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NON-MEDICAL RESUMES ALM EXPERTS: Legal Expert Pages (Western Edition) 2025

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 framing, complexity, systems thinking, and sensemaking-
decisionmaking (SM-DM) paradigm as related to policing. He is a certified FSI
advanced force specialist and InputAce/Axon Investigate at 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 is
currently enrolled in his second 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
JOHN University. He is a graduate of the Advanced Force Science Analyst course.

His 23+ years of experience include command level within law enforcement
BLACK (Patrol, Investigations, Corrections, & Training). Specialty areas include
mental health response and long-term strategies, crisis negotiations,
intelligence teams, mobile response teams, and Use of force (UoF)
reporting, policy, and accountability. Senior instructor for defensive tactics,
firearms, CQB, small unit tactics, and force simulation. Advanced training
P r es i d en t and involvement with sensitive administrative reviews involving UoF and
officer malfeasance.
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.

I have lived in both the operator and Intell world and continue to consult on
varied projects. Throughout it all, I have seen how it all comes back to that
moment of insight that precedes the decision. I believe that the research
space of sensemaking/decision-making/insight generation is a dynamic area.
It is a blend of the objective quantitative dimensions combined with the
qualitative human-in-the-loop experience, perception, knowledge, human
CONTACT factors, heuristics, and bias (good and bad).

PHONE: This space of insight and sensemaking; that which precedes and in fact
503-707-5107 determines one’s choice on which to act (from a system thinking and
complexity framework) is a critically needed understanding that police must
recognize and incorporate into their thinking.
linkedin.com/in/jblackaragon
If I can be of assistance, one just needs to ask. I look forward to our
E: [email protected] conversations, a good bourbon, and a cigar.
WEB: aragonnational.com

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