by Austin Davis
Austin (00:06):
Hello Conceal Coalition. Austin Davis, your national Director of trainee. I am glad to be with you this month. I'm glad to be with you every month, but especially this month. This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. I know I say that pretty much about everything because I'm a pretty enthusiastic guy, but this month's topic is about de-escalation. I want you to think about this for a second. You carry a gun so that you will not get killed or permanently injured or maim in a criminal activity, but we go to the range. We practice our shooting skills, but the question I've got is do we ever really think about mastering and practicing our de-escalation game? You see, when it comes to de-escalation, the more you know and the better you get on this situation, the better chance you have of not having to use the gun or use force and heaven help you if you do ever have to use force.
Austin (00:58):
We have legal protection, things like firearms, legal protection to help us with the fight after the fight. But if you can explain why you did what you did before, you had to use force and show that you tried to deescalate, not only does that keep you from having to use force or use lethal force, it can really help you when you have to defend yourself against a criminal effect. Now why me on this topic because de-escalation, well, a couple things. Number one, I'm a de-escalation instructor certified through Forest Science Institute. I'm a certified crisis intervention specialist with the National Anger Institute. I'm also a PERF instructor. That's Police Educational Research Forum, am an ICA instructor that's integrating communication, assessment and tactics. It's the way to take officers and train them, and it is the only course that we know of that uses metadata to prove that it actually reduces the need for violence to deal with people who are out of control.
Austin (01:57):
Also, it's made safer for the officer and the consumer, the person who's going through mental crisis. I've also written a book about this. I've taught the academy level and I teach to all of my officers in my department. I'm the lieutenant in charge of training for my whole pd. So I think I a little background that will kind of help this, and I've been doing this pretty much full time now for about three years and I've learned a lot of things in that process I think may help you in a real short amount of time. Now, let's start off with the basics. When you talk about de-escalation, number one, not all situations can be verbally deescalated. We would never trade our personal safety to risk de-escalation, and there's really two types of de-escalation. When you think of de-escalation. Most of you think about verbal de-escalation, kind of like that first Star Wars movie.
Austin (02:47):
These are not the droids you're looking for. These are not the droids we're looking for. Keep going, and I even have this problem a lot in my officer sometimes when I'm on shift. You'll hear the call out, Lieutenant, can you come do your de-escalation stuff is not something you really do to someone as much as something you kind of offer them like, can I split of cookies about a pizza? And maybe they'll accept it, maybe they won't. I'm going to break this little quick chat down today into two different types of de-escalation. We're going to talk about physical de-escalation and then we're going to take a real deep dive into verbal de-escalation. And I really think if you spend some time with me today, you might get a lot out of this. I've used these exact same techniques to talk a suicide by cop nights year old kid who decided that he wanted to die and I as a police officer on scene, needed to shoot him.
Austin (03:33):
Took 45 minutes using these same techniques I taught you to get him to get some help. The whole time his mom was screaming at me, kill him. Kill him because if you don't, he's going to come back and kill me. We resolve that without a used force. I was doing some of my high on meth one day walking down the street with a machete, use these exact same techniques to deal with that about a 15-year-old girl was going through a suicidal period, use these exact same techniques. So I think when you understand this and kind of get the basics down and master and work through it a little bit, you're going to find that this will really increase your safety, but it also is going to help you in your day-to-day life. Now first off, we talk about de-escalation. It's not all verbal talk, talk, talk.
Austin (04:13):
This isn't hug a thug. There is physical de-escalation. Now, if you read my book, you kind of know where I'm going at this. If we have someone who's getting ready to split your head open with a baseball bat, and at this point you don't want to go, wow, I need to listen to them and through them, understand their empathy and then diffuse and defer with some sort of higher source, I need to guide through, nah, at that point in time you may need to draw and shoot them. Now, if someone's trying to split your head open with a baseball bat, you didn't start this, you didn't instigate this, you didn't egg it on and you shoot them, you deescalated with gunfire. That is a legitimate form of de-escalation. Unfortunately, that's kind of we call right of bang de-escalation, bang being the event left, being before the event, right?
Austin (05:00):
Being everything that happens after the event. And there are some situations they're rare, but they do happen and that's why we do carry a fireman, a readily accessible way that we may have to pull, punch and put metal into meat and solve the problem hopefully. And thankfully that is going to be very rare in your life. There is another way to physically deescalate and that's used force. Remember, if you've ever watched my concealed coalition university pepper spray class, I have a theory. I really can't put a number on it. I'm putting a number. I can't really give you hard data on it, but 85% of the situations you deal with in some sort of use of force counter your firearm's going to be 100% the wrong tool because this does not meet the requirements of deadly force, which means you worry about death or imminent serious bodily injury.
Austin (05:45):
So you're going to need to deescalate with something less than that. Could be a fist, could be a leather sap, old school police stuff if legal in your area, very appropriate. Matter of fact, make a note to everybody. Let's do a webinar one day on SAPs and if you know what they are, these are leather with a lead filling in 'em, they go back to ancient times. But in the 20th century they were very common for police officers and they're very effective close end range weapons. And for some people who don't want a gun or don't have pepper spray, this might be an option. But again, some areas are kind of wishy-washy, illegal. But anyways, if you use a non-lethal tool, use of force, fist, sap pepper spray, tactical pen club, whatever, that's still de-escalation of force but just not deadly force. And when you think about physical de-escalation, you have to to understand that you may want to try what I consider an expedited, and I call this the Texas method of expedition, expedited method of de-escalation.
Austin (06:46):
Actually it's verbal judo, but it's been taught by every Texas field training officer. I know these are people like myself who are licensed to take and make baby cops into adult cops. And it's the ask, tell, make. So de-escalation with force might involve something as simple as a process called ask, tell, make. So let's say you're pumping gas, you're walking down the street, somebody approaches, you do not know you don't have good guys, bad guys or unknown. So you say, Hey, hey, stop, stop. I dunno what you want, but if you back up a few steps, I'll talk to you. And if it's a normal person, it's me or you and somebody's a stranger approach, you go, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to mess with you. You back up a little bit and talk to them. But if all of a sudden they go, whoa, whoa, what's your problem?
Austin (07:26):
They start getting real close to you. That means they disregarded your no. So that's ask. Next thing I want to tell 'em is, Hey man, I dunno what's going on. You need to back up. If you don't back up, we're going to have a problem. And if they don't back up, then you may have to make them. Now there is a magic formula between ask, tell, and make, ask, tell, and then before you make, you may want to give what's called the quintessential question, which is, is there anything I can say or do right now to keep having used force to get you to stop hitting me, spitting on me coming close to me, bawling your fist up, whatever. And if they say, screw you, I'm going to do what I want. Boom, game em on, you're probably going to have to make 'em. These are compressed and these are not as common as you would think.
Austin (08:08):
Then a lot of times we get to the point of ask, tell, make not from some stranger approaching as sort of the first of four parts of an interview for a street attack. We get into this because we escalated things and remember, anytime you use force you're going to have to explain that force. And if you have a process, whether that's astel, make edge, five steps or the ICAP wheel, whatever technique that you feel comfortable and you feel polished with using, you're still going to have to face the II wrap formula. And I think that's one of the real keys we talk about de-escalation, the II wrap formula II wrap, it's an acronym for the five things you have to do to use self-defense lawfully no matter where you are, first one is innocent. So somebody comes up and starts on you and you go into your reactive self, not your logical self and you bait them on and then we have some sort of problem.
Austin (08:57):
You may not be innocent anymore, you may give up your victim status, which can really haunt you in criminal, civil and social issues. So of the I wrap first part of that acronym I is Are you innocent? The next thing is a threat imminent. That means it's going to happen right now, not I think he did something last week or he's going to do something to me next week. It's got to be imminent. The next part of the II wrap is going to be the R, which is it reasonable. Now when it comes to reasonable, you have to be reasonable in two things. One, subjective and objective. Subjective, your interpretation that this is a threat that warrants you using force to deescalate the situation because think about it, de-escalation is always about one of three things. Stopping someone from doing something they want to do, making 'em do something they don't want to do or telling them no.
Austin (09:44):
And so you have to be reasonable in your interpretation that this is a situation that involves verbal, it involves ordinary force or involves deadly force. And so by having a pre-programmed and educated, a logical way of dealing with these things, whether again that's ask, tell, make, whether that's edge, whether it's five steps, it really helps you not only survive the situation, stay in executive function into actions, not reactions into responding, not reacting. It will make things go a lot easier, but you also have be reasonable in what you do. And if you have a de-escalation program that can again help you stay in prefrontal cortex more an executive executive mindset instead of going into that little sort of amygdala hijack. So we talk about I wrap, it needs to be innocent, so it means de-escalation means you didn't accelerate that. Virtual de-escalation do not escalate the situation.
Austin (10:40):
Rule number two has to be imminent. So when you deescalate, if you do have to use force, you can say, Hey look, I tried these things verbally or I tried these things with use of force or whatever and it didn't stop. So that's why I decide to act right now. You have to be reasonable objectively and subjectively in my interpretation of it and what I did and my interpretation, it was based on these things I said and did as part of my de-escalation process. But then the reasonableness is because I was talking and thinking and trying to stay in executive function, making sure that I was making conscious decisions, not sort of primal responses that may help moderate this so you don't end up shooting 15 times instead of one or hitting someone in the head when you should have just checked them in the elbow with your SAP or a body shot.
Austin (11:26):
A of the I wrap is avoidable. Now, a lot of you're getting ready to turn me off now because hey, I've got stand my ground, I've got castle doctrine. But one of the things about de-escalation is if I see something happening and I can just get in my car, close the door and take off, I win. I can lock the door to my front of my house, I win. Now if they start smashing the window breaking into the car, they start kicking in your door. That tells us that this was not avoidable, but anything we can do to avoid this, which might be something as simple as putting a parked car between you and the person who's trying to aggress on you, a picnic bench, a light pole, a big tree to give you some more reactionary gap to give you more time, more ability to think to stay in executive function.
Austin (12:05):
And then finally the last one is proportional. The really cool thing about de-escalation is in a lot of ways if you're trying to do this, it shows a process. And in that process, if you can just maybe just gain two or three beats, two or three seconds, two or three minutes and then figure out what's going on. The deal about proportional is a lot of times when it comes to de-escalation, we have to be very careful separating the facts from the story, the facts from the story. Let give you a classic example of this from my department recently, one of my favorite sergeant, she's so cool, she was arresting somebody and he spit on her. I don't mean when he was talking, I don't mean like an S that spurred out, I mean, and talked a luie on her. She stayed her executive function, didn't respond to it.
Austin (12:54):
When I debriefed her on this the next day about this situation, I said, I'm really impressed that you stayed in control and you did not give into your base or instincts. She laughed at me and she's like, Lieutenant, trust me, LT. She goes, I wanted to just knock the stuffing out of him. She goes, but I knew he spit on me. There was nothing I could do that spit had left on there. All I had to do at that point in time was finish closing the door. He was already handcuffed in the back of the unit. There's a plexiglass panel between me and him and not escalate this thing. And that's really what de-escalation does for us. It allows us to kind of see the 30,000 foot view of what's really going on and we can separate the story from the facts. Another classic example that you could think of is somebody comes along yeses or disagreement and they haul off and they open hand slap you.
Austin (13:42):
Now at this point a lot of you thinking, I'll pull my gun and shoot him. Well, remember I wrapped the pee was proportional. Is that slap worth? Is that going to cause serious bodily injury or death? Probably not. So can you use ordinary force in that situation? They slap you pepper spray. I think that'd be pretty good. Maybe time to go out the sap and body check 'em one or give 'em a big right along the common peral nerve along the thigh. That might be appropriate. But when you're involved in understanding the whole dynamics of conflict through the lens, the framing of de-escalation, you're going to probably find out you start seeing conflict very different. And you might find yourself being more goal-oriented in finding a solution that works best for you legally, criminally, civilly and socially. So if you shoot someone as de-escalation, if it stops a threat, yes it is.
Austin (14:32):
If you hit 'em with a sap, a tactical pen pepper spray, you go hands on, you do a little b JJ on 'em, that's de-escalation. And so there are some physical ways to deescalate, but again, a lot of times that's a very narrow way to use de-escalation. And if you do have to go to physical, remember astel make, it's one of those deals when you're managing someone you don't really know about. If you just remember astel make, that might work out a little better for you. Now let's try the sort of classical thought when people think about de-escalation and that is verbal de-escalation. Now a couple things about verbal de-escalation. Not everybody can be deescalated. You see, the problem is human beings only communicate two ways. That's it. Human beings only communicate two ways they communicate with force or reason. That's it. And as long as you can reason somebody, you can verbally deescalate 'em.
Austin (15:25):
If they're not willing to reason or they will not follow along and co-regulate with you to allow you to help them deescalate, we have a real problem. So before you even think about using de-escalation verbally, remember you're always checking this little binary, yes or no, one or two, one or a zero. Are they able to reason with me or do I need to use force? If you understand that, that will be very helpful. The next thing you understand about verbal de-escalation or actually even physical de-escalation is the number one rule of de-escalation. The number one rule of de-escalation is do not escalate the situation. This is the hardest thing I have to teach my officers do not escalate the situation. So what you want to do is you want to draw a little.in the middle of your life, draw a circle around it and circumscribe your actions within your due bounds.
Austin (16:18):
If you want to ask yourself a simple question, where are those things that I will and will not pass for me to deescalate? I really try to watch my language and a lot of people don't like that. Look, if you're talking the street, people talk their language. Maybe yes, maybe no. But one of the things I like to think about when I was about eight years old, I was out doing some yard work and a kid who was kind of a bully and a pain in mind, butt in life was rolling down the street without his friends. And I went, Hey, mf, see your friends aren't with you. And I jumped him and we had a little tussle. It went pretty well on my side. He's running off down the street after it's all over and I turned to look in the window and there's my father looking out the window with his arms crossed going, and I'm like, oh man, I'm in a world of trouble.
Austin (17:08):
So I come on in, my dad's like, sit down. He's like, I saw what happened. I kind of got a feeling from the conversation, the things you're yelling as you're beating on him, I get it. Let me explain something to you. The phrase, Hey, mother was never designed to deescalate a situation. So I guess you could say I've been in de-escalation training since I was eight years old. The thing is, one of the things you're going to learn here in a minute, we talk about reading people's emotions and listening to them and through them is you're looking for unmet desires because that's really where anger comes from. All anger comes from an unmet desire and if someone disrespects you or if they don't feel in control or they're seething because they don't agree with your political process or they have issues of abandonment and you touch that, that's a trigger point.
Austin (18:00):
That's a hot point. That's not a hook, that's not something that brings it into you. That's something that lights the fuse, that pulls the pin on the hand grenade, if I can use that phrase. So the first thing is don't deescalate. What I want you to start understanding is as you're walking around life, notice where your arousal level is, and if you do have to go into de-escalation system situation and you're getting ready to use a prepackaged system like getting ready to go over, make sure you know where you're at. For example, when I'm on patrol after drag, get ready to call out, I've checked my unit, I know who's on patrol with me these days. I got everything all worked out, I get ready to call out. First thing I ask myself this real quick is do I got any sad hats? Sad hats and acronym people use de-escalation.
Austin (18:39):
It stands for am I sick? Am I on alcohol, am on drugs, I'm on patrol. Hopefully I'm not sick on alcohol or drugs. Am I hungry? Am I anxious? Am I tired? Am I stressed? So I live in the Houston area and it's a very wet swampy area and there's just a lot of times I'm looking around here to see if I've got any Sudafed around. I'm on P Sudafed, my head hurts. This is not the day where my buttons are heavily insulated or have a little guide to keep people from pushing my buttons. Maybe I'm tired. I worked a late shift, I had a bunch of paperwork, I had some other officers I had to go deal with because of something they didn't pull that I'm back on duty the next day and I'm really tired. I have to think about that. I'm really anxious.
Austin (19:23):
Am I going to a call that I've dealt with before and these problems that people are going to be a problem that day? We call 'em frequent flyers or heavy users, heavy consumers. And so kind of know where you're at on those days. Be extra careful with your situational awareness to give yourself more reaction time, more reaction or your gap and to really pay attention to that internal voice inside you that says today is not the day. The simplest way to explain that is those people go, I've had it up to here. Those people got the little bruise because all day they go, I've had it up to here. When you're up to here, you have no more room left to give when somebody tries to push your buttons and they're out of control. And the problem is if you have two out of control people, it's going to be extremely difficult to deescalate them because the goal of de-escalation is one of us has to stay in control.
Austin (20:02):
And it's very interesting because if you ever watch enough of body cam footage on YouTube of officers involved in critical dynamic situations, you can just see how they start edging up, edging up, edging up and getting very close to sometimes meeting and exceeding and matching the suspect. And this is a real problem in law enforcement. It's a real problem for civilians as well. So the big takeaway before we go into the specifics of verbal de-escalation is think of cap. Okay, I am kind of big on visuals and acronyms, but does this person have the capacity? Are they in agreement and are they participating? Because if they have the mental capacity, you might find your words, don't even get through to them. I've dealt with schizophrenic people who the voices that they were hearing were so loud that they couldn't hear my voice, so they didn't really have the capacity to do this.
Austin (20:49):
Are they in agreement to this? Do they? Yeah, yeah. What you're saying makes sense. I'm going to go along with this because remember there's three things they want to do, something you don't want to do. You want them to do something they don't want to do or they need to understand the word no, this ain't happening. And so they may not agree to any one of those three things and you might have to massage it before you get that in there. And the P is are they participating because they may go, yeah, yeah, I hear what you're saying. Yeah, it makes great sense. But they still charge towards you with the garden hose, the rake, the shovel, the machete or whatever. So you have to have all three of those in there. Now there's several ways and systems deescalate, they all work real well. If you've watched concealed Cion University episode on de-escalation or if you read the book, I've been using a five step for years, it has been very handy for me.
Austin (21:30):
Then here's the five steps very quickly. The first thing is contact. Before I show up, I have to ask myself, do I even want to get involved in this? Now if I'm in uniform, I'm on patrol, do I have the ability to say no? Yes I do. If the situation is contained and it's controlled, I might need to wait for other officers. I might need to wait for EMS. I might need to wait for the specialized crisis intervention unit to show up to do this. I might need spend more time talking to dispatch real quick to go, is there anything I know about this person? If I see there's a phone in their hand, do we have their phone number? Can I call them and talk to them and maintain some distance? So the first thing you have to do is you have to decide if you want to get involved or not.
Austin (22:12):
Now, here's kind of my general rule, use it, don't use it. It's completely up to you. But here's the deal. If you're non-sworn, I don't like the word citizen because we're all citizens, whether you're a police officer or not, but if you're non-sworn and you see someone who's out of control and is something that doesn't involve you beat feet, gain distance. Now if you want to do something, get on the phone, call dispatch, be a good witness. Another note to gu, we need to do a whole webinar and how to be a good witness. I know you're going, I saw it. I know how to be a good witness. Trust me, it's an experienced police officer. We need to have a webinar on how to be a good witness. And I know you think that's boring, but trust me, you will make your life easier.
Austin (22:51):
You'll make the officer's life easier. You'll make the chance of this whole situation getting to be a better revolution because you're looking for what's really the facts, not the story. So we need to do that, but either here nor there. First thing is the five step is contact. Decide do you want to make this? Now next thing is decide what your tactics are. There's three variables and tactics, time, distance, safer angles, time. Do you want to do it now or do you want to wait for other people? Do you need to let them see if they're going to kind of cycle down and kind of tire out? Or if there's some sort of rhythm to what they're going through, you see sort of where they'll freak out, then they calm on down, then freak out. Maybe you can time it and pop on in distance.
Austin (23:27):
Do you want to be closer or farther away? Do you want to be closer because they're in a withdrawn kind of almost catatonic state? And you think that okay, the situation means I need to talk to 'em on their level and get closer. Maybe think of dementia and autism having a situation maybe say the risk is low, there's not really a threat, but I don't feel threatened and I want to get down on their level. I want to make eye contact or I want to be down their level and not make eye contact. Depending on what you're getting a read on the situation, depending on what's a trigger and what's a hook, what. So first off, and then the last thing is safer angles. Can you put something between you and them to a safer angle? Or even if you're out in the open, can you say to yourself, if I make two steps this way, I put a car between me and him.
Austin (24:11):
If I move two steps this way, I put a small brick wall between me and him, I move two, three steps this way. I got a picnic bench between me and him. Find somebody to gather off a distance. So in the five step, first one is contact. Next one is empathy. Empathy is different than sympathy. If they're telling you, my dog died and I'm having a bad day, oh, I know how you're feeling. My dog died too. His name was Sparky. Empathy is trying to understand someone where they are from within their shoes. So the first thing you want to do is you want to decide, do I need to contact them? If you're a civilian, it's not involving you Get away. If you're a civilian, not sworn and it's your neighbor, it's a coworker, it's in a situation where they're between you and the exit.
Austin (24:47):
You may have to do this. Say to yourself, no, I don't want to contact 'em. But really this is the best of some really bad decisions. Make the contact. Next thing you want to do is empathy. Empathy is listening to them and through them, listening to them and through them. Remember almost all anger or essentially all anger is going to be unmet needs somehow. So listen, is it a loss that they're suffering? Is this thing that they're going through some sort of disrespect. Is it seeding anger? Is it abandonment? Is it shame? And if you can hear that, then you can feed back on 'em. The next thing is called build rapport. And there's some simple ways to build rapport. First thing you can say is, Hey, I'm listening to you and through you, so don't say that. Listen to you and through and say, I hear what you're saying.
Austin (25:31):
Your girlfriend left you and you feel a sense of isolation. You have no friends. Everett has a right to feel loved and belong. That's the first step. You may also want to try to use any iconography they've got. You see a Masonic ring on 'em, hopefully somebody who's having a crisis on Mason, but it could happen and you say, Hey, I see a free mason here. You guys control the world. How can we control the world if we can't control the fantastic websites that say we control the world? Kind of makes me wonder sometimes. I had a situation that the kid who wanted to do suicide by cop, he's wearing a Dallas cowboy hat and to build rapport with him, I said, Hey, hey. I put the patrol car between me and him and he was doing some fake charging, but I didn't feel felt there was a threat there, but I didn't feel threatened personally.
Austin (26:14):
And I said, Hey, we got a problem here and it's not what you think. I said, I see a Dallas cowboy hat's on and I'm a Texan fan and I don't know if we can be friends. And you could just see it just shocked him. And I said, that one star on the side that's on the logo, that's a Yelp braiding. And I got a little bit of laughter out. I've got a dope meat. It gave me enough pause to kind of get in there. Now, he was one of those people that was doing this thing because of extraneous chemicals in him meeting with some severe substantial mental illness that he had going on. He was in crisis, but it gave me a chance to inject a little urine and work on there. So the first thing is contact. Second thing is his empathy. You going to build rapport, then you have some influence on him.
Austin (26:52):
Hey, hey, I hear what you're saying and I need to know what's going on. You're the only one. The whole situation, you explain what's going on. But I'm old and I've been around guns for the last 32 years as a firearms instructor. Could you just slow down a little bit and talk slower for me? I've done this before with another situation where we were out in the sun and I'm like build this rapport with them and hey, everyone's got a right to be loved and I understand where you're going with your parents. It's really hot here. If we can just move just a few feet back, we can be in the shade right next to the patrol car in the front seat. I've got a cooler jica diet Coke. And so I got the cooler, gave her a Diet Coke, I got my Diet Coke.
Austin (27:32):
We sat there and I built some rapport. And then you want to have some influence. And that influence could be could you step over? Could you slow down a little bit? Could you lower your voice? You don't seem like the kind of person who wants to scare children are you, but the way you're yelling, the other kids in the house are really freaking out. I don't think that's the kind of dad you want to be. And then you go for behavior change. Now the problem is these five steps, you may get to poor. I might get to the place where I go, Hey, would you like a diet of Coke? And they blow up and they go back, you don't understand anything and that's cool. I just cycle back into contact. Do I still need to be here? Do I have a legal right to be here?
Austin (28:09):
If I'm in law enforcement, it's this situation I controlled, I need more people control this maybe been over my head or I just go back to empathy. Listen to them and through them. Hey man, I hear what you're saying. You're lost. You have no friends like I, no friends. Hey, tell you what, today's your lucky day. You can have me as a friend. You don't care. You don't know me. No, but I do know this. I'd like to know what's going on so we can help wind answer to what's going on today. Obviously something's not working out. Can you remember a time? So we worked through these steps. Now the five steps work really well, and if you read the book that I wrote on de-escalation, the protectors playbook for de-escalation, I've got those down. And if you follow that and you follow the Castil University, I really think that's a winning combination.
Austin (28:55):
It's a little involved for some people. The thing that the National Association for Anger Management teaches is something called the Edge technique. I think in a lot of ways the edge technique works a little simpler for some people. So let's run through that edge technique. First thing goes contact decide do you need to or not? Trust me, if you're not sworn, you get away from this, get away from this. But if it's a neighbor, if it's a family member, if it's something that you are, they're between you and the exit, you may have no choice. Set aside if so, factor in your three things. Time, distance, safe angles. First thing is empathy. Listen to them and through them, try to listen what their unmet need is on this thing. So is it shame? Is it abandonment? Is it seething anger? So figure out where that is.
Austin (29:39):
When you hear it, you can go back. Then the next thing after empathy of edge is de defer and diffuse. Hey, I hear what you're saying. You're not happy with the service in this restaurant. You're not leaving until you talk to the owner of McDonald's. And I hear that. But the law is if the owner says, you got to go, this is a criminal trespass. So I'm deferring to them. So it's not between me and the person I'm going to leave McDonald's as an officer or the manager. It's this other power. If you don't want to use rules, regulations, or policy of a place, you can try for universal. No one loves me. My girlfriend left me, I'm homeless. Hey, everybody's got a right to feel loved and everybody needs to be somewhere. Then that's how you sort of give that back. Then you do the G, which is guided options.
Austin (30:31):
Hey, look, they don't want you here in the restaurant. How about this? If you'll come outside and take two steps off the property, we will talk about your problem and we'll try to find a solution on how we can locate your friends or whatever the situation is. Screw you don't know what's going on, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They start blowing back up. Just go back to motion. Listen to them through them. Figure out where their unmet need is. Lock into that. Come back with a diffusion and defer and dissipate statement. Hey man, I hear you. I'm listening to what you're saying. Everyone's got a right to be loved and everyone's got a right to be somewhere guided options. But again, criminal trespass, they said you have to leave. You have to leave. And when you do the guided options, you also try do the positive tone.
Austin (31:16):
It's like do you want cake or do you want ice cream? Do you want me to hit you in the head or break your leg? It needs to be that way. If you cycle through this two or three times and you're not getting to the guided option exceptions, you may want to try to guided option that's a negative, but then tag the other end of it with a positive option. Look, I hear what you're saying. Everyone's got a right to be loved. Everyone's got a right to be here, but if you don't leave, it's going to be criminal trespass. That's a law. If you don't leave, I'm going to have to take you into custody. I'm going to put you in handcuffs, put you back car, put you in jail. And we don't want that when we could just go outside the building, take two steps off the property and I'll clear this call for as long as it takes to solve this problem.
Austin (32:00):
And if you get anything from that at that point, these guided options then comes the E of the edge, enthusiastic, positive reinforcement. Thank you very much. I appreciate your work with me. I know this is a big stretch for you and I can see you're really a sharp person and you want to resolve this thing for everybody's happiness. I'm really grateful for that. And that's how you work through the edge profile. What I'm hoping you get out of this whole de-escalation thing is this, not every situation can be deescalated. The only thing you can really deescalate is yourself. And once you get past a certain point and you get in that certain high reactionary mindset, you actually lose the human part of your brain. You wanted to make little hijack and it's uncontrollable. And if you've never been there, it's pretty scary. And if you're a parent, if you're in a marriage or if you're in a dating situation or friends, you may have a situation where you two start and it escalates and you start saying things that later on you're like, I can't even believe I said that.
Austin (32:56):
That's not even me. That's you losing executive function. And remember in de-escalation, somebody at some point has got to be in control because what we're trying to do is we're trying to let them work off our own emotional capacity and bring them on down. Now, if they don't want to come on down and nothing you can do about it, you may have to use force in law enforcement terms. I may have to use a taser. You may have to pepper spray them. I may have to tackle 'em. If they're coming at me in an officer by suicide and I have no way around this, I may have to use lethal force. But the goal with de-escalation is try to keep this thing as left of bang to try to take 'em from here down to here. We can work with them and make sure that you're very cautious about your own arousal rate because it's really easy.
Austin (33:34):
Get sucked in and these people might start saying some stuff and threatening stuff. That really starts getting you ratchet on up. And the more fear you feel, the more you get hijacked by your amygdala. This little thing in the middle of your brain, that sort of your body's alarm system. And once your body's alarm system starts coming in, everything about your responsiveness is going to change. Closing hope. If you're a concealed coalition university member, you will go and watch the de-escalation. If you haven't seen in a while, go back and watch it again. It's really a very information dense thing. It's really pretty straightforward. But you need to practice this and practice it in minor things. Next time your kid, your spouse or whatever is going through and they're escalating a situation, first thing you ask yourself is contact, is this the right time to even deal with this kid?
Austin (34:21):
It is just they're acting out and I just need to back off and let them vent out, or do I need to get involved in this emotions? Listen to them through them. Listen to what they're saying. Are they telling you any clues? It's like a marked card game. What is your unmet need that you're upset about? And then when it comes to empathy, make sure it's tactical empathy. You don't have to agree with them. You just have to find a point of contention and validate what they're saying so that person feels like they're being heard, that needs being met. And we can back 'em on down. If you can defer and diffuse it, blame it on somebody else or give them an affirmation of a positive universal. Everyone's got a right to be somewhere if they're homeless or unhoused is the new term. Everyone's got a right to be loved.
Austin (35:00):
If it's something everyone's got a right to have friends or it's natural to be upset if the VA did this to you. I've had a vet once where to go on the side of and sort of do test empathy and really slam on the VA whether or not the VA was at fault or not in this certain situation at that moment, it didn't really matter. Now I don't ever want to lie to them because they catch you and they lie, they're going to hang you and you're really in trouble with that person crisis, but you can't empathize with them. See things through their lens frame things through their lens to bring them into a situation where you can have guided options. And remember, we want to try to make guided options as positive as possible. If you'll just stop yelling and step outside, we can have this conversation.
Austin (35:42):
If you do have to put a negative, make sure you put that negative in a positive. Hey, if you just step outside, we don't have to arrest you. And we can talk about this for as long as you need. Look for sad hats. Are they sick? Are they on alcohol? Are they on drugs? Are they hungry? Are they anxious? Are they tired? Are they stressed? Are you in those same situation? Keeps you from going on up. And then once you do get 'em into one of those guided options, feed 'em a bunch of positive reinforcements based on what you feel like is their unmet needs. Back from me.
Austin (36:14):
I really hope you got something out of this. I hope you can tell my enthusiasm. I truly have a passion for this. I think if you really start to really work hard on your de-escalation skills, it will help you not only in the gun world and the self-defense world, but it's going to help you all types of your professional, your personal and your play life. And it's amazing how you can bring this down. You watch your kids play a softball or soccer game, and when the parents starts going off, bam. If you've got this thing, you can bring them on down and the first time you do it and you feel like, holy cow, that thing really worked. You're going to want to do it more and you're going to study it more. So hopefully you'll go to CCU, you'll read the book. If you have any questions, we're going to go ahead and put my number down here. Go ahead and text me. I'd be more than happy to answer to you. I'd like to come on out to wherever you are in your community and do a de-escalation seminar for you guys if you want that. If the demand's there, I've got no doubt that pharmaceutical protection or conceal coalition will send me on out there. And as always, as I end up every one of my talks, be a guardian, always, and a warrior when needed. It.
YouTube Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFH9qm0OBHg
Credit: Austin Davis, National Director of Training, Concealed Coalition Webinar