After graduating from the police academy and being placed on the SWAT team as a paramedic, I had to ask the question, “After 15 years as a life saver, can I take a life?” 

Every year, there was a SWAT competition where our team would compete with other teams from around the US in shooting, an obstacle course and terrorism scenarios.  At one training session, a commander from the LA County SWAT addressed us:

“You are wolves.  Your job is to protect the sheep.  Spot the predators in a crowd.  Watch them. Stalk them.  See their movement.  Are they packing?  What’s their exit strategy?  Keep your gun cocked and locked and your knife blade razor sharp.  Be alert and ready to strike fast, unannounced with extreme prejudice.  Remember, you hesitate—you blink—a citizen dies.”

The wolves must be part psychopath to catch a psychopath.  My evolving skill set had expanded to understand the criminal mind.  This is where psychopathic behaviors save lives.  The idea that psychopaths exist as normal people in society is a lot to think about. 

My stint with the SWAT team presented nothing new to me.  I had already been on the job 10 years and got my Ph.D. in fucked up people.  Watching criminals die slowly from bullet wounds while I tried to save their lives gave me no gratification.  I always wondered about the events that had brought them to that point in their lives.  This was the sad part of what I saw.  People died with a blindfold on.  It crushed me to know with a little training they could have avoided death at age 20 and lived a good life to 85.  So many memories snuffed out in a split second.  But the wolves protect the sheep, bottom line.

I see all criminals first as babies, smiling, being held by their mothers.  What went wrong?  Was this behavior hardwired into the DNA or was it learned?  I guess I could have gone either way myself.  Growing up there were times I thought I may become a criminal, but my life shifted with my first job in the emergency department while still in high school.  It allowed me to enter an adrenaline-charged environment that offered the same fix as any drug.  I had a purpose.  

Wolves Protect the Sheep at What Cost?

The military has been skillful to remove the sheep and keep the wolves in battle.  I’ve met so many men and women with PTSD.  It ruins their lives forever.  They take antidepressants and sleeping pills, and many commit suicide.  That’s why today I spend many hours helping physicians and patients understand the mental and physiological dangers of stress.  

There were 2.8 million men in Vietnam.  Only 280,000 engaged in combat.  The average psychiatric casualty was 12 per 1,000 men.  There were 35,000 men admitted to military mental health facilities.  What we can glean from the effects of war can be applied to police, EMS and fire personnel who deal with the same mental health issues.

The US has been desensitized to violence with movies about the fictional jack-off Rambo.  The ninety-minute visual bullshit story plants the seed that men are weak if they experience a mental breakdown.  Another one is the movie “Patton” with George C. Scott, about the tyrannical WW2 general who had no fear.  In one scene, a soldier broke down in tears while visiting a hospital.  Patton slapped the man in the face and told him to snap out of it and to stop crying because he was a soldier.  

If you do a little historical digging, you find out the truth. Patton was called “Blood and Guts Patton” by the Washington star fuckers, but soldiers had a different view.  Soldiers knew his reputation was a false narrative.  On many occasions you find Patton was not the hero he was made out to be, much like J. Edgar Hoover, the dress-wearing homosexual who ran the FBI.  However, perception is reality.  Certain experiences predispose a soldier to killing.  Witnessing a friend killed by the enemy is one way to trigger the killing behavior.  We have known for hundreds of years that men fight not to kill the enemy, but to protect their squad members.

This is where my skill set comes in.  People have no sense of the bloody underbelly of life; people are dangerously naïve.  This is encouraged by the media and TV, which serve as a single information source for most people.  More and more of what people watch is accepted as reality. 

What We Can Learn from Injured Wolves

I’ve developed advanced treatment protocols for PTSD, traumatic brain injury and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) looking at multiple metabolic pathways.  Each person is biochemically unique and handles stress in a different manner.  Sheep take it the hardest.  Wolves can compartmentalize the trauma and roll with it.  A wolf’s physiology is made to handle stress. The wolves are the skydivers, and the sheep are fine with golf.  Wolves love to travel in a pack.  Sheep crave isolation.  Any external stress is just too much.

Protecting people at all costs has always been at the forefront of my mission.  I have radar for bullshit and most people have a narrative in their head that is full of misinformation.  From the time they wake up they are lying to themselves until faced with a traumatic event.  Then their world and belief system changes in seconds. 

Like Hunter S. Thomson said, “Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intentions of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out and loudly proclaiming, ‘Wow, what a ride!’”