While the Sheriff certainly has the best of intentions, he
and his deputies come across as
something between King Cobra’s gang (see picture at left; source: http://bit.ly/2o5Ojrx) and ISIS. The climax of
the video when he and his coterie march off doesn’t help either.
An unfortunate fact of life is that many people will judge
you by how you look. Many of us remember our mothers checking us out
before we were permitted to leave. Some of us of have wives who fulfill the
same purpose today.
In the MISO/PSYOP world there are two contexts WRT appearance.
1.
The Audience
You need to dress to have your audience feel positively
about you. In sales training we often say “the prospect has to be listening to
you and like you as a person before they will consider buying anything from
you”. In the case of an audience that you are attempting to influence, such as the population of Lake County, you
need to adapt your uniform to engender the trust of the people you are
attempting to serve, yet adhere to appropriate force protection measures.
A very good example were the Brits in Bosnia. While the US
troops were always in “Battle Rattle” – meaning helmet and body armor, the
Brits were not. They wore soft caps and no body armor. This means if they came
across a situation where a non-lethal response was preferred as a first step,
the could upgrade to body army and helmets as a way of showing business.
Clearly this lesson was lost on Lake County. Of course it’s
possible that the Sheriff thought only the bad guys would watch this video and
get scared, but of course, that would never be the case in today’s world.
2.
The Supported Unit
MISO never works alone. We are always supporting a unit
wither SF or Conventional and we need to look like we are a part of that unit
in the military context.
Any potential negative impact of the Sheriff’s video may not
be known, but it is at least a pretty good example for instructive purposes.
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