For over 22 years, Ron Barber has been producing critical police officer training videos for law enforcement officers and criminal justice students. In the first half, he discussed the current state of law enforcement, changes in how the public perceives them, and the challenges they face. Cops have "unfairly and needlessly" been taking a collective beating since Ferguson, he commented, and since then, thousands of officers have either retired early or are leaving the force as fast as they can. Often times, it's the police officers' families that want them out of harm's way, he added. He also believes that in a sense Americans fail to overlook crime statistics-- since 1966, 1,196 people have been killed in mass shootings, which is just .001 of the total 928,000 murders in that period. He does think that law enforcement is getting a better grasp on mass shootings, and have nipped several in the bud since El Paso.
Barber invited two people in the profession to join the conversation. First, Randy Sutton, a 34-year law enforcement veteran on Las Vegas Metro, talked about gun issues and his encounter with an active shooter at a school dance. He also offered analysis on the Stephen Paddock case, and spoke about Wounded Blue, an organization he founded that assists cops who have been hurt and injured on the job. Mark DiBona, a 33-year veteran officer, detailed his struggle with PTSD and a suicide attempt. He now works as the Public Information Officer for Blue H.E.L.P., an advocacy group for law enforcement struggling with mental health issues and a forum for honoring those who took their own lives when their emotional injuries became too much to bear.
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In the latter half, MIT and Princeton trained physicist Dr. Claude Swanson shared theories and evidence for the paranormal, mediumship, ghostly activity, and survival of the soul. He described the soul as a more permanent higher dimensional aspect of ourselves, and that its composition may relate to torsion energy (a physics term for the twisting of space). The mysterious "fibrous" substance of ectoplasm may also be connected to torsion, he added. In his study of seances, he was particularly impressed with the late British spirit voice medium Leslie Flint, who was said to produce the sounds and voices of the deceased but not through his mouth. Swanson said Flint's process was independently tested numerous times (recordings of his communications are archived here).
He related EVPs (electronic voice phenomena) to orbs that produce high-frequency sounds. This is demonstrated, he said, in the healing ceremony of the Lakota tribe. As they chant, "the energy builds up, little orbs begin flying around the room and high pitched sounds can be heard coming from them-- that's their ancestors" communicating. Swanson believes we are in the midst of a planetary shift to a higher vibrational level as our entire solar system moves into a new energy zone. He also suggested that in the afterlife, there are cities and libraries and all sorts of activities "that allow us to keep developing our soul even on the Other Side."
News segment guests: Howard Bloom, Mish Shedlock