By George Hall
Recent ICE vehicle-stop shootings raise urgent political and legal questions. But they also raise a deeper learning-systems question: What does the institution teach agents to see before using force?
Training is not merely the transfer of procedures, policies, and skills. In high-authority environments, training shapes perception. It teaches people what counts as danger, resistance, urgency, guilt, control, and permissible action.
Formal instruction is only one part of that system. Recruitment messaging, mission framing, peer norms, leadership signals, field supervision, performance pressure, body-camera practices, language about the people being stopped, and accountability after incidents all teach people how to interpret reality.
The victim remains the person harmed or killed. The agent remains responsible for the action. But institutions are responsible for the perception field that can make harmful action feel reasonable in the moment.
Training does not just prepare people to act. It prepares them to interpret reality.
A Lesson from Corporate Athlete Training
Years ago, I attended a five-day Corporate Athlete program in Florida, based on the research tradition made famous by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in their Harvard Business Review article, “The Making of a Corporate Athlete.” Their argument was that sustained high achievement requires more than intellect or effort. It requires physical and emotional strength, disciplined recovery, energy management, and the ability to perform under pressure.
The learning principle I took from it was simple: Training does not simply build capability. It changes how people experience pressure, interpret stress, and respond under demand.
One story from that training stayed with me.
As part of the program, we were told about an elite team of SWAT officers who heard gunfire and began walking toward it.
Most people hear gunfire and move away.
A trained officer may hear gunfire and move toward it.
The sound is the same. The perception is different.
In the right context, that can be courage, discipline, and role clarity. If the signal is clear—gunfire, an active shooter, an immediate threat—trained movement toward danger may save lives.
But if the signal is ambiguous—a car moving, a person panicking, someone trying to leave, a frightened driver failing to comply—the same conditioned readiness can become dangerous.
The person in front of the officer may stop appearing as frightened or confused and start appearing as a threat to be controlled.
That is the learning problem.
The issue is not simply whether people were trained.
The issue is what the training system taught them to see.
The Current Case
Recent reporting on ICE vehicle-stop shootings raises exactly this issue.
Federal immigration officials were reportedly instructed to pause most vehicle stops after deadly shootings involving immigrants in vehicles, including Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas. The Guardian reported that the pause followed renewed calls for accountability, that officials in both cases were not wearing body cameras, and that ICE had already begun additional training for new officers, including training on high-risk vehicle stops.
The policy question is obvious.
But the learning question is deeper: What did the system teach agents to perceive in the moments before they used force?
That question looks beyond what procedures they practiced, what policy they signed, or what slides they saw in training. What did the whole environment teach them to recognize as danger, resistance, guilt, urgency, authority, and control?
Training as a Perception System
Training is often treated as content delivery: People receive information. They complete modules. They pass tests. They enter the field.
But in high-stakes work, training does something more powerful: It shapes perception. It tells people what matters, what to ignore, what counts as a threat, what response is expected, whose fear is meaningful, and whose fear is suspicious.
In high-authority environments, a person does not merely learn a task; they enter a role. They inherit a vocabulary, a mission frame, a peer culture, a chain of command, a reward system, and assumptions about the people they encounter.
That is why “more training” is often an inadequate answer.
The better question is: What is the training system training people to see?
The Reverse Bystander Effect
The psychology here reminds me of the bystander effect, but in reverse. The classic bystander effect, often linked to the Kitty Genovese case, describes a failure of action under social ambiguity. Responsibility spreads across the group. Each person wonders whether someone else will act, whether the situation is serious, or whether their own intervention is required. The result is hesitation—not always from indifference, but from uncertainty, diffusion, and the absence of a clear role.
But in some enforcement environments, the danger runs the other way.
- Responsibility is concentrated.
- Authority is amplified.
- The person is armed.
- The team expects action.
- The mission has been framed as urgent.
- The target population has already been morally coded.
Ambiguity is converted into threat. This is the reverse bystander effect.
Instead of ordinary people failing to act because responsibility is spread too thin, ordinary people may act too quickly and too violently because the training system and performance environment have concentrated responsibility, authority, permission, and urgency around them.
A person in a car may not first appear as frightened, confused, late for work, or trying to escape an unclear situation. Instead, they may appear as a target, a flight risk, or a vehicle threat.
The system does not merely train agents what to do. It trains them what to see.
The Vehicle as Threat
Vehicle stops are especially volatile because cars create ambiguity. A driver may panic. A driver may not understand who is stopping them. A driver may believe they are being robbed, kidnapped, or attacked, especially if officers are in unmarked vehicles or not clearly identifiable.
But within an enforcement frame, officers can interpret fear as aggression.
- Movement becomes flight.
- Flight becomes guilt.
- The vehicle becomes a weapon.
- Control becomes the highest value.
Once that perception snaps into place, the human being inside the vehicle can disappear.
That is why the phrase permission structure matters.
A permission structure does not have to say, “Use excessive force.” It can be quieter than that. It can teach that ‘these people’ are dangerous, that their fear is suspicious, that their movement is a threat, that hesitation endangers the team, and that control is safety.
The agent is responsible for the action.
The institution is responsible for the permission structure that makes an excessive response feel reasonable.
What Learning Leaders Should Notice
These concerns are not only about ICE. They apply in any organization where training is treated as a checklist rather than an ethical architecture.
Learning leaders should ask the harder questions:
- What does this training teach people to notice first?
- What does it teach them to ignore?
- What does it make feel urgent, normal, and permissible?
- Whose perspective is centered?
- Whose fear is treated as data?
- Whose fear is treated as guilt?
In low-stakes environments, a bad permission structure creates poor service, bad judgment, or operational mistakes.
In high-stakes environments, bad permission structure can kill people.
The Real Test of Training
The real test of training, of course, is not whether people can repeat policy. It is what they do when the situation becomes ambiguous. That is where the training shows itself.
Not in the classroom.
Not in the quiz.
Not in the compliance record.
In the moment when someone is frightened.
In the moment when a car moves.
In the moment when authority feels challenged.
In the moment when the person in front of you can still be seen as a person—or has already become a threat object.
Training does not just prepare people to act; it prepares them to interpret reality. And when institutions train people to see movement as threat, resistance as criminality, fear as guilt, and control as the highest value, the harm begins before the trigger is pulled.
It begins in the way the system teaches people to see.
References
Loehr, J. (2024, December 13). Indoctrination: The power to shape mind and behavior. Jim Loehr.
Loehr, J. (2025, March 26). Our most precious resource: Jim Loehr on energy management fundamentals. Jim Loehr.
Loehr, J., & Schwartz, T. (2001, January). The making of a corporate athlete. Harvard Business Review.
Olivares, J. (2026, July 14). ICE pauses vehicle stops after deadly shootings in Texas and Maine. The Guardian.
Image credit: studiostockart
