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The Prison Officer Podcast
The Prison Officer Podcast is a place where prison officers and correctional staff share their experiences, discuss leadership, cope with stress, and learn survival strategies for one of the toughest careers out there. Hosted by Michael Cantrell, this podcast delves into the lives, dreams, and challenges faced by those who work inside the walls of our nation’s prisons. It features interviews, insights, and discussions related to the unique and demanding world of corrections. Whether it’s overcoming difficult leaders, understanding rehabilitation, or addressing misconceptions about incarcerated populations, the Prison Officer Podcast provides valuable perspectives from professionals in the field.
The Prison Officer Podcast
100: Discover the Secrets of Human Behavior - Interview w/Greg Williams & Brian Marren
Discover the secrets of human behavior in high-stress environments with our special guests, Greg Williams and Brian Marren from Arcadia Congerati. These experts, known for their work in developing the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter program, join us to celebrate the 100th episode of the Prison Officer Podcast. They offer unique insights into the parallels between correctional facilities, law enforcement, and combat zones, emphasizing the critical role of situational awareness and behavioral pattern recognition to enhance the safety and effectiveness of correctional officers.
Listen as we uncover the fascinating dynamics within prisons, where the art of reading and reacting to one's surroundings is not just beneficial but essential. We explore how curiosity, early recognition of behavioral patterns, and proactive engagement can prevent potential threats from escalating, all while enhancing creative problem-solving skills within the constraints of a controlled environment.
Arcadia Cognerati website
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or E-mail: info@arcadiacognerati.com
The Human Behavior Podcast
The Theory of HBPR&A Textbook
From crowd control to cell extractions, the PepperBall system is the safe, non-lethal option.
OMNI
OMNI is cutting-edge software designed to track inmates and assets within your prison or jail.
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Take care of each other and Be Safe behind those walls and fences!
In more than 28 years of corrections, I have used or supervised Pepperball hundreds of times. Now, as a master instructor for Pepperball, I teach others about the versatility and effectiveness of the Pepperball system. From cell extractions to disturbances on the rec yard, pepperball is the first option in my correctional toolbox, with the ability to transition quickly from area saturation to direct impact with the non-lethal PAVA projectiles. Pepperball provides me with a range of non-lethal options for cell extractions involving non-compliant inmates and when the use of force is over, decontamination is easy with no oily residue on the walls or floors. To learn more about Pepperball, go to wwwpepperballcom or click the show notes below. Pepperball is the safer option first.
Speaker 1:Well, welcome back to the Prison Officer Podcast. My name is Mike Cantrell. This is the 100th podcast for the Prison Officer Podcast, so I'm really excited and besides it being the 100th podcast, I feel like I've got two of the guests I've been waiting to talk to for a very long time. They're masters in their field and I am just dying to hear their take on corrections, and we're going to talk about human behavior, performance and the analysis of that. So my first guest is Greg Williams. He's the president and founder of Arcadia Cognorati. Did I say that right?
Speaker 2:You said it perfectly.
Speaker 1:Okay, arcadia Cognorati. It's a consulting firm specializing in assessing, developing and conducting training and education to address urgent safety and security needs in some of the most challenging environments on the planet and absolutely I consider corrections a challenging environment. And I also have with us today Greg Marin. He's a multi-conflict, full-spectrum operational. He has operational experience with conventional and special operations forces, law enforcement professionals and other agencies. He was the architect of the US Marine Corps' highly successful and life-saving combat hunter program, which I think many of you have probably read, the book Left of Bang. I have recommended it on here as one of the biggest books for a correctional officer to read, and that book came out of a lot of this stuff that these guys put together.
Speaker 1:So we're going back to the beginning, uh, before the book, and hearing uh from the people who, uh, you know, got this stuff set down. I'm going to kind of, you know, set up this and a lot of correctional officers are going to look and say why do I need this? And correctional officers know this, they do it, they're taught it. They just may not realize it. Because I'm going to tell you guys, and you're going to recognize this immediately, one of the first things one of the old rookies or one of the old heads, is going to tell you when you walk in, you're going to be standing chow somewhere. And uh, he's going to look over at you and he's going to say, if it goes quiet in here, get your back to the wall. And that's exactly the kind of stuff we're talking about. It's recognizing, uh the anomalies in our environment. So, um, I'm going to turn it over to uh Greg and Brian, if you guys will take a minute and kind of tell us what human behavior, human behavior pattern, uh recognition and analysis is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, easy. And Brian, if you don't mind, I'll start. And Michael, honored to be here. Brian and I are both fanboys. We follow you on LinkedIn. We also listen to the Prison Officer Podcast. You'll notice I'm always giving you the thumbs up and support, and to be on the 100th episode, that's also an honor. And to be on the 100th episode, that's also an honor.
Speaker 2:So we work in an environment that's military, first responder courts, corrections, and certainly we have a long, rich history of working in the prison system. Brian is an inmate sometimes, I think, but more so. I want to tell you that even at the beginning stages of my career in law enforcement, I was inculcated into corrections in a place called DeHocca, the Detroit House of Corrections, and one of the things that I made sure that I understood when I was a survival instructor at the academies was the different environments that were faced by what was going to be the jail depths that were going through the same training that I was, and, being a master instructor, one of the things is you got to understand the environment. I need to understand where you're going to work, what a day in the life is like, what are the types of challenge that you face or I can't draft a successful curriculum. Second part of that is when we were working to build Combat Hunter back in the day, the very first iterations were called Urban Hunter and I was working with the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab and then other groups to try to build Combat Hunter from the human behavior and human performance standpoint. And one of the things of the big three that were killing people in combat during that time insider threats, ieds and snipers we actually went to and for non-attribution I'm not allowed to tell you the California correction systems, with the assistance of and the blessing of the California correction system, so we could take the people that were ultimately going to work on these programs and show them what it looked like when we were looking at groups inside of an environment, because, if you think about it, it's exactly what they were about to face in Iraq and Afghanistan and everywhere else. This person, this is their home and this is their set and their group that they run with, and these are the tribes and the arguments that are going to come up within those tribes and these are the ones that are going to come up within those tribes and these are the ones that are going to come up between the tribes.
Speaker 2:So being able to go to an environment like a prison and sitting with our binos and spotting scopes and watching that as flies on the wall were tremendously important in building the program. The only thing I'll tell you is that Left of Bang is an incredible after action review and if anybody reads it they're not going to be dumber. But the idea was that it was like somebody following me around. It was a couple of young Marines that were Marine Reserve lieutenants that followed me around, wrote down everything I said and printed a book. Well, good for them. But the idea is remember that's not the end of your training, that's the beginning of your education. Certainly, every story in there is true, because they're mine.
Speaker 2:But you can't just read a book and go into the corrections environment and be safe. You know what? There's a lot of time you got to shut up and watch and there's a lot of time you got to just sit back and smell and feel the environment, because your training has to be based on instinct and intuition, just like in law enforcement, just like a traffic stop. Everything's different every one of them. There's no two days that are exactly alike.
Speaker 2:And the final thing I'll say before I hand it over to Brian Marin, because I met Brian during those periods in time. Brian's a decorated Marine sniper scout veteran of the intel community. I'm honored and lucky enough to find him along the way and he's been greatly instrumental and helpful for Arcadia. But the idea of taking all of the stuff that you do in a day and understanding that the two most dangerous times in corrections are going to be when you're bored or when you're overwhelmed so when everything is coming at you all at once you're going to make your mistakes, and when nothing's coming at you and you're yawning and you're thinking, man, time to put my feet up on the desk, that's when the crap is going to hit the fan. So I think we're in the same environment, I think we talk about the same thing. We're no strangers to having your folks that are working in the facilities that you're very familiar with attend our courses. Brian Maron.
Speaker 3:Good facilities that you're very familiar with, attend our courses. Uh, brian merrick, good, yeah, so I would say that, um, you know, when it comes to what we do hbpr day, human behavior pattern recognition analysis um, everyone inside the prison, both the the officers and the inmates uh, have PhD in it. And what I mean is you get a lot of tacit knowledge and experience, but you don't get a lot of the training that goes along with it, or we don't get a lot of the analysis, or comes from reading a book or trying to find more. And, like Greg said, that's great and maybe it's helpful, but you really got to look at it from a training perspective. It's helpful, but, but you really got to look at it from a training perspective.
Speaker 3:And the way I define HBPRNA is, if you know, you go back to when you were a little kid and no matter who raised you mom and dad and uncle, grandma, grandpa you knew when they walked in the room, before they ever said a word, whether they're happy, whether they're sad. You know my case I got to go run and hide because you know I'm about to catch a whooping for something that I did. Right, you understood that, and actually all humans can and we're sort of born with this ability. I mean we literally. If you want to get into the neuroscience of it, you have mirror neurons in your brain that allow you to mirror the brain state of another human being. So if you've ever walked in and seen you walk up and one of your buddies is kind of looking angry and staring at at someone and you're like you're like hey, what's up man, what's going on? Now you're all of a sudden like angry and staring at someone before you even know what the situation is Like, your brain can mirror that stuff.
Speaker 3:So what you get in there, especially in a prison, is great because, um, it's, it's basically a lab. I mean, you're in a controlled environment and so there's only so many outcomes, there's only so many things people can do. You know it's not like a chaotic. You know, out in the street there's an event going on where there's a little bit more free play, like it's a controlled environment. And the other thing is, you know, but what you also see, what I've always loved anytime we've had corrections officers or I got to speak to them or they're in our class is that you know, you guys see some of the most amazing stuff when it comes to behavior, because all those inmates, they got a lot of time on their hands and they got more time, I mean, so they come up with the craftiest stuff you've ever seen.
Speaker 3:They can work on something for days, weeks, months, because they've got nothing. And so you get this level of ingenuity and creative thinking that you don't, you don't, no one has to do, they don't have, you don't have to innovate when you're out on the street, I'll just go rob someone or steal something or do whatever. Like when you're in prison, you kind of got to be innovative so you only have access to so much stuff. So it's just a fascinating sort of lab of human behavior and you're constantly in this environment. That's in flux a little bit and everything can change quickly, but there's only so many things that can happen. Most of those things aren't good, right, and if things go bad, but. But I just love talking to corrections officers because they really do see some of the wildest stuff that, like you know, people are like no way they did that, like oh yeah, they did, and so, and like Greg said too, it's a great observation, it's great for training, observation and so to recognize different things going on and to put a name to it and to put a word to it and then get better at it. Because what we try to do at a basic level is first with everyone, is just like cultivate curiosity in your environment, find things that are interesting. What a lot of people do is try to look for like what they'll call like threat indicators or this, and it's like that's great, you's like that's great. You may see that, but you also may not, and that's kind of too late in the game.
Speaker 3:We try to do everything like the book. You know, left of bang. How do you be proactive and predictive? Like you just said, you know, all of a sudden, the what? If things go quiet, get your back against the wall, like that's an atmospheric shift. That's all of a sudden. You don't know what happened, but you've got that, what people call that spidey sense right, you're. You're. The hair on the back of your neck stands up. Well, there's there. There's no such thing as a sixth sense. That's actually just a a sort of a cognitive game that your brain is playing and it's sensing your environment and your unconscious awareness, like if you've ever just suddenly had that feeling. You don't know why. That's your limbic system, that's your survival brain saying hey, pay attention, dude, something's about to go down. So you have this unconscious ability.
Speaker 3:So what we try to refine is like all right, let's take some of that stuff that's happening unconsciously, let's learn about it, let's get to a better understanding of it, and then let's get even better at utilizing that, what your own innate knowledge and ability is. And when you can do that, that's when you get really good at going hey, you know what? Today's the day I think something's going on. Let me figure out why I'm seeing these indicators, let me put these together so we can intervene before something happens. So I don't have to wait till. Oh, here we go, we knew this was going to happen. It's like well, if we knew it was going to happen, then we should have done something about it. And so there's still that delay, a little bit of denial, but but that's what we get folks really good at.
Speaker 3:And we like working with you know if you're especially if you're, you know, a corrections officer, and your day is like can become obviously it's very routine. So you fall victim to your brain and how humans are wired. We're wired to be lazy or we're wired to burn less calories because it's about survival, so we start to miss stuff. But you're also like, so you're at a huge disadvantage from a cognitive performance standpoint. Like you got, the deck is stacked against you. However, you do have, like I said, because it's a prison, because it's a controlled environment, you got a lot going for you too. So it's like you know you're there's a lot up against you, but hey, there's a lot of things you actually can do too. So, um, that's what we enjoy training people to get better at.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Um, I I think, um, you know, the training has changed. When I came in, we didn't have as much formal training. We had old officers and I remember they would take me up to the top tier and, like you said, it was a lab, you know, and they would have us. You know, tell me what's going on over here. Look at that over there, see that guy standing outside that cell. What's he watching for? I remember one of the things they told me was uh, don't watch the watcher. If you see a watcher, figure out what he's watching, you know. So it was those little things like that that I first came into. And, uh, you, you touched on another thing, which is complacency, and one of the things I found fascinating on your guys is you had a podcast specifically about that and you talked about complacency as self-satisfaction accompanied by unawareness, and nobody would think that you'd walk into a prison and get comfortable, but we do. We're absolutely comfortable in that environment. So how do we overcome that? What's going on there and what can we do to?
Speaker 2:be less complacent. That's such a great question, so let's dial it back just a little bit and say so. Why do we become complacent? We become complacent because it's a coping mechanism, it's a survival strategy. We came from environments where, all of a sudden, we walked out of the cave and we had to fight for our lives. So we're constantly evolved to thinking that that's always a heartbeat away, that's a breath away. So our body wants to retain all of our fighting skill and our calories and our acumen for that dangerous encounter that we fear is right around the corner. And because we put all our eggs in that one basket, we want downtime. We want to make sure that we're up in the bed all day and we're not doing anything to be ready when we have to spring into action. So those scales were built so long before our human consciousness developed to where it is now that we have to fight that literally every day.
Speaker 2:It's hard to go to the gym. You know, the funny thing is, once we go to the gym we feel better all day. It's hard to eat a good diet. It's easier to eat crap food. But you know what, once we start eating a good diet, we crave that. So we have to train ourselves, like Brian and I were just before this call. We were talking about attention. You're only given so much attention and when you use attention you need sleep. I mean, a third of your life is spent sleeping. Why? Because this thing at the top of your skull needs attention. It needs to be able to relax in between all of its time of sampling your environment.
Speaker 2:So what I loved about your story is that was the old FTO, before the FTO program. Because, remember, some of us are old enough to remember when there wasn't a thing called the Field Training Officer Program and what they did is they gave you either the fire cracker that person on the street that was the best at what they did and had the highest arrest record and was always the crap magnet, or they stuck you with the guy that was, you know, five years past, retired He'd already retired in place. And I remember I got that guy I'll say his name because everybody knows him Old Smitty. I got Old Smitty that said don't touch the radio, don't touch the car keys and don't wake me up. And that was it. You know what I'm saying. It's like okay. So we sat behind the fire station and I watched the stars go by, because I was like man, there's all those wonderful radio runs, can I be out there? Nope, because I was with the wrong guy.
Speaker 2:But what your guy told you is a scientific principle and I want you to think about that Don't watch the watcher. So let's just talk about that one thing that he said, michael. Okay, so your brain is set up with your eyes giving you a visual field of your environment. Okay, your, your eyes give you a visual field of your environment. Your eyes have a 6-degree or an 11-degree functional field of view boy or girl and when you scan your environment, you're looking for light, motion and edges, things to attend to, right back to attention. So that person that's watching is a lookout. So what you do is you draw a T, making the T go across his shoulders and down from his head and orient what he's likely looking at. Now you draw your six or 11 degrees out from that, looking from overhead, and you go okay, he's watching out for the guards, he's watching out for the other gang, he's watching out for the person delivering whatever. Okay, so who's watching the watcher? Who's paying attention to that person and what's going on where he's not oriented to? Because that's where the people are hiding in plain sight, that's where they're building the shift, that's where they're hiding the bootleg liquor or the drugs.
Speaker 2:And so what we do is exactly the same thing that you do. We just do it in a different baseline, in a different environment. So our baseline can change anywhere. It can be in a room like an interview room, it can be in a room like an interview room, it can be in a factory, it can be in a vehicle bay, it can be out in the rest of the world or on an airplane. Well, that's no different from you. You've got people that are in charge of transferring prisoners to court, back and forth to different prisons, in and out of a jail cell to, for example, the infirmary, and what happens is, each time you go from one threshold to the next, you have to recalibrate your brain and go okay, now I'm on the floor, now I'm in general population, now I'm coming into an office setting.
Speaker 2:Because if you don't, what's happening is you're not preparing your brain for likelihood, those things that likely could occur, and that's just being alert and aware. But your whole body is fighting that. Your whole body is saying go lay down, have more food, go to sleep. You hear that alarm. Don't worry, it'll go away soon.
Speaker 2:So to be that good person, to be at the top of your game, you have to fight what's hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years, of the sedentary mindset that you're in and embrace what all humans have been given, and that's the ability to alert to certain cues in your environment. So Brian gave you one. We're wired to look at other people and feel their emotion through our mirror neurons. Okay, which means that if you're happy, I'll be happy. If I want you to be happy, I should be happy and you'll be happy too. Okay, that's great. But you know, the other side of that same coin is danger. We've been given the innate ability to sense danger in our environment and we talk it away. We say, oh, the hair on the back of my head stood up. Oh, I got this hanky feeling. Brian mentioned it the spider senses.
Speaker 2:Look, I'll bet you, you talk to all the people that you work with routinely in prison officers and staff and administration and everyone will be able to tell you a story about how they knew the crap was about to go sideways because of a sound or a sight or a smell. So you said earlier about when it gets real quiet, back to the wall. I'll tell you, you want to predict an ambush in combat. Radio is going to either go absolutely dead or it's going to spike. It's going to be all this rapid transmission. You're not going to understand it and that's going to be the atmospheric shift just before the ambush, or it's going to go dead quiet and everybody's going to go hey, do you hear that? Yeah, exactly, and now you're going to get the ambush.
Speaker 2:So it's the same human behavior rules, let's call them, and it's the same interaction with humans, it's just on a different baseline level. So you I would agree with Brian you've got it much harder because you've got less flash to bang. You've got it much harder. We give the gift of time and distance, which means the more time you have to observe, the farther you are away from the incident, the better you have it. So you're actually right up, close and personal almost all day long. So I also know that you have surveillance units. So that's how you can offset that right by watching and listening.
Speaker 2:Because I'll tell you one thing, I'll tell you before I end my rant. Rant here, michael, is that coppers on the street have the red and blues. They also have a siren and it gets them into more trouble because you know what they do. They race into a situation without giving it enough time for the brain to consider what might be happening. Your folks, even when you go to you, know hands-on or less than lethal. At least you can sit back for a minute, take a look and assess what's going on and say I can compare that to this person's previous behavior or to that wing at that time during the day or night or something, with police work on the road that tends to be a little more random. Do you understand where I'm going there?
Speaker 1:absolutely, yeah, um, and we also have the ability. You know, most of these big prisons have a thousand cameras, yeah, so I've got guys who are intelligence specialists who are watching the camera and can give you information while it's going on with a whole different viewpoint, right? So, yeah, let me uh ask this, and brian on your website, and he it kind of leads into what greg was talking about. You talk about humans have devolved and I think prison we get to see some of that. Can you talk to us about how humans have devolved?
Speaker 3:so what we kind of mean when we say that is, um, you know, our, our ability to sense, make and problem solve, our ability to understand and read and interpret the environment has devolved, and that's that's over the course of human history. It's a it's a slow process. It's been accelerated by newer technology staring at a phone or screen and stuff like that meaning there's less sort of human interaction out in the world today. You know, even with like kids, you know, and so we don't learn as many of the lessons that we do anymore, and so we're kind of so used to. Now is there an app for that or is there a technology for that that we're missing a lot of cues right in front of us now and take that to a prison. A little bit different in the sense that now you're all reliant on that, on just how someone looks, how they walk, where they walk, who they go and associate with. That's how it kind of all used to be done, right, in a sense, like in how tribes and humans and cliques and groups would interact with one another. Right, we look for familiarity and we find comfort in familiarity, and so we're always going to look for something. That is just part of the reason why humans, all humans, set patterns.
Speaker 3:So every person, whether you're an inmate or you're a corrections officer, like you're going to set a pattern. You can't not do it. It's what your brain wants to do. It wants to burn less calories. So it's going to consistently do the same thing over and over again once it finds a way to do something by burning the least amount of calories. So what we look for is like okay, you're going to set that's a, that's just baseline behavior, and then you kind of if there's deviations from that, there has to be a reason. There's, there's some catalyst that caused you to do something different today. No one just randomly goes about their day in their business, Like you know, unless there's, like you know, mental health or or drugs or something involved. That meaning meaning we all set those patterns. So what you know, specifically what we would talk about with a, with a prison, is like it's like it's that Petri dish. It's that you know informal rules in prisons. You know all over the place of what who can hang out with who and and and what, who belongs to what group, and you know they don't might not have a lot of say about that when they come in, but it's going to, it's going to formalize very, very quickly, and so that creates its own ecosystem.
Speaker 3:And so what a lot of people try to do is say here's some things to look for, you got to watch out for this, or you got to watch out for that, or here's some some some pre-event indicators, or here's some a threat indicator, or here's something, and that that's all good. But actually you go back to it. Go back to it even what your your story from when you first got there and someone showed you it's like get really, really good at what's normal, what's typical, what should I expect to see? The better you get at that, the better you get at reading and understanding a baseline and knowing what normal is, the easier it is to spot what those deviations are. You may not know what it is right or what's going on, but you'll be able to recognize it. So, like when I'll go with different groups, whether it's like a task force or police officers doing whatever or a military unit, you know and they're going okay, well, we got this, we and we kind of look for these things, and I'm always like, well, stop, hang, stop, hang on, don't. Don't tell me what you guys look for. What should I expect to see? Right, we're out on the surveillance thing, it's two o'clock in the morning. These are the people like what, what should they be doing right now? What's normal for them? And they go well, normally, they're doing this, normally, doing this. Okay, great, because now I can spot, well, that's not normal because you said that and they're going oh shit, that's right there, you right there, you must be up to something over there. I didn't even see that.
Speaker 3:It's like because you get so used to looking for all of these different things like you kind of there's, you know, cognitive biases that will take over and now you start to see things that may not, that might not actually be there in a sense. But what you have there with that ability, especially in the daily routine, is like and Greg was kind of talking about this earlier is your. Your brain wants to know the answer before you get to the. It wants to know the rest of the sentence or the paragraph before you get to the end of it. Right, so it'll fill in words. It doesn't want to be surprised, so it'll, it'll, you know, write things off or, you know, not attend to certain things because it's like Nope, I know this, I've been in here a hundred times, you know I, I've got this.
Speaker 3:So what we try to really get people to focus on is sort of that anticipation, right? So you go, all right, what, before I walk out here, what should I expect to see? What's normal at this time on this day? You know, whatever's going on it, because two in the afternoon is different than two in the morning, monday is different than Saturday, whatever, like you have to just know, like, what is typical, what should I expect to see. And then, once I placed myself in the environment, the things that aren't typical, they're going to just pop out to me right away. And now I can start to determine, okay, well, why is that? And I can start to sense, make a little bit and try to put things together and go, oh shit, this is now escalating. That person never sits with that group. Hang on, they should be over there. And you know what? Wow, now that guy. He never stands over there, he's always over there with that group. Okay, I'll stop right now.
Speaker 3:Now we have something before it escalates into whatever is coming next, and so if I get really good at recognizing those things, I can kind of intervene sooner. I can change the situation, I can manipulate it, I can move where I'm standing, I can, you know, change up the routine and maybe that's just enough to change the trajectory of the outcome of the situation. And that's what a lot of times you see, is like you are first sort of file fold. Our first response to things a little bit of denial. When we see something out of place or we hear something out of place, okay, that doesn't make sense, that's probably nothing right, or I get caught up.
Speaker 3:So if I'm looking at like I want to influence the environment that I'm in and I want to take control, doesn't mean I have to tell people what to do, doesn't mean I have to be you know, yell at people or do your take command. It might just be doing something that they didn't expect me to do. So now they're going wait a minute, hang on here. I wasn't expecting this. So now I have to figure out. Now they have to figure out what's going on. You know, greg does this a lot. We call it throwing the rock in the pond, where he's like a kind of loud, gregarious big guy and he'll just walk up to a situation and completely change the dynamic because he's just asking questions and, you know, playing dumb in a sense. But now everyone's going. Wait a minute, who? What's going on here? I didn't expect this. So those are.
Speaker 3:Those are kind of ways to test and sample your environment at a low calorie level, and you're also sort of engaging your brain. Um, your brain likes games, right, it likes you know fun things to look for to keep things novel. But once you've seen something enough times, it no longer becomes longer, becomes novel. Well, that's a great way for me to hide in plain sight, right, if I I can. If you're just so used to seeing something, you're never going to look at it again. So I can use that to my advantage if I'm trying to get away with something. So just trying to create some of that novelty is it may. It just keeps you more engaged and actually you get to use your full attention that way.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and I think you're right on what I did an episode not too long ago about being predator or being prey when you walk in there, how you walk in that room sometimes makes all the difference. If a guy walks in there, an officer or a female, and they walk in there, they're confident, they know what they're doing, the inmates know what they're doing, things stop. But if you're that complacent guy who they're just waiting for you to pass on through so they can go back to what they're doing, so that's kind of that rock in the pond thing that you're talking about.
Speaker 3:Exactly and you can use that use that use that with, like, with, with, with you know, you have the ability to always enlist the aid of others in a sense where two is is always better than one, right? So sometimes I can go be like, all right, hey, I'm gonna go do this, michael, I want you to watch to see, I'm gonna go be the rock in the pond, I want you to see where the ripples go and see what happens, right, so I'll go in and do something and then you're gonna go whoa, go, whoa. These guys over here, dude, they took off, they moved around the corner, they went over here as soon as you walked up. So now I know, because me in the situation I can't see everything right, but if I've got that overwatch, maybe that person on that camera to go. Hey, when they went through, all couldn't in the situation, you've got too much going on, but that's where you get really good, uh, what people call situational awareness.
Speaker 1:That's when you really understand kind of a who's who in the zoo and what's happening. Yeah, I, uh, I had a captain, and this was very early on and just exactly what you're talking about before we had cameras, before we had any of that. And he calls me over. He said go stand over there by that stairwell and cuff whoever comes down the stairs. And the guy had worked at Missouri state pen for like 35 years and he just took off and I'm like he didn't tell me to do anything except for that. No, no, setting it up or nothing. And sure enough, here comes this guy and I said come here. I cuffed him up and just stood there. Here comes the captain. He knew if he walked this this way, this guy would grab his stuff and come down the stairs.
Speaker 2:And we had it and that's amazing, the knowledge of your, your area michael, that that knowledge is so critical, because nuance is everything and and that's baseline comparisons are where it's at. So I'll give you an example has anybody, uh, other than me, ever seen the Andy Griffith show where Andy was the sheriff in Mayberry? Have you ever seen an episode, michael?
Speaker 2:I'm hoping Okay, so one of the things is Andy used to have his pant leg out of his boot and I won't break it for the folks that are watching now, but figure out which pant leg it was and then find out why. Because that was a message. That was a message to people that watched Andy Griffith, the actor on that show, because he was portraying a membership of a group and, depending in that time and that place, whether you had both pant legs out or one pant leg out, or if it was right or left, or the type of boot you wore, that made a message about where you were and we call that social media. Now, okay, that was the version of social media in the 60s for that show, but they were actually trying to show the late 40s, early 50s America. So if you understand that sometimes actors and television and movies portray nuance for us to get excited about, well, only imagine what real life is like. It's robust, it's fidelity-filled. So how do you do what we do? Well, the first thing is you understand that not all words are meaningful unless you put a bunch on a yellow pad. So Brian said anticipation and I look at anticipation as an important word, but I also look at that as curiosity, because I have to go around and look for those things that I anticipate, to see when are they right now, what's going on? So a great game for your folks to play would be to say what's the baseline, and pick an area and hold it with your hands like you're looking through a camera lens, and go, okay, on the floor right now in the cafeteria, right now, from this row to that row what's the baseline? And have your folks yell out certain things that are going on. Well, it seems calm. Okay, calm. Describe that. Well, nobody's getting agitated and excited. There's not a lot of yelling, okay. Well, what was it like yesterday at that same time? Well, every day at the same time. Usually this is a raucous, noisy environment. Okay, so what about the players? Are there a lot more people today or not?
Speaker 2:What's happening is, by playing these games with your brain, you're elucidating, you're putting a magic marker around those things that should be important in your environment. So now, what do I look for? Now that I got the baseline game down? I look first for incongruent signals. Incongruent signals happen all the time and they don't always lead to danger. Incongruent signal is everybody's walking to the right and you got one guy walking to the left, everybody's standing up looking and one guy's seated. Those are incongruent signals. Now, if you get enough incongruent signals in that same baseline, you know what you got.
Speaker 2:Now you got an anomaly, something that's either above that baseline or below it. If it's above that baseline, I've never seen it before. If it's below it, hey, why aren't those people going over there for the free candy that the guy from the fire truck has thrown at the parade? There's a reason. There's a reason for everything that's happening in that environment. And so, by anticipating what's likely and then being curious, you're constantly involved with your environment and it's a fun game. Why? Because hypervigilance is unsustainable. You can't always be on the camera, you can't always be on, you can't always be tuned in to what's going on. So what you got to do is you got to balance it.
Speaker 2:And I'll end by saying Brian's point of enlist the aid of others. Hey, if you're giving me something that I don't know about my baseline, something that's hiding in plain sight, or something I don't know about, that, that suspect or inmate, whatever you call them now, I'm sure they're I'm using an old term but maybe that one prisoner is like me. You know, I'm in my 60s, so I ain't got a lot to lose. So you mess with me. You're going to get the horn right. But maybe that newer person doesn't know that.
Speaker 2:Maybe they haven't anticipated that this is a common way to gain your confidence, to get you close enough for me to urinate on you or to try to stab you or try to punch you. Why was that important? And guess what? That's one thing we do. One thing we do is show you how to build a baseline, and you can do that every day. You don't need Brian and I to come in and show you how to build a fidelity-filled baseline with all these things, because you're the expert. You're the subject matter expert in that wing, in that prison, in that environment. So that's a great game that you can play and it's going to make you smarter and harder to kill.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So these inmates, most of them have grown up in neighborhoods and areas where manipulation is normal Okay, and a lot of. I mean, I came from a small town, so my first day in Missouri State, penn, was just like crazy. I had not experienced people that violent, people that manipulative. So how do they use? It's basically using human behavior analysis against us.
Speaker 2:What's some of the stuff? How do they do it?
Speaker 1:and what's some of the stuff we can do to you know, yeah.
Speaker 3:So, brianrian, do you want to start? Yeah, I'll go. You got please. Yeah, I'll go, I'll go ahead.
Speaker 3:Sorry, we got a got a little bit of a delay, but, um, yeah, so you think of everything, um, in terms of survival, because your brain, that's what is always first and foremost and it's always something that's there, even as comfortable as our lives are today, compared to people who lived in the past, wherever like, we don't have to worry. You know, I think more people die now from eating too much than eating too little. You know what I mean? The idea is we're still wired for survival. So if you grew up in an environment like that maybe a poor area, maybe you're a rough part of town, whatever, or you had really bad parents and you had a shitty upbringing or bad life, whatever you are primed for survival and that's how you learned to survive. You had to manipulate people, you had to get around, and I don't use that in really a negative way in terms of the term manipulation. It was just a, it was just a function of you having to survive in your environment. So you're actually especially, you know, in a prison system.
Speaker 3:They're, they're very much primed for survival and so they're always thinking about that and always thinking about what? What can I gain? How can I gain the advantage? Where? Where's my next meal coming from? Where's my next cigarette coming from? Where's this come from? How can I get this, how can I get that? And that's all they. They have, you know all long. You know all day long to think about that stuff, right, and all night long to think about that stuff. You don't right. You have a shift, you have a family, you have vacations, you have administrative things you have to do. You got some training, you got new policies and procedures that are coming down. You got all of these other things to think about that capture your attention, right, where all they need to think about one thing, and that's making it to the end of today. And then the next day they get up and how do I make it to the end of today? And so it's not something most people are typically looking at.
Speaker 3:They don't view the world that way. Well, that's their whole world, right, but it's kind of your world in a sense too right, meaning, even as a corrections officer, you're completely outnumbered, right, you only have so many resources. Things could go catastrophically wrong, so it's sort of a bit of a survival situation, sometimes for you as well. And so if I start to look at it that way and try to take that perspective of how do I survive the situation One, I turn it into a very important factor in my brain. My brain starts to prioritize things a little bit differently and it starts to then see the world from a little bit different perspective. Right, if I don't have things handed to me all the time, then I got to figure out how to do it and otherwise I'll die.
Speaker 3:Well, all the best innovation comes from survival. I mean, that's that's why humans are so prone to technological advancement and innovating, because that's how we've survived as a species for so long. Otherwise we don't. We all would have died, right? So so, understanding that they just have that more time to think about that stuff is they have a big tactical advantage in that point, right, they don't need to worry about any of the stuff that you're worrying about. They just got to get through the day, so that gives them a lot more time.
Speaker 3:So when you're understanding that perspective can can be hard to do. I can try to do that. But if I look at it as what is this person doing to survive. And again it goes back to the pattern recognition. Every, all humans set the same patterns for the most part, and then, individually, we get into our own little habits and our own little things that we do, and once I find something that's successful, I'm going to continue to do it that way. Right? So if I find something that works, my brain gets a little hit of dopamine and goes, ooh, I'm going to do that.
Speaker 3:You know again, that's why people will like rob the same place every time, or or someplace that looks like that. That's why I like when people are running from the police, you know where they run to home, or something that reminds them home. Like literally, like yeah, that, but or somewhere that's cognitively close to something that reminds me home. Like me, like I'm a city boy I grew up in chicago. Like, yeah, I had a lot of field training and stuff and literally from the military and then with my friends.
Speaker 3:But like, if you put the pressure on me, I'm running to a city, city, because I know, I know where I can hide, I know where I can go. Like I have some friends that are like dude, put me out in the country, because you're never going to find me Right and I would be lost out there. So we always constantly look for familiarity. So if I know a little bit about someone, if I know what they like to do, what, what, what their likes are, what's familiar to them, it kind of helps me conduct a little bit of predictive analysis about what they're likely going to do. Right, if they had a successful thing that they did in some location, they're going to use that same location or something that's cognitively close to what it is. So that's kind of how we're just constantly looking for familiarity.
Speaker 2:I would add this, if I can Michael I've spent a lot of time working with felons almost 50 years and I've never met a felon that wasn't a master manipulator. I never met a felon that wasn't a legal scholar. Guilt or innocence is relevant. Legal scholar Guilt or innocence is relevant and violence is a language. And violence is the simplest form of language for a felon, because if you don't understand me, I'm going to hit you harder until you do so now, if we have that you know. Of course there's white collar crimes out there. Never met one.
Speaker 2:But if you have been raised in an environment where you've got to tip the scales, then what I would say to anybody that's working on the other side, whether you're LE or working in courts and corrections always plan on listening to what Brian just said about patterns and impeach a person's testimony. What do I mean by that? Everybody sets a pattern, and the idea is that that pattern sets up a modus operandi how your brain responds to certain stimulus from the outside, and that's all based on drug interactions, whether it's dopamine or cortisol or any of the other endorphins that are going on, or cortisol or any of the other endorphins that are going on. So learn enough by standing back and not making a decision. Look an extremist when the fight's on. You got to do what you got to do. But if you've got the time and you can be patient, then build a file folder for each person and what nuances they do. They like to smoke. They're right-handed, they like the tats. This person likes the Bible. Whatever those things are is what that person's strong suit is. So you're either going to play into that strong suit or you're going to play away from that strong suit.
Speaker 2:And what I mean by that is, once that person lays out what's important to them to get something, they're going to return to familiar territory. They can't constantly bounce around, because if they bounce around, they're not sure what the outcome is. And they've thought about that likely outcome a good long time. They've thought about the chance of going to jail, of going to solitary confinement, of having their room searched or be shackled or less than lethal force, and they've considered what's likely going to precipitate that If I touch you, if I talk back to you, if I poop on my tray and try to fling it at somebody or whatever those things are. So if I understand that this is the likely catalyst, this is the thing that's going to get me there.
Speaker 2:And then I look at the person that's in front of me and I say what's their story? Because every one of us wants to control our story. There is nobody in the world that watches a Jack Reacher movie and pauses the movie and looks in the back and goes you see that janitor back there that's cleaning up that vomit in that cafeteria, way back in the frame. That's who I want to be. Nobody aspires to that right. So let a person tell their story. It's his or her story. Let them show you what's important to them.
Speaker 2:And then, after a while, what's going to happen is those things are going to either form a baseline for normalcy and I mean clinical normalcy or they're going to become anomalous. Hey, you never said that before. Or hey, wait a minute, why isn't he doing these things? And those gaps, those gaps in that biorhythm and that heart rate that's going by, that's where your trouble is. Look, no different than checking somebody's pulse or checking a brain scan on an fMRI, where the seams and gaps are. That's where I should be interested, not necessarily the words coming out of your mouth, because everybody, including most of the people you work with, have the gift of gab and have a line of shit that they're giving to get out of the situation or to move things along or to. Oh yeah, buddy, hey, just in a minute, just give me a minute, right, we all have that. You have to learn that as a cop, or the world wouldn't spin right. But the idea is how efficiently and effectively? Because, look, when you're reading me, I'm reading you and, and so that's a give and take and listen. Uh, if you want to build trust with the prisoner, if you don't care about building trust, then don't listen to the podcast. But if you really care about that, building trust means operating at the speed of trust, which means it's less dangerous for both people playing.
Speaker 2:Now, are you going to get that? One person that doesn't care is going to go for the jugular all the time? Yeah, but guess what? They're no longer an anomaly, it's part of the baseline now, right, but you're not going to get fooled as much If you let me go, give me a little time to skate and then just observe me in my environment, then I'll understand what you're all about. And guess what? Even actors, even the best actors in the world, can't keep it up for very long. Even those most well-trained in the prison system can't keep up that facade for very long. So maybe it's a week, maybe it's a month, but it ain't going to be a year, it ain't going to be six months. Sooner or later, you're going to poke holes in that mask that they're wearing, and we all wear masks. Every one of us wears masks and we change them all the time. So change the word mask for baseline and then change curiosity for anticipation or anticipation for curiosity, and you're going to be smarter going into that environment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, you know, we I mentioned watching the inmates, watching what they do, but one of the things I've been trying to teach lately is you have to engage, you know leadership is influence. And if the first time you talk to an inmate is when there's a problem, you have no influence.
Speaker 2:So how is that different, michael? You're so on board. Look, I went to a police agency one time and the police agency said, hey, do me a favor, describe the cop that works our area. And we had a sketch artist do that. And every single one that was sketching it was a sideways view of their head and they had a mustache or not, or they wore a hat or not, okay, and it was nondescript. And I go why are these all sideways? And they go. All we do is see them driving by. They've never stopped and got out of the car and asked what was going on.
Speaker 2:Now, all of a sudden, there's a critical incident or a school shooting, and show up and go oh, by the way, I'm your resource officer. Hell, no, you, brian's rock in the pond analogy You're the rock, okay, or you're the frog on the lily pad that's getting hit by the wave, but you're part of that baseline and by interacting with people, the more I interact with you, the less dead space there is. So now I see what a pattern of life is like in you, in your cell, on your wing or your block, and that's hugely important to me. Look, if you're just showing up and punching in the card and making your money, then you are assuming more risk than I am being proactive, and if you want that, that's fine, but don't be on my shift, because what you're going to do is you're going to get me killed, and I'm not going to accept that. You know so. So how do we change that? We understand the gift of time and distance. We constantly educate ourselves and we force our agency to send us to training. The more training that we have, the better look. The whole goal is to make us smarter, faster and harder to kill. You know and, and and we want that for our kids in our community too. And and you're no different than I am when it comes to that, because I hear the stuff you're putting out there and I watch your podcast and that's what's important to you too.
Speaker 2:But it's not all about sympathetic and parasympathetic reactions and normal human reaction time and edge weapons defense. You have to be tactically smarter than the inmate. You have to be more cognitively sound than that group of people in the cafeteria. And you know what? If you're not, then you're just a security guard and one day you're going to get kidnapped or punched or stabbed. I mean, let's do that, because I say that same thing to cops in the room. What's your difference between anybody else in the world? You're assuming all this risk and you think, because you've got a gun, that you're going to be somehow different or the vest is going to stop all the danger. You know better than that. It's your brain that's going to get you into or out of the situation. Your brain because you're too sedentary, or your brain because it's probing your environment and it's going to lead you to safety before that danger hits right, right.
Speaker 1:So we've talked a lot about individuals and how we see the anomalies, and I know that the combat hunter program uh, that was for the military, and you were taking them into a new culture and you were teaching them how to see the things that happen in a culture. Well, for us, in corrections, I think there's a correlation there, because we're talking about gangs, you know.
Speaker 1:So here's this group of people or this culture of people. What's some of the things you know that on a, you know other than just the individual? What's some of the things we look for, you know, as a group, when we're watching groups. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Great question.
Speaker 3:You can, you're right. So one of our basic principles is that sort of people yeah, absolutely, great question live this type of life, growing up I don't know. Oh, my gosh, it's all new to me. It's like, no, it's not new to you. Yeah, you haven't seen that before. But guess what?
Speaker 3:People still have to establish relationships, they still have to belong to a group, they have to be part of a tribe, they have to be part of a team for survival purposes, right, and if they're not, it's harder for me to get along. You know, everyone talks about like I'm a loner, I survive by myself. It's like, no, you don't, because if you were really a loner, no one would ever know you or see you, because you'd be out being a loner somewhere, and so we still have to have this interaction. So, when it comes to different types of group dynamics, there's still hierarchies there. There's still formal and informal ones, right, and there's people that are the shot callers and there's people that are in charge, and there's people behind the scenes and there's the young guys who maybe got to earn their way in or whatever. So we all establish these little hierarchies and groups and so you can start to determine sort of, we would say, like who's who in the zoo? Right? Who's really pulling the strings here? Who's really doing that? Who's the one that's behind the scenes, that's making all the calls, but you don't actually ever see them doing it. Who are the ones actually doing it? And the better I understand those group dynamics. It helps me in that sort of predictive analysis and to understand what might be going on in the yard today. Right, are we going to have a good day or are we going to have a bad day? Right, and if I can really get good at that, it doesn't necessarily matter. I mean, what they're doing, it's how they're doing it, how are they organized, and it's the same sort of dynamics that you have. It's just not a formal chain of command, it's just done a little bit more informally.
Speaker 3:But think about that, even within, let's say, a corrections officer and the organizational chart you have, you can point to the organizational chart and see where everyone's at, what everyone's rank is, who they're in control. But there's also an informal one where there's always the one officer that everyone loves. Maybe they're not in charge, but they have a lot of responsibility and people look up to them. Well, that person has a lot of influence. Well, that group in that prison, that gang, it's no different. There. You might have the one guy in charge, but then the one person is really popular, but that might create kind of a weird dynamic. Popular and now, but that might create kind of a weird dynamic. But that would create a weird dynamic or or or occasionally difficult dynamic within. You know, the correction officers were lying how we got this guy's in charge when people don't really look up to him, respect them, and that kind of creates issues with the one that really is in charge that everyone does listen to. Now there's well, that's the same thing with their group.
Speaker 3:So, rather than than looking at it as completely different, I go well, how is this the same to what we do? How is it similar? And what that allows me to do is sort of use what I know in my world. Maybe I've never been in that world, maybe it's my first day or first week on the job and I've never seen any of this stuff before. I have all this stuff that I can lean on and I can say how is that similar to what I do know? And from there it just sort of helps me understand, like, oh okay, that's their captain, that's their chief, that's their you know, whatever that's their sergeant. You know what I'm saying. And if I look at it as that similar rank structure, it helps me go well, what would I expect to see then, if that's their rank structure, who's in charge? Because that helps me build relationships with the right people. It helps me not waste time with someone who's like dude, like you're, you're talking to me all the time and you're, but you're, you're jamming me up here, but like you're, you're no one where this person if I can, if I can establish trust with someone, uh, who is important, maybe that is that background influencer, maybe that's going to give me some leverage. Maybe that's going to be the guy that says, hey, stay out of this area at this time today and you know, depending on what it is like, it might save your life.
Speaker 3:But in in knowing sort of, I always say is like just just learn the rules of the game, right, there's informal rules to every game that you're in every situation. Like we, we work in a lot of different areas, so we don't just work with like law enforcement, we work with like private sector and universities and churches, and it's like to me the human behavior stuff and everything that we do is universal. That's why we get to do it. But my thing is anytime we go into one of those places, like I just got to go, what are the rules of the game here? How are things done here? And I can equate that to what I know, and I can use my own terminology, like, like you know, greg, and I'll do that.
Speaker 3:We're like, oh yeah, that guy he's the shot caller or or he's the shadow governor. Well, that was a term from Afghanistan we would use to go, all right, you're the governor of this province, but there's a shadow governor too who's really running the show. Well, that's no different. And so we'll go to a place and I ask people and I'm like, ok, well, who's the shadow governor? And they're like, oh, that's so and so over there it's like cool, now I know who's who in the zoo and how to, how to operate in that environment. And then it's just, you know getting what you want.
Speaker 3:Like I, you know establishing, you can establish trust and transparency with anyone, right, because they'll know. Like, all right, like hey, you know what? Yeah, I don't like Michael, cause he's. He's the corrections officer, but I know he's a good guy and I know he's not going to screw me over. I know he's only going to bring down the hammer if I do something stupid or if it's my fault, like you know what I mean. So there is an establishment of trust and transparency with that and it allows you to just operate freely and you're always going to have your percentage of people that they're just always going to be the problem child, like it doesn't matter what it is, that's how they express themselves, but then, like Greg said, that sort of becomes their baseline right. So now you know that about that individual. So I want to know each person as best as I can and where they fit into the hierarchy.
Speaker 3:And man, those conversations that you guys have with each other on break, before shift, after shift there's so much more power and information in those conversations than we even think. Right, there's a lot happening just sharing that. What you know. Those little conversations like that's where you put something together, that's where you get that network of people to go oh, wait a minute, hey, something's going down today. Then we got to you know what we got to do all stop, or we got to change the way we're doing things. So those informal conversations I always tell people to to have, because those are where you find out the best information.
Speaker 2:So, michael, let me give you one. That's a game, that's also a practical application scenario for free that you can use with your folks. Anybody that's a prison officer here can do with their folks. So come up with a song or a book or a film and then assign that to two different people in the group. Say, ok, you're group lead here and you're group lead here. Let's assume we got three or four people that are doing it and say, ok, now write these down Folks that are listening to this podcast right now.
Speaker 2:Write down logo art. Write down tattoos. Write down clothing design tattoos. Write down clothing design. Write down commercial advertisement. Write down graffiti. Write down music, you know, and geography, whatever. Okay, now we have these categories, now, each one of those. You have those on a card right Now. Everybody's got them on their, their their phone at home or right now on their yellow pad.
Speaker 2:Now, this is the goal, michael. We have a public event that's coming up and at that public event you're in charge of recruiting people from the audience. Just average everyday people out in the audience to come to your side. So they're part of that music, that song, that book, that movie that you're trying to recruit them for. So, first thing, you have to break down what's the logo art of that Dixie Chicks song that you assigned, okay, well, what would those folks have as a tattoo to show that they love? Uh, uh, the chicks, I guess they're called now. And what kind of clothing design? Would that be more western or is it more urban? Okay, and how do they advertise, you know, and then you can change that to Taylor Swift or a rap group or you know whatever you want to do. What type of graffiti would you likely see if they were going to do that? And then how would they behave at that public event? Would they do a bake sale? Is that common to that group that we're talking about? Or would they have a boxing match or a wrestling match or a musical concert? And if so, what kind of music? Well, that game that you're playing.
Speaker 2:What you're really doing is doing an internal, external baseline. Stop looking for what I saw when I was growing up and start looking for what he or she saw. Stop looking at what's important in my environment and try to think what graffiti they would put on a bus. Stop to recruit me, because every gang that you're dealing with in prison has something to fit into those categories and what you've created is this colander where not everybody fits. So now the things that fall through that colander, that sieve that you created, all of a sudden they become more important.
Speaker 2:Then, after you've done that exercise, go back in your environment and assign them a cell block or a cell or a group. Now look, I can learn more about you from doing a trash poll than you'll ever understand. I can get a search warrant, I can get an affidavit for an arrest warrant or a search warrant and get a judge to sign it, just looking at the shit you throw away. So imagine what I could do if I was a little bit patient and I looked at these different categories of my environment. So these are games to make us cognitively more aware of our surroundings, and that situation awareness is a tool. It's like if we were going fishing on a cloudy day in murky water, would you use the same bait that you've always used? No man, you've got to change that stuff up. So being a Cognorati, being an Arcadia Cognorati, means that I anticipate the environment, I understand more before I set foot into the environment, and then I leverage that knowledge to to turn information into intelligence and that intelligence becomes actionable yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1:I love the way you talk about filtering or running it through a colander and then you don't have to look at the whole place, you're just looking at what falls through precisely because you can't, you, you cannot I want to not have the bandwidth.
Speaker 2:You're exactly right yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Um, brian, you mentioned uh, maybe a mental health. You know an outlier and and, uh, of course, I worked in a mental health uh institution. The thing about that is, once we start engaging with those inmates, we start watching those inmates. Even mental health inmates have a baseline and they come up in a above and below it.
Speaker 1:I used to play a game with them. I had a the worst of the top 40 worst mental health inmates in one unit and every night when I'd come in and feed at four o'clock, I'd just come up with a question what's your favorite Elvis song? And I'd ask each one of them you know, as I went through there and it was just this little game and some of them really got into it. Some of them told me to F off, you know, but when I got done feeding I had a baseline for where each one of those guys was that night. You know little stuff like that.
Speaker 3:That's exactly what we're talking about. And so that you know what what that does is, um, like you said, setting that baseline is that. That's what allows you to conduct predictive analysis. That's what allows you to say what's likely going to happen next. What is this person likely going to do? That information and plus it's even if they keep telling you to F off. Well, you do a different question every day, you might actually, and then find out something that that person likes, that the guy who's been telling you to F off every single night goes oh well, you know, I actually like that. And then you go oh, now I have an in, Now I've built some sort of rapport, Now I've built a relationship. You know, it's just those little things and you know you actually don't ever know what that's going to lead to. But all of those things are the things that matter. Like what that's going to lead to, but all of those things are the things that matter. Like your policies are going to change, your tactics are going to change, your tools are going to change, your uniform might change, but those establishing those relationships allow you to kind of implement other changes easier too.
Speaker 3:Because, like we keep saying, like humans look for familiarity and we don't like uncertainty, right? Humans do not like. When things are uncertain and you're not sure what happens, is your limbic system, your survival brain, kicks in and goes I don't like this. What's going on? So you immediately go. Your first answer, especially in a prison, is like I may have to be violent, right, you? You automatically go to that because of that uncertainty. So the more I can start to, more I can create that certainty for people, the more cognitively comfortable they are, in a sense, right, so it allows them to relax. It allows me to turn down the thermostat a little bit, turn down the pressure, right? Because if I start throwing things in and I change things up, a lot, people do not like that. So if they have a good relationship with me, they're more likely to accept that.
Speaker 3:It's like, hey, if I'm delivering this news to you and hey, there's something new that we have to do, and now you're not going to get this. Well, at least I have some familiarity with you, Michael, and I got a little bit of trust built. It might not be much, but it's better than nothing. And so that's all it is is like those small, small wins over time, those small. You know, it's like the, the baseball analogy. Look, we just want base hits. Get on base, get on base, get on base. And then every once in a while you're going to hit a home run. All right, Get on base, get on base.
Speaker 2:It's those small hits. That that's all I'm not killing. And if we're discussing things, you get what I'm trying to say. We're not writing. That's the whole.
Speaker 2:Idea is that you're trying to build a form of conversation, and if we talked about violence being a language, we certainly don't want it to degrade to that, and that's what we were talking about, with humans devolving, humans devolving. Social media didn't make us smarter. It's a tool, and if we rely only on that tool, we're never going to be able to communicate well with the person next to us. So your communication skills, your trust with your team and then your trust with your inmate population, man, that's huge, and you know training is the answer there. Education is great, but education is like putting a sign on, you know. So the idea is that we've got to make sure that we learn skills and you've got the perfect place to rehearse them.
Speaker 2:Every day, as a field training officer, out on the road, I have to pick and choose a traffic stop or a burglary alarm. You have the opportunity to influence your environment every single day and get better and better at it, or leave it like an experiment and see what happens. Well, I would venture to guess that if you left it alone for a while, it would become Lord of the Flies and you guys would never be allowed back on the floor. So the idea is that how do you get the person to be a rule follower? You enlist their aid in showing what the difference is. This is more fun. This is easy. You got to do the time. This is an easier way of doing the time and both of us get what we need out of this arrangement. That's not wrong. That's okay to do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, um, so the I guess the downside to human behavior, performance and analysis, uh and you guys have talked to a lot of military, a lot of law enforcement, and I'm sure that they have the same thing how do we keep from becoming so hyper vigilant?
Speaker 2:because it's a problem with correctional officers.
Speaker 1:You get so nervous about somebody going to stab you all the time, that when you walk outside you can't turn it off.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, exactly, brian, I'll let you go first.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, what we try to do is, you know, informed awareness, all right, hypervigilance is one it's unsustainable, you can only do that in short bursts is one it's unsustainable, you can only do that in short bursts.
Speaker 3:And two, if you're constantly hypervigilant, you may actually be making yourself a little bit dumber. In a sense. You're less likely to notice things, because what happens is you're sort of training your brain to go as long as I stay in this hypervigilant state, nothing's going to happen to me and you'll miss things. You will absolutely miss things in your environment. So that's why we always say just you take a step back and understanding things a little bit better. So I, you know, establishing relationships, understanding the baseline of what you should see and what you should expect to see, and knowing what those things are and the differences leading up. How is this different than yesterday? How is this different than the last interaction I had with this individual? How is this different? Or how is this the same? And you're kind of doing what's the most likely, what's the most dangerous course of action, right? So in our head it's like okay, you've got something that's going on. I see something. All right, well, likely, it's just this. Well, what could it be, if it's dangerous what I'm doing, that I'm actually creating that sort of balance to go all right. Yeah, it could be an ambush I'm walking into, but what else could it be? And then do I see, and where's the evidence leading me to? Is it leading to everything's going to be fine, or am I seeing something else that will contribute to, you know, some chaotic situation? And having that balance allows me to do that.
Speaker 3:And one other thing and Greg mentioned we actually just did a whole podcast on it is where we talked about violence being a language. It's a way to communicate. If I don't have the words, if I don't have a way, if I'm not feeling heard, if I don't feel like I'm getting through to you, I'll use violence, because that's what I know, especially in your prison population. Look, this is what I know. This is a, it's a form of communication. And if we look at it that way and it's hard to do this when people say like, oh, you can't take things personally it's like, yeah, that's really really hard to do when someone's yelling at you or talking shit to you or whatever, like it's very difficult because they're good at getting in your skin, but the better I get at managing that and understanding like, okay, this person doesn't have the ability to bargain, they have nothing, they're in jail, they have no leverage, they have nothing. So this is how they're using it.
Speaker 3:If I start to look at it almost like scientifically, like what is this person teaching me? What are they trying to tell me? Not what the actual words are no-transcript, all they know. So if I get better at like, okay, what's really going on here? What are they trying to tell me? Because sometimes they're trying to tell you, hey, I am angry at you and I'm going to attack you. Sometimes they're telling you, no, I'm just angry because something else happened and I'm just trying to get it off my chest Right and you're the only person I can do that to. So just trying to approach it that way, rather than just saying, hey, don't take it personally, like that's, like that's really hard to do, I mean, it's very difficult. So that's how I would kind of explain it, but I'll let Greg kind of go into detail.
Speaker 2:I would add this Brian, I would say and Michael, you'll understand this immediately the inmate controls the narrative, but I control the timeline. So the idea is that I have to use tactical patience to my advantage every single time and as a team, operationally, we have to use tactical patience. Should we pounce now or should we delay? Do we wait to get additional gear or personnel? Do we just lock it down and time it out and try to talk? Because the idea is, if you're constantly worried that you're going into an ambush, sooner or later you're going to be right and that's again going to skew your internal baseline, because you're going to be walking on eggshells with a pillow duct taped to your ass all day long and that anxiety is going to tear you apart. You're going to have a heart attack, you're going to shoot yourself, you're not going to be healthy when you go home to your family. So what you got to do is you got to go. Ok, I give it to you, you'll control the narrative. You know you're writing the book every day in your cell or out on the block or in the cafeteria. But you know what. I control the timeline here. So I'm only going to move or act when I'm absolutely ready, that we have the tactical advantage and the strategic advantage and operationally we're ready to go. If you think that way, then what you're going to do is slow time down, literally and figuratively. Slow time down. So time is a tool that you can use to be safer and smarter, and you know what.
Speaker 2:This is such a great conversation, but you and I know, michael, without attending training on these things, it's going to be in one ear and out the other. Are we going to do some good today? Yeah, are people going to listen, and I hope that they're interested enough to follow your training guidelines and come to some of our training. But the realism of the situation is you have the rest of your life to get better at what you're doing and it's incremental. It takes you going out and seeking out that training that will expand your brain, so you're not hypervigilant. Brian said it and I'll say it again it's unsustainable. And I know more cops that are in the grave because they had a heart attack or shot themselves after they left work, and every one of them wanted to, you know, go to the beach. Every one of them wanted to go hunting and have these wonderful safaris, and they're all pushing up daisies now because they didn't take care of their physical and mental health, and we can't allow that.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. So, since we're there, go ahead and ahead. Tell me, what do you guys have coming up? What, uh?
Speaker 3:how can they uh, you know, get some, find some of your training yeah, so you can always uh sign up at our website at arcadia, cogneraticom, um, and and I always push out uh every few weeks like kind of like a update hey, this is what we have coming up. Uh, you can always reach out to us. We can always come in and do training. Um, there's, there's, there's a we've got some courses coming up. If anyone's out on the East coast at Virginia and Liberty university, we have one next month. That's actually free. If you're in law enforcement corrections, you just got to get to the training. Um, I can send you the links to that stuff as well. But but you know, there's we've got training kind of popped up all over a lot of law enforcement and we also do some private sector and stuff as well. But it's just easier just to kind of like if you want to sign up. We have obviously the human behavior podcast where we talk about a lot of the stuff real in depth and try to give some good takeaways. We have our Patreon site as well where people can learn more, where we do little breakdown stuff and give out little tidbits here and there. So you just got to kind of contact us and stay connected.
Speaker 3:I always tell people too. Like LinkedIn is actually a great way for us to get a hold of folks or people to follow along with us and ask us questions. It's super. I mean, that's where we met you and we've actually, despite it. It's just another social media site. You know it's Facebook for adults, I say, but like it's actually really if you use LinkedIn for the purpose it was designed, it's actually really great for networking and stay in touch and, you know, meeting and talking to other thought leaders or people in the business and finding out about different training and what to do.
Speaker 3:Like that's actually a great place for for that. So I always tell people connect with us, follow us on social media. Uh, reach out with questions. We're easily accessible. I get to everyone's questions. Eventually, um, I do the patreon folks first because they're they're paying for it, but, um, you know that's how it is. But in terms of training, we can always come out and we can do training. We like to do regional training where officers from different agencies can show up. Those are always some of the best courses anyway, because then everyone gets to kind of talk about different things they see and you get kind of a better awareness of what's just not just what's happening at your specific location, but what's happening kind of all around the area.
Speaker 1:Sure, sure, and we'll put all those links in the show notes so anybody wants to look up those, that'll be there in the show notes for you and you go straight there. Um, I can't tell you guys how excited I am to finally get to talk to you. Uh, I've followed you on LinkedIn. That's how we met and LinkedIn is great. That's.
Speaker 1:A lot of my guests come from LinkedIn because it gives me access to people who I'd never have access to otherwise. And, uh, you, you guys are a couple of them and I'm follow all your stuff. Yeah, if you haven't been there, go to their website. The podcast is amazing. Uh, there's a bunch of stuff on YouTube also that you guys have out there and, uh, they posted on LinkedIn and on LinkedIn. And, yeah, just thank you. That that's so. Corrections often gets overlooked, you know, sometimes so, and that that's my goal here is to bring in some of the stuff that law enforcement and the military get and bring it over to corrections, because it's important to us also. So, thank you guys, greg, brian, thank you so much.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it. Greg Brian, thank you so much.
Speaker 3:We're just honored to be on the show as well. I appreciate it Michael.
Speaker 3:And for what we do and for what we do I like the corrections officers, and then also when you get down to Customs and Border Protection, those folks where you're kind of at the same location, you build up more tacit knowledge than you even realize. Like I'll go down and like or see something or watch someone and I'm like man, these people are really good, like you're those things that you do every day. If you learn to unpack that, that's where that subject matter expertise comes in. And what happens is we don't often do that and it's like, well, you just got to get the experience where I just had a hunch. It's like well, that's great, because you're in a prison or you're at the board patrol, so you they don't like you kind of get to do whatever you want, and it's not meaning like they have a lot less rights right there, but like versus a police officer on the street going like, oh, I did a hunch, so I pulled him over. It's like, well, that's not going to stand up in court, but either way, it's the same thing is that like I look at unpacking what you do know or what do I know, instead of worrying about what I don't know or trying to figure it out and what's typical, what's normal.
Speaker 3:Get in that the easier it is to spot the new TTP that they're using, the new thing that's going on, because there's always going to be some new way of doing something, a new way of smuggling something in a new way. They're constantly innovating. So don't chase those TTPs and say, all right, here's what we're seeing now, here's what we're seeing now. Just get really really good at vanilla, get really really good at normal, at typical, and then those little deviations from that baseline will stand out even greater. So I appreciate what you guys do and what your listeners do. It's a really tough job. Like you said, you get overlooked a lot. I think hopefully some of that's changing and some of the places I have seen it's getting a little bit more funding and training and stuff in some places, and you know always need that and how we go about corrections. But it's a really, really tough job and there's a lot of complexity in it and so I appreciate what you guys do and you guys are really good at it.
Speaker 2:So yeah, and my closing remarks will be brief, michael, we've been listening to you for a good long time. We've had this on the calendar for over a month. We've both been excited about actually physically breaking that barrier and being able to talk to you one-on-one like this, rather than remotely. And somewhere somebody that's listening to this podcast, be it an administrator or just a line officer, is saying the same thing we don't have time for this kind of training or we don't have money for this kind of training. And I will tell you, you'll have all the time and money in the world when you're answering that lawsuit or when you're preparing for that prison officer's funeral. So you decide what your priorities are and go out and get that training, because if you don't, nobody's going to bring it to you. You're going to have to, you're going to have to actively seek it out and you're going to have to sell it to your folks. So, michael, we're honored. We'd love to do this again sometime and we'd love to bring your honor, you on our show one day.
Speaker 1:Sure, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I'm going to say one more thing, because, you know, I realized that I was doing some of this stuff, but listening to your guys's podcast and listening to reading your articles and stuff, I real you gave me the language. Nobody ever taught me the language, you know. I I knew what it was, but I didn't know why I was doing it or why I was seeing this stuff. So that's I got and that's why they need the training, so that they can identify and put this place or put what they're seeing in context. Yep.
Speaker 2:Right and you're exactly right. Thank you guys for doing that. I mean, that's what you've done for me, Testifying everything that's going to improve everything. Michael, your spot on buddy.
Speaker 1:Everything. Thanks again, guys. Everything. Thanks again, guys. Brian, greg, have a great day and we'll talk to you next time.
Speaker 3:Thank, you so much. Thanks a lot, michael, appreciate it.
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