Fight or Freeze: Active Shooter Response with Michael Howell

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She first thought cover and concealment towards you devaluate situation before she made the next move.

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But she never made the next move, moving her pistol from her left hand to her right hand, from her right hand to her left hand, nervous as all get out.

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Welcome to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates, where leaders find the insights, advice and encouragement they need to lead courageously.

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Welcome back to the show.

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I'm so honored that you're with us here today and this is a special episode with a special person, Good friend, Michael Howell.

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Michael is a retired Kansas City Kansas police captain with 25 years of service.

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He did 27 and a half years with the United States Army.

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He's also a veteran and he's one of the four most experts in active shooting incidents and that's why we have him on the show.

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You may not know this, but the video footage of the Lakewood church shooting from February 11 was just released and there are some things that we need to discuss and there was no one better than Michael Howe to have on the show.

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So I'm honored to be here, sir.

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How are you doing, Mike?

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Great, great Travis, Glad you called me.

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Well, before we get going about this particular instance, I know you've reviewed the videos and I called you immediately when I first saw it because you're the one I want to talk to.

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Everybody wants to rush to judgment when these videos come out because, unfortunately, our law enforcement leaders aren't real great about giving context to anything.

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So the video's just dropped and that was pretty much it.

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So we're going to get into that.

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But you are an expert for a reason Not only are you a PhD student getting really close to the end of that in the middle of your dissertation in criminal justice but you know a lot about active shooting.

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So I guess we should start with your personal experience with a real live active shooting incident.

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So tell us about that.

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Well, I was not really excited to go on the show with a friend of mine, but he talked me into it and we went out to a big box store in Southern Johnson County in the community called LaNunca and made our way through this packed business.

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It was the Black Friday, it was the Sunday after Black Friday in 2017.

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And I'd say there's probably about 3000 people in the store and as we were, we loaded up our merchandise that we went to get and as we were making our way toward the cash registers, all sorts of people, all sizes, races, you name it started running and screaming man with a gun, man with a gun, shots would be at fire, people were being shot.

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I had not heard any gunshots at this time.

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I tried to stop some people to try and find out what was going on, and everyone was in a rush to run by me.

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But I was finally able to grab a young man, pull him into the aisle and say look, I'm a police officer.

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What's going on?

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He said there's a guy out front.

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He's shooting people.

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Again, at this time, I had not heard any gunfire from anyone.

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But I looked at my friend that I was with, gave him my car keys, told him look, do me a favor, I need you to get this down straight.

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Call 911, tell them they have an off-duty officer inside the store.

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He's handling the attack.

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Give them a detailed clothing description of me, because I didn't want to have blue on blue violence.

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Give them a detailed clothing description of me and a physical description of me so the responding uniform officers would have the ability to understand who I am, that I'm not the bad guy.

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He did that, and then you know.

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Dave Grossman talks about auditory exclusion and how your body undergoes a metamorphosis of sorts in regards to hearing, seeing, you know, sight, taste, smell.

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The whole nine yards, it appeared.

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I felt like time stopped and I was.

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I'd say I was a good 125, 175 feet away from the manager that was yelling at me exactly what was going on.

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He gave me a physical description of the suspect, he told me his direction of travel and he told me that the suspect had said multiple times that he was an off-duty US Marshal and that he was there to kill people and that he was armed with a long gun.

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Well, having just come back from a deployment overseas to Kosovo following my Iraq deployment, I was concerned that this guy might have an explosive IED vest or a rifle of some sort.

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So again I told my friend hey, get out, help, get these people out, call 911.

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I've got to go to work.

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And at that point I felt as if when I share this in my seminars across the country, I feel like warm oil has poured on my back.

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I felt completely at peace because I knew that, regardless of the outcome, I had trained for this response Through my department, through my years in the military as an infantry officer.

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I knew that I would win because I had trained for it.

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I had no doubt in my training.

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I began to maneuver through the maze of clothing, displays and books and chips and all kinds of merchandise.

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I could see the guy, the older white male wearing an army field jacket of sorts, had long grayed and shoveled hair about his shoulder length, probably in the mid-60s, pushing a cart, walking north in the main aisle saying I'm an off-duty US Marshal, I'm going to kill people.

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I carried a Glock 23 off duty with me and somehow it hurt in my hand.

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I began to maneuver away into a position to where I could win.

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Once I decided to engage this guy if he refused to surrender.

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As I was moving north-northwest through the store, he turned west, turned left and about halfway across the store he made this spontaneous statement I'm an off-duty US Marshal, I'm here to kill you.

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So at that point I thought I had been discovered.

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But he never made eye contact with me.

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He just kept pushing the cart like he was in a trance, pointing his long barrel weapon.

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Well, come to find out, the long barrel weapon was a Ruger 44 Black Powder 44 caliber revolver at about a 16 inch, 14 inch, what looked like about a 14 inch barrel.

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I continued to try and get behind him.

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We got to the area about aisle 321.

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I know that that was the dog food, cat food aisle and I knew if I could get him to go down that aisle instead of continue to follow the people toward the northwest corner of the store as they were fleeing the business.

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I knew my backstop was a solid concrete wall.

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I knew that, worst case, the only person who was going to get hurt, aside from him, would be me.

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I did not want any civilians to be injured or lose a life, so I let him get about 50 feet away from me.

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He crossed the main aisle, was continuing to push westbound toward the far west wall of the store toward a doorway where people had fled out and I identified myself as a police officer, since I said police, freeze, drop the gun, don't move.

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He stopped and began to turn toward me and he turned and pointed that revolver right at me.

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As I was saying the same thing the second time, and as I said police, the second time, that's when he pointed the gun directly at me and I fired and dropped him a medium.

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I was kind of in shock because I was like training worked.

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I mean everything I had been trained to do.

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It worked seamlessly and I told my range master and several of our academy instructors later a big thank you because they're intense focus on training and training right to respond instead of just training to check a block paid off, because had they not trained me as well, I don't think I'd be here today.

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Following my last shot I looked around to make sure there was no suspects with this guy because you never know and immediately called 911, identified myself as an off-duty police officer from my agency Because I was in a different city, different county that I was commissioned in, explained to them what was going on and told them I need a uniform officers there immediately.

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And then I asked the dispatcher if it was okay for me to keep her on speakerphone because I didn't want there to be a blue on blue attack without some recording of it, because at the time I didn't know if the store had an audio recording or just video.

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So I kept talking to the dispatcher the whole time, I want to say about 7 to 8 minutes after my last shot rang out.

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The entry came from the Lonexa Police Department, made entry and found that those 5 officers found me in the back of the store, obviously met me at gunpoint, ordered me to the ground, made closed in with me, identified myself, showed my identification and let them know that the suspect was deceased in aisle 321.

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And then it was just your typical mayhem from there cops, ems, command staffs, detectives.

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Then the district attorney showed up and in between all of this I asked for permission to call my wife first to let her know what had happened, because I had had an on duty shooting 20 days before this.

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I was well aware of the process that was going to have to happen between my alerting law enforcement or dispatch to the shooting and the detectives and command staff showing up.

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Once I had permission to notify my department, I called them and let them know that, hey, I was off duty at this store.

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I was engaged by this active killer who had threatened to kill multiple people in the store as he chased them from inside the store to the outside.

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Then they in turn responded to the store and met up with me there.

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Yeah, if you were riveted by that story, you've got to see Mike in person in his seminars.

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He does an incredible seminar that talks about this story and talks about best practices of these active shooter incidents.

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Very few of these incidents really are textbook, but this one is.

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You just heard Michael Howell describe it.

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I don't put a lot of stock in the criticism that people give officers in these incidents.

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We've had a few of these in recent years.

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We've had Uvaldi, we've had Parkland and everybody wants to come on and comment about the either action or inaction of the police officers, but those people for the most part have no actual moral duty to ever intervene in one of these incidents In particular.

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I've heard politicians talk about Uvaldi.

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I've heard politicians talk about Parkland and we can debate that, but they don't really get a right to debate that because these politicians are given their opinion while their armed security guards are around them.

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They have no moral duty to do what Michael Howell or any other law enforcement officer has to do.

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But that's why I wanted Mike on, because when I saw this video from Lakewood.

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Let me sort of give everybody a brief description of this video.

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We'll link the video down below, but the video is kind of difficult because when you see the article I link, there's not really a video that sort of combines these together.

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You have to watch one video for one angle and another video for another angle, and one of the videos with the angle shows some pretty herald stuff.

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The other video is what Mike and I are going to discuss, because it doesn't necessarily show that.

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I wanted Mike to talk about this and I will probably chime in as well.

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But essentially they were having a service at Joel Osteen's Church in Houston, texas, on February 11th.

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I believe it was a Spanish server, so it was a little bit later in the morning.

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She shows up and she walks in with the baby and she goes right into the church and she starts firing rounds.

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Of course you hear the loud volume.

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It sounds like a rifle, mike, you may know whether it's a rifle or not and there's a bald-headed.

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By the way, I'm not going to give names out.

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There's some YouTube videos that have given names out of the officers.

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I haven't confirmed that.

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I haven't even confirmed what agency they're from.

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These were off-duty officers working at the church and there were some security guards working at the church and so there's a man wearing a suit, bald-headed that goes to town and I'm sure you saw that part of the video, mike he starts trying to locate where the shots are coming from because, as you know, mike, it's very chaotic, as you just described, and you have a hard time knowing in a large building where the shots are coming from, because the shots are echoing.

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Is that not correct?

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Yeah, but kudos to this.

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I can relate to this bald-headed guy.

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He did not hesitate yeah, mike, you're right.

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I mean, regardless whether he was on the security team and he was also a police officer, or maybe he worked their off-duty or he was just full-time security team the bald-headed guy with the suit and the gentleman with him that I don't believe had a gun pretty heroic stuff.

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They identify the gunfire, they get there in a very rapid fashion.

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There's kind of an L-shaped hallway, so she's in one straight hallway and the video's down here that you got.

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Everyone can watch it.

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But I want you to kind of hear what Mike has to say about it first.

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And he is sort of using that L-shaped hallway, these hallways that join together for cover and concealment and as gunfire stops he's peeking around and he's firing back and he does this multiple times until he puts the suspect down and then they all move forward and they start on first aid and the cavalry starts to come.

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But there's a secondary video that's going on at the same exact time and that's why this is kind of confusing to people.

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But it appears in the video.

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There's two females, but there's one female in particular that you see really well in the video, like it's coming from a body camera, and I'm not going to give the name.

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Some YouTube videos have given the name but I can't confirm that.

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But also they said it was a Houston police officer that was working there off duty and I tend to believe that because she is decked out right, she's got unlike the bald-headed guy in a suit, she's got an external vest, she's got the fancy gun and the sights and she looks like she's geared up as a municipal police officer it would be and she sort of barricaded herself inside an area that almost looks like a closet.

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It's surrounded by three walls and an entry and she's completely hidden and she does a little bit of radio traffic not much, but it sounds like she is right there where the suspect is and the gunfire of Ollie's going off.

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And there's a delay in the gunfire of Ollie and as I'm watching this mic I keep expecting her to engage but she doesn't.

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She stays there.

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In fact she stays there so long.

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If you watch the video play out she almost gets relaxed.

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She's taking her gun real loose in her hand and flipping it back and forth from left hand to right hand.

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I kind of think I hear whimpering at some point.

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It's very, very strange, without the information to go with the video.

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I kind of wanted to just get your thoughts on this, because I know you watch the same video and I don't want to get your thoughts on this.

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What did you think when you watched that portion of the video?

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At first I was impressed with the fact that, rather than run Tel-Mell without even any regard for what the threat could be, she first thought cover and concealment towards she could evaluate the situation before she made the next move.

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But she never made the next move yeah she stayed hidden in that stairwell, moving her pistol from her left hand to her right hand, from her right hand to her left hand, nervous as all get out.

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Now, I don't know what kind of training she had, but I understand her fear.

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It's there, it's real.

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But you've got to overcome that and I don't think in this instance she did.

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She chose to.

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You know, she kept sticking her, trying to stick her head around the corner, kind of slicing the pie if you will, but she never fully committed to going any further than where she was.

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I'm surprised, based on the number of rounds that the active killer was firing from her rifle because you could definitely tell it was a rifle that she, that she, that this officer was not hit by a gunfire that came through the walls or we had any other casualties.

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Yeah, I tend to agree, Mike.

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And when she concealed herself behind this stairwell or closet, whatever it was, the volleys of the rifle, fire was pretty rapid, and I totally get it.

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Hey, you, you conceal yourself, you communicate to the other officers.

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Where the suspect is, you give constant communication.

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But then when that gun volley stops, I've been to the training, mike you've obviously not only been to the training, but you've done this in real life.

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This officer, if she's indeed from Houston PD, she's been to the training.

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Every major municipality has trained in very similar fashions.

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In fact, if it's down in Texas, it's probably alert training.

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I don't know that for a fact, but more than likely, it is More than likely.

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And so I kept waiting, like I'm with you, I'm watching the video and I'm thinking okay, right now she's going to communicate because we I'm reverting back to the training she's going to communicate, communicate, because right now she's a set and duck, but with the gunfire going off of the rifle.

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But as soon as that rifle fire stops, I expected her to go into go mode, and only as she's not going to go mode, she squits communicating Once again.

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I think I sort of hear some whimpering or something.

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She shuts down.

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Yeah, and the best way to describe it, mike, that I've seen personally in training was she froze, and I want to.

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I want to talk about the human performance of this.

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In high levels of stress, especially people not trained, about 7% of people, according to the data, will just freeze.

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And it appeared to me that she just completely locked up and she could not push herself into go mode While at the same time a couple of dudes without armor and one without a gun were in go mode.

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So it's a pretty incredible dichotomy of what's going on and I think your assessment is correct, and I sort of wanted to wait to pass judgment, but the more I watched the video, the more I was having a very difficult time making any excuses for this.

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So I just want to kind of ask you your expert opinion, mike Other than freezing, what do you think is going on here?

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I think she's afraid she's just like I had at that at my shooting.

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I had thousands of what I call courses of action or responses going through my head.

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Should I do this?

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Should I do that Because I was confident I could hit my guy from a distance?

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I had practiced.

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I knew I could hit a steel target at 75 feet with my Glock because I had done it.

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I don't know what this young lady's training has been.

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Many officers were regardless of the size of the department.

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Many, many officers only qualify for a fire of their gun during their department's qualification.

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Could be once a quarter, could be once a year, I don't know.

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I'm surprised that she didn't choose to go to a prone position, because I think if she would have gone to a prone position just outside that doorway, she would have had an opportunity to engage the target.

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There's no question with as close as this gunfire was to her.

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I believe she had multiple opportunities to engage a target and there were multiple seconds long times where there was no gunfire going off.

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In fact, when you watch it, I think it actually goes from freeze to.

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She just made the decision she wasn't going to engage.

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It almost appears that way she almost locks up and then she gets so relaxed and starts just sort of, just kind of I mean, there's no other way to describe this she's just hanging out Right.

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He's in shock.

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Yeah, it's definitely a very strange video.

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You said something very important when you talked about your personal incident, mike.

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You talked about the mental fortitude, you talked about your attitude and mental capacity that you had already.

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You knew you were trained, you knew you were ready, you knew you were going to win.

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This is the exact opposite, is what appears to me.

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Correct, I guess you'd call it my go-to slogan is trained to win.

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There is no second place in something like this In my mind.

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Over the 25-year period of my career, I had been in not just that store but a lot of stores where this very scenario had been run through my mind hundreds of times.

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What would you do if this?

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Or what would you do if, then?

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What would you do?

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I teach this in my seminars and I stress to my audience the most important thing you can carry with you once you leave your home that will best prepare you to defend yourself and others or others, is the mindset that I will survive.

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Because what would have happened if I would have not had my sidearm with me that day?

00:22:39.441 --> 00:22:43.700
I've had people ask me that and I told them I said I still would have attacked.

00:22:43.700 --> 00:22:55.883
I would have responded based on the training that I had received over the last 23 years on the department, and at that time 20, I was already retired from the military.

00:22:55.883 --> 00:23:02.221
But then so 27 years, all of the training that I had had.

00:23:02.721 --> 00:23:17.623
Once I evaluated the situation and realized this guy wasn't pulling the trigger, but he could, I was going to try and take him out, no matter what, I don't think she had that level of mindset or levelheadedness to commit to.

00:23:17.623 --> 00:23:21.431
I've got to stop this, you know?

00:23:21.431 --> 00:23:24.037
I don't know if she knew this kid was already shot.

00:23:24.037 --> 00:23:26.050
I don't know.

00:23:26.050 --> 00:23:40.553
All I know is that when I watched the video and saw how the bald-headed guy in the suit approached her after she had been shot and she was down, this female officer couldn't have done the same thing, but chose not to.

00:23:41.506 --> 00:23:46.536
Will you have the right to say all that, Mike, because you have the credibility to say that.

00:23:46.536 --> 00:23:51.785
Obviously there are a lot of people saying some really crazy things that don't have that right.

00:23:51.785 --> 00:24:02.631
As I said earlier, and I want to ask you this I actually don't think this is a training issue because if she works at Houston PD, there's no question they're trained well.

00:24:02.631 --> 00:24:05.974
I know a lot of their trainers, highly respected agency.

00:24:05.974 --> 00:24:08.250
They're trained, like most big cities are trained this way.

00:24:08.250 --> 00:24:09.934
But it goes further than training.

00:24:09.934 --> 00:24:17.493
Like you said, you can go to the training every year, you can go to check the box, you can go to your qualification, but it's more mental.

00:24:17.493 --> 00:24:19.157
And you said something very important.

00:24:19.157 --> 00:24:23.265
I want everybody to understand whether you're in law enforcement or whether you're a civilian you.

00:24:23.265 --> 00:24:26.234
What if that scenario before it happened?

00:24:26.234 --> 00:24:30.496
You're constantly thinking in your mind if this happens, this is what I'm going to do.

00:24:30.496 --> 00:24:33.493
If this happens, I'm going to do this, or if this happens, I'm going to do that.

00:24:33.493 --> 00:24:38.111
And we talk about that in our seminars all the time, our second survival seminars about what if-ing scenarios.

00:24:38.111 --> 00:24:42.904
But you could tell that that had likely never crossed your mind.

00:24:42.904 --> 00:24:43.326
And the reason.

00:24:43.326 --> 00:24:50.115
I can say that the confidence is the action, and so I want to take you here because I think this is important.

00:24:51.545 --> 00:25:00.053
Almost immediately after Parkland, almost immediately after your vaulty, you had people questioning law enforcement's response to that incident.

00:25:00.053 --> 00:25:09.315
As we are recording this, not only are the videos difficult to find online and they've been age restricted on YouTube so you can't find them.

00:25:09.315 --> 00:25:15.484
There has been nobody publicly that's talking about this and I want to ask you why do you think that is Now?

00:25:15.484 --> 00:25:19.135
I know there wasn't a death count after it was in Parkland or your vaulty.

00:25:19.135 --> 00:25:29.115
I believe there was one lady that was injured or one man that was injured in this and, of course, the suspect was killed, but I don't see anyone talking about this.

00:25:29.115 --> 00:25:50.316
And, by the way, just for our audience knows, we aren't talking about this to shame some police officer, but we're talking about this to learn, so everybody else can listen to this and understand this, so they can then better themselves to perform at the highest possible level, because these are very difficult situations, very high stress, a lot of unknowns.

00:25:50.845 --> 00:25:56.237
But she knew that there was somebody very close by that was shooting in a rapid fashion.

00:25:56.237 --> 00:26:00.992
But here's what she did in no Mike, she could have been mowing down citizen after citizen.

00:26:00.992 --> 00:26:02.135
She had no idea.

00:26:02.135 --> 00:26:07.538
In fact, the assumption is when you hear that volley is she's killing multiple people.

00:26:07.538 --> 00:26:08.869
Thank God she did not.

00:26:08.869 --> 00:26:10.930
But that is really the assumption.

00:26:10.930 --> 00:26:11.992
I get watching it.

00:26:11.992 --> 00:26:20.233
That would be the assumption if I was in her position that this lady is mass killing people in that church and there was literally no action.

00:26:20.233 --> 00:26:23.073
Why have there not been any outrage about this?

00:26:24.650 --> 00:26:24.991
I don't know.

00:26:24.991 --> 00:26:28.174
I mean because the outrage from you, valde, and I read it.

00:26:28.174 --> 00:26:31.212
I don't know if you've read the executive summary report from the Texas.

00:26:31.212 --> 00:26:41.198
I'm sorry, but the cowardice in my opinion tends to show its face in a lot of different situations.

00:26:41.198 --> 00:26:48.250
I'm sorry you would have had to have shot me as if I were an officer on the scene in Uvaldi to keep me from going after the shooter.

00:26:48.250 --> 00:26:53.474
There were so many things that were done wrong that should not have happened.

00:26:53.474 --> 00:26:55.169
Same thing in Parkland.

00:26:55.169 --> 00:26:58.089
I'm sorry you have a school shooter.

00:26:58.089 --> 00:27:04.814
You need to close with and destroy that shooter However you can, as quickly as you can.

00:27:04.814 --> 00:27:05.968
It didn't happen.

00:27:07.448 --> 00:27:18.232
Your average response time I'm not sure if the audience understands this your average response time to a uniform police response on the report of an active shooter or active killer is eight to 10 minutes.

00:27:18.232 --> 00:27:22.676
How many lives can be lost in eight to 10 minutes?

00:27:22.676 --> 00:27:24.943
Hundreds.

00:27:24.943 --> 00:27:30.068
Most of these shooters have more than one magazine, more than one weapon.

00:27:30.068 --> 00:27:35.369
The young lady or the active killer from Nashville had two rifles and a pistol.

00:27:35.369 --> 00:27:39.429
This lady had plenty of things to take care of.

00:27:39.429 --> 00:27:41.801
Business Uvaldi.

00:27:41.801 --> 00:27:48.153
This kid had multiple AR platforms and pistols that were all legally purchased.

00:27:48.153 --> 00:27:50.444
It's just gut-wrenching.

00:27:50.444 --> 00:27:52.393
Why society?

00:27:52.393 --> 00:28:00.728
I mean, I continue to find myself challenged with people who do not want to hear this story of how to survive an active killer attack.

00:28:00.728 --> 00:28:05.529
You notice I'm not saying active shooters, because it does not take a gun to kill a person.

00:28:05.529 --> 00:28:18.471
The Allen Texas active killer attack was done with a gun, but less than 35 minutes later a land rover was used to mow down a group of folks sitting at a bus stop in Brownsville.

00:28:18.471 --> 00:28:20.844
It does not take a gun.

00:28:20.844 --> 00:28:21.487
It could be anything.

00:28:22.761 --> 00:28:40.509
Yeah, Mike, I want to say this and I think the civilians out there may not understand it or even maybe get upset by it, but when you talk about the mental capacity and the what-if scenarios, I'm going to tell you what's always been in my mind and it's going to sound weird, but I just got to be honest about it.

00:28:40.509 --> 00:29:04.876
I've been in stores, I've been in restaurants, I've been on, you know, been at work and I've thought to myself I want it to happen with me around, I want to be there when it happens, and I think that needs to be the mindset of a well-trained, well-mentally prepared law enforcement officer, and even to the civilian world, because CCW is out there quite extensively.

00:29:04.876 --> 00:29:06.944
That's the mindset you're talking about.

00:29:06.944 --> 00:29:10.805
You know you're ready, you know you're going to win, you know you're prepared.

00:29:10.805 --> 00:29:13.047
So let me be the solution.

00:29:13.047 --> 00:29:15.445
Do you find anything wrong with that idea?

00:29:16.650 --> 00:29:20.869
No, who better to send than someone who's trained mentally and physically for such a response?

00:29:20.869 --> 00:29:23.705
Well, those are the people you want on your A-team.

00:29:25.380 --> 00:29:33.948
It's going to be interesting because this police officer is off duty and the leadership at her agency is going to take one of two approaches to this.

00:29:33.948 --> 00:29:47.789
We know what the approach was in Uvalde in Parkland severe punishment, terminations of some criminal charges on others for cowardice and the chief is going to take one of two approaches.

00:29:47.789 --> 00:29:57.250
He's going to say, or she's going to say I believe it's a he he's going to say well, she's off duty, our policies and procedures don't apply, we're not going to do a lot.

00:29:57.250 --> 00:30:10.307
Now I think that would be wrong because, while she may be off duty, she's wearing a uniform from the agency, she got probably likely got approval from the agency to be there and she still has a moral duty to act.

00:30:10.307 --> 00:30:12.265
And that will be the easy way.

00:30:12.400 --> 00:30:16.691
That would be what we call in our Craigslist Lucie Siminar sort of the cowardly way to deal with this.

00:30:16.691 --> 00:30:26.567
The proper way to deal with this would be to evaluate this, assess this, investigate this like she was on duty, and I certainly hope that's what happens.

00:30:26.567 --> 00:30:26.740
Now.

00:30:26.740 --> 00:30:30.825
Listen, there may be information that you and I don't have, and I want to acknowledge that.

00:30:30.825 --> 00:30:50.751
We're not here trashing anybody, but we need to look at this and learn from this because, when these situations happen, we're going to rely on individuals to have that mental afford to do and that training and those resources to deal with this quickly, because, as you said, responding officers are eight to 10 minutes away and that's not going to do the trick.

00:30:50.751 --> 00:30:51.846
So what's your thoughts?

00:30:53.237 --> 00:30:54.584
on that I agree.

00:30:54.584 --> 00:31:04.691
If I were the chief whether it's that agency or any agency and I had a situation like this, the first thing I would do would be to have a one-on-one conversation with that officer.

00:31:04.691 --> 00:31:14.000
These are the facts as I know them, based on the video, and you explain your actions or your inaction Very well.

00:31:14.000 --> 00:31:23.813
It could be a training deficiency or and I'm not trying to denigrate this officer in any way, but she probably froze.

00:31:23.813 --> 00:31:26.305
That's why they call it fight or flight.

00:31:26.305 --> 00:31:31.428
I think what she realized that she was outnumbered as far as her capabilities.

00:31:31.428 --> 00:31:32.750
She froze.

00:31:32.750 --> 00:31:39.710
It's almost eerily like the guy the failure in Parkland.

00:31:40.792 --> 00:31:56.348
Yeah, when I look at it, mike, from a training perspective and I've observed in field training with rookies, I've observed it on calls, I've observed it in a training environment From a training, it certainly appears that's exactly what happened and, of course, dave Gross will discuss this in his seminars and his books.

00:31:56.348 --> 00:31:59.586
Throughout history we have examples of this very thing happening.

00:31:59.586 --> 00:32:09.567
But that's why we train, mike, that's how you were prepared, because you trained to overcome the performance factors that will come with these high stress incidents.

00:32:09.567 --> 00:32:39.484
And obviously there's a glitch somewhere and I, instead of us just trashing an officer and moving on down the road, my hope and my desire is is our leadership will evaluate this to help others and then be transparent about what's going on, because it comes across oftentimes because you've already, even though there was no doubt there were officers in the wrong there and in cowardice there, there were also other issues they didn't have the tools to get in locked doors, and there's other issues that nobody really wanted to talk about.

00:32:39.484 --> 00:32:45.050
So that's not the issue here, but I would rather have all the information to evaluate this.

00:32:45.050 --> 00:32:50.871
We can all learn from it and, mike, your assessment and your opinion means everything.

00:32:50.960 --> 00:32:52.747
I can't thank you enough for being here.

00:32:52.747 --> 00:32:54.564
I mean, we're.

00:32:54.564 --> 00:32:58.728
This is a real live hero folks I'm talking to everyone else that wants to talk crazy.

00:32:58.728 --> 00:33:00.766
They wouldn't do it if they had the chance.

00:33:00.766 --> 00:33:01.721
They just want to talk.

00:33:01.721 --> 00:33:03.325
But Mike is in the arena.

00:33:03.325 --> 00:33:07.785
He's lived it, he's done it, he's won and he's here to talk about it.

00:33:07.785 --> 00:33:14.786
And, mike, I appreciate you so much for being here, hey no problem, travis, I appreciate it and, if you've been listening, thank you for being here.

00:33:14.826 --> 00:33:17.382
and just remember, lead on and stay courageous.

00:33:19.880 --> 00:33:22.647
Thank you for listening to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates.

00:33:22.647 --> 00:33:25.923
We invite you to join other courageous leaders at www.

00:33:25.923 --> 00:33:25.923
travisyates.

00:33:25.923 --> 00:33:27.506
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