The number one, most important thing, and I can't emphasize this enough, is we emphasize space. Establishing that space, backing myself out of the situation, keeping my back to the door, knowing my points of egress, knowing how to get myself out of the situation. But at the end of the day, if we're in the back of a rig going 70 miles an hour down the highway, I don't have a lot of places to go.
SPEAKER_01Firehouse Vigilance presents the weekly scrap, a podcast dedicated to the never-ending fight against complacency.
SPEAKER_02Corley Moore, Firehouse Vigilance is weekly scrap number 356. My guest tonight is Jake Heck, firefighter, paramedic. Jake has over a decade in fire and EMS service at the Maplewood Fire Department in Missouri. Before the fire service, Jake served as a U.S. Army Combatives instructor and lead defensive tactics instructor for the Columbia, Missouri PD. He is a UFC veteran with a 20 and 4 professional record. He brings unmatched real-world experience to the classroom. And the thing I am most excited about, and the reason he is coming on tonight, is he is the founder of Vest, First Responder, and has trained more than 3,000 firefighters and EMS professionals in workplace violence survival and mental health response. He is recognized as the foremost authority in workplace violence training for healthcare workers across the country. I'm so excited for this conversation. This is a very unique uh topic that we're going to be discussing. So welcome, Jake Hecht, for Scrap episode number 356. Welcome, my brother.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much. It's an honor to be here. Longtime listener, and uh I really appreciate you having me on.
SPEAKER_02I'm I brother, I really am. I don't know of anybody else talking about this, so I was excited to get you on here and have this discussion. Uh, is there anything you'd like to add? Anything I missed in the intro that you want to tack on?
SPEAKER_00Um, yeah, proud, proud dad of two amazing boys and uh proud husband to a 21-year veteran of the Air Force Air Guard here in Missouri. And uh, she has taught me more about uh leadership and communication than any textbook I've seen yet. So nice, yeah. Proud dad and proud husband. That's why we do it, right?
SPEAKER_02No doubt about it, brother. No doubt about it. Excellent. All right, audience is primed and ready. They are already chiming in the front row gang checking in, the vigilantes checking in, and all the scrappers showing up for this discussion. So it's going to be exciting. So I'm gonna get to the sponsors, I'm gonna get them done so we can get to scrapping. Everything in the fire service gets tested. Training, instincts, equipment. That's why Snaptight designs and builds its fire hose to perform no matter the challenge. Durability, packability, and kink resistance. Every single line is tested before it leaves the factory, so you know you can count on it. Snaptight, it's American made, firefighter trusted. Visit Snaptighthose.com to learn more or find a distributor near you. Firestationfurniture.com, they provide a complete line of quality furniture for your firehouse. They are firefighter owned and operated, they understand the strain firefighters put on furniture and they offer furniture that's built to last. Visit www.fire stationfurniture.com for more information. Y'all on fire. Daniel, he's been on the scrap multiple times. If you want to check out his episodes, if you want to know more about him, but he has he's one of my favorite instructors, and so I want to give him a shout out and say, go check out yawonfire.com. And you can see all the classes he has to offer. You can book him to come into your department, talk about culture, talk about situational awareness. He kind of talks about some of the stuff we're talking about today, but not necessarily the actual uh survival training. So, with all that being said, of course, if you're not a vigilante, why not? Vigilantes, uh the Discord, it's amazing. Go to patreon.com slash the vigilantes B1 and join the discussion, man. It's so amazing. So, all that being said, sponsors are done, and we focus on Jake. You started Vest.
SPEAKER_00That's right, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I just want to kick it right there and say what uh just tell first of all, tell the audience what VEST is for those who aren't aware and where it came from. Go ahead.
SPEAKER_00Vest violent encounter survival training. Um, you know, going way, way, way back years back, I was a high school history teacher and um taught ninth grade American history and economics, wanted to rewrite the curriculum of the teacher that I inherited class from. So made built a whole new curriculum for them. So um was teaching for about a year, and uh I was also involved in mixed martial arts fighting professionally at the time. And my coach said, Hey man, like if you want to make a run at this, I think you can. So I didn't want to look back when I was 40. I mean, at the time I was young, 22, 23, and I want to look back when I was 40 and 42 now, so it's kind of ironic. So um didn't want to look back and wonder how far I could have gone. So I quit my full-time paid teaching job and started running an MMA gym and managing fighters and and all that. So had a bunch of pro fights, fought over in London, had a pretty fun, bloody mess of a fight, and uh got along with the promoter. Promoter said, Hey, do you want to run my gym in Ireland? So I said, Yeah, I moved to Ireland, lived there for about two years. While I lived there, uh got signed by the UFC. So um fought in the UFC, fought and won on the John Jones Macheta card in Canada, and uh was living the life and uh had a couple more fights, lost a couple decisions, a couple didn't go my way on a submission. So they said, you know, have some more regional fights, we'll have you back, and um decided to give up fighting and uh pursue personal training. One of my clients as a personal trainer was a St. Louis County firefighter. He said, Hey, you should try firefighting, it's pretty cool. So I did, and it is. And um, very early in my career, about a month in, working at a uh busy uh I would call it urban uh firehouse. We went to a small little motel room where there was a little 20-something-year-old girl sitting in a chair rocking back and forth, talking to a toaster. Okay, and we we walked in and uh my partner knelt down beside her and asked her how you know what her name was, what was going on. And without any sign of vegetation, without any sign of anything, she came out of the chair, knocked him down, started clawing at his face, trying to bite his face, trying to choke him and stuff. I was like, Whoa, cops were in the room with us, pulled her off of him, and uh I was like, Hey man, like are you good? And he's like, Yeah, I'm fine. Like, what like are you good? Like, you just got like I mean your face is all scratched up, like, what's going on, man? He's like, dude, it's no big deal, it happens all the time. I'm like, what do you mean it happens all the time? And I had no idea.
SPEAKER_02So this was your first like call with with violence, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, okay, okay. So um which you're no stranger to violence, but yeah, but I thought that I thought I was done. I thought I was done with the violence, right? So I thought I was helping people. So um, you know, afterwards I asked, uh it was it blew my mind that you know, first responders got assaulted or that dealt with dealt with violence or anything like that. So I asked probably 200 firefighters around the St. Louis area, hey, what would you do if you were involved in a violent encounter? And of all 200 I asked, I got two answers. Do you know what they are? Hit them with something tough.
SPEAKER_02I was gonna say hit them with something.
SPEAKER_00That's the only two answers I got. And I don't think that I don't that's not a knock on any St. Louis firefighters or anything. I think it's just an uneducated guess as far as how to get out of the situation. And so, me, uh coming from the background that I came from of building curriculums and also having a history of dealing with violence, I came up with a curriculum of how to handle those situations. So, over the past, I don't know how many years now, we've taken hundreds of hours of crisis communication, suicide intervention, behavioral health communication uh classes to learn how to communicate through those situations to avoid the violent encounters from happening, but then also the hands-on component of controlling those situations to get ourselves out of that situation safely.
SPEAKER_02Right on. And that is the origin of Vest.
SPEAKER_00That's where it started. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Right on. And I I would I would be in the same boat if you asked me, you know, like I would say, well, find the hardest object I could get my hands on that I could swing with some velocity. Yeah, and use it.
SPEAKER_00So that's kind of the question that I ask. That's kind of the opening question I ask whenever I get in front of a room of firefighters is you know, raise your hand if you've been, and I I asked this to your audience right now. Raise your hand if you've been yelled at on a call. Cussed at on a call.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, put it in chat. Put it in chat. Say one, two, three if you've been if uh well, answer his question with a one, two, three if it's affirmative for you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So yelled at on a call, cussed on a call, threatened on a call, pushed, spit at, punched, slapped, full on wrestling match, knife pulled, gun pulled. Every room I've ever been in, 100% of people raise their hand at some line during that line of questioning. So it's 100% of us have been involved in a violent encounter. And then my next question is what are you doing to stop that from happening?
SPEAKER_02Right. And what and what and what do you get? What do you get? Just blank stairs at that point, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Because there's no there's no standardized education or no standardized training for how to get ourselves out of the situation. And the comparison I always make just to show the validity of the class is so I'll ask you the opening question. Do you think in the fire service maydays are 100% avoidable? Maydays, yeah, like we could do, we could do something where we would never have a Mayday again.
SPEAKER_02No, absolutely not.
SPEAKER_00I agree. But do you think that we would have more maydays if we never trained on hose deployment, uh building construction, reading smoke, staying with a partner? We train on all these things to prevent the Mayday from happening.
SPEAKER_02Best way to mitigate a Mayday to mitigate the chances of a Mayday is is high competence in the in the basics. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00So we do all these things to prevent the Mayday from happening, but at the end of the day, they still happen. So then we know how to handle them. We we know we're gonna do our grab lives or our Lunar or whatever acronym we're gonna use to get ourselves out of that situation. And if we had never had that training before, that would be a real butt-puckering moment for us. We'd never had that training before. So that's what that's what our training does is it it prepares us to be involved in those situations and how to prevent the situation as much as we can. Everyone always says it's a self-defense class, not a self-defense class at all, it's a communications class. Okay, it's it's way easier for us to communicate with the patient to prevent that from even happening, as opposed to going hands-on with them.
SPEAKER_02Right on, right on. Um, so let's let's go from that to the training gap. I want to move right. I mean, we're gonna cover a lot of information here. I think this is gonna be one of those scraps that has a lot of information people are gonna have to listen to multiple times and take notes on. So talk to me about the training gap and what you mean when you say there is a training gap.
SPEAKER_00The training gap is everywhere I go and I ask them, what training have you had on de-escalation, crisis communication, uh, communicating with behavioral health calls and things like that. I I get blank stares because it doesn't exist. There's no standardized training for how to handle these situations, how to prevent such a prevalent problem. You know, health healthcare workers are 22 times more likely to be involved in a violent encounter than any other industry in the country, which was a surprising stat to me. I would have thought it would have been police officers. Sure. So then my question was why isn't it police officers? And the answer is physical consequences, tasers, mace, nights, guns, uh, also legal consequences of if you hit a cop, you're going to jail. And, you know, one topic I want to cover maybe a little bit more, you know, later in the conversation is the culture that we have of being involved in violent encounters. And you know, an open-ended question I always ask is have you ever seen a police officer be assaulted and then not report it and say, ah, that's just part of the job. That's just yeah, you know, my frequent flyer, I get him all the time. He punches me or hits me or spits at me all the time, it's no big deal. It never happens, right? They report it every time, so why don't we?
SPEAKER_02That's just the the difference in the culture of the exactly. No, I get it. I've never thought about it until you bring it up, but you're 100% correct.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. But I can it's just it just is just the way it is, you know. And I I don't understand it. I don't understand why we do it. I don't understand why why that is the culture, uh, but it is, and I'm I'm really working hard. That's that's my main drive in in my class is to change that culture and to get us reporting those things and and making those making those reports, making those calls, and collecting that data. And we can talk more about that as as we kind of progress.
SPEAKER_02Right on. No. Uh in the article you you sent, and it's a great article, it's on Firefighter Nation, correct?
SPEAKER_00Uh, I sent it to Firefighters. Okay, okay. I don't know if they've published it yet.
SPEAKER_02Okay, okay, fair enough. Uh, in your article, you point out if you ask a room full of firefighters, yeah, that they all they absolutely every hand goes up. Uh, but yet, like you just talked about the culture, it's just part of the job. We just say, yeah, that's that's what happens. It's just part of the job. Why do you think the we've normalized violence so much more than almost any other profession? Where we just I take it.
SPEAKER_00I don't, I don't have an answer. I think there's a lot of things that go into that. I think it's uh a culture that we've had. I think part of it has to do with leadership, I think part of it has to do with ego, um, you know, where I'm not gonna make a big deal out of this, you know, what whatever. Um, or you know, part of it is time. You know, I I go to a lot of busy fire departments and say, hey, we need to be reporting this. And they say, I just I just filled out this report. I'm not gonna. So my question is, and we'll kind of dive right into it. Uh I ask everyone, I I want to find out the lowest ranking person in the room and ask them, what does a violent encounter look like at your department? And the answer I almost always get is I do a really good job documenting my narrative. I'm like, great, who reads your narrative? And they're like, uh my medical officer, I think. Like, and then where does it go? Like, what happens? If it doesn't cause work comp, where's it go?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, just file 13, but it was just in the file cabinet and forgotten.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So that's why in in response to that, in response to that, I created firstresponderviolence.com. It's a site that you can go to to report violent encounters, and I made it all drop-down boxes. It's it takes 90 seconds to make the report. It's all drop-down boxes to say what happened because we need to be collecting this data. We need to know that this is happening. And and at the end of the day, data is power. And at the end of the report, after you make it, uh, there's three boxes you can click. One is do you want your admin to know about this? You click yes. Also, there's a login for admins. Let's say that your department wants to sign up and and your chief or your whoever signs up and puts in their email address, they'll get a notification saying a member from your fire department made a uh data link on uh or an encounter on firstresminderviolence.com. Click here to view the report, and then you can view everything that they put in there. Also, do you want to make a police report? And then it gives a space to put an email address to send a police report, and then they'll respond to that email saying, Hey, did someone from your agency make a violent encounter report? And then the the big one that we've been working on is peer support. Do you want peer support?
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00Here in Missouri, we have an amazing peer support network to link them up with people who can help them right away. And all the emails are linked on there. It's tough for me to go through every country and link in all of that, those states' peer supports. So we've joined with uh Good Guys Bad Thoughts, which is a veteran-run uh organization out of Louisiana that have volunteers that man their phones 24-7 that can steer them, that can get them linked up with a peer support member at any time.
SPEAKER_02Oh wow, nationwide. Okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So and it it divides them up as far as veteran, first responder, paramedic, firefighter, and you can click those boxes to get linked with a peer support member of that status.
SPEAKER_02And that is first responderviolence.com.
SPEAKER_00That's right. That's where you can make the report.
SPEAKER_02That's not just fire, that's fire ems.
SPEAKER_00I mean in nurses, fire EMS, D dispatch, uh, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Or is it just first responders? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Which it's in the title, first responderviolence.com. Uh excellent, excellent. And it is, it is chronically underreported. I can't think of a single time I uh other than put it again, like you said, in the narrative, maybe, which yeah, and I don't know.
SPEAKER_00And so the big the big stat, you know, that I like to focus on is you know, we're we're 22 times more likely to be involved in a violent encounter than any other industry in the country. There's a reported of you know 18,000 violent encounters that happen annually to first responders. Uh, and according to the stats, 49% don't get reported.
SPEAKER_02So that's 9,000 if I'm doing quick guerrilla math every year.
SPEAKER_00Uh that that's an extra 18,000.
SPEAKER_02Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Okay. So yeah, don't get reported. Because we're not even, you're just talking 18,000 is just what's reported.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Okay, okay. Yeah. See, I'm I'm quick.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, it's like I said, it's a chronic problem. And uh, you know, it what what are we doing to fix it? You know, uh I it's it shouldn't be part of the job. And and the comparison I make to that is if we say it's part of the job, have you ever gone to a restaurant and or imagine that you go to a restaurant and they bring you chicken instead of steak and you flip the table over and smack the waitress? You would go to jail, right? Right? Or you're at your son or daughter's parent-teacher conference and they're like, Yeah, Johnny's really struggling at math, and you get mad and cuss her out and spit in her face. You would go to jail.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00So why are we ah, it's a Tuesday, it just it just happened to be.
SPEAKER_02No, it's it's a it's a it's an awesome, awesome question.
SPEAKER_00And I and I understand the mental health side of things, and I understand, you know, the the main comment I get is if I press charges, it won't go anywhere. Well, if you don't press charges, I promise you it won't go anywhere.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00So, and I understand it's the behavioral health thing, but in certain states that we've been exploring, there's behavioral health cases that you can make to get consequences towards these patients, because that's one of the reasons why we are one of the most uh assaulted uh career uh career avenues in the country is because there's no consequences. Right.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely no, no, yeah, nothing.
SPEAKER_00So that that's another thing that that I've been working on uh you know legislatively is to get so in Missouri, there's a special victims unit for assault on first responders where it's the same penalty as assault on a police officer. So I'm working on getting that nationwide. Uh, for example, we were just at the IFF conference, the uh second district or fifth district conference in Minnesota. And in Minnesota, uh they had a violent encounter on a first responder that uh it could have done a lot of harm to that first responder, and um the maximum sentence was nine months in jail.
SPEAKER_02Oh wow.
SPEAKER_00And like that that's a that's a slap on the wrist for almost killing someone.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00So like we we need stricter, stricter uh consequences for these these violent encounters.
SPEAKER_02No doubt about it. Uh I want to get in. There's so much I want to touch on. Uh because you talked you talked about of course peer support, and then uh you talked about uh but uh when do physical options start? Like because I know that that's just this big giant gray area. Yeah, I know I know that you know EMS uses chemical restraint at times and things like that, but uh I don't know of any departments that train at all for physical options. I mean, maybe very, very few, but I can't think of anybody who systemically has it built into their their their protocols. Uh what you what I guess I I want to go to the common administrative objections because that's probably what a lot of people are thinking about. Is what would my chief say about this? Yeah, violent encounter. Yeah, what's the the common objections?
SPEAKER_00So, yeah, so you talked about when we need to go physical. So with each state that we go to, we research the self-defense laws for that state, the castle doctrine for that state, and the duty to retreat in that state. Some states are duty to retreat states where they say if it's physically safe for you to retreat the situation, you are obligated to do so. Whereas other states are a stand your ground state where if you have any any place that you have the right to be, you have the right to defend yourself in that place. And so I always say, uh, do we have the right to be in the places that we're called? So do we have the right to be in a patient's living room or do we have the right to be in a patient's front yard? Do we have the right to be in the back of the ambulance? We have the right to be in all those places. So we have the right to, if we are physically threatened or physically assaulted, we have the right to defend ourselves in those situations. And one thing I do want to focus on is we have to like one of the big things that we teach in class is what's called a safety profile. So my safety profile, being six foot tall, 220 pounds, and have being trained in mixed martial arts for 10 years, is different than a safety profile of a 110-pound uh female EMS provider who's only been in the job for two weeks. We have different safety profiles and we need to respond differently based on the threat that we see. But then the safety profile also goes towards the person who's in front of us. A safety profile for a 25-year-old intoxicated male who's drunk and has cauliflower ears is different than a safety profile for an 87-year-old female with Alzheimer's dementia who's aggressive towards us. So we need to uh establish what that safety profile is and what the risk for us is in that situation, and then respond appropriately to that. And the other thing we talk about is our reason what are our resources? So we talked about police officers, their resources are mace, tasers, nice, nights, guns, all those things. Our resources are physical and chemical restraint. So, how are we going to use those things? Are we going to employ those resources? Because I've I've heard from a lot of different firefighters, well, my resource is I'm going to hit the red button on my radio.
SPEAKER_02Radio.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And my question then is what happens when you hit that red button?
SPEAKER_02The dispatch comes over. Hey, did you mean to hit that?
SPEAKER_00Exactly right. Every time if you have 220-pound mail sitting on your chest, punching you in the face, that's not exactly the best response that you want. So us utilizing those resources, the hands-on techniques that we focus on is the number one most important thing, and I I can't emphasize this enough, is we emphasize space. Establishing that space, backing myself out of the situation, keeping my back to the door, knowing my points of egress, knowing how to get myself out of the situation. But at the end of the day, if we're in the back of a rig going 70 miles an hour down the highway, I don't have a lot of places to go. So in that situation, I'm going to eliminate all the space and I'm going to hold on to that patient using leverage and using jujitsu techniques to hold that patient in place so that I can utilize those resources, which are chemical and physical restraint.
SPEAKER_02Beautiful. No, no, it makes complete sense when you break it down. Are you ready for some questions coming at you from the audience, or is there more points you want to make on that topic right there? I mean, but we can we can circle around and go on deep.
SPEAKER_00So you know, just kind of the the question you ask of the most common.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yes. I do want to hit on that. Yes.
SPEAKER_00Uh, you know, a lot of administrators say, well, I don't want you to teach my guys how to fight. Right. And and we couldn't be further from doing that. We're teaching them how to get themselves out of a situation safely. And, you know, I would say that it's unsafe to let your personnel go into these situations that we see so frequently uneducated on the topic. You know, we talked about Maydays. It would be unsafe for you to let a fire company go not knowing how to read smoke, not knowing anything about building construction, not knowing about how to stay with a partner, not knowing about hose deployment. If if we let them go in a situation like that, that would be unsafe. We want to teach them how to handle these situations because we know they're going to happen. So we're not by any means teaching them how to be aggressive. It's quite the opposite. We're teaching them how to back out of that situation.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00The other objection I get is uh I'll have I'll have PD teach my guys how to do this. Right. I I reference PD using defensive tactics on lowering their numbers. So it works for them. And it and it works on in their de-escalation and works for a lot of situations, but we wear different hats. We it is not the same job. So the comparison I always make is I wouldn't have the stewardess teach the pilot how to fly.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00They're both on the plane, but they have different jobs and they have different responsibilities. So we teach something that's very that's focused on firefighters, EMS, what our job roles are, how to do those things. And the last objection I get is we're good. My guys don't need it, they got it. And that's just ego talking. Right. That's just why why wouldn't we train on this? Why wouldn't we know how to handle these situations in the most professional, legal way?
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_02No, no.
SPEAKER_00So I I I hope that answers your question as no, it does.
SPEAKER_02And and and the big thing there that you put on at the end is in a not just professional, that's very important. Don't get me wrong, I'm all about professionals and they're doing it right, but you said in a legal way, because when you start talking about the the council laws, the stand your ground, the what would you say, the duty to I'm from Oklahoma.
SPEAKER_00Duty to retreat.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, duty to retreat.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so the uh the opposite of duty to retreat would be a stand your ground state. So Missouri is a stand your ground state, and uh the the two states that that you focus on the most as far as like a duty to retreat state are uh Minnesota and Illinois. And they're not at the end of the day, duty to retreat is just kind of like a catchphrase because at the end of the day, if you're in a situation where you cannot retreat, you still are able to defend yourself and able to uh prevent yourself from getting hurt in the situation. And that's like I said, using some of those tactics to prevent the encounter from even happening and and also to use those hands-on techniques to use our resources, physical and chemical restraint.
SPEAKER_02Right on, right on. No, no, it makes complete sense. First question coming at you from the audience, which is Taylor Anderson. She wants to know question, what has been your most common push? And we've you just touched on this, so that's uh go ahead. Common pushback for with Vest, and how have you worked through that to keep spreading the mission?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I mean, the the common pushbacks are kind of what we just talked about, as far as you know, we'll have PD do it, um, or or I don't want you to teach my guys how to fight. And I would encourage any admin that thinks that I'm teaching their guys how to fight or their guys to to be combative, to sit in on a class and and just see what we're doing and what we're going over. And it couldn't be further from us teaching them to be the aggressor. It's quite the opposite. We're teaching them how to talk themselves out of the situation. And it's a communications class, it's way more communications class than it is a self-defense class. But it's it's all about getting ourselves out of that situation as safely and as legally as possible. You know, one aspect that we haven't discussed yet is in all three levels of our class, we talk about defensive documentation. So I had the opportunity to sit down with two uh attorneys, one's a plaintiff attorney and one's a defense attorney for uh healthcare workers and what the narrative needs to look like when you're involved in a violent encounter to properly document what happens on these calls and and how to use that documentation to say, you know, I was afraid for my safety. I I used and we and we also, after an agency takes our class, we give them kind of a template SOG, which is a forced continuum of we use our de-escalation strategies, we used our scene safety strategies, we used, you know, all these different aspects to prevent a violent encounter from happening. And at the end of the day, sometimes patients choose violence. And and when they choose that, I use the least amount least invasive possible, least invasive technique possible to control the situation to prevent any harm to come uh to the first responder.
SPEAKER_02Right on. Okay. Great questions. Keep them coming, Taylor. Matt says, and I don't know, I Sam's pulling the questions, and Sam is watching your questions and encouraging you to send more. From the departments that have implemented VEST, how many have said that their violent encounters have lowered or had better outcomes than before? Is there any sort of feedback on the on the inner?
SPEAKER_00So so every department, so normally we have three levels of training. So in level one, we talk about the foundations, seeing safety. We touch on behavioral health, the six most common behavioral health calls. And just to touch on that a little bit more, uh, I've taken, like I said, hundreds of hours of behavioral health classes. And I got sick of going to these behavioral health classes, and they say, these are the signs and symptoms of Alzheimer's, these are the signs and symptoms of schizophrenia. These are the signs I don't need to, I understand I need to know the signs and symptoms. I need to know how to communicate with that patient to put them at ease and lower my risk in those situations. So in level one, we talk about uh the scene safety tactics, our behavioral health calls, a little bit of defensive documentation. It's just kind of a broad overview and to establish a foundation. Then about six to 12 months later, we come back for level two. Level two talks about it, it focuses a lot on our mental health. So, first responder mental health, peer support, where the peer support came from, how we can get those situations. And the reason we put that in was because violent encounters can be one of the most traumatic calls we'll ever run.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00And how how we can get through that and how we can keep them on the job, and how we can keep them mentally healthy in order to keep doing the job. And then level three is all scenarios. So it's all very, very tough scenarios of like, if you can get through this scenario, you can get through just about anything. So it's about eight to ten scenarios of just like how are we going to get out of this situation? You really it makes you make them think about what they're doing and all the things that they've learned from the past 12 months, put those into play. But the point of that is the the agencies that we've been to, after we come back after that for level two, I put a big, you know, book on there and says, story time and and tell me a story of a violent encounter that's happened. And the most common response that I get is we're not there. They know these red flags, they know these signs of agitation, they're paying attention to there now, they're more adept as far as looking at that scene and knowing when a patient's going to become aggressive and they they're out of the situation. Because we need to establish when a sit when a patient when a patient changes from a patient to an assailant. And we need to make sure that we are safe through establishing that space and backing ourselves out of that situation.
SPEAKER_02And that's what level one starts establishing is giving them that awareness, that recognition, and then and then and those six six common behavioral issues. What how'd you how'd you phrase that?
SPEAKER_00The six the six most common behavioral health calls that we'll run. So schizophrenia, bipolar, Alzheimer's dementia, substance abuse, depression, and uh anxiety.
SPEAKER_02Nice, nice. And you've basically, like you said, you've taken hundreds of hours and you've threw them all in a pot and melted them down and said, here's here's what to here's the down and dirty version.
SPEAKER_00Exactly right. So we we kind of we kind of dissect each one of those calls and what is particular to that different patient population and how to communicate with that particular patient population and and what is what is most common for them and how to communicate with them to get ourselves out of the situation and put them at ease.
SPEAKER_02Right on. Okay, I'll get some more questions coming at you because I want to I I love involving the audience, but man, there's so I mean, this is all it's like drinking from a LDA, you know, just a ton of information. Uh great question, Matt. Thank you for that. Ryan Woodruff is the next one. He says, What can you do when in transport patient goes from zero to a hundred in rapid violence escalation? And I think he even said in YouTube, you actually answered this with the with the eliminate space, right?
SPEAKER_00Exactly right. Yeah. So there's techniques that we go over. So we go over um, you know, establishing that space as much as we can, but all the techniques that we show in the back of the ambulance, so we so you know, breaking this down a little further, in response to all these violent encounters this past year, 2026, NFPA passed uh a legislation on four fit on amendment 455, 2026 edition, which says that every firefighter and EMS provider nationwide needs to be trained in de-escalation strategies as well as hands-on techniques in standing, bedside, and grounded positions. So those bedside positions that we show are all from the bench seat and how we can control those situations. So um, you know, because that is the first responder.
SPEAKER_02We're not actually bedside, typically.
SPEAKER_00I mean, yeah, yeah, typically, yeah. So bedside is on the bench seat with the strength. Exactly right. So, you know, some of those techniques and some of those success stories are that a week after we rolled this out for a very large agency in the Midwest, uh, they had a knife pull um on one of their subjects, and the patient wrist locked the patient, took the knife away, handed to his partner before the police officer could even draw his gun while they were still on scene. So, you know, whenever I hear about these stories, I it's it's field tested. I know it works. I know it works because I've done it. I've done it on calls, and and I've had 3,000 responders write to me and say, Hey, I did this, this worked. Hey, I did this, this worked. And even more than that, what's even more positive to hear is hey, I de-escalated the situation before it even got to that point.
SPEAKER_02Right on. No, I love it. No, and uh great. Uh great stuff. Fireman Piv, Kyle Piverall coming at says, when LEO is not on scene or arriving, but not there, how can we as non-confrontational part of first response deal with violence when talking does not work?
SPEAKER_00I guess I need some more details on that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I don't know. If I don't know if there's enough there to answer it, but you can take it whatever direction you want.
SPEAKER_00So let let's say let's go for an example that uh we have arrived on scene, police are not there. So it depends on agency to agency because I've been to a lot of agencies where they will not go on scene until law enforcement gets there, which I think is a great tactic to have.
SPEAKER_02That's another thing that I'm trying to work on as far as a national side of things, as far as are you saying they don't go on scene when it's a suspected violence or suspected like any scene, any scene, period? Yeah, like it just like elevated heart rate, yeah.
SPEAKER_00They won't go on scene unless PD is there.
SPEAKER_02Is that just okay, okay?
SPEAKER_00I've also been to agencies where they don't ever get PD.
SPEAKER_01Well, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So, or you know, the the the one of the first questions I ask whenever I get to an agency is if you can have police handle violent encounters, have police handle violent encounters, what is your police response like?
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00And the variety of answers I get to that question boggles my mind.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Um, you know, a lot of agencies say that their police are so hands-off that they know that nothing's gonna happen. I've heard other agencies say that the police amp them up and and get them going and escalate the situation. So, you know, at the end of the day, I always tell people that if we can play good cop, bad cop where we are the good cop, that's always kind of the route to go to kind of de-escalate situations as far as like, hey, I don't I don't even want to get them involved. Like, let's I think we can work this out. I think that we can figure this out. You know, why don't we just let's let's let's go talk over here and I think we can figure this out without getting them involved. And so if we play the good cop on that and try and be the positive light in that, normally we get people to to go our way, but you know, going more towards that question, if the patient is amped up and uh law enforcement's not there, leave. Keep your back towards the door, back yourself out of the situation, back up, radio. This scene is no longer safe. We will stage down the street, leave. Don't be there.
SPEAKER_02Right on, and that leads right into Rob Reed's question because this is I know there's so much legality and so different states and everything else, but Rob Reed wants to know when it comes to retreating, what's our legal obligation from that point to the patient and abandonment?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it depends. State to state is different for sure. And so that would be the uh a state to state question. Um, but at the end of the day, uh I haven't been to an agency yet where if a first fire EMS personnel does not feel safe on the call and they retreat from the situation, I've not seen an admin yet say, you should have stuck that out a little bit more. I wish you would have stayed in there and really hung in there. So, you know, as far as pushback from your agency, I haven't seen that yet. Um, but at the end of the day, let's play this whole tape out. And let's say that I have a violent patient that's good that's coming towards me and I'm trying to back myself out of the situation, and I back in the front yard or I keep that space, or I retreat all the way and I drive down the street and stage until police get there. Once police get there and the scene is controlled, and I come back onto the scene and I render care to that patient, we're good to go, right? Or let's play it out even further. And law enforcement, you know, can't get control of the situation, and maybe I can come in and like I said, be good cop in that situation, say, hey man, like I know things have been going your way with police. Like, I I want to get you out of the situation, I want to help you out. Let's get you the mental health that you need or the physical help that you need. I can tell that you're a person that cares a lot about what's going on here, and I want to help you out in this situation. So, you know, like I said, let's let's play that tape out and see how far it goes. But at the end of the day, we have to keep ourselves safe in that situation. We we don't have to just put our head down and and keep running forward and and hope for the best.
SPEAKER_02No, yeah. It's a lot of stuff that I've never uh you think about, but you never break down and process systemize, you know.
SPEAKER_00And so I agree. A lot of people don't break down and and systemize it the way that we are doing, and a lot of that comes from and I don't want this to come off wrong, but our ego.
SPEAKER_02Oh, without a doubt.
SPEAKER_00You know, I I can't tell you how many times a patient will step to uh a first responder and then they step forward. It's like, what are you why are we doing this? What are you gonna prove by by doing this? Just back yourself out of the situation, like just just keep yourself like back off. Like, who why not? So, like that's that's some of the de-escalation that we we talk about.
SPEAKER_02So Luke Stevenson coming at you from down under. He wants to know. I wish I could do a good Australian accent, but I don't have one. What are your thoughts? What are your thoughts about firefighters carrying handguns? I've heard some do on the rig or on their person. Is it just adding another risk to the mix?
SPEAKER_00It absolutely is adding a bigger risk. So I've done defensive tactics for police officers, and more than half of the class is gun retention. So, you know, keeping your right hip back or how you stand or how you turn or like you know, turning on those things. And it just brings it it brings another another element to the the the fight that you do not want to have. So I I cannot, so I I think, and I'm not 100% sure, but I think that it might be agency to agency, but I think in departments in Texas and Florida that you might be allowed to carry in some of those states or some of those agencies. Um, and I I can't encourage them enough not to do that because it just brings, like I said, and it we have to think about what we are bringing to the party. Sure. And and every first responder that I know carries a knife in one of their pockets or shears or whatever. We have to think about what we are bringing to the party, and we have to be cognizant about having those things and keeping those things away from a violent encounter, right?
SPEAKER_02Especially some of those are the six common behaviors, some of them, especially.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh great questions. Uh Jeremy Humphrey, Hump himself, out of Missouri. What is the time frame for the three classes you offer? And how are they typically scheduled or spread out?
SPEAKER_00So typically we do between six and 12 months between each class. And the reason that we do that is like we've talked about, it's so much information, and it's kind of a new way of thinking about responding to these calls and a new way of operating that we in in giving them this information, we want them to have time to put these things into practice.
SPEAKER_02So it's an acclamation.
SPEAKER_00Yes, exactly right. So normally it's about six to 12 months apart on the classes and and how we break them up. So, yes, we give them enough time to put these things into practice and then build upon those skills as we go.
SPEAKER_02So, if someone wanted to book a class, and I I usually ask this at the end, but since we're on the topic of the classes, uh, best way to get information on booking a class and seeing about bringing you into their agency, what is the best? Is it is it the first responderviolence.com?
SPEAKER_00Vestfirstresponder.com.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so it is different.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, vest.
SPEAKER_02So that's the other one is just the data collection.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, just yeah, it's completely separate. So that's just data collection. So Vest First Responder, all my contact information is on there. So the way that we are kind of tiering things out now is we are currently in about 10 states, and within those states, we have a representative. So we we bring someone through a train the trainer class. So let's say a larger agency sends, we normally say a good ratio is to have one trainer per hundred members in in your agency. So let's say we have a bigger agency, for example, Kansas City, Missouri has uh 1,300 members, they sent 16 trainers through the to the train the trainer program. So with that, you know, we have some standout trainers in in those programs, and then they can be a representative for that state. So in the state of Kansas, they can roll it out in Kansas. So then I will contact the state of Kansas and their EMS board and find out what we need to do to be able to give out CEUs in that state. And then we'll also contact that if it's a fire marshal's office or a state office to see if we can get the class funded, because we check so many boxes on OSHA, NFPA, all these things for firefire safety to see if we can get this class funded in those states for smaller departments to get it to get a trainer into those programs and roll up the curriculum for those departments.
SPEAKER_02Which both of those things are phenomenal, but specifically I want to dig in on CEUs. Have you had success getting CE like uh EMS CEUs even? And and yeah. Oh, that's so as of right now.
SPEAKER_00As of right now, we can give out CEUs in Missouri, Illinois, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and currently working on the 5th district, uh, Minnesota, South Dakota, uh, Wisconsin, and uh those those four states up there, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin. And then I've had a lot of interest from some southern states, Louisiana, Texas, Georgia. Uh, we're doing another train the trainer session here in St. Louis June 18th. Still have some open spots available, which are gonna be booked up by those states. Like I said, we just got back from the IFF uh conference up in Minnesota last week. And so those spots, a lot of those spots are gonna be booked up pretty soon, but still have some open spots. So if you can get someone from your agency to come here to St. Louis to get through the train trainer program, bring this back to your agency. Still have some open spots for June 18th. We do them about every other month. So it'll be June 18th, and then we have another one, I think the second week of September.
SPEAKER_02Right on. Okay, and there's questions on this, but I wanted to do like the I can't think of anything more boring than than an EMS refresher, usually typically, because they're they're just to check the box training. So to actually have something like this that would be beneficial and kind of CEUs would be amazing. To follow up, uh, yeah, okay. I got you, Ken. Ken Schofield, I got your question. It is VestFirstresponder.com. I said that right, correct?
SPEAKER_00That's right. V E S T first responder.
SPEAKER_02Matthew KFD coming out. He said, question to be a train the trainer, do you already have to have the one, two, three levels of classes?
SPEAKER_00So we did the do to do the train the trainer, we start, we do level one, it's all in one day. So once you're a level one trainer, you bring it back to your agency, you roll out level one. You come back, do level two training. We we go through the level two training and it's all day. So in the the beginning of class, we spend four hours and they go through the class as if they're a normal fire EMS professional. We're under the mentality of see one, do one, teach one. So they're gonna see the class as if they're a normal fire EMS professional, sitting through the first four hour class like a normal class. Break for lunch, come back. We we go through each slide. I give them the whole slide deck, I give them pre written out notes. And a binder, and I give them all the templates, all the background reading that I've done, and just give them a breakdown as far as like a quick education on all the different aspects that we're going to touch on. And then we break down each one of those slides and the main component of what issue we're trying to talk about or what concept we're trying to get across. I the last thing I want is for them to memorize my two or two and a half hour didactic presentation. I want them to make it applicable to their agency.
SPEAKER_02Sure, sure.
SPEAKER_00So as we dissect each concept of this, we talk about how that can apply to their agency or what they've done in their agency or what they've done in their career. And the most common question I get, and I I want to kind of you know make sure that I get this out there a lot of admins like, well, I got this guy who fought MMA for 10 years, he'd be a great guy, or I got this guy who was a boxer for 10 years, he'd be a great guy. And I tell them I appreciate that, and I appreciate the hands-on part. I need good communicators. I need good educators because you know, sometimes I get these guys who have been wrestlers for 10 years or MMA fighters, and they can barely string a sentence together. I'm like, I need you to teach for two and a half hours. Can you do that?
SPEAKER_02Right. I don't need an arm bar here.
SPEAKER_00I need Yeah, exactly. The hands-on component is way easier to teach than the teaching part of it is. So I, you know, if I have good communicators, good leaders, that's that's the route to go. And the hands-on part will come.
SPEAKER_02And I think one of my biggest takeaways from this is that it is a communications class. And I think you've stressed that enough throughout the doc. Uh, and you also said like level three, it's all scenarios, scenarios, scenarios, scenarios.
SPEAKER_00We talk about some things, and it's more of like more the culture change of getting people to report these things and getting people to uh change the culture around that. And you know, we talk about some some issues that don't get talked about a lot. For example, turning your ambulance off and bringing the keys with you. It's a it's a mind-boggling concept that no one does. And we, you know, we talk, I talk about you know, all the different ambulance thefts and how common it is for an ambulance to be stolen and things like that, and how well how that looks to the public when your ambulance is stolen. When you didn't just, you know, and we go through all the different security systems that you could have on there and how what a painstaking process it is if someone wrecks your ambulance or drives into a building in your community or hurts someone else in the process, right? And all the different domino effects of that happening. So we talk about different aspects of that in level three, but like I said, the hands-on component in each component we review level one, level two, and then level three, like I said, is all scenarios and it's uh it's very educational.
SPEAKER_02Right on, right on. No, I mean I'm very intrigued. Uh Luke Stevenson, I think he kind of covered that a little bit, but uh Luke Stevenson again coming at you from Australia as an individual and in prep for trying to get a vest class booked. So as an individual and in prep preparation for trying to get a vest class booked, what kind of martial arts would you recommend learning?
SPEAKER_00Um jujitsu. Jiu Jitsu for sure. Yeah, I mean, wrestle wrestling jujitsu, it's gonna be hard for him to come across like folk style wrestling in Australia, but uh yeah, ju ju jitsu would be the main main component. We we don't teach any striking, we don't teach any, there's no striking at all in any of this. Um, it's not necessary. We we just need to, like I said, establish all the space or eliminate all the space. And when we eliminate all that space, uh, you know, there's certain different techniques that we go over as far as like how to hold someone in a safe way where we can utilize our our physical or chemical restraints. So jujitsu would be ideal, um, but certainly not necessary. Like I said, the hands-on components is very easy to teach, the classroom component, as far as being an instructor, being a presence in the classroom is is harder to teach.
SPEAKER_02Right on, right on. Uh team Woodruff says, Dispatch does a decent job of vetting calls, but how many times do you show up and it's a whole different call than you thought you were getting into?
SPEAKER_00So that's one of the components that I wanted to add to the first responderviolence.com site was that if you're involved in a violent encounter, you can report that address or report that call or report that to flag that on dispatch. But the amount of roadblocks and headaches and everything else that I mean, just in Missouri, I think there's 600 different dispatching agencies just in Missouri, and they all have different rules as far as how you communicate with them and how how you can flag an address and all that. And plus, in order for me, so I I pay for this website out of my pocket to and it's free. Any admin can sign up for it, any person can get on there and and you know register a call or whatever. I pay for that out of my pocket. For me to have a HIPAA compliance site, it was thousands of dollars a month. And so I just the red tape, yeah. Yeah, so um, but but as far as you know getting that information from dispatch, you know, we we go over that actually in one of the one of the calls in level one, as far as like your scene safety is a fluid concept and it's changing all the time. You know, those of us have been to paramedic school, BSI, scene safe, the scene's gonna stay safe forever, right? Yeah, always it's in concrete, yeah, exactly. It can change so fast. We talk about what EMS received in their dispatch notes and what PD received in their dispatch notes, and how fast things can change on those scenes and what we need to be aware of in those situations. So, yes, it is ideal if we could flag the addresses whenever that happens, but it wasn't something that I was able to uh streamline for everyone.
SPEAKER_02Right on. I have some UFC questions. Matthew KFD wants to know who was your biggest fight, or which one are you most how do you want to however you want to phrase that or answer that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so the my first fight, like I said, on the John Jones Machita card was in Canada. There was a big buzz around, you know, John Jones fighting Macheta, and there was, I think, 40,000 people in the arena. And uh, you know, I we went into it knowing that Rich Antonito was my opponent. He was a good boxer and had a real good boxing stance. And we knew that if we just pounded on that front leg, that he would not want to do that anymore. So if you watch the fight, the the opening, opening few seconds is me just belting his leg. And uh then all he wanted to do was take me down after that. So it was a kind of a boring first round because he took me down. All I'm trying to do is like set up a submission, get myself out of it. But then I knew he was gonna shoot in the second round and uh decided to touch his ear with my elbow and he decided to take a nap. So um everything all worked out there.
SPEAKER_02Knock out in the second.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_02Now I don't need to now a spoiler alert.
SPEAKER_00Uh well, if you need to go to sleep later, you can watch the first round.
SPEAKER_02Okay, I enjoy, I enjoy a submission battle somewhat. Somewhat.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I don't have the the knowledge to completely understand a lot of what's going on, but I enjoy it somewhat.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh Matthew KFD followed up with if someone isn't able to make it to a class, is there any reading you would recommend on the subject of violence and first responders?
SPEAKER_00Uh, you could read a lot of boring um NFBA uh uh articles that I've read about violence and first responders and violent counters and things like that. Um I'm currently trying to work on putting together a book and putting together some manuscript. I know that you're quite the author, and I like a lot of the things that you've done as far as putting some of those things into practice, like how your chapters go, where here's the concept, here's how you put it into practice. So, you know, I'd like to model that as far as different things we can do because there's a lot of concepts that we cover and how to put those things into practice. Right. You know, one of the one of the slides that I have up is that Rome was not built in a day. And if you try and do all these scene safety practices and all these de-escalation practices all at the same time, you're gonna fail. Absolutely. So pick one and do it for a rotation. Oh, you know, for 48 hours or 24 hours, whatever your shift is, always keep your back to the door. That's all I want you to focus on is keeping your back towards the door for 24 for 24 hours. Right. And then, you know, I'm gonna talk my tone, is is a big one that we talk about. I have trouble controlling the tone of my voice sometimes. My wife would attest to this. Sure. So whenever I tell my wife, you look really pretty, it doesn't, the message isn't there. So we talk about tone. So maybe I'll focus on tone for just 24 hours, and and that's all I'm gonna do. Is I'm gonna talk in a calm, even tone, and like how like I said, how we're communicating. It's a communications class at the end of the day, and uh, you know, how we're communicating with them. So uh I'm trying to put together a book or a manuscript or something to put out that could accompany the classes, but I'm a busy guy, and it's it's hard to hard to find the time to put that together.
SPEAKER_02No doubt, no doubt about it. I and I I'm a pretty avid reader, and I can't think of a single book that touches on this topic. I'm I'm not saying like I'm just a catalog of every book ever written, but I I've I've not heard of one, and I'm sure there's something, but but uh again, uh I'm working on it. I I can't wait. So I love it, which is a great segue into book or books that you think firefighters should be reading.
SPEAKER_00I got you.
SPEAKER_02So not just not just on violent encounters, but books.
SPEAKER_00Sure. So I wanted to focus on three kind of components that we talk about in class. So the first one is communication. So a really good book on communication is called uh Your Next Conversation, and it's by Jefferson Fisher. So uh Jefferson Fisher is a lawyer out of Louisiana, and he talks about it's a lot of different aspects of communication as far, and we can apply that towards how we're interacting with patients, how we're interacting with coworkers, how admin or leaders are interacting with their um you know subordinates in the firehouse. A lot of different aspects of how we can communicate with people and how we can kind of handle those situations.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00So that's communications and then uh mental health. So our mental health, uh, don't lose yourself. Uh so there's two books. One is don't lose yourself, and one is don't lose ourselves, and it's by the salty paramedic. Okay. Um, so the the don't lose ourselves is uh about couples, as well as about uh like marriage and and communicating through that. And um, so I thought that was really good for like our mental health. And then the last one is is mental fortitude, uh, which I think we need more of. So Fighter's Mind by Sam Sheridan. Uh it just kind of goes into kind of the the MMA scene wherever I was deep in it, um, and just the the mental components that go into training for fight, being in front of a thousand people, thousands of people, uh, you know, and and having a door locked behind you, and the other person wanted to take your head off. So it's a lot of things going into the mental aspects of that, preparing for that. So he does a really good job of breaking down like what the mental components are, and he goes into several different sectors of the world and different fighting components um and and different ways of looking at that. So those are those are my three. So mental fortitude, communication, and our mental health.
SPEAKER_02Fighter's mind, don't lose yourself, don't lose ourselves, and you your next conversation. You said it was Fisher? Fisher?
SPEAKER_00Jefferson Fisher, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Fisher. Okay, okay, got him right. Got him right. Beautiful. So we do a thing on here called the Five Questions for Firefighters. There are no right answers to it, they're just your opinions, and the points are arbitrary, passed out by me with the help of the audience. So, Jake Hecht, are you ready for the five questions for firefighters?
SPEAKER_00Yes, sir. Let's do it.
SPEAKER_02All right, here we go. Number one, you can do anything in the world except be a firefighter. What would you choose to be?
SPEAKER_00At at my heart and soul, I know that I am an educator. I like educating people. So I would be some type of teacher or coach. Um, you know, I did the high school teaching thing, and uh it's a it's a thankless, hard job. And uh I'm I'm not sure I could go back to that, but some type of teaching, whether it's you know, fire ground teaching or or whatever it is, um, some type of teaching. So teaching or coaching or running my own MMA gym or something like that. Educator. So educator would be the job title.
SPEAKER_02I'll I'll take it for I'll take it and say that's a single answer for max points because I love I love I love sharing knowledge. And the fact that you you actually started that, uh put that on hold to go have your face beat on and beat on others, you know. Right, right. And then and and you know, hey, hey, chase the dream, brother. Absolutely. I mean, yeah, like you said, you didn't want to be 42 and wonder, right?
SPEAKER_00Exactly.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's awesome, man. Uh, number two, it is job town, it is time. You're in route responding. That scene from backdraft where you slap that tape into that cassette deck. What song are you playing while in route?
SPEAKER_00I cannot tell you how long I have thought about this question and gone back and forth with so many different responses. Right. Uh, you know, and I've heard a lot of responses on your show, and I I think I'm gonna go uh living on a prayer. Really?
SPEAKER_02It's a bonjoy.
SPEAKER_00It's it's gonna get, I mean, everyone knows the words of that song. So we're all getting it on the same page, we're all gonna be communicating together, we're all gonna be singing it in our headphones. So, like, and we're all gonna be working together. So at the end of the day, when we get on scene, we we want to have that camaraderie, we want to have that like union of of being together and working together. So, like, I can't think of a better way of knowing all the words of a song and kicking it off by singing living on a prayer while we're on our way.
SPEAKER_02That is a first, is it is it, yes, Sam? I was gonna Okay. Not only is living the first time living on a prayer, first Bon Jovi, which I will have to say, uh I uh uh as as a rock 80s rock anthem, like I can't think of a better one to kick open an apparatus door to say, whoa, whoa, halfway there.
SPEAKER_01That's right. Yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_02Everybody, I like I like the song, that's what I'm saying. But even better, the the way you said everybody knows the lyrics, so we're all getting on the same page. We're getting in sync. Uh exactly. No, I love it. Uh, max points, number two. Number three, cold weekend at the station. Checks are done, training is done. It's food is cooking, PT's done. You've done everything you're supposed to do. You're not being lazy, but it's a lazy day. You're clicking through the TV. What is that movie that no matter how many times you've seen it before, no matter where it's at in the movie, you're gonna finish watching it. What is that movie for you?
SPEAKER_00I want to give you a little background on this. That at a department that I used to work at, I actually put together a list of top five, but we needed a top five for every genre. Oh, so we need a top five for like comedies and like and like everything. So, like we did all that. But at the end of the day, I say I'd say uh the movie I'm watching all the time is Goodwill Hunting. So no matter where it's at, it's gonna be Goodwill Hunting. I'm gonna I'm gonna watch it the rest of the way through, whether it's from you know the last five minutes or the first five minutes. I'm gonna watch that the whole way through.
SPEAKER_02I love it. No, I instantly think of so many. Uh it's funny, it's Ben Affleck. Uh yeah. Uh number four. I I let it on the this one's on the clock. You got a clock above you. You get one minute to answer. You get to put four people on your Mount Rushmore of the fire service. If you go too long, you don't get points. If you if you uh explain it after the clock, any blah blah blah. Follow the rules, get points, four people. Who do you, Jake Heck, put on your Mount Rushmore of the fire service?
SPEAKER_00I can already tell you I'm gonna break the clock, but I'm gonna take a page out of uh Chris Bloom's book and give you tact or uh stereotypes of the people.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00So I want the I want the new eager firefighter proby that is ready to do everything and just so eager and just like jumping at the gun to do everything. I want the grizzled engineer that is like MacGyver, that can figure everything out and can put everything together, and there's not a problem that he can face that he can't figure out. I want the uh officer that owns it. I want the officer that knows his people and owns if he does something right and owns if he does something wrong, where he says, I should have known better, or you're right, I did that because I know my guys. And the last one I want is uh the nerd that knows everything, that knows everything about everything, that knows about hazmat, that knows about you know car battery fires, that knows about electric cars, knows about everything. So those are my four, those are my four genres, and I made it in time with five seconds to spare.
SPEAKER_02New eager firefighter, the grizzled engineer, the officer that owns it, and the nerd.
SPEAKER_00That's right.
SPEAKER_02Right on, brother. I love it. I just I'm kind of picturing the yeah, what those faces look like up there on the the mountains. Uh max points four for four, so no pressure on this last one. Number five, it is heavy fire, searchable space. Would you rather be assigned to the nozzle or first in on VES?
SPEAKER_00So I've I've gone back and forth on this too. Uh I so I've I've been on the nozzle and I have three grabs in my career, but they're they're all dogs. So all my grabs have been which which I'd I'd rather I mean it's always good to get a dog out and and save a dog. So um I'm gonna say VIS because I I want to get, you know, everyone got in this career to be a hero and and to help and I and to help people. And I I can't imagine uh you know that feeling of of pulling that person out and knowing that you pulled them from the from the grips in there. So I'm picking VIS.
SPEAKER_02Love it, love it, absolutely love it. Max points, uh five for five, absolutely crushed it. And that officially puts 356 scraps in the books. Jake, if people first of all, thank you for spending your evening with us sharing a ton of information.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. It's an honor to be on here, an honor to to answer the questions to get to get a question from uh Jeremy Humphrey and uh all the things. It was awesome, man. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02Beautiful. Uh, so much information. And you gave us resources to get more info. That's that's that's so thank you. But uh, what's the best way to get hold of you if someone wants to do so?
SPEAKER_00So we're on I'm old and I'm on Facebook. So Vestresponder is a personal page on Facebook, Vestresponder is a business page on Facebook. Uh Vest Vestresponder underscore on Instagram. I don't really keep up with it, I don't really know how to use it. I think I'm posting stuff on there. I have no idea. Um, but the website vestfirstresponder.com uh has all of our contact information on there and um you know what we're doing. I post on Facebook every time we're at an agency or at a department as far as what we're doing and and where we are and and the updates. So um yeah, get at me, message me. I I I need help. I need help getting good instructors to bring this curriculum to new states and uh expand this into new agencies to keep first responders safe because that's what we're doing.
SPEAKER_02Right on, brother. Right on. All right, housekeeping for me. Go to patreon.com slash the vigilantees. And first of all, joining the vigilantes is awesome. Okay, that's step one. That's just that's step one. Step two, get in the discord. If you're not in the discord, you are missing out on the whole reason to be a vigilante. Like 95% of the reason is is that the other five percent, it does support the scrap, but the uh 95% is connecting with the like-minded souls, and they are bad asses, and the resources there are amazing. So go become one. Um next week on the scrap, it is the return of Tom Richardson, one of my favorite uh multi-people interviews, and now I get you have him one-on-one, and I'm excited for next week. So that'll be exciting. And then two weeks from today, long time in the playing, Jason Worthy coming on, and I am excited. So that's enough jabbering for me. We got the after party coming up. If you're vigilante, Sam just sent out the link. I I'm saying that. Uh Wessels, if he hasn't, it will be coming soon. The uh, so uh get to the after party. Jake was invited, and we will be in there to bust his chops if he if he shows up. Uh audience, uh, first of all, Jake, again, thank you so much for thank you. A, your passion for what you do, and B, uh spending your evening with us because there's there's a lot of things to that you could be doing, and and you're hanging out with a bunch of firefighters and a bunch of scrappers and a bunch of vigilantes, and I do appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00Can't think of a better way to do it.
SPEAKER_02It's awesome. Audience, you make the scrap magical, you show up each and every week, you ask phenomenal questions that are always on point and always right in the guest wheelhouse. So thank you so much for making the scrap magical. Remember, must don't scrap. I hope the tone stays silent unless it is burning. This job will never be safe. So stay smart out there. Thanks for listening to the weekly scrap. Please subscribe and please share. We'll see you at the next episode.