Winning Violent Encounters with Amir Khilla

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Announcement 0:01

Welcome to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates, where leaders find the insights, advice, and encouragement they need to lead courageously.

Travis Yates 0:12

Welcome back to the show. I'm so honored you decided to spend a few minutes with us here today. I'm excited about today's guest. Today, we have Amir Kila, who spent more than 25 years teaching officers and others how to control violent encounters safely. He's currently a Michigan Peace Officer, a use of force rider for Law Officer and Police One, and the author of the excellent book, The Officer's Top Ten, a Field Guide to the Fights Cops Actually Get Into. I can't recommend that book enough. Amir is the founder of Centurion Modern Subject Control. It's a law enforcement training program built on data about how officers actually get assaulted. He's also a second-degree Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt, a retired professional MMA fighter, and a U.S. Army Combatives level two instructor. He has a master's degree in human performance from Western Michigan University. That's only the beginning. We don't play around here at the Courageous Leadership Podcast. Amir knows what he's talking about. Amir, how are you doing, my man?

Amir Khilla 1:14

I'm doing well, Dr. Yates. Thanks for having me on the show.

Travis Yates 1:17

Well, man, I'm excited that you're here. And uh we've been talking a lot about this particular topic lately, and we've rolled out some training called Focus, Field Observable Cues for Unknown Situations. It's a passion of mine to study what's occurring before violence occurs. I assume that you do some of that, but it's also you're the expert in once that encounter involves, how to win that. We're gonna get into all that. But before we start, man, you've you've done a lot in your life. You've been a pro MMA fighter, you're a business owner, BJJ Black Belt, now you're in law enforcement. What drove you into the profession?

Amir Khilla 1:52

Well,

A Partner’s Death Changes Everything

Amir Khilla 1:53

it was um a work of of uh of passion. Um, I had a training partner, Eric Zapata. Uh he was one of my main sparring for boxing uh partners, and um he was a an officer locally here, and um unfortunately he was murdered on scene uh just before the Ferguson stuff started going.

Travis Yates 2:14

I was about to say I've heard of that name when you said that name. Go ahead, I'm sorry.

Amir Khilla 2:18

Yep, no, you're good. Uh so with the loss of Zapata, we called him Easy. Um, and then all the uh outcries for change, and uh everybody wanted to point fingers and and and um place blame, uh, but not too many people were ready to stand up and be like, okay, I'm here, Lord, send me. And that's what I decided to do. And uh through that process, um realized the type of training that we had as law enforcement was uh behind the times, I should say, and um wanted to give it something more modern. The the threats definitely evolved, so we need to evolve with it.

Travis Yates 3:00

Well, you couldn't have said that any better. Behind the times is an understatement when it comes to defensive tactics and surviving threats. And it almost seems like, Amir, I don't want to depress everybody here, but it almost seems like we've almost gone backwards in recent years. Like we keep telling cops that when violent people violent men and women are in front of us, and I will point to it's mostly violent men and well over 95% of all assaults, it's men, uh that they we keep telling cops when they see this violence in front of them or the precursor to violence that well, we should just talk like Chick-fil-A. We should just de-escalate, like like you control what someone else is going to do. You have a different approach. Uh, obviously, what you teach is de-escalation, but de-escalation is a tool and it's just a mirror of tools that you can use to de-escalate, much more than just verbal. Can you kind of expand on that a little bit?

Confidence Drives Real De Escalation

Amir Khilla 3:50

Sure. Well, I treat everybody I encounter like it's my son or my brother that's just having a bad day that day. I don't know if you've heard of the competency effect. I'm sure you have, but the more competent an officer is, the more comfortable they are with going hands-on if they are forced to, the better their de-escalation still skills. As their confidence goes up, there's a direct correlation with their de-escalation skills. So um I people thought when I first uh joined the force that this retired MMA fighter is going to be out there getting all sorts of use of force incidents. And uh my partners would show up to the zone just to watch, and uh they realize that this dude doesn't fight that much because I had no reason to fight. I've had my ego, you know, beaten out of me in the cage. I have nothing to prove to anybody. Um, so I say all that to say that if you're competent with your hands-on skills, you are more likely to be able to de-escalate. And sometimes you have to keep in mind that going hands-on preemptively or before the situation heats up too far out of control, is sometimes the right thing to do. And not doing that is inappropriate for us.

Travis Yates 5:02

Well, you're taking the words out of my mouth because uh we've done an extensive study on this, and I'm sure people have all seen it anecdotally, and you've seen these videos that when you see people in front of you that are displaying violent tendencies, and we'll call them pre-attack indicators or pre-incident indicators, and everyone listening knows exactly what that is, even though we try to talk ourselves out of it and run to the Chick-fil-A attitude and think it's gonna stop. That sometimes as we continue to talk and give them time, that escalates a situation where we could go hands-on in a low-level use of force and prevent a high level use of force. And, Amir, I don't expect you to understand this, but our listeners know it because we've talked about it a lot that the departments we've studied that have gone to mandatory de-escalation that does not involve the hands-on, it's just it's all verbal. And the ones that have gone to the reform policies that it's a policy of a last resort to use force, all those departments' use of force has increased and also results have increased. And the reason is is what you just talked about. If you don't sometimes go hands-on very early, you're gonna have to escalate force to get that under control. I'll just get your thoughts on that.

Amir Khilla 6:12

Yeah, I think there's a happy medium between ask tell do and the new um, I don't know what I would label it, over-de-escalation, where we're just getting into an argument with subjects and just letting things spiral out of control to the point where now the basic soft empty hand technique is not going to be adequate, and I have to escalate something else. Um, you put that in conjunction with the over-reliance on tools. It's just a recipe for disaster for our men and women out there, and it's uh we're setting our people up for failure with the amount of training or the level of training that we give them. Plus, um, I'm sure you're aware of the lack of administrative support. So guys are out there second guessing themselves at every turn, and before you know it, they have a blade stuck in them.

Travis Yates 6:59

And that's yeah, just this week, uh, and we're rolling out another video on this this week. Just this week, most people listening to this or watching this have seen the Chicago video, and it was where the man had his shirt off and he's acting violently, you know, he's swinging his arms like he's about to hit people, and there's firefighters there, and there's a Chicago officer there, and and the Chicago officer has her taser pointed at him, never deploys it, and finally he goes at the firefighter, and the firefighter takes a halligan tool, just hits the guy in the face, and the guy goes out, end of story. And everybody's quick to jump on the police officer for not doing anything. I'm here to tell you at Chicago PD, she did exactly what she's trained to do. She's told to de-escalate every situation no matter what. She's not trained to impose force before there's force used upon her. She's doing everything she's trained to do, and she's worried that if she did do anything early, Amir, that she's going to be crucified. So, and the second part of that video is the hypocrisy. Everyone's praising the firefighter for taking a halligan tool to the guy's face at the end of this encounter. But if that police officer would have taken a baton and went to his face, she'd be up for murder charges in the city of Chicago. It'd be totally different. So it's it's the hypocrisy of the world, it's the leaders that you talk about, it's the politicians. They've got this all wrong. Firefighter is exactly right. You don't let them hit you, you've got to sometimes hit them first to bring that to an end. And by the way, subjects, we didn't, you know, the subject did not, you know, do anything else to anybody else. So I think you're right. There's a lot of problems inside law enforcement. A lot of it's tied to leaders, a lot of it's tied to training. You're trying to change that, and I would ask you this. And it's interesting you talk about the people came to watch you, sir, and thought you were getting a bunch of fights because listen, I don't want to brag here, but I've been in some BJJ gyms myself, and I am a celebrated white belt, and only people in BJJ would laugh at that joke. But it is a very uh it's a it's a sport or it's a uh I don't think I'm good enough to call it a sport, but it's a workout that is very humbling. You do leave your ego at the door, and the men and women that I know that are very good at that are just like you. They're not looking for fights, they're very calm individuals. And so, what did fighting at the highest level really teach you about staying calm under stress that really our audience can learn from?

Amir Khilla 9:20

So keeping your emotions in check is the first um step into controlling your breathing. And physiologically, the breathing is the lowest level or lowest common denominator of control that we have over our body. If we can't control our own body, there's no way that we're going to be able to control another person's body that's aggressively trying to get away from us or attack us. Um, so my main lessons from fighting were initially staying calm, not taking things personally. It's it's a job. We punch and kick each other in the face for a living, um, and going back to that breathing when you got overwhelmed. And then looking for a way out. There's there's generally always a solution to the problem that you find yourself in. But it's almost insurmountable to be able to get out from under somebody that's punching you in the face. And I want to get back to my feet in a fighting position. There's a lot of steps in between that. So fighting taught me that you look for the next escape. You only look for the next rung up the ladder. You're only looking to improve your position one step at a time. If you accidentally jump a bunch of rung uh steps on the ladder, you're good to go. But you're not getting um a defeated mindset by not by not being able to get to the top of the ladder. I'm just trying to get to that next step.

What Assault Data Actually Shows

Travis Yates 10:34

Some information about your curriculum, sir, is you start with the data, right? I don't think enough training programs start with what the actual data says. I may call it research or data, whatever, because we have a lot of it in the profession. We we tend to sometimes um start with what we think the public wants or what is politically correct, but you actually start with the data. So, what do the numbers say about how officers actually get assaulted? And how far is that off from how agencies are training?

Amir Khilla 11:03

Well, Travis, unfortunately, most training now is not just what the people want to see, uh the citizens want to see, but mainly what the instructor enjoys, her or himself. So you'll you'll notice that instructors tend to gravitate to their own um area of expertise and background. We wanted to kind of flip it around and look at we have very limited time with these officers in training, very limited. So we need to distill the most common situations that they're finding themselves in. And it's not uh being in half guard under somebody or uh doing a helicopter sweep or an inverted guard. It's it's a lot simpler. It's usually a pull away, it's a haymaker, um, a tackle. Those are the things that we focus on the most in our program. And don't get me wrong, I initially when I got into this work, I did what most instructors do, and I gravitated towards hey, let me show these guys how sweet I am, let me put on a demonstration, not a training. And that's really the you're not doing anybody any service. You you might get some fans, but now all these officers either feel completely inadequate because they can't do what you're doing, or they're going out there and thinking that they're gonna pull something off that's gonna get them hurt. So we try to re-reverse engineer that to what are the most common situations officers are finding themselves in? What are the simplest yet effective techniques or concepts or principles that we could teach them to make them more effective at their job, not just for their own safety, their partner's safety, the subject safety, the police community relationships that could obviously deteriorate when things go wrong. So that's the approach that we took, and it's worked really well for us.

Travis Yates 12:48

Yeah, I think you said something important or you talked about being simple because one of the things that always bothered me is my training basically until this in the academy that we went through a one-week training course and they showed us some arm bars, they showed us some things, and then that was it. The rest of my career, that was it. And I'm thinking to myself, you expect us to be on the streets and get into these encounters and be perfect and to and to be able to win these encounters, but this training's not continuing. But I think most officers aren't able to train on a regular basis in this area. So the idea of keeping it simple, but you can't just do that once one time. What would your suggestion be for maybe leaders listening to this on bringing this to their department?

Training Time Versus Better Curriculum

Travis Yates 13:26

Because if we would put just a fraction of the energy into what we're talking about, Amelia, that these leaders put into what I don't know, IACP tells them to do with their latest policy suggestion, we'd be better off. But I am concerned that officers are not getting what they need when it comes to this, when it comes to going hands-on, because there are times unfortunately that has to happen. What would be the minimum that you would you would explain to leaders that they need to pretty much impose? Now, with that said, I've seen some leaders that have said, hey, I've I've offered free memberships and different BJJ gyms, and and that's probably great, but many of those instructors may not be able to relate the legal stuff and the law enforcement angle with a lot of that, right? So I would just ask you, I mean, what would be your recommendation if someone can't come to what you're doing? What would be your the minimum you would you would ask tell these leaders they need to do?

Amir Khilla 14:11

Recommendations that I would make would be to not rely on the state minimums, because those are just minimums. As a leader, it's your responsibility to take care of your troops. And you're sending them out there ill-prepared and unequipped. That falls back on you. Just because the state mandates four hours a year, or in what is it, California, four hours every two years? Right. That's a minimum, and you should be providing your troops with the training that they deserve.

Travis Yates 14:38

And no one's going to perform well getting four hours a year. No, no one's going to be able to transition that to good performance.

Amir Khilla 14:44

Do you know how many hours a week my kids that are in middle school and high school wrestling train?

Travis Yates 14:52

I would assume more than more than a few.

Amir Khilla 14:54

Yeah, we're we're we're talking about five to eight hours a week. And those are middle school kids. All that's on the line is a little metal or you know, placing better in bracket. In our game, life's are on the line there. So just to put it in perspective, I mean, I've been preaching about this for years. Uh, if you look at the percentage or the ratio of deployment versus training for the military or law enforcement, there's a huge discrepancy there. We should be allocating a lot more time. Obviously, we're going to run into administration, administrative problems, backfilling the road, workmen's comp, overtime, all that stuff. But if we're asking, if if society is asking our law enforcement to perform better, to do better, we need to provide them the means to accomplish that mission. So let's get them better training, let's put them in there and see what we can do with that improved training time.

Travis Yates 15:48

I mean, once our leaders oh, go ahead.

Amir Khilla 15:50

I'm sorry. Sorry. In addition to that, I would not try to train them more. I should let me rephrase that. I don't want to offer them more curriculum, I want to offer them better curriculum. Because, like you mentioned, the recollection under distress or stress is a huge component of it.

Travis Yates 16:09

Yep. Yep. And let's say we have a leader that wants to go this route, there should be an evaluation period. Like they should be able to look at this in a year, two years, three years and say, is what I'm doing working? What would that evaluation look like, Amir?

Amir Khilla 16:23

Well, I I would uh highly we we need to be tracking everything that we do. If it's not measurable, uh we're not gonna be able to improve it. So what we would be most interested in use of force statistics and lack thereof. So how many officers are not getting into use of force incidents and resolving it? How many peaceful arrests do we have with very minimal force? And what are the outcomes of the use of force incidents that are happening? Injuries to officers, injuries to subjects. I think those are those are data points that could be tracked very easily through use of force reports. And you have the the proofs in the pudding, as they say. The numbers tell the story.

Travis Yates 17:07

Well, we have a long way to go because law enforcement does not only not look at the data, they're lying to people about the data. And I'll just give you one quick example. There was this big praise about the South Indiana's new reforms on use of force and mandatory de-escalation and all this stuff, right? That has nothing to do with what we're talking about. And I went and looked at the data, and their use of force went up 64%, their officer assaults went up 65%. But they're bragging publicly about their new reforms, and so it's almost as if it's all virtue signaling. Look what we're doing to reduce use of force. But what they're doing is actually increasing use of force. There's a there's a big, you know, there's a big magic trick going on where it's uh, you know, we're we're we're telling you to listen to us, but if you actually look at the data, it's not there. And I think probably one of the reasons they don't look at the data is they probably know it's not working. But the community groups or the activist groups or whatever are clapping and praising whatever they did, it's really a mess, but it's the officers that lose and it's the citizens that lose. When use

Budgets, Liability, And Political Pressure

Travis Yates 18:09

of force is increasing because of a policy change, that's on the leader. And so if if we're speaking to an agency that is sort of falling into that trap and they know they need to get out of that trap, this can sell. I mean, yeah, this is you know, defensive tactics or whatever, but how would you sell this? And I know education is everything, and nobody wants to seem to educate the public on the realities of policing, but would would you have any suggestions for them?

Amir Khilla 18:34

Well, I would uh I would not try to sell this to a department. I'll tell you why. The obstacles that we run into from an administrative perspective, yes, I have to take a person off the road. Now I have to backfill his spot. Now I might have one of the officers get injured in practice. Now I'm working with workman's comp. So unfortunately, what the administration, the typical administration is looking at is hey, you know what? We'll pay out a settlement for for a case that happens if and when it happens, and most likely it's when it happens, as opposed to taking all these risks up front and providing competent professional officers to go out there on the street.

unknown 19:18

Right.

Amir Khilla 19:18

If I wanted to spread this, which I've been doing and I've been meeting with a lot of representatives, it needs to be done on the legislative front. And um, I would say at least statewide or federally. So we need to establish these minimums uh and provide the training that's mandated by law. If we leave it up to the discretion of departments or of city managers that are looking at spreadsheets and they're saying it is a lot cheaper to just settle out of court if a use of force incident or when a use of force incident occurs, versus getting our troops the training that they need to be professionals and improve their craft and uh reduce injuries to themselves and to the citizens. So it's really hard to push for additional training. I know that's kind of depressing, but that seems to be my experience from trying to get uh to preach the gospel, so to speak, or push push the message out.

Travis Yates 20:24

Let's just call it what it is, Amir. Maybe you don't want to call it like this. This is on the police chiefs and sheriff. They can train their officers in whatever fashion they want. They don't typically need a city manager or city council permission. They can do that, right?

Amir Khilla 20:38

I don't know about you, Travis, but I've never refused an order from my chief.

Travis Yates 20:43

So explain to me what has happened. What what what's happened? What what is going on at this level that's created this this situation? Because I think listen, the cops listening to this know it. They know it. No one's advocating it except for a few of us, right? But they all know it. So what what do you think has happened?

Amir Khilla 21:02

Well, I'll be frank with you, Travis. We have we have some of the blame ourselves as officers, right? So I've tried to offer free training for officers at my martial arts studio when I ran that. Um, they either want to get paid to go to training, um, rightfully so. I mean, it's their job. We're asking them to do something to improve their job. They don't want to take the time away from their family after working 12-hour shift. So there's a lot of things working against an officer, even if they're provided that free training. However, the majority of the issue is it not being part of our requirements for the job. And you might actually have some opposition from um our side, union sides, right? So we're going to require these guys to do this additional training, and some of us are not in the best shape. Some of us haven't run a mile since the academy, and now we're putting more stress on guys. So I know it's it's not a very popular opinion, but our side. Has a little bit of the blame as well. So it's a combination of that and then administration dealing with their spreadsheets and their budgets and their city managers and the city council members. Um it's an uphill sell. It doesn't, they don't make the decisions based on what's best for the officers and for the community. A lot of times it's what's best for our bank account.

Travis Yates 22:23

Yeah, there's a lot of truth there. And I think citizens may be shocked by that, but it's I think it's the absolute truth. I appreciate you saying it. I don't know if

When Restrictions Push Officers To Shoot

Travis Yates 22:31

you're familiar with the New York City Chocode Law, Amir. We've talked about that a lot here, and it's a law that's geared only to NYPD officers. And it's called a Chocode law, but it's not a chokehold law. They have banned uh any touching of the neck, any touching of the chest, any touching of the back, any touching of the shoulder in any encounters. I would just ask you as an expert in this area, how do you win any fights if you can't touch the person in any of those areas? Is that even possible?

Amir Khilla 22:58

I have not mastered my Jedi skills to that point. I can't do it.

Travis Yates 23:03

Well, I can tell you the Jedi skills that NYPD is using, they have to shoot people now. Their shootings are at an all-time high because they have made it a felony up to seven years in prison. There are cops, there's a cop in Rikers Island right now. We're getting an encounter with a subject that was acting very similar to the Chicago video we talked about. The guy wasn't even hurt, but he had to touch his neck to get him under control because in fighting, that's where the head goes, the body goes. That's a that's something everybody watches every weekend in MMA or UFC or whatever it is. And so they've made it in in New York City to where they can basically prosecute any cop that gets in any altercation. It's really insane, but it's what's more insane is no one's talking about it. The leaders aren't talking about it, trainers aren't talking about it. Uh, and I don't know how anybody's an NYPD cop if they go to work every day thinking that they may be arrested. I don't understand that.

Amir Khilla 23:54

You're gonna run into the same issues that we did with COVID. We're just better off not doing anything at all. That's how you get around it. You'll let somebody walk down Main Street stabbing people, and I'm just either gonna shoot them or I'm not gonna touch them. I'm not doing anything in between.

Travis Yates 24:11

Yeah, I think that's probably where it is, and it's really insane because they don't seem to be bothered. There's an all-time high in shootings, and you don't have to believe me, any Google search, anybody listening can see that. That's where I found it. Uh, but that's what a lot of these reforms have done in these cities is it's actually increase the higher levels of force. And Amir, what I love what you're doing here is this will decrease our levels of force and probably decrease use of force altogether because it's more of much more of a proactive stance. And I would ask you this, and I keep saying this around the country, and people kind of look at me weird. I'm convinced that handcuffs are the best officer safety device we have because the hands are what can hurt you. And if if if if if at anything we get officers to go, hey, you know what? For your safety and their safety, let's put some bracelets on their wrist, and we're all protected early into an encounter where we're not having to use some of the things you train. What's your thoughts on that?

Amir Khilla 25:06

Well, I agree with you. It's absolutely the most common um use of force, the handcuffing is that that's what we do almost on you know an hourly basis. We're cuffing people. Um, obviously, there would need to be things to take into consideration. Um, what am I making contact with the citizen for? Uh is it just a citizen encounter or am I?

Travis Yates 25:27

Is this a reasonable is this a reasonable thing to do based on the circumstances?

Amir Khilla 25:31

Right. But what people don't understand is that a a regular citizen encounter or citizen contact or a traffic stop, traffic stops what one of our deadliest uh officer uh safety issues. So anything could change very quickly. It's going to be very, very hard to judge who do I cuff, who do I not cuff, and uh what indicators or what uh boundaries or guidelines am I working with to make that decision.

The Book, Contact Info, And Closing

Travis Yates 25:57

Let's talk about your book, The Officer's Top Ten, a field guide to the fights cop actually get into. I got my copy on Amazon. I'm sure it's available at other online stores. What made you write the book, Amir?

Amir Khilla 26:10

Um almost almost a sense of resignation. So if we can't get these officers training on their own, if we can't get departments to go beyond the minimum four hours a year for defensive tactics, what can I do to get this information out towards to street level officers that can deploy it and study it after practicing it two, three times after briefing with their zone partner? And that's when I decided to put it together and push it out there.

Travis Yates 26:40

Well, it's excellent. I appreciate you doing it. I don't think there's enough information like this out there. Um give us your website, how we can contact you. Um there's going to be some interest in here because I'm telling you, I think you know this, but I want to make sure our audience knows this. There's a lack of this information out there. It seems crazy to me, right? But there's just, I don't think, I don't think there's a lack of knowledge. I think there's a lack of people that are willing to be bold and courageous to speak about these issues. And I'm so appreciative of you. And so you are at the center uh at the peak of this, and I and people need to be able to contact you. So give us your website and information for that.

Amir Khilla 27:14

Absolutely. Centurionms.com, centurion modern subject control. So it's marysamcharles.com. I'm also on uh different social media platforms, generally Amir Killa, and uh subject control is the centurion uh Facebook handle.

Travis Yates 27:36

Yeah, we'll put uh the link to the website in the show notes, and um we're doing all we can in our small neck of the woods with tackbehavior.com. We want to get you involved in that is where Amir. I'm so appreciative of what you're talking about. We don't have enough people talking about what it actually takes to save cops' lives. Everybody's playing games today, and those games are are deadly, and we see it. You can't go to YouTube or Rumble right now and not see police videos where we're all screaming at the screen, going, What are we doing? We can't blame the cops when we don't prepare them for these encounters, and so I appreciate your efforts in that.

Amir Khilla 28:12

Absolutely. We couldn't do it without platforms like yours, Dr. Travis. Thank you.

Travis Yates 28:17

Amir Killa, thank you so much. If you've been listening or you've been watching, thank you for doing that. Just remember lead on and stay courageous.

Announcement 28:27

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