PODCAST: The Law of Unintended Consequences with Jon Becker | THE INTERVIEW ROOM | Episode 038

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The Law of Unintended Consequences with Jon Becker | THE INTERVIEW ROOM | Episode 038

Image of Jon Becker, Host of The DeBrief and Founder and CEO of Aardvark Tactical, guest on the On The Blue Line Podcast with Wayne Mulder

Jon Becker

Host of TheDebrief | Founder and CEO of Aardvark Tactical.

Meet this Weeks Guest: Jon Becker

Jon Becker has spent the past four decades dedicating himself to protecting tactical operators. He is the founder and CEO of Aardvark Tactical, a leading provider of tactical equipment and custom solutions, and founder of the armor manufacturer PROJECT7, which provides purpose-built, scalable, and integrated tactical armor built to suit their operators’ unique mission needs.

After founding AARDVARK at just seventeen, It wasn’t long before AARDVARK’s customers began asking Becker to sell them tactical gear in addition to the climbing gear that AARDVARK originally specialized in. During this time, Becker spent thousands of hours training with the teams he was serving while also attending Loyola Law School. Once he became an attorney, his interest in civil rights and police litigation merged and developed into him writing for many of the top tactical publications on a variety of topics. As AARDVARK grew, it became involved in military system integration and eventually specially manufactured gear designed to enhance operator safety – and that has remained the company’s priority ever since. Along the way, Becker has had the privilege of working with some of the world’s top law enforcement and military units, including the amazing leaders who guide their teams through some of the most dangerous situations and encounters imaginable. Through The Debrief, Becker is able to share their incredible stories of leadership with the world.

Becker resides in Los Angeles, California, with his children and wife of thirty-two years. When he isn’t running the show at AARDVARK, Becker is running ironman triathlons, racing sports cars, speaking for tactical organizations across the country, and sharing in-depth conversations with the industry on The Debrief.

Show Notes from This Episode

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AFTER the episode:

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TRANSCRIPTION OF EPISODE. Please note this is a new service we are offering and there will be spelling, grammar and accuracy issues. This transcription is offered as a convenience to our listeners, but at this time it is not guaranteed to be accurate.

00:00:02:14 - 00:00:33:54

Wayne Mulder

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the On the Blue Line podcast with Wayne Mulder. And I am your host, Wayne Mulder. I know it's very confusing the things that go on around here, but thank you for coming back. Thank you for listening to another episode. You may be watching this. We do put these episodes out on our YouTube channel.

00:00:33:54 - 00:00:53:09

Wayne Mulder

You can also go to the website and watch them through there on the blue line.com for its last watch and I hope that you will or are. And I appreciate you listening. I've got another great episode for you this week. I know I say that every week, but this week is no exception. On the podcast is John Becker.

00:00:53:34 - 00:01:29:34

Wayne Mulder

He's spent four decades dedicating himself to protecting tactical operators. He is the founder and CEO of Aardvark Tactical, which is a provider of tactical equipment and custom solutions, and the founder of the Armor Manufacturer Project seven, which this conversation about what he did with Aardvark is fascinating and it's only one part of this conversation that you're really going to enjoy hearing about his journey through law school, him working with some of the world's top law enforcement and military units, and then his time now that he really is giving back to the community, giving back to the law enforcement community, the spec ops community and the military.

00:01:30:19 - 00:01:52:57

Wayne Mulder

Just through this wonderful podcast and video that he has, which is called The Debrief, I'm telling you the professional quality of that. I say it over and over again, but it's outstanding. And the information and the emotional pull into these stories is incredible. I personally have been watching them and I am suggesting that you do as well because you're going to enjoy them and you're going to get a lot out of those broadcast as well.

00:01:53:36 - 00:02:14:00

Wayne Mulder

Becker resides in Los Angeles, California, with his children and his wife of 32 years. And when he's not doing these exciting things, he's running Ironman triathlons, racing sports cars and speaking for tactical organizations around the country. It was absolutely a pleasure having the opportunity to sit down with Mr. Becker. And I know that you're going to enjoy this conversation as much as I did having it.

00:02:14:00 - 00:02:25:51

Wayne Mulder

So without taking any more time, here's this week's guest, John Becker. Well, John, welcome to the show.

00:02:26:54 - 00:02:28:26

Jon Becker

Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

00:02:28:44 - 00:02:45:23

Wayne Mulder

Yeah, this is a blast to get to sit down. I tell you, I've been able to listen to a little bit of your story, and I know the listeners are going to definitely enjoy what we get into tonight. But let me start with like I always do my get to know your questions, my break the ice questions I like to throw out to everybody.

00:02:45:23 - 00:02:50:07

Wayne Mulder

So let's start real easy. This is the softball one. Coffee or tea?

00:02:51:14 - 00:02:51:55

Jon Becker

Iced tea.

00:02:52:13 - 00:02:59:25

Wayne Mulder

Iced tea. You are the second person. Back to back episodes. Iced tea is the winner. Has you, have you ever been a coffee drinker?

00:03:00:12 - 00:03:20:38

Jon Becker

No. You know, it's interesting. Growing up, I mean, my entire life I've been surrounded by cops. So you think I would have picked up the coffee habit? Right. And and it's I've never loved coffee and I've never particularly loved hot tea. My actual drink of choice would be Coca Cola. Okay, but it's not exactly good for your girlish figure.

00:03:21:48 - 00:03:26:51

Jon Becker

So I've moved on to two iced tea is my primary drug of choice.

00:03:27:12 - 00:03:33:09

Wayne Mulder

I love it. Any favorite place to have that drink?

00:03:33:09 - 00:03:39:07

Jon Becker

I think, you know, I mean, I'm the Californian, right? So it's it's always the beach is always the right answer.

00:03:39:28 - 00:03:47:33

Wayne Mulder

And yes, even here in Florida, that's the right answer as well. Even though the summers may not be the best time to be at the beach, as we've discussed.

00:03:48:36 - 00:03:55:17

Jon Becker

You know, I'm currently in Memphis where it is pouring rain. So I'm looking out the window of my hotel and it looks like a beach.

00:03:55:35 - 00:04:00:57

Wayne Mulder

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's Floridians. We've we can understand exactly what you're saying.

00:04:00:57 - 00:04:06:01

Jon Becker

And the thing I don't understand is the water falling from the sky. That's that's deeply troubling to me as a Californian.

00:04:06:14 - 00:04:10:24

Wayne Mulder

Yeah. Yes, especially southern California. I hear I hear the stories.

00:04:10:24 - 00:04:11:33

Jon Becker

Yes, for sure.

00:04:11:56 - 00:04:18:19

Wayne Mulder

So I have to ask best or worst travel story, do you have one?

00:04:18:19 - 00:04:38:29

Jon Becker

I'm going to say best travel story. When my son graduated from high school, we took a family trip to Japan, which was absolutely amazing and, you know, had had a lot of amazing food and a lot of fun. Just really good family time. Yeah. So most of my happy travel memories, all revolve around family trips.

00:04:39:01 - 00:04:42:57

Wayne Mulder

That's great. Yeah. In those, making those memories is where it's really at anyway.

00:04:42:57 - 00:04:44:07

Jon Becker

So for sure.

00:04:44:36 - 00:04:57:54

Wayne Mulder

One last question. I usually go down the book route and you can always redirect the question there if that's easier for you. But let me ask, do you have a go to music? Like if you're stressed or excited, do you have a go to song or go to style music for you?

00:04:58:53 - 00:05:21:23

Jon Becker

So they say that your favorite music is the music that you listen to in high school, which I think is still for me. True. So it's all eighties music and it's I'm not I'm not particularly really eclectic music taste. It could be anything from country to heavy metal a lot but it's kind of that that genre now most of the time what I listen to when I'm working out or driving is podcasts.

00:05:21:50 - 00:05:42:05

Wayne Mulder

Yeah. Same here. I, I find it interesting how we kind of like you said, you really like everything and it all comes from that era for me, more late eighties, early nineties, but still in that era of music that you grew up with. And it's really what I default to. But now it's all about the podcast and learning what I can from other people.

00:05:43:35 - 00:06:08:40

Jon Becker

You know, I spend a lot of time working out, driving, traveling, and it used to be I looked for kind of mindless entertainment. Now every time I'm trying to do something with my brain, I as a hobby, I do Ironman distance, triathlete, triathlon. So I find that for a really long bike rides podcasts keep you from give you the ability to ignore the suffering.

00:06:09:07 - 00:06:34:57

Wayne Mulder

I'm sure. Now, let me go into that for just a second. Now, do you listen to podcasts when you're both biking and running? And the reason I ask is some of these other triathletes and distance runners such as like Rich Roll and some of these other guys that I listen to talk about how for them, when they run, they actually don't wanna listen to anything because it's more of a mind numbing exercise where they kind of just get in the zone and they're actually not listening.

00:06:34:57 - 00:06:42:10

Wayne Mulder

They don't want to listen to music because it screws up their cadence and they don't want to listen to like podcasts or anything because they just kind of want get in the zone and be in their own thoughts.

00:06:43:12 - 00:07:02:49

Jon Becker

So I think I think for me it depends if it's really short, hard running, if I'm doing intervals, it's usually heavy metal, okay? It's tougher music. If it's really long run where I know I'm going to get bored. Podcasts There is a sweet spot between like 30 and 60 Minutes where I can go listen to nothing, turn off my brain.

00:07:02:49 - 00:07:20:27

Jon Becker

And I find that a lot of my best thinking takes place while running, that, you know, I can kind of take a topic at the beginning of the run and you're just kind of turning it over while you're running. And most of the time that I write, a lot of the questions that come from the podcast come from just thinking while running.

00:07:20:27 - 00:07:25:49

Jon Becker

So I agree with them. There's, there is a magic hypnosis to running, but nothing else gives me.

00:07:26:25 - 00:07:31:51

Wayne Mulder

And that's what I've heard. A lot of them liken it to even like a meditation practice it's just it really gets them in. The Zone.

00:07:32:37 - 00:07:33:54

Jon Becker

Told me.

00:07:33:54 - 00:07:49:24

Wayne Mulder

Well, let's go ahead and switch gears a little bit, Jon. Let's start with the kind of beginning of your story and then we'll come through like, I know you're a business guy, so maybe walk us through a little bit of what brought you to the business world and kind of how it started. Maybe the origin story a little bit.

00:07:50:12 - 00:08:12:03

Jon Becker

Yeah. So the origin stories I start at 17, I leave high school and go to college. I left high school early, went to college and my first year of college I meet a girl who works for a rock climbing wholesaler and she says, Hey, you know, we climb with them on the weekends and she says, Hey, we're bringing in this camping device.

00:08:12:03 - 00:08:39:12

Jon Becker

We should start a mail order business and sell this thing because nobody's going to have it. That's it. Okay. Yeah, you know, it sounds like fun. And so she she flaked right away because she had a job and she was going to college and whatever. And so I started selling rock climbing equipment from my mom's den. Literally, my business was a desk in my mom's den in, you know, in a 75 square foot den selling rock climbing equipment.

00:08:39:12 - 00:09:03:25

Jon Becker

And I grew up in a military family. Dad was a Navy captain and brother was a Special Forces guy. And so I started dealing with SWAT teams and military special operations groups that were my ropes and harnesses carabiners. And I just kind of drifted in that direction. And because I grew up around that, I was comfortable with it always been very pro law enforcement, always been very pro-military.

00:09:03:52 - 00:09:26:38

Jon Becker

And so by the time I'm 18, 19 years old, I'm selling more military style, you know, static line ropes and carabiners and, you know, figure eights, rescue weights. And the business started to drift in that direction. I never wanted to be a salesman. It's just not like I didn't I didn't want to be that used car salesman. So I thought I'd better know more about the gear than they do.

00:09:27:19 - 00:09:48:22

Jon Becker

Yeah, because then I'm a consultant, then I serve some value other than, hey, you know, want to buy a rope. And so I started learning very deeply about the equipment. And as I started to deal with more and more units, they started asking for other things, you know, hey, can you get us eagle nylon gear? Well, I don't I don't know anybody.

00:09:48:30 - 00:10:07:28

Jon Becker

Oh, you know, call this guy and get set up by Eagle for me. And it just drifted into more military and law enforcement direction. And at some point, they started asking me for things that I knew nothing about. Right. And so I'd say I don't know anything about, you know, can you get us chemical agents? I don't know anything about chemical agents, you know?

00:10:07:28 - 00:10:29:20

Jon Becker

Do you know where I can get training? Do you know where I can learn more? I'll come down. You know, go for a chemical agent class with us. And so my rule was I would never turn down free training. And so by the time I'm 25, I've got about 3000 hours of special tactics training. I mean, I've been through, you know, in Defiance school and then for school and handguns, got shotgun, pursued driving.

00:10:29:20 - 00:10:56:52

Jon Becker

I ordered it a couple of SWAT schools, you know, chemical agents, class, flash bangs class. And what I didn't know at the time and I now realize is that the guys who were training me were the originators of a lot of the tactics and techniques that that I was learning about. So, you know, I learned to throw a flash bang from Sid Heil who is is still regarded as the national expert recently died.

00:10:56:52 - 00:11:23:09

Jon Becker

But you know the national expert on diversionary devices he was the guy that was writing all the articles. He literally wrote the manual on flash bangs. So it's kind of a you know, you know, I guess Michael Jordan taught me to play basketball is the easiest way to explain it. And as the business started to develop, we started dealing with more military units and more, you know, federal agencies.

00:11:23:51 - 00:11:50:38

Jon Becker

It just became diversified. And we started to have this kind of broader skill set. And so I went to law school, and when I while I was in law school, everything I wrote on everything I researched was law enforcement related. I was lucky enough to secure a two year clerkship at the LAPD police litigation unit, which, just by dumb luck, happened to be when Rodney King was happening.

00:11:51:19 - 00:12:04:35

Jon Becker

Lucky. So lucky me. So I worked on the Rodney King case. I worked on the original case I worked on. This is when when law enforcement litigation was starting to take off. So dog bite cases had just started.

00:12:04:49 - 00:12:05:09

Wayne Mulder

Okay.

00:12:05:20 - 00:12:40:30

Jon Becker

We had we had dog bite cases. We had protests, cases, police. It handled the kind of top tier of cases for the city of Los Angeles. So it was, you know, 100 plaintiffs, 100 defendants or certain attorneys, Johnnie Cochran being one of them, the ACLU being another, that if the city was sued for the actions of the police department and I worked for an amazing lawyer there, a guy named Corey Brant, who educated me about the legal aspects of what I was doing and I kind of fuzed those two.

00:12:40:30 - 00:13:12:19

Jon Becker

So I started writing on tactical topics. Everything I wrote in law school, I tried to gear towards tactical topics. I ended up publishing a law review article about media interference in tactical situations and ended up writing a two part series for the National Task Force Association on Flash Bangs. And so those two came together. And then when I got out of law school, I had been working for lawyers that didn't have insurance companies, and they did the right thing every time.

00:13:13:06 - 00:13:20:02

Jon Becker

Right? When you get into civil litigation, you realize it's the insurance company and they don't care if the cop did the right thing or not.

00:13:20:16 - 00:13:22:55

Wayne Mulder

Right. It comes down to the bottom line and exposure.

00:13:23:36 - 00:13:48:39

Jon Becker

Exactly. And the idea that, you know, you going to take an officer who's been in a life threatening situation, has defended himself, and you're going to give the guy he shot money. It just didn't sit well. And so at about 25 years old or seven years in, we're doing military business. I distinctly remember sitting down with my wife at the kitchen table and saying, so I know we just spent all of our money.

00:13:48:39 - 00:13:52:39

Jon Becker

I'd be going to law school, but I don't think I want to practice law.

00:13:54:09 - 00:13:55:42

Wayne Mulder

That conversation over.

00:13:55:42 - 00:14:11:09

Jon Becker

You know, surprisingly it went better than I thought it would. And I'd been with her now for 32 years, so she was dumb enough to stick around. But no, it's the business had grown to the point where it was kind of I would make more money as a lawyer, but I enjoyed my life more.

00:14:11:36 - 00:14:15:37

Wayne Mulder

What was the push for wanting to go through law school in the first place while building the business?

00:14:16:19 - 00:14:37:44

Jon Becker

So yeah, I went to college, I got out of college, I wanted to do an advanced degree. Law was interesting to me, especially with all the law enforcement agencies I was dealing with. It seemed like a really good degree and honestly, at that point I thought, I'll probably just become a lawyer. You know, I could become a deputy district attorney.

00:14:37:44 - 00:15:02:20

Jon Becker

I can, you know, I could do civil law, civil litigation. And I didn't really think even then seven years. And I didn't really think the business was going to be a livelihood for me. But the thing I didn't understand that now, you know, retrospectively at 54, looking back at the business, the same kind of why it's been successful was the guys that brought me up.

00:15:03:19 - 00:15:14:24

Jon Becker

How had had polluted my brain, so to speak. They had they had built a culture for our business because I really cared about my abuser.

00:15:14:52 - 00:15:15:12

Wayne Mulder

Right?

00:15:16:19 - 00:15:45:55

Jon Becker

Because the guys I was putting armor on were the guys that were in my wedding and they were guys I was vacationing with and seeing on the weekends. And, and it created this very personal relationship for me between my end user and what I did. And there were a couple of events, one, one I can share with you that profoundly impacted the way I looked at what I did and the consequences of my job.

00:15:47:16 - 00:16:11:29

Jon Becker

And the one moment I'll share with you is there was a Glendora police officer named Louie Pompei and Louie was off duty in a grocery store. The grocery store gets robbed. He decides he's not going to get involved until they start pistol whipping a special needs box boy. So at that point, he draws a gun, engages who he thinks is a suspect.

00:16:11:29 - 00:16:31:28

Jon Becker

There is another suspect that he doesn't see that shoots and kills him. CHASE And and I didn't know Louie. I mean, I knew a lot of people around Louie. It was an agency we were dealing with the Louie and I were not personal friends, but at that point we were in Arcadia and the Arcadia Police Department. I literally knew every single person on their farm.

00:16:31:28 - 00:16:57:27

Jon Becker

I had fit them all for body armor. I knew them all by name. I would see them on the weekends. And so I went to the funeral with Arcadia Police Department with one of the most jovial human beings I've ever known was a guy named Joe Bell. Joe had a joke for everybody, right, Joe? He was the six, six three, £300, you know, behemoth of a man that everybody had a joe.

00:16:57:46 - 00:17:18:59

Jon Becker

Everybody got to. He was that guy. Yeah. And I sat behind Joe at the wedding, and Joe and Louis were close friends, and I watched Joe decompose at his funeral. I mean, absolutely sobbing. Yeah. Just inconsolable and watched the whole thing play out with Louie's family. And I remember walking out and saying to my wife, this is going to permanently change.

00:17:19:39 - 00:17:26:56

Jon Becker

I'm never going to be the same. And she said, Why? And I said, Because this is what happens if we screw up.

00:17:27:30 - 00:17:27:48

Wayne Mulder

Yeah.

00:17:28:28 - 00:17:59:16

Jon Becker

Right. If armor doesn't work, his gear doesn't work. This is the consequence of our actions. And it it just changed me. It just, you know, and every subsequent funeral I went to, I just had this very personal relationship with my end user that that carries on to today. And as we started doing bigger, bigger business and more military stuff, you know, I was dealing with a program manager and I was never going to be playing user.

00:17:59:22 - 00:18:17:52

Jon Becker

You know, my end user was a 20 year old kid. Stan In a post in Afghanistan, I found myself always on the side of the user and arguing with program managers about like, This isn't going to work. You need better gear. This this gear isn't going to, you know, isn't going to hold up. You're putting your users in danger.

00:18:18:24 - 00:18:21:52

Jon Becker

And sometimes at my peril, not everybody receives that feedback.

00:18:21:52 - 00:18:26:42

Wayne Mulder

Well, no. In general, there's a lot of feedback people don't receive. Well.

00:18:27:12 - 00:18:49:42

Jon Becker

Yes, yes. And you're making a mistake and screwing your end user is one of those one of those things. Yeah. But it's just, you know, so by the time I'm out of law school and the business is growing and this is kind of where I am, I realize, like, this is a call. This is, you know, I look at my end user even today, I look at the people in the industry and how many of us don't care about the end user.

00:18:49:42 - 00:19:28:53

Jon Becker

And and so I see myself as being responsible for my end user safety, much in the way that like a medieval armor or what. Right. You know, there was a very personal relationship between the guy that made your armor for you and the knight. Yes. That's that is our role. My my job is to be as smart as I possibly can to reduce the likelihood that when you put yourself in harm's way, something bad happens and you come full circle to our drug grows, we create our own armor brand called Project seven.

00:19:29:11 - 00:19:30:21

Wayne Mulder

Yeah, I was going to ask about that.

00:19:31:03 - 00:19:57:05

Jon Becker

Yeah. So. So what happened was I I'm very particular about gear. Okay? I really care about quality. I care about how well it works on the operator. I think because I was brought up by SWAT teams and spent so much time with them training and moving and shooting, there's this very personal relationship between, you know, a guy in a gear.

00:19:57:05 - 00:19:57:27

Wayne Mulder

Right.

00:19:58:12 - 00:20:18:25

Jon Becker

And and I understand that at a very deep level. So I, I became very frustrated with the armor industry, and I could never get what I wanted for my end user, you know, and it's and part of that's because I'm very picky and part of that's because the niche of the market that I deal with is a very small niche, right?

00:20:19:03 - 00:20:44:51

Jon Becker

You know, 85% of the armor industries conceal the body armor for patrol tactics is a very small part of the industry. And so I finally got frustrated enough that I built an armor brand and we partnered with Safari Land to develop all the ballistics for us. So they build our ballistic in our plates. We have in-house so capability, in-house design capability.

00:20:45:05 - 00:21:12:45

Jon Becker

So we are literally making armor for for our clients now, which gives us the ability to work on very specialized projects because we deal with everybody from small local police departments to, you know, tier one units. Right. And international counterterror units. And so it's given us the ability to take these very specialized mission and build very specific equipment for for those units.

00:21:13:40 - 00:21:36:10

Jon Becker

And so, you know, you come full circle to the first guy who is saved by a Project seven vest, which, you know, happened. Not that not that long ago. I found out sitting in my car, I remember clearly sitting in my car waiting for my daughter, getting her haircut, and that I knew that one of their guys had been shot.

00:21:36:41 - 00:21:55:10

Jon Becker

Well, and, you know, we were trying to get information on it because they were in our armor. And a friend of the family called me and said, hey, this is what's going on and this is what happened to him who shot seven times. You're shot them both arms, a shoulder hip, kind of low abdomen. And then twice as his vest.

00:21:55:10 - 00:22:18:19

Jon Becker

Wow. And and nobody really knew how many times he'd been shot, what happened. And so I talked to his family friend, the chief of police, another agency. And he said he said, oh, yeah, man, you're you're you're best say this kid's life. And I sat there and cried and I sat in my car and cried because it was like everything we had done, all the effort we had to it had come to fruition.

00:22:18:25 - 00:23:03:45

Jon Becker

And subsequently getting to know this, this guy, Jordan, whose was saved by the armor, I mean, what an amazing guy. What a fantastic, you know, legacy as a brand. And it's just that's kind of why I stayed in this tactical space. I really believe I can do more good in the seat I'm in, enabling, you know, guys like you who are putting themselves in harm's way for other people, it's very easy to become jaded to law enforcement, military, but it's you know, you have to stop and think about whether you would put yourself in a potentially deadly situation for someone you've never met.

00:23:03:45 - 00:23:29:22

Jon Becker

Right. And maybe never will, you know. So it's I am very fortunate then that I get to serve people who do that every day all over the world, in state and local, federal and DOD. And it's you know, I feel like the whole story arc ends up in a place where I have the best job in the world working with amazing people.

00:23:29:49 - 00:23:33:21

Jon Becker

And and I don't think that would've been the case if I'd continue to practice law.

00:23:33:55 - 00:23:52:31

Wayne Mulder

I love it. Yeah, it's when I heard your story. That's part of the reason I definitely wanted to have you on, because it's such a powerful. Why? Because it's something you don't think about. You don't think about it on this side of the house either, because, you know, you get training, purchasing, whatever. Obviously training is involved in it, but purchasing gets the body armor or whatever.

00:23:52:31 - 00:24:07:24

Wayne Mulder

And you know, hey, I got to go grab my best. And every five years or whatever, they're going to send you an email and annoy the crap out of you till you come and get the new one. And, you know, you you don't even think about that. And you think of it kind of in the way you might go to Wal-Mart or you might go to Amazon and purchase something else.

00:24:07:24 - 00:24:16:01

Wayne Mulder

Even though this is a life saving device and you don't really think about the person and the company that's behind that product that's getting it to you that very well might save your life one day.

00:24:16:55 - 00:24:17:51

Jon Becker

If something does.

00:24:18:21 - 00:24:18:46

Wayne Mulder

Go ahead.

00:24:19:01 - 00:24:37:35

Jon Becker

One of the best things about the save with with Jordan was he said, hey, I asked him if he would come and talk to our staff and he said, yeah, I want to meet the people that saved my life. And so we brought him into a we had an all hands meeting about marketing and kind of just, you know, normal business stuff.

00:24:38:18 - 00:24:59:24

Jon Becker

And we ended that meeting before lunch with a slide but just said, you know, 7 to 1. And I said, you know, we started this thing specifically for a reason. And that reason was to protect and to save somebody. And every day you guys are putting yourselves into this and focusing on this, and you never really have an opportunity to see the byproducts of that.

00:24:59:24 - 00:25:15:21

Jon Becker

We knew when we started this brand we would save someone's life. We didn't know who it would be, we didn't know when it would happen, but we knew that we needed to focus on doing it. And fortunately, you know, we're building a product that could do that. Isn't that right? Jordan Yeah, and he got up and told the story and I mean, it was not a dry eye in the place.

00:25:16:53 - 00:25:25:26

Jon Becker

It came full circle and it was like, you know, you look at your gear like you look at your brakes on your car. It only matters when they don't work.

00:25:25:49 - 00:25:26:36

Wayne Mulder

It's a good analogy.

00:25:27:21 - 00:25:40:49

Jon Becker

But there are somebody who designs that brake. Yeah. Who makes it work every time. And so that's that's the way we look at our job. Because if I do my job perfectly, you don't think about your gear.

00:25:40:49 - 00:26:17:20

Wayne Mulder

That's perfect. Yeah, that's very powerful. And something else I can't keep in mind. As you were talking, you talk about the tactical space, but over the last 20 years and even more so in recent times, there's definitely been this merger where a lot of your front line officers are becoming your tactical guys, especially as we've moved away from and we've seen some recent situations as well as we've moved away from barricaded subject protocols and move more towards active shooter training and active shooter protocols where you have your very first deputy or your very first officer going into that school or mall or whatever.

00:26:17:36 - 00:26:34:30

Wayne Mulder

And they are your tactical guy and they may be taking on a shooter with a rifle or whatever the situation may be by themselves with no backup. So how has that progressed or have you seen those kind of changes like in the equipment side of it and some of the things that you've had to bring to market and worked on?

00:26:35:24 - 00:26:56:52

Jon Becker

Oh, it's interesting. I just actually wrote an article for police and security news talking about lessons learned for active shooter programs, because obviously the evolving incident calls into question everybody's active shooters. You know, I remember when Columbine happened and people saying, oh, this is never going to happen again. This will never happen again. We're never going to do this and that.

00:26:56:52 - 00:27:24:43

Jon Becker

And obviously, it did. Yeah. And I think I think we are making as a society, we are making a lot of unconscious choices and those unconscious choices and what they call the law of unintended consequences. An example I always use in explaining this is Dalmatians. Okay, so 30% of Dalmatians are death, either one or both years.

00:27:25:51 - 00:27:26:25

Wayne Mulder

Interesting.

00:27:26:25 - 00:27:57:00

Jon Becker

And the reason 30% of Dalmatians have hearing problems is because the gene that selects for hearing also selects for spots in blue eyes. So as they bred spots and blue eyes, they selected deafness. Interesting we are. And that's an unintended consequence, right? We are doing the same thing with our law, right? As a society, we are spending our time second guessing every tactical decision somebody makes.

00:27:57:00 - 00:28:31:15

Jon Becker

We are pushing away from the, you know, the guardian mindset of people who are willing to. I recently had Ed Henry on our podcast, who's a shooting survivor who runs the Safari Space Program and had put it best. He said, You have to have somebody that can consider the old lady and go by periodically and say hi to her because she's alone and and take her groceries, but be willing to to visit incredible violence on another human being and a second notice to save somebody.

00:28:31:39 - 00:28:58:40

Jon Becker

Yeah. And we as a society, we don't we've become so comfortable. We're so far up the Maslow triangle that we don't want to think about the fact that the sausage has to be made somewhere. And so we we want police officers now that are community friendly and really nice and have never been in trouble. And, you know, agencies are selecting for guys that stay out of trouble, guys that avoid difficult assignments.

00:28:59:00 - 00:29:09:32

Jon Becker

You know, it used to be that the guy that worked narc that had worked street dope and then worked an arc assignment and then worked some kind of major narc assignment and then work swat like that was the guy that was promoted.

00:29:09:54 - 00:29:10:08

Wayne Mulder

Yep.

00:29:10:58 - 00:29:32:52

Jon Becker

Now it's the guy that spent his entire career in that and he spent his entire career in Edmond avoiding those difficult situations. And you know, it's the guys that that I interview on the podcast would never make it off probation. Now because they were guys that were looking for trouble. There were guys that were willing to go into dangerous neighborhoods.

00:29:32:58 - 00:29:50:06

Jon Becker

They were willing to harass, you know, criminals and go looking for trouble. And so in the process of doing that, you know, I mean, I've talked to administrators and agencies are like, well, we don't hire military guys because, you know, a lot of them have PTSD and they've all been in these these violent situations. We don't want people that are violent.

00:29:50:42 - 00:30:03:39

Jon Becker

Yeah, well, the consequence of all those decisions is you have 300 police officers at a location for an hour and 17 minutes.

00:30:04:10 - 00:30:04:26

Wayne Mulder

Yeah.

00:30:05:52 - 00:30:27:27

Jon Becker

And children are being actively murdered while they're there. They're putting on hand lotion and they're looking at their cell phones. And you saw what happened when Baugh Tech got there and you had like guys that were tactically oriented, tactically prepared to, like, know where we're going to solve this. And it was over in minutes. Right. I think that that to to circle around to what you're saying.

00:30:27:27 - 00:30:49:21

Jon Becker

I think if we want to have effective, active shooter preparation, we do need to push tactics down to the lowest level. We need to push it down to the lowest level. But that means that we've got to spend time training our police officers. We have we have to, you know, like we've gone away from fighting in academies. We've gone away from I mean, there's an academy I recently talked to the academy in a Stranger.

00:30:49:39 - 00:30:58:51

Jon Becker

The academy gives the kids yellow cards. Okay? And if you're in stress and you feel like they're picking on you, you can put up a yellow card and they'll stop picking on you.

00:30:59:22 - 00:31:01:15

Wayne Mulder

For the love of God.

00:31:02:15 - 00:31:13:13

Jon Becker

Yes, George, I mean, I. Yes, true story, I swear to God. And, you know, my my response was, man, that's awesome. Do you think that's going to work on a crop that's beating the shit out of her and taking their guns?

00:31:13:39 - 00:31:14:00

Wayne Mulder

Yeah.

00:31:14:00 - 00:31:37:13

Jon Becker

No, I don't think it's going to. Criminals do not follow yellow cards, but it's it's we've kind of reached that point. And so one of the things that I advocated in this article is the idea of, yes, we need to push tactical skills down to the lowest levels in police departments because it is the two year police officer that's going to be driving by the school.

00:31:37:39 - 00:31:37:53

Wayne Mulder

Yep.

00:31:38:24 - 00:31:58:24

Jon Becker

When the active shooter kicks off and that kid's going to have to roll in and deal with it. And if he's never done for some poor training and if he doesn't have a rifle and he doesn't have a plate rack and he doesn't have breaching ability, you're quite we're setting him up to be killed or to do nothing.

00:31:59:11 - 00:32:20:49

Wayne Mulder

Right. And one of those two things is going to happen. I don't even know what to say. I'm still in shock from the yellow card statement. I'm assuming that was that was it the state of Florida? I'm assuming one thing, one thing that I noticed down here that we started doing. So I training at the academy as well at one of the local law enforcement academies.

00:32:20:49 - 00:32:35:40

Wayne Mulder

And one of the things that we started doing or that came down from the state, I would say it's about 2 to 3 years ago was requiring a communication portion to where the kids I say kids only because they feel like kids these days. But the cadets.

00:32:35:56 - 00:32:36:34

Jon Becker

Those are kids.

00:32:36:50 - 00:33:07:12

Wayne Mulder

I was going to say I felt like a father with my first patrol squad when I made sergeant. But the younger people that are coming into this profession, they're coming into the academy and they can't communicate with people and they don't know what to do when that communication turns where you don't agree with each other. So one of the facets that they require is what they call morning brief, where they actually sit there and they take ten, 15 minutes and they have to bring up a divisive topic and then they have to defend their device, divisive topic.

00:33:07:24 - 00:33:37:46

Wayne Mulder

And then that way it doesn't matter whether you like it or don't like it, you have to at least have the conversation and be able to articulate where you stand on it. In both they the one presenting and the class then goes back and forth because the state realized the state of Florida that we've got a whole generation of law enforcement officers coming out that can't even communicate, let alone something where they would need a yellow card because they don't like what is happening or it's too much, Lord forbid, where we go as a profession with that.

00:33:37:46 - 00:33:57:34

Jon Becker

I remember we. So when my son was in sixth grade, the school coach got up and gave a spiel about, you know, we're going to do sports and you know, it's very academic. School is going to and, you know, a lot of kind of doctors, kids and private school and it's got to get somebody gives us long conversation about you know we're going to do non threatening sports.

00:33:57:34 - 00:34:11:16

Jon Becker

There's going to be no contact and you know, we're to make sure that kids will have fun. And he goes, this whole thing and I walk up to that person, hey, coach, you know John Bakker's sons, Jonathan? He says, Yeah. I said, if he sucks at something, do me a favor and tell me socks don't blow sunshine up his ass.

00:34:11:41 - 00:34:32:33

Jon Becker

Yeah, right. Like, I don't I don't want my kid to become what I see applying for jobs exactly. Like we human beings engage conflict all the time. And and if we lose our ability to make, you know, to handle conflict, one of two things happens from it. We we either cower from it.

00:34:32:58 - 00:34:33:10

Wayne Mulder

Now.

00:34:33:48 - 00:34:36:59

Jon Becker

Or we react violently to situations we should.

00:34:38:00 - 00:34:38:43

Wayne Mulder

Absolutely.

00:34:39:30 - 00:34:58:55

Jon Becker

Like. You've got to learn to modulate your emotions. And that, unfortunately, I think, is we're giving everybody seventh prize trophies. We've kind of moved to this work mode where it's like everybody's special, everybody is unique, you know, you're a magic sunflower. And then, you know, you come to work for me and you write something and I go, Hey, this is really bad.

00:34:59:18 - 00:35:02:56

Jon Becker

You need to go rewrite this and you go into a crying fit and quit your job.

00:35:03:30 - 00:35:03:48

Wayne Mulder

Right?

00:35:04:39 - 00:35:32:06

Jon Becker

You know, it's just it's an especially in law enforcement where your entire job is conflict. Yep. Right. There's there's there's almost there probably is never a day that goes by that you are not dealing with some kind of conflict. Somebody is mad at somebody. Somebody is fighting somebody who's violent. You're engaging somebody who's unhappy that you're there. And if you can't control your emotions and you are not confident, you are more likely to get into a dangerous situation.

00:35:32:06 - 00:36:03:55

Jon Becker

And I think we have kind of down selected a population now that we end up with. And you have all these the recent example, but there's plenty of examples. You know, going back through history, you've all the is the most glaring because we have video of everything and you know, it's hard to change. You know, it's terrible. You know, I, I sat there and watched the entire hour and 17 minutes and, you know, that's that's with the news station filtering out sounds of kids screaming right.

00:36:03:55 - 00:36:27:46

Jon Becker

Which which I appreciate them doing for the family standpoint, but I don't think they should have done from a standpoint of society. We need to be less sensitized or desensitized to violence. Yeah, because we have this we're very comfortable, we're very safe in the United States and even in bad areas, we're very safe. I don't go to bed worrying about somebody killing my family.

00:36:27:46 - 00:36:47:41

Jon Becker

Right. And so the result is we start to think about higher things on the Maslow triangle. And it's like, well, I don't want to be officers that are rude. I don't want a police officer who, you know, pulls me over and shines a light in my face because, you know, that's offensive to me. That's like, yeah, well, that's necessary for safety.

00:36:47:41 - 00:37:09:18

Jon Becker

Well, I'm less concerned about his safety than I am, you know, I mean, you can look at what's happened in Portland and Seattle and, you know, in San Francisco, like we're we're pushing away what we need to keep us safe. Yeah. And and we won't figure it out until we get shoved back down the Maslow triangle. Yep. It's sad, but it's true.

00:37:09:48 - 00:37:25:17

Wayne Mulder

I couldn't agree with you more. And one more thing before I segue into really what we want to talk about today on that. You know, the tragedy is I also personally see it as a leadership crisis, too. I think it really speaks to the leadership crisis we have in this country. I don't know what your thoughts are.

00:37:25:19 - 00:37:46:10

Jon Becker

Well, we we I completely agree with you. We you see with our politicians. Right. We we are picking leaders who are self-absorbed, who are focused on their careers. I refer to to me the difference being a leader and a managers and a manager does what's good for their career and a leader does what's right.

00:37:47:06 - 00:37:47:34

Wayne Mulder

I like it.

00:37:48:25 - 00:38:11:33

Jon Becker

And, and I grew up surrounded by leaders, right. Who who were leading people in combat and whose lives depended on each other. And so that was my role model of this is this is what a man is, right? You know, men figuratively, because there are women that are, you know, absolutely plastic leaders. But this is what this is how I'm supposed to act.

00:38:12:16 - 00:38:36:00

Jon Becker

You know, I'm supposed to be responsible when things go poorly. And so it's you know, I teach a class actually taught it for several several attacks organizations on culture centric leadership. And it's all focused on trying to drive the right culture to drive behavior. I Guess we whether we realize it or not, culture is what ultimately undermines underlie our behavior.

00:38:36:43 - 00:38:48:03

Jon Becker

And I always give the example of why there's a culture in your buddies. There's a culture in your church. Those two probably don't mix very well.

00:38:48:43 - 00:38:49:33

Wayne Mulder

No, never have.

00:38:50:15 - 00:39:09:46

Jon Becker

There is a code of behavior when you're drinking with your pals. There's a code of behavior when you're talking to your mom and there's a code of behavior when you're going to church or you're in a business meeting and you know what's appropriate and not appropriate based on that culture. And so we tend to make that culture accidentally.

00:39:09:46 - 00:39:37:06

Jon Becker

And as a leader, we need to make it intentional. We need to to be creating an environment where we have people that are willing to place themselves in harm's way, that are willing to make dangerous decisions, that are willing to force their career based on their belief system. Yes. And that's we're actually selecting the exact opposite because, you know, the woman that will lean in and say, you know what, this is the whole I'm going to die on because I believe strongly in this.

00:39:37:49 - 00:39:51:12

Jon Becker

We fire. Yup. Because she's so argumentative and difficult. Yeah. And we keep the guy who says yes. And it's interesting as one of the parts of the culture at is, I don't trust you if you don't argue with me.

00:39:51:59 - 00:39:52:15

Wayne Mulder

Right.

00:39:53:00 - 00:40:18:12

Jon Becker

Because you never agree with everything I say. And so ultimately, if I am driving this ship off a waterfall, we're all we're all going to die. If one of you doesn't roger up because there was a Korean Airlines crash in New York several years back, 20 years ago, and the pilots flew the plane till it ran out of gas because they weren't willing to argue with the air traffic control.

00:40:18:30 - 00:40:41:09

Jon Becker

Yep, right. I don't want that. And we don't want that in law enforcement. We want I want you to get to a scene and be willing to make a decision and be willing to take action. And then you've got to believe that the people above you are going to honor that decision and support you enough. It's a stupid decision and you made it in bad faith.

00:40:41:11 - 00:40:44:20

Jon Becker

That's a different thing than you really tried to do the right thing.

00:40:44:58 - 00:40:45:30

Wayne Mulder

Absolutely.

00:40:46:21 - 00:41:04:55

Jon Becker

You know one of my conversations with the employees is you're going to make a mistake. You're going to screw something up, you're going to cost me money. That's 100% chance you're the way to survive. That is to understand why it went wrong and walk in and say, Hey, I screwed the pooch and here's how it happened, and this is why it won't happen again.

00:41:05:25 - 00:41:22:30

Jon Becker

The way for that to be a terminal event is to not take responsibility for it or lie about it. So the problem now is we've come to a point where we're picking people as leaders that are willing to lie until they die and take responsibility for nothing.

00:41:22:30 - 00:41:24:19

Wayne Mulder

Yep. It's never their.

00:41:24:19 - 00:41:39:00

Jon Becker

Fault. Then you all the happens. Yeah. And then you've all the happens and we're like, Oh man, I can't believe that nobody did anything, you know? And the chief who clearly now if you see the body worn camera was in command. Yeah. Immediately said I wasn't in command.

00:41:40:24 - 00:41:44:13

Wayne Mulder

Right. A term we're using loosely but yes he was in charge if you would.

00:41:45:28 - 00:41:49:12

Jon Becker

If you show up with four stars on your caller, you're in charge whether you want to be or not.

00:41:49:15 - 00:41:53:51

Wayne Mulder

That's right. You at least positional authority over that seeing at that moment. There is no question.

00:41:53:51 - 00:42:16:10

Jon Becker

Yes. Which creates an obligation for you to either take command or give someone command. Yes. But we've we've created an environment where making a mistake is a career ender. And the people that we're promoting have frequently been able to avoid make the mistake, not not make mistakes and recover from, but avoid.

00:42:16:31 - 00:42:16:51

Wayne Mulder

Right.

00:42:17:45 - 00:42:25:03

Jon Becker

And, you know, one of the examples I used on the podcast a couple of weeks ago in an interview was, you know, the first guy that found a rattlesnake got bit by it.

00:42:26:11 - 00:42:26:33

Wayne Mulder

Right?

00:42:26:51 - 00:42:49:24

Jon Becker

If he didn't tell anybody, the second guy that found a rattlesnake did bite. And that cycle continued until somebody said, hey, I picked this thing up and it bit me and it hurt me. Don't frickin touch it. It's got a rattle on still. Yup. Right. And so if we don't want to continue getting bit by rattlesnakes, we need to take honest looks at our mistakes.

00:42:50:02 - 00:43:04:44

Jon Becker

We need to own our mistakes. We need to have the leaders that have made mistakes and recovered from those mistakes so that they don't make the same mistake. And a lot of that, like those lessons learned in that experience, was a lot of the motivation for doing the debrief.

00:43:05:22 - 00:43:22:26

Wayne Mulder

Yeah, which is exactly where we're going next. But I could spend a whole episode just talking about leadership with you. I find this absolutely fascinating and so needed. But let's switch gears a little bit into what you started. And I love everything about it which we can talk about as we go through it, but what is the debrief?

00:43:22:26 - 00:43:26:58

Wayne Mulder

Let's start by just kind of introducing it to the listener.

00:43:26:58 - 00:44:14:43

Jon Becker

So the debrief is a video and audio. It's available on all the streaming, you know, basically all the streaming platforms, video and audio wise, it is a video, an audio podcast, it is a long format interview show. That is me sitting down one on one or one on two, depending on the on the interview and going into great depth with either leaders or legends in the tactical, the people that have particularly interesting angles on tech or training or people that have survived, you know, significant events and kind of walking through their career, walking through an experience, walking through something that they've developed from a technology standpoint and really kind of running it to ground over

00:44:14:43 - 00:44:35:27

Jon Becker

the course of most the interviews are about an hour or two. You know, we've done a couple of two part episodes that are going to be released that are two hour interviews, but it's roughly an hour. And it's it's the goal is to get a very deep level of knowledge captured on audio or video before we lose it.

00:44:35:51 - 00:45:05:51

Jon Becker

And Then take that lesson of, you know, somebody getting bit by a rattlesnake and push it and broadly as we possibly can because there are so many bright tacticians that no one will ever hear from. And part of that is because if they're not teaching all over the country, you've never heard of them. And part of that is the guys that are really doing the job right now frequently are silent professionals.

00:45:06:05 - 00:45:07:53

Wayne Mulder

Yes. And many times have to be.

00:45:08:40 - 00:45:17:16

Jon Becker

Yes. Yes. And honestly, many of the best operators I've ever known, no one will ever know did what they did.

00:45:17:49 - 00:45:18:03

Wayne Mulder

Yep.

00:45:19:03 - 00:45:54:01

Jon Becker

And so what happened? The triggering event in the, in the origin story of the debrief, the triggering event is one of our friends who's a guy named Tim Anderson. Tim was a six the Marine Corps full board colonel in the Marine Corps is a sergeant at LAPD, ran the K-9 was ball squad. Tim was one the brightest guys I've known tactically he because he had been military in law enforcement he fuzed those two doctrines in his brain so he and another guy said who was, you know, part of the origin story for Aardvark.

00:45:54:16 - 00:46:21:12

Jon Becker

Right. They came together and built a tactical science program with another guy named Tico. And Paul. And that tactical science program is taking established military doctrinal concepts and pushing them down to law enforcement. Right. And I'll give you an example, like things like the instinct, right? Because people don't think in terms of what's an instinct. And so, I mean, there there there are a lot of these examples.

00:46:21:12 - 00:46:37:36

Jon Becker

But we talked about the end state in my second interview with said, you know, which is where are you trying to go? Which if you're not consciously thinking about where you're trying to go, you're not going to end up where you want to be. Right. And if you do, it's an accident right now.

00:46:37:39 - 00:46:39:38

Wayne Mulder

Luck played a part, correct?

00:46:39:43 - 00:47:00:25

Jon Becker

Yeah. Yeah. You only ended up there because you're like, Oh, this is the best place. But that's not something we're teaching police academies. That's not something we're teaching law enforcement leaders. I give an example on the podcast of the time. He led men in combat in the Marine Corps. He had had ten years and conservatively $100,000 in training when he became a captain in a sheriff's department, they gave him a new badge.

00:47:02:02 - 00:47:02:25

Wayne Mulder

Right.

00:47:03:27 - 00:47:25:30

Jon Becker

And so so Tim instead and Ody had put its program together. Well, when Tim Cornelius died. And I remember standing at Tim's funeral, having a conversation with a couple other guys, and it was like, How much did we lose today? How much do the law enforcement community lose in expertize by one guy going, and we do nothing to capture it.

00:47:26:06 - 00:47:57:34

Jon Becker

There is no mechanism through which lessons learned or captured their debriefs, which which I had been attending my entire career. And, you know, our work has been doing for probably close to 20 years, that evening lecture series where we will have a team that has a significant event, bring them in and pick an audience, exclude the media, take away cell phones, implement Chatham House rules, and like, okay, tell us what really happened and what do you wish you had done and what did you screw up and how could you have done it better?

00:47:58:31 - 00:48:32:22

Jon Becker

And so I'd seen that culture, right? And then I see what's happening now, which is we just go on a witch hunt, we write a report and we never implement lessons learned. And when Tim died, it was like, This is stupid. We need to be doing something with this. We need to be capturing these guys and sit down with them and have long format interviews and talk through this and share it so that a patrol officer, you know, whatever issue Wisconsin can hear directly from the head of LAPD.

00:48:32:22 - 00:48:32:49

Jon Becker

SWAT.

00:48:33:19 - 00:48:33:37

Wayne Mulder

Yeah.

00:48:34:22 - 00:48:55:35

Jon Becker

Who he will never meet or hear from. Right. So that was that was kind of the reason that we did it. And, you know, sadly, little did I know that the first two interviews are with Sid Hale and Sid was a 35 year friend of mine. Aardvark is not our work without Sid's influence in my life. I'm not who I am as a man without Sid's influence in my life.

00:48:55:35 - 00:49:25:08

Jon Becker

He was he was an amazing human being. C.W. was five in the Marine Corps. Commander in the L.A. County Sheriff's Department led the Sheriff's Special Enforcement Bureau, you know, four time combat veteran, like just an amazing guy who also had a fantastic family life and wonderful kids and was a good friend and did everything right. And so Sid, I interviewed Sid early on and he was going to be the first two episodes we launched and sadly six weeks after our interview he died.

00:49:25:39 - 00:49:53:52

Jon Becker

Wow. And so it was just instant validation of we got to capture our best or brightest or smartest thinkers, the guys that are innovating, the guys that are making a difference and share it throughout the community. And I am in a very unique position because I'm not bound by any agency rules.

00:49:53:52 - 00:49:54:09

Wayne Mulder

Yeah.

00:49:55:24 - 00:50:09:27

Jon Becker

I don't have any political ax to grind or political risk. And so like when we started doing our lecture series, the reason we did it was because if an agency hosts it, it's discoverable.

00:50:09:55 - 00:50:10:09

Wayne Mulder

Yeah.

00:50:11:22 - 00:50:39:34

Jon Becker

And the media can demand access. And one agency might not agree with another agency, because I'm a nonpartisan actor and it's my house and my rules, and I can do whatever the hell I want. Yep. It gives me the ability to go directly to the right answer and so that was the motivation with the debrief was, okay, I know all these guys, I've been surrounded by them my entire life.

00:50:41:07 - 00:50:49:40

Jon Becker

I can control what is released. Yeah, because as a law enforcement leader now, it's a very dangerous thing to have a conversation with somebody from the media.

00:50:50:06 - 00:50:50:51

Wayne Mulder

Oh, absolutely.

00:50:51:46 - 00:51:04:01

Jon Becker

You know, you set the wrong intonation or you tell a complicated story and they can cut a section out of that story. Yep. You just became man bites dog.

00:51:04:28 - 00:51:07:13

Wayne Mulder

Oh, yeah. And it happens all the time, sadly.

00:51:07:31 - 00:51:25:10

Jon Becker

Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, what's happened is it's created a culture where law enforcement doesn't defend selves. So you've got you have an organized opposition that is out. You know, the new one is chemical agents that every is going after. And it's like, you know, you have to organize opposition that's running around fighting every time it's going poorly.

00:51:25:58 - 00:51:26:11

Wayne Mulder

Yep.

00:51:26:38 - 00:51:58:01

Jon Becker

And concentrating those into a story. And you know, the other 99 times that the cops did the right thing and the chemical agents worked and somebody was saved as a result, somebody did kill. Good. We don't talk about that. Right. But it's so dangerous for law enforcement to go out and talk to the media because of that, that in order to actually get these guys to express how they really feel and tell their stories, it's got to be in an environment where they know they're safe.

00:51:58:01 - 00:52:03:36

Jon Becker

And every episode of the debrief that airs, the guy that's on the show has seen the episode.

00:52:04:19 - 00:52:04:42

Wayne Mulder

Okay.

00:52:05:24 - 00:52:16:55

Jon Becker

And if there's anything they're concerned about, it comes out. Yeah. And, you know, there is no there's no footage that anybody will ever get their hands off.

00:52:16:55 - 00:52:28:39

Wayne Mulder

Wow. When you do an excellent job with the vulnerability side of it to where you really pull the emotion into it and get these guys to talk, which in and of itself is its own art form.

00:52:28:39 - 00:53:02:07

Jon Becker

Yeah. I mean, I think part of it is because I have existing relationships with it, but I think also like people don't understand how emotional the job is. Yeah. And you know, guys put their armor on and, and they, you know, their emotional armor because they have to. Right. They have to like if you and I talked about this, you know, with your day job, like if if if you absorb every piece of emotion that you've seen over the last 20 years.

00:53:02:31 - 00:53:04:48

Jon Becker

Yeah. You'd never get out of bed.

00:53:05:29 - 00:53:05:43

Wayne Mulder

Right.

00:53:06:37 - 00:53:33:43

Jon Becker

But that doesn't mean it isn't there. That doesn't mean that, you know, that the kid that was killed in a car crash doesn't have an impact on you. And so I think when we create an environment where those feelings can be expressed, they're there and they're raw. And and I think that that's the part of it that we lose in this whole thing right.

00:53:33:43 - 00:53:52:30

Jon Becker

I mean, I think it's very easy for us to vilify the guys that you've all the and say that, you know, oh, yeah, they were all cowards and they were whatever. You know, there's a lot of scorched shooting that's taking place. Oh, yeah. There's nobody there was involved in that situation that wasn't permanently damaged. Quiet.

00:53:52:52 - 00:53:53:52

Wayne Mulder

Yeah.

00:53:53:52 - 00:54:16:12

Jon Becker

And that feels good about what happened. Absolutely right. So whether they made the right decision or they didn't make the right decision, whether their actions were good or they were not or whatever we are, we are damaged people. Yeah, you and I talked about offline about it. Tom Sater, please book, you know, and which is all secure, which is a fantastic book.

00:54:16:12 - 00:54:37:51

Jon Becker

He's a former Delta operator, Black Hawk Down guy. If you have not read that book, you should read that book. And if you wouldn't mind linking to it in the show notes, it is a fantastic global he he really lays bare the damage of 20 some odd years of being in a tier one unit and constantly risking himself on our behalf.

00:54:38:29 - 00:55:07:01

Jon Becker

And so I think if we can create an environment where a little bit of that shows through and these guys are a little more humanized, I think that that really will help to serve the community and give people a little better perspective because you see it I see it, you know, Sid talks about it and I think was the first episode we said he talks about, you know, the guys are crying in the locker rooms and guys whose careers are over.

00:55:07:01 - 00:55:33:41

Jon Becker

It's like it. That's what's missing. Yes. You know in the dialog right now is because in the end these guys are human beings. Whether or not, you know, they make mistakes, they're consequences mistakes. They're damaged by everything that they interact with. And I think as a country, we're starting to have this moment of reconciliation in part because of guys like Satterlee.

00:55:34:26 - 00:55:47:15

Jon Becker

Yeah. Who are running the most. I mean, you're not going to have a hard time finding a more macho profession than being a Delta operator. Right? Right. Mike, that's that's that's a pretty manly job.

00:55:47:24 - 00:55:49:08

Wayne Mulder

Yes. We can all agree on that for sure.

00:55:49:08 - 00:56:13:21

Jon Becker

Yeah. Yeah. If you listen to his book and you don't feel like a complete loser and since you're not paying attention to the book for people like that to be able to lean in and go, hey, wait a second, like I'm a human being, this is what happened. This is the harm it caused. You know, the third episode of the show have Lee Mcmillion from LAPD, SWAT, who talks about that operation that he had where a 19 month old was killed by the team.

00:56:14:00 - 00:56:38:04

Jon Becker

Wow. And one of his guys gets shot and you can see the pain. Yeah, right. It literally changed his career. He literally made a decision to leave. Was the best. I mean, LAPD, SWAT is about as good a job as it gets in law enforcement. Yeah. And made a decision to test for sergeant leave after that operation because he was he was so traumatized.

00:56:38:08 - 00:56:43:33

Jon Becker

But unfortunately, he came back and is now running the unit and he's the guy we want leading the unit.

00:56:44:07 - 00:56:47:15

Wayne Mulder

Right. Because he understands that emotional part. He's seen.

00:56:47:15 - 00:56:57:10

Jon Becker

That. Yeah. Well he's had I mean, they've made mistakes and he's he's got you know, you take you look at some of the guys that LAPD or L.A. Sheriff's have 15 operations.

00:56:57:46 - 00:56:58:03

Wayne Mulder

Yeah.

00:56:58:35 - 00:57:21:15

Jon Becker

And it's like if we take you more like, oh, the first time they shoot somebody, we need to get rid of them because they're really great. Like, that's not the right answer. Not the right answer is you look at these guys in gray hair who'd been there for 20 years. They make much better decisions. Yes, right. Do you want your brain surgeon to have gray hair or do you want to be 22 years old?

00:57:21:15 - 00:57:45:01

Wayne Mulder

Good point. Because you want that life experience and that's something that sadly we are missing so much. And like you had said, with the way even the emphasis in this career has gone, where we emphasize the wrong attributes for what we want in the future. So I love it and I really want to drive home for the listeners this the debrief and I will have everything linked up in the show notes, but it is high quality.

00:57:45:25 - 00:58:10:01

Wayne Mulder

It is absolutely professional. It's fun to watch. I actually a couple of the YouTube videos, the opening to the third episode that you've mentioned a few times, the first one is just a very moving tribute to this hero. So adds excellent job on that and I really want to encourage the listeners to check it out because I think once you've watched the first one or listened to the first one, you're going to be hooked and enjoy it.

00:58:10:28 - 00:58:33:05

Wayne Mulder

What is next for it? Well, let me real quick and one other story that you tell that I want to highlight is I had listened to the Ed Henry one and you had mentioned that. But it actually that story, the beginning of it goes into two stories involving body armor and really kind of drives home the why you do what do and the amazing survival stories of these heroes.

00:58:34:04 - 00:59:11:38

Jon Becker

Yeah, and here she is. And she is such a good human being that if you tell me you don't like it and she. I know I don't like you, and I don't need to know anything else. That's Ed Henry. Ed? Ed was in a place in time, for one, probably the most significant event that ever happened with body armor, which was a catastrophic failure of software, which was Ed's partner, a guy named Ed Lim Barker, who had a penetration on a five and a half month old best when a threat it should have stopped, which then drove the entire revision.

00:59:11:49 - 00:59:54:07

Jon Becker

It drove the recall of a material called Zylon. It drove the entire revision of the standards for soft armor and added all the condition testing and all of the current standard was built on the on the suffering of Madeleine Barker. Well, and so Ed was present during that. And then just a year later he was shot in a terrible I mean, unless you listen to the episode, you hear the event that the event starts with a naked woman and a baby running into a bar, and it ends with the suspect shooting at three times once in the mall and shopping incident in his leg, which almost kills him and twice in the vest.

00:59:54:25 - 01:00:30:03

Jon Becker

So Ed has watched his partner almost died. But, you know, because of armor, he has been saved by armor. And now he retires and takes over the saves program for Safari Land, who at that point had just bought second chance, who had gone bankrupt because of that possessed and Ed ties their saves programs together and if you want to talk about round peg round hole I mean the most passionate guy I know not only about armor but about saves and the recovery process from a shooting and what happens and what what gets in, you know, what goes into surviving a shooting.

01:00:30:28 - 01:00:52:56

Jon Becker

Right. And so Ed goes through all of that and tells some stories that are just you know, he tells the story of his daughter, you know, after his shooting going to Sunday school and having a nun tell her that her dad was going to hell because he killed somebody. Yeah. Which, you know, I said in the podcast and, you know, that's when Ed punched in on.

01:00:53:09 - 01:00:58:15

Jon Becker

Exactly. You know, all this while he's convalescing and could barely walk without a walker.

01:00:58:28 - 01:00:58:58

Wayne Mulder

Right.

01:00:59:34 - 01:01:22:37

Jon Becker

Right. It's like it's crazy. It's it's terrible. Like the stories are just and that's what people don't understand. They don't understand like the, you know, we recently had, like I said, we recently had a save. And what what the public doesn't understand is those guys go in and they look at the feedback on the YouTube stories. Yeah, right.

01:01:22:57 - 01:01:30:45

Jon Becker

And they might see a hundred that say, you know, way to go, I'm so glad you're alive. But there's one guy that's like, I wish that pig had died.

01:01:31:21 - 01:01:35:01

Wayne Mulder

Oh, yeah, that's the worst part of YouTube, unfortunately.

01:01:35:01 - 01:01:56:54

Jon Becker

Yes. Yes, it is. That's the worst part of social media, right? It's Ed describes it as a viper, which I think is a very accurate characterization. But no, I mean, it's so. So, yeah. And you've got Ed's episode we had we still have coming down the road. I interviewed Mike Helman, who was one of the original 60 guys on the LAPD platoon and one of the founders in a we've got some newer guys talking about stuff.

01:01:56:54 - 01:02:24:59

Jon Becker

We've got a great interview with your South Carolina cop named Buddy Brown. They had one of the worst shootouts I've ever seen. One guy killed, two guys, mortally wounded, buddy. One of them. It just we were gradually building these episodes and trying to document in time these the leadership philosophies of these guys, their experience is their lessons learned.

01:02:25:28 - 01:02:38:31

Jon Becker

And that's why we called it the debrief, right? Because that's what it is. It's it's a debrief. And if it if it saves one guy's like, it's worth it. It's worth all the effort. It's worth everything else.

01:02:39:01 - 01:02:46:42

Wayne Mulder

I love it and it's so powerful. What is next? I know you mentioned there's some more episodes coming out this season. Where in season one is there going to be a season two?

01:02:47:18 - 01:02:54:50

Jon Becker

Yeah, the rest. Yeah. So we're we're in season one. Season one will be 12 episodes. We're ending season one with Ron McCarthy.

01:02:55:19 - 01:02:55:44

Wayne Mulder

Oh okay.

01:02:55:45 - 01:03:22:53

Jon Becker

Who was is also another legend in the tactical community. And then there's, you know, a few more we are talking about. We've got some really cool stuff coming up. We, the California Association of Tactical Officers did this thing that they call decision making exercises that if you are not implementing in your department, you should be. What they're what they do is they take a group of people, a group of, you know, let's just take it to say your agency.

01:03:22:53 - 01:03:47:56

Jon Becker

You pull together your team and you feed them. They took a real incident and they feed you the information as though you would get it on scene. So in the case the way Carter does it, they'll pull together, say ten different tactical teams, three guys from each team, put them on a zoom call and say, you know, I'm a naked woman with a baby, just ran into a bar, which sounds like the beginning of a terrible joke.

01:03:48:00 - 01:04:12:32

Jon Becker

Yes. You know, and they'll say, you know, here's here's the information you have available. What resources do you want? What's your initial plan? So now you sit down and you run through what am I going to do? And then I say, okay, now here's a little more information. And so so after the first time you come back as a group, everybody splits up in the small groups, come back into a whole group and they go, okay, you know, when what's your plan?

01:04:12:41 - 01:04:31:17

Jon Becker

Here's what we came up with. Okay. Anybody disagree that. Yeah, I disagree. We did this, this and this. And so you have all these different groups reading back on each other's ideas and say, okay, now here's a map, here's some pictures, here's some additional information. Go back into your groups. They go back and they go, this is what we're going to do.

01:04:31:17 - 01:04:51:14

Jon Becker

Here's our, you know, our more developed tactical plan. These are the resources we want. So they do that three times. Okay. So you are forced to leave the event the force to make the decisions. And then at the end they say, okay, now this is a real incident. We have Wayne here who's going to debrief the incident. He was the incident commander.

01:04:51:14 - 01:05:00:45

Jon Becker

And you hear what really happened, what their plan was, what worked, what didn't work. Because the thing people forget, it's tactical decision making is paradigm based.

01:05:00:45 - 01:05:01:03

Wayne Mulder

Right?

01:05:01:40 - 01:05:21:12

Jon Becker

Right. So so you are presented with something on the ground that is long and cylindrical and moving. Yes, right. If you've already heard the rattlesnakes story, you know, that could be a rattlesnake. So right away your position to view that as a potential threat and what the threat could be, you then run your checklist on it doesn't have a rattle.

01:05:21:23 - 01:05:40:55

Jon Becker

It's orange, doesn't have diamonds on its back. It doesn't have a diamond shaped head. Okay. It's not a rattlesnake. Yeah, right. Well, again, you never picked up the snake, you bit. But I can tell you about my experience of being bitten by a rattlesnake. And I can put you through a decision making exercise. And it's almost like you've been there.

01:05:41:29 - 01:06:05:24

Jon Becker

Yeah. So then when you're forced to make that decision, you're much more likely to make the decision and you're also much more able to get through all the noise and get to what's actually signal. And so we did a deep debrief episode with with Toby Darby and Josh Wofford, both lieutenants. Now one's the captain at Glendale Police in California, and they talk about that.

01:06:06:16 - 01:06:25:03

Jon Becker

And that's kind of the direction we're going in season two. We're just about to start shooting season two. We've got about 20 more people that we're going to interview. We're going to do a debrief with the Bataclan incident. Okay. So so it's it's kind of going to be a mix of legends, leaders, training and technology and critical incidents.

01:06:25:48 - 01:06:51:12

Jon Becker

And my goal is that in each season, you're going to get a couple of each. And then probably starting next season, we're going to start doing kind of horizontal sections of those. So like for instance, I've interviewed several people this season to talk about the history of SWAT. Oh yeah. Like the evolution of the LAPD, specifically. So what we're going to do is we're going to go back and recut through those.

01:06:51:12 - 01:07:16:08

Jon Becker

After you think of those episodes as verticals, we're going to recut those episodes and take those little snippets and put them together to form an episode. On the history of flash points per for an episode on the history of LAPD, your history of LAPD, SWAT of the History of L.A., Sheriff's ACB or FBI, HRT or, you know, kind of giving you a little short takes on a specific topic.

01:07:16:13 - 01:07:17:54

Jon Becker

So that'll that'll launch in season two.

01:07:18:28 - 01:07:34:04

Wayne Mulder

Awesome. Y will be sure to have all of this linked up in the show notes and I will push it out to the on the blue line community. But I'm excited. It's really great. Let me John, I can't let you go until I ask you one final question. It's the question I ask everybody, and it's kind of where I distill everything down.

01:07:34:40 - 01:07:50:16

Wayne Mulder

It can be something we've talked about so far. Could be something we haven't spoken about yet. But the final question that I ask every guest that comes on here is what is that one takeaway? What is the one thing that law enforcement officers can do that makes a difference in their personal lives, something actionable that they can do right now?

01:07:51:48 - 01:08:27:32

Jon Becker

So I think if you look at all of the people that I've interviewed and I distill those conversations down to one thing with regard to their personal life, it's balance. The guys that I have seen be successful and I'll use it as an example. You know, I used to joke about it and say it is a guy that will, you know, kill without thought and combat, go back to Austin at night, ask God to forgive him, write his kids a letter, probably read some philosophy or poetry and sleep with a clear conscience.

01:08:28:30 - 01:08:54:41

Jon Becker

And that was him. And the reason he was as successful as he is, the reason that McMillian has been successful run McCarthy. You know, these guys have a balance to their lives where they are passionate about their profession, but they don't up their family lives. And that that balance I have strived for my entire career. Right. It is work matters.

01:08:54:41 - 01:09:08:42

Jon Becker

What you do matters, but you're only effective if you're healthy and happy. So true. It's it's a fine balance and constantly seek balance between your professional life and your personal life.

01:09:09:53 - 01:09:20:52

Wayne Mulder

Well said. And great advice. I really appreciate it. John, how can people connect with you? Obviously, we have the debrief that live is the website. The debrief not live, but what else? How else can people connect with you?

01:09:21:34 - 01:09:38:16

Jon Becker

People are welcome to email me directly. You can feel free to share my email in the in the show notes. It's just Jay Becker at our talk tactical dot com people are you know if you have suggestions for an episode if you have ideas if you have like, oh my God, you've got to talk to this guy. You have to hear about this experience.

01:09:38:25 - 01:10:03:07

Jon Becker

Please share it. And if you have feedback, like if you watched the show and you're like, I wish you had asked more of this or you know, this is new for me. Like, I'm not I'm not a talk show. I'm, I'm playing one on TV right now. But it's not you know, I'm open to feedback. I want to know how this can help the community or how it is helping so that we can tailor what we're doing to ensure we reach the audience as best as possible.

01:10:03:55 - 01:10:15:45

Wayne Mulder

Perfect. Well, it's a great show. I really appreciate you coming on. And I really thank you for everything that you're doing and everything that you've done for the law enforcement, the spec ops community. And John, I really appreciate it. Thank you so much.

01:10:16:21 - 01:10:22:22

Jon Becker

Thanks so much. I appreciate you having me on when and what you're doing is fantastic and that the community certainly appreciate what you're.

01:10:22:22 - 01:10:37:15

Wayne Mulder

Well, thank you. And that does it for this week's The Interview Room. I hope you really enjoyed it. Another great guest will be with us again next week. We have a great line up for you here over the next few weeks and I'm through the rest of the year, so you're definitely not going to want to miss a single episode.

01:10:37:46 - 01:10:56:04

Wayne Mulder

We also have Morning Roll Call, which typically comes out on Monday mornings. However, I may change my mind and who knows? They could come out different day of the week, but morning roll call, check that out as well. That's just me talking to you and it gives us a few minutes to go over something, anything from news or something actionable that matters, hopefully to you.

01:10:56:27 - 01:11:16:13

Wayne Mulder

One last favor, please, please, please. Whatever service you are looking at or whatever service you are watching this on, you're listening to this on, please leave us a rating and review five stars. That would be the appropriate number of stars if for some reason it's not five stars, in your opinion, or if it is, tell us why we would love to hear it.

01:11:16:13 - 01:11:30:03

Wayne Mulder

I would love to get your feedback. In fact, I'm going to start reading some of these reviews on the air. I been looking at some of the ones on Apple Podcasts and thank you, thank you, thank you for the phenomenal reviews and thank you all for taking the time to listen to this. I hope you're really enjoying it.

01:11:30:18 - 01:11:57:27

Wayne Mulder

You all have a safe week out there and I will see you next week in the interview room. I will see you next week in Morning Roll Call. But in the meantime, I'll see you on the blue line.

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