Security and law enforcement are two areas that suffer from out of date practices, training and technology. They suffer possibility more than any other industry from what  Marshall calls “arrogant ignorance”, ignorance that is driven by the self-deluded assumption that it knows better than anyone else possibly could. The result is unnecessary loss of life, of both the public and law enforcement officers and security personnel. 

 

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Marshall knows the issues only too well. He actually worked in the law enforcement related field as an “agent without portfolio”, part time, for nearly 10 years. He, among other things, busted a late night clothing store burglary in progress, broke-up a convenient store robbery, was the key actor in the capture of a fleeing aggravated assault suspect, investigated the Keyhoe brothers shoot-out and participated in the subsequent nationwide manhunt, investigated, identified and did surveillance to expose a pedophile to law enforcement, and was cleared by the DIA to do a classified briefing on a domestic terrorism threat against military assets, investigated the disappearance of Philip Taylor Kramer, red celled a major metropolitan airport and revealed major lapses in security during national periods of heightened alerts – many of which exist in airports on an international scale to this day. He became a specialist in non-lethal weapons with a soft kill option and their use, and so now looks at all the police shootings of unarmed civilians and knows that there is something terribly wrong. As was witnessed in the Keyhoe shooting, police training has gone from bad to abysmal. Ever wonder why police can shoot an unarmed man 20 times or more, as what happened to Stephan Clark?

 

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“Fear”, Marshall states authoritatively. “When you have more than one officer on the scene and they all shoot, that’s nothing but fear and bad training. It’s bad training because they lack the knowledge of how to control the situation without shooting. After all, if the guy has no gun, what’s he going to do? They’re supposed to know what the situation is. Is it dark? Then why wasn’t at least one of them armed with one of those really powerful flashlights that are available now? How are you supposed to do your job in the dark? It’s common sense. How can you take control of a situation if you can’t see the situation? So Clark was shot 20 times because the cops couldn’t see, had bad training and were afraid. We don’t need scared cops on the force. If they’re sacred, they should write tickets, not shoot bullets. I’m sorry – I feel no empathy for cowards. I just don’t”

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Marshall has only to point the behavior of former Broward County Sheriff Deputy Scott Peterson, who is said to have taken a defensive position outside the Parkland high school during the mass school shooting, instead of going in to intercept the shooter and terminate the threat. What many will find surprising is that Peterson actually believes that he essentially did a good job, during the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School because he “called in the location of the massacre and gave a description of the shooter”, according to Jim Bell, the head of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office Deputies Association, the local police union, according to the New York Post. Marshall points out that Peterson’s actions exhibit a total and complete lack of the combat training required to perform the duties of a security officer tasked with protecting the school. 

 

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“There’s no excuse for Peterson’s actions,” Marshall says. I can say that because I’ve been in situations where I had to decide to put myself in potential harm’s way before and I did, because you have to decide if you could live with yourself if you didn’t and innocent people died. I’ve made that decision – and I can tell you, that’s a good way to die – if it has to come to that, because that means that in the face of a live and lethal threat – you stood there and delivered your best until you couldn’t continue, so others could live.”

 

Since that news originally was released, it has since come to light that four additional Broward County Sheriff’s Deputies hid outside while students were being killed.

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The number one problem of police departments nationwide is themselves and their overarching entrenchment in protecting their own and their misguided assumption that only they know how to do effective law enforcement, which results in a deadly game of the blind leading the blind. Right now, officers are quitting law enforcement because they feel unappreciated in the least, and like they have a target on their back, at worse. What else should they expect?! The police are the only organization in this country whose members have the ability to kill with near impunity with absolutely no oversight what-so-ever, and in recent years that power has been brandished for the entire world to see and then supported by the rank and file and the elected local government. Only a group of idiots would be oblivious to the fact that in reality, the public would eventually turn against them and a few extreme individuals would begin to shoot them.

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The trouble is, law enforcement has no cognitive comprehension of just how vulnerable they are. That in some areas of the country, the entire force could be wiped out over night. Not just in some isolate small town, but any suburb and a good portion of some cities. This was studied back in the mid to late 1980s as part of an action movie plot that Marshall was developing. He wanted to have a criminal motorcycle gang of vets do a series of late night bank robberies. Armed with military and improvised heavy weapons, they used a two prong tactic – stage a hostage situation in an abandoned house that would draw a large police response. The other group would set a perimeter around the bank while others used explosives to blast through the vault. At the hostage site at the right moment, the house is blown-up and shooters would mop up the survivors. Police wiped out and money looted. No one left to give chase. To be sure his data was accurate, he discussed it with a police officer who confirmed Marshall’s analysis – off the record.

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The entire way that policing is done in this country has to change, from training, selection, assignments and culture. The cancerous practice of blindly supporting police officers who are bad cops has got to stop. To be a police officer should be an honor and a privilege, and those who abuse that should be dismissed in the least and prosecuted when warranted. If it takes cities to introduce such measures into law, then that’s what will eventually happen because if police abuses continue, then the cities will be sued and the law suit tactics will change from the antiquated charges of civil rights violations to wrongful death on the part of the officer for doing it, his training supervisor for not providing the proper training and being sure that it was learned, to his immediate supervisor for not being sure that his officers were properly competent to be in the field, to the city safety supervisor for not being sure that the police department understood the new paradigm, to the mayor of the city who didn’t make sure that the city safety supervisor had impressed upon the police department heads the utmost importance of adhering to the new policies and training.

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One of the ways that policing can change for the better is greater utilization of non-lethal weapons. What many officers may not realize is that non-lethals give them greater force options because by using them, normally, you’re not going to kill someone by mistake. Thought they had a real gun? If they were hit with a bean bag rifle, instead of a firearm, they’re down but not dead. There’s no reason a bean bag gun couldn’t have been used in the Stephan Clark case, and if it had, he’d still be alive. There’s no excuse for not integrating non-lethals and the appropriate training, into modern policing, and failure to do

so could constitute criminal negligence – opening the door for major lawsuits.

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Simultaneously, the general public has become increasingly ignorant of what is and isn’t acceptable behavior during encounters with police officers. Many times, incidents that have ended tragically or costly, could’ve been avoided if the civilian involved behaved differently. Both law enforcement, and the general public, have been ingrained with an unnecessary adversarial attitude toward one another. The entire concept of “To Protect and Serve” has gone by the wayside in too many communities – both in how the police act and how the public reacts to them. When’s the last time you saw a PSA on TV about the proper way to behave when pulled over by a traffic cop? Many of the basic ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’ are not just common sense – things like at night, turning on your inside light so that the officer can see where your hands are – before he approaches the car. Or, whenever you get behind the wheel, putting your insurance card, driver’s license and registration behind your overhead visor, so that if you are pulled over, you don’t have to reach into the glove compartment to get them, thus removing any possibility that the officer may think you have reached for a gun?

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What Marshall  can do is develop, train, and market solutions on the law enforcement, municipal and public sector levels, in order to resolve the unnecessary conflict, violence and loss of life that has become increasingly the new normal, that is threatening to tear our communities apart.