The Stick or the Snake

The Stick or the Snake

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit threatproof.substack.com [https://threatproof.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_7] On June 22nd, a man in camouflage ambushed police officers outside a hotel in Montreal’s Côte-des-Neiges neighborhood. He fired more than two dozen rounds in under a minute. Constable Mohamed Lamine Benredouane, 34 years old, a father with a pregnant wife, was shot and killed — the first Montreal officer to die in the line of duty in 24 years. His partner was shot and critically wounded. A 68-year-old bystander named Michel Mizrahi was also killed. A video circulating online appears to show him being shot by an officer as he approached her position mid-gunfight. Quebec’s police watchdog is investigating, and the police chief has said plainly that he does not know who shot Mizrahi. That hasn’t stopped the internet from reaching its verdict. The officer panicked. The officer wasn’t up to the job. She should have been trained better. Some went further and made it about her sex. I’ve spent more than three decades across Army Special Forces, law enforcement and SWAT, and counter-terrorism work, and as a use-of-force expert witness. So let me tell you what the people typing those verdicts don’t understand — and more importantly, what this tragedy can teach you and your family. Your brain was built for this decision — and that’s the problem Picture one of your ancestors walking a dark path. Something long and squiggly lies across it. In the span of a single footstep, the brain has to decide: stick or snake? Step, freeze, or jump? The bloodlines that decided “stick” and threw caution to the wind eventually got bitten out of existence. The bloodlines that flinched — that decided “snake” first and were relieved to be wrong — survived long enough to become us. Under mortal stress, with no time and no information, the human brain prioritizes the most threatening interpretation of what it sees, deals with that first, and sorts out the details later. That’s not cowardice or incompetence. That’s the operating system, and every one of us is running it. Now, it simply doesn’t really care what the result might be later. It only cares about this fraction of a second. Now put yourself behind that planter in Montreal. Your partner is dead a few feet away. Rounds are still coming. Your entire world has compressed to one threat axis. And suddenly, a shape closes the distance on your position in nearly exactly the same way the gunman who is trying to kill you does a few moments later. Stick or snake? Her brain answered the way human brains have answered for three hundred thousand years. Keep in mind that it is not verified at this time that the officer shot the bystander, but the discussion points still hold. Split-second syndrome, and what the Supreme Court understood that the internet doesn’t In my tactical courses, I teach officers about what’s often called split-second syndrome — the trap identified by a police lieutenant years ago in an article in the now-defunct Police Marksman magazine. The U.S. Supreme Court described it in Graham v. Connor, recognizing that use-of-force decisions occur in circumstances that are “tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving.” I break that into what I call the SIT factors. Safety — the situation is dangerous, so you are short on safety. Information — it’s uncertain, so you must act without the full picture, which means you can be wrong. Time — it’s rapidly evolving, so the decision must be made in a fraction of a second. Here’s the part I hammer in training: good tactics are largely the art of manipulating those three factors in your favor — using distance, cover, angles, and patience so you never have to make the stick-or-snake decision in the first place. Poor tactics force that decision on you, and the results are suboptimal at best and tragic at worst. I hold officers to a high standard on this, and I’ve written before about avoiding friendly fire and blue-on-bystander/victim disasters ( [https://threatproof.substack.com/p/4-successful-disarms-4-tragic-results?r=5ya4h1&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true]4 Successful Disarms, 4 Tragic Results) [https://threatproof.substack.com/p/4-successful-disarms-4-tragic-results?r=5ya4h1&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true], because I want officers and others to prevail and go home. But there are times when no tactic on earth gets a vote — when the stick-or-snake is simply thrown at you. An ambush by a rifleman who has already killed your partner is exactly that. I don’t say this from the cheap seats. I teach active threat courses for law enforcement at the instructor level — the people who go back and train their departments. Threat identification and avoiding friendly fire get covered in my courses at a depth I have not seen matched anywhere else, because I believe the deadliest seconds in these events are the ones where good people misread each other. In fact, when this incident hit my newsfeed, I had just finished teaching a church safety group how to distinguish an active threat from everyone else — using the visual frisk and the ABCDEs of awareness that run through all of my material. So when I tell you what training can and cannot do, it’s not a guess. It’s my job. By the way, Paid members of The Threat Proof Newsletter can download my Active Threat Awareness Module, which I present in many of my courses to police, military personnel, civilians, church groups, and others. (Find it below the pay line) And I’ll say this as clearly as I can: there is no training program at any department level, anywhere, that reliably makes an average officer — or even a fairly good one — perform like a superhero in an outgunned, partner-down, worst-case ambush. Anyone who claims otherwise has never had to make that decision and never will. High-stress performance training helps at the margins, and the margins matter. But the people demanding perfection from that officer are demanding something that does not exist. I have tried to clip a few videos together of the incident below. You can see that after the encounter with the bystander, the officer is directly assaulted by the shooter coming around the barrier nearly the same way. She has a blink-of-an-eye time period to decide what to do. It is hard to tell, but she appears to be able to duck out of the full-force attack and may or may not have fired at the shooter. Luckily, it appears that the shooter needs to reload or clear a malfunction, and he is engaged by officers and stopped, dead right where the officer previously was positioned. I believe the female officer was severely wounded, but Canada holds its information tight. I am not sure if she hesitated or fired in that split-second, but it shows both sides of the stick or snake, maybe shoot a bystander (coming around in a near attack pattern in the middle of a gunfight), maybe get shot by the gunman and die with no second chances. Hesitation or survival. As for Michel Mizrahi — those who knew him say he was directing people away from the gunfire when he was killed. I don’t know exactly what happened in his final seconds; nobody does yet. But take the reports at face value and you have something the internet’s version can’t hold: two good people, both acting on brave and fundamentally human instincts, colliding in the worst possible way. Nobody in that frame is the villain except the man with the rifle. Now the part that’s for you Because here’s the truth: someday you might be the one running from gunfire toward the uniforms — or toward a capable civilian defender. Do it wrong, and two right instincts collide again. So learn this now, calmly, while there’s time — the same way I teach it in my seminars. Hands up. Open. Empty. The three words I drill in every seminar. Nothing in your hands — not a phone, not keys, not anything that reads as a weapon in a quarter-second glance. If you’re armed and police may be arriving, your weapon goes down and out of sight before they see you. Use your voice, loudly and repeatedly. “Officer! My hands are up! My hands are up!” or “Officer — help me!” — or if it’s an armed neighbor instead of a uniform, “Don’t shoot! It’s me..!” Under extreme stress, auditory exclusion is one of the most commonly reported effects — they may barely hear you. Say it anyway, keep saying it or whatever fits the situation. I have some code words I teach that may be useful here for avoiding friendly fire. You’re trying to buy one beat of recognition in a brain that’s locked on a threat. Understand that they may literally not see you. Tunnel vision is real. The formal term is inattentional blindness: under threat, the brain drives all attention to the danger and deletes everything else. There’s a famous experiment where people counting basketball passes fail to notice a person in a gorilla suit walking through the middle of the frame (watch it yourself [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo] — count the passes first, no cheating). You can be directly in front of an officer or defender mid-gunfight and functionally not exist. Act accordingly. Never surprise anyone with a gun in their hand. Don’t burst around corners. Don’t sprint up behind or beside a position. The single most dangerous moment for this is exploding out of a building’s exit into a parking lot where officers are set up — you appear suddenly, at speed, at close range. That is the stick-or-snake, weaponized against yourself. Stay out of the line of fire — offset, then move. In the military we call the principle bounding overwatch: if you expect someone to protect you while you move, you must keep their lane of fire open. Don’t run a straight line between the defender and the threat. And don’t take the other wrong path either — a long sprint across open ground toward safety that never was. A few quick steps at an angle — putting cover between you and the threat, and clearing their view of the gunman — beats forty feet in a straight line every time. Break line of sight with the shooter first. Then move directly away. If “bounding overwatch” sounds like some crazy commando tactic that has no place in an active shooter conversation, consider this: you’re fighting with an intruder at your own front door. Your secondary defender — your wife, your husband, whoever in the house can get armed and come to your aid — does exactly that. Do you break away and run straight at them? The tendency when people get scared is to run to their savior. But now your body is exactly between their muzzle and the threat. Instead: break away from the attacker, move loudly a few steps to the side, and hand your defender a clean line of fire and a clean angle to use whatever tool is in their hands. Same principle at your front door as in that Montreal street. Offset, then move. And if the fight is still on around you: get behind real cover and proactively look for your next move. Hide means being hard to see and hard to reach, not frozen without awareness or readiness. Then be ready to provide aid — to yourself or the person next to you — because every officer on that scene is fighting for their life, and it may be a while before anyone can get to you. If you’ve followed my work, you’ll recognize the shape of that sequence: Alert, Evade, Hide, Fight, Aid. The same responses I teach families apply here, reverse-engineered from a tragedy. None of it is complicated. All of it has to be decided before the moment — because as Montreal just proved, the moment doesn’t leave room to think. Sit down with your family this week and talk through one question: if we ever hear gunfire in public, what do we do — and what do we do when the police arrive? Thirty minutes at a kitchen table. That’s where these decisions belong. If you want the complete system — the full family emergency action plan I’ve built from a life spent on the other side of these calls — it’s here: tacticaltwos.threatprooflife.com Two men died in Montreal doing their duty as they understood it. Honor them by being ready. Be responsible, capable, and confident. Trevor ThrasherThreatprooflife.com For paid subscribers: how to spot the threat first Everything above is about surviving the moment once it’s unfolding. But the earlier you see a threat coming, the more of these decisions you make on your terms instead of in a half-second of panic. That’s the rest of this: the Awareness Module from my instructor-level Active Threat Interdiction course — the same system I teach the people who train their departments, and walked a church security team through days before Montreal. Inside: the ABCDEF framework for reading a person in six lanes, the Rule of Threes (one cue means watch, three means act), and the Visual Frisk — the two-second read that tells you if the person in front of you is a threat, adapted from Paul Howe (former CAG/Delta) and built for flash-picture speed. Plus the body-map every student keeps. Real course material, not repackaged internet content — useful whether you’re an everyday defender, running church security, or wearing a badge. If that’s worth a few dollars a month, come on in. Either way, thank you for reading — and be responsible, capable, and confident.

Two Terror Attacks. One Day. Is Your Family Ready?

The ThreatProof Podcast — Guest appearance on News Radio 1110 KFAB with Chris Baker The ThreatProof Podcast — Guest appearance on News Radio 1110 KFAB with Chris BakerAbout This Episode This week I joined Chris Baker in studio at News Radio 1110 KFAB in Omaha to break down what’s happened since my original Iran threat assessment — and what it means for your family this weekend. We had two terrorist attacks on American soil in a single day. We’ve had four ideologically driven attacks since the Iran strikes began. St. Patrick’s Day weekend is here. And most families still don’t have a plan. That’s what this conversation is about. What We Cover * The four-tier threat model — and how every tier has now confirmed * Why two attacks in one day didn’t get the media coverage it deserved * Vehicle attacks: why they produce the highest casualties in the shortest amount of time, and why ISIS literally publishes a how-to guide targeting events like St. Patrick’s Day parades * The Tactical Twos framework — the same planning system used in special operations, applied to a night out this weekend * What to have in your car’s medical kit right now (and why a box of Band-Aids doesn’t count) * Church and synagogue security: why you have to be your own first responders, and why most events are over before police arrive * The poll that should alarm every American: what percentage of fighting-age men say they’d actually defend this country * Why the weapon is never the problem — and why that conversation matters more than ever Key Takeaways * Four attacks. Fourteen days. Every tier of the original threat assessment has produced a real-world event. This is no longer theoretical. * Ideological violence doesn’t need a direct tie to Iran. The attackers don’t need orders from Tehran. They need a trigger for hate that was already there. The Iran strikes provided that trigger. * You are the first responder. The majority of active threat events are over within five minutes — before police can arrive. The people who stopped these recent attacks were right there, and they were prepared. * Vehicle attacks are the highest casualty-producing threat. More people can be injured and killed by a vehicle in less time than almost any other method. ISIS publishes guidance on exactly how and where to do it. St. Patrick’s Day events are the kind of target they name. * The Tactical Twos in practice. Two rally points. Two alert signals — one overt, one covert. Two places to barricade. Two places to find medical aid. A serious trauma kit in your car. This is not complicated. It’s just not being done. * Stop the Bleed saves lives. A tourniquet and wound-packing material fit in a bag or at your ankle. A two-hour class gives you the skills. Most people won’t do it. Be the exception. * Only 45% of men aged 18–34 say they’d stay and fight if the U.S. was invaded. If you don’t think that has implications for how we handle domestic threats, think again. Behind the Scenes Chris asked me on short notice after two attacks happened on the same day — and what struck me was that most of the coverage treated them as separate, unrelated events. They’re not. The pattern I laid out in my original assessment is confirming faster than I expected, and that’s exactly what I told Chris on air. The caller who mentioned that ROTC students at UNL are being told not to wear their uniforms on campus — that hit home. That’s force protection. That’s a real signal about the threat environment we’re operating in right now, right here in Nebraska. If you’re heading out this weekend, have a quick conversation before you go. Pick a rally point. Know where your medical kit is. Stay 99% in the moment and enjoy yourself — but run 1% of your attention in the background. That’s not paranoia. That’s just what a responsible person does. Check out The Threat-Proof Family Guide and prepare your loved ones for nearly any crisis: Threat-Proof Family [https://academy.threatproofcommunity.com/the-threat-proof-family-guide/]The Chris Baker Show on KFAB: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/53-chris-baker-323959657/episode/ideological-attacks-a-threat-to-every-american-326736583?app=listen [https://www.iheart.com/podcast/53-chris-baker-323959657/episode/ideological-attacks-a-threat-to-every-american-326736583?app=listen] This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit threatproof.substack.com/subscribe [https://threatproof.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Minneapolis Mayhem and Mindset

Real-World Lessons from Recent EventsBy Trevor (OSS | Street Smarts | Threat-Proof Coaching) Minneapolis, January 2026. The recent fatal shooting involving federal agents (ICE/Border Patrol) in our own backyard is a stark reminder: high-stress law enforcement encounters can escalate in seconds. Whether the command is lawful or not, the priority is survival—not winning the argument in the moment. If you carry a gun every day (open or concealed), these basics are non-negotiable. They’re drawn directly from John Farnam’s “Rules of Stupid” and decades of practical training in personal protection. John Farnam’s Rules of Stupid (The Foundation) WHY DO I HAVE TO KEEP REPEATING THIS! Don’t set yourself up for trouble before it starts: * Don’t go to stupid places * Don’t associate with stupid people * Don’t do stupid things * (Often added: Don’t do them at stupid times) These rules prevent 90% of the avoidable problems armed citizens face. Stupid varies by person and context, but following them keeps you out of the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people. The 3 Core Rules for Police Encounters * Comply clearly and slowly When police give a command (lawful or unlawful), follow it purposefully. No sudden movements. Survival comes first—any dispute gets resolved later in court, not on the street. * Never make motions toward your weapon Any hand movement toward your waistline, pockets, holster, or anywhere that could be misinterpreted as reaching for a gun is a high-risk trigger in a tense encounter. Keep hands where officers can see them. Period. * Disclose you’re armed when appropriate If the situation allows (e.g., during a pat-down or traffic stop), calmly and clearly say: “I am legally armed.” Hands still visible, no sudden moves. It’s not always required by law, but it’s often very smart—it reduces misunderstandings. When to Actually Resist The Police This can be a deep subject with so many if’s that I only dare touch upon it. You'd better only do it as a measure of last resort to save your life or that of another clear innocent against unlawful (or perhaps horrible) conduct by the police without other reasonable recourse. Some states allow reasonable resistance against clearly unlawful arrest, but you will often see the myth that people think they can use deadly force when law enforcement is infringing on their rights or arresting them in circumstances they feel are unconstitutional. It’s far from that clear. Many states will not allow resistance to arrest, even if the arrest is unlawful, short of a very specific need to protect yourself immediately from serious harm.Very importantly, the lawfulness of the encounter is never judged in the street. You can still end up very dead and even innocent, or very much a criminal, dead or alive. The Bottom Line The only person responsible for your survival in that encounter is you. I carry nearly every single day.I’ve never once worried about getting shot by police because I generally follow Farnam’s Rules…generally, and I take measures to make sure everyone knows I am the good guy. See my previous posts on the subject here: Follow these basics—Farnam’s rules + clear compliance + no reaching—and you won’t have to worry either short of some very extreme situations. Why This Matters Now The Minneapolis incident (January 24, 2026) highlights how quickly things can go sideways during federal operations or routine contacts. Video analysis and official statements show conflicting accounts, but the outcome was tragic.These rules aren’t about blame—they’re about stacking the odds in your favor so you go home. Want More? If you’re serious about responsible carry and threat response: * Subscribe for free updates * Want to master the basics to keep you safer from crime, armed or not? Check out my 30-Day Street Ready Challenge Course: https://academy.threatproofcommunity.com/streetready30 [https://academy.threatproofcommunity.com/streetready30] Be capable. Be safe. Go out there. TrevorOSS | Threat-Proof Coachingthreatproof.substack.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit threatproof.substack.com/subscribe [https://threatproof.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Don't Become a Danger Sandwich and How Not to Make Kidnapping Easier

The face of crime has changed. Ten years ago, staying out of trouble meant staying out of bad neighborhoods, avoiding gangs, and not involving yourself in criminal activity. That simple formula no longer works. Today, police are increasingly handcuffed by policies that protect criminals over victims. Drug addicts are subsidized. The mentally ill roam free until—as one newscaster grimly observed—”every mentally ill person gets to slaughter one innocent person before they do something with them.” Active threat incidents have increased several hundred percent over the last decade. Random violent attacks against completely innocent people have become routine. This isn’t fear-mongering. This is the hybrid threat environment I’ve been warning about. And if you’re not prepared for it, you’re failing yourself and everyone who depends on you. The Numbers Don’t Lie Consider these statistics: 1.2 million violent crimes are reported annually in the U.S. Eight out of ten people will be victimized by violent crime in their lifetime. One in ten households will experience property crime in a single year. But here’s what should really alarm you: only 41.5% of violent crimes and 31% of property crimes are actually reported. Most crimes are unreported and unsolved. If your safety plan depends on criminals being caught and prosecuted, you’ve already lost. Your primary goal is never to get the criminal captured. That’s a side benefit at best. Your primary goal is to defend yourself and your loved ones—first and foremost. The Protector Code: 1% Effort for 100% Safety I developed what I call the Protector Code: dedicate just 1% of your life to personal safety and security. One percent of a week is about 1.5 hours. That’s it. Fitness, training, education, watching videos, developing a home defense plan, organizing equipment in your car—small investments that compound into massive protection. If you won’t do this for yourself, and you refuse to do it for your family, you’re failing them. Period. What I’ve found, through decades of training law enforcement and military personnel, is that small doses of safety can increase your protection by 100% or more. The 1% effort is the place to start—but not the place to finish. One Minute Lessons That Save Lives The news is filled with stories where I think: A one minute lesson could have saved that person. These aren’t complex tactical maneuvers requiring years of training. They’re simple principles that, once understood, become patterns and frameworks you can apply flexibly across countless situations. The Florida School Shooting: Students were killed as an attacker stood outside a classroom doorway, looked in, saw them standing in the middle of the room, and opened fire. They knew it was an active threat situation. They just had no idea what to do. If their parents had given them a one minute lesson—barricade the door, get in the corner out of view from the hallway, grab a weapon, be ready—those children would be alive today. As a father, that’s the kind of regret that keeps me up at night. It’s why I do this work. Don’t Become a Danger Sandwich One Minute to a Safer Commute: When standing in public—especially around transit—put your back to something solid. Keep everything potentially dangerous in front of you. Don’t stand in front of active train tracks, staring at your phone, with your back turned to everyone walking past. That makes you a danger sandwich—vulnerable from multiple directions with no awareness of what’s approaching. The subway attack video shows exactly this failure. A man in black approaches an unsuspecting rider from behind and shoves him onto the tracks in front of a train. The victim is now in critical condition. The one-minute to safety lesson: Position all danger in front of you. Glance at your phone if you must—you’re human—but maintain awareness of your surroundings. That simple adjustment could have prevented this tragedy. The Capability Assessment Workplace Safety Scenario: An 18-year-old store employee in Florida saw a man shoplifting. Her response? Block his path to the door. Ask yourself: What did she hope to achieve physically by standing between a full-grown adult male and the exit? The answer is nothing. All she did was put herself at risk. In fact, she likely made the crime easier. The suspect had cased the store earlier, saw an unprotected, unaware, smaller female alone—and returned. When she positioned herself at the door, she essentially delivered herself to him. I call this the Capability Assessment: Before you act, ask yourself what you actually hope to achieve with your physical resistance, and whether you’re capable of achieving it. This young woman’s actions were legal. But tactically? A disaster. Morally? Debatable—risking your life over property rarely makes sense. She did some things right: she drew massive attention to herself, and when he tried to force her into a vehicle, she fought like hell to stay out of it. As a former police officer, I can tell you that loading an unwilling person into a car is one of the hardest things to do if they truly resist. But I see people kidnapped all the time who clearly didn’t fight with everything they had. The one minute lesson: If someone tries to take you to a secondary location, fight with 100% commitment. Whatever they might do to you there is worse than the risk of fighting here. Neo-Barbarism: The Hybrid Threat Reality Some call this “assassination nation,” but that’s too simplistic. What we’re experiencing is neo-barbarism—a society so over-civilized it can no longer protect itself from those who choose to act like barbarians. In that subway video, four people appear. Three of them are committing crimes—jumping turnstiles, random assault. Only one is obeying the law. And he’s the victim. Our Constitution, as John Adams noted in 1798, “was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” The whale is through the net. The barbarians are inside the gates. The systems we’ve built work for people who are generally law-abiding and moral, with occasional capacity to deal firmly with sociopaths and criminals. Today? The suspects are treated as victims, and society itself is blamed. This isn’t a political statement. It’s operational reality. And your survival depends on recognizing it. For more on the hybrid threat environment and case studies of recent attacks, read: The Whale is Through the Net and The Barbarians Are Inside the Gates [https://threatproof.substack.com/p/the-whale-is-through-the-net-and] Your Assignment The patterns I’ve outlined here—situational positioning, capability assessment, commitment to resistance—aren’t the end of your training. They’re the beginning. Over time, you won’t need a massive collection of one minute lessons. These principles become internalized frameworks that allow you to respond appropriately across a broad variety of situations. But you have to start. Take the first step For individuals and families: Sign up for my Street Ready 30 Day Challenge [https://academy.threatproofcommunity.com/streetready30]. [https://academy.threatproofcommunity.com/streetready30] You’ll get an ebook, video lessons, real-world examples, and a workbook with specific tasks to improve your safety by 100%—with just 1% effort. This is the perfect starting course for you or anyone in your family. For groups and organizations: Bring the Street SMAARTS Seminar [https://highthreatsystems.com/street-smaarts-seminar] to your workplace, church, school, or community group. This is the full framework delivered live—ideal for teams who want to build a culture of readiness together. Go out there. Be safe. Be ready. Trevor This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit threatproof.substack.com/subscribe [https://threatproof.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

A PREDICTABLE DEATH IN MINNEAPOLIS AND THE NEW NORMAL OF TRIBALISM, POLITICS, AND EMOTION IN PLACE OF REASON

The Minneapolis ICE Shooting: Put Your Thinking Cap On The shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis is generating enormous heat. Predictably, most of the conversation is driven by tribalism, politics, or emotion. This event was 100% predictable after we had witnessed rising violence and the use of vehicles to obstruct agents, with shots fired, and people already wounded and killed. See my earlier article after the first attacks on ICE here: I’m asking you to do something different. Instead of reacting, I want you to examine this incident through the lens of physics and human factors—from the officer’s perspective at the moment force is used. Human Reaction Time: Starting and Stopping Most people don’t understand that reaction time works in both directions. It takes time to perceive a threat and initiate a response. But it also takes time to stop a response once it’s started. Studies show the average reaction time to a simple stimulus is around 0.25 seconds. But that’s under ideal conditions in a lab—not on a snowy street with a vehicle accelerating toward you. Complex decision-making under stress takes longer. And once you’ve committed to pressing a trigger, there’s a lag before your brain can send the signal to stop, your body processes that signal, and your finger actually ceases its action. Shots fired after a threat has passed aren’t necessarily evidence of malice—they may be evidence of basic human physiology. Limited Attention: You Can’t See Everything Human attention is finite and selective. Under stress, it narrows further—a phenomenon known as perceptual tunneling. We simply cannot see and process everything that is happening. Our short-term memory capacity is limited, and we can visually track only a few objects at a time. At times, our focus on the threat is so complete that even things that would be clearly in front of us on video are never even recognized. Check out the “Invisible Gorilla” on YouTube if you want a dose of that reality. Armchair quarterbacks watching video footage can pause, rewind, and zoom in on details like the exact angle of the tires, the precise position of other officers, and the vehicle’s speed. Of course, their perspective today often goes through an emotional and tribal filter, altering the very facts they see, just like stress alters what we see. They can analyze frame by frame, with the benefit of hindsight, rewind, slow motion, and zoom in. An officer in the moment cannot. He’s processing movement, sound, shouted commands, potential threats to himself and others—all in fractions of a second. He doesn’t have the luxury of freeze-frame analysis. The question isn’t “what does the video show?” The question is “what did the officer reasonably perceive in real time?” Stick or Snake: The Survival Response Here’s a principle you need to understand: in survival situations, humans don’t have time to verify—they react to patterns. If you’re walking through tall grass and see a curved shape on the ground, you jump first and determine whether it’s a stick or a snake second. That’s not a flaw. That’s millions of years of evolution keeping you alive. The cost of assuming “stick” when it’s actually a snake is death. The cost of assuming “snake” when it’s actually a stick is a momentary spike of adrenaline. Officers confronting a vehicle moving toward them are operating on this same survival wiring. The brain is screaming “threat” and initiating a response before the conscious mind can complete a full analysis. The legal and tactical question is whether that perception was reasonable given the circumstances—not whether it was correct in hindsight. What Factors Are You Weighing? I want you to engage your high brain here—not your tribal brain. Consider: * Limits of human perception * Limits of human reaction time * Limits of human performance in situations that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving What factors are you weighing in your assessment? Drop them in the comments below. I’ll be adding comments with specific data points as I continue to review the available footage and information. Thinking hat required. Stay safe. Be reasonable and rational; others won’t.Trevor This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit threatproof.substack.com/subscribe [https://threatproof.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]