I'll go through them.

But the important thing to remember is how you perceive the world outside of work influences how you perceive the world when you're in work. You can't have horrible perceptions and a non regulated stress response out of work and then go into work and expect everything to just click on. But those five are here now.

So that's about being present and process focused. It's not that you have to always be in the present focus, but in performance situations, that's where you need to be. And then after here now, we have as is, which is stripping our own narrative from the observations. We are usually the hero or the victim.

We're at the center of all of our stories, and we tend to connect observational facts together with our narrative, even though those things might have not been connected or have nothing to do with us. We are in a situation, and we have these observations that are factually correct. They're just observations. And then we overlay our inferences and our narrative.

So we actually teach people how to separate and know which is your narrative and which are the actual observational facts, and then teach them to see, you know, sometimes there's another explanation rather than your narrative. And we'll practice that outside of, you know, high performance situations, so that when they're in that moment, they can intuitively see that there's alternative explanations to things.

So then after, as is, we have as granted, which is about not fighting reality. And yes, sometimes I. The world does suck, actually. Many times there's suffering, there is pain. But many times we also add suffering beyond what we have to experience from that situation. And we start to think we deserve our or are entitled to a different reality than what exists for us now.

And that can actually create very much a chronic stress response, as people are just fighting reality. Because usually when they're fighting it, they're focused on all the things they can't control and that are out of their influence. And that just increases the overall stress response. So they enter a situation already at a heightened level of chronic stress, which makes the acute stress response easier to get out of control.

And then after, as granted, we have release, which would be releasing our attachments. And sometimes that attachment might be to perfection, and how to move on after a mistake. And then other times it might be releasing the attachment of a loved one, or even a situation or a job. It's seeing that there's power in impermanence. And without impermanence, it is hard to have joy. Yes, it brings us grief and a lot of other negative emotions, but it's also the only way we can experience joy. So we go over releasing and be able to move on from things.

And then the last one is effortless, virtuous action, which is living every day intentionally from your values and your virtue, very, very deliberately. So that when the crucible moments happen, where your character is put to the test, it has been practiced so much that that is your automatic response. So, yes, we have the breath work, but then we also really hone in on these five critical perceptions as a way to start perceiving the world. So that when the hard situations happen, those have been trained as well.

Jon Becker: Very interesting. Yeah, I want to talk. I want to come back to that when we talk about resilience a little bit, because I feel like that kind of all ties together. So pulling back to building performance capacity. So we had cognitive, we have adaptive capacity, which is the self regulatory, the interpersonal, the intellectual. And then what about stress tolerance? Talk to me about stress tolerance.

Brittany Loney: Well, that kind of feeds into the self regulatory. It's where we're teaching the person how to actually have more reservoir to deal with stress. So we talk about stress tolerance in terms of how stressed the person currently is. We call that actually stress expenditure. So how much am I putting towards this situation? And then there's a stress reservoir, and the reservoir is how much gas is left in my tank to continue dealing with situations that may be hard.

And the stress reservoir was actually our newest concept. And it came out of realizing that stress expenditure, or your stress level, didn't tell us the whole story about who performed well over time. And we were seeing that there were many people who could perform exceptionally well under high physiological stress responses. And we don't mess with that. If the person's performing well, making good decisions, that might be their optimal zone they need to function at.

But then we also started to look at, well, how much do they have left in the tank? If something else were to happen on this shift, how much reservoir do they have left to actually be able to deal with it? And we saw that those weren't always compatible. Those who performed really well under high stress, hey, they're still performing well. Sometimes they had a low stress reservoir, and if one more thing happened, it would have pushed them over that edge.

So we help people train both of those. How do you perform well under stress? And then how do you make sure you have more left in the tank should something unexpected happen that requires you to still be at that optimal performance level?

Jon Becker: That's really interesting, and we'll probably come back to that with resilience, too, because it is, you know, it's stress. You tend to think of stress like, oh, he's really good under stress, but he's really good under stress when he has a happy, healthy home life and he sleeps well and he's physiologically fit and, you know, he's not sick and his kids are healthy, is a very different response than he's in the process of getting divorced and hasn't slept in three days and drinks too much. And, you know, it is that I don't. I think we tend to view that with a very fixed mindset also.

Brittany Loney: I think it's starting to be viewed as part of the culture, and that's what I signed up for.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Brittany Loney: And I don't think it has to be. I know it's hard. I'm not minimizing how hard it would be to try to maintain everything, but I don't think the answer is, well, that's how it has to be. I think there is a solution out there that can be worked to. Maybe it can be a lower percentage of people who have to function that way.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's funny because to some degree, it becomes almost a self fulfilling prophecy. Right. Like, if you don't take care of yourself, you are more likely to find yourself in a situation that will stress your stress capability, that will drain that reservoir.

And then, you know, and the more you put yourself into that loop and you don't recover from the stress, it's almost like somebody who gets injured and continues to push hard with that injury. Like, it. It's never going to get better. You've got to heal it and you've got to refill the reservoir. And I think we tend to forget that.

Brittany Loney: Yeah. And I think. I'm glad you mentioned the home life because I think sometimes they're – The stress reservoir is really low. Maybe there are a few high stress things that happen on the shift and they dealt with them effectively, but then they have degraded the stress reservoir.

So now they're going home with an emptied reservoir. And then something happens that it might be relatively minor in the scheme of things, but that's the thing that pushes the person over the edge. And then there's this outburst and they're just not handling it well.

So it's, what can we do to help shut down after each high stress event? Because then you're kind of refilling the reservoir little by little. Not fully, but little by little. So you have more at the end of the day.

And then the most work that I've actually done that people have found highly effective are transition home routines. And a lot of that is, let's pour a little bit more into that stress reservoir. So when you get home, you have more capacity and you're not just drained in a shell of a person at that point.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's funny, I started implementing, like, a transitional. You know, my drive is very short, it's a couple of miles, but I've started implementing, like, a transitional habit when I'm coming home. And when I interviewed, I interviewed one of the guys from BRI that was involved in Bataklan.

And one of the most profound things he said at the end of the interview was that when a military operator, I mean, basically Bataklan is a military operation. It's got the level of death and destruction that a military operation would.

But he said, the hard part is when you're deployed militarily, you come home, it takes you a few days to get home, and you're stopping here and you're doing this. And then you get home. He says, I came home from that event and my family was like, well, what happened? And he goes, it had been a ten minute drive. I just went to bed. I couldn't talk about it. It's too much.

And I think we, especially in law enforcement, tend to forget that the transition between those things doesn't really provide an opportunity in many cases, to refill that reservoir. And that reservoir cannot be filled with bourbon.

Brittany Loney: Yeah. And I think that is a big distinction between military and police, is they're also living in the environment where the things have happened. So there's the constant triggering of now there's this extra low lying stress that's there. Maybe it's not even low lying at times, especially if it's a recent event and you're on your day off and you go by that area and it's like, just triggers you.

And then there's that stress response continuing to kind of hit at that reservoir. So I actually think for police officers, because there's not the same amount of transition time as military members get. And there's, I mean, military gets change of environment, too, which I think is huge. Not to minimize their experience, but I think that makes it even more critical that police officers and other first responders are living who are having to transition so quickly have something that helps them fill that reservoir just a little bit more.

I know it won't get capped off, it won't get full at the end of that day, but what is that thing that you're doing to help you transition so that your family doesn't always get the worst of you, so you don't always feel so depleted completed by the end of a shift, what can help fill that cup? A little bit might not be optimal, but a little bit is better than nothing.

Jon Becker: Well, that kind of brings us to the fourth pillar of building performance capacity. Right? Which is this idea of high performance habits. Talk to me about that a little bit.

Brittany Loney: The high performance habits, I think are just this series of all the different things that we talk about, from mindset to stress tolerance to even intellectual adaptability. It's creating habit out of them. And how do you work these techniques, tools into systems that are done consistently over time? It's not, none of these things are a one time thing.

And then you've summited and you're done and you never have to do it again. All of them have to be habits. Now, there's going to be some that tools that you'll use in certain situations and not in others. But really high performance is a series of decisions that you consistently make over a long period of time that help sustain you. So it's changing the mindset from implementing a tool to creating systems and processes that become habits in your life.

Jon Becker: Okay, so we've kind of talked about building performance capacity. I tend to think of this in like, we're going to build the operator, we're going to make him shoot well, we're going to make him move well. You know, we're going to give him the ability to make decisions, but then there's also the ability to access those skills and capabilities, you know, when the flag goes up. So talk to me a little bit about that.

Brittany Loney: So that starts in skill acquisition as well. And I make that distinction because many times in our field we'll have people come to us and they want the tools for the mission, for the game, for the shift, whatever it is. And I really want to make certain that those habits are acquired away from the situation that really matters and then the ability to transfer those into the moment that really matters. That's where you actually start to see the magic happen. But you don't get to application without putting in the time to actually build up the performance capacity.

And in our field, many people think that they can do that. Like, let me just jump to, you know, using this when I need it the most. And what we actually teach people to do is progressively start applying those habits, the tools, techniques, procedures, everything they were learning and building the capacity, and will start to shift that to, how does that work in this specific mission, in this specific task, in this shift, whatever the situation might be?

So we actually start to get into more scenario like integration of the skills and then start to build into, okay, now it's the mission and you're ready to apply it. So it's very progressive, as any skill would be. When you learn how to shoot. You learn how to shoot where there's not many distractions and you have one task in front of you. Same here.

But then you don't get to the point where you can navigate a shoot house effectively without having done that. So that's really what the application comes down to. You've put in the reps to build the capacity, and you're shifting from what we call a training mindset, which is very analytical. You're really looking for those little things to fine tune all through the training. Almost a bit of a perfectionist mentality there.

But when it comes to application, it's a trusting mindset that will help someone kind of be in that zone that you hear a lot of people talk about. When everything was flowing, the decisions just seemed to be right. The environment slowed down. That's because the person was able to trust themselves and turn off analytical mode.

So when we get to actually living the performance capacity that they've built, a lot of our work is actually around trusting the performance capacity that they've been able to build and not interrupting it from happening at the level that they've built it, which is what most people do, is we have this very high potential, and we interrupt it with over analysis.

Jon Becker: Yeah, paralysis by analysis, as I like to refer to it. It's interesting because I interviewed the privilege to interview Earl Plumlee, who's the first special forces group recipient of the Medal of Honor. And Earl was involved in a just horrific situation that I still to this day, don't understand how he survived. And his performance was unbelievable. But when you hear him talk about the events Earl is an extremely humble guy. It was one of the funniest interviews I've ever done. I mean, he's describing grenades bouncing off of his chest. Something hit me, and I was like, that's not my grenade. It doesn't have a pin in it. You hear the way he describes it.

And his mind was so far past the actions he was taking. It was so far like he describes the recognition that he was too focused on shooting because he started to see the brass coming out of his gun. And his brain was like, okay, I need to back off because I'm too focused on my front sight. And it was just this. You got the impression that so much of that performance came from his ability to disassociate from all of the skills he had learned and focus solely on the application of the skills. And it ties very much to what you're talking about.

Brittany Loney: And it's this complete immersion in the moment, and nothing else is entering the mind or taking up any part of the brain's load at that time. This complete presence is essentially what you're training people to be able to do. And when you get into over analysis mode, during execution, that needs to be trusted. You are actually using parts of the brain that need to be offloaded to be able to perform in the environment that they're in. And then trust that you'll. You've intuitively trained yourself to respond effectively in those situations.

And that's where, when we go back to those five critical perceptions we talked about earlier, usually it's one of those five things going wrong that causes us to actually interrupt our performance. So here now is all about the presence in the process. Many times, people are overly focused on the consequence or the outcome, and they forget pieces of the process and the foundations and the fundamentals and just being in the moment to be able to respond to. They're on fast forward on what's going to happen because of this or what could happen in this situation.

So we have to go back to controlling the thought piece to keep us in the present moment and really immersed in that environment. And we do a lot of that actually through pre performance routines. Or in this case, it would be like a pre-shift routine where the person is getting themselves into that optimal psychophysiological state. It could be through music, it could be through breath control, through the thought component.

Everyone kind of has their unique way to get themselves where they need to be mentally and physiologically to be able to perform well. That's really where those moments start, application of them, because that's what allows you to start trusting.

And it's also if you find yourself too self focused in those moments of execution, either you're ruminating about your past mistake or you're just, what am I going to do? What am I going to do? Bring it outward, either on the situation or on someone else. Service to others, those who are around you. And it's really, really hard to interrupt your own performance when you're not focused on yourself.

So we actually call trusting mindset is very much an ego less state of mind in training. The ego can drive someone to be better, whereas when it comes to performance, the ego can drive someone to be worse a lot of times. So you have to transcend your ego to be fully immersed.

Jon Becker: And it's interesting because you talk about performance rituals and like, you see this in professional sports all the time, right? You see the Olympic diver or the Olympic track athlete that stands there with their eyes closed, you know, or, you know, or the gymnast that you can see them mentally rehearsing their routine or they're listening to music. Like, performance psychology is used widely in sports, but is not totally made the transition to this application.

And it is, you know, like you said, establishing their right mindset. Moving into an operation in the right frame of mind is where that hello state comes from. It's where that, you know, you know, LeBron James, you know, transcending the game or Michael Jordan or, you know, Tiger Woods or any of the people that we regard as just, you know, Tom Brady performing way above their, you know, what you expect them to do.

And it is that ability to just ignore the fact that there's 5 seconds left on the clock, ignore the fact that it's the fourth quarter, you're on the verge of losing the Super Bowl, and focus on the fact that you need to throw one pass really well.

Brittany Loney: Yes, that's a great analogy. And sometimes I hear in the tactical space of, well, I don't have time to do that. It's not about having to be long and drawn out, because I think sometimes we see these long rituals of athletes thinking it has to be the same. It doesn't. It's just about having momentary, we actually call them micro resets.

And that's actually what most of our operators use are these micro resets that keep their neurophysiology from getting out of control. It doesn't necessarily have to be pinpoint on this optimal state. That's all the time. It just has to be within your control and practiced over time. And then those micro resets, they work in one breath. It's not this ten minute, five minute, one minute routine. Sometimes it's one breath that recenters you.

Jon Becker: So give me some examples of the kinds of things that you're teaching for micro resets, like what are guys doing as they're stacking on a door to prep themselves. What is an example of micro resetting?

Brittany Loney: A lot of the micro reset will be around breath. And then usually one very brief statement they'll say to themselves that has a meaning in terms of helps them get outside themselves or helps them get in the present moment. And it's different for everybody what that statement will be. But usually it's around a one to three breath routine that then ends in one statement that helps them get in that right frame of mind.

Jon Becker: Very interesting!

Brittany Loney: And what we say with that three breath reset, the first breath, especially if, let's say you're still in your vehicle and you've got a like a brief moment you can take. The first breath is to get you back in the present. It's not necessarily to be controlled. Breath one is let me reorient. Where are my feet? Where are my hands? Where am I? Like just reorient, get present the second breath. You're actually now starting to get more in that self regulation. You're using the exhale to actually calm you down. That's really where our relaxation response gets a bit more activated, is on that exhale.

And then breath three is an orientation to what is my next action or intention? How will I enter this situation? And that is the base technique that most of our people will adapt off of to create the one that works for them in their situations.

Jon Becker: That's really interesting. And I guess there's also probably an underlying habit component here. Right? Like the things that you're doing that are preconditioning you to perform well.

Brittany Loney: Yes. And what should happen is you no longer have to really think about doing these things. These three breath resets and training should be practiced with training. It's not something you reserve for the performance moment. They start to become part of how you perform. And actually a lot of the research goes into when you learn self regulation skills with technical and tactical skills, they actually become encoded as one memory.

So when you do the technical or tactical thing, the self regulatory skills actually get primed with it and you do those all part of it. So what we want to end up getting to is a state where self regulation and cognitive control are habitual ways of operating that no longer take your thought away from the situation. Anything, when we're taking your thought away from the situation, even for a moment, we are taking your situational awareness.

And that's why for me, the building, the performance capacity is so important because I don't want you to go out and try all these techniques in the heat of the moment because you're going to lose situational awareness doing it. They should become part of the way that you operate.

Jon Becker: Yeah, but it's interesting, you raise a really interesting point there, which is that the ability to control your internal regulatory environment and the, the hard wiring of these, these habits and hard wiring of these techniques, you're freeing up cognitive capacity for situational awareness.

Brittany Loney: 100%. That's what you're doing, and you're actually increasing your capacity for it. Because when you're under super high suboptimal state of stress, I'm not talking the effective hypervigilance. I'm talking you are now out of control in terms of your responses. You actually shrink your cognitive load, what you can actually take in.

So in many ways, that self regulatory skill is not only reducing the cognitive load that's being used, but it's actually increasing the capacity you have available to use.

Jon Becker: Yeah. One of the example comes to mind, which is one of the shootings that we debriefed. When you watch the body worn camera, one of the officers who just kind of came upon the problem was not part of the team, but arrives on scene right after two officers have been shot and that suspect has been shot, just starts walking around a field. You watch the body worn camera and you just see them just walking around a field. They're doing nothing effective, just kind of walking around the area kind of in squares.

And, you know, in the process, the debrief is like, well, why? What are they doing? And everybody said, I don't know. And it strikes me that what they're doing is they're so overwhelmed by events that that's what they have. They have the ability to walk around in a square. And like, you've, you've moved down the cognitive Maslow triangle. Right? You've lost the ability to perceive anything beyond just, just walking around in a square.

Brittany Loney: Yeah. And you also reduce your responses that you have available to select from. And I don't know why the walking in squares came up. That would be interesting to actually explore why it wasn't that. But they couldn't get out of that loop because that was the only available response they could select from in that moment, because the level of stress shrink that accessible knowledge to where that was the only thing available.

Jon Becker: Which I guess is part of a big part of what we talked about in building capacity, is building that stress tolerance. It's building as we've moved away from stress academies for law enforcement and we've had, you know, kind of move to an environment where, you know, well, we don't want to yell at people, and we don't want to make them tired, and we don't want to harass them. We're doing ourselves a great disservice because we're setting people up to make them more likely to be overwhelmed, like, we need to be stressed in training.

Brittany Loney: Yeah. Stress inoculation has been proven over and over to be an effective way to teach somebody how to increase their stress tolerance has to be done effectively. Because one of the things that I don't think many people realize is, let's say yelling is the stressor in my training, but then in my operating environment, let's say, the propensity for yelling, it's probably low for whatever this task is, just for the sake of example. I know it's not always low, but the stressor, let's say, is time in my real operating environment.

But I was trained being yelled at, and then, oh, wait, why can't you transfer that stress inoculation? You could perform well being yelled at. Why aren't you transferring it to being able to do it in less time? Different stressors have different effects. We inoculate two stressors as they're presented. If I get better at performing with people yelling at me in the field, I'll be better when people are yelling at me. I won't necessarily be better when other stressors are presented.

So, yeah, stress inoculation is funny, is we have to really be specific about the stressors, what are most likely to be experienced out in the field or on the street. And then those are the stressors that should be progressively increased, not all at once, but it is progression. So the person stays in that stretch zone, that adaptability corridor, and builds adaptive capacity and stress tolerance tools in conjunction with each other.

Jon Becker: So, in a tactical environment, you know, your day job and my client's day job, yelling at you is maybe not the best stressor. Maybe it is time compression. It's distraction. It's like, give me some examples. If you were building a training curriculum for a SWAT team, what are the kinds of stressors you want to apply versus don't want to apply?

Brittany Loney: I would look and I would meet with the people who are on, let's say, the SWAT team and I would say what are the stressors that tend to be present most often? And then also what are the unexpected ones that tend to throw you off? I get kind of debrief them with that. Then I would backwards plan the training to progressively amp up the stressors that are almost always present and then also insert an unexpected manner.

The ones that tend to throw them off that don't always happen, but they are unexpected and can throw them off. That's how I would do it. I'm not saying that yelling is always wrong. If there's yelling in the performance environment, there should be yelling in the training environment. They should just be mirror each other as much as feasible and possible in that training environment. So yeah, I would just meet with the people who are out there doing the job and then work with them to backwards plans those similar stressors in a progressive manner.

Jon Becker: You know what's interesting about that though is, I mean, in my career I've attended over 1000 debriefs in the last 38 years. I've been through 1000 plus debriefs. And I've interviewed a lot of people and worked with a lot of teams that have had shootings.

And it's interesting as you're saying that what I'm thinking of are the things that people report back. What they describe as traumatic about these operating environments is often not somebody shooting at them. It's kids being present. It's fire alarms going off, it's sprinklers going off, it's bodies being present or the smell of blood. It's things that they aren't exposed to in a training environment that seem to imprint very deeply.

Brittany Loney: Yes, and that makes sense because the unexpected can be extremely stressful in and of itself. And then now you add the component of, there's such an emotional component about around children being present in any stressful environment. So then now, you know, in an officer's mind, in that situation, now there's children present. I haven't trained that. Let's say this is a novice level officer. That would be extremely traumatic because they, in their mental model, they think children shouldn't be here.

So in a way they actually start fighting reality a little bit in that moment. And this is where we go into that, you know, as granted, like this is how the environment's unfolding. You can't fight the fact that a child is now present here. You have to deal with that fact and accept it to be able to move on.

So, yeah, I think you're 100% right because the unexpected from a survival mechanism those imprint and are more stressful simply because they're unexpected. So the more we can insert them and we don't have to think of them all because there's no way we ever will. But there does have to be an element of that in training where it's not working out exactly as you anticipated it working out. There's an adaptive component that they have to almost problem solve around or emotionally cope with.

Jon Becker: And I think it's easy to overlook in training. Right? It's easy to overlook. Like, it's complicated to plan, you know, unexpected in training. Right? It's complicated to spray your guys with sprinklers. It's complicated to have loud music. It's complicated to, you know, have things happen that are unexpected.

It's, you know, I think in terms of medical response and the teams that I've seen that have performed at the highest levels of medical response are the teams that integrated it into their training all the time. Somebody got shot in every training exercise, practically, and you had to now put a tourniquet and move them.

And you look at the teams that do that and then when it happens, they're surgical, they're deliberate. They don't even emotionally modulate with it. It's just something that we trained. And I think it really speaks to training designed for teams to throw chaos and irregularity and unexpected things into training on a regular basis. So when it does show up, it doesn't over modulate everybody on the team instantly.

Brittany Loney: Yes, and it is hard to think of how, you know, to plan that in there, but maybe the goal ends up being one unexpected think thing every two or three scenarios or something like that, to where it's not overwhelming for the person who's planning the training, but it's also at least addressed to some level. And I think the mindset around training has to change to being in stretch zone moments. The point of training is not to be perfect on every reiteration.

And I think sometimes situations are designed for success, and I'm not saying designed to get a gotcha and design it for failure, but it has to design to get the person out of their stretch zone. A successful training isn't one where every single person walks away and did the right thing. That just wasn't a challenging training. In my viewpoint, everyone was in their comfort zone. Great!

But really, how are you going to build the adaptive capacity? You have to train in that stretch zone, but you do have to have moments where you go back to the comfort zone for some confidence. But that shouldn't be where you're living.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I think that's an extremely important point. Right, is that it is. Training is, you know, it's not designed to make you fail, but training is designed to test the edge of your ability. And if it's not testing the edge of your ability, it's like going into the gym and doing bench press with ten pounds. You're not going to get stronger every time you lift. It's got to be right on the edge of man. This is almost too heavy.

Brittany Loney: Exactly. Maybe not every time you lift, because then you might go into over training, but you definitely have a systematic progression. And I think that's the same when you look at tactical training, there's a systematic progression. And I've been in training environments where they were living in their stretch zone for ten months straight. And, I mean, these are highly experienced people just living in their stretch. It's hard.

So I do think there has to be this element of, like, you're living in your stretch zone, but then you come back a little bit to top off that stress reservoir, and then you go back live in your stretch zone so that you can actually increase the capacity of that stress reservoir over time.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I mean, you're an ultra runner. I'm an iron med distance triathlete. Like, you know, people go, man, you're already, you did an iron man. You're fit for the rest of your life. No, you stop being fit. The day of iron actually arguably stopped being fit a couple of weeks before Ironman, but, like it is not. You know, you're driving towards a peak with those kinds of events, and that's not what we're looking for in a tactical environment. We're looking for an optimal level of performance, not a peak level of performance. So there's got to be this kind of train recover, train recover mindset.

Brittany Loney: 100%.

Jon Becker: Which also, I think, goes into our third point, which is resilience. It's longevity and resilience. And how do we not only build good operators, but build good operators that are going to last 20 years? I know you've done a lot of work in this area, and I like to just press on resilience a little bit. Like, what? What? Give me the buckets of resilience.

Brittany Loney :So we've got physical, which would be exactly what it sounds like. So your ability to recover from injury also avoid it because sometimes we do just over train, or we get ourselves in situations that we don't need to be in sometimes due to decision making, and then maintaining that physical capacity and how we train as we age has to change as well. You know, how we train at 25 is not going to be the same thing that keeps us uninjured at 45.

So there's the physical component, the cognitive component on do you retain the cognitive skills at the same level, at least if not even higher than when you entered the force? And when I'm talking about that, that's your observation skills, your memory, your decision making, creative and critical thinking, your ability to mitigate your own biases, those type of things. And then the emotional aspect, in terms of managing chronic stress, having emotional stamina, to where you can keep going in a way where you're coping effectively. I think people keep going in a way that's coping ineffectively.

And then at some point, they hit a thing where they just can't keep going. And then the last one we've got is that spiritual and philosophical aspect, which I think is usually underrepresented when talking about resilience. And this is what grounds you. A tower only rises as deep as its foundation. And sometimes that tower has grown and it almost gets lifted out of its foundation. We have to always reground ourselves in our why. What is our purpose beyond ourselves?

And that can be the tribe, the brotherhood, the sisterhood. It can be the purpose of serving whatever that may be. It is systematically grounding yourself, not just saying the words, but truly feeling that sense of purpose. And then I am a huge fan of stoicism in terms of how it teaches people to think about really hard situations. The Romans did go through a lot of hard times, and I think through that they've left a body of philosophy that tells us how to survive and thrive in those hard times.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's interesting because you talk about spirituality, your spiritual and philosophical. For you, that could be your religion. It could be, yes, but it doesn't have to be. It can be grounded in what Simon Senec called the why. What your – why is – It could be grounded in just your philosophical approach, but there has to be kind of that, you know, philosophical component to your existence that allows you, again, to refill the well periodically.

Brittany Loney: Yep, it's checking up on that foundation. Are there cracks in it? And I really think the spiritual component, whether it's religion or not, and I personally am not a highly religious person. I'm highly spiritual and philosophical. And it's that grounding in the why, in the values and a purpose outside of myself.

And I do think there's a mindset to the spiritual component as well. But we have to stay connected to that I think once we become disconnected, we become disconnected to others as well. I think those two tend to go hand in hand.

Jon Becker: Yeah. One of the things I teach when I teach culture centric leadership is the organization. Any organization, to have a correct culture, has to have a why, and the why has to resonate, and it has to resonate with everybody in the organization. And the why, generally speaking, has to be about people like we – It's as much as we think, oh, I'm motivated by success. I'm motivated by money. You know, the people that find success in money and are empty inside afterwards. It's because there wasn't that connection to humanity.

And I think that that connection, you know, in the case of a tactical unit, may be the brotherhood, but it is finding that purpose and making sure that everybody is agreeing on that purpose and that they all have a why, even if it's not exactly the same. They all have a why that they come back to.

Brittany Loney: Yeah. And I even think revisiting it together is helpful. I know it sounds kind of soft or whatnot, but when you can get a group of people to talk about the purpose of what they do at a profound level, that runs deep. It's not just reflecting on it yourself. It's also, how can you bring others into that purpose, which is the role.

Jon Becker: You know, one of the primary roles of leadership. Right? Like that is my job as a CEO, is to create culture. It's to give everybody the why – Like, what does the organization exist for and why, you know, why are we here? And making sure that as an organization, we are remaining grounded in that why? Because I think that the loss of that allows us to kind of go adrift.

Brittany Loney: Yeah. And there's a term, I forget who termed it operator drift within the military community. And it's this slow drift that happens without even people noticing because it happens so subtly over time. And, you know, it might be where, you know, one drink a night becomes two drinks a night becomes three drinks a night becomes. And it just progresses very slow, where no one is noticing how far off a person is from their baseline of who they are and how they used to be. Because it's happening so slow, they keep forming a new normal.

So we never have this drastic comparison point. And then once it kind of drifts too far, it's a lot harder to bring them back in. But that's when they really need to be brought back in. But how do we notice that drift before it does get to that point? And that's where I think it's checking on your tribe. It's those little calls here and there when you're thinking about that person who may be going through a tough time.

And that, I think even a role for different things like biofeedback to see, okay, really, what is the state of my nervous system? That's essentially what it's telling us. And then that can be one marker of physiological and even some emotional aspects will play into that. How's the person sleep?

All of these over time, it paints a picture and tells a story, and I think we just need to listen to it before something catastrophic happens. And it's usually when something catastrophic happens that everybody is now attuned and listening, but it's because that drift happened so slowly, we didn't see it. But in hindsight, we see it very clearly.

Jon Becker: Well, it's tragic, right? It is amazing. I mean, both of us are dealing with soft units and tier one units, and it's amazing how many of our nation's best warriors, people that we have deified, lose their way towards the end of their careers and leave their units in disgrace because of drinking problems or because of extramarital affairs. It is terrible how many of them are ending their lives with suicide. You talk to any of the tier one units, and the majority of them have lost more people to suicide than they have to combat.

Brittany Loney: Yeah.

Jon Becker: And it's just that little bit of drift.

Brittany Loney: Yep. And it's so subtle. And we have to really pay attention to the small things, because if we wait for the big thing, it is going to be the big thing. So what are the small things that each organization, each leader, each officer, each military member can start to. Okay, here's the thing I'm going to look for in my buddy. Like, here's their baseline. Here's how they used to be when I met them. And really take the time to think, okay, how did that person. How were they when I met them?

Okay, you're seeing that drift a bit more, and then everyone's going to have their unique way. They want to be brought back in. But sometimes it's just being asked and seeing that people will rally around you, that helps that person come back into the purpose. It's a purpose in the tribe. They really matter.

Jon Becker: Well, I think from a, you know, from an individual standpoint, it's also surrounding yourself with people who will check on you. It's surrounding yourself with people and giving them permission. You know, for me, this is. I've been married for 34 years. That is a big function that my wife performs of saying, hey, like, dumbass, you're working too hard. Like, you need to slow down. You're not sleeping enough. You know, you start to act like a jerk, and then taking the moment to go, okay, hold on, don't get angry. Don't react to this. Really assess where I am here and allow. Allow the tribe to pull you back into the village before they have to throw you out of the village.

Brittany Loney: Yeah, yeah, that's powerful.

Jon Becker: So one more area. One last area I'd like to kind of touch on here is, and I've heard you describe it as building your armor, you know, building the mechanisms of resilience. Let's kind of just walk through, you know, I've heard you describe it as physical, you know, kind of self, which is, you know, kind of emotional, and then external. Why don't we start with physical? How do I build my physical? Well, actually, before we go there, talk to me about how resilience is built. Bottom down, bottom up, top down. Like, explain that to me.

Brittany Loney: It's built both ways, bottom up and top down. And that's where I talked about the breath control and these physiological methods. And some of this bottom up will be sleep, physical movement, nutrition. This is happening at a physiological level. So when I say bottom up, I'm speaking physiological to brain. And then when I say top down, it's thoughts downward that actually start to affect physiology.

So I think we build it both ways. And the way that we actually have this pictured is in a pyramid, and at the base is the physical self. We have three relationships, and those three relationships are physical self and others. And our physical self is at that base. And that's movement, not just exercise. But how are you just moving around on a daily basis, or are you sedentary most of the time?

There's a huge body of research right now on being sedentary and how that leads to various degradations in capacity, whether it be physical, cognitive, or emotional exercise, which is, you know, getting whatever it is that your required dose may be, and being more intentional about it. Sleep and nutrition. And I think when you look at the OP tempo of many tactical communities, they don't seem in alignment with being able to take care of the physical self.

So I think we see either it be from trauma or from the perceived lack of time. I think sleep is one of the first things that starts to go. And if I'm looking at any operator for drift, that I think is, it's a very early signal. It's not like something's going to happen because I think the majority of people aren't sleeping well, but I do think it's one of the things that can lead to other downstream effects. So I would prioritize.

Okay, how is that person optimizing their sleep if you can't get more, let's work on quality. If you can get more, let's figure out how and let's take care of the root problem. If you're not sleeping, you probably will stop exercising and you will probably throw nutrition out the window. They kind of come in pairs.

So we look at optimizing all of those and working within the person's schedule. Identify even short times. Maybe you don't have time for a 30 or 45 minutes workout, but maybe you have time for a ten minute bit here and then a ten minute here and then maybe another 10 minutes later. It's just figuring out within that person's OP tempo, how can we get in at least a half hour of total physical activity, whether that happens all in one dose or nothing, that's going to kind of be up to the op tempo in the context.

So really working within the reality of that person's environment versus like here's the optimal thing to do for sleep. You need 7 to 8 hours and right away they throw it out because it's like, well, I can't do that. So thanks. You're of no help. So we're looking, how do we meet them where they're at and optimize what we can and then with the self. Did you have something, Jon?

Jon Becker: Yeah, yeah. Let me ask you a question. We tend to think of like, okay, I have a very physical job. You know, I work construction. Oh, that's my exercise. But I think you would probably argue that there's a whole emotional component to exercise that is not met. So, if you're an operator and you're training all day and you're doing movement and all that might be meeting your movement quotient, but it may not be meeting your exercise quotient.

Brittany Loney: Exactly. Yeah. We actually separate movement and exercise because, yes, if you have a physical job, you are getting your movement, but are you getting your exercise where your heart rate is at an elevated level for X amount of time and you're doing strategic things to build the foundations of physical movement from strength to endurance, whatever it might be, that would be best for your job. But to say you're in shape because you're moving through the day, that is not accurate because they affect the body in very different ways, and both are needed.

Jon Becker: And from a, you know, I probably five or six years ago, started to really take sleep seriously. You know, cold bed, cold room, dark windows, you know, no caffeine, deep sleep. And it was unbelievable how it affected everything else. Like, you know, your blood work, your weight, your, you know, how you think, how much energy you have during the day, like, yeah, I think it's very easy to undervalue sleep as kind of the anchor. And Matthew Walker's book that says, basically that's when the repair work takes place. And if you're not sleeping, you're not repairing, you're just gradually degrading.

Brittany Loney: Yeah. And that same for the brain. Many times we think it's for the body, but sleep is actually even more important for the brain. Obviously, it's important for everything, but it is literally the only time the brain is able to regenerate the damage that it's done. And through every single day, we have micro traumas in our brain, and we usually don't think about that, but just in the same way as we use a muscle, and over time, we'll actually start to get microtrauma in the muscle, then it repairs itself, and then it gets bigger. I mean, that's how, essentially, muscle is built. The same is true of our brain.

And the only time it can do that, rebuilding and that regeneration is during sleep self and each stage of sleep. I could nerd out forever on this, but each stage of sleep actually has an important function. I think a lot of times we're chasing deep sleep, and it's at the expense of some other stages. And many times, especially with those who are chronically sleep deprived, they're going into REM earlier than they normally would because there's an REM rebound that happens with chronic sleep deprivation.

So, no, you're not getting the level of deep sleep because you're an REM, because your brain's actually really smart and it's trying to make up for the REM that you've been missing. So I think it is important to realize, yes, deep sleep is important, but so are all the other stages.

And when we start to use these wearables and rely on them to tell us our quality of sleep, many of them, especially using the optical sensors, are not going to be highly accurate. The sleep quantity, time is likely accurate for most of them, but the sleep quality, it's not. And I see people actually start making significant adjustments to things that were actually working because they think they're not getting deep sleep, because the watch is telling them that.

And I'm like, well, how do you feel? Well, I feel fine. Like, you need to go with how you feel more on that piece when it comes to the sleep quality, because they can, I have seen it lead people astray and even get overly anxious about not getting quality sleep because their watch is telling them that they're not, but really they are.

Jon Becker: Yeah, that's one of the – There's an upside to gamifying things, which is it focuses your attention and makes you, you know, change habits. But the downside to gamifying things is that you could actually become, you know, too obsessed with it. You see people with diet where they become orthorexic, where, like, it's. It has to be, you know, oh, man, I didn't get a purpose. I had five too many calories today. And, like, the same is true with sleep. Like, it's – You have to enjoy it. Like, it can't be, but it.

But it's also, I think that people under undervalue that, you know, Ambien does not produce normal sleep. You know, a pint of bourbon does not produce normal sleep. You know, eating right before you go to bed does not produce normal sleep. Like, there's all these things related to sleep hygiene that we tend to forget and then not understand why the next day we're foggy or we're not moving as well, or we don't think as well.

Brittany Loney: And I'm glad you mentioned that there are positive things. I'm not completely anti wearables and whatnot, but it's being smart about how you're using it. If it's changing behaviors in an effective way, go ahead. If you're starting to change things that are working because you think it's not working, because your wearable is telling you, that's where you might want to get a second opinion on that aspect.

But, yeah, the value of sleep, it really can't be overstated. And I think people are tired of hearing about it. But I also think that it is the anchor, like you called it. I love that word for it because I think it anchors every other behavior.

Jon Becker: Well. And in this community, sleep is up. And let's just call it what it is. Like, I don't know any operator that gets enough sleep or takes enough, you know, takes it seriously enough. It's just, it is the nature of the work, the nature of the assignments, you know, the coming home amped up from an operation and trying to fall asleep and, like, there is a lot to it.

Let's talk a minute, we kind of – We kind of went through, you know, the five perceptions. But from a self standpoint, how do we, how do we build our armor for self develop?

Brittany Loney: The first is the perception, and we did go through the five. Just a reminder here now, as is, as granted release and effortless, virtuous action and then purpose. So this is going back to that spiritual and philosophical aspect, is how are you connecting with yourself's purpose in a very meaningful way and continuous development and learning? Actually, as human beings, we have this innate drive to want to be better and to evolve.

So it's how are we systematically setting that up in our environment to where we feel like we're evolving and gaining mastery over our environment and tasks and so we can have self mastery. So those would be the three with our relationship to ourself. Did you have any questions around any of those?

Jon Becker: No, I think that's, you know, I think. I think you nailed that. Yeah. It is really kind of finding that self, though, and not. We tend to focus too much on the physical and lose, and lose self pretty easily.

Brittany Loney: Yeah. And if you think about the pyramid, I was saying, like, physical is the foundation relationship with self. Is that one level up? So if our physical aspect is all gone haywire, that middle layer is a lot harder as well. It's far harder to have effective perceptions of reality. When you're not sleeping, you're not working out, you're getting crappy nutrition.

But then it's also another control mechanism that if we don't feel like we have control over the physical, okay, then can we take some control over the self that actually might help us get more control over the physical. So I think we can work them both ways. I think they affect each other as well.

Jon Becker: The final one is external. Talk to me about that.

Brittany Loney: This is all about your connection with others, your tribe, who you've chosen to surround yourself with. And are they influencing you in a positive or meaningful way, or are they potentially bringing you to your bad habits? And maybe it's your comfort zone and you've got that buddy who will always go have the drink with you, but are they serving you in a meaningful way in your life that helps you keep going in a safe, sustainable manner? And within that, we build our tribe, but then there's also tribes we have to leave.

And we discussed that state of liminality and this actually came. I heard this first from Doctor Preston Klein with the mission critical Teens Institute. He had come for a visit and he explained liminality and I thought it was very powerful. It's this state of being in between tribes. And this could happen if you're transitioning units, you're transitioning stations, you're retiring.

Any transition where you are leaving your old tribe and you're not yet accepted into your new tribe is a state of liminality. And it's very hard for human beings because we are tribal in nature. We are very social beings. Our brains are actually built to be social. And when we aren't part of a tribe, we feel a bit lost and it's highly stressful.

So when we're in that state, we actually have to double down on, okay, who still supports me? Who do I still have by my side? And it doesn't have to be a ton of people. They just have to be meaningful people. It's actually better to have meaningful connections than a lot of connections. So it's regrounding yourself. There are still people there. Who are they? And then you slowly start to build that tribe around you again.

Jon Becker: But I think it's a very valid point. And it is – We are hardwired. Our survival depends. Human beings only get to be what we are now because of our ability to cooperate, because of our connection, because of our communication skills, and especially transitions in leadership, transitions in tribes, and especially when guys are retiring or they're leaving units. You see guys go adrift.

And it seems now, 40 years into this, the ones that don't go adrift, the guys that don't drink too much and go out and find hookers and cocaine and whatever, are always the ones that have good friends outside of the job. They have a family that they're connected to and kids that they love and participate with. It is. It is maintaining more than one tribe and being connected to those tribes consistently.

Brittany Loney: Yes. Yeah, I think he hit the nail on the head whenever someone is transitioning out of the military because that's where I've worked the most. We recommend they read the second mountain because that's talking about a purpose beyond the achievement.

The first mountain is all about individual achievement. And I'm going to get this rank, I'm going to get this position, I'm going to get this. And it's like all of these external, like, things we're going to achieve and kind of put on our resume.

The second mountain actually becomes more about your eulogy virtues and how are you going to serve the world through living your purpose and your values versus the resume virtues. And that transition, I think, is big when people are looking at, okay, what is my life outside of the tactical space. And I think reading that book can help someone see it doesn't have to be just taking another job in the tactical space. It can be, but it doesn't have to be, and it doesn't also mean you have to leave it completely.

I think the second mountain opens up options for people to think about what's next in a different manner than I think. What is the tendency to think, well, what's the next achievement? And then I would also look at their tribe if they don't have a strong one outside of work currently, I would try to get them connected with a new tribe before they fully leave their old tribe and have someone actively helping them find that new tribe.

And that's where I think, you know, veterans groups, first responder groups, all those type of things. I think those are huge when people are transitioning, because it's at least a group that feels like the old one and people who can relate to me. And I think that's where people can start building up that new tribe.

Jon Becker: I love that! Yeah. So I think probably the one thing I'd ask now, Brittany, is like, how can people follow your work? Where can people find you? Find what you're writing about, find what you're talking about.

Brittany Loney: My website's probably the best because I have a page where it's a content and various appearances. It's a elite-cognition.com. Don't forget the dash in between elite and cognition.com. And then you can also follow me on LinkedIn. Brittany Loney.

Jon Becker: Beautiful! Brittany, thank you so much for spending this time with me! You've definitely made me smarter in the process, and I appreciate everything you're doing for the community.

Brittany Loney: Thank you so much! It was such an honor to be able to speak with your audience!

Episode 16 – Critical Incident Review – Medal of Honor Recipient – MSgt

jonathan@aardvarktactical.com on October 1, 2024

Episode 16 – Critical Incident Review – Medal of Honor Recipient – MSgt. Earl Plumlee

Jon Becker: This is a very special episode of the Debrief and the CATO podcast. We are at the CATO conference and have the opportunity to sit down with Master Sergeant Earl Plumlee, who is a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient for his actions in Afghanistan, sitting here today with Brent Stratton.

Brent Stratton: What's up, Jon? How are you, man? It's nice to see you!

Jon Becker: Glad you're here, buddy!

Brent Stratton: Yeah, it's good to see you, too, man! Getting to be spending a little bit of time together at the CATO conference.

Jon Becker: Absolutely. With a legitimate American hero.

Brent Stratton: My goodness, man! We were lucky that he came to speak with us into our membership. And I just walked away from his presentation impressed, and we'd done a lot of research on him. I'd watched a lot of his interviews. I'd watched the citation presentation with President Biden, so I felt like I had an understanding of it.

But hearing his presentation, Washington, moving, insightful, and I loved. Obviously, the story is compelling, but his thought process and how much he's put into dissecting and understanding what led up to that and his actions and what got him there, what made him successful, that was what was most insightful to me.

Jon Becker: I totally agree. We're very fortunate to have this time with Earl and hope you all enjoy this interview.

My name is Jon Becker. For the past four decades, I've dedicated my life to protecting tactical operators. During this time, I've worked with many of the world's top law enforcement and military units. As a result, I've had the privilege of working with the amazing leaders who take teams into the world's most dangerous situations.

The goal of this podcast is to share their stories in hopes of making us all better leaders, better thinkers, and better people.

Welcome to The Debrief!

Earl, I appreciate you joining us today. We're excited to interview you and kind of hear your story.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: No, pleasure to be here! Thanks for having me!

Jon Becker: Why don't we start with, like, let's go back to the beginning. Talk to me about where your career began.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So my career began to – I decided to join the military as a junior in high school. I went to the marine recruiter who laughed at me. I thought I had discovered a glitch in the matrix. I was like, I'll just get out of here. Forget high school. And turns out the military knows about that. You have to finish high school before you can join. But he said, go to the National Guard. They will let you join now if you really want to. Which was true.

So I joined the National Guard as a junior in high school. And had a marvelous time, one weekend a month, two weeks a year throughout my high school career. It was a great way to. It kept me out of trouble mostly. And I got to go drive a tracked vehicle or a hemet, which was what I was doing anyway when off roading and playing around. And that's what I did all of high school, but it's not what I was looking for.

So as soon as I was able, I went back to the Marine Corps recruiter and signed up for the infantry because the artillery in the National Guard was too easy, but he had a harder job for me.

Jon Becker: So how long were you in the Marine Corps?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: I'd have to check exactly, but nine years and some change.

Jon Becker: And what was your career arc in the Marine Corps? Started in the infantry?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah, I started off in the infantry. Had a great time walking around with stuff on my back, digging holes. I'm still among my friends now. I'm without peer and hole digging. They've never been professionally instructed. I have, but served in the infantry, later became a recon Marine, and ultimately, after nine years in the Marine Corps, left and joined the army as a 18 x-ray, which is the entrance program for selection. You go straight to selection. It's a great program if you make it. It's an interesting way to end up in the army if you don't.

Jon Becker: And so you obviously made it through selection. Where did you go from there?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So I went after selection. I didn't realize that the Q course is a year and a half, two years long, depending on the job you pick. I thought it was selection. You do this 30 days of arduous assessment, and then you're in. No, that's just to make sure that you can actually complete the training.

And then I did, I think, a year and a four or five months of the Q course, the qualification course, which was learned a lot, became a much more professional soldier. I didn't know you had to speak a foreign language as a Green Beret, and that was obviously, I'm not a deep academically, so that was the scariest part for me, having to learn to read, write, and speak a foreign language. But they met dumber people than me. They locked me up in a room for six months with a very nice lady by the name of Ibu Maggie, and she taught me how to speak Indonesian.

Jon Becker: So Indonesian was your language?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Indonesian was my language.

Brent Stratton: By choice or by assignment?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: They took a test. I got to pick some languages, and you know where you're going to get stationed. And I had a older GB. He's like, make sure your wife picks what group you work in because she's the one that's going to live there. You'll be gone the whole time. Good marital advice.

Jon Becker: Brilliant!

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So my wife picked. She went to live in Colorado or Washington. So I wrote down, I think, two asian languages and one european language with first group being in Washington and centered on the Indo paycom, and then 10th group being in Colorado working in Europe. And we have a test that says which languages I would have a higher chance of learning to a higher ability. And that one said that he is an Indonesian guy.

Jon Becker: That's interesting. That's interesting if they have a system that can actually diagnose that.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah.

Jon Becker: So then you ended up at?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Ended up at first special forces group in Washington, and it's been my home ever since. I've never been stationed anywhere but inside a first group. We have a battalion for deployed in Japan that I served in three years, but I've always been in first group.

Jon Becker: Which is Fort Lewis, right?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yep.

Jon Becker: So let's kind of walk. Walk me forward to the event you deploy. Which theater are you in? Kind of give us the background.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: We deploy to Afghanistan. We did a train up in the winter in the mountains of Washington, which really had us set up well to do a summertime deployment in Afghanistan and was chosen to do a VSO site. It was in the city of Miri in the Ghazni province.

Jon Becker: So I'm gonna play ignorant for you because not all of our listeners are gonna. We both speak, you know, acronym natively. I'm gonna play dumb the whole interview here and ask you to define all of the acronym.

Brent Stratton: You just playing?

Jon Becker: I am, yeah.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So Villi stability operations. And it's a program we had where to kind of eliminate those safe spaces and also just to kind of add some backbone to the governance of the old government of Afghanistan. At this point, we put an ODA into a village and kind of let them create a police force and then help with infrastructure projects and just keep the Taliban out of those villages.

So you'd lay down ODAs and kind of sprinkle them through every three or four villages. You add an ODA and the theory, which it was fairly successful, would keep them out of there.

Jon Becker: ODA?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yep. Operational Detachment Alpha, which is the kind of the base maneuver element of special forces in the army. It's twelve men. They each have a particular skill set and they're built for an operation like this. They go on the ground and you don't really need to support them other than we need money.

And if you want us to shoot american guns, we need american bullets. But we bought our food from the village, so we kind of prop up the economy of the village. We try to use as much of their economy as we can, and it's not top down, it's bottom up. Like, we're putting the money at the bottom of this economy and using it and causing it to grow. And we plug in a lot of the programs from the State Department. Can you grow grapes instead of heroin? That would be cool. And here's a benefit to that.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I think one of the things that I don't think people realize about your unit is you are for deployed into foreign areas and are kind of there on your own.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah. That's what attracted me to it, is we go, they leave us there, and they would rather we don't ask for any help. The whole point of us is the footprint's small, the logistical strain is small, and the output is supposed to be.

Jon Becker: Great because you're affecting it early in the system.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yep. And we're kind of. The state department tries its best, but you have somebody deciding what is best for an area from Kabul. When I'm there, I'm like, yeah, that's not the best for this village. They need these things, and we're gonna. They need a drainage ditch. They don't need you to pave anything. That's not gonna help.

Brent Stratton: You know, what's kind of cool is hearing it. This is a much more advanced version of it. I don't mean any disrespect towards that, but it's almost similar to, like, a community oriented policing model that you would see where you're working on building relationships and, you know, hoping that if you can build these relationships and you're gonna be able to keep crime out, so to speak. So you're taking that on a much bigger, much more macro level. But as you're saying that, I see how there's some very similar principles and philosophies associated with it there.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: No. And we, I mean, I think it's not just like it's heavily nested in it. We did. We have shuras, and we'll have everybody come out like, what do you like about the Afghan government? What do you hate about it? And then we identify these problems. Like, well, we hate the Afghan police. And I'm like, why? Well, they set up checkpoints, and you have to. They take road tax. Like, they take road tax. And we go to our Afghan police.

Jon Becker: They rob people.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah. Why are you setting up basically a strong arm road tax. People hate it. Like, well, we have to pay for our food and our fuel and our ammunition. I'm like, you have to pay for that? Why are you paying for that? And our Afghan police were taking tolls and then driving to Pakistan and buying arms and ammunition to serve as a police force.

And we're writing that up like, hey, where's all the money going? Because these guys haven't been paid or supported in any way in about eight months. And they're like, we figured whatever the problem was, obviously some kind of graft, but we fixed that problem. And then the people don't get taxed by their own police when they're trying to utilize public roads, which makes people like the police more.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's fixing them. It's fixing the village from the inside.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Right.

Jon Becker: As opposed to trying to impose a solution and one that they may or may not agree with.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: And that's also, we try to do all that stuff and never actively participate in the discussion. So we want these things to get solved. We may move things, pull strings, but we want them to feel like they 100% solved it. And in the end state when, if we decide to leave, we want that we have left systems in place that they are solving it. And then also, you know, let them trust their government, let them trust their police, and not always run to the nearest American soldier. And, like, I need this fixed.

Jon Becker: Teaching them to fish and then letting. Letting them pick the kind of fish they want to eat as opposed to, like, handing them a fish and going, here's your fish.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Unfortunately, I think we got there about 400 years too early. I have high hopes. In a couple hundred years, my great grandkids will probably be able to get that place really sorted out.

Jon Becker: Alexander the Great had the same hopes.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So, yeah, there's a famous story of an ODA and they ask a village, like, what do you guys need? And, well, we used to have a dam here, and it was really great before the dam was destroyed. And if the dam was rebuilt, this village would really prosper. So they send the engineer sergeant out to see this blown up dam, and we're thinking that the Soviets, or maybe we blew it up during the invasion.

And he goes out there and he's like, I don't know what they're talking about. There's no dam out there. It's like, you could build a dam there, but there's not one. And so we go back and, you know, talk to these guys and why do you. Why is there. There was a dam when was there a dam? Alexander the Great built the dam. Genghis Khan, as punishment for the afghan king killing his emissaries, came in and tore everything up and he tore the dam down and he broke all the stones into gravel so that they couldn't remake the d***.

And so that's how long they've been without a dam. And which is, when you think about it, if they just annually, sometime in the over the past 500 years, carried one rock out there, they'd have a dam, but they didn't.

Brent Stratton: Amazing perspective, though, if you think about that. I have this problem today. Oh, no. It's such common sense that this problem was actually from several hundred years ago. I can't even imagine thinking that on a day to day basis that the problem was actually something created that, that far previously.

Jon Becker: There's a fantastic book called prisoners of geography. And the premise of the book is he looks at all the areas of the world that have had extensive conflict, Afghanistan being one of them, and why do we fight over this area?

And in the case of Afghanistan, goes back before Alexander the great and talks about trade routes and all of these kinds of things. And it's like, many times it is a structural problem. You know, he talks about why does India and China never fight? Because they have the himalayas between them and it's too expensive to fight.

And the chapter on Afghanistan is fascinating because of that very thing. Like, you know, they've got a multi year, thousand year relationship with their village and, you know, many cases we show up and we're like, hey, we can fix this in two weeks. No, I don't think you can.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: We don't want you to.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Yeah. And we don't like your solution.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah.

Jon Becker: So talk to me. So let's keep going forward in a timeline. So you're deployed, Oda?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah, we're having effects and I'm having a great, I'm falling in love with being a Green Beret at this point. It was neat. At this point, I know I'm never going to leave a team until I absolutely can't serve anymore. I'm just loving the challenge. Every day is different. We're doing ambushes one day, we're doing medical engagements the next day, training the police, you know, one time, you know, how to collect evidence and, and not be awful and then working with our afghan special forces and trying to get them up on, on a pier with us. And, you know, I never have ADHD.

So if we're going to do the same thing twice in a day, I'm going to start bashing my head against a wall. So I really, I really loved it. And, and, you know, my, the team's small, so, like, there some problem comes in and, like, that's your problem. Go fix it. And as a young, you know, e six, that was kind of heady stuff. And like, hey, go solve this problem. I'm busy. And here's what you, you get 50 grand, you know, and a truck. Solve it. And I love, and I just loved it.

Jon Becker: That's fantastic. So keep walking forward.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: I'm doing great. And then, you know, my, my, my sar major Tony Bell flies into the camp and he's looking for me. And, you know, normally you don't want the company sar major looking for you, but at this point, you know, I know that my performance has just been exemplary and I'm doing great work.

So I'm, like, not afraid. Whatever he's about to tell me, it's going to be a good job on something. I just don't know what. And it was terrible news. You know, he's telling me that they're closing our site. It was very successful. And then I could go home early or I could come work for him in the company headquarters. And no Green Beret goes to selection to do either of those things.

So I'm, like, crestfallen. That's two equally crappy things for me. But I decided that working at the company headquarters is still deployed work. It's still in support of this war and going home is not. And so I chose to work for him and left Miri and moved to Fob Gosney, where I supported the company headquarters as the weapons sergeant and started my, you know, my nine to five, if you will. It wasn't a nine to five. It was about a five to ten at night.

Jon Becker: Work till you get work till you exhausted. Go to sleep till you can't sleep anymore.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, like, one of my first things is we had, I think, 60,000 pounds of fragmentation producing munitions stored near the living area and the company headquarters because the fob had just grown. But the ammunition plan had not changed. And I was like, well, you generally don't want to sleep next to bombs. At least I don't. But everybody has a job on the AOB, so I had to move it myself or had one other soldier help me.

So every day we would get up about four in the morning and start carting the stuff off and put it in a different area. But every day was some challenge like that where not the most interesting work in the world. A lot of it was, you know, back breaking labor or mind numbing paperwork. Like, I calculated ammunition consumption for all the ODAs and projected what we would need to order in the future, which is nobody wants to do that.

Jon Becker: I'm gonna say that was probably not part of selection.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: No, they did not have that. Nobody said, hey, at one point you're gonna get to do this forecast ammunition and if you get it wrong, you know, people are not gonna have ammo and they're gonna hate your guts. And I'm like, okay.

Jon Becker: So give me kind of describe the fob for me. How big is it? How many people?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So, you know, I don't know how big, it's not how many people were there, but it's. I think it's. I think it was 2000 meters by 1000 meters, you know, and I think it is roughly, it's got straight lines, but, you know, think of jelly bean. And it was a Polish camp. The ODB had probably 40, 50 people on it. And then we had two teams that were living connected to our camp.

So we had a very small SF footprint on the camp as that's how we worked anyway. And I think there was a polish couple thousand poles, you know, and it was a really, it was a hub, as we were, because we'd won the war in 2013. A lot of people forgot that we won once already, but we were winning and leaving. And it was, it was kind of the first larger fob where you could actually ditch equipment as your unit was retrograding out of the country.

So huge logistical hub for that area of Afghanistan. And for a unit that's leaving, it's the first place equipment that's not actually yours, you only need it for Afghanistan. It's the first place you could find somebody to sign for it so you could leave.

And it's also in the city of Ghazni is kind of a big deal in Afghanistan. It's part of the old trade routes. It used to be a huge city and had some religious significance. If you're not, if you can't afford to Hujj at the Mecca, you're allowed to do some form of worship in Ghazni and get partial credit. But what kind of got us into a bind was we generally don't tell anybody when we're closing a camp because the Taliban developed a really neat, easy win for them. So if we say we're closing a camp, they'll come in and attack it very near to the end.

So then they get to take credit for running us out of that area. So unfortunately they figured out that we were closing Ghazni and selected us for a complex attack so they could kind of claim credit for shutting it down and running us out. And then also they, I mean, rightfully so, if they were able to inflict the kind of casualties they were hoping for, can kind of dictate foreign policy or the US's swag at it.

And, you know, you figure if you killed a couple hundred american soldiers, like that would be front page news. Everybody be like, what is going on? And let's get out of there. Everybody kind of had lost their taste for the afghan war anyway, so that's what they were hoping for. The low end kind of make the afghan people think that they're driving us out at the high end, affect America's foreign policy.

But we didn't know that. I'm just on the ground carting ammo around and eating chow and lifting weights and hoping that some weapons sergeant somewhere sprains his ankle and I can go take his place. And we always got indirect fire. And I look back on all the precursors if we really paid attention, but we were too busy. And the AOB by its nature, is a support mechanism. It's not a kinetic operation. The poles owned all the land around us, which kind of kept us disjointed.

But we were watching the frequency of the indirect fire attacks on the camp come up to the point where I didn't leave the camp between 10:00 and 12:00 because the worst case scenario is there'd be an indirect fire camp or indirect fire attack on the camp and I would get trapped because the whole camp shuts down. And you have the regular army out there strictly imposing all these, these processes they have.

And if, you know, like I'm trying to get work done, I'm trapped across the camp until they open it, and they won't open it until EOD inspects each of these rounds. And it's, so if I'm going to get trapped somewhere, I get trapped on the SF compound where at least I can get, you know, a task completed. But it started, it went from being, you know, a intermittent thing to a weekly thing to a daily thing. And, you know, we're thinking even then I remember like the big win is that they're closing the camp for an hour to 2 hours every time they do this. And it's just a harassment thing.

But what they were doing was conditioning the camp. You know, every day you need to go sit in your bunker, this is normal. Also mapping out where all these soldiers are seeking cover and also refining where these rounds are landing so that when they launch their big attack, they can hit key infrastructure on the camp, which they did.

So they're the first volley of indirect fire after the initial breach hit the camp generators, and somebody decided to park the spare or alternate generator right next to the primary to make maintenance easy. When one burned it, burned the other. So we live without electricity for kind of a while.

Jon Becker: So you think initially, as they're doing this, they're basically scouting and training?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yes. Looking back on it, we went after it, and we know that they're assessing. Scouting. Each of the guys that assaulted the camp had a little card that was hand drawn, but amazingly accurate. Even I don't read the posh tube, but I picked it up, and I recognize everything on the camp. I can point to each structure and tell you what it is because it's drawn so well.

Jon Becker: Do they have people inside the camp also?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah. So we had, you know, even on the polish fob, they have a program where they hire afghan laborers to do different tasks and perform things. And the Taliban just went and either coerced, recruited, or just caused their own people to be hired. And, you know, had those guys all over the camp.

And, you know, we recovered, I think, five suicide vests that had been hidden on the camp. Somebody put them on and sweat in them, and then for whatever reason, you know, they didn't receive the signal or see the thing that would cause them to conduct their attack, and they took them off and then just went and rejoined that workforce, which caused everybody to be, you know, nervous wreck for. Cause that guy's still here. And is there any more suicide vests buried on the camp somewhere?

Jon Becker: Yeah, I mean, so they're basically, they're building towards an attack objective and gradually getting more accurate maps, figuring out their fire, figuring out your patterns, figuring out where everything that's critical is so that when they do kick off the attack, it's all at once.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: And they, you know, and it was bigger than that because they'd launched some attacks throughout the entire country, and they're getting the critiques and ars after action review and, like, what is successful and what is not.

So one of the first things, one of the first attacks, they detonated the bomb, and then the guys had to drive down from a safe place, and the lapse between the vehicle borne explosive device and the little assaulters was too long.

So the camp had kind of shrugged off the bomb and was waiting for them. And killed them all immediately. And then a second attack. They got much closer. Dressed up as Americans. But, you know, if you've ever watched any of the stolen valor videos, man, if you put your tie clip on wrong there's a marine out there somewhere that'll spot it from 200 meters. So nobody was fooled that these guys were American soldiers because they had AK-47s but their uniforms were wrong and slovenly. So those guys were all instantly neutralized without penetrating the camp very far.

So, you know, they're like, okay, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna. They staged in a structure very near the camp dressed up as the Afghan army, which worked. Cause when I first saw them, I was like, these guys, I'm a Green Beret. I'm gonna put these guys to work. This is my job. Why are they over here anyway? And then they identified themselves as not the Afghan army by shooting at me.

Jon Becker: Which is a pretty clear message. Yeah.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: It's in the intelligence community, we call it indicator. It's a clue.

Jon Becker: Police work, you call it a clue. Yeah.

Brent Stratton: I mean, a great detective, Earl.

Jon Becker: So how does talk to me the morning of the event, what happens?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So the morning of the event. And one of the reasons I was able to respond as quickly as I had is we always make fun of young Earl. He's a real knucklehead and I pick on him all the time. But we took a picture for the deployment on the AOB and we're having a change of command. And I went full, full bore for the picture. I wanted to look amazing.

So I had all my equipment, I had all my ammunition looking good. My rifle's cleaned up, I have my sniper rifle. And I took a great photo right before the attack and I get distracted. So instead of taking my equipment back and putting it up in my room I went to hang out with a buddy of mine in the med shed and set all that stuff just outside instead of putting it up like a true professional.

But it worked out for me. And we're hanging out, like I said, both of us are kind of bummed out that we're on the AOB and we can't wait to not be on the AOB. And suddenly we're both on the floor of the med shed covered in everything that was on his shelves because a 3500 to 5000 pound bomb is just detonated about 700 meters from where we're at.

Jon Becker:

Where did they actually detonate the bomb? Was it the gate or.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee:

Oh, that's. So that's what kind of clued me in immediately that this was going to be different because that is a very common attack. They'll drive a truck bomb or a vehicle bomb into a gate and try to kill the sentries working there. But this one was on the far end of the camp that's not habitated. And we had a flight line on it. And this is about midway down the flight line.

There's a long section of this Hesco wall. And they detonated the bomb back there. And the chances them killing anybody are extremely low. I think there was one guy running down the flight line who lived, apparently. I saw him on a video but somebody said they knew him and were talking to him. He didn't remember his name for a couple days.

But because he was about 200 meters from, you know, this, this thousand pound, multi thousand pound bomb and you can see him just get launched off his, he's out there running, obviously at the end of his run, kind of going all in and you just see him get launched like a rag doll off the, off the running trail.

Jon Becker: So they basically used a 5000 pound breaching charge.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: It's a, I would say flashbang would be more apt. You know, they got, they needed a hole in the wall which a much smaller device would have built a, they cleared out 60 meters of eleven foot Hesco wall and left a 20 foot crater under it. You know, like it was overkill. A couple hundred pounds would have made what they needed.

So I think it was mostly to shock the camp. And also they, either by accident or by design, you know, all the alarms go off, everybody runs to their bunkers and, you know, those first few rounds came in and killed the power to the camp.

So they, the camp had, you know, two conditions for attack. Fobcon Red, you know, we're getting attacked. Everybody, you know, hit your bunkers and get in there. And then Fabcon black means, hey, everybody, come out and fight for your life. Because the camp's been penetrated, it's a possibility that's being overrun. And the polish command was not able to communicate that down to the guys in the bunkers.

So they're riding this attack out in the bunkers and unbeknownst to them, there's 15 guys wearing suicide vests sprinting across the airfield, coming to the bunker, coming to a bunker near you. Up until now, their plan is going perfectly, working out really great.

Jon Becker: Because they've created their diversion, they've breached the wall and now the 15 guys are coming in through that opening.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: And, you know, at this time I'm hearing they had a base of fire set up, which is, you know, to machine guns that aren't going to penetrate the camp, but it's to provide suppressing fire so these guys can worry more about movement than about engaging us forces or polish forces.

And I could hear that, and I was kind of figuring out what we were facing, and, you know, jumped in my stuff and started looking for a way to get over to the other side of the camp, which we had a mail clerk out picking up the company's mail. And he was not excited about being out during this.

And then as he was coming back on, 180 degrees from where this bomb detonated, we had a hotel that had a good amount of foreign fighters, or not foreign fighters, afghan fighters, and about 160 of them, also with machine guns, RPGs, recoilless rifles and mortars. And, you know, after the bomb detonated, nobody's really moving except for him. And they wanted something to shoot at. And he was the guy, so he was super pumped not to be out there anymore.

Jon Becker: So the 160, they're friendlies or they're.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: No, this is. The attack was going great until then, but we surmised that they meant to penetrate the camp on at least three sides. And there's probably more fighters, but these guys are sitting in this hotel just firing into the camp. And there was another truck, a 20,000 pound charge, and the fuel pump went out on it, and the driver just got out and walked away. But it broke down, I think, less than a mile from the camp.

So we're kind of thinking those guys were supposed to create space for at the gate because these guys are firing directly into the front gate. This truck supposed to pull in as far into the camp as he can and detonate, and then these guys will leave the hotel and kind of hit the camp.

Jon Becker: Got it.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: But that didn't happen, you know, didn't do proper maintenance on their vehicles, so they would.

Jon Becker: Yeah, their whole operation was ruined by a fuel pump, right?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah, fortunately. Because, you know, you know, as I tell the story, like, if they'd had one more Girl scout, I'd have been in trouble because I was down in my pocket knife by the time it was over. But anyway, that's, you know, I'm unaware of this other than, you know, we get into a truck, me and my two buddies, and we pull out of the camp, and I'm like, well, you know, I'm in charge of security for the SF camp. I already decided I'm gonna go get in a fight, but, I mean, I'm gonna lock this gate because we had a big gate, and I'm like, you guys pull through, I'll lock this gate.

And, you know, that's going to be my. At least I didn't leave the gate unlocked. And somebody just ran in here until these guys mount the towers because I can kind of see the AOB shaking it off, and everybody's doing what they're supposed to. And anyway, the truck parks out on the street, and they start taking fire. And, you know, I slip through a little foot gate, and by the time I get to the truck, you know, Drew and Nate are pretty excited that we need to go somewhere else.

Jon Becker: Yeah, they're taking fire, and they're ready to leave.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: I'm locking the gate up and, you know, putting. Putting my locks on and making sure my shoes are tied tight. And they're out there, you know, rounds bouncing off the truck and are like, you know, looking. Where is he?

Jon Becker: Cursing you, screaming at you, honking the horn.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah, I probably almost got left. But, you know, we hop on the truck, and we start pulling away from the camp, and we're pulling past our motor pool, and it's. It's catching h***. And we're. We're thinking, well, maybe we'll go help those guys. But, you know, they're. We can see them. Everybody's running around pretty animated, and the guard towers are starting to return fire. And, like, they. They got it. There's. Let's. We'll head for the breach.

And, you know, we start moving toward the breach, and that's when my company warrant, and then a medic from one of the other teams, Matt Horde and. And Mark Colbert, pull up. They're on a four wheeler giving us thumbs up and pointing toward the blast. And we're giving them a thumbs up, and, yeah, we're going there, too. Let's get after it. And we headed down there together. And it started off with us in the front, and I kind of get to the airfield, and we start slowing down, kind of thinking about dismounting at this point. And as they pull past us, they start catching h***. I could see them getting hit, and I could see them. I could see rounds impacting around them.

At this point, though, I thought it was the base of fire. Honestly, I could see that they were catching a lot of small arms fire, and I just thought it was from the base of fire that I could hear from just off the camp because at this point, I'm still down this little lane, and I haven't come out onto the airfield to really see the whole thing. Yet I can just see them know, catching a ton of fire.

Jon Becker: So at this point, you think it's still external fire?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah, because.

Jon Becker: Not internal fire?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Not internal. Because we got there so fast. You know, I just couldn't. I was like, we must have beat them before they got here because, you know, there's still smoke in the air. And we raced down there in this truck, and, you know, that's, Taliban didn't give me their plan, so I was unaware of what they were doing, which was rude, but that's okay. But they back. Yeah, they stacked really close to this thing. I don't know where. I mean, it must have been a bumpy ride for them, because, you know, they. They were already 200 meters into the camp by the time I get there.

And anyway, we pull around to block these guys from the fire, and then, you know, I see the Afghans, and before I have that split second thought, like, wow, these idiots are facing the wrong way, and they're running away. The bad guys are over here. I'm gonna jump out here and put them to work. And that's, you know, they turned inboard and identified themselves as the enemy by firing at me, which, you know, got everybody stressed out in the truck again.

Jon Becker: They would subsequently learn to regret that decision, though.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So maybe I never got to talk to them. But, you know, I have my sniper rifle, and I'm kind of banging it on everything in the truck, trying to get the dangerous in toward the bad guys, and I present it out and fire. Fire one round, and it jams. I think that I had a scar variant. It's got an external charging handle. I think that the charging handle must have caught on the door frame because it's, like, one of the most reliable rifles ever. It's. That thing never jammed before. Never jammed since. But for this story, it jammed, which was a huge letdown for me.

So, you know, I've decided, you know, I know I got Drew and Nate with me. They still got a couple plays to make, so I'm gonna create space for them, and I pull my pistol, and I'm a pretty good shot, but I'm better the closer I get. So I just started closing with the nearest group of fighters and engaging them with my pistol as best I can.

Jon Becker: And describe the battle space for me. How far are you from them? How are they set up? They're set up. How many are there?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: You know, like, I think back, I don't think all 15 of them were there. I think there's probably 9, maybe. Maybe 12 were there. But, you know, they were in a semicircle around us. So they were all the way. The trucks kind of started the turn. There's guys all the way out to the left shooting into the driver's window, and they come all the way around to my front and slightly to my rear shooting into my window.

Jon Becker: So they were spread out, closing towards you guys when you encounter them.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So they had, this particular lane was the only way to access the main thoroughfare through the camp off the airfield. And they had it marked on their little cards. So, you know, we didn't know what they were trying to do until later, which they had to get past us to meet their intent. They had to get past us and get down this lane because right behind us, down this little lane is all the bunkers where all the soldiers who are seeking cover from this indirect fire. They're all in these little bunkers that are set up, up and down the street.

And as best we can tell, they, they all had 20 hand grenades, a lot of 40 millimeter grenades for their under barrelled grenade launchers and about 20 rifle magazines, which is kind of a lot in Taliban equipping. And we figure they're supposed to hit these bunkers, throw grenades in them, shoot grenades in them, and then ultimately obviously detonate their suicide vest at some point and kind of work down these.

And everybody has a different guess of how that would have worked out. But it would have been fairly successful, I think, especially a lone guy. Somebody probably would have killed him. But operating in, in a team like that, they'd be able to suppress a target and have a guy sprint and run and dive into the bunker, which is, was a tactic they, you know, later used on me.

But, you know, at this point, I dismount with my pistol. I start engaging as best I can. I think they had a plan that if somebody got wounded, they would detonate their vest because I put two rounds in this guy's rifle and he kind of came off of his gun. And then we do a training. If somebody's wearing a vest, I didn't know it was a suicide vest, but we go for the pelvic girdle and I was like, oh yeah, I'm doing this wrong.

And I dropped down to his pelvis and fired around and turned the strings off. The doll dropped. Also. I'm super close to him now and they haven't hit me yet. I'm obviously getting effects as I transition back and forth to each of these guys give me distance, like what? The nearest guy was probably 7 meters, and the furthest was probably 15. So we're right. I can tell that they washed today because I don't smell too much.

Jon Becker: That's pretty close.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: And close enough. I remember seeing expressions. I know when I got a hit because I'm looking at this guy's face, and I can see that what I just did hurt. I can. I remember being, you know, agitated, frustrated, and so, you know, we're close, and. But now, you know, I've covered that distance, and I honestly didn't think I was gonna make it that far.

So I'm kind of, I didn't have a great after plan, so I was kind of like, holy s***. What the h*** just happened? How did they not hit me? And obviously, Nate and Drew have a different version of this because as I was running around with my pistol, they were both getting hit with everything that missed me.

So they're fairly frustrated and don't understand why that happened either. But I never thought I would actually close that full distance. I was just trying to have as good effects as I could because I was just waiting to get hit, to be honest with you. And once I got up there, I was like, well, I guess I need A plan B now.

Jon Becker: Yeah, here we are. Now what?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: And, you know, I grabbed a lot of stuff, but I didn't grab my gun belt, so I was carrying a concealed pistol, and I only had one magazine for it. And I have. I call it my combat purse. I have a purse, and I keep lots of hand grenades and spare mags in it. But when I jumped out of the truck, it's in the floorboard of the truck, which, you know, I didn't bring the truck with me, so I didn't have that. But I had a hand grenade. You know, it's the next best thing I had on my vest.

So I pulled that out and popped the spoon and tossed it, and just blind luck, I hit that fighter. I'd hit in the hips, and he's just laying there still. And everybody, all the guys behind him saw that grenade and just got way much further away, which was the plan. You know, that's what people do when you get hand grenades out. They go somewhere else.

Jon Becker: So they basically turn a run away.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yep, they all. Which was great for me because I needed a little bit of time to figure some stuff out and get some bullets or. And get some bullets. Get a gun. I need a gun.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Any gun. I went to work on my rifle. You know, we have the drill, and I locked the bolt to the rear and stripped that magazine out and did my little. Three little piggies, and the rounds fell out right away. Thankfully, wasn't a bad jam, or I probably wouldn't have made it again and then put a fresh mag in and was back in the fight. And, you know, the grenade detonated, which is, you know, the guy did have a suicide vest on his is the only vest that didn't detonate. Is the guy killed with a hand grenade. Just one of those weird.

Jon Becker: Yeah. The one guy that was actually exposed to an explosive device his vest doesn't detect.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Didn't detonate. Yeah, because everybody else we were shooting, their vests were detonating, and I was like, how did the grenade guy not blow up? But it did kill him, so we didn't have to worry about him anymore. And then I'm sitting there going, you don't see that every day? And I start hearing pop, pop, and I can hear a thump, thump, thump behind me.

And I remember, ever since I was a recon marine, I hate. You know, I sound like Anakin, but I hate sand. And there's sand running down the back of my neck, and. And I look off, and I can see, you know, to my rear and left. There's a guy in the. In the prone, with us, sling supported prone position, just laying them. Laying them in on me, and he's going for a headshot at, like, 100 meters. And he just had a bad zero and threw, like, five rounds into the wall, just not in me, and I knew exactly. I have 100 meters zero on my gun. This guy is at, like, 100 meters because it's where we do our wind sprints for pt in the morning.

So I dropped to a knee, and I held on the notch of his throat and pulled the trigger, and he instantly, you know, vaporized off the earth. He was gone, which surprised me. I was not ready for that.

Jon Becker: Yeah, you're expecting him to be shot, I guess. His vest detonates his.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah. You know, it took me a minute because we had polish tanks, so I thought maybe a tank had come up and just decided to crush this one dude with the gun.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: But they started looking around, and they're not there, and I, and you know, it dawned on me that I hit a suicide vest with a sniper rifle. And, you know, like, great, you know, bucket list is complete. I've now done every sniper's dream shot.

Jon Becker: Shot a guy in a suicide vest and detonated the vest.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yep. Recommend it doing that much further away, if you can. 100 meters is still kind of close. Whatever their vests were made of. I think the other thing is they had a very hot explosive in it with not enough shrapnel.

So, you know, later, as I get exposed to these vests, you know, it was painful, but, you know, I never got hit by any fragmentation of any substance other than one piece of brass from an AK. Got blown out of a vest and hit my arm, but, you know, it didn't. Unless I get a bad sunburn, there's not even a scar.

Jon Becker: Amazing!

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So Drew has an opposite story. So he caught every piece of frag on the battlefield, ruined a couple tattoos. So, you know, that's my, that's my side. His got a different story.

Brent Stratton: Everybody's got a different perspective on how things unfold.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: He's like, they were great vests. Every time one went off, I got hit with something. But at this point, you know, I can hear everybody kind of screaming behind me. I'm at this corner, so I don't want to go back to where they're at because these guys will just be right on top of us, and I'm not going to. I didn't know that they were just down there waiting for me. I thought maybe they were trying to run down to the airfield where the aircraft are stored and start destroying aircraft.

So I'm going to go after them, and I'll stay engaged. As far away as I can is, you know, my rough plan. And I know, like, whoever is not out of the fight, they're coming, and they're going to hear. They're going to hear me. I'm throwing grenades and I'm shooting my rifle. You know, the rest of the rest of the guys I came with are going to get down here any minute.

Jon Becker: Cavalry's on the way.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Cavalry's on the way. So I start moving down that lane, and I get about halfway down it and about, you know, five guys hang muzzles out and start shooting at me, and I start, you know, returning fire. And, you know, at this point, like the furthest one, we're talking maybe 20 meters, you know, nearest, probably 15, but really close if you have a, you know, 5 by 25 scope.

So I'm, luckily, I had a red dot on it on a 45 offset, so I'm trying to use that and, you know, I'm shooting at them, and every time I put my rifle, you know, they're doing whack a mole stuff, so they'll pull back, and some else is shooting at me. So I'm trying to transition back and forth.

Jon Becker: And so they're ducking behind cover.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Oh, yeah, they were using cover. Well, and even the guys who were exposing, you know, they're, they're using, you know, the sealant containers and the Humvees and the boxes. They're, they're using it really nicely, really only giving me, like, you know, half of their face, mostly their rifle, and not, you know, big targets to engage. And, you know, there's more of them than me. So every time, I point a gun at somebody, he'll just duck behind, and then somebody else will take a couple of shots at me.

Jon Becker: Are you in the open at this point?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: I'm in the open. I'm, in my mind, I'm slowly walking, but, you know, due to, you know, using mostly adrenaline and very little red blood cells, I was probably sprinting or jogging. But I, you know, I remember still, like, working, working through this problem, trying to keep moving. Cause I can see this, uh, this junction panel, and that's my goal, is I'm going to fight to this junction panel, get behind it, and, you know, have cover and. But anyway, most of the way, that junction panel and my rifle ran dry.

And I, you know, just try to do a speed load, a speed reload right there in the middle of them. Not optimal, but my pistol is empty and my grenades are gone. And anyway, as soon as I dumped that magazine, the nearest fighter to me slung his rifle, sprinted toward me. You know, the classic screamed out lock bar.

And at this point, I kind of, I know what's going down, but I, well, practice, you know, I don't really have to think about this. I got the gun reloaded. Felt like he was hanging off the end of the muzzle, but he was probably, you know, 710 meters away and fired, fired a few rounds and struck his vest and detonated it.

And I think the junction panel ate most of the frag. The blast kind of blew me out from behind there, off to my side. And I wasn't out confused. I was trying to figure out I was very comfortable for whatever reason, but I just remember kind of laying there, and I was, why is there so much gravel in my bed? And you can hear that pop, pop, pop of rifle fire. And there's another fighter has left cover. And he's looking over his sights. He's got his gun super low on his chest, and he's just looking right at my face, firing his rifle. And all his rounds are landing about a foot low. Cause he wanted to take it all in. I guess.

Jon Becker: He was watching himself be successful.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: And anyway, I jerked my rifle up and just hammered away at him and folded him up. He's the same distance. He's probably at that ten to twelve meter line. And I must have hit him five or six times because I was really getting after it, being aggressive on the trigger.

Jon Becker: He's closing on you. You're trying to make him stop closing on you.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: It was an emotional event for both of us. And, you know, I get back to my feet and go back to that whack a mole thing I'm doing. Just shooting at everybody that's got a head on their shoulders when I run, you know, ran at ammo again. And so this time I'm like, I'm not going to do. I'm not going to do the race again. That was lame.

So I dumped my magazine as I simultaneously turn off and sprint back to my. The corner where the. Where I dismounted the truck and get reloaded. About the same time, I'm kind of dashing around this corner and, you know, crash into Drew Busick, who's been in the backseat getting shot, bleeding all over the mail for the entire company. Everybody was pretty bummed out. My mom sent cookies and you bled all over him. Thanks!

But, you know, he's had his own struggle. Like, the one of the rounds came through and hit the child safety locks on the truck door. So he was climbing through all this mail, and he's trying to get this truck door open, and it's not gonna happen.

Jon Becker: Oh, God! So he's trapped in the back of the car with the child safety locks.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah. And then Nate, that's literally like a bad dream. And Nate's driving. He got hit. And we call it the nuclear karate chop. He got hit and he had a stainless steel windlass on a tourniquet that he had up on his collar of his gear and around has hit it, and he thought he got shot through the neck.

So when I dismounted the vehicle, he jammed the truck into reverse and did a reverse 180 out of there. So when Drew finally got out of the truck, I guess he was confused about which way is this truck facing now.

Jon Becker: Cause he had done the cool James Rockford J turn.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: But Drew, he saw me run down that alley, so he came running for me. Nate left the vehicle. They got super lucky on their shot placement for killing the truck. They shot the battery terminals and the alternator. So the truck was kind of. And the child safety lock and the child safety lock.

Jon Becker: Three for three.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah. Missed me. At this point, Nate's still in pretty good shape. I think Drew caught three or four rounds, but most of them hit a truck door, a truck seat, so they came through as more like chinese throwing stars. So it really looked like he just got in a knife fight. It's not that bad. He'll disagree because he's had some very nice tattoos that are ruined at this point, so he's pretty upset about it.

Jon Becker: I think it's reasonable to be.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah. You know, nobody wants to put in all that time and effort, and then now it's just this weird flayed open thing when.

Jon Becker: Plus, nobody wants to get hit with frag.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Oh, yeah, that rounds.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee:

But he saw me run down the alley, so he's coming. Like, I thought, you know, like I knew he would. Somebody's coming. And, you know, he. We crashed into each other, and I was like, hey, I know where they're at. Let's go get them. And he's like, yeah, let's go get them. So we, at this time now it's two people. That's a team. We're doing some teamwork. He's on the far left of the lane. I'm on the far right. We're moving down. Nobody's really shooting at us, but, you know, it's still. It's indirect fire. Still landing on the camp. This base of fire is still shooting.

So I don't mean to make it sound like it was a peaceful walk. It's still, you know, if we're. If Spielberg was filming, we got plenty of stuff going on to make it exciting. And he's looking like he's gonna step over. This last guy I shot, and he's. This guy is, like, smoking. Like, you know, there's a little bit of smoke coming off of him.

And I remember telling Drew, I was like, stay away from the bodies. They have suicide vests on. And Merritt kind of stopped him in his tracks, and he turned back, and he's like, what? Everybody has a suicide vest, so, you know, keep your distance. Be forewarned.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Which, you know, he's kind of paused there, kind of edging toward this d*** junction panel again. It's the only cover in this little lane. Everything else is open thoroughfare, and it's all these sea lane containers, so there's nothing really to hide behind.

Jon Becker: You see, junction panel. You make an electrical box.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So, yeah, it's a gigantic electrical box. So it's where all the big two inch cable from the generators comes in here, and it gets dispersed out.

Jon Becker: Got it. How big is this?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Probably two and a half feet wide and 3ft tall, 4ft tall. You know, it's almost big enough for two people to hide behind, which comes up in a minute.

Jon Becker: Which probably at this point looks to you like a….

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: It's better than no castle. Yeah, pretty funny. The rounds that had come through it because it wouldn't stop a bullet but it would hit those big, heavy cables and since they were aiming at me, it would turn the bullet, you know, like 30, 40 degrees. So if they aimed it, if they had just sprayed blindly, they probably would have got me. But they were actually aiming at the panel trying to hit me and it would just turn just enough to go around me and come through the back of the panel, which is kind of marvelous. It's one of those weird things.

Jon Becker: Yeah. I mean, this whole event is you literally couldn't script even up till now. And have anybody believe this actually occurred?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: No, not at all. I think the only, only reason anybody even remotely believed us was, you know, it happened on base. So when they came back to investigate it, you know, they did like, you know, CSI. Like you said you were shooting here. Let's see. And like, well, there's a pile of. There's a pile of brass there. And I actually was doing a walkthrough for. I was on drugs for pain. So it was either General Conville or Secretary of Defense Esper. But I was kneeling down. I was like. And then I got my grenade out and threw it right here and found my grenade pin.

Jon Becker: Wow!

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So I was like, oh, s***, I was right here, actually. And he's like, well, I mean, yeah, I guess you were right here, but, you know. Anyway, Drew is sitting there and this vest goes low order. So it's like a blowtorch. Like a gigantic blowtorch. It's like 20ft of flame and overwhelming heat. It went from being spicy back there to just like, you opened an oven door and you're looking in at it.

Jon Becker: So if Drew had stepped over him, he would have probably been.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah, crispy. It wouldn't have done him any good. But anyway, Drew hates things like that. So he came over to join me behind the junction panel and either the guy's grenade started detonating or everybody just started throwing grenades just because. But either way, we start doing the whack a mole stuff again. Me and Drew, and we just. Everything was exploding. We watched the video of it. We're trying to count at least 15, probably more like 20, 25 grenades because you can just see them rapidly exploding in this area. And stuff's flying out of the alley.

And, you know, we're, you know, Drew and I are having this little chubbing fight where I want to get all the way behind the panel so I can shoot behind it. And he hates that because every time I dig my hips in, I'm kicking him out the other side of it. And then, you know, likewise, he'll jump back in and kind of push me over to the edge of it, and I dislike that intensely.

So we're kind of, you know, sharing this thing like. Like two brothers would share something not well. And at that time, that's when I get hit in the base of my throat with a large, heavy device. And I'm kind of choked up over this junction panel. And I have called an admin pouch. It's just a big, bulky pouch, and you can keep a notebook and a gel shot and a candy bar, things you need in combat.

And anyway, I look down at mine, and it's got a grenade wedged against it, which it's not my grenade, and it doesn't have a pin, so it amps the stress level up for me and Drew. Well, for me, Drew, I don't think, noticed it, but for me, it was a traumatic event. I whacked that thing away from me, and then while I'm messing with that, something hit me in the back of the leg, and it's another grenade. You know, we figure it hit the wall behind me and then just ricocheted off and hit me.

And Drew and I are both trying to kick that thing out of there because it's in the same configuration. It's not ours, and it doesn't have a pin, so we don't want it. And we get it out of there, and Drew grabs me. He's like, hey, we got to get out of here. They're going to kill us. And he's a pretty smart guy, so I tend to go with what he says. And we take off running out of there, and I think we get three or four steps away from that panel, and we both just get kind of knocked down by an explosion.

And I remember he's trying to get up, and I'm kind of laying on his leg, and I'm messing with my gun because I can't get my stalk into my shoulder, and I can't get on my feet because he won't stop yanking on me. And that's when I had looked down, and I can't figure out what's wrong with my rifle. My buttstock's folded over. And there's an arm just below the elbow down. Has smacked into my rifle and broke the buttstock off. Or not off, but broke it and folded it.

Jon Becker: When you say an arm, you mean literally, physically, somebody's arm?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yep, just somebody's arm. And I think he might have reached across his vest and detonated his vest and then sent an armed missile at me. Or maybe it was just laying out there. Because after the battle, there was body parts everywhere. Like you find when a bunch of guys get together and detonate suicide vests. That's all that's left is the extremities. Mostly pieces. Yeah.

Jon Becker: So the blast that knocks you down is him setting off his suicide vest.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Well, probably. It could have been a grenade also. Maybe there was an arm on the ground and the grenade just, you know, who knows? But there was stuff exploding. A lot of it. And anyway, we get up, you know, drew helps me to my feet, and we end up back around this corner again. And that's where we see Mark Colbert, because, you know, I remember seeing him falling. I haven't seen him at this point. I haven't even heard him.

And he's, you know, he's usually the guy that would be driving it. I'm trying to figure out where, like, I'm kind of. I'm thinking that he's either dead or, like, you know, grievously wounded, which I guess he was grievously wounded. He got shot through the b***. He says it was the upper thigh, but I was in the hospital when he got treated. It's definitely b*** meat, you know, and. Which hurts.

But I guess he and Nate had got Matt Horde, who was driving the four wheeler. They've been spending this whole time getting him patched up and off the battlefield. So he got shot through the calf and in the forehead, but is hit the lip of his helmet and stopped it. But he is not useful because he….

Jon Becker: Yeah, when an AK round hits a ballistic helmet, that's not designed to stop an AK round, it does tend to pass some kinetic energy through.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah, that's what he said. So he was pretty confused for a day or two. But anyway, I'm pumped to see Chief Colbert. He was from my team. He was on the AOB with me, and he was one of the guys that kind of mentored me directly on my team. He's a GB I aspire to be, and he was a part of my team leadership, and I was very thankful he wasn't dead. And he's kind of a character, so he's like, what you know, kind of a gruff guy, and he's like, you know, what the h*** are you guys doing?

You know, say, do the same spiel again. Like, chief, we know right where they're at. They're right down here. Let's go get them. And he's like, yeah, well, h***, let's go get them. And he starts limping up from his, you know, ostensibly upper thigh injury. I never seen anybody walk like that with a thigh injury. But, you know, he waddles around, stacks up, and I'm about to lead us down. You know, Drew's taking that far left again. I'm on this corner. You know, you can't have a good war story without a Navy SEAL.

So we had one Navy SEAL showed up, Lieutenant Turnip seed. He stacked up with Drew, and I'm trying to reload my rifle, you know, if you hear, I keep running out of ammo, and it's always been a stressful thing for me, so I'm like, I'm going to reload before we go around the corner, and I can't find a magazine. I look down, and my vest is empty. There's no more magazines.

And I was like, well, I better check to see what I'm dealing with here. And I pull my magazine out. It's got one round on the feed lip there, which sounds bad. It's not that bad. Cause I have one in the chamber, so I've got twice as many as I thought I had. So I have two.

Jon Becker: So you have the double Andy Griffith special two bullets.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: But they're not any bullets. They're sniper bullets. So fair.

Jon Becker: Okay. Yeah, problem solved.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah, problem solved. But I'm like, hmm, probably. Well, I probably shouldn't walk point. So I yelled, hey, chief, I can't go first. I'm out of ammo. You got to go first. Which confuses him. He's like, huh? What the h*** you talking about? Like, I only got one bullet. You have to go first. You take point. But don't worry, I'll cover you.

He's like, you know, oh, I'm already shot, so I can go point and get shot more. That's your plan? I was like, well, yeah, yeah, you. You go first and get shot more. But, yeah, he rolls in front of me, and we start to kind of, you know, push down this alley. It's at this time that a soldier from the 10th mountain, Mike Wallace, has run all the way across the camp. He's heard this gunfight the whole time. I guess he was in the MWR with his guys, didn't have any equipment. He just had his rifle and 130 run mag and can do attitude. But he's run about 1100 meters, I think, and he sees us kind of easing into this alley, and he's like, can I go with you? We're like, yeah, come on. If you want to come. This is the place.

Jon Becker: We got 32 bullets.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: No, we got 32 bullets. Yeah. And anyway, we. We ease down this alley. We get. We get to the end of it, you know, the same thing. Pretty peaceful at this point. It's better than it has been. Nobody's throwing grenades at us, and nobody's really, like, shooting directly at us. The camp is still. You can hear stuff blowing up, and you can hear everybody on the camp shooting everywhere.

But in our little spot, it's not bad. And, you know, the chieftain is looking down. There's body parts everywhere, and stuff's on fire. The UAV compound had, I think, like, 500 gallons of aviation fuel for the drones, and it has been burning this entire time. And anyway, he's like, I think you guys got them all. And we hadn't because somebody heard that must have spoke English, decided to make a funny, a funny little dig on chief, but bounced past two hand grenades at us and yanked the lanyard on his vest and detonated his vest, which, you know, scattered everybody. Everybody wanted to be somewhere else.

And I remember, like, thinking, why is everybody running? Been through way worse than this. And one of the grenades actually, you know, came, you know, dumped over near me. And I'm back almost to the generator panel again. It's my spot. It's my favorite hangout. And I'm like, I'll ride this thing out. And I'm looking at it, and I remember, like, oh, I don't have eye pro on. I probably shouldn't look at it when it goes off. So I remember turning my head.

Brent Stratton: Safety first.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Safety first. Yeah, yeah.

Jon Becker: When you're gonna stand by a grenade.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Don't look at it.

Jon Becker: Important safety tip. Wear eye protection.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Right. Which is just, you know, at this point, not thinking completely clear and figuring out what's really going on in the world. But it did. It detonated, and it hurt. I remember, in my bones, it hurt, but nothing hit me. And, yeah, man, I guess I was right about that one.

Jon Becker: That's a win.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: But I start hearing fire again from behind us. We didn't know this is the last fighter has run all the way around. He's shooting the guys up in the back of this thing, you know, I guess he hit Mike and he hit this polish lieutenant. His name escapes me at the moment, but they're both a catch in h*** and returning fire. I fire my last two bullets, and drew fired a few rounds at him. And either we hit his vest and detonated him, or we hit him and then he has detonated his vest. Either way, his vest detonates, and it blew my call us from where he was kind of toward the end of the lane where we started. Most of the distance to me.

Jon Becker: How far do you think that is?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: It probably blew him probably 10 meters. And he was right choked up against this guy. So he pretty much tamped that charge. And, you know, at this point, I have no ammunition. I got my pocket knife out, and I'm kind of dancing around with this knife. And it occurred to me that there's probably more useful ways to spend your time than knife fighting suicide bombers.

So I was like, I know Mike's gonna be injured. I didn't know who he was at this point. I just knew he was a us soldier, but I know he's gonna be injured. So I ran over and grabbed him and attempted to. Tried to grab him by his collar, but he had a stretchy shirt on. So I just pulled it off, and it was just stretching way out. So I was, s***, I'll figure this out another way.

And I reached down and I grabbed him by the belt buckle and kind of just picked him up and shuffled him into this UAV compound and started treatment on him. You know, he was in a bad way. I had an IFAC, and what he really needed was a hospital. And lucky for him, you know, we're on a fob, and I can see the hospital from here.

So I grabbed a contractor for the UAV compound. He's sitting back there hanging out next to a generator. They had a little Suzuki mule, and he got it fired up. We loaded Mike up and got him, you know, got him to the hospital pretty quick after he was wounded. Unfortunately, he did, you know, succumb to his injuries and died that day in Ghazni.

And, you know, now I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do because, you know, I'm alone again because I keep. My friends keep running off and abandoning me, and I send away the only friend I had, this contractor. But, you know, I, in the Q course and the weapons side, to become a weapon sergeant. They have light weapons, and it's the annoying part, they're taking these guns apart, putting them back together, and it's a high stress thing, and they have all these, you're gonna be on the battlefield and have to assemble a gun at night covered in honey. And I'm like, I don't think so. I'm a combat veteran. This has never come up.

So I hate this part of the story. But I went and grabbed an AK, and it had a really nice 30 caliber hole through the bolt. And the operating rod is like shattered off of it, so they don't work like that, even as reliable as aks are. And I throw it down, I grab another one, and it's got nine mil rounds through the top of the magazine, but it has blown the magazine out, which has stretched the receiver apart. And they don't work like that either.

But I was like, well, this one's got a good bolt. I stripped that one out, go back and put AK together and got it. I start grabbing magazines and grenades and trying to figure out what I'm going to do. And the incoming commander, we had a change of command that day, runs up and he's like, Earl, what the h*** are you doing? And I kind of tell him about my day and try to get him involved with my plan to run off base and attack this base of fire. And he's like, well, the poles have tanks here. We'll probably just let them do that. Let's go back to the camp and takes me back to the AOB. And that was the end of my day.

Jon Becker: So at this point, after all that, you're ready to go off the base and go attack the base, fire at the other facility?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah. Well, there were Taliban out there.

Jon Becker: But in the process validated the Q course. I mean, you weren't covered in honey.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: But yeah, I'm like, yep, yep. So if you're in the Q course right now, you know, yeah. Maybe one time you might have to put guns together in combat on the battlefield. I'm sorry.

Jon Becker: It's interesting. Cause as you're going through, I hear you referencing training Q course, prior experiences, how much of your training kicked in without you really having to think about it as this happened?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: All of it. So every instance, the actions I didn't take, actions I executed, rehearsed activities that had been trained into me relentlessly. So I didn't decide to pull my pistol out because my rifle jammed like it was a, it was a auto reflex. As soon as the rifle didn't recoil properly, it registered that the rifle was down.

And then by the time I really cognitively figured that out, my pistol was already out. When I had to reload, you know, that that process started because I, you know, I trained, so much that when I felt that bolt locked to the rear, there was already a magazine coming, and the old one needed to be out of the way because they're passing each other in the sky, and so, which really, you know, I always tell people the only thing I'll own is the will to engage with the enemy. All the success that I enjoyed on that battle was for the training I had received and, you know, good training that was well thought out.

And being in an organization that won't leave well enough alone. I had peers that were like, well, you didn't really do that great. It was executed kind of poorly. You should do that one again. And being humble enough to listen to guys tell me that I wasn't the best and to become the best. But, yeah, obviously, everything I had executed on that battlefield was something I had trained at before many, many times.

Jon Becker: So your responses were automatic, at least at a technique level, those responses had become automatic for you?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Absolutely. Yeah. I didn't have to. I could concentrate on other things. Cause I didn't have to come up with what to do. My body was just reacting to that.

Jon Becker: Do you think that that facilitated you not being overcome by the events?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah, I mean, if I had to figure out that my rifle is jammed and I need to pull my pistol out if I need to, if I had to think through why I don't have ammunition in my rifle currently, I think that not having those ready made solutions kind of providing me a tool to use against the enemy, obviously held my psyche together.

Jon Becker: I'm going to guess also that as, I mean, you obviously, you were exposed to multiple blasts, right? I mean, your sequence of explosions, at some point, I'm going to guess that you're no longer, you know, able to do advanced mathematics as you're moving.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: You know, if you notice that the person that decided to stand next to the grenade so they didn't have to run somewhere, that that is not a brilliant mind.

Jon Becker: Eye protection. He was wearing eye protect.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Oh, wait, no. He turned his head through the battle. When I start the battle very clear, and I can remember seeing, you know, further off into the camp. And then, you know, as. As the battle progresses, my little circle of cognitive recall, it gets closer and closer and closer to the point when drew and I were getting grenaded. At a certain point, I remember. I know that was engaging something, you know? Right?

But in my memory, all I can kind of see is the rear of my rifle, the red dot and the brass. I have a astounding memory of the brass coming out of the rifle. I can't remember what was in front of me at all. And that's where I can kind of tell how much stress I was under through the battle is kind of how far away I could see, which I recognize because it's an evaluation of how competent you are for free fall. Is the instructor first thing on the ground, he's like, what did you see? And if you saw nothing, that's bad, because, I mean, you were really in your own head. When guys get a few jumps, they remember their altimeter, which is about eight inches from their face.

So you'll see guys have a very good the whole jump. They just remember the dials spinning on that altimeter. And then when somebody is really competent in the air, they'll remember, well, I saw the instructor, and then there was a mountain and a lake off to the, you know, to your rear, and that's as you kind of get inoculated to stress and fear, you'll start taking in those. Those details.

So that's kind of, you know, I know I was kind of maxed out for what stress and fear I could kind of deal with because at that point, I couldn't see past, you know, the rear aperture of my rifle.

Brent Stratton: You know, one of the things that you touched on was you felt like the training had come from people that were being honest with you and saying, hey, you're not performing very well here. I'm guessing in a training environment, when you were getting that feedback, I would imagine that there's a lot of really cool things to break down there that you have the organizational culture at that point that somebody is willing to be able to say that.

And then you touched on, too, the humility to be able to accept that and then that drive to be able to continue to train and build those repetitions. And then you saw it play out. So oftentimes when we talk about accountability, when we talk about standards, those are just kind of words that people use. Oftentimes it's used with supervision, or I'm going to hold somebody accountable.

Jon Becker: Right.

Brent Stratton: But we're talking about some line level, lateral accountability, truly with your team and being able to say, hey, you're not performing well here. You need to work on this. And I could see a lot of people shutting down, and nobody wants to work on the things that they're not good at.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah. It's not comfortable to embrace weakness. Right. I would rather, obviously go out and just nail the things I'm really good at. So to take stock and look in the mirror and be like, well, I'm going to throw myself on the altar of humble pie and go and fail at this until I'm good at it, it's a hard thing to do. And I think SF has a good culture where people will respect that and kind of honor your, like, well, at least you're out here.

Brent Stratton: Yeah. And that's great to be able to build that culture, and that's something that organizationally, I would love to make sure that we're building that in each of our organizations, but I don't know that we always see that. Oftentimes you see, well, I'm not the sergeant. That's nothing. My job, I don't want to be the one that goes and does this, but really being able to step up and do that, I thought was really interesting that you said that. Those are things that I'm keen on.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah. And, you know, we were talking earlier, I guess, you know, rehash my. A lot of people are like, wow, it's great. That's amazing that you did that. I couldn't do that. I'm like, well, let me tell you about Earl's first gunfight and, you know, driving into a city at night in Iraq and wasn't even that bad. Nobody was shooting at me, but they were shooting at things.

And I, you know, luckily, you know, Browning makes a very sturdy gun because I was trying to pull that thing off the truck and get sitting so low in the truck that I couldn't see anything. If I'd had to react, there's no doubt in my mind I would not have. I was wanting to be anywhere else but then that gun truck.

But I had some really good leaders, and I think noticing that I was kind of down here thinking about myself, wishing I'd gone to law school and just giving me small tasks to get me outside of my own head. Not an important task, but asking me if I had my flares ready for escalation of force, asking me if the truck behind us was still there. And I'm, like, forcing me to kind of get out and participate in the battle, not in a meaningful way, but in a way that just kind of kept me engaged. Engaged, yeah. And then once I, you know, you'll get comfortable with anything if you're there long enough.

So, like, you know, once I realized that I wasn't going to die immediately, I started coming up out of my little turtle shell. And luckily, that was a pretty one sided fight. By the time we kind of got there, it was all over, and I never really got engaged, but that was my first gunfight. If I hadn't been strapped into the truck, I was definitely ready to run somewhere else.

Jon Becker: What do you think? So from that earl to Medal of honor early. What happens there? What changes in you?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So every, and I also, I got really lucky in that I had a very, what, low escalation of violence. So gunfights that were overwhelming on my side, very little return fire. And then gradually, they got worse and worse. And as I went through. But each time, you know, I started getting confidence. You know, it's one thing to, you know, you train martial arts your whole life. If you've never actually fought somebody, you don't really know.

And to kind of see my training function on the battlefield and to, you know, after you've survived a few gunfights and then you're like, the reason that we were successful is these things that we had practice and training, and it validated the training. I'm like, I just have this confidence that I'm ready for anything.

And I think after Ghazni, I've never been stand alone in the face of the enemy before. But there's a very common nightmare that combat veterans have, and I've had both of them, or I used to have both of them. And one, the bad guys, you shoot them and they don't die.

Brent Stratton: They don't go down.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah, they don't go, they don't go down.

Jon Becker: The Michael Myers nightmare.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Or they fall down and they get right back up. And you're on the battlefield, and you're shooting these guys, and they just, they don't die, and they keep coming. And eventually, you're oval run. And then the other one is, you know, being on the battlefield without ammunition or no gun. Yeah, right.

Jon Becker: So you played out both of those.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So I played out both of those, but I've never had that nightmare again after that day.

Brent Stratton: That's funny. Cops have the same thing. Right? But shooting and running out of ammunition and not being there, and when you're telling the story, you know, we had, we were fortunate to be able to hear you present it a little earlier. In hearing it again today, that's all. I kept thinking is, man, you are playing out everybody's worst nightmare.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah, it's the old going to school without pants thing.

Brent Stratton: You did that, too.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: I did that, yeah. Yeah, we're not talking about that. Yeah, we'll keep this on combat and training, but, no, that's, you know, it's a very, very common thing. And then after that day, I went and looked at what would I have done different? I could have come better prepared. I could have brought a different rifle if I could see the future. I wish I'd had my gun belt on, but habitually for the labor I was doing, a gun belt does not help with manual labor. I did the best I could with how I would have come.

And when I really looked in the mirror, I was like, I wouldn't really have changed anything. I still think the fight I anticipated having to shoot, waif off the camp or being asked to support another team. The sniper rifle lended itself to being that thing and then surviving that battle. And I would say strictly off of the training and then the tactics that I've been taught gave me, like, a really high level of confidence.

Brent Stratton: Is there anything that, and maybe this is too strong of a word, and I certainly mean no disrespect to it, but the word that comes to mind is, in the weeks leading up to the assault, would you term as complacency of getting used to the assaults that were coming daily? And then you could set your watch by how often they were coming. And is there anything that you even would have been able to do offensively to be able to impact that?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So, you know, we looked back at that. What could we have done different? So the AOR that we were in was not ours. So we were staged there just for logistical reasons. So we had no right. If we had found out that these guys are doing this, a camp attack, us special forces would have had no right to go out and prosecute this. And nor would we ever waste any of our time trying to solve that mystery because that was, you know, we have a coalition partner, the polls, that's theirs.

And then, you know, we had some intelligence indicators that painted the picture that they were also solving. So they had their. Their picture. They knew that the camp was going to be attacked that day. They didn't know it was going to be a spectacular attack. You know, they went, they sent a two man sniper team to the hotel to what they thought stop a team from emplacing a – Either recoilless rifle or a rocket or some sort. And that was their big plans because they had kind of picked up some intelligence that there would be an attack, obviously underestimated, vastly.

And on the other hand, we knew that somewhere in that quarter of Afghanistan there was going to be a spectacular fob attack because we could see them sucking up all this support to support it, you know, like the, a 20,000 pound bomb and then two, you know, 5000 pound bombs, that's, that's a vast amount of explosives. So we could see them gathering the stuff up, the munitions that they were moving around. We knew there was going to be a spectacular attempt.

And I guess if we'd ever sat down and just disregarded the other work we'd been given, we might have figured that out, but we had no cause to do it. We were doing our job in our areas of Afghanistan and they were, they were running theirs. And I think, you know, it's just one of those, the battlefields are messy and the enemy gets a chance to kill you. You can mitigate it as best as you want, but in the end of the day, they get a vote and how the battles go, suspect gets a vote.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Yeah. So, from a lessons learned standpoint and things that you think are actionable for other units, what, looking back at this, you talk about stress inoculation. How would you now, on the heels of this, explain to other people building stress inoculation and how did this event change the way that you viewed that?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: So I had always been trained in a manner that was stressful and that's different. As you get older, older and more competent, the stress is different. So as a, like a young, a young private, it just takes a sergeant yelling at him and that's stressful. You know, that causes a ton of problems for him. And then for like, my, my operators, the closest thing I can get is to like physically fatigue them. It's very common. Before we do a stress shoot, have a guy run a mile in his gear.

And then I also like pepper spray and tasers because even if somebody thinks that there's a chance that they're going to get tased, you'll see them act in a very different manner because especially if they've been tased once before.

Jon Becker: So you'll unexpectedly tase them.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Well, I'll tell them that, hey, we're doing training today and somebody's getting tased.

Jon Becker: Could be you, could be somebody else.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah. Whoever shoots the lowest score gets tased today. That's always a fun one. But, you know, it's, it's one of those things. I find that when somebody's physically exhausted, like, to the point of like muscle failure, that closely mimics their combat performance because, you know, in combat, different processes are taking place and, but a lot of them, you know, the racing heart from all the adrenaline in your system, the fear and just the, you know, that over that preponderance of emotions that are coming in, you get the same physical performance from just like, running a guy ragged, you know, that's how good he is.

So if you think on any given day at 50 meters, I'm very competent with a pistol, I can just beat a ten ring to death. But somebody stands down there with one bullet and they're going to shoot it back, that's a tough shot for me. And I'm, you know, that I'm a high level performer. So you think, and you look at statistics, they kind of bleed that out, that these gunfights will happen inside of 10ft and, you know, two guys will wail away at each other and shoot, you know, seven, eight rounds and there's one hit and, you know, they weren't very good in the first place.

And then once those eyes dilate, you know, keeping the front sight post clear is nearly impossible. And, you know, and the best you can do is just kind of hope for that process to line up once. And, you know, you look at, I think, people like Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, very fascinating characters because they weren't exceptionally fast gunfighters and they weren't exceptionally well known for their competency with a firearm. But what they did possess was either, you know, very probably sociopaths. They just didn't get rattled and they would hold the gun out, use the front sight post and line up a shot and take it.

And, you know, you have to be able to get out of your own head, kind of master your body and apply the fundamentals like your life depended on it. Cause for this story, it does. And make those hits. And for training, if you're not completely stressed out in one manner or the other, you're not really training.

Jon Becker: You're just practicing.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: You're just practicing. You're not training for an actual scenario. You're out farting around a little bit.

Jon Becker: It's interesting because you talk about two complementary things. One is absolutely fundamentally drilling the basics and being able to execute those basics under a high stress situation. The other thing that you're talking about is the culture of the unit. That is accountability to one another and to the unit itself, to constantly attack your weaknesses and to create a culture of driving towards perfection. It strikes me that those two kind of came together for you.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah. And even as a force recon marine, that was the same culture, actually, probably more rabid. That place is very aggressive with it. And to be there, have your peers demand perfection of you, and then to have relevant, well thought out training and then to be a professional yourself, you can't help but end up with something pretty special at the end of that.

Jon Becker: It seems, though, that it's very easy to decide that you've mastered the basics, and it's very easy to avoid uncomfortability in interpersonal relationships because, you know, I know Earl isn't practicing this, but, like, I don't want to have the awkward conversation. How do you prevent that from occurring in a unit?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: I think, I mean, it's always going to be uncomfortable at first, and then it's the manner that's delivered, you know, and you can tell, you know, if somebody's picking at you in a malicious manner, like, that's how it comes off. But if somebody is being humble and like, hey, you know, the stopwatch doesn't lie, the target doesn't lie, you're not doing well.

And I think I know what's wrong. Maybe they're trying to help you, maybe they can't. You know, if it's up here, a lot of times they're like, I can do this, but I'm not there where I can teach you. I'm just telling you, you're not there. So be back here tomorrow.

And then, you know, something that always kept me humble, also, right after I became a force recon marine, being qualified as an zero 321 coming from the infantry, huge deal. I got airborne wings. I've been to Sears school, and I walk in, and my first team, Sergeant Pat Sterling, he sat me down, the whole team's gone, and he's lauding my accomplishments. He's like, you graduated Ardeche.

Yeah. He's like, cyr and jump school. Like, it's a big deal. And I was like, my head's this big. And he's like, that's the bare minimum. To even walk through that door. Like, you are the bare minimum. I will even accept that. Comes in here and drinks water in my presence. So, like, so now what are you gonna do? Like, why should I keep you?

And for me, that was like, man, he took the wind right out of my sails. And I was like, yeah, why am I going to be here? And I was like, okay, so I'm not special anymore. I was special before I walked in this door. And now I have to hold myself to a higher standard. And I'm looking at the unit to see what guys are good at that I'm not. And it's everything. And I just rapidly attack that.

And I think that that conversation kind of stopped me because it's a two way street, you need somebody to be bold enough to tell you you're not meeting the standard, and then you got to be humble enough to take that. And don't take it as a personal attack. You're not good. Get good.

Jon Becker: It's interesting! One of the things that you said is that you talked about stopwatches and scores and things that are objectively measurable. Do you think it's essential that you are driving objective standards? Because if I say, well, I don't like the way you sing, that's it. That's a difficult thing. It's very subjective. But if I go, hey, you know, it took you 45 seconds. It's supposed to take you 15.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: I mean, that's an easy one because if you don't know that, you're not trying very hard. But there's other things, especially how you're giving commands to a room, especially the job we have. They have the sleepovers. You'll go into a room and sometimes it'll be empty, and sometimes there'll be 30, 40 guys in there. And we're like, okay, rehearsing these commands, and you're like, hey, that's not intimidating. I don't feel like you're owning the room. I think the way you're delivering it, I feel like, is inviting violence.

And then you got the other guy that's, like, way over the top, and I'm like, hey, you're screaming like a maniac. That's almost as bad as this weakness. You're kind of adding a, like, stress to the room. Like, we don't need them panicking that we're going to murder them all. We want them to understand that we are in command of the situation competently.

And that's, you know, like, have that conversation how you're standing. Like, you know, you look scared. Like, that's. That's not. Like I didn't feel intimidated. I felt like you were intimidated. And, you know, and most of the time, people's body language is, is there, like, well, I was intimidated. It was terrifying. But, like, okay, well, don't stand like that. You know, stand like this. This is how you were looking. And, you know, subjective things like that.

And I can tell, like, when somebody's in placing an explosive, how confident they are. They can lie to me. They can even, like, yep, it went off. But, like, you know, you're sitting there messing with it and your hands are doing that. You know, the, like, I don't know what to do with my hand stuff. And, like, you're. You need to rehearse this more, because obviously, you got it right this one time.

But I know and you know that you were nervous to a huge extent. Like, let's go practice that until you're not nervous. And, I mean, you can lie about it, like, well, it's because it was cold. That's why. You know, and, like, well, I don't. Maybe you're the only one that knows, but that looked dumb to me.

Jon Becker: So it's just a constant drive towards excellence in everything.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: In everything, yeah. Why? You know, I don't think anybody wants to write a book about how I did pretty good at some stuff, you know? And nobody's gonna read that. Like, Tiger woods gets to write a book. He nailed it. So why wouldn't you want to master these things? And especially, you know, in the military and law enforcement community, like, not only does your own life hang in the balance, somebody else's life hangs in the balance.

And that was always been my kind of thing. Before you go off the battlefield, you could get killed. That's bad. But if you get somebody killed, especially somebody you care about, because you didn't want to train hard, and you got to carry that forever. And I've seen that eat at people either because it's true or because they think it's true.

So, you know, I also decided that at the end of the day, when I go to bed at night, I'm going to go to bed fine, because when my friends do get killed, I know that there was nothing else I could have done. I gave everything on the battlefield. I gave everything in training, and this is the profession we're in, and that's just what happens. And if you can't say that, you're just putting yourself up for one bad event to ruin two lives.

Jon Becker: So, initially, you were given Silver Star, which was then upgraded to the Congressional Medal of Honor, which is obviously the highest honor that our nation bestows upon warriors. What does the Medal of Honor mean to you?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: I haven't really figured that out yet. I've always admired Medal of Honor recipients. I've read their stories my entire career, even before I joined the military, I've always been just profoundly interested in those types of men. Like, this situation was so bad. And then he rose to this occasion. It's just always fascinated me.

So to be honored with it myself, I don't know what it means to me. I think for me, obviously, to be honored by the nation was a profound thing. But I think what really affected me the most was my peers, when men like Tony Bell and Mark Colbert are giving me accolades and telling me that I exceeded the standard.

And those are guys I always drove myself to emulate, to be half as good of, and to have them there when it happened, clapping at me was huge. You're having your heroes worship you is a huge paradigm shift. That's very uncomfortable.

Jon Becker: Yeah. It's interesting interacting with so many warriors throughout my career. It's always interesting to me how the people that receive the highest honors are usually so humble about it and often find themselves wondering, why me or why not somebody else. It's almost like it takes that humility to reach the level that you were able to reach.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah, I think probably, yeah. But, you know, it's hard. It's hard not to be humble when, you know, I wasn't the best gunfighter that was there. I was the best gunfighter that didn't get shot in the first 5 seconds of the battle. You know, so, like, for me to, like, I was the only person that could have accomplish those tasks is not true. You know, Drew and Mark Culbert were, you know, equally proficient at those things, and, you know, it's like, the only reason that I was able to be, you know, receive those accolades is because I didn't get shot right away. They did. And no doubt in my mind that if those had been reversed, if I'd gotten hit right away, you know, Drew would have stepped in and. And filled that breach or chief would have shaken that off and been the guy to receive that award. I know that's true.

Jon Becker: But I think, also, you had to be able to rise to the occasion, and you were.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yep. Well synced to high level of training. I didn't rise to the occasion, luckily, I had a high bar set for me that I grasped onto. And, you know, as the. Everything was kind of falling apart. Like, I had a really strong foundation. Foundation better than theirs. You know, I always. I love telling soldiers, like, you know, you're not as good as me, but your training is. Is the best, and it's relevant.

So when you, if you have to go on the battlefield, you know, you know, go on with your head up high and that confidence that you. You are going to be the best man on the battlefield, I think that's a unique thing that we get to say as Americans that whatever room I am, I'm probably the best at this thing.

Brent Stratton: You know, one of the things, Earl, outside of everything that we've talked about today in doing research and reading about you is one of the things that was that I saw included in your bio was that you put a lot in there about your family. And my perspective is that of all the great things that you have done professionally and some of the great things that you bring to the table, humility wise, I really liked reading things that spliced into your professional accomplishments in your career you outlined.

This is when I met my wife. This is where she's from. This is when we got married. This is when my daughter is born. This is when my son was born. And seeing those things in there, I really appreciated that about you. I would imagine, never having served. I don't know this for a fact, but I do see a lot of similarities in the people that I know from the military community as well as in the law enforcement community.

And there's a lot of guys who really get it right professionally. There's a lot of guys who might get it right personally. There's not a lot of guys that can build both in there. And John and I have a mutual friend in Sid Heal, and I touched on him this morning, and some of the things that he taught me about where some of those things line up for both is really something that's changed my life. It's driven me to be a better person.

So I don't know you personally in that regard, but I thought it was unique. I read a lot of people's bios and things. I hadn't seen a whole lot of people that bring that in there. So I thought that was really cool. To be able to see that and to see how you interact a little bit in that regard is something that's really great, too.

And something that's worth mentioning for the people who will end up listening to this and being able to find that balance away from your professional life. And you touched on it, too, with your language school and picking out where is it that your wife wanted to live, and this is what you're going to do and being able to keep that balance together, man. So I think that's really cool to see. Just an observation.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: No, I think it's true. And I always, we don't recruit young men. We recruit mothers of young men. Cause that's who has the say. Like, I think about joining the army. If the mom's not convinced it's a good idea, they're not coming. And then by keeping a guy, most of the time he wants to stay, if his wife doesn't think it's worth it, or if she feels like the paradigm is way out of whack or the work is not of value enough to explain why he's not home. You're going to lose that guy.

And I've taken my wife right to the edge several times. She's not shy, so she's like, hey, this is like, I signed up for adversity, but this is not it. And I have to go and find that work life balance and turn it back a notch.

Brent Stratton: That's good. It's a good thing to learn. One last question. Winning the Medal of Honors probably had you go to a lot of different events and probably get to meet a lot of people. Who's the coolest person that you've met since you've won the award? At going to some of these events.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee:

I don't know who's the coolest person.

Brent Stratton: Or maybe one of the most impressive to you, to you personally, one of the people that you enjoyed meeting the most. Maybe that's a better way of putting it.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: I got a single one out. But especially growing up, reading Medal of Honor narratives, when I went to the Medal of Honor convention and I walked into the room and I'm looking at all the legends from the Marine Corps, from the army, from the Navy, air Force, and you see all these guys that I've been reading about, and I'm in a room with them, and they're trying to buy me a beer. That was pretty cool. Yeah.

Jon Becker: Yeah. It's a very unique club.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yep. And I'm also the new guy in the club. So they were like….

Brent Stratton: So you have to buy the beer?

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah. They're like, hey, actually, there's this crappy stuff we have to do around here, and you're the guy that's in charge of it now. So I'm like, right back at the bottom of a population building.

Brent Stratton: The humility, man.

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Earl. On behalf of a nation that is grateful for the service you provided. Thank you!

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Pleasure!

Jon Becker: It's very easy for us to forget these kinds of stories, and it's very easy for people that are not in this community to think, well, how bad can it be? And I think that events like this show us not only how bad it can be, but the amazing level that people can rise to. And as a country, we appreciate you!

MSgt. Earl Plumlee: Thank you!

Episode 32 – Most Profound Moments of 2023

jonathan@aardvarktactical.com on October 1, 2024

Episode 32 – Most Profound Moments of 2023

Jon Becker: It's been an amazing year on the debrief. In the 18 months since we launched the show, we've accomplished more than we ever thought we could. To date, there have been more than 100,000 downloads of the show. We've recorded 31 episodes of the debrief and five episodes of battle, proven leadership, and covered a wide variety of topics.

To end our second season, we thought it might be fun to do an episode that gave you a behind the scenes view of this year's critical incident reviews, as well as the most memorable moments of each. Selecting incidents to cover on the podcast is a job we take very seriously.

Our goal is to provide you with not only an insiders view of the incident and the response, but to look for events that have specific lessons to teach, which we believe will make you and your team safer. We're also looking for guests that we believe will be able to clearly tell the story, convey the challenges they face, and also share their own experiences.

This year we did ten episodes that were critical incident reviews or had at least a portion dedicated to an incident review. Our episodes ranged from very recent to historically significant events, and from successful hostage rescues to tragic terrorist attacks and everything in between. So without further ado, let's get into our year end recap show.

My name is Jon Becker.

The goal of this podcast is to share their stories in hopes of making us all better leaders, better thinkers, and better people.

Welcome to The Debrief!

The first incident we covered was the hostage rescue at the Bataclan theater in Paris. As you may recall, on November 13th, 2015, Paris experienced a series of coordinated islamist terrorist attacks. These attacks took place over three separate areas of the city and were carried out by multiple teams of attackers. In total, 130 people lost their lives and more than 400 others were injured.

Almost 4 hours after the events began. They ended with a dramatic and successful hostage rescue conducted by France's elite brigade for research and intervention, or BRI. Because of the nature of his current assignment and the nature of their work, my guest for this episode was an anonymous current member of the team who participated in the rescue. The bravery these men displayed cannot be overstated. The terrorists were there to die. They were wearing suicide vests and carrying AK-47s. The hostages were trapped in a narrow hallway and had been told by the hostage takers that if the police entered, they would be executed. Imagine trying to conduct an HRT in a narrow hallway through a single door with two guys in suicide vests and AK-47s.

And then just before you initiate being told that you will have to head shoot the terrorists or their vests will detonate. Truly, one of the most amazing operations I've seen in almost four decades of working with tactical units. Their successful rescue of everyone without losing an operator is almost a miracle, were it not driven by their skills and planning. This was a really heavy episode.

We recorded it late in the evening, sitting together at my home. Because I've known the guests for several years, it felt like a deep conversation between two friends until I listened to it back and realized how profound the conversation was. His recollections of the event were haunting. And one moment that I simply could not get out of my head afterwards was this one.

Speaker: As I told you before, when I make my way back to home, it was very tough on the scene after the first wave of recreation, when all the only the dead people stay in the the theater. It's what I remember. It's the cell phone rings in all the pockets of the victim.

Because at that time, people all over France know by TV that something happened. And the relatives who know that some of their family is in the concert start calling, get some news about relative. So it's. And you can hear. Hear the cell phone, see the light of the cell phone on the dead bodies and hear the ring. Ringtones. That was tough.

Jon Becker: Our second critical incident review this year was with Earl Plumlee. This is a special joint episode between the CATO podcast and the Debrief. And joining me for co-host on this episode was Cato president Brent Stratton.

Our guest was Medal of Honor recipient staff Sergeant Earl D. Plumlee. Master Sergeant Plumlee received the Medal of Honor for his actions on August 28, 2013 at Fob Gosney in Afghanistan. This is a story that sounds much more like an action adventure movie than a real event. When you hear the story, you find yourself just shaking your head involuntarily. It is difficult to imagine how Earl survived this event.

But honestly, in talking with Earl, it became very clear why he survived. He is a true American hero whose actions that day are deserving of the highest honor our nation can give. If you don't believe me, go ahead and read the citation for the Medal of Honor. Truly amazing. For me, the most surprising thing about this interview was how lighthearted Earl was. About the entire event and how funny he was. Earl is the quintessential Green beret, is gifted with a very dry wit, is calm under pressure, operationally very effective, and has a humble demeanor that serves to downplay his skills and work ethic.

We recorded this episode at the CATO conference in Reno, where Earl was the keynote speaker. Perhaps my favorite moment from the conference was walking out after Earl's presentation and having a seasoned member of one of the nation's top full time tactical units tell me he was planning to burn his man card after hearing Earl's story.

There's a lot of good stuff in this episode about training and preparation, but the moment I chose for you is a surprisingly lighthearted discussion about being repeatedly attacked and blown up by terrorist hand grenades.

Earl: And, you know, we're. You know, Drew and I are having this little chubbing fight where I want to get all the way behind the panel so I can shoot behind it. And he hates that because every time I dig my hips in, I'm kicking him out the other side of it. And then, you know, likewise, he. He'll jump back in and kind of push me over to the edge of it, and I dislike that intensely.

So we're kind of, you know, sharing this thing like two brothers would, you know, share something not well. And, you know, at that. At that time, I – That's when I get, like, hit in the base of my throat with a large, heavy device, and I'm kind of, you know, choked up over this junction panel. And I have a call it an admin pouch. It's just a big, bulky pouch, and you can keep, like, a notebook and a gel shot and a candy bar, you know, things you need in combat.

And anyway, there's a – I look down at mine, and it's got, you know, a grenade wedged against it, and it's not my grenade, and it doesn't have a pin, so it amps the stress level up for me and Drew. Well, for me, Drew, I don't think, noticed it, but for me, it was a traumatic event. I whacked that thing away from me, and then while I'm messing with that, something hit me in the back of the leg, and it's another grenade. We figure it hit the wall behind me and then just ricocheted off and hit me.

And Drew and I are both trying to kick that thing out of there because it's in the same configuration. It's not ours, and it doesn't have a pin, so we don't want it, and we get it out of there. And Drew grabs me. He's like, hey, we got to get out of here. They're going to kill us. And he's pretty smart guy, so I tend to go with what he says. And we take off running out of there. I think we get three or four steps away from that panel. We both just get kind of knocked down by an explosion.

And I remember he's trying to get up, and I'm kind of laying on his leg. I'm messing with my gun because I can't get my. Can't get my stock into my shoulder, and I can't get on my feet because he won't stop yanking on me. And that's when I had looked down and can't figure out what's wrong with my rifle. My b*** stock's folded over, and there's an arm just below the elbow down, has smacked into my rifle and broke the buttstock off, or not off, but, you know, broke it and folded it.

Jon Becker: And you say an arm. You mean, like, literally, physically, somebody's arm?

Earl: Yep, just somebody's arm. So I think he might have reached across his vest and detonated his vest and then sent an arm missile at me. Or maybe it was just laying out there. Cause after the battle, there was body parts everywhere. Like you find when a bunch of guys get together and detonate suicide vests. That's all that's left is the extremities, mostly pieces.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So the blast that knocks you down is him setting off his suicide vest.

Earl: Well, you know, probably it could have been a grenade also. Maybe there was an arm on the ground and the grenade just, you know, who knows? But there was stuff exploding. A lot of it.

Jon Becker: In our third incident of the season, we dove into what's perhaps the most controversial case in the past ten years, the Breonna Taylor case. When I first looked into this case, I was surprised by how consistent and bad the media coverage was. Everyone from LeBron James to Kamala Harris had gone on the record that the cops who shot Breonna Taylor should be in jail, if not worse.

Press coverage said that Brianna was shot in her bed. The police were at the wrong house, the search warrant wasn't for her, and a variety of other ugly facts that seemed undisputed in media coverage. When I was interviewed by Sergeant Betsy Brantner Smith, she encouraged me to dig into the case and offered to introduce me to Sergeant John Mattingly, who led the raid and had also been shot in the leg, severing his femoral artery. That discussion surprised me because I had not heard anything about an officer being shot.

So I agreed to talk to John and to dig into the case more deeply. I read everything I could possibly find about the case before my first call with John. What I found really surprised me. The prevailing narrative was not only wrong, it was clearly contradicted by the physical evidence which had been released to the press. What struck me when I first spoke to John was how exceptionally normal he was.

Simply put, John was every narc sergeant I had ever known, he'd worked narcotics for most of his career, had made 2000 plus high risk entries, had never shot anyone, never had a force complaint. And he started off our conversation by telling me he really didn't think Breonna Taylor should be dead and feels bad that it turned out the way that it did.

While there's certainly room to debate tactics, dynamic war in service, and the conduct of other officers in the aftermath of John being shot, there is no doubt that Kenneth Walker shooting John Mattingly triggered the entire event. The episode features a lot of lessons learned and showcases the absolute devastation the event had on all of those involved. For me, though, the most pivotal moment is this one that describes what actually happened in 12 seconds at Breonna Taylor's door.

John: So Mike hits the door the first time, and he hit right on the deadbolt and which, you know, is a no no. And it didn't do anything. It dented the door a little bit, but that was it. And I remember somebody, somebody in the background yelling, hey, my daughter hits harder than that. Everybody kind of laughed, as, you know, as you do.

Second time, he hit it, hit it flush and almost knocked it open. I could see through to the living room. I could see the dead boat was bent. And I said, here we go. And he hit it a third time, and it flew open. But that time, I can see from right to left, I can see the couch. I can see the curtains on the window. I can see the wall. There was a picture on the wall. And I –From right to left, I'm slicing the pie. And I get where the door frame on the left side of the door and the wall for the hall meet, I can no longer see anymore. Can't see down the hall, can't see in the kitchen to the left. All I can see is the living room. Everybody at this point is yelling, please search warrant. Police. Search warrant. Please. Search warrant.

Now this is pretty quick, you know, the cutting and the slicing. The pie is maybe 2 seconds. So it's fairly quick. Just boom, boom, boom, boom. At that point, as soon as I step from left to right into the door frame and my gun light goes from right to left, I come up on the. I can see the end of this gun. I could see it was silver, and. But the first thing my mind did, as I'm turning right to left, I'm seeing two people, but they're overlapping. It's like one big blob at the end of this long hall. Long, dark hall. And you got the ambient light from the tv coming out of the room. Now you've got the law. The light from the hallway kind of coming in, giving a weird look. Then you've got our, you know, mounted our gun lights.

So as I'm going right to left, I'm going, something's not right here. My brain, even though this is super quick, my brain's thinking all these weird things, like, this is weird. Normally, people run, they hide, try to escape, they give up, or they fight. But I've never had two people waiting at the end of a hallway just standing there, so. And I knew in my mind, I assumed one was a guy and one was a girl because one was taller, one was shorter. But I couldn't make their face out. I couldn't have picked them out of a lineup. Cause my focus went right on that gun that was extended out.

So if you're looking down the hall, Kenneth Walker's to the right, Brianna's to the left. As soon as I see the gun, I think, oh, crap. I mean, it was so quick. As soon as I saw the gun, the flash, the bang, the smack in the leg, I felt it. I returned four shots. It felt like it was simultaneous. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

But evidently, there was enough of a gap in there for him to dive out of the way in this doorway. And when that happened, I went behind the doorframe, and I came back out and shot where I thought he dove into. And what we didn't know at the time, and we know now, looking at the pictures, was Breonna Taylor tried to follow him into that door, her feet where she was on the left side of the hall. If you're looking down the hall, her feet ended up on the right, actually past the threshold of where he ran into. Into that little indention. And then she fell back against the wall.

So after I got shot, I felt my leg. After I got out of the way, I said, man, I've been hit. And I knew it was bad because, you know, on the street, I've seen hundreds of people shot. And if it's just a throwing through leg wound. There's a little blood, but it's not catastrophic. You know, it's not a lot. And as soon as I put my hand out of my leg, my palm was just soaked. I thought, oh, man, this hit my femoral artery.

So I yelled that out, man. I've been hitting my femoral. And at that time, I go down, and miles kind of steps over me and a little bit on me, and he's returning fire down the hallway. All this, again, is so quick, man. We can explain it, but unless you're there, the speed at which these things go is just tremendous. From the time that door opened and he shot till it was complete silence was 12 seconds.

Jon Becker: Our next incident was an extremely personal one for me and rife with emotion. On August 18th, 2021, the San Bernardino, California, SWAT team was assigned to locate and arrest a suspect who had ambushed and attempted to murder a San Bernardino county sheriff's deputy the day before.

When the team located and attempted a vehicle takedown, the suspect immediately opened fire with a ten millimeter handgun, striking Officer Jordan Robison seven times and Officer Chris Shipley once. Officer Robinson was hit in both forearms, his shoulder, his femur, his stomach, below the armor, and took a grazing wound to his ribs. He was also hit in the abdomen, which was stopped by his armor.

Officer Shipley, despite being shot in the leg, was able to return fire with a teammate, fatally wounding the suspect. Officer Shipley then rendered life saving medical aid to officer Robison. SWAT medic Spencer Brumbaugh then provided life saving aid to officer Robinson immediately after the incident and through the subsequent transport to the emergency room. This case was just so terrible. Jordan received so many injuries and was clinging to his life for quite some time.

For me, this was also an intensely personal case because Jordan was wearing project seven armor. Jordan was the first save for project seven, and to say we were emotionally invested is an understatement. Getting to know Jordan, Chris, and Spencer, it was hard not to love them. These are all great guys, committed to their profession and more importantly, committed to one another.

It quickly became clear that we needed to do two episodes, one on the event and one on Jordan's recovery, and that we needed to talk to all three guys to hear the story. It's important to keep in mind that the suspect fired nine rounds in 3.5 seconds, hitting officers with eight out of his nine rounds, and that the whole event took just over 20 seconds. In this clip, we heard Jordan describe the shooting in detail.

Jordan: As we approach, we hit the, hit the car for the. I think they call it bumping. The purpose of it is to throw the occupants inside whatever vehicle that you're bumping off, because it's supposed to be a surprise technique to where, yeah, they're sitting there, and then all of a sudden, their car gets hit. And then once they're figuring that out, we're getting in position.

So it kind of gives you an advantage. But like Chris pointed out, the problem was we had no advantage because we had no element of surprise. He was watching us the whole time in the rearview mirror with his hand on the gun. So by the time we execute the bumping technique, his hand. His left hand is already on the door, and he already has a gun in his other hand. So he exits the car as we're doing the bump technique.

And another problem with this van that we're using is the door doesn't work right. It's had malfunctions for years and years and years. We've known about it. So the problem is, I have to hold the door partially open. I can't close it, because if you close it, that door is notorious for not wanting to open again. And you can't have that during that situation. You can't have it all the way open, because he'll see us coming, and he'll see guys all the way down the road will expose ourselves way too early, earlier than we wanted to.

But I'm holding the door partially open as we approach this. Looking back, I don't know how I'm supposed to hold a hundred pound van door. When you slam it closed or when you slam against an object, all that hundred pounds goes flying forward. And I was a strong guy, and I couldn't hold it closed.

So as we execute the bumping technique, that van door slams shut. I fall directly onto my face. I think Ernie fell next to me. I think you maintained your balance, Chris. So I fall instantly. Instinctively, I didn't even tell myself to do this. Just instinctively, I spring up, open up the door, and at that point, I'm looking down the barrel of his gun. I jump out of the van.

I remember looking down at the ground to make sure I didn't eat s***. As I jump out, making sure, like, my feet were on the ground, I remember looking up and sighting my rifle. And I – At that time, I just remember being hit multiple times as I'm doing this, I remember feeling the heat, feeling the impacts, feeling. I think I felt my arm break. I didn't feel the second one until I landed on the ground.

But I felt one of my arms break, and I take an instinctive step to my right to get out of the way. I didn't even consciously remember trying to sight him on my gun. I just remember taking a step to my right and then getting hit in my femur. And then I – that's when I fell and I kind of landed on my front side and then kind of rolled to my back. And I remember at one point trying to push myself off the ground.

And that's when I realized both my arms were broken. I already knew my leg was broken. That's when I realized it hit my stomach. I could feel my shoulder burning. I knew. I knew I'd been hitting my shoulder. That's when I kind of realized the extent at which I'd been wounded. And I knew at that point, and I was kind of relying on everybody else around me.

Jon Becker: Our next incident happened in British Columbia, Canada, and featured another Jordan, Jordan McWilliams from the RCMP's Lower Mainland division emergency response team. On November 7th, 2012, Jordan fired a single shot which killed a hostage taker who had pointed a handgun at the team after a five hour standoff at the Starlight Casino in New Westminster, British Columbia.

Although it was a completely justified shooting, this incident began an almost three year nightmare for Jordan and his family, which included Jordan being charged with murder by the newly created Independent Investigations Office, a civilian oversight board created just before Jordan's shooting.

This was the first time a police officer had been charged for using lethal force in British Columbia since 1975. Although the charges would later be dismissed, the damage to Jordan and his family had already been done. Jordan's story is both a cautionary tale and a story of struggle, persistence, and eventual victory over a politically motivated witch hunt. I first met Jordan through his team leader and was immediately struck by how kind, humble, and professional he was.

Jordan was everything good about Canadian policing, yet had been absolutely tortured by a political oversight office. When I heard his story, I knew that we needed to have him on the show. Jordan's perspective on his ordeal demonstrates what an amazing person he is. The idea that he somehow managed to get through all of this and not be bitter forever is truly a testament to his character and to the mantra his mother taught him. Do you want to be better or do you want to be bitter?

The soundbite I chose for you has two contrasting stories about how he was treated after the shooting. What struck me about this is how we all have the power to either damage or heal others after a traumatic event, something as simple as a few words.

Jordan: The next morning, something pretty cool happened that's had an impact on me for a long time since. And I remember I woke up the next morning, it was pretty early, and my doorbell's ringing. And I walked downstairs, opened the door, and it's the chief of New Westminster police. So the team I was a part of was regional team. I worked for Delta. New West was our neighboring agency. And then there was a couple other agencies part of the team. And this incident had occurred in New west.

So their chief, who I did not work for, showed up at my house, and he knocks on the door. I open it up. I'm like, chief, how are you? He's good. Jordan, may I come in for a minute? Yeah, absolutely. Invite him on in. Remember, he says to me, he shakes my hand. He says to me, Jordan, I just want to thank you for what you did for my community yesterday, and I really appreciate it. And I want you to know that I appreciate it. And I was so impactful in that moment to feel like, okay, because we talked about this already, you know, good person having to kill somebody first, exposure to real interpersonal violence. Like, I've been in fights before, but nobody ever shot at me. I never shot at somebody. And now I'm getting that affirmation from a person in leadership, in authority, thanking me. He didn't, I didn't need him to get on the news and say, Jordan's a hero, and he did a great job. But I didn't even realize how impactful it was for him to say to me to my face, thank you for what you did and shake my hand.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And at that point, did you talk to your own chief?

Jordan: No, no, I hadn't heard from him.

Jon Becker: So the chief, when you're back at the department, the chief never comes and sees you. There's no, like, you don't have a moment of, like, hey, man, are you okay?

Jordan: No, no, we didn't have any of that. And, yeah, I'd been around the department my whole life. My dad worked for that agency for a long time, and I got on there pretty young, but I'd been to Christmas parties, and I'd known these, these guys and their kids. And, yeah, he didn't have anything to say to me.

Jon Becker: Next episode was the leaders and legends with a true legend, the special operations world Delta Force member Tom Satterly. I was really excited to speak with Tom, not just because of his resume, but because of his book, All Secure.

In All Secure, Tom lays bare the struggles he had after leaving the unit, his battles with PTSD, substance abuse, suicidal thoughts, and his journey out of the darkness. What I loved about Tom's book is that historically, people have been able to dismiss discussions of PTSD by impeaching the author's resume, attacking their experience or simply attacking their manliness. None of that is possible with Tom.

Here is a guy with a world class special operations resume and an unimpeachable man card openly discussing the darkness he experienced, as well as how he and his wife, Jin, navigated a path out of the darkness to happiness. We had a great discussion about the unit, the Black Hawk down incident, small unit leadership, and Tom's work after leaving the unit with vets and their families. Although there were a lot of clips I considered for this episode, the clip I chose is Tom describing the iconic battle of Mogadishu that was the subject of the film. Black Hawk down.

Tom: Infiltrated and realized immediately we were already under fire. You know, it was in the heart of the beast. It was in the Bakara market. So that's where all their weapons were and just bad guy territory, of course. We thought, in and out, right? In and out before they even know we're there. And, you know, you shoot one helicopter down, and then they shot another helicopter down.

And I remember watching it fly overhead off to the northeast and then crashing. And I knew that's when I knew during that mission that it had changed. It was going to be a lot longer. Up to that point, I was still joking about, we're going to make a home for dinner. I wonder what they're going to have for dinner tonight, you know, and we're still kind of cracking jokes like we did then. People started getting shot, and five ton trucks started blowing up, and helicopters were shot down, and we had to fight our way up the street to the crash site.

And then basically, we're pinned down to that crash site for 18 hours. It's like the longest sustained firefight since Vietnam at the time, and it may still be, I don't know. But it was the night that I watched friends die. I thought I was going to die. I kind of gave in. We ran out of ammo, and my team leader came in, and I asked him a question, because you could hear the convoy trying to make it to us, but it had been going on for hours. Raging gunfight going off in the city as they tried to fight their way to us.

There's a gunfight at our house as they pick our house apart with rocket propelled grenades and, you know, AK-47 fire. But thank God we had the little birds to keep them at bay. And we were kind of in the Alamo situation, the best we could be at that crash site, but they just kept picking us apart. And when my team leader came in, I asked him, do you think they're going to make it? And he looked at me, and I was, like, waiting for that motivational speech, you know, like, hey, you know, f*** up young camper. And he just looked at me, goes, I don't know. And he turned to left, and I thought, well, s***, you know, s***, this sucks.

And I kind of at that moment, like a calm, you know, washed over me versus the harried, like, what's going on? What's going on? And looking everywhere. And it was kind of like, here we are. Right? Here we are. I'm gonna break as much s*** as I can tonight, kill as many people as I can, and help as many of my guys as I can, because I didn't figure I was gonna make it. And it just kind of gave me that courage and strength to keep going.

Jon Becker: In 2017, Las Vegas experienced a mass killing sniper attack at the Route 91 Harvest music festival. The shooter, who was located on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel, opened fire onto a crowd at a concert, killing 60 and injuring more than 400 others. In the immediate aftermath, hundreds of patients were evacuated by uninjured bystanders, first responders, and people simply driving by the venue.

My guest for this episode was Doctor Kevin Miness. Kevin was an emergency room doctor at the nearby trauma center who led a team of physicians, nurses, and support personnel who are trying to manage the onslaught of injured people. I was referred to Kevin by a debrief listener who was a tactical operator in the Las Vegas area. He described Kevin as the unsung hero of the night, having triaged and treated hundreds of patients. When I spoke to Kevin, I was blown away by the story.

I found out that he'd been a team physician for a local tactical unit and had spent years thinking about the best way to handle a mass killing event. In his words, I spent years thinking about this, and here I was in the middle of it. This was a heavy interview with a lot of lessons learned, but the clip I chose for you is Kevin describing the first few minutes of patients arriving at the hospital.

Kevin: So I'm sitting there, I'm hearing this whale of sirens coming, and as they pull up, the first vehicle pulls up, and it's a police vehicle. He tries to get out. I slam his door shut, and I tell him, just stay in. When we get all these patients out. I'm going to tap your car. And you go. I look through his driver's side. I look through his window, and there's two in the front seat. I opened up the backseat, and there's two on the floorboards, two on the back seat. And I looked at all of them, and I knew they were dead.

And there was more police vehicles right behind them. And I just knew at that point in time, this is, you know, this is the real thing. And how in the world am I supposed to do this? And, yeah, I've been doing this triage system for a long time. I've been kind of developing this idea of what to do, but is it really going to work?

And, you know, there's no real time to second guess what you're going to do. You just, you know, again, I think pre preparing for difficult situations makes it so that the hurdle for actually making the decision when it comes is just. It's split second. I don't even think the idea crossed my mind, to be honest. When that occurred, I already knew we were going to do it. This is no other option, because the systems that are out there, which are salt and start, there's no way they would have differentiated those patients.

So doors opened up. I'm like, station one, station two, station four, you know, rapid track. That's what I would tell the staff that corresponded to red, orange, yellow, green in my book. But they didn't have to know that. They knew where those areas were in the erde.

So I'm opening up the door, I look at the wounds, you know, station two, that one goes to station one that wasn't goes to station four. And they just. They keep coming. They keep coming. The pickup trucks come. And I pop up onto the back of the bed. I look inside, and there's like 15 people in there. And I'm thinking, how am I supposed to triage all these people?

And again, I can't say this enough, but the people there were the true heroes that because even being shot themselves, they would be, doc, this is the one you need to take care of first. They did my job for me. They pulled out that red tag. Who needed to go to station one? We'd grab that one, move, move them out, and then I would triage the rest of them. So, you know, the pickup trucks, the first one was the scariest, but, you know, once I got through that one, I was like, okay. And then the other ones came, and I was like, okay, I can do this.

Jon Becker: On July 2nd, 2020, patrol officers attempted to contact a suspect about moving an illegally parked automobile at the Three Rivers mobile home park in Hastings, Minnesota. As officers spoke to the suspect's wife and two of his four children, the suspect locked and barricaded the door to his trailer with his two children inside.

Over the course of the next 15 hours in sweltering heat, the south Metro SWAT team, in conjunction with Washington county and Ramsey County SWAT, attempted to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the crisis as the suspect's mental state deteriorated. Although they were able to obtain one of the two children through a ruse, it became very clear that a tactical intervention would be necessary. A tactical intervention in a trailer to save a child is about as bad as it gets. And despite the difficult conditions and the need for multiple teams to cooperate, a successful intervention was conducted, rescuing the other child.

My guests for this episode were Adam Schieda, Dan Salme, Jeff Hansen from the South Metro SWAT team. We recorded this interview at the 2023 NTOA conference. What was great about this interview was that we had three different people and three different perspectives on the same event, which made for a really interesting conversation.

The clip I chose for you is Adam Schieda describing how they were able to grab one of the two children through a ruse whereby they agreed to save the suspect's cat. Although it was extremely disturbing that the suspect was more concerned about his cat than his kids, it was actually kind of a funny story because he was dumb enough to think that he could send one of his hostages out with a cat, and the team would secure the cat and return her to him afterwards. Imagine his surprise when two operators broke from cover and ran out to grab the girl and get her to safety.

Adam: Yeah, this is. Speaking of just crazy demands. This was a good one. So the suspect is. He kind of, as. As this thing shakes out, he is. Becomes very, very concerned for the welfare of this cat in the trailer, far more concerned about this cat than his two children. And so he works out a deal to lower his daughter, the twelve year old girl, out of one of the windows of the trailer where she would be holding this cat, and I, his daughter, would then walk over to the garden shed and secure the cat in the garden shed and then be allowed to return to the trailer.

He would raise her back up, bring her back into the trailer, and then we would move on, move on with our lives here. We would continue what we were doing because he was worried when officers came into the trailer that we would somehow hurt or kill his cat. And so that arrangement was made. Jeff's negotiator said yep, that sounds good. Let's do that.

Well, in the meantime, we're relaying that information to Washington County SWAT that's up in position to see this whole thing shake out. And that's what happens. So he opens up the window, he lowers this girl down. She's holding the cat. And two Washington county operators were in position by that garden shed, kind of by those trees, and they see her start moving that direction. Those two operators broke from cover ran right between the garden shed and the trailer house, and scooped her up and get her out of there. And when we talk about this and we presented this different times, I call special attention to those two guys.

And this kind of the way I explain it, you know, we, in our world, in our society, we throw around the word hero, like, all the time. You just see in the example I use, you know, you have some lady pull over the side of the road and, like, move the turtle, a snapping turtle, from the middle of the road to the ditch. And the local newspaper does a write up on this hero that moved this. Yeah, right. Never mind that she, you know, almost caused a 15 car pile up because she pulled over in a dumb spot or something like that, but she's called a hero.

These two guys, the two gentlemen from Washington county, like, they did some hero stuff there. This guy threatened to kill police officers. He pointed out a handgun. They heard a racking of a slide on the phone, and they ran right past him. They broke cover from where they were scooped up this little girl, and ran right past the suspect and got her out of there to safety.

Jon Becker: Not all hostage rescues go well, as they say. The suspect gets a vote in every engagement, and sometimes that vote is decisive and devastating. That was the way deputy Chief Jonathan Bigelow from Orlando PD described the next event we covered this season. The incident began when Orlando police officers responded to a domestic violence call. As officers attempted to contact the suspect, he fired a shot through the door, striking officer Kevin Valencia with wounds that would eventually prove fatal.

The suspect then barricaded his apartment with his four children as hostages and began a 24 hours event that required the resources of both Orlando PD SwAt and their partners from the Orange County Sheriff's SWAT team, sadly reaching a tragic resolution with four children and the suspect all dead.

My guests for this episode were Deputy Chief Jonathan Bigelow from Orlando PD and Sergeant Chris Eckland with Orange County Sheriff's Department. This incident was ugly, and I can't stress enough how much I appreciate these two teams being willing to revisit this terrible incident and share their lessons learned. It's easy to debrief incidents where everything goes well, but incidents like this are often more important to discuss precisely because they don't end well.

The clip I've chosen for you is sergeant Chris Eklund discussing why teams need to train for adversity as well as training for success.

Chris: You know you can't. We always try to train our teams for the best victory and the best win and we want to be able to say that our teams are the best. So we create this performance that makes us kind of believe that. But when they come under adversity, and I mean, I know that when my team has come under adversity, it's always better on the other side.

So I don't know if there's an answer to where you're creating losses and then they come out better. Of course you don't want them to be so beat down that they can't. They don't ever believe in themselves. But there's a fine line between what's reality and what's not.

Jon Becker: On July 22nd, 2011, Norway experienced two consecutive terrorist attacks, a bombing at a government building in Oslo and a mass shooter event at a youth camp on nearby Utoya island. These were perpetrated by a lone right wing extremist and were unprecedented for the peaceful country of Norway. This event resulted in the deaths of 77 people, most of whom were children, and the injury of more than 300 others, and stretched the capabilities of Norway's first responders to their limits.

My guest for this episode is an active member of Norway's most elite tactical and counterterrorism police unit, Beric Schapstroppen, also known by its call sign Delta, and internationally as Delta Norris. Because of the nature of his assignment, I interviewed this guest anonymously. We conducted this interview over video from his home in Norway. Delta Norse is the national tactical unit for Norway and operates in some of the most challenging conditions anywhere, to say the least. The viking warrior heritage of Norway is alive and well in Delta Norsh, but so is the professionalism only seen in the world's best tactical units.

The clip I've chosen for you is my guest describing the moment his team encountered the perpetrator of all this violence. It's important to keep in context. By the time they've encountered him, they've already found dozens of dead teenagers as well as hundreds of others wounded. It would have been very easy to kill this suspect and certainly no one would have faulted them. Yet despite that, these men held true to their oaths and risked life and limb to take him into custody.

Guest: Eventually, the person, he disappeared really quick behind the knoll. And then he reappeared again to us. And immediately we could see that it was one of the perpetrators. No weapons in his hands. He was just walking with his hands like a walking cross palm. So his hands facing towards us. What was. What we could see, and like I said, it was dense forest. It was a bit dark, clouded.

So we didn't have the best. We show outline of him, but what we could see that he was wearing some sort of vest, and we saw some square objects in that vest, and he was just saying something mumbling all the time, walking towards us. We were giving him orders. Freeze. Or else he will be shot. Because we were. Immediately, when we identified his west, we were thinking, maybe that's a suicide west. And he's kind of like walking towards us, getting closer and closer and then eventually detonating in the west.

Jon Becker: This has been a fantastic season. I'm profoundly grateful for the opportunity to share these stories and for the support we've received from you as a listener going forward into season three. We have a lot planned for you, and I cannot wait to share it. The first episode will be arriving in mid January. Always remember that this show is for you. The show has one mission, operator safety. It is our belief that giving you exposure to a wide range of guests and incidents will make you better able to make the right decision when confronted with danger.

The show is not monetized. Don't take any sponsors or any paid endorsements. The only thing we ask is that you help on our mission by sharing the show with your teammates and friends. What you do truly matters, and I, for one, appreciate that there are still brave men and women who are willing to place themselves in harm's way for a total stranger.

Thank you for all you do, and please be safe!

Episode 2 – Sid Heal Part 2_ Understanding Tactical Science

jonathan@aardvarktactical.com on October 1, 2024

Episode 2 – Sid Heal Part 2: Understanding Tactical Science

Jon Becker: My name is Jon Becker.

Welcome to The Debrief!

My guest today is Sid Heal. Sid is a legend in this special tactics community and a key figure in the history and evolution of special tactics in the United States. Sid is a retired CW-05 in the United States Marine Corps, serving numerous combat deployments, including the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and Operation United Shield in Somalia, just to name a few.

Sid is a retired commander of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and has led the Special Enforcement Bureau, the Emergency Operations Bureau, and a wide variety of other assignments. Sid is the author of several books and literally hundreds of articles. Sid is taught at the US Army War College, is a former board member for the NTOA, and is the former president of the California association of Tactical Officers.

So, Sid, the last time we sat down, we ended with the genesis of your book, Sound Doctrine. Talk to me about what the origin story was for Sound Doctrine.

Sid Heal: When I became an officer in the Marine Corps, I had been enlisted for ten years, and so the Marine Corps began putting me on a career path. It was understood that there were certain courses that I was going to be required to complete successfully, and I estimated between 1978 and 1986, when it was the first time I really led as an officer. Troops and harm's way the Marine Corps had conservatively spent over $100,000 on my education. I felt comfortable being in charge. It was not like it was my baptism of fire as an officer.

When I became a captain in the sheriff's department, I got a handshake at a new badge. And so I decided to apply the strategy behind what the Marine Corps expected of me in law enforcement. I signed up for every major school that I could attend, that they would let me go. Command college for California Center of Leadership Excellence, the FBI National Academy.

These were months long or years long courses, and yeah, they did change my thinking. I wish everybody, especially at the command rank, could attend either or both of these schools. And I know we have some other ones, but they're not driven as much by the organization, such as the Marine Corps, as they are by the personal initiative of the students. I think you get a better class of student for that, I will say that. But the trade off is that we've got people that are going to get promoted that have not demonstrated the initiative and do not have the skills, knowledge, and abilities of the people that have gone through these courses. That was really when my research took a serious turn.

As a matter of fact, Sound Doctrine was originally a paper that I wrote for a master's degree called a scientific approach to tactical decisions. And I ended up arguing with a professor. And to his credit, in my opinion, I won the argument by explaining some scenarios where his particular strategy would not apply. And it was the first time that I think that he'd thought about it. What I later coined was looking at it from the inside of the windshield. The vast majority of people that see police actions are looking at it from the outside.

There are a lot of things that are influential that people don't understand, that when you're in law enforcement, I'll just give you one as one example. We're not allowed to flee. When it turns sour on us, we're not allowed to get up and say, I'm not going to play this anymore. I'm going to quit. It's too dangerous. It's too messy. I don't know what to do. We're expected to bring that situation to a position where the public feels safe.

People who enjoy law and order and sausage shouldn't watch either one being made, because, as I've mentioned before, it's messy. I don't have a phaser. I don't have the ability of making it look pretty. We're trying to save lives and injuries. I really don't know how to put it any better than that. And that's probably why somebody that would be more eloquent would be able to explain it, so that even the activists could understand that we are not as indifferent or unfeeling as I think they think we are.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's interesting. I remember, God, 25 years ago, having a conversation with Daryl Gates over dinner, and we were talking about Rodney King, and it was after he had retired, and it was, you know, post, post everything. All the litigation was over. And he said, you know, his reaction when it happened was to fire them all, and he couldn't because of the way the rules worked and everything else.

But I said, you know, what was your thought? And he said, you know, people need to understand that you only use. You only win a fight by using more force. The guy that wins the fight is the guy that throws the last punch. And sometimes you misjudge sometimes it's a couple of extra ones. And what she gets at the time was, I know you're going to maybe occasionally throw 1 or 2 too many punches. I don't want you to throw 20 extra punches.

Sid Heal: People think street fights are boxing matches or wrestling matches, but I got to tell you, even the ones that you watch on TV with ultimate force and mixed martial arts don't compare. The closest thing that people might have to judge these, that they might have actually experienced is a dog fight. Growling and biting and scratching and hitting with feet and knees and elbows and biting ears off. And I'm not exaggerating.

Jon Becker: No, I think we are. The thing is, we are almost. We've almost risen to a point where we're too physically secure. We are distanced from violence. Yeah, we see it on tv. We see it in movies. It's not a personal thing. Most people have never been in a fight. Most people have never been punched.

And so frequently you have people looking at the actions of an officer that's in a fight who have never been in a fight. Well, he hit him three too many times.

Sid Heal: I wish, and it'll never be seen on reality TV. And I won't mention any names, but to watch a deputy sobbing because we couldn't save the hostage. Sobbing or giving up his marriage. Transferring because he held himself to a standard that was so unrealistic that no one could have done better under the circumstances. He could not face the team members, even though we tried to come back.

And I can't tell you the number of times when they just ended it all. They'd go in the locker room, pull out their gun, and it would be over. It's bad enough going to a funeral because an officer was killed, but we can't tolerate our failures in something that we have dedicated our lives to. And I realize that I'm getting a little upset.

Jon Becker: But it's close to home.

Sid Heal: It's close to home. And the thing is, I'm not using these as hypotheticals. I could see these people, and in one case, this guy had two bronze stars from Vietnam, and he had been wounded twice and could not tell us why he thought he could have done better without sobbing to the point we couldn't understand him.

Jon Becker: I think it's difficult for people to understand. One, how complicated the situations are. Two, how personal they are. But more importantly, I think that everybody looks at these things and they think that there's always a winning solution, and there's not. There's not. You know, it's. You look at how many of these scenarios are just, you know, there's no way to win. You know, I recently interviewed Lee McMillian and we talked about the Pena case.

Sid Heal: There's another giant.

Jon Becker: Right. Yeah, for sure. But it's you. You have a guy with his own kid who's gonna kill the kid and he's shooting at you, and there's no winning situation there. This is not gonna be like everybody high fives and goes home. And I think that it's very easy from the outside to look at these things and say, oh, yeah, this is easy. They should have just done this. It's really easy to win the football game Monday morning. Yeah, it's a completely different experience when you're in there and your life is dependent upon it.

So when did it first occur to you that these two doctrine streams of law enforcement, military needed to come together and you needed to start working on that?

Sid Heal: As a new sergeant, I was assigned to SCB special enforcement bureau as a team leader. And we were encountering shootings. And without belaboring the point too much, it was literally like being in Vietnam again, at least to me.

I realized that there was a lot of things different, like it's not a hostile environment and everything else, but I knew that I was not going to be able to live with the fact that somebody got hurt because I wasn't up to speed. And I was not up to speed, not just in the rural, the urban environment, in actually the thinking.

So I spent a lot of my own money, went to the government library in Los Angeles, which was the cheapest place to get specialized books. And a lot of them were monographs, which I really liked because the author wrote it for the love of the subject, for lack of a better term, rather than how good it was going to sell.

And so as a result of that, they tended to be shorter and more tightly focused. So I bought a lot of monographs and continued to do that through all my reserve training to the point where I got to actually meet some of the authors in the Marine Corps, Dr. Joe Strange and I, Dr .Russell Glenn.

I'm trying to think of him, and I kept notes. It wasn't that I was smarter, it's the fact that I was succeeding because I had already thought through the problem. It was one of the things that General Mattis eventually said was the fact that the most important, five inches or six inches on the battlefield or between your ears, I don't think anybody could put it better than that.

But I didn't put it that way until he had said it, but I understood it intuitively. And so that was really where it started. But I didn't put a pen to paper other than for my own personal use until 1989, when I wrote the first article, and that was at the request of John Coleman.

Jon Becker: And then how far after that? Like, when did you really start writing Sound Doctrine?

Sid Heal: 1999, probably. Well, I know I take it back. It was earlier than that. It was probably where I had made the decision to do it before I died, like on a bucket list. Was on the beach in Somalia, which is a kind of a funny story by itself. I started it when I first got back, and I can't tell you how many attempts I threw away. I'd never written a book, didn't know what a book should look like.

I asked two people, Larry Richards and my colonel in the Marine Corps, Tim Anderson, who was also LAPD, if they would look over my shoulder and give me some ideas. Sound Doctrine is actually a lot more extensive. I have thrown at least that much stuff away. I didn't throw it away because I spent so much time writing it, but it was Tim's idea to keep it short and to write it as a primer, not as a textbook.

And so Sound Doctrine was written for people that had never been in the military, had never been in law enforcement. But these tactics could be explained so they would be understandable. And so we used competitive games like soccer and football and basketball and baseball and chess, because it has a lot of the same attributes and characteristics of any other conflict. Somebody wins, somebody loses.

Jon Becker: That's interesting! I remember you using the analogy of checkers to explain checkers versus chess, to explain the initiative.

Sid Heal: Yeah.

Jon Becker: And it's so I didn't realize that you and Tim, that it was. I knew he was your colonel in the Marine Corps. I didn't realize that that was the genesis. When did Dick Odenthal get involved?

Sid Heal: He got involved when Larry Richards died. Larry Richards had a stroke, and so I asked Odie to look over my shoulder for field command. Field command is actually a text. It's written for instructors or college professors that are going to go into this at a deeper level and to explain stuff. It really duplicates a lot of what Sound Doctrine does. Sound Doctrine explains the concepts and why they're important. But field command actually goes into more depth because it's a textbook.

Jon Becker: So if somebody was to say, well, I want to be a student of the game, I want to understand this. Would you recommend they start with Sound Doctrine and then move to field command?

Sid Heal: I usually. I get that question a lot, and I usually ask them, where are you in your career? What schools have you attended? Sound Doctrine is a primer. It's written as a primer and it's not going to hurt to read it. You could spin through it if you've already gone through that. And some of the critiques that I've had is that it's very basic. Well, that tells me that this guy's at an advanced level. That was how it's intended.

Jon Becker: Yeah. If Chinese 101 is too easy for you, it's because you're in Chinese 201.

Sid Heal: That's right.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Sid Heal: Well, and that was the whole point with field command. And so then I would tell them that you can read field or Sound Doctrine, but you're probably going to get frustrated when it's teaching you things that you already know. So I would just recommend start with field command.

Jon Becker: So why don't we walk through some of the key topics in both Sound Doctrine and field command and talk through kind of your perspectives. I mean, obviously, you and I could sit here for days and work our way through field command. And at some point in the future we may do this again to try and go deeper.

But one of the questions that I get most often for you because I went out to a lot of people and said, hey, I'm interviewing Sid. What do you want to know? And there were several topics that came up that people said, hey, please ask this. So why don't we start with in state? Because that seems like a logical place – [Crosstalk]

Sid Heal: That actually is a good place to start. Because if I could pick one concept that is responsible for more debacles is the lack of a clear end state. They haven't thought it through enough to know what it is that they're actually trying to achieve.

I have videos that I show that I divide up the class. You're going to look at this from the administrator trying to explain it to the city council and the public. You're going to look at it from a forced review that's trying to use it to learn from for teaching. You're going to look at it from an activist standpoint, looking for everything bad, whether it has rational logic behind it or not.

The fact that you can identify something that didn't go right and then show them a couple of these videos, probably the single most common missed concept. What was it you were trying to achieve? It's really the metric that is necessary to judge whether your course of action is contributing to achieving your end state. The end state is really what is necessary for this to be a successful operation.

One of the key things that activists miss is the fact that that determination is usually done under risk and harsh time constraints and uncertainty. And as a result of that, they don't understand that we don't have time to look for an optimal end state, the perfect thing, the best situation. We're only looking for a satisfactory one. And we understand that if we had the time and the resources to go back and do it again, we wouldn't do it the same way. Humans do not repeat unproductive behaviors.

So the first thing I would say is, define your end state. What is it that we're here for? What is it we're trying to achieve? If we're sent, and I use one of these as an example that I can see, and this was my own department, to prevent a suicide, what is it that we can do? And in this particular case, the best thing probably would have been get in your car and leave. There's no value added in you being here.

So one thing I agree with a lot of the activists is that we need some training in this. And more than training, we need the education. Training helps us do things better. Education tells us whether we're doing the right thing to begin with.

Jon Becker: Well, training teaches us the technique. Education teaches us the why.

Sid Heal: Yep. And that was probably my most asked questions to the point where everybody has actually, in unison repeated it, because I would go, you know, my next question, and they all repeat in unison, why? I don't want you just to tell me what you're going to do. I want you to tell me how it's contributing, why it's necessary. So I enjoy that. But that'd be the number one place I would start.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's interesting. One of the ways that I describe instate when I'm talking to somebody is the next time you go on vacation, where are you going to go? And they're like, oh, I'm going to go here. What are you going to do? I'm going to do this, this, and this. Imagine if you started that vacation by getting in your car and making a decision to go right or left, because without an end state, that's what you're doing. And even when you get there, you won't know you're there.

Sid Heal: When I teach the class, I show a picture of a golf course, and I ask the class, what club do you use? And a lot of them play golf. I don't. I wouldn't know if it was a good club or a bad club, except for one thing. There's no flag, there's no hole. It makes a difference how far away it is, which direction the wind is blowing, is it on a slope?

And then on the next slide there's a hole with the slide. And now they all have some idea of how to achieve that objective. That is how important the end state is. I use golf because it's a benign example, but it's absolutely imperative before you can develop a plan to know what it is you're trying to achieve well.

Jon Becker: And so I think that's actually a good segue to the next one, which is maneuvering in time and place. So talk to me about that.

Sid Heal: Most everybody understands that tactics unfold in places. We talk about key terrain and observation and high ground and choke points and things like that, but they don't understand, a lot of them, that time is also a dimension, and as a result of that, doing the right thing at the wrong time is just as bad as doing the wrong thing at any time. For those that have been involved with police work, how many times have we searched an empty building and the suspect has gone? It's not that our tactics were faulty.

As a matter of fact, we're using the same tactics that we would use any other time. And matter of fact, in many cases they're effective when the suspect is there, but the timing was off. You can actually maneuver in time just like you can maneuver in space.

And so we start with illustrating the purpose of initiative. The freedom of action, the ability to choose the time and circumstances under how the next episode is going to unfold. That provides a huge advantage. In some cases, the advantage is so huge, it's decisive in nature simply because we have the ability to exploit the circumstances.

Another one is density. One of the reasons that tactical operations are so much more complex when there's a lot of people involved is because there's a lot of activities that compete with each other and in some cases even conflict. Which means if you do this one thing where we've been deprived of the ability of doing something else, probably a good example with riots is the objective to kettle them and arrest the perpetrators or to disperse them.

Well, needless to say, it's going to take a completely different set of courses of action to achieve depending on what you've decided. And that's something that needs to be cited ahead of time. It's not something you can go halfway through and say, oh, we're going to change direction. Needless to say, we need to be able to change direction. But that's not really leadership with the military, especially the Marine Corps called driven by events. We're simply following the path of least resistance. That is not leadership by anybody's definition.

Jon Becker: No. And the path of least resistance is down the river off a waterfall.

Sid Heal: Yeah. Or overusing a device, like a tactical device, like a taser or a bean bag. It works well, so we'll use it again. It worked twice, so we'll use it 50 times.

Jon Becker: Well, we see this right now with dynamic entry and no knock warrants. This is a raging topic in the media. And actually, recently, the National Tactical Officers association came out with a position paper on no knock warrants that was not all that popular in some circles. What are your thoughts on that?

Sid Heal: I responded to that article. At first I see it. I saw it on Facebook, and I responded right then, I'm all for it. It had become the default. When I became a captain, I was a unit commander at the Special enforcement Bureau.

And one of the things that I told my lieutenants, if you bring me a course of action, and the only thing, when I ask you why we chose this and the only thing that you defend it with, and we've always done it that way, I'll cancel it. I will not allow that to proceed.

Then you can either come up with a different course of action or defend that one. The idea was that we can't accept things at default. We've become lazy. We accept risk that we should have no business accepting. We normalize it. Well, swot's a risky business.

And therefore, it's just because of the nature of the assignment that used to light my fire. And the lieutenants will tell you that I became passionate about that. So when I talk about maneuvering in time and space, the space is the easy one. They can see it. They can touch it. They can feel it. The maneuver elements are physical people and things and weapons and vehicles and planes and all kinds of things. But time is a notional dimension, meaning that it exists really only as a mental image.

And so as a result of that, you're dealing with abstract concepts that are actually manifesting themselves in different ways that we can exploit. The objective, for instance, in maneuvering in space, is to gain and maintain control of key terrain. Terrain that provides a market advantage. But the objective in maneuvering in time is to create and or exploit opportunities. Opportunity, in the simplest form, is really a window. And time where circumstances provide a temporary advantage.

And so as a result of that, in some cases, we can create them with distractions and things like that. But in other cases, we need to recognize them, exploit it. And I'll just tell you that it's been frustrating for a lot of my students that have completed a full length course. And I got to tell you, I'll be the first one to admit it's grueling, but they end up in a tactical situation where they know more than the people that are leading them.

And I have to tell them, don't give up your career over this. Make your case without an argument. But unless it's a safety issue, you are honor bound, duty bound, to remain subordinate to your superiors. Your day will come. And that's one of the things I try to soothe them with. It's kind of interesting.

I've been retired for some years now. I can't tell you the feeling of euphoria, ecstasy, exhilaration that I get when one of my now commanders incident commanders calls me or sends me an email and says, thanks so much, I remember. And he will cite something that I might have just used a metaphor to illustrate it or an anecdote or an illustration.

Rarely do they cite the concept verbatim, but the fact was that they remember it from the story or the exercise that we. That we did. I don't even know how to explain it. It makes every hour that I've spent studying this or writing about it or teaching it worthwhile instantly.

Jon Becker: Yeah. You have a unique ability to capture complicated concepts, and I think this is part of the reason that you've been able to fuse these things and put them into a way that people understand them. You have a unique ability to capture a complicated scenario and paint it in a very simple, frequently funny story that stays with you. And I'll give you one. I'll give you a couple, actually.

First one is that guy couldn't find a giraffe and a flock of sheep. I cannot tell you how many times after the first time you told me that I've used it, but if I had to pay you a licensing fee, you'd be a rich man. The second one. And going back to kind of dynamic entry, I remember when you went back to SCB and we were having that was, you know, what year was that when you went back as a captain? When I went back as a captain.

Sid Heal: 2000, early 2000, I think I was promoted in 1999.

Jon Becker: So that's 20 years ago. And we were having conversations about dynamic entry and no knock warrants and how, you know, you didn't really believe in them. And you said something that was profound. It was just kind of a classic sit off the top of your head.

You said, here's the problem with dynamic entry. The guy inside the house has made so many bad life decisions that the sheriff is knocking down his door with a SWAT team. Giving that guy 30 seconds to make the right decision is not going to yield the right result. Let's give him an hour to think about it. Right? He still may make a bad choice, but I mean, that's a perfect example of maneuvering in time.

Sid Heal: At least he made an informed decision.

Jon Becker: Yes, exactly. But that's a perfect example of maneuvering in time. You're slowing the event down to get to a point where you are more likely to have a positive resolution.

Sid Heal: One, I've had so many mentors over my lifetime, and many of them are accomplished and recognized on an international level, one of which was eventually major General Alec Ron from Israel. And he was at Entebbe and I asked him about dynamic entries. This is clear, back in 1987 or 1988, and we were debriefing in Tebby in detail, far more than any of the books I've read.

But one of the things he said in his heavy Israeli accent, and I will probably insult him by trying it, but he says, I'll tell you something, Sid, you cannot control everything. If you continue to do this, you will lose people. Boy, he could not have said anything that grabbed my attention with the Marine Corps, who would grab me by their stack and swivel than that. These people were following me because they trusted me. I needed to be worthy of that trust. And that was a major impetus. I was already doing it.

And he just put it in words better than I could have. But here's a guy that was in situations that they wrote books about that was validating the same conclusions that I had reached. Stumbling and bumbling along.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I think what's lacking in a lot of cases today, and this was a conversation that I had with Mike Hillman as well. When you guys inherited the problem, you inherited the problem.

Sid Heal: That's right.

Jon Becker: And there was no solution. There was no how to book. So you had to build a how to book. And the process of building a how to book means building a y book. The problem is that the y book has not been handed down. The how to book has, and to some degree, Sound Doctrine and field command are the why book that people need to read. They need to understand. It's things like in state maneuvering, in time initiative. That's the part that I think people really, it's lacking today. We're teaching the how, we're not teaching the why.

Sid Heal: One of my real heroes was a guy named John Schmidt. He was a major in the Marine Corps. He was certainly more higher ranked later. Eventually retired. He was the primary author between one of the first books that we were required to read as officers called war fighting. It was war fighting. FM, FM1, Fleet Marine Force manual one. Then it became MCDP1. Marine Corps doctor publication one. He had a gift, and I thought it was a gift of being able to make it so I could understand it.

After having personally experienced it and talking with him, it wasn't so much of a gift as it was willing to drill down so that you understood it well enough to explain it, not just reiterate what somebody else had said. When it came time to write feel command, I used one of my kids textbooks, for instance, I bowl printed the first time a concept was introduced. I italicized the explanations so that they would jump out. I realized that that's third grade stuff, but that's where we're at with some of the people.

When I was talking to General Zinni and General Conway and General Mattis, these people were so far ahead of me that had I not read, I would not have understood anything that they had described to me. They were at a level far beyond what I was going to be able to translate.

And so, as a result of that, I tried to take these concepts and make them as easy to understand, even at risk of overgeneralization. In many cases, I've made it obvious that in the simplest terms, or the simplest, so that people understand that the concept itself is more complicated than I'm explaining it. But for our purposes, you can understand the essence.

When I was asked to explain, in fact, I got asked several times to condense this down. I couldn't condense it. It's not a condensation. It is a distillation. I had to leave things out to be able to get the essence of this. If I could leave people with just this one idea, it would be this. Concepts are universal. It's only the applications that are contextual.

I can explain the concepts, and most experts, even if they disagree about a lot of things, will agree on the concepts. And this includes activists. It's the applications, though, that are really the true art of war. The concepts are the science. I can explain it. I can prove it in many cases. I've got exercises and games that I play with students so that it becomes intuitive. But there may be a thousand different ways that it actually applies in real life.

Jon Becker: So if you were looking back at 30 year old Sid, 40, 35 year old Sid, where would you start teaching yourself tactical science?

Sid Heal: I'd start by convincing people that there was a tactical science. The sad part about it is that we've got most law enforcement officers without any understanding that they can support their decisions with solid, reliable science. Tactical science is probably closest related to military science, but as soon as you say military, you can drop.

Jon Becker: Yeah, everybody freaks out.

Sid Heal: That's right. I have several games to illustrate how this works. But tactical science is a soft science and that's problematic. Hard sciences like mathematics and astronomy and…

Jon Becker: Yeah, math is easy because there's answers.

Sid Heal: That's right. You can build a spreadsheet. It doesn't matter who puts the data in, it's going to give you one answer. But soft scientists like economics and sociology and psychology and other things don't use algorithms or formulas to give you one answer. They use probabilities and interpretations to give you a range of probabilities.

The fact that you didn't pick the best one is not your fault, it's the nature of the science. But the sad part about it is because there's more than one rand answer is problematic with many administrators because they believe that if there's more than one right answer, there can be no wrong answer, simply some answers that are better than others.

Well, I can tell you if you understand the science, there's wrong answers and we have the debacles that we have to live with in law enforcement that cannot be justified. I make a very lucrative sideline out of testifying in court.

As an expert on tactics, I can be honest with you. I could triple my income if I wanted to do it more often than I do. I don't enjoy it. I usually limit myself to two cases per year because it keeps me sharp, it keeps me on the edge. Anybody that has ever gone through a deposition by a well trained, experienced attorney is going to get a level of detail that you will never get from a report or from a PowerPoint or anything else. So I do that.

But I got to tell you, I don't enjoy exploiting it. I would rather avoid it altogether. But every once in a while, and I don't take retainers and everything and I give them the first 30 minutes for free. And the only reason I limit it to 30 minutes, if you can't explain it to 30 minutes, I'm not going to understand it and you're not going to understand it, but I'll just tell them, and I've said we're not going to win this case.

I'm going to tell you that I'll help you with damage control, which, by the way, is almost always the kiss of death. I've had several attorneys hire me even after I told them, we're not going to win this. I'm not going to say that we did everything right. I've actually read cases where I've called up and said, you don't want me on the stand. If this guy makes you an offer, take it.

Well, that is not how most experts that I've dealt with, especially the opposing experts, think I get paid the same whether we win or lose. But my contribution largely has been simply explaining the rationale behind the decision making, because I could articulate it. And the person that actually had to make the decision made the right decision without the ability of explaining why. If I can get that jury to look at me and say, you know what? I don't agree with that decision, but I understand why he made it, we're done. We can do that because there's more than one right answer.

Jon Becker: If you were going to develop a young officer now, you know, through lieutenant, what would your reading list look like?

Sid Heal: I hate to say it, but it would be voluminous. It's hard for me to read a good book and dismiss it. Now, I have had some books where I've said, read at least the last three chapters.

Jon Becker: Where do I start?

Sid Heal: I'd ask if you're looking for leadership. I got to tell you, there are a lot of really good books from the business community that have applications in law enforcement and tactics. One of the game changers for me was in search of excellence by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman management by wandering around, catching people, and doing something good. I mean, this is a book I read 35 or 40 years ago, but still had such an influence on me that I can quote from it to this day.

Most people, it's out of print, wouldn't even know another one was information anxiety by Richard Saul Wormande. Really, the context that comes out of this book is the fact that you don't need to know everything. You need to know how to find it.

One of the things, though, that really hit me with this book is the truth is not enough. It's only important if you believe it. It can be completely inaccurate, but if you believe it, you're going to act on it and pay the consequences. So it's to your benefit to make sure that the sources you're using are something that you can rely on, because they've actually changed your ability to think in certain ways.

Men in mission, Tony Kern's book, I'm trying to think of this one going pro. It's basically what's going to be necessary for you to be a true professional. I could go on and on and on, and I'm a hate to do it under this forum because I'm going to forget something. And I got to tell you that we put reading lists together on crisis decision making. Crisis decision making. Gary Klein, sources of power, intuition at work. Power of intuition. Malcolm Gladwell.

Jon Becker: Which one? Blink?

Sid Heal: Oh, Blink's one of the ones that come to mind. What the dog saw, freakonomics. I could go on that.

Jon Becker: Do you have reading lists? Do you have a recommended reading list?

Sid Heal: I also keep my library, the list of my library eventually became too large for my memory, so I put it into an excel spreadsheet so I can remember where I put the book. Nowadays, a lot of my reading is electronic, and the advantage of electronic is the fact that I can do an electronic search.

So if I remember one concept that I want to amplify or get into, all I have to do is remember the book. And then I typically have several books that I have in three formats. Hard copy, electronic copy, and the….

Jon Becker: Audiobook.

Sid Heal: Yeah, the actual book, the software.

Jon Becker: The software. So I would love, if you wouldn't mind sharing kind of Sid's recommended reading list. I would love to get it.

Sid Heal: I'll dig it out if you want.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I would love to have one of the show notes because we're going to, we'll do detailed show notes that as we go through concepts and talk about things, we'll reference out. So I would love to include at least a link to, hey, here is, you know, Sid's recommended reading list.

Sid Heal: I cut it way down. The people that I usually deal with don't like to read. They definitely don't like to study. They don't see it as contributing, especially to their careers. They'll go out and spend two and a half hours picking up weights, but they won't spend a half hour reading. And so I've cut it down to, if you read this, a book a month, which to be honest with you, is not difficult, you will be light years ahead of where you were this time last year. So, yeah, I've got it. I've got a leaders, team leaders. I've got one for crisis decision making, I got one for risk management.

Jon Becker: I love that! If you'll share them, I'll actually put them up.

Sid Heal: I'll send it to you tonight.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I'll put it up on the recommended reading list. So I think what I would love to do to kind of conclude our time together is go through some rapid fire questions. Short answer, give me Sid’s off the cuff. Quick thought, what's your most important habit?

Sid Heal: Reading and writing. I say reading and writing. You can't write if you don't read, but writing it also forces you to put it in your own words, which means that you have to understand it.

Jon Becker: Leader versus manager. What's the difference?

Sid Heal: The leader is far more developed and is able to handle things that won't fit into a management profile, particularly in commanding. One of the things that's emphasized to us in the Marine Corps is that I don't care if you know anything about bask and weaving or not. If you're in charge of this project, you better find somebody who does, but you're still responsible for accomplishing this end state.

Jon Becker: What do you think the most important thing is for building an effective team?

Sid Heal: Trust. I don't really have to think about that too far, but if they don't trust you, nothing else is going to matter, and if they do, nothing is going to stop it.

Jon Becker: What do you think the most important characteristic of an effective leader is?

Sid Heal: Character. We can teach the skills, but if they don't come with a sense of obligation as responsibility, as part of the package, they're just keeping the seat warm for their next promotion.

Jon Becker: If you could have any, you could have dinner with anybody, live or dead. Historical figure, who is it?

Sid Heal: Boy, that is a tough one. Dealing with tactics or. Yeah, life in general.

Jon Becker: Let's go with dealing. Dealing with the – With this topic.

Sid Heal: I have been privileged to have dinner with a lot of the people that are dead now. One, and probably not for the reasons everybody think of, would be Gunnery Sergeant Harris, who was really the one that got me started. He broke me into Vietnam. He was a Korean war veteran, and he punished me. I was the champion sandbag filler of northern I Corps, but he never busted me. And I got to tell you, I deserved it.

Now, I had office hours. I was private twice, PFC twice, Lance corporal once, and corporal twice. The sergeant major would literally shake my hands one day and call me a shipbird the next day. I'm using the exact terminology. This is the thing. I had office hours. I had company office hours and battalion office hours. I was on a suspended bus when I got out of Vietnam, and the deal was if I would stay in the bush where I excelled, I could go home as a corporal.

But if I came back and screwed up, I was going home as a PFC because I was on a suspended bus. I would like to meet that man once where I could thank him for putting up with me and setting the tone. The information that he gave me not only saved my life so many times, I can't begin to describe it. It was always understood that it was not a gift. It was entrusted, and I was expected to pass it on.

If at some point in time somebody writes a eulogy, I think the highest compliment they could give me was that I was a teacher, I was a mentor. I took the information entrusted to me and made it available to people that also needed it and benefited from it.

Jon Becker: Anyone that has ever known you would write that eulogy?

Sid Heal: What's that?

Jon Becker: I said, anyone that has ever known you would write that eulogy.

Sid Heal: I hope so, and I think that's a problem. It's interesting. I have lots of medals. I don't have a single award hanging on my wall. I don't have a certificate. I have a number of college degrees. I've never hung them on my wall. But I have a picture of my team in the first Gulf war where one of the troops wrote on the picture, thanks for getting us all home.

It's almost impossible for me to describe that without the feeling of pride that this guy, who was 19 years old, has now got kids and grandkids and is home. I don't even know how to describe. I have no words for the feeling that it means to me that I wasn't always successful. But I can say that I held nothing back. I did the best I could with what I had, and I was better as the years went by. I don't expect perfection from any of my troops, but I expect dedication, feeling of responsibility.

Jon Becker: I don't know that I can end this on a better note than that.

Sid, thank you so much for sitting down and having this conversation!

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