OSI Agent, Police Chief and Firefighter Reveals Situational Awareness and Self-Defense Tactics

 From navigating active threats to teaching his family situational awareness, David Jones brings decades of real-world experience as an OSI Agent, Police Chief, and Firefighter to this eye-opening discussion. Learn critical self-defense tactics like the 'what if' game, how to spot dangerous behavior, and what to do (and not do) after a self-defense incident. Jones shares insider knowledge on everything from dorm room safety to proper breathing techniques during high-stress situations. Whether you're new to personal safety or a seasoned prepper, this episode delivers practical strategies you can implement today to better protect yourself and your loved ones. Discover why knowledge trumps gear and how to think like a seasoned first-responder professional when it comes to situational awareness. Essential listening for anyone serious about personal safety and preparedness. 

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Transcript

OSI Agent, Police Chief and Firefighter Reveals Situational Awareness and Self-Defense Tactics
[00:00:00] Welcome to Preparedness Pro, where being prepared isn't about fear. It's about freedom. I'm your host, Kellene, and every episode we explore the peaceful principles of preparedness and self reliance. No gloom, no doom, just practical solutions for everyday living that help you become more independent and prepared for whatever life brings your way.
From kitchen skills to financial wisdom, emergency planning to sustainable living. We're building a community of capable, confident people who understand that preparedness isn't about preparing for the worst. It's about being free to live your best life regardless of what comes your way. So whether you're starting your preparedness journey or you're a seasoned pro, you're in the right place.
Welcome.
Kellene: Hey everyone. It's Kellene, the preparedness pro I managed to snag Dave Jones back and we've done, , over a dozen of these interviews so far, but there was just so much more that I left on the table.
I mean, how often do you get [00:01:00] someone who's a former OSI investigator that's Air Force Special Investigations, Office of Special Investigations, I should say, and a former police chief and someone who does not know the meaning of the word retire. And so in his so called retirement, he's a fireman as well.
 We just don't get that very often. Those kind of people are rare, especially with such a tenured period of time of service. He's also also an amazing author, has written a great series called the guardians of Rockport.
 I just gobbled up that series. He's also written other books. , on what he knows back best, which is crime and, , detective work. He still is a detective advisor for precincts. So there's just so much more we want to pick his brain about. And after speaking with Rob Chadwick the other day from USCCA, I knew I had to have Dave on again to help fill in some of the gaps that we didn't get to take care of with Rob.
So Dave, thank you so much for coming back on the show. 
Dave: Happy to [00:02:00] do it. 
Kellene: Okay. So for those of you who don't know you, , let's just start off with just a little bit about you, , because I think that's important for our audience to get some type of point of reference. , as I mentioned that you were air force office of special investigations.
, that's a brainiac job folks, just so you know, that's somebody who's not going to get, uh, These kids aren't going to get away with much , after that job.
And then police chief, in a unique environment, not what most police chiefs are today. So law enforcement out the wazoo, and then now you're into firefighting. , and then in your spare time, , you're writing great books to devour. So can you share your journey from law enforcement, through, through law enforcement and then into firefighting?
Dave: I spent 20 years as a special agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, or OSI. I imagine most of your listeners haven't heard of that unless you're near an Air Force base. But if you've seen the TV show NCIS, I think there's four of them now, we're the Air Force equivalent to the NCIS.
So we have a joint headquarters at Quantico, Virginia. So the NCIS, they [00:03:00] do Navy and Marines. The OSI does Air Force and Space Force. And the Army CID does the Army. We're a little different than other federal agencies. We're a federal agent just like the FBI, but our job is a little bit different. We do all investigations and felony level investigations above what the military police can do, and counterintelligence, counterespionage work.
So we're kind of like half FBI and half CIA. So most of my career , I was a specialist in, I was an anti terrorism specialist. So I did that the bulk of my career. I did a lot of felony work too, a lot of bodyguard work, executive protection, but my niche in , my career was more anti terrorism and my final assignment, I was a superintendent of the Special Investigations Academy.
Detachment one. So any OSI agent or NCIS guy that was going to deploy to Africa or Middle East or Iraq or Afghanistan They'd come to me and I'd have six weeks to teach detectives how to be soldiers before they go Try to be detectives in a combat zone. That was a great job I loved it And I told my wife you follow me for 20 years then I'll follow you and I would have stayed and become a civilian Also, I was a military agent.
There's also a lot of [00:04:00] civilian agents But the wife wanted to come back to Wisconsin where she's from. And that's how we got here. And there wasn't a lot of federal jobs for me in Appleton. So I became a local police officer first with Grand Chute. It's a, Appleton's, the Fox Valley area is about 300, 000.
So , it's a populated area, but not super populated and a lot of little towns. So I was a city cop first in Grand Chute. Then I went and became a college, the chair of criminal justice program for the university. Then I missed law enforcement. I went back and I became a veteran affairs police officer for a little bit.
And then I. Took the job as chief of police for the University of Wisconsin, which was kind of a unique experience, more different than I thought it would be. And that was great. And I retired from that three years ago, almost. And I always wanted to be a firefighter. So I started, I became a volunteer firefighter about four years ago.
, I'm a fire investigator and I do part time. It's a volunteer position, but it's a lot of fun. 
Kellene: So you get to do, if people have watched Chicago Fire, you get to do what Kelly Severide does on the show, Chicago Fire with the fire investigations, right? 
Dave: Yeah, it's just like that. [00:05:00] No, it's I mean, I do that.
Yes, it's a volunteer stuff and it's, but it's not as sexy or glamorous as that. It's usually walk around. I mean, any fire is going to be a big bunch of ash. You walk around there with boots on and getting covered in ash, trying to take soil samples, send them to the lab. It's a lot more forensic and a lot less sexy than it is on TV.
But, it's an important job and it's fun to do in my volunteer capacity. 
Kellene: Let's be honest here. What motivated you to go and be the police chief at a university campus? 
Dave: My daughter. My youngest daughter was going to college and I didn't want to keep my eyes on her. So, she went to be a freshman at the University of Wisconsin.
I became the police chief there just to keep her in my hip pocket. So, it's kind of like a sitcom, but it was, you know, it was fun. Her buddy's got a good time, but it was kind of unique having your dad's the chief of police. So, 
Kellene: Yeah, that's unique. Don't mess with her, man. Don't you dare put something in her drink.
Dave: And so that's why she has a starring role in like most of my, my guardians of Rockport series. She's, , her name's Cassie, but she plays Maddie in the book and she's a school teacher now. And so most of the characters in , my fictional [00:06:00] dystopian book are based off my friends and family, which makes it a fun thing to write.
Kellene: , and read too, because you get to see some insight into the author. It's fun that way. 
Dave: Well, thanks. Yeah. I mean, I started more as a therapeutic way. , I have deployed to combat, , Middle East eight times. So I have a lot of time in the Middle East. And, , so I have some PTSD from that. So it started off as therapy, a therapeutic way that I write my.
Things I don't feel comfortable saying out loud, emotions, and it was a therapeutic way. It's very therapeutic for me, but it's a fun hobby. Now it's making a little bit of money. Well, 
Kellene: that's wonderful. That's awesome. Well, can you share, , a particularly memorable or impactful experience from your career in law enforcement?
Dave: There's so many. I guess the big one is 9 11. Like, that's what most cops are at my age would say. I was on the anti terrorism team in the Air Force. There are three anti terrorism teams. They call them A. S. T. I served on two of what I served on the big one. Then I was team leader of the one in Europe.
 But at the time I was on the one in And the stateside one, I was overseas working in the USS Cole investigation on the Yemen [00:07:00] Oman border. So I worked in that case. I just got back to the States. So I wasn't good at her pool. I was supposed to have a six months non deployment time between deployments.
So I just got back and then not a lot of it happened. So of course, there were only a handful of guys or only about 30 agents that were qualified for anti terrorism work in the air force. So I took the first team in. There were six of us. We went in through Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. So for me, I was 30 years old at the time.
Yeah, 30, which is young and, , to go over there. And after I was here about, you know, I think about Pearl Harbor, my grandfather's Pearl Harbor and going overseas. So this is the first time, you know, I didn't want the war, I wouldn't let anybody down. So I took a six man team over there and, , just very unique, emotional time.
I left my young family and I didn't know when I was coming back. Normally when you have orders to the combat zone, you know, you're leaving today, come back next time. But this time we didn't need to set orders. We're going, didn't know exactly where we were going or when we'd come back. Yeah. , there's no base.
We just went in there and landed and try to operate. So it was a unique cruise. About 200 of us beginning with special forces, six OSI [00:08:00] agents and a few other guys. If you saw the movie, , 12 Strong when they went in on on our horseback, that was, that was a situation. 
Wow. 
It was very unique. It's kind of changed my perceptive, perception on a lot of things.
Kellene: Well, I want to delve more into the law enforcement side of things, because I want to peel back the curtain and help civilians interact better with law enforcement. We had John Lott, on here. I don't know if you caught that one, but John Lott was saying how 
Dave: Oh, 
Kellene: he's a good catch. Yeah. I'm a lucky girl.
I, I, I, what can I say? I feel, I feel 
Dave: unworthy based off the clientele you had on. 
Kellene: John Lott was talking about how he believes one of the most valuable, , self defense mechanisms, , and that's probably the wrong term. I'm sure he has something much more clearer to say than that, but what is our police force , and how stripping it down, like you talked about in the first interview, what a negative impact that that has been.
But he talks about how. We should interact better with the police force, , in [00:09:00] order to have less crime going on in the U. S. And so one of the things that I want to accomplish in today's interview is just that. What There are, we discovered in the interview with Rob Chadwick, and if you haven't caught that folks, I strongly suggest that you go and catch that interview with Rob Chadwick, who's head of the director of training for the USCCA.
 What are some of the first things that someone should do after a self defense situation, whether that is with fists or pepper spray or a firearm, what are some of the first things that someone should do after self defense situation from the perspective of the civilian?
Dave: I'll say the first thing is make sure you're safe.
If you're fighting a guy and you win and you can get away. Get away. Make yourself safe. If it's a gunfight and the shot's fired, keep the suspect at gunpoint and make sure you don't get holes in you. So make sure you're safe. Number one. Two, contact law enforcement because you want your side of the story to be put out.
So you want to get them coming and let them know that, Hey, I'm the good guy. [00:10:00] If I have a firearm, I want to identify him, 5'10 I'm 200 pounds, these are the clothes I have on. I was involved in a self defense shooting. Tell the police I'm coming and give them your description. Because they're not going to know if you're a good guy or bad guy or not when they get there.
But if the responding officers have that, it's something. When the cops come up, it's best not to have a gun in your hand. Now, if you have to, you're holding something at gunpoint, maybe when the police get there, hold a gun over your head or do something so you don't have a mistaken identity shooting. The police don't know what's going on, so they're going to basically treat you like a suspect at first making everybody safe.
Because they don't know the situation, so they'll probably handcuff you. They'll, they'll just argue, just cooperate. And, , you wanna say certain things, but one thing you do wanna do is you wanna point out any, witnesses. If it's a legitimate shooting, say the lady over there saw it. You get her name. Can you see this camera over there?
These people on the bus was going by. So any evidence that will help you, you wanna point out to the law enforcement now because it won't be a detective. It might be a 21-year-old kid right outta the academy. You might miss things. So you wanna point all that out, and then it's gonna talk about what , a, is it a, is it a good shooter or a bad shoot?
Or somewhere in the [00:11:00] middle and you don't know. So you wanna be careful what you say. You don't wanna not cooperate with the police. You, definitely wanna cooperate with them, but you don't wanna make a hard statement. So what I always tell my police officers, which they have more training, but I tell the police officers as well, don't make a hard statement.
Because as a Lieutenant Colonel Grossman will tell you, you'll talk about a thing called tacky psyche. Your brain to protect you is gonna bifurcate your memories and your, your perceptions. So you're gonna say things that maybe aren't accurate because your mind., Help you protect yourself from that.
So when I tell the officers to say, or tell civilians, I was scared for my life. That's the first thing I'm going to do in a shooting is, I was scared for my life. I was worried. I want to talk to you, but I'm a little, , kerfluffle right now. I want to talk to an attorney before I make any hard statements.
So you don't want to just a hard line, tell him nothing because you want to tell him the facts. Well, this guy attacked me. This guy pulled a gun. I was scared for my life. If there's any evidence, okay, he had a knife, he dropped it in the gutter. So there's some things you want to get out the basic story so they can do the basic investigations.
You don't want to just out of carte blanche tell them nothing. You want to tell them just enough to get the case going. Then before you make a [00:12:00] detailed statement, let them know on record. Say it. I'm a little nervous. I've never been in a shooting before. I'm a little excited right now. I have a lot of adrenaline.
I like to talk to an attorney before I make a final statement. That's good. For the gist of it, this guy attacked me, I defended myself, I defended my family. You want to get just enough information out so the police can process the scenes and they know you're not the bad guy. I've, I've been on cases where somebody has been trained, never talked to the police.
If you're a criminal, that's good. If you're a legitimate shooter, you don't want to say too much, but you want to say enough. If I say, you know, pound, sand, cop, I'm not telling you anything. Well, they might assume you're a bad guy. So you want to give them enough information. with your case. , like the Daniel Penny case that's getting tried today, you probably seen that in the news.
the ex marine that took t subway. He said enough to let the police know He didn't go overboard. And we to say too much without a a lawyer present It's because we don't remember things. Just like, , if you're a police officer involved in a shooting, as a police chief, we don't let you make a full statement for 20 or 48, 48 hours.
You need to have two full sleep cycles before I do a [00:13:00] full debriefing of you because you can remember things differently. Just like, , going back 20, 30 years ago, we had to interview sexual assault victims and later it turned out their stories were only partially correct and people accused them of lying and it wasn't that they were lying.
It's that their perception to protect them, they don't remember it. Certain things. If you're in a high stress situation, time will slow down or speed up. You'll have auditory exclusion. You won't hear certain things. You'll have tunnel vision. Your eyes will close in. You won't realize what's going on around you, so you and you're saying things, you might forget the order it happened.
So it was very common for sexual assault victims who just came to a very traumatic event. to say things in the wrong spatial order. And that immediate after that then three or four weeks they go to court, , the attorney might point out that they were lying or were wrong t said things that weren't it was correct well the fact, it was correct their mind but their mind was protecting them at that point. so now we want you not just to have 48 hours but 2 full sleep cycles Before we go a deep interview of a highly traumatic situation of a police officer involved in a shooting or a sexual assault victim.
We'll talk to him initially to find out, okay, where's the evidence? We need to go collect these [00:14:00] bedsheets. Is there a used condom or is there soiled panties? We need to collect this evidence. We'll need to know that right away, but before we do a hardcore breakdown interview, we give them two full sleep cycles to make sure that their faculties are back, their emotions are down.
So if you're involved in a police shooting or any sort of situation, tell the officers this person attacked me. I was scared for my life. That's important to say. If you shot someone, you're scared for your life. You want to say just enough for the officers to do their investigation to have a concept of what's going on.
But say I'm very nervous right now. I'm at I like to have a couple of sleep cycles or talk to an attorney to make sure and every police officer in the country knows this. , what we go through as police officers. So it's an expectation. The civilian would want to do that as well. Does that make sense?
Kellene: Wonderful. Yes, that's great. Thank you so much. So what are some things that you, if it was your own daughter, what are some things that you would not want her to say to an officer after a self defense incident? 
Dave: It's more important to think about what to say, than what not to say. You don't want to, you know, basically I, I shot the guys.
I [00:15:00] intended to kill them. I did that. So you never shoot to kill. You shoot to stop the threat. It obviously they may die at the point of being shot in the chest, but you shoot to stop the threat. You never shoot to kill. Okay. One 
Kellene: more time. You never shoot to kill. You shoot to 
Dave: stop the threat. 
Kellene: Stop the threat.
Okay. 
Dave: We still shoot to kill. We shoot to stop the threat. Now the best way to stop a threat is to shoot them in the center mass, either the head or the chest. You're stopping the threat, but your intention isn't to kill the person. Your intention is to stop the threat. So it's more important about what to say than what not to say.
You don't want to say anything that makes you look like, You're the aggressor. Basically want to show, Hey, I was scared. I was defending my life, defending my family, defending a person on the street, and I was scared that somebody would be hurt. I was scared that I would be killed. And obviously, the main word that comes out for police officers is reasonableness, where your actions reasonable.
You can use every level of force, but obviously shooting someone is always going to be a deadly force. That may not be a reasonable amount of force. In most states now, there's things [00:16:00] called the Castle Doctrine or the Stand Your Ground Law. Those are important to know if your state has those, and every state's different.
It doesn't give you the right to use deadly force all the time, but we'll talk briefly about the Castle Doctrine. That applies to your home or your vehicle or a place you're lawfully allowed to be, like your work. If somebody attacks you and there's a castle doctrine in your state, you don't have to leave.
You can stay and defend yourself in your home. If there's no castle doctrine, that's almost like you must evacuate. So in california, there's no castle doctrine. In california, if somebody breaks into your home, if you're able to run out the back door, you have to do that before you use deadly force. You can't use deadly force in california unless there's no option to flee.
So if you think a castle doctrine, the opposite would be you must fully a possible doctrine. So does your state have a castle doctrine? Then, basically the stand your ground law is the same thing but can be anywhere. That's, you don't have to retreat. So if someone's attacking you on the street and they pull a knife, if you can run away, you have to run away in a state that doesn't have a stand your ground law.
A stand your ground law means you don't have to run away. So you can [00:17:00] stand your ground. So it's not a cut all thing, but it, it allows you any state that has that, you have more rights as a citizen to defend yourself in those situations. Now, running away may be the best defense.
Kellene: Well, one of the things that, , John Lott talked about is how, how women are at a disadvantage when they're running away from a male attacker.
, because they can typically out run the female, which is interesting with these States that do not have stand your ground laws. Without taking that into account, , that was one of the fascinating things that I found , in reading his books. , one of the things that I wanted to ask you about is , the mental and psyche, psyche after, aftermath and being involved in a self defense situation.
What can you tell people about that to help them focus, to help them make benefit of those two, two nights sleep, et cetera. 
Dave: Okay. Well, first let's talk about the first 30 minutes. When you get into any fight or flight situation, have an adrenaline [00:18:00] dump. Your body does that for your fight or flight response.
And I noticed your, your guest yesterday talked about that. You have your fight response. your flight or freeze. Most people freeze. Obviously you want to train fighter flight and not be that person that freezes in the combat zone. , that's always a loser. The best thing to do is to do the right thing.
Second best thing is to do the wrong thing. The worst thing is to do nothing at all. So you want to act, but after your body, you get the adrenaline dump from your kidneys. It dumps adrenaline into your system and your body's going to react. So if you're Been training at the range, you're gonna lose your fine motor skills.
So if you're at the range you're training to hit the little buttons on your gun, all that's gonna go away because all the blood leaves your fine motor skills, your fingers and your toes, and goes to the big muscle groups. You can run fast and punch hard. So all your fine motor skills go away. So back, when I became a cop in the early nineties, we trained officers to use your thumb to hit their slide release and.
We now know in combat, you're not gonna be able to do that because you have no fine motor skills. So now we just teach the cop, you know, hit their magazine, pull the slide, any, use everything, gross motor skills, because your fine motor skills are gonna be gone once your [00:19:00] adrenaline dumps. So you fight that way, yeah, but then after about 10 to 15 minutes, when your body goes into reaction, once the fight's over, all that adrenaline's gonna go away, and it's different dopamine, different things are gonna go into your blood system.
You're gonna start getting the shakes. It's gonna be like you're freezing. I mean, if you've been in a situation four or five times. You'll start shaking uncontrollably and, it's because your body's reacting to the rush of adrenaline being gone. So things that are going to happen is you're going to have a, like, Colonel Grossman could talk much more about this.
This is his thing. But the tacky psyche, that's his term. He coined that phrase, I believe. But you're going to get your tunnel vision. So, I mean, in a situation, your eyes focus just like you're, You're a gazelle and a, a puma is chasing you, in Africa. So, I mean, you're going to get, well, that's going to go to the big muscle groups.
Your eye is going to focus so you can see far away and pinpoint where the threat is coming from. Your auditory exclusion, you're not going to hear things, so you're just going to pinpoint certain things. Time is going to slow down or speed up. So people have a hard time remembering things in the right order because your mind does this.
It takes two full sleep cycles to get over that. So [00:20:00] then PTSD is usually going to be a problem. You can have sleepless nights, you might be sick, , you took someone's life and you weren't prepared for that. That's, even if you are prepared for it, it's a hard situation. Even if it was a just complete shooting, you had to do it to save lives.
If you took a life, that's hard on, on the human. It's hard on our psyche. And so every, everybody reacts to that differently. And PTSD is a real thing that's going to set in. Just like any traumatic situation, there's going to be levels you have to go through of, you know, denial and anxiety and fear and hatred.
You'll have to process all that. And I'll leave that to Grossman. He's the guy for that, but it takes a while to overcome it. But immediately after that, you're going to get the shakes. And it's not that you're a coward. It's just your body's physiological reaction to the adrenaline wearing off. Just like if you've ever been in a bad car accident or almost, and you just, Turned and just missed the accident briefly.
A few minutes later started getting the shakes. It just happens. If you're ever better to fight, after the fight you get the shakes. It's not because you're a coward. It's your body's physiological reaction to the adrenaline wearing off. And so that's to be expected. 
Kellene: So how is the psyche of a regular civilian then different from [00:21:00] that of a boxer?
Because I don't think I see boxers getting the shakes after their fight, so to speak. What have they done mentally to make that a different experience? 
Dave: One is training. You know, first time you're in a fight, you get the shakes afterwards. If you're in fights all the time, it's normalized, but it comes down to training.
 If you train for situations all the time, your experience will be less, but you still have it. I played the what if game that's what I guess one of the biggest takeaways for me Is whether you're a new police officer or my daughter go to school or any of the students at the university?
What if that's how you meant to prepare it? So it's not the first time you if you get a situation It's not the first time you thought about it. You've thought about it 20 other times So what would you do if you had a flat tire? Okay, I'll do to change it What do you do if there's a drunk knocking on your door?
What do you do if someone comes at you with the knife? If you thought about it several times by playing the what if game I don't do with my daughters We go to a restaurant. Where are the exits? Okay, if somebody came with a gun, what could you do? Well, there's exits here and here I could go through the kitchen.
I could break a glass door I could hide under the table you played the what if game so what if and when it ever does [00:22:00] happen They thought about it. Same with rookie police officers who are doing field training. Okay, we're taking, shots from the left. Your field training officer goes down. What do you do?
Okay, I take cover behind this ditch, radio dispatch. And basically by thinking through it, playing the what if game. It's not the first time they responded to it mentally when it actually happens. And like a boxer, they've trained and trained and trained. So when they do get in a fight, it's.
More a routine expectation versus a first experience with that.
Kellene: So what are some of your suggestions then? To stay calm, as calm as possible in the midst of a crisis or just in the immediate aftermath. 
Dave: Okay. It is gonna be breathing. Breathing focuses on everything. So we call it navy seal breathing, but it's basically slow breath in, long breath out your mouth, in your nose, and out your mouth.
Do that several times and that does a few things. One, it makes your tacky psyche go away. It makes your auditory exclusion and your tunnel vision go away 'cause you're getting more oxygenated blood to your brain. Also after a police shooting, what we do is we always have [00:23:00] the officers. Look to the right, look to the left, look up.
What you're doing, several things, I'm looking around for other threats before I holster my weapon. Look to the right, is there any more threats to the right? Any threats to the left? And I look up, so I'm looking for threats because everybody forgets to look up, but there might be a person on a balcony upstairs or something, so you look up, you're looking for other people that might be shot.
Maybe my partner took a bullet. I didn't hear it because I have auditory exclusion. So I'm looking to the left, looking to the right, looking up, I'm breathing in and out. I do all that, and that should let my vision open back up, calm me down a little bit, keep my nerves so I can talk on the radio, call for backup without, you know, sounding, bejazzled.
So I do all that. I do all that before I host my weapon. And, that's pretty common for police officers. That's how we train police officers and it's a way to train civilians as well. They're breathing and looking and getting situational awareness of your new battlefield. What just happened? If he shot rounds, you shot rounds.
Most of your rounds are going to miss. Most of his rounds are going to miss, but you're going to hit something somewhere. Did a kid behind me get hit? Did my wife get hit? Did I hit somebody I didn't intend to [00:24:00] shoot? So you're scanning for threats, scanning for wounded, scanning for witnesses that might, you know, help your aid later.
And you're breathing in and out and calming your nerves and giving more oxygenated blood to your brain.
Kellene: So, would you say this kind of changes my perspective and my approach in, , training women for firearm self defense? Would you say that training them automatically after a shoot, before they holster their weapon or before they put the weapon away to have that type of response?
Dave: I do a lot of, uh, civilian training, mostly on ladies because, you know, the last four or five years, ladies are by far the fastest growing aspect of gun owners in CC. So I teach civilian firearms ownership and, uh, I'd say ladies are probably 90 percent of my, students. And I train that always before you holster after the shooting.
I teach them, I teach police officers. Police officers don't have any special training. Ninja training, I teach my civilians what a police officer would do. And the same thing, I teach them just like I told you what to say, what not to say, how to decompress. First thing, get yourself safe. If there's a shooting, you don't know if something's not [00:25:00] going to happen.
This might be a second bad guy. So get yourself to cover if you're not already behind cover. Reload if you have to. Start calling the police. Do your breathing. Look for witnesses. You do all this because the battle for a civilian is not over and you might have just won the confrontation. But like the guest said yesterday, there's going to be a lawsuit.
There's going to be a criminal investigation. Just the start of your problems are just starting. I mean, you survived the encounter, but now you need to survive the bureaucracy of the American legal system. 
Kellene: Yeah. Well, let's talk about some identifying dangerous individuals here. What are some signs that someone might pose a danger to others?
What are some things that you would look for? 
Dave: I usually look for mannerisms. If their eyes aren't, you can tell how they say the eyes are the mirror of the soul, but your hands are going to kill you. So if you're trying to hide something, always watch the hands and the eyes are the two things I watch.
If you're looking if they're going to run away as a cop, if a bad guy is going to run away, he always looks to the direction he's going to run first. So if he's looking past me, I know he's going to do a boogie and try to take off on me. And I'm an over fat guy, so I want to catch him before he runs. So if you start looking in a certain direction, I [00:26:00] know he's looking for an escape route.
 If he starts lying, their eyes will blink a lot. We used to say you look up and to the left if you're lying, but that's not 100 percent anymore. , it happens a lot, but it's not an always thing. If you're left handed, you look up and to the right. So, it's an indication, but it's not a tell all thing.
A lot of times you'll blink, or you'll look up to try and engage certain memory parts of your brain to think of a lie. But It's hard to tell, , if they're looking at your purse, looking at your phone, or they're looking around for witnesses, that's a big thing too. If, somebody's walking down the street and they're looking back and forth, that's not a normal thing to do.
I encourage people to watch, to just watch people. Sit in the mall or sit in the parking lot, people go by, you'll see how people are walking normally. Usually they're oblivious to the surroundings. Somebody's walking around and looking at certain things. Either they're a cop or usually a predator. So it's, uh, you can see how bad guys look and think because they act differently than other people.
They're looking for a target, looking for an escape route, looking for potential witnesses, looking for cameras. So watch their eyes. Then if they have a gun or weapon, they're going to use their hands. Usually they're going to be, in their waistband. Most bad [00:27:00] guys are going to carry a gun. They call it prison carry, basically in the front of the pants and the waistband.
So if you see the left hand pull up a shirt, the right hand will draw a weapon if the right hand is pulled. So it usually takes two, two hands to do that. So if you watch, you look for bulges. That's where most people will carry a gun that are criminals. Because they don't have a holster because if they use it, they want to be able to ditch the gun easy.
If I catch a guy who has an empty holster, he's my suspect because where's your gun at? So most bad guys don't carry a holster. Because it's hard to throw the gun away if you still have a holster on your pant. So they'll just kind of prison carry in their waistband. So watch their eyes. How are they dressed?
 I don't want to demonize people that wear hoodies, but a lot of bad guys wear hoodies because it's easy to hide your, hide your identity, your head. Again, I don't want to say anyone who wears hoodies is a criminal, but if you see a lot of people and one person's trying to hide their face, hide their, you know, what they're wearing.
It might be a clue. Then you're just going to walk to the side of the street, if they follow you it's a clue. If I'm walking down the street and I see a, someone questionable coming toward me, a big thing is your spiny sense. You'll be able to tell you that maybe something's not right. So crossword is on the street that they cross over with [00:28:00] you.
That's a sign as the monitor and go the other way. You might want to confront them. I might want to do something different to defend yourself, but your situational awareness is everything you want to identify a threat. You can identify a threat. You can avoid it. So if you're walking obliviously looking at your cell phone, you walk right into someone's trap.
Then it's a little too late. You have to use your weapon. You've already lost. 
Kellene: Yeah, that's something that, Rob Chadwick said yesterday, too, is in all the time that he was with SWAT and FBI, he said, if you have to pull your weapon, you've already failed the mission. 
Yes, no matter how competent you are with a firearm, it's still avoidance is the key.
So let's talk about, , especially given your time as a police chief for a university, how can people prepare for emergencies, in a dorm, small apartment environment, and then maybe let's address on the road. 
Dave: Okay, , in a dorm, just like anyone else, I say play the what if game, it's going to be not everything's a shooting situation, but You hear someone knock on your [00:29:00] door and you go to look out the peephole and there's a thumb over the peephole, don't answer it.
You know, if you hear a fight next door, realize, you know, there's a gunfight next door, the bolts will go right through, drywall it, no problem. So have a way to secure yourself in your dorm room or your apartment. How are you going to secure it? Usually dorms own windows. You can put a chair behind the door, some sort of device to block your door.
But if you're in a small house, you have to worry about the windows as well. Houses are not designed to keep bad guys out. , but you can keep the honest person out. But if somebody wants to get in your house, they're going to do that. So have a level of defense. I can block my door. I can close my curtains, understand lighting.
I can turn the lights off inside the house, turn lights on outside the house. So it's hard for them to see in, easy for me to see out. Then find a way to have a plan to defend yourself. If you do have a gun, Yeah, we have a plan. I'll tell my wife we drill every so often. Something happens and I'm not home.
She gets the dogs, gets the kids, goes to the back bedroom, gets the gun up first before she calls the police because the police will arrive in 5 minutes. The bad guy might be in a minute and 30 [00:30:00] seconds. So when seconds count, the police are minutes away. So get the kids Get the important things, get the firearm, take a spot in a certain room where we have planned, behind a piece of furniture, and call the police, say, um, my name is Patty Jones, I'm a police officer's wife, I live at this address, there's someone at my door, I'm in the back bedroom, I have a gun, so if you say you have a gun, the police are coming faster, and to tell the police officers that I'm in the back bedroom, I have a firearm, I have a firearm.
And, uh, so they're coming quickly and then usually the dispatch will keep stay on the phone with you if you're in a bigger location or there's multiple dispatchers and then when the cops get there, they'll tell you when the cops are outside the house, then you can communicate. You don't have to trust the voice of dispatch on the phone will tell you that, but have a plan.
Always have a plan where to go and what are you going to do if you have kids in like four or five bedrooms. Is there a safe area? We're going to rally all the kids in one group because now I have two kids in one room And a bad guy's in my doorway if I shoot the bad guy and I miss and it goes through a wall Is the nursery on the other side of the wall?
My dorm is going to go somewhere else. So think about what are your targets? What I always tell people to do now Almost college you can't have guns in the [00:31:00] dorms But I tell people if you're shooting inside a house where you have neighbors in close proximity Usually drop to a knee and aim up because then your bullet's going to go on an upward trajectory So if there's a guy in my front door and he's 10 feet away If I shoot straight at him and I, the penetration keeps going, my bullet's going to go straight to the neighbor's house.
If I drop to a knee and I'm shooting in a 30 degree angle, I'm going to hit the guy, but then the bullet will keep going up and it'll be less chance of hitting something dangerous. We learned that from, we do a lot of, we used to teach air marshals. So, On planes, the place you don't want to shoot on a plane is above it.
You always see on TV where they shoot the window and everybody gets sucked out. That doesn't really happen. What you don't want to shoot on a plane is above it. That's where all the hydraulics are, are above it. You want to shoot down to the luggage compartment or some other way. So you want to find out where your bullet's going.
Back in the day before they had armored cockpits, if I'm an air marshal and I'm taking out a suspect, I don't want to shoot toward the cockpit because I don't want to hit the pilots. Well, now the pilot's cockpit is armored and we can do certain things, but we don't want to shoot upwards because that's where the hydraulics are.
So there we try to make close contact, make a body [00:32:00] shot, try to traverse through the body if we have to. But, obviously as a civilian you don't want to have to do that. Just try to shoot somewhere where the Things important aren't going to be. So normally you take a knee and shoot upwards. When I taught a lot of active shooters for school response, a lot of times we'll teach drop to a knee because normally you want to have target identification, find the bad guy, target acquisition, I pin them, and target isolation, there's no one around it.
Before we take a shot. But in the school shooting situation where kids are running around left and right, we might hit a child. But if we don't take the shot, there's still, it's called the greater danger theory. If we don't take the shot because the target isn't clear, he's gonna continue to kill other people.
So we have to take that shot. So I used to tell my officers to drop to a knee and shoot because your bullet be going in anger, angle upwards. So you hit the guy, the bullet penetrate, keep going higher and higher and hopefully when it comes down, it's in a safe location or has less energy. That makes sense.
But the what if game is really what to play. 
Kellene: Wow, you've just unloaded a whole lot of information there. I'm gonna have to listen to this over and over again here. 
Dave: I'll limit it to the questions asked. [00:33:00] 
Kellene: No, no, I love it. That's, that's what I've got you on here for. So, in terms of personal safety, you're, you've talked about situational awareness.
as being a key component. And the what if game that you've always played with your family too, and make them accountable when they go out in public, you know, to make them aware of exits and such. Are there any other specific habits or practices that you would suggest that promote self reliance and self defense?
Dave: Just get into the habit and play the what if game. If you're out, , I saw you talking yesterday about somebody was pumping gas and they got carjacked and they sprayed gasoline on somebody. That's a great defense mechanism, but play the what if game. Just think about when you're pumping gas. What can you do?
Like with my daughter, when she was going to school, she couldn't carry a gun on the school a lot of times, but we're in Wisconsin. So she had an ice scraper and it's like a weapon. She had another one that's, you know, she hooked to her sun visor. She's pumping gas and someone comes up.
First thing you do is get your car and lock the doors. But if not, you had improvised weapons you could use, like an ice scraper, certain things that aren't maybe guns, but it can be easily utilized, and if you already think about it, hey, this ice scraper is my [00:34:00] weapon, I have this here, a pepper spray, you already have a concept, you know what you're going to do, if you just kind of panic and freeze, trying to think about what you're going to do, you've already failed, you already have to have a plan, so you're pumping gas, you're walking, you're hiking somewhere, you're If something happens, have a plan.
What am I going to do? How am I going to defend myself? How am I going to call for help? How am I going to signal people?
Kellene: Yeah, that whole have a plan, that's, that's part of the first and second principles we teach of spiritual preparedness and mental preparedness. What do you think, The role of spiritual preparedness plays in the aftermath of a self defense scenario.
Dave: Well, I'm a Christian, so that's a big part of who I am and how I process things, but not everybody is, but having a higher power is going to help you psychologically overcome a lot of things. Why did I have to take a life? Did I do this? What am I going to go through? If you have something to, I get to pray to you, or you have a higher power you could look in or find comfort in, that's always helpful.
Whether it be, you know, Christianity or Islam or Buddhism or any, you have some sort of, you know, higher power that you look to, it's going to make something that's greater than yourself, it's going to [00:35:00] help you overcome challenges, just from a psychological aspect. 
Kellene: Yeah. Yeah. I agree with that. Would you mind sharing a personal story where perhaps some quick thinking and preparation made a difference in an emergency?
Dave: Yeah, there's many. Uh, I'll go back to civilian times. I was a brand new cop or brand new OSI agent. This is the 90s and I was driving with my wife and a three year old daughter and a one year old daughter in a car. I was driving to a new base from North, from Montana to North, Texas. So we're outside of San Angelo, Texas.
And it was midnight. I've been driving all day, and two young kids in the backseat, and I've been driving for like 12, 13 hours, just exhausted. I stopped at a gas station in the middle of nowhere. It was my mistake. I had a bad situation. You know, I wasn't watching what I was doing. I got gas and went and parked on the side of the gas station where it was dark.
And it wasn't anybody around, and I got out, my wife and two kids in the car, then the car pulled up behind me, and four guys got out of it. Automatically, I knew this was a bad situation, because you don't just park there, four guys got out of the car, they're parking, blocking me in, and two came on each side of the car.
Luckily, I was armed, carrying off duty, [00:36:00] so I put my shirt back and showed them my gun and my badge, and said, hey, can I help you guys? And, they had just got my gun and badge, all kind of turned, got in the car, and left. But my wife, before that, my first year in law enforcement, She's always like, why do you carry your gun off duty?
It's just a pain in the butt. You always have to have a cover garment. It's always a pain in the butt. After that, she never once complained about me carrying off duty again because bad things would have happened whether we just got robbed. But I couldn't fight four guys, especially if my, my Children, my wife there, I'm exhausted.
I picked a bad location. I parked in the dark, on a unpopulated area on a It was my, it was my bad to now always watch where I park. I check before I get out of my car. I always carry my firearm and my wife doesn't complain about it anymore since that time. 
Kellene: Well, , okay, so let me ask you this. We've, we've got the benefit of all of your history of all of your experience.
What basic first responder skills should every prepper learn such as, you know, is it first aid or fire suppression or self defense? What are some basics that they really need to take time to learn? 
Dave: I would say all that is great things. [00:37:00] But one, we got to think about the government. They can't always be there to help you.
We have an ambulance crew, which you still have a first aid kit. We have a police department, but you still should be able to take care of yourself. There's a fire department, but you still have a fire extinguisher and smoke alarms. Your job is to take care of your family until help arrives. Help's coming if it can, but if it's a major disaster, help might not even be coming.
Now one might be down if it's a Katrina situation. Help might be days away as a parent. It's your job to take care of your family until help arrives. So you want to have, you know, learn basically basic fire. And how do I put out a fire? How do I use a fire extinguisher? It's simple. There's so many things to do, but how do I put out a simple fire?
How do I evacuate? What are the exit ramps for my house? Can I do CPR? Can I stop bleed? If there's a gunshot, if you have a firearm in your house and you use some training, I believe you should have a minimum of how to stop the bleed training. Whether it put a tourniquet on or direct pressure, you should learn about that.
I'm a big advocate of second amendment. Everybody should be right to have a gun, but then again, your [00:38:00] responsibility to have any gun. I'm a big, I'm a big second amendment advocate, but I'm also a big training advocate just because I buy a gun. It doesn't mean I'm trained. I know how to use it. I can buy a guitar.
It doesn't make me a musician. I have to learn how to play it and train and take classes and practice. Same with the firearms. Buying it doesn't mean I'm harmed. It just means I have a potential deadly item in my house that could be used Anyway, it's just an object. So learn firearm, learn how to practice with it, learn CPR, learn how to stop the bleed, learn how to put out a fire, uh, learn basic directions.
 Now talk to my wife, of course, after 30 years, I'm still trying to teach her North, South, East, or West. She doesn't get that. It's going to be like, she's 
Kellene: not here to 
Dave: defend herself. My daughter's too, but so learn basic directions where it's going to be. I live with this in my address. And, , you don't have to know I could cop on eastbound or westbound, but you can know generally where you're at.
Uh, I, I, you drive with my daughter, my wife. Okay, if we got a car accident right here, you call the police. What would you tell them? What road are we on? What highway are we on? If you don't know, you can [00:39:00] look at the side of the road. There are mile markers. There's a mile marker 113 on the side. Or you can tell the dispatcher.
Okay, I see, I'm on the highway. I'm going from Appleton to Green Bay. I see a Best Buy store to my left. Be able, but that's playing the what if game. If there's a car accident, you gotta report right now and you are gonna get to help somebody. What would you tell a dispatch? So many people are following their GPS.
They don't know where they're at because their phone's telling 'em where to go. When they call 9 1 1, they can't look at their phone 'cause they're on the phone with it. So just play that. What if game? You don't have to be like a cop and No, I'm like the 2,400 block of J Street, but be able to, something happened.
Okay, I'm on Highway 43. I'm on highway 41. You know roughly where you're going. If you don't know where you're going, north or south. Your car usually has a compass on your car. It says S or N. Where is that and start using that? And just so you have a somewhat of a understanding of where you're at, because you're calling for help and you don't know where you're at, it's gonna be harder to find you.
Especially if you're a hiker or jogger, you're out in the woods on a hiking trail, if you call the 911 when it pings, it pings usually a thousand feet around, around where you're at, which is a big area. [00:40:00] A lot of times we get a call or someone nowadays, someone gives your kid a phone to play doodle jump in the kid.
It's not on one. It's emergency call. My mom doesn't know it. So send out a 911 call dispatch calls back on the phone, but the phone's on silent while it gets playing with it. They call back. They don't get a response. They have to dispatch an officer that also knows kids within 1000 yard might be. If you go to the mall, it might be like anywhere in the JCPenney parking lot.
Kellene: Okay, 
Dave: you're around looking for, you know, a sign, but if you don't know, you don't know. So it's hard because if someone's just pinging up, you tell the cop just to ping off your phone, it's not a very exact sign and it takes time. So if you have a little bit of a, you can say, I'm by the mall, in between the mall and PetSmart.
If you don't know North and South directional, that's fine, but try to work about knowing where you're at. If you have to give a direction to somebody on the spot, could you do it? And so that's, , that's one of the biggest problems as a police officer I've seen is communication. Someone calls for help, but they don't know where they're at.
Then dispatch is trying to ping their phone, but it might be a jurisdictional issue, and that slows down a response. We're coming, but if you don't [00:41:00] know, tell us where to get to you. It's going to make it a challenge, and it's going to slow down our response quite a bit. 
Kellene: You know, you're so, meticulous in your books and, and how you describe things in the proper processes and such.
I'm going to put you on the spot here. What are some things that other, we'll say preppers do that drive you bonkers? 
Dave: Well, I'm a gun guy. I'll say it right now. I like guns. I have my guns and stuff. I'm a firearms instructor, but so many preppers that I know, they have like 20 guns and a million rounds of ammo, but they don't have a fire extinguisher.
They don't have any, you know, money saved any cash for emergency. They don't have any food. That's, you know, they just have guns and ammo. And usually they're, you know, my age, they're heavyset 55 year old guy. Okay. You're probably not going to win a lot of gunfights. You're not going to, We all have this fantasy it's going to be like Red Dawn where we're fighting an insurmountable band of zombies or the Russians, and it's fun to fantasize that, but realistically that's probably not how it's going to be.
You might have to fight, you know, if you survive one gunfight, you're doing pretty good. If you survive three, it's probably not going to happen. [00:42:00] But so many people just get all the sexy things of guns and ammo. They rely on stuff and not off knowledge. I'll take knowledge over stuff every day of the week.
 A big thing I have as a prepper is my survival library. I have a great cookbook. You know, I have, , but you don't know because the internet goes down. How long do you boil your water? How many drops of iodine or, you know, bleach do you put in your water to purify it? What do you do? How do you skin a deer if you don't know any of this stuff?
What do you do if you have to, you know, say you're, , someone's having appendicitis. Can you do that? So, I try to have medical supplies and a book of knowledge. Anything I can do to print out or save on a thumb drive or something that I can use. Because I have a, my generator, I can still access my thumb drive unless there's an EMP or something that wipes out computers.
But I try to have hard copies of everything, so I have a pretty good survival library of things that I don't know how to do. If I can go back and look it up, I'll have that. , but other than that, so many people rely on what they like doing. If you're a, you're a radio guy, so many guys have 20 radios, but nothing else.
So many guys have 20 guns. So instead of just prepping what you like to do, [00:43:00] be well rounded. How am I going to feed my family? How am I going to protect my family? Look at the 10 process you have. Can I do all of them? You know, that's, what's important. 
Kellene: Yeah. Well, I think you've, you've already answered my final question that I usually ask our guests in terms of parting wisdom, everything that's come out of your mouth today has been parting wisdom, so I really appreciate you taking the time , and helping us , to develop better relationships with law enforcement, to better protect ourselves and to be better prepared.
Thank you so much. Let's tell everyone where they can find your books. 
Dave: All right. My books are all on amazon. com or you can go to my webpage. It's going to be a davideldonjones. com. D A V I D E L D O N J O N E S. com. You can see all about me and my books and there's links to the Amazon where you can purchase them.
Kellene: Wonderful. Dave, thank you so much for, for giving us another shot at you. And, once again, , we're benefited from it. So thank you so much. All right, folks. Let's get you, some of these books in your hands [00:44:00] because they're wonderful. They help you play the what if game really, really well.
, it's not an EMP scenario so much, , that triggers the, society collapse as it is. Well, can we tell them what it is? 
Dave: Yeah, it's a cyber attack and it's our own reliance on technology that kind of is our downfall. After hyperinflation hit with the cyber attack, the wheels come off the bus and we have to decide if, if all the brick and mortar stores close because we rely on Amazon, if Amazon doesn't work, if we can't order things, if there's no fuel to get the, you know, the goods to your house, what do we do with society?
Right. That was sort of a reset. 
Kellene: Right. Well, thanks again so much and, , folks, get out and get his books because they're well worth it. I just gobbled them up, stayed up as I teased him. I stayed up way past my bedtime on more than one occasion and, , you'll enjoy them. They're, they're great. They're, they're not raunchy, they're realistic and he's meticulous in the details of the books as well.
Thank you so much, Dave. We appreciate you. 
Dave: Thank [00:45:00] you.
Thanks for joining us today on Preparedness Pro. I hope you enjoyed yourself and learned something new. Want more preparedness inspiration? Join our live shows every Tuesday and Thursday at 11 a. m. Eastern on YouTube or Facebook at Preparedness Pro, where we can answer your questions live. Looking for a community of like minded people who understand that preparedness is about freedom?
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