Episode 1 – Sid Heal Part 1: The History of LASD – SEB

Jon Becker: This episode of the Debrief is dedicated to the memory of Sid Heal. When we began this project, our primary goal was to capture the history and stories of the men who developed special tactics before we lost them to time. Weeks ago, we made the decision to launch the show with two episodes we recorded with Sid.

Sid has been my friend for more than three decades and was a key part of my early career and tactical education. Without Sid’s influence, I'm not sure AARDVARK would have ever developed into what it is, and I'm certain I would have been a very different man. As a result, it seemed only fitting for Sid’s episodes to lead the series.

Sadly, a few days ago, we lost Sid. As we were preparing for his memorial, I anguished over whether we should release these episodes and what the right thing to do was. That anguish ended when Sid’s family gracefully told me that I needed to release them, and that is exactly what he would have wanted me to do.

A special tactics community will remember Sid as a force of nature, as a teacher, as a marine combat veteran, as an author, and as the quintessential student of the tactical game. I will remember him as a great friend, a man of deep faith, a loving father to his kids and grandkids, and a dedicated husband to Linda for almost 52 years.

I'm very grateful for the time I was able to spend with Sid. His impact on the special tactics community was profound, and I know that he will be remembered by his teams, his friends, and his students for decades to come. I'm also grateful to have had this conversation with Sid just weeks before he passed and to be able to share that conversation with you.

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 the 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 in 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 and is the former president of the California association of Tactical Officers.

Sid, thanks for joining me today on The Debrief!

Sid Heal: Thanks for having me!

Jon Becker: So why don't we start with where your career started. Let's start at the beginning and kind of work our way forward to the present.

Sid Heal: Law enforcement career?

Jon Becker: Let's start with the Marine Corps.

Sid Heal: Marine Corps. I was 18 in those days. The draft was going. I was one, I was going to go at any time. Nobody would give you a good job. Nobody wanted to train you and have you leave. So we were basically societal cast offs. And so I joined the Marine Corps to keep from getting drafted.

Jon Becker: And then how long after you joined the Marine Corps did you deploy to Vietnam?

Sid Heal: I went in the Marine Corps in February, and I was in Vietnam by August, so. And that includes a 20 day leave, 10 days of mess duty.

Jon Becker: And then how long were you – how many times did you go to Vietnam and how long were you there?

Sid Heal: Two. Technically, I was only there on one deployment, but I got hit by friendly fire on April 5th, 1970. And so I spent the rest of April and most of May in Guam Naval hospital, and then they staged me back in Okinawa for about a week before I went back.

Jon Becker: And then you get back, you're done with the Marine, your Marine. Well, you're not done with the Marine Corps service. You come back from Vietnam. When do you go into the sheriff's department?

Sid Heal: Oh, not till 1975.

Jon Becker: That's right. Because there was an interim there, wasn't there?

Sid Heal: Oh, yeah. You could not have envisioned a scenario that would keep me in the Marine Corps one more day. But what happened was that I had, on the way to Vietnam, I had met a girl that I wanted to marry, and I knew that I wanted to go to college. And so the GI bill made that possible.

So when I came back, the two things that I knew that I wanted to do with my life was marry the girl that is still my wife 50 some years now and go to college. And so I got out of the Marine Corps, but when she had our oldest daughter, she couldn't work and we couldn't make it on the GI bill. And so I joined the Marine Corps to stay in school. They promised me that if I would come back in the reserves, that they would guarantee me my bachelor's.

Now, interestingly enough, I was a little bit more than skeptical, but they were absolutely truthful. I can't even tell you the number of things they did to help me stay in school. I'll just give you one that I thought was phenomenal. This particular unit that I joined was Anglicol, and you were required to be jump qualified within twelve months of your billet assignment. And so they sent me to jump school.

And when I would come back, I had to go to school and they would have a jump, or we'd have, and they literally would send us all over the world. I would just load my pack up with books and land. I was a corporal and the first sergeant say, hey, come here, and I'd go over there and he says, it's time for you to study. And they'd send me off to one side and I would sit underneath the tree and study. They were absolutely serious. I mean, that's just one of the things that they did. The reason I say jumping was significant for me was the fact that my pack was so heavy that to keep stick integrity, they would usually make me stick leader because I fell the fastest.

Jon Becker: I love that! So then, okay, so after that, you go to college. You didn't start at the La county sheriff's, right? You started…

Sid Heal: I started with the district attorney's office. It was kind of interesting in those days. I was a white male. I was not a high value recruit. And so I tested for every place I was accepted for Michigan State Police, which was my home of record, which is where I had joined. But I had gotten married, bought a house, had a baby, and I got asked to join the LA sheriff's department and the LA district attorney's office.

But the LA district attorney's office offered first. And I was in a position where I needed the bird in the hand. And so I did two years as an investigator. And be honest with you, I loved it. Investigation was, I don't even know how to describe it. The only thing I could compare it to was either SWAT or patrol. But you literally would beat the suspect at their own games.

So I learned informants and I learned interrogation and putting the pieces together. In fact, I started the sheriff's academy because I had to go to another academy when they hired me with a post certificate in investigation, a basic certificate. So I have two post basic certificates, one in investigation and one in general practice.

Jon Becker: So then two years later, you leave and go to the LA county sheriff's department?

Sid Heal: John van de camp became the DA and said that he did not need a police force. The Bureau of Investigation, they're all police officers. So I was low man on the totem pole, and I was going to be cast aside. And so they asked me if I would do a Y rate. I didn't even know what a Y rate was, but basically it's a demotion in lieu of layoff. But I had a baby. I couldn't go out and hope I could get a job that I want.

So I took the Y rate. It went right to the bottom of the totem pole, except for seniority. And they sent me through the sheriff's academy again. So I went through the Rio Hondo police Academy for the first time. So I went back to the sheriff's department. Interestingly enough, two years later, they called me to go back to the DA's office. Well, needless to say.

Jon Becker: That ship has sailed.

Sid Heal: That's right.

Jon Becker: It was gone. You had your chance at that one.

Sid Heal: Thanks for calling.

Jon Becker: So where was your first assignment? Like, walk me through your sheriff's career up until the point that you ended up.

Sid Heal: Oh, I started with jail. And it was interesting because there were a lot of opportunities in the jail, but I'm not an indoor person. I didn't realize how bad it affected me until I was actually inside. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. I would do anything to be outside. Sometimes I literally have to check out just to go outside. I can see why people would be claustrophobic. I mean, it was that kind of a feeling. I've never been claustrophobic, but it was an anxiety.

So I knew that I was not going to do well there. And to be honest with you, had I not gotten out, I would have left. It was that bad. By the time I had three years in and I had already decided that I was willing to start over rather than stay inside anymore. So I got selected to go to Firestone station, which was actually number one on the list for two reasons.

One, I really, really liked the people there. I had done a ride along there in the academy, in the action. It was probably as close to TV as anything that I was likely to see. And the second reason was it was the number one fastest way out of the jail because there was a lot of people that didn't like that.

So I spent 80, see, last part of 79, 80, 81, and 82 at Firestone. Then I went to industry. My name was on by that time, intent to promote the sergeant. Then they made me a sergeant and sent me to Crescenta Valley. And then I only had 22 months in grade when they asked me to take a test for the special enforcement bureau.

I loved patrol and I was good at it. And they had asked me to go to SCB as a deputy, but I was having too much fun in patrol and I just really didn't want to start over again. But they asked me to go as a sergeant this time. And so I did. And I spent 84 to 89 there. And then they promoted me to lieutenant. I spent twelve years as a lieutenant.

And then I was actually quite shocked to be a sergeant, to be a captain. But I was ecstatic when they put me back in the special enforcement bureau. It was like putting briar rabbit back in the briar patch. I mean, I was a happy camper and I would have been content to stay there, but I got activated. I had been activated for every war that Marine Corps had at that time.

And this one, the latest one was Operation Iraqi Freedom. And they activated me in January, and I was gone pretty much the rest of that year. And so they put somebody else in charge while I was gone. When I came back, they promoted me. And five or six years I stayed as a commander. So that's pretty much it.

Jon Becker: So I'd love to kind of walk through because your career parallels the evolution of special tactics in the United States. And if you were to sit down and write the history of SWAT, you can't write the history of modern SWAT without mentioning Sid Heal. It's just one of those names that's going to be there. You certainly can't talk about flashbangs or tactical science or a variety of other topics. I will tell you that. You know, I've done a lot of these interviews. The one name that has been mentioned in every single one of them was yours.

Sid Heal: Oh!

Jon Becker: And that is, that is from an officer level to a chief of police level. As people talked about their careers, they talked about the evolution of their careers. And I went to Sid’s this class. I went to Sid’s that class. So what I'd love to do is wind back to when you first get to the bureau in 84, the 84 Olympics are happening. And kind of talk me through that initial evolution, because the bureau starts earlier. Do you remember when swots started at the bureau?

Sid Heal: Yeah. SWAT actually started in 1966. The concept.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Okay, so, Sid, I would love to start in 1984 when I, you know, you get to the bureau, the 84 Olympics have happened. You know, SCB and LAPD have now both spun up SWAT teams, but it's starting to evolve and you land there as a sergeant. So walk me through what happens when you first get there.

Sid Heal: It's actually even bigger than that, because there were a lot of societal changes that made SWAT, the concept of SWAT vital, not the least of which is fully automatic weapons and booby traps and rock houses. What had happened was that our system of government does not allow the military to intervene in what is believed to be a domestic policing matter.

So as a result of that, we had to rise to the level of our military counterparts, not the least of which, in those days was Delta Force and the Seals. So they provided a huge amount of training and we had all of our weapons upgraded. And largely the 1984 Olympics went on without much problem.

So as a result of that, we had all this training and equipment, and now we're faced with rock houses. So as a result, and I don't know who said it first, but somebody said, hey, if this will work for hostage rescue, this will work for arresting narco suspects, and sure enough, it does. And interestingly enough, within about two or three years, we were teaching a lot of the things that we had learned back to the military. So including my team had been activated and sent back to the east coast to train with Special Operations Training Group, which had just been stood up by the Reagan administration because of TWA-847.

So it was a time, the best way, it was explained to me, Washington, a colonel in special operations training group, full bird colonel, to tell you how high this was up in the Marine Corps chain of command. He said that they considered LAPD and LASD experts in urban warfare. And I was shocked. I said, sir, we're not at war. He says, you're attacking a fortified location. I said, yes, sir. And they're shooting at you? Yes, sir. And you're shooting at them? Yes, sir. Sounds just like war.

And so as a result of that, that started a relationship that went for years and years and years where we could literally pick up the phone and talk to people, in many cases in different parts of the world, and ask a question and get a straight answer.

The special operations communities, both in the military and law enforcement, did not play well together. It was like everybody had their best kept secrets. It did nobody any good, really. And so the National Tactical Officers association was formed in 1983 to start alleviating that. But you could have professional conversations that you could not get at a conference. You could not get in any kind of a public forum, but you could talk to people in Nebraska that were taking down underground concrete bunker complexes.

And I'm using these as actual examples. They flew us back to the east coast and then flew the dutch entry team in for the dutch Malaccan train assault. I went to Israel and debriefed in Tebbe and Malat. I went to Belfast and Haifa and Jerusalem and Princess Gate, in London, and the mall bombings in Sydney, Australia, and the Yonsei University riot in Seoul, Korea. And so many places I can't even think about because it was not going to be put to paper and they needed to vet the person they were going to talk to. And they would not exchange the information in any kind of a durable format.

We were free to take notes, but some cases we were told, like, we couldn't take pictures or we couldn't take some notes or just to leave this off. But we got straight answers. It really kick started a lot of our thinking.

Jon Becker: And just to put context on it, right. 1972 is the Munich massacre and 84 Olympics come. Everybody's afraid that that's going to happen in Laden. That's in context with Prince's gate. Baron, Switzerland, Mombachan, Kenya. There's a series of hijackings and building takings, and hostage seizure becomes a mechanism through which terrorists are negotiating to get media attention and push their message.

Sid Heal: Interesting thing that you should say that, too, because it resulted in a change of tactics with the terrorists. The terrorists at that time really relied on hostages. It gave them a huge amount of public exposure. It allowed them to negotiate because they had to be taken seriously. Otherwise we lost the hostages.

The tactics, techniques and procedures and some of the technology allowed us to recover the hostages, in many cases killing the suspects, the terrorists, and being very successful with the hostages. And when I say we now I'm talking about the counter terrorist community.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Sid Heal: The global counter terrorist evolving. Yeah. Both military and law enforcement. It was so successful that they had to switch to bombings because.

Jon Becker: Well, because you had entebbe. They all get killed. You have prince's gate.

Sid Heal: Yep.

Jon Becker: All the hostages, rescue suspects are killed.

Sid Heal: Mogadishu.

Jon Becker: Mogadishu Bern, Switzerland?

Sid Heal: Yep.

Jon Becker: You know, you had the one. Was it GSG 9? Did the airplane….

Sid Heal: Yeah, that was GSG 9. And the airplane was in Mogadishu.

Jon Becker: So, like, you have this series of, like, it works pretty well. It works really well in, you know, Munich, but that's kind of the apex of taking hostages and making a scene. From then on, the tactics start to adapt.

Sid Heal: Yeah. And evolve. The after action of Munich was an eye opener. They have a saying that success has many authors. Failure is anonymous, but there was no way that we could attribute some of the mistakes that were made at Munich to accident or incompetence.

There were some real command and control issues, some intelligence issues and a lot of tactical issues that everybody that was going to find themselves in such a situation started taking seriously. And because this informal collaboration had already started to evolve by the 1984 Olympics, and you're right, we were terrified. It wasn't just a feeling that they were going to attack. We were terrified. We knew they were going to attack.

We learned everything. I'll just give you one that was shocking to me. I was quite comfortable, having been so many years in the Marine Corps by that time, including my tour in Vietnam, in the rural environment. But there was as much to learn about the urban environment as there was the rural environment. And I was a duck out of water.

And so I really started paying attention to the people that had been doing this on a routine basis, not the least of which is the combat was extremely close range. The targets were fleeting and elusive. And as a result of that, we learned to shoot without getting a front sight picture by adapting it, literally with a piece of aluminum angle iron in those days with a flashlight that we would use fiber washers to adjust the flashlight so to the height of burst. And we had sighted our weapons in at 25ft.

A lot of people were shocked at that. But the advantage was is that if you could see the light and it was on your target, you could pull the trigger that quick. I can't tell you how many times that saved people's lives. And we went to state of the art submachine guns and the recoil, which at that point….

Jon Becker: [Crosstalk] – Started with MP5S.

Sid Heal: Started with MP5. Yeah.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Nine millimeter MP5S. And that's when the MP5 was just an MP5.

Sid Heal: Yeah, exactly.

Jon Becker: So, so then, you know, you and you and LAPD are running parallel in your development. I recently interviewed Mike Hillman.

Sid Heal: And there's another guy that I got to tell you, if they're not mentioning Mike Hillman, they're missing.

Jon Becker: They're missing. They're mentioning. It's not quite as much as they're mentioning you, but that guy is – [Crosstalk]

Sid Heal: He was one of my mentors, so let's put that in perspective.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Yeah. Mike. Mike. You know, Mike kind of walked me through, from the D Platoon side, the evolution of tactics and how they started to reach out to the European units. They started to reach out to the military units. You guys were doing the same things kind of together. Right?

Sid Heal: Together and apart. It's kind of interesting because we, first of all, we compared notes with each other on a routine basis. There was a lot of rivalry, but it was a friendly rivalry and nobody wanted to see anybody on the other side get hurt. And nobody wanted to feel the guilt that we would have inherited if somebody failed and got hurt because of something that we had withheld.

So it was open, but it was very informal and it was usually done on the phone or we train together in person. And LAPD ended up with teaching the west coast marines and the east coast seals, and the LASD ended up teaching the east coast marines and the west coast seals. We didn't really plan it that way. It's just the way it turned out.

But, yeah, and I couldn't even begin to tell you other countries that ended up getting involved. But if you ever go down to SCB and see the trophies and we display them with honor, is the number of world famous teams from France and Germany and the United Kingdom and Australia, and both in the military and law enforcement.

Jon Becker: So it's GIGN, it's GSG 9, it's, you know, 22 SAS. It's, you know, it's – At that time, it's literally a who's who in the tactical world exchanging tactics. Because, you know, one of the ways that Mike put it that I think was really articulate is he said, you know, we were concerned about them taking hostages on a bus like they did in Munich. And he says, we had to figure out how to assault a bus.

And I think the thing that's easy to forget is everything has a beginning. Special tactics in the United States, that beginning is the late sixties, early seventies. SED starts a little sooner. LAPD D Platoon is the first official SWAT team beginning full time in 71. But the real zenith here, the real acceleration takes place for the 84 Olympics.

Sid Heal: The original SWAT teams were in response to the Texas tower shooting. And so as a result of that, the concept was counter sniper, and the sniper had the primary function on the SWAT team. And everybody was pretty much in support for years. When we started doing entries, the snipers became in a supporting role and the entry teams took over the primary function.

So I got to tell you, what I've just described is a lot more methodical and neat than it really was. It was messy. For years, we refused to write down standing operating procedures because we didn't have any adherence to paper.

And as a result of that, we would change a technique. If we had a briefing in the morning, we were free to change that technique for an operation in the afternoon. It was that fast. So it was a state of constant review and continual adaptation.

Jon Becker: Where everybody worldwide is trying to figure out how to do hostage rescue, how to make it effective, how to apply it to multiple environments. And I think one of the things, this is just before I start my career, but there is this very collaborative sense. And I think that's right about the time John Coleman founds the NTOA and creates an official platform.

Sid Heal: Yeah, as a matter of fact, it was never national. It was always international. Right from the very beginning, it was obvious that we had to come to grips with this. We were in operations in those days where we were so certain of being shot that we would put a personal vest underneath our entry vests because we knew that the entry vests were not going to stop some of the things that were being shot at us. That gives you a perspective of pragmatism that no class or PowerPoint could ever achieve.

So just to give you an example, nobody really intended to specialize, but some were just the nature of the game. Seals would teach us how to tell if a boat was overloaded by looking at the water line. In some cases, they'd repaint the water line, and the seals would tell how to tell us, teach us how to tell when it's been repainted so it looks like it's actually higher than it is. And then we would teach them urban warfare because we could actually close down the city at night, and we would. A lot of operations that people had no knowledge of were because we were moving at night. Crossing a freeway at night is like crossing a big river, except you can get killed, and so.

Jon Becker: Except the river is full of alligators.

Sid Heal: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I couldn't even begin to tell you. The marine corps with vertical operations, vertical assaults and helicopters and skid drops. One of the things we discovered was the fact that we could take down a skyscraper because there's no windows on the roof. And so we could actually, most places we couldn't land, but we could skid drop.

We also found out that when you skid drop, when you jump off the skids of a helicopter, you need to have some protocols, whether you call them standing operating procedures or not. Because if half the people jump off the helicopter on one side and the pilot corrects for the heavy side, you can tip the helicopter over. And pilots don't like that.

Jon Becker: Neither do the guys getting on the helicopter.

Sid Heal: Exactly. So I can't even tell you how many skid drops we did. And then I learned to repel. I mean, I repelled in the Marine Corps, but nothing like what we were doing, the Australian rappel, because we could go in from the top of a window without exposing us or the rope.

And then eventually we didn't like unhooking from the rappels, so we went to fast ropes and I got that from the Marine Corps. I don't know who invented it first, but I learned it first from the Marine Corps and then LAPD and LASD. And I don't even know how to tell you how many different things I would say in the five years of my first tour. There wasn't a day that I didn't come to work where I didn't learn something new. And I think that most of the people felt the same way.

An eagle was your biggest obstacle. It would be like bleeding in the water with these guys. If you had anything that you were sensitive about, a scar, a tattoo, your ear stuck out too far. I'm trying to think it was like sharks, they would go for you. But it was always with the understanding that we would be better, that we were no different than anybody else. But we were being exposed to knowledge that nobody else had really ever taken the effort to gather. It had probably always been there, but now we were actually discussing it at a professional level.

If I could take credit for anything, it was the fact that I was one of the few guys that started codifying it. I actually started taking notes, probably because I just wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer and I did not want to forget this stuff. So I began taking notes in probably the spring of 85 is when I can first remember when I really, and that tickled my curiosity to study, if this is this, what else? And I wanted to know why it wasn't enough to tell me what to do. I wanted to know why it was important and how it's contributing.

So from there it just went on. I started writing lesson plans for years and then I got asked to write one article and so I wrote the article. I couldn't believe the interest that it got. It was the first time I had testified out of state and I was being called to Florida and Minnesota and Arizona, Oregon and Washington and places that I didn't know anything about the case, but I could explain it. And I need to emphasize that I was just one of the guys. I probably got more credit than I deserved because I had the name recognition from the articles and eventually the books.

Jon Becker: So mid 80s, you're at SCB, you start, you guys are students of the game, you're studying, you start writing lesson plans. At some point you get tasked to do flashbang research. Walk me through that.

Sid Heal: It was in 1980, early 1988, and we were getting sued for flashbangs. And one of the questions that were coming up was who trained you, what were their qualifications, and a variety of other things. So my lieutenant at the time, Russ Collins, called me in and he wants me to do a lesson plan on flashbangs.

So I went back, I gathered all the materials, and about a month later, I came back and said, russ, we're going to need to do original research. And Russ goes, why? I said, because the only information available is coming from the people that are selling them and they're only providing the information that makes their particular product look good. And they're really not addressing what we believe the key issues, when it should be used and when it shouldn't be used. But they would tell us everything they want to know about how it worked.

So as a result, he said, how long is this going to take? I said, at least six months. And to his credit, he said, okay. So that became my collateral assignment. And I interviewed doctors and acoustical experts and went to the crime lab and got the original study from the human Effects laboratory in Aberdeen, Maryland, and interviewed the military who had been studying grenade simulators and a variety of other things.

And so we wrote a fairly comprehensive lesson plan and published it December 1st, 1988. And we, according to our protocols, made it available to anybody with a need to know, which was other police departments. By January, it was the national model and we could no longer keep up with the requests which were coming in scores at a time. And I believe the lesson plan at that time was 30 or 40 pages. It was pretty comprehensive and it was at a user level. It didn't explain a lot of things, but it was expensive for the LA county, if you can believe that, to duplicate this lesser plan and send it to everybody that was asking. And yet we did not want to charge for it.

So we asked the National Tactical Officer association to make it available at cost, and they did. And to this day, as far as I know, it's still available.

Jon Becker: So, yeah, that was the original NTOA flashbang diversionary device user's manual.

Sid Heal: Yep.

Jon Becker :Yeah. Which quickly became the national standard and still forms the roots of almost every flashbang class worldwide.

Sid Heal: I think as an author, and I became an author later, I didn't really consider myself an author because I did the lesson plan, but the greatest feelings of success and self satisfaction come from having somebody that I respect as an intellectual thinker and teacher cite me either. I don't even know how to tell you what that feels like. It feels like, wow, it really was worth going the extra mile and being able to attribute that. I attribute all of the things that I learned to the original authors. But if I could take any credit was the fact that I just compiled it.

Jon Becker: Well, see, I think it's – So we met in 89. 88 or 89?

Sid Heal: I think you were 88.

Jon Becker: So say 88. I mean, I don't think it's possible retroactively for people to put in context how unusual that diversionary device user's manual was. It's unusual. Now, at the time, it was unheard of. Nobody took the time in law enforcement to go and understand blast physics and understand physiology and understand, like, people were using flashbangs, but they were using flashbangs because they had been exposed to grenade simulators and they kind of made them feel stupid. And they thought, well, this is going to work.

So really, like, you were the first one to actually look at it scientifically and say, this is why it works, right? I mean, I learned all of that from you because I knew you. Everybody else learned all of that from you. They all learned bleaching over Dobson. They all learned temporary threshold shift and hearing pressure wave sensory overload. Like those were terms you developed in that research, but nobody knew.

Sid Heal: I think you'll recall that I mentioned that it sounds a lot more methodical than it was in reality. It was quite messy. I'll just give you one. I had to laugh when you were saying that because I remember how messy. We had flashbangs that were basically adapted from grenade simulators, and the majority of that was basically just powder and paper. So you couldn't throw them through a window, you couldn't throw them through a screen, you couldn't get them through bushes.

So what we would do is we would get a cod weight, which weighed half a pound to a pound, and we'd put some duct tape around it and we'd throw it through the window. Well, that solved one problem, but we noticed some disparities. Somebody would say, holy mackerel, that was hot. No quality control or…

Jon Becker: Too many rolls of tape.

Sid Heal: Exactly. It was the amount of tape we were using. In some cases, we would just put enough to adhere to the weight and it would explode normally. But in other cases, they would put 100 miles an hour tape that we'd get from the pilots or duct tape that we could buy out of one of the hardware stores. And some people would put one band and some people would put five or six. And without knowing it, we were creating these miniature pipe bombs.

Well, when I got my class in blast wave physics, literally from Dr. Paul Cooper at Sandia Labs, I learned that we had no clue what we were doing. And it's only by the grace of God that we weren't getting hurt worse than we were or hurting somebody else.

Once we explained that, it also really lit the manufacturers and developers. And so they started building things that we could use as is, which is tremendous advantage from a civil liability standpoint. And to be honest with you, there's more money in doing that than there was in selling dope because they were making money hand over fist. The flashbang in those days costs about one dollar fifty cents to 1$, 80 cents to make and we were buying them for anywhere from $15 to $30 each. So it was a huge markup.

But the use of the flashbang was a game changer in our tactics because it created what I learned, a thing called an exploitation window, a period of time where the human brain is unable to process outside information because it's being overwhelmed by stimuli. And now we know it as the amygdala hijack, we're actually indexing a portion of the brain which is going to be perceived as life threatening, even though the flashbang, if used properly, is pretty harmless. But the fact that it's perceived overwhelms the brain's ability to do anything that we would consider thinking.

So we, in fact, I'll just give you one right now. Off the top of my head, I had three separate incidents where we took the guns out of the hands of the people or they threw them down when they knew we had them. That would have died had it not been for the flashbang. Well, needless to say, this created a situation where we tended to overuse them. If it works a little, it'll work a lot.

So we threw more than one flashbang and we didn't understand a lot of things. But once we started doing the research, we made a lot more knowledgeable decisions and intelligent decisions, wise decisions. So we found, actually, and I did a statistical analysis on that, is that we were using them less and we were using less of them, meaning, per the situation, it's one of the few non-lethal options that will support a dynamic entry. The effects of are virtually instantaneous, and I say instantaneous. Scientifically, there is no such thing. That's one of the things we found out.

Jon Becker: Yeah, but it's milliseconds.

Sid Heal: That's right, milliseconds. To give you an idea, there's about a two second window of vulnerability, but that's because it takes that long for the fuse to go off. It's a delay, but then we get anywhere from 2 to 8 seconds of what we call the exploitation window, where the individual is incapable of mounting an effective defense. I mean, they'll have startled reflexes and other things without getting into too much depth, but typically that was enough to save their lives and save our lives.

Jon Becker: So, yeah, 2 to 8 seconds is a long time.

Sid Heal: A long time. We could put the full entry when we were doing experiments with the Marine Corps. One of the things we would do is we would give the subject ear protection, which most of the suspects didn't have, and a camera, and having take pictures of the entry team when that flashbang went off, if they could take the pictures, all they got was pictures of muzzles.

In one case, we had Captain Jim French with a camera and we threw it in and he could not make his finger work enough to click the trip. I took the camera out of his hand, took his picture, and then put it back in his hand. That's how long 6 to 8 seconds is.

Jon Becker: I have a very clear memory. Shortly after we met, probably 89 or 90, we did a flashbang demo together, testing some stuff, and we gave a guy a squirt gun and put the squirt gun in his lap, threw the flashbang in and then simulated an entry coming in. And the last guy grabbed the squirt gun while the guy sat there trying to figure out what to do.

Sid Heal: In real life the first one that happened to me, the first one I can remember off the top of my head is we had a guy with an m two carbine. He had gun ports cut in his house. He swore that he'd never be taken alive. And when that flashbang went off, he reached out and could hit the m two that was leaning against his bed but could not put it enough together to grasp it. I literally picked it out.

Jon Becker: So the sheriff's department starts actively using flashbangs. You're writing. This is kind of the beginning of Sid Heal, warrior poet, for lack of a better term. The flashbang manual comes out. It begins to get people thinking about a deeper level of understanding. It's not just, oh, the manufacturer says it's this, it's let's go do our own research. When is the next significant event in your career that you think marks a milestone? Is it Somalia?

Sid Heal: Probably. That was huge. That put me at an international level for the first time by Somalia for me was in 1995 and, well, started in 1994. But as I mentioned, I was working with a special operations training group and I get a phone call. What do you know about nonlethal options? And I laughed. What do you care about non-lethal options?

And he said, I've been ordered to do research on this. And these guys were all just like, we were doing research. And they said, we don't know where to start, but we figured cops would know. I said, well, I'll just tell you what I think is that you're looking for a magic bullet that doesn't exist, that it's not a technology problem, it's a training problem, that we need to have a holistic view.

And one of the incidents that they cited, Washington, some refugees in Guantanamo Bay decided they would riot and take over a PX. Well, a marine's company was charged with guarding it, and they fixed bayonets, and apparently they weren't taken seriously, and they stabbed three people. And so I mentioned this incident. I said, if you're willing to stab them, skip the intermediate options, because I don't have anything that I can think of that would be as good as that. He said, well, we don't want to do that. We need to be able to accomplish our missions without having to kill the adversary.

And I said, well, I know a guy that I'll get him to talk to you. But I was a CW-05 by then, and I was not willing to drive to California. I mean, drive to Camp Pendleton. CW-05, for those who've never been in the military, I explain it as a huge amount of esteem accompanied with absolutely no authority. But my lips were moving, and typically a colonel or a general's voice would be coming out.

And so as a result of that, I enjoyed vicarious authority. And so when I said I wasn't coming, they took me seriously. And so they said, well, when can we meet? Let me know. I'm working all week. And they said, Thursday. I said, come on up. Well, on that particular day, it was raining and pouring down rain, one of the few days in southern California.

So we went into a room that kind of went as a skiff because everything they were saying was classified. And so they gave me a bunch of scenarios, and I explained where I thought some of the problems were, and I gave them some suggestions. That's all it was on how I thought we could have done it better. But the big thing is, they had no technological advantage. Their idea of a non-lethal weapon was shooting somebody in the foot.

So I called you to bring in whatever you wanted to demonstrate. Shotguns and bean bags. And I'm trying to think pepper balls didn't exist in those days. But, yeah, whatever we had, and I do remember it was so hard. What's that – [Crosstalk]

Jon Becker: Stinger grenades.

Sid Heal: Stinger grenades, yep. Flash bangs. Obviously, it was raining so hard, we had to blow the water out of the rear sight apertures to see. And they were surprised that we didn't go to arrange. We went out in the parking lot and fired it into a concrete wall. Whatever it was, it left him quite impressed. And so I got kind of volunteered as a consultant.

Jon Becker: This is in voluntold.

Sid Heal: What's that?

Jon Becker: Voluntold?

Sid Heal: Voluntold. Yeah. That really wasn't as bad as that, because there wasn't anything they could ask for that I wouldn't have given. They had been more than gracious with their information and time. But, yeah, it was understood that it wasn't given to me as if I had an option. And so I went down there several times, and they came up and we exchanged information. And I got a phone call in the spring of 1995, right out of a clear blue sky that said, sir, what is your – This is sergeant so and so. What is your Social Security number?

So I gave it to him and I said, just out of curiosity, why don't you get it out of my OQR officer's qualification record? And he goes, sir, I'm not from your unit. And I go, whoa. And so we hung up, and I turned to my partner, Danny Bean, and I said, Danny, I don't have good feelings about this.

Jon Becker: Get ready, buddy. You just became a partner of one.

Sid Heal: I got activated on a Thursday, got my shot record updated on a Friday, was sicker than a dog on Saturday from all the shots, and Sunday I was in Mombasa, Kenya, and it was like something out of a movie. It was a side of the Marine Corps that I'd only seen on the special operations side, but I literally had the pick of the Marine Corps of the best guys. They were all gunnery sergeants, Gunny agers and Gunny Dunn and…

Jon Becker: Gunny McGilton?

Sid Heal: What's that?

Jon Becker: Gunny McGilton?

Sid Heal: Gunny McGilton, Gunny Rodarty, and a second lieutenant in the Air Force who had six months and worked for Phillips lab. The guy was smarter than all of us put together. Our GPA, our YDEZ general classification jumped by double when he was present. I mean, he was that smart. In any event, he was in charge of lasers. And I literally had a blank check. And to this day, I have no idea what I could spend.

But I reported to a three star general around the chain of command, and there's a lot of people, even at a CW-05, between a CW-05 and a three star general including the MEW commander and the commander of the landing force and everybody else, well, including the ship's captain, to give you an example.

And so I not only had the best in the Marine Corps, I had a guy that could write checks in about ten different currencies at one time. I asked him, Bob, how much money can I spend on this? He says, that's classified. I says, yeah, but just give me some ideas. He says, well, you've already spent three quarters of a million dollars. I says, oh, can I spend a million dollars? And he looks at me and he gets excited, you think this is going to cost a million dollars?

And I thought for a second, I said, you know, Bob, I realized that one of my unfulfilled career goals in the Marine Corps is spend a million dollars in the Marine Corps money. And he laughs, and he goes, you can spend a million dollars. So I go, well, can I spend 2 million? He says, don't go there.

Jon Becker: There's the line.

Sid Heal: I'm not going to tell you what you can do. So I had sticky foam and oculus foam and lasers that are still classified and would do things that even Star Trek has yet to figure out, which is, well, I'll give you an example of how smart this guy was. One of the lasers we had was LX-5, laser experimental model number five. And it was at the, what we call, I later found out, the brass board stage.

Basically, they had built this amalgamation, for lack of a better term, this component out of off the shelf things. So they had gadgets and gizmos and whatchamacallits and thingama jobs that had to fit a certain way. And so it was necessary for all of my guys to learn how to do this. And so we were up. We were staying in a hotel at that time in Mombasa, Kenya, in plain clothes. And I was having everybody do the drills, take it apart, put it together, take it apart, put it together, hour after hour after hour.

Finally, about 02:00 in the morning, when we are literally brain dead, I looked at the lieutenant, and that was another thing that used to irritate my gunnies is that I called him by his first name in the Marine Corps decorum. That was a little out of their social constructs.

And so I go, Rob, I got good news and bad news. And he looks at me and goes, well, what's the good news? The good news is you're going to be the first United States Air Force officer to win a Marine Corps combat action ribbon since the Vietnam War. And his eyes get about this big.

And he goes, well, what's the bad news? Bad news is you're going ashore. There's no marine that's going to be able to fix that if it doesn't work. And we cannot have it not work. So we went ashore. We got in a huge firefight, which nobody remembers that wasn't there because it was so much emphasis on the non lethal part. But he did. He earned his combat action ribbon and it was awarded to him as his highest decoration. And he's proud of it to this day, even though he's retired.

So it was a wake up call. And when I got back, we came into March. Air Force Base, they flew us back, flew my team back. The rest of the team was on float and they were in the Mediterranean in that area. But I had a team and they flew us back. Well, being a CW-05, March Air Force base is about 25 miles from my house. So I called my wife and said, hey, meet me here. So she came there and I waved goodbye and never checked out.

So I just went home. I mean, I'm never going to be promoted again. And so I went home and sleep because there's like 11 or 12 hours difference with jet lag. And I get called up by a colonel in Washington, DC, said, gunnar, how long is it going to take for you to get back to Washington, DC? And I go, sir, I'm going back to work. He says, well, when are you going back to work? I said, Monday. And it's like Thursday night now. And he says, well, that's true. He says, but technically your orders don't expire till midnight Sunday.

So how long will it take you to get back to Washington, DC? I said, wow, sir, military transport. He goes, you come back any way that you can get here? So I flew commercial back, and what they wanted was a debriefing. And that was probably the tip of the tip that you just described in Somalia, I couldn't even begin to tell you how many different places and how many people I talked to at such high prestige in both academia, the military and politics, to the consulate level, including other countries.

So, yeah, everything else I did till that point really paled in comparison. If I had to pick just one, that would have been in 1995. And by 1997 was the first time I was speaking to an international audience. And they were paying me.

Jon Becker: Oh, yeah, no, that was – It exploded. Like, it kind of the same thing happened to the business, right? Like, that was the beginning of the Marine Corps non lethal program, which then we had the army non lethal program. And all of those programs kind of evolved out of that one trip to Somalia. And it was really kind of the genesis of us becoming a non lethally oriented business, especially because it was that Somalia mission. We didn't have time to put together lesson plans. We didn't have time to train anybody.

Sid Heal: And so it was messy.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I did a five day instructor course for your unit in one day with retroactive read ahead. Here's all the stuff you guys have, Sid. Godspeed! Good luck!

Sid Heal: A lot of the documentation we did after the fact.

Jon Becker: Oh, yeah.

Sid Heal: One of the things that was interesting, too, is that I mentioned the fact that CW-05s, which are pretty rare. I think at that time, I was the 13th one in the Marine Corps, including the reserves. I mean, there was only 13, period. And not everybody wore the bars because they became limited duty officers. But we had a huge amount of esteem and not a lot of authority. But I reported directly to General Zinney. I got credit for a lot of things that he actually deserved the credit for.

I asked him one time, I said, sir, do you ever feel dumber when I get near you? And he's not one that really chit chats, but I was a five, and I was as high as I was ever going to be, and I felt emboldened. And he looks at me and he goes, no, why? I said, well, sir, if there really is a scientific process called osmosis, I get smarter. I was just wondering if information and knowledge was a finite.

Jon Becker: Yeah, because I'm getting smarter. Are you getting dumber?

Sid Heal: Well, the great thing was, besides his intellect and his foresight, was he was pragmatic. He understood the concepts, but he also understood that the applications were what were going to make the concepts work. The rules of engagement, for instance, were unwieldy. And I was ordered to bypass the chain of command, not run anything through the chain of command, report to him directly.

And so I lived on the Ogden, but the flagship was the BellaWood. And so I would pick up the phone in the combat operations center up with, where all the navy guys were and say, I need a ride to the bell of wood at such and such a time tomorrow morning. And sure enough, there'd be a helicopter there. And then I'd go see General Zinni. First time I'd ever been in a flag officer's wardroom. And I remember in this one occasion, I started explaining the conflict, and he recognized it so fast. He held up his hand, which I took as sign language for shut up.

Jon Becker: Because it was sign language for shut up.

Sid Heal: Yep. And he turns to the chief of staff, which is the only reason I know his name, John Moffatt. He goes, John, he's right. He's right. We got to fix this. And he fixed it. That was just the kind of guy he was. I feel guilty accepting praise. That was really vicarious.

Jon Becker: I don't know. I mean, General Zinni certainly set the tone, but the evolution of the non lethal program accelerated rapidly because of your involvement. Whether it would have happened without you is a matter of debate. But the fact that when we met those guys at SCB, and that conversation started with, tell me what nonlethal is.

Sid Heal: Yeah.

Jon Becker: It ended with trained marines off the coast of Kenya, what, three or four weeks later. It was not a long time. And during that time, had to write rules of engagement and had to get all the stuff vetted, put it together. Like, had you not been there, you were catalytic to that process. You being there gave them a connection between the military world and the civilian world and tying them together.

Sid Heal: That was how General Zinni explained it to me, because I was actually feeling it even then, and I did not want to take undue credit, but he explained that I was bilingual. I could talk Adam boy Charlie David to law enforcement, or Alpha Bravo Charlie Delta to the military.

One of the things that it led to was in 1997, I got called into the under sheriff's office, and he started the conversation with, if you can do this for the Marine Corps, you can do this for us. And he had a bunch of notes on a legal pad and proceeded to rearrange my career path from what I had envisioned. And as he's going on, he's describing a project which eventually became known as the Technology Exploration Project. And none of what he described was anything that was really appealing to me at the time.

But I'm a lieutenant, and he is multiple pay grades above me. So I'm taking notes and I'm pretty quiet. And he says, I know you don't like this, and I don't particularly care, and goes right ahead with what, the next two years, which I thought was gonna be my career, and that was to manage this technology exploration project. And the focus was on finding technologies that had applications in law enforcement.

The idea was to leverage my contacts in the Marine Corps and my association with them, because I had a clearance. I was working on classified projects. I had literally been all over the world. I was gaining and had already gained by that time, a national reputation and in some cases, in international, in the sense that I was being interviewed by TV stations from Australia and Italy. I'm trying to think of some of the ones.

Jon Becker: We wrote an article. You and I wrote an article for Jane's international defense.

Sid Heal: As a matter of fact, that was an interesting one because it went to Jane's international defense review, and that was really a groundbreaker because I got invited to speak at the first international non lethal weapons conference and ended up speaking at four of the first seven as a keynote speaker.

Well, it's like Odenthal calls the self licking ice cream cone. The better it tastes, the more you lick it. The more you lick it, the bigger it gets. And that's exactly what happened. And I couldn't begin to tell you how many different places. But Haifa, Jerusalem, Israel, Belfast, Dublin, Mostar, Sarajevo, Seoul, Brazil, Argentina, I'll just skip the cities and go to the countries, because in some of the countries, I'd go to multiple cities because it was expensive to move me over. In any event, that led to teaching, and I started teaching at the us military war colleges.

Well, I did for 20 years and taught at every single one. My handler was a retired lieutenant colonel from the Marine Corps. Told me I had a hat trick. I was one of the few guest professors. I don't know what their associate professor, adjunct. I don't know what the title is, but that had been invited and spoken at every single one.

All four of the services, industrial college, the armed forces, the National War College, command and staff, general command and staff, which eventually became the basis for a book on the concepts. There was no textbook, and so I kept thinking somebody would write one. And we have had some good books on non-lethal, but they've always been focused on the technologies. And right from the beginning, the technology was the way of developing and utilizing the concept. In some cases, the concept existed without the technology.

Jon Becker: The technology was a manifestation of the doctrine. Right? Like, in the end, non-lethal is a mindset. It's teaching force as a rheostat rather than a switch. And the technology was just the vehicle through which you were administering that application.

Sid Heal: It's funny you should pick that out. That was one of the original metaphors that I used to explain the non lethal force concept to people that believed that the Marine Corps force spectrum ran from the M-16 to the F-16. That's a quote.

Jon Becker: Now I remember there was an article that you and I wrote a rebuttal to written by an army colonel, and it was like, I think it was. What price sticky foam? I think was the article arguing that the us military is the most lethal killing machine and never needs non-lethal. And then Afghanistan happens and Iraq happens, and they go, wait a minute.

Sid Heal: The Balkans were the big ones. When the Balkans went off, we got sent back in as peacekeepers. And one of the things that I used in Somalia, I explained, was the fact that it's going to be difficult to make a case for a humanitarian effort if the only tools we have available to us are to kill the people we're sent to protect. That has been quoted a number of times since then, but it also expressed the frustration that we experienced.

There were a lot of people out there that became adversaries that I never truly thought that they had thought it through, not the least of which the international community of the Red Cross, who believed that we were using them to enhance our ability to use lethal force. That's true to a point, but the lethal force was going to be used anyway, and the idea was to protect the innocent while still being able to use the lethal force. And there was a number of other ones.

Jon Becker: There was a mindset in the kind of late 80s, early 90s. I mean, I went through it. I remember did an interview on Daryl Gates radio show with the ACLU, and the whole argument was, this is going to be used disproportionately. It's going to be used racially, it's going to be used this way. So what you're saying is you would prefer they use a baton because that's the choice you're giving them.

Remember, you and I have both repeatedly used Maslow. The only tool you have is a hammer. You tend to view all your problems as nails. The corollary to Maslow is if the only tool you have is a hammer, all your problems are nails.

Sid Heal: Yep. What's really interesting, too, and I don't know why, but the baton is one of the oldest non lethal options available to us. It's been around since at least the 1820s, and for whatever reason, it doesn't have the controversy attached to it, the emotional baggage, as some of the safer devices, even though we'll admit that it's primitive and they cause injuries like the bean bag and the sting ball and the taser and the pepper ball. And I just have to wonderland what they think is going to happen.

One of the things that we're experiencing right now, today is the fact that judges and activists are advocating for injunctions against the use of nonlethal weapons or some types of non lethal weapons, without realizing that removing this particular device from the forced spectrum relegates us to using something that's far more harsher and primitive because the problem doesn't go away, because they don't like the way it was handled. And yet some of the biggest critics have come from the law enforcement community, but we can't get any traction.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's interesting. I remember when I did the instructor training for Somalia. It was a room full of gunnery sergeants and arms folded. I'm the most lethal killing machine in the world. Tell me why I need this. And I remember saying to one of the gunnies, if right now you have rules of engagement, those rules of engagement require lethal provocation for you to use lethal force. Everything up until now, everything up until that occurs means you're taking rocks and bottles, and all you can do is wait till the problem escalates. It's like dropping a match on a piece of carpet and waiting till the house is on fire to try and step on the match.

Sid Heal: Exactly right. And that was one of the things that the international committee, the Red Cross, objected to, was the fact that we could target noncombatants to get them away from harm's way, which made the likelihood of killing the adversary, which were putting them in danger to begin with, easier. I'll admit the rationale.

Jon Becker: Yeah. But the inverse is also true. You're driving away the non combatants, so they're a lot less likely to be killed.

Sid Heal: What they ignore is the fact that in many cases, the technicals in Somalia were putting them in harm's way on purpose because it made us reluctant to use lethal force, and so it gave them an advantage, particularly when our technology was better than theirs so they could negate that technology.

So it's one of the things I got asked this in London one time, it's legally right and morally wrong. I understand where you're coming from, but the law needs to be caught up to the technology. We don't have to kill people that are not trying to do us harm.

Jon Becker: Yeah, but it's interesting because, and this is what you see happening today. I mean, you look in California with AB-481, there is so little understanding of the technology and the doctrine that there's a belief that nonlethal weapons are increasing the number of incidents of injury and fatality. And it isn't until you take them away and put law enforcement in a position like the military was, where it's like, here's your tools, hammer and screwdriver.

Hope you don't have to cut anything because you don't have a saw. I think that we're kind of at a point where the doctrine now is lagging behind the technology.

Sid Heal: Again, what's interesting is that if you really look at it from the balcony, we're using technologies that we were lauded for 20 years ago, even 10 or 15 years ago. What's happened is that we'll be the first to admit that we're using the cutting edge, the state of the art. There hasn't been a lot of improvements, and the improvements that have been made have usually been increasing the effectiveness of an existing device or technology rather than a new technology. So there are new technologies out there, but sadly, nobody wants to bell the cat.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And it's, I think, you know, as we've talked about, you know, there's always an arms race between technology and doctrine, right? Since the first guy picked up a stick and used it as a baton, there has been an evolution of technology and an evolution of doctrine. And, you know, you think about the lecture that Robert Bunker gave years ago at one meth, talking about the evolution of armor and the evolution of weapon, and there's this constantly taking place. We're in one of those periods where we have transitioned, and doctrine has become less important.

And I think that one of the things that you said early in this conversation that has stuck with me is that the why was what you were trying to figure out. We've reached another point where the how is past the why.

Sid Heal: Yes. And let me just add to that, that is a police problem. The training in police is unbelievably expensive, far more than most citizens understand. We pay the guy to go to school, we pay the person that's teaching them, and we pay the guy that's doing his job or her job while they're gone. It's horrendously expensive.

If you gave me a device that worked 100% of the time for free, I, as an administrator, would still have to factor in what it's going to cost to bring it up to training. And if it's got a steep learning curve, it may not be cost effective.

So when people are talking about defunding police, if they would just change the name to reform police, a lot of us would be on their side. The sad part about it is we've been complaining about this for years, but nobody has been paying attention.

Don't listen to the politicians when they're telling you they're spending millions of dollars on the development of non lethal options, for the simple reason is go look at how much of a percentage that really is compared to all the other things they're purchasing well.

Jon Becker: I've spent my entire adult life in non lethal weapons and the last significant technology was 15 years ago.

Sid Heal: Taser?

Jon Becker: Yep.

Sid Heal: Yep, you're right.

Jon Becker: It was exact.

Sid Heal: Interesting enough, the taser, the new taser is really an adaptation and an improvement on one that had existed before that.

Jon Becker: Yeah, but as you said, it was a game. It's not a brand new technology, it's an evolution of an existing technology.

Sid Heal: That was one of the things I learned by the travel. The travel really opened up my eyes because they would send me to places like Belfast and Dublin and Haifa and Jerusalem and Bostar, where I thought that they would be light years ahead of us in both the thinking and application. In reality, they were struggling with the same problems and the antiquated technology. You're right.

One of the things, when you mentioned the taser was the fact that a lot of the controversy surrounding it in the United States is cultural. It's not unpopular in the United Kingdom. But what's unpopular in the United Kingdom is impact munitions, which are not all that unpopular in the United States.

So it had no basis to do with science and safety and effectiveness. It was people's uneducated opinions, ignorant opinions in many cases. And in some cases I would argue and debate activists from the other side, including in public, and give them scenarios using their strategy as opposed to ours. And we would admit, for instance, that impact munitions are going to cause injury. So too, batons.

The difference is that I may be willing to shoot a man with a knife at 35 or 40 ft with an impact munition.

Jon Becker: Hitting him with a baton.

Sid Heal: I can't reach him with a baton unless I'm willing to accept the risk to my own life.

Jon Becker: And he's dead long before that.

Sid Heal: And that's exactly what's happening. And they have not thought some of these issues through.

Jon Becker: Well, it's interesting because, you know, again, it goes back to the why, right. It goes back to kind of this understanding of doctrine. And I think that that's kind of a good segue for us to talk about how you began to merge or fuse what you had learned in the Marine Corps from a doctrinal standpoint and what you had learned in law enforcement and push those together.

Sid Heal: Probably the best way to explain this is the fact that when I became an officer in the Marine Corps, I had had 10 years as an enlisted for 1978 until 1986, 8 years. I would conservatively estimate that the Marine Corps spent $100,000 on my education before I ever led troops in harm's way.

When I became a captain for the sheriff's department, which is an executive level. I got a handshake and a new badge. It was expected that I had already acquired this knowledge. Without a career path, without any command colleges, without any schools, the Marine Corps would give me material that I was expected to read when I would go to school. I took tests that I was expected to pass.

And if I didn't pass, I could expect not to be promoted again. And within the given time, I could expect to be reduced to harmlessness, is what we'd call it, put to pasture. That mindset drove me into studying for myself as a law enforcement officer, particularly when I became into some decision making authority.

Jon Becker: So that's the genesis of your book, Sound Doctrine, which I think we'll pick up on our next episode.