From Theater Lights to Patrol Nights: Officer Matt Johnson

Transcript

Meet Officer Matt Johnson

Officer Sam Rippamonti 0:02

Welcome back to another episode of Allen Police: Behind the Badge. We're your host, Officer Sam Rippamanti and Alexus Birmingham.

Community Outreach Coordinator Alexus Birmingham 0:08

And today our guest is Officer Matt Johnson.

Officer Matt Johnson 0:11

Hello, guys.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 0:12

Yeah, thank you.

Officer Matt Johnson 0:12

It's a big seat to thank you.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 0:14

Thanks for coming on. We've been wanting to get you on for a while.

Officer Matt Johnson 0:16

That's that says a lot. Thank you. Following Chiefs and Deputy Chiefs and NFL players and D1 athletes. Now the best. Oh, well, I'm up with that.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 0:28

So we'll get into what you do for the department here in a minute. But off the top of your head, I know you've been in multiple units with the within the police department. You've got to have some stories from along the way. Because we've been here both 18 and a half. Yeah, we started about 19. You're about two months older than I am. Yeah. I'm your senior officer. We came up as babies. So uh give us a story. Tell us something fun from your career here.

Officer Matt Johnson 0:56

I mean, patrol's uh a litany of stories. It's it's something new every day. You know, anything you see on cops, you you see here in the city of Island. That's true. Um, but we've gotten to do a lot of cool stuff. Catch murderers, bank robbers, um, fights, DWIs, thefts.

The Distinct Truck Bank Robbery Chase

Officer Sam Rippamonti 1:12

Yeah, you I remember a case, I don't remember how many years ago it was, but a bank robbery. I think you were in street crime unit at the time. Yep. Can you tell us a little bit about that story?

Officer Matt Johnson 1:23

Yeah, so that was right when street crime started. Uh Officer Courtney and I were working in an unmarked charger, and a bank robbery comes out at Tom Thema, Wells Fargo. So they're given a vehicle description, and all we kept getting was it's a real distinct truck, real distinct truck. We're like, what do we look for? Real distinct, like we don't know what that means. So more comes out, like they had a camper shell on it, and the camper shell was two different heights and stuff. Like, all right, at least we know kind of something to look for. So we were sitting northbound on top of Ridgeview, and we're Ridgeview is just two lanes. So we're sitting on top of Ridgeview, and of course, turn time Jackson's right there.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 1:59

Yeah.

Officer Matt Johnson 1:59

And as we see a real distinct truck coming at us, we're asking, like, what color it is, you know, what's what anything about it. Wasn't there some confusion on the there was because of the RP was colorblind. So we got like seven different colors of this truck we're supposed to be looking for in, you know, rush hour traffic. But we see this truck, we say, okay, that's that's gotta be it. So we go to turn around and here comes a funeral procession.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 2:20

Oh no.

Officer Matt Johnson 2:20

So we gotta like do this 30-point turn on the bridge to go to not go down all the way back behind the funeral procession, come back up. So we get down to the highway, get back up northbound, and you've got three ways to go. You can go to McKinney, you can go back towards Frisco, or you can go straight, you know, up north. So we said, Well, just pick away. So we went straight. It wasn't the right way. So guy, guy gets away. So, so we're we're we had to work overnight. So we're working at uh the outlet mall, uh, assignment you're familiar with. Remember when coach would get hit and they said, Yeah, we gotta sit out in front of coach all night long because someone's gonna break into coach. So Officer Courtney and I are there and we're chit-chatting on the phone about you know what we could do. And I said, Man, I said if he went back towards town, went to Frisco, then he'd be on the toll way because he was in the right lane, and we're like that. He could either go to Highway Five or go the toll way. So I said, Call the toll way, just see if they have like a camera. Let's give it like nine minutes, and let's say, did this, did anything weird go through at this time? So he he calls and he's like within 10 minutes, calls back. He's like, hey, they got the truck. It's on video. I'm like, what are you talking about? He goes, the video records and it only keeps captures 19 minutes of or 19 hours of video. So we got the truck. We just have to do a subpoena for that truck to get the license plate. We're like, perfect. So next morning we get to work. I'm like, next morning, it's later on that night. We fire off this subpoena and we're expecting like one truck, one license plate back, right? No, we got like 7,000 license plates.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 3:52

It's a lot of traffic.

Officer Matt Johnson 3:53

So they can't they can't narrow it down to like one gantry, one whatever. It's like this whatever block it was, it was a block. So now it's just entering a thousand tags and trying to find that one truck. So we find it. And then we find the driver's license photo to the registered owner of the truck, and it's our bad guy. We're like, we got him. So we find out where he works, we find out what the deal is we call. Of course, everybody's because it's bank robbery, right? Every everybody's involved, FBI's involved, our uh CID's involved. So we say, we got this guy. Um, we found out where he works, we're gonna go sit up on his job. Well, it's an electrician company where they have 35,000 work trucks that are all identical. Was it Denton County area? It was Denton County. Yep. So we're all the way out far, far west Denton County. So we find out that all these guys, before they get back to the store or the shop or whatever at 4:30, hang out at QT. So we're like, we'll go to QT and we'll nab this guy. There's like 30,000 trucks in the parking lot. Everyone's just milling around, they all look the same, they're all wearing the same outfit. We're like, this is impossible. So all right, someone sit on the guy's truck, and when someone walks to the truck, then we'll go run in and nab them. Great. So we got a guy parallel to the truck. Okay, I got a guy walking through the truck. So we start rolling in. Well, it is like this eternally long bay of like garage doors and equipment sheds and stuff. And we're just flying through this place. And we slam down, get this guy, take him into custody, put him in the back of the car. And FBI's there and they want to talk to him. So they talk to him in the back of our car. We're like, cool, you know, kind of high-fiving and stuff. And just, I mean, we're done. And like the time delay it took for everybody else to get there, like it's all over. But like, people are still flying in the parking lot. This guy that owns electrician place is losing his mind. They were driving like that in the parking lot. We're like, we got this guy, it's we can't tell you what is what he's done, but it's pretty bad. So they're like, don't tell anybody about this, you know, don't do any press releases on this thing, you know, it'll all come out. Like, all right, cool. So we're finish our high fives and we go back and we go to his house and recover a bunch of the money, and then we're driving back to work. We've been up like 36 hours by this point.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 6:00

Wow.

Officer Matt Johnson 6:01

So we're tired. Get up the next morning, nothing in the news. Kind of wait next day, nothing in the news. That Friday, FBI nabs the guy. We're like, FBI? It was us. We did this. FBI didn't have anything to do with it. So I was gonna kind of those things where you're like, I see how all this works now. Grabbing the FBI nab is, and he'd been doing this. He was called the nice guy bandage or something, but he was a note slider, so he'd come in and slide you a note and say, Hey, I need to.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 6:29

He was like an old country fellow.

Officer Matt Johnson 6:31

Mm-hmm.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 6:32

Wasn't there a reason? Well, I can't remember was something with his wife or backstory to why he was doing it.

Tracking Plates And The Arrest At QT

Officer Matt Johnson 6:38

Diabetes or something, and he couldn't afford that. She was real sick. So he started to rob banks and was like, Hey, this is easy. So then he would just keep robbing banks, keep robbing banks.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 6:46

I remember trying to say he was she was real sick, and they found out what was her illness, and she's like, Diabetes. Yeah, diabetes went.

Officer Matt Johnson 6:53

She went to rob a bank, maybe. But yeah, I guess you do what you have to do at at that point. But yeah, FBI nabs the guy. We're like, okay.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 7:01

So you were in street crimes. That's no longer around anymore, that unit. Um, can you explain what street crimes was?

Officer Matt Johnson 7:08

So we kind of have an off uh an offshoot of that. What we were tasked to do at the time we had a bunch of house burglaries. So we were tasked to put burglars in jail, and this is where they would like kick your back door uh while you're at work, take all your stuff. And it was it was a lot of different groups. Well, we identified um a bunch of different groups and we started to take them all to jail. And then um we had one kind of specific guy that kept hitting Allen over and over and over. But every time he was in a vehicle, but the vehicle had modifications to it every time. So, like the first one had a paper tag and like stock rims, second one had aftermarket rims and a paper tag, third one had a dealer tag or a regular hard tag and stock rims and like some more stuff. So we're like, God are we gonna find this car? So we kind of did the same thing. We put in a request for all the cars that were registered from this date to this date that would have the paper tag, what got paper plates and what got hard tags in that same time frame, and found this car. So we were like, it's in Richardson. We're gonna go see if we can just drive around that neighborhood, drive around some apartments and see if we can find this thing. Well, we're going southbound and we get off at like Arapahoe or something, and in the parking lot of the gold repair, uh gold cellar is our car. Oh my god. I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. So slide in there on awful wheels, and there was our car. So we got the car, we you know, did some investigative work, and uh lo and behold, a couple days later, this guy gets caught during a burglary in Allen and goes to jail.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 8:38

Wow.

Officer Matt Johnson 8:38

Well, we want him to go out and show us all these houses because he's he's he's super talkative. So it's like we show us the houses that you hit and we can kind of clear some of these up. So we had a couple of like broken back windows, but like didn't look like entry was made and stuff. So we're driving up Angel, and we're driving by this neighborhood that had a couple of those, and he's like, Yeah, yeah, I hit this neighborhood, I hit the street right here. And we're like, You gotta be kidding. Like, that's we didn't think it was one of his, but it was one of his because most of his were on the west side. So this guy's talking and he's like, you know what? I really want Whataburger. So we go, we had gotten this guy out of county jail, like he's in handcuffs and a jumpsuit in the back of the car, and he's just showing us all these houses that he hit so we can clarify them all. He goes, I really want water burger. I said, Man, I'll buy you Whataburger. I said, But would you do a video for us on how to not get your house burglarized, like what you're looking for? And he's like, Absolutely. So this dude just kind of monologued for about an hour while we're eating What's her, and I'm just kind of remembering all these questions. So it came down to it, and Sergeant Felty's like, Hey, let's get this guy to do the video. I want you to interview him. I'm like, Oh, absolutely not. I was like, I'll write you down all the questions and you can interview the guy. So ACTV comes out, we go to the jail in the I don't know, report writing room or whatever, and we they I'm thinking it's gonna be like a camera, like a jailhouse interview, you know, like one camera or whatever. No, they got lights and backdrops and microphones. I mean, it's a it's a whole production.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 9:59

AC TV does it big, yeah.

Officer Matt Johnson 10:00

So they put it on YouTube and it was like, I don't know, seven million views or something. So everyone's like, oh, and you're reading all the comments. That's staged, that guy's an actor, there's no way he can tell you stuff. Yeah, like I I was there. That is 100% legit. And this dude was he was just super educated on alarm systems and could have done so much with his yeah, yeah. But his whole deal was he he but he gave us kind of everything that a thief does. He's like, I'm not a I'm not a home invader, I'm not a you know, bad guy, I don't want to confront anybody. But he would like he kind of left it, he kind of alluded to, but he pepper spray dogs. So like if the dog come, he would pepper spray the dog, and people would be like, My dog's covered in red, what's going on? And then they go in there, whole house is empty with all their stuff. So this guy laid it all out. I mean, what to look for, what they look for, what burgers look for, what you know, what uh child predators look for, what murderers look for, I mean, all this kind of stuff.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 10:54

So we're just like usually don't get that.

Officer Matt Johnson 10:57

No, his thing was just, I mean, talking. He was super highly educated guy that just because you got him water burger. And Whataburger was it. That's it.

The “Nice Guy” Bandit And The Credit

Officer Sam Rippamonti 11:06

It's a staple in the state. So he even broke down like when you're pulling up to a house, like nosy neighbors. Oh, yeah, talking about if you see somebody looking through the blinds, like he's he's moving on, he's not sticking around if if if nosy neighbors are watching you.

Officer Matt Johnson 11:20

And that's why everybody thought it was fake because he talked about the VIP program and how neighborhood watches work and all this stuff, and like that's all a setup just to get the police department you know credit for all these extra things they do. We're like, this, no, he flat laid it out. I see a nosy neighbor and the nosy neighbor's watching me, I'm out of there. I see uh uh you know police car drive by, I'm gonna wait about five minutes. I see neighborhood watch people, I'm out of there. Yeah, it's like so it he wasn't scared of the police because he knows we're just kind of roaming around. He goes, if it's neighborhood watch, he goes, they're watching, I'm gone.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 11:48

Because he would scout the neighborhoods prior, right?

Officer Matt Johnson 11:50

Yeah, he would go jogging. He was a jogger. Yeah, remember that? Yeah, so he would jog and it it was, I mean, just a litany of information. He would burglarize the house, take all the stuff out, you know, go five trash cans down, throw it in the trash can, and they keep jogging. So if he got caught, he didn't have the stuff on him, but the stuff was far enough away where he could always go back and retrieve it, and no one's gonna look that far down.

Speaker 5 12:10

Right.

Officer Matt Johnson 12:10

So when we if we if I mean but all of our burglaries dried up. I mean, we had years with no home burglaries, and it was like this guy was prolific.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 12:19

And I believe that video is still on our ACTB channel on YouTube. So if you want to listen or watch it, go check it out. Yeah, still gets quite a bit of a.

Officer Matt Johnson 12:29

Yeah, uh the UK had a huge like tick in it. We're like, what is what are people there? But but it's the it's universal information. Don't keep all your stuff in your master bedroom, hide your important stuff. If you have heirloom jewelry, don't keep it where your other jewelry is because they're gonna steal it. And he he kind of got in the video, he's like, you know, I I feel bad. I I took a lot of uh heirloom jewelry, and once people started telling me what what how sentimental it was, I felt real bad that I took it.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 12:54

Well, we were hoping for a uh you know a follow-up video one day, you know, turned his life around. Well he's back in prison.

Speaker 5 13:02

So yeah.

Street Crimes Unit And Burglary Tactics

Officer Sam Rippamonti 13:03

Well, won't be getting that follow-up with the happy ending to that one right now. So talk about police. You didn't you weren't a police officer early on in your career out of high school and college, right? No, no. I've had I mean you've lived up in New York, New York City. What were you doing in New York City?

Officer Matt Johnson 13:22

So I did theater. So I went to uh uh arts high school in Florida and did, you know, production, the lighting, sound, stage management, production design. Um, and came to Dallas and got a job at Water Tower Theater in Addison and a show came through with a lady named Sandy Duncan. Y'all know her? Peter played Peter Pan.

Speaker 5 13:40

Yeah.

Officer Matt Johnson 13:41

So she was doing a production, but they had a summer stock before. Like, hey, we we need you to come up at the summer stock and do theater with us. I'm like, it was in Massachusetts, Berkshire, Massachusetts. Never heard of it, right? I'm like, yeah, let's go. So we go up there and we do all these shows with like all these super famous people. I'm like, whoa, this is crazy. I was all uh intern as an electrician. So we did, you know, hung all the lights and did all the the stage stuff. And then through that, met a uh person that was like, hey, we have this theater in New York and we need a um production manager. So would you be interested in a job in New York City? And I'm like, in the city, and like, yeah, got an apartment for you, got all that stuff. I'm like, well, yeah, well, I'm 19 years old, let's go. So I moved to New York, called my mom, like, hey, I'm moving to New York. She's like, You're what? My dad's like, uh, you're what? Yeah, 19 years old. So go to the city, get a job. And I was I'd taken a break from college at the time, right? Oh, yeah. But my first job at this place was to hire four interns. So I'm like, okay, so there's a stack of resumes, and I'm talking an inch thick each one, and it's masters of theater, and you know, all these unbelievable degrees. I'm like, and you're gonna come work for me.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 14:47

Who didn't have any knowledge of this thing?

Officer Matt Johnson 14:49

For for I mean, I I had great knowledge, right? I had the job, but I'm like, you're gonna come be an intern for $50 a week in New York City. Wow. So I was like, well, that kind of sums up my my college. You can't eat on $50 a week in New York City, found out. Correct. So worked, you know, we did off-Broadway, Broadway, uh, a lot of cool shows. Um, and then got to a point where I was either gonna go on a Disney cruise ship and be gone forever, or sit with the lighting designer and draft lighting design stuff for all of the tours. And I was like, you know, I'm kind of bored with this. So came back to Dallas. Um, and then through I went kind of back to work for Water Tower Theater doing some some design work, met a guy, and then started an entire marketing career. Yeah. So long before law enforcement.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 15:36

What brought you into law enforcement?

Officer Matt Johnson 15:39

You know, so my dad was in law enforcement, but he got into it late as well. So he didn't get in until he was like 50 something, 40, like late.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 15:46

Late career.

Officer Matt Johnson 15:47

Late career. So that was like his, you know, second third. He spent his life in radio business and then got in law. He's retired now. Oh, yeah. So he worked in McKinney. So but when I was like six years old, I listened to the police scanner all night long. Like that would I'd turn it on and go to sleep. So I don't know what my fascination was, but I listened to that police scanner in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and we're just all the radio lingo and all this. I was just fascinated with it. One one night my parents called and they said, Hey, you you missed it last night. A guy crashed his motorcycle. We were that lived in a neighborhood that's under construction. I crashed his motorcycle. There was fire trucks and police cars and stuff. Why didn't you wake me up? Like it was three o'clock in the morning. I'm like, that's all, you know, I'm I like all that stuff. So got got done with my marketing career. I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna, I'm gonna just take a shot and be a cop. I'm like, well, go to McKinney, your dad's there. I was like, uh, I don't know. Law enforcement getting into it, right? It's the hardest job to get, easiest one to lose. So I was like, I didn't didn't want to go there and have something go wrong or go, you know, oh, he didn't make it, and then it reflects poorly on my dad or whatever. So I'm like, I'm just gonna go. I lived in Allen, liked the city, loved it. We built a house here. So I was like, you know, I'm just gonna go see what Allen's got. Like your own path. And yeah, just did my own thing and uh, you know, got into academy and did well and went through training and didn't mess up too bad. And eighteen and a half years later, here we are.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 17:07

Yeah, we went through training at the same time. I think I was maybe a month, two months ahead of you. Yep. So it was kind of weird when I got out of training. You and Sergeant Arsenal were finishing up. Yep. And uh so I would be coming in and they'd they'd be in the break room, you know, like we are when we're in training. We'd had to stand in the break room when we weren't doing anything.

Officer Matt Johnson 17:27

You remember the night you got you got your letter or you got signed off on? Yeah, I do. Yeah, so he gets signed off. You're in training, right? It's you kind of only talk when spoken to, and you're just you're not you're not it's not as bad anymore. Right. A lot of that's this is all this is old school. And uh so he gets so we're sitting there chit-chatting, right? Just waiting for whatever to happen.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 17:46

What's the how's it going?

Officer Matt Johnson 17:47

Like, what's it like being in the car by yourself? Yeah, we're excited. And then he gets pulled into an office and he gets you're you're out of training, you're released, you know, you start your regular shift, and he comes back in and we're picked up our conversation. And the boss comes on the corner and like, ah, uh, you're you're now an officer. You were not yet. I'm like, oh my gosh.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 18:06

I got called in and tell you, hey, they're still in training. You don't need to be talking to that guy's no longer here. But we're like 30 seconds ago. We were in prison together. Yeah. So me and Matt have you know, we've grown together over our career here. We've done a lot of fun stuff at work and outside of work. Oh, yeah. I mean, there was a time Matt called me up and he's like, Hey, I think we're gonna go motorcycle. Yeah, he's like, Yeah, but I don't have a motorcycle license, so I need you to drive it home. You bought it. I bought it, and then he had to drive it. So we went out there to look at it and he goes, Yeah, I want it.

Officer Matt Johnson 18:39

So I rode it all the way back, kept it in his garage, and then I had to go get my motorcycle license. And it was like, usually you need a way. So I'm driving this thing home, and uh, this is dangerous.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 18:50

We were in that savannah neighborhood out by towards Denton. I remember it. I was like, we went out there and yeah, I want it. I was like, okay.

Officer Matt Johnson 18:57

Well, that was one of the reasons I sold it was, you know, let's go to a motorcycle safety tip here. They're dangerous, right? So the first couple weekends you go to the hospital and ankles are hanging off, and people are like, you know, I don't think I don't think a motorcycle's for me anymore. I think I want it, you know, more metal around me.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 19:12

So I held on to mine until my third child was born, and my wife was she was tired of me going on I'd go on motorcycle trips with my several guys from work.

Officer Matt Johnson 19:23

Yeah, long ones.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 19:24

They go Yeah, all the way up to Big Bend, up in Oklahoma, Arkansas. We'd go all over, you know, week-long trips sometimes. And you know, I had three kids now. And she was like, Hey, you I really don't like you going on these trips because my father-in-law had gotten in a bad wreck. So it was all these different things. I said, Well, I'll get rid of it if you don't me buy a boat. I had to work a deal. That was it. She agreed to the boat. She agreed to the boat, and then the boat only lasted a few years, and we realized we don't have time for a boat. Yeah. Kids are in sports, so you're never around. Yeah. So I don't even have the boat anymore.

Officer Matt Johnson 19:59

Yeah, we have a boat, and it's the same thing. It just sits under the awning and we go to baseball games the rest of the weekend.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 20:04

So yeah, you live up, you know, Oklahoma out there. Pretty much.

Viral Interview With A Prolific Burglar

Officer Matt Johnson 20:08

Pretty much. On the land. So you have two boys, right? Two boys. You and that one. Yep, 14 and 11, both baseball players. Yeah, they're straight baseball now, right? Well, still basketball. Bowen's still doing basketball, but yeah, they're they're big into baseball.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 20:22

Full-time jobs.

Officer Matt Johnson 20:23

It's kind of like people go, What's your hobby? I'm like, my hobby is to sit at baseball practice and watch. Man. Do you do traveling? Oh, yeah. Travel ball. Wow. Oh, yeah.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 20:32

That consumes a lot of.

Officer Matt Johnson 20:33

You get a good comfy camping chair and you know, get your balls. Do you have the rocking one? I do have the rocking one. Yeah. And you even have a little tiny bottle of WD40 to spray it on their squeaky ones because they squeak off. Do you have the footrest? No, I don't have the footrest.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 20:45

Well, they have the recliner one. Yeah, you know, like she's telling me.

Officer Matt Johnson 20:47

Yeah, full-on setups out there. People spend thousands of dollars.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 20:51

Oh, it's hot when it's hot. Well, and it's cold when it's cold.

Officer Matt Johnson 20:54

We played in the snow before. So people use pods and heaters, and you know, so you have to be ready for all of it.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 20:59

My niece did all the travel softball, so they would always come. I mean, we live in South Texas, all my family. They would be up in Dallas at least three to four times a year for tournaments. And I mean, they would go to Colorado, they'd go to all these different states. And it's like you said, they all have their chairs, their cooler things. They set up a certain setup they all bring to every tournament.

Officer Matt Johnson 21:20

Snacks, drink mixes, sunscreen.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 21:22

And then their younger kids are just running wild.

Officer Matt Johnson 21:25

They're feral. Like you've seen them, like you know into Sunday, you're like, oh, there's my child I haven't seen in three days.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 21:33

So when Matt was in street crimes, there was another officer, Garrett Courtney, who's an SRO. You know Garrett. Yeah. And then we had another officer, uh, and a detective, uh, Caleb McMillan, who's now a preacher. Y'all can y'all send him back to the church. Yep. He uh but they were under the I was in community relations. Well, the sent Sergeant Felty was over both of us. Oh wow. So we all office together out of the same area. So we have Yeah, at the village substation. So we had a real close group so much to where we decided to all take a work trip. And uh that was that's probably the most fun I've had on a guy's trip. I haven't been on a whole lot of guys' trips, but that one was a blast. We decided to go to West Virginia. That's where Sergeant Felty's from. And uh they always always talking about the Hatfield McCoy, Hatfield McCoy train.

Officer Matt Johnson 22:23

Fall colors, all colors, all the trees would change colors. You gotta go see it.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 22:27

Is there a train that runs through there?

Officer Matt Johnson 22:28

A train?

Officer Sam Rippamonti 22:30

There's a live feed of a train.

Officer Matt Johnson 22:31

Oh, there is actually. Yes, there's a mini uh train that run through there that are on YouTube. I thought he was fascinated with trains.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 22:37

He was there towards the end when Sergeant Felty he was he was ready to retire. He was just waiting to a certain date. He you know, we have multiple monitors. He had a monitor that we'd keep up of the live train feed of a certain intersection in West Virginia, train crossing, and then you just hear like the train come through, and you're like, oh, train's here.

Speaker 3 22:57

Train's coming, train's coming, cold train.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 23:00

But we loaded up, he was already there because he has another friend he rides with.

Officer Matt Johnson 23:05

Well, and we had to like finagle our work schedule so we're like all four of us could go at the same time. So we was like it was a scheduling nightmare. We're like, all right, we got this day, we got this day, and we got one day to get there and one day to get back.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 23:16

Yes, because we wanted to maximize our time in West Virginia, so we left at 6 p.m. on a Saturday and pulled into West Virginia at noon on a Sunday.

Officer Matt Johnson 23:27

Yep, nonstop. We stopped one time, I think. And the ironic part was so like, you know, we switched off drivers and stuff, like three o'clock in the morning, the middle of like Memphis or somewhere, we stopped at this convenience store. We're like the Powerball was like two billion dollars or something. So like we all bought a Powerball ticket. And then we go there, have our whole trip, and on the way back, same thing. We stopped, we're like, Is this the same store we stopped at before? It was the same store exactly. We were so delirious. It was like you know, two o'clock in the morning, the lights are so bright. We're like, This is the same place we stopped on the way here.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 24:00

Like, what are the odds? Yeah, we go back and look at some of those pictures sometimes because we all put them in a big shared folder, and maybe how we made it out alive is beyond me.

Officer Matt Johnson 24:11

He he wrote he wrote a four-wheeler, so we all had side by sides. He wrote a four-wheeler on this, like it's called the outlaw trail, right? Not maintained, it's dangerous, it's like old coal mines. And we're riding, and it's he's like huge ruts, but he's on this big old green pipe, and he's like the four-wheeler's like a skateboard sliding on this pipe. And we're like, What's that pipe? I'm like, Oh, that's high-pressure natural gas. We're like, so what happens if that pipe breaks? They go, Oh, it's bad. It like it would be an explosion, it'd blow the mountain off, and we'd all die. We're like, hey, let's get off that pipe. Yeah, let's put the trail in. That's where it went. You and then down the cliff was well, 1700 feet of straight down to nothing.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 24:49

Oh, it's it was it's different world when I say that. Like, we we turned a corner one day passing one of the coal mines.

Officer Matt Johnson 24:57

Oh, yeah, the guy.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 24:57

And there was a coal miner. Like, he had he was leaving for the day, and he had his like thermos in one hand and his lunch pill in the other, and he was still wearing his like green Stanley thermos, and it was like picturesque, like you coming out of a mine. I looked at that guy and I was like, there is no way I would try to go, you know, hand to hand with that guy in combat. Like, he he looked tough as nails.

Officer Matt Johnson 25:18

Well, and that's you know, we're out there, you know, roughing it, right? And these expensive side by sides and our brain gear and stuff were like three manly. And this guy's coming out of a coal mine, we're like, that guy beat us. Like that guy, hands down, is more manly than we are.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 25:31

Yeah, that first day we got there, we were so delirious. We went and got to ride a little bit. I remember we had all we we cooked dinner. Me and Matt were kind of the chefs for the like Garcia on the on the trips where the cookies we cooked the whole time, and then we're sitting there on that porch, and I think I was asleep with my eyes open.

Life Before Policing: Theater To Marketing

Officer Matt Johnson 25:51

It's so delirious. We'd be in the car and like music would be on, and we're like, Sammy, you're you got past your so you keep the driver up. I got you, I got you. And he fell asleep. We turned the music up, he started waking up to the sound song. Like, you're dead asleep. Don't act like you weren't. We're gonna die because you're not keeping the driver awake.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 26:07

I was uh I am not a good passenger when when I'm he doesn't hide it well either.

Officer Matt Johnson 26:11

You know, you don't do like the we were just looking out the window. I mean, he was just like he was out.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 26:15

Oh yeah, it'd be mouth open. Yeah, it was a good time, though. Good time. So shifting back to to work. Now you're on patrol?

Officer Matt Johnson 26:26

On patrol.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 26:27

What's going on in patrol?

Officer Matt Johnson 26:28

Man, patrol's great. Is it? I mean, that's you know, chief calls it the hub. I mean, it really is. It's it's why we all got into law enforcement, you know. Um, some days in Allen or Slow means we get to be defensive. So you know, you don't get to just take off. You get to be, well, yeah, I mean, it's you get to choose what you know, if there's a a place that gets a lot of thefts, you know, we'll go, we'll go do a lot more there, be a uh a deterrence. Um, you know, we don't have a lot of the in-progress hot calls and stuff anymore. So I think our our patrol mentality has changed on let's deter some of this stuff and let people know Allen's not the place you come do that.

Speaker 3 27:04

Right.

Officer Matt Johnson 27:05

You know, we have that's that slogan, not in Allen. Hashtag NIA. Hashtag NIA. And that means it's spread, you know, all these people know each other that come up here and do crime and they go, We get caught last time with Allen, so don't go there. Right. Um, so that's what we want, you know, our citizens to go. You may see us sitting around in a parking lot. We might be watching a car, we might be watching a business. Um, you know, we lot do a lot of that where we're concentrated on on the um highly populated high crime areas. And I high crime is a loose terminal, right? But we want to keep it that way. Um, you know, I want I want families to walk and kids to play and you know, not have to worry about the bad guys that are that are lurking.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 27:44

So you guys aren't just sitting around in parking lots.

Officer Matt Johnson 27:46

No, in fact, yeah, that's that's a big no-no. A big no-no. You you are and but the but that you know, we work a 12-hour shift, right? And that 12-hour shift, you're you're expected to work for 12 hours. It's not like you can go, oh, I went on a really rough call. Um, you know, it could be something, you know, life-changing to somebody else. We may do five or six of those a shift, you know what I mean? So there's a lot of mental fortitude that comes with being a police officer, and that's part of it is you got to get back up, and just because you answered a bad call, you know, 10 minutes ago, you click clear, you're ready for the next call. And it could be a call equally as bad or or you know, uh changing somebody's tire. It could be changing a tire. It could be, you know, who knows what. But but that's that's the the the fun of patrol is it's it's never the same day twice. Um, you know, and and with uh Chief Dye, I mean, we it it patrol has completely shifted its mentality of you know, kind of just go along with the flow to no, you're gonna go out there and we're gonna go, you know. Yeah, we're not gonna sit back and let things happen if you're gonna avoid it. Correct. I mean, the the best, you know, offense is good defense, and that's that's where we're that's where we're at now. So real happy on patrol. That's awesome.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 28:51

Are you any other units like specialized?

Officer Matt Johnson 28:55

Um, I'm a crisis negotiator. Used to be called a hostage negotiator, but we really don't do much hostage negotiation anymore. Right. Um, which I got into that's kind of part of my my thing was I was in marketing, I was in sales.

Speaker 3 29:06

Okay.

Officer Matt Johnson 29:06

And I could basically tell you within six or seven scenarios of what this person, what their buying technique was gonna be, whether they were gonna really buy or not. So I had it down. I said, it's it's gonna be six of these things. If it's this, you know, it it was algebra, A plus B equals C. So if it's this, sell on that. If it's that, sell on that. If they're if they're just looking, you know, tell them glad to have their business a different day. I said, you know, the ultimate sale would be to talk someone in crisis out of a crisis situation, be that a hostage situation, a suicidal person, whatever. So I said, you know, that would be to me is the ultimate sale. All the talking and stuff you do in regular sales, like that seems fun. So I said, you know, I want to be a hostage negotiator, I want to go be a police officer. So within, I don't know, a year and a half, they're like, hey, uh, we have a hostage spot open. I'm like, uh, I'll put in for it. So I'm thinking there'd be a lot of people put in for it right. I'm like, this is that's a pretty big deal. I was the only person. It's like, all right, welcome to the welcome to the show. I'm like, oh gosh, I hope I don't mess this up. And Sammy's been one, right? So that first time you're in negotiator school and they're like, hey, you go through all this stuff about, and it's it's a lot of psychology and it's a lot of language skills, and it's a lot of active listening, and it's a lot of, you know, how do you talk to somebody in crisis because you're not dealing with somebody that's rational? You know, how do you get them to be rational? Um, all that rapport building and stuff, I mean, it's not transactional, it's you're you're it's a development. We get to do that on patrol every day. I mean, so it's not just a crisis situation. We deal with that on a daily basis, you know, a bad domestic situation, uh, you know, somebody that's got mental health problems is causing a disturbance, whatever it is. And uh so when you slap those headphones on in negotiator school, right? Like you're like, that's it. This is my this is my make it or break it moment. But on patrol, you have 10 of those a day.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 30:49

I mean, so it's it's a so good for just any officer to go through, even if you don't really want to be on the negotiations team, because one of the hardest things uh to learn when you're early in your career here is be quiet and listen. Yeah, you know, they're gonna tell you what's going on, and you know, you have two ears, one mouth, listen twice as well.

Officer Matt Johnson 31:12

Learning how to be a good listener, or adversely, if you have to talk to somebody that doesn't want to talk, how do you talk to them without shutting them off? How do you talk to them without open-ended questions?

Officer Sam Rippamonti 31:20

Yep, not DPS conversations kind of questions, you know, all that stuff you learn in in crisis negotiation school, and it's it's great training.

Training Days, Friendship, And Motorcycles

Officer Matt Johnson 31:29

Yeah. So, I mean, we're we're all mental health peace officers here, so we're we're all trained in how to identify mental health issues. But when you get to do it on a daily basis of just honing that skill and keeping that um fresh, that that that art of conversation, I mean, that's really what it is. Um, when I got hired on here, they're like, Man, you know, you're oral board, you you seem like used car salesman. But I'm like, well, I was in sales, like that's that's kind of what but that's where I I think that you know, it our tool belt's full of tools. Not everything is a hammer, right? So a lot of times you have to have the ability to communicate and talk and see through what they're what they're really saying or see the underlying issues and be able to not really confront them at the moment, but know that they're there, keep them in your back pocket and kind of work your way towards it. But all that conversation skill is uh showing empathy, yeah, absolutely. It's just developed.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 32:17

So, with that, you're like assisting like SWAT teams on certain missions or things like that.

Officer Matt Johnson 32:22

Maybe we do. Um, we actually uh the negotiators, there's a couple of us that do um the intelligence. So a negotiator team is built of a lot of different uh components and uh uh Intel guys, myself and Sean Forkin, we get to do a lot of like kind of behind the scenes setup of scenarios and stuff. So that's really been fun to do is take negotiators that aren't as comfortable, um, putting them with you know bad guys that we have that are you know uh actors and saying, hey, this is gonna this is really a SWAT team mission. We're gonna burn the SWAT team for three hours. They gotta, they gotta rotate and do all their stuff, whatever they have to do, command uh control-wise, for three hours. Negotiator's job, talk to that guy who doesn't want to talk for three hours. Start the clock. It's incredibly difficult, right? And the actors, it's really hard for them because they're gonna go up and down, they're gonna mess with you. I mean, you you know, you've been on the other end of that. It's an actor that you know especially, it's ultimately hard. But it's just that it's that exercise of of doing it and and and getting it until we're either gonna burn that three hours out or we say something wrong and something goes sideways. And I mean, there's a lot of different facets that that go on, but conversation can go really good or really bad, and it's one sentence.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 33:39

Yeah, but working the hotline, I've gotten on calls where I've been on the phone for you know over two hours trying to help somebody through a crisis because that's usually what it is. It's not somebody that is just that has mental health problems, so so to speak. They're just in a crisis. You know, you're in that crisis moment and it's like that they're not thinking clearly. Like, crud, what am I like? I'm just gonna end it because I don't know. I can't think of any other way to get out of this. So you have to learn to kind of help coach them through coming up with a plan, them coming up with their own plan. Because if you come up with a plan for somebody in crisis, it's not gonna work, right? So you gotta try to help coach them to come up with their plan to solve the issue, and then a lot of times when you're that high stress level, you're in a crisis, they start to come down, and then all of a sudden they want to go to sleep.

Officer Matt Johnson 34:34

So you're like, okay. But that's the best part about the department is we get so much training, and we have so much training ability um and opportunity that that when you watch, you know, there's the thousand videos on YouTube of stuff that's great, and you go, gosh, how do those guys keep your composure? It was, you know, crisis going on, gunshots going on, these guys are just calculated and communicating and whatever. It's because they've trained it. They've trained it, they've trained it. You watch something that's a miserable failure, they didn't train.

unknown 34:59

Right.

Officer Matt Johnson 34:59

So that's what I love about the department is they give us the opportunity to just train, continually train. And uh, you know, you know, on patrol, any moment something could go bad where we have to use all those skills, and we it's it's a group that's never worked together in that situation at that date and time, with that weather condition, whatever it is, you gotta be ready for it. Right. And that's where all that training just kicks in, where you're like, let's let's go.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 35:22

So, not to not to backtrack, but I just thought of something. Let's see if you remember this or not. So there was a Friday, I it might have been a Thursday, going on, or last or Friday for the week. Matt leaves. Well, he forgot to lock his computer. And IT, please don't come after me for this. But I uh I figured out how to get into his computer and program it to where every 30 seconds a new Google tab would open up on his computer saying, Thank you for voting for me. I won't say who the political candidate, who the political candidate was, but it was not somebody he voted for. So every 30 seconds, a thank you page would pop up, and I forgot about it. And I went home for the weekend and I come in. I come in on Monday, and it's just me and Matt there, and I'm sitting there in his office, and all of a sudden he's like, he starts saying a few choice words, and he's like, I something is wrong with this computer. I do not know what's and then I remember, I'm like, oh, he's like, I came in and there was a million tabs open.

Officer Matt Johnson 36:29

Tens of thousands of tabs were open. And you can't click each, I mean, you can't you know, get rid of them all. It was click, click, click, and you have to go up because they were cascading, right?

Officer Sam Rippamonti 36:40

They're still coming up. Because he had stuff open in there that he didn't want to close it all out, so he had to go through and manually close all those. And he thought it somebody had hacked his computer, you know.

Officer Matt Johnson 36:52

He's just giggling.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 36:54

I couldn't hold it in because he was calling IT and I was like, oh man, I'm totally busted. But then I had to. The funny thing is I couldn't remember how I did it, so I had to Google how to get off. I don't know what they were thinking of that, but that was that was a fun, fun memory from what we had.

Officer Matt Johnson 37:11

No, good times of and it wasn't that I didn't it I didn't have a jiggler, didn't any of that stuff, but just you know, when you walk away, it's got that three-minute delay or whatever before it locks, and he got he got to me.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 37:21

Yeah, because y'all's office was secure. Yeah. So you know they but I knew the code to it. Yeah. Well, you put installed the door lock, so yeah, you know the code. My god.

Officer Matt Johnson 37:29

Jack of all trades.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 37:30

Doesn't surprise me though. Yeah, it's typical Sammy behavior.

Officer Matt Johnson 37:33

Sami stuff. Oh, absolutely. Kind of fun. Absolutely.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 37:37

Is there anything new in uh patrol right now?

Officer Matt Johnson 37:40

Um we have a lot of different uh openings coming up. So we have a sergeant opening coming up. Um talking about getting the bike patrol unit together, so it'll be a full-time bike unit. Of course, we've always got all of our drone guys and our motorcycle guys and our canine and you know all of the people that that help make patrol what it is. Stay in patrol for a while? Yeah. You like it? Yeah, I like it. You have a good I went to SRO, so Officer Strickland, my work wife and I. I was about to ask about her.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 38:05

How's she doing?

Officer Matt Johnson 38:06

She's fantastic.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 38:07

She was a good she's fantastic. She's so good.

Officer Matt Johnson 38:09

So she was in SRO before I went there. So I go to the office and she's like, Hey, you want me to offer some Laney? I'm like, all right, cool. You know, nice to meet you, whatever. Within the first three minutes, like, do we just become best friends? Like, we are exactly the same person. We could be an old married couple like tomorrow, and no one would think anything about it. My wife's like, How's Laney? I mean, this is my real wife, my work wife is like it's we're just the same piece. Laney is awesome.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 38:30

Yeah, she's so much fun.

Officer Matt Johnson 38:32

Yep.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 38:32

She was a good she was good on the podcast. Oh, yeah, she's a natural.

West Virginia Ride And Near Misses

Officer Matt Johnson 38:35

Yeah, she's she's good. But we you put us together with uh, you know, a bunch of kids from high school. It was it was entertaining. It's like you're more laid back than her, though. Yeah, I I that's the thing. I have to do it. I'm the calm one. Yeah. So if that tells you anything, yeah, just be aware, be aware. She's she'll get you. She's a firecracker. And she's you know, CrossFit coach and super in shape, and I'm close to that, right?

Officer Sam Rippamonti 38:59

Yeah. So yeah, you're chasing those boys around.

Officer Matt Johnson 39:02

Yeah, yeah. I do a lot of sitting. Remember, I don't really chase anymore. You still have cows and everything. Got long horns, some horses, just an old rancher. It's an old rancher. Doing my thing.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 39:11

Up in bales, Texas. Yeah. Well, we appreciate you coming on and talking to us today. Thanks for having me. Is there anything you want to share with the community?

Officer Matt Johnson 39:19

With the community. Um, gosh, you know, we're out there all day and night. Um, if we're on a traffic stop, move over and slow down. I can't tell you the amount of times we've been on in it, you know, the highway in the morning or whatever, and people are going 70, 80 miles an hour a foot from you. Right. So for the sake of my family and everybody else's, move over, slow down. Yeah. Give us you see the the police lights, slow down and get away from it. You never know. We could have one car on scene, but you got three cars crashed and they're all blacked out. So you don't know what you're getting into. When you when you approach cars, especially in the dark, slow down.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 39:57

Yeah, and we've had medical issues, you know, where it can spill over into a into that lane next to you.

Officer Matt Johnson 40:02

Yeah, we had one the other day, a guy crashed through the guardrail, half the guardrail sticking out onto the service road, and his car's blacked out and guardrail sticking out. Well, we're you know setting up cars trying to get people there, and cars are flying back and slamming all the brakes before this guardrail. It's like you see all the police cars around. Like, we're trying to get to where this we can secure the scene a little bit, but y'all have to do your part. Slow down.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 40:21

Slow down and move over, slow down and move over. That's my yeah. Very cool.

Officer Matt Johnson 40:26

Words of wisdom. We appreciate you. Well, thank you.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 40:28

Thank you for coming on.

Officer Matt Johnson 40:29

Like I said, there's a big seat to fill with Chief Ben here, Deputy Chiefs, Derek Molina, which has a lot of good stories. Eternal brain.

Officer Sam Rippamonti 40:38

So we have a lot of we have more stories that we could get into, but we'll we'll spare the family podcast. Spare people for those. So thank you for coming. If you'd like to learn more about our police department or upcoming events, go to our website at allenpolice.org. And make sure to like and subscribe. And if you have any comments, leave them down below. See you next time. See you next time.