Building Kickass Instructors: Dan Fraser’s Approach to Presentations and Police Training

Welcome to another episode of The First Responder Playbook! Today, host Brent sits down with Dan Fraser, an accomplished police officer, instructor, and author, whose passion for empowering others has driven his impressive career. Dan takes us on a journey from his early days as a military reservist in Canada to his two-decade career with the Calgary Police Service, where he quickly traded SWAT aspirations for a calling in training and instructor development.

Dan shares eye-opening insights about the importance of effective training, the real goals behind teaching, and the challenges of ensuring retention and operational transfer of critical skills. You'll learn how Dan’s curiosity and commitment to helping others led him to start his own consulting business, write "Kickass Presentations," and collaborate with some of the brightest minds in law enforcement training. The conversation also dives into Dan’s ongoing work with Raptor Protection and the cutting-edge “Methods of Instruction” course, which is changing the way agencies approach use-of-force instruction.

Whether you're a new trainer or a seasoned officer, you'll find actionable advice, memorable stories, and inspiration to level up your own teaching and leadership in the first responder world. Tune in for expert insights into what really makes a great instructor, the power of networking and ongoing learning, and how to make a lasting, positive impact on your agency and community.

Want to be a guest on The First Responder Playbook: Insights on Leadership and Training? Send Brent Colbert a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1748037097521814b71b1b454

 

Get Dan's book at : https://amzn.to/4nvsdxO

Dan's training website: https://www.frasertrainingsolutions.com/

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Guys, welcome to the first responder playbook. It's my pleasure to
have Dan Frazier with me tonight. I've met Dan at the a
conference in St. Louis. I usually
try to let everybody introduce themselves because I don't do them justice.
Dan, introduce yourself to my audience.
Oh, man, this. You put me on the spot here, introducing myself.

(00:24):
Well, I'll keep it, I'll keep it quick because we want to get some, some
valuable conversation here. But yeah, I'm, I'm coming to you from
Calgary, Alberta, which is up in Canada. I
started off real young, like 17 years old. I was a
reservist in the military and then got hired real young as a police
officer as well. 22 years old and with the Calgary Police Service.

(00:46):
And I want, I was a typical guy. I wanted
to be like a SWAT guy kind of thing and, and do those kind of
things. And then when I got into our, into training,
I realized that these guys that teach all the tactics training and stuff,
they were blowing my mind with their knowledge, with the,
the why behind everything that they did. And

(01:08):
I thought, you know what? I want to be like these guys. And
so I kind of angled my, my whole career that way. It was mostly in
patrol, but I spent about 20 years in our, kind of, our riot
unit. They don't call that a, call it that anymore, but public safety unit and
doing specialty munitions stuff and just kind of collecting up instructor
certifications and then was able eventually to become a full time

(01:31):
instructor in, in our academy. We, we run our own academy in
Calgary. There's about 2300 officers,
sworn officers, then about another thousand civilians. So it's, it's one of the
bigger municipal agencies. And I got to teach tactics
every day for six years, and it was just awesome. And then went back to
patrol and had some different roles,

(01:54):
but mostly staying in patrol in training,
etc. And, you know, when I left training,
that's when a couple of the other instructors pulled me aside and they said, hey,
would you put together a course on how to actually teach?
That's what you need to do. And I thought, okay, well, I'm doing

(02:14):
something right, I guess. And that, that one little
comment has just sent my life on a different trajectory
over the last, oh, 15 years to
really look at, like, okay, what makes a good instructor?
And what I found a lot was there was, there's a
lot of people telling you what to do, but not how to do it. They

(02:35):
go, you know what you got to do, Brent? You gotta be dynamic. You gotta
wow your audience. You gotta Bring them in. You get and you go, oh, okay,
this is wonderful. How do you actually do that? And so I really want
to make sure that with the stuff that I'm doing that I'm
eating my own dog food. First of all that, and secondly that
I'm. If I can't give you, if I can't hold

(02:57):
your hand and walk you down the path of where we're going, at least I
can give you some real solid examples to help you to be better.
And that's really been my focus is instructor development.
It led me to start my own consulting company. Then
I left the Calgary Police Service in just around Covid time and I went into
the private sector. Terrible time to do that by the way, especially when it came

(03:19):
to training. But such is life. It gave me
time to, to write a book. So I've, I'm the author of Kickass
Presentations and since
then I've just had a lot of really great opportunities. So now I work with
guy by the name of Chris Butler. We're talking about smart people in
law enforcement. He's the smartest, if not one of the smartest

(03:43):
people in law enforcement. Training and use of force. I work for
him in a company called Raptor Protection and we teach a course called Methods of
Instruction which is all about the human factors of training
use of force. That's a very sought after course. And then I work with
Ken Murray, the one of the co founders of Simunition, teaching
training at the speed of life course. And then I've got my own stuff. So

(04:05):
super busy doing the training stuff, which is awesome. And then
I decided, well, I'm not done with policing. I felt like I escaped
my career with only one ex wife, a bad back and
sleep apnea. And I thought no, I'm gonna,
I'm gonna jump back in here. So I was able to join our national
police department which is called the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or the

(04:27):
rcmp. And they let me work part time. And so I pick and
choose where and when I work and it allows me to work sometimes
close to home here in Calgary, but I'll also do stints all over the province
and even up into the arctic. So I'm, I'm. I'm living
the dream. I'm traveling all over the place and doing lots
of instructor development type stuff and then

(04:49):
still keeping my hand in the, in the actual day to day of first
responder policing. So that's kind of, that's me in a nutshell.
That's awesome. Now I, I gotta say, as An Oklahoma
kid from the 90s. The reason I knew where Calgary,
Alberta was is the Hart Foundation. Bret Hart.
Owen Hart. Yes,

(05:11):
exactly. Well, our, our
junior hockey team is called the Hitman, just
because of that, you know, Brett the Hitman heart and Stampede wrestling and
that kind of stuff. Yeah, most people know Calgary. Some will know it because
of that. Some will know it because of. We're close to the national
park called Banff, which is about an hour away. And then we,

(05:35):
excuse me, we host the largest, or they call it the greatest outdoor
show on earth. It's a mega huge rodeo and that kind of thing called
the Calgary Stampede. And that's every summer and that draws about a million people through
the gates over the course of 10 days. And the whole city kind of
shuts down for that. And you know, if you show
up to work and you're not drunk, they send you home. It's,

(05:57):
it's, it's a big party, you know, it's, it's cool to see everybody,
people from all walks of life, you know, getting into the western spirit and
wearing cowboy hats and, and cowboy boots and
doing the country music thing and it's, it's pretty awesome.
It's awesome. So let me ask you this. You, you get on.

(06:17):
When you got on at Calgary at the municipal pd, did they have their own
academy then? They did, yeah. Yeah, they're
putting through, you know, between 100 and maybe
200 and you know, 40 ish, 250
at the max kind of cadets a year. So yeah, they run their own academy,

(06:38):
which is, yeah, which is nice. It, it allows
them to be nimble enough to make change and they.
Excuse me, I'm still, I'm, I'm, I got, I know we had to cancel this
recording like whatever a couple weeks ago. I'm still got this weird link
break off from that. So yeah, run, run our own

(06:59):
academy here in Calgary. And it's,
it's nice because there
is still small enough to be nimble. Meaning
that when I was the Taser master instructor,
you know, I had the Taser portfolio, I had the strategic
communications, so kind of de escalation portfolio and some, and

(07:20):
some other ones, some mental preparation and conditioning. If I saw something that I
went, you know what? This needs to be brought into our training. I
had really hardly anybody to ask. I would kind of run it by my own
supervisor and the rest of the unit. And if it kind of made sense
legally, medically and all these other ways, we'd go, okay, let's make the change.
And in that respect, we were able to kind of really innovate

(07:43):
and stay ahead of, I think, you know,
the rest of the North America in, in a way.
And I've seen that now going around and training other agencies. One of
the things that they lament all the time is, man, we wish we could do
this or we wish we could do that, but there's so many hoops to jump
through and so many, so much red tape. And it really,

(08:06):
what who gets held back is the
officers and who suffers is the officers and the public.
Ultimately. Absolutely. How long
did, were you on the job before you realized training was
the direction you wanted to go? Like I
said, I was, I was, excuse me, in the

(08:29):
academy and I had come from. I was doing my degree in criminal
justice in university and I had this very forward thinking
professor out at the University of Fraser Valley in British
Columbia named Terry Anderson. And he put us through this program in
one of his classes called Living on Purpose. And what you did
is you went through a whole series of exercises over the course of months to

(08:51):
kind of narrow down what it is. That is what's your real purpose
here? And mine was that I'm a dedicated wisdom seeker
and my, my mission in life, my
goal is to empower others. So I really started looking
at my own life about how can I, how can I collect gems
of wisdom and then pass them on to other people to empower them?

(09:14):
And when I really thought about it, could I have
angled my career to be like a full time SWAT type of guy?
I could have, but man, when I saw the quality
of instruction that I was getting, I thought I want to be one of
those guys. So it was like right away I wanted to angle
my career towards that. That's awesome.

(09:37):
Is it up there? Is there like in Oklahoma, we have to have
two years on before you can become like what they call a basic instructor. And
then you go through a 40 hour class and then you can kind of teach
like basic subjects. And you know, if you want to get into defensive tactics
or firearms, they have a whole separate certification for that. Is it
similar to that up there? Yeah, very similar.

(10:00):
Yeah, you would take a, you know, and once you have usually a couple
of years on, for sure. Yeah, same thing. And you spend
your time, you know, doing control tactics, annual research,
all the stuff that nobody wants to do. Right. Because you got a bunch of
senior people who come in and they don't want to spend the day on the
mats. And, and back then we ran through everything in the PPCT

(10:21):
playbook, you know, from ground fighting to knife defense, to
cranial pressure points to, you name it in a day. And to.
For detectives and for everybody, people who, you know, they barely, they barely
knew where their duty belt was and they had to run through all that. And,
and so that was, that's where you really cut your teeth.
Not just teaching the stuff, but teaching the stuff to people who either

(10:44):
don't want to, don't care, or think they already know it,
which is really difficult. And thankfully, they've, they've come a long way in, in Calgary
Police now. They, they very much tailor the annual type of training to
what work area you're in. Because why put through a bunch of
undercover people, through what the uniforms are going through when it doesn't
apply to their job? Yeah, just slowly

(11:07):
collecting up different instructor certifications and then being the
bane of my supervisor's existence by going, hey, they
need me to teach. They need me to, you know, come and be a quarry,
like be a role player for this or teach this course or go on
another course. And so, yeah, a lot of time away
from the street, but it's got to be done. It's awesome.

(11:30):
When did you finally start realizing that
maybe there was other ways of conveying your message and
learning about those advanced instructional methods? When did that
finally start playing in and how did you get involved in that?
I don't know if there is really advanced stuff.

(11:53):
I think, like everybody, you know, whether you think of starting out as a
police officer and you've got your officer coach and your first field
training officer, and you go, there's a bunch of stuff that they're doing that I'd
like. I'm going to grab that. This other stuff, it's not for me
or I can't do that, so I'm going to find somebody else. And the same
thing with, with instructors. I think you just take bits and

(12:15):
pieces from, from everybody. Um, you know,
there's certain things that I, I mix a lot of humor into what I
do. And in fact, in my, my, my book, I talk about, I've
got a, a chapter and it's, it's part of the course that I run called
you've got to be joking, which is really, how do we use
humor to engage people? Some instructors

(12:36):
immediately look at that and go, I'm not funny. I can't do that stuff. And
you know what? I bet they are funny. It's just a matter of, of
tying into that. Like, maybe it's, maybe it's real dry dad jokes or
something like that. Let's let's, let's
bring that out so that you can do some of this stuff. So

(12:57):
I really like showing people what is possible
as far as, as far as instruction and
realizing that everybody's on, on this journey, like everybody's on a
path. And I hope to be a better instructor
next year than I am this year and even better the year after that.
So I think it's just about continuing learning and

(13:20):
really looking at it from your students perspective and going, what, what
do they want? What do they need? And let's get to that stuff immediately.
I love that. That's actually like a very good way of like saying that,
because you're right. I mean, if you're, if your students aren't catching what you're saying,
then you're not really doing them a service, you know?
Yeah. One of the things that I'm

(13:43):
like always on now is
what is training? Like, what is the goal of this whole thing? And,
and it's something that I open a lot of my presentations with when
I speak at conferences and whatnot. And you have a room full of.
I was just down in Indianapolis for the NAFTO conference, a room full of
200 trainers, and people are going, what is the

(14:06):
goal of training? Like, is it to make people better? Yeah, but
is that really the goal? The way that I
look at it is we want to change behavior. If you're not
changing people's behavior, if they're not going out into the field and doing
something different than they did before that is more effective, then it's kind of
a waste. In the research literature that is called

(14:29):
retention and transfer, meaning you have
to have your students retain what you're teaching. It doesn't matter if it's
legal stuff, book knowledge, or whether. Excuse me,
it's a, it's a. Some kind of control tactics type of thing. If they
can't remember how to do it, they have no chance of actually performing it later.
So there's retention. And then the second is transfer. We want

(14:51):
to be able to have them transfer that
knowledge, that skill, whatever it is, into
an operational environment where they can actually use it. And
one of the studies I love to go back to is, was done
by 4 Science, by doctors John and Don O' Neill, their husband and wife

(15:13):
team. They went and looked at a bunch of different.
Three major academies really, in the United States, and they looked at what was
being taught, how it was being taught, et cetera. And there's a bunch of facets
to what they were doing, but ultimately what they
found was that there was very little retention and therefore very
little transfer of a lot of things. So when they looked at some basic

(15:35):
stuff like applying a cranial pressure point,
those basics really only
lasted about six weeks with their students. They brought the students back in at different
intervals and said, hey, here's a person that needs
this. Go ahead and do that. And they're looking at the academies or
own checklist for, for what makes

(15:58):
this effective. And they were ineffective after only six weeks. And when they looked at
advanced stuff or, or more complex
skills, like let's say a weapon takeaway, right, Somebody's got a gun in your back.
How are you going to deal with that? Two weeks. Two weeks and it
was not even functional anymore. So here
we have these, these. The students

(16:20):
graduating from their academy unable to perform
already at graduation, a lot of the stuff that they've
actually learned. So it's a big problem I think in law enforcement.
And so that's one thing that I'm on all the time is
like, we need to be looking at what we're teaching.
We need to be conducting not just retention

(16:42):
tests, meaning can they remember what to do, but a transfer test.
So let some time elapse and then let's, let's
give them a, let's test them. Let's see if they actually are picking this up.
And if they're not, then we need to look at ourselves as trainers,
not as them, as students that, hey, you can't do this. You
know, I was teaching high risk vehicle stops one day in our

(17:03):
academy and that involved this prone handcuffing. So you have somebody on the
ground. You know, we teach a technique for prone handcuffing. Well, these
students are fumbling through this and having a hard time. And I remember one of
the other instructors going, we taught you this. How come you can't remember this?
Well, if everybody's unable to remember that, we, you know,
we got to look back at how this is being taught and it turns out,

(17:26):
yeah, they hadn't seen it in months. You know, we taught it in a, in
a blocked fashion where they got a whole bunch of handcuffing early in their training.
And then we leave it for a number of months. Then we throw them into
a more dynamic and realistic type of environment and no
wonder they're not able to perform it. So I'm, I'm really
fascinated by that at, and how do we get the

(17:47):
most out of our students from the training that we deliver?
And that's kind of changed my outlook at pretty much
everything. That I do. As far as training goes, that's
awesome. You know, I feel
like a lot of times,
especially in the basic academy, they teach

(18:09):
you to the bare basics, and
they don't want to go beyond that. And so I feel
like you're right that they don't. There's no
really them trying to make you apply it later on, say,
hey, show this to us. Show us how it's working. It's just, hey, we're gonna
get you through the academy. Good luck moving forward. Right.

(18:32):
Can you pass a test? We put a check in the box, we move you
on, you know, and we see it like, certainly in firearms training, this
is one of the things that I'm, you know, just preaching all
the time, is that we spend all this time on a flat
range. No realistic context. You
know, if you think about what's the cue for you when you're out in the

(18:52):
field? What is the cue to let you know that somebody needs shooting? Well, they're
pulling a gun, they're pulling a knife, they're doing these kind of. They're. They're posing
a deadly force threat. But
in most of our training, what's the cue? It's a target
turning on a range, or you're already looking at the target, which doesn't have a
gun on it, and it's an instructor blowing a whistle or yelling something, or

(19:14):
a shot timer or something like that. And as soon as we go
live fire, we start to cut a lot of the golden
threads that we can bring in from the real world.
So we do a bunch of this shooting and punching holes in paper, we pat
ourselves on the back, and then we do a couple of scenarios where
we bring in some non lethal training type ammo, whether it's, you know,

(19:37):
Simunition, fx, marking cartridges or airsoft or whatever it is. We
do a couple scenarios and we go, right on. You got this. And out
you go. And really, we're grabbing the stick by the wrong end. You know,
if this is like training for an MMA fight and we spend 90% of the
time hitting the heavy bag, getting really good at that. We have
a couple of light sparring sessions, and we say, yep, you're good to go. So

(20:01):
I think we have a long way to go in law
enforcement training in general to be able to really
prepare our students for what they're about to face in the real world.
Yeah, I agree. We actually just started
a mandatory night shoot with

(20:23):
some dynamic shooting and stuff at night last year
at our agency. And you would have thought that, like,
you know, we kick somebody's dog, they were like, well, we gotta go out there
at night, and we got to do this and this and this. And.
Exactly. Because cops get in such a routine of, well, this is the
way we always do things. Like, you know, I want to get my minimum

(20:45):
hours with training in a year. And, you know, they don't want to do any
more than that. They don't want to do more than their two quals a year.
And I. I'll be honest, I was like, man, I don't do I
really want to do this. This is like August in Oklahoma. It's like a furnace
outside. And, you know, that I got out there and I went through. And I'm
like, man, that instructor was really good. And, you know, I'll be

(21:07):
honest, totally went in there with a bad. Like, I don't want to do this.
And then I went through it, and I was like, you know, it was actually
a really good class. Like, I learned some things. And
he. Because he. He started off, he's like, hey, I know it's hot out here.
I know y' all don't want to be out here. This is why it's important.
And I'll never forget, he had a,

(21:28):
like, piece of cardboard that he wrote
in marker what the statistics of why this is important.
And I. I never had seen that before in such a
unique way of presenting it that it stood out and
stood in my head of, like, man, okay. Like,
you know, it was just. You don't see that. Like, you don't see somebody riding

(21:51):
on a piece of cardboard. Yeah. And buddy did it in a way, and he
explained it in a way that it stuck. And I was like, okay, I see
the benefit of this. And, you know, we put. We've got 150
officers, and I would say a good 75 afterwards are
like, hey, that was actually really a glass. And it just took presenting it
in a different manner at a different time of day and switching it up from

(22:13):
just shooting paper and, you know, it ended up being well
received. Yeah. And that instructor
motivation. Excuse me. To do. To do that is. Is super important
because especially with inservice training, you know what the
training is probably going to be like before you go. Because everybody talks and they
go, oh, yeah, Brent, you did the training. I'm going next month. Like,

(22:34):
what was it like? And if you have people coming back going, actually, it was
really good. We did some cool stuff. You know, I
made me think in a different way, and it was actually, they
made the training fun. Oh my God. They made police training
fun. Like, God forbid. Yeah.
Everybody else wants to go. And then, you know, next, next year when you got

(22:55):
to go again, you'll be, you'll be going. Yeah, this is.
I'm ready for it. Right? So that's. Yeah, that's fantastic.
So let me ask you, I have something that
I gotta say to my audience, and I think
you've probably. I've never been a strong writer.

(23:15):
You gave me the most impactful
way of writing when you're like, hey, write
it like this and write it this way. And it stood out to me because
you made it so relatable.
How did you get into being a
good writer? And how did you even get in that path in the first place?

(23:39):
Wow, that's. That's a great, great
question. I think writing
for me probably came from someone who I really consider a
mentor, a guy named Brian Willis. So as, as you may know, he's a deputy
director of eelita, the conference and the organization that
we're involved with. And I

(24:01):
was fortunate enough to have him as my head of
tactics training when I went through the academy. And he's the one that really brought
a leader into the Calgary Police Service. And he was
one of those guys that was writing articles and writing books. And fairly early
in my career, he approached me about writing something for one
of the. Writing a chapter for one of the books he was doing. And

(24:23):
I realized that the quality of
our ideas, if we want to
express things really well with high quality, you need to be able to
write them well and explain them well. And
that led me to just start putting things in writing
and going, hey, is this valuable? And then writing articles for various

(24:46):
law enforcement magazines and journals and those kind of things
and is really, I think, served me well in my career. Even in writing
reports. I was kind of a stickler for, for writing.
And I would have. When I became a new sergeant, I would have some
officers, you know, I would send them some feedback on a, on a report.
They'd go, what are you doing? I've been on the job for five years or

(25:08):
10 years. I've never had a supervisor send a report
back like this is. I'm going, hey, if you want to be
better, there's a way that we can make your, your reports better, better
and everything you write better, because that's going to reflect on you. It's going to,
it's going to go into places where you don't even
know like who, who's going to pick up this report that you're

(25:30):
reading, you don't want to get a terrible reputation,
let's say, with, you know, with the crown
prosecutor, knowing that when they see your.
Brent H. This guy's. You know, this guy's writing's terrible. Probably
his. His field craft is terrible. Probably his
testimony is going to be terrible, or you can have it go the other way.

(25:52):
So, yeah. Something I took an interest in fairly early and
then was very fortunate with the. I lead a journal to be able to come
on as one of the section editors there,
and I'll give people feedback if they want
feedback. I'm not one of those guys that goes around saying, hey, here's what you
got to do, because often it's not received well, even though

(26:13):
it's. I kind of look at stuff as this is feed forward, like, hey,
whatever. Whatever was before. That's fine, but how can we be
better in the future? And I was really encouraged, Brent, when
I half expected an email or nothing to come back or for
you to come back and, you know, with some kind of angry retort like,
I. And you didn't. You said, hey, this is great

(26:36):
feedback. And then you actually did the thing, and you turned around and
you submitted something that was like, is this the same person
writing this stuff? Because it was two totally different
writing styles. And you went from a very.
Sort of a clinical, I want to say, like
a dry way of writing, which a lot of people do, into something

(26:59):
where you started off with a. With a personal story and
something that grabs people that they actually want to read. And there's some
actual takeaways there where they go, after I read this, what do I do differently,
you know, or what's the. What's the feeling? What's the thing I want
somebody, the audience to think, feel, know, or do
when they're done reading this. And you grasped onto that right away,

(27:22):
and so I'm proud of you. It was. It was. It was very cool.
It was definitely coming out of my comfort zone, I'll give you that. And so
I appreciate it wholeheartedly, but I'm gonna segue this into my
next topic. All right. Of. I was at a.
And it just hit me. I literally was fixing to go to bed,
and I was sitting there watching tv. My roommate was asleep,

(27:46):
and I was like, I know what I want to write about. And it hit
me, and I literally knocked that out in 45 minutes.
And, you know, I was like, man, Ilita's
really got my, you know, creative juices flowing this week.
And I heard somebody mention it this year and it made a lot of sense
of Aelita. Recharges my batteries.

(28:09):
And I'll never forget, the first year went 20, 23.
We had never sent anybody up there to it. And my.
My now boss, my training coordinator was like, hey,
there's a couple of us going. Would you be interested in going?
And I was like, yeah, that sounds like a blast. Didn't know anything about the
organization. I was like, yeah, sure, our agency is blessed enough

(28:32):
to send us to out of state training per year. And I was like, yeah,
why not? And I'll never forget, they sent me with nothing but
admin. I was the only patrolman, and I had a
blast. But I went up there and we signed
up late and we stayed off site. And so
I had fun, but I didn't network.

(28:54):
And so, you know, once you get back to your hotel, you're like,
do I really want to go back over there? I got to pay for parking.
I didn't get the full experience. And so I was like, next time I'm gonna
go like, I want on site. And what's funny is, this
year we signed up to go, and I put in in
December. Well, Trump came back in office in

(29:17):
January, and there was a bunch of grants that were put on
hold. Well, as a tribal agency, those were frozen real
quickly, and so there was, like, a budget freeze
for us for like, a month and a half just to see how everything was
going to play out. Totally understandable. Well, I did
they. I didn't get my stuff done in time, and, like, the hotel, like,

(29:40):
filled up and does. Yeah. Yep.
And I was like, man, I'm not gonna get to stay inside again. And I
just happened to check, like, a week and a half before, and they had
an opening for us and they got us in. And it was such a.
I don't want to say better experience because I had a blast the first time,
but sure. It's such a different experience being on site and,

(30:02):
like, getting to prot. Participate in everything every night. And
that's what I want you to talk about is just why Aelita is so
awesome and how people can benefit from
just getting involved. Well,
yeah, I mean, if I. I started, I went for the first time in 2012,
and immediately I go, these are my people. This is the place

(30:24):
I need to be. I just loved being around so many
instructors, people who are experts in all
kinds of areas, and everybody along the pathway in
some way, and everybody's just trying to get better and learn off of each other.
And like you said, there's the networking part of it, what I have
found is even more than just collecting up a bunch of

(30:46):
business cards or that kind of thing, is developing relationships.
And that has served me so well in my law enforcement
career because, you know, you get talking around
the lunchroom or whatever and somebody's asking about
some training thing or some new piece of equipment, and I
became the go to person for that. Because I might not

(31:09):
know, but if I don't, I know a guy. And if I don't know a
guy, I know a guy who knows a guy. Because there's such an incredible network
of really passionate instructors there. And,
you know, I. It was important enough to me that I didn't want to wait
for my agency to give me the time or give me the money. So
every year that I've been, I think there's one year where my department

(31:32):
paid for me to go. The rest of the time, this is on my own
time, my own dime, and totally worthwhile
because you need to take time to
stop and sharpen the saw. You can't just be doing the work all the time.
And that's what I find Aelita is it's a
week to get together with other great instructors

(31:53):
to have a lot of fun. And just the learning,
as you know, Brent is like drinking from a fire hose. There's so much
good stuff there that it's really
hard to take it all in at the time. And there's so much going
on that you can stay on whatever track you're on. If you really
like doing, you know, putting your hands on people in the dojo, you

(32:16):
can do that all day, every day for a week. If you want to be
shooting, if you want to be learning about de escalation, if you
want to be learning about instructor development, like, there's much so, so many good things
there. And it's a peer organization.
Nobody's paid to speak. Everybody's on the same level. It was
one of the first years that I was there. I had

(32:38):
a guy named Chuck Remsburg sitting in the front row of my class.
Now he wrote a three part series
of books that I had because my dad was a cop.
And he wrote a book called Tactics for Street Patrol that it
published in like 1982. And I'm going,
this guy is. I have no business having a

(33:02):
conversation with this guy. And he's sitting in my class. So that's
been one of those really, really cool things just to see everybody there
is trying to learn off of everybody else. It's just such a. Such a
Great experience. And yeah, staying at the host hotel really helps because
there's so much good stuff that goes on outside of the

(33:22):
actual sessions, right in the hallways. There's the conversations
in between sessions and at nighttime and I mean there's
activities and stuff every night, but there's the opportunity to just
hang out and, and meet people and have some really great conversations
and move the ball forward in whatever you're trying to do in your own
agency. I'll just say this. I will be back to

(33:44):
defend my third place in the world cornhole position
next year. And we're going for the third place. Well done. Yeah, that's a big
tournament there. So good for you. You know, I got carried, but
hey, you know, I'm gonna make sure he's there next year. But
it was, it was awesome because there's so many
different things that you can learn that's

(34:06):
actually, I don't know if you've seen a couple of my videos with David Velasing.
I met David at the conference this year and he was there teaching De Escalation.
And it's just again, kind of like you and Jeff, such a great
mind on just like police work and like I could always
pick his brain for great topics and
I would have never done that without being there, you know,

(34:29):
100%. Yep. I think that
I've tried so hard this year, especially now that
I'm in training full time to come back and
implement some of the ideas that I learned up there
and implement new things. My boss went through. I guess there
was a Milo class about reality based

(34:52):
firearms qualifications and we're actually working that out on trying
to implement some of that with like de Escalation stuff this year
and Nice, you know, because we went up there and
you know, it's. You practice what you preach, you go up there and you learn
something new and bring it back to your agency. And
I, like I said it was just a happenstance that I even ever

(35:14):
found out about it, but I'm so glad that I did because
it's just such a different atmosphere. You're not there to go have a week
long vacation. You're there to go learn and have
fun. Like it's, it's. You're not there just to go blow the week off and
say, yeah, yeah, I went to training for a week. I might have hit five
minutes of class. And it's just such

(35:36):
a. And not to mention the host sites, the Union Station
Hotel is just so unique and awesome and
big that it makes for such a fun
atmosphere. I, I went in the ginormous Ferris wheel
this year by myself. Probably would never do it again by myself, but
it was still a cool experience, you know, And

(35:59):
I really, like I said, if anybody looks
up a leader, it's I L E E T A guys, not FBI leader.
They're a little bit different organization, but if
they look it up, there's just so much, just even if you
join as a member of, you know, the
journals, the articles, all the different, you

(36:21):
know, the Facebook group, the LinkedIn group, there's so many
ways to, like, get this knowledge out there and then have
the conference on top of it. It's well worth it.
Yeah, it's. It's changed my life. Absolutely. And
you know, the. I can't think of how many, how many
people that I have developed really great relationships with over the

(36:45):
years because of Alita. And then every year that I go, man,
it's like, it's like a family reunion there. Every year, even
during, you know, 2020, they closed
it down because Covid nobody went. The following year, in 2021,
they held the conference, but they wouldn't let Canadians in. So we had
a, we had a night where all the Canadians were on, or

(37:07):
I shouldn't say all the Canadians, but a number of us were on like a
Zoom call. And they brought it into the, the, the
main sort of bar area there at the, at the
entrance. And people just took turns coming by and having
a drink with us and having a chat over Zoom. And.
Yeah, you don't get that with too many other organizations. So I, I can't say

(37:29):
enough good things about it. Yeah. If you're out there and you're sitting there thinking,
oh, maybe I should go, maybe I shouldn't. They asked me for a quote a
couple years ago about if you had to say something about Eileena, and I said,
sell a kidney if you must, but get to this conference, you
know, put, put money away. Yeah. It's not
necessarily free or cheap, but if you got to pay

(37:52):
your own way, like get there, it will be worth your while. Well,
and we actually, I think we end up winning
three or four different memberships as you know, either through
winning the, you know, getting placed in the cornhole tournament, or they won them through
the giveaways. And our agency blesses us that
they send us to one out of state training per year, so they pay for

(38:15):
ours completely. And what we actually have done is
donated our, the three memberships we won to officers in
Oklahoma, so that way they can at least join the organization.
And then if they decide to come to the conference, even better. But at least
they have access to the journals, you know, the networking stuff.
And so we're just trying to spread

(38:36):
the good word of A in Oklahoma,
unfortunately. You know, I'm a big college football fan. We had some Norman
PD guys in there, University of Oklahoma. I won't hold it against them,
but they were awesome. I want you to
touch on one more thing. And I did not get to experience this this year,
unfortunately, because by the time I got there, it was totally packed

(38:59):
and I got to watch the recording of it, but I feel like it's
not the same. And next year I'm going to make sure I get there early.
The Emerson Hour. Yes.
Yeah, the Emerson Hour is something that
was brought in by Brian Willis, who's the deputy executive director there.
Ralph Waldo Emerson famously would ask friends of his when he would see them,

(39:23):
what has become clear to you since we last met? And he
thought that that would be such a fitting
question for certain people to ask. So he started a thing
called the Emerson Hour, where he would pick six speakers.
He gives them about six months notice before the conference.
And then at the conference, there's going to be the Monday night

(39:46):
Emerson Hour. And nobody knows who these speakers are, Nobody knows what the
topics are going to be. And the idea is, you get up there, you've got
nine minutes with no slides, it's you and a microphone,
and answer that question. What has become clear to you since we last
met or since the last conference? And, man, what an impact,
Impactful time that is.

(40:09):
There's. It's funny how every year themes kind of come up,
but really, people. People really speak from the heart. And
it's just. It adds another
nice layer of depth to the Aelita, the Aelita family,
the conference itself. So I was selected to speak there in
2019. And I'll tell you,

(40:33):
that is a. That's a stressful kind of thing. It was Joe Willis
running it at the time, and when he called me and said, hey, would you
be a speaker? I thought, okay. And then I tell you what, that
nine minutes that you need to spend in front of your peers
clacked around in my brain like that little ball in a paint can for
six months, and I'm making notes on my phone

(40:55):
and I'm trying to. Yeah, it's. Hey, you want. You want
me to speak for a day in front of people? Even an hour with
a PowerPoint, no problem, man. Nine minutes, no
notes, no nothing. That was. That was
a challenge and really Trying to bring value to, to everybody who's in
the room. So people put a ton of work into

(41:17):
that and yeah, it's one of my, one of my favorites. And a
no miss event at the conference every
year. Next year I'm definitely getting there early because when I got there this year
it was packed, like the room was full and I was like, well there's no
room in there. I'm not squeezing in there. So next year I'm getting there early
for that. Early. Yep. So there's always something I can learn to

(41:39):
do better next time. With conference next year I'm getting there early for the Emerson
Hour. I know that fact. Yeah, good stuff. Let me
ask you, let me ask you this. Yeah.
Raptor protection. You know you're doing the,
the instruction, methods of instruction class.
Yeah. What is the methods of instruction

(42:01):
class? Because that just sounds so intriguing to me. Yeah,
you know what, it's maybe not Chris Butler who developed this. And
we talk about this a lot. It's maybe not the best name, but it's gained
so much traction now that people know methods of instruction. They know
moi, the abbreviation. So really what it's
looking at is how do people learn,

(42:23):
how do people especially learn motor skills? And
how do we teach motor skills for
retention and transfer, especially during life threatening events?
So it's aimed primarily at firearms
and control tactics instructors. But quite often we have
academic instructors, we have driving instructors, we have curriculum

(42:47):
designers, everybody involved in training.
And it's really looking at what is the
threat environment first that officers are going to face out there
and are we really preparing officers for what
they're actually likely to encounter. So for example, if you look at the
FBI statistics about the distances at which

(43:10):
officers get attacked, it's not the same ranges that we're using on
a, on a live fire range. Like we're, it's, it's close.
Right. The most dangerous time for a police officer is that moment of
first touch when we go to put our hands on somebody and they realize
this is real and they launch an attack from there. And so
we just, we, we look at,

(43:35):
we look at what the reality is of all of these kind of things and
then how can we angle our training towards that? And we're not,
we're not telling officers, here's what you need to do, abc. We're going,
we don't really know what you teach or how you teach it, but you know
your stuff very well. And how can we start bringing
real world context into the training that

(43:58):
you have to develop better retention and
transfer. So you were talking earlier about having to shoot at night and
officers going, what? We're shooting at night? Yeah, low light
is a really big part of, of policing. You know,
it's statistically like 50 or more
of, of the arrests and use of force stuff that we get into is

(44:19):
during hours of darkness. So
why isn't our training reflecting that? So I had a, we, we were
training a group of conservation officers from the province of
Manitoba and some of them had been on the course six
months earlier and they said, here's all the stuff that we did
to, to bring in some real world stuff and to apply your course.

(44:42):
And one of the things they did is they have conservation officers who
are not there full time. They kind of come on during the summer months, they
work with the full time people and they're running through the couple
of weeks of training that they have for them. And one of the first things
they said is, okay, there's a person in this room, there's no lights on in
there and they go, yep, go in and arrest this person. And so they got
their flashlight in their hand and they're going, yeah, but it's dark

(45:05):
and the instructors are going, yeah, okay, well
what am I, how am I supposed to do this? Like, I've got my flashlight
in my hand and I need to handcuff. It's like, hey, figure it out. And
so they go through and they do it and they, they realize, oh yeah, this
is something that we haven't really practiced before. I had to sort of muddle my
way through and figure out the best way. And all

(45:26):
the, all the students after went, wow. Like we've never been kind of challenged like
that with something so simple. And so what we do is really expose
the real world context of the threat
environment that officers are likely to face. And then we look at all of the
human factors that, and really, human
factors. It sounds, it sounds fancy, but it's, it's. What capabilities

(45:49):
and limitations do humans have? How do our eyes
work? How does our brain function for
decision making under life threatening stress?
How does our memory work? And how do we tie all this into training
so that we're giving our officers the very best
we can? What you hear from trainers all the time is

(46:12):
we need more time. We need more time. And the reality is we have,
we're not getting more time. We all know that, right? It's not going to
happen. So how do we use the time that we actually have
constructively to get the best out of our students, to prepare
them for Those really
high stress, high consequence, rapidly evolving

(46:36):
violent encounters that they're going to be involved in. How do we best
do that for them? And really looking at it through the lens of
it being informed by research. And so we will
touch on or reference of over
150 peer reviewed studies. And the reality is
that there's been more research

(46:58):
in human factors, in police use of force in the
last eight years than there were in the history of the world before that.
So whatever you were doing 20 years ago, some of it might be relevant. But
I bet you there's a bunch of stuff that you didn't know. And there's all
kinds of incredible research going on all over the world, not
just by, you know, companies like

(47:20):
4 Science Institute, but all over Europe. And
we kind of distill all that down and we hand it
to instructors on a silver platter and go, here's a way that
you can understand this research. And now that we challenge you
in the class, how do you, how do
you implement this? What are you going to do differently when you leave here?

(47:43):
So what are your takeaways? But and more importantly, what are your action items?
What, what are you going to do when you leave? Because again, it's retention
and transfer. You might not remember all this. So the manual is pretty thick, you
can go back to it later. But more importantly, what are you going to do
differently as a trainer? And that's the most encouraging thing
for me is to hear back from trainers who took the five day course

(48:04):
and they go, you know, here's what I did and here's the results that we're
getting. And it's really kind of moving the needle in law
enforcement training to just, hey, here's the way we've always done it.
You know, we don't really know why as
you probably have experience often when you become a trainer, you get
the big manual, right? You get the binder, here you go, you know, maybe

(48:28):
it's on a flash drive now, but it's, here's all the big book of learning.
And you go, oh, okay. And you, you teach what they told you.
But is it valid? Has it been validated? Why do we teach it this
way? Is there a better way to do that? And so we really
challenge a lot very strongly held
notions that instructors come with and stuff

(48:51):
that you know, that Chris and I have been
parroting sometimes for years where we realize
this, this actually is, this isn't true anymore. So it's
very confronting for a lot of instructors. They come on the course and sometimes
during the first couple of days there's a lot of like, you know, side eyeing
their other instructors going, are these guys full of it or have I

(49:13):
been, have I been fed a line throughout my instructor development
in my career? But we, we have a lot of discussion, we really dig
into these, all of
these issues, look at it from a research
perspective and go, is there evidence to
support this or not? And is that evidence valid?

(49:37):
Is it in the law enforcement domain or is it in, maybe it's in some
other adjacent domain that we can map onto what we're doing enforcement. So
it's, it's just such a, an incredible
learning experience for the instructors that, that take it. So
yeah, I, I encourage anybody to have a look into that program. The methods of
instruction from, from raptor protection. That's awesome.

(50:00):
I want to ask you one final thing and then I'll let everybody,
you know, figure out how to get a hold of you. Looking back
on your 20 plus year career, what's your absolute
favorite thing you've done?
Oh man, that is a loaded question.

(50:20):
Favorite thing I've done? Yeah,
I have. Maybe I could count on maybe
not even one hint the days that I did not enjoy
in my job that I would not want to repeat again. I was just been
blessed to have a really great career.

(50:44):
I don't know that there's one kind of
highlight. It's
funny the things that after you look back on your career and you're explaining
it to people who aren't a cop, and I go, yeah, in the name
of training, I've been punched in the face and
pepper sprayed and hit with tear gas and all kinds of

(51:08):
launchable munitions and I've been
choked unconscious and lit on fire and all these kind of
things. Of course, you know, not all on the
same day, thankfully, but I,
I think for me it's, it's really the instructor stuff. When
I have had officers come back to me and go,

(51:30):
hey, let me tell you about an incident that I was in and they start
telling the story and about what they did and they go, you know what?
It was just like training and I knew what
to do and it, you know, and I just go, yes, that means
that what I was doing, I got it
right, you know, because we, we don't always get it right, but I got it

(51:52):
right with this person in this circumstance and, and
that kind of keeps you, keeps you going. So I think that's, that would
be some of the highlights in my career is, is officers coming
back and, and telling me about their incident and telling me how they could hear
my voice in their ear and they were doing what they were trained to do
and, and it all worked out. So, you know, as soon as we

(52:15):
end this podcast, I'll think of some other, you know, cool thing. And
yeah, I've had some cool things. I've. When we had UFC in town, I
got to sit right behind the Rain Girls and I got to present a cowboy
hat to Dana White and, you know, met
all kinds of celebrities and politicians and doing
VIP protection and stuff. But, you know, the stuff that I really,

(52:37):
I really find valuable was how I had an impact on
people as one of their trainers. That's
awesome. I love that. So if somebody wants to get a hold
of Dan Frazier, either to network or to bring you down for training,
what's the best way for them to get a hold of you and where can
they get your book? Well, they can. So,

(52:58):
so I've got, well, two websites. One for the book, one for my,
my courses and training, which is fraser trainingsolutions.com
youm can follow me on Instagram, you can follow me on LinkedIn. Just look
for Dan Fraser. My book, Kick Ass Presentations. And
I realize I'm getting a ton of glare for those
watching on the video. It looks like there's some type of nuclear explosion

(53:22):
outside. And I don't know, maybe not yet,
not yet. It's just all of a sudden the sun came out and is glaring
off of a wall outside. But I've got my, my book here. Kick Ass
Presentations. Wow. Audiences with PowerPoint
slides that click, humor that's quick and messages that stick. You can get this from
Amazon, you can get it from Barnes and Noble

(53:45):
in Canada, you can order it from Chapters Indigo. And
yeah, I've got a course that goes along with it called Kick Ass Presentations, a
two day instructor development course for, for those who want to get better at the
craft of standing in front of a room and
imparting knowledge. Awesome. Well, Dan, I'll definitely have you back,
and so then we'll get the cool story the second time you're back. All right,

(54:08):
sounds good. No, thanks. I appreciate it. You're doing, you're doing good stuff with
this podcast. So thanks so much for having me on. Well, it's, it's my pleasure
to have you on this, so thank you for coming and
I'll talk to you soon. Okay, sounds good.