Episode 30 – Being a Tactical Athlete with Kelly Starrett

Jon Becker: 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 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

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.

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! 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

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.

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!

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. 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

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.

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!

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

Jon Becker: 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!

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!

Episode 20 – Recovering From Being Shot– Jordan Robison Follow-up

Jon Becker: 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!

Okay, so, Jordan, after last week's episode, I got a lot of phone calls and emails and text messages saying, how's Jordan? What happened to Jordan? So why don't we just start there? How's Jordan?

Jordan Robison: Today? Yeah, Jordan's doing good. I'm a full time student right now, which is definitely a complete change of pace for me. Tumbling again, going back and not being who I used to be, but trying to figure out who I'm going to be in the future and making those plans. But no, I'm doing well right now. Full time student. Really invested in that. Really invested in my studies right now. Planning for the future.

Body doing pretty good. Lower back sucks. I'm pretty sure that applies to, like, 60% of cops anybody wears a vest. But, yeah, since my hips are a little uneven now, which I'm sure we'll get into. Lower backs pretty rough. The leg on cold days, you know, you can feel it. Arms. If I move something super, super heavy, I can feel it. But overall, I know a lot of guys get it worse, so there's no, no complaints from me, surprisingly. Just sometimes your back sucks and just focused on school, but overall doing well.

Jon Becker: And now you're medically retired.

Jordan Robison: Yes. Yeah.

Jon Becker: So off the job, full time student, trying to figure out what Jordan 2.0 is going to be.

Jordan Robison: Correct. Yeah. So I've had a couple different plans floated. Originally it was like nursing school with the thought of going flight medic. But ultimately, I think long term, what I'd like to do is PA. So I'm working on getting my bachelor's degree in the medical field. Right now, I'm leaning towards the bachelor's degree in respiratory therapy. And then PA. School is definitely the route I see myself going as a physician's assistant, PA.

So I have to get my bachelor's degree and I'm going to do that in respiratory therapy, just so I get that good medical background, get good at innovations, art lines, things like that. And then I want to go to be a physician's assistant. Two years of school, but pretty intensive. School. But it's something that I can see myself doing, not getting bored with, and a lot of satisfaction helping people in a different way.

Jon Becker: Yeah. I mean, I think it's interesting because you're really young and it's kind of, you know, it's Jordan 2.0 at a very young age, but from where I sit, I think that you've given us enough.

Jordan Robison: Yeah. And that was the hardest thing. Like, really, that was super, super difficult to deal with, is I am young and I'm hungry. And I loved the dynamic parts of being a cop. Like, I loved the foot pursuits, the vehicle pursuits, getting the gangsters, getting the guns, the SWAT callouts, the barricades, the warrants, the range. Like, that was probably some of the most fun I've ever had in my life.

And so it really took me stepping back and stepping away to plan for that long term future. It's like, yes, this is fun now while I'm 32 years old. But you got metal on your leg. You got metal in both your arms and your stomach. You got a scar, like a twelve inch scar in your stomach. Where are you going to be in ten years? How's your back going to be in ten years? What is your plan? Like, are you just going to do this till your body falls apart?

So I really had to kind of humble myself and say, hey, you are not going to feel be this young forever. Where do you see yourself in the future? And I wanted a career that I can literally do for the next 30 years without continuing to make that daily sacrifice that cops make on their body. Cause I don't know too many cops after the age of 50 who can stand up straight without their lower back hurting.

Jon Becker: Oh, yeah. I'm 55, and all of my friends that were my contemporaries when I started my business, I don't know anybody that doesn't have at least one knee replacement. They've all had Achilles tendon surgery. They've all had meniscus surgery.

Jordan Robison: Yeah. The toll it takes is just potent.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's ridiculous. I mean, I am the healthy one now, which is kind of terrifying. When I look at my friends and thought, oh, man, that guy's in such good shape. He's like 75% bionic now, though. So let's. Let's go back. Like, we covered last week's episode. We went through, you know, the event and kind of the. The medical response and kind of lessons learned.

But I think what people want to understand and what I would love to share with our audience is what Jordan went through. Right? Like, what was, you know, the shooting happens. You get to the hospital. Let's just kind of walk through the timeline.

Jordan Robison: Yeah. So, I get to the hospital. I'm awake the whole time. I mean, obviously, Spencer talked about it. That's a good thing that I'm awake the whole time. It sucked when you're going through it. Cause I can feel every second of it. But I'm awake the whole time. They finally, I think I went to surgery. It was either hour and a half, 2 hours after I got to the hospital, which is another good sign, you know, not getting rushed straight off.

But I remember going up to the or, and the anesthesiologist tells me, hey, you're going to sleep. And I look at him right in the eyes, and I say, thank God. Straight in the eyes, like, I'm. Like, I'd like to take a nap, please. Yeah, exactly.

Jon Becker: I'm willing to miss this part.

Jordan Robison: Yeah. So I wake up from the first surgery. From what I was told, it's about a ten hour surgery. So I wake up from that. Feels the best way I could describe coming out of it is just like, you feel like you're waking up out of, like, a crazy ice bath. Like, I felt like I was defrosting, you know, and you're jolted right back in your body. My leg feels worse than it ever did. Arms. I can feel every second of it in my stomach. The pain kind of doubled in my stomach.

But I wake, you know, I wake up in my hospital bed. Some family comes to see me, see my mom, see my girl, tell them, hey, I'm doing all right. Like, stop freaking out. I'm fine. They walk out of the room. I'm like, I'm freaking out. This hurts. No, but…

Jon Becker: On brave face, they walk out, goes back to.

Jordan Robison: Exactly.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Jordan Robison: Yeah. So talk to them. Everything's good. The nice thing was the department had a officer sit with me the whole time. You know, obviously, it was a gang member who was involved in it. We don't know about family security reasons, so. But it was nice having somebody to talk to.

And then they started prepping me for my second surgery. So at that point, they had what's called a steinman pin in my left tib fib. So it's a metal pin that they drill through your shin, and they attach weights to that pin to the edge of your bed to pull traction on your femur. So that was not.

Jon Becker: That sounds like a barrel.

Jordan Robison: No, it was. It was not pleasant. So that's how I woke up from the first surgery with my Steinman pin in, which was great. And then, what they did in the first surgery. Sorry, I'm kind of rambling. What they did in the first surgery was they repaired my stomach because that was the emergent part.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Let's walk real quick. Let's go back through injury. So left and right a*** bones are broken.

Jordan Robison: Yep. Femur shatter.

Jon Becker: Shattered. Left femur round through the stomach, like, traverses the stomach.

Jordan Robison: Yep. Part of the. I think it's the descending colon and the small intestine get caught as the.

Jon Becker: Round goes through and then around, through and through in the shoulder.

Jordan Robison: Yeah, that one didn't need any medical intervention. They just patched it.

Jon Becker: And then a graze wound on the ribs.

Jordan Robison: Yeah, graze wound on the ribs.

Jon Becker: And two in the plate.

Jordan Robison: Yeah, two to the plate curve.

Jon Becker: Okay, so. Okay, so you were saying start with the stomach.

Jordan Robison: Yeah. So first surgery was the stomach repair, and then they placed the Steinman pin. And then they told me once I woke up from that, because my arms and legs still broken, that I'm obviously going to need a second surgery to repair my limbs. But the ors are full and obviously they have a couple safe for, like, emergent situations. And I was stable.

So I think I waited like, two days in the hospital and the pain was there, obviously, but they had me so high on stuff that I was managing it pretty well. And then I go to my second surgery and I wake up and just. It felt like the pain had just turned up on a scale that I just hadn't felt before, especially in the legend.

Once they put the rod in. Once they put plates in my right arm, my left arm. Waking up from that second surgery, I think it was. The first surgery is on Wednesday. Second surgery was on Friday. Waking up for that second surgery, it was rough that night after. It was a rough night, but.

Jon Becker: So the first surgery is basically the abdominal repair.

Jordan Robison: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Second surgery is all the orthopedics.

Jordan Robison: Yep. All the orthopedic repairs, which are plates.

Jon Becker: In left and right arms. And then pin in the leg.

Jordan Robison: Yeah. A rod that runs from my left knee up into my left hip.

Jon Becker: Oh, so like, I was a stiver rod, I think.

Jordan Robison: I'm not sure the name of it.

Jon Becker: Yeah. But basically it's in the middle of the femur to rebuild the femur.

Jordan Robison: Correct.

Jon Becker: And then. And then a pin down in the shin, which was removed.

Jordan Robison: Yeah. So that was removed. So I wake up from my second surgery, there's no longer weights pulling on my leg, which I thought would be nice, but, um. You still feel the leg break. But, um. Yeah, I don't know. You just deal with it. The hospital, that was it. It sucks, too. And especially with stomach surgeries. If anybody's had a stomach surgery, you know, you have to have what's called a ng tube, nasal nasogastrianol tube to Provide suction because they can't risk you vomiting. You vomit, you're gonna tear all your stitches open.

So I have this tube that's running through my nose, down my throat, into my stomach, and can't drink and you can't eat the whole time. So the whole time I'm in the hospital, I can't have any water, and I can't eat anything while I'm dealing with this.

Sounds crazy, but looking back, that was definitely, like, one of the harder things to deal with, especially once you think I was there for like, five, six days, and the tube didn't get taken out till day five. And so that sucked. I remember. I think we're five days on from surgery now that they finally took the tube out. They said, all right, your stomach sealing, take the tube out. And they give me an orange jello. And I remember that was the first thing I had eaten. And I was so, like, the flavor from a hospital orange jello. You would not believe how much flavor that jello had.

Jon Becker: Like, I've done six day fasts in the past.

Jordan Robison: Yeah, I'm sure you would.

Jon Becker: It is amazing on that 6th day, like, you eat.

Jordan Robison: It's like the explosion of flavor from just the most basic thing. It just blew my mind. And. I don't know, I still remember that jello.

Jon Becker: Fascinating! So up until now, I imagine in that five or six days, you're kind of rising and falling emotionally. What were the low points for you?

Jordan Robison: So it was probably the first night after my second surgery, I was really high because I was on all kinds of pain meds. When you come off of prolonged anesthesia, like I was on, you hallucinate. So I'm hallucinating. I'm in just a ton of pain, you know, because that's how it is whenever you wake up from something like that. And then, what had happened was I was an EMT before I was a cop. So I'm blessed with just. Just enough medical knowledge to know when something's wrong, but not enough to know that it's not that serious.

Jon Becker: Got it.

Jordan Robison: So, that night, I start noticing that there's fresh blood coming into my ng tube. And to me, I know that means there's an upper gi bleed that's. That's happening. So that's what I knew from my EMC knowledge. What I didn't know from, you know, lack of further knowledge is probably just an ulcer. So at the time, I'm like, my stomach ripped open. I'm dying. This isn't good. You know? Like, I had convinced myself that I was gonna die in the hospital bed, and that's what freaked me out more than anything. Like, if I died out there in the field, like, who cares? You know?

And I know that sounds callous, but that's a quick, easy death. I did not want to die in a hospital bed laying there helpless. Like, that was one of my biggest fears at the time, was just dying like that. And so when you're hallucinating and you're super high, you're not really rational. I convinced myself that I was dying, and eventually, it took a text from one of the doctors who's on the team. Doc Ebee sent a text to, I think it was my mom who's with me at the time. Like, tell Jordan to calm down. Like, it's probably an ulcer. He's fine. Like, and the message he said was, remember, two steps forward, one step back.

And that kind of stuck with me throughout the process of this healing process is, you are going to take steps forward, but there are going to be setbacks, and so you have to manage that. Take your setback, take your medicine, and then just take two more steps forward tomorrow. So got through that night, eventually fell asleep, and got through it. But that was definitely the low point.

Jon Becker: Was that the only time that you thought you were gonna die?

Jordan Robison: That night, I thought I was gonna die. And then the initial shooting when I went down, obviously, you're trying to self assess, and I knew it was bad. I knew it was hit a lot, and I hadn't lost consciousness yet, but there was definitely the thought there of just, hey, like, this could turn. You might not make it so. But other than that, those two moments, I knew I was going to pull through.

Jon Becker: Yeah. It's interesting because, you know, one of the things that we've talked about offline and talked about with Spencer is that the. The physical condition that you were in going into this is probably a large part of the reason you're still alive.

Jordan Robison: Yeah, that's what all the surgeons said. They said it definitely helps. During the initial surgery, the orthopedic surgeon kind of cursed me a little bit because she was like, yeah, it's good for your recovery. She's like, it's very difficult to get through all that muscle to put your place on the rod. But she was like, I mean, that's my problem, not your problem. Like, you did the right thing.

So she kind of joked with me a little bit. She was like, yeah, it was kind of hard to get through all that muscle to place, place a rod. But that really, really took its toll. Being in good shape took its toll during the physical therapy process. That was huge, absolutely huge.

Jon Becker: See, I don't think, you know, it's, it's, I think lessons learned, right? Always the goal of the podcast is lessons learned.

Jordan Robison: Yeah.

Jon Becker: And I think that one of the lessons learned here is the fact that you were in the physical condition that you were not only means you survived better, but it means you recover better?

Jordan Robison: Correct. Yeah. No, especially when you have good workout habits established so that PT lifestyle. A lot of people dread physical therapy. Getting up out of bed, you know, you're sore, you're tired. But to me, that was already part of what I was doing, daily, daily conditioning. So I mentally just treated it like, hey, I'm gonna go work out.

Instead of thinking of like, oh man, I gotta go do physical therapy of like, no, I'm gonna go work out. And that's how I convinced myself to go and give 100 miles an hour every time I went to a physical therapy session to the point to where they're like, you, you need to calm down.

And I was like, no, you need to turn it up. Like, you need to crank it up little. Cause this is easy. So that, that mentality of just pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing, really, I feel like helped me get back on my feet as quickly as I did.

Jon Becker: What, when did you know you were going to be okay? When was the first time that you're like, I think I'm going to be okay?

Jordan Robison: From the initial shooting or?

Jon Becker: Yeah. from the hospital, like, where was that point that you were like, I, I think I'm gonna be alright?

Jordan Robison: Sounds weird, but once my back actually hit the hospital bed and I felt like once, once they got to the hospital, they pulled me out of the car, they moved me off the gurney, and they put me on that soft hospital bed. That's when I was like, all right, I'm still here, I'm still talking. Yeah, this s*** hurts, but I think I'm gonna be okay.

And at that point, luckily I had reached that conclusion because shortly after that my parents walked in too. Then my fiance walked in, and I spoke to them, and I was able to be as calm as I could and just tell them, like, hey, I'm okay. I'm gonna be fine. Relax. We're good. My mom's a mess. Fiance is a mess. My dad looks right at me. I look at him, I was like, dad, I'm okay. And he was like, yeah, you know, if you're still talking, you're gonna be fine. I was like, yeah, no, I'm good.

Jon Becker: So it's interesting. Cause our mutual friend Ed Henchy, you know, who we both adore. When I interviewed Eddie, one of the things he said is that mindset. Yeah, mindset really matters to both survival and recovery. And every time we've talked about this, that's what I see, is that your mindset was in the right place kind of all the time. I mean, certainly, you know, it's a roller coaster, but you were committed to surviving and thriving again from the get.

Jordan Robison: Yeah, like you said, it's a roller coaster. You just. You have to remember to ride those waves. And it is that little mantra that doc eb gave me of just two steps forward, one step back. And when you take a step back, you cannot let it, like, defeat you. You can't let it destroy your spirit. You just have to know, like, hey, today your leg hurts. Yeah, that's gonna happen.

All right, let's work on your arms. Hey, let's work on some core. Let's do something else while that lake heals, and then you can go back to it. But I think where a lot of guys run into trouble is this, hey, I'm not who I used to be. It's like, well, no, you're not going to be who you used to be. Like, you never be who you used to be, but you can be someone just as good. You can. And it might be in different ways.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Jordan Robison: But you just have to have that mindset going forward of just a hundred. A hundred miles an hour in your pt, 100 miles an hour in your recovery, or 100%. I don't want to say 100 miles an hour either way, 100%. That's what you have to give.

Jon Becker: So, okay, so five days, second surgery, that's done. They've turned you into a bionic man and put all kinds of ballistic parts into you. What's the next significant milestone?

Jordan Robison: So, to get out of the hospital, I had to start being able to pee on my own again. Which sounds weird, but teaching your body how to pee on its own is a pain. It sucks because when you can't, they have to do what's called a straight catheter, where they go in and take the pee out, otherwise your bladder is gonna burst.

Jon Becker: That sounds like a barrel of laughs.

Jordan Robison: No, it sucks. It really, really sucks. But your body responds quicker than you think. So once you could pee on your own, then they were able to get me out of the hospital, and I got transferred to their live in rehab facility. And I was there for, I think, like, seven or eight days, where every single day, three times a day, I was doing physical therapy with the goal of, you know, going home.

So they teach you how to get up, get out of your wheelchair, get into bed, get up three steps, because I had three steps to my house. So we worked on steps. We worked on, you know, going to the bathroom, all these livable things, as well as just strength conditioning. Working on my right side. Cause that was the good leg. Working on how to manipulate that to, you know, protect my femur. It was good because you work out every day, multiple times a day. So being there was really good for my mind.

Jon Becker: So then after that eight days, we get the great video snippet, my personal favorite video snippet of Jordan walking out of the hospital.

Jordan Robison: I was adamant about that. I was absolutely adamant, because, you know, they're like, all right, here's your wheelchair. We're, you know, we'll wheel you out. And I looked at my mom was like, get my walker. I'm nothing. I want everybody to know that I'm okay. I don't want people to see me because it was bad. Like, everybody knew it was bad. You heard about it. It was bad.

So if I could mitigate people's fears a little bit, not just to be selfless, if it helps people, like, calm down a little bit, not blow me up every day, that's a plus. So, no, I was adamant. I walked out of there on my modified walker. Cause I couldn't put weight on my forearms, but I.

Jon Becker: Cause both your arms were broken.

Jordan Robison: Yeah. Cause both my arms.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Let's just keep perspective here. Yeah. Your modified walker implies that, like, you know, both your arms are broken.

Jordan Robison: I could put the tension on my elbows. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And push with my good leg, keeping my broken leg off the ground.

Jon Becker: You'd lean on the parts of the arms that weren't broken and walk out on the one leg that wasn't broken.

Jordan Robison: I was sore when I went home. I'll say that it was worth it.

Jon Becker: I mean, I can honestly say, like, watching the video, that was the first real indication that we got. And watching the video, there was something different about you walking out as opposed to going out in a wheelchair. You're like, he's going to be okay.

Jordan Robison: Yeah. And that's really the message I wanted to convey of just like, hey, I'm going to be fine. I walked in my walker and I did, like, the lap and said hi to everybody there and spoke to as many people as I could, and then eventually looked at my dad, gave him the whole, like, hey, I'm done.

Jon Becker: We're done, buddy.

Jordan Robison: Leg hurts. Need to go sit down. And then got my truck and got out of there, which was nice. So that was definitely a high that day.

Jon Becker: So what's it like when you get home?

Jordan Robison: So it's different for everybody. I know a lot of people experience, like, a great sense of relief. Like, hey, I'm finally home. I'm finally out of it. And for me, I couldn't tell you why I felt this way, but I. I was hit with one of the real, real low points. Like, just this wave of depression that I had not felt yet.

When I got out of the hospital and finally made it home, and I've talked about it and I think I understand why now, but at the time, it was, like, shocking. I didn't expect to feel this way, but just a wave of depression hit me like I never felt before.

So I guess the mindset behind it was when I was at the live in rehab facility, I had a tight schedule. I would wake up every day. I would PT four times a day. You know, I had occupational therapy. Lunch was at a certain time, everything was on a strict schedule with the goal of going home. So your day is filled. Your day is productive. Your day is moving towards a concrete goal.

Jon Becker: Near term.

Jordan Robison: A near term concrete goal. And then when I got home, it was just this, well, now what?

Jon Becker: What's my good luck with the rest of your life?

Jordan Robison: Exactly. Like, my stomach's still open. I still have staples in my stomach that have not healed. Like, I still. That requires wound care every day. My legs still broken, my arms are still broken. Like, I have wounds that need, like, tending. My fiance had to help me with that and, like, actually clean my wounds every day.

So that was a big question that hit me of just like, well, now what? Now what's your goal? Like, what's your concrete goal? Because there is none. It was, take as much time as you need. Come, like, we'll be here. And it was that's not a concrete goal.

Jon Becker: That is amorphous and nebulous and kind of, you know, it's reachable.

Jordan Robison: It's limbo.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Jordan Robison: That's the best way to describe it. It's. It's literally just limbo. And that was really, really hard to deal with. So what helped that for anybody who gets in that spot, was coming up with a schedule. I made a daily schedule of, hey, I have physical therapy Monday, Wednesday, Friday. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I take my little walker and I go for a walk around my neighborhood. I remember one of my neighbors saw me and started yelling at me. She's like, Jordan, you are a mile away from your house. Like, what are you doing? And I was like, I can't be home anymore. I don't know what to tell you.

Jon Becker: Like an Alzheimer's patient, we just found Jordan a mile from home. You guys come pick him up.

Jordan Robison: I know she – I thought she was just going to take my walker so I couldn't go anywhere.

Jon Becker: But again, that's mindset, right? That's a mindset of, like, I'm going to go do something hard.

Jordan Robison: Yeah. And so that's what all the physical therapists noticed when I actually started going to physical therapy was just like, all right, we're going to start coming up with some new exercises for this guy, because I would just show up and be like, hey, yeah, I appreciate it. I want to start doing this. Like, hey, that was great. That wasn't hard enough. Or, hey, you know, I can feel pain here. Let's modify it this way.

And so, I don't know. We started to develop a really close relationship to where I would go to physical therapy, and I would be drenched from sweat, head to toe, and walk out of there, like. And that sense of accomplishments, really important, especially when you feel like you're in a limbo.

Jon Becker: I think also, like, you are an active participant in your own recovery.

Jordan Robison: Yeah, 100%. You get into it, what you put out of it. And I think one of my friends the other day, I met up with him. He had broke his leg recently, and he asked me, he was like, hey, any advice? And I was like, the best advice I can give you is when you go to physical therapy, go a hundred miles an hour and give 110%. It's like….

Jon Becker: Make it hurt.

Jordan Robison: Yeah, yeah. Go give 100% when you go to physical therapy. I saw him recently, and he told me, he was like, bro, that was the best advice you ever gave me. He was like, my leg feels way better than it did. And I'm like, I didn't do anything. You did it. Yeah.

Jon Becker: But I think a lot of it, and this is part of the reason that I wanted to talk to you. I think a lot of it is somebody who's talked to a lot of guys that have survived shootings, not knowing what to do, not knowing where you're going. I know that you and I have had conversations with some of the other Safariland survivors.

Jordan Robison: Oh, yeah.

Jon Becker: It's having a roadmap. Even if your road's going to be slightly different, having some sense of where you're going kind of adds purpose to that. And it makes it feel like I'm not crazy.

Jordan Robison: Yeah, yeah. It just gets you out of that. That kind of funk of just like, well, like, I don't have a direction, so maybe I'll try this. It's like, no. Form a concrete plan and go attack that plan. That's the best thing you can do. Um, and I noticed a lot of the guys, the safari land survivors I talked to, once they get over, you know, some of the mental issues that they go through that I went through, that every survivor or something like this goes through, and they get back to work, I see an improvement as, as long as, you know, some of those issues are dealt with. You see that improvement when somebody has a set plan in front of them.

Jon Becker: So what's the next major physical milestone?

Jordan Robison: So it was to graduate from the walker. So I went back to the doctor and they said, hey, congratulations. Your arms are healed. You can now use a traditional walker. I was like, give me a cane. I was like, I want to use a cane. I don't use a walker. Like, I'm sick of this walker. It was funny, too, because I had, like, this old man walker, and I had, like, you know, like, gunfighter stickers on it. Like six, six hour stickers on it. Got an AARDVARK sticker on that. Like, all kinds of, like, you just.

Jon Becker: See you rolling into PT with, you know, glock and sig stickers.

Jordan Robison: Like, walkers all decked out.

Jon Becker: But I finally got 50 years younger than the guy next to you.

Jordan Robison: Got rid of that, started walking on the walker. Obviously no high impact, but they're like, you can start putting weight on that left leg now. So that became a real focus in the physical therapy, was just trying to get that left leg strong again, which takes effort. You don't realize how much muscle mass you lose in that leg, in a leg. When you go through something like that.

Jon Becker: And I've seen the x-rays of your leg, and it especially initially, didn't really look like a leg anymore.

Jordan Robison: Even healed. Now, my orthopedic surgeon who fixed it says bone heeled. It looks like a modern art sculpture down there.

Jon Becker: Yeah. It's a little abstract.

Jordan Robison: Yeah. Just a little. Little artsy.

Jon Becker: It's unique, though. It's a one of a kind.

Jordan Robison: Yeah, all right, whatever. I just want to be able to tie my shoes, and then turns out the way the bone heeled, she's like, yeah, buy some slip on. Buy slip on. So today, I had my fiance tie my shoes. But the next big one, obviously, was getting rid of the cane and being able to walk on my own. And that got better, obviously, because, you know, same thing. Just push it too far.

Jon Becker: Yeah, well, I mean, now, like, honestly, like, if I didn't know that you had injuries, you can't tell. Yeah, like, obviously there's. There's scars.

Jordan Robison: Yeah.

Jon Becker: But just, like, if you just met, you can't tell that, like, you have no clue what happened.

Jordan Robison: It is funny. I was at school the other day, and obviously none of my classmates know. I don't. It's not something I go broadcast, but one of the guys who sits next to me, who I get along with really well, looked at my arm and sees, like, the pretty distinct, like, bullet hole in the scar. And he was like, bro, what is that?

Jon Becker: That's nothing. Let me show you the other.

Jordan Robison: I was like, oh, that one. Don't worry about that little guy. But, yeah, it's – And he said the same thing. He's like, because I told him I had no problem talking about it. And he was like, that's. He's like, I never would have known. And I was like, well, good. Like that was the goal.

Obviously. I chose to medically retire just like we talked about with the longevity and going forward, but my goal was like, I don't want to be the guy who limps around every day because, you know, he didn't take physical therapy serious. Like, I still want to be able to work out because people asked me before, what's your hobby? One of my hobbies was going to the gym, working out.

Jon Becker: That's showed.

Jordan Robison: Yeah. I enjoyed something I enjoy now. So that was huge for me to continue that.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I think that if you. If you didn't know, you know, what's happened since the shooting and just picked up Jordan before and Jordan after, emotionally, there's probably a lot of difference. Physically, there's some marks, but I don't know that you would necessarily be able to go, oh, you know, he's like a different guy.

Jordan Robison: Well, I got a few more cheeseburgers on me now. A little bit there. I'm losing.

Jon Becker: Which is totally okay. I think you're. I think at this point, you were entitled to at least a couple of extra cheeseburgers and five pounds of extra blood. I think it's full pass on that one. So talk to me. Let's. Like, that's the physical side of it.

Jordan Robison: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Talk to me about the emotional side of it. Like you talked about it was dark when you first got home.

Jordan Robison: Sure.

Jon Becker: And then. What does that roller coaster look like from there?

Jordan Robison: So, you know, I already spoke about, you know, that dark place, and then getting that schedule helped. Well, I truly thought that I was okay, like, especially when I was busy and I was going through all this physical therapy, and I was happy, you know, I was tired, and I was working out, and all the guys were talking to me. I was talking to guys on the team. I thought I was okay. Like, I thought, yeah, this is sad.

There were days where, you know, I'd wake up and I'd, you know, you feel that grief and, you know, you cry and things like that, and I get over it, and I'd be fine. Like. And I was like, no, I'm handling this really well. I'm doing. I'm doing good.

Fast forward. I think it's like five and a half months. I go back light duty, and I'm working in personnel and training. I have a conversation with one of the guys on the team, and he shares a detail with me about the shooting that I didn't remember until he said it. And what the detail was. I remember we were talking, and I was like, yeah. When I was down, I was just trying to call out where I was hit, you know, like, you know, it sounded like a badass in my head.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Jordan Robison: Left arm, right arm. He's like, no. I was like, what do you mean, no? He's like, no, you just said Mike. I was like, like, Mike. He's like, yeah. You just said Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike. And I remember it like. Like this. Like a cheesy TV, like. Like a cheesy movie. This flashback flooded into my brain where, when I was down, the guy at my head, his name's Mike Yin.

Mike was at my head, and he was the one who was talking to me, because that's one thing we always assign to. You know, if you're not actively doing medical aid. You're talking to the person keeping them there. And that's what Mike was doing. Mike was talking to me, like, hey, we're all here. You're good. You're good. And I just. I remember looking at Mike, and all I could say was just like, Mike. Like, Mike, Mike, Mike.

Well, I didn't know. I didn't remember that until he said it. And I can't even describe the emotions that hit me while I'm at work. Light duty. So we've somehow. We're at lunch when we're talking about this. Somehow I'm able to keep it together. I go sit at my desk, and my buddy sits next to me at his desk. Our desk are, like, right next to each other, and I'm, like, staring at a blank computer screen. There's nothing on it.

Like, I'm not doing anything. I'm literally sitting at my desk, staring at a blank computer screen. Just completely. Almost like, shell shock. Like, just completely overwhelmed. And my buddy sits next to me. He was actually a vet, served a couple tours in Iraq. He recognized immediately that something was wrong. He's like, hey, dude, like, why don't you go home? And I was like, all right. He's like, I'll talk to lieutenant. I'll talk to everybody. He's like, don't say bye to anybody. Just grab your stuff, go home. Call me if you need me. I was like, cool, you know, and good on him for being heads up. Yeah, like, it was really heads up.

So I go start driving home, and my heart rate is through the roof. I'm sweating, like, truly, like, diaphoretic. I'm completely sweat through my shirt, sobbing uncontrollably, and my breathing accelerates to the points where I can't even drive. I literally have to pull over halfway home because I can't drive. My hands won't stop shaking.

So I sit in my car on the side of the road in the ghetto of San Bernardino. Because I was taking the streets home, I didn't trust myself to drive the freeway. Just sitting on the side of the road for about 30 minutes before that, what we would describe as a panic attack subsided, and I was actually able to start my car and drive home. And that's when I went back to work and said, like, I need to talk to somebody. I'm not okay. Like, I can't do this.

Jon Becker: Like, yeah.

Jordan Robison: Because that was the first time where that actual physical side of PTSD hit me. And this is months later. At this point, I was like, no, I'm I think I'm fine. Yeah, I think I'm past this.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I totally weathered this thing. It's no big deal.

Jordan Robison: Exactly. Yeah. And so once that hit me, talked to a therapist or they put me in touch with the counselor, told the counselor what happened, and she was like, I'm putting you off work. I was like, well, I wasn't gonna go back anyway, so I'm glad. At least I'll get paid. I'm glad I wasn't gonna go. And so I started working with her, and I think I worked with her for about, I think it was four months that I saw her. And we started doing this therapy called EMDR. So rapid. Sorry. Eye movement desensitization. Desensitization. I forgot what the r stands for. Something like that is.

So essentially it's you need to take that short term memory that's causing your brain to think you're in a fight or flight situation and activating your sympathetic nervous system. You need to take that short term memory and get your brain to process it and put it into long term memory. She was like, that's what's happening. It's like the emotional side is the emotional side. You're going to grieve. You're going to be angry. You're going to go through all that.

She's like, that's just going to happen. But the physical side, the panic attack, the accelerated heart rate, the sweatiness, because this had happened a couple times after that, that trigger, she's like, that's something we can help with. You don't have to live like that. So we started this process, and it was a long process and it wasn't easy, but I'm trying to transfer that memory in the long term.

Jon Becker: I've heard it described by other shooting survivors and doctors that I've talked to is the best application I heard was if it fired together, it's wired together.

Jordan Robison: Yeah.

Jon Becker: And that you have to unwire the physiological response from the emotional. Like you said, you know, the fear, the trauma, the sadness, all of that is an emotion.

Jordan Robison: Yeah.

Jon Becker: And you can process the emotion, but it's the physical aspect of it. It's the high heart rate and literally your body going back into fight or flight uncontrollably. Right? Because there is no direct threat right now.

Jordan Robison: Straight adrenaline.

Jon Becker: No way to solve it.

Jordan Robison: Yeah, straight adrenaline dump.

Jon Becker: How so? You worked with her for about four months. When does that portion of this thing not necessarily go away, but become manageable and kind of tempered?

Jordan Robison: I'd probably say, I think towards the end of that time, the severe panic attacks subsided for me. And I know it's different for everybody. But, like, the adrenaline dumps randomly got smaller and smaller till eventually they kind of stopped for me on the emotional side to where I felt, like, emotionally, I could talk about it.

I could watch the video. I could, you know, share this experience without getting too emotional. Probably took me. It still comes back every once in a while, but I'd say probably over the year mark, like, maybe year two, three months, something like that.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Well, and what. What now still triggers that for you? Like, is there anything direct where you're like, oh, I need to avoid, you know, I need to watch. What? Avoid watching Rambo or, you know, I can't watch cats on TV or, you know.

Jordan Robison: Well, it's, I think we talked about it, obviously, before this. If I'm watching body worn camera video from somebody else's incident, I can watch that just fine. Even if they're taking contact, even if they're taking fire, it's the officer down where I can hear the officers screaming, where I could hear or see the blood, things like that. I can still watch it. Like, you know, if I had to get through it, I could do it and I'd be fine. But it's. Do I avoid it? Yeah. Like, personally, I don't want to see it because I'm like, I've been there. It sucks.

Jon Becker: I mean, you know, you and I watched the video of you together, and. And, I mean, I. My heart rate was elevated. Like, it's. It's. It's certainly traumatic, and. But it's. It's a testament to your willingness to go to therapy, your willingness to engage. You know, it's so easy as, as a type males to think, I'm good.

Jordan Robison: Yeah, I'm good.

Jon Becker: I can deal with this. And, you know, it's. It's at hinch again, and I have had this conversation, like, you know, you didn't hesitate to get your leg fixed when it got shot.

Jordan Robison: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Right. Your arms broke, and you're getting that traded. But we're very inclined to just go, oh, no, no, my brain. There's nothing wrong with my brain. Yeah, no, your brain had the same experience that the rest of your body did

Jordan Robison: It's the same thing. Like, my leg was broken or my leg was not broken until it was broken. You know what I mean? Like, like, when that happens, like, your mind needs to be fixed. So for me, I was fine up until, boom. Like, I was hit with it hard. And I know it's different for everybody. Some people can be progressive, especially, I know, a lot of guys, long years on the job, where they see horrendous things PTSD can be. Can grow and shape over time. But this, for me, was one major incident that was causing a, like, a visceral reaction that I needed to go deal with. Yeah.

Jon Becker: So we've, you know, subsequent to your shooting, you've had conversations with guys who have recently been in shootings.

Jordan Robison: Yeah.

Jon Becker: And, you know, one of the things that I, as your friend, am most proud of is the fact that you were willing to go and engage that and pass on, you know, kind of what was shared with you by other people. What would your counsel be to somebody who has just had an event like this?

Jordan Robison: Well, there's two portions of it, obviously, as we talked about, for the physical stuff, the simple advice, just 100% in all your. Everything you can do to try and recover physically, go 100%, even if it. All you can do is move your hand in the hospital. Well, then move your hand, flex your hand, do whatever you can.

So that's the physical side. For the mental side, you can't do it on your own, no matter how much you want to. You cannot fix what. What is going on in your brain on your own. Now, whether that means you talk to a therapist or you talk to somebody who's been through it before, I recommend a trained professional personally.

When you talk to that trained professional, you need to have a connection with them. Like, if you talk to somebody and you're like, wow, this guy's kind of a p****, you're not gonna. You're not gonna heal from that guy. Go to somebody else. Like, don't. Don't sit there and try and deal with somebody you don't like with your therapist. You need to be able to trust them. You need to have a connection with them, because that – They say 50% effectiveness is determined by your relationship with your therapist.

So you're talking. A huge amount of healing or lack of can be done by your relationship with your therapist. So that's huge. And then there's a community out there of people who've been through bullshit like this who are here to help, you know, I've done. I'm going to keep doing my part to reach out to guys who are going through this just to be there, you know? And it's just crazy, too, when you talk to these guys, how much you have in common. Like, every shooting is different, every set of physical problems different, every set of mental problems is different.

But there's just so many things that, you know, we all have in common that, like, do you go through this? He's like, yeah, man, I really want to. One of the big things was sleep. I didn't sleep for s*** for probably the first year. Didn't sleep like I could not fall asleep to save my life.

Once I was asleep, which probably happened like once every two, three days. I sleep for like 12 hours because my body was exhausted. But falling asleep was brutal. And I know I've talked to other guys who really struggle with sleep because they either dream or, you know, they wake up every hour. But sleep is a common thing. And that got better for me one when time had passed and I got therapy.

Jon Becker: So what about for people who, you know, like, when this whole thing happens, obviously everybody around you has a reaction to this.

Jordan Robison: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Right? And some of those reactions are positive and some are not. What would you counsel people who are close to somebody who has been through this?

Jordan Robison: Yeah, that's a really good question. I would just say that you should probably look at your own mental health as well because you, especially the guys who put tourniquets on me, like, they. They went through something traumatic. They saw one of their buddies essentially get butchered and they had to try and fix it. Didn't know if he was going to live or die. They all had to go do interviews with blood, my blood all over their hands, their uniforms.

I mean, Spencer talked about it super close with his family. He has to go home, face his family, who's all like, house Jordan. House Jordan. He doesn't know, you know, you are going to have your own trauma. When, especially for the guys who were there who don't go through the actual, who don't actually get shot, you have trauma that you have to deal with.

My advice is don't try and get your therapy session or lump yourself into that same category. And this isn't to disparage anybody, but there I – What I notice, and this happened with multiple people, is a lot of guys who were going through some mental trauma of their own would come to me and try and find some absolution in it and try and be like, we went through something crazy. And I'm like, yes, we did. But like, we went through two different things, you know?

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Jordan Robison: Like, and I'll be honest, probably emotionally, I didn't have to go back to the department. I didn't have to deal with that. Like my, I don't know what you went through, man. And I'm sure that sucked going back to work after seeing that, seeing one of your buddies go down, I couldn't even. I can't contemplate what that's like, and that's. You need to find somebody who's been through that. But at the same time, too, it's like, I can't be your therapist because I'm going through something as well.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Don't try to relive the event.

Jordan Robison: Yeah. Not. Not right other. Not right away in it. It's all coming from a good place. I get that because they need to go through it. But my advice is, go talk to your therapist. Go get a therapist. Go talk to them. Go talk to each other. Go talk to – And when I'm in a good place, like I am now, I'll talk to you about it all day long. I could care less. We talked to, I don't even know how many hours I've talked to all my brothers on the team about this for.

But when that person who's physically healing and emotionally healing, you got. You gotta let them heal. Don't dump your. Your burden onto them as well.

Jon Becker: What did people do that was helpful?

Jordan Robison: I thought it was really helpful how people kind of coordinated behind, behind the scenes together. Like, I don't know how somebody coordinated with my parents. And, like, every day, somebody would drop off a meal. You know, every day somebody would say, here's dinner. Here's dinner. Here's dinner.

So my fiance didn't have to worry about anything. I didn't have to worry about anything. We didn't have to order food. Just constant stream of food. I think people got together, the poa fix, like, my fence, because one of my fence was falling, and it had been my plan to fix it. Obviously, I got hurt, so I couldn't do it. And they just came out of nowhere, fixed my fence.

So just little things that the community got together and did for me really meant a lot. Like, to this day, it really meant a lot. One of the things that I wasn't there for, but I also, like, really found inspirational, too, is the whole SWAT team got together with each other to deal with what they were dealing with for, I think, like, a week, two weeks after every day, they would just go meet up and talk to each other.

And knowing that my guys were taking care of themselves, especially after the initial shooting, kind of gave me some peace. Knowing that guys were reaching out and taking care of my fiance kind of gave me peace. That way I could focus on me, because instead of having to worry about my fiance or just, like, you know, is she being taken care of? Everybody is hitting me up like, she's good. We've got her. Whatever she needs, she gets. Don't even stress about that. So taking those little burdens off the person who's healing really meant a lot.

Jon Becker: Because it creates space for you to go heal.

Jordan Robison: Exactly. Just. It literally just lets you focus on yourself.

Jon Becker: If you were to go back prior to this incident with Jordan 1.0, nowhere near the man Jordan 2.0 is, but Jordan 1.0, what would you tell you that you think would help you get through this? Other than what we've already talked about, is there anything else that you'd be like, oh, man, I wish I had known.

Jordan Robison: Oh…. I don't know. Just really don't take your personal relationships, especially at home, with your parents, with your fiance, with your friends, with your family. Don't take it lightly. Like, take that serious, because you never know when that's going to end. And luckily, you know, I got to make amends and, you know, closer now with everybody, you know, but before, I was pretty distant with everybody. It's distant with my parents. I was distant with my fiance, distant with my family. It's just 100% focused on work.

So if I could go back in time and just say one thing, it's just like, hey, man, really don't take those relationships for granted. Like, really take that serious. But as far as prepping him for it, I don't think there's any prep for it. I think you just got to go through it. I would just show up physically strong and just work your a** off. I mean, obviously I would tactic because. Tactics, we got to sit down and discuss some tactics.

Jon Becker: Sure.

Jordan Robison: Hindsight being what it is, but…

Jon Becker: Hindsight is always 2020.

Jordan Robison: Yeah. Physically, I felt like I was prepared for it. Emotionally, it's a roller coaster, but I still feel like I got through it. Just the big thing I would say is your personal relationships, because that could have gone differently, and I would have ended being in a less than ideal place with all the people that I love and care about.

Jon Becker: So do you think that this has kind of re-perspectived life for you?

Jordan Robison: 100%. That's the biggest reason. Not the biggest reason, but it's definitely consideration for my medical retirement. Like me and my fiance. You know, we want to start a family. We, you know, I want to be there for my parents, X, Y, and Z, and there's more to life than going out and chasing murderers and gangsters. And it's fun, don't get me wrong. And it needs to be done and it's important.

But for me, with my hardware, everything that I went through had to sit down and make that, you know, personal decision to, to step back with long term goals in mind, long term life assessment in mind. Where do I want to be in 10, 20, 30, 40 years? So, yeah, no, definitely gave me perspective on everything.

Jon Becker: Jordan 2.0, a better man than Jordan 1.0 was.

Jordan Robison: I definitely feel like it matures you a lot again, even against your will. Like you, you grow up when you go through something like this.

Jon Becker: So, my brother, I appreciate you being here with me! This was fantastic! And hopefully everybody that heard the story will know that Jordan's okay.

Jordan Robison: Yeah. And just this stuff happens. Unfortunately, it happens. We're seeing it on like a weekly, even daily basis sometimes. So hopefully this podcast can get in the right hands and hit the right set of yours.

But, yeah, no, thanks for having me, brother!

Jon Becker: Thanks so much!

Episode 3 – Lee McMillion: Inside LAPD D-Platoon (SWAT)

Jon Becker: 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!

My guest today is Lieutenant Lee McMillian. Lee is currently one of the two lieutenants leading the Los Angeles Police Department's metropolitan division, D-Platoon, which is better known as LAPD SWAT. In total, Lee has spent 33 years as a Los Angeles policeman, of which 23 years have been spent at Metro 21. With D-Platoon, Lee is one of only three men to have ever served at all possible ranks at D-Platoon, Officer plus one sergeant and lieutenant.

Lee, I appreciate you joining me today on The Debrief!

Lee McMillion: Thank you, Jon! It's my pleasure to be here!

Jon Becker: Let's start with your history. Let's go back to kind of where you started when your career started with LAPD.

Lee McMillion: So I started the police academy when I was 21 years old. That was May of 1988. After the police academy, my first patrol assignment was rampart division. Then I went to Southeast Division. I was there for almost four years. I did a very brief stint as a farms instructor. I won't get into how I had to navigate that into my career path to keep my P-3 stripes and remain eligible to go to metro Division.

Jon Becker: Fair enough.

Lee McMillion: And then I went to metro Division in April of 1994. Two years later, I went through SWAT selection. And then after assignment to SWAT, I was in the platoon for eleven years. And the back five of those. Correction, the back four of those, I was an element leader.

Jon Becker: Okay. And then at that point, what happened? Did you promote and rotate out or.

Lee McMillion: I did. So it was summer of 2007. I made sergeant. I went to 77th Division, where I spent about 19 months. And then, just as good fortune has it, I was able to come back to SWAT as a sergeant or a squad leader.

Jon Becker: Got it. And then how long were you there? The second time?

Lee McMillion: So I was a sergeant in SWAT for a little under four years when I just took the lieutenant's test and my number came up. So I made lieutenant in October of 2012. And then I was gone about two and a half years before. Once again, the stars aligned.

And I'll have to say that each time I left SWAT and promote it out. I never expected to be able to come back. You just have to be good in your, you know, in your mind. It's. It's that pyramid structure where, like, there are less positions, the higher you go in the rank structure.

Jon Becker: Sure.

Lee McMillion: So when. When you promote out, you have to be good with never, ever coming back and just find another career path. And there's plenty of great job opportunities on the LAPD, and I was gonna find my way into other career opportunities. But just as good fortune and cosmic energy have it, I was able to come back not only as a sergeant, but also as a lieutenant.

Jon Becker: So why don't we talk a little bit about the history of D-Platoon for. I mean, I think everybody's familiar with LA SWAT, but, like, from a history standpoint, when did D-Platoon start?

Lee McMillion: So, LAPD SWAT started in the first roll call was actually December of 1966. So it had been on the back of the 1965 riots in Los Angeles. It had been after the Charles Whitman incident, which was, I believe, summer of 1966.

And so there were these increasingly provocative police incidents where the law enforcement community realized that there would need to be enhancement of tactical proficiency and resources to handle these. So again, it was December of 1966 was the first roll call, although we say 1967 is our anniversary year because it was late in December, and we just don't want to eat up that whole year.

So it was a part time platoon for nearly five years until November of 1971. During the part time period, there were 176 personnel men who rotated through the platoon. And it was a part time assignment, as I said. So you could be a Hollywood detective, or you could be a patrol cop in just any division. And those personnel would get together for a couple days every month and train in what they were still figuring out were the responsibilities of SWAT.

And if you figure the personnel, we had Korean war vets. It was during the Vietnam era. So some Vietnam vets. There might even have been a world war two vet in there that would have been quite tenured on the department at the time. And then after some successes, specifically, there was a black Panther incident in 1969. And then in November of 71, SWAT came to metro division as a proper platoon and with the designator of d platoon, so. And that's where we've been ever since.

Jon Becker: So in 71 was the point that it becomes a full time assignment and is stood up as a full time team.

Lee McMillion: Correct.

Jon Becker: Okay, how big was it prior to that? Like, how many personnel?

Lee McMillion: So as a part time team, it was, correction, four squads of ten each. Okay, so about 40 yeah, 40. So four squads, ten each. And then when it came to Metro as D-Platoon about the first couple deployment periods, it remained four squads, ten each, and then soon thereafter, bumped to six squads of ten each. So 60 officers, and that's our structure today, is 60 officers. We actually have seven sergeants. Six of those sergeants are squad leaders, as I mentioned, 610 officer squads.

And then we have an additional administrative sergeant position that can rotate through if a sergeant is injured on duty or goes on vacation, somebody can backfill the squad and also handle admin. And then there are two lieutenants, and the two lieutenants are myself, and then my partner is Ruben Lopez. And after an incident in 2005 is when they expanded that structure, so it would just be greater lieutenant coverage. And bottom line is, just one guy can't stay awake that much.

Jon Becker: Yeah, that's fair. So, 1971, the unit becomes a full time unit. By then the Black Panther shootout was in 1969?

Lee McMillion: Correct.

Jon Becker: So 69 is Black Panther shootout. 71, the team becomes full time. 74, the SLA shootout occurs?

Lee McMillion: Yes.

Jon Becker: Okay. So it's kind of pre full time, and then post full time SLA happens. And that's really the genesis of the team, as most people see it.

Lee McMillion: Correct. So when it was a part time team, there were various successes at different deployments, and one of the bigger, more prominent was obviously the Black Panther incident in 1969. So, actually, if you look at our emblem, we've got it's the eagle and holding the lightning bolt and the banner. And then the banner has a 41 and a 54 on it.

So the 41 stands for 41st and Central, which is the intersection of the Black Panther incident in 1969. And then if we're going to talk about the SLA incident in 1974, then that was at 54th and Compton. So just two significant landmark incidents with success and brought notoriety to the team and also fostered that confidence with the chain of command that this is a team that can handle these sorts of incidents. And it just furthered the evolution.

Jon Becker: Yeah, because 74. Well, even 71, when the team becomes full time, this is still a pretty radical idea. This is not. LAPD literally coined the term SWAT, and this is kind of a radical idea to have a special weapons and tactics team, especially full time special weapons and tactics team. Talk a little bit about the origin. And so it was Jeff Rogers and Daryl Gates, if I remember correctly, that coined the phrase.

Lee McMillion: So I know Daryl Gates was an inspector in 19, December of 66 when this whole thing started. So, obviously, he was a very prominent chief of ours for, I believe, 13 years. But before he had promoted to that rank. He had this concept of a police unit with enhanced capability, just watching the trends in law enforcement and the increased danger, provocative nature of them.

And so what are we going to do to prepare for it when it hits Los Angeles? So, yes, SWAT was the brainchild of Daryl Gates, then inspector, and he was actually a driver for Chief Parker at the time. And then obviously, as he promoted to the rank of chief, then the platoon had wide support throughout the chain of command because he is now the chief. And it was his concept.

I know that there's some, I don't say conflict, disagreement, but the overall premise is that SWAT started with LAPD and there may be other law enforcement entities out there. I'm not going to arrogantly state that it started with us, and that's the way it is. There are 17,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States.

If one of them had a variation on the theme and just didn't call it SWAT at the time, I certainly give them credit for what they've done, but for bringing the term special weapons and tactics and attaching that to a police unit that's a full time team, I believe that credit does go to the LAPD.

Jon Becker: I think from a historical context. So you look at Black Panther and put Black Panther in greater context. At that point, you're having weather underground and events where police cars are being blown up. There's a lot of civil unrest, Watts riots internationally, you have the Munich massacre, you're having hostage takings. It kind of sets up this environment where you look at Munich and law enforcement quickly realizes there can be problems here that we're not prepared for.

Lee McMillion: Correct.

Jon Becker: And so it makes sense why they would look at it and say, yeah, we need to do something else. Looking back at the history, also talk about the effect of the 84 olympics, because that seems to be the point in the US where SWAT really explodes onto the scene and you see teams popping up kind of all over the place.

Lee McMillion: Right. So, as you said, it was after the Munich incident at the Olympics and then when the city of Los Angeles received the Olympic award for the 1984 games is in the couple of years prior to that, that Daryl Gates and other government officials determined that if something like this could possibly occur in the city of Los Angeles, what are we going to do to prepare for it? And that's when LAPD SWat did all the outreach.

So a lot of our personnel, you talk about Jeff Rogers and Mike Hillman, Al Preciato, Ron McCarthy, a lot of travel to international agencies that had experience with counterterrorism operations. And then that's when our platoon went from a tactical team that was making entries but not necessarily hostage rescue capable to full blown hostage rescue capable resources.

Jon Becker: Yeah, because, I mean, again, in context, that is kind of the terrorist act du jour for the late 1970s is sees a bunch of people somewhere demand the release of a group of prisoners somewhere and then try to negotiate your way or sneak your way out of it.

As you know, that's the point also that it shifts for the hostage takers because you have 22 sas at Prince's gate in London. You have the Entebbe raid, you have GIGN and Berndes. Like, there's this series of catastrophic failures of hostage takers where the teams start to figure it out.

Lee McMillion: Yes.

Jon Becker: And they begin to know how to deal with hostage takers. And all of a sudden it goes from they're negotiating to they are, you know, dying in the airplane because the team has built, you know, the strategy. So as you guys started to reach out, you were reaching out to which teams, like which european teams kind of laid that foundation.

Lee McMillion: So, yes, european teams. Moreover, our own US army and our US Navy and then so very close relationships with them. And then from there, I would say GSG 9, initially, GIGN, the SAS. And we've kept a lot of those relationships over the years.

Jon Becker: Yeah. It seems as somebody who's worked with D-Platoon for a long time and kind of been around the platoon, you are more connected internationally, I think, than a lot of other units. And there is more of an information exchange that takes place.

Lee McMillion: Yes, I actually keep a lot of correspondence with our resources in the UK, in France, actually, as far as Dubai and in Norway, Delta Norse. I'll have frequent communication with all of those teams.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Because I think especially when you look at LA as a potential stage for an attack, it seems like most of the tactics develop, both good guy and bad guy tactics develop in Europe and the Middle east and then kind of make their way to us soil on both sides of the equation. So it probably is helpful for you guys to maintain those relationships. And I understand how the tactics are evolving, I would imagine

Lee McMillion: Absolutely. And real time debriefs. An incident occurred in Paris. We have resources that are sending us information about what occurred and obviously there's a lot of confidentiality to it, but we've got very good communication, so we can learn from their successes and challenges and the like.

Jon Becker: So talk to me about the current configuration of the team. How big is it? You know, what's the overall structure look like today?

Lee McMillion: So our structure hasn't changed since, I'll say, mid 72, early 72 ish, if we became a full time team November 71. So shortly thereafter, we were six squads of ten each. Each ten officer squad is divided into two five officer elements. So if we talk about ranks, and I want to get, like, too weird on the rank structure chart, but we have 48 police officer 3s. We have 12P. Three plus ones, which are element leaders.

So if you kind of do the math, you got six squads divided into two five man elements. Right? You got twelve element leaders. And then each of those squads is run by a sergeant or a squad leader. So we have six sergeants that are actual squad leaders. Then we have that admin position that can backfill. And then two lieutenants.

Jon Becker: Two lieutenants rotating responsibility over time.

Lee McMillion: Yes. So Ruben and I are, for the most part, we are exactly 50-50. We'll handle off hour standby or on duty incidents every other night, every other weekend, so that at the end of the year, we're both up the exact amount of time.

Jon Becker: And I think that one of the things I think that's unique about D-Platoon and also about Lasherf SEB, is you have complete responsibility for the tactical problem in the city of Los Angeles. There is no. There's no, you know, there's no phone home after you guys. It is your problem, ultimately. Right?

Lee McMillion: Right. We are the last line of defense. City of Los Angeles is 468 sq mi. There are 21 geographic patrol divisions. So when something happens in a geographic division, it's actually the commanding officer of that division. That is the incident commander.

So we subordinate to the incident commander. We provide a service. And everything that we do, I will. If our personnel are, let's say, the element leader and sergeant are devising tactics downrange, they'll make me aware of what those are. And then I go to the incident commander, who's going to be that geo division commanding officer and seek that incident commander's approval to implement those tactics.

Jon Becker: Got it. And just from a breadth, one of the things that I know about the team, but I think is really fascinating is your breadth of capabilities. Talk about the cadre system and kind of how you have built these individual silos of excellence, for lack of a better term.

Lee McMillion: So when an officer first comes into SWAT, everyone is a general entry team member, SWAT element member, and then after about a year in the platoon, then they can branch out. And obviously, they'll have to prove their proficiency at the basics, and then they can specialize. And the specialties are crisis negotiations is something that our crisis negotiators astound me. I will screen an incident where it seems like it's going to be quite challenging, and we'll get there.

And next thing I know, our negotiators have this guy walking out handcuffed and apologizing. They're remarkable. So, crisis negotiators is one of our primary cadres, along with, as expected, snipers, lead climbers. The city of Los Angeles has 52 miles of waterfront between the port of Los Angeles, on up through the coastline up to Venice beach.

And so we have a tactical waterborne component that simply brings SWAT to the water. Everything that's expected with less lethal or diversionary devices or otherwise on land, just those members can do that in the water. We have explosive breachers. We have firearms training cadre. We have weaponless defense, which also handles all of our chemical agent instruction for our personnel. And now we have, technology is used more now than ever. The robotics, pole cameras. We have a SUAS cadre as well, properly licensed FAA 107. And so those are, I think I hit all the cadres, and then we work in four week deployment periods.

So throughout those four weeks, our first week, if we'll letter the weeks. Right, the first week would be week A and B, C and D. And so if you do the math, four week cycles, there's 13 of them a year. Like 52 weeks a year, math works out.

So that first week A is what we call our core week, and that's where all of our personnel work during those training days. And we do all of our firearms training for the various weapons systems. We'll do the movement where the slow, methodical Harris warrant hostage rescue, dynamic workplant, explosive breach. But those are our core skills that we do during our core week in week A.

Then all those cadres that I mentioned, they have their various training days, weeks B, C, and D. So snipers will shoot out of the helicopter every other Tuesday. They will be on the range or working some version of urban hide, rural, hideous, Calkin Place, UKD on every other Thursday. Our negotiators have a day in there. Climbers have a day in there. Explosive breachers, whether they're building charges or working with the platoon, using charges in conjunction with movement technology, the personnel making sure all of our robots work properly and enhancing their ability to maneuver those devices through every variety of terrain.

Likewise with the UA's personnel, our lead climbers, and then our medics. I forgot our medics. So we have about eight EMTs that are properly certified EMTs. But our medical package for the platoon actually comes from the LA City fire department. That's interesting. So after one of our element leaders was killed in a rescue effort in 2008, Randy Simmons.

In fact, that was 14 years ago yesterday, February 7 of 2008, and we realized that we didn't have the medical support. And I mean, to be honest, the medical support at that event would not have saved Randy's life. He took a 380 on the bridge in the nose. But we enhanced our ability to have medical support downrange with us.

So this relationship with the LA City fire department, and they're paramedics. So in order to be. It's tactical emergency medical support, or TEMS is the acronym, and they will be an LA city paramedic for at least five years, then they will actually sign a waiver because there's that, you know, the fire department isn't going to go where things haven't calmed down. Lack of a better way of putting it. And so they'll sign a waiver that I will go wherever SWAT goes. And so they are actually with our personnel on target, and they'll go through a two week basic SWAT package. They're not carrying guns, but they will learn how to use our firearms.

So if one of us goes down, they can render it safe. They understand the gear. They wear very similar gear so that they're around us and that while they're watching our movement and they're seeing all the different gear that we use, it's not completely foreign to them.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So they know effectively how to move with a stick and stay out of the way and, you know, know which way guys are going to go, etcetera.

Lee McMillion: Absolutely. Very well said. And then. But they'll also do a tactical medic course with La county sheriff's department, with their air five guys, mountain rescue personnel, ESD. And then after that, then they come to us. And so right now, we have eight in that cadre, and two of them are on everything we do.

So whether it's pre planned or spontaneous, they're on standby just like we are. They have take home city cars just like we do, and their phone will alert in the middle of the night for an incident, and they will roll straight into the job site, just like our personnel. And they'll have their medical gear. And typically, they'll be in what we call our Medcat, which is a Linco Bearcat. But it's for the most part, an armored ambulance, but it doesn't satisfy all the sanitary requirements because chewing tobacco and sunflower seeds.

SPEAKER It's armored and SWAT guys are in it.

Lee McMillion: Yes. Yeah, but it does. But it carries the majority of our medical gear, so they're in that on site and they're to provide medical care for not only our personnel, but also victims and even suspects.

Jon Becker: So, I mean, with 60 guys, that many cadres, I'm assuming guys will have multiple specialties, then, like you may be a long gun and a medic or you may. Is there that kind of crossover in specialty?

Lee McMillion: Yeah, so actually, when I was an element member and an element leader, I was a sniper climber diver.

Jon Becker: Okay.

Lee McMillion: So I did those three, and then when I came back as a sergeant, I was with those cadres as well because I had obviously a deep understanding of those disciplines.

Jon Becker: Right. So then within a mission, so if you get an operation, you have X number of divers there for any operation, or you have X number of snipers, X number of climbers, just by rotation of the platoon, you're going to have all of those specialties there, kind of whatever the operation is.

Lee McMillion: Correct. And we also try to disperse those specialties throughout the elements and squads so that depending on who's on standby, who's up for a barricade, that squad will have a cross section of those.

Jon Becker: Got it. Talk to me about the typical D-Platoon operator, because I think one of the things that is striking when you interact with the platoon is there is a lot of experience in D-Platoon. I mean, it is not uncommon to meet somebody who's been an operator for 10, 15, 20 years and has hundreds or thousands of operations. So what is kind of the average d platoon operator look like?

Lee McMillion: So average agent or platoon, I believe is right, about 40 go plus or minus a year or two on that. But about 40 years old. Before someone goes through selection, they're probably going to have anywhere from eight to twelve years on the LAPD.

And when personnel come into our platoon, especially with just enjoying the operational tempo and the type of work and the camaraderie, personnel stay a long time. In fact, I'll say 80% of our personnel stay about ten years.

Jon Becker: Which – from an experience standpoint, somebody at D-Platoon who has been there for ten years, that's hundreds of operations and it's hundreds of hours of training or thousands of hours of training. Like, you just start to raise the expertise of the organization, which if they didn't stay that long or you had a rotation, wouldn't happen.

Lee McMillion: Correct. But if you also talk about experience. So operational tempo we do about. As of recent, we do about 100 and 2125 spontaneous incidents. A year. And then we'll do probably 30 to 35 pre planned. And the pre planned are typically warrant services. So if you figure that an officer is going to get 150 incidents or the platoon will have 150 deployments per year, and an officer makes, let's say, even a third of those. Right? That's a good 50.

Jon Becker: That's 50 operations a year.

Lee McMillion: Per year. Right. So if you do ten years in the platoon and on the low end, saying that you'll make a third of those incidents, you've got 500.

Jon Becker: 500 operations is an amazing amount of tactical experience, especially in a modern environment where there are not that many full time teams. And even the ones that do don't have that many operations. So what is the process to activate SWAT?

Lee McMillion: So, perfect timing for this question, because the other thing I was going to say is that having correspondence with a lot of different teams, we'll see that different teams have different criteria for deployment. So when our officers. When I say we have 150 different deployments a year, 125 spontaneous and 25 or so preplanned, that there are certain criteria that needs to be met for us to even move that monstrous machine of LAPD SWAT.

So let's talk about a spontaneous incident. Spontaneous incident would be. We'll go with, like, just the groundwork of an armed, barricaded suspect. Right? And so the four criteria. Crime's got to be committed. Suspects believe to be armed. He's in a position of advantage. And that position of advantage, we use that broad term because that can be anywhere that can be in the middle of a field of grass, that can be in a home, that can be in a vehicle. He's in a position that gives him a tactical advantage. And you can define that however you want. And then the final thing is refusal to submit.

So the officers have to try to communicate in some way. Like, no answer at all can be a refusal to submit, but we at least have to try and get that person to submit to arrest.

Jon Becker: Got it.

Lee McMillion: So with those four criteria haven't been met. And I'll just give the example of, if I'm on standby and my city phone rings at 02:00 in the morning, I'll go down to my desk at the end of the hallway, and I've got my little screening sheet. And I use that because if I'm up at 02:00 in the morning and my brain's a little foggy, these are good prompts for me to make sure that I'm answering all the questions.

And so when did that incident originate, has it been going on for 5 minutes or has it been going on for 2 hours? And what's the criminal history of the suspect? What's the target location and specifics? Not just the address. Is it a unit in a 300 unit apartment building is a single family residence, detached garage. So I get some specifics about that, obviously. Weaponry, efforts to communicate, what's the nature of the dialogue? And then once I confirm that we have a crime committed belief to be armed. Position, vantage. If you submit, then I notify my commanding officer.

And so my commanding officer has to approve the deployment of our personnel. The only time I will send our personnel immediately upon getting the screening is if there is – If it's a hostage incident, life in the balance. And then when I notify the chain of command, it's more of a notification. I mean, clearly no one's going to say no. You shouldn't go to them. Right?

Jon Becker: Yeah. We have somebody holding a hostage. Let me make 7 phone calls and 45 minutes from now I'll get your question.

Lee McMillion: At the risk of stating the obviously. So if it's a hostage incident, I'll send personnel immediately and then notify the chain of command and we'll get that machine moving much more quickly.

Jon Becker:

Got it. And your personnel are city, car, everything, like they're leaving from their home to the location. They're not coming together and having to mobilize and all that, right?

Lee McMillion: That's correct. So if it's an on duty incident, we're likely there's a good cross section of us are training at a certain venue somewhere and they can just in trail and figure it out and we'll all go there together. If it's off hours, then we have a standby list where we have 16 for tactics, another two for negotiations, a primary secondary negotiator. And a unique thing about our negotiations, excuse me, about our negotiations profile is that those are actually SWAT officers.

We don't have a separate cadre of negotiators who are just negotiators and never, you know, working with SWAT. These are actually SWAT cops. And in fact, through our selection process, our selection is a twelve week course. And the first eight weeks are really where all the testing takes place. And the back four weeks of that, those twelve weeks are what I call enrichment. And one of those weeks in the back four is a 40 hours crisis negotiations course. Every single one of our personnel goes through a CNT course. Crisis negotiations.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Lee McMillion: And so they all have a baseline knowledge of crisis negotiations and, you know, just things to say, things not to say. And…

Jon Becker: Which may be more important.

Lee McMillion: Yes. Yeah. It's not always what you say. It's what you're not saying that matters. So they'll all go through this Christ. Negotiation course and then those that after you finish that one year in the platoon and, you know, prove your – That you're comfortable in all the different aspects of baseline SWAT stuff, you can specialize as negotiators. So 22 of our 60 are our negotiators.

Jon Becker: Oh, wow!

Lee McMillion: So when we roll….

Jon Becker: So third of the platoon?

Lee McMillion: Yes.

Jon Becker: Yeah. I mean, almost half of the operator level platoon.

Lee McMillion: Correct. And then they'll get enhanced training and they'll attend different symposiums and they have every deployment period, they have their training days where they can debrief incidents that occurred elsewhere or debrief an incident that we experienced. We have behavioral science doctors that are attached to us. So when we send out a crisis negotiation package. I know I'm getting really deep into C&T right now.

Jon Becker: Yeah. That's okay, though.

Lee McMillion: I'll come back to it that we have a BSS doc there with us. So they're not actually doing the negotiating. The negotiating is all with our primary and secondary negotiator. We have a supervisor that oversees it, but the BSS Doc can look at or listen to the nature of the dialogue and maybe weave in some things that the suspect is saying that may help our negotiators in connecting.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I think one of the things that. One of the misconceptions about SWAT teams, especially larger agencies like yours, is that SWAT is just a bunch of trained killers that are going to go out and deal with it tactically. And I think one of the most striking things about your platoon is the emphasis on crisis negotiation, and it's the emphasis on surrounding call out. And it's really, it's a total resolution approach. It's not simply we get there and everything goes tactical.

Lee McMillion: Absolutely. So I've kind of derailed. Your original question was, what do we do when we go to an incident? And you're right, we go straight to the job site. We don't all rally it at the command and gather gear and go. So everybody has their gear with them. We have support personnel in our vault that will grab our armor and our truck and everything goes to the field.

And then on to your statement about this resolving incidents in the least confrontational manner possible. So there is a – It frustrates me that there is a common perception that when SWAT responds to an incident that there's going to be significant property damage and that there's going to be – That we – Yes. Good time to laugh.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Lee McMillion: Gonna show up, gonna break everything, and probably gonna shoot everybody.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Lee McMillion: And then before the brass even cools on the deck, we're gonna get in our cars and drive away.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Lee McMillion: And nothing could be further from the truth. And I'll talk about the stats of our platoon. Cause I'm actually very proud of them that we started keeping a database in 2013.

Jon Becker: Okay.

Lee McMillion: And so we've captured absolutely all of our deployments. And since 2013, I think we're at about 1150 incidents.

Jon Becker: Okay.

Lee McMillion: And so if I talk about those 1150 incidents, we use force of any kind, all the way down to wrist lock, twist lock in less than 8% of the incidents.

Jon Becker: Wow!

Lee McMillion: We use deadly force in less than 1.4% of the incidents.

Jon Becker: See, I think that is, I think that if the average person knew that statistic, it would stagger them. Cause I do think there's this impression, like, oh, yeah, no, everybody's gonna get shot every, you know, and one and a half percent of the incidents in Deadly force.

Lee McMillion: Less than.

Jon Becker: Wow!

Lee McMillion: Less than one and a half percent. And obviously, we can thank Hollywood and all the fantastic Footage of movie scenes of all that destruction

Jon Becker: And 85 movies. That have been made about your platoon. Two tv shows, they've done a great job of a disinformation campaign.

Lee McMillion: Yeah, absolutely false. It doesn't happen that way. And all that credit for our low statistics of uses of force and uses deadly force, that goes to our personnel and their commitment to resolving these incidents least confrontational manner possible. Crisis negotiators. And especially since about 2016, what's really helped us is all the technology, whether using robots, pole cams, UAS, those help us search without exposing our personnel. It just makes it safer for everybody, makes it safer for us, makes it safer for the suspect.

So we keep on refining our systems and we keep reducing the need to use force. And the big catchphrase, and probably the last couple of years, is deescalation. And it's something we've been doing forever. But there's also different tools that we're adding to our toolbox that assist in that. And so it's a constant pursuit to handle the more provocative incidents in the least confrontational manner possible.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's interesting because in talking with you and in talking with guys from the platoon, the emphasis seems to be on slowing the entire thing down. Right? The guy is emotional, he's made bad decisions, he's in a bad place.

And the sooner he gets into a confrontation, one of my friends said a long time ago, Sid Heal said a long time ago, when somebody is in a tactical situation, they have made so many bad choices in their lifetime that the sheriff's department, in his case, is at their house with a SWAT team knocking down the door.

If you give them 30 seconds to make a decision, they're probably not going to make the right one. And it's interesting because as you talk through it, it's crisis negotiation. It's getting technology in. It's slowing the whole thing down and delaying this moment when an officer is engaging with the suspect and trying to prevent that from ever happening.

Lee McMillion: Right.

Jon Becker: Which I think is another thing that Hollywood has created kind of this fictitious myth for that. It's like, oh, yeah, I know, here they go. They're going right away and it's just not the case.

Lee McMillion: Right. And so like for, I'll speak for the LAPD. We're the last line of defense. So if we don't fix the problem, no one's going to. Yeah, but I think what's lost in all of that is that we're a lifesaving organization.

And there's, you know, people look at what SWAT does and they look at armored vehicles and they look at snipers and they look at all these things that they like to translate into. Well, they're, they're going to hurt people significantly or kill them. Yeah. But as the last line of defense, we need those things. But we're also a life saving organization, and clearly our statistics prove it.

Jon Becker: Yeah. It's an interesting discussion of militarization of, of law enforcement and military issues of SWAT specifically. One of the things that people key on is armored vehicles. And it's always struck me as kind of a crazy thought because without an armored vehicle, that's a lethal force engagement. If you put an officer there, without an armored vehicle, the suspect is shooting at an officer, he may hit, and there's no chance for resolution at that point, you're going to a tactical resolution, whereas with armor, you are the, all of those things are putting a margin of safety between the suspect and the operator.

Lee McMillion: So that actually brings up a great topic of these, what I'll call landmark incidents that have promoted our evolution. So we talked about the 84 Olympics and taking that step from traditional entry teams and some enhanced capability to full blown hostage rescue capable. Then our tactics adjusted. I'm going to say, in the late nineties, one of our element leaders, Ken Thatcher, was on staff at Blackwater.

And what I like about Blackwater was that they would have, like, tactical law enforcement teach law enforcement, and military teach military, because the crossover for, we'll say, rules of engagement aren't necessarily the same, but the tactics of limited penetration rather than running walls. And that really changed the profile of our tactics.

So a landmark evolutionary time frame in our platoon. Then we'll go to 2002, and now we get to armor, and armor completely changed the way that we deploy. When I was a young swat cop, we literally had, like. We actually called the tomato van. It looked like a van you would see on the side of the road selling tomatoes out of the back and had a gas leak inside. So if you ride around it too long, you're getting a headache.

And now, all of a sudden, we have armor. And so today, we have a bear, which is like. It's on a freightliner frame. Just a big, big bear, enormous armored vehicle. We have four bearcats, and then we have two armored excursions. And so with a fleet of armor, we can park where we need to. And you're right, it is actually de-escalating because we are in a better tactical position, and we've had more than one incident where our personnel have been shot at in the vehicle and haven't returned fire.

Jon Becker: Yeah, yeah. But if they'd not been in the vehicle, they would have had a choice – [Crosstalk]

Lee McMillion: Force to return fire. Yes. You have to defend your life and the lives of the citizens and your teammates and all of that. So I'm not saying that we're gonna allow a suspect to shoot at our army.

Jon Becker: Sure.

Lee McMillion: Of course. Unendingly, of course. But if we can reposition and we can take them into custody without, then certainly we do.

Jon Becker: And that's, I think, also one of my favorite sayings is the whole point of special tactics is to put the suspect in a position where resistance is futile and surrender is likely.

Lee McMillion: Well said.

Jon Becker: Right. So the suspect is now in a position when you're in armor, you know, you don't have to be a math major to figure out you're probably not gonna win the gunfight. Right? Like, the more distance you place between you and the suspect, the more the suspect has to come to the realization that, like, I may not win here.

Lee McMillion: Yes.

Jon Becker: I'm probably not gonna win. And as soon as he gets to, I'm not gonna win, then he's making a decision. But as long as he thinks he may win, and if it is an immediate face to face confrontation, then he's not gonna win long term, but he has a chance of winning the initial engagement. So I think that the ability to, again, slow everything down, separate your personnel from the suspect.

But it's also, I think, like you talk about the platoon not returning fire in a situation where they could have. Certainly, I think that goes into selection too. Right? A lot of it is who you pick and their ability to make those decisions on the fly.

Lee McMillion: Yes. And so I talked about some of the tenure of our personnel. Right. I mean, that we're 40 plus or minus years old. That before you go to selection, you'll likely have eight to twelve years of street experience as a police officer. You're seasoned, you know how to handle these tenuous incidents in the field. You know how to talk to people, you know how to de-escalate. And so those are the people we're hiring. And then I've been asked on more than one occasion, you know, what, who are you looking for when you're looking for a SWAT cop?

Jon Becker: That's a really good question.

Lee McMillion: What's the profile? What's the personality? And so just to tell a quick story is back in October of 2010, HRT FBI Quantico was running selection. So we have a great relationship with them. And I went back and joined for their selection. And part of that was so they would wake up bright and early the first day and do all these physical tests. And then as the day evolved, I got with, there was a psychologist, psychiatrist. Psychologist, I believe, monitoring. His last name is Middleton.

So Doc Middleton is, he's kind of just standing back and he's just kind of watching the personalities of the different personnel and selectees and how they're interacting. And so I'm having a conversation with him and he says, so, yeah, I mean, obviously the first thing we do is put them through all of these strenuous physical tests and ensure that they're prepared physically for this, he says.

But about noon today, we're going to just sit them down in a room. They're going to take a raw IQ test. And based on their scores from a Raw IQ test, I will give you 80% certainty who is going to make it to day two.

Jon Becker: Wow!

Lee McMillion: And who's going to be done?

Jon Becker: Man, that's a bold prediction.

Lee McMillion: And yes, and so then he went on to explain that when somebody does very well on a RAIQ test, that's someone who one is, he's done the research and he or she has done the research and understands the job that they're applying for. So they've prepared for it.

Jon Becker: Sure.

Lee McMillion: It also enhances their ability to multitask problem solve, be resourceful, think innovatively, and.

Jon Becker: Pay attention to detail.

Lee McMillion: Yes. And adjust to the terrain as things change. And he says, then later on, we'll do a personality test and Myers Briggs and I guess some people speak of the pros and cons of that. So I won't get into whether you're a florist or a field marshal or otherwise.

Jon Becker: Yeah, whatever.

Lee McMillion: And those change from year to year anyway, with life experience and formal education and all that. But the raw IQ piece really stuck with me. And so you ask me who we're looking for in a SWAT cop. I want to be smart. And once they're smart, you can build everything else off of that, because you'll see that they understand their job taskings, and they're going to be committed to it, and they're going to understand the organization.

And then as they come in the platoon, then it's our responsibility to expose them to the culture of our platoon and our drive for professionalism. And then they assimilate into that as well. And then they also are going to. We need to create an environment where they feel safe.

And I could talk about a book by Daniel Coyle, Culture Code, where our personnel need to feel safe to work in this environment and where they can feel safe to come to work. They can challenge the norms. They can bring innovation, take risks. They feel safe to say, fail forward. Use the phrase.

So all of that goes into the personality of the personnel we're looking for. And then whether it's. And we want a broad cross section of life experience as well. Because I continue to talk about crisis negotiations and how much that assists us in resolving these provocative incidents and those broad life experiences are going to help them communicate and understand as they are working through an incident where I'll say, just because you can't. Just because you're justified in using deadly force or force of any kind doesn't mean you should.

Jon Becker: Sure.

Lee McMillion: Right? So if there are other more innovative ways for us to solve the problem, then that's what we're doing, and those are the people we want to hire.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Cause, I mean, realistically, lethal engagement is not good for anybody.

Lee McMillion: Amen to that.

Jon Becker: Especially now. Right. Like, it's not. It's. It's bad for the suspect, obviously. Cause he's gonna lose the gunfight, but it's also bad for the officer. It's bad for the department. It's bad for the platoon. It's like there's no. I think there's this kind of misconception that special tactics teams want to go out and they want to go kill people. And realistically, having spent 35 years around SWAT teams, there is no lethal engagement where everybody walks away happy.

Lee McMillion: You are absolutely correct.

Jon Becker: Everybody's a loser, right?

Lee McMillion: Yes, absolutely.

Jon Becker: Yeah. You've got a slightly older platoon than the typical SWAT team. You have probably a little smarter than the average bear operator. How do you maintain very high standards while managing all these a type personalities?

Lee McMillion: I wish I had the answer to that question. So, I mean, if you consider, obviously we want free thinkers. We want, like I said, smart, innovative. And then we assimilate them into the tradition and culture of our platoon, which is to constantly evolve and find a better way to do things with less and less confrontation. So when you assimilate them into our culture, and then I'll promote another book. Here is James Kerr, wrote legacy about the New Zealand All Blacks.

Jon Becker: Oh, interesting!

Lee McMillion: Okay, right. And this book talks about how when they bring someone into their team, how they make them, they are immediately educated about the traditions and the ethos of that team and the culture. And so when you bring people in and maybe they. SWAT is a cool job and I want to go through selection and they're going to get through selection, but then they realize that this is a life saving organization and I need to be a part of this very honorable team that strives to accomplish exactly that, saving lives.

So then we're also going to promote their free thought. And so as this younger generation with a different perspective on resources and innovation and a different way to maybe approach a challenge, then we're going to encourage them to present that. And some of them work and some of them don't have. But I never want to stymie the innovative drive of our personnel.

So I need right now we're running selection. We're in week four of the twelve weeks and we've got twelve personnel. And we did a lot of testing on the front end. And all of our hope is that all twelve are going to graduate and that they're going to assimilate in the platoon and they will be successful, successful and productive and contributive team members.

And I want them to understand immediately what they're getting into. And I also want them to understand that we're looking to them to be the next generation of innovation so that we can continue to not only keep our stats, but improve on those stats of force of any kind. Less than 8% of the incidents and deadly force and less than 1.4% of the incidents. We can improve on that. But how are we going to do it? And those are the personnel we're hiring.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So it is this. The Japanese have a notion called Kazen, which is like this idea that you are constantly improving, continuous improvement, continuously addressing the weakness of the organization, either through bringing in other people, through improving culture, through improving training. And it sounds like that's kind of in the heart of everything that you're doing, is like everything can always get a little bit better.

Lee McMillion: Yes. In fact, Kaizen is constant, methodical. So there's a constant methodical drive to improve.

Jon Becker: Yeah, yeah, talk to me. So the culture, obviously, of the team is essential. And I'm a big fan of culture as a concept. I think that that is ultimately what drives our behavior is this notion that I always tell the story, like, you and your friends have a culture when you play poker and you and your parents have a culture when you go to church. And those two cultures are completely different. And there aren't necessarily written rules, but it's very clear to you that some behaviors are not acceptable at one versus the other.

Lee McMillion: Well said.

Jon Becker: And when you are bringing people into your culture and educating them, you're setting expectations, you're setting norms, but you're also setting an understanding of the relationship between people. How do you maintain, for lack of a better term, a familial environment? Because tactical units are obviously, the guys are very closely bonded. There are close relationships. How do you maintain that closeness and still maintain standards and people's need to meet standards?

Lee McMillion: So the good thing is that when we select personnel and they're going to go through selection and, well, we select personnel to start our course and then they're going to go through selection. There's a personality in them that makes them want to be the part of a team. Right?

Jon Becker: Sure.

Lee McMillion: We're hiring smart individuals, but not to be individuals, they need to be a part of the team. They need to be confident and be able to stand out and do what's right all the time, but they also need to be, there's a drive in that personality to want to be a contributive member of the team, and the team needs the support of the team.

And in fact, when some of our personnel, we're involved in a lot of stuff and some of our guys are going to get significantly injured and there's a drive for them to want to come back because they want to be a part of the team, they want to continue to contribute. They want the team to know that they still want to be there and still contribute to the team.

So whether it's something that I can do or that supervision can do to ensure that people continue to contribute to this team. I think the bigger part of it is that the team takes care of that. That's the team culture that we have element leaders that lead their personnel and keep them engaged in the need to be a member of a team and contribute to the team. And a term I use is, and I don't mean in a sexist way at all, but I say, take care of the man next to you better than yourself.

Jon Becker: Yeah, right.

Lee McMillion: And I use that term man or woman, but. And, in fact, the guys probably get tired of hearing me say it, but I'll say, take care of the man next to you more than yourself, because if somebody's take. If you're taking care of somebody else, somebody's also taking care of you.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Lee McMillion: And if you're only concerned is taking care of yourself, then this is the wrong place for you. I don't need you in this platoon, so you can only take care of yourself. Go find another job where you can just go do your thing.

Jon Becker: It's interesting because, you know, when you think about that culture, that's gonna carry over very well. When you have an incident, somebody's injured, you have a shooting, whatever, how, you know, as a leader of a unit that is engaging and has shootings and recently had somebody shot, how do you manage that, the load on the individual that occurs when an event like that occurs.

Lee McMillion: That's another question that I wish I had the answer to a lot of. You know, we've got a lot of tenure on platoon, so we're gonna. We've got, you know, literally generations of, you know, some. Some older personnel that have been through some things, and they're gonna respond differently than maybe someone who is influenced from other things that maybe you or I don't understand.

So I could talk about one of our guys, and I won't name names here, but Dan Sanchez, he just retired this week, and Dan did almost 22 years with our platoon. And people asked me to describe Dan. Dan wants his life is drink coffee, chew tobacco, read the Bible, crossfit workouts, be around his family, and go to SWAT barricades. Six things simple. And then we have other personnel that are. They're constantly swiping the Internet, and they're looking for, you know, that dopamine hit of likes from strangers.

Jon Becker: Sure.

Lee McMillion: And things that I will never understand, and I'm not going to try and understand it, but they just have different influences that are going to impact the way they respond to different significant events. And so when you've got somebody that's swiping different blog sites and seeing what other people are saying, that they're completely disconnected from our platoon, but maybe they're making a comment that, yeah, the Monday.

Jon Becker: Morning quarterbacks, and I don't even know.

Lee McMillion: Those comments exist because I'm not the guy going on those blogs. So it's literally generational. You've got a younger group of guys that are coming up through our platoon now that are influenced by things and social media that our more tenured guys just aren't paying attention to.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's interesting because historically your job has happened not in secret, but largely out of the public view. Right? Like a SWAT incident would happen, it would be reported in the news, and unless it went particularly well, particularly bad, it didn't get a lot of coverage and there was no after effects.

Now everything is videotaped between body worn cameras and people with cell phones. Everybody is a tactical genius that is going to critique the team's every action. That's got to put a load on the individual operators.

Lee McMillion: It does. And like I said, I think it's more the younger generation that's actually watching all of that stuff. But another frustration for me will be that some personnel feel a need to post things online that don't need to be online, that there's this need to share when I…..

Jon Becker: No, it's the dopamine hit.

Lee McMillion: I don't. Yeah, everybody look at me. I want, you know, I'm trying to be kind.

Jon Becker: Tell me you like me. Yeah.

Lee McMillion: So my frustration is that when things get posted that don't need to be posted. That, and you're right, that dopamine hit of likes. But you actually just said it a couple sentences ago about what happened to staying in the shadows and being the quiet professional with the heart of a servante.

And in fact, we were having a conversation about social media and posts that maybe should not be, not have been posted by a particular platoon member that's now retired and in the office with some of our guys. And I'm babbling a little bit just because I don't want to be. I'm trying to dance around this, but I love the statement of one of our element leaders.

And he said, I didn't know that there was an expiration date on humility. And he was talking about – We were talking about this younger generation that hasn't known life without social media. And so now you've got this generation that is so pulled to social media that they just they don't know the difference. They like – What do you mean? I can't post that.

And so when it's something that it's just organic to you, when you've grown up with social media, now you're an adult and more social media. But how do we. So it's like people were making excuses that, well, they just don't know the difference.

So, yeah, they're gonna post stuff. Cause it's what they do. But if the postings aren't humble and professional, then why are we doing it? So I didn't know there was an expiration date on humility. And so that promoting the. In fact, I would love to have it as an interview question for selectees that would you still wanna come to our platoon? If you could never tell anyone that you worked here

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Lee McMillion: If you had to, just. I'm a cop in the city of Los Angeles. And never tell anybody they worked LAPD, swat. You still want to be here? That's the person I want. I want someone that's willing to go the extra mile, stay in the shadows, have the heart of a servant, and just provide that service to the city of LA without any personal acknowledgement.

Jon Becker: That's fantastic! I think. Why don't we move on to the kind of final. I've got a series of rapid fire questions for you, ten words or less or short sentence answers, and just kind of see what your thoughts are. What is your most important habit?

Lee McMillion: I don't think I can. How about quirk?

Jon Becker: That's a fine line. Yeah. Yeah. A habit in a quirk.

Lee McMillion: It's kind of the opposite sides of the same quirk and habit. So something that I'll do every day is I do one crossfit type workout for every day of the year, and it's just a personal discipline. Right? So if I miss a day, I gotta make it up. If I miss three days, I've got to – I got a few days.

Jon Becker: It's gonna be an ugly Sunday. Few days that I suck.

Lee McMillion: And my daughter's actually taken to that as well. So it just shows that discipline, that daily discipline. And, yeah, I'm going to sacrifice maybe some quality for quantity, but it keeps you on track, keeps you from going too far, too long without working out.

Jon Becker: Yeah, that's actually a really interesting way to look at that. I like that. In your opinion, what's the difference between a leader and a manager?

Lee McMillion: So a leader is going to foster loyalty and commitment to the completion of goals for the betterment of the team, where a manager a manager is going to measure with various metrics that are quantifiable and impersonal.

Jon Becker: Got it. What's the best book you've read on leadership?

Lee McMillion: I keep going to Daniel Coyle and culture code. I think I've had some personnel issues in the platoon, and I wondered what has prompted that? And is there something that I can do? And that book talks about how you need to create an environment where your personnel feels safe.

Safe to challenge the norms, safe to come to work and bring innovation, safe to fail forward. I know there's a lot of great books on leadership, and I've read a bunch, but for some reason, that one's always in the front of my head.

Jon Becker: What do you think the most important characteristic of an effective leader is?

Lee McMillion: Selflessness. I think that if you're selfless, that your team knows that you are there for them, yourself. And if you're selfless, you're also committed to the technical knowledge, the tactical knowledge, all of. To preparing yourself to serve your team as effectively as possible.

Jon Becker: I love that answer. What's your current favorite online resource? Website or podcast?

Lee McMillion: So there's like, professional and personal. Right? So professionally, pretty simple. Gordon Graham, Lexapol. Right? Police one case law, you know, the Fourth Amendment. All of the things that we need to know so that we do it right?

Jon Becker: Sure.

Lee McMillion: Because the public deserves that. And then personally, YouTube, right? I mean, if I'm fixing something on my motorbike, I go to YouTube. If I got a change of garbage disposal, and I'm not quite certain what to do with that. YouTube.

Jon Becker: I love it!

Lee McMillion: I know, it's stupid.

Jon Becker: No, it's a fair point. You obviously have a lot of responsibilities. One of two lieutenants over LAPD Swat. You have a lot of responsibility at any given point. You have responsibility for the tactical instance in the city. What keeps you awake at night.

Lee McMillion: It's wondering what we're not prepared for. There's all these things that are happening around the world, and I think, as I mentioned, we've got great relationships with a variety of teams around the globe. So staying connected. And what are they doing that we need to look to? What is the incident that's going to come to Los Angeles? And when it lands, we're not prepared.

Jon Becker: Okay, Lee, final question. What's the most profound memory of your career?

Lee McMillion: So, that's tough to narrow it down to one. I mean, we talk about, you know, like, when Randy was killed, RJ was killed, or, you know, Louie died, and how it recalibrates, how you take care of your personnel. But if I'm going to say something that's had an impact on my career, that took it in a direction that I didn't see coming, I'm going to talk about a failed rescue effort on July 10th of 2005.

And after that rescue effort, a little bit revealing here I questioned if I was the right guy to remain as an element leader in SWAT. And so it was after that incident that I took the sergeant's test. Before that, I was going to be Lee Macmillan, SWAT element leader for a bunch of decades and then retire, and that would be the end of it.

But having that incident in the back of my head and wondering, you know, am I the right guy? I figured, I'll make sergeant. I'll go back to patrol. I'll be a patrol sergeant and do my career there and just live out the rest of my LAPD career, you know, just doing regular police work, and it's an honorable thing to do and patrolling these good sergeants. And I wanted to be a good sergeant, but just with good timing and cosmic energy, I was able to come back to SWAT.

In fact, my partner now, Ruben Lopez, was the lieutenant on SWAT at the time, and he's the one that hired me back as a sergeant. And then as I was back as a sergeant, just kind of the next natural step would have been to take lieutenant's tests. And I did. And then. So I went back out, and. And then our commanding officer was Ed Prokop, and he hired me back as a SWAT lieutenant.

And I think that that one incident, not only did I learn an awful lot about myself and priorities, but it took my career in a different path that I had no intention of going the morning of that event, but the evening of that event, you start thinking of maybe some other things that you should be doing.

Jon Becker: Do you mind sharing what happened?

Lee McMillion: So it was a father who was holding his daughter hostage, and he had actually assumed the nom de plume of Tony Montana from Scarface, so he would only respond to our negotiators. As for Tony or Mister Montana, he had an office in a used car lot that had the desk set up like Scarface in the movie and a monitor behind him with a split screen and all these surveillance cameras.

One of our Sierra teams was looking in through a window. And at one point, he took a poster and put a Scarface poster over the window. And ultimately, he came out to where I had the emergency rescue team on the back side. And he came out holding Susie in one arm and reached for his pistol.

And then one of our guys in the hatch of the armored vehicle tried to resolve through shooting him, but it was a missed shot. And then he ultimately ran back in the office with his daughter shooting back at us.

So as we went to effect that rescue, one of our guys, Dan Sanchez Washington, shot in the shoulder. He was reaching for a flashbang and actually took one in the shoulder. I mean, completely noble. He continued on and deployed the flashbang and went in the room with Bob Gallagher, junior, Bill Casey. As mentioned, Dan Sanchez and Eddie Perez.

Another element leader on that was Rick Gonzaldo. But ultimately, Suzy Pena, 19 months old, was killed. And absolutely horrific. And just, those are the things that help you recalibrate, right? One of your guys got shot, failed rescue effort. What could I have done differently? And is this the right place for me?

Jon Becker: I think that is a fantastic place for us to stop, and I appreciate you sharing it with us!

Lee, I so appreciate you coming on and being on The Debrief with us! Thank you so much!

Episode 9 – Chief John Perez: Securing the Rose Parade/Bowl & Authentic Leadership

Jon Becker: 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!

My guest today is Chief John Perez. John recently retired as the chief of police for the Pasadena Police Department in California. In his nearly 37 years of service to Pasadena, John served at literally all ranks in the department. During his career, John worked patrol, narcotics, counterterrorism, as a SWAT sergeant, lieutenant, and commander.

John helped form the first generation of Pasadena's tactical team, which had the challenge of deploying as a full time gang enforcement team and as a SWAT team for many years. John was twice awarded the chief's medal of excellence and received several commendations for his service over the years.

John, thank you for joining me on The Debrief!

Chief John Perez: I appreciate being here, Jon. Hopefully I have something to contribute on leadership.

Jon Becker: I'm sure you do. Tell me, let's start with kind of your history and background. Where'd you grow up? What was the decision that led to you becoming a police officer?

Chief John Perez: Absolutely. I've been a LA kid my whole life. I was born in East La, and Belvedere Heights now refers to as East LA, a large family. First generation Americans had brothers that were born in Mexico and parents born as well. And so they migrated here. And from East LA, we generally made the migration east of over to LA Puente. And then from LA Puente after about 1213 years old, 14, we went over to hues Covina, which was a dynamic change in lifestyles. And where we were moving with a father who really worked hard all week long and a mother who raised us and worked part time. And we were also raised by a woman from Mississippi who was my mom's best friend.

So I have the best of both cultures and culturally as a Latino. And then moving into a mostly white area of town, going to South Hills High School in West Covina really produced a view of the world and life, and with one incident that occurred, really pushed me into policing and prepared me better than I thought.

Jon Becker: Will you talk about that for me?

Chief John Perez: At 14 years old, I had a. I was probably 12, 13. My cousin was 14. He was stabbed in an incident outside of a liquor store where he was just buying candy and he wasn't, in fact, a gang member and a good kid, a good natured kid in a great family. And he was stabbed and later died in the hospital. And that was just. And we grew up in this gang area where, you know, we really couldn't use the parks if the police or the gang members were in the parks.

So you learn to have a way of life where it really gets in the way, you know, as a kid, to really go out there and grow and be in a safer place. When I became of age to move around about 14 years old, and finding a group of friends in West Covina, it changed dramatically. I was able to move around, enjoy life, but I never forgot, you know, the experiences we had as a family going through the death and the reminder that there are bad people out there. And since that point, at about 12, 13 years old, all I wanted to do was be a police officer and serve. Nothing else. Not the military, not the firefighting. Just serving as a police officer was my goal.

Jon Becker: And was passed in the first agency you went to work for?

Chief John Perez: It was the very first agency I applied for, and the last and the last it was. I applied for the sheriff's department and passing at the same time as a police cadet. I was able to take the entry police officer test in those days in the 1984, just in the beginning of 85, took the test. So when I became a police officer, I didn't have to take a test again.

It was more of just updating my background and sending me to the academy at 20 and a half, being not only the youngest person in the academy, but the youngest person, the youngest police officer in the department for a while until somebody else was hired at 21. The average age back then was 24, 25. Now it's closer to 30. So you can imagine at 20 and a half, you really got to make sure you're mature and trying to move into an area of making good decisions.

Jon Becker: I have a 20 and a half year old son. I don't think I'd arm him.

Chief John Perez: My parents probably said the same thing.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's a fair point. So talk to me then, through the early parts of your career, I know you worked a variety of assignments. Kind of walk me through the big periods of your early career.

Chief John Perez: Well, you know, it was dynamic. In the eighties, it was about the violence, right? We saw the crack cocaine and gang epidemic kind of crash into each other. And being a young officer out in the field, I think it was only about four weeks into it, there was a shooting where we responded to a street there in Pasadena, with a lot of gang activity. As I make the turn with my training officer onto the street, you could see the smoke coming from casings. I'm 21 years old, thinking, you know, they're paying me $12 an hour for this.

So I get into the street, I get out of a car, and the person shot as we're talking to him was somebody I had stopped prior and knew him a little bit. And we're kind of connected about the same age, you know. And then to see him taking his last words as he dies, as he's talking to me, and, you know, you're going through these emotions, but you also have your field training officer, you know, yelling at you to get a statement from him who did it, you know?

So it's a really odd place to be from an emotional standpoint as a young man and having care for people that you're right in the midst of this event where somebody's dying on you that you remembered a week earlier that you had a pretty good conversation with, and you knew he was a gang member, or I knew he was a gang member. But nevertheless, life went. It was gone right there in front of me.

Jon Becker: And that was how far into the job?

Chief John Perez: That was about three, four weeks. Two to three weeks. Less than a month, for sure. And my training officer walked me through all that much. Shortly after that, we had somebody jump off our Colorado bridge. And as soon as the body almost hit, my training officer was yelling at me to look the other way, because that thumping of a body hitting the ground, these are things you experience, along with a high level of calls for service and the murder rate that we were experiencing in California, especially in Pasadena, one neighborhood was way too much.

Give you an example. Back then, we had 13,000 part one crimes, major crimes, and most of it was in one neighborhood. Today, Pasadena probably has about 3600, and it was the lowest period we've ever had during the nineties.

Jon Becker: So it's 80% reduction.

Chief John Perez: Without a doubt, in violent crime even more. And so, during the nineties was by far the best decade of policing. After the LA riots. Haven't experienced that. It was a very unusual period of the smelling sensation of buildings and the amount of people we arrested out of Pasadena. Rodney King was from Pasadena in Altadena area.

So you knew him from pet stops, and you're familiar with him. But it was a terrible period of time to go through that purpose, that time, and then move into the nineties with the best research we've ever seen in policing. Federal grants, problem oriented policing, community oriented policing. We really were becoming skilled at what we were doing during the nineties.

But then came the advent of other things. Bike patrols, SWAT teams for many other agencies. Many of these departments started to hire more officers. The crime bill was written in 94. In 96, 97, we had 100,000 more officers added across the country.

So all these things were occurring, and we're all moving to a place where we didn't know. We were finding so many opportunities for equipment, tactical training, police vehicles. It really was setting us up for failure into the future without knowing that, because at some point it was not managed as well as it could have been.

Jon Becker: Yeah, you had this period of time where it kind of started with the 84 Olympics, and the development of SWAT starts in 71. At LA, full time SWAT 84, everybody's prepping for the Olympics. We have this massive expansion in tactical teams all over the country. And then Rodney King, 911, Columbine. There's this series of events, the North Hollywood shootout, where the patrol side almost followed at that point, the tactical side, and began to professionalize and increase equipment and all that. When did your team start?

Chief John Perez: Our team started in 1997, and I arrived to the team late in 97, as a team was just taking off. And one of the concerns chief Malikian had the time as his team was developing, was to create it into a neighborhood policing team equally as much as a tactical team. Now, if you look today at our specialized units, SWAT teams and neighborhood policing teams, and even gang units all function differently. A mindset is different.
SWAT teams are trying to slow it down, control it, the tempo of the event. Neighborhood oriented policing has to do with creating relationships in neighborhoods, having people call us as often as possible to try to find long term solutions to neighborhood problems.

Then you have gang enforcement teams. Their effort is open up that car door often, make the arrest, look for something that might be a crime to stop the next violent incident from happening. And now you're taking all these three and putting them into a blender and just sit and go. It could be a train wreck.

Jon Becker: It's going to go sideways. One of the three areas. It's going to go a little sideways.

Chief John Perez: At some point it will. And we were creating. That group of officers were all hand picked, and we were careful as to who we brought into the unit under Lieutenant Darryl Qualls and our commander, which was Wayne Hills, who ended up becoming the deputy chief. The minds that they had were excellent for what we were trying to create.

We were looking for the right police officers to come into that unit, reviewing police reports, see who everybody wanted did they have the mindset to follow good directives, to be part of the community, to want to engage the community? At times, we didn't get it right, and we had personnel issues and problems. And during that time, we also had Rampart.

And so I read the entire Rampart report. I was talking to some of the personnel from Rampart that transferred out to learn the lessons, the top ten lessons, of how to run these type of units. So we ensured the most basic of approaches on leadership were there. But much of it was management. It was about making sure we read the reports, the arrest information. We went out to see what kind of arrests were being made. We looked at the quality of the arrest. We had conversations, debriefs, and discussions on everything.

So, really, it was an unusual period of time to create such a big team, but realizing there was a dynamic out there that reminded you on cautionary tales, what could go wrong.

Jon Becker: So at that point, it was neighborhood crime task force.

Chief John Perez: It was a neighborhood crime task force from 19. They were developed in August 28th, 1985. I remember that memorandum that was written, and we just went to this fantastic technology, which was called collating copies, where you could make more than one copy on a machine. And so I remember making one extra copy of that memo for myself, and I still have it today. It is something that I glean on.

And there was a lot of good information from that report, and it basically stated that the amount of violent crime and what was referred to as Northwest Pasadena was just outrageous, and something had to be done. And they broke it down by area codes and some of the violent crime and the races and the cultures, and then decided that we needed a 24 person team to go out there every day and make arrests. And they did top end. They made thousands of arrests.

And we look now, 30 years later, and the criticisms that we get, as well as the damage of that, well, okay, we probably put a lot of people who deserve to go to jail, but we also took a lot of people and put them into jail that maybe could have had diversion or just needed something more than a ten year or five year prison sentence for your fourth arrest for rock cocaine. Right?

So there was a better way to have done it back then, and we just went all hard and all heavy with the. With the war on drugs, and we're not talking about those that needed to go to prison and should never come out. The wide majority should have the opportunity to relive their lives.

And I think we destroyed a lot of lives. Not Pasadena, but the general reform across the country and very careful about that. For somebody to have a federal charge of, you know, one rock cocaine and to go to jail for ten years from that, and you see 18 year old kid tearing up like, I got no life no more.

Jon Becker: Yeah. It's interesting because retrospectively, I think history has not been overwhelmingly kind to the war on drugs, and especially the federal sentencing guidelines. I remember the article that I wrote to get on to law review in law school was about federal sentencing guidelines. And it was contrasting a guy who had an ounce of cocaine that was laminated into a suitcase and an ounce of cocaine in the suitcase. One guy goes to prison for 30 years, one guy goes to prison for 10. Cause the container counts. So I think that retrospectively, there was that moment where it was like, okay, that might not have worked.

Chief John Perez: Yeah, we have enough science now and data to make better decisions. And that's what I'm hoping here in post retirement, to be able to run around and help that education. Not from a place of thinking we know it all, but provide the cautionary tales and the study of what we need from a police officer today and the prototypes we're looking for.

Jon Becker: When did NCTF move into being a SWAT team? Like, when did that – When did you stop the neighborhood crime?

Chief John Perez: Tasmania, 1985, about 92, 93, became a special enforcement team. And then by 95, the idea started to come out about a team that was really more tactically inclined and SWAT trained. And so by 96, we went to the special enforcement team, SES.

Jon Becker: And at that point you were a sergeant?

Chief John Perez: I was a sergeant moving into the unit at that point. And brand new officers, all brand new, really. The age difference between me as a sergeant and the average officer was maybe two years or three years. Same with my lieutenant, that he was the youngest lieutenant wooden, Darrell Qualls, and he was probably, you know, 34, 33, 34. So we had this perfect team being set up. Culturally, what a leader that was, african american and Latinos, two latino sergeants, and then a team that was made up of everybody, Asians, blacks, whites. It was really a team you could be proud of. And it was by far a period of time.

We learned how to be better leaders with each other, with the community, and really manage all that work that was coming through at times. We were deployed 7, 14, 21 straight days. And not only were we the gang unit for the shootings, to try to stop more shootings, we were also the SWAT team. Then we became a fugitive team. And at the time we had a janitors for justice.

So we became the dignitary protection and the protest team. So we were doing it all. And it was rough on families, it was rough on people's personal lives, where their personal lives were, in fact, a professional life. You couldn't escape it. And so that's just the way it was. You worked out together. You spent the night in the locker room, sleeping on the floor together in the offices, standing by, waiting for hours for events to happen, if the president visited or some high dignitary came to town. So it really was an extraordinary period of time. When I look back and all the work these officers did.

Jon Becker: So, and at that point, the primary focus is criminal. With 911, that changes. Right? When did you promote, you promoted a lieutenant? Around that time, right?

Chief John Perez: Right before 911. A month or two before 911, I was a patrol watch commander. Very unusual period of time when 911 struck that morning and my wife was a dispatcher at the police department called me and woke me up. And it was just a very. I mean, the feelings we all had that day, you know, it was, this depression was sitting in. The world seemed smaller, like you couldn't breathe, and you're wondering what's going to happen next and all the potentials for another attack. And started to think out the Rose Parade and the Rose Bowl games and things that we host.

And the next thing I know, they created a counterterrorism unit of two people, and I was the lieutenant of that section. So literally, they walked me to a closet, called me in and says, this room with all these boxes needs to be done. And you have, you know, it was September, obviously, so we're getting into late September by the time I get up there. We need you to move all this and get ready for new plans and security plans for New Year's. So hurry up.

Jon Becker: So clean out this closet in the next two months, secure the Rose parade and the rose ball from a terrorist act to tier one events.

Chief John Perez: Absolutely.

Jon Becker: In two months.

Chief John Perez: Absolutely.

Jon Becker: Seems reasonable.

Chief John Perez: And at that time, we didn't really have a lot of federal support. We had some support, but it wasn't a system that we created as a result of it. And I was sent off to New York to work with their counterterrorism team and work on the Macy's day parade through the neighborhoods and the bureaus that they have.

So I learned a lot from that experience going up there. Greg afshuriandhennae, who was the corporal in the room, incredible. Always owe him so much for what he did during that period. We worked seven days a week, sometimes 20 hours a day. For all those months, there was no rest, rewriting policy protocols engaging people.

And we were responsible for the potential investigations that came up. And it wasn't about proving that you had yourself a possible terrorist event. You were disproving was the approach we took, because that was a much better and healthier way to try to prove something. You could rationalize as to why not proving something puts you right automatically on the opposite side here. You become your own critic on these things. And we had some very interesting calls of, you know, Middle Easterners, for example, you know, using plastic bags to block older windows out at night.

And they only come in after one in the morning to have a cigarette outside in an apartment complex. And they'd go back in, and we're a month off or less than that from New Year's. How do you handle that? You know, getting our bicycle team. We were all set up on surveillances, each one that came out for a cigarette to smoke. What did we do? We gleaped them. Good old police tactics. Each one that came out one by one.

Finally, the last one came out, like, where's everybody at? We gleaped him as well. We get in there, we hold the place, we call the FBI. They come out, and they do an investigation. They say, we got nothing. These are just Saudi Arabian kids, students with money from their parents who are going to school at PCC, and they just need some direction. And so I remember the FBI agent leaving as we all left after 4 hours of an investigation. They said, just don't embarrass us. And it's like, wow, we have a lot of learning to do in terms of culture.

And so we went out, and really we were taught by the mosques about the culture and building our relationships around those communities in Altadena and Pasadena was hugely important. So that incident kind of drove that, like, hey, we need some training here. You know, we can't just use our instincts in policing every time we think we're right, which is the hardest part about police work, right?

Figuring out whether a crime is actually occurring, not chasing the guy with the money bag, with the mask and the money sign on the bag. That's simple. It's thinking there might be a crime. That's the most difficult part of policing forever.

Jon Becker: That's an interesting way to put that. It's interesting how, like, you think about 911 and the effect it had on the country, but the effect it had on Pasadena was pretty profound, because I'm sure that prior. Well, talk to me about prior to 911, what was securing the Rose parade and the Rose bowl like, and maybe give us some. Some give us some perspective on the Rose parade and the Rose bowl.

Chief John Perez: Well, you're talking about the parade itself. That is a month's planning just for the actual operation, but it starts months in advance, if not at the beginning of the year, as each event goes on and UCLA season begins. Our planners, which are amazing people, they're assigned a lieutenant, a sergeant, a corporal, a couple of officers, and that's it.

Nothing more than that. And they would go out and plan every event, taking every type of precaution and trying to reduce the cost. We could make everything as safe as you would want at a high cost. The freedoms are going to be restricted and it'd be unaffordable. We'll end up being like today's soccer games in Europe, right? Fully fenced off and so many, it becomes a man's game. Families don't go and it's getting better these days, but.

So we were in the same predicament as after 911 to see how we're going to approach this. But before that, a lot of planning, a lot of effort. You depend on mutual aid, you depend on relationships. Cost was always a factor that was more of a dynamic as law enforcement began to increase the cost with salaries and retirements.

And these things made it more difficult. So before that, it was tough. But we had fantastic people from Roger Kelly, who planned the World cup, to people we had that were known across the country by their name and what they did with people like Alex Uribe and Bruce George and people that just knew how to do this work. And Randy Taylor was a well known name. But these are people that traveled the country to other stadiums.

Jon Becker: What was the primary fear for the Rose parade and Rose bowl? Pre 911?

Chief John Perez: It was managing the crowds. It was an event happening of violence on the parade. The parade's a million people. They thought it was probably closer today as h***. Tech did their numbers, maybe between seven and 800,000 people.

Jon Becker: Actually, on the physical parade route,.

Chief John Perez: It’s the biggest parade that we know of anywhere globally, but definitely in the country. At five and a quarter miles from the last float to where we park them is seven and a half miles. This is a lot of space and it's easy to maneuver as you pass. TV Corner, which is like a stadium. TV corner runs about four or five blocks around Colorado and fair oaks. It fits about 40, 50,000 people and is the most secure place in the country at that time. And in fact, we have so much security there, we start 48 hours in advance.

As the stands are going up, we are making sure that we have complete security with bomb dogs and searches and turnstiles and who's coming in. We've always had that to make sure we didn't have somebody taking over afloat or some kind of attack of any type that we made sure that happened. And so that was always a concern before 911, but it was also managing the crowds into old Pasadena with 80 drinking establishments in a small area of less than a mile square. That's a lot of restaurants and bars that have even been there.

Jon Becker: 700,000 people and a bunch of alcohol.

Chief John Perez: And now you move into the next morning, you're dropping into the Rolls bowl. At the time, they almost had 100,000 people fit prior to the bowl being redeveloped, from 100,000 down to about 85,000, not to mention people working the outside events. So you're always looking at about 100,000 people there.

Jon Becker: So when 911 happens, the switch flips, and it goes from we're concerned about demonstrators, we're concerned about street crime, to we're concerned about the Rose parade of the Rose bowl being used as a stage. How does that change at that point? You're running counterterrorism, right? So how did that change your preparation and your relationship with your partner agencies?

Chief John Perez: And so you have to look at the reason why. Right? Simon Sienk, what's the why behind it? The why is that we care about the fact that this is the number one tv event in the morning on New Year's across the globe, you know, with a lot of people, hundreds and hundreds of millions of people watching this event.

So it matters that the bang for the buck right there and then would make a difference about America if you wanted to attack it. And so the why was clear as day. And so the way we went about it, Wayne Hilts, again, he was the deputy chief and loved his leadership, and he says, get that phone and start calling agencies and start getting federal resources.

So you basically have a phone and you start making phone calls and work your way up the ladder to people. And, you know, these days, all those relationships paid off over the years. But I was finding frontline people like myself that would say, hey, we'll be there, we're coming. I said, well, we don't have any overtime. We don't have money to pay you.

And they would, in fact, say, don't worry about it. We're coming from all portions of this country and this globe. We'll be there. And so we had to make sure we had hotels, hotel rooms set up. We had all the resources.

Again, Greg F. Sherman was running most of the investigations at the same time. We're trying to coordinate flights and hotel stays and this and that. So there was a lot of work, not to mention looking at every part of the parade. We walked it, we were underneath the street with public works, looking at the waterways. We were looking at newspaper stands, trash cans moving. Everything you could think of was being redone.

And I remember. I recall Wayne hilts walking in saying, hey, I need a name. We're doing a press release. This new federal team that you're going to, that's going to work with us, what's going to be that name? And we're doing it in the next couple hours. You need to hurry up.

So I'm sitting in the room and Greg's busy. I'm sitting in there. I thought, well, threat assessment response team, we finally got to. I said, how's that sound? Sounds really good. I wasn't smart enough to think it out when I gave him that name, that from. From 2001, 2002, all the way forward, it's known by our street name, Tart.

Jon Becker: Tart.

Chief John Perez: So I wish I'd been more creative. The name itself made sense to me. The threat assessment response team brought every level of tactical response from bombs, dogs and tactical teams and chemical sniffers, planes and military set up all over the region. But the name Tart really didn't reflect the effort.

Jon Becker: It might not have been your best.

Chief John Perez: Branding moment, not at all. The long name was good, so over the years it stuck. The planning was redeveloped and changed, and as we went forward, it was adjusted when needed, and so it still continues on, and these federal partners really make it work for us.

Jon Becker: So you're a lieutenant now. We go post 911. What happens – you then become a commander, if I remember correctly?

Chief John Perez: Nope. I recall there was an opening in the special enforcement section now for a lieutenant, and I thought, they're going to send me over there. I know they are. And so I started packing my boxes. I remember Wayne hilts telling me, hey, you know what? Don't worry about it. We're going to keep you here. You're not going to move. But we've set up all our plans. Everything was already moving.

Once you get to that point, you'd love to work it, but it now has its own life and we as leaders have to realize that it's set up well. It no longer needs me. New leadership can take it to another direction. And sure enough, the chief made a decision to move me to the special enforcement section.

So I spent another three years going back to that unit with a new generation of officers and different dynamics. And we had seen our violent crime rate drop with all the work that was being done with the prior team. In fact, they dropped it to maybe, ooh, one or two gang homicides from the double digits. Incredible work. But then we saw that the leadership changed a bit by 2006, 2007. I became a commander in 2006, and as the leadership started to change, the officers were as great as they ever were. But some of the direction, some of the emphasis changed.

And again, you got those three dynamics. If you mess with one and it's not balanced the right way, you're going to get something different out of it. And sure enough, we saw gang violence skyrocket back up to double digits, and we had a couple double homicides in the street and thinking, oh, my gosh, we need to really do something about this.

So the team was again reformatted, rebranded. We created a fugitive apprehension team to really go after many of the gang members that had warrants that needed to be arrested. And that was a facet we used in the late nineties to go after people with just simple warrants to incarcerate you.

And so those broken window type of approaches does make a difference, and it does incarcerate the more violent, and you throw off the planning because their leaders are now incarcerated. People don't know who's running what from a gang level. So it was helpful to bring it back down again.

Jon Becker: And when you came back to the team as a lieutenant, now having been, you know, post 911, going to New York, going to Boston, seeing the experience, having the experiences you had, did the emphasis of the team change?

Chief John Perez: It did. In the perspective that my lenses, I had multiple lens to look through. And the things that I worried about grew, and I was worried about how much work the team was able to really focus on. The team had shrunk in terms of number of officers, it was hard to get to all the training.

The SWAT component, as important as it was, was a huge restraint on the neighborhood policing and the gang enforcement, because we got to a point with the blue ribbon report and some others that it was about having at least two days of training. And now with court time and special operations, we may lose the visible, preventable part of policing to be out there. Our cars were known. They had no lights on top, no police lights. They were slick top. And whenever anyone saw the slick tops, the street just got quiet.

So we used all kinds of shock and awe over the years on somebody was, you know, their wedding or their birthday or an event or we just needed to rest. We would have patrol guys drive those cars for the shock and awe of it. We'd have people call the station and want to know if John Perez was working or John Baker so we could make sure that the SES is not out there. And so they had everything they tried to do from a criminal standpoint to know if they could run freely or not. And so these were challenges that we had.

The SWAT component was the largest of trying to control how quick it was now growing with weaponry, bearcats, and the need for more training. More training, more training. We were getting away from neighborhood policing and the gang enforcement.

Jon Becker: So at some point you promoted to captain, or was it commander?

Chief John Perez: It's commander straight from the special enforcement section, which is at the time was unheard of for usually they want you to go through administration, have some other type of staff level jobs. And the chief, Chief Malikian, again, had confidence in me to take me straight from that type of unit, from a strip mall all the way north of the city in some little building, and bring you all the way downtown to the upper levels of the department and command staff.

It was a daunting feeling of this overwhelming thing, like, oh, my gosh, the first day I opened up that key to that office, it was like, man, I am not ready for this. I don't think you're ever ready for an assignment. But it was like, holy smokes.

Jon Becker: So how did you cope with that feeling?

Chief John Perez: I was fortunate. I learned it was a learning growth and I ensured for people that I was learning. I had a reputation of running hard. The world to me was SES. So in that unit, tactically planning things, you always made room for discussion before a big decision. And the team kind of understood one another and where we were going, we all knew the why to it, and we all bought in.

As a commander, the world changed. Suddenly I had 100 and something people of civilians, professional staff working. And so I had this reputation from coming from there. I had to adjust myself that I get used to who I was. And many of the administrators that we had that were level equal to a lieutenant were far more skilled than most of our lieutenants when it came to technical work within the department. The systems that we had, from computers to excels to whatever we were doing, they were far advanced compared to the average lieutenant.

And so I learned a lot during my two years as a commander of the civilian division of dispatch records, much of our technology that was going on, our jail systems. And it really was important to learn that avenue of work for me and was a great foundation, much as was a police cadet in my first two years, where all the administrative work of working the computer systems was the foundation for me all the way through my career.

So it really was an amazing period of time for people who are in law enforcement. Pay attention to those type of assignments that you think are not what I call the meat eating assignments. That's the vegetables on the plate, and it's good for your health. Right? And we have to learn to go after the vegetables on the plate. I would never replace those years as a police cadet and knowing how the systems worked.

By the time I was a trainee with an FTO, I was teaching people how to pull information out of the computer they never thought was possible. And working with the administrators, they taught me so much, was another growth to understand that dynamic and to understand the mindset of a professional staff, civilian workforce compared to the, again, meat eating workforce of police officers. So it was the best growth I ever had as an executive was that period of time.

Jon Becker: So you were admin commander for two years?

Chief John Perez: For almost two years I was in that assignment before moving on to the field operations division, which was in fact, our patrol division. And that was a frontline position where you are really, really trying to manage lieutenants and senior lieutenants at that – With a way of doing business.

So the directives that come in from a police chief, whether they're that police chief's directives or they come from the city manager or they're given by a counsel in terms of guidance, many times it's the commander that's got to go down and sell those directives. And you can't say, the chief told me, you really got to help people understand this is, we're trying to go with this directive and trying to expand people's vision.

So I don't think my skill sets then were developed enough as an executive to walk in and help people understand some of the changes we were trying to make to gain the trust of the public for the type of police work we had to do. And it's quite the challenge.

So I spent three years in the patrol division, really trying to manage many of the obstacles. Every ten years or so, we were losing a large part of our workforce due to the amount of overtime that we have forced overtime. It was a problem that we were dealing with all the way up until I made interim chief, and it was a way, we found a way out of that, but it was a constant problem with officers leaving us and having to rebuild the system again.

Jon Becker: So it's interesting you know, you see guys that are promoting the chiefs of police. A lot of times they'll come in one of two ways. They come in through an admin route where they have a lot of admin experience, or they come in through, you know, what you described as the meat eating route, which I think, knowing you as long as I've known you, I think is a very accurate description of, you know, Sergeant John Perez.

How did you synthesize, though? Because it's knowing you as long as I've known you, you always had a reputation of being like a hard charging, go getter, meat eating cop, and all of a sudden you're thrust into a very political environment. Right? I guess it's probably when you become the patrol commander that you were introduced to the politics of the city, right?

Chief John Perez: Oh, absolutely. You're at the whim of who the police chief and the senior people of the organization are, and people jockeying for positions, people looking to show they got control over something. You have to live in that environment. And for the goodness of it all, keep focus on neighborhood policing and doing this job for the people that need it. Not everybody on the block gets to vacation in Hawaii or the cabo. For them, the best it gets. Their kids get to play out front, man. That's the best it gets. And our police officers sometimes forget that everywhere across this country, we forget that basic tenant. We're here to make your life better. If maybe the deputies in my town would have done that more, I could have used the park without them being in there as gang members.

So everything I did later on was a lot to do with how I grew up in the first half of my life, to say, that's how we should police. I was policing from a 13 year old eyes of John Perez thinking, this is all I want from you. You know, it's like a young John Perez talking to the older John Perez. Don't forget about that. Nobody's going to like it. People are going to push back at you. People are going to think you're weird about that and maybe not going to like you over that.

But I had to stay true to my approach to policing, that it was about prevention, making, developing relationships and really trying to make it safer for people by prevention first being visible and then by intervention, and then if we have to enforce, well, who knows where that's going to go, right? It usually goes very well, but when it doesn't, we see the video of that. So that's why prevention and intervention are hugely important today more than ever before.

Jon Becker: It's interesting, because it's, as you come into higher and higher leadership positions, the politics of the world begin to get you. And as a chief of police, there's a lot of political pressure for you to act a certain way or to try and appease certain groups.

And, you know, I have a lot of friends now that I'm an old man, and we're all old men, a lot of friends that have come into those jobs, and you see it change them. I didn't see that with you. I never saw you kind of undergo that transformation. You were still a meat eater, but somehow you learned to speak fluent vegan.

Chief John Perez: Well, you know, I'll tell you, that's great. To put it, furthering my education as a lieutenant, getting my master's degree, I went for my bachelor's as a sergeant. As a lieutenant, my master's. I started working on my PhD as a lieutenant, I mean, as a commander. And I think that learning how to do peer review reading was a game changer. And picking up great books over the years from the early nineties all the way through to where we're at today with the leaders and what they're using from previous history really changed the format on using science into policing, really using science. Like, okay, how can I take that and use it?

There were some ideas I held for ten years. I'd write a memo to myself and hold it on a flash drive or the computer drive, wherever it was at, and bring it back up or print it out and put it into a book. And I have a ton of memos from the 1990s I wrote myself. It's like almost I was talking to myself into the future. And so I used much of that from. We reorged the entire department. I used much of that documentation and reading the peer reviewed stuff that was out there on the science. And it really was the nerd part of us coming out and willing to try new things and being progressive. A really difficult place to take a piece of equipment.

I mean, we visited your place on occasion. Always remember the janitors for justice and saying, hey, man, we need stuff. We don't have money to buy any of the munitions we may need. You said, take what you need, but you use anything. You have to pay me for what you use.

Jon Becker: You recommend stuff, you gotta buy it.

Chief John Perez: You basically said that we're talking the 1990s, and that's before the period where I knew you selling your leather from the trunk of your car for handcuffs. So we all made this progression over the three, four decades now where we're at today.

So I think that was. And spending time with smart people around me and people I respected. You're a big part of my own growth because you are well accepted by law enforcement and you're not in law enforcement. I think most people, the younger generation would probably think you were at one time. That's a frequent question.

You are well respected and accepted because of your mindset, what you provide and, you know, you put away the ego. You put all that stuff away and you deal with us. But you're a big reader. You use science and you use everyday rational thinking. And I believe that's what connects you to many of the leaders in law enforcement today. That's why you're so well accepted.

Jon Becker: It's one of the things that I think, and I think we share this. The more people I command, the bigger the business is, the more responsibilities I find, the more terrified I am of being wrong.

Chief John Perez: Right.

Jon Becker: And I see that same thing with you where it's kind of driven. You know, it's like they say that, you know, talk about Kobe Bryant. You know, he liked to win, but he really hated to lose. And successful people, it strikes me, are people that they want to win. Like, I like to win. When I win, I'm over winning so fast because I'm worried about the next fight and how I might lose that.

Chief John Perez: There's not a lot of learning lessons from winning.

Jon Becker: Yeah, that's true.

Chief John Perez: When you lose, unfortunately, that sets up your winning for later. And I had a lot of learning to do. And losing, you lose credibility. It's how you lose credibility in an organization. As a leader, you are going to lose it. You have to gain it back. You deliver directives. You're taking a chance. Many of the leaders of today, you have to be actuarial. You're reading tea leaves and you have to have the confidence in yourself to say, I think, first of all, we're heading this way. And this is why you may be wrong.

At the end of the day and for a while, you lose credibility from that. You could be an NFL coach and third and one, and you decide to do a set of plays for a while that aren't working. The growth in, that's amazing. But in the meantime, you are well hated. I'm a big Ted Lasso fan for the leadership lessons that are in there. Right?

And so these things are huge. When we look at where we lose in life and the credibility we lose on any given day, the next day you get to wake up and get it back. It takes a little bit longer, but there are times I tried to do things or my ideas were way off, and I had to deal with it. And you have to fall forward, right?

You have to, as I say by Maxwell, you got to fail forward. You have to be able to get yourself back up, stand back up, and keep going forward. You can't just give up and say, man, I'm no good at this. And that's part of the learning lessons for the greater growth of it all.

Jon Becker: The thing is, I think that ultimately, what is at the root of a lot of that and a lot of what I hear you say is kind of two things. The first is authenticity, right? It's being who you are and manifesting your principles.

Chief John Perez: When do you find out who you are? You know, I mean, you always are who you are. And you're confident. First argument in the morning is yourself in the mirror, right? And you move on with your day. But who you are and you believe in yourself. When you start to find out who you might be as a leader, it really does start to change. True north, authentic leadership. It was a book written 30 years ago that is still one of the lead top books about true north, about being yourself.

And in the beginning, when you're developing yourself, it is a bumpy road. It is a bumpy road to trip and fall as you find out who you are to get to a place. And you adjust along the way, because you might fall into a circle that maybe they like to, you know, criticize every directive from command staff. And you're in that circle for a while, and you're like, man, you know what? This is not my circle. That's not me.

So you learn to circle yourself in with over a lifetime of people that are good for you. And in an organization, you may lose touch with them once in a while because you're in different parts of the department. So much of the people I made command staff are with me when they were young officers. And you might call them yes men or yes people, but they're yes people to the point they support you, but they're the first people to get in your face and tell you when you're wrong, you know, really important.

Jon Becker: I've said for a long time, like, you know, somebody on your staff who agrees with you serves almost no value, right? I won an argument, and I go hunt an argument.

Chief John Perez: But you know what? You don't want people just say, don't like something either. I've seen those people on command staff. That's a bad idea. We shouldn't do that. You're ready to fall forward.

Jon Becker: Right.

Chief John Perez: Like, you give me something. I'd rather go with the yes person because they're on board to work that directive.

Jon Becker: Yeah, that's a good point.

Chief John Perez: And we're like, well, we don't know where this is going to go, but I'm with you. I'm, oh, hey, I'm not sure there's a good idea. I'm with you. Let's go. And we're good. We're good with that perspective. As opposed to saying, I don't like where you're going, I gotta go. You know that doesn't work.

Jon Becker: No, no, it's, it's, it's, I want you to argue with me. I want it to be creative. In the end, we're on the same team so we can debate the play. And I want to hear your thoughts on the play. And I want us to argue what the best play is at the point that we go to the huddle, the play's call.

Chief John Perez: Right.

Jon Becker: We're all on the same team.

Chief John Perez: My staff, we got to move. My staff knew that our discussions are more important than a decision. Discussions are more important than the decision. Now there's times you can't have that discussion, but you got to make time for it.

Big part of our early planning with the city hall occupation was a preplanning. And having these discussions. I always recall a quick story as a chief with Lieutenant Bill Grossoffe, our chief of staff. I wrote an email. I was going to fire it off the council and the city manager. And Bill happened to walk in. I said, alt, take a look at this thing. Ten what you think of it? I'm relaxing, stretching from writing it. I'm smiling. I feel good, right? I just wrote something good.

Jon Becker: Feeling pretty good about it.

Chief John Perez: He's at my desk reading the computer, and he says, h*** no. F, no. He says, you can't send this. He goes, I'm erasing it. And he deleted it. He, right there. He deleted everything I had worked on. Now, granted, you get it back from the deleted, but he went through the effort of deleting it. And those are the people you want around your.

Jon Becker: So what you're saying is Chief John Perez. Was Chief John Perez because of a deleted email?

Chief John Perez: Yeah, absolutely. Or you look to a great commander like Art Shute, who's NFL coach of command staffs, and art has this ability to, to argue with you. But in the beginning when he was a new commander, he didn't have that. I actually kicked him out of the command staff office twice, but yet by far, he was the strongest leader that we have today in policing along the San Gabriel Valley, on his event planning experience, his leadership, his willingness to tell you did wrong, we give you a hug. But in the beginning, he had to figure that out as I did.

So I tried to give him the leadership. I wish I would have had more when I was coming up to the organization.

Jon Becker: So you mentioned the Occupy Pasadena movement. I think it's an interesting topic in authenticity and in placing yourself in peril. Will you kind of walk us through that?

Chief John Perez: Well, the pandemic really put us off. Right? It changed everything we were doing. And that's part of this evolution, that we had staff meetings every single day. Our lunch was in the office in our, what we call our department operations center up on the top floor of the police department. And it was important for us to review every division we had, every protocol.

We must have adjusted at the end of the day, over 100 protocols in the organization based on the pandemic, from how we were doing investigations, how we were going to deploy people. If there was, you know, people being infected and were positive with COVID how do we respond to that? How do we put you off from work? How do we notify everybody in the department without notifying them?

Well, I did some things our human resources division or our legal department didn't like for the city. If somebody was positive for the COVID we put your name out and said, John Becker has his home waiting, testing. Now HR and the legal department is like, what are you doing? That's a HIPAA violation. We are in a world global pandemic. And you're worried about that? Thats what we were worried about how tactical, some organizational policy in a matter of war when you're being shot at, right? No, no, no. It doesn't work that way. But what we were able to do is we had very few work related contacts. Much of it was coming from outside of work.

So we were able to control it. And people understood what was happening and say, well, I think I need to get tested as well. And so more people would get tested and we'd have more negatives coming back, or you were put off early. So that type of approach up and staff worked. Then you go through what was happening with social justice, the cabin fever, right?

People were coming out of their homes, vehicle pursuits, driving fast, shooting their weapons. People were stuck with the pandemic in what I call that moment in the shining where his head comes through the door, here's Johnny the Nicholson incident. And so people lost it, and people were doing dumb things. And this was creating this environment and then you had the incidents that happened in Atlanta. You had these shootings that were going on that were driving the George Floyd incident.

From May into June, more shootings were happening, and everyone now was under the spotlight. And so we're thinking, man, we got to get ready for something like this and having the discussions. And then came August, August 15th. We had our own officer involved shooting with a young man from our community who had a gun. The rumor after the shooting was he had none. And it was very difficult. We had the gun recovered with DNA on it, and people said, well, how do you know that that was implanted by you guys?

We think you guys went to the hospital and did all that stuff. And as well, the rumors were flying. Even the council members said, you know, how do we know that gun wasn't there beforehand with his DNA on it? Isn't that possible?

Jon Becker: Could have just been laying there, parked on that street, happened to run by it.

Chief John Perez: I get the emotions. I get where everybody was at. I know the difficulty of all this. It was tough, but it led to a place after that shooting where people were upset. And I actually received emails threatening to kill me, kill my family, kidnap my kids. And the officers were going. The officer involved was going through a lot. We had a right to protect him. And so it was a very difficult period of time. I did meet with the family. I discussed it with the family, the incident. They hired an attorney, a civil rights attorney, and another one that represented George Floyd.

And so these were very difficult times. And so within a week of that incident, and this is where it matters, to work intel early and put yourself in a position to grab that information. I learned that from the science of reading. Whether the old books of the seven habits and a courageous follower and good to great, all these great books were the start of our leadership reading.

Then you forward it today to YouTube and where we're at and the great writings going on with Simon Sinek. And you got Jocko Willek, the retired Navy SEAL that was a lieutenant commander. And what I like about his video and his books and his writing is that he's a study of leadership. He'll read for hours and hours to come out with 30 seconds of stuff, and we could respect that.

Jon Becker: Oh, yeah, totally.

Chief John Perez: And he applies his experience to it, and I really appreciate his approach to that. And it's the fact that he wasn't the most decorated warrior out there. He led the most decorated unit in the military. Now, that's leadership. That's where you have something to say. I am listening and I am going to go back and study what you are saying.

So we are in a place where we really use that for our future thinking. We had a place in a time in the morning where we had a BLM activist who had a restraining order to stay out of the city of LA, and she had occupied their city hall. And as Michael Moore told me, it was hundreds of $1,000 in damage in overtime and blah, blah, blah. It's problematic for all of us in our community. She shows up at our city hall now. She's from Pasadena, she lives in our town.

And we dealt with her in every shooting. She was out there on Facebook Live saying, hey, you know what? We're going to occupy city hall. And I'm in my workout gear and, which is probably word and stuff from 8th grade or something. I don't know how I look, but I'm getting ready to go down the weight room and my staff is in their office. About 07:30 in the morning. Hey, chief, she's going to occupy. She's not going to occupy. We're not going to become Portland.

We're not going to become all those places. City hall has way too many important services in a much lower level. It's much like occupying the capital of a state or a country. You stop all services. It's the wrong form and the wrong view for us to make the real change we need. No way. I can't allow that to happen.

Jon Becker: Yeah. The symbolic nature of occupying the city hall is.

Chief John Perez: I went across the street. I left the station, went across the street and talked to her right there on Facebook. And she gave us everything we needed to be able to understand what was going to happen. And from that point, as I left, there were people that were driving by that saw the live Facebook, that drove to city hall and engaged me out there in a positive conversation.

So it was pretty good that we were able to talk to one another for people in our community. Based on that interaction that led our day, though, and planning our intelligence, we acted early. We had tabletops. We set everybody up, making sure we were ready in advance by 10:00 in the morning, who was going to be held over at night, who was going to be ordered overtime.

Tactical teams, all this department operations center up above all the team leaders and the debriefing and deconfliction that went on really saved us that early planning of having unique things in place and being able to gap up and allowing frontline supervisors to question our approach, say, wait a second, we're not sure that's a good idea.

Okay. Why? Back to the why. And they have that discussion. It wasn't just that you had people that were in disagreement with the idea. They also provided their experience. And that's the difference right there, is that you're not just saying, I don't like something, but you're saying, I don't like something, but let me offer you a different route, or why I don't or. We adjusted this and we were able to work all those kinks out during the day, nonstop, that we secured some of our areas early so they couldn't occupy those areas and we used mutual aid.

The equipment we needed, we brought in tow trucks was very, very unique and something we trained to after that day, to other local police chiefs and police departments, to be well prepared, well situated and placed, but unseen by the public. Hugely important to allow the public to demonstrate in protest. That's their constitutional right. We should support that. Offer them the traffic units they need for traffic control and the safety. But you don't need to see 500 tactically dressed officers 20ft from you when you're protesting. It really jacks up everybody's emotions.

So if you would have opened any closet door, 20 officers would have fallen out, you know. But we were well prepared with equipment, a lot of debriefs and brief backs. The brief backs were hugely important. The rehearsals of what we were doing, it was. This was all led after the ideas were formatted with the command staff. Commander Art Shute and Lieutenant Johnny Mercado were enormously important to this whole growth.

Now they go back years, decades before, to ses. The learning curve we had back then about neighborhood policing and gang enforcement and SWAT team and balancing all that. So their mindsets understood those different directives and wasn't just tactically planned. We opened up our eyes and ears to the leadership.

Look, people don't often say they are overlaid and under-mannered. Right? It's the other way around. That's what people say, that we're over managed or we're undermanaged. Over-management and we're under led is usually the issue that we're in. We tried to make sure it was the other way around. Everything we do, we manage. We absolutely manage most of our lives, everything about it. But there are opportunities for us to identify a point, to be a leader. You can't be a leader 24 hours a day. It's impossible.

But you look for the opportunities to make change, to lead in the right direction or change culture. That's really the learning lesson that came out of that, was to look and ensure that you are taking the opportunity to lead. When it presents itself, when it presents itself right there, you have to have the ability to say, that's the moment I need to do something right here. And that's the importance of it all.

Jon Becker: So in that occupied Pasadena, you had, obviously, the tension of a city council that's divided and has different views. A community that's divided has different views. Pasadena, although a small city, does have a relatively activist mindset in some of the critics and within the council, what made you make the decision to deny, nope, you're not taking city hall?

Chief John Perez: It was a decision I had made early on, looking at Portland and looking at what happened in Minneapolis, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, at third city hall. And I realized if we allowed occupation, many people wouldn't get services.

Jon Becker: I'm guessing that was not necessarily a popular decision with some of the members of the community and some of the members of the city staff.

Chief John Perez: Absolutely. Our city manager, we had a long discussion, very supportive, and he had mentioned that there wasn't support for this entirely. In fact, we had one council member said, just let them occupy. Let them have it. You shouldn't stop them. He said that the following week. And so that's problematic for me to have that type of loss of government, and what could happen and trying to clean that up later could be difficult. And so we had that discussion we talked about the following morning. Maybe I would be released as a police chief, basically terminated.

So I called my wife, let her know that that might happen. She just wanted to make sure that we were doing the right thing, and I was doing the right thing, and she was fully in support. So I knew I was in a good place at home.

And so a few hours later, when Antifa started to show up and we started to see the name changing on the street signs to freedom way, pig way, this, that, this. You know, they had duct tape, and they had the spears and they had shields. They were putting on very scary stuff when you're that close. City manager, after we talked, he says, okay, well, we'll talk later. He shows up at about four or 05:00, and, you know, in police work, we have what's called a go bag.

And so he raises his bag. He's got my go bag with me. I'm here with you guys. And oftentimes thereafter, during the protest, we invited everybody to our department, operations center, council members, city people, city managers. He was almost always there with us throughout the night just to listen and to provide his guidance and what we needed to do and full support. And it was really good for him to be out there.

But our situational awareness, this is the key. The situational awareness for people, for counsel and the city manager and the legal department, for the city attorney's office, it would have been delayed because of the usual processes of policing. In this case, we worked and gave him immediate information because he was on the scene with us. He was seeing it himself firsthand.

And I'd walk up and it's like having the general right next to the battle scene and give them what we were doing. He was then able to relay that to the council quickly and give his assumptions, his assessment of what was happening.

So the situational awareness was a big factor in all of this. But having that support from the council and keeping the city attorneys up to date and everything we were doing with phone calls every less than an hour was tremendous in making sure everybody supported our direction.

Jon Becker: But it was almost a suicide pact between you and the city manager then, because him showing up knowing that there's at least one council member that thinks it's time to turn over city hall.

Chief John Perez: Absolutely.

Jon Becker: And he has a chief of police that has already expressed that that's not going to happen.

Chief John Perez: Absolutely.

Jon Becker: You know, I mean, I realized that you obviously had done the calculus, that you were willing to lose your job.

Chief John Perez: The risk. The risk assessment. And that's why I think he's one of the best city managers in the country. He'll put me in check in a moment if he had to. Not a problem. He'll shut me down. He's the boss. You know, it's what the structure of. I'm not an elected official as a sheriff. Right?

Jon Becker: Yes.

Chief John Perez: So there's a lot more decision making processes going on between a group of people that's got to be collective and best for our community. So it worked.

Jon Becker: But it's interesting because I think one of the things, when I teach leadership, one of the things that I talk about is the difference between leaders and managers, and one of those differences in my brain is the willingness to place yourself in peril for principle, the willingness to go, you're not taking city council well. They may fire me. Okay. Like, you had already made a decision that you were willing to lose your job and not give up city council.

Chief John Perez: We kept that quiet. We didn't want the officers to have to deal with that emotion. Whether they supported me or not was, you know, we have a new chief in the morning. During this whole episode of a officer involved shooting had just occurred, and by the end of the night, it worked out extremely well, in that nobody went to jail and only one car was impounded that wouldn't start.

And it was a careful approach that we had from having hundreds and hundreds with the potential for thousands to having less than 100, and then dealing with a group of 20 or 30 walking around marching and doing things, and our tactical officers having the discipline to handle it correctly. And at the end of the day, we learned a lesson.

One of the lessons was, as command staff members, if you're not part of the planning process, you're not allowed to make last minute adjustments. You can imagine a coach coming out of the locker room with 20 seconds left in the game, and the head coach picks a play, and all of a sudden the coach comes running out of the locker room criticizing the head coach about, that's a bad idea right now. Oh, wait a second. We've had three and a half quarters to figure out their weaknesses. We think this is the best decision. So we learned some lessons coming out of there.

But at the end of the night, the officers were really satisfied. They did something right for the community. And, you know, coming out and talking to the majority of officers that were going home at 03:00, 04:00 in the morning, had some great discussions and a lot of thank yous to us and the command staff for making the right decision.

That was, you know, good for us. As command staff, you make the decisions, you go on to the next battles on whatever that's going to be. But to have a couple hundred people coming out and going home and shaking your hand, saying thank you, I think that mattered.

Jon Becker: As somebody who knows a lot of people in your department and grew up in the city of Pasadena, that decision had more impact on your brand than you could have possibly recognized.

Chief John Perez: Well, even in the community, we had people the following week, officers go get their food, and people were paying for their food and, you know, clapping for them, and they walked in to pick up their food because there were still the pandemic rules, but they had a lot of community support from people for doing what we did. It got very little attention because it went the opposite way. The news stations were looking for occupation, not the other way around.

So it got very little traction, and that was fine by us, but it got very little traction from the public. And we had another 75 protests thereafter. And all of them were handled in the same regards, except for having to put out the line of officers, because it wasn't an occupation, it was a protest or demonstration, which they had the constitutional right to do. And we supported that. And so all those other 75 protests and demonstrations, we allowed that to occur without our presence.

Again, we planned in the same way, the same accord. Again, you opened the door and everybody would fall out. But we were not seen other than the traffic officers on the motorcycles providing the traffic stops and the brakes that they needed, or those moments we had to run out and make an arrest for a gun or a fight or something that was happening. Those were the only times you saw the majority of our officers.

Jon Becker: So you see, you have 75 additional protests. It's an interesting choice in a modern law enforcement environment to decide between having a large presence or allowing a protest constitutionally. You're there to protect their constitutional rights and give them an opportunity to protest the government, which is the whole point of it. And so you need to let them go. But the amount of presence and the type of presence seems to almost give these things the ability to create their own weather.

Chief John Perez: Yes, it is possible. You never know. Once again, going back to leadership principles, we're going to the true north. It is the foundation of what I believe that in doing my experiences over the years with janitors for justice, the occupation period during the great Recession, and then reading literature, Madison, Wisconsin, maybe the lead in the country in the 1970s, writing literature about campus protests and not being seen and how much the chances were heightened that it would conclude safely for everybody.

And so I took all that into an equation and came out with the fact that we should go on that route as often as we can. There are moments in which we can't. Occupation was one of the city hall. Correct. But I had to be able to try to identify those or have a team that could identify them. And that's only going to happen through discussions and having our staff meetings and giving people the confidence to say, this is not the one, or, we need to do something better on this other one. So that was really important. But it really goes to the true north principle.

Believing what you believe, knowing you've studied the confidence, everything that you're done, and you got to wait for the fastball to come at you. I had a great talk with Matty Moda back in 2018. He came to our station, and we donated equipment, and I asked him, what is it like to be there?

And Walter Austin or Tommy Lasorda asks you in the 9th inning to come up and get ready. He says, well, you know, you've done all your study. You prayed to God, you've done everything you're supposed to. You lived your life well. He said, this is for a pinch hit, right? The guy who led the most in the season for decades. It was the record, he says, but then you studied everything you needed to. You knew you had it. When you get to the plate, you make your decisions. The ball comes at you and you say, bring it on to the pitcher.

And basically that's, I love that because that's the same approach we basically took, was to say, look, we've studied everything. We're taking everything into consideration, but now we're at a point to make a decision.

Jon Becker: But I think implicit in what you're saying, apart from what we've already talked about, authenticity and having true north, is being a student of the game, right? Like you're not walking into the bottom of the 9th inning wondering what could happen and having no plan in place. So what are your thoughts about that? It strikes me that you've always been a student of the game.

Chief John Perez: And one of the terms I use often is a student of the profession for us, and being a student of the profession means you're always studying, you're always learning, you're always bouncing things off your mentors, listening to other people, debriefing situations and taking all that into consideration. And this was part of all that understanding. You're going way back in time and pulling things out and knowing where you want to be.

And so this was the right thing to do. It was the right thing to do, not to be present in the dozens we had out in front of the police station where people wanted me to take a knee or the hundreds of people, you didn't see a police car, police cars driving by. And it was very peaceful events where people got to experience the emotions of other people and the tragedies that have happened in their lives and to share them without us being in the middle or me coming out in uniform and for a moment, taking the knee and taking all that away from everybody, that wasn't the point.

At the same time, we had to know when we had to be present and when it was about protecting the proper property of the city or people. And I believe that that was the right time to do what we did. So it took a lot of thought and support from people around me, and not everybody around me was in support of what we did. At the end of the day, it was the right thing. We did take a chance. We had an opportunity to be leaders in the organization and in the community, and we took that route and we stayed with it.

Jon Becker: I think that another interesting thing about your career was your willingness to almost follow a Lincoln principle. And I think of all the chiefs I've known over the years, hundreds, possibly thousands of chiefs of police, I've never seen anybody walk into a crowd of people that did not like him. Maybe Daryl Gates walked into a crowd of people who did not like him and said, tell me what's wrong with me the way you have. Talk about that.

Chief John Perez: For me early on, you know, learning from other chiefs like Bernard Malikian, the others that have been around, you have to engage the community and you have to do it your way. And I believe the only way to do that was to be as open as I could with our community. We had something called community conversations where we went in with frontline officers to engage the community and talk to one another about real issues in policing.

Anytime people called me on my cell phone, I answered. Anybody sent me an email, I answered it. You invited me to your forum. I did my best to be there. And those engagements were hugely important, not just with people that I connected with. And philosophically, we might have been the same arena. It was connecting with people that we weren't in agreement philosophically on a lot of issues. And some of them are very close friends. They're what could be considered activists, people in the community that wanted police reform. I wanted police reform.

And for them to understand the route I was going and reorganizing the whole department. We flattened it, we regrew it, we put new equipment, new training, new technologies. We're a better police department. And many police chiefs and departments had asked, hey, how did you do that? We created new units. We put more officers into patrol without raising a penny on the budget. All that done.

And so how did that really happen? A lot of work, a lot of meetings, and a lot of teams of people coming together. And not everybody was in agreement. I eliminated the gang unit for a new model, a contemporary model that was intelligence led model that we have today. We still put units out there when we need to on overtime to patrol these neighborhoods. But much of the work we're doing up front is intelligence led.

We're going to identify these career criminals, the gang members, the people that are doing this crime, and arrest them before they do it or immediately after the arrest. That's the goal to ultimately get.

Jon Becker: I think saying philosophically disagreed is a gross understatement of people who are calling for your resignation while you're inviting them to be on a chief's counsel.

Chief John Perez: And some people even threatening my life.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I mean, literally, it's interesting because, you know Sen. Tzu, know yourself. Know your enemy better. Hold your enemy close. Hold your friends close. Hold your enemies closer. It was interesting to watch you start a chief's advisory council with people who strongly, philosophically disagreed with you and then open yourself up to criticism in a forum you created.

Chief John Perez: Right.

Jon Becker: Talk to me about what that. What was the advantage of that?

Chief John Perez: Well, it's where it came from. And where it came from was, you know, on July 29th, 2016, I had a v fib incident where I had died for, they said 60 something seconds on a heartbeat and came back and had a surgery and blah, blah, blah.

Jon Becker: I think you might be skipping over.

Chief John Perez: Yeah, probably.

Jon Becker: How about you dropped dead and were dead for a minute or more.

Chief John Perez: Yeah. So with that.

Jon Becker: And would have remained that way if.

Chief John Perez: Not for people in the room.

Jon Becker: Not for people in the room putting you on.

Chief John Perez: You know, Bill Sanchez and many of the officers in that room did a wonderful job in making sure I was still around. But during the time I was off a lot of reflection. I always thought I was a pretty good person. But, you know, when this happens to you, you want to be even better, you know, and you strive for ways to do that. And much was done in terms of reading and really finding yourself. And part of that was reading about Theodore Roosevelt and many of the presidents I read, including team of rivals on Lincoln and how he brought people into his cabinet that were against him.

And when the opportunity created itself for interim chief, which nobody was searching for at the time, not me, and the permanent chief, which I really wasn't searching for, and let the city know I wasn't going to apply for that job, it really was interesting that that reading, that approach, that study, helped me embrace the activists even more and create a chief's advisory that, in fact, was made of people that were looking for deep, deep rooted defunding or, you know, changing the police department in ways that was not healthy for the community. And many of them, if not all of them, I believe, really changed their perspective over the years of how they viewed the police department.

And, in fact, in the beginning, the union. Absolutely. You know, I love Roger Rodin, one of the best presidents in any police union anywhere in the state, if not the country, and the way he approaches his work, but he heavily was saying, hey, man, this is not a good idea. I don't think we should be doing this at the conclusion of all this.

If I were to get rid of it, Roger would have beat me up first, because the union appreciated this group of people, to engage them and to have meetings with them, because each one of the board members represented multiple nonprofit organizations, representing hundreds in each one. So you're touching on thousands of people. Some of the chiefs advisory members even lost some of their credibility in the community for what they were learning at the police department.

So when they see how diverse we are, when they see the changes we're making, you know, change doesn't come from the outside. Change comes from the inside, not just on the leadership to say you're going to do it, but the management work that's taken to create the systems and the budgets and the protocols and all the things in management that are hugely important. And that's a learned skill, as is leadership, which is a leadership, which is a tool. It's a skill set you have to have.

So all that put us in a place that helped me during that period of time to really function through and keep the chief's advisory updated. If that chief's advisory was made of all John Perez friends in the community, what good was it to brief them before the occupation of city hall? Really, it wasn't going to do me any good. I needed people that were going to criticize me and say, well, wait a second. But to explain to them why they helped market some of the things that needed to be done in the community from an education standpoint.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's interesting. There is currently, with law enforcement, a bit of a siege mentality, where there are a lot of vocal critics and a very quiet law enforcement lobby where every bad thing that happens gets publicized and dragged through the news. And law enforcement is not proactively defending itself. And it strikes me. Yeah, but not at an organized level.

Chief John Perez: I understand that completely.

Jon Becker: And you look at some of the legislation that's happening in California related to law enforcement, and some of it is just moronic. AB 481 and this idea that, oh, military equipment is what's causing the problems. Well, first of all, half the things on that list have nothing to do with the military.

Chief John Perez: Military use it.

Jon Becker: But it strikes me that part of the reason that that happens is this siege mentality and this kind of pushing out of criticism and not having a willingness to engage.

Chief John Perez: It's a lack of education that we really need. Even internally, on both sides. Yeah, even internally. I started a Sunday email that was based, you know, it was based on our last chief, Chief Sanchez's Sunday email about everything went on in the community. Way too much information for what I could do.

So I changed it to a format which was about educating our personnel, the new laws coming out, the promotions, the areas that needed policing focus, as well as leadership issues, providing good video on leadership and things we could all learn from collectively. And it was a starting point in the organization. No matter where I went, I could start my conversation at the Sunday email. Hey, chief, you wrote this in the last Sunday. I agree or don't agree. Well, let's talk about it. And it was a great place that when I didn't do them on Sundays, I would get half a dozen or more texts from people.

Jon Becker: Where's my email?

Chief John Perez: Where's your email? Yeah. And in the beginning, I didn't send it to everybody. I only sent it to the lieutenants. I wanted them to talk to these points. And I quickly discovered there was a portion of the lieutenants that said, I don't talk to this stuff. They could read it on their own. I said, nope, not until you guys learn how to read it to your people and have this discussion. I'm not going to get it out. So a lot of pressure started to come to send it out to over 400 people every Sunday, and not just the command staff and lieutenants and the administrators of 23 people.

So it really was a platform I stuck to as long as I could before I released it out to everybody. And it was helpful, and I tried to do it all on my own. So it came for me. You know, it wasn't ten people writing it, sending it to me, and whatever mistakes or things you didn't like, it's my stuff. This is from me to you in a love letter here. And so I think it really did help in a lot of our communication with the new laws that were coming out and things that were happening.

Jon Becker: But it's once again inviting potential criticism. Oh, without a doubt, it's once again commander's intent, open to discussion, which, I mean, that's kind of leadership 401, right? That's not – You better have your ego in a pretty comfortable box.

Chief John Perez: Let go of your ego.

Jon Becker: Yeah, like, you got to leave it at the door. But I think that comes back to kind of last thing I'd like to talk about before we go into the rapid fire questions, which is this notion of servant leadership and this notion that, you know, the most important person in the organization is not the one at the top of.

Chief John Perez: 100%.

Jon Becker: Tell me your views on that.

Chief John Perez: Well, growing up, playing sports, and having a large family with seven brothers, servant leadership is the direction you go. You follow others, and you're a strong follower in supporting your family. Coming into the police department as well. Always following the new chief, following people around me, following to learn, has really always been part of my platform foundation for myself.

If I believe in you and I support you, I'm following you everywhere because I want to learn from you. I want to learn how I could be better. And I want you to believe in me. And that's just part of having a circle of friends. I have the same friends for the most part I've had since I was 13, 14 years old, you know, which is really cool, right?

Because we believe in one another. And the same friends that have been core with me over my years at the police department are still close friends of mine because we haven't lost that connection. And with other people, you come and go depending on the decision. And so servant leadership is an actual management leadership principle that was written by Dr. Peters in the early seventies. And his leadership principle at that time was about learning how to follow others in your leadership, knowing that it's important to listen to people around you and their issues so you could become a better manager. But it was also about leading.

And I believe that this foundation of servant leadership is something that is going by the wayside and we got to bring that back. The most underrated leader forever will be the most consistent leader. It's an unusual place where we define our leaders by the home run, by the moment, by the things happening.

But the most consistent leaders over a period of time are usually lost. You know, they're lost in time. For some reason. We just say, well, you know, John was really good, always treated us well over those 20 years as a leader. But it, you know. Cause it wasn't that one time the building burned. You carried everybody out, man. He was the guy.

So we tend to devalue the consistent leaders over time that do it in a servient leadership style. Yet it is the essence of everything we do in leadership.

Jon Becker: That's a fantastic place to move on to our rapid fire questions. So these are…

Chief John Perez: Do I need a lawyer?

Jon Becker: Say again?

Chief John Perez: Do I need a lawyer?

Jon Becker: Probably not.

Chief John Perez: Okay, good.

Jon Becker: I mean, you did for the last five years of your career, probably not now. So these are kind of single sentence. I want your kind of quick reaction thoughts. What's your most important habit?

Chief John Perez: Relationships. People around me making sure that if you're going to lead, that people believe in you, at least they know who you are. So it's about creating those relationships and the conversations with people around me.

Jon Becker: Leader versus manager, what's the difference?

Chief John Perez: Leader versus manager? Leader has got to know the opportunity to lead. Managing is something that we do every single day, the majority of the day, hugely important. But we have to really have the skill sets to be leaders, to understand when to identify it and how to treat it with respect and love.

Jon Becker: What's the best book you've read?

Chief John Perez: I would start probably with 7 habits of the most effective people by Dr. Covey. But that could probably be sharply debated with Jocko's extreme ownership, which took a lot of those principles and his experience. And so I'd be jockeying for those two. But you know what? Jordan Peterson, 12 rules for life is amazing book. Jordan Peterson is absolutely our Plato and Aristotle of our times.

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

Chief John Perez: I would have to say likely the feeling that we had as a command staff after occupying of the city hall and the fact that the department, everybody believed in what we were doing. The community believed that we did the right thing at a moment that I think many people wanted the opposite thing to happen, to feel good in terms of activists and so forth.

So I believe that moment, that feeling, that driving home at four in the morning with no sleep for over 24 hours, I really felt like we had done something collectively together. There are very – Almost no moments in our lives where we think about the best thing that ever happened. It was just you, it was always people around, and that was an example of just that.

Jon Becker: What's your favorite resource? Online resource, website or podcast?

Chief John Perez: I have to go back to Jocko, man. Well, the debrief, I'm going to say, is first, without a doubt. Debrief is it? That's the new learning place for us to find our leaders locally. You connect with them because of the profession. You know what they're saying. You could learn from the leadership lessons being thrown out there.

But for the last few years before the debrief, Jocko was really the place to be for me because he's taken the science of leadership from all the years before with management, and you could break it down with great guests that he has and also the principles of what's worked for him in wartime.

Jon Becker: What keeps you awake at night?

Chief John Perez: Has to be the safety of police officers. My heart goes out to every single one of them doing the best that they can. The absolute love they have for their communities. It's really undervalued by the media and people out in the community. There's so much great things going on that they don't get the credit they deserve for their love for what they do. They're sacrifices for what they do.

All the many different areas of policing, from homeless to having to take action, to working with people in need, the amount of work that's needed and all the training that comes with all that the love these people have for this profession and their communities is unbelievable. Yet I don't think they get the respect for that. I don't think there's enough there to remind our communities how lucky they are to have that one 2% of society serving as police officers.

Jon Becker: And that is a fantastic place for us to stop. John, thank you so much for doing this!

Chief John Perez: Thank you, brother! Thank you!

I hope there was something I offered for everybody out there. I appreciate it!