Specialty Focus
Description
Dr. John R. Black (DBA) is the President of Aragon National Inc. He is a nationally recognized expert witness in Police Practices, Officer Involved Shootings (OiS), police training, corrections UoF, and self-defense issues. Dr. Black regularly presents at internationally recognized conferences about concepts such as the proper methods of inquiry, framing, complexity, systems thinking, and sensemaking-decision making (SM-DM) dialectic related to policing and citizen self-defense. He is a certified FSI advanced force specialist and InputAce/Axon Investigate at the Examiner and Metrological levels.
His doctoral work concentrated on how people take and use visual information when making decisions in the business world. He has taken his study of human thinking in systems (a Masters in Homeland Defense with an emphasis on counter-terrorism) and expanded the idea of using a systems thinking approach to understand how we look at decision making both after the decision, more importantly, on that which precedes the decision. He completed his post-doctoral Master's degree (psychology), studying this question from a cognitive and philosophical perspective. He is also a certified system thinking trainer from the Cabrera Research Labs at Cornell University. He is a course graduate of Advanced Force Science Analyst and a trained Cognitive Interviewer.
His 23+ years of experience include command level within law enforcement (Patrol, Investigations, Corrections, & Training). Specialty areas include mental health response and long-term strategies, crisis negotiations, intelligence teams, mobile response teams, Use of force (UoF) reporting, policy, and accountability. Senior instructor for defensive tactics, firearms, CQB, small unit tactics, and force simulation. Advanced training and involvement with sensitive administrative reviews involving UoF and officer misconduct.
A retired SGM from the US Army Special Forces Community with 30+ years of expertise in military special operations (US Army Special Forces, Civil Affairs, Psychological Operations) and national-level operations. Senior trainer, instructor, and mentor in subject areas ranging from small unit tactics, firearms, special operations, critical thinking, leadership, intelligence analysis, and decision-making.
Dr. Black focuses on understanding the "upstream" moments, frames, and models that the actors involved used to make sense of their world, ultimately culminating in their choice or decision to use force. This subjective experience of the actor combined with the objective context of the event against the backdrop of the normative standards provides the richest understanding of the Use of Force sensemaking and decision making.
