Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)
Come on a ride along with a Veteran Homicide Detective as the twists and turns of the job suddenly end his career and nearly his life; discover how something wonderful is born out of the Darkness. Embark on the journey from helping people on their worst days, to bringing life, excitement and smiles on their best days.
Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)
Justified: The Untold Story- One Shooting, One Officer and the Fight to Clear His Name
A missed turn, a narrow street, and a car surging through headlight glare—that’s the moment James faced when a priority call pulled him into a six-second decision during the early Portland riots. What followed wasn’t quick at all: months of silence, political reshuffling, media leaks, and a grand jury that treated him like a suspect while he waited at home under a gag order with a newborn on the way. We open the door on the whole arc—what the body cam showed (and what it couldn’t), why force science matters when your brain is fighting to survive, and how a unanimous clearance arrived more than a year later on his daughter’s first birthday.
We also go where headlines rarely do: the cost of limbo on a family, the isolation of a process that withholds discovery from the one person who lived it, and the way narratives get spun when outside counsel, activist pressure, and “veteran cop” stereotypes collide. James talks candidly about memory gaps, firing seven rounds in roughly a second and a half, and learning from experts why cameras don’t see like eyes. He shares the harassment at his home, the friends who kept showing up, and the debrief that finally revealed the victim statements, ring doorbell footage, and witness accounts that had existed from day one.
This conversation is about more than an officer-involved shooting; it’s about leadership, timelines, and the human beings inside the uniform. We dive into mental health, counseling that actually works for first responders, and the faith practices that helped James rebuild. We also discuss career risk in politicized climates, how to seek real closure, and why departments should offer full debriefs to any cop returning to duty after a critical incident.
If you value thoughtful, ground-level insight into use of force, police accountability, body camera evidence, and first responder wellness, this one matters. Subscribe, share with someone who needs it, and leave a review with your take: what does real justice—and real support—look like here?
Gift For You!!! Murders to Music will be releasing "SNAPSHOTS" periodcally to keep you entertained throughout the week! Snapshots will be short, concise bonus episodes containing funny stories, tid bits of brilliance and magical moments!!! Give them a listen and keep up on the tea!
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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Murders to Music Podcast. My name is Aaron. I'm your host, and thank you guys so much for coming back for another week. So on this week's show, I've got a special guest. His name is James, and you guys may remember James from season one, episode 26 and 27, where we spoke about faith on the front line. That was our most listened to episode for season one. Season one had about 75 episodes, and that was our number one episode. And we really spoke about the dirty truth in law enforcement and Christianity and taking Christianity into a workplace. And while this is not a Christianity podcast, we definitely don't shy away from it. And uh, you know, and I think that's a good thing because that episode being such a listened to episode and the most downloaded episode we did in season one speaks volumes for maybe where we are as a nation or a country or a listening group at least. On tonight's episode, we're not going to be really talking about the Christianity aspect, but what I want to talk about is a critical incident that James was involved in. See, James and I worked together at a local police department. And I remember the night that I met him. I responded to a shooting, and he was the patrol officer and I was the detective. And that's how we responded, that's how we met for the first time, I believe. And then um, you know, tonight I want to talk about a critical incident that James was involved in right during the heart of that beginning stages of the George Floyd movement, and I want him to tell his story because it's not just a typical critical incident, officer-involved shooting. There was literally 18 to 24 months of hell that he had to go through. And we talk about being persecuted for doing our jobs when we've done nothing wrong. And I want him to tell his story. But before we jump into James, I'm gonna tell you this is gonna be about an OIS or an officer-involved shooting. And when we talk about officer-involved shootings, everybody needs to understand that when law enforcement goes to work, they don't put on their boots thinking how we're gonna kill somebody today. They are usually in contact with somebody that is in the middle of a crisis, and that person's bad decisions chooses the outcome of those circumstances. The officer-involved shooting or the critical incident is usually over very quickly when it comes time to make decisive actions. Now, when we take that and we put it in the heart of one of the most liberal states in the United States of America, and I say liberal, but this is not a political conversation, conservative versus uh liberals, Democrats, doesn't matter. But overall, Oregon, it being one of the most liberal states in the United States, placed in to one of the most liberal counties of Multnomah County, and then you place this in the epicenter of liberal politics, which is the city of Portland, and all of this happens during the George Floyd movement, within days of the riot starting for George George Floyd. You have to guess how highly publicized this was in the Pacific Northwest. You may, if you're in the Pacific Northwest, you may remember seeing this on your local news stations or being reported about. Being involved in the OIS is one thing, and James is going to get into it, but I'm I'm giving you this precursor so you know where this is going. There's intense political pressure. Imagine having a district attorney who is targeting law enforcement officers, and when he can't find somebody to do the dirty deed, he shops around until he finds somebody that is willing to take the case and trying to prosecute a law enforcement officer when it was unjustified. And then imagine having a department that doesn't have the balls to stand up and defend the wrongdoing against one of their own. Feeling like you have no support, like you're lost and on an island. Then to have the media attack combat veterans in law enforcement. What effects did that have on James, this case, and the community as a whole? You're gonna hear about James, his two kids, his family, and 20 months of hell. That is what's coming up in this podcast. Listen to the end. Now let's get into it. So, James, thank you so much for being on the show tonight. And uh, I'm just gonna let you go. You're a great storyteller. Just tell me the story, take me to the from the beginning to the end, and then we'll ask some follow-up questions in the end. Cool? Sounds good.
SPEAKER_00:All right. Um, yeah, I guess just kind of laying the groundwork. You said you've I've kind of had my intro in the other episode, uh, about kind of my background um upbringing. I was born and raised in Central California. Uh, one of five kids um was raised in a private Christian school uh my whole life, age 18, went into the U.S. Army, five-year infantry contract, um, was able to go airborne during that time, um, had a combat deployment to Afghanistan 2011-2012, and got out of the Army in 2015. Uh, moved to Western Oregon University after the Army in Central Oregon, um, studying criminal justice and literature, and that's where I met my wife. And during my senior year of school, I was hired by a police department um in Oregon. Um, and that's where I met you at. I had been there for a couple years. Um me and my wife, at the time, my wife was working full-time. We were pregnant um with our first daughter, um about eight months pregnant when this incident happened. And I'd been at the department, I believe um two and a half years at this point, um, two to three years. And so I'm still a pretty new patrol officer, pretty early in my career. Um during that time, yeah, I believe it was the second or third day of the riots, um, end of May 2020. Um, Portland was pretty bad. If you guys remember back then, thousands of people um destroying downtown, overtaking, trying to overtake precincts. And I was coming at the end of my work week, and during our patrol brief, one of the sergeants on the other team had come in and essentially said, Hey, tomorrow we're gonna need a detail. Um, it's gonna be overtime. Essentially, Portland was pushing out to all the surrounding agencies saying, we're gonna need assistance. We don't know what that's gonna look like, um, but we're gonna need to focus all of our assets on this defending our east precinct. They had, I think, Intel that they were gonna try to overrun the east precinct like they had up in Seattle and Minneapolis and essentially try to burn it to the ground. So, at that, like I said, at that time, me and my wife were both working full-time. I was working graveyard, so we were kind of on opposite schedules. Unfortunately, we'd really only see each other in passing during my four days of work, but this was prior to us having any kids, so we were kind of able to dedicate a lot of our time to our careers um and what we were doing. I'd reached out to my wife after the patrol brief and said, Hey, do you mind if I work overtime tomorrow? I have a lot of buddies that work at East Precinct in Portland that I went to the academy with and were close with. And just based on kind of the craziness of what was going on at that time, uh kind of felt called of, hey, I'm able and don't have any other obligations at home. So this is kind of what you sign up for is this craziness that was going on. So um, she didn't have any problems with me going in the next day. But I'm not from the Portland area. Um, if you guys, like I said, remember from my background, I'm from Central California. My only exposure to the Portland metro area was literally working for this police department. Um, we lived on the Washington side of the river, so I didn't even live in the area. Um, and so I essentially went to that sergeant that had done the brief and before the start of our shift, because this was my Friday the day prior, um, told him, hey, I'll do it if you guys let us work partner cars. I'm not gonna be by myself. I don't want to be by myself driving around Portland. Um, and I asked him who else had signed up for it. Um, I looked and there was only one name on the list so far, which is a good buddy of mine, a guy I trusted, um a very good officer. And I said, Hey, if you let me and him work partner car, I will do it. So he said, Okay, I'll temporarily write you down, I'll confer with this other guy. And if that's if that works out, um, just have your phone on when you go home tonight. Because like I said, I worked 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. So he said, just make sure you have your phone next to you when you go home and I'll call you if that's gonna be. He's like, I don't see why that will be a problem. So as long as we can let you guys work partner cars, um, yeah, we'll we'll call you in. So I go home, go to bed. A couple hours later, I get called by him and essentially saying, Yep, um, we're gonna pretty much go with that. Everybody's gonna be in partner cars a part of this detail. And can you be in at the PD at this time, which was like early afternoon for your guys' brief? We still don't know what we're gonna ask of you guys. We still really don't know what's going on. And so I said, Yeah, let me grab something to eat and take a shower and then I'll be in. So I headed in. They had some SWAT guys there. Um, there's gonna be a small kind of protest. It wasn't really a protest, they did like a walk through our town, and so initially, there's like you guys are just gonna escort these people, they're gonna be using main roads, and it was pretty low-key. And we actually like took pictures with some of them afterwards, and it was actually like pretty um beneficial. We went back to the city hall and pretty uneventful. Um, they let us all go and grab dinner, and they sent us somebody back at the PD. It sounds like stuff is starting to kick off in Portland, and we're trying to call over there and figure out what they need from us tonight. And they essentially said we just need to make sure all of you guys are good. We have no timeline, we don't know how long we're gonna ask you guys to be here tonight. If it goes late into the morning, we'll try to get you guys relieved. But essentially, we're probably just gonna be on call for whatever Portland needs. So we all went and grabbed food, came back, and um, there was, I think, six of us on the detail. It was two sergeants in a partner car, and then four of us officers each in partner cars. Uh, we essentially met in the back parking lot, and one of the sergeants they had a list of like ten, I think they call like contact offices essentially that Portland had given them. They're like churches and businesses that essentially had given us like the keys or the codes to the building of essentially you guys can go and borderline hide in these buildings. And so the plan was we weren't gonna be out patrolling. Um, it sounded like they were marching on the east precinct already, and all Portland was asking us to do was go to priority one and two calls so their officers could focus on being assets at the precinct. So we'd only be going to emergency high-end, uh, emergency priority calls. One or two are kind of for people that aren't in law enforcement, as far as like um I don't know what's a good way to put it, Aaron. They're like kind of the most dangerous calls you would kind of go to. Um, they're the you know, 911 dispatch is actually dispatching them out. You don't self-dispatch to them, it's the domestic violence calls. Uh call with a weapon is usually going to be prioritize the number one. Um, you know, lower the number, the worse it kind of is. So we weren't gonna be taking just random calls for service. We were literally only there for the more emergency style calls. Um, and so they didn't want us patrolling around for obvious reasons, they didn't want us getting stuck, they didn't know how big kind of the protests or the riot was gonna be around the area. And so we had picked a church out of the list of 10. Um, and essentially it was you guys are gonna go straight here, we're gonna stage here almost like a fire department. And as calls come out, then you guys will go to your call and you'll come right back. And so we did that. Um, I was the driver of our vehicle, and us, the other partner car got dispatched to cover a Portland unit almost immediately when we went into Portland. Um, me and my partner and the two sergeants got to the church. I remember setting up the computer um on the desk where we could see all the Portland calls, and we were setting up live screen TV so we could watch the riots essentially live to know if it was moving towards our area. And we hadn't been sitting in there for probably two or three minutes when the call came out uh for this critical incident. So essentially there was still Portland units that were drifting around taking calls, and we were just gonna be covering them. We weren't gonna be like actually primary, we were more serving as cover officers. Um, and they had dispatched a two-man Portland car, which learning after the fact it was a recruit and her coach, um, and it was to a priority uh dispute. Um, essentially, from what I remember, is a guy on scene was threatening to 55 is the code they use, essentially threatening to kill people on scene. Um, and so they asked if there was any available cover units. Um, no one piped up. I looked at the two sergeants and said, Hey, do you guys care if we go to this? And they said, No, that's what we're here for, go for it. So I got on the radio um, essentially gave the callstone that they had given us for that night and said, We're available for calls, and they asked us to cover. Um coincidentally, or now looking back providentially, that call was only a couple blocks from us. Um, and the main throwaway that you would use to get there when we pulled out, um, they had flaggers on the road now. I don't know if there were issues with the traffic lights, if they were trying to direct people away because of the protests, but we were now stuck in traffic. Um, we weren't running lights and sirens initially because we were so close. And when we pulled up the map, the Portland unit was a little ways off. Um, and we thought just with how condensed those neighborhoods are, a lot of people think you're always gonna be running lights and sirens and stuff like that, but you kind of use discretion. Um, for people that are familiar with Portland neighborhoods. If you've ever been to like San Francisco or the coast, or you know, it's pretty much a one-way street. It's not, you know, thorough cars will be going back and forth both ways. But if you have a car parked on the road, like the the availability and the movement down those roads, they're very narrow. Um, and the sun was going down at this point. Um, and so we weren't really comfortable running code running around. We thought we could just get through that light, and it was literally going to be like two or three turns, then we'd be right on the road. Um, but like I said, me and my partner were not from Portland, so he was kind of navigating from the passenger seat and I was driving. We ended up getting an update from dispatch that I can remember is essentially someone was calling back in, um, and there had been an escalation on the call. Um, I don't remember the exact details. It was other than that. I think that's when maybe we got the information the guy was threatening to kill people on scene. It was something that elevated our response. And I think dispatch said they could hear still um people yelling on scene. So I remember my partner looking at me and said, All right, we need to get there. And so I'm like, Well, I don't know where I'm going. Like, so he's literally pulling up the map. We're trying to see what side streets. So we do a U-turn out of the line of traffic where they're doing all the flagging, and we just start cutting down side roads, trying to get back to this major thoroughway around it, so we can get onto this side street where the address is. Um, we come out, we're in a Tahoe too, um, for our patrol vehicle. And so we come out, we get on one of the other major cross streets, and I remember him telling me, okay, you got turn right, and you're gonna have two lefts, and it's gonna be pretty much your second left, you'll turn left. So we go, I turn left, and we realize we're one street short. And so looking back, like we're both laughing because it's just, you know, as you know, someone that's been in law enforcement, the chaos of uh things never go the way you think they're going to. No, it's you know, professional in its own sense, but you know, and not to minimize the call we're going to, but it's just our kind of natural response with each other. We're here on overtime, and probably one of the most volatile times in our lifetime in law enforcement. The city is literally going to hell around us, and we're another agency vehicle running around this town trying to find where the heck we're going.
SPEAKER_01:And you got to understand that this call they're responding to is not an abnormal call. Priority ones and twos happen every day. Uh, James and I worked in a city where armed robbery, shootings, stabbings, uh I mean, all that stuff happened literally every single shift. So while this may be an exciting call for somebody that works in a small department, a small town, for us, this is like a Tuesday afternoon at 3.02 p.m. It's just all the complications of not being in your city, not knowing where you're going, getting caught by one-way streets, you know, and it's imagine getting lost in a parking lot, can't find your way out, multiply that by 10 because you know once you get to where you're going, somebody really needs your help.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So we realized pretty quickly uh we just turned down the wrong street. And like I said, these are very narrow roads and we're on a Tahoe. Um, and so we're both like laughing, but also realizing, okay, we need to get turned around now. So I'm literally doing like the eight-point Austin Powers turn in the middle of the road, trying to get turned around. So um we get turned around finally.
SPEAKER_01:I hear I hear clown music going in the background, like this are doodle doo do do going in the background. But go ahead, sorry.
SPEAKER_00:Yep, so we get turned around, and right as we come back on out on the major thoroughway, we see the Portland vehicle pass us. And so I go easy. We'll just follow them in, we're covering them anyways. Um, but just to add to the the comedy to not be lighthearted about this, because based on obviously what happens, but so like I said, and this is no disrespect to this officer. Um, but she was uh from what we know, she was a recruit officer, she misses her turn as well. So the next turn was the proper street. Our plan was to follow her in. We're now on the road, and she just keeps driving. And so me and now my partner are literally stopped in the middle of the road, and he finally looks at me, he's like, dude, just go. And so we turn out, we end up being the first car to turn down the street towards the address. Um, and so he and then by he and my partner, he's trying to pull up on the map, you know, kind of zoom in to see where the house is at. The last updated information we got is that the suspect is affiliated with a black Chrysler, I believe. Um, and he's still on scene. Again, the last kind of full context of the information we had um was just that he was trying to threaten, he was threatening to 55 or kill people on scene, and he's affiliated with a black car. That's essentially the extent of what I can remember for the information we have. And so my partner says, hey, it's gonna be up here on your left. Um, almost immediately I view a middle-aged woman um running down a the driveway of the home we believe is the address, frantically waving her arms with a light on her iPhone. Because, like you said, at this time uh it's it's night out. So she it looks like she's trying to flag us down with like her cell phone. But she's in the road now doing this, and she's frantically looking back over her shoulder while at the same time trying to wave us down. And so, for officer safety reasons, you know, kind of one-on-one from the academy on, you don't try to park in front of directly in front of addresses. You want to give yourself enough room to be able to look and take in as much information as possible. So, one of the training things, you know, you're always gonna park short of an address. Um, and so I parked the right hand side of the road. We have kind of everything still in front of us, and I just remember me and my partner saying, and then again, this whole incident um was I think what, six seconds. Um yeah, it wasn't very long at all. So I the way I'm describing it, this is all happening very simultaneously, you know, second to second as we're taking this in. But essentially, I just remember as we're pulling up, I'm saying, it was either me or my partner that said, Well, there's our there's our victim, and then we both look up and I see a black, you know, vehicle coming up behind her. We just see headlights, and I say, Oh, that's probably our suspect. Um, almost immediately the vehicle stops short of her and then starts continuing into her, and we're watching essentially this car try to hit this lady. Um, so I almost immediately immediately jump out of my vehicle, um, start yelling at the car. Um, and from what I can remember is essentially her for everybody that's at night, you know, stood in front of a vehicle with headlights. Pretty much all you see is headlights. Um, you know, especially if you're going from an inside environment to outside within that that light, it's going to overtake your eyes. Um, but I just remember the flash of essentially her body going across the headlights. I obviously I've seen my body camera nose, so I know how she went across, but at the time, I don't know how this lady's getting across the vehicle. Um, from what I'm perceiving, is that he's hitting her with his car. Um, and I'm essentially yelling, and almost immediately I hear the revving of the engine as she clears the front of the vehicle and then the vehicle overtaking me. Um, as I had stepped out of my door, um, like I said, our vehicle that we're using is a Tahoe. I think it was like a 2018 or something, but pretty, pretty big patrol vehicle. Um, and just the sensation of I am essentially now in a fatal funnel. Um, these roads are very narrow. Um what's a fatal funnel? Uh essentially just worst case scenario. A lot of the time it has to do with like building clearance, you know, you're going in the door, you don't have any movement to your left, your you know, your right, you you're you're trapped in your position, essentially.
SPEAKER_02:Gotcha.
SPEAKER_00:Um, and so that's and especially like from a military standpoint, training. I know I have that background, but that's you know, that fight or flight response. I just remember immediately. Um, like I said, she and this is all um, I think from the time of us being on the scene of me shooting was under six seconds, or right at six seconds. So it's very, very quick. Um, but I remember, yeah, her clearing the front of the vehicle, the loud noise of him, um, not him as the suspect, uh, accelerating his vehicle, it being on me uh extremely quick, and just headlights essentially. Um, and just knowing I'm about to be ran over. How close do you if you had to estimate how close was that vehicle to you, James? Like initially when he starts taking off.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, when he so she clears the headlights, you hear the engine rev, and you're the next thing in its way in that fatal funnel. About what was that distance?
SPEAKER_00:I'd probably, I don't know, 40 to 60 feet.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. A couple car a couple car lengths away, I think, is the way that I've described it before. Um, but it yeah, so it's just engine reving, headlights, um, and then essentially yeah, feeling like I at that point I I'm I'm stuck. I have my patrol vehicle to the right of me. Um, and just next thing I remember is essentially me putting rounds in into the the front window of the car and just following through those rounds and the vehicle coming to a stop. Pretty much I got my back to my patrol vehicle. Um, and yeah, as based on his acceleration and then me shooting, um, when he comes to a stop as my rounds hit him, me and him, I'm at his like driver's window, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, totally.
SPEAKER_00:Um, and so yeah, we me and my partner, we put out shots fired. Um, I obviously know now what he's screaming because of the body camera, where I can, you know, recollect what's being yelled, but he's screaming from inside the car, which you know, going back and watching the video, I believe he's screaming, you know, um, you got me, you got me. Um essentially that I I had shot him. Um the female victim is immediately running up on me and my partner screaming. That's the second time that mother effort tricked to run me over and we're yelling at her to get back. We can see another uh elderly male behind her that's bleeding from his face. I have no idea what this guy's involvement is. Um, but I can see someone else that's been injured prior to us getting there. Um, and essentially we start going into trying to get further resources there. So, as you can imagine, um, with the state of the climate, what was going on, I was informed after the fact that in uh Antifa and the rioters were playing our um dispatch, like either on phones or on speakers. And so they have now an officer putting out shots fired the third day of the riots. Um, and from what I was told, is then there was phone calls that were being made into dispatch, stuff being put out essentially like it's on now. You guys just shot another one.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so I'm gonna stop you right there for a second because I didn't know that piece. Here's what I know, and I'm not gonna go into all my details right now, maybe I'll touch it at the end. But I responded to that shooting as an investigator, and when I arrived, I parked at the head of the street, and that's where I parked because that's where it was a crime scene tape, and I walked in. And there were two car fulls of people that were that drove by and they were slow rolling. And when they saw me get out of my car and come in, I was obviously a cop. I was in plain clothes, but it was a pleasure, and they knew who I was. They started screaming a murderer, murderer, and from that position, we couldn't see the crime scene, it was farther down the road. I had no idea how they knew what was going on, but that makes sense now.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, like I said, that's I I've never confirmed that. That's just I had buddies at Portland that were down at the ground zero of the riot, and essentially he said, Yeah, almost immediately when that was put out over the radio, like all hell broke loose.
SPEAKER_01:So for years I've wondered how these two car fools of strangers knew that, you know, essentially somebody, you know, there was an officer involved shooting, we killed somebody. Uh, I had no idea how they knew that, but it makes total sense um because they were obviously part of the riot, they were part of the you know, uh, the opposing forces that night, and there was a lot of them.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And so yeah, almost immediately now I have going through my head, you know, essentially what just happened. It was just so quick. Um my partner was phenomenal, and essentially we had another the other um patrol vehicle, the two-man partner team, um, showed up. They boxed in the suspect's vehicle so they could get him out. Um, I essentially went to, from what I remember, I think I like put my gloves on in my car, and one of the Portland officers essentially, you know, told me, hey man, you're good. Um, for me being the shooter, like step aside, like we'll, you know, start doing first date on this guy. And I think there was a local civilian that was either an EMT or something that helped them too. But I essentially um sergeants showed up on scene, our sergeants. I gave him the safety brief, which is essentially giving the limited information of, you know, this is the direction I shot, this is how many times I think I shot. Um, is there anyone else involved? Um, that's just so they can make sure there's no one else hurt or outstanding. Um it's a very quick kind of brief statement. Um, and then yeah, at that point they start separating us.
SPEAKER_01:So, from an investigator's point of view, that initial safety statement that James is talking about is given in an officer-involved shooting, and we actually instruct our officers and our sergeants are trained to ask a very limited set of questions. In an officer-involved shooting, we unfortunately a life is oftentimes taken or deadly force has been used. And from the investigation point of view, we have a couple things that we're looking at. Um, yes, there's gonna be an internal investigation. So if you know a sergeant shows up and starts asking questions that are outside of that limited scope, maybe they're gonna uncover some stuff that may affect that internal investigation, either positive or negatively. But then, and James is gonna talk about this in a moment, there's a criminal investigation also. And that criminal investigation is going to say, is this police officer a murderer or not? Did they act within the confines of the law? And is their use of force reasonably justified under state law? So now we start asking questions outside the scope. All of a sudden, we start compounding the issues in this criminal investigation. And you're going to hear momentarily there were lots of issues with this criminal investigation. Not because James did anything wrong, but again, it becomes part of that climate. The climate that we're in, it's a very liberal city, Portland. Somebody has been shot during the George Floyd. The nature of George Floyd is law enforcement versus civilians anyway. You can see where this is going. So the fact that there was a limited set of questions asked, it's on purpose. That's the way we do it. That way we can have a fair and impartial investigation as we look into this, and everybody is treated fairly.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And so, like I said, uh almost immediately I'm walked back to my sergeant's one of the sergeant's vehicles. And I'm yeah, I'm essentially from what I remember, I'm standing on the side of the car. Um, you know, all the the hormones and the adrenaline dump that's going, you know, now all I'm hearing is lights and sirens because all these Portland units are now en route to the road, blocking it off. Civilians are starting to coagulate at the end of the road. I remember some lady who ended up being on the news a year later trying to give false statements, sitting in her electrical wheelchair screaming, you know, that cars were driving too fast down the road and yelling, and you know, little does she know that I'm the shooter and I'm standing directly in front of her and she's trying to yell at me at what just happened. I'm like, you know, ma'am, I we can't talk about it. So But essentially, I don't remember who it was. Somebody came up to me and essentially told me, you know, he's dead and informed me that I had just um the guy had passed away. And so uh Yeah, at that point we're essentially they're removing from me from the scene.
SPEAKER_01:How did that make you feel? When you heard that in that in that moment that he was dead and you had just killed somebody, uh, what were your thoughts, feelings, emotions in that moment?
SPEAKER_00:Um it's hard to articulate. There was so much stint like stimulus going on. Um and to be honest, like without being like cold about it, my biggest frustration like in that moment was like essentially we volunteered to come over here to help to not pull resources so that like my our buddies, these guys could defend their building. And the first call we went on, I just shot and killed somebody.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um, obviously, that's you know, I hindsight's 2020 looking back, like I, you know, we didn't, I know I'm not the one that caused this, this guy caused this, and we were just the responding force at that point. Um, but yeah, that would that was what was going through my head is like essentially what did I just do?
SPEAKER_01:Um and I want to clarify something else. So when James was talking about that car being two to three car lengths back, 40 to 60 feet away, something like that. Um, I want to put that in perspective for you. So I spent 10 years being a use of force defensive tactics instructor. And when we're talking about two people standing in a parking lot, a police officer and somebody armed with an edged weapon, a knife. The rule has been for years 21 feet. And but without going into all the details of changing rules and you know, whatever, let's just say 21-foot rule, because that's what everybody's going to be familiar with. If that person has the knife out and the police officer has his gun in his holster, the person with the knife can close that 21-foot distance on foot, likely before the police officer can get his gun out of his holster and effective rounds on target. That is a very fast, um, that's a very fast and very short amount of time. And it just shows you the risk that the officer is in. So now we take this person, and now we may be 40 to 60 feet away, but we're in a car with a high-powered engine, closing that distance. And James spoke about that six seconds that he had between the time he basically arrived and shots fired. That's how fast that car was moving and closing the distance and ultimately nearly hitting James. So I want to put that in perspective for people that are like, well, he was 60 feet away, the naysayers. You know, why'd you have to do that? That is why.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I can go further into you know some of that stuff as we get to that point, too, um, on kind of what drew this out, or at least what I've been told after the fact of why this got drawn out the way it did. Um, but essentially, yeah, uh me and my partner with him being a witness officer, um, he did not shoot. Um we were taken back to the PD, separated, go through the whole process of then the district attorney's office showing up because this is in the city of Portland. We had Portland investigators that were leading it, so we had to wait for their detectives to show up. Uh, they do a round count where they pretty much take your gun, they take your ammo, they're taking pictures of you. I remember in that moment, essentially, you know, obviously, you we talk with our union, we have our union representation that we kind of do our initial brief with. You know, no one's watched the video. I haven't watched my video. I'm just going off my recollection and essentially, you know, being asked how many times did you shoot? Um, and still this day, obviously, I've seen my body camera now, so I know how many times I've shot. Um, you know, this case has been a due kid, everything's been done. But at the time when I was asked, I said two to three times. That's all I remember was my last two to three shots. Um, well, they started doing my round count, and I have, I believe, seven rounds missing from a magazine. And, you know, my lawyer, our union guys are saying, stop, like, don't worry about it, don't stress about it. This is normal. Um, and obviously, you know, you too, and our other listeners are law enforcement. We get all those talks, especially at the Academy, about um action, reaction, and the force science behind the human brain, and when you're in those fight or flight responses, how your brain protects your body, and part of that, you know, short-term memory, or you know, those different spots that it'll kind of edge out. Well, I mean, in full transparency, I was very arrogant with a lot of that. You know, I was I'm a combat veteran. I spent a year in Afghanistan at the age of 19 as an infantryman, um, had some experiences over there, and was always just kind of like, well, I didn't have that feeling over there that I know of. Um, but that really kind of threw me off of just how quickly the event happened, how much my body, you know, the training kicked in, um, and essentially just being to a point of where I don't remember four of my rounds that I shot out of my weapon, and how how do I articulate that? And obviously now I know after the fact um through counsel and different stuff too, and just learning more about the human brain and how that's a natural response and a trauma response um of how your body protects you. Um, but yeah, so that was kind of that initial night. Um, I kind of mentioned earlier my wife was, I believe, seven or eight months pregnant with our first daughter. Um, it was a high stress pregnancy. We had had four miscarriages prior um to our oldest daughter now. And so I essentially wasn't gonna call my wife. And one of our uh sergeants in the union essentially said, You need to call your wife. And I'm like, Nope, I'm not gonna call her. I don't want to stretch her out. You know, I don't want to cause issues with the pregnancy. She's gonna find out he's pretty much out of love yelling at me, you're gonna call your wife. Yeah, so good thing I do, because of course, as you know and probably know where this is going, other people had started reaching out to her, thankfully, after I'd made the initial phone call, but essentially told her, Hey, I'm fine, I'm not hurt, I've been in a shooting, I'll be home in a little bit, and essentially everything's okay. Uh, my wife is a daughter of a cop, so she, you know, she understands she's not prying um and kind of nose the gig, unfortunately. So I end up getting driven. Well, essentially, we then our uh command staff shows up, they're finally done with the processing part of it. Um, we're put on gag orders. Essentially, me and my partner are not allowed to talk to each other, um, which is pretty normal, you know, because of the grand jury process that we have to go through in Wiloma County. Um that's essentially how especially fatal shootings are being cleared at the time, and you don't want to compromise your testimony or anything, bringing any naysay in. So it's hey, everybody's gonna be separated, and kind of the grand jury until the grand jury can be done. Um and so I get a ride home from our chaplains, they end up driving me home in my truck. Um, and yeah, I get home. Um, my wife sitting on the couch and essentially asked me, Do you want to talk about it? And I pretty much told her nope. And we attempted to go to bed. Um, I couldn't sleep because of the hormone dump and everything that was going on with that. From what I can remember, I think I went downstairs and grabbed a bottle of Jameson and I went and I sat in the shower for a couple hours and just tried to let my body, which I mean it's kind of ironic, so now I'm putting alcohol in my system, but just the hormone dump and how sick my body was from that, you know, throwing up and everything, dysentery, just from your body doing its natural thing with the hormones now. It's trying to process out, um, eventually pass out, and then yeah, now the fun part of administrative leave.
SPEAKER_01:So, how was and I'll talk a little bit about Multnomah County versus maybe some of the rest of the world, real quick, and then I'll ask a follow-up question about command staff. Um, so grand jury process in Multnomah County, an officer involved shooting is required to go before a grand jury process. Not required to, but is the standard practice, meaning that they will treat an officer who has shot somebody in the line of duty just like they would two civilians who get into a shooting in the street. Um and maybe even with more scrutiny because we're held to a higher standard. But the point is the police officer who just acted lawfully in the line of duty is now treated as a murder suspect or homicide suspect until you know the grand jury proves that their actions were justified. And in Multnomah County, this is the way we do it. There's going to be people listening out there who have a different method of doing this in their state, and it's called the coroner's inquest. A coroner's inquest is an open court uh process where all the facts of the case are presented to a judge. So instead of it being almost adversarial in Montloma County, where you're looked at as a suspect and you know the facts are given, and you're waiting on baited breath for them to say that, you know, a no-true bill was indicted, you act reasonably, which you knew that you did, a coroner's inquest just lays all the facts out. The complete story is going to be told from start to finish. The judge hears it, and then a single person makes a decision. This is a justified shooting within the confines of the law. But during that process, because it's open court, the shooting officer is not considered a suspect in air quotes in a coroner's inquest. It's a lot softer approach to hearing the facts of the case versus Multnomah County that is uh, you know, looks at you as a suspect. So go ahead.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and a thing too with people that don't, because I know I work, you know, in a different state now where grand juries aren't a thing. So like some of the guys, if I could work with, I had to explain like the grand jury process, and it's not like you're sat down, it's not a trial. So like you don't have access to discovery. So me as a shooting officer, the full extent of what I know is literally what I saw and what I did. I don't know ballistics. I have no idea how many times I hit this guy, where I hit this guy. I don't know who this guy is. I don't know this guy's involvement, I don't know the victims. I'm not privy to any of this information at all for this entire process.
SPEAKER_01:And on the flip side, the investigative side of this, which I was involved in, we do the victimology. So we know who the victim is. Uh, and I'm gonna use the word victim, but he's not a victim in this case, the deceased. We'll do the deceasedology on this. Um, we take a look at all the training records for the officer that involved, what training have they had, what is their tenure, how long have they been on the job. We'll take a look at the facts of the case, interview all the witnesses, bring all of the uh important parts of the investigation together, and then we will present that as an investigative team to the grand jury. So the grand jury, seven to 13 people who sit there and listen to these uh cases over and over again, we come in, we tell all the facts as the investigation shows, we show video, we show timelines, we show response times, we tell the story, but the officer involved does not get to hear any of this. They're isolated alone, they've been gagged, they're on an island. We as investigators can't contact. I can't contact James and say, hey guys, this is how the investigation's going, because now they have him isolated as a quote unquote suspect in this homicide investigation, which frankly is a complete bullshit way of doing it in Multnomah County. Um, and James is gonna tell you why, but that's the way that process works. On my side, I'm doing the investigation. On James's side, he's waiting with baited breath to figure out if he's gonna go to jail for killing somebody.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So essentially now that the admin side of it starts. Um at the time, and again, this is May, I believe it was the last day of May 2020. Um, we had a different sitting district attorney, which I don't think a lot of people remember this detail, that was at the end of his career and was supposed to be he'd already been voted out, but his term was supposed to be through the summer. Um, well, now we have politically what's going on, what's going on. And from what I remember, and again, it could just be my opinion, I don't think he wanted anything to do with ending his career in this capacity, and essentially stepped out early. So his replacement, who was very um vocal about his intentions as a district attorney, and um people can Google it. I don't even want to mention his name or go into him more than we need to in this. Um, but essentially uh he now steps into office with my shooting sitting on the desk. Um, so that already is delaying stuff from the get-go. Like, hey, the sitting district attorney isn't gonna handle this. The new guy coming in, we don't know what that process is gonna look like. Not to mention this is during COVID too, so that's slowing a lot of stuff down. Um, so I'm pretty much being told, you know, sit at home, hurry up and wait. Um, we end up having our daughter, uh, you know, Lord willing, a successful birth, uh, no complications. And so it's kind of one of those what they meant for evil, the Lord meant for good. I'm now having the capacity where I'm at home um with my newborn. But at the same time, like Aaron just said, it I'm not on vacation. It's pretty much waiting to find out where this is going. Um, I was able to watch my body camera with you know our lawyer and our union rep at that point, um, and kind of see what was going on. Um, and mine, if I remember, mine was the first shooting on body camera in Monomac County. We were the first agency to get body cameras, and we had had them for like a month, month and a half, I think, if I remember.
SPEAKER_01:Correct.
SPEAKER_00:Um, and so yeah, I was sub, I don't know if it was subconscious or what, but I was able to get my body camera on in that process of jumping out as quickly as I did from my vehicle. And like going back and watching my body my video now, um, watching my body mechanics. Essentially, I was like I said, I was a grave shift officer the whole time I worked there. Um, I had my flashlight on the front of my vest right next to my camera. So very naturally, I would step out. You know, even for a month or two that we had them, my first actions are I grab my flashlight, turn my camera on. Um, and if you watch my video when I'm jumping out of the car, you can see my hands doing stuff. And it's literally that it's grabbing my flashlight, turning my camera on. And I didn't know until watching the video that I had shot one-handed because I was punched out with my flashlight in my hand. Um, again, just kind of going into the brain mechanics of that fight or flight. Um, it was where my lawyer was like, What is in your hand? And it's me when I'm punched out. You can see I'm holding my flashlight in my left hand.
SPEAKER_01:Wow.
SPEAKER_00:And didn't even know that until after I watched my video. Um, it just kind of plays into and you know, more testimony to how quickly it happened and how quickly my body was put in that response mode to where like even that, I didn't realize I'd done that. Um when they had taken my pictures um post-incident, I had gloves on, and they asked me, Well, were your gloves on when you're shot? Because we need to take a picture of you guys to stand. And I was like, Well, I'm wearing them, I think so. I didn't realize until after I watched my video um that I had gone into my car and put my gloves on just to try to help with like first aid and stuff, like latex gloves, plastic gloves, or whatever. Yeah, like shooter gloves or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Um, and so it's just like little details like that. Um, and then yeah, seeing that I had shot, like I said, believing um seven times, but it was like a second and a half that I had gotten those seven rounds off. Um, and now we're starting to step into the ground as an agency, too. Of um, you know, I have my recollection the way I remember stuff with my vision, you know, my brain. And then now we're looking at a body camera footage, which has got, you know, fisheye lens, it's got different angles.
SPEAKER_01:Um let me talk real quick about those seven shots.
SPEAKER_02:Yep.
SPEAKER_01:So James just said something that was super important, and it goes with the science behind it. There's a company out there called um Force Science University, and force science applies the mechanics of the brain to law enforcement uh tactics and applications and shootings and lethal force situations. An average person, you don't have to be a trained police officer, an average person with a handgun in their hand, it can start pulling the trigger and get four rounds off in a second. And even if they tell their brain stop shooting, their finger is already engaged in squeezing that trigger. So when James talks about seven rounds in a second and a half, that math totally works out. You got four seconds from that first shot. First shot is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, second and a half, and it's not like it's some superhuman thing. So people oftentimes, these options involved shootings, think, you know, why do you have to shoot them seven times? Why do you have to shoot them ten times? Um, and sometimes it's because they ran out of bullets. They would have loved to shoot them more. But other times it's just because you start shooting, did it hit, did it work? Even after you cognitively you see that it worked, your brain doesn't shut off because it takes time for those processes to happen. And I think that kind of science and technology is super important when we look at these officer-involved shootings, especially you know, ones where James, where you're gonna hear in a second how he was uh criticized and drugged through the mud on this. Go ahead, James.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and just and even like what you were kind of mentioned earlier, but with like the vehicle distance and stuff and the acceleration, and like you can see in my video, I mean, it's all public, people can pull it up, but um when I I I actually initially punch out on the vehicle and then like come off, like I'm not gonna shoot. But then obviously my brain is saying this dude ain't stopping, and he you can hear in the video, um just him further accelerating than the headlights, and so but yeah, so watch my video, it kind of messed with me a little bit because cameras, I mean, anybody that has an iPhone or anything, it filters out light different than the human eye. So naturally, if it's got headlights coming out of it, to my understanding, it's gonna filter out so you can see, you know, you can see the full body of the car, which me as a human being stepping out of a car looking at the headlights at night, I I kind of, you know, I just hear it and I can I know this is a vehicle coming at me. Um, so it was just like little details like that.
SPEAKER_01:Um did the fisheye lens have any uh adverse effects on the scrutiny or the replay of the video?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. And that's I mean, we can get into that now or kind of why this got drawn out or why we were told this got drawn out, you know, over a year later. But that, you know, there's a lot of criticism over officers firing at moving vehicles. Is it effective or not? Um with you know, Oregon state law and pretty much the whole West Coast, for my understanding, and probably more states have adopted this now, with shooting at vehicles, essentially, is if you're able to step out of the way and not shoot, you should. Um essentially, it's are you putting yourself in the position to have to fire? Um, and that's pretty much what this whole thing came down to. And with that, with the angle of the body camera, you can't see the fact that I'm up against my Tahoe and that it's next to me. Um, the width of the road, you know, like I described, it's one of those roads where if you're parked on the side of the road, which we were in gravel, um, up against the cement, like it's pretty much a one-way street at that point. I had stepped out of my car around my door. Um, and my partner, who's a very squared away officer, um, you know, testified to when he was in the grand jury that he had punched out and was going to shoot. And the only reason he didn't is because as he was tracking the vehicle, based on where I was at up against the car, he wanted to shoot either right past me or essentially into me, um, and thought I had gotten ran over. And that just shows again how a testament to his training, how squared away he is that he didn't shoot. Um, but that's just how quickly the vehicle was upon me. Um, we learned after the fact when I was finally privy to the information that all the victims and witnesses there from the family that was being attacked essentially all testified this cop would have gotten ran over, you know, or killed if he hadn't shot and nobody did. So that's that's all the backstory, and that's you know, um with that there, at least on that part. But like I said, I'm not privy to any of this information. All I have now is now my body camera footage, which is six seconds, um, as far as the shooting goes. And then now we don't know how long this is gonna take. So I'm at home this whole time, you know, month to month is going by. Um, I'm getting phone calls from the lawyer, the union. You know, you can imagine initially with being in a shooting during this time, the drama of it, my phone's getting blown up every day by people in the department, people I know, people I don't know, showing support, uh, surrounding agency people. Um, but after a couple months, that pretty much wears off. Um, you know, you have the people that you're close with, you know, you're friends with. Um, but I'm now at home watching around the country almost weekly, different cops in different states getting indicted for use of forces. Um shootings and some not shootings. Essentially, that was kind of the culture at the time was if you're a cop and something's on video and you use force, like just that's probably an expectation that this is what's coming. Um, obviously, the indictment in our process comes through a grand jury. Um but it was still this was in May, and we're now at the end of the summer, and I still have no information. Um, I think the new DA had taken over at that point. Um, but still the sentiment of our department was we don't give statements, we're not, you know, interacting with the investigation because that's what the grand jury is for. That's always been the sentiment. Um, and so it's yeah, it's just still the hurry up and wait part. Um, and now the stress of that starting to settle on. You try to suppress it and you know, focus on my my daughter um and my wife and my family with that stress going on. Um, but like I said, we were living on the Washington side, so I'm trying to remember kind of the uh chronologically, some of the stuff that was going on. Uh, we lived in a pretty conservative town on the Washington side of the Columbia River. Um, I didn't have we didn't have take-home cars. I didn't have a you know cop flag on front of my house. I think we literally had an American flag and a Christian flag. Um, and we were I was outside the home one day, and I think I had like in the back of our garage over our Wade sex, we had like a home gym. We had like a little blue line flag, but you literally had to be like on your knees at the base of our garage looking up into it to see it. So it's not like something we're promoting outside our house, like hey, a cop lives here. And uh so I still don't know this day if this is something where I got like doxxed or this was just a local guy being an a-hole or what. But essentially, I'm literally sweeping my driveway, and this dude is standing at the bottom of our driveway, and he's just staring up at me, smirking. I'm just like I said, conservative town, like pretty small neighborhood. I was like, hey buddy, can I help you? And he just looks up at the Christian flag and he says, Hail Satan. And I literally start laughing because it was so like out of left field. Um and I'm like, excuse me, and he says, Hail Satan, Black Lives Matter, and then you know, F U fascist, but actually says it. And so I start realizing what's going on. And I, you know, I'm like, dude, get off my property, get out of here. And he just won't move. He's just standing there, he's now staying at the road, keeps screaming to the point where our cousins were over seeing our um daughter, my wife, and they're inside the house and hear him out there yelling. And uh, I'm you know, telling him, get off my property, dude, get out of here. And uh he starts to walk off. And I don't remember, I think it said something effective, like, I'm not the problem in this situation. And he's just still now screaming at the top of his lungs back over at me. So it was enough where me and my wife pretty much were like, I don't want to stay in this area with what's going on. And so um we started looking at moving out of the area, moving more rural. I'm like, I don't want to live in town anymore. And so uh we ended up posting our house on the market, and we moved to a rural part of Washington on some property um about 50 minutes almost to an hour north of Portland. And uh it was a blessing at the time because we got complete separation, you know. We joked that it was our family sabbatical, um, but like I said at the same time, this isn't vacation. Um, it was kind of the time we needed and to get away and be away. Um, but yeah, it didn't take long of us being out there. I think it was another couple months. Um, I caught one day, so my wife's back to work full-time, and I'm pretty much a stay-at-home dad with my daughter. Um I'm on the side, we're on a couple acres now. I'm on the side of the property, literally with my daughter in a jumper. And uh I see a small sedan with Oregon license blades pull into our gravel driveway. And so I'm like, oh, this is weird. I'm just watching the guy. He doesn't know I'm there. He rolled down his window, sticks his iPhone out, and starts filming our our new house. And so I pretty much I think I had a shovel. I put the shovel down, I start sprinting across my property, and he looks over and sees me and fishtails off of our property. So I call our union. Um, essentially, like, hey, I don't know what's going on. Um, we had bought a new house, a new property, and they're like, Oh, maybe it could be like an insurance thing or someone from the county, you know, uh assessor. I'm like, well, why would it be organ license place, you know, out here? So they're like, you need to call the local sheriff's office and this have them essentially flag your address, um, let them know what's going on because of how far out we were. Um, there's not law enforcement out there. And essentially just so you're aware of something's going on. Um, I was told after the fact that some of the local news agencies were kind of asking about how much I've been I was being paid because I was on paid leave this whole time. So I don't know if it was like a freelancer for one of the trying to say, like, oh, this guy's on admin leave and just bought a new house or however they want to spin it.
SPEAKER_02:Sure, sure, sure.
SPEAKER_00:So I if you know, if I was a betting man, I think it had something to do with that capacity, um, especially with some of the news articles a couple months later that started to come out from our state, you know, big news source. Um, so yeah, still at this point, we're probably five, six months into this. Still, it's pretty much I'm getting a phone call a couple times a month. We still have nothing. I know our our chief at the time was calling the DA and saying essentially what's going on, and they're keeping them out of the loop. Um, they're not engaging with our command staff at all. And some stuff happens at the department um where our chief ends up stepping away, and then I get a new interim chief um towards the end of the year, and so now I have a new chief. Um, thankfully, the department they're you know showing enough respect in the sense where they're not asking me to come back to work. They had asked at one point, do you want to come back or work the desk? I'm like, no, not really, because I don't want to just sit there like the happy clown and act like this isn't hanging over me and tell people, you know, and there's genuine people that are asking how is stuff going, but it's like it's just like, no, if I'm allowed to be home, I'd like to be home with my family because I don't know where this is going. And to my understanding, a cop in Winoma County had never been indicted for shooting, is what I've been told. So it's kind of like we're in uncharted waters and we don't really know what's gonna happen with this. Um, I was approached at one point by our legal counsel and said essentially that it sounded like the DOJ, which is the Department of Justice for the state, was now getting involved. Um, they didn't understand the capacity of the relationship, but all we knew is that it sounded like the district attorney's office had reached out to them and it would be in my best interest to now do a recorded interview. Um, so obviously I don't have anything to hide. I'm like, this whole thing was six seconds. Like, why are why is this taking so long? Um so I obviously agree to participate in this. Um and so at this point, yeah, I go and I do a full formal interview on record. There's representatives there um from the Portland investigators, the local district attorney office, and there's representatives from the Department of Justice that do their own whole line of questioning during this multiple hour uh interview. And so uh yeah, we do that. Essentially the sentiment was you do this, this should probably speed stuff along uh because you're now giving your side to the piece. And um, like I said, still at this point, we're not privy to any discovery. I don't know any of the backstory still. Me and my partner are still on a gag order. Um, we're not allowed to talk. Um and then we literally get into the the next year. So now, like I said, this happened in May. We're now into the next year. Um, my wife is now pregnant with our second daughter. Um, and we get stoned, you know, stonewalled by the district attorney's office. My to my understanding, legal counsel and our new chief are asking, hey, he did the interview, like, where's this going? What's DOJ's involvement? You know, essentially it got to the point where it seemed like we were just annoying them for the amount of what's going on with this. And it was becoming evident we're not going to be told what's going on until it probably does. Um, so right after that, a guy who I'm actually friends with now, but it was a Portland officer, gets in an officer-involved shooting, um, which ends up being fatal. Uh, and I believe it was announced on Twitter by our district attorney that now that Portland officer, this grand jury, is going to be ran by the Department of Justice. And my shooting is going to be ran by a civil uh defense attorney office out of Portland. For you know, I don't remember the word how they phrase it, for like uh transparency, transparency, oversight, um, third party. Essentially, he's quote unquote removing himself.
SPEAKER_01:Anytime a defense attorney in the city of Portland is running some shit for you, bro, it's not transparent and it's not one-sided.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and not to mention that this is a person, you know, crime, it's a shooting, and this guy, to my understanding, this is no offense to him, didn't have any legal um background in this type of prosecution or defense or like cases, like so. Yeah. Um, so yeah, so now we're this is I believe that was in March, and well, yeah, the Department of Justice isn't running my shooting because they already interviewed me. And from what sounds like after the fact is, you know, a lot of it is hearsay because we've just heard from you know people that have come forward or hadn't, but um, it sounds like they didn't have an issue with my shooting. We we still we never got full closure or disclosure on what that was. All I know is I was interviewed by the Department of Justice, and then we're being told they're not involved now. We don't know why. Um, so now we start knowing, okay, now I have this new guy that's being announced that's going to be running my thing. We'll probably have some form of a timeline now on hopefully this coming to some form of closure. Um, I think right after that, because I'd given a formal statement and because my partner had given a formal statement because he hadn't shot, they asked if they could lift the gag order finally on us, because me and him now are almost at a year of not talking to each other. And like I said, we were close friends when this happened. Um, so they finally left the gag order on that, where we're able to essentially see each other. Um, he ended up coming out to my property. My wife left for the day and just gave us our time, you know, on our rural property in the woods to just sit and hang out. And uh that ended up coming up when we finally did go to grand jury. They asked us to have different legal counsel. Um, and I it didn't end up going south, but the sentiment kind of was that they were frustrated that me and him were able to talk to each other. It's like, okay, we both have statements on on record. If we retract state, but again, this is a six-second incident. Like, what are what are we talking about here? But again, it was just like I said, it was the sentiment and the culture of what was going on. Um, but so this other shooting that happened in Portland. Um, the Portland officer was a former Ranger Battalion sniper that had been involved in the History Channel documentary for his time overseas. Well, Antifa found that and starts going online and throwing a fit about combat veterans in law enforcement. We are a year, almost a year into this now, and I have not been asked a single time by the district attorney's office about my time in the U.S. Army. Literally, within like the next 24 hours, we are getting calls. Hey, we need all your service records. Um, we need your awards, anything you got from the Army that you're willing to disclose, uh, we want it. And so essentially, um, we saw what was going on with this. One of the Portland city council members, who I believe is no longer a city council member, um, was pretty publicly calling about, you know, throwing a fit that we have combat veterans in the ranks of law enforcement that are now getting in shootings and shooting people here on our streets. Um, and like I said, I was a you know, a sawgunner, a 240 gunner in Afghanistan. I have my combat infantry badge. Um, and I essentially told my lawyer, like, no, we know where this is going. I have nothing to hide, but like this has nothing to do with my shooting. And it's very clear what type of narrative is now trying to be spun.
SPEAKER_01:I'm totally trying to demonize you. And this is the same person who tells you thank you for your service on Veterans Day, you know, standing out front of Home Depot, and now they're asking for all your stuff, trying to demonize you for what you did, and turn that around and say, you know, you're an out of control combat vet. That's why you're killing people on the streets of Portland. What a shitty narrative.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And so, and I had an honorable discharge. I think we disclosed my DD214, which all the veterans, that's just like your your discharge paperwork that has all your awards and your time and service and stuff like that. But like anything outside of that, like, good luck. I don't even know if they can get disclosures from department, you know, of the military or anything like that. I didn't, I never I didn't have a single like negative counsel while I was in the army. And that's not me trying to be boastful. Like, I just had a very good time career in the army. Um, I promoted very early and was a squad leader when I got out. I had a good time in the service. Um, but it was clear based on what was going on with this Portland guy, like, no, we're not playing into whatever they're doing with this. Um, and so we decided to not engage with that. Um couple months after that, we're getting closer. They start saying you we should be having a grand jury sometime this summer. Um, my shooting had little to no news coverage at this point, a year into it. Um coincidentally, once now my grand juries are starting to get announced, um, there's a newspaper article. I say newspaper, it's the online um you know, main news media for the state of Oregon. Uh starts posting uh articles where I'm now learning um stuff about the case from this online news article. It's going into like the ballistics of like essentially my ballistics for my shooting, supposedly like where I had hit the guy, how many times he'd been hit. So I that's one of the questions I have. How who's giving this information? Who's leaking this information to?
SPEAKER_01:Sure.
SPEAKER_00:So now I'm sitting at home knowing, okay, I'm probably finally going into a grand jury. Um, and now there's narratives, it's seemingly narratives that are starting to be spun on the media side of it. Um, the local news station starts interviewing quote unquote witnesses. There was one, that same lady I kind of mentioned that was in a wheelchair or whatever, that said that she witnessed the shooting. Um, and I believe on the news video, if I remember it right, she said that like all four of us officers, uh me, my partner, and both the Portland cops shot this guy as he like sat still in his car. And so they're just again, they're muddying the water prior to us going into a grand jury, which, if we hadn't made it clear at this point, a grand jury is a bunch of civilians that are sitting on a board um in a room and are presented this, you know, case to make a decision was this justified or not.
SPEAKER_01:As this progresses and we get closer and closer to this grand jury, how is your mental health as far as stress of being indicted? I mean, the the the writing's on the wall, the climate is against you. Where are you at mentally?
SPEAKER_00:I had suppressed it pretty well up until um that stuff started happening, the whole trying to engage, you know, the military stuff, which I mean my service was a huge part of my identity. So, and that's a lot of stuff I've matured kind of from, you know, here after the fact. Um, but I had really gotten heavy, like embedded in my faith at that time. Like I said, that's kind of the the dark joke um in our families that that was my sabbatical, you know, that I'm home during that time. Um, really heavy into scripture during this time. Um, one of the benefits is that a lot of the Christian guys at our department had reached out to me over that period, guys that I had worked with, but we had never shared our faith with each other. Um, and so again for the people that have listened to the last episode I was on, the responders by grace um first responder ministry that I run now, which you can find at respondersbygrace.com, um that started as officers by grace, and it was just a bunch of guys in our our agency. And so I started driving all the way down to the PD and we were meeting in the parking lot in like our trucks and like lawn chairs. Um, because now our department was starting to be demonized by our local city council, um, where like I said, the chief had been removed, um, trying to engage racial stuff that wasn't there. Um, and just the mental health. I think a lot of the guys were so burnt out over what was going on, and me being home and having the ability to kind of just even in the stress that I was dealing with, that's one of the things, like I said, what they meant for evil, and they, I mean, the powers of bee that were running, keeping this thing going, the Lord meant for good were the amount of growth I had in my faith in that capacity um grew, and the relationships that I was able to build during that time grew. But at the same time, I'm human, and now, like I said, my I have a one-year-old, my wife is pregnant with now my second daughter, and uh being told over and over and over again, we we don't know where this is going. There's no reason this should have been stretched out this long. There's no reason that we should be told that DOJ is not involved after interviewing you. Like, we don't there's no reason this guy should be running your grand jury with his career, you know, no offense to that guy, but he's just not qualified. Um essentially be prepared to be indicted, is what we were starting to be told. Um, so yeah, I I was struggling pretty bad.
SPEAKER_01:Um what did you find out? You know, when when grand jury finally comes, looking backwards from that, what did you find out was the delays? Why was DOJ in and out? Why was it taking so long? Why are they bringing in some outside counsel that you know it's unprecedented, they've never done it before. What was going on behind the scenes?
SPEAKER_00:Again, um, all I it's all hearsay. Um, we've had people from within the district attorney's office that reached out to me after the fact. I don't know if it was out of guilt or just trying to give me closure. Um, none of them were willing to go on record, so I'm not gonna say names out of respect for them.
SPEAKER_01:Fair enough.
SPEAKER_00:Um, but essentially was told that from the very beginning, the decision was made to indict me or facilitate an indictment. And based on the evidence and the statements and everything that was there, they didn't think it was gonna happen. Or if they were able to convince the grand jury of an indicting me, they're like, There's no way we're gonna be able to convict this guy. But as we said, around the entire country at this time, cops are getting indicted. You get indicted, like your career is over, even if you are found not guilty. Um the way the news media, everything like you're an indicted cop for murder at that point, you're not coming back from that. Do you know how many grand juries?
SPEAKER_01:Um, ask it a different way. Were there multiple grand juries convened to hear your case or a single grand jury? Or do you know?
SPEAKER_00:Um well, I know I only went before one grand jury. So I I to my understanding, my case was presented over that week in July of 2021. So my shooting was May 2020, and we finally went to grand jury, July of 2021, and it was the week of my daughter's first birthday. It was the day before my daughter's first birthday was the day I was cleared.
SPEAKER_01:Wow, and that was how many months after the fact?
SPEAKER_00:Sorry, I'm getting emotional. I'm just saying that.
SPEAKER_01:Um, brother, take a time.
SPEAKER_00:That was so I don't know, May. Was that 14 months, 15 months when I was finally cleared? Yeah, but yeah, so I mean, getting but even getting into the the actual grand jury, like, okay, it's finally announced. Um now, like I said, there's multiple news stories out there now that are starting to at a minimum muddy the water. There's the articles online that are getting posted with information, like I'm learning stuff about my own shooting from the media that I am not allowed to be proved. Some of it's true, some of it is just objective, you know, ballistics, uh hearsay, this and that. But it's like it's clear somebody from within the investigation, whether it's I don't think I have enough respect for the Portland Police Bureau. I don't think it was investigators leaking the stuff. I I firmly believe it was someone probably within the district attorney's office that was has a relationship with these news outlets and we're leaking information or letting people be privy to this information. Um, but yeah, so I brought in with the union. I'm taking before the city and command staff at this time, a couple days before the grand jury, and essentially told, um, if you do get indicted, we don't know how the city is gonna handle this. We don't know if you're gonna be retained as an employee. Um, essentially, this the whole sentiment was we don't know. We've never dealt with this before. Um, we're trying to get straightforward answers, like what's gonna be the response? You know, what are you as command staff um gonna be doing with this? And just the whole sentiment is essentially like we'll find out, you know.
SPEAKER_01:What happened to the thin blue line? We've got your back, we're a family, we're all you know, kumbaya. What happened to that? Where did that go? Because I mean that's what they told you day one when they got hired, when you got hired.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'm not gonna comment on that.
SPEAKER_01:So amen.
SPEAKER_00:I will say the the peer support side of it in um the guys that were close with me through this whole thing, I still am close with now, they know who they are, and I will my family be forever thankful for their support and the way that the Lord brought me those relationships that came from this. Um, yeah, so that was that side of it. So essentially, I'm having to now go home and tell my pregnant wife again. Um, I don't know what's gonna happen. I don't know if if I end up getting indicted, if I'm, you know, I'm arrested at that point. I don't know how that works with our legal counsel. And she's like I said, she's so my second daughter was born in September. So this is in July. So she's five or six months pregnant, and we have a one-year-old. And when we don't have family that live local, it's just me and my wife. Um, we made the decision to live rural the way we did to raise our daughters. Um, but doesn't negate the fact we know we're close to the church community, but we've even moved away now over an hour from our church community to try to get the solitude and the privacy living out rural where we do, but it's just it's me and her. That's it. Um, so yeah, that's the sentiment going into my grand jury. Um, so we had like a day or two prior to that. Um I ended up pretty much getting to that point of accepting, like I'm I'm gonna be indicted. Um, we live by a couple lakes. I remember one morning, I just told my wife, I am gonna fast this morning. I didn't eat breakfast. I'm like, I'm literally took my Bible, went to one of the local lakes and just sat in my truck and I read through Psalm 7. And essentially, Psalm 7 is David crying out um when he's being accused of different things. Um essentially is like, if I'm guilty, like let me let justice come. But if I'm not, like, save me from whatever the hell is going on right now. And I'm I'm essentially in my truck bawling. Um, if I did something wrong here, like I I accept that. You know, I know what I felt, I know why I made the decision I did. But like you're sovereign, this is in your hands. I understand why we're being put through this. Um, but I trust you, if I'm guilty of something for taking this man's life, you know, Romans 13, let the government do its job, and I'm I have to live with it. But if I'm not, like, and I remember I literally verbally said this out I just want to raise my daughters.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And so I pretty much like at that moment, um, I yeah, I chalked up like, okay, like that side of it's done. Like, I I I trust you with this, and we have we have to go through with this. And at that point, the grand jury had been going on for a week. All their witnesses, um, some of them false witnesses, and I can say that truthfully, manuscripts are out there for everybody to read. This stuff is public. There are people that are brought forward. I don't know if it was full for full transparency of people that said they witnessed it of just letting everybody speak. I think it benefited me because the grand jury got to see how outrageous some of these people are. That if I remember one of them that I read after the fact was a guy saying that the guy I shot and killed had gotten out of his car and we had shot him out of his car unarmed. Um, so like that's going on all week. Um, but they have use of force experts from the department. I believe they had to get somebody in from Motorola to literally testify to about the camera of like, why does this view look the way it does? Why does the car look like, you know, it's farther away from him than he than it is? You know, why can't you see his vehicle? Like, why is the fisheye lens, the the the lighting, like all of that has to be explained to these people that are about to decide if I am guilty for manslaughter or if I'm cleared. Um, and then I was the last one, me and my partner were the last ones that testify on the last day of the week. Um, and so yeah, we go down there. I I'm in there for a couple hours, pretty much doing what I'm doing right now. Um, and they had a big screen behind me. They're playing my video, going frame by frame with it, want me to essentially say what I felt. You know, um, I'm being asked by the civilians, you know, how close actually is the vehicle to you? You know, I'm testifying, I can reach out, feel like I could touch it, you know, at the point where I'm shooting, um, trying to explain everything. We just pretty much talked about over the last hour.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um, but then they get to ask me whatever they want. I literally have, I don't know how she had to be maybe 19 or 20 years old, she's a young girl. Um, pink hair and all, asking me if I looked in his eyes, like when I did it, where I'd asked the district, you know, the DA's office essentially, like, you know, do I to answer this? Sure. I don't remember how I responded, but it was just like, you know, no. Like I'm I'm shooting at a vehicle that's trying to run me over.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:I know where the driver's at, and that's what I'm shooting at. I this wasn't anything intimate with me and this guy that I, you know, I killed in that capacity. I'm my brain's in fight or flight mode, trying to stay alive. So it's just, I mean, that's par for the course with a grand jury, right? Yeah. So I go home, it's not like an immediate thing. You don't know if you're clear or not. And like I said, the next day, it's literally my daughter's first birthday. Um, and I get a phone call in the morning, essentially, um, saying you've been cleared unanimously. Um, and that part of it is done now. Um, how was that moment? Uh, not what you would expect.
SPEAKER_02:Really.
SPEAKER_00:Um now through obviously like counseling and stuff, you know, neurological counseling and understanding more of the brain and kind of how my body handled that. Um, obviously, like the emotion side of like it being done, but I had to sit on that form of stress for over a year. Yeah. My body had to learn, my brain had to learn how to cope with that. And now this phone call is telling me you don't have to, you know, have that stress anymore. But my brain doesn't have anywhere to put that stress.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, totally.
SPEAKER_00:So it made it worse. Um, where, yeah, just the irritability, the mood swings, the crashes. Um, thankfully, the department at least was like, well, that part of it is done. The union advocated for me to be able to go on like baby leave now, because now we're expecting my second daughter. Um, there was question on whether or not the department was even going to release the body camera video. We had to advocate for the department to get ahead of the narrative. We're like, we're not stupid. And I can sit here and fully admit that I can see um, you know, if you look at the video without context, understanding everything we just talked about, it's it's one of those where it's like, yeah, you're shooting at a vehicle, you know, um, like where how are you getting hit by this thing or whatever? You know, there's thank you, YouTube and your algorithms. I've had videos suggested to me of essentially that popped up in my feed that I stupidly have watched of former cops doing breakdown videos of how I'm just another stupid cop that jumped in front of a car. Wow, yeah. So I mean they're those are out there. That's I had no idea. Yeah. So um we thankfully our department did a good job, in my opinion. Um, I'll give them that, in doing the full context, um, showing how the guy. So I had mentioned that guy that was bleeding the elderly man.
SPEAKER_01:Yep.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I learned that he had been assaulted by this suspect before we even got there. He was slammed down on the road. Um, and so all those those videos from ring cameras were included in the thing, showing how recklessly he's going back and forth on the road. Um, and so that at least was put out. The news still, you know, they they're not going through the full video breakdown, they're only grabbing the part where I'm shooting, you know, next to his vehicle, my last shot that ends up being the one that kills him. And so, from what we're told, essentially, however, they're trying to privy it of why this took so long, was just like, well, the the the camera and the angles. Sure. Why they're from what I was told is their justification of why they dragged this out for so long. Um I yeah, I've like I said, we've been privy to different information from different whistleblowers. Um, I've met people through the Lord's Providence actually this last year that worked for the Department of Justice that I've just met in different capacities now in my job that came up to me and was like, I know who you are. And I was a part of those early conversations at the Department of Justice level for indictments. And essentially the decision was made yours was a good shoot. By a department of justice. Yeah, yeah. So I know there were guys at our agency that confronted the district attorney about that to his face. Um, and I think he sidestepped those questions or refused to answer them. That was again hearsay, I was told after the fact after I left the agency. Um, but essentially at this point, I'm now on leave trying to get figure out how to get closure from this. Um with the aftermath, my second daughter is born. Um, I have every intention of going back to work for this agency. And this entire time through this process, I've been told we will handle and address the stuff with the district attorney after you've been cleared. As far as asking publicly, you know, why was this handled the way that it was? Um and respectfully, now it's cleared. And so I go back to the department and um I'm now on my third chief. Um, and this meeting did not happen with the sitting chief, so I'm not gonna throw any shade at this guy. I've you know, I've never worked for him, I don't know him, uh, I have nothing personal against him. Um, but other people within the command staff behind closed doors, I essentially asked, How are as an agency are we handling this now? Now with what we know, um and the way this was handled, like with a liability that now my co-workers are living under, and if I come back and work here, this guy's still the DA here. Like, or how is this being addressed? And essentially, to my face was said, Um, do you really expect us to take on a district attorney?
SPEAKER_01:Wow. So when did you go back to work for them?
SPEAKER_00:I did not. Yeah. Um, I was approached by my local agency where I live now. Um, when I had my address flagged, um, they started sending deputies by my house pretty routinely to just check on me and my family, letting me know we're here. Um, we know what's going on, we support you guys, anything you guys need. And after I the day I got cleared, I got a phone call. We are 100% good with everything that happened here. If you want to come work for us, let us know. Wow. So we sat on that for a while. Um, we looked at moving out of state completely. I had an application in Alaska for a police department because that's where I was stationed in the army. Um, I had an application in Montana, and we prayed through it as a family and felt like we were still being called to stay in that area of Washington where we had just bought our property. Um, and we had a newborn at this point, our second daughter. Um and so the decision was made after essentially the response that I was given of you got your closure, and essentially no more is gonna be said or asked at this point at the command level, and I wasn't comfortable stepping back into that amount of liability um as an officer in that city.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I don't blame you. Um, I I I wouldn't be either, you know, again, what happened to the thin blue line? We've got your back. Um, I think that I think it speaks for itself. Do you feel that this got drug on because there was a witch hunt? If early on it's you know written in the books, you're gonna get indicted for this, and this goes through uh I know multiple uh assisted district attorneys, I can tell you that. Within the you know, confines of the DA, multiple district attorneys uh was over were over your case at various times, DOJ at one point, and independent defense counsel at one point. Do you believe this was a witch hunt to find a team that was willing to indict you by the district attorney at face value?
SPEAKER_00:That's what it looks like now. And um even with the guy that led my um my grand jury, like the actual guy that facilitated it, to Minor Saint afterwards was like pretty much like, yeah, it's it's I don't understand, I don't know really what I'm doing here. He was being paid$300 an hour to now run my grand jury a year into it. So what was going on for a year up to that?
SPEAKER_01:I know that there were uh assistant district assistant district attorneys um who put their careers on the line for your case.
SPEAKER_00:And uh to my understanding, every district deputy district attorney that was on my case left after my shooting.
SPEAKER_01:That is correct.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And they uh fought the good fight for you while they were in office, and they're all now gone. So uh I'm I'm glad that it turned out the way they did for you.
SPEAKER_00:And that's one thing I know like me and you have talked about with me doing this. I'm not here trying to make my shooting anything more than it was. You know, there they're it was a very quick incident. It was critical for me and my family based, you know, obviously the family of the deceased, the the victims. Um, but the really the part, and I I've completely left this part out um prior to me even meeting with the command staff, which prompted that conversation of me to actually go to this command staff person and asking now what? So one thing that I will say that our agency did well was a debrief. They usually wait till everything's said and done. And essentially it was everyone that was involved in the case. So, me and my partner, the two guys that showed up to do CPR, um, uh chaplain I was really close with was there, and then our um lead like DT instructor that had full access to all discovery at this point. Everything's done. So we had all the interviews, he had the body camera footage, he had the blood stick photos. Um essentially, it was giving us guys an opportunity, and I ad I advocate for this. Anyone that's listening to this that's still in law enforcement or in the capacity of peer support at their agency. Um, me as an officer getting that closure, I get to ask whatever I want, I get to know anything I wanted to know about people at this point, any closure I needed to go at that plan to go back to work, they were allowing me to have. Um, so I know just me personally, that's something I would advocate for in your agency if you don't do something like that. That just gives person closure before they put the uniform on. And they don't have that, those questions still lingering in their head. Me finally getting to sit down, learn the full context of this guy, his criminal history, which anybody can look up, why he was actually at the house, which you can kind of draw lines together based on his criminal history if you look it up, um, the people that are being victimized there for a long time, um, the relationships with those people there. Then I got to listen to the initial interviews that night of all the witnesses from that victim family about them essentially articulating literally one of the guys said if there's like a good shoot, this was one of them.
SPEAKER_02:Wow.
SPEAKER_00:So I'm literally sitting there now getting emotional and frustrated, like probably the one of the most uh angry times ever in my life. Because I and I think I even said out to the guy leading the debrief um why they have did this take as long as it did. Yeah. I've just so now this is ever because now I'm getting to see everything that they had this whole time and were sitting on. I'm getting to hear it from the quote unquote victims. Um and it, yeah, I mean, and it all so you want to argue, you know, it was just based on perception of the body camera. And I mean, like I said, I talked about this in our last interview, you know, me and you did. The impot the imposter syndrome is that about it that really affected me for a long time. Because there's you know, a lot of guys I really respect at that agency and still do um from a career standpoint. And I had guys, you know, yeah, my song or video, I I get it, it doesn't look good. And it's just like, again, I don't think they're being you know, facetious or anything. Like that with a comment like that. Sure. But it's just like that was the sentiment of it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it was. I saw the video. Um, and you said it yourself a five minutes ago without the full context as to what you were feeling. The video could raise questions, it would raise an eyebrow. Um, and that's not a bad thing. That is just technology. Everybody thinks we got body cam footage, and body cam footage is gonna sit, you know, everybody straight and it's gonna show exactly what occurred. Well, it doesn't because it has an iris on there, and that iris is designed to filter out light so it doesn't wash out the screen, like shining a flashlight right into somebody's camera, right? If you do that, you're gonna see that that iris will close down and now you can see past the flashlight. But take that same flashlight and shine it straight into your own eyes. Your eye doesn't shut down, you can all of a sudden see past it. And I think that, you know, it's just little things like that with technology. Body cameras are great, but they're not the end-all be-all, and they don't portray or really show all of the things that the human eye does and the the brain does, and the way we process things and the fear, and you know, that's why we're there to articulate the things that we see, feel, hear, taste, touch, you know, all of that.
SPEAKER_00:So, yeah, that played essentially me finally getting to see all that, and then an understanding, like I said, we have guys now coming forward from the DA's office or you know, DOJ or whatever saying, yeah, this is what was going on. So, my sentiment is okay, well, what are we doing about that? I'm not trying to sue the district attorney's office, I don't even think I legally can, but it's like, are we not even publicly doing a statement as a department? Are my co-workers getting the full debrief of hey, your two coworkers that were just out of work for 18 months? This is why, or do they just all get to make their own opinions based on my video? Do they know how much of this stuff was? Do they know the liability that they're working under now with these district attorney? Yeah, this guy ain't going anywhere.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, he's gone now, by the way, everybody. Yeah, you thank God he's gone. Let's talk about your mental health on the on the back end of this. Uh, were you in therapy during this time?
SPEAKER_00:I didn't start um seeing a counselor until the new stuff started popping up bigger into it.
SPEAKER_01:And then uh let's talk about uh I think mental health, and you and I have spoke about this in the past, there's a stigma with it, and there's a stigma, even when you get in these critical incidents or whatever it may be, there's still a stigma that if you go see a counselor, mental health professional, you're weak, you are less than, you're looking for an out, PTSD's a crutch, all of that nonsense that old school law enforcement believed. And some of the problem is old school law enforcement are still your FTOs. So the new generation, some of the new generation is still getting that mentality beat into them, you know, from the passenger seat. What is your opinion on mental health counseling therapy in the careers that we're in?
SPEAKER_00:I think it's absolutely necessary. Um, like I said, I know for me, it was one of those blessings that came out of this, and I full transparency, I see my counselor still the same counselor to this day, um bi-weekly. And with me and my wife, that was a decision. Hey, if after all of that as a family, and yes, I'm still in law enforcement after that. Um, and that's just by again what the Lord has done in me and my wife's life as a family. Um, we still feel called to this. Like I said, the relationships that came out of it, the first responder ministry they run, it all came from this incident. So thank you, uh, DA Mike Schmidt. Um but yeah, so I mean at the end of the day, but yes, my relationship I have with my Christian counselor now came um from this entire thing. And so um our counselor, uh she may or may not listen to this.
SPEAKER_01:She's a 10, she is an absolute godsend, and uh what a blessing she is.
SPEAKER_00:And and to you know, the counseling side of it, there's also neurological counsel or you know, therapy that comes with that. Like I said, a lot of the brain science stuff um that helped give me a lot of that closure. Um and then there's the spiritual aspect of it, and whoever I'm sure everybody knows by at this point, I'm a Christian, and so there's Christian aspect of that counseling. That would be my suggestion as anybody seeking counseling is like there's so many counselors out there now is finding one that aligns with your worldview because it's gonna help answer these type of questions. How do you view human beings? How do you view right and wrong? Like a lot of these things that play into our role in law enforcement, um, or whatever, decide at first responder, if you're fire, um, whatever it may be, um, having that core value system deriving from the same place of your morality, of working through those type of situations, those type of questions, those critical incidents, you know, the why of the stuff that we see that we talked about in the last episode, whether it's suicide, stuff against children, like whatever, the heavy stuff that comes across this job. Um, I've gone to secular therapist, and I just me personally, I walked out of there more frustrated. Amen. Yeah, me too. So that's why initially it took me a year. And again, by God's grace, this counselor that we it's you know, we both use was one of the vetted counselors by our peer support team at the department. Um, and she was on the list where the department paid for me to go to her that whole time.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's great. And you gotta, you know, also as you're out there searching for that counselor, that therapist, whether you're law enforcement or a doctor or a fire, whatever it is. I think it's important you find somebody that's culturally competent in your walk of life that understands, you know, kind of what's behind the curtain in your world. Um, because that can really help focus their attention in the right areas and give them an understanding as to the perspective or the angle you may be seeing things through or the filter you might be seeing things through.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So that helped with a lot of that. Um so, and I just wanted to put this like out there too, just because I think we're probably wrapping up here soon. Um me and Aaron have talked about this at length. Um, not necessarily this incident, but like the aftermath. Um there's been times where I have attempted and flirted with the idea of going back to this department. Um, I just want to put this in full transparency out there. There's guys there that I love, you know, not only as brothers, but just the respect I have for that department at the patrol level down for what those guys deal with, what they still deal with, the environment over there, the culture over there. Um and I've asked myself, and I've had even people recently ask me, you know, why do you keep that door open, you know, still to this day? And I think a lot of it was just seeking closure um from this whole thing. I went straight from my admin leave from that conversation with that command staff person to working at another agency. So the next time I put a uniform on was 19, 20 months after my shooting at a different department. Um, and then having to work through that whole thing now. So I think that played a lot into that. Um, I think that's one of the reasons why I agree to do this with the URN. I think we talked about that. Yeah, is kind of giving me my wife and kind of giving it to the Lord of trusting him, you know, his providence over this whole thing. Um even hindsight's 2020 looking back over the incident, you know, the fact that we were at the location we were at that our sergeant picked out of the 10 staging spots, we picked that one that was three or four blocks away. Sure. The the flagging that was going on the road that caused to be delayed for a minute or two, the turns we missed, the Portland officer missing her turn, which led to us being the first ones down the road. The guy had driven down a deadhead and run and had to recklessly come back. And that's why he was at, you know, where he was, where he was when we pulled out, just the provenance around all of that. Um, it's finally, you know, I got finally to that point, and the deep reef helped a lot of that of um, you know, really embracing as a Christian that Romans 13 aspect of there is a reality. We live in a broken world. Um, but on this side of eternity, there is a form of government righteously that is there for this very reason, for the preservation of life and property. And I just happen to be used that night in that capacity, and um, it's essentially just moving on from that at this point.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Well, man, I can tell you I really appreciate you being vulnerable coming in. I know that this conversation we're having right now has been in the makings for the last six, eight, nine months, whatever it is. And I'm just thankful that you were willing to come forward and talk and tell your story uh with full transparency, the good, the bad, the ugly, the mental health, the faith side of it, um, because somebody else out there listening can relate to this. Um, so you know, educational entertaining provide value, right? That's kind of what this podcast does. In this conversation we're having right now, and I'm gonna call this a conversation. I think your vulnerability um will really help people. And I know I've got law enforcement listening to this, uh, that maybe they don't even understand. They're in the same situation you were in, but they don't even understand, you know, why they're keeping that door open. And just your last point about closure, speaking to that point of closure, maybe that's what they need to hear to be able to move on and be healthier and heal from their situation. So thank you so much, James, for coming on and uh chatting with me.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_01:So in 18 months, let's work some quick math here. 18 months took six seconds for James's incident to unfold. From the time when you take that six seconds and you divide it into the full 18 months before he got cleared, that's 777,600,000 times longer to clear this case than it took for the case to unfold. That is a crazy amount of numbers. It's crazy, ladies and gentlemen. I really appreciate you sticking around for this extended conversation. You guys are absolutely awesome. Uh, you know, just surpassed the 100th episode. So, you guys, thank you so much. I'm gonna do another hundred, and we'll see you about this time next year. Ladies and gentlemen, that is the Murders to Music Podcast.
