If you attend a class at Insights one of the things you are taught is mindset. And it’s not just the mindset you need to have to be able to do what you have to do to use lethal force to defend innocent life. You learn a little bit about the mindset of the bad guy.

One example from this last weekend was from Greg (paraphrased):

The Green River Killer took great offense when an interviewer mentioned his raping of women. He insisted he did not rape them. They were prostitutes and he always paid them for the sex. “But you took their money, because there was never any money found with their bodies.” His response was, “They were dead. They didn’t have any use for it.”

And, of course, they never said no when he came back and had sex with their bodies for several days. So how could that be considered rape?

This is part of what the Insights trainers call, “removing the paint job”. Criminals may look like ordinary people on the outside but they aren’t what most people really consider human on the inside.

This last Sunday near the end of the Street & Vehicle Tactics class Derek opened up.

The day before we learned Derek grew up on New York City. He and one other member of his family (including cousins) went into law enforcement. Everyone else became criminals. He knew more criminals and saw more criminal acts by the time he was a teenager than I probably will in my entire life.

He went to the funeral of the first person he knew who was murdered when he was eight years old. His dad would tell him to take a particular coat when he went out, because that was the one that had the .38 special revolver in the pocket—he was eleven years old. When he went to college the police told their class to not go to a particular convenience story because they would get robbed. He saw multiple people come back from that corner in their underwear—even when there was snow on the ground. Taking their pants was the easiest way to make sure they got everything in their pockets. When we were practicing avoiding a mugging he showed us how a professional team of muggers would do it. If you stepped into their “kill zone” when a gun discreetly shoved into your ribs and calm, quiet, voice would tell you what to do and you would be on your way in half a minute without you wallet, phone, watch, etc. They then would reset to their start positions and wait for their next victim to enter their box. He told us of his cousins telling him of stories about how they jacked someone for their wallet in a parking lot and details of other crimes.

That was Saturday. On Sunday he said he wanted to share some things he had never shared with a class before.

He said he had a realization from watching our reactions to his stories the day before. He asked, “Before you were 25, how many of you went hunting? Went fishing? Hiked in the forest? Swam in a lake?” Nearly all of us were able to answer most of the questions with a yes. Then he said, “I didn’t do any of those things. I never even dreamed I might be able to do any of those things when I was growing up.”

His lesson rambled some. He obviously had not practiced it. His lesson was that our world view is dramatically different from many criminals. It is so different that we can’t really comprehend how different it is. There are a lot of similarities in some respect. Some of them have families they are supporting, most of them have families that love them.

But we don’t just have a different tribal label. We are so different in so many way that we probably cannot think like them.

Frequently they are firmly committed to a life of crime. Just like a drug addict or alcoholic, counseling doesn’t work unless they made the choice to seek it out. And he is now a counselor!

He found a path away from that life when he was young and can now socially blend in to either world. He wanted to share that insight about both worlds with us. We, almost for certain cannot and should not expect our standards of behavior and belief in a specific social contract to be shared by them. They have a much different social contract.

While many of us may be ignorant of their culture and beliefs to the point of extreme denial and extreme conviction that they must be like us, they know, sometimes with great passion, that we are not like them. Frequently, they do not want outsiders in their territory. If you do tread on their territory be on the lookout for signs of hostility and heed the warnings.