Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Learning to Become Better at Life by Understanding the Reality of Classrooms, Crime Scenes & Courtrooms: Investigate Fully - Report Honestly
Kristin is a Social/Emotional Investigator, Former Teacher & Human Development Expert
Matt is a Trial Attorney, Former Prosecutor & Criminal Law Scholar
H.C. “Hil” is a Criminal Investigator, Veteran, Retired FBI Agent & Cactus Expert
NERVOUS SYSTEM WARNING - SOMETIMES WE USE RUDE WORDS! Topics include Drugs, Sex, Death & Violence and also Abuse, Neglect, Abandonment & Betrayal.
We use raw and vivid imagery and choose words that explore what is real.
We are your life cast, and this is Brain Food for Life. Life cast is a task force. A task force of former government workers, first and second responders who have seen some stuff and, well, are now here to provide practical real world protocols to implement into everybody's life system. And a lot of people are talking about here's what's wrong with the world and pointing out problems and here's right? Teaching trying to teach where the problem is as if talking about the problem is somehow solution, but it's not.
Speaker 1:It's not. And all the jargon, diagnosing, and and and the words that are used in every spiritual, secular, religious, or psychological space, governmental space, well, that's not gonna help. And so life cast has been developed to try to provide real world solutions to real world problems. But that first does require having some conversations about the what the real world is. In the world of first responders, second responders, what we're talking about is tragedy, trauma, and crime.
Speaker 1:I'm Matt Long.
Speaker 2:I'm Kristen Long.
Speaker 3:And I'm Hillary Jenkins. And
Speaker 1:we're gonna spend just a little bit of time talking today about tragedy, trauma, and crime, and what those words mean in the lives of people and especially the lives of families and children. Because whether you're 70 years old, 40 years old, 20 years old, or 10 year old 10 years old, your childhood experience or your experience with a child impacts how you behave. And, you know, there's a lot of talk out there about this thing called adverse childhood experiences. Well, I'm gonna set that aside and just touch on and say, yeah, that exists. But, most people that are talking about that, it's in a it's in a very narrow form.
Speaker 1:There's a study, Kaiser Permanente, and, but essentially, it's this. The bad things that happen to us when we're children stay with us and result in disease, disconnection, and destruction. We're more likely to experience pain, illness, and real dysfunction of the mind, body, and gut, the more tragedies, traumas, and crimes that we were forced to be a part of. The other days, Hillary, you were we were talking about, by the way, Hillary's a got a lot of experience, some military, FBI agent. Kristen has a lot of experience.
Speaker 1:She's an investigator. She works in the court. She, investigates family, tragedy, and she was a elementary ed teacher for many years. Me, I've been in the justice system, as a trial attorney, both as a prosecutor and a defense attorney. And I was also a supervisor and a trainer, for a lot of professionals in the areas of person's crimes.
Speaker 1:I've also been a testifying expert on situations where children are impacted by serious and complex crime. So look, we come from a background that has seen a lot of tragedy, a lot of suffering, a lot of trauma, and the effects of of crime. But, Hillary, you were talking about a, a shootout, that occurred in the in the eighties in Miami as as I recall. Can you can you tell us a little bit about that?
Speaker 3:Well, sure. It was 04/11/1986, and it's well known as firefight in quotes. And it was the bureau's, realization that they were they were outgunned, and the mindset of the perpetrators was superior, to have the outcome that resulted in the death of two agents and injuries to three others.
Speaker 1:And what year was that again?
Speaker 3:Nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 1:See, it was fascinating when you were talking about that shootout because those these were, serial bank robbers. Am I right about that? Yes. Because when you're telling that, I was aware of the North Hollywood Shootout with LAPD in the nineties.
Speaker 3:Yes. I remember you asking me questions that, were in the same, you know, category, but I I thought you were talking about a different incident because my my memory was of the Miami shootout and not what you were trying to
Speaker 1:Right. And I was sure you were talking about we were talking about the same thing because it was so similar because in in the nineties, there was the North Hollywood Shootout with a couple, serial bank robbers who had, homemade body armor, and they had, automatic, AK 40 sevens. They were converted to automatic. And LAPD just got their butts handed to them in a firefight where they were on, you know, of small, handguns or shotguns is all they had at this time. You know, not everybody was outfitted with with long guns.
Speaker 1:And these the the self the body armor that the bad guys had were just the the the the small munitions had enough were just not having impact on them. And these these these the good guys, the cops here, LAPD who's one of the most, you know, trained and experienced and and, you know, they deal with real violent crimes. They were just flat out outgunned. And I was fascinated that, you know, you talked about the lessons that were learned by the FBI in that Miami shootout, the shootout. Is that what you call it?
Speaker 1:No. Firefight. The firefight. Yeah. The firefight.
Speaker 1:And how that didn't get really translated to the LAPD, which is a local law enforcement. You know, and, you know, almost ten years later where they have the same issue happened, there. And when when I was thinking about that and kind of research and hearing from you about it, it made me think about just this concept of tragedy, trauma, and crime, and the impact that that has on people, persons, and families. And how so often as people, as persons, and as families, the the the the ammunition, the weapons that stress, harm, abuse, threats that exist to our bodies, to our minds, to our sense of peace, happiness, our development, our ability to behave in a certain way, our ability to connect. We're just we are outgunned.
Speaker 1:The the the enemy to the mind just has such great firepower, and we have not been and are not provided the same weapons, tools, defense mechanisms,
Speaker 2:tactics Shields of protection.
Speaker 1:Shields, training, all those things to combat those the destruction that comes from our our our mind enemy, and in some cases, our body enemy. And how this, you know, this this FBI and the feds, they had this institutional knowledge about how to change things, and they did change the way they started responding. Am I right about that?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. And what's interesting is law enforcement historically has always been reactive in nature. Mhmm. And a shift took place to become more proactive. And I was in the FBI during the time that occurred.
Speaker 3:And so I saw a lot of changes in the way, agents would, conduct investigations and make arrests and, try to be as proactive as possible rather than reactive Mhmm. To an incident. And that's the whole purpose of gathering information and intelligence as much as you can take in before you go execute a search warrant or arrest warrant so that you have the advantage. Law enforcement always thinks, you know, they're gonna have the advantage because they're law enforcement.
Speaker 1:The the vast resources they have.
Speaker 3:All of that. But the criminal element seems to be always one step ahead in creating new avenues and new ways to commit the crimes, to outsmart law enforcement who has to still play catch up. Right.
Speaker 2:I love those words you used reactive and proactive because the funny thing about even I just related it to just a little human. As soon as we're born, we are encoding information to stay alive, to stay safe, to stay alive. And that you and and humans, we are reactive beings. And I liked that that instead of being reactive, there are strategies to so you can learn yourself and be proactive for your safety. I loved those words.
Speaker 1:In in intelligence, the idea that first there needs to be a, a fact finding and a integration of of information in there. That's built on institutional knowledge, and it's built on, you know, but in the moment data. And if it's changed and, you know, as as especially when you're because you're and I love thinking about a tragedy, trauma, or crime response in terms of being very tactical. And and and what we, too often the ones that are tactical are the offenders, the predators. And and too many good people if they're not engaged in kind of this, you know, what what pop culture might call warrior mindset.
Speaker 1:Right? Which I hate. How that's been applied, but I mean real warriors. You know, the the the cops that I know who are the most dangerous are the ones that you won't you don't know how dangerous they are. They hide in plain sight.
Speaker 1:You're among them. But there are others that I the other guys that I work with and some some guys are on our team. Mhmm. They you may see them and they may be kinda small. They may you may mistake them for being a little kind of a nerd or a or a or a geek or something like you'd say in in high school.
Speaker 1:And these these mother f'ers, they're the real ones who if they are close to you, and and stuff has
Speaker 3:to go down, boy, they're who you want on your side and they are
Speaker 1:you know, you're dead before you know it. And and and these are guys who are these great investigators because they get information. They they talk to people. They get up up close and personal and understand, and understand things. And so this life cast.
Speaker 1:Right? Life dash capital c dot capital a dot capital h dot capital s dot capital t, it is built from a hypermilitarized approach to life, which is to not just be aware of suffering and certainly not to accommodate suffering and just say, well, this is who you are. No. It's to identify and eliminate harm, stress, and threats to life. Because really when we talk about tragedy, when we talk about trauma, when we talk about the effects of crime, that we're talking about harm.
Speaker 1:Harm to development, harm to the mind, harm to the body, harm to function, harm to behavior. We're talking about stress, cognitive stress, emotional stress, relationship stress, family stress, intimacy stress. And we're talking about threats. Threats that result in neurological and cognitive and emotional just strain and worry and anxiety and all these words that get diagnosis. These these harm, stress, and threats are what results in educational diagnosis, processing disorders, attention disorders, psychological and behavioral disorders that some disciplines put a label on and try to, treat as a pathology.
Speaker 1:And, yeah, those some
Speaker 3:of those pathologies exist, and some of those labels, and
Speaker 1:some of those diagnosis might be useful in certain contexts, in a very therapeutic, in a in a medical context. But they're less useful in just a pure life context, in a in a in an integratable mechanical context. There, the goal is and must be and is for for us to prevent tragedy where tragedy can be prevented. To prevent trauma when trauma can be prevented. Prevent crime when crime can be prevented.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. But then in those instances where tragedy, trauma, and crime can't be or are not prevented for whatever reason, that we can reduce, minimize, mitigate the effect of that tragedy, trauma, and crime. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And we almost have to reframe. This is why I like brain food. This is real brain food for life because we're retraining and and telling our ourselves that the emotions we had was information. It was information to keep us safe and secure to survive. So if we can unpack those emotions with ourselves and know how they affected us, how they taught us things to keep us safe and secure and find happiness, we can reuse that information in a healthy way instead of pack it somewhere in a not healthy way.
Speaker 2:It's information. Right.
Speaker 1:So I wanna I wanna talk a little bit and break this down tragedy, trauma, and crime. Because some tragedies, probably most tragedies that we're a part of, that results in trauma. But not every tragedy results in trauma. And there are some things that may not be a tragedy, but that still have what we call trauma.
Speaker 3:And then we're in this world
Speaker 1:of crime, and there might be some crimes that are tragedies and some crimes that do result in real substantial trauma. But not every crime does. Not every bad thing that happens needs to be either a tragedy or a crime or a trauma. And what we're at in this world is there's anything that we're dissatisfied from, we rush and call that either a tragedy or some sort of criminal act. And and so let's start with this word trauma because it's one of the what I call the ineffable words, and there are a few.
Speaker 1:God, energy, love, and and trauma is certainly one of them. Because it's just become so overused and I think misused to the point of not being a word that can be shared or understood. And it's really as a as a hand wave. And and, you know, as as I was I was told by my trauma expert, they said if everything's trauma, then nothing is. And that if in our lives, we're not able to weigh and balance unfortunate, disappointing, events in our lives without calling everything trauma, then there's a there's a problem.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. You can unpack the word I think when I the word trauma in, like, in medical science is, some type of right injury to the tissue, a tissue or something. So I, like, if you think of it as just your skin system, but growing up you're gonna have just your skin system. You're gonna have lots of little scratches and little cuts and bruises and stitches and you know, that grow into scars if treated correctly become scars that might have happy memories and they might have sad memories. But now that same thing is happening inside your body and your nervous system with the information you're taking in as you're experiencing things and that's that's all trauma is.
Speaker 2:There's something stops. If you think almost as your nervous system as the same type of system, there's things in there that have been stored because your mind was like, nope. Too hard to process that one. That doesn't keep us safe, and it goes somewhere else in your body. It's a little if there's some injury that needs to be addressed, helped out of there, and then it becomes just another little bump in your road map in there.
Speaker 2:There might be a little mountain over there that's like okay that one is a little bit harder to think about and face and so we've got to take precautions when we do think about those kinds of things and all the other places that we're thinking about so we can move through space happily with our injuries. That's our injuries that have either healed or not.
Speaker 1:In in in asking and or contemplating, maybe reflecting on what is the injury helps get us to whether or not it is in fact trauma. And sometimes trauma is acute. It happens right in the moment really quickly and then recovers. You know, you nick your, you you you you you nick your hand. Right?
Speaker 1:There's an injury. There's a skin tissue injury that that's not gonna affect the way I function. It might have a little bit of pain. It might be some annoyance. I gotta clean it a little more frequently, but it's it's gonna recover fairly quickly.
Speaker 1:And the same thing happens in our in our when we talk about emotional trauma or cognitive trauma, we're talking about injury to the mind, which is to be distinguished from injury to the body. Now sometimes injury to the body does have the effect of injuring the mind, injuring the emotions. It now makes it so it's dysfunctional, which is when we say it's it's now operating in a depressed, right, or, even a disabled form. And and and and in trauma, especially emotional trauma, when we're talking about, you know, different experiences that happen to kid, you know, the ones we point to adverse childhood, and there are so many. Adverse childhood experiences.
Speaker 1:Right? Some of the most common are, you know, real, poverty. Just just, you didn't have, you you were worried where your next meal would be. You were worried about the safety needs. There was an unsafe it was a unhygienic home.
Speaker 1:You were worried about getting, you know, fungus and ringworm and these things because your your bed wasn't clean. You know, one of the things they look at in the
Speaker 3:government when they come in to do a home inspection.
Speaker 1:You know, they look at things like, is are there just mattresses on the floor without bed coverings? Well, that's not about, about monetary ability because you can't afford a bed. It's because what that that ends up resulting as far as health, hygiene for, any person that's living in a in a in a dirty environment without, clothes or, laundered sheets and laundered clothing, and you're looking at babies.
Speaker 2:Protection from even the elements, the environment. Yes. Winters and the summers and the just
Speaker 1:It's about say it's about safety. These these types of, things. So moving moving at various stages of of your child can be can be extremely traumatic. You lose your home and your friends and your team and your school and your anticipated path.
Speaker 2:And the way you moved through space, the way you learn a place where you learned how the world works is gone and changed.
Speaker 1:Having parents, siblings that are associated with with or that are involved in criminal justice system as a as an accused, as a defendant, as a criminal. They go to jail or prison or on probation. These are all things that impact a child impact their, because it impacts a person's identity and their reality. And one of the most common one is a child who experiences is the victim when people are victims of person's crimes. So now we're in crimes.
Speaker 1:And I've just distinguished this idea of different types of crimes, because what is a crime? Well, sometimes there might be a religious crime that we call or some call sin. Right? And there's punishment associated with that, so called spiritual or religious crime. And then there's governmental or regulatory crimes.
Speaker 1:And this could be, well, you didn't file the right paperwork or financial reasons and the government was wrong. Right? Speeding and these other regulations. These are these are other types of crimes. There's property crimes.
Speaker 1:Right? You get your bike stolen. And then there's person's crimes, which are crimes against the person, the identity of the individual. And this is really what we're talking about violent crime, sexual crime, right, assaults and, weapons for to to cause fear and terror in the hearts and mind of other other people. Right?
Speaker 1:These are the types of crimes that that really impact the the person or any crime. Having something stolen, having your bike stolen could be really a traumatic event and could be could could be a bad thing, but that might be different. It's likely gonna be different than a kid whose father, brother, uncle, cousin, coach, some position of trust violates their body and results in pain and shame in a level of discomfort, especially when that child is in an environment that they're supposed to be particularly safe. And these crimes against children, especially, but family violence crime, domestic crime, the the thing that makes that so impactful and tragic and traumatic is the environment where they happen, which is the home, the kitchen, the living room, the bedroom, and even the bed of a child where they're supposed to feel the most safe and secure. And it's that impact on the mind and on the emotion and on the safety and on the identity and reality, where real tragedy and harm and stress and threat is manifest and expressed in the thought process, in the behaviors.
Speaker 1:Now you have a person who no longer feels like they can communicate truthfully to someone in their life. Because the person who they thought was someone that they cared about and cared about them is now violating their body. Mhmm. And that perhaps that person's partner who might be their mother or someone else that they love, a grandmother, is either aware of and taking protecting the offender over them, and that impacts that person's identity in reality. The moment that those type those types of things happen, and so crime is another whether you're the victim or the relative of a victim or a relative of an offender, anyone who has impact on that crime, that can be a nuclear bomb that impacts that family, that person, that entire people.
Speaker 1:And that's the type of things the things we're talking about when we talk about trauma. The tragedy comes in other forms. Right? There's there's there's natural disasters. There's fires.
Speaker 1:We're in February 2025 right now. We're we're on the heels of, just these fires that are going on in in California that just have a these are tragedies. They're unfortunate things that result in real suffering.
Speaker 2:You mentioned communication too through that, like, if the if the child you said if the child doesn't know how to communicate that, and that is the big key is the the experiences, the tragedies, the events that are traumatic, the all of that child all the way through adult. It's it is that communication piece of of of making sense of it with language that that needs to be talked about with the identity, with the other persons and people in their life, with the communities, with the culture, because it either gets discussed and talked about and communicated or packed.
Speaker 1:You know, and the you know, when I think about just give an example. There's a reason why we do what we do. Vehicle accidents. What a violent act. Now that a vehicle accident could happen just from a person's neglect or just not paying attention, All the way to a person's impaired by drugs or alcohol that prevents them from being able to have attention to what's going on and they're not aware of of how they're they're operating.
Speaker 1:All the way to a person gets behind the wheel and is badly motivated and wants to cause as much mayhem as they could and use this this vehicle as a missile, as a weapon and intentionally poorly motivated ram into somebody else. Well, all of these are car or what we call a car accident. And all of these can result in everything from, it's just a emotional fright, whether that be a a small rear ending that just didn't have a whole lot of impact, to a major accident that resulted in tipping and flipping and and all these things to where one person walks away completely unscathed without any injury, and another person dies simply because of the position that they were in within the car or because one person had a seat belt or not, one person had a airbag or not or a differently situated airbag or was a different weight or size or height or position. Oh, important. And I got a war story that I'll tell one of these days about a person who was
Speaker 2:The war story.
Speaker 1:Right. These wars None none of those. Yeah. But right we of of all these examples where we think, my goodness, that was this far away from being the most tragic thing to, in some cases, that was this far away from not being a tragic event. Is that I had a one case where a passenger happened to be leaning to the right looking in the back seat, kind of in the middle, and a post came through the windshield and shore off that passenger's face.
Speaker 1:And there was one death there simply because that person was in the safest position in the back seat, but leaning over to the middle to look at what was going on. And these are tragedies. These are traumas and they're and they're also crimes. And so there are for every possible scenario, there is the potential for tragedy. There's a potential for trauma.
Speaker 1:There's a potential for a crime. But if so, so what? Once it's happened, what are we or can we do about it? And that's what BrainFood for Life is meant to be is the beginnings of a the so what component of that is that every tragedy, every trauma, and every experience of crime can be, responded to so that it doesn't have as catastrophic impact as it would be if it's left unaddressed, unattended to, and untreated. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And the one thing that I found is in in in all my years of governmental, associations is the government response to these things is not a therapy or healing modality. Too many victims of crime think that if I can get maximum punishment to the wrongdoer, the evil doer, then that will somehow give me closure or make me feel better. But I am here to tell you that is not the case. That the the the the vengeance governmental vengeance for your offender will not reduce the impact
Speaker 3:of what that offender did in their in their conduct
Speaker 1:to you. That will there will still be an injury to them. So it needs to be addressed differently.
Speaker 2:And it's every experience is it's packed. It's impact it it's packed in there. And there's ways I you might as well make it help you build your identity instead of having pieces of you keep beating your identity up.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's it. It's just unpacking it to help you become all you and not separated where pieces of you are beating you up or feel shame or feel some sort of, you know, retribution needs to be had or any of that. It be you can quite literally make it your experience Yeah. Helpfully.
Speaker 1:And that's that's the mission. That's the purpose of life cast as a as an entity, as a as a team, and and even as a business model. And the purpose of brain food for life is to provide real cognitive, emotional learning, and a mechanical approach to things so that the harm, stress, and threats of life can simply be reduced even though they can't be eliminated completely. We accept that and embrace that. So we're gonna be talking here about different tragedies, different types of traumas, and we're gonna spend a lot of time talking about crime because there are so many crimes that happen.
Speaker 1:Most crime most crimes that happen don't get reported. And our the people that are involved in those, whether they be victim, villain, stranger, observer, witness, reporter, or the person who gets reported to need tools in order to be able to contend with the impact on reality and the impact identity when they become aware that a crime has occurred adjacent to them. So talk about what is a what is a crime. Well, for me, I'm most interested not in governmental regulatory crimes Say, ah, somebody sped and therefore they should be punished. But it's really that.
Speaker 1:It's some violation of a boundary of a law, of a rule, of a of a principle that results in punishment. And, you know, when the offender is caught and is able to go through a system, the the government decides what the punishment is, and usually that's some sort of removal of liberty. For example, whether that be probation or jail or a fine or some sort of a punishment that really does take away their liberty. But it happens in families all the time where if you violate the family rule or law, the the judge, the parent will put them in time out or take away a privilege or prevent them from being able to have some sort of freedom. So these are all different things that happen that result in punishment.
Speaker 1:But when a person is a victim of a crime, especially a person crime, betrayal, abuse, neglect, abandonments, physical, sexual, emotional injury, injury to development, injury to the mind, they're being punished by the crime. And that punishment, that suffering must be acknowledged and addressed by the victim, by the person who experienced that at
Speaker 3:some point.
Speaker 1:Because this is a real the real world of crime is that there are consequences when a person's property is damaged by someone else. When a person experiences pain and suffering and real fear. Threats to life, threats to safety, threats to their being. They experience punishment. And sometimes it's self imposed, sometimes it's externally opposed, but it's it's it's real.
Speaker 1:So we'll get into that a lot more. We'll talk about the different types of crimes, specific types of crimes, and crimes that impact that have to do with sex, death, drugs, and violence, relationships. The ability to think, the ability to give voice to the thoughts of your head, the ability to behave in certain ways. So because these these these experiences, tragedy, the trauma, crime certainly affects one's behavior even if that behavior is to speak truthfully about the things that they're thinking and the things that happen to them as they perceive them. And I that appears to be one of the things that's lacking in everybody's life is the ability to or the opportunity to give voice to the real thoughts that they have in their head and the real ideas that they have.
Speaker 1:Instead, they're being replaced by shared beliefs. So let's call maybe this exercise, we'll we'll call it an investigation into identity and providing some investigative tools and some tactical tools that are proven, that are evidentially sound in order to help all individuals find and express their identity and then be empowered to adapt, change, and re express their identity as new data, new information, new intelligence is developed along the way. Message for my children from a from a flawed parent is if change is what you need, then you can change right in front of me. You don't have to leave to change. You don't have to hide to change.
Speaker 1:I wanna be a part of your change, especially when that change is because things that I might have done and because of things I might not have done that I ought to have. And then I'll change my behaviors as well as it relates to you because if children are simply treated as extensions of the family and told they must adopt the ways in the processes of the family. Well, that in of itself, in my view, is a crime. Mhmm. But the families must be a system where a person is free to explore and express their identity and personhood, not simply be an extension of whatever those adults in their lives say they must be.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And that concept of personhood and identity and reality is fundamental to our mission statement and our pedagogy and our approach to life, death, agony, and ecstasy. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Out of the words, a little three year old I know. I a person. I'm a person.
Speaker 1:A person. I'm a person. I'm not a burden. That's right. You're not a burden.
Speaker 1:You're a person.