The Armor on Their Back Is for Their Own Admin | Erica Gaines | Ep. 436

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But at the same time, like, is it just going to be sitting there not being used? Because then how is that resourceful? How is that respecting the purpose of that thing? I want them to donate them all to children. I like that. Except I think most of them probably aren't children's bikes. So therefore we have- You know what though?

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If they're criminals, it actually might be some little girl's princess bike with tassels that somebody jacked and it was found behind a gas station where they got arrested. You could commit a crime on a bike with tassels for sure. How did you get into what you do now? Your backstory is very interesting to me. Yeah.

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specifically around, I feel like, having known you for at least five minutes now, but I suspect your optic on things shifted after you went through a use of force trainer that you mentioned in your bio. It did.

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Which, by the way, is something that I recommend as many people as possible try because the misconception around decisions and why they are made in those environments is so wildly misunderstood. It is misunderstood, but it's also like under lock and key. Is it?

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The amount of times that I had ignorant comments and statements and questions for people that weren't answered because I didn't have this like... I didn't have the same perspective as after I did the scenario. And I was like, oh, maybe I have things wrong. I went into it very like, you guys should be shooting people in the leg. Why aren't you doing this? But here's the thing is on the TV.

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And they're like, what do you mean you don't know? It's like, I don't fucking know. And they're like, that's not you can't say I don't know. And they're like, we need you to describe exactly how it happened. And it was kind of in that moment that I realized, like, all these times that I've been asking everybody, like, are you OK? Like, I'm listening to cop stories.

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I'm hearing all the things while I'm knife girl. And in that moment, I'm like, you guys all fucking lied. I just played a fucking video game and I'm having this completely like involuntary physiological response. So like, what the fuck?

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But then I also realized in that moment, like, holy shit, like what if what people view as racism or bias is actually human limitation and a trauma response with such little, there's such little control there. And it's like,

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it's so easy to project onto that moment, or to that video that you see on YouTube, all of the bias that you have, or the really traumatic stories that we've heard, it's really easy to project that onto that scenario without recognizing sometimes there's not even room for that thought to be present. It's all just very, and again, right, it was a video game.

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But that was the most overwhelming experience that I had with violence. Like violence is not a part of my world. Yeah. I mean, racism is real for sure. Yeah. Somebody would be crazy to argue against that. But I land in the same place you do. The decisions that are requested of these people in the short period of time with limited information.

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That to me is even more reason that wellness is important, but also that, you know, the conversation around what people want from cops, it's not invalid because what I see is a lot of apathy. I'll add to that too. The biggest piece of advice I have for my friends who are in law enforcement is to develop a social circle that has absolutely nothing to do with law enforcement.

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I'm not saying cut your friends out. And I tell them, force yourself to spend time with people that you don't work with because otherwise all you do in your off time is talk with your buddies about what happens on your on time. And you are in this self licking ice cream cone that spirals nowhere. Yeah. And it's hard though. I get it.

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Especially the ones who are, you know, they can go all these different departments or they're a narc or they're a detective or they're SWAT and all. And those things are all amazing and they should be super proud of those things. But I've also been there when it was like the SWAT barbecue. And the families are there. It's so uncomfortable for the spouses because there's, I have to, bro.

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Everyone is talking shop, so I can't, there's nothing that I'm gonna bring to that conversation. Get in there and start making stuff up. So I can hold my own, but it's still, it's just a conversation about what are you doing? Well, this is what we're doing. Totally.

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I was just, so we met up with a girlfriend that works for Kalispell, and he immediately just starts like hamming it up with her, talking about like, what do you guys respond to this? And they're going back and forth. And I just said to him, I'm like, it's so funny how like, you're able to form these sort of surface level relationships with any cop because you can talk about work.

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Um, but I haven't, I've, I've been to Canada, Mexico, Honduras, no Bahamas, but I haven't been to Europe. So I, I would love to, like, I've been talking with agencies in Australia and England, just trying to understand how people are all kind of doing things differently. But no, I've spent most of my life here. I didn't get a chance to like go, like I was very much contained.

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I loved a very like sheltered life when I was younger. So now I'm like, I can do it all. I want to see everything. You should. I highly recommend it. I think I had to get a new passport because my birth date was incorrect on my passport, but I think it's my fourth one. And those other three were pretty full. Yeah.

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You're going to find that the agencies are all defined by their similarities, not their differences. It's going to, you might have a different uniform, different gun, all this different tactics. It's going to be the same root cause of, I think a lot of the issues that you're going to find globally. Yeah. I have a hot take. Send it.

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So I think I just think about how men deal with taking care of themselves. Alcohol. What? Right. Right. Or shoving it down. Right. So I think about you have to dig the hole first. But yes. And then you put it in the hole. But historically. men have dominated the law enforcement world. It doesn't matter if it's in America or if it's in another country.

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Like I, I used to do, um, it's called SWAT roundup and it's an international SWAT competition in Orlando. And so lots of other countries come in. So I've gotten exposure to other countries and how they work and they all view wellness or PTSD the same. Like it is, it's really fucking similar.

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Higher ups that are still in, you know, come from a world where you suck it up. Don't find the value of putting money towards something. You know, it doesn't seem to spend money on something proactive when you're not used to that. When you're constantly being reactive, it seems frivolous. Hmm.

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So I'm having to convince leaders of why they should be spending money on these things because it actually does, it might not mean productivity. It might mean loyalty. It might mean longevity. It might mean that your people don't take their lives.

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Let's do some hook, hook, pile tape or Velcro, depending on where they came from. Yeah. That Molly dude, once you do it, you're in fucking Molly. Um, you can't help what you love, you know, like some of us love, nobody should love Molly though. It is the most excessive, heaviest, visually like pointing out somebody with a tattoo. But it's tactical. It's not, it's heavy.

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But the outside of the bag doesn't draw any excess attention. Yeah. Like Vertex. Sure. There's a good example. That's the great person. That's the person who can navigate through that world and is very tactically proficient. Yeah. But you're not a beacon of like, look at me, look at me. And that actually, that person to me is way more effective and way more dangerous.

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It's like the guys that shake your hand. So shake my hand. What are you doing? Just do it. Just shake my hand. No, just do it. where the finger comes out and I'm like, ugh. Why do you have to let me know how tactical you are with your handshake? God, they're guarding the trigger well even on the handshake. Oh, it's real.

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will have to watch for their bias training. But that's what it looks like when you mandate something, it becomes a check the box thing, right? So we're having a lot of officers that somehow get access to a pre-recorded wellness training and it's like, do this, this, this, this, and this. Who the fuck is gonna do that when they're feeling stressed? If you don't know how to do it.

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Especially if you add to that, if you don't do this, this, this, and this, you can't do this or go back, they're just gonna get through it as fast as possible. And the way that I explain it is like, does it make sense to give a cop a gun on day one and be like, Godspeed. It depends on what the cop's going to do. You would never do. Right. Is he guarding a Walmart?

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That's probably where they're going to use it. That's a terrible example. That actually is a bad example. I feel like the vast majority of cop shootings are at Walmarts. Yeah, shootings are at Walmarts.

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it's it's a risk it's a liability and yet we treat these like wellness and resiliency skills the same way like oh i'll just tell them that they need to i remember i worked with an agency and i was like so what do you what's the protocol if somebody has like a major issue like and they need help she hands me a five page packet and i said so you expect me if i'm in distress and i finally gain the courage to ask you for help to flip through your fucking pamphlet

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And do this five, four, three, two, one grounding technique when I've never done it. If you don't practice resiliency skills when you don't need it, then you're not going to think about using them when you do. And it's probably not going to be effective if you only know one or two resiliency skills. There are many different breath techniques that do different things in your body.