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Education is more than the accumulation of knowledge. It’s the growth we experience when digging deep into the topics, systems, and ways of thinking that give flavor to life. Enlighten Me is dedicated to bringing listeners into the world of the unknown and providing meaningful insights into issues that affect us all. In each episode, we bring in researchers and experts from a wide range of fields to discuss a topic and how it relates to their industry.
Part of the TXST Podcast Network: https://www.txst.edu/podcast-network.html
Jeremy (00:06):
I am Jeremy.
Rodney (00:07):
I'm Rodney.
Jeremy (00:08):
And this is Enlighten Me. So Rodney, how much do you know about the ALERRT Center? I think I look at the media mentions a lot in my daily job tasks, just kind of seeing what's being talked about with Texas State in the news. And I see a lot of mentions about the ALERRT Center, so I'm curious how much you know about it.
Rodney (00:23):
Actually, just because I've been at Texas State for a while, I know a fair bit about it. It's one of our most productive university research centers, but it's on a subject that is not always easy to talk about, though I think it's on all of our minds. It's our center that focuses on active shooter response, particularly for first responders and law enforcement.
Jeremy (00:44):
It's one of those things that, like you just mentioned, no one likes to really talk about it, but it's just the society that we live in today. It's one of those things that's just kind always in the back of our minds and it's always in the news. And so to be able to have this program at the university that's on the forefront of this type of research and how to prepare law enforcement agencies to deal with these types of situations, it is almost one of those things that it's uncomfortable but also reassuring to know that there are people who are fighting that battle actually making sure that we are prepared to handle these things as best as we can. And so I think a lot of people probably have heard of the ALERRT Center, but they don't actually know what they do on a day-to-day basis and what the actual ins and outs of their training is. So I'm curious, were you able to talk to anyone to get a little more insight as to what the ALERRT Center's mission is and what they do from day-to-day?
Rodney (01:33):
Yes, I was able to talk to a research director at the ALERRT Center, Dr. Hunter Martaindale, who gave us some good background on basically why the ALERRT Center exists here at Texas State and how they've evolved as their mission has expanded.
Hunter Martaindale (01:52):
Hunter Martaindale, I'm the director of research at the ALERRT Center, which is housed underneath the Division of Research as a separate research center, and I'm also an associate research professor at the School of Criminal Justice and Criminology.
Rodney (02:04):
And how did you come to Texas State?
Hunter Martaindale (02:06):
Well, I started as a student, so I moved in 2009 as a new master's student and then I went through, got my Ph.D. here and I was able to luckily fall into a position that I'm in now.
Rodney (02:20):
What's your Ph.D. in?
Hunter Martaindale (02:21):
It's in criminal justice through the School of Criminal Justice. I came here and I was randomly assigned to work underneath Pete Blair, who at the time was starting to work with the ALERRT Center on a course buyout basis, and so I got pulled in just as his graduate assistant. And so that's how I got introduced to the program, but it wasn't intentional.
Rodney (02:40):
For listeners who might not be familiar, let's say, what is the ALERRT Center?
Hunter Martaindale (02:44):
The acronym? Everybody loves acronyms in law enforcement. It's the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center. So it started in 2002, a couple years after the Columbine attack, some of the local SWAT team guys — we have a joint SWAT team with San Marcos PD, Hays County Sheriff's Office, Buda PD — some of those guys recognized the need to improve training after the Columbine attack.
Rodney (03:07):
Of course.
Hunter Martaindale (03:07):
And so it started off pretty small, just local training. The agencies around here and it was only law enforcement based, the state of Texas put some funding toward 'em. They were able to expand out across the state and then momentum picked up and federal agencies started giving some funding and so it spread out to nationwide. Unfortunately, these things always follow, the funding always follows tragic events. So as these things kept happening over the years, they kept getting a little more interest. The training was at that time focused only on the law enforcement response, how to get officers to show up on the scene, get inside as quickly as possible, stop the perpetrator and get that done. That was the initial focus, right, the issue with Columbine. It has expanded in part because of all the research that we do but has expanded to where now we have classes that are joint fire dispatch and law enforcement.
(04:01):
So they're all working together speaking the same language. The dispatchers are hearing the traffic and how to communicate back and forth. How do they get joined together in a unified command presence? We have classes specifically for civilian response. We've got classes for how to breach doors, following the Virginia Tech attack where that perpetrator locked the doors with chains. So as the data show patterns, classes get developed to prepare law enforcement and all first responders on how to respond to those scenes. And so it's ever evolving. It's changed a lot and like I said, unfortunately these things follow events. So over the years, I think we're at about $180 million in funding federal and state. That money goes directly toward all the operations. So all the training is free for officers, so agencies aren't having to pay to have a class brought to them or to attend a class. They have to have I guess the time for their officers to be there, but they're not paying actual cost for that. We provide everything because of that generous funding that we've received.
Rodney (05:08):
Is it free for the other first responders and community organizations that support?
Hunter Martaindale (05:12):
We do have a civilian side that is also free. Yeah, it's not directly tied to any direct organization itself. It's just kind of available for everyone. But for the officers and the first responders, everything is free for them.
Rodney (05:27):
All this evolution in the ALERRT Center, since you've been there and since it's existed, is that driven by new data and research that's coming internally or feedback that you're getting from the field or both?
Hunter Martaindale (05:37):
It's a combination. I mean the courses themselves tend to be driven by the data. We find patterns, we see things that are happening and then we adjust based off of what we're seeing going on. I'm assuming we'll talk about the FBI data in a little bit, but those data at this point are getting close to 600 events. So over the 25 year period of time we have 600 of these events that have happened. And so we have a pretty good sample of those things that are ongoing and we're able to piece out trends from that.
Rodney (06:07):
And what about your particular research? What's your specialty?
Hunter Martaindale (06:10):
It initially started off just active shooter data based, so it was all just descriptive data. Looking at that, I've expanded as I went through grad school and got out to where I'm doing more performance-based studies, so I'm looking at how to improve decision-making and just overall performance. We still maintain all that descriptive data and focus in on that, but I've really keenly kind of approached that law enforcement and first responder, just performance idea of it and then also the program evaluation and making sure that what ALERRT is training actually works as best we can. It's hard to measure because such a low base rate. So you have, like I said, not that many events that happen in a year. So there's not very many people that have gone through our training that have responded to these. So it's hard to measure the efficacy of the training that way. We have some other ways that we can touch it. The few people that have gone through one that have been through our course, they always reach back out to us and let us know how things can give us debriefs and it's always been very positive. I'm glad we've had some people that have gone through and have been able to have a good positive impact on those events as much as they can. But those are kind of few and few and far between just because they're so relatively speaking, few of those events that happen.
Rodney (07:21):
I mean we're a big country and there are a lot of law enforcement. Coast to coast, everybody can't come to San Marcos for training.
Hunter Martaindale (07:27):
We only do three to 5% of our training is here in San Marcos, almost all of it, 95 to 97% of it is out in the country. We have, I'm going to mess this number up. It's changed so much. When I started there was about 20 mobile training kits and now it's over 300 of these kits. And these kits contain everything you would need to put on a class from the computers to the training weapons, safety gear, all the everything, anything you could possibly think of that you would need for a class. It's in these Pelican cases, and I think there's about seven in a kit. UPS loves us. We ship a ridiculous amount of stuff. Those kits go out to the community that's requesting the training.
Rodney (08:13):
From what I do know of the ALERRT Center, the center was kind of ahead of the curve in using things like virtual reality and digital tools to enhance training. How exactly does that work?
Hunter Martaindale (08:21):
We don't do it as much for our actual training. We've been using more for research at this point. Part of the reason is we've gotten so big that when we make a change like that, that's a big change. We're training about 40,000 officers a year at this point. So if we're going to implement something like virtual reality to supplement some training, that's a big ask and it's hard to implement. So we are currently using it for various research projects. We use it to elicit stress and acute stress, and we have some active shooter scenarios that we use for that that have the officer or the participant put on the headset. It's all wireless so they can walk around a big space and feel as if they're in the actual training environment and they walk through and they experience victims and they experience different audio and they get to see attackers and respond how they do. We also use it for other things besides just active shooter. We can use it to have decision making studies. So what was presented and how do they respond to if it's a weapon versus something that's not a weapon. So you can use it for those kind of issues.
Rodney (09:26):
You do a lot of research with the VR things and huge part of the center's mission is research. Do you have any recent significant findings that people might not be aware of?
Hunter Martaindale (09:36):
Yeah, we've got a lot of stuff going on. I mean, our hands are in a lot of pots, so just to kind of preface it, I mean when I took over this position in 2016, it was just me. I was the research department and up until last year it was just me. And so this last year we were able to hire in a couple folks. So I've got three other researchers with me now that are helping. So we're working on simple interventions on reducing acute stress. So if you can imagine if not necessarily an active shooter event, but a police officer walking up to a car and has to process that scene, if you can reduce the amount of stress that they're feeling, you can improve their decision-making process, how quickly they're making decisions, the accuracy of those decisions. Now you can imagine doing that in a domestic violence situation, an active shooter, whatever it is.
(10:22):
If you can have some interventions to drop those down, that acute stress down, you can improve that overall performance. And we're now in the process of pushing that over to a law enforcement agency, replicating that study and putting it into the hands of actual officers and just showing what does that decision making process look like with people that have the training and do this on a day-to-day basis. And do we get those same effects that we've already shown? And I'm pretty confident we will based off of how strong we've found it with the pilot studies.
Rodney (10:50):
So ALERRT's not just looking at the unusual mass events like an active shooter. So you're looking at things that helps law enforcement be more effective and responsive and capable of things like deescalation.
Hunter Martaindale (11:02):
It's all tied together. So anytime I'm talking to people about research, people always think you're only doing active shooter research, which is limited in the scope of what that is. And I always tell everybody, no, if it's anything law enforcement related, we'll support it. It doesn't matter what it is. I mean, we help different researchers send out surveys to people that have gone through our training. We've had such a large pool of people that have gone through our training that are across the nation. We fit all 50 states. And so we were able to get these good samples of officers for people that are doing nothing at all related to active shooter, but they need a law enforcement sample to inform whatever it is. So obviously we vet it to make sure it's a study that we think it's worthwhile, but then we support them in that way. The map lab is a good example of that. It's not active shooter base at all, but he just wants to help the tactical professions as he called it, which is just the first matters.
Rodney (11:49):
You send most of your training out into the field, but do you host large conferences for active shooter training or to share research here at Texas State?
Hunter Martaindale (11:59):
Well, we do. We do both. So we have a active shooter conference. It's every fall. That's a first responder focused conference. We bring in speakers that are doing interesting research, some of 'em, but most of 'em are doing debriefs from events that have happened. So sharing the experiences they have, they're very interested. They bring in video and audio from the actual event themselves and they go through and they walk through what happened and best practices they've learned from that. So people are able to see some of these events from the people that actually responded to 'em and then they can take that back and internalize it. And then we have, I put on a research talk, we discuss the projects that were done that year, and then we have just different speakers that we had some psychologists come in last year that were talking about health and wellness and we have different people there, tangently related to active shooter that come in and do presentations, ends up being two days of breakout sessions, about a thousand officers show up.
Rodney (12:55):
Yeah, I mentioned some of those sessions could get pretty intense when you're going over actual events, I would assume to improve response, you have to look at everything that went well, but also everything that could have been done better.
Hunter Martaindale (13:06):
The ones that I've sat through, the speakers have always been very candid about things and they have a unique perspective. They were there. So not only, and there's some interesting research out there on body camera, but body cameras only capture so much, and so they're able to tell you what they were actually seeing. They're able to tell you what they were hearing, what they were smelling. And so you get these visceral kind of descriptions of what's going on and it really brings home what these guys and women experienced in those events and it's pretty powerful.
Rodney (13:38):
Kind of brings home that this is not just research for the sake of research. This is really reacting to-
Hunter Martaindale (13:44):
Yeah.
Rodney (13:44):
The world we live in.
Hunter Martaindale (13:45):
And that's ALERRT's mission is that we're a research based organization to just improve things, try to save lives and move forward. So all the projects that we work on are geared in that angle. So I mean, another one, we have a research scientist, one of the new hires on staff, Dr. Peter Tanksley. He's currently working through a project, it's called the NOMS dataset, but it's all cause mortality. So basically all death certificates every year get collated by the CDC and that data becomes publicly available. And so he's able to pull out all the law enforcement deaths over this period of time and you can show how those people are dying different from the population, the general population, and he's able to take those data, show those trends, that's going to immediately turn into policy for health and wellness officers and health and wellness policies in general for law enforcement on how we can improve some of that. And a lot of that's stress related. It's cardio metabolic related, and those figures are drastically different for the law enforcement population and the general public.
Rodney (14:47):
I know ALERRT's worked closely with the FBI before and they've adopted of the ALERRT methodology and training. Is that a good source of data for response to these events?
Hunter Martaindale (14:58):
After Sandy Hook happened in 2012, which was also, it was the catalyst event for a lot of things. It was one thing that helped push me forward as well is that was the 20 kids and six teachers died in that event. Following that, the president had put forward the directive to understand these events better. So the FBI, we had a relationship at the time, it wasn't as close as it is now, but we had a relationship at the time, they reached out to see if we would be part of called the active shooter working group, which we did. They ended up actually adopting my methodology for my master's thesis is what the methodology is that drives that whole data set. So we went out and we modified what we had done with my master's work, but put together what that methodology and decision matrix looks like and we've been part of that team ever since.
(15:45):
So we meet throughout the year, go through events that have popped up that might meet the definition of what a active shooter is based off of that methodology that they have. The FBI's data is only on active shooters by themselves. We supplement those data. So we take those exact events. I think there's 554 now through 2024 on the FBI data, and then we keep track of what we call active attacks. So the idea of being law enforcement's not going to hear there's an attack going on, then they're going to over the radio, a man's running around with a knife stabbing people and he's, oh, I want to turn off my lights and sirens now because that's not an active shooter. So the response is going to be the same regardless of what the mode is. So we pull in any attack that somebody is attempting to kill multiple unrelated people in a populated area, which is the definition of an active shooter. And so in our data we have all the firearm events which mirror the FBI data, and then we have some knives and we have some vehicles where people use vehicles. The January 1st attack in New Orleans, that one falls as an active attack. They have a huge impact on our organization and not just our organization, but nationwide. Those data drive not all, but most of the active shooter policies across the nation.
Rodney (16:59):
Well, final question. What are your big goals for the ALERRT Center coming up?
Hunter Martaindale (17:02):
We're trying to touch as many people as we can, so it's a saturation issue on training. We've trained close to 400,000 people at this point over a long period of time, but we've only touched about half the agencies. So we're always trying to expand that out, get funding so we can go out and touch those folks. Research wise, just keep informing law enforcement as a whole. So we're driving forward and trying to have as much of an actual impact with some sort of research that has actual relevance and not just not going to knock it, but not just theory based research, but actual relevance based research.
Jeremy (17:40):
That was really interesting to hear. Just kind of what the ins and outs of the ALERRT Center is, what their mission is and how they're leading the charge in Texas and across the nation with law enforcement responses to these types of situations. And so that was really cool to hear that insight. Was there anything that stood out to you the most about that conversation?
Rodney (17:56):
It was really refreshing to me to hear how they don't take the politics of it into it. They just look at each incident and what happened and what can we as professionals do better to improve our response for law enforcement, for the paramedics, for the victims, leave all the extraneous chatter beside and just make our community safer. And their focus on that goal is something encouraging in some really dark times here.
Jeremy (18:25):
You hit the nail on the head, I think, with the word encouragement. I think people love to hear centers and research-based practices like this that are focused on, like you said, keeping people safe and learning how to prevent and respond to these situations so that people like you and me can feel safe. Kind of on that same note, a lot of people when these unfortunate situations happen, they always kind of wonder, why did this happen? What's the motive behind this act of violence? And so who were you able to talk to, learn the mindset of people who create and carry out some of these acts of violence?
Rodney (18:56):
That's the question we all hear after something happens. We all ask it ourselves. We hear it on the news of someone going, how could someone do this? And that's why I talked to Dr. Rael Morley from our School of Social Work. Their experience both as a researcher and in their career before, gave them some really unique insights into the mindset of people who commit violent acts.
Rael Morley (19:18):
Hi, my name is Dr. Rael Morley, and I'm an associate professor from the School of Social Work here at Texas State University.
Rodney (19:28):
What's your particular area of research?
Rael Morley (19:29):
My main focus of research is mindfulness meditation, violence in the brain that includes things with police, active shooters, all different levels of violence.
Rodney (19:39):
Interesting that you started with mindfulness and meditation and I guess you studied the intersection of that with violence?
Rael Morley (19:44):
Yes, yes, yes.
Rodney (19:46):
How did you come to that as a particular research field?
Rael Morley (19:48):
Glad you asked. So back when before was a graduate student, I was a parole officer. Then I and I also meditated and went to my Ph.D. program and I began to realize that all the stories that a lot of my parolees would tell me and I always listened, were just something that really motivated me to understand, particularly with violence. At the same time, a lot of the things that they would talk about were issues with paying attention, lack of self-compassion, things like that. And as I got into researching mindfulness at the same time I realized that these things are interrelated and that there are a lot of programs out there that specifically catered to at the time, corrections folks, people who are incarcerated, and showing that it reduced recidivism, which is what got me into mindfulness more, not only as a practice but as a research. And then I just since then have looked at it in all kinds of ways with policing and police, deadly force related shootings and things like that, all as examples of tools to potentially reduce the likelihood of wrongful violence.
Rodney (20:49):
And actually, I want to take a step back. I believe you're the first professor we've had who started their career as a parole officer. How did you start off there?
Rael Morley (20:59):
Well, that's a whole other interesting story. So I got my bachelor's degree in criminal justice and psychology, and I ended up in Austin and was looking for direction and they were hiring. So it wasn't necessarily, I guess the goal I wanted to do. I didn't really have, graduate school was the eventual goal, but I just started there and I managed to get into the position and it was just an interesting job to have for a while. And I also uncovered a lot of things in terms of one personal biases I had versus incarcerated folks or parolees. And then it also just kind of opened the door for me to listen to stories from, the stories of these folks.
Rodney (21:40):
So it sounds like the career was also a bit of an education.
Rael Morley (21:43):
Yes, it was.
Rodney (21:44):
This, the intersection between mindfulness and violence, I don't think that's something that would occur to a lot of people that there was a-
Rael Morley (21:50):
Yeah, I understand. I suppose there's been all kinds of research in the past looking at different tools to calm the mind and stuff like that. A lot of folks with antisocial personality or proclivities towards violence or even folks who just like impulsivity and a lot of things that mindfulness in particular are a very good tool for that. In terms of the brain, a lot of the folks that I guess is impaired or that's tied to violence, lack of self-reflection, lack of emotional processing, overly focused on external events, over hostility, all these things and seeing hostility where it's not there. These are things that mindfulness actively, not only in terms of the brain, but in terms of how it impacts symptoms, reduces that. So it is kind of, I guess something that folks didn't think much about. I mean, at the time when I first got in, I didn't connect the two. It was only through research that brought me into it. And then just kind of my personal, I guess, journey, learning about mindfulness and how that impacted me personally, especially given some of the traumas I experienced because there is a connection with trauma and violence as a parole officer.
Rodney (22:54):
I think it's not news to say that America's very concerned dealing with the problem of active shooters and mass shootings and mass violence. It certainly feels like, and some research bears out that there's been a definite uptick in the recent decades. And I think that's something we all do after one of these incidents happened is a lot of people wonder, how can someone do this?
Rael Morley (23:16):
Yes, yes. And first, let me also state, a lot of folks still try to connect why different violent people do violent things. A lot of people that do violence, whether serial killers or mass shooters or terrorists or otherwise, all do have parallels, but they also have their unique differences.
Rodney (23:35):
It's not a one size fits all.
Rael Morley (23:37):
So in terms of discussing it, I mean, part of it I can talk about is just the research demographics could also get into some of the theoretical understanding of how violence may play out. For these folks in particular, they do follow a lot of parallels.
Rodney (23:52):
What are some of the, I guess, commonalities that you see frequently with?
Rael Morley (23:56):
So there's quite a few of them. Impulsivity, a lot of 'em, it tends to favor men. Men are more likely, like 90% of the violent offenders of all varieties tend to be men. They tend to be impulsive. They tend to have exposure to previous trauma that gets unresolved. And they also, a lot of them have been exposed to, tend to have some kind of self-esteem loss or signs of feeling entitled to something.
Rodney (24:31):
That feels like different extremes of a similar problem, a feeling of entitlement, but also a feeling of, I don't know, abandonment or a lack of control or lack of power.
Rael Morley (24:40):
Yes. And that is fairly common among all the different demographics. If you're talking about, for instance, serial killers, very similar in many ways, also very different.
Rodney (24:53):
Okay. Yeah, the expression's very different. But it's interesting to know that they have some common roots or origin points.
Rael Morley (24:59):
They do.
Rodney (25:00):
Has your research or has anyone's research shown any reason why? It seems like the mass shooting, public mass shootings has become such a frequent occurrence.
Rael Morley (25:09):
It's hard to say. So definitely the amount of fatalities that are occurring with mass shootings now are up significantly because of large capacity weapons and such, and having these folks have access to 'em. So that is definitely, I think a big part of it because whenever people see these things on TV and they see how many people are exposed to and the amount of people who are killed, that's been going up consistently. And so I think that's part of it too. And then I just think the other thing is seeing some of the more in recent years, just you're seeing younger children being more likely to be targeted. And I think that calls that particular to folks because we have a tendency to want to protect the young. And it seems there's a level of something being more heinous because it targets young children in particular.
Rodney (26:00):
Are there some particular patterns that, I know mass shootings happen in a variety of settings and places and targeting different people, sometimes randomly, seemingly or sometimes targeted groups. But school shooting in particular, and we've experienced it here in Texas, certainly some of the higher profile, more memorable cases from Columbine on have been school shootings. Are there particulars to school shooters? Because I know frequently it's a teenager, but not always.
Rael Morley (26:26):
That's a good question. So what I'd have to state on that is there does appear to be some differences. A lot of, for instance, workplace violence, there's usually some specific reason why that workplace was targeted, some kind of trigger in the past, or if it's something like for instance the plane being in Austin a couple of decades back getting slammed into the IRS building, there is a target that's political, but these in particular are younger. And what I think that I have seen on the research on those is they definitely had more childhood experience issues of child experiences. You definitely seem to be more pronounced differences in terms of the loneliness, the bullying and things like that. They also tend to have parallels between the two. So it seems less political, more just vindictive versus society.
(27:18):
Would be, I guess, the better way to see about it. What's the best way I can get the most attention? And I state that saying that I'm really over generalizing.
Rodney (27:26):
Certainly.
Rael Morley (27:27):
Yeah, because there's a lot of, it's hard for us to even get to the point of what a lot of the folks actually think because we don't get many of them that survive. They all tend to be suicidal. Most of 'em don't expect to live. And I'll also say, and what's interesting is there's even times when many of 'em, in the case of school shootings will give up early in some cases because they realize they crossed a line. So that is another fascinating, it doesn't get talked about as much.
Rodney (27:57):
I think the public may make assumptions that anyone who does this has left a long letter or a manifesto somewhere.
Rael Morley (28:03):
That is common. Yes.
Rodney (28:04):
Okay. But it's not universal?
Rael Morley (28:06):
It's hard to say with anything's universal, research.
(28:08):
So we'll say that most folks, what we know, and this is where I got to say most folks, they will either have a manifesto or in other cases, they just kind of start telling people over time and they have leakage to where, and most of these cases — I say that as a scientist, we kind of generalize, there's always exceptions to the rule — but in the cases that we can generalize about, there seems to be some kind of leakage where they're telling a story to people and letting 'em know as if they want folks to find out. And then there's others who have a very political manifesto, which is written out there where they have, I guess something to justify in their view what they've done.
Rodney (28:45):
Timeline wise, these kind of happen at the same time, the rise of digital communication and the rise of school shootings. But does that the tendency of people to post on message boards or send emails, give researchers, I guess when they're going back and trying to understand a particular case, are there more footprints to follow?
Rael Morley (29:02):
Yes. I think social media does a big change for mass shooters in particular because they share a lot and you can find signs, a lot of the things we know about them now, a lot of that does come from looking at their online profiles, for instance, their fascination with guns and things like that. So if you were to ask someone several, like let's say two decades back predictors, they didn't have a lot of 'em because again, a lot of the research was done. Folks would see them and say, oh, they were alone. They were loners. They didn't see it coming. They were struggling with mental health. But now you can see patterns of, for instance, fascination with gun violence, talking about previous traumas that come out and even to the point where they begin to plan these events.
Rodney (29:41):
As we start to understand some of the commonalities, what can we do as a community, as a society to try to not just identify, but kind of head off and intervene before people get to these crisis points?
Rael Morley (29:55):
Well, that's a great question. I think the first thing is I think there needs some just general education that a lot of times people are reaching out ahead of time and they are telling people, and there are signs, and not everyone who we do research on persons and concerns, which show the signs, but they're not actually done anything. And that's been a big part of research too, but they're not necessarily those folks. But to be more aware of that. And I think there's things like if someone says something and that seems to talk about violence and mass shootings, take that as a concern and don't ignore it. And I think a lot of times these things are ignored by people who might've said something like, for instance, art room pictures in schools where they show pictures of death, violence, they talk about these things or active sharing with plans with friends, and to think it's going to help them in the end for these individuals to, before they commit, to actually have an intervention.
(30:50):
So I think that's probably one of the big things research tells us. But I also think that there's some greater cultural things that we need to pay attention to, such as focuses on bullying. A lot of times these folks have a history of being bullied and being forced into social isolation, being more compassion. I think that's a big part of my overall picture and that I like to tote any kind of violence. But I think that's, especially in this case, one of the things that often separates concerned persons versus active shooters is this humiliating event, whether it's like a loss of a job or public or online humiliation that happens, that triggers it. So finding ways that we can be more compassionate and to avoid embarrassing folks when they go through hard times and maybe even finding a system for it. I think the other thing that also you can't ignore is most of these folks exhibit very toxic, masculine traits. There's over fascination with that, and it's beyond a doubt that the demographic is largely men and that a lot of the things that I think that men feel that they need and are missing, they're not finding. So they're not even able to find a job, not being able to find a girlfriend or feeling vulnerable. These are all things that can tie to the behavior. So finding us not to ignore that, but as society question, why do we put that on them and why do we put that on ourselves?
Rodney (32:12):
How can mindfulness help?
Rael Morley (32:15):
I think mindfulness integration into our society would be a great step. Getting everyone on board for that is not always easy. But definitely having programs and outlets, because I think it helps one, if you can find many of the folks who could potentially end up that way, getting them to be able to introspect anybody with that violent potential or anyone who's experienced trauma, to go inside and heal themselves and to see who they really are and experience stuff from a moment of self-awareness that tends to make 'em less violent. A lot of violence lacks self-awareness. People have these grandiose visions of who they think society will see them as. In reality, we see them as monsters after they commit the acts, whether it's mass shooter, a sex offender, or otherwise. I think being able to get people the introspection to be able to be compassionate to yourself, because I think that's something that a lot of these folks lack is being able to say, Hey, life's hard. I lost a job. I'm having a hard times getting a girlfriend. I'm having hard times connecting with others. I'm alone." I have to be able to accept that that's real and that's going to happen and give myself the grace to say that's okay and not feel that I have to show the world something that I'm not.
Rodney (33:28):
Could you give us some examples of, I mean, obviously you can't give anything personal, but how that played out when you were working with parolees and incarcerated people, what kind of intervention would you use to try to treat people who were struggling with some of these issues?
Rael Morley (33:42):
I had the fortunate benefit of actually being part of and doing research with folks meditating and incarcerated folks meditating, and these weren't necessarily all violent, so let me throw that out there. They weren't all violent in this particular case. Their specific crime of interest was not the main focus of it. Rather their history and their demographics that might relate to violence. In this case, a lot of folks, for instance, some of the things that stuck out to me was there was one individual who struggle with drug use, which is also something that's not uncommon with many types of violent offenders, including mass shooters. And he would talk about how the feeling he got and how he wished he was exposed to that early on. Another one through a person who actually committed murder, and he had a traumatic brain injury, which was the original connection between the two, but he also taught meditation groups.
(34:35):
What it helped for him in particular was after he had a traumatic brain injury, him, his girlfriend got in a fight and he killed her. A year later in prison, neuroplasticity kicks in and he realized what he did. He realized that he had to accept what he's done, which a lot of folks can't do. That's where the dark descent happens for many folks. So he was able to accept what he did and find some kind of peace by one learning to meditate, but two, teaching other folks who might do the same thing or might run on the same problem. So in that way, he can prevent other violence, kind of finding his own internal redemption through that. So these are at least two examples. And then I can take more tertiary examples of police officers experiencing trauma and veterans experience trauma, which isn't the same thing, but being able to go into those dark places and give yourself that peace to be able to focus and let go of the traumas you've seen is a big deal.
Rodney (35:28):
As you say, it's not the same thing, and it's not mass shootings, but I know veterans and police officers also have a higher rate of suicide, which is another rising form of gun violence.
Rael Morley (35:40):
And violence too. They're more likely to have domestic violence among other things. A lot of that's tied to PTSD and untreated. So the parallels even there for these particular folks are very similar. They're untreated, they're socially withdrawn. They have these very toxic views in how they see themselves, and they can't come to terms with those things. And so in this case is, yeah, they can express violence. They show a lot of the same signs. And I will say that the military and Department of Veterans, the VA, have paid attention to mindfulness as a treatment for folks with PTSD, violence related PTSD. And I think that is a thing to also consider in all these cases. There is often a form of violence exposure beforehand. And I think for anybody who goes through something like that, being able to come to terms with it and make sense out of it because it breaks our view. And I can speak from that personally on that, going through having a gun pointed at me on the job and things like that. These things like how did this happen? The level of vulnerability, being able to look at yourself and say, "Hey, it's okay that it happened. These things happen."
Rodney (36:48):
As you say, people are frequently showing signs, and if they haven't done anything yet, it's human nature. If it's someone or that you're close to, you don't want to get them in trouble and you can't imagine that, well, they'd never do that. So if somebody is seeing signs of this kind of feeling of isolation or persecution and giving signs that violence is something they're considering, what should someone do?
Rael Morley (37:11):
There's definitely a red flag depending on where you're at. Red flag laws, if that person's in particular looks like they're about ready to commit a crime, protecting them and protecting others becomes the primary concern. But earlier on, if they begin to get fascinated with mental health, taking more interest in them, trying to connect with them more, trying to get the mental health treatment's a good idea, trying to bring it up with their peers and people around them. Personal interventions are there. Looking to see if there's bullying in schools, consider changing environments or there's definitely things that alternatives to develop social connection in other places that they may not have. Maybe it's working out, maybe it's like getting involved in a religious group or some other kind of support group. And it may be really hard at times to do this, but I think it's also very important connecting with their friends and people close to 'em and try be ready to reach out and really show compassion if something really crazy has happened, like a loss of a job or public humiliation of some variety, really extend at that point to go to them. These are all things you could do to prevent it. And again, it's impossible to prevent anything, anybody from doing if they're really that committed, but realizing that when they're in that dark place, being able to get them help is the primary concern.
Jeremy (38:44):
Well, that was a great conversation it sounded like you had, and I think we learned a lot of good insights as to what the ALERRT Center does and what their mission is, and also learning some of the psychology and some of the mental health aspects as to why people commit certain acts like this, so that hopefully we can find ways to prevent these things from happening again in the future. So this was a really great, insightful conversation.
Rodney (39:05):
No, I came out of it feeling a little more optimistic about this subject than going in because I think the grim fact is that we all know that these incidents are going to continue at some pace, but talking to our experts here, I'm not just resigned to the fact that it always has to be this way. We can be better about this.
Jeremy (39:25):
And it makes me very happy and confident, and like you said, more secure to know that we are on the forefront of these types of research projects and these efforts to help prevent some of these things from happening in the future. That's what it's all about.
Rodney (39:37):
Thank you for listening to Enlighten Me. This podcast is a production of the Division of Marketing and Communications at Texas State University. Podcasts appearing on the Texas State Podcast Network represent the views of the host and guest not of Texas State University.