[00:13] Speaker 1: Welcome. Leo Roundtable at leoroundtable.com, the law enforcement talk show. My name is Chip Debloc, and I'm your host. And we're a group of law enforcement professionals that talk about today's news and issues, but we do it from a law enforcement perspective. And let me introduce the crew. We've got, uh, Chief Joel Schultz on the show, and retired, uh, from police work, but still living in the state of Colorado so he's got to keep his head on a swivel. And we've also got Lieutenant Randy Sutton, the founder of The Wounded Blue at thewoundedblue.org, retired Las Vegas Metro Police, uh, lieutenant as well. So thanks, gentlemen, for being on the show. And a shout-out to our sponsors. You know, we have our title sponsor, Gulls at gulls.com. And don't forget that 15% off discount code. It's REDIO15. You can use that at gulls.com. Also, complianttechnologies.com, our satellite sponsor.

[00:56] Speaker 1: We have gunlearn.com, mymedicare.live, safeguardrecruiting.com, our streaming sponsor, and yes, uh, right now during the live stream, we're streaming to over a million followers. And twobells.com, they built a new online store at leoroundtable.com. Go to the leoroundtable.com to check it out. A shout-out to Bryan Burns for the Free Press at tampafp.com. Thanks for carrying our content, Bryan. And the same with Ray Dietrich with formerlawman.com, and Travis Chase with lawofficer.com. Thanks to all those entities for helping make this show happen. And now, here is the news topics that we're covering today, guys. 15-year-old male student fatally shoots himself after shooting a teacher at a prep- preparatory school, a high school, in Texas, of all places. We got a Colorado sheriff and four deputies, they are all indicted on criminal misconduct investigations. So yeah, that's in, uh, in Colorado, in our chief's neck of the woods.

[01:47] Speaker 1: We've got a suspect fatally shot by Howard County officers when he approaches them with a knife, um, and, uh, I believe he had autism, if I remember correctly. We've got a Dayton police video where an officer-involved shooting leaves one man dead. And we got a longtime Monroe County Sheriff's Office sergeant jailed in a timesheet scandal. We've got a motorcyclist that flees at 103 miles an hour, and then when he gets cornered by a cop, what's he do? He hits the officer with the bike, crashes, jumps off, there's a foot chase, taser. There's, there's a good story coming up on that one. Then locked and loaded, new lawsuit aims to strip gun bans from national park buildings, if we have time to get to that. And then lastly, another video, it's a domestic violence call that ended, um, in a deadly police shooting, uh, by Phoenix Police Department. So that's what we're starting off with. So this first one, thegatewaypundit.com, not a lot of information unless someone on the show has it.

[02:40] Speaker 1: 15-year-old male student fatally shoots himself after he shoots a teacher at the preparatory high school in Texas. So this 15-year-old student, he's dead after shooting at a teacher, uh, or shooting, shooting his teacher at a preparatory high school in Comal County, Texas. And this happened on Monday. Now, the teacher was transport- transported to the San Antonio Hospital, and according to the Associated Press, the student fatally shot himself after he shot the teacher at the campus. Now, the name of the campus is the Hill Country College Preparatory High School. Law enforcement said there's no longer an ongoing threat, but the school was shut down when all this stuff was going on. And the, uh, circumstances that led up to this, of course, are unclear. The FBI is involved in it though, and they are assisting local law enforcement. And, um, unlike in the Guthrie investigation, hopefully the sheriff will actually let the FBI, Randy, do their thing. (laughs) So that's what we have.

[03:35] Speaker 1: Um, any, uh, any commentary on this one? Randy, your mic's open. You wanna take it?

[03:39] Speaker 2: Well, you know, uh, I, I'm happy that the FBI is involved, but the, the real question is, so what? They, they don't... (laughs) This isn't their investigation, uh, unless there is a nexus to terrorism or some federal statute. This is, this is a local investigation. So it's up to the local law enforcement to handle this. Uh, always, always glad to have the FBI, uh, you know, use their forensic abilities if necessary, and, and-

[04:06] Speaker 1: Resources.

[04:06] Speaker 2: ... do any nexus. Yeah, but, um, but at the end of the day, this is not an FBI investigation.

[04:13] Speaker 1: All right, good point. Dr. Schultz?

[04:15] Speaker 3: Yeah, R-Randy is right about that. And, uh, um, I, I think probably there is always a suspicion about, you know, is this a conspiracy, is this a diversion, is this, um, a radicalized thing that might have some roots somewhere else? You know, there, there are a couple of things about school shootings that I always, uh, wanna emphasize. One is the safest place for a K-12 student is behind a locked classroom door when the bad guy is on the other side of a locked door. There have been zero fatalities of K-12 students when they are locked in a classroom behind, um, a, a, a locked classroom door. So, uh, y- y- you know, a lot of civilians and a lot of law enforcement will say, "Oh, we need, we need to evacuate. You need to get everybody outside." Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Protecting in place is, so far, 100% effective. Now, you know, if somebody's out in the hallway or something else, that's, that's different. But...

[05:17] Speaker 3: And the other thing is, um, we tend to think of Columbine, and that's very near and dear to me because my son-in-law was in the cafeteria sitting next to an unexploded propane bomb, uh, during the a-, uh, attack. But, um, we, we still think that that's the template for school shootings. And this sounds like, and I tried to find some other news sources and very little information, as you, as you said, um, it sounds like a personal vendetta against this, uh, particular individual. And that's often the case. Uh, you know, it may be one of these, uh, people or groups that want to make a name for themselves and they want to cause as much havoc and as much death as possible, but it doesn't sound like this was, uh, the case. And there are lots of...... shootings that happen on school grounds that are counted in the number of school shootings.

[06:08] Speaker 3: And so this panic number of, "Oh, there have been hundreds of school shootings" in a year, I don't wanna minimize the problem of, uh, of violence in schools. Um, but if, if somebody happens to roll into a parking lot and, and there's an exchange of gunfire, that's considered a shooting on school grounds even though it may have zero nexus, uh, to the school itself. And this was not a... didn't sound like it was intended to be a mass shooting. Um, I'm, I'm suspecting, again, this is just conjecture but there was one teacher that was targeted for whatever reason. Uh, that 15-year-old went in, did that, and probably had every intention of committing, um, you know, self-murder as is often the case with, with, uh, uh, school attackers. So thi- this was not, um, anomalous, uh, in that th- there weren't lots of other injuries, uh, you know, d- domestic issues, uh, girlfriend, boyfriend, uh, staff, um, th- these kinds of things are included in the whole universe of school shootings.

[07:15] Speaker 3: And everyone is anomalous, you know, we, we... I hope that the jurisdiction there talked about, uh, staging and incident command and, uh, cooperation with other responding agencies and, and, uh, had, uh, had done some practice. Most, most schools, I think, have. Um, but, you know, Uvalde taught us that, um, practicing one type of response for one type of event doesn't necessarily get you ready for other types of events. It's kind of like warfare. We're always prepared, uh, to fight the last battle that we fought the same way that we fought the last battle with the same enemy that we had. And, uh, school, school shootings are, are, are a different breed. There just needs to be some, some very basic general things to do and one of those things is protect in place, get your kids behind a locked door, um, and don't be in any big hurry to get them released.

[08:09] Speaker 3: Uh, I know we have evidence preservation, we have, uh, trauma things to consider, uh, reunification is critical 'cause parents are gonna be gathering outside so you need to plan for that, um, so I, I, I, I'm interested to see what they discover about this shooter and, again, I suspect it's gonna be, uh, they, they were mad at the teacher for pure business and then got rid of themselves which was, which was their intent, my, my conjecture.

[08:40] Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I'm, I'm su- well, fascinating stat about it's 100% effective to have students behind a, a locked door, um, which i- which, which speaks volumes and I'm surprised we don't have more information out yet 'cause this actually broke yesterday evening, I believe, and there's still not a lot of stuff in the news cycle on it a- at all. So, um, and I don't know why. So, um, anyhow, I look forward to getting more information on this, but, uh...

[09:06] Speaker 3: I, I don't think there was enough, there were enough bodies to, to make it newsworthy.

[09:11] Speaker 1: Yeah, that would be sad, wouldn't it? Yeah. That would be sad.

[09:13] Speaker 3: Well, yeah. And, and I, you know, prior to that I, I wrote something about this, uh, years ago after Parkland, um, we know there were school shootings before it started hitting rural and suburban America. In urban areas, you know, if you had a school shooting in New York City or Chicago, um, it would be on page 3B as a, you know, a little one column article but then when it started to hit America's heartland and, and suburbia and, and, uh, white kids started getting killed, uh, then we started to see the, the panic and, and the news coverage. I... Bi- just kind of a sociological observation. Uh, again, not to minimize any, any, uh, attack on any school anywhere.

[09:58] Speaker 1: Well, gentlemen, you ready to go to our next story then? And, uh, we will continue to bring up new information about the school shooting but, um, if you guys are ready for it, our next one that we've got coming up here is from globalordinancenews.com in Colorado so we'll go right back to the chief. But, uh, Colorado sheriff and four deputies indicted in a criminal, uh, misconduct investigation. Now, uh, now, and you can even tell, you know, obviously, you know, from the article you can kind of pick up that it's a smaller agency but we're in the Denver area. Uh, four of the, at least that's what the article says, the chief will either confirm or deny that, but four of the current seven law enforcement officers in a rural Colorado county, including the sheriff as well as a former deputy, they've all been indicted in an investigation into allegations of misconduct according to prosecutors and they said this on Friday.

[10:46] Speaker 1: Now, it's, it's when you hear what the misconduct allegations are, they're gonna give you, like, pause. So a grand jury, they got a grand jury involved in this, they indicted Costilla County Sheriff's Office Sheriff Danny Sanchez and a former deputy by the name of Keith Schultz on charges of allegedly mishandling human remains that were discovered in October of 2024. Um, so, yeah, that was, uh... Just thinking about that, that was, what, a year and a half ago according to the court documents. So, uh, a man had found the remains and, uh, we're coming up on a commercial break so I'm gonna go through this kind of quickly here, but a guy that found the remains reported them to the sheriff's office. He said that the Sheriff Sanchez and Deputy Schultz, they took only the skull and they left the rest of the body behind, including the teeth according to the court documents. And, of course, we know that teeth are, like, extremely important in identifying a deceased, uh, you know, uh, body.

[11:41] Speaker 1: Um, and, uh, then it talks about two months passed before Deputy Schultz wrote in a report saying that he left the bones in a bag on his desk and he went on another call. This is kind of bizarre when you guys hear what happened. We got 15 seconds before our first commercial break so, guys, stick with us. We will cover this. When we come back, we'll be right back. (instrumental music plays) My family only cares about one thing: that I come home safe.

[12:06] Speaker 2: At Gull's every order begins with a promise.

[12:10] Speaker 4: Made with purpose, stitched for support, backed with pride, answered by dedicated hands, delivering the standard you have sworn to uphold. We serve more than the mission. We serve the person. Each piece is engineered to help get our first responders through the shift and back home safe.

[12:58] Speaker 1: Welcome back. LEAH Roundtable at leahroundtable.com, the law enforcement talk show. My name is Chip The Block and I'm your host. We're joined by Dr. Joel Schultz, retired police chief in the Colorado area, and also Lieutenant Randy Sutton, retired Las Vegas Metro Police Department, also the founder of The Window Blue at thewindowblue.org. And the funny thing is, is that, you know, Dr. Schultz is living in Colorado and that's the story, that's what we're talking about right now. We've got a Colorado sheriff with four deputies indicted in a criminal misconduct investigations and it's, it's four of the current seven law enforcement officers in that agency are the ones that are, that are in the grease, including the sheriff. And a grand jury indicted, uh, Costilla County Sheriff's Office Sheriff Danny Sanchez and a former deputy Keith Schultz, we talked about that, um, before we went to commercial break.

[13:43] Speaker 1: And there were human remains discovered back in October of 2024, about a year and a half ago, according to the court documents, and the guy that found them, he calls the sheriff's office and the sheriff and the deputy, Schultz, they (laughs) they, they leave with only the skull. And, and you know, the skull, everything wasn't even intact because the teeth weren't even in it. They left the teeth and the rest of the body and they just take the skull. And then after two months, Deputy Sanch- uh, or Schultz wr- uh, wrote on his report saying that he left the bones in a bag on his desk, uh, which I guess he meant really the skull, and then he went on another call, a coroner's official said that he received a skull in an unlabeled paper bag from the sheriff's office, and then Sheriff Sanchez and Deputy Schultz, they're charged with official misconduct and corpse abuse. Now, usually when we hear corpse abuse, we think of some other kind of abuse.

[14:29] Speaker 1: I'm glad that at least it didn't go down the Cold Ethel route. But separately, we have Undersheriff Cruz Soto, Sergeant Caleb Sanchez, who was actually the sheriff's son, and Deputy Roland Riley, they're all charged in connection with the use of a taser involving another case against a man who was having a mental health crisis in February and tried to leave when they insisted that he go to the hospital. We just had a case like that yesterday, but they ended up having to shoot and kill the bad guy. But the man said that he was roughed up by deputies and was left with, uh, with broken ribs according to the indictments. And Undersheriff Soto was charged with failing to intervene, failure to report use of force, third-degree assault, and official misconduct, according to the court documents. And Sergeant Caleb Sanchez and Deputy Riley, they were charged with second and third-degree assault.

[15:16] Speaker 1: Now, in, in announcing these indictments, we have a district attorney stepping into the picture here, the Twelfth Judicial District. It is the District Attorney Ann Kelly, and she's commenting to the, uh, about the investigation and prosecuting crimes. And she says that they're gonna do their job no matter who the offender is. And, and also a person who answered the phone Friday at the sheriff's office said that there are seven law enforcement officials that are on staff with that agency, and of course we're talking, what, about four of them? Um, so, uh, so... I know, Randy. So, so, so Dr. Schultz, you're there, it's, it's your town, it's your peeps. We would love to get the, uh, the insights.

[15:55] Speaker 1: But, but I do know that, uh, before the show we were talking and I had some concerns whether we had, like, a rogue district attorney going after the cops, and you kind of assured me that really was not the case here, right

[16:08] Speaker 3: No, uh, District Attorney Kelly, uh, and I'm sure she's the one that, um, uh, brought the case to a grand jury, which i- rather than a direct, um, charge from, from her office, uh, that gives it a, a, a better, um, objectivity, you know, wi- with, with a, with a grand jury taking a look at it, uh, which are fairly rare. We, we don't have standing grand juries in our, in our state. Um, and she actually, um, is th- the DA that came after, uh, especially appointed DA that came after a recalled DA that was a Soros in, in little old San Luis Valley, uh, DA who was just in- incredibly intolerable and h- and got recalled. Um, let me tell you a little bit about Costilla County. Um, there are 3,100 counties in the United States. Costilla County ranks 3,000th in terms of poverty.

[17:09] Speaker 1: (clears throat) Oh, wow.

[17:10] Speaker 3: Um, and th- they have... I've been in southern Colorado since, uh, with, with the 10-year gap when I went back to Missouri, since, uh, 1989 and, uh, so I know a lot of these folks and I, and I know a lot of these agencies. And I've met Danny, Sheriff Sanchez, or former, he just resigned, um, and maybe Deputy Schultz, I'm not sure. Different spelling. Um, but anyway, th- this has been a constant, uh, problem. Th- this is not the first sheriff that's been criminally (laughs) charged in Costilla County. Um, th- uh, couple of years ago, the DA, uh, Kelly said, "I'm not gonna prosecute any more cases unless you can figure out how to handle evidence." Uh, and CBI came in and collected all the evidence, Colorado Bureau of Investigation, and, and took over the evidence. The attorney general, uh, Phil Weiser, uh, please don't vote for him for governor, um, has, has been involved.Um, so it's not only problematic with, with this group but, uh, problematic historically.

[18:18] Speaker 3: Uh, it's a s-

[18:19] Speaker 1: Hear you.

[18:20] Speaker 3: It's a small county, it's a poor county. Um, poor wages, poor recruitment, poor retention, all of the things that work against, uh, quality law enforcement, uh, uh, uh, sad to say. So, um, I- I am, I am personally going to see if I can contact, um, their attorney to take a look at this accusation about improper force with the, uh, with the, with the mental health thing, um, b- because if it really is a justifiable use of force and the grand jury, as most citizens would say, "Oh, they're mentally ill. We, we shouldn't, shouldn't, uh, you know, treat them harshly." I don't know anything about the case. It, they, th- they may be absolutely justified, they may be absolutely, uh, you know, need, need to be found guilty in, in due time, I don't know. But I, I don't want there to be a precedent set, um, for bad judgment about use of force in any particular situation.

[19:21] Speaker 3: So, I'm, I'm gonna-

[19:22] Speaker 1: Good point.

[19:22] Speaker 3: ... I'm gonna look at that, um, because, uh, you know, there is ... And Chip, we've talked about this before, uh, there is a prejudice against small agencies. And I have seen, personally, at least two state investigations of, um, u- uses of force by officers in small agencies, actually both of them over in the valley, which by the way is adjoining my val- You do this to go across the mountain pass and, and you're in that county. Um, that, that were very poorly done, uh, didn't, didn't pay attention to the science, didn't pay attention to, uh, principles of use of force, didn't pay attention to the legal parameters. So, I, I wanna make sure that, that these guys have, um, a- a- at least access to some good, um, good analysis of that use of force. And let the chips fall where they may.

[20:15] Speaker 1: All right. Well, I'm ... You gotta keep us informed on that, uh, 'cause I would definitely wanna hear about that. And we got a commercial break coming up, guys. It's our second one. We're gonna be talking about Compliant Technologies, The GLOVE People. Stick with us, we'll be right back. All right, guys. It's time to talk about Compliant Technologies at complianttechnologies.com. And they are committed to providing non-lethal solutions to help officers gain the upper hand safely and rapidly in a humane, low optics manner, utilizing what they call their CD3, which stands for conductive distraction and de-escalation device technology. Now, their flagship product, we all know by now, is called The GLOVE. It's helped officers not only tens of thousands of times, but they've actually had over 250,000 deployments. No injuries, no deaths, it's, uh, amazing s- statistics. They actually have achieved non-lethal status in an arena that predominately can only offer less lethal results.

[21:01] Speaker 1: And when it comes to weapons retention, transitioning to a sidearm or conduction energy weapon, TheGLOVEatcomplianttechnologies.com, they virtually eliminated weapons confusion. So, stay ahead of the game with Compliant Technologies and their revolutionary CD3 that hundreds of agencies ha- have already turned to nationwide. And friends, take it from me, when it comes to safety, this is one of the most common sense, hands-on solutions that's ever come along. Go to complianttechnologies.com today and tell them that Chip sent you. Complianttechnologies.com. Welcome back. Leo Round Table at leoroundtable.com, the law enforcement talk show. My name is Chip DeBlock and I'm your host. Yes, we're joined by Lieutenant Randy Sutton, founder of The Window Blue, thewindowblue.org, also retired Las Vegas Metro Police Lieutenant, and Dr. Joel Schultz, retired Police Chief hiding out somewhere in the Colorado area. So, thanks for being back on the show, guys.

[21:43] Speaker 1: And we just got back from commercial break. Um, I know that we were talking about that, um, um, that case (laughs) in, in Colorado where we, where we lost half the, uh, half the, over half the sheriff's office. Any more commentary on that? Are you guys ready to go on to the story with the video? We have Chief Schultz?

[22:00] Speaker 3: I just wanna tell you, uh, uh, that area is, uh, a high desert, uh, it's actually called an aspen, uh, desert, I think. Uh, so low humidity, uh, lots of sandy soil. So, it's not unusual to find skeletal remains, either from hikers or from, um, murder victims. It's a great place to hide a body. Um, so it, it-

[22:22] Speaker 1: Really?

[22:23] Speaker 3: Yeah. And the, uh, the bodies don't decompose typically the way they, they do. It's very easy to get skeletonized and they get mummified, so, um ... I, I, I worked with the coroner's office as well for a while. So, um, that doesn't mitigate the, uh, way that they allegedly handled the, uh, (laughs) you know, the skeletal remains. "Well, we'll just bag up the skull, take it back to the office and I'll write this up here in about a year and a half." So, um, that, that's bad, bad optics.

[22:54] Speaker 1: Ah.

[22:54] Speaker 2: They probably put a candle on top of the skull and it's on the chief's desk.

[22:59] Speaker 3: Well, that would not-

[22:59] Speaker 1: (laughs)

[22:59] Speaker 3: ... be unusual for the region but, uh, yeah-

[23:02] Speaker 1: Ah.

[23:02] Speaker 3: ... I don't know. (laughs)

[23:03] Speaker 1: Oh, wow. Wow, brutal. All right, guys. Uh, popping over the video, rumble.com, our favorite law enforcement video channel called This Is Better. We have a suspect fatally shot by Howard County officers when he approaches, uh, them with a knife after calling 911.

[23:19] Speaker 5: (sirens) That's it, sir. It'll get better, man. I ju- I'm telling you, it's gonna get better. Stop. Stop now. Alexander, stop. Stop. Stop. I'm telling you, stop. Please don't let me do this Alexander. I don't want you to do this. Alexander, stop Drop the fucking knife Alexander, stop. Drop the knife. Drop the knife now. Drop it, we're getting cornered. (gun firing) Dave 41, shots fired, suspect down.

[23:43] Speaker 1: And so this is in Columbia, Maryland. So, the ... Well, we'll start from the beginning. It, it's a police shooting, March the 1st. We have three county police officers, they open fire and they fatally shoot this guy named Alex Lemory. He's only 25 years old, outside his Columbia apartment. So, Lemory, our bad guy, he had autism. And officials said that it's unclear whether responding officers were aware of that during the encounter.However, we respond, we, law enforcement, respond off of actions. Um, so, uh, the chief talked on this earlier, a lot of people, you know, you have a mental health, a guy suffering a mental health crisis or autism, whatever, there ... That alone does not alter what we, what we have to do. Uh, unless you're just really willing to die doing your, doing your job. Uh, we work off of actions. And so, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll ... Let's see what happened on this one.

[24:32] Speaker 1: According to police, Lamourie, our, our guy that had autism, which may or may not have been known by the officers, he called 911 himself earlier that day to report that he believed that he was the victim of an online extortion scheme. Police said that officers encountered this, uh, this kid, you know, I mean, 25 years old, outside his apartment and that he's holding a knife. All right? So that's, that's a huge flag. Howard County Police Chief Gregory Durr, uh, he's given kind of the account of what goes on. He said that, uh, at a news conference on Thursday morning, that after exchanging personal information and photos online with someone who claimed to be a young woman, that our guy, Alex, here received a threat from an individual stating that the private exchanges would be released unless money was paid. And that's pretty it. That's pretty much it. That's what we have. Now, it's just the backstory.

[25:18] Speaker 1: Doesn't necessarily have really anything to do with what decisions law enforcement has to make when they get there. I mean, it gives you a little peek into a window of what happened and maybe what brought this kid to this, to this place that where he was at, right or wrong. But all that really has very little bearing on what cops do, and I, in my show notes, because there's really not a lot of information in the report, if you start watching the body cam footage from the beginning around the eight-second mark, officers are approaching the suspect and he's already got a knife in his hand and he had already called n- 911 just reporting that he was the victim of this extortion scheme. And at, from eight seconds to the 25-second mark, that's, um, all it takes before shots are en- end up being fired. The suspect is approaching officers with a knife in his hand. They're giving him commands and he's just totally blowing them off and he's still walking towards the cops with the knife.

[26:06] Speaker 1: And then we have a second body cam that shows the shooting at the one-minute mark, and then we have a third body cam, um, that shows the same thing from three different angles. And of course, you know, our guy, um, you know, died unfortunately. He was noncompliant. Lieutenant Rand, you wanna take this one first

[26:23] Speaker 2: Uh, I got some situ- ... I got some, some issues with this one.

[26:26] Speaker 1: Okay.

[26:26] Speaker 2: Um, this is, this is, um, uh, reveals why lower lethality, um, you know, type of, of objects can be utilized. There was no ... They had no beanbag gun, they didn't d- try to deploy a taser or a wrap or anything else. And, and this individual, um, yes, he was walking towards them. He almost seemed like he was in a trance. Um, he did not seem to be aggressive. And so, uh, I think that, that had they had the low lethality shotgun or something, uh, of, of that nature, it could have been utilized effectively in this particular case. This was not ... He wasn't running up on them. The, the, the action was kind of, uh, slow and, um, and I just think that there could have been, there could have been an- i- had they had the tools, uh, available to them, they could have utilized them.

[27:27] Speaker 1: Well, you, you bring up a good point. I, I don't remember whether there were tasers on the gun belts of the officers. Um, I ... but, but you're, but you're, you're right. I, I, I don't even know if they've got, um, if they've got, you know, 40 millimeter, you know, f- uh, launchers or, or whatever, uh, is so ... That would be nice to know. They certainly, they certainly had enough officers. You know, if you, if it was one officer and you expected him to go, uh, less lethal, that would probably not be a tac- a good tac- a wise tac- but they had three officers. So that's, uh, that's a very good point. Chief Schultz?

[28:00] Speaker 3: Yeah. The administrator, uh, later said that they were going to make, uh, I can't remember if it was the chief or county commissioner, th- they were gonna make some efforts to get more, um, l- less lethal options. And, um, apparently they had maybe called for a taser, uh, like, like maybe they only have X number, um, you know. Kind of reminds me of Rodney King back in the old LAPD days. Only the supervisor would have a taser. So you, you know, you got to call and have somebody roll up. So with, with that many officers, it is unfortunate, eh, that somebody didn't carry some other, um, option in there. Um, i- you know, the ... And, and, uh, I think ultima- ultimately, it'll, it'll be justifiable because he did have a, a, a knife in that, you know, stab position. He made some kind of verbalization, uh, about, "You're gonna have to shoot me," or something to that effect if, if I, if I, uh, uh, heard that correctly.

[28:56] Speaker 3: Um, he was headed toward-

[28:58] Speaker 2: I, I, I did, I did not hear that. I did not hear anything.

[29:01] Speaker 3: Yeah. I think at the, at the initial thing before he started a- advancing, um, and one of the, one of the officers said, uh, "Okay, we're gonna be cornered here." And there was an entrance and you can't let the guy go in there. They, they hopefully, uh, would have known that this is a disability housing area. So, um, and interestingly, in another news article, it said t- uh, I think there were three officers that fired.

[29:26] Speaker 3: Um-

[29:27] Speaker 1: There were.

[29:27] Speaker 3: And two of those had, had CIT training and one was a negotiator. So they, they at least had some verbal skills. And they did call the person by name and, and, uh, you know, uh, people with autism are often hyper-sensitive to stimulus and so, you know, typical yelling at, at them is, is not going to work. But again, you don't necessarily know what you're going into in a situation like this. One of the things that, um, was mentioned in one of the articles is that, that of course, you know, when you get s- statements from, from relatives and friends and survivors, uh, they're, you know, very seldom, uh, praising the police for shooting their loved one.Um, but one of the statements was, "We haven't heard anything from the police department, nothing from the county. Nobody's called with condolences or apologies or anything." Um, and, and that's a really difficult position.

[30:21] Speaker 3: You know, one of the things wh- when I, when I would in- investigate something, if I could get a suspect to write an apology-

[30:28] Speaker 1: Huh. Yeah.

[30:29] Speaker 3: ... um, you know what that is in court? A confession.

[30:32] Speaker 1: Admit, ad- yeah, you're admitting it (laughs) .

[30:34] Speaker 3: So, um, it, you know, it's, it, it would, it's a delicate balance. You know, you wanna reach out to, um, the, the, the secondary and tertiary victims of this, of this tragedy. But to do so, you know, a lawyer would probably say, "Don't say anything." You know, PR be damned. Um.

[30:55] Speaker 1: So I got a question for you, Chief.

[30:56] Speaker 3: So, very, very unfortunate. What?

[30:58] Speaker 1: So, let me ask you this. So we're talking about obviously there's a couple sides to this. There's criminal and, and there's, you know, civil. Um, so we've covered the criminal and we talked about you, you, you guys have already said that you felt that it was, you know, justified to shoot. And I, and I, and I agree. But with what Randy brought up about the lack of less lethal, and Chief what you brought up about the department saying, "Ah, we gotta try to get more of that," at, at what point... When do we get to the point, I guess, when we're in court, and, and let's just say that there's a civil suit, because there almost certainly will be a civil suit associated with this, and the judge says, "You gotta, you gotta be kidding me. It's 2026. You guys don't, you don't have a le- at, at least every officer outfitted with some, some form of less lethal? Are you freaking kidding me?" You know, and, and just write, be prepared to write the freaking check.

[31:45] Speaker 3: I think Vaughn, uh, Kline kind of addressed this yesterday. All of the efforts that law enforcement have made to deescalate, to have additional tools, uh, to avoid lethal force, we, we've done that in response to public demand and we've been very good at that. Um, and so now we have set an unrealistic expectation that we will always have the ability to deescalate, we will always have the manpower and the tools ready to avoid lethal force. So we've kind of painted ourselves in a corner in that regard.

[32:20] Speaker 3: J-

[32:21] Speaker 1: Yeah.

[32:21] Speaker 3: And I may be misquoting Vaughn, but I think that was his point.

[32:24] Speaker 1: Yeah, 'cause I, yeah, you would ex- you would almost expect that. So guys, 10 seconds. We're going to the commercial break. Put your seat belts on. Here we go. All right, guys. It's time to talk about GunLearn at GunLearn.com. And you know, as law enforcement officers, we deal with guns and we deal with ammo every day, but it's what we don't know about those things that gets us into trouble. And if you're fortunate enough to have gotten that degree from GunLearn.com, a certified firearms specialist, you can actually take that degree and convert it into college credits, 'cause now it's worth it. You know, they partnered with Smarter Degree, a certification as a firearm specialist by GunLearn.com. Um, even, like I said, if you've gotten it over the last five years, you can now, it's, well, now it's worth college credits through Smarter Degrees University partners. So whether you're pursuing a degree or you wanna maximize the value of your education, it is there now.

[33:12] Speaker 1: And GunLearn.com of course is the first and only company to offer a step-by-step program that takes you from your present knowledge level to become a safe, accurate, and competent certified firearms specialist. And they provide citations from federal law and ATF rulings for every point taught to ensure accuracy. And their training is approved by basically everybody. GunLearn.com. Welcome back. Leo Roundtable at LeoRoundtable.com, the law enforcement talk show. My name is Chip The Block and I'm your host. We're joined by Dr. Joel Schultz, retired police chief, and Lieutenant Randy Sutton from the Wounded Blue. And, uh, yes, we've been talking about a story with a video component. And if you guys are, are, are ready to, are you ready to cover the Dayton Police, uh, video? Is that okay with you guys? I get two thumbs up, uh.

[33:54] Speaker 6: Yes.

[33:54] Speaker 1: Randy says no. Okay, here we go. Rumble.com, our favorite law enforcement video channel, this is better. Dayton Police, they released body cam video of an officer-involved shooting, leaves a guy dead.

[34:03] Speaker 5: Do you have any weapons or any guns? No. Okay. I'm gonna pat you down, all right? Dude, I can give you my ID, bro. Take my ID. Stop reaching. Stop. Stop. Why are you grabbing on me, bro? I'm patting you down. For what? All right. Stop. Why are you touching me? I'm comfortable, bro. Stop touching me, bro. Dispatch, stick it up for me and send me another crew. Stop touching me, bro. Stop reaching. Stop reaching. Stop reaching. ... towards Third Street. Stop reaching. Stop! I'm not reaching. Stop reaching. I'm not reaching. Bro. Stop grabbing on me, bro. He's got a gun. He's got a gun. He's got a gun. Stop. Stop. Drop it. Drop it. Right here. Oh. Right here.

[35:12] Speaker 1: Stop.

[35:12] Speaker 5: Bro.

[35:14] Speaker 1: Stop it.

[35:16] Speaker 5: Right here, guys. Right here, guys. He's got a gun. He's got a gun. Drop it. Drop it now. Drop-

[35:34] Speaker 1: So Dayton, Ohio, and, uh, our bad guy is 44 years old, Reginald Thomas, dead. Dayton Police said that just before 9:30 on Tuesday night, we have a Dayton Police officer trying to stop this guy, uh, a 44-year-old Reginald Thomas, and he's riding his bike without a front light. And it's a bi- it's a bicycle. So in the footage, the officer's heard saying, "Hey, the reason I stopped you is 'cause you were riding on the sidewalk and you don't have a front light." And, and of course, it was dark. I mean, it was nighttime. And, and, and the guy, Thomas, our bad guy says, "I don't have a light." Like, like he didn't know, and that's when the officer said, um, "Hey, are, are you armed?" And Thomas denied the, being armed, um, and, and ended up lying. So then the officer started asking him if he can pat him down, and the guy goes back to the ID thing. "Hey, I can get you that ID." And cop tells him to relax.

[36:22] Speaker 1: And so after he denied having a weapon a second time, the officer approaches to start doing the pat down, and that's when the guy, uh, is, is, um...You know, he starts saying, "Hey, dude, I can give you my ID. Why are you grabbing on me, bro?" And, and, uh, then he hops off the bike and he, and he takes off when the cop starts, you know, touching him for the frisk. Uh, and so, um, there's a foot chase and you hear the officer who I thought... I gotta admit, I thought it was a female officer at first. I don't know, the voice was a little bit high. I don't know if it was because of the chase or whatever, but the cop's yelling, "Hey, stop reaching! Stop reaching!" And, and the guy's, you know, reaching and grabbing in the waistband area while he's running away from the cop, and of course, it's nighttime so you can't see super clearly. And Dayton police said the body cam footage showed our bad guy pulling out the gun, uh, which can be seen in the video.

[37:09] Speaker 1: The officer yells for him to drop it, which he did, um, and I will point out that the bad guy produces the gun. The, uh, the cop finally draws down on the guy and when he draws down on him, the bad guy just drops it, to- tosses it on the ground, but right, right in front of him, meaning the bad guy. He... It's not like he, like, threw it across the, the field or whatever. And so our cop re-holsters his gun and then he goes hands-on with the bad guy. And during the fight, sure enough, they get moved closer to that gun. What's the bad guy do? Reaches down, you can see clearly in the video, picks up the gun. He, he doesn't have it in the shooting... Well, I guess you could really shoot it in almost any position, but he's got it held almost backwards, but he clearly picks it back up and, um, our cop y- you could...

[37:56] Speaker 1: It may be a good, good conversation to have 'cause when he first had the gun, the cop was verbalizing that he had a gun, but, but I don't think there were any other cops around. And later on, after the fight, and the cop holsters the gun and the guy picks up the gun again, um, you could hear the cavalry come and the sirens stuff, but I really had trouble. I was listening to hear the cop yelling to tell the people that were there the dude had a gun. I, I, I didn't hear it happen, but, but there is... One of the responding cops as a backup takes one shot and, and, and shoots and kills the bad guy with a single shot, and, uh, the bad guy later dies at the hospital. So, that's the way that goes down. Randy, you wanna take this one first?

[38:32] Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm, I'm very happy that there was a backup officer there. Um, the, the, the, the tactics that were employed here, um, you know, especially with, with holstering, I, I was, I was dumbfounded by that action, um-

[38:47] Speaker 1: Yeah.

[38:47] Speaker 2: ... holstering his weapon when there's a firearm right there. Um, at that point, you know, there, of course... You know, here's the thing, man. When these, when these instances happen and the adrenaline is just coursing through your veins, you don't have any, uh... You know, we'd have no knowledge about the experience level of the officer, um, and everybody reacts differently. Uh, you know, we try to revert to our training, but at the end of the day, um, in these critical incidents, sometimes we act in ways that, um, that, that kind of defy logic sometimes. And, and this is, this is how training is so important, realistic firearms training is so critical, uh, to try and, and, uh, prepare people for these critical incidents. Um, you know, so I, you know, I, I wish he, I wish he had taken charge. Uh, it might have, might have avoided the shooting, but at the end of the day, who made the decision? The bad guy made the decision.

[39:49] Speaker 2: He's the one that introduced the firearm, he's the one that went to pick it up, and he got exactly what he deserved.

[39:58] Speaker 1: Chief Schultz?

[39:59] Speaker 3: Okay, here's the headline. Cop shoots Black man for no bicycle headlight.

[40:06] Speaker 2: Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah.

[40:07] Speaker 1: Yeah. No, you're right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[40:10] Speaker 3: Y- you know, I looked at, uh, a, a Facebook article on, on this event and the, the, the, the commentators on... You know, Facebook is full of idiots and, and I'm on Facebook so I'm indicting myself, but, um, the, the massive lack-

[40:25] Speaker 1: Motherfucker.

[40:25] Speaker 3: ... of understanding by the, by the civilians (laughs) ...

[40:30] Speaker 2: Son of a bitch.

[40:32] Speaker 3: (laughs) ... by the civilians, um, it is, is really sad. I, I was a little disappointed, um, in the chief's presentation of this. Uh, he was... I, I mean, he did a fine job, but he was... He, he made sure to say, well, the officer didn't have his gun out until he saw the gun, and then when, when the gun was dropped, he holstered the gun like he was apologizing, uh, and praising the officer for, for re-holstering, and all of us agree that that was a tactical faux pas, um, and, and potentially very, uh, uh, very destructive. Um, you know, and, and, and this, this would of... was a, a, a petty stop and, and very possibly what we might label as a, as a, uh, a pretextual stop. Uh, the cop is afraid that other things are going on and so he, he wants to make this contact. Um, I was very i- interested, I'd... And I'd like for, you know, Travis, uh, uh, to, to maybe take a look at this.

[41:38] Speaker 3: What were the, the indicators that this guy w- was gonna be so aggressive and eventually pull a gun and, and run from the guy? Um, th- they were very subtle, if they were th- there, there at all. I would say one thing for, for officers out there that are, that are listening. Um, when somebody seems over-cooperative and wants to distract your attention, um, and, uh... Like, "Here, here's my ID." So, he reached down for, um, the I- the ID that was in, uh, a kind of a holster-type device on his waistband. Uh, why was he so anxious to get the officer to pay attention to him getting his ID out?

[42:20] Speaker 3: It was either so he could have access to the weapon that was nearby or-

[42:25] Speaker 1: Right.

[42:25] Speaker 3: ... that he wanted to look so over-cooperative that there wouldn't be any question. You know, "Let's get a verbal warning and, and, and, uh, we'll, we'll go on about the day." So-Uh, I think it wo- it would be a good thing for officers to look at f- a- as an analysis. Should the officer had known that this guy was pretty, uh, uh, gonna be aggressive and, and ready to flee? And the, uh, uh, I, I think the officer's... I, I think the officer's response to the guy lifting his shirt to get his ID out, um, wi- which was in violation of the officer's commands, right? Um, I, I think the officer responded well to that. "I don't, I don't want you to do that right now," uh, and, and tried to kinda calm him down. Um, it would've been appropriate when you started seeing this resistance, for the officer to jerk this guy off the bicycle, get him down prone, cuff him up.

[43:25] Speaker 3: But there, again, the optics of that and the sensitivity, uh, sensitivity of officers to this, um, particularly if the guy ended up not having a weapon or not having a warrant, um, you know? Again, the headlines are gonna scream, uh, "Bicyclist slammed to the pavement," you know, for, for having no headlight. Uh-

[43:45] Speaker 1: Yeah.

[43:46] Speaker 3: ... a- a- and, and so I, you know, I think the sensitivity that we don't wanna look bad on camera, um, i- has, has really provided a lot of, uh, danger to, uh, to officers. Um, and, and I think, you know, we say, well, he s- he said he... The officer exclaimed, "He's got a gun," something to that effect, when there was nobody around to hear it. I think we do need to be, um, uh, acclimated to narrating for the inevitable audience of the body cam.

[44:18] Speaker 1: The witnesses. (laughs)

[44:18] Speaker 3: So that he has... So he had, right, than the, than the Monday morning quarterbacks, uh, so that he can say, "Yes. I, I knew I saw a weapon and I wanted to communicate that, you know, to anybody that might be watching later."

[44:31] Speaker 1: You know, I wanna... I just wa- and we've only got seconds here, really, so we're going kinda over into the Wounded Knee time on this one. But I wanna remind everybody that, you know, once lethal force is introduced, once a, once a, uh, uh, a weapon like that, like a firearm or, or, or the knife is introduced, you know, don't be so quick. What if I'm a bad guy and I point a gun at you and you point your gun at me and I, I holster it or I throw it on the ground? And you holster your gun and I reach down and pick it back up again, and we just go back and forth like that, you know? Or the same thing with a knife. You know, w- we could do that all day. We had a burglary call where a deputy showed up and it's a jewelry shop, the guy's behind the counter, and the deputy draws down and the guy comes out with his ha- with his hands up and he's walking towards the deputy. Deputy makes the mistakes, uh, mistake of the guy did not have a weapon.

[45:18] Speaker 1: As soon as he hol- went to holster his weapon, the guy charged him. And guess what? That's the worst part because the gun's not all the way in the holster and he doesn't have it out where he can use it. So the, the bad guy gets ahold of it. Now they're fighting over a gun. Nightmare scenario. Uh, but look, uh, Chief Schultz, thank you so much for being on the show. I appreciate it. We lost Randy Sutton. Our, our sponsors, velus.com, complianttechnologies.com, governor.com, and medicare.lifesaverrecruiting2bellas.com. We'll see everybody back at 12:00 noon tomorrow Eastern Time.

[45:50] Speaker 1: (rock music plays)