Your Brain Is Not A GoPro, And That’s Why Courtrooms Get Videos Wrong

A split‑second decision lives in a world your camera can’t fully see. That’s where we spend this episode, with Force Science’s Von Kliem guiding us through how the brain actually works under threat and what that means for accountability, policy, and courtroom truth.

We start with the mission: honest accountability grounded in human performance. Von breaks down why perception, cognition, and environment shape both police and civilian choices, and how de‑escalation succeeds only when conditions allow it. From there, we dig into why bodycams aren’t eyes. Surveillance systems drop frames, bodycams distort angles and time, and a missing 0.56 seconds can erase a punch or a pre‑attack cue. You’ll hear a Montana case where video “proved” no swing, until a frame‑level analysis changed everything. We unpack the gap between deciding to fire and the moment a shot breaks, why warnings are “when feasible” and often not, and how asking for movement can invite danger.

In court, opposing experts increasingly invoke “generally accepted practices” that aren’t real standards. We examine how that reframes the rules mid‑trial, how prosecutors should handle reasonable doubt ethically, and why juries deserve better than freeze‑frames and hindsight. We also walk through a real‑time bodycam review: a wrong‑way pursuit, a fleeing suspect waving a gun at drivers, and the principles that govern immediate threats. Along the way, you’ll learn why “don’t move” is the smarter command, how imputed knowledge from air support and dispatch matters, and why audio often tells more truth than video.

If you carry a firearm, this conversation is a blueprint: invest in decision making, not just draw speed. Know the law of self‑defense, get insurance that stands by you before the facts look tidy, and train for recognition, avoidance, and control of your own attention. If you lead, legislate, or report, build processes that respect science: scrutinize video provenance, understand frame construction, and resist narratives that travel faster than facts. Subscribe, share, and le

Peregrine.io: Turn your worst detectives into Sherlock Holmes, head to Peregrine.io tell them Two Cops One Donut sent you or direct message me and I'll get you directly connected and skip the salesmen.

Transcript

Welcome, Guest Intros, Housekeeping

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Cops One Donut Podcast. The views and opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of two Cops One Donut, its host or affiliate. The podcast is intended for entertainment and informational purposes only. We do not endorse any guests' opinions or actions discussed during the show. Any content provided by guests is of their own volition, and listeners are encouraged to form their own opinions. Furthermore, some content is graphic and has harsh language. Your discretion advised and is intended for mature audiences. Two cops when donut and its host do not accept any liability for statements or actions taken by guests. Thank you for listening. All right, welcome back to Cops One Donut. I'm your host, Eric Levine. With me today in studio is the banning sweatland. Are you sir?

SPEAKER_00 0:56

I'm doing great. I think first time for a live. How's everybody doing tonight?

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Doing doing good here, sir. Appreciate you stopping in. And then our special guest back again, the not villain from a bond movie, Von Kleem. What's up, brother? He looks frozen. And we lost him. He said, fuck this podcast. I'm out.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

I think he was saying something about his VPN, maybe slowing him down.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

And he's back. Look at that.

SPEAKER_02 1:25

You didn't hear all I did was shut off the VPN and then you guys booted me.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

Oh, it kicked you out for shutting the VPN off. Uh uh.

SPEAKER_02 1:32

When you re when you realized I wasn't actually in Denver, Colorado right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Uh, so like I was telling everybody, no, your TV is not messing with you. This is not a Bond villain. His name is Von Kleem, and he is a force science and the force science expert. How are you, sir?

SPEAKER_02 1:50

I'm good. Hey, thanks for having me, guys. This is uh nice coming off the holidays to get back in the saddle again, sit down with a couple of uh true believers and and liaison builders and all around uh all around good men.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Oh, I'll listen to you. You're like a pro. You've been on, you've probably been on more than any guest that we've had. I think. I think it I think you're right.

SPEAKER_02 2:14

The amount of money you're paying me, I should hope so. Yeah, I know, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:17

You we're giving you about as much as we're given all of our uh mods um that help out. And I think I don't know what the percentage of zero is, but math-wise, it's gotta be in the millions. So um we are probably asking to double it this year, so let's do it. Yes, we will do that. Multiples of zero, I believe that's always a good number. I'm trying to get us to go live on Instagram. So if you give me one second, it looks like we are about to. There we go. Hey, hey now, awesome. There you go, Banning. See, now we can go live on Instagram as well. Uh, it's a lot smaller because we're in this format, but um, so Von, sir, you're the man of the hour. Um, can you give people a little bit of a background that don't know you, that may have never seen you on the show? Kind of tell them what it is you do and what it is force science is all about.

Applying Human Performance To Civilian Cases

SPEAKER_02 3:11

Yeah, so again, thanks for having me. Force Science is a company that's not an individual science. We got four divisions. Uh I run our consultant division. I'm the president of Force Science and also the director of consulting and communications. So in my division, we're involved in most of the high-profile police and civilian force encounters, or many of them, if not most, over the last at least five years. Um, we evaluate uh force encounters, hoping to arrive at honest accountability. And so what that means is we don't let people forget there's a human behind the badge. So when we talk about decision making during critical incidents, we're really making sure people understand the psychological, physiological, and environmental influences on perception, cognition, decision making. In other words, they're not robots out there, they're affected by stress, they're affected by fatigue, they're affected by injury. Um, and so if we're gonna when we hold them accountable, which we all have to do, we just want to make sure that that evaluation is is honest and never forgets that's a human behind the badge. Um, saying that, I gotta let your audience know we work just as many civilian cases. Everything that applies to cops applies to civilians. Uh, when I came into the agency or when I came into the company, that was a big big deal for me to expand into civilian cases, work on with prosecution, work with defense, worked with civil plaintiff's attorneys and criminal uh civil defense attorneys because honestly, the evaluation doesn't change. Um, so if we're gonna apply to cops, we're gonna apply to civilians. I've worked gang homicides. Uh, we actually, uh one of my favorite cases I worked was a guy who admitted to murdering somebody. Uh, we got the case, it was a it was a drug deal gone bad. We got the case, uh, obviously civilian, uh, and demonstrated very quickly. This guy did not shoot anybody, he did not kill anybody, uh, but he did confess to it. And so we had to explain to them how that happens, why that could happen. And that required us understanding not just human performance, but sort of the culture of gang activity and uh false confessions and why somebody would admit to something that we could show forensically did not happen, could not happen the way you said it did. Uh, so that's a little bit what we do in consulting division. We work with uh agencies, we work to actual cases, uh, we go out and do presentation for journalists, for community groups, um, civilian oversight groups. Uh, we just want to get education out to anybody who has a stake, who's a stakeholder in forcing, which really is all of us. Uh, that's one division. Force science also has a research division. Um, we have legacy research sitting back about 20 years now, about 31 peer-reviewed articles um or peer-reviewed scientific uh publications, which are important, but they we have thousands of peer-reviewed studies that support our curriculum. Um, and we've had some of the top industry leading experts in their fields. Uh, for those of your audience who understand, like Klein and Kahneman and Schmidt, guys who, if you understand Dr. Green, uh, these guys are just absolute giants in their fields and they're outside law enforcement. So we relied on them to tell us what we can expect from humans in any critical instance or in any performance. And then we took that stuff and we apply it to policing where it applies. Um, so our curriculum is backed by thousands of peer-reviewed projects by some of the top leading experts, um, which is maybe a good time. All you guys, uh, one of my goals was to expand our into civilians. We used to just do cops. Uh reason we did that was because back in the day before video, uh, police tactics and techniques um were were kind of uh they were close hold. They were they were um sensitive, like law enforcement sensitive. And so they didn't want to put them out. And so when we brought cops into training, they wanted to be able to talk about tactics, they wanted to be developing tactics and understanding the human performance that went into that. But now with video, uh, and so we wanted to respect that, I guess. Uh now with video, police tactics are everywhere. Yeah, so we thought it's better now that community members understand what they're seeing and why cops do what they do. Um, we still separate out police training from civilian training, although you know, we'll ask the cops, do you guys mind if this journalist sits in or this civilian sits in? Overwhelmingly, they don't care. Uh, journalists are tough sometimes because cops are less likely to open up and talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly, um, usually involved in their own critical incidents. Um, and so there's kind of what we call a chilling effect when you bring in people who aren't trusted to uh to come into law enforcement training with a bunch of cops. What ends up happening is the cops just shut down. Uh, they don't they don't feel uh it's not a it's not a place they want to share uh their mistakes, they don't want to share their questions because as you guys know, in critical incidents, there's a lot of things you don't remember. There's a lot of things that happened that you don't know how it happened or why it happened. Um, we can explain a lot of that through just pure human performance considerations. Um, but we've got cops in almost every single class who are still wondering how something happened in their own shooting. And and so they want to feel sort of emotionally safe to ask questions. Um, so that's the reason we still separate out police training from civilian training. It's not because the curriculum changes, it's gonna be the same curriculum either way. Um, and in that vein, you know, I've opened up, I gave you guys a uh a link there to our brand new online force encounters course. You know, we hopefully we'll do this again as more and more uh I think that's more and more uh of your audience members come on, but we will uh give you guys access to the online force encounters course, give you 15% off if you use that code. Um and you're gonna get the same curriculum that the cops are getting when they come to our classes.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

Yeah, so we got that, and I believe the discount is in the graphics. Give me one second.

SPEAKER_02 9:35

This one, yeah, it's a leo 15 off.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

Yep, we got that scrolling across the bottom, guys. So uh, and you said this is cops and civilian.

SPEAKER_02 9:45

Yeah, anybody who anybody can sign up for this one for the online uh version of that. Uh and yeah, it's like I say, it's gonna be the same training. So that's us. We we have a consultant division, we have a uh research division, we have a a uh curriculum, a training division where we we teach a lot of classes, and then we do instructor development division. So that's us in a nutshell. And uh yeah, again, thanks for having me here.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

Yes, sir, no problem. I it's just I think it's important that um people understand that I I think one of the comments that I saw, because because um, you know, you had mentioned, you know, when I when a cop's getting a use of force, you know, like there's there's a person behind that gun, and somebody's somebody made a comment of, well, there's also people in front of that gun. Well, that's we're not discounting the person that's on the other side of the shooting, uh, for sure. But the problem is, is oftentimes there's explanations scientifically for why we shot the guy in the back, why we uh we don't remember. Um there's there's things behind it. And if you don't take the time to get behind the science of why that is, then you're not really truly seeking justice. You're just trying to make an emotional uh judgment. And I think getting the the why we act the way we act, why things happen the way they happen, um, and understanding the science behind it, being able to back that um with with uh repeatable that's pretty much what science is having being able to do the same thing repeatedly gets the same results.

SPEAKER_02 11:23

And you know that it's funny you bring it up because when we analyze cases, again, a lot of them are civilian cases, and even if it's a cop on civilian shooting, we do absolutely look to whoever made that comment, we look at the human performance aspects on the civilian side as well. So, one of the things we really focus on um is when we charge people a lot of times, you know, suspects are charged with uh disobeying a lawful police order, right? Resisting arrest, and we're looking at it, and you got 15 people screaming at them, you got one person using force on them, and another one giving orders, and we're like, well, hold on a second. Would any human be expected to be paying attention to what this guy said while this guy's beating on him, right? Or what this guy said while this guy. So we actually have to analyze how human performance and how human factors affect civilians under stress so that we can give that feedback to cops. Is he look, you want to become the most important stimulus in that person's life in that moment if you expect them to pay attention to you. So before you can charge them with disobeying, or before you can kind of generate voluntary compliance, you have to understand that they are also under the effects of stress and human performance issues. So that's a great point. We don't ignore it. We actually have a great feedback loop back into it. Um, and like I said, our false confession cases are civilian cases. You know, I I just I've had three or four civilian on civilian shootings in the last year that I testified in, and every single one of them we were ended up getting self-defense charge or not guilty charge. So it the human performance applies to the civilians, and we're doing our best to make sure that stuff's being considered in these cases. One of our cases is out of Florida, they sat in jail for four years before we could get involved and get that guy out. Um, and it really came down to the judge needing to understand what we refer to as counterintuitive behaviors. We look at it and they go, why would a guy do that in that situation? I would never do that. And we say, Well, yeah, as we sit here in the air-conditioned courtroom, or as we sit here on this podcast, nice and relaxed with a beer in our hand, or you know, Red Bull. Nice red bull. Maybe uh we we can think of a lot of different things that might make sense to us right now, but we have to analyze it through the lens of the person who was facing the consequences of getting that decision wrong and having very little time to make those decisions. So those are civilian cases, and and we're working hard on those as well.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

Nice. Yeah, I I think that's important to know because if we're gonna claim the science behind it, does it science doesn't change for a civilian versus a cop? Now, some of the rules of what a cop's allowed to do versus what a civilian's allowed to do, that can change.

SPEAKER_02 14:24

So yeah, and you know what's interesting is it goes the other way. We actually have more trouble with experts coming in and saying that human performance does not apply to police because of their specialized training and experience. I was like, you want to tell me what training you know work the humanity out of the cop? Because we haven't, and it's easy when they do it in court because we literally pull them into the deep water and say, Well, go ahead and describe that training then. When did that training occur? What was the you know, evidence basis for somehow removing tunnel vision and auditory exclusion and and and time distortion from the human, you know, when did a cop learn how to do that? And of course, no answer because it doesn't exist. Yeah, but it's easy to say, well, the cop shouldn't feel fear because of their specialized training and experience. You're like, okay, well, maybe when we when you can show me what that training experience is in the move fear, uh I'll be interested in it.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

What is um what is what are one of the most common tactics that you see from defense when they're trying to trip you up on a cop's use of force?

SPEAKER_02 18:33

The the one that's happening right now the most is they are uh they're ignoring the police officers' training at the agency, and they're they're pointing to these things they call generally accepted police practices. And if you ask what are generally accepted police practices, they are not national standards, they don't actually exist. So, what these experts will do is they'll come in and say, a reasonable officer following generally accepted police practices would have done this other thing. Even when the officer has followed their training, followed their policy, even when their bosses come in and testify this is exactly what we want the officer to do. These experts will come in and say, Well, no, it a progressive modern police department uh would follow generally accepted police practices, um, and a reasonable officer following generally accepted police practices would have done something different. Now, what is that something different? And I and I can't make this up. The tactics they're using, and by the way, they're doing this against civilians too. Not just they don't have generally accepted police practices, but they'll say modern defense, self-defense, you know, standards. If if a bad guy doesn't want to be arrested and they decide to run, these experts will say you just have to let them go. Because if you chase them, you've increased the chance for violence at the point of arrest. So since you decided to chase them, which is discretionary, you don't have to chase them, um, and you reasonably perceive that there would be an increased chance for violence at the point of capture, they then shift culpability from the suspect to the officer, saying you never should have chased them. And if you stand too close to a suspect and they punch you in the face, they'll say you stood too close. And I hope your audience doesn't believe this is actually happening. I hope they believe I'm making this up because 100% I am not. This is what they're saying, Court. Right. Uh, and it's it's it's putting cops and civilians in horrible positions. Even even a case out in uh New Mexico where a guy was in his own home, the guy said, I'm gonna come kill you. He drove several hours to the guy's house, kicked in the guy's front door, the guy retreated to his own kitchen and ended up shooting the guy when he came in the house. And they said the homeowner should have de-escalated and could have run out the back. I mean, they just made up this duty to retreat that didn't exist. Um claim that it since it was avoidable, he's lost his right of self-defense. Um, so it's it's stuff like that. Those are probably the biggest tactics. They're just they're changing the standards and they're not giving any notice. Uh I'll make this final point. The one of the experts said on cross-examination, Well, did you read the local policy and training? He says, No, I didn't read the officers' training or policy, I just evaluated it against generally accepted police practices. So okay.

SPEAKER_01 21:44

And this, okay, so here's my thing, it's got to be working somewhere, otherwise, why would they why would this be a repeated type of defense?

SPEAKER_02 21:53

Well, yeah, it does work if you've got you've got some states that are more uh yeah, I mean, they're yeah, they're they're just really progressive. They they they want to hold officer accountable. They think they think if an officer shoots somebody or uses force or engages in violence, it was always preventable. And if it's preventable, then an officer chose not to de-escalate, an officer chose to engage in violence because they're led to believe by these experts that all all violent encounters can be de-escalated if the officer just simply chooses to do that. Um, and so that's just sometimes if you got the right jury, it's just an education process that not everybody's able or willing to be de escalated. Um, but there's a good population, you know. I when I teach cops, I say there's a population of people who who want to kill you, right? Or want to hurt you. With with de escalation, you can reduce that population of people who want to hurt you, right? Yeah. Uh with defense tactics, with jujitsu, with training, you can reduce the population of people who can kill you, it can hurt you. But there's always going to be a population of people that remains. And so, yeah, de-escalation is important when it works, it works great. Um, but what we learned from the psychiatric community, because during the reform, during the reform period, they kept saying we need mental health professionals, not cops. We need mental health professionals, not cops. So I said, that's okay. Well, let's look and see what would a mental health professional do that a cop's not doing, right? Because we're not just gonna outright say no. We're like, well, okay, cops, as you know, have been integrating with other industries since the beginning of time. We work with doctors and mental health professionals and firefighters and power line workers and ambulances. We know how to integrate with other resources. So I said, well, let's see what they would do that we're not doing.

SPEAKER_04 23:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:53

And I had the benefit of working as a crisis counselor first, so I kind of knew where to look. And it was funny because there's this research called the um best practices for the emergency treatment of agitation. It was the beta reports, best practice for the emergency treatment. It was their de-escalation for mental health professionals. So I read those reports, it was five of them, but I read those reports and tried to take from them all the best practices. And what stood out to me is do you know where they got their best practices from?

Opening Police Training To Civilians

SPEAKER_01 24:26

Oh god, no, where cops the TV show? No, from us. Oh, oh, I thought you meant the TV show. I was like, Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:40

Like people come off the street who are in highly agitated, and these people want to fight them. What do they do? They they eat they call the police, right? They didn't have magic words. What they had was a was a needle that they would stick in the person's leg and hit the plunger, and the guy would go unconscious. Like that, a pharmacological response was their primary response, right? But but so I kind of laughed at that because the best practice for the for de-escalation came from police who do it the best and do it the most often, right? Historically, now generation after generation has to be retrained, right? They have to be reincentivized that it's important, they have to be retrained, they've got to have hundreds of hours of training and a lot of practice to get good at it. But what I did pull from the mental health profession was critical to policing, and and it became part of a lot of national programs, and that is uh not everybody's able or willing to be de-escalated. We just wrote that down. If they if that's what the mental health professionals are telling us, that's what we believe. And we knew that already, right?

SPEAKER_01 25:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:47

Um, the other thing was uh we don't de-escalate other people, we set conditions that increase the opportunity that they will choose to de-escalate themselves. And and sometimes it's just time, right? If you have time and they're escalated because of drugs, right? Because of anger unrelated to you. Sometimes time, if you can sit there with them for a while, let the drugs metabolize out of their system, right? Yeah, let them get tired, sober up, yeah, let them sober. If you have that kind of time and resources, it's an option, right? Some jurisdictions don't because you're going call to call to call, right?

SPEAKER_01 26:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:27

Uh, but I I've seen where cops will sit there for two hours with somebody, just let the drugs metabolize if you can do it safely. What's the rush, right? Yeah, so all these strategies, these are always discretionary. It's up to the individual cop. Uh, what is his skill set? You know, how much time does she have to sit there with them? Those kind of things all came out of these beta reports. So um, so yeah, that those are kind of the things we look at. Um, and to wrap up your question, what are the tactics? It really does come down to just stripping cops of any realistic um human performance expectations. So the tactic is cops never get fatigued, cops never get emotionally aroused, cops uh can do smooth weapons transitions, cops never miss with their guns, cops can stop instantly. So I call it weaponizing police video. I want you to imagine a guy has a gun, he's pointed at the cop, he takes off running. Now, legally, just for the sake of this hypothetical, legally, you can shoot this guy, right? Right, right, yeah. Violent felony offense, he's fleeing. Well, as the guy starts to turn, the officer makes a decision to shoot, and it and and it takes time. Once you make a decision, you have to actually perform it. Well, there's a gap between the decision and performance. So he uh he says that he uh uh they will stop it. And as the guy's turning, he drops the gun right before the first shot hits, and so they'll freeze frame that and they'll say that well, he has no gun in his hand, therefore he's unarmed, therefore you can't shoot him. Well, the question isn't whether you can shoot an unarmed person, it's whether at the time you made the decision to shoot, you'd have the legal authority to do it. And if you did, you still have to account for the amount of time it takes to uh execute that decision to perform that decision. The problem is they will take that video and they'll do a still shot, zoom in, show you that the gun's not in his hand, and then pretend that any human in low light conditions during that dynamic moving situation could have even possibly have seen that, which they can't. No human could have seen that, and then they'll use that against the officer when they indict him. They'll say, Well, we're gonna put you in prison for 40 years because you shot him when he literally didn't have the gun in his hand anymore. And as I'm describing this, everybody should know which case I'm talking about because it was a it was a national headline case. So that's one of the other tactics they use is they're weaponizing video by expecting police and against civilians to do things that no no human could do.

SPEAKER_01 29:11

Yeah. So Von, this is one of the great things about your perspective. Now, you're not a cop, right? Now, no. Now, yeah, you're no longer a cop. So, um, like you you remember when you were on and you you debated the uh the ever big fanboy of yours, Mr. Billfold, uh, on qualified immunity. He's he's in the house tonight. You remember when you you went up against him for the qualified immunity chat?

SPEAKER_02 29:40

Mr. Billfold, yeah. I've got that, I've I've got the poster on my wall at home.

SPEAKER_01 29:43

Hell yeah. The announcement poster. Hell yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:46

Yeah.

De‑Escalation Limits And Mental Health Insights

SPEAKER_01 29:46

So, oh God, don't tell him that. He's gonna forever, he's gonna jerk off that tonight. Um just uh so anyway, um, first he said uh I do want to put his comment up here. Uh he said, while I'm sure that Vaughn has an inherent bias towards cops, I do not think that he would sacrifice his integrity and lie on the stand for a cop. I'm sure he is caught flack behind the scenes for it. So one of the common things on on with uh our crowd, um, because you know that we got a pretty well-rounded crowd here. Some are pro police, some are uh anti-bad cops, some are just pure anti-cop. Like we have a nice well-rounded mix here. But one of the things that they that that's common amongst people that are anti-bad cop and anti-cop is they don't think cops are held accountable ever or it or enough. And I try to tell them, like, geez, just at my department alone, my one department, I every single year that I've been there since 2012, um, somebody's been fired, charged, something around around that lines. IA investigations um that if they got them fired or charged or both, all of these things. Um I see it, but I'm one person at one department. You're a little different. You travel around, you do the civilian side, and you do the police side. Are police being held accountable? Are they being held accountable to a point where cops are on eggshells, or is it vice versa, cops are not held accountable so often that they just think qualified immunity lets them get away with murder? Like, what has been your impression on cops across the country and and them being held accountable?

SPEAKER_02 31:31

Um yeah, so I guess accountable the reason that gets frustrating is because what the law is currently set up as if if it's a close case, it goes to the benefit of the cop. So we can all go, I don't know if I would have done that. Some I might have done something different. And if it's a close case, it benefits the cop. So you're a lot of people aren't gonna be satisfied frequently with those close call cases, um, because that's the way the law is set up. Now I've got I had five cases uh or saw five, five officers out of uh one state where every one of them went to prison. Uh, and there was no human performance or police praxis or anything that was gonna explain why these guys did what they did. They it was just excessive. Uh it was brutal and ended up in the death of somebody. And frankly, they all needed to go to prison. And then uh five cases out of out of California, uh, five different instances. Uh nothing. I had nothing to say, no human performance, no police practice was gonna explain what I thought was just pure evil, and those those those all those cases result in prison. Um, we see cases where cops make things tough on themselves, right? Where the underlying use of force probably was reasonable, but they threw a bunch of F bombs out in the process and they were insulting and egotistical and arrogant. And I'm like, you know what? Yes, you sound terrible. You sound unprofessional. The underlying decision is fine, but you have community members who don't want to split that, right? If it if it looks bad and sounds bad, it is bad, right? That's not the legal analysis. And so there's cases that even I look at and I'm like, this is this is ridiculous. Like you are making it very hard on all of us when you act this unprofessional, even in a legally justified use of force. Um, but yeah, here's why I like what Bill Fold said, and I I don't run from this. And I want to give a reframing to what Bill Fold said because this came up in court recently. They asked about my bias towards police. And I have a son who's a cop, and obviously I was a cop for a lot of years. Um my bias towards police is something I grew up with as a kid. Um, and and the reason for that was and and and was solidified in my own experience working around a bunch of great cops. Um and but here's what it really rests on. My bias is that these cops are supposedly recruited, right? And once they're recruited, they come in and they're they're they get background investigations and psyche vowels and they're interviewed and they take written tests, and then they have to be interviewed by your community members, right? You have a civilian interview board, you have your agency interview them, you have polyograph exams, you have uh his background and history checks, whether they did drugs or stole things. Like this is the process that's typical in when you hire a cop. And then they go through an academy where they're continually assessed for academically and integrity. And then when they get out, they go with a training officer and it's and a training sergeant who they're continually being assessed by multiple officers. Now, not every agency has all of these processes, but generally speaking, this is the process, it's the one I'm familiar with. And then they're on probation for a year where they continue to be evaluated and scrutinized, and then all of their cases are reviewed by supervisors and then subject to the scrutiny of prosecutors. So, so when I get a case involving a cop, assuming your jurisdiction did those things, I have what is called a presumption of regularity. I'm assuming you didn't just hire some derelict criminal off the street who is out here trying to abuse people, they exist, but there is a presumption of regularity, there is a a presumption of innocence, and there's a uh yeah, I gotta uh basically a yeah, presumption of innocence, presumption of regularity. Now that's theirs to lose, and in every single case, I start to see very quickly where they lose it, right? Whether it's an integrity issue, whether it's an excessive use of force issue. Um, but yeah, I go into cases assuming you didn't hire a criminal, right? Because of all that, right? Um, the ones that get through the cracks, the ones who really have they they work for jurisdictions that just couldn't get good people, they lowered the standards, they they they were just trying to fill seats, and whatever their reason was, we see agencies that the police departments are filled with basically they're just a blue gang, right? You've seen it, there's been national stories around it. I've seen cops throw people off third-story buildings, right? We saw cops get indicted and arrested because groups of cops were running drugs and doing protection rackets down in in New Orleans and stuff like that. I wasn't saying New Orleans, but yeah, that's where it was. Yeah, I'll call them out. Fuck them. Don't do them shit. I know it's generation by generation, but you, me, guys like us who have a front row seat to the profession, we know where the corrupt cops are, and there's it's and we know that it's a constant, never-ending battle to get them out, get them out. Well, we're talking about a million cops in the US. You know, we're talking about um, you know, one of the prosecutors questioned me on the stand, and he said, I said something on a podcast. I think like 98% of the cases I see, the cops are fine. Doesn't mean I would have done what they did, but legally speaking, I used this, I said 98%. Well, I don't know what the actual percentage is, but it's pretty high. And he questioned me on that, like, oh, so near perfection, and there's another is there any other profession that's near perfect like that? I said, Well, it's a different question because the question is are they engaging in obvious excessive you excessive use of force, right? It has to be clear and obvious beyond debate. And so when I get cases that are close cases, I'm like, Well, it's fine. I don't think I would have done that. I certainly wouldn't train a cop to do that, but it does fall within a range of reasonable options, and I can see why they did it. This is a close case. Well, the law protects our our police officers. Um, but that being the case, what I didn't say, and I will next time this comes up in court, is hey, dear prosecutor, every single case that a cop's involved in the use of force or makes an arrest, including putting handcuffs on somebody, which is a use of force, right? We don't always have to report it, but it's a it is literally a use of force. Um, those go to your desk, prosecutor. What percentage of those do you charge? What percentage of the arrest do you go after and indict the cop? I bet you it's a lot higher than 98%.

SPEAKER_03 38:20

Yeah.

Weaponizing Video And Frame Rate Pitfalls

SPEAKER_02 38:20

That make it through just fine. And so it's it really is a numbers game. So people watching, I gotta say, it's like uh if you focus on the planes that crash, you can always find a plane crashing, and you can put it on a news and play it on a loop. Um, but you can't ignore the planes that are landing safely. You know, that's the story. As long as you've got millions of safe landings every day, or whatever it is, I know it's a uh hundreds of thousands of planes landing every day um safely. We're not gonna pretend that there's an epidemic of plane crashes, but we also can't ignore the fact that planes are crashing, right? That's kind of how police, that's kind of how police is now. The difference is when you got a plane that keeps crashing over and over again, yeah. Yeah, you gotta take the plane out of the sky, right?

SPEAKER_01 39:15

But to um use your own analogy, and this is for officers out there to listen to, you can't treat a citizen like they're crazy because they have a fear of flying. And if they have a fear of police, it don't make them feel bad for having that or try to talk down to them. I see cops do that all the time. Oh, yeah, how many cops have fucked with you in your lifetime? You how many times have you been around cops? Like, you can't do that either. Because just like I get just like with your airplane analogy, I know how safe flying is. It doesn't mean I'm not like at two jacks as soon as you can get them, so I can take the edge off because I don't like being out of control up in the sky. You know, I'm worried I'm gonna be that one in 100,000, 100 million, I don't know how many times they crash. Damn it, Vaughn. You're gonna have me thinking about planes crashing.

SPEAKER_02 40:07

Yeah, well, you know, son of a bitch. That's all right. We we we got to teach a class up in Seattle on the it was a long-term uh title, but was uh the neurobiology of transformational victimization, and and basically it was um how historic victimization, historic trauma can go from generation to generation. And and to your point, if you're afraid of flying, I want you to imagine you live in a house where your mother and brother and uncles and aunts all tell you that your uncle died in a plane crash, and your other uncle died in a plane crash. And and I was once in a plane that almost crashed, and every single day they're telling you, do not go on a plane, planes crash. It doesn't matter whether it's true or not, you you're going to live your life as though it's true. Yeah, and if someone, a pilot comes up and says, I'm gonna just take this metaphor all day long, right? It really does translate well. I like the so a pilot comes up and he's like, No, I've never tracked crashed my plane. Why would you even think I I crashed? You're not gonna change uh you don't you're gonna change them with a rational discussion because it's a heart, it's a heart and head moment thing, right? You can't have a head conversation with someone who's having a heart moment, and if they are terrified of you, and if they have framed every interaction through the lens of you're trying to kill me because of the color of my skin, you're trying to kidnap me because of the color of my skin, an immutable trait that they can't change, and they've been convinced that's true. You don't get to just walk up and be like, it's ridiculous, it's not true. And I can show you the statistics, and you can, it's not going to be persuasive. You have to build relationship.

SPEAKER_01 41:59

Yeah, you have to have a instead of flying like American or United, you got to create a two cops, one donut airline. And that's how you bridge that gap with the airplane.

SPEAKER_02 42:11

American my that's my my airline. So don't make, don't make American Airlines mad tonight.

SPEAKER_00 42:17

Probably a good thing I'm a pilot, so we can actually see there we go.

unknown 42:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:22

You guys don't know what you're talking about. I crash playing all the time.

SPEAKER_01 42:25

Yeah, could you imagine banning coming over the the speaker letting you know everything's okay? I would just sit back and fall right to sleep with Banning over the mic.

SPEAKER_00 42:35

Oh no, there's there's something up with those mics.

SPEAKER_01 42:36

It's like we're at your uh cruising altitude. Just sit back, relax. Banning's got the wheel and listen to some slow jazz flute. Oh shit.

SPEAKER_00 42:49

See, I'll just read to him throughout the flight. It's gonna make them calm. Yeah. Don't worry about that.

SPEAKER_01 42:55

minimum hell yeah he does his best flying once he's had half a handle we'll be all right you ever been in inverted in a zone board hey from what I understand those planes are capable of doing that they are just the computer doesn't let you do it yeah yeah yeah I don't want him to do that either trust me that's like it's weird and now that we're kind of on the topic like I never had a fear of flying the older I get the more I just start thinking it's like I have to turn a movie on immediately they're always get because I always sit at the emergency exit too and uh as soon as I you and I flew together to where we at going out Arizona yeah so you were on your movie before we even started taxi yes so I have to get the movie going because it gets my brain thinking about other shit and then as soon as the lady comes by with the little drink things I'm like just give me my two I know how many I can have I know how many I need to get over the edge.

SPEAKER_02 43:56

It's killing me I gotta fly all the time and I it's actually backwards what I do is I sit in there and I imagine what it would be like if I was in a coffin like how small a coffin is and I imagine being in a coffin and how confined that would be and then I look around and see how much freaking bigger this airplane is and I'm like man this is spacious. This is great.

SPEAKER_01 44:16

Mine's not a claustrophobic feeling I could give a shit less. That doesn't bother me it's just it's the takeoff that's the only time I'm nervous because I'm like if shit's gonna go down it's gonna go down here. It's gonna go down right on the takeoff just enough time for me to go oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck and then I'm dead so um that's that's what makes me nervous but I want to give a shout out to Craig Holcomb. He dropped 10 memberships uh I did see that Deadleg got one so that's nice.

SPEAKER_00 44:45

I'm glad Deadleg got one uh looking at everybody in there uh I don't recognize any of the other names that got one but I tell you who didn't get one marine blood everybody knows the game if Marines Blood does not get one you got a drink I saw a comment uh since we're on the plane thing somebody said I can't picture banning squeezing into a propeller plane while that's that's what I learned on it's it's you know little Cessna well Little Cessna 172 yeah had what's called a a G1000 cockpit so it was a glass full glass cockpit I had Sirius X tip radio I like the way you say cockpit yeah getting the cockpit you know it's uh anyway Von son of a bitch I think it's frozen though yeah yeah yeah it's frozen in the segment yeah Von you're for being at home your internet is terrible because you've been choppy all night but his voice has been good voice has been fine but yeah his video feed has been choppy but uh but going back to when I I started training back in uh I guess he's thinking 2006 is when I started flight training uh when I was at Altam City Police Department that's when I was in boot camp oh god making me feel old now yeah well you are old uh anyway I I was doing it uh on the north side uh uh of the Metroplex down here in Dallas Fort Worth and they had to find a flight attendant light enough uh to come fly with me and back then I was powerlifting all the time so I had a top of a six pack going everything I was trim for myself at 275 pounds yeah and uh they had to get a a little female pilot to to be my my my flight instructor. Oh my God. Uh so then I was thinking man I'm gonna do all this I'm gonna get my instrument rating go all the way to commercial I'm gonna have to buy a bigger plane if I want to take family or something like that because there's there's weight limits on these little it's like flying a picture flying a Mountain Dew can uh with a lot of turbulence especially in the summertime with DFW and uh I have a huge extreme fear of of of height and I'm a pilot. But if I can see the gauges of the plane I know we're okay. Yeah. It's one of those and some of these new planes through American and Delta out there give you that option on that that little screen to where you can see airspeed where you're going to feel better if I can see that. And I think some of our citizens would feel better when there's more transparency of what's going on at the oh you see what he didn't that was a long flight. Yes that was a long flight but we still got back and he landed it he landed it I didn't even break the landing gear off.

“Generally Accepted Practices” In Court Tactics

SPEAKER_01 47:21

I know tonight's theme airplane puns I like it oh you started this trip here Vaughn so yes sir uh definitely in first class yeah and you know how many frequent flyer miles he gets for being on the podcast again that's right that's right it's just as many as he got last time yeah exactly that's right double double up double points it's a holidays Jesus Christ we don't have any blackout dates either for flying so we're flying 247 over here does this count as a red eye you being on the show this late at night I think it's no not quite it's got a it's got to break over midnight. Oh is that what it is I mean I can talk you can oh I hope your people aren't watching Vaughn because they're gonna be like I thought this was supposed to be like a professional law enforcement thing. No they know better than that pilots association podcast or something like not again I do count one pilot I tell them 15 minutes before I'm gonna be on oh yeah by the way yeah yeah I'm doing this podcast um so tell me I I know there's cases and stuff that you're a part of or that you've been on there's one in particular I want to ask you about but I don't know if you can even talk about it. The Michigan stuff Michigan I think it was Michigan.

SPEAKER_02 48:48

Yeah Michigan Colorado I can talk a little bit about those the the criminal cases wrapped with no expectation that it'll be recharged.

SPEAKER_01 48:56

So there was a hung jury it was uh 11 to 1 not guilty oh so that was good that was a strong showing um yeah we can talk about those cases there was a there was a high profile national case recently that uh I'm just I gotta be very careful but here's what I'll say yeah I I'm not gonna mention any names or anything like that if people in the comments can think you go you guys can say whatever you want we're not going to acknowledge it we're not gonna try to do anything that would jeopardize his case integrity so yeah well this one was interesting because they were prosecuting a cop and they had a theory and the theory was premised I'll just leave it really vague the theory was premised on two facts and when they briefed me on the case I took for granted those two facts existed and so I had an opinion of the case based on those two facts.

SPEAKER_02 49:49

I re they sent me the evidence because I don't ever give them an opinion based on a video and I don't give an opinion until I've reviewed the evidence. Well neither of the two facts that their case hinged on were actually true. And so I sat down with the prosecutors and we watched the video together and we went through the case and I asked them please show me where you got those from because I can show you right now the opposite and what was interesting was the cognitive dissonance they they didn't know where they got those facts. They'd already charged the case like this cop was going to be charged or he was charged and I was like well based on the absence of those two facts what this guy did is is consistent with general with with police practices uh here's why a cop might do what he did um and basically one of the facts was here's why every well trained cop would have done what he did right sort of thing very nice so uh they kind of looked at me like so you think this was reasonable and I said well I'm telling you why he did what he did is consistent with training and policy um there's obviously ways it could have been avoided but that's not the legal standard you know could it have been avoided is not the legal standard it's was he facing an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury is the first question. The second question is was the response to that threat reasonable based on the officer's perspective at the time not what we later learn and I'm telling you that it definitely falls within a range of reasonable options. If this was a training event and students did this I'd say yeah this is that's that's a way to do this well I found out that uh they went ahead and moved forward with the trial and they ended up convicting the officer um with a different expert they didn't they didn't call me or let me know they were going to actually take it to trial so that happened recently and that kind of stuff's frustrating because the uh they don't have to agree with my opinion you know they don't have to put me on the stand but they premised their case on two facts that didn't exist and they found an expert who was willing to ignore those facts or just yeah just bypass them and because they'd already paid me I I couldn't work for the other side I was conflicted off of working for the other side and so I just had to kind of sit back and watch it unfold um that's that's the first time that happened um it's a bit frustrating because I think reasonable people can disagree but there's some there's some things you can't disagree on facts right so yeah that happened I don't know if that was the case you were going to bring up but you can bring up another case no yeah that would that was I think we're talking about the same one but um yeah it was uh I think some people have mentioned it in the comments already um it rhymes with Ben Hear.

SPEAKER_01 52:56

Uh is that was that the same one me?

Accountability, Close Calls, And Standards

SPEAKER_02 53:02

Yeah you I don't know I'm not well I'm not looking at your chat oh sorry um my case was in Australia how's that okay yeah this ain't the same one then or Ireland or Egypt somewhere over there nice um but was that a uh was that a nice flight to Australia yeah did you have a good flight how long is a flight to Australia didn't crash did you put another shrimp on the Barbie uh while you were there we're gonna go into cooking now something I don't know I mean it's we're open for anything tonight but uh okay um yeah I was just curious uh on on some of these higher profile cases that you've you've finished up and how that fall out and whatnot has been from those yeah let me let me share can I share a screen yeah yeah you should be able to share screen right there in the box let me see if I can find something real quick uh while we're here because this was uh this is I think your audience is gonna find this really interesting I just worked on a case um out of Montana oh well that's where I was stationed when I first uh got out of boot let me see if this is gonna get rid of you guys one is it Great Falls uh Grand Rad I don't know where it was somewhere one of those fucking tiny towns in Montana well you gotta fly there you can drive yeah you gotta fly out to Montana so this was if I can let me see if I can share this uh window did Bon just drop an F bomb no no no he did not nice try can you guys see this uh one second I gotta add it let's see here is that it nope it should say he never swung um you may be sharing the wrong screen yeah it's sharing infinity infinity there that's right share screen window how about that one let's try there you go there we are all right so here's the here's the setup because this is actually this was really cool and a lot of people don't know this um we got a case where a man came out at 1130 at night confronted his confronted another man who actually was his neighbor but he didn't know it they need these two guys did not know each other but they were actually neighbors 1130 at night he says hey he's drunk he says stop breaking the cars our guy's like I I wasn't breaking the cars he had just picked up some mail off the ground and he was returning the mail to another neighbor's mailbox so he picked it up off the ground walked it down put in the mailbox this drunk guy comes out and says you know stop breaking the cars like I said wasn't breaking the cars he comes down pretty quickly flicks his cigarette and says you've got one second and I'm gonna f you up and our guy who's you know never been in a fight in his life sees this grown angry apparently capable man threatening to F him up and the guy flicks his cigarette and he starts swinging at our guy now this is on video right this is a surveillance camera picks up some of this and our guy backs up and shoots him seven times like almost simultaneously while the guy's swinging he's backing up you can see him backing up and firing the gun the guy goes down he immediately calls the police and goes hey this guy just attacked I mean immediately like within seconds this guy just attacked me um they say basically give him CPR and our guy was like what the the guy that just attacked me like lots of indicative of lots of in uh like uh indicators of honesty right our guy is not trying to hide anything he stays there admits to everything um the the uh investigators say well we got a bad fact and I said what's that he goes we have a video and I said okay and he says he never swings at him and he's like we watched the video the guy never swings and we like I said okay well what kind of video is it what's surveillance I said well the frame rate for a surveillance video could be variable right could be right you know for a body cam it's about 30 frames per second which is how we typically experience the world that's why it's 30 frames per second that's why we play things back at 30 frames per second because it's what we're most used to seeing. Well with a surveillance camera could be variable from 14 to 20 back to 18 back right and I said well with that slow of a frame rate you could have over half a second of missing information how many punches could be thrown in a half a second right yeah and so they say well he doesn't swing he just stands there right on the video I said okay well I don't know send it to me we'll get it analyzed in our video software and we can tell you exactly what the frame rate is and we can tell you exactly what each frame um was capturing at at that moment so our video analyst comes back and he says from the time the shots fired there's 0.56 seconds missing right before the literally right before the fire right before the shooting and so while I was guessing when I said it could be about a half a second it ended up being 0.56 seconds of missing data now why that was important I'm gonna show you maybe um the uh in order to understand why that's important you have to understand how videos are captured so if you're seeing here when you talk about this is a group of pictures there should be one two three four five six seven frames that's we'll just call that a group of pictures each frame in this in this photo is what's referred to as an iframe what that means is when we watch videos we think every frame is a is a new picture a new picture a new picture and then you just kind of like you did with your old books in school where you draw something on it and then you you just kind of oh yeah flick it and it makes it look like it's moving well that's what a video is it's it's individual frames where a little bit of movement is captured between each frame so that when you run them all together it looks like movement. Right we if you're not video literate if you don't understand videos what you would imagine is that if there's seven frames each frame is a different picture and it's called an iframe an index frame or a reference frame that iframe is in fact a different picture the problem is or and if each individual picture was in fact an iframe it would look like like this when you watch the video does everybody see that movement yeah okay the problem is that's not how cameras actually record when a camera records it has a processor in it and the processor is set with an algorithm to tell you when to take a new index or reference frame. If there's not enough movement in the environment the camera decides not to take another picture instead it just copies the previous picture. And so you see down here it's a B frame it's a bilateral frame which means that second frame is just a copy of the first frame. It's not an actual new photo so it'll it'll keep all of the pixels that haven't changed or that it has not recognized as changing. It's just a copy and then here you might have another iframe which is an actual representation environment maybe another iframe because you can see movement but then you get another B frame. The B frame because it's bilateral believe it or not it can it can copy a frame before it or it can copy a frame after it but it's not an actual picture of the environment here's a P frame which copies the iframe before it right it's just a it's a predictive frame. All right so what you end up with there is how much of this when you when we look into our software we can tell you precisely what each frame is whether it's an iframe or a B frame in this video what it was was it was an iframe and then 0.56 seconds before the next iframe that means everything in between was captured as a copy of another frame it was not an actual representation of the frame because it was low light conditions the camera's not picking up movement.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:45

So what it did was it took a picture here copied that picture over and over again so it looked like he was sitting still or or just not moving.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:55

Yeah, so this is what you this is what it actually what you can actually rely on. None of those frames in the middle count. They're not actual pictures. And this is what it looks like if you take those out and you only capture the iframes.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:18

Nothing fucking changed.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:21

Nothing changed, right? So what we were able to show, um, I think that's the same one. Um yeah, so I can stop there. So what we were able to show was this if your if your charging decision was based on, did I stop already?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:42

No, yeah, you're good.

Fear, Perception, And Community Trust

SPEAKER_02 1:03:43

The uh if your charging decision was based on the fact that, hey, he didn't move, therefore, the client's lying. He says the guy swung at him. We have evidence the guy never swung, your guy's lying, we're not gonna put him in prison the rest of his life. Our guy was like, no, he was swinging at me repeatedly as I was backing up. It's not captured on video. So we have to demonstrate that okay, one, maybe the guy's lying. Maybe the guy actually never swung at him. Now that's kind of inconsistent because you kind of see him moving back, but you don't see him swing for sure, right? And so the prosecution just kept sticking, like they the prosecutor to their credit, some are corrupt, some just don't care about the truth, and they're going to go after and go after and go after. Now, this was a civilian case, not a cop case, and some of these prosecutors just don't care. These prosecutors were good prosecutors, they just knew nothing about video, and so in their head, the guy says he swung, they have a video, it doesn't show the guy's swing, therefore, he's lying. Therefore, the basis for his self-defense is premised on a lie, therefore, we're gonna charge him, right? We had our experts come up, and then I testified as well for two days. Ultimately, the jury came back not guilty. They came back super fast. They said prosecution should have dropped this case, and here's why the prosecution says, Well, what ultimately they said, Well, what you're saying is you don't know what happened during that 0.56 seconds, do you? And I was like, Well, no, yeah, I don't. I wasn't there. Guess what? Either do you, neither do you, yeah. Yeah, and and it is absolutely possible if you think that the absence of movement means the guy is lying. There are other explanations for why there would be absence of movement. That's all we're saying. We weren't there. We don't know if the guy swung, we don't know if he didn't swing, but what we can tell you is an average swing of 0.14 seconds, and you have 0.56 seconds to work with. So, how many punches on average can you get in in 0.56 seconds? Because there is some movement on the video, it's just not you just don't see him swing. Yeah, so they say I love the defense. Was like, Well, government, that's a you problem, or that's a government problem. That's what they can say. We don't know what happened, and they're like, Well, yeah, but you have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he didn't swing, you right? And you can't do that in order to convict this guy under the premise that he's lying. The government has the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that this guy's lying, that this guy didn't swing, and therefore he had no justification for using uh force in self-defense. They couldn't do it by the time it was done. And and again, these were good prosecutors. Uh, they just didn't know, and you could just see the blood draining out of their faces. The more our video expert explained how what they were relying on wasn't in fact a solid, a solid foundation to rely on. So uh that was a great outcome. Um, I 100% believe our client, you know. I yeah, you know, and and I think that well, clearly the jury did too. Um, and in fact, they said afterwards they thought the prosecution should have just gave up halfway through the trial.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:10

Well, I mean, and that does bear a great point, is part of the problem with the system, the problems that we do have is you do get prosecutors that are corrupt, you do get prosecutors that I say ego starts to come into it. Because let let's say, Vaughn, just for the sake of argument, during your during this presentation, right away, I don't know shit about your case, but in watching that, I'm like, oh yeah, that gives me reasonable doubt right now. Like I'm I've already doubting myself. I would as a prosecutor, I would feel I have a moral and ethical obligation to go, this I didn't know this. If I've got doubt now, that's enough. I need to dismiss, I need to talk to the judge.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:56

I gotta dismiss this because yeah, ethically, you're right. I think ethically they they so the this is this is interesting. The prosecution asked me a question that she should have never asked, and I was shocked. But she says, Well, you were a prosecutor, weren't you? I said, Yes, ma'am. And she said, This is on court TV, so I think you can find it somewhere. This was a two-week trial, I think it was on court TV. But she says, uh, I said, Yes, ma'am, I wasn't. She goes, Well, you've had cases that have had holes in them, haven't you? And I'm like, Oh, I don't think you want to go down this road. And she goes, Um, and and just because the case had holes in it doesn't mean you didn't prosecute it, just because it was a hard case, and so I pivoted to the jury because I didn't want her to stop my answer. So, as a witness, you want to answer to the jury because it's harder for the prosecutor to interrupt because the jury is then offended. Because I'm having a conversation with the jury, who, by the way, is the audience. I'm not answering questions for the prosecution, she asked the questions for the benefit of the jury, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:00

So I pivoted and I just locked on pro move right there. Yeah, well, it's like, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:07

So this is the benefit of prosecuting cases because I hated it too. I'm like, oh man, I just lost eye contact with my witness. That's brilliant. Wow, but so I look and I said, and this is just educating the jury, uh, and it's all true, everything I say is true. Um, and it goes to your point. When we receive a case, when the police investigate a case, they investigate it typically to the probable cause standard, right? This reasonable belief that's enough to make an arrest. Do you have probable cause to believe they committed an offense? That is way far away from proof beyond a reasonable doubt, right? It is not enough to convict, not even close, but it's enough to arrest. It's enough to it's an investigatory standard, and it's enough to continue the investigation and to set bonds and get them in jail for a minute if you have to, right? To ensure that they come back, right? Okay. Once a prosecutor gets that case, a prosecutor can ethically charge a case on the probable cause standard. You can charge it because that's why we have an indictment as a probable cause standard, a preliminary hearing is a probable cause standard. An information that you file must be based on a probable cause standard. So you can charge. But a prosecutor has a higher code of ethics, they have a separate prosecutorial code of ethics that says you cannot prosecute the case unless you have reason to believe there's a substantial likelihood of conviction. So when we receive those cases with holes in them, as she pointed out, I said our next job as a prosecutor was to get investigators, either in-house investigators, or we would rely on the police department to continue the investigation to fill in those holes, so that before I can ethically move forward with the prosecution, I have to have a substantial likelihood of conviction, which means proof beyond a reasonable doubt. That is a huge gap.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:07

So I said, so no, if there were gaps in holes in my case, if there was gaps, if there was problematic cases, I could not, in my jurisdiction, how I said it in my jurisdiction, it applies to all, but I wanted to give them a little bit of an out. So I said, in my jurisdiction, where I prosecuted, we had a higher code of ethics for prosecutors. They do too, but I didn't mention that part. Um, which said, no, I couldn't actually, nor would I actually bring that case to trial because the way it's trained to prosecutors is you can't just take a case and throw it against the wall and see what sticks. You have to have a good faith basis that your evidence is going to be admissible, it's going to be material, and it's going to result in proof beyond a reasonable doubt, or you can't ethically move forward. Right. Which, to your point, that can come halfway through the trial. And a prosecutor should be able halfway through the trial to move uh to dismiss the case with prejudice based on inability to prove the case. They there always should be a mechanism that allows them to do that, they're not stuck.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:07

Yeah, right. Um it's like us as police. I've I have literally put cuffs and stuffed a guy in the back of the car. I'm like, this is my dude. Same description, everything. I mean, down to the like he had white Nikes with uh red swooshes on them. I'm like, this is my dude. And you know, I there's no personal feelings behind it. I was like, yeah, this guy matches. All right, dude, put your hands on my knee. He's like, What are you putting me in cost for? Like, I didn't do nothing. I'm you know, that's what a lot of bad guys say, too. I didn't do nothing. I was like, well, all right, sorry, dude. You match the description perfectly. Um, the other big one was he had a giant cross chain. And then I go inside to uh get the uh video evidence out of the 7-Eleven. It was not my guy.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:55

Not him, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:56

Same necklace, same shoes, same height, same built, everything.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:00

But just the personal feeling on that. You're like, you followed it to a T. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:05

I was like, I got my guy. Like, I was excited. This is my dude. Like, no doubt, no doubt. Go look at the video, and we're talking 10 minutes, you know. This is from the time I get him, cuff them, stuff him, and I go inside real quick to check the video while somebody stays with him out in the car. And uh, I watch the video and I'm like, uh 217 to 220. Uh, let him go.

Prosecutorial Ethics And Reasonable Doubt

SPEAKER_02 1:13:25

Well, here's here's what's funny. It's like the we say innocent people are the hardest people to investigate because they know they're innocent and you're still figuring it out, right? Yeah, so this is why you've gotta you have to have where you can, you gotta have officer stage, but you gotta have dignity and respect for the people because there is a chance you don't have the right person, and and frankly, even if you do, it it inertes to your benefit for many reasons to treat them with dignity and respect along the way as well. But uh, yeah, the there's a there's a legal case out there. Do you know how fast you have to let that guy go once you realize it's not him? Immediately, yeah. Immediately because there the case, there's a case where the guy was like, All right, this is my guy, same thing. Look, just massive description, put him in cuffs completely lawfully, and then on the radio guy goes, suspect in custody, and the arch guy's like, Well, what so but he left him there because he had his name, he had his information, he was still running him for warrants, yeah. So he left the guy sitting on a curb in handcuffs while he waited for dispatch, like just a few minutes, right? And the court was like, No, that's not all right. Like, as soon as probable cause or reasonable suspicion dissipated, it was gone. You get him out of those cuffs with no undue delays. Yes, that's that's when that happens. And here's what's hard about it because we do this like role-playing. If the guy's innocent and he's telling you the whole time, F you, I didn't do it. You're harassing me, you're racist, abusive, you're corrupt. You know, F you, you're now validating every single stereotype he has about cops, yeah, because he knows he's innocent, you're throwing him in handcuffs, making him sit on a curb. Dude ain't happy. Yeah, and you now have to take cuffs off a dude who's not happy. Yes, and and just because you're letting him go doesn't suddenly like calm him. Like that is that has happened more times, and you're just like, that is why people are like, Well, why would you have to have tactical protocols for removing handcuffs? If the guy's signal to and he's being resistive, don't take the cuffs off. And I'm like, Well, because you sometimes have to take cuffs off pissed off innocent people, yeah. You better find a way to do it safely.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:40

So, what I did with this guy, because it was the same exactly to the T of what you're saying. I was a racist, I was all this shit. He was going off. He's pissed. And I said, All right, I understand you're mad. I'm getting you, you know. I wasn't the one that led him out of the cuffs, but I was getting out there as quick as I could because I didn't want my partner to have to deal with it. It was my, you know, it's my fish, so to speak. So um, I get out there, I was like, hey man, I was like, I understand you're mad. I was like, I need you to see what I saw. And so I was like, if you just give me five seconds of your life, I was like, here, have a seat. And I let him sit in the driver's seat. I goes, I trust you this much. Sit in my driver's seat. Look at this computer screen. I want you to read on the computer what I read. And so he's reading the description. He's like, let me guess. It said, you know, it's a it's a black man. And I was like, well, yeah, that's part of it. But I was like, you know, dreads. I was like, here's the big thing. I said, white, you know, I was like, read the shoes, and I want you to read the chain. And so he reads it, and he's still pissed, he's still mad. And then he's like, he's like, all right, he's like, but what's that got? He goes, What's that gotta do with me? I said, All right, now hold on. I was like, now come here. And so I brought him inside and I was like, now look at the video camera, what I saw. I was like, look what your guy's wearing. You know, it was full, it was great cameras, like 4K camera. 7-Eleven had it going on, and uh he saw that and he's like, look at his chain, look at what his shoes are. I was like, as soon as I watched this, I let you go. Fair? I was like, you saw this. The first time I went inside. He's like, all right. So he's like, uh, he goes, I he he did say he goes, I appreciate you did this because you didn't have, I know you didn't have to. He's like, but this is the bullshit we're talking about. And I said, All right, fair. So I got my man to come off of you know, just that pissed off cloud by just trying to be as transparent as I could because I was wrong.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:35

But on another note, how many cops do we know that don't don't do that? You're you're taking it to that extra level. And I think that's why you and I get along on new things. There's so many cops that are just driven based on their training. Okay, that's not the guy, get him out of cuffs, let's go to the next. No, just like you did, take that extra second and freaking explain it. It doesn't it doesn't take anything out of your yeah, I mean I'm glad he let me.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:00

Yeah, because that ultimately that's gonna let you yeah, we call that a tactical apology, right? So we we would teach that in like verbal judo communications. Like some guys would be like, I'm never apologizing. I'm like, Well, maybe you need to call it a tactical apology because it's gonna go a long way when you arrest an innocent person legally. Yeah, we arrest innocent people legally all the time. We stop and detain. We when I was police, thanks for pointing out I don't do that anymore. Uh but way when the police legally detain people and then they have to let them go, a tactical apology goes a long way. How about just for the inconvenience, right? How about hey, thanks for your cooperation. I'm sorry we had to keep you out here this long, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:42

Yeah. Um, Mike Cucumber asked, uh, Eric, if you get falsely arrested due to you matching a description, how do you handle it as a citizen? Just plead the fifth, just ID and hope the department holds them accountable. Um well, that's the thing. Like, if if you're going based off of what I just did, like the example for me, it that wasn't a false arrest. That doesn't qualify as a false arrest. That was given the all the descriptors and everything that I had, the totality of the circumstances at the time, it was legit. I had legal authority and and justification for putting you in cuffs. I thought I had the right person. I wasn't, I was going on good faith. I guess I don't know what you Vaughn, you explained it. You're a lawyer.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:25

You get you have to have reasonable suspicion at that point, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:27

Yeah, and and and that's really, really good reasonable suspicion, especially when you got the chain and the shoes matching and all that stuff. So um, but to Vaughn's point, the moment you find out, and this is what I was trying to get to in the court case, the moment that that prosecution had lost that, or or I should say, found reasonable doubt within himself, I would say you have a moral and ethical obligation right then and there to be like, we got we got to dismiss this. Like, I can't, yeah, I can't ethically go ahead or morally go ahead with this because I don't I have doubt.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:03

Yeah, and I think I think two we got two questions on the table now. With just following up with the prosecution, the prosecutor could and did in that case say, okay, even if that's true, right? So they kind of pivoted and said, okay, even if that's true, we still don't think it was enough for him to be able to shoot the guy. Okay, fair. You just changed your theory of the case on the fly in the moment. And if that's what you honestly believe that you're gonna advance that, fine, you're not unethical. So I don't want to call them unethical for continuing it. You're you hit the nail on the head, though. Once they believe they no longer have enough, then ethically they gotta they gotta drop the case. Um, now to the false arrest there, I think you did a great job. It's again, it's it's not a it's not an illegal detention, it's not an illegal arrest. So if that's what you mean by false arrest, but it is the wrong guy, true enough. So I think the question was what do you do as a citizen? Um, well, one, recognizing that what the legal standard is is pretty low. And if someone's telling you you match the description, and you know, you kind of just as respectful as you can be, the faster you're gonna get out of there. That's probably always true. Be as mad as you want. Um, but the more respectful you are, the more cooperative you are, the faster you're gonna get out of there. Um and then and then take that, I guess hopefully I get a tactical apology. But uh I wouldn't want to be in that situation either.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:26

You know, yeah, and and you gotta you gotta ask yourself too, if I go the other way, if I if I does resisting and making it as uncomfortable as possible, does that work in my favor or does that work against me? In the long run and in the short run. So this is my answer to everybody when they feel like they're being unjustly, you know, stopped by the police or whatever. Make your protests known, but comply. Uh-oh. Google, Google's taking over my TV. But um, yeah, make your protests known, officer. I you got the wrong person, but under threat of arrest or whatever. I'll I'll comply with what you're telling me. Uh I think that goes so much farther. I I've seen stop after stop of some of these uh um, I don't know what to call them. They they they're they're just constantly trying to test uh they're not First Amendment auditors, but they they go around and they try to get purposely pulled over.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:26

As they testing the limits of their constitutional rights.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:29

Yeah. And and they're like, Am I are you threatening to arrest me? And they're like, Yes, we are. And they're like, okay, under threat of arrest, sir. Like, like respectfully, I'll cooperate or whatever it is. But yeah, I always tell people just just tell them, hey, I I I don't agree with this. I'm I'm innocent, but whatever. Like, you know, because then you've made it known for the record.

Video Analysis That Changed A Trial

SPEAKER_02 1:22:49

And if I'm your attorney, I'm gonna have or your brother, I'm gonna have different advice too. Like Uh what I would do is when you say, Can you plead the fifth? It's like, yeah, you don't ever have to talk, you don't have to plead anything. The fifth doesn't even kick in until you're arrested, right? But but you don't you never have to talk, whether it's a fifth amendment right, or just don't talk. Um the problem is here's the here's the practical consequences. If you have a good alibi or someone they can call, you have information that's gonna speed up the process, not sharing it's going to delay the the process, it's going to keep you there in handcuffs longer, right? So we got that being said, sometimes you you don't you don't want to start talking because you're gonna talk yourself into an arrest for some other reason. Yeah, you get somebody in my jurisdiction, like, I didn't just rob a store, me and my buddy were over here smoking weed, and we're like, Well, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:46

I I kind of like Mike's call here. Just comply. What if I can outrun them? If you can outrun them, brother, that's hilarious. Uh, I I mean, don't run from the police, please. I'm not gonna give you that advice ever, but uh, that is fucking funny. Outrun the radio. Well, hey, if he's on a motorcycle, you got really good odds in most states because most of us can't chase you on a motorcycle.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:11

Uh if we could just staying within this court realm, if you will, we had some comments earlier about AI, and I get comments on LinkedIn and Instagram all the time on uh AI. And and I'm not sure if it has truly entered. This is a question for Vaughn. Has this truly entered the courtroom yet to where prosecutors are now having to get IT type computer people to verify private video that AI has not been a portion of what's getting introduced to this case? You can see where I'm going at with that. You could really this AI uh that the people send me, I mean, it it within the Vaughn.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:55

I can I can make you and and Banning make out with AI. Like I've I've got scary, I've got it down.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:01

So but have you seen, Vaughn, have you seen not to lie anything in 2025 get introduced and maybe dropped based on further investigation revealing that the AI was not a true source of information that was about to be entered into court?

SPEAKER_02 1:25:19

Well, here's let me back up before AI for a second. Any video evidence can be distorted, manipulated, it can be cry. I mean, all the old school stuff, it's not originals, it's it and so every case where there's video being introduced for forensic purposes, right? In an effort to prove a fact. Um, we know body cam video is not fit for the purpose of time, distance, speed, or angles, and yet prosecutors try to introduce it all the time for time, distance, speed, and angles. It is it has distorted lenses, discoloration based on technological advantages, it's got um frame rates that did that distort time, distance, and speed, all sorts of technological features, not bugs. These are features of the camera because they were never fit for the purpose of forensic analysis. That's not why they were designed. So every case where video or photographs are introduced, that sort of analysis is part of your due diligence, it's part of your of your process for assuring the validity of the evidence, right? Um, yes, AI now makes first impressions more difficult. So the more computer literate you are, the more AI literate you are, the less certainty and weight you give to initial viewing of video because you know it can be manipulated at high levels. Um, I have yet to see any cases where um AI has been attempted to be introduced. Evidence that was generated by AI was attempted to be introduced as original evidence to as evidence of the thing it purported to represent. I haven't seen that yet. But those discussions are being had on our legal, our legal discussion boards. Um, and I think our video analysts can figure that out very quickly. It's the same thing we did with sexual assault cases where you know uh simulated child porn cases, where they would take uh the body of an adult or yeah, the body of an adult and the face of a child and combine them in videos and in photos. That's old technology, that's you know, decades old they were doing that. So we would have to evaluate the evidence for that, right? Um, so AI is just another another technological leap, but the the analysis is going to be the same. Now, I don't know yet. Um, it's not in my wheelhouse yet to know what the experts will be looking at that would mark something as clearly this is AI generated. Clearly, this is not. I suspect it's easy for them. I suspect they could drop it into software and see what how it was generated. Sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:03

Um, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:04

But we're probably not far from a day where it's it's indistinguishable.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:09

Yeah, video will be inadmissible because it's not you just can't tell anymore. God, that's gonna be terrible.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:15

If you think about it though, I mean, just the advent of AI for public use in 2025. Yeah. Thinking about where this is gonna go in just the next 24 months is scary. And I'm hoping, and what I'm what I'm kind of screaming at here is are all the prosecutors gonna make sure that we're using some taxpayer funded to uh for videos that are coming in. Either we bring in somebody like Force Science that may have a team that's developed in the future even more uh that can kind of break down stuff if it's a serious case. But to me, uh AI is a menace. Somebody wrote in there AI is a menace, and I I do believe it. Is there some funny ones out there? Sure. If you're using it on a comedic level, uh, I think that's okay. But when you're doing it to where somebody's doing something, actually breaking the law or hurting somebody, I think the charge should be that much higher for the person that created it and released it. Um, to me. I mean, it's just I mean, you can really damage somebody with that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:10

Well, think about one of my concerns is um alibis. Like, so not not evidence of the offense itself.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:18

But I was here at this time with this person.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:20

I was at this party with this. Here's a video. Once that gets dissembled, we already got distortions in public perceptions on both, you know, going both sides, prosecution defense, they whoever gets out of the media and starts sharing their narrative. Can you imagine if you're like, I wasn't there, they got the wrong guy. Here's and here's a video of me. I was at this party. Who of us is watching that is gonna be in any position to determine the the legitimacy of it, and it's going to look as real as real can be to us, reasonable doubt, right there. Yep, yeah, and then and then it's and here's the problem with me. We've seen cases high profile, almost every single high profile case you can think of. And you guys, you know, challenge me with the in the in the chat. Um, and I'll let you know if I was involved with it. But the uh almost every high profile, if not every high profile case we were involved with, where a city burned, riots, protests, people were murdered. Um the media narrative that supported that outrage was not true. The actual case looked nothing like the original media accounts. And so we had cities burning and people being murdered and Wendy's being burned down. If you guys remember that, the Kenosha riots all were based on absolutely false, knowingly false information in those cases. So the and the reason that happens is because whoever's trying to, you know, advance this idea of accountability, they are doing it in an unjust and corrupt way. We all want honest accountability, but that actually takes time, and just especially what you're talking about now with the advent of some of this evidence out there that's getting disseminated, that's just actually not true, it's just factually inaccurate. Um, so these people now are getting ahead of these narratives and putting out AI-generated alibis, or um, you're gonna see cities burning, you're gonna see riots and protests and cities burning completely off of false information. Yep. The problem is the majority of the people out there believe the narrative, they're righteously indignant, they're absolutely mad because they think they have a good reason to be mad. Um, and they're not just mad, they're angry and willing to burn cities down based on their perception of corruption that was completely manufactured. Yeah, so I I say that trying to think of a case that wasn't that the actual initial media accounts look like the actual case, and I can't think of any off the top of my head, but yeah, I can think of a lot that weren't.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:52

Yeah. Um, to Harrison's point, LEOs can use AI to make fake videos. Sure they can. Just like they've planted evidence in the past, uh, you know, falsified documents. Like there's all sorts of things that cops can do and have done, but um I I don't understand what your statement's trying to make. I don't think anybody's debating that, other than the argument that most people make that cops aren't even bright enough to know all of the uh constitution that they swore an oath to uphold, like the First Amendment. So just ask them that name the five elements of the First Amendment. And you think that they're gonna be able to use AI to make a fake video, you gotta pick a side, bud. Either they're smart enough to make that type of video or they're too dumb to know the constitution. Which one is it? So uh I I I don't know what to do with your comment there, um, but I wanted to leave it up there so we can make a point. Um, some angry people are happy to use an excuse to go crazy. Yeah, I think I think everybody's looking for that's the beauty of America. If you've never traveled, if you're if you're not a person that has traveled outside the U.S., um, I am, I have traveled outside the U.S. quite a bit. Oh we just lost him again. Yep, Vaughn had take shit.

unknown 1:33:00

I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:01

I mean, hopefully he comes back with a better video. Uh-oh. Vaughn fell fell out of his chair. Um, but if you if oh he had another Red Bull. If you've never had the benefit of being outside of the country, uh and really getting a perspective on on what life is like out other places, the things that we're outraged about here in the United States are because we have the luxury of living in the United States. That's why I love our country. It is truly a luxury to live here.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:34

It is. I mean, when you look at everything around the globe, it is regardless of what you're pissed off about or what side you're on or politics, this and that, which we don't do on the show, it is an absolute luxury to live in the United States.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:46

Yeah, yeah. No, I'm I am blessed to have served this country, still serve. Um I I guess banning served if he's a Marine. I don't really know. Served crayons. I don't know how hard that is. Yeah. Uh Von, I don't know if I ever asked you, were you military?

SPEAKER_02 1:34:05

Yeah, I was I retired out of the army as a jag, remember?

SPEAKER_01 1:34:08

Oh, that's right. That's a jag off. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:12

Oh, trust me, I I I people thank me for my service, and I'm like, well, if you're thanking me for being a cop for 18 years, then you're welcome if you're thanking me for being a jag. My military service. It was I was support services, I was good in my job, but I was not dodging bullets in the military. So you're right, right.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:34

We called that a smart admin pogue in the Marines. We damn sure needed you. Uh people can make jokes around. And then there's just as many jokes about the O three guys in the Marines.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:46

I I sure as fuck don't need them. Because I can tell you this. They're the ones that I have to deal with now because I'm still in, like, they're like, oh, you got to read a Miranda, or you gotta read.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:57

I'm like Article 31 rights.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:00

Yeah, I'm like, what why? I'm not questioning him. I got what I need to arrest him. He's going. If you want to question him, go ahead and read him his rights. I'm not. I was like, I'm putting him in cuffs, I'm getting him up to the jail, and that's it.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:13

No, no, no, you get you want to be educated by the JAG. Yeah, yeah. They so if these are military guys, it's because you have an additional set of rights that are called Article 31 rights. Your JAG calls them Miranda rights, they're not, they're very different. Right. The problem is Miranda's triggered by custodial interrogation. You are 100% right. Article 31s are triggered by the arrest. As soon as you arrest them, you have to advise them of their Article 31 rights, whether you intend to question them or not.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:43

Oh, see, they're not verifying that. They keep telling me Miranda.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:45

I'm like, when the fuck do I gotta read them as well all day, yeah, all day long. And it's not Miranda. In fact, here's the problem if you read a Miranda before it's a custodial setting, you're lying to them. I I've written articles about this. I was like, you guys, stop telling them they have a right to an attorney in a non-custodial setting because they do not.

AI, Evidence Integrity, And Courtrooms

SPEAKER_01 1:36:06

Right? Yeah, yeah. I'm like, this is not the movie, and that goes into civilian uh policing as well. You know, you're like, you don't sorry, I'm getting distracted by my look at my look at my thing over there. Why does that say 21, Banning? On the on the uh that's really strange. Anyway, it's probably AI. Yeah, um, yeah, fucking Chinese are listening in on my mini split. Uh I I don't understand. We still have officers to this day that don't get the difference between when they have to read person their Miranda warning versus when they don't. And I'm like, you watch these movies where they're like putting the cuffs on, you have the right to remain silent. I'm like, who the fuck does that? I the only the only city I think that actually does is probably NYPD. Just because every NYPD show you watch, they're the ones that do it.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:04

Hey, here's what's funny. I worked a case last week. Um it was a shooting case, the police show up, the guy stays, civilian case, and he's like, Yep, I shot him. And I put the shotgun back at my house. So he I gotta be careful the facts, it's an ongoing case. They the guy shoots somebody in defense of another person. Okay, the other person, yeah. The other person is detained by the police. Of course, this is all happening, blood's still everywhere very fast. They put this other person in handcuffs, they read this other person their Miranda warnings. The the victim, the the person who was getting beat on, gets read them. They take the suspect, the the civilian guy who used self-defense, uh, they take him away to go three of the weapon, which he's showing them right where he's at. He's not hiding anything, and they start asking him what happened. And they have him in handcuffs, they're letting him walk back to his house. So here's the question: what is the definition of custody that triggers Miranda? And the answer is whenever a reasonable person would feel like they've been formally arrested.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:17

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:17

The mistake people make is whenever a reasonable person would feel like they're not free to leave, that's not custody because a traffic stop would therefore be custody because you're not free to leave. Right, it's just a seizure, right? A Terry stop would be custody, but it's not. So was the guy who they suspected of murder, who they put in handcuffs, who was told to show them where the gun was, walks back to his own house. Would a reasonable person feel like they had been formally arrested, such that it should have triggered Miranda? Because they're in there like asking him, Hey, what happened? What's going on? Now, as the attorney, I'm going, you guys just walked way too close to the line on that one. Why not, why not mirandize the guy earlier under those circumstances? But setting that aside, why on earth did you think it necessary to Mirandize the victim? It's because they put her in they put her in handcuffs and put her in the back of a police car and thought, okay, well, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:20

Mike, uh, Mike Cucumber dropped five dollars in the chat and said Craig Hendry is spending 160 days in jail for free free speech. Flex your freedoms recently arrested for speech. So luxurious. Interview them. Uh, I don't know. I'm not familiar with that one. I'm not familiar with that one. That's interesting. Um, Marine Blood or Tim, one of my mods. If you guys can uh just hold on to that case name and uh maybe we'll make a video of that later.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:50

But speaking of the the UCMJ, Vaughn, and I've I've always wanted to ask you this and I always forget, but you know, what what was your thoughts on a few good men in reference to oh yeah, Tom Cruise's nice ass in them that uniform?

SPEAKER_01 1:40:04

Great.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:04

Well, I mean, it's just it it to I it's a great movie, regardless if it's real or not. It it's a good movie. Yeah, and I'm just curious on what Vaughn's thoughts are on the movie.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:13

Um, yeah, I mean, what how do you get more motivating than uh Catherine Bell, right? I don't know, I don't understand the question.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:21

I mean, do you do you do you think that they're the I I'm guessing the way court unraveled versus how the case went, is that pretty accurate on how it was handled?

SPEAKER_02 1:40:35

Uh well, no, they always accelerate. There's a couple things about military court martials that are unique that nobody would believe because they're so different. I'll give you an example of that. Um, when we go through a trial on the merits, once we start, we don't stop. That case starts, it might start at eight in the morning. We're gonna go. Uh, if it if the judge realizes it's gonna be multiple days, they might let us break at 1700, 1800. However, if the judge thinks they can squeeze it in in a in a 20-hour day, you will go through the merits of the case and you'll do it all in one day, even if it takes 20 hours, and then immediately go to sentencing. So in the civilian side, you you you break, it could be weeks, months before you go to sentencing. In the military, you immediately go to sentencing. And so uh I've been in cases where they'll give you a break to go take a comfort break, as we like to call them. Um and then you come back and you you move into sentencing phase. Uh it's it makes it very difficult to try cases. That being said, while things are faster in the military, and many military judges prioritize what we call the panel members, not the jury, they're called panel members, they want to get them back to work as fast as possible. So it's not the due process should be on the defendant. But most of the time in court martials, the judges seem to be more concerned about getting that first sergeant back to his unit, getting that commander back to their unit. And so they fly, they just fly through that stuff. Um, they're very regimented, they are much, much better to practice. We military court martials and the and your command of the rules of evidence um is really high. You are expected to have a very high level of competence, much more so than you do in the civilian side. Um, and so you have a really higher, you have a higher class of criminal and you have a higher class of attorney um in the military, generally speaking. Now you you get your you get your your no loads and you weed them out pretty fast. You don't let them litigate very long. Um what else about it? The uh rarely do you get a bad judge. Now we started to see some bad judges um towards the end of my military career, just people who had no right, no just they did not have the competence to be on the stand or on the bench. But for various reasons, they got put on the bench. And uh they were some of the worst judges I've ever seen, most unqualified worst judges. But for the most part, the military judges are very, very good, high quality. Here's what else is different. Um, after a trial, you go talk to the judge, the prosecution and the defense, and prosecution is called trial counsel. Um, and the judge educates you. Here's what you did well, here's what you didn't do well, here's what you might have thought of next time. And so you have a very fast feedback loop. You don't get that in the civilian side. So you're constantly being educated um in really high, high quality, meaningful ways. Um, I prosecuted in in military courts, and then also as a federal special assistant U.S. attorney, so I prosecuted in federal court. The closest thing to military is federal court. Um, federal court is a gentleman's court for the most part, they're very good attorneys for the most part. But I will tell you, my supervising attorney um in the federal system uh said he would he would give up 10 federal prosecutors for for one JAG from a specific branch. They're not all the same. Uh I'm only talking about the Army, right? Army Jag has has great training programs, great screening processes, and really great attorneys come out. The millet the Marine Corps Jags who become litigators are um they're such a small organization that they are very good. They have to be.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:49

So the Marine Jags are as much dumb shit as the Marines do, yeah, they have to be good.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:53

And that's yeah, no, marine jags are legit. Speaking on that, just when I was in as a young, I think it was a E2, E3 at the time, uh serving down in the Kings Bay area, uh, you would see Marines go out in town and get in trouble, either a DWI or uh family violence. I mean, both serious offenses. And sometimes you would see the UCMJ would adopt they would adopt a case out of the county, adopt a case out of municipality, depending on what the charges were. Did did you or when you were in, did you did you see that they wanted to adopt a lot of it? Or would they let some of it just play out in the county county sessions uh or district courts and then do their own punishment after it was over? Did the military want to adopt more of it to keep it in-house, or do they want to allow the district and county courts deal with that, if that makes sense?

Military Justice vs Civilian Courts

SPEAKER_02 1:45:55

That's yeah, and and it'll be an unsatisfactory answer, but I do want to start for the audience and say there's a thing called uh double jeopardy. You can't be tried twice for the same offense in the same jurisdiction. And and I don't mean jurisdiction as in county, I mean jurisdiction as in level. So if you're charged in state court and you're found not guilty, you can't be charged in state court for the same offense. But double jeopardy does not apply for federal and state. So you can be charged in the state and found not guilty, and the feds can say, Well, our turn to try now, right? Or charging the feds not guilty, and the state can go, well, let's let us try. Yeah, there's usually memorandums of agreement, which are which are semi-formal uh memorandums of understanding or agreements where you know if if the if the county or the state prosecutes a case and it's a not guilty, we have regulations or at least policies that say we're only gonna we can take it legally, but we're only gonna take it under extraordinary circumstances if it's already been litigated to to jeopardy, right? Through through sensing or through uh verdict. That being said, sometimes to answer your question was very pragmatic. So when I was the special assistant U.S. attorney, um, I was doing a lot of sexual assault cases and some homicides. But uh, if it was a sexual assault case, the jurisdiction follows the soldier. So let's say the soldier's out in the county and they get in a sexual assault like you just described, the state has jurisdiction, and so do we. Now, military and feds are both feds. So if the military takes the feds can't, and vice versa. So we have a memorandum of agreement with the feds on who's gonna take those cases. But uh it's been a while since I've thought about these things. So hopefully I'm I'm I'm still straight on these issues. But uh but pragmatically, practically speaking, I would look at the sentencing range. So I would call the feds and talk to the military attorneys and the state, and I'd say, we got a guy, for example, we had a case out of uh Topeka, Kansas, that uh it was a military guy who got caught on to catch a predator, right? So he's picking up kids. And so I just called the feds and said, Hey, what what kind of a sentence are you gonna get? Because this guy was dead to rights, he was going to prison, right? And so I called the feds and said, Hey, what what do you guys typically get for this kind of sentence? And they're like, you know, we might get terms of months, right? Uh we might get a year, terms of months, whatever it was. Um, in the military, military is notorious for very, very low sentences, very low, like ungodly. It would blow your mind at what people are found guilty of. I've had people found guilty of sexually assaulting, fallout, double team raping a woman, got zero jail time, just got kicked out of the military and deported back to their their home state. And uh unbelievable that some of the sentences that the military would give out, they're so low. Um but the uh the state said, oh, this is mandatory minimum, like 17 years or something. So we're like, well, that answered the question. You know, we're gonna send it to the state. Because, you know, as the as the representative of the military at the time, I'm like, we're not gonna get a good sentence. We we got the guy dead to rights, we're not gonna get a good sentence. The feds were like, this is just low stuff for us. We got way too many other big cases we're dealing with. He's not gonna get a good good sentence. And the state was like, we'll take it, and the guy's going to get over a decade at least. Um, so that was part of what New England was. We were just practical speaking. Yeah. Uh sometimes it's just a call to the prosecutor if it's a special type of case, and we'll say, Hey, what kind of experience do you guys have in doing sexual assault cases? Because we got in the military very, very good at prosecuting sexual assault cases. Um, and uh, so some of the states weren't equipped for it, some were. It was just a conversation with between the prosecutors.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:59

Yeah, and I think a lot of those sexual assault cases, and anybody gets involved in that, I it's one of those, they it can disappear off the docket, and we're gonna get a lot of land in Texas.

unknown 1:50:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:09

That's all I'm gonna, I'm gonna go with that. But uh to you know, people that are dead to rights and stuff like that, and then I always think about my 10-year-old daughter, you know what I mean? And I'm sure there's a lot of uh moms and dads out there that think the same, but that's not a due process, and I understand that, and there's gonna be problems with my statement on that. But uh anyway, yeah, get them out of the uh get them out of the matrix. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:30

Well, this is why you know yourself and why, you know, if you get personally attached to a case like that, you call you call in your battle buddy to go make the arrest, and so you can emotionally vent somewhere else and not lose your career and family over this guy. But but uh the feelings you have are not unreasonable. Obviously, you know, we we did a case where um and I I at the time I was not happy. I was a young cop working undercover, and it was a sexual well, this guy was a photographer, and uh, I'll try to keep this rated PG at least. Um, but he was he was fo he was photographing um explicit sex acts with children of all variety with the parents' permission. So he was yeah, the parents were were pimping out their kids for stuff, and he was the first well, he was needing a new photographer, so he actually put out a wan ad for somebody who could help him take photos and videos of these events, and so we worked up that case and uh got him got him dead to rights, and so we were ready to get the warrant. We got the warrant, we're gonna go make the arrest, and our supervisor was like, nah, nah, nah, nah, no, you're not, you're absolutely not making the arrest. Um, so they called in an arrest team and knew nothing about the case other than the guy had a warrant, but we knew too much about the case, right? And so it was uh you know, he did us a favor by detaching us from the the arrest itself. At the time, we were like, What do you mean we're not making the arrest? Of course we're making the arrest. He's like, Nah, you're not.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:04

Yeah. Well, folks, let's get into the second part of this show. Sorry, we rabbit hold guys now that we rabbit hold down kid diddlers and all this nasty stuff. Uh, let's get a little into the body cam review. We've only got a couple today because I knew we were gonna let we're gonna let Von just go off leash today and just keep going. And uh he did not disappoint. But uh for those that never done this, um, and it's been a minute since we, you know, actually since we've actually done one all the way through, absolutely. Yeah, so um what we do basically is uh rather than watch a video and then sit back and try to Monday morning quarterback, we pretend we are the officers in the body cam video. And we kind of stop and go, stop and go, stop and go as how we would handle the call from what we see. Uh and you kind of see some commonalities in police training across the nation. Even though Bandy and I never trained together and uh Vaughn never trained with us, our ways of getting to the same goal tend to all meet. Um, we may take slightly different paths to get there, but it all ends up trying to get to that same accomplishment. And you'll see that most of the time in these videos, although we've never watched these videos. Uh, so there's that part. That's the element of surprise. And every once in a while, these officers go way off the rails, and we discuss that if that's what happens. Um, but more often than that, uh it it goes pretty much how we think. We we kind of sound like Nostradamus on here sometimes with our predictions, but it's not it's not that we're reading the future, it's just it's training and experience. So uh, but it gives you guys a chance to ask you know, very important question. Well, why didn't they shoot them in the leg or whatever it is you guys come up with? So let us share this screen. Um I think that's the right one. I was gonna say if it's gonna let me share it, we're gonna biggie size this. Biggie size, big size. There we go. And play. Alright, this is a real-time information camera. Not a real-time crime center camera, but that's what we like to call it. We've got no volume right now. I have no idea why we're following this white truck. But it appears he's running all sorts of lights. Okay, so we'll pause it right here. Um I don't know why we're chasing this guy, uh, but he was clearly running lights and stuff when the real-time crime center cameras were following him. Uh, not sure what's up. Uh, a lot of times it's a stolen vehicle, or they just left a scene of some sort of violent crime. Uh typically. So when I look at this, that's where my mind's going is this person is some sort of fleeing felon, other than him fleeing from the traffic stop. Uh, and in this, it's going to be a high-risk stop. If it comes to a stop right here, I'm going to get out of my car. I'm not going to run up to his vehicle. I'm going to stay back, stay behind cover, and try to call this guy out with guns pointed at him. Um, Vaughn, what do you got?

SPEAKER_02 1:55:45

Yeah, I kind of want to know what he's running from. Yeah. Which makes a big difference. We uh I want to know how many occupants there are, whether all the occupants are presumably involved. It could everything that's happening now from a supervisory standpoint, which is this is pretty realistic. You're getting information uh fit fed to you, so you're not the involved officer. You're like, well, I need to know what it is you're chasing him for, how many occupants, what's the weather conditions, what the road conditions, what's the because it makes a difference on whether you uh uh a lot of jurisdictions, the supervisor has to allow you to continue the pursuit nowadays. They can terminate the pursuit from distance if you're not feeding them enough relevant information. Um, so that's what I'm that's what I'm asking here. Is we're about to do some pretty pretty aggressive pursuit right now. I'd like to know why.

SPEAKER_00 1:56:32

Yes, yeah, I agree. Banning, you got anything? It just for people that are watching that are not in law enforcement and you guys are digging in and you're looking and you're trying to understand it. Basically, what Bon is saying is the officers that are involved in this and dispatch, and we may have an air unit here or a drone. To me, it kind of looks like a drone with the way the setup is. Um, what are the elements of the offense? What brought us here to begin with? Why do we keep trying to take somebody's quote unquote freedom away to question or figure out evidence of what occurred uh before the cameras came on? That is that is that's all we're saying is we're trying to figure out uh do we have an offense here or not? We have enough, obviously, if we're chasing them uh for this long, using this this many resources.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:16

Something drew our attention to this vehicle. I'm curious why we started following it to begin with. Um typically it's stolen vehicle, some some form of felon. Uh you're not gonna start just following a car because it has a parking ticket violation.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:33

You're not gonna treat somebody like this for running a red light. There's some point to where the public is absolutely in at all times way more important uh than a freaking red light violation.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:43

I mean, it's large cities we're not going to, but some of you small cities like where you were at. I don't know. Never know what the hell you guys will chase for. Uh if you're from Georgia, it doesn't matter. Uh you you didn't stop. We're chasing. So all right, let's keep going. All right. You're gonna be northbound on eastern. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 1:58:03

Yeah, he's he's going the wrong way on 240.

Jurisdiction, Sentencing, And Case Selection

SPEAKER_01 1:58:06

Oh all right. So this is where um that's an actual air unit if everybody can do that too, but this is where I'm not I'm not going to chase this car with my vehicle. I'm not going the wrong way down the freeway. Um, but at the same time, he is such a risk to the public. You got, you know, you got air one, so you don't need to follow him with your vehicle. You just gotta parallel and figure out ways to get to this guy.

SPEAKER_00 1:58:33

Some of the units are gonna try to get into the the correct lane. Yeah, and they're gonna utilize their lights going down. And if you have enough agents, enough units that are available, you're gonna try to slow people entering in the same direction. There's a there's a there's a methodology that we can use to try to limit the amount of cars that go up there, but everybody can see how fast this is going on.

SPEAKER_03 1:58:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:58:54

I mean, we'll all we want to do is is to end this before he hits an innocent family coming in that opposite direction. Yeah. Yeah, this guy's uh out of control. All right, let's see.

unknown 1:59:08

Okay, guys, Ramp is 1022, the first chief, and air one, keep up with.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:12

All right, driver's bailed out the window. Oh, he's trying to carjack. Oh, he's got a gun. Yep, he's armed.

unknown 1:59:20

Hey, he's out, he's running, he's about to carjack somebody else.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:23

It's not Texas. Oh my god, somebody run him over.

SPEAKER_00 1:59:26

He's trying to carjack people.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:28

Okay, so seeing this, one, if you're a civilian out there and somebody's pointing a gun out you on the freeway, you are a hundred percent within your rights to uh run that motherfucker over. I'm just saying.

SPEAKER_00 1:59:39

Well, props props to police activity for this. I mean, look at the date up there. You know, I mean, uh last month. Back in back in November. And we and we've we've got this here for our viewing, and I hate to call it pleasure. We're able to kind of dissect it with our opinions.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:54

Now, I am by no means an attorney and giving you legal advice, but I'm just saying you could uh according to the laws as I know them, this would be self-defense.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:03

And well, somebody's trying to blanket speech, yes, but Vaughn's got a little bit more of a backing on that.

SPEAKER_01 2:00:10

That's why I'm not letting that's why I'm not making Vaughn answer that type of question. I don't want him to have any liability in my dumbass. But uh yeah, I'm just gonna say you're legally allowed to beat your kids in Texas, and you can also run people over pointing a gun at your face.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:24

We do have a castle law here, and there's nobody anyway.

SPEAKER_01 2:00:26

Go ahead. I'm joking that relax, relax. They're jokes. All right, uh, let's keep going here. Your boy is desperate. Oh, we got him. 10 points, Gryffindor. That's a Texas man.

unknown 2:00:39

He's right by the truck now. He's still on foot, though.

SPEAKER_01 2:00:42

Your boy is gumby, he's still going. Okay, so in this, as a cop, okay. I can tell you right now, I see a person that is has dis gross disregard for the public safety. 100%. He is a hundred, like at this point, there is no ends of the earth that I'm not gonna go to get this man. Yeah, there's nothing that's going. I don't even care if a supervisor's like, stop. I'm going after this dude. That's me. Yeah. So, Vaughn, what do you got?

SPEAKER_02 2:01:11

No, man, I think I can already imagine what the defenses are gonna try to argue. But yeah, there's only two questions. Is a guy is he posed an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury? Is it reasonable to believe that he does? And I think just from what we're seeing, overwhelmingly the answer is yes to yourself or to others. Overwhelmingly, just from his driver behavior alone, forget the fact that he pulled a gun out and he's pointing it at every car that drives by. So the question is what would be an effective quality of force to immediately and decisively stop the threat? That's the next question.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:43

That's that nerd talk.

SPEAKER_02 2:01:44

I like you can do that from a from distance with a long gun and a scope, then that's probably best.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:51

Yeah, talk nerdy to me, Vaughn. I like it. That's all I'm talking about. So talk nerdy. Oh, oh, he's still getting run over. And the blur tells you what the hell.

SPEAKER_00 2:02:28

I can't see the gun. Show us your hands!

SPEAKER_02 2:02:34

Yeah, you pause it there for a second. This is where it gets this is where training becomes so important because right now we get into this sort of uh this loop. Show me your hands, show me your hands. I don't want him moving at all. I want him to just freeze and not move because if he's got access to a gun, show me your. Hands, the movement of compliance is exactly the same as a pre-attack indicator. Right. The movement to comply is the same movement to shoot you. So when you talk through this with cops in a training setting, they go, Oh, yeah, that's actually a great point. So, what should I do instead? Well, the answer is don't move. Don't move. Like that's the that's the command you want to give them. Um, and you want to freeze them in place while you get into a tactical, a tactically advantageous position. But I I just hate inviting movement at this point. Now, other cops may have a uh a counter argument to that, but that's that's my take on it. Don't move.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:35

Yeah. Um, Mr. Bill Fold's asking me to get somebody mod access on Twitch. I don't know how. Sorry. I don't even have access to Twitch.

SPEAKER_00 2:03:45

Let's talk about Brandar since the last one on there, or second to last.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:49

Uh, aren't they supposed to be able to say something before they're so I'm I'm I'm gonna answer this in in a short stint.

SPEAKER_00 2:03:57

Yeah we've already seen evidence of this man willing to take a life pointing that gun into somebody's car, trying to obviously his truck is now not working. He's trying to get away from the law enforcement still. And if he's willing to point that gun into a nobody's, you know, a civilian just coming down the road that has not been involved up until this point, you have to stop that action. So for saying for something, we we we said it with the lights and science behind it. We set it as they were pursuing. And we have got to totally end that we we we have to end that threat right now. Yeah, you can say it as you're doing it, but you have to end that threat to make sure nobody else gets hurt. And I'm not a proponent. We don't want we don't wake up every day and hope that somebody loses their life over something, but you have to end that threat. That's all I'm getting at, period.

SPEAKER_02 2:04:50

Yeah, and I think that the this comes up in a lot of cases, most cases, because I think jurors want to they want to know that you at least warn the guy, right? It it's nice to warn him. So if you have if it's feasible, and that's how the policies are written, there believe it or not, there's not a legal constitutional requirement to give a warning. Um, the only place a warning is really discussed is in when you shoot somebody to prevent escape. So if somebody's gonna take off running from you from a violent felony offense, you can constitutionally shoot them, um, but you must give a warning when feasible. So, what does it mean when feasible? Well, California describes feasible because it's not really described is if you can do so without increasing the threat or the risk to yourself or others, the amount of time it takes to say stop or I'll shoot, drop the gun or I'll shoot, if you just literally time how long it takes to say that one, are they even going to hear you anyway? So, what's the point of giving a warning they're not gonna hear? But even if they do hear you, the amount of time it takes, you then compare that amount of time with how fast they can turn, point, and shoot that gun, which on average is about a quarter of a second.

SPEAKER_03 2:06:05

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 2:06:05

So if the gun is already up, it's a matter of deciding to turn and fold the trigger. It's a quarter of a second. It'll take you longer than a quarter of a second to say, stop or I'll shoot, police, or I'll shoot. And so courts are very, very liberal uh in recognizing that giving a warning when you're facing the difference between an imminent threat, which is one that's about to occur, and an immediate threat, which is one that's happening right now, this falls squarely in the immediate threat category. It's happening right now, and so there's no legal requirement to give a warning. Some policies will say give a warning when feasible. And feasible means if you can do it without losing your tactical advantage, if you could do it without increasing risk to yourself or others, which is a very low bar. Um, just to put a fine point on it. Imagine you got somebody who's pointing their gun at a clerk at a bank and they say, Get up, I'm gonna shoot you in your head, and you come in sideways, they don't even know you're there, and you have the tactical advantage. Um, the law does not require you to let them know you're even there or give a warning before you stop that threat because it takes 0.06 seconds to pull that trigger from index to pulling that trigger. And at 0.06 seconds is faster. Um is much faster than the amount of time it's gonna take for you to identify yourself, lose your tactical advantage, and have them turn and pull the trigger at you. Um so it's a great question, it comes up all the time, but just from a human performance standpoint, once you have an immediate threat, you're not legally required to do it. Um, and it's tactically disadvantageous if you do.

Bodycam Review: Wrong‑Way Pursuit And Gunpoint Carjacking

SPEAKER_01 2:07:46

Yeah. Plus, I mean, just the reasonableness argument about uh I I've chased him in a pursuit for the last five miles. Um, he got out of the vehicle. We continued, we had a helicopter, we've been trying to get this person to stop. He's got hit by a vehicle that he was trying to carjack and still continue to be a threat towards other people. Yeah, I don't think me yelling out was going to change his behavior.

SPEAKER_02 2:08:12

So it but you know what, Eric, here's what here's that why this is not a bad question. This comes up in every case. The guy can be sitting there with a hatchet. Literally, we have a case where the guy had a hatchet trying to break into houses with a hatchet, faces the cop with a hatchet, says, Is that gun big enough? And refuses all command, starts walking backwards into the community with the hatchet. They're telling him stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, while pointing a gun at him, and eventually they shoot him because he decides he's gonna continue to move away from them and into the community, um, still with the hatchet. And the opposing side brought experts in who literally from universities who literally said the officer was not justified in shooting him because he didn't warn him that he was gonna be shot. Yeah, and this is a case where he's pointing the gun at him. So it's it's it's a fair question because it's gonna come up in every case.

SPEAKER_01 2:09:03

Yeah, I saw Mike Cucumber say something about can you shoot and talk at the same time? I mean, you you can. And a lot I wouldn't recommend it, but a lot too.

SPEAKER_00 2:09:14

You know, when they go back to training, they they're they're saying it as they're shooting, depending on their their vantage point. And you know, somebody said, Oh, they'll be seen. I mean, there's there's a lot of tactics and dynamics that go involved in this uh that we're dissecting when when it all took place in 13 seconds. Yeah, you know, just as an example.

SPEAKER_02 2:09:31

But you can it's a great question, too. Like, I love that. That's a human performance question. Talking disrupts your shooting platform, it's going to take you off. Your gun is not going to be accurate while you're talking. The other thing is it splits your cognitive load. You have a it takes a lot of focused attention to aim or to fire accurately in a dynamic setting. It takes a lot of cognitive effort to speak and to formulate words in an effort to generate voluntary compliance or give warnings. Um, so even if you get whatever you're gonna say on auto autopilot with some level of automaticity, like you just say it on a loop, um just saying that is actually cutting against the other expectation of cops is that they shoot accurately when they shoot. So we don't train cops to do both simultaneously. One, because it it is an amazing pressure on your cognitive load, it's very, very hard to expect. But two, it just throws your shooting off.

SPEAKER_01 2:10:23

Yeah. Um, Brandar said the officer has no firsthand knowledge of the weapon being pointed. How do you know that? You're you're speculating, you don't know what this officer knows. You don't know as he came up over that hill, he didn't see that guy holding a gun, pointing it.

SPEAKER_02 2:10:38

Well, and that's that's also it's not required legally anyway. You have imputed knowledge. So if dispatch is telling you you're allowed to rely on dispatch, you're allowed to rely on other officers. Um, if you can make reasonable inferences. So when you're generating a reasonable belief that the person poses a threat, it's based on training, education, experience, and experience is what you're talking about. He doesn't have the personal experience of seeing it, but it's also the fourth one is reasonable inferences.

SPEAKER_03 2:11:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:11:05

And so that's why reasonable inferences are another officer saying he's got a gun, helicopter saying he's got a gun, he's trying to carjack people. Um responding officers are legally allowed to rely on imputed knowledge from those third parties.

SPEAKER_01 2:11:20

Yeah. And uh another form they they call it good faith and all that shit, too. Reasonable and prudent person.

SPEAKER_00 2:11:27

Yeah, reasonable and brutal person telling you giving you the information that you need to act.

SPEAKER_01 2:11:32

Yeah, and there's a fucking dude on the freeway on foot, like that doesn't happen either. It's not a reasonable person doing that shit. So yeah, I got no issues, um, no issues with any of that. And yeah, but to my point about just making the comment that he's going off of what other people are saying, you don't know that. Like what the body cam sees is not what the officer sees. That that needs to get out of people's heads as well.

SPEAKER_00 2:12:01

But body cam is a great tool, yeah, but it's not following the direction of the eyes. And I know Vaughn can go in and systematically uh explain that. And some people may not even be able to keep up because I can't keep up with it, but on what our body does, what our body senses, and what our body sees. Yeah, well, if he's proven one thing tonight, he knows a little bit about cameras. Just a bit. Just a bit. So in sp in reference to cameras, yeah. Vaughn, does the I understand we're getting 30 frames per second, but is the audio constant or is it taking sound bits as well?

SPEAKER_02 2:12:36

No, the audio audio is fantastic because it's it's actually sampled at like tens of thousands of samples per second. So we actually heavily rely on audio. Um you know, if this is a good time. Let me if I can again, let me share the screen showing you what Bannon's talking about, because this is this is really what we use to make this point into juries and the judges. So if I can show you real quick why we don't rely on body cams.

SPEAKER_03 2:13:17

If you'll let me pop that up.

SPEAKER_01 2:13:19

Yeah, one second. Trying to get it to go.

SPEAKER_02 2:13:23

All right. So what we did, we put police officers with eye trackers on and body cams. This is the same officer. He's responded to a simulated crash scene where there's gonna be a shooting. The on the left is the body cam, uh chest mounted, and on the right is eye tracker. Uh the eye tractor, you can see these little over here, you can see these little dots. It's about about a half a degree of visual angle. Um, that is very accurate. That is telling you precisely where the eyes are looking. Um, what's important about this is we have the body cam. This is what we believe the cop is seeing, right? This is what the cop has available to be seen, and how much more information is available through the human eye than what the body camera is showing, just in this. Here's the exact same scenario. On the left is the body cam, on the right is the eye tracker. You can see where the officer's looking isn't even captured on that body camera. Yeah, over 70% of the information the officer is going to use to make their decisions won't even be on the body camera at all, is what we were able to show in this particular study. Um, here's a great one on the left is the body camera on the right. The officer has turned his head to the right. This is the officer's partner. He's checking the relative position of his partner as they both move up together, which is very common. Nothing on the body camera is in the officer's line of sight or perspective or vision. This is why when we say you cannot assume the officer saw anything on the body camera ever, nor can you assume that what the officer did see is on the body camera ever, because the body camera cannot ever be used as a proxy for an officer's experience. In this case, the gun is aligned straight ahead towards the suspect who's going to be armed with a gun, and yet the officer's looking to his right and seeing none of that. We cannot hold the officer accountable to anything on that body camera. And we don't know this in real life because we don't have eye trackers on cops. Here again, you'll see the eye trackers picking up the sight. We know the officer's looking, his eyes are here, roll up to his back sight. So, how much of this stuff out here in the environment do you think he's seeing? The answer is none because his eyes are focused right here. So, even though it's available to be seen, we know based on focus of attention, his eyesight is aiming that gun, which means anything happening beyond, which we call external far, is not actually being seen by the officer. And if you look right here on the body cam, you can see the suspect can't even be seen. So, what the suspect's doing with a gun in his hand, he's got a gun in his hand right here, is not even picked up on the body cam. So what the officer is seeing or able to be seen is much greater in this particular instance than what the body cam picks up. So we showed this. Um, this is just part of the education piece we use when we try to show people the limitations of body cams versus the human, the alignment of the eye. And I say alignment of the eye because we just because your eyes are aligned doesn't mean you're actually focusing on it. We've all done that when we daydream, right? You're looking at something and you're actually just internally focused. But in most of these cases, um, the only way you know what the officer perceived or what their focused attention was is when you interview them and they tell you.

SPEAKER_01 2:16:56

That is awesome. I like that. Um, yeah. Uh so Ryan Ryan Lance asked, Is tunnel vision a real thing when in a firefight? Um, I'll I'll tell you the quick version of what I've been taught uh in my career is that yes, it's a real thing when you get into those high stressed environments and you get that auditory and uh ocular exclusion. I guess that's the the big nerdy words that they say, but um, you get that adrenaline, all sorts of things start to happen to the body. And uh tunnel vision is a possibility um for anybody that goes under the street.

Commands, Warnings, And Immediate Threats

SPEAKER_02 2:17:31

And let me let me just correct one thing. It's it doesn't have to be high stress. Anytime you focus your attention, if it's top down, meaning you're you're you are intentionally driving your attention to something you think is important. Your focused attention means the periphery blurs out and your attention's focused. That's the tunnel vision, right? It happens when you're calm, it happens now in firefights or high stress, sometimes it's bottom-up focus, meaning your body's telling you what to focus on, that which you think is most dangerous to you in that moment. And so that's what we think is tunnel vision because it's a top-down demand on your attention. But when you have a, I'm sorry, bottom-up demand on your attention, but when it's a top-down, intentional, rational decision to focus on something, you still get tunnel vision. So tunnel vision does not require high levels of a stress or arousal for top-down tunnel vision. That's just what you get, bottom-up tunnel vision or auditory exclusion. You also get it for every sense. That's why it's called sensory gating. It happens in your eyes, your ears, your touch. Um, where somebody's hitting you, you don't even feel it, right? Because your focused attention, either top-down or bottom up, is intent on some other stimulus that you believe is the most important stimulus for you to focus on, either intentionally or non-consciously.

SPEAKER_01 2:18:49

I never really thought of that. But that makes total sense when you get Von Kleem explaining science to you. It makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 2:18:57

I read good. That's because I read good. I read much more gooder.

SPEAKER_01 2:19:03

I'm more better at this than you boys. Um, no, no, that does make sense. Uh the you guys gotta understand, too. I'm giving you the dumb street cop version of what we're told. This is this is the training I get versus the training of an expert who does this for a living. So I when you guys hear cops and you're like, oh, they're cops planing. Well, they're giving you a dummy version of what they know from guys like Vaughn. Uh, because we don't do this every day. I don't have to worry about use of force, especially working an office job now in the crime center. I don't have to worry about that stuff. I got much more important things to worry about, like uh, you know, how long you're allowed to keep information and data through public uh uh city cameras, like things like that.

SPEAKER_02 2:19:53

What's funny is, you know, this isn't stuff that was even made for cops initially. This was Dr. Lewinsky, who's the founder, co-founder of Force Science. His biggest contribution to the profession of policing and to forcing counterassessments, his biggest contribution was recognizing that all the other professions were already considering these things, but they weren't applying them to cops. So, sports, if you understand why a quarterback would throw an interception and we're looking at it going, that guy, you could see the guy sprinting to cut between the receiver and the quarterback. Uh, but he can't see it because he's focused on that receiver and he's scope-locked on that receiver, and so he throws it. He doesn't see the the the D back coming in under side underneath, right? Um, so or the safety coming in underneath. I don't know, my football, I play rugby, so I'm looking at the change. Um anyway, so but that's another example of tunnel vision, right? It's it's not high levels of stress, it's very high levels of focus, though, right? He's gotta focus. We see it in driver behavior. That's where one of our number one industries that we look to for human performance is how do humans operate in calm driving conditions versus emergency driving conditions, and it's all been massive amounts of of data. So none of this was meant for police um or civilian force encounters, um, it just applies.

SPEAKER_01 2:21:15

Yeah, yeah. So for future reference, nothing about forward passes for for Vaughn. They gotta be laterals, only a lateral.

SPEAKER_00 2:21:25

So to so to speak on that, I've always been consumed on what force science does. I love uh the breakdown, but can you looking at just a 30,000-foot view, and we don't have to go into the mechanics of everything, but let's say force science is contacted by agency X or more than likely maybe an attorney for the officer involved in an OIS, okay? And they're like, hey, this is what's going on. Uh, we would like to retain your services. What is a light, very light step pattern that force science wants to look at as they start going down the rabbit hole of one OIS? Is it we're looking at body camera first? Or is it we're looking at the narrative? Are we looking at a CCH or current criminal history of a of a suspect? What what is a I I don't know the best way to explain it.

Bodycams vs Eyes: What Officers Actually See

SPEAKER_02 2:22:26

What what's just yeah, what's the order of operation? Yeah, it's it's sort of the evaluation methodology, and we have to explain it to the court too. Um, I don't like looking at the body cam. We all are tempted to look at it first, any camera, because once you see it, you can't unsee it. And even even though I know that it tells you nothing about the officer's protection perspective, you still then have to fight your own bias afterwards. You start to pretend you know more than the cop knew. Well, you do know more, you forget. That you know more than the cop knew at the time, or the civilian. Again, this all applies to both. Um, so ideally, if there is a statement from the officer, I start with that because the law requires us to evaluate these cases through the lens of the shooter, the civilian shooter, the police shooter. What did they perceive? What meaning did they assign to it? And then was that meaning reasonable? Right? So I have to start with well, what bucket of information did the shooter have? Like, what did they perceive? Then what makes that challenging is we get people who want to release body cams or you know, and or other witness statements. I'm like, I don't really care what other people saw. Now, other people can confirm the officer's perspective, they can contradict the officer's perspective, and then we have to look at well, is the confirmation or contradiction a product of different angles, different focus of attention, different biases, different expectation bias. All that comes into play. So when we look at human performance, we start by looking at what are the potential psychological, physiological, and environmental influences on perception. So Dr. Mark Green does a lot of great work. He wrote an article that's a great framework called 33 Reasons for Not Seeing. That explains 33 psychological, physiological, and environmental influences on perception, reasons why a human might not see something that was capable of being seen, that we later see on video, or that another witness might have seen. Why that's important is all that research was done for traffic. All that research was done to whether in an effort to hold people drivers accountable for their decisions during normal traffic patterns versus emergency driving versus negligent driving, right? So all of those psychological and physiological influences they just affect humans. And so we we whittled it down. We I whittled it down to about nine that apply or might potentially influence perception during a police critical incident or a civilian critical incident. Um, and then I start to look for evidence that those things influenced it, right? So that's that's the first thing. My methodology is to figure out what is the bucket of information that the shooter had, and then is what meaning did they assign to it, because that meaning has to be reasonable, and then what did they do in response to that meaning, right? So that's a general framework. Um the video, so many times the video is irrelevant. I just it it just becomes irrelevant. The a video can be great at confirmation, it's it's very hard to contradict an officer's experience because perception occurs in the brain, not in the eyes. So, you know, just another human performance. Again, this does not just apply to cops. This uh in a in a traffic sense, if you believe there's cases where a person slammed on their brakes, crashed into the car in front of them, they bailed out of the car to go see what damage was, and they never even hit the car in front of them. And there and what it was is it's an expectation. Like you expected to hit the car, you visually saw yourself hitting the car because it was your biggest fear, and your brain does not know the difference between that which you actually experience and that what you vividly imagine. And so take that same thing where people get out of their car to look for damage because they were involved in a wreck that never occurred. Take that in the police world, we have cases where Dr. Alexis Artwall has documented that two officers responded to a shooting, suspect shooting at him, partner watches the other guy's head get blown off, like it just it explodes. He returns fire, runs back to help his partner, and his partner's fine, never got hit with a bullet. And it's just he vividly imagined what is the worst possible thing that can happen, right? So perception occurs in the brain, it doesn't occur in the eyes.

SPEAKER_01 2:26:52

And so these are like when an acorn falls on a patrol car.

SPEAKER_02 2:26:56

Yeah, well, you know, I mean, we talked about that case, right? Yeah, that was so that was one of the cases we looked at, and what was amazing about that, it's exactly right, it was expectation bias. That police officer, who is a highly trained special forces guy, uh he believed that the suspect in the back of the car had a gun that he did not search him for, he didn't search him well enough for. He was going to pat him down for the gun when he got close enough to the guy who he thought had a gun and was involved in a violent domestic, thought he had a gun. When he got there, the acorn falls, hits the roof. He interprets that as a gunshot. He doesn't just interpret the sound. He physically was shot. He thought he was shot. He physically gets hit and falls to the ground, scrambles the back, tells people he got shot, all on video, right? So we don't have like an incentive to lie about this. Like, yeah, I'm just gonna use the acorn as an excuse to shoot somebody, just doesn't hold water. Everybody involved in that case believed that the officer 100% believed he was shot by the suspect in the back of the car.

SPEAKER_00 2:28:06

Um, and that was that was believed on CAD notes, correct? So he's coming with a preconceived notion based on the CAD notes of all the stuff involved, and then he arrives on scene, so that's already in his in his conscience.

SPEAKER_02 2:28:20

Well, it was worse than that. It wasn't CAD notes, it was his only experience because he he he was talking to the female half of the domestic, the guy had stolen her car. Um, the guy walks up while he's talking to the female, she's like, That's him right there. They're talking to him. He does it, he's like, and the guy's getting resistive, and he's like, No, just look, hold on for a second. And he pats him down real quick, says, Have a seat in the back of my car until we figure this out. Pats him down real quick, puts him in cuffs, puts him in the back of the car. Now, this is my understanding. Haven't looked at the facts in a while. So, again, give me a little bit of grace if I screw up one of the facts. But he uh that's true, actually. That was a good detail I forgot about. Um, so he uh but then the the other police officer tells him, Hey, we found the car, and we have a silencer in the car, we don't have the gun. And she told him he always has a gun, he always has a gun. So they find the car, they find a silencer, they don't find a gun. So now he's thinking, crap, this guy's got the gun on him, and I did such a half-assed job of a pat down. Okay, I'm gonna go do a full better search. I'm gonna go make sure he doesn't have the gun. So he was actually primed from his experience at the scene, not just CAD notes, uh, which made it worse, obviously. Nothing was good about that case. No, I mean that that's about as bad as they come when you unload on a handcuffed suspect from the back of your patrol car. Whether you legitimately, honestly, but inac we called it honest but not accurate. He honestly believed he was shot.

SPEAKER_01 2:29:52

He I 100% believe he thought that. Like, there was nothing about me watching that going, he's lying. Right, like I didn't think he was lying. I think he 100% believed it. Um yeah, I see uh and Von I, if you laugh at this, I won't hold it against you, but Dick Beater Memes 2 on Instagram wants to know if we saw the Seattle lieutenant get her police squad uh vehicle stolen from her. I'm not even familiar with that case. I I've seen it. I've seen it. It's basically dude's on the freeway. He's he's on foot, he's being a he's like stopping traffic and whatnot, and officer pulls up in her car, trying to deal with him from inside of her car, right? Uh, and just comes up, opens the door, throws her out of the car. Okay, I've seen that one. Takes her control thing.

SPEAKER_00 2:30:41

That was somebody from like a hundred yards away filming that. Yes. Okay, that's the same one. Okay, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:30:46

Um, I don't really have an opinion.

SPEAKER_00 2:30:48

Um we don't have enough information.

SPEAKER_01 2:30:49

Yeah, I don't have enough info for that. I can just tell you that lock your doors. That wouldn't be a problem. Keep your doors locked. Uh keep your seat belt on. Um, all the reasons to not get thrown out of your car. But uh anyway, um but yeah, I I 100% like you, like you said, Juan, there's no there's no part of me watching that that didn't go, this guy, this guy does not believe what what's happening. He's he's he a hundred percent believed what he and then his poor partner who has to come out. But my thing is that all I can think of is the guy in the backseat just going, what the fuck?

SPEAKER_00 2:31:28

And just trying to the dude that's not actually doing what they think that he's doing.

SPEAKER_01 2:31:33

I mean, it's just like he's trying to take cover because rounds are now coming up stalking the back of a tight ass, nowhere to go, hands behind your back, yeah. Oh, that poor man. I mean, you know, don't get me wrong, he did was committing domestic violence allegedly. And he was he's gonna do his time, he's gonna do his due course on that, but he's getting fired at by two people. Uh and I don't think he got hit though.

SPEAKER_00 2:31:57

So that's no, they haven't been in the range in some time.

SPEAKER_01 2:32:00

Yeah, that's a plus. He didn't get hit, you know. They're they're firearm accuracy, is about as good as their accounts of acorns.

SPEAKER_02 2:32:07

So yeah, well, here's the other piece is this is not a guy who these these are ordinary, normal human processes. This was not a product of like hypervigilance, like PTSD. Like they were like, Well, he was a he must have been a combat special force. This is a product of PTSD. No, no, it it is it is your brain telling you something is true that later you find out is not true, and we see example of that after example after example. It is the ordinary normal processing of a human brain during a critical instant where we have a bias towards interpreting things as though they are most dangerous to us, particularly where you have this expectation bias, right? Which he had in this case. So I only had one question, which was do you think this guy's making this up, or do you think he actually believes he was shot? And if you tell me, well, I believe he thought he was actually shot, okay. How do you train your officers to respond when they've been shot from a guy in the back of the patrol car? What did he do inconsistent with that? Nothing. He did exactly what he was trained to do if he reasonably believed he'd been shot. He was honest, but not accurate. So the question then becomes what do you do with him? And how do you explain to the community, like, uh yeah, he got this one wrong, but no, he's not broken. He might be a phenomenal cop. He might be uh having the highest level of resilience and mental health. And this was Dr. Mark Green, he did a lot of reading on this, or writing on this, is it's very difficult to explain. This is the product of an ordinary, perfectly imperfect human brain operating under stress. Now, that's not to say there aren't cases where officers are running around in hypervigilance and high, high levels of chronic stress, where the next acute stressor puts them over the top and they drive into condition black. That's a very different scenario.

Tunnel Vision, Sensory Gating, And Bias

SPEAKER_01 2:34:06

Well, I do think part of training goes into it because what is one of the things every good FTO, in my opinion, tells you that you should be doing on all scenarios is playing the what if game. What if this, what if that, what if this? And without knowing any of the information that you just said, Vaughn, because a lot of that I didn't know at the time, the first time I saw this video, is I go, right there was a guy playing the what if game, and he just had a crazy imagination. Like I was like, his imagination was too vivid. I said, and that I was like, although that's what I thought happened was he was playing the what if game and maybe got some information, like you said, with the silencer and all that, that he let get the best of him. I said, it doesn't, it doesn't take away the the uh the he's still liable for what he did, like you still got to be held accountable.

SPEAKER_02 2:34:59

Oh, the way the way I put it that's why that's why you write checks like immediately and fast. Yeah, I I need to write a check fast to this. But the uh the you said some so we have this thing in training, you might know the word mushin, right? It means Japanese, means empty mind. Oh, yeah. So we want we want we want cops to go into every scenario with sort of an empty mind, not expectation bias, but we also want them to play the what if game, if then or if when sort of thing. Um, and we want them to have a plan and to not be surprised when something happens, but we also don't want them to overanticipate it and then develop a bias. It is an impossible position we put them in. And so we want them to have machine, we want them to have this empty mind, so you know you're not expecting a left and you get hit with a right, sort of thing, but you also don't want to be driving yourself to hypervigilance in a way that you're then reacting like an eggshell victim would.

SPEAKER_01 2:35:55

Yeah. Um, Mr. Billfold said, Eric, do you think a lazy pat down is a version of creating his own exigency in the outcome of a shooting? If he had performed a proper pat down, his brain wouldn't be primed to respond with force. Um, I don't think that those are similar. I think um one, uh a lazy pat down is is, you know, it is what it is, it's negligence, uh, versus standing in front of a car is I think it's kind of a way we're conditioned in training. Um you're you're constantly told, you know, in policing. Actually, George mentioned this the other time. You're you're told to go handle the threat. It's a very uh it's the opposite of what we're programmed for. When you become a cop, you're programmed to go to the threat, go to the threat, go to the threat. And that is not a normal thing. So then when you get somebody that's not compliant and they're in a car, and you're like, I gotta get between everybody and the threat, and I gotta get in front of like it's just kind of an instinct, um, which I think is different than a lazy pat down, uh, if that's the case. I sometimes I don't necessarily think it's lazy, is it is um I can I can throw myself under the bus on this.

SPEAKER_00 2:37:09

So that's a big ass bus. It is, it's a very large bus. And then sometimes it has wings and it flies to destination. So uh it's an air bus. It is, it's in there, and I'm the only one on there because it's heavy freight. So going back I I was probably two years out of what's when I was in canine. So I had 10 or 11 years on the street. And uh I went to a family violence called and we had an arrestable offense right off the get-go. Okay, it was uh the the the second party or the first one that called 911 was uh claimed an an injury. Uh that person felt pain and uh the other person was was intoxicated, the suspect, and I had an arrestable offense that I had under 504 and 505 of the of the of the CCP in the state of Texas. I had to make an arrest. Okay. So I made an arrest um and I I patted down, I emptied pockets, I did everything because I'm taking this person to our jail. Right. And this is before our jail went uh to to a uh regional facility with four agencies involved, and it was still our jail. Um, and I'm very good at pat downs. I was able to many times in my career find things on people that they cannot take into that. And he's handcuffed. I'm asking him, he spoke English, everything was communication was there, everything was there. I felt great on my pat down, and literally I took the subject into the jail, uh, a white male, and we go through what's called a P3 back in the time. I'm doing all the questionnaire stuff, and then I leave the jail. Now he's gonna have to be arraigned in the morning by the judge, okay, for a family violence uh offense. And I get a call about 10 minutes after I leave. Oh, that's the worst. You have a knife on your subject you didn't find. And you want to talk about a stab in the eye, stab in the arts, stab in the brain of me knowing that I'm not gonna leave a corrections officer a person that's armed. Yeah. And so immediately and and he needs help. Yeah. It's the only thing that came over the radio. He needs help, there's a weapon in the jail, and it's the person you arrested. Yeah. And I'm about four miles from the jail. I could not, I was traversing time getting back. It was a Sunday night. I remember it vividly like it was yesterday, using my lights, using my sirens, because he's asking for help. I'm following policies and procedures. I get there, Sally Port opens, I pull in, I run in, and the dude is literally the corrections officer had had him basically hog swined, is what we call it, and he's sitting there holding a uh Swiss Army knife. And it's got an extendable necklace around it. So what had happened was is through what we call and Von will understand this a rage este statement. Where was this at when the officer was patting you down? Me, the bad guy right now, because I didn't catch it. So he had it around his neck, okay? And he so it was here between the pectoral muscles doing the pat down. And as we were patting down, or when he saw the police arrive to begin with, he took this necklace. And I want you to think about those old candy necklaces that we used to get at like circuses. Yeah. And you could take that necklace and you could stretch it out, right? So this was that type of necklace with minus minus the candy or whatever that's on there. And he took that necklace and he stretched it out and he brought it down to the center of his body, so it was underneath his pectoral muscles and his back. And he was a pretty built kid. I say kid, he was an adult, but a young man. And it literally was right there in the chest, and it was just a standard uh Swiss Army knife, and you went straight over top of it. I went straight over top of it, and I didn't feel it. So I'm essentially the bad guy because I didn't catch that. That's on me. I own that all day long. But to catch that, and when you're giving it to a young 18, 19-year-old CEO in a jail, you could have got somebody seriously hurt.

SPEAKER_03 2:41:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:41:24

Because he used a deadly weapon on the scene of why I was taking him. So we met the elements of the offense of everything, and now I'm taking him to the jail. And then we found that. So that still riddles my mind on I've been trained, I go slow, I do everything, but even somebody that has the proper training can miss something. And that hit, I mean, I lost many and many a nights of sleep.

SPEAKER_03 2:41:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:41:50

Taking that guy out to dinner, meeting the CEO. I'm like, hey, man, I'm sorry. And he didn't want anything for me. He's like, hey, dude, it happens. We see it all the time. And I'm so what I did was is I even slowed down more. What can I do to make sure that this never and thank God it never happened again for another 10, 12 years, however long I was in. But that affected me.

SPEAKER_04 2:42:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:42:10

I even you're taking that dude into a correctional facility, and he had essentially a four-inch blade, three of them on that Swiss Army knife, and that was on me. You know, that was thank God nobody got hurt out of it, but that's this guy right here.

SPEAKER_01 2:42:24

I'm not gonna lie, if I was a CO, as soon as you arrived, I'd be like, I would have just shake, shook my head and I would have handed it to you as I hit you in the nuts.

SPEAKER_00 2:42:33

Yep, you damn right. And I deserve and I would have deserved it. And you would have taken it. So it's uh it's so you know, no matter how good of a police officer I was during my time, I've made mistakes. Yeah, you know, and that's that's something that I reflect on still every day. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 2:42:48

We had we had a CO, though. If you want to feel better, he was a CO that became a cop and uh he missed a gun on a Pat Down. That he took a guy into the jail. In the jail he used to work in. Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 2:43:01

That sucks. I bet he got uh razzed on that.

SPEAKER_02 2:43:04

Yeah, he left the department, became an LAPD cop.

SPEAKER_01 2:43:09

Oh shit. Um man, he was a good cop though.

SPEAKER_04 2:43:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:43:13

Well, boys, we've been going almost three hours here. So um, and I I don't have any more videos queued up. That one's really long. I don't want to put that one on. But uh Vaughn, sir, you you got anything that you want to uh get out there before we uh take off tonight? I really appreciate you being on.

SPEAKER_00 2:43:31

And and I and I want to add to that before Vaughn opens his mouth. Shut the fuck up, Vaughn. Tonight I learned that forced science does this for civilians. It's the first night I knew this. Um and I thought I knew a lot about forced science. And forced science guys, let me tell you something. I back 110% because they're they're making law enforcement better. So, with that in mind, we have a lot of viewers out there that are all for our Second Amendment. I'm telling you, and I back this, get on the Force Science website, tell them banning or Vaughn sent you based on the podcast. I don't care. Get as much training as you can from Force Science and Vaughn and all the other instructors and and professionals that they have. This is huge. Yeah. Um I didn't know, and that's that's for me. And I'll shut up.

The Acorn “Gunshot” Case And Expectation

SPEAKER_02 2:44:24

If you have an insurance company, ask them to bring us in. Uh, a lot of them are paying us to come in and talk to the Second Amendment guys, the concealed carry guys and girls, the the uh American Council of Second Amendment, Second Amendment lawyers, all they do are use the force cases for civilians, they bring us in for training. U.S. Law Shield brings us in for training. Um uh it's we're we're happy to do it. Those are my favorite classes, by the way. Those classes of civilians, concealed carry trainers and and practitioners, they they're amazing. They ask the best questions, they they they're there to learn. I mean, it's it's outstanding. Um, yeah, but we we would love to do that. So yeah, get online, you guys. Especially all I'm gonna say is uh you guys are the audience, whether you're on a jury, whether you're carrying concealed, whether you're uh you know, need our services, by all means get a hold of us. Um if you do need us, I will tell you if you go to our force science.com, there's a consulting tab, and it's a free pre-consult. Just get on our calendar, fill out the form, get on our calendar, and uh we can have a phone call together about whatever it was that got you got you in front of us. Ideally, you bring an attorney. Um, it it expands our conversation so that we can talk about the good and the bad and the ugly of your case. Um, and uh that first that first call is free, and then uh we could set you up with your attorney whether you guys want a formal consult, whether you want to retain us for a consult. Um, a lot of times after the pre-consult, you don't need much more, like we you get it get it shaped. Um, but take advantage of the online classes, you get 15% off right now using the coupon code that was in the chat um or in the cryon there, Cion. Um and yeah, again, thanks for having me. I always love these these conversations.

SPEAKER_00 2:46:16

And while that's scrolling at the bottom, let me just add to this. So there may be some of you out there that are thinking about carrying a gun. And maybe it's you weren't in the military, you weren't a law enforcement, but you're on that, you're on the fence. You're like, I want to protect my family. I live in the United States of America, I want to protect my gun. Vaughn, what is the best route? Not only for training. I mean, we could we could speak on for days of that, but let's say tomorrow they want to go to a gun store, purchase their first firearm. What can Vaughn Clean tell our audience? Where do you need to go online to get that proper protection? I know you mentioned U.S. Law Shield, but where else can these loving Americans go to either receive training or legal backing uh to carry that gun to where they feel more confident in the actions that they may have to do in the future?

SPEAKER_02 2:47:09

Yeah, I mean, there's so if you're not police, you'd like the NRA, usually is a good starting point. NRA, um U.S. Law Shield, uh, we like to work with a lot. Uh the uh USCCA is another one. What I want you to do is I'm not gonna endorse any of those off the top. Right now, what I'll say is when you when you talk to them, ask them whether they have a review board who's going to look at the facts of your case before they decide whether they're gonna pay and insure you. You want the one who's going to pay, whether they believe in your case or not. Yeah. And and because more often than I can count, you have people reviewing these cases that do not understand human performance, and they'll look at a case and say, This is not a good shooting, and we're not covering this. And then we get them and we're like, This is an absolutely legally justified shooting for the following reasons. Um, that's not every time. I mean, there's obviously bad shootings, but uh ask that question because some of the insurance companies, they're they're gonna get you the attorney, and you can deal with the attorney on what your defense is gonna be. And I know U.S. Law Shield is really good about that. I don't I can't say where the other ones are on December 29th, 2025. I haven't seen their latest coverage or the latest processes. Um, but I would say that I'd also say this what I emphasize in the classes we teach CCW, uh well, I didn't have to be concealed. Anyone who wants to carry a gun for self-defense, I don't care if it's open or concealed. Um, you get in trouble for decision making, not for accuracy. Everyone wants to spend all their time learning to shoot straight, shoot fast, shoot straight, shoot fast. And that's foundational, that's important, but spend much more time on decision making. Know the law, know the law of self-defense. Andrew Bronca, uh, the Law of Self-Defense podcast. Um, he is brilliant in his evaluation of cases. He he has a he's a friend of mine, he has a personality that you'll love or you'll hate. Uh, and he is he is unfiltered, he is ruthless, but because of that, uh he is he is dangerous in his legal analysis. And he has a book called The Law of Self-Defense. I would get that. It's free. You can go to his website, you can get that for free. I use that still, and study what it takes to win those cases. So his position is you carry um you carry a gun to to protect your life. Now you need to carry uh insurance and understand the law of self-defense to keep you out of prison, eventually, essentially is what it is.

SPEAKER_00 2:49:46

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 2:49:48

You're in double jeopardy there. One, you got to save your life, and then you gotta keep it out of prison. Uh so law of self-defense is a great place to start, and he'll you'll learn about imminent threat analysis and de-escalation and avoidance and proportionality and uh retreat and where you're required to do those things and where you're not. You gotta study that stuff on the front end way before you find yourself in a situation, otherwise, you won't, you're not gonna think of it in the moment. So that's a that's one more great resource, I think.

SPEAKER_00 2:50:18

I and I agree. And it's and my whole thing is you know, I've been I've been, I guess, legally carrying a gun since I was 18 in the Marine Corps. And I want to make sure that anybody that makes that decision uh there it is to be the there it is. Oh, outstanding. Um if you're gonna make that decision and you don't have any formal training before, and maybe you watch this show or some other shows and you want to carry for your family, make sure that you also take some funds and go out and get properly trained on that handgun or rifle or or shotgun, whatever you're gonna you're gonna use uh to do this. And there and these, and I hate to say it, but these there it's a dime a dozen. There's a lot of companies out there that that offer it. I'm not gonna endorse just like Vaughn stated, um, anybody off the top of my head, but there's a ton in Texas, they're almost in every city.

SPEAKER_04 2:51:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:51:11

You can go out there and get that training. And that's that's the biggest thing that I harp on is go out and get the training on the equipment that you're gonna use to protect your family.

SPEAKER_03 2:51:20

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 2:51:21

That's a that's a big thing to me. And I know that's a big thing to Von, Eric, everybody else that's watching this, but you can do it. Just go out and get the right training uh with the the with the piece of whatever firearm you're gonna use to train your family. Go out and get trained uh before you can uh accurately do it for your family. Make sure that you you have the skills needed uh to do that thing. I mean, that's a big that's a big thing to carry a firearm. You gotta make sure you get the right head behind you to do it. Yep.

Training, Insurance, And Practical Takeaways

SPEAKER_02 2:51:48

Yeah, there's other if you haven't read uh we should do this sometime, maybe not tonight, but give a book review list. Some of your read some of your uh folks like to read. If you haven't read Gavin de Becker's Gift of Fear or Protecting the Gift, Gavin de Becker's Gift of Fear should be must-reading. Um, anything by Tony Blau, be your own bodyguard, um even warrior. Um, and and the reason for that is the yours your protection doesn't come down to mostly to the accuracy of your gunfire. It comes down to avoidance, it comes down to recognizing the threats well in advance, it comes down to trusting your own instincts. So we talk about the gift of fear. They what they do in that book is they they talk to victims of violence, and they're like, I never saw it coming. But during the interview, there were all these signs that they did see. They just refuse to assign value to it. And even when they did assign value to it, they refused to modify their conduct because they were embarrassed. They were whatever the case may be. You'll start to learn really practical things about violence. Um, who's another uh wait? Let's come up with a book list, let's owe that to your audience because there's some really great books out there that are foundational understanding the reality of violence, not what we see on TV.

SPEAKER_01 2:53:13

Yeah. Yeah. It's um it's it's one of the things that I've I've had many debates on the show before of um sometimes using quick, fast, overwhelming violence actually helps everybody involved um because it's a lot less force than if I hesitate, let things build up, and then we get into this uh higher use of force where I end up having to use my you know deadly force or something like that. Absolutely. So but uh no, brother, I appreciate you being on as always. You're you're definitely always welcome. But now that I know you got this cool other podcast guy that you know, maybe we can get him on here with us.

SPEAKER_02 2:53:51

Who's that? Oh, Andrew?

SPEAKER_01 2:53:52

Yeah. I I don't even know who that is. So I was like, he just sounds like it'd be a fun guy to have on.

SPEAKER_02 2:53:57

He's fun, there's no doubt, and he is unfiltered, and he is he is heavily politically charged, and he's a great he's a great personality.

SPEAKER_01 2:54:05

What is it gonna take to get you out here in studio with Banning and I? You just tell me when, man.

SPEAKER_02 2:54:10

I just well, I don't know where you guys at these days.

SPEAKER_01 2:54:12

Uh DFW. Oh, yeah, anytime.

SPEAKER_02 2:54:16

Just give me a date, I'll fly in.

SPEAKER_01 2:54:18

Hell yeah. I'm like 20 minutes from there.

SPEAKER_02 2:54:21

It's gotta be better than staying up till midnight on my on the on the on the wrong coast. Hell yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:54:26

We'll make a night of it. We can we we can do it with some great stakes and some good times.

SPEAKER_02 2:54:31

Yeah, yeah, bring it anytime. Bring it catch me soon because court season's coming up, and uh four four cases in March, two cases in February. I got shot show coming up. You guys can be a shot show.

SPEAKER_00 2:54:41

I'm I'm I'm waiting on a request to get answered, if that makes sense. Yeah, it does. I I think I saw you what two years ago a shot, something like that.

SPEAKER_03 2:54:51

That's right, yeah. I took you out to stakes, I think.

SPEAKER_00 2:54:53

Me, you, and uh Frank, and we did. We we had a great time, made some good pictures while we were out there, too.

SPEAKER_03 2:54:59

I just saw that picture the other day.

SPEAKER_02 2:55:00

Yeah, that was great. Um yeah, we'll see if we get that whole crew together. Again, then Kyle Reyes was with us, and Miranda from Virtue was with us, and it was a great crew. Great crew. Uh Lynn Westover was with us. Yep, yeah. Um, yeah, let's uh let's do that. But anyway, yeah, get a hold of me. Uh it is coming up fast. So March is filling up, February's filling up. Uh court's coming. It's gonna be a lot of fun cases.

SPEAKER_00 2:55:25

You're saying in January we need to come up with a date and get you down here.

SPEAKER_02 2:55:28

So yeah, yeah. January's kind of open up until Shot Show. I've got a deposition, and then after the deposition, I got Shot Show, and then it just gonna hit the it's gonna start smoking.

SPEAKER_01 2:55:41

I know. It seems like the only time we can get him on the show is when it's not court season.

SPEAKER_00 2:55:44

That's right, that's right. Well, Von's a very busy guy, and uh, for him to bless us with his his presence. I know, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:55:49

Oh, that's that's fun. I appreciate your audience putting up with me too. Mr. Bill Fold, especially he's I think Mr. Bill Fold is a good thing. Oh my god, don't say his name.

SPEAKER_01 2:55:56

If you say his name directly, he's gonna he's never gonna stop talking about it. Yeah, Von gave me a shout out.

SPEAKER_02 2:56:03

I'm in his brain. One of my uh one of my colleagues asked about for him by name. He's like, Hey, I watched that podcast. Uh, do you know Mr. Bill Fold? I'm like, I wish. Hey, I can make it.

SPEAKER_01 2:56:15

He hasn't signed it yet, but yeah, there we go. There we go. Yeah, brother. Good stuff. All right, brother Vaughn, thanks for joining us. Uh, everybody out there, thanks for joining us tonight. A lot of great questions. Uh, Mr. Bill Fold said thanks, T UCOD and Vaughn for a great stream. Uh, no problem, guys. Everybody have a good night. Take it easy. Vaughn, stick around.