Take a look behind the curtain with a real whistleblower.
An American Patriot prepare to embrace the uncomfortable truth
because this program has no time for comforting lies.
Here is civil liberties, enthusiasts Second Amendment,
Defender and recovering FBI agent.
Kyle serif Hello, my friends and welcome to the Kyle Surf and
show for Monday. May the 8th as I promise, I will
be coming to you tape. Delays, we are going to get this
done on Sunday, the day before, because I'm going to be doing
the Tim cast in Real Life podcast this evening.
So after you watch this, you can tune in this evening and catch
me. On, Tim cast today is going to
continue our long form interview series kind of back on track.
And I have a guest named Peter Johnson who I met at the SHOT
Show in Las. Vegas was instantly, just a cool
guy to meet. And then of course, like so many
things we Add all these things in common, that they're going to
be interesting to you all as well.
He owns and operates Archway defense, which is a training
company. And he got his background doing
five years, as a federal Air Marshal.
You can see where we've kind of made a little segue there.
He used to be an international team leader, conducting
counterterrorism missions and surveillance around the globe.
And prior to that, just like me, he was in the Air Force.
Did six years, working overseas in a designated Marksmanship
role. He did.
Ordinance clearing conducting reconnaissance and Gathering
Intel. On local Nomads.
We're going to dig into all the backgrounds and what he did.
I think it's also interesting is, he's got a background in
criminal justice with an emphasis on counterterrorism.
And that led to a Capstone project that he wrote about the
radicalization of Somali youth in Minneapolis.
So we're touching a bunch of things that we've touched on
before on the Kyle Serafin show including the George Floyd
stuff. The fact that there was this no
go Zone and sort of the lawlessness, that was happening
in Minneapolis, the weaponization of the fams.
And we're going to talk about things that I think are going to
be relevant to you, like active Shooters because that's what his
business is Safety and Security. For those of you that are
walking around, In a increasingly more dangerous
world. First, I want to thank our
sponsor and we have a very new and very special sponsor
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Like so if you want to visit Catholic vote.org you can check
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So check them out at Catholic vote.org.
And right now, we're going to Pivot over, and I'm going to be
bringing it up mr. Peter Johnson.
Good. How are you doing, buddy?
I'm good. Thanks for having me.
Yeah, I'm really looking forward to this.
Actually, the beard. I know you told me it was a clip
on but it looks fantastic. It is very sporting folks.
He looks like this in real life but he's what you're about like
7 foot 11, something like that quotes?
Yes, I'm somewhere in there like a giraffe.
Yeah, well I used to run around my body was a vide I partner.
When I was in the Air Force was I think he was six foot nine and
I'm you know, I'm about 58 so it's like a like a Scottie dog
and a great day and kind of hanging out together.
Always end up with like really tall, cool buddy like that but
you've got the cool to the logo on.
First of all, tell people like where you grew up and and we'll
go just get into your background and then we're going to roll
straight into this thing and start talking about the
Phantom's. Yeah, so originally from the
Midwest Minnesota, which we talked to show a little bit
about the riots that happened but from Minnesota and then,
like a lot of people in 9/11, 9/11 happened, I felt the
calling join the military and then left for Texas because the
Air Force and bounce all over and then came back to Minnesota
for a little while and head out to New York with the Air
Marshals around. 09 so Midwest originally and that's where I'm
at right now. Yeah and then where you at the
is it the New York field office with the Phantom's?
New knife. Oh New York field office for
five years and in d.c. I'm sorry in the FBI, it's kind
of considered like one of the two biggest field offices and I
probably vies for the worst places to work with the
Washington field office. Is that the same story for you
all? 100%.
It's a double UFO, Washington, field office.
And I fo in the New York field office that says, if you can
make it here, you can make it anywhere which is true because
it's just a horrific place to work.
But yeah, it's not exactly. I think the way that Sinatra
meant it, when he was singing, that sort of stuff, was it?
No not at all. But it's a yeah, around the FED.
Everything I've heard from other friends and different agencies
is New York and DC are the highest OPS Tempo.
And just generally the Most rough offices to work in pasta.
Living at all those other reasons.
Yeah, that's the big thing. I think for a lot of federal
agents cost of living is brutal in certain areas and even with
the offset and then especially if you're away from home all the
time that's also got to be tough.
So, fans are away from home. How often, I, how many nights a
year? Do you think when you were doing
that where you away? Um, the Probably for four to
five nights a week. There are the Ops Tempo was so
insane out of New York. I mean, they would run you.
They had rotating days off for a while.
So you have what mixed days off like five days?
Work one day or one day off then fly.
Again, you're going out to the Middle East, then coming back to
West Coast, then back to Europe back to sub-sahara, Africa, I
you'd wake up and not even know what country you're in.
Yeah, that's that's brutal to and then you've got to also be
locked on when you're on the Plain, we're going to talk about
the mission set little bit. We did bring on Sonia lobosco.
Who's retired? Obviously.
And is working with the National Council for your for your old
employer and I just want other people have another kind of take
on it. Let's let's reel it back to high
school, you came out of high school, you're in, you're in
Minnesota, and then did you immediately go and join the Air
Force out of high school? Or do you go to school first?
No, so joined the military. I was at the right age to be
eligible. Join the military, right as 9/11
happened. As Of us were around when it
happened. We remember that the recruiting
you couldn't get on base four months.
They shut down all bases. So I finally got a basic
training slot in. I believe it was January of 02.
That's very prompt. All right afterwards.
So did you, they didn't even have a very much time in the
Delayed Enlistment program just rolled straight in there and
right off the Lachlan. Yeah.
Do you remember the Lackland pterodactyl?
Did they have that going when you were there wouldn't hurt
actor? That is.
Because I was still there. 13 21st was right on the fence
line, right? I don't think this anymore.
So we had this, somebody warned me about the Lachlan
pterodactyl, when I went to basic, and I went as a 27 year
old. So very different animal, right
and enlisted with a college degree, I saw a show up there
and I get this this drill instructor who starts screaming
at me and he's basically yelling.
Like, I don't want to see you Flinch at the position of
attention, I don't care and he's using colorful language, if a
pterodactyl comes and you know, takes a dump on your shoulder
and apparently that's the that's the Lachlan.
A tactile thing, they do it to everybody.
I watched kids, you know, flinching and moving all over
the place and just getting crushed, you know?
I was a grown-up, you yell at me, you're just one other person
in my life, who's done it. True story, especially coming in
at you said 27. Yeah, that would be when you
have like 17 year-olds coming into 27.
There's a lot of life experience between those two, those ten
years, the hundred percent. So unn, and did you train a
security forces was that your, your afsc 501.
C, 3, Secure went straight from the pipeline into Security
Forces, then Air Base ground defense school and then got
into, I forgot what the operation was right after we
graduated. But there were some like,
Northern watch or something. Was a counterterrorism Stateside
deployment, but all the not post 9/11 stuff of trying to figure
out what's going to happen in the country.
And how big is this terrorism thing?
Going to be and did six years all through and through 02 to
0-8, okay. Some of the Specialties that you
did. You mentioned designated
Marksman. I know there's a lot of
trainings you can do and there's there's guys that are checking
IDs at the gate then there's guys that are out there running
around and doing real work overseas.
I guess everybody potentially could do that but not everybody
is actually going to do that when it comes to the security
forces. Yes, the security force of for
people, that don't know the security forces is the job is
kind of twofold. It's either you're in a law
enforcement on base security, role or your in Air Base ground
defense, which can include Off base, which is what you want to
do. Think I do you.
Like the way you said that to this, what you want to do?
It's what people who looking are looking to be downrange want to
do, right? Yeah.
You definitely everything. I mean, even with the insanity,
everything was great off base when you come back on base.
That's when you have to deal with all the just BS of military
life where you're actually working.
So I focus more, especially on my last deployment 06 and 07 off
base, so we would spend 14 hours in our Patrol Zone every day.
By the wire which was way more fun than checking IDs or sitting
in a tower hoping that some people are going to run across a
field and start shooting at you. I like that.
You said hoping to it gets really boring up in those Towers
100%, I could imagine that. Yeah, everybody wants to do the
mission, they're trained to do as far as specialized skill
sets. What kind of things did you do
additional kind of skills and training?
Did you do while you were in that afsc?
So, when through combat arms, training maintenance, The end of
my enlistment so it's actually really good school down again,
Lachlan, but it's a formal instructor school and not just
weapon platforms but how to teach adults and people who
think and not just regurgitate information but deployed we were
blowing up stuff every other day or so.
And then we were doing the fast, not the Marine Corps fast, but
the air marshal are the pardon me, the Air Force fast, which is
Flyway security team. So you'd fly all through Iraq.
I didn't Get over to Afghanistan.
But anywhere that a C-130 could land in Iraq.
We were doing Flyway security teams, whether it was a ground
security mission where you are the sacrificial Force to keep
allow the aircraft to take off or you're a flight deck denial.
If you're transporting pucks or pows or valuable assets like
generals or politicians or something else as they're flying
through. Iraq.
The entire country and makes sense.
And when you say combat Arts is that the red Hat's?
The is that the red hat school? Yeah, that's a redhead school.
So for what it's worth, at least the Air Force has a formal
Firearms, instruction program. I believe it's a couple months
long, it's been a while, but to just focus on how to teach
people for a couple of months full-time, it for what it's
worth for military, it was a pretty good instructure
instructor, development course. And then obviously that took
pretty well. And And you you are competent
capable. I know you're so when I say
you're a big guy, I mean, that in a very serious way, people
should understand that you got big hands and it makes it makes
a difference being able to control a firearm, particularly
a handgun. If you have the kind of the
bigger Mitch and the bigger body behind it and and that
obviously, led to you being kind of a stud shooter which is what
the fans do, right? That meeting ended up going
there. Yeah, so the part I loved about
the fams was I thought it was a good shooter in the military.
I was an expert Marksman and does it a marksman.
And the one of the Shooters in our unit, getting out of that.
I'm like, okay, I'm gonna get shooter in shot.
A lot by myself and trained constantly, even after the
military and when you get into the Air, Marshals, I'm like,
okay, I'm a good shooter and then you realize, how much
better you can get when you're in an environment that is driven
towards Perfection of Marksmanship, and the ability to
run a gun opposed to shoot a gun, and there is a huge
difference. So, we were shooting.
I think your old Duty gun of 8:58 357 Sig.
Did you guys have that still in the?
No. No, that was sorry, he a secret.
So you guys I know a lot of Secret Service guys ended up
because it was all under DHS at some point.
And that's I think that's how the contract actually went over
that way. But yeah, you were shooting kind
of a zippy round out of those, the sweet cigs.
Yeah. So 357 Sig in for the shooters,
listening 357, Sig 9 mil projectile basically on a 40
Smith & Wesson casing neck down. Just super Snappy around and
then Plus p.m. oh no they've since moved away from it but
during our time you're a lot of rounds down range.
Yeah let's break that down just for folks that are my more
novice Firearms but I'll plus p is going to be the load of the
amount of pressure that that round has behind it.
And when you start adding a p round or a plus P, round your
incrementally, increasing the speed, and the pressure inside
the chamber, which means you get a faster muzzle velocity, but
mostly what it means is, it feels like you're shooting
something that is trying to get. Out of your hands a lot harder.
It is a and it's good for self-defense and it's good for
for aggressive actions as needed.
But definitely it makes it a challenge to shoot those things.
Oh yeah. So if you can shoot that well,
you can shoot, you can pick up any gun and it's pretty easy to
shoot it after that, I can totally imagine that.
All right, so you went through the fans Academy in 2010.
How did you choose fams of all the different sort of federal
law enforcement out there? What, what led you that route?
So kind of happenstance at the time I was working for a police
department in Minnesota part-time as Non-sworn because
they you needed a four-year to be sworn I already had my two
years knocked out but I was going through my four year
program while I was coming up the ranks and that was kind of
the pipeline if you will to get us Warren position.
At that specific PD is, you worked 38 hours, part-time
finish up your four year degree and then got in well the
financial collapse happened right as I got the job.
So the housing market is tanking.
They're laying off all the like our Intel analysts and A else at
the PD and I'm looking at my name on the list.
I'm like there's only a couple people behind me.
So I talked to the captain I said, is it, do you know where
this is going to go? He's like, we have no idea how
deep this is going to cut. Like, okay, are you okay if I
start applying a somewhere else because I just got this job and
he's gave me his Blessing if you will.
Yep. And friend of mine from the
military said, hey, did you know the Air?
Marshals are hiring. I'm like, oh well we did the air
marshal mission in Iraq with the fast and I We like that.
So let's give it a shot. So I applied in think I started
the application process in early 08 and then finally got a job
offer late 09. Okay.
So you were going into the fams about the time that I had
enlisted, because I went into in June, I think of 2009.
So so you went in there and you did.
What six years is that correct? Five total five, totals 09 to
end of 2014 2015. Teen.
So Phil and I were talking before you got on about the fans
as an organization and in many ways, kind of the, you know, the
bastardize redheaded stepchild of federal law enforcement, just
not a lot of love. A lot of not just very few
people understand what the mission is and I think probably
really even worse when it comes to bureaucrats, right?
So we were talking about how tough it is like the people that
actually stick it out and do 20 years with the fans, are either
a special breed of tough or maybe they just are not got
their head up and look around or what's how tough is it to
survive in that agency? You know what first I'll say
some of the best people I've ever worked with in my life were
in the air marshal program. On the front lines, like truly
some of the strongest Patriots. Best fighters, best Shooters.
Best tactician errs. These guys rock stars.
Honestly, I'm not talking about. We all had worked with people
that you want to forget. And thankfully I've forgotten
about those people. I'm talking about the the rock
stars that I did work with and some of them are still in the
program right now. Sure.
But it's the most people don't know the fans.
The air marshal program has been around since the 60s 1962.
It's not a new program on 9/11, there was 33 Air, Marshals
total. So, yeah, it's had a history of
kind of like these huge multi-thousand Air Marshal
pushes where they increase because the hijackings of sky
jackings and that's mainly 70s and 80s when I was going on,
right, and then they cut the budget.
It as everybody does and it kind of just kept going through this,
but initially was under the FAA, the Federal Aviation
Administration, which makes a lot more sense because the FAA
is not a law enforcement agency and the Air, Marshals were a
counterterrorism agency, not a law enforcement.
And there is a pretty big difference on how you approach
that topic. But then it did get bastardized,
especially after 9/11, when into I think it was originally the
FAA. And then Bounce quickly to
someone else Customs and Border Protection.
Then it got into TSA and then downhill from there.
But the reason there's a lot of former Secret Service in the
Air, Marshals is, I found out and this is one of my old
supervisors. Who was Secret Service said?
Yeah, a lot of the old guys that they wanted to get out of the
Secret Service, who are non-performers, they pushed them
over to the Air, Marshals and gave them a they could pull
their retirement, get another salary and build another.
Retirement while they got rid of them, out of it, the Secret
Service side. So of quarter always want,
totally makes sense. Um, just promoting the world's
most critical space right like, take them away from money,
laundering investigations, in New Orleans and put them into a
plane where somebody might try to hijack.
It yeah just wild but so the it is a very bastardized I
apologize but it is it agency with some drawing, some of the
best. as I've ever worked with in my life, By contrast led by,
some of the dumbest people I've met in my life at the top
levels. And most of those that when I
was working there at the top level there, they've already
gone. I don't know what it's like now,
but from hearing from my friends in and obviously watching your
show and staying in contact with just old teammates, it seems
like it's it's up to the same old Behavior, really good.
Skill set, very talented people, crazy, awesome unique.
Leti of being able to deploy trigger pullers anywhere in the
world within minutes. I mean you can you can flood
anywhere in the world with covert well-trained, people who
can work by themselves, they don't need any service and
support. They can trains, they can go
into any country come and go as they please, and they're very
comfortable with it, with no, no crazy Logistics or spin up time.
But then, and even as we're hearing now, It's kind of
morphed into just another bureaucratic weird organization
that gets used and abused. Yeah, definitely that and which
is really disappointing on so many levels.
But I do appreciate the correction there because I was,
I was sitting there thinking I'm like, yeah, the way I said that
doesn't sound right. I've got two buddies that are
current FBI right now, former fans and they were two of my
favorite guys to work with hands down.
You exactly the way you described it, good tacticians
capable when it comes to fighting capable when it comes
to being a physical animal you know.
Understands the three-dimensional space where
they were working. We work surveillance together
and you know those are the guys I want have in my back.
I know they can pull the trigger and put exactly what they need
to do and end of the day, it's like what a sad loss for the
program, but so many great dudes that are former fans and people
that are stuck in there on the front lines.
And then, like you said, led by some of the worst.
The FBI is the same way in a lot of ways.
It's just the worst management you can imagine right?
Yeah, it's it unfortunately it's consistently.
Now with our, my current We travel Coast-to-Coast border
border, training State, local and federal law enforcement.
So we come across some feds and I always have the same
conversation as we're having right now.
Is how is it? Oh guys on the ground?
For the most part really good people.
DC is completely gongshow, it's ridiculous 100%.
And we're going to definitely talk about what you're doing
right now because I think people are going to find that
fascinating. I want to just kind of cover
sort of the mission set that you did when you were in the fans
and kind of before you got out and then maybe you can tell me.
You know what? Was the final decision point to
leave five years is kind of a make-or-break time because
somewhere between five and ten years you decide whether you're
going to be there for the next, you know, 10 or 15 after that.
So, you know what did you do in and then, you know what changed
your mind to go. Private.
Yeah. So initially getting out of the
academy phenomenal training, some of the best Shooters on the
planet were Cadre. So training, with these guys
super gun, ho get into the mission set, you start getting
good Mission packets of known. Terrace affiliate terrorists in
their Affiliates or plus ones and you're doing surveillance
packages on those guys traveling all over the world.
Obviously wears you down a bit but you felt like you were doing
the right thing and your commission made sense even on
the frustrating days. Well, then it started morphine.
Midway through my time in where you started getting packets on
people, with no derogatory information whatsoever, I can't
go into detail specifically. But normally it would to anyone,
it would make sense of why you would previously be doing a
mission on this person because you read the packet and you're
like, okay, they've done X Y, and Z that makes sense.
Why we would want to watch these people, and then you start
getting packets on people that Are you haven't done anything.
We couldn't find. I couldn't find if they had a
parking ticket. And the not International
Americans. So that was a for me,
personally, that was a huge Tipping Point.
I remember sitting in the bullpen one day Bolton is like,
where all of our computers are at the office.
It's a, your team set up there. And during your office days,
you're just be us in with everyone and we started talking
about some of the stuff that's going on and you realize that it
wasn't just our team. It wasn't just my my squad.
It was it was happening too. Two other guys to, they were
getting these really weird packets that had seemingly no
Nexus. What we use Nexus to terrorism.
There was nothing. There there is no there there as
they say, right when you're was this I'd have to go back but it
would probably be right around 11 or 12. 2011 2012 somewhere in
there. It got so bad.
I even emailed the director myself and I'm like is the open
door policy or whatever? Hey, this is that's fake.
By the way, that's it. Obviously, more importantly,
like ethically, I started seeing this I'm like Okay, the bare
minimum I have to, I talked to my supervisor.
I'm like, this doesn't make sense.
He's like an animal talk to everyone in the chain.
They're like, I don't know. So emailed the director didn't
hear anything back because my concern was if we're using our
resources or the the citizen taxpayers resources to go after
people that I can't find a Nexus to terrorism.
We're trying to stop the next 9/11.
Why are we going after this for theoretical?
John Doe who has no Nexus to terrorism?
No, documented criminal history. Not a threat to Intermodal
Transportation. Anything I'm like it just
doesn't make sense. Emailed, the director, nothing
emailed Congressman nothing. I'm like no one cares,
literally, no one cares. We're we have Air Marshals and
this is a little dirty secret of the Air.
Marshals, you can find it, you probably talked to a couple but
the suicide rate of the Air, Marshals was horrific, the Ops
Tempo. These guys were traveling
non-stop globally. I mean, just insane amounts of
flight hours, insane amounts of trips, and we're happy.
To do it, especially if there's an increase in threat.
But the suicide rate, it got to the point where on our home,
intranet, not internet. Intranet our internal internet,
it would show like a news and Bam are air marshal news.
And I remember one summer was just like photo photo photo
photo and it was all guys, that killed themselves.
And I'm like what why are we wasting this Talent?
These Patriots for BS, like complete BS and that was a
pretty big disenfranchisement disenfranchising for me.
Obviously, the Ops Tempo was ridiculous.
New York. I don't know if you've ever, if
you've lived there for too long, that didn't help the situation
either. So you put all that together and
it the writing was just kind of on the wall for me, or I said,
okay. It was chock it up for what it
was. It was a great experience.
I worked with some of the best people I've ever met in my life.
Huge fan of living in New York at all.
And I said, maybe could I do more somewhere else and have
more of a sense of purpose in my life.
So, in about 2014, I started looking at transitioning out and
finally pulled the ripcord and when you stepped out, what did
you step into right away? Because starting a company is
usually not part one, there's usually some transition but, you
know, some people take the plunge and Go the whole way and
I'm curious how that yeah, that looked I would either super
smarter super stupid. I don't know.
Cash out everything I could sold my investment.
Real estate. I just had one condo, got rid of
that dumped. Everything I had into starting a
business and God, what I call an MBA, the very hard way made a
lot of mistakes and started morphing through what What
business actually is and thank God.
I'm still here today and still able to train.
That's awesome. Actually, I think that's the,
that's the barrier to entry. Most people don't have.
It's the courage, especially feds, they don't have the
courage to step off into the void.
If they have no pride and you had no private sector
experience. At least not any you know
professional long-term experience with it.
So doing that is even kind of more courageous.
I think that's what keeps a lot of feds in place.
Even though they know that what they're doing is wrong or what.
They're a part of his awful is that kind of the same experience
that you had watched? People.
Yeah, it was um, and I God bless him.
I still talk to old teammates and other feds still this day to
this day and I've helped a couple transition out where
they're like, hey, I kind of want to get out what I want to
get into this field and helping them like, draft a resume for
it. Get into contract, negotiation
and cetera, but a lot of them, get addicted to that paycheck in
the fear of the non guaranteed paycheck.
Actually. That brings up a point.
This is actually, this is part of that decision-making process
and I can't believe I forgot it because I'm talking about
paycheck. So everybody talks about get
into the FED get into the government.
Guaranteed paycheck, guaranteed paycheck.
Like okay, yeah. Well I remember the shutdown.
The there's a couple shutdowns that happen while I was in.
Somebody can go back and look at the dates on that.
I don't remember. All I remember is they were
horrible. So we stopped getting paid still
out of work, but more importantly and this is where
most people don't. Don't think get it.
We had government travel cards. So we had a credit card that we
put all of our hotels on all of the stuff and think about
traveling that much that credit card can get into five ten Grand
in a blink of an eye. Just the Ops Tempo is so crazy.
We're responsible for pain that and it's your, it's your credit
that it's going to hit if you don't.
Oh. Yeah.
And you'll, you'll get written up and you'll get fired.
If you don't pay your credit card obviously because it's your
duty to pay your credit card now, The trade-off is you put
your travel voucher in. You get your travel voucher paid
and you pay your credit card easy.
Well unless you are budgeting to randomly just spend an extra 15
grand over a month or so which most people don't plan on and
you can make it work, it's miserable but you can make it
work and it just overnight. I'm like, okay I'm not getting
paid, I still have to work, which I understand where public
servants and we're providing a National Security role and I get
that totally fine. Then I still have to pay the
credit card that I keep racking up because we're traveling
still, because you're telling me to travel and then I have to, I
have to pay it hoping that the government comes back open and
pays our card. So that was also a hmm.
Maybe this isn't as stable as I thought it was.
It's interesting. You got a you got a very strong
head nod from producer fill in the background because No, 15
years of doing that. And a lot of what Phil was doing
was was surveillance work where we had the same kind of Ops
Tempo and travel very frequently, where they were
putting us on the road, not common for a lot of law
enforcement. In fact, most federal law
enforcement doesn't do that, but surveillance teams do and
obviously fams are doing that full-time.
It's very interesting. It's I hadn't even thought of
that angle of it, but you're right.
It is, I remember the sequester in 21 of the 2018 end of 2018
and everybody was complaining about whether they were going to
miss. Mortgage payment, and we only
miss one paycheck and I thought that was hilarious, only because
it's like, what did what a dangerous situation to put your
National Security folks in, they've got a top secret
clearance. They've got the SE, I read ends,
and they are one mortgage payment away.
Their one paycheck away from being defaulting on a home.
That's care. That's crazy, Insanity, absolute
insanity. But that it goes into the just
overall. How DC runs and it is insanity.
Yeah, it is, they don't care at all.
I want to read something and I'm going to Pivot into Accompany
because I'm fascinated by that and actually I'm fascinated
about all the aspects of it. There's so much of it.
It's come on with an active shooter in Texas, over the
weekend with the the Neely situation, and people stepping
in and have it to be their own protectors.
I just want your take on this. We got an email that I did a
whole Twitter space on. We had about 300 people on a
Friday night, listen to this and this is an email from Oscar
Hernandez who's an a sack out of the Atlanta field office with
the fams. So focuses on Twitter feel can
bring this up for us and it just says all we've received an
update from the ACC which is the joint coordination Center.
Is that sound right? Yeah, I think so.
Sounds right to me that all field offices are going to be
increased their deployment of personnel with wave number 13
deployment dates. Have this, it's a pay period.
The Atlanta field office going to send 17 fans per wave.
That means there's going to be a nationwide 175.
Fans are going to be sent plus seven, senior fans, which are
the supervisors. I guess a total of 182 law
enforcement fans Personnel. It's going to be 26 people per
wave being sent down from these offices.
Has to go down to the Border. You think that fans are
well-suited going to the Texas border?
Going to the Arizona border to process?
Migrants? Is that a skillset?
You think they're trading at the fans Academy's?
Know I'll say the Phantom's are highly trained and very flexible
in their, their ability to think on their feet because they have
the you operate with almost no direct Supervision in the sense
of there's not somebody over your shoulder constantly telling
you what to do just like, guys, when you're doing Intel or
surveillance packages. You have to problem solve in the
field and there's no Daddy you can call and be like, hey, I
have a problem. Can you solve it for me?
They're like, I don't even know where you are.
So the Air. Marshals could I like to do it?
That's true. They don't know where to look
like, I'm in West Virginia. What are you got there?
Like, yeah, it like that. I remember calling my
supervisor. I'm like, hey, we've got a
problem. Blah blah.
He's like, okay, what country are you doing?
I'm like, Exactly got it. Exactly.
But Air Marshals where they do really well is shooting and
behavioral detection. Really good.
Obviously staying awake is a phenomenal.
Let it's a skill and being able to maintain Focus over long
periods of time. It is a scale for sure but yeah,
but send him down to the southern border to process
illegals. Entering the country doesn't
make any sense. Now, if you were saying, Saying
hey, go down there and we have we want you guys to be the
almost like the first phase of Behavioral detection to say.
We think this person's story is BS, like go chat with them
because you see enough people where you start picking up the
indicators of deception and deviations from Baseline
Behavior so that would be a more appropriate use case.
Like we would do, I personally did stuff for the United Nations
General Assembly. Looking for suicide, bombers In
Crowd. Because behavioral detection
that makes sense but sitting them down to a processing is
also like a like a side benefit that you can see over the whole
crowd. Like yeah that's one of your
unique special skills. Pick me because I'm a giraffe.
It's true. Yeah going down there because
I've got buddies and I won't say any of their names but I've got
buddies down there right now that have done multiple
rotations on the border and they've some of them initially
volunteered for it because they're like okay hey this is
the mission like I'm a patriot like I'm a public servant this
This is my job. We're going to protect the
country. They get down there and they're
like, we're not protecting the country.
We're just letting this stuff through, that's where the
disenfranchisement. And also the disrespect, just
complete abuse of resources is happening right now and they
don't have law enforcement authorities on the border is,
what I was told is that is that your understanding as well as in
they can't, they might be able to carry a gun, but they can't
actually go and enforce federal law in a broad spectrum.
Yeah, well every law enforcement agency has their narrow
jurisdiction. Ours is really good on
Intermodal Transportation, Tokyo convention, I say ours is in my
previous job, of course, but the Border Protection enforcement.
I mean, it's, you would almost have to put them in a situation
to for deadly force to happen, which they could use deadly
force, but you'd have to force them into a situation where they
would use it and then they'd be authorized to use it.
But again, That doesn't seem like a good use of the
resources. If you will, for a agency that
costs almost a billion dollars a year to run.
Yeah, one-tenth of what the FBI costs and you're talking about
just they have one really specific, specialized skill set
that they own and crafts. And then we're not going to use
the tool for what it's for. I always told people that having
the FBI, the way it was right now because it's an Intel agency
that has a, you know, a law enforcement capability.
It's like taking a screwdriver and Welding it on the end of a
hammer. And then you've got this really
bulky awkward, you know, /. But you've got a hammer that
can't get close to a lot of stuff, too, because it's got the
screwdriver. On the end of the balance is all
off and its proximity. So you just have a tool that
doesn't work. It does two things poorly.
Instead of one thing really well.
And then you've taken this home to knife and you're like, you
know what, that be really good for.
Let's just unscrew all these light plates, we're going to
take all the face plates off. All my my electrical outlets
with this freaking sharpest knife.
Yeah, it's um it's it's disrespectful.
Not only to the talent that is recruited in the fams but also
to the American taxpayer, because they deserve more than
that and they have an expectation, right of what that
what that bruise doing? They should they should have an
expectation. It's their money.
Sending these sending these guys into training to get them
trained better than anybody else specifically with a pistol to
operate in an undercover capacity, internationally at a
moment's notice deploy to meet threats.
Within that Intermodal Transportation Network, that is
that's what the deal is. They're like okay, we'll fun
this, but just throw them down on the southern border as a ride
along or to help warm up sandwiches and a processing
facility is insanity. Truly truly, it is folks.
If you want more hot takes on this we did an entire Twitter
space that went on for at least three hours, maybe more with
Sony lobosco. So you can listen to more of
that stuff. I want to Pivot to something.
I think that Is actually more broadly interesting to people at
this point. Let's talk about Archway.
Let's talk about how you decided to get into that space.
Let's talk about some of the work that you guys do, and then
we may just free form on some of these these current event topics
because this is your business now, and you know, unfortunately
business is full of opportunities.
It sounds like. Yeah, it's um, well, Archway
started actually. I was in I'll never forget it as
in Istanbul and middle of the night.
My phone rang picked up the phone had multiple, as you guys
probably. Bleep.
Multiple phones picked up the phone.
That was ringing. I'm like yeah.
Hello again traveling as much as we did.
No idea what's going on. Somebody's talking about a bomb
I'm like okay was there a bombing at Istanbul airport or
something or whatever and look Who do we freeze?
Yeah, bear with us. One second folks.
I think you guys froze but yeah, we did.
All right, so I got bombing and then you were saying You know,
let me check one second. Try that one more time.
So how our choice started was I was in Istanbul.
I don't know how much you guys heard.
But yeah, I remember that. There was a bombing on a phone
and then it kind of disappeared out on us.
Okay, so I looked at my phone it was my mother was my private
phone. Oh yeah, bomb didn't explode.
She was at church. So for the Catholics in the in
the audience who are aware of, there's a thing called adoration
so Catholics, pray at church 24 hours a day, 7 days, a week.
365. So she was in an she was
fulfilling an adoration slot and a police officer came into the
Adoration chapel and said, hey I need you to leave right now.
There we found a bomb against one of the doors in this small
little town in Minnesota and she's like, what?
This is, a town of like sub. 4,000 people not big at all.
So, she called me. She's like, the police officer
had me look around my car to see if anything was tampered or
Vicious. And then when I said, wasn't, he
said getting your car, get out of here and they got rid of the
bomb, however, that happened. But at that point I'm like, and
this is already, I'm hitting that disenfranchisement with my
current Mission set being in Istanbul for the seventh time
that month or whatever it was. And I'm like, wow.
So if a church with a school attached, I mean, these people
have no idea how to handle this and Air.
Marshals, believe it or not. Some of our, a lot of our
training is explosives because of the concern of bringing a
bomb on an aircraft like, well, maybe I should start a company
to help train schools and churches on how just reasonable
mitigation, for instance, like this because I don't think any
of them are ready and this was already during a time where we
saw. Oh, increased violence in
faith-based or houses of worship in the u.s.
It was right around that time where those attacks started
skyrocketing. So that all those pieces
together kind of brought me to the point of like, yeah, you
know, I'm done. Maybe I'll look at something
else and transition Out. Start our train fast forward and
that's what we did. Now, you mentioned to me, you
got three buckets of business, maybe tell people what those
three look like. And then sort of the diversity
of training you go through that, which it's got to be, you know,
depending on the the Training. You're going to get a very, very
different class. I have to imagine very much.
So the so the three arches of Archway or the three buckets of
our business is law enforcement, training State, local and
federal law enforcement. And most of that training is
based on weapons development, SWAT team, training Firearms,
instructor development or solo active or solo officer responds
to active shooter and some vehicle courses and stuff like
that. Then we have our middle bucket
which is our corporate clients and That's more workplace
violence mitigation crime. Prevention through environmental
design design, helping to like hardened their facilities while
not turning it into a prison looking facility.
And then the last Arch way or the bucket is faith-based and
that's a lot. Honestly a lot more of a charity
that we do now just because the finances are never there and we
just try to help them as much as we can.
Now checks out let's let's talk about a little bit.
Some of the current events that are out there.
You've got experience, And people everyone from folks, who
carry gun professionally to folks who probably wake up in
the morning and, you know, would be in what we call it Gary
Cooper's, you know, white color mode.
You know, the multiple colors. Do, you know the colors off the
top of your head or those something you can speak to a
little bit and kind of explain to people?
Yeah, and I'll probably butcher some of them.
But code, black is where you just shut down.
You got sensory overload, your your Rolodex hasn't really
filled in on what to do in that specific specific situation.
That's where people are. In shock and they just they're
not responding white. I believe is something to the
effect of you basically think the world is a bunch of unicorns
and everything's fine around you.
Yes. Moms Demand Action.
Maybe yeah. Everywhere between there.
I think there's a condition like yellow and red yellow.
Orange and red. Exactly.
Right. Yeah.
So we're it's a sliding scale between those two and the goal
is from my understanding is trying not to stay in that read
all the time because honestly it's Not sustainable and nobody
walks around exactly like burnout range.
Yeah. You're never going to be able to
sustain. The key is just pick up on
indicators or really focus on what you need to focus on and
kind of relax on mostly everything else.
We both probably have buddies who live in the red and they're
really hard to be around for too long.
It's like there's not, this isn't a bond flick.
Ninjas are not coming from the ceiling panels.
Yeah. Any second of the day, like it
violence, once you've seen enough violence, you kind of
start seeing the indicators of who you have to pay attention to
and what indicators you need to be aware of.
And then start elevating your own response without any risk of
giving away your training for free.
Because it takes hours, and hours, and days and days to just
even get the Baseline. All of these things, but maybe
kind of tell people, some of the stuff that you're teaching, the
kind of Behavioral techniques, you're having people observe on.
I'm more than happy to kind of pump a business that does this.
Because so many people are looking around going, you know,
what is my responsibility in the world?
They often think that it's the police are going to come and
save them, and I think we all kind of are realizing, that's
not the case. It doesn't matter whether you're
looking at the Covenant School, you know, the police who showed
up there and we could do it kind of a quick talk on that too.
But, you know, excellent operators.
Who just had the right tools? The right tactics and nailed it.
And yet you still can't beat the bad guy.
That's already decided to come and do something.
So, what kind of things are you looking at?
That people can be aware of even if they're unarmed, you know,
like your average mom. Your average person who's a
retiree, who's not going out there, trying to, you know, go
to CrossFit Gyms and carry a gun, every single second of the
day, which advocate for maybe not the CrossFit, but the gun
part. Yeah.
So the start with, and I was on, I don't know if Michele Tafoya
is podcast and it was after an active shooter.
And she's Like asked a similar question and my response was
start with the concept of evil is real and if you don't believe
that, nothing I say matters after this, if you don't believe
that evil is real, I can't help you because what happened in
Texas or what happened at covenant, or what happened at
Parkland that is pure evil and to fail to acknowledge that
you're setting yourself up for failure.
So if you get if you acknowledge that evil is real now we can
have a conversation. Then it's acknowledge that most
people act similarly in a similar way in a similar
situation and I know that's kind of vague but hear me out if you
think of like a coffee shop or a restaurant that you normally go
to frequently, there's a baseline Behavior.
That's pretty stereotypical. If you will for that specific
coffee shop or restaurant, and we I use the air marshal analogy
this way. Have you ever flown to Vegas?
And I know the answer was you Yes.
But Bill also. Yep.
So everybody's flown to Vegas.
Now, think about kind of visualize.
I'm big on visualization. Put yourself on that flight from
wherever you left from to Vegas. What would you describe as the
baseline or the normal kind of average behavior of most of the
people on that flight? I feel like there's probably,
you know, three buckets of people.
There's people that are going home.
So that's okay. There's probably a group of
people that are really excited about going to Vegas.
They look like the guys from swingers.
Beginning of the drive to Vegas, right?
And then then maybe you've got someone in between who's got
some business and they're just a grown-up and they're going to
Vegas, but it's not like a thrill, but I think those are
kind of your three categories off the top of my head.
Perfect spot on. Now, remember the last time you
left Vegas, what's the average Behavior?
Generally, speaking of, most, of the people leaving Vegas going
anywhere. Yeah, they're either dejected
because they lost all their money, right?
Or their psyche, because they just got married to some
strippers. Something like there's kind of
like a very small percentage of those, you don't see a whole lot
of like super positive energy. Shawna on a Vegas outbound
flight. So part of part of our training
was blend in with whatever the dress vire environment, whatever
is normal on that leg act that way.
So if people are clapping clap, if people are just sitting
there, Pecking away at the screen in front of them, be that
person. So the concept is acknowledge
that most people, it's actually emergent Norm Theory.
So if you want to get a little nerdy with me for a second,
there's researchers I believe it's Killian and somebody else
but emergent Norm Theory and I might be butchering that but
it's the concept that most people will change their
behavior to fit in with a crowd because of the instinctual need
to feel connected with those around us.
However, when you're there for a different purpose, You will act
differently. And when we talk about a suicide
bomber, I do this with our Aviation Security.
Clients everybody in the room and not ask you today.
If you knew absolutely knew today was the last day of your
life, would you act differently today than you acted yesterday?
Clearly. Absolutely Uninvited.
The certainty of your own mortality will change your
behavior because there is no thought process of, there's a
tomorrow. If you look at when we're
looking for specifically, Aviation or sports and
entertainment for suicide, bombers like Ariana Grande
bombing look for behavior that is outside, the Baseline that
bleeds indicators because they know, deep down inside that
today is the last day of their life, they will act differently
than everyone. Nell surround them.
So we start with behavior transcending behavior from what
they look like what they're dressed, like everything else
because that all changes, but the behavior, the indicators
are. Ultimately what matters?
Because behaviors what presses? The trigger uses a knife or
presses? The Detonator.
So one of the things that I remember doing surveillance that
you have to really help new guys, new gals that are in the
business, overcome is the sort of guilty knowledge that you're
there to watch people. And I got to imagine it works on
the opposite way to Bad guys. But like for example, if I'm
trying to spot you and I see you in an airport.
If I were to naturally, make eye contact with you, you're a tall
guy, you stick out of the crowd. Got a big beard and long hair so
I go like oh that's that's like a tall guy with you know, he
looks like one of my old bosses. He looks like one of the dudes I
used to work with and I, and if I make eye contact with you, I
would either have a head nod or it would be, a nothing would be
a neutral. We would just have an eye
contact for a moment and leave when I see people that are
deliberately trying to avoid eye contact.
That's weird. Right?
Like that's an indicator. Like, why are they trying to do
that? And it's because they have the
knowledge that they're trying to watch me and When you watch new
guys, do surveillance, they're never trying to make eye contact
with the subject. They don't want to have a
pleasantry. They don't want to have that
contact and you gotta break people of it.
There's nothing more normal than walking up and seeing the
subject that you're surveilling and going.
Hey, how's it going? The guy goes, oh, you know,
crappy or whatever and you go like yeah.
Well, you know, if this weather would make anybody mad or
something that's just a throwaway and then they forget
you. But if you go up there and they
go, how's it going? And you go look great.
You know just fine and then you walked off and you look really
weird. I'm not a cop.
That's exactly right.
Because people freeze in that thing, because they're not
prepared for a reasonable interaction with normal people,
so that the change in that Baseline is very pronounced and
then that person's like that was weird.
And now they're hooked up. Now they're looking around for
what other weird things may happen and nothing weird may
happen again, but now you've set them at Ed, you know, on an
edge. Yeah.
So we start with a lot of just like you guys the behavioral
side I think it's an underappreciated skill set that
can be developed. So even on our in 20:19 I
co-founded a tech startup where we use Virtual Reality,
augmented reality to speed up training and ultimately it comes
down to research proves that about an hour and a headset is
equivalent to 10 hours in a classroom which is a phenomenal
Roi on training time for sure. So we put our one of our first
products was actually an active shooter program for O'Hare and
Midway Airport systems that we launched in 2022.
And now this year, we're launching a behavioral detection
situational, awareness level. And an IED intro to explosives
and blast mitigation, all Envy are so taking the knowledge of
guys, like you guys like us all of our Network, putting it into
a headset and trying to get them, the same amount of
training in a fraction of the time.
Yeah, it's it's kind of interesting.
So how does a regular person? So we've already talked about
you're going to have to accept that there's evil in the world.
I agree with you, 100%, if you don't understand that, there's
some evil out there, you've obviously never experienced it.
Even if you can't theorize that, then we're going to have some
real problems for the base understanding of you.
And I are not looking at the same world, right?
So that's pretty easy. And then, once they start kind
of looking for these behavioral Departures, what are some of the
things that people can kind of look at and go?
You know, we're all going to see ghosts in that space and and
surveillance guys are the best at it.
Like every surveillance guy thinks they have a surveillance
team on them at some point in time and so you can actually
lock up. Why, why would someone be
following you? Which I have that reason now
which is fun. And, and then when you can
actually say like this, The reasons, you know, not just that
identify this person. But here's some concrete
behaviors that are so far outside the deviation of normal.
When I was at El Paso's airport the other day.
I landed I slipped the guys I thought were surveilling me.
I watched them. Go down to baggage claim and 15
minutes later they came back Upstream towards the security
area looking for me frantically, which is hilarious.
But at the same time like that knocks that home for me.
It's like, I might be being followed know, I'm being
followed knows the two dudes that I already id'd doing it.
That's a different animal, so, yeah.
How do you, how do you get from the, the, you know, I'm not
going to see ghosts and And of living without just being in the
red like some of our buddies, who are basically, like I said
living in a bond flick. Yeah.
So the the part of it comes with a psychological preparedness of
what are you willing to take responsibility for in your own
life? Like, I'm not worried about a
new capping right now here because if it does the
probability is I'm within the blast radius of the Twin Cities
metro and if it happens there I'm gonna die quickly or of
radiation and a week or so. So I'm not really worried about
that. Because that's outside of the
scope of my control. Now, I'm inside my house and we
have layers of security that don't look like security because
we Harden locks and windows and stuff like that security cameras
that are hidden. So I'm not that stressed when
but at the same time, I have access to a firearm just
guessing you do right now of course.
And so I'm kind of analyzing what I'm going to take
responsibility for a teach. Each second of the day.
Now when I go out, I'm lucky enough to be married.
My wife is a Balor, I used to say dancer, but then people will
get the wrong idea. She's a ballerina, classically
trained. So she was in a show in Downtown
Minneapolis last night and so if she's like, oh, we're going to
have a cast after party afterwards.
I'm like, that's fine. I'm I'll be this over cab.
I'll drive. I'm not going to drink because
I'm not going down to a theater unarmed in Minneapolis because
I'm going to take responsibility for.
Myself and, obviously, her protection while I'm there.
So, they're there for, when I come out, you do your quick,
little casual scan of just, what's around me?
Okay, homeless guy across the street fair enough, there's some
people sitting out at a little restaurant.
Having a drink, they're pretty low on my radar and then cars
driving by no abnormal pattern, we're good.
So then taking that that quick scan of your life and realizing
you are not in a Bond film first and that you are not Not in a
unicorn Fairyland either so kind of bridge it and then control
the classic saying, is control the controllables.
Again, I can't stop. If I can't help it.
If there's a vehicle that is an IED, that was parked their RV by
AB that was parked there, two days in advance in front of the
theater. Like, that's a good chance.
That's outside my skill set, unless I happen to see some
indicators based on my training and experience.
So don't stress about the stuff you can't control.
Knowledge, what you can control? What's inside your scope and
then work through that, to hone your, either your Hardware, or
your firmware to better. Mitigate what do you, what do
you prioritize? Because everybody's only got X
number of hours in the day, right?
Not everybody is going to be able to sit and spend all their
time like working up to operator status as a shooter operator
status as a Brazilian jiu-jitsu technician.
You know not everybody's going to have all the skills all the
time. So if you were going to put like
this is the most important thing you should do for your personal
protection. So where do you start and then
maybe like the two runners-up if that?
Yeah, so I would say the first the biggest skill set in this is
not what people love to hear on Instagram but the biggest skill
set start with situational avoidance.
So if you know that your skill set is not there and that you're
not comfortable competent or physically fit or blah, blah,
blah, situational avoidance from a legal aspect is better,
anyway? Just avoid stupid situations if
you feel the situation, Oceans getting stupid did email out of
there and just be done with it. So I'd start with that, then
going into that reasonable defense.
Now, I always you actually, can I ask question you have the FBI
so when you were in the academy you had different people from
different backgrounds in unarmed or DM defensive measures or
recall defensive tactics but same idea.
Yep, yeah, yeah, defensive tactics.
So the disparity of force like Like I'm 250 pounds and almost
65 and I've thought for a bit and I'm comfortable fighting.
If you put me up against like my sister, very lover death, mother
of five. I mean super short maybe weighs
like nothing on a good day. She will never beat me right
ever. No matter how much you could
train with, with every UFC fighter in the world, for the
rest of her life and she will never be Right?
I mean outside of holy, no, see and taking away my ability to
see or breathe? Which now she has a good chance
of beating me. So acknowledge what your
strengths and weaknesses are. And then find ways of mitigating
that through whether its technology, or or weapon
platforms, I'm a huge fan of Defense Techo.
See if you want to just break distance and not use deadly
force if you can avoid it, it's always a always a good good
decision in the civilian side. To avoid deadly force.
If at all possible. Yeah.
That's what your criminal tell you your criminal liability is
nasty criminal and civil liability.
Because remember, even if you win the criminal, you still have
the Civil side which is that can bankrupt you also.
So you're not going to go to jail if you win this the
criminal but you might lose everything if you lose the
Sybil. So the reasonableness of force,
anytime I can get away. I love OC.
Great. Great tool.
Solid flashlight has even carrying one at the theater with
me last night because You get approached by just that low
level idiot Criminal on the street if I can avoid using
actual physical violence against him, if we have to have an
encounter, I'd prefer that and a great flash to the face, take
away their eyesight for a second and give them the opportunity to
reevaluate their decisions in life, such a good way of saying
it. So there's a guy named DJ DJ
Shipley familiar with him. He runs a training.
Yep I don't know him personally but I know the name.
Sure. You kind of have some of the
same. I'm Vive is DJ and one of the
things that I really like that, I listen to him.
This is for folks who are not aware of Shipley, he's a former
SEAL Team Six operator, his story is actually
heart-wrenching and it's really incredible.
His dad was a seal to. I actually use to follow his
dad. Who does the he does the
investigations into fake seals and yes, so he's found a ton of
them. Yeah, Dan Shipley, interesting
guy to, you know, early social media adopter and was like
really pissy about Jews that were faking seal.
So I get that. But DJ Shipley says something
about, you know, the idea of carrying an extra magazine.
Now, when you're law enforcement, you got it.
An extra magazine because the possibility of getting have
having to actively engage in a pro active shooting situation
exists, although probably still pretty small.
We've seen it. Go really quickly and you need
it. But his take on not carrying an
extra magazine when he's carrying his everyday carry
pistol. Was something that changed my
thought process. And his thought was, if I'm
carrying an extra magazine, there's a possibility that I'm
getting into a shooting situation where I have to
reload, and if I've got a Reload, I probably should be
wearing body armor. If I got to wear body armor, I
probably should have a rifle and some magazines for That, and if
I'm doing all those, what the hell am I doing there?
And so your situation avoid is, I'd never heard it said, just
that way, but it's 100% correct. That if there's a possibility
that you need to upgrade your capabilities to deal with the
situation you're going on, you need to ask yourself why you're
going there. Are you getting paid?
You got to go. Get drink it.
Out of something nasty. There may be a place where you
got to go, get your kid out of somewhere ugly.
And so, that's a real thing. But there's got to be a real
compelling reason for you to engage somewhere where you have
to carry more things. Yeah, so let's take the Riots of
in Minneapolis. I was actually last night.
One of the other performers, her husband was a former Minneapolis
cop who was on the rooftop during the riots.
Trying to defend the third precinct from being burnt to the
ground and obviously then getting burned up with it and
there was a point during those riots in the Twin Cities where
it's like, okay we're going to hunker down at home.
People are calling like a why are you going down there and
getting involved with the riots and taking them down?
And Are you out of your mind like right?
No, the battle space if you will.
So right? So you transition even let's do
it. Just to a current event.
So this guy Perry goes down into the BLM rice.
But he's driving for Uber right. Totally different agreed.
Maybe your take on that because I think people are interested in
that everyone has an instinct what self-defense looks like and
yet they're not professionals and they don't teach the number
of people that you do. They don't have the background
that guys like you. And I necessarily have, I'd love
to hear your take on it and you Know the whys and why Nots?
Yeah. So to my knowledge, he was
actively working at for Uber at the time, like he was that is
was up and he was taking rides. Correct.
That's my understanding of yep. Yep.
So now he is a reluctant participant because he is
physically at work. So to protect himself in a
mobile office, a vehicle, which is his property still protected
under the Fourth Amendment. He has reasonable means of
privacy, right? But he also has a reason Means
of his own self-preservation. So if he, when people talk about
going down into a situation that doesn't directly affect you,
there's a different conversation there but for this anytime when
somebody's at work, I generally unless some facts come out of
left field. I generally give the benefit of
the doubt to the person who is working as the reasonable actor
in the equation. So when I heard that he was
working, Uber and that we all saw the video of his car was
surrounded. If I'm not mistaken or if I
getting your facts wrong, please correct me.
But I believe his vehicle was surrounded and then he was
approached by somebody with a rifle.
I'm not mistaken. I was carrying a slung AK-47
model. Yep.
And then, at some point, the
rifle came up like a mouse. Yeah.
Kind of a low ready, so they mentioned that, it wasn't
pointed at him. What you?
And I both know the difference, maybe you can talk to some of
that, you know. Hello ready.
How do you feel about that? Is that a threat to you?
If you have a gun in your looking at me the wrong way,
you're a threat to me, because we did a, there's a couple
videos on YouTube where I did a one second draw from The holster
on a Target, that was 200 yards away.
And the concept is that actions faster than reaction.
If you have a weapon and you're looking at me, not like a.
Hey, what's up, man? Like, I might shoot you.
I know that I statistically have roughly about a half a second to
one second. Of your reaction to put around
on. That is not a lot of time.
I'm behind the power curve already, right?
Because you're already decided something and you're carrying a
weapon system, correct. And you're carrying a weapon
system that far Oaks out seeds. My capability of my defensive
pistol that I have on me, so the disparity of force but also, the
concept of I've carried a weapon.
Most of my adult life and I don't get in shootings.
Really that often because it turns out round pulling guns on
people and looking at them like I want to kill them, right?
Because that kind of what we call.
Escalation of force can happen then.
So, when when I see a video of somebody who's LARPing for lack
of better words in the middle of a protest and then approaching
somebody and trying to what we call induce fear, which in state
of Minnesota, we used to have a thing like strong armed robbery
Were if you were implying or trying to show that you could
use force, it was a strong arm. In this case, he's clearly
brandishing them and he puts his hands on the weapon.
I would say. Yeah.
So if his both, if the subject, suspect hands were clear and
he's like, hey, get out of here, get out of here and get shot.
Totally different story. As soon as both hands are in the
weapon in any type of a fighting position and you're within range
of me now. It's a totally different story.
There's no I have not found any case law.
That requires an individual to be shot first before they defend
themselves and that's where it is, right?
And that's the real piece of it. It's the action-reaction thing I
know you've done the same drills that I've done, by the way,
pulling a one-second draw, and, and knock it around at 200
yards. That's a spicy, that's a spicy
spicy move. I can do that at about 15 and I
don't spend nearly as much time doing that stuff as I can.
But that, that is a testament to some serious skill.
And there are people in the world that are like that.
And if you If you come up against somebody, you're going
to kill them in that situation because the skillset you have.
And generally speaking even my skill set is going to kill
people if they decide to do something stupid like put two
hands on a weapon and put them, you know, near my family.
I'm going to end you. And I know you feel the same way
just because I know we have that sort of commonality.
It's incredibly dangerous to see someone that is decided like you
say, LARPing and wants to walk into that role because they
obviously are not considering the consequences of what they
are implying to a skilled participant on the other end.
Yeah, or even, even to that fact, an unskilled participant,
take my sister again, if she has a license carry permit to carry
whatever state. You're in, whatever the verb
engines, people use, all she has to be, is in reasonable fear of
great, bodily harm or death. That is a general term that's
used in most States. Now, obviously look up your own
state law. If you're listening, but you
should know what that. What that threshold is for
justifiable use of deadly force, and reasonable, fear of great.
Oddly harm or death. If you grab a rifle and you're
looking at me walking towards me and bringing it up, even if it's
still at low, ready with your hands on it.
And your posture is something I can articulate as a fighting
stance. I am in reasonable fear of
great, bodily harm or death. And I don't want this
interaction, but you are forcing it.
And that's a huge difference. Let's talk about the Marine
quickly. That Jordan, a leadeth, I don't
even know the Marines name, and I think it's kind of interesting
because I know the guy that the so-called victim who was a a
homeless person that's been arrested, what?
44 times something to that effect.
T' you two were so so he's and they keep showing us these
videos from like 2011, when he's dancing in A Streetcar and doing
a Michael Jackson routine. That's obviously not what
happened. You lived in New York for a
while, you've been on the Subways, I've lived I've not
lived in but my wife is from New York.
I've spent too much time in New York for my liking already and
I've seen these people. What's your take on something
like that? Because I think there's probably
tubing. There's probably two pieces to
it that are really critical. Yeah.
The the key is one. I'm going to transcend that
specific incidents for just one second.
Please that city has bastardized, their police force
and attack, their police force for so long and said that they
are all racist, horrible people, and that everything that's wrong
with this city is basically because of the NYPD
paraphrasing. But I mean, the whole defund,
the police movement, the blaming the police for Every interaction
that they have, that goes south because of subject action.
So, first and foremost, everything that happened on that
Subway. I'm going to put right on the
shoulders of the politicians that created the situation where
one criminals are being led out of.
Let out after being arrested over and over the revolving
door. We've all heard it.
You said something. I think it was 40-something,
arrest. And by the way, one of those was
abducting or 10 attempt of a attempting to abduct, The
seven-year-old girl if I'm not mistaken.
Yeah. And his last one is that he had
an assault charge that was pending and he had a like an
active warrant for an assault. So I mean violence is in the
it's definitely in the mix so then just when I hear this
because obviously I after this I'll be on another radio show.
Talking about different active shooter violence incidents
people are like, well what do you think?
But we have a lifelong career criminal.
Yeah, maybe he knew how to moonwalk.
Awesome. And then we have somebody who
was not a lifelong Criminal Who Did not wake up wanting to get
into a violent altercation with somebody.
I'm saying that innocent until proven guilty but right now I'm
going to give the benefit of the doubt until I hear other
information towards the non lifelong criminal who didn't
wake up that day, wanting to kill somebody.
What do you think about that? And I agree with you on a
percent on that too. I didn't think we'd have much of
a different take. What is interesting is that he
held the guy supposedly for 15 minutes which is tells me, 24
years old son. Experience with some combatives.
I'm sure they teach basic combatives.
I mean, you, and I have probably, I'm guessing you've
choked people out. I've joked people out.
I've done it. Two guys who were in the army
that thought they were tough at Airborne school because they
were your size, and they thought they were going to attack a
little guy like me. It turns out, I'm actually kind
of heavy for my size so and I have more skill.
You can't lower your head and hit me in the waist.
It's not going to work well. So I've done, you know,
Guillotine guys out. But at some point you got to
also know the difference between letting it sink in letting him
lose Consciousness, which is not fatal.
By any means, you can do a blood choke or an air choke where he
really did damage. It sounds Like 15 minutes.
What do you think? What do you attribute that to?
I mean, I've only seen a couple minutes of the video, but the
generally speaking, I would say that the, the reasonableness
one, he is not a law enforcement officer, therefore he should not
be judged in the same light of the training and experience for
civilian law enforcement. That is a different standard
because they're giving different tools, different Authority and
different training, specifically in combatives on D, escalation
and less, lethal force, and all that other stuff check.
So, I'm not apply the same standard.
To this Citizen. And maybe he is a marine or he
was a marine. Sounds like, yeah, sounds like
no longer working for the Marine Corps at this point.
But either way, but right prior service and great, but prior
service, the only training that I'll take into account in his
prior service, would be his ability to see a threat and
respond accordingly for the self preservation of himself.
So I'm like, okay, he clearly thought that this guy was a
threat reasonable fear. He had A fear of great bodily
harm. At least at least bodily harm
for himself or others which is from what we've seen in the
video makes sense and eyewitness videos already saying that her
eyewitness testimony saying the same exact thing.
Yes, the 15 minutes, I could chalk it up to a million
different things but at the end of the day, it doesn't really
matter because he was the suspect was still fighting with
him on the ground. You could see there was still a
complete unwillingness to change the behavior.
The co be of The suspect. So again lifelong criminal tried
to abduct kids assaulted people. Versus a veteran who woke up and
was likely coming or going from a job and did not try to start
the interaction or that or he's not even from there.
And that may be the case too. And he's just a guy who's on,
you know, who's just a Subway passenger as a tourist, which
I've been that all that not really a tourist I guess, but
I've always thought that I might choose somebody in a New York
Subway, if I was there because it's It's bad.
It's horrible. I mean, the number of times that
we were on the subway, I'm like we need to stop taking the
Subway because I don't want to get in an off-duty shooting here
and there are so many idiots that are trying to provoke an
assault or trying to invoke. I mean, the videos coming up
people being pushed into onto the tracks by these Psychopaths.
Yep. In New York, the assaults down.
There are ridiculous. So everybody knows it.
Everybody in New York. And by the way, this is not new
for New York. If you remember, there's a huge
landmark. Case, believe in back in the 70s
where the Subways were. So dangerous.
That people just got, they wouldn't go down there one guy.
He was getting robbed by a couple kids and he pulled out a
gun and shot two or three of the kids.
I forgot the case. But long story short, there's
headlines of he was a hero at the time because everybody was
so sick and tired of being attacked, abused, and robbed on
the, on the transit system. In New York, back in the 60s, or
70s. And it led to people Apple that
were so-called trained in martial arts.
This was the red beret sort of thing.
The Red Jackets this is Curtis Lee Wells operation.
I have a weird connection through my in-laws to him but
end of the day he recruited a bunch of guys to basically ride
the Subways. I think they were called
guardian angels and people can check me in the comment section
but they rolled around and they were marked as such.
And they just basically said, look if law enforcement is not
going to be down here we are. And hey man, I don't know karate
but I know crazy. And I'm going to take you down
and that was kind of the move, right?
And so there's there's a lot of history and it's not even
vigilantism. It's essentially like filling
Gap between the expectation of law.
Enforcement's ability to solve the problem and you're just
general responsibility is another citizen.
Look, you're a man, you're responsible for women around
you, that's the way I was raised.
I know you feel the same way about, you know, that's why you
get into a guardian protector type role whether it's law,
enforcement, or military or otherwise.
But yeah, it's crazy to think that I want to Pivot to, you
know, that we could sit there and talk about that.
But I think end of the day also, maybe talk real quickly about
the sympathetic response and the ability to judge time when
you're in the middle of a fight. Like That.
Yeah, anybody who's actually been in a real fight even
training. If you've been a boxer,
Brazilian jiu-jitsu MMA, anything or been in combat, or
self-defense, or even got to the point where you, you thought you
had to go weapons hot, the time Distortion is ridiculous.
I don't know if went how many times you've experienced it, but
I'm guessing you've experienced it.
We had some chats will keep out of this from Shot Show which
stuff gets spicy. And in that time that
hyper-focus comes in. And if you put a gun to my head
and you're like, tell me exactly how much time passed.
I could not tell you exactly how much time passed because I don't
know. That was not how the brain
processes that information once that amygdala fires, the
prefrontal cortex is disengage. So from a physiological
standpoint it's reasonable to say that he lost track of time,
which because he's in fight or flight in that survival mode.
It's always been my argument. Argument for the three cops.
We just saw a manslaughter conviction for the guys that
were at the Derek Chauvin situation and it's like, look,
you're acting like he was sitting there paying attention
to what this dude was doing and he may not have known at all and
have having worked CPR, you know, been on on scenes and done
codes. If you'd said, how long were you
on seeing? The only reason I know is
because we rotate for CPR, compressions, and I've got a
timer running on the pads. That tells me how long I've been
working the code. If you ask me in any reasonable
setting, I have no idea. It could have been 15 minutes.
It could been 45. It could have been three
minutes. It's and sometimes that's the
case. You've been there for three
minutes and you're like, it's been an hour.
I'm exhausted and then you look up and you're like it's been
three minutes and 12 seconds like how what is going on here?
So yeah not, I've had to activate on a flight on multiple
flights before back in my day and we won't go into the
details, but some of them were hands on and More Physical in
the sense and the to this day, I the only time stamps I'll have
is the flight deck recorder where I'm calling up to the
captain after we've subdued everything.
And we know that roughly when it started and roughly one, it
ended from that time stamp. But in the moment, I had no idea
how long that was going because that was not my focus.
My focus was on preservation of Life of those around me.
Sure. I just want people to have that
awareness as they are potential jurors in.
These cases as they are looking in and and getting law
enforcement reactions that don't have the time to share all this
long-form information. You know, these are experiences.
You can't fake and you can't, you can't really accurately put
yourself. Be a peer of this person unless
you have gone through something that is fairly aggressive and
and is a very strong sympathetic response.
I want to just kind of pivot. There's only, you know, we could
probably talk about this for hours, if you and I want it to,
and it would be fun to this shooting happened in Texas.
I want to kind of talk about that.
That's easier World, Public Safety, Public, Safety Training.
You know, getting people aware of, this could happen at a
church. It could happen else.
People are always acting like, oh, I'm scared.
I can't go to a school. I can't go to a mall.
I can't go to church without having this stuff happen.
Lie, still pretty rare. Maybe.
Maybe some of the things that people should be doing in those
specific environment that are unique to a mall environment or
unique to a church. They can do that smart.
Yeah, so in those first, as soon as you get there, best thing you
can do is establish Baseline. If you've been there before,
check your previous knowledge of the location.
See, what does anything look off our their cars?
Parked in a location that cars aren't generally parked in.
Is the flow of traffic coming and going Early are the people
in the stores, is there even a quiet Focus?
Where people's heads are pointed in a Direction?
That's an early indicator, that there's something further away
that's outside of your sensory field that you cannot pick up
on. Which that those couple seconds,
it's a matter of it can be the matter of life and death.
So find those indicators and again it's not that Bond.
Flick of like walking around with your hands up all day.
Just look around. Say.
Okay, this is pretty normal. Everything's normal.
I'm going to check again and a little bit and anytime I see an
indicator that's outside of that green, what we call Green?
Just everything's you're going down the road.
You've got green lights in front of you keep going.
As soon as you start spotting that yellow Behavior or that
deviation from Baseline, that's the yellow light at the traffic,
you start making decisions. Do I speed up?
Do I slow down? Do I turn left turn right?
Start thinking of it in that light, red is really easy.
Once you start hearing gunshots, make a decision be decisive.
So don't hesitate. What do you think about making
that decision beforehand? Like as you walk in plans with
especially with kids and family and wives that don't necessarily
react to being yelled at like mine, whenever I yell at her to
do something, it's just like it's fries and stuff.
They don't fight or flight, a lot of people freeze in my
experience. So then part of it is specially,
if you're responsible, for the protection of others, and I say
responsible, in the sense of, if you're a parent, you're
absolutely responsible for the protection of others.
If you're an aunt and uncle or even a older child with, Your
parents who are becoming more elderly or you're just a good
human being in a public place. Start start looking at it from,
if you're in the responsible, for the protection of others.
And then when it's in the span of your control within family in
it, one of the things I do with my wife because again, she comes
from musical theater slightly different than our background.
Not a Hands-On occupation in the same way.
Yeah, I'm like, hey, just out of curiosity at if Happens here.
What would you do? And she looks around and she's
like oh I'd probably go over here, I'd go over there.
Like okay good. And it's not a stressful
conversation and it doesn't have to happen every day but every
couple weeks we'll have a chat about that.
And the more chance you have, the more natural, it becomes
where that reaction, you're building the neural Pathways
ultimately so that you don't go into that classic code black
where you have nothing to pull from.
If you build a narrow pathway of, okay, if something happens,
I can go there. Or I can go there.
Okay, I have two choices and then if something happens
re-evaluate and say, oh well, that one's much better than what
I previously, thought, but at least you've already mentally
put that through. We always say the body.
Can't go where the Mind hasn't been.
If you haven't put your mind there, you'll never be able to
respond. That's a really, really good one
to remember and it also has kind of a nice catchiness to it.
I feel like you should meme it and you should put it out there
and I will retweet that because I dig it.
It's so interesting. You said, looking for aberrant
behaviors that are Slightly out of the norm.
When we looked at the video of that, that shooter in Texas, he
parked at a stop sign and got out obviously, his dress code
would have let you know, but people don't get out of, you
know, when they're blocking in other cars in a mall parking
lot. So that's tip number one.
It may only be two seconds worth of warning, but it's enough for
you to know, like something is wrong and that Prime's you to be
able to go to that next step of maybe taking the next step of
safety correct in a lot of our SWAT team training that we do is
talks about, we work on hundredths and tenths of a
second on improving whether it's room clearing or weapons
manipulation or the split time shot between shots and we train
it, not in the sense of hate. You need to be a competition
shooter because a tenth of a second, you'll be a winner.
No, it's opportunities of violence.
Watching the video in Texas, think of time.
As opportunities of violence directed at you, or somebody who
doesn't deserve it down in Texas.
Listen to the splits. There were roughly point three
point two five. So About three to four rounds
per second can be fired on an average semi-auto handgun or
shotgun or rifle, which is pretty standard.
So, every time you talked about two seconds, you see somebody
parked at a stop sign in a parking lot and get out of a
car. If that gave you 2 seconds,
that's eight rounds of opportunity violence that you
took away from them and gave to yourself in the sense of
personal protection, mitigation where you're able to get away
from those eight rounds, because you gave yourself to seconds,
He's right now and I'm a competent shooter can probably
take a shot at 25 yards in under that amount of time.
So now you've opened up an opportunity and probably the
distance if you go get the training.
So let's talk about where people can come.
See you for training or other places that you recommend if you
want to kind of throw that out there, I'd like you to you know
throw out the websites and handles all the things because I
think it is really important stuff for people today.
Yeah, so our training is our church, our company's Archway
defense.com that's Archway defense like Archway to your
home defense like Department of Archway, defense.com handle,
Twitter, Archway, defense, we are back after being banned
about five years, for hauling out the media for
officer-involved shooting where they lied about.
So we're really excited to be back on Twitter Archway, defense
for Instagram, all of the social medias are the same thing
Archway defense. Now if you're getting training,
go to our Instagram page. And there's if you're looking
for a permit to carry, we worked with a we partnered with a
national firm that will do permit scary.
Phenomenal. Click the link.
Put in your ZIP code. You'll find a place to get your
permit to carry. That's a perfect start.
Even if you don't plan on carrying a firearm for
self-defense, it's a great course to go through to
understand the legal aspects of what you can and cannot do.
I think that's one of the most important pieces before you go
out and buy the new gun, or the new holster new.
Anything, like, go figure out the law and then back yourself
into it with the permits and the guns and all the other cool
gear. Very good.
Advice to you guys operate in the, the areas outside of the
Twin Cities. Are there other places that you
traveling nationally to teach people?
Yeah, I mean, most of April we were in, we're doing courses, in
Texas, and in Minnesota. And as I say, we travel
Coast-to-Coast, border-to-border for our training.
So we're all over, I'll be heading down to Chicago in a
week and then, coming back up to the Twin Cities.
We have an entire city government, all, sworn unsworn.
City workers that were training in situational awareness in our
VR product through our tech company.
I really do like that. If you come back down to Texas,
you gotta let me know. I'll come see you, guys, even
though it's a big state. I'll make, I'll make a special
trip to come, hang out. That be fun.
What about your work? Peter, thank you so much for
joining me today, folks, I want to throw up, thank you to our
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into, but I'm about to fly to Dulles, so I'll probably see
some fans on the way, so we'll see you guys very soon.
Thanks for joining us. Thanks for listening to the Kyle
Serafin. Show be sure to follow him on
Twitter and Truth at Tiles seraphin.
Thanks for listening to the Kyle Serafin.
Show be sure to follow him on Twitter and Truth at Tiles
seraphin.