Law Enforcement Judgment, National Pride, and Tactical Accountability

Speaker Identification

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock. The speaker identifies himself by name at the beginning of the program and leads the episode, sponsor mentions, story introductions, and closing remarks.

Speaker 2 – Guest, Dr. Joel Schultz. The host identifies him as Dr. Joel Schultz, a retired police chief, and the dialogue indicates he provides analysis as the guest commentator.

Speaker 3 – Prerecorded Sponsor Voice / Galls Advertisement. This voice appears during the sponsor break and speaks in a polished promotional style distinct from the live host discussion.

Speaker 4 – Sponsor Segment Voice / Compliant Technologies Advertisement. This segment promotes Compliant Technologies and its CD3 device technology. The voice may be the host reading a sponsor script, but the transcript does not clearly distinguish whether it is live or prerecorded.

Speaker 5 – Sponsor Segment Voice / GunLearn Advertisement. This segment promotes GunLearn.com and its firearm-specialist training. The voice may be the host reading a sponsor script, but the transcript does not clearly distinguish whether it is live or prerecorded.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:

Welcome to LEO Round Table at leoroundtable.com. My name is Chip DeBlock, and I’m your host.

We’re joined by, yes, it is really him. It’s not just a cardboard cutout. He will move occasionally. It is Dr. Joel Schultz, retired police chief. He is currently in the beautiful state of Colorado. Thanks for being on the show. We appreciate it.

A shout-out to our sponsors, guys. Please support our sponsors. They go to great lengths to bring this good-quality content to you. We have our title sponsor, Galls.com. Don’t forget that discount code. Guys, keep us in your pocket. You always have 15% off at Galls because of this show and their sponsorship. The code is Radio15, so remember that next time you go to Galls.com.

Also, CompliantTechnologies.com, our satellite sponsor. We have GunLearn.com, MyMedicare.live, and TubeBuddy.com. They built a new online store, leoroundtable.com, so check that out.

Also, a shout-out to all the guys who are helping us do the show and allowing us to stream to various outlets across the internet: Brian Burns from the Tampa Free Press, Ray Dietrich from Alummond.com, and Travis Chase with LawOfficer.com.

If you want to watch the show, we are live right now on a lot of outlets. We’re on YouTube. We’re on Facebook right now. I think we’re on five Facebook pages. We are on Rumble. We’re on Vimeo, LinkedIn, and you name it. We’re also on podcasts. If it’s a podcast platform, we’re going to be on it, especially Spotify and Apple iTunes.

We’re also on social media: Rumble, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, formerly X, and Truth Social. We’ve got the live version of the show and a produced version that comes out the next morning at nine o’clock. That has all the videos we talk about embedded into it. We’ve got a lot of stuff going on, and we’re five days a week during the lunch hour, 12 noon Eastern time.

Let’s go into what will whet the appetite. You know, we always joke. The chief and I, he’s been doing Mondays lately, and also Chief Ralph Ornelas wanted me to let you know that he misses you on Fridays, by the way. He really does.

The chief and I, Chief Schultz and I, joke that after the weekend, we usually have some deep topics. We have deep commentary, and he’s perfect for that stuff. I don’t know that we really have the deep stuff today. We have some pretty comical stuff today, but some of the things that we’ve talked about before, we’ve got new information on as well.

The two main topics do have a tendency to be a little deeper. I’m going to go ahead and throw it out there. I haven’t been covering it because I don’t trust the Iranians, but according to Trump: “Start your engines.” Trump declares the Iran peace deal complete and lifts the naval blockade. Of course, something new could have happened between the time I put this in my show notes and the time we’re going live.

Also, “Plunging Pride in the USA?” Why only a third of Americans are still extremely proud today. That is worrisome. That is going to be our deepest topic today, and it is perfect to have the chief on.

Also, horseplay shooting. We covered this last week. There’s an update. There’s an opening with the Pasadena County Sheriff’s Office. We’ve got, I guess it’s the city of Pasadena Police, a horseplay shooting between Pasadena cops. “Unacceptable behavior,” the mayor says. Yeah, one of the guys got fired.

We’ve got Sacramento. Wow. We are going from Pasadena Police over to Sacramento. A deputy fatally shoots a suspect who pulls out a shotgun during a woman-in-distress call. I’m surprised I have any fingernails left after watching that video, Chief, and I can’t wait to hear you talk about that.

Then we have the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office. They released bodycam of a deputy shooting an unarmed 15-year-old. After watching this video, Chief, I’m kind of on the team that suspects that if we watched videos of uses of force and we couldn’t tell what agency they were from, and we couldn’t see the patches, I bet we could come pretty close to guessing where they worked. I mean, I just think that with this Miami one.

Then we’ve got hot grease and stabbing. A Michigan drive-through dispute ends in an attempted-murder charge. Finally, we’ve got bodycam video released in a fatal Tucson police shooting involving a guy armed with a knife. So, all those stories as we have time to get to them.

Let’s start with the first one right now. Tampa Free Press at TampaFP.com: “Start your engines: Trump declares Iran peace deal complete, lifts naval blockade.”

Look, the big deal is, number one, I don’t think anyone in their right mind should trust anything that comes out of the Iranians’ mouths. If they’re Iranian and their lips are moving, they’re going to be lying. We don’t even know who’s running the country. There are so many factions that are at dispute with each other.

However, the United States and Iran have officially reached a peace agreement, according to President Donald Trump, bringing an end to the months of military conflict and immediately halting the U.S. naval blockade on Iranian ports, which is a good thing, right, as long as we have oversight.

President Trump announced the finalization of the pact on Sunday in a post on Truth Social. I love the fact that he uses Truth Social. He doesn’t have to rely on the media to get the stuff out. “The deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete. Congratulations to all,” is what Trump wrote.

He also goes on to say that he fully authorized the toll-free opening of the highly contested Strait of Hormuz, as well as the immediate removal of the naval blockade. Wow, because they’ve been sitting there for a while.

The president ended his announcement with a message of global maritime commerce: “Ships of the world, start your engines. Let the oil flow.” He’s always animated when he does stuff.

On Saturday, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, acting as the lead mediator, accurately predicted that finalization of the agreement was expected within 24 hours. That’s what they’re saying happened.

So that’s what we have. I don’t know how much faith you have, Chief, in this being binding or the other guys doing what they’re supposed to be doing. We don’t even have the exact terms of the agreement yet. Chief Schultz?

Speaker 2 – Guest, Dr. Joel Schultz:

A friend of mine texted last night and said, “What do you think about this deal?” I said, “Well, I’m going to see what the markets say.”

Even before today’s opening, NASDAQ is up. All of them are up. Small caps are up. Gold is even up, which is a little contrarian, but you played Simon Says when you were a kid, right? Simon says, “Touch your nose.” Simon says, “Wink.” Pull your ear. Oh, I didn’t say Simon says, so you’re out of the game.

Iran has played this game all the time. If they’re going to claim, “We didn’t say Simon says,” their penalty is not that they’re out of the game. They’re going to throw a drone at an oil tanker or shoot down a U.S. helicopter or something like that.

So I’m less optimistic than the markets are. Oil is down, back to almost, not quite pre-war level, but the first week of the war. So all the economic trigger signs are good and optimistic.

It’s interesting, and I’m not a foreign analyst. You’ve got some high-dollar panelists who really keep their fingers on the pulse of international diplomacy and intrigue and that kind of stuff. But the wild card to me is Netanyahu, because he seems to have his own course.

Lately, you’ve seen President Trump literally cussing out Netanyahu, who everybody was accusing him of being in bed with, saying we’re only in the war because Bibi wanted him to be. So it’s very interesting that there’s this apparent friction.

Again, with the Trump administration, you don’t know what’s fact and what’s theater. Trump may have been presenting this pretend-fractious relationship between him and Israel’s Netanyahu to make it seem to the Iranians that Israeli influence is less.

But I think Israel is going to continue to antagonize, and rightly so, Hezbollah, which of course is just the left hand of the Iranian government. As you said, we don’t really know who’s in charge. Just because you say to somebody who says they’re in charge, “We’re going to do this treaty,” you still don’t know what kind of pockets of resistance, miscommunication, or military authority exist. Somebody could still pop off a drone or hit the red button on a missile and really put this whole thing in peril.

So I’m skeptical, like every American is. But I also have faith in our chief negotiator that if this falls through, some more bombs are going to fall and some more suffering for the Iranian regime is going to happen, and eventually they’ll be broken.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:

Thank you, Chief. We will watch this, but I suspect that there’s no way these guys are not going to push the edge of the limits.

Speaker 2 – Guest, Dr. Joel Schultz:

You know, psychologists always say you teach people how to treat you by the way that you respond to them, communicate with them, and put up with them.

Iran has certainly taught the U.S., and I think Trump probably should have known this, and people who have studied Iran know this, but it’s not peer-to-peer. It’s not a matter of power. It’s not a matter of religion. It’s just a matter of world outlook and life philosophy.

They really don’t care if all of their people die. They don’t care if they die. They’ve got to maintain their pride. They’ve got to maintain their trust in their eternal reward for being an enemy of the great state of the United States.

So to communicate between the parties of freedom and the parties of tyrants is not a one-to-one conversation. Like you say, we’ll just have to see what happens.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:

Agreed.

Next, we’ve got Tampa Free Press at TampaFP.com. We’ve got “Plunging Pride in the USA: Why only a third of Americans are still extremely proud today.”

This is troubling, guys. I don’t know how people hear this, but this is really serious stuff. When you find out how this thing falls and what some of the influences are, and why we’ve gotten here, that should really get you thinking. It should be alarming.

I’m going to go through as much as I can. We’re about a minute off from going to our first commercial break.

According to our article, fewer people are feeling a strong sense of national pride these days. New polling data shared on Sunday shows a steep drop in how Americans feel about the country, the USA, with only a third of respondents saying they are extremely proud to be Americans.

The poll was put together for NBC News, but don’t freak out. There was a bipartisan team: Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates and Republican pollster Bill McInturff with Public Opinion Strategies. These guys were both part of this.

Their findings highlight a massive shift from 2003, when 70% of people surveyed described themselves as extremely proud. Seventy percent. Wow. That is huge, a huge difference.

I’m going to stop there. Guys, we’ve got our first commercial break coming up. Stick with us. We’ll be right back.

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Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:

Welcome back to LEO Round Table at leoroundtable.com, the law enforcement talk show. My name is Chip DeBlock, and I’m your host.

We left off talking about an interesting story here. I’m going to jump back into it. It’s called “Plunging Pride in the USA: Why only a third of Americans are still extremely proud today.”

They did a comparison. They did a survey back in 2003. Seventy percent of people surveyed described themselves as being extremely proud. But now it says that only a third of Americans, around 33%, are there.

NBC data reporter Steve Kornacki broke down the numbers on Meet the Press. He was speaking with host Kristen Welker, and he pointed out that combining the extremely proud and the very proud groups, the two most positive, they actually make up about 56% today. But you have to lower the threshold from extremely proud to very proud. That makes a slight majority.

He said, “Look, extremely proud and very proud, those numbers together get you to 56%.” But at the other end of it, only a little bit proud or not proud at all, that makes up 21%. He emphasized the long-term trend, adding that the significance of this number is that it’s in decline. So he’s implying that it’s still declining.

He said there has been a steady 21st-century decline. At the turn of the century, three-quarters of Americans were extremely or very proud, and that number has fallen to 56%.

The drop isn’t happening equally across the board, and this is another alarming fact. Kornacki said political leanings play a huge role in who feels proud right now and who does not.

He goes, “What’s behind this?” He says it’s a familiar fault line. He said it’s political and demographic. First, it’s partisan. “Look at this,” he said. “Republicans are almost universally going to tell you that they are extremely or very proud.” Then he said, “Look at that number for Democrats.” Meanwhile, only a little proud or not proud at all: 12 times as many Democrats say that compared to Republicans.

So 12 times as many Democrats compared to Republicans are saying that they’re only a little proud or not proud at all.

Americans are also losing faith in major establishments across the board. The examples he gives are Congress, the federal government, religious groups, the Supreme Court, and the news media.

So when you factor all this in, declining pride in the USA falls along partisan lines, and a huge correlation with that is where they get their news, who they let into their brain and into their home.

Chief Schultz?

Speaker 2 – Guest, Dr. Joel Schultz:

I was trying to do a kind of Venn diagram of all of the factors that might be involved in this loss of pride in America. I remember the bicentennial in 1976 and all the pride and celebrations. Now we’re at 250, and who cares? It’s really kind of stunning.

If you look at all of the institutions, and I think your analyst alluded to this, we don’t have loyalty to our employers anymore. We have fewer and fewer lifetime, committed career people at police agencies, for example, or corporations. That loyalty thing goes both ways.

Families are not what they used to be. Loyalty to churches or denominations is not what it used to be. So this whole idea that “I am loyal because the institution merits some respect and loyalty” has really eroded to the point that I don’t know if we can recover or not.

I just wrote a piece on my own blog about Juneteenth, which is coming up, and we’re going to hear, “We haven’t made enough progress. We need reparations. We’re still a racist country.”

Chief, you’re not quite as old as I am, but within my lifetime, I lived in a place where there were still small towns that had signs at the city limits that said, “No coloreds after dark.” We had places where, if a Black kid would sneak into the public swimming pool, they would drain the pool and refill it.

I lived in an era where I watched the riots in New York and Selma and Detroit and Chicago, where Blacks could not step into schoolhouses, public schoolhouses. They could not step into public universities. That’s all within my lifetime.

If we don’t celebrate the successes, if we don’t remember that we have heroes, even if they’re flawed, Thomas Jefferson was brilliant, but he was a slave owner. George Washington was amazing, setting precedents for our presidency, but a slave owner. Confederate generals, I get it. They were rebels, but there was a certain amount of loyalty. There are so many things that we ought to be celebrating.

It doesn’t mean that we ignore our flaws or say that we’ve been perfected. But if you can’t, for a moment, look over the scope of history over the last 250 years on this continent and say that this is the greatest land that has ever been on the face of the earth, and it’s the most democratic, the most free, with the most economic opportunity, if you can’t say that, then you are absolutely blind to the reality of history.

If we don’t establish that as a foundation of merit and aspiration, then we’re not going to be able to have a foundation to build on. So we just need to celebrate what we’ve accomplished, admit what needs to be changed, and work to change that with love, pride, and appreciation for where we are.

I am appalled by this report. I’m not surprised by this report.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:

Yeah, I’m disappointed. I’m glad you touched on some of those advancements that we’ve made. I haven’t seen quite all those things that you described, but horrific.

What I have seen is this country elect a Muslim Black president. He got not just the electoral votes. He got the popular vote. He got the vote not just once, but twice.

So are we racist? I tell people who are close to me, I think that we have bred out the racism that previously existed in America. I think that we have bred it out of most people. Even the numbers with Obama getting the popular vote help prove that.

Yeah, the advancements. People should be, I mean, I wake up every day and I’m just so glad that I’m here in America. I’m glad that I was born and alive in this day and age with all the things that we get to witness, because I could have been born 20 or 30 years earlier and missed all this stuff.

So yeah, I’m very thankful and grateful. A lot of that I realize comes from God, but I get it.

Commercial break, guys. Stick with us. We’ll be right back.

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Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:

Welcome back to LEO Round Table at leoroundtable.com, the law enforcement talk show. My name is Chip DeBlock, and I’m your host.

We’re joined by Dr. Joel Schultz, retired police chief in Colorado. Chief, are you ready to jump over to Pasadena, California, real quick?

Speaker 2 – Guest, Dr. Joel Schultz:

Yeah. We need to talk about that.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:

Yeah. We covered it last week. I don’t know if you were on that show or not, but ABC7.com: “Horseplay shooting between Pasadena cops unacceptable behavior,” and this is the mayor talking.

Pasadena Mayor Victor Gordo is not mincing words as he describes his disappointment after a video emerged of a police officer shooting a colleague in an incident that the department described as horseplay.

He said, “It’s juvenile. It’s unacceptable behavior at the highest level on the part of these officers.” That is what Mayor Gordo told Eyewitness News.

The incident occurred in September. I’m going to tell you guys what happened. I can’t get the image of this thing out of my head. You’ve got a couple of cops, they look young, and they’re standing behind a patrol car in a police parking garage. They’ve got police vehicles everywhere.

You’ve got a cruiser that rolls in behind them. He’s in front of the cruiser, and we’re watching the dashcam. Of the two young officers behind the car that are in front of our cruiser, the one on the right looks at the driver. You can see him looking at the driver, and he unholsters his weapon and points it seemingly at the driver of the car that just pulled up. Then he holsters it.

What we don’t see, because we’re looking at the dashcam and not a bodycam, is that the driver apparently unholsters his gun, and he goes to point it at the guy. He’s returning the favor. He’s going to point it at the guy who is in front of his car and who had just pointed his firearm at him and then holstered it.

When he does that, for whatever reason, he must pull the trigger because the gun discharges. The bullet goes not just through the windshield, but it hits the cop who had just drawn down on him and holstered. It hits the guy in the shoulder. So much for saying shooting through windshields is not accurate, Chief.

You can see the guy getting hit in the shoulder. He runs around. He’s got the guy next to him. I think another colleague runs up, and the guy who shot him gets out of the car. They run up and attend to him.

Anyhow, that’s what happened. It was horseplay. They were both involved. Even the dude who got shot, he started it by doing the same thing. He just didn’t pull the trigger.

Police Chief Gene Harris identified the officer who shot his colleague as Officer Roy Alator and said that he has been fired from the department. Previously last week, they said they disciplined the officers involved. They didn’t say anything about firing anybody, but now that guy’s been fired.

The officer who was wounded, who drew down first, has recovered and remains employed by the Pasadena Police Department. Interesting.

They go on to talk about how horseplay and safety-rule violations are not their standard of professionalism, which I get. I’m glad that she did that. The mayor expressed relief that there were not more serious consequences, like a civilian or someone else getting injured.

So there you have it. Chief Schultz, I know you’ve been at a couple of agencies. You would hate this. I know this is one of these things you would hate to have happen under your watch. What do you think about this?

Speaker 2 – Guest, Dr. Joel Schultz:

I think they did mince words. I think the chief and the mayor backpedaled way too much, even though they’re claiming they were stern.

The words that you quoted from the article were horseplay, failure to adhere to safety rules, regretful conduct. The mayor said, the chief said, “This is not going to happen again.”

There need to be two criminal prosecutions for both officers, who negligently assaulted one another with a loaded, city-issued firearm. There’s no excuse. There’s no light terminology: horseplay, unfortunate, regrettable incident, “this is not who we are.”

Chief, you need to do a top-down review of safety policies and of the attitude and culture of the department. I hope this is not reflective. I hope this is two knuckleheads who just weren’t thinking straight. But when something like this happens, we like to eat fruit in our family. We take them out of the package from the store and put them in a container so they’ll last longer. But when you have, and this is the bad-apple analogy, when you have a strawberry that’s got a little mold on it, you not only take that out, but you look at the rest of the strawberries and see if they’ve been infected.

I’m not saying this is a widespread problem with this particular agency, but you’d better root it out and make sure there’s not some kind of underlying subcultural context to this crazy criminal behavior. Make sure that it doesn’t happen again, not by saying, “No, that’s not going to happen again.” You’ve got to ensure that it is never going to happen again.

This makes my blood boil. It’s outrageous. I’m against horseplay and practical jokes everywhere, including police work. I’ve been on the end of some practical jokes, and I hated it. I detested it. It’s unprofessional. Police work is fun enough without trying to inject some teenage levity into all of this.

Have I made my point clear on this issue?

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:

You would have hated working with me, Chief, all I can tell you. I’ll tell a story in a minute.

In all seriousness, before I get to my story, I’ve never worn the chief hat or the sheriff hat, but I’m smart enough to know that the chief handled this in one way, and I would have liked to see something else.

If I’m working with that agency and I’m wearing a chief’s hat, now he’s put me in a position where I have to go down that rabbit hole and see how bad and widespread this is in the department. God forbid it happens again, right? I absolutely have to.

I would consider, look, the guy who got shot, there has got to be discipline for him. I’m not saying necessarily fired, although it needs to be on the table. But if he’s working for me, he’s at least getting some serious days off for what he did.

I know he got shot and he’s recovered, but he’s getting days off, especially if I’m firing that other guy. This guy is at least going to get time off without pay. I would like to see it done better than what is being done. But yeah, that whole liability thing. Now he has to do it.

Speaker 2 – Guest, Dr. Joel Schultz:

Yeah. He cannot have any other firearms-related infractions for the next 20 years.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:

Oh, yeah. Or he’s screwed.

When I was young, look, I was 21 years old. Leave me time to tell my story, but go ahead.

Speaker 2 – Guest, Dr. Joel Schultz:

Okay.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:

When I was a rookie, clearly, I was on my first squad. We worked midnights. I had a little cap gun, and I would go around and surprise people. I would ambush them, and I would throw the cap. It was night, and the sparks would fly and stuff. They knew it was me, but they called me to a meeting and then they ambushed me.

I remember being in a horizontal position in the air and everybody holding me. They were taking their disharmony out for the cap gun and the caps. That’s how they handled that little problem, and it would have lasted. I mean, young and stupid, just doing stupid stuff. So yeah, that was pretty bad. But I grew up after that, believe it or not. Go ahead.

Speaker 2 – Guest, Dr. Joel Schultz:

I think, in addition to what those officers did, you should have taken a pretty stern beating, but you got away pretty easily with that.

I had a partner, a couple of us on midnight shift, and there was a real estate company in our town that had a frontiersman. It was Frontier Realty, and he was holding a rifle. This other officer, Steve, you know what I’m talking about, said, “115, we’ve got a report of a man with a gun in front of such-and-such location.”

So I screamed up there expecting a man with a gun, ready to fight it out, sneak up, whatever, and it was just this icon, this little wooden statue of the frontiersman with the musket. I was not amused. I was not amused.

Steve continued. I saw him years later, and I wrote a Police1 article on the topic of practical jokes. He knew I was talking about him. I met him at an alumni meeting, and he was still snickering about that.

I won’t tell any other stories because I want you to have respect for me at the end of the show.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:

Yeah. But this is the latest update. I’m not surprised they fired the guy. I was kind of expecting to see that last week because I was just thinking, if that guy worked for me, how do they not fire him and let him fight to get his job back? But I don’t think you’re going to see that happen.

We’ve got a little over a minute, guys, so let’s go to our first story with a video component. We’re on Rumble.com. This is Butter. Did you have something you wanted to add, Chief?

Speaker 2 – Guest, Dr. Joel Schultz:

Actually, Chip, if we could go, or at least make sure and get there, to the deputy who deals with the shotgun and the distressed woman. There’s so much psychology. We need to talk about this officer, who is acting totally inappropriately. I’m just mad about that. If we want to talk about Sacramento, we can.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:

I’m just trying to find that here. This is the Sacramento one: “Deputy shoots suspect who pulls out a shotgun during a woman-in-distress call.” That’s what you’re talking about, right?

Speaker 2 – Guest, Dr. Joel Schultz:

Yeah. That’s it.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:

We now have less than 30 seconds left. Let me whet the appetite.

Sacramento deputy fatally shoots a suspect who pulls out a shotgun during a woman-in-distress call. Guys, this is really something. This is the one I was surprised I had fingernails left on. You don’t want to miss this. Stick with us. We’ll be right back.

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Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:

Welcome back to LEO Round Table at leoroundtable.com, the law enforcement talk show. My name is Chip DeBlock, and I’m your host.

We’re joined by Dr. Joel Schultz, retired police chief. We left off whetting the appetite on this next story. It’s from Rumble.com. This is Butter, which is our favorite law enforcement video channel.

We’ve got “Sacramento deputy fatally shoots a suspect who pulls out a shotgun during a woman-in-distress call.” It sounds good. I’m going to work through this right now.

Video Audio / Deputy and Suspect Exchange:

For right now, I’ve got to keep everybody here right now. I’m waiting on one more, okay? I’m just going to place you in handcuffs right now.

No.

Drop the gun. Hey, 1-Boy-1. Drop the gun. Just drop it, man. Come on. Just drop the gun. You don’t want to do this. Just drop it. Come on.

8-1-Boy-1. He is walking northbound with a gun in his hand. It’s not pointing at me right now. He’s just trying to get an issue right now. Okay. I will shoot you. Come on. Stay down. Stay down. Stay down.

8-1-Boy-1. Shots fired. Shots fired. Subject down. Do not go for the gun. Do not go for the gun. Drop the gun. Drop the gun. Drop the gun, sir. Drop the gun.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:

So first flag, we’re in Sacramento. We are in California, okay? That should help explain what you’re getting ready to hear, which is going to drive some people crazy.

A suspect who pulled out a shotgun on a Sacramento sheriff’s deputy was shot and killed by law enforcement near Galt. But he wasn’t shot and killed right away.

According to the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office, and I didn’t know we had sheriff’s offices in California, so I’m kind of thinking they’ve got it wrong unless Sacramento is an office and not a department. I suspect they’re a department.

Anyhow, deputies responded to a call for service about a woman possibly in distress. She’s on the side of the road in a silver sedan. This happens at about seven o’clock in the morning, so that’s a little unusual for a call like this going out at that time of day.

A lone deputy responds. He sees the car with a man and the woman inside. He contacts them, and the woman lets the deputy know that she does not feel safe. The deputy moves her into his cruiser and puts her in the backseat.

Now he gets out, and he’s dealing with the guy. They’re at the rear of the car, and the hatch is open to the back of the car, the hatchback or trunk area, whatever you want to call it. The deputy is standing facing the suspect, and behind the suspect is the open hatch for the stuff in the car.

As the deputy is beginning to investigate, it says the guy grabs a shotgun from his car. They’re leaving some critical stuff out, Chief, because just before that happens, the cop tells him, and he’s asking questions, “Yeah, I just called for backup.” The guy can clearly hear him on the radio. Then he tells the guy, in case he missed it, “I just called for backup. I’m waiting for someone to arrive. I’m going to go ahead and put you in handcuffs.”

As soon as he says the word handcuffs, the guy says, “Oh, no.” He takes a step back, reaches in, and pulls out a shotgun from the rear of the vehicle because the deputy is letting him stand there with the hatch open.

He doesn’t take the shotgun all the way out at first. He kind of picks it up and is holding it suspended in the hatch area of the car, but he’s got it in his hand. The deputy starts giving commands to drop it and starts creating distance. He backs up behind his cruiser.

Through a long dialogue of a minute or two, he allows this bad guy holding the shotgun, who steps away from the car, clearly holding the shotgun now, to obtain cover using the cop’s cruiser. So now the cop no longer has a good line of sight on him. If the guy wants to drop down to the ground and use the shotgun to shoot the deputy underneath the car, or shoot the female he had the altercation with who is in the car because the deputy is responsible for her safety as well, the deputy is at a huge disadvantage. He let the guy get out of his view, and now the guy has not just concealment, but cover.

This goes on for too long. The guy backs away. Now he goes into a field. Backup comes. It looks like a female officer showed up with a rifle, and we have a male officer showing up with a shotgun. I couldn’t find where they actually finally shot and killed this guy, but apparently that happened.

So many things bothered me with this. It went on for so long, but of course, we are in California. We’ve got almost six minutes. Chief Schultz?

Speaker 2 – Guest, Dr. Joel Schultz:

Yeah. I would really encourage people to look at your produced show tomorrow once that video is up, or look it up. It was so distressing.

Here are a couple of psychological things I think we can take away from this. First of all, I would almost bet you that this officer was an A student in the academic part of the academy. He was prepared to do police procedure. He was not prepared to deal with an uncooperative suspect. He had no warrior mindset. I know we’re not supposed to talk about the warrior mindset, but he had no sense of, “I’ve got to take this situation and control it.”

He let the suspect control it from the very beginning. There are two psychological things I want to talk about. One is that he stayed within his realm of competency. It’s obvious that he did not know what to do with a potentially combative, or even lethally armed, suspect. So he reverted to the things he was comfortable with.

He was running license plates. He was asking for ID. He was calling in and giving descriptions. He was trying to negotiate and make a connection with this guy. All the things he knew how to do because that was out of the textbook.

I’ve been accused, because of my education, “Oh, you’re pretty good at that book-learning stuff.” Well, I am good at that book-learning stuff, but I can also take care of business when I need to take care of business. This guy absolutely did not.

So we retreat to our area of competency, the things that we know we can control, talking on the radio, and so on.

The other thing is the core difference between the police mindset and the civilian mindset in dealing with cognitive dissonance.

I’ll tell you a quick story if I can. We were in Kansas City, my wife and I, walking down to try to find a Starbucks. She saw this guy walking down the street, in the street but close to the parked cars, and he kept looking into the cars. She’s been married to me long enough to be suspicious of just about everybody, including me. She said, “Hey, look at that.”

So I looked. For the average civilian, you look at that and say, “Well, that’s weird.” It puts a little distress in my mind, cognitive dissonance. I have to resolve that tension in my mind. I’m going to resolve it by making up an explanation for what this person is doing that fits with my normal life and mindset. So, okay, the guy is probably looking for his keys in the car or something, or whatever. You make up some kind of story.

My mindset, as well as my wife’s police heart, was, why is this guy looking into cars? Why is he not on the sidewalk? Why is he in the street? It became clear to me that this guy was likely looking for keys in a car or something to break into and get. This was on the Plaza in Kansas City, a beautiful place.

When this officer, with his civilian mindset, sees this guy poking around in his layered clothing, poking around in the front of the car, and holding his shotgun, this guy must be thinking, “Oh, he’s not going to hurt me. I just need to have a conversation with him because I don’t want to kill him.”

So he’s relieving his cognitive dissonance, not from a police mindset, but from a “this is just another fellow human being, and I’m trying to understand him” mindset, which gets cops killed.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:

Wow. Yeah, you’re spot on. It was tough to watch. It wasn’t, Chief. And I’m worried about the girl in the car too.

Speaker 2 – Guest, Dr. Joel Schultz:

Absolutely. At one time, the cop had taken a position and the bad guy had taken a position. They both had long guns out, and the girl was in between, freaking out. There was a point at which, when there were enough officers on scene, she should have been evacuated, rescued out of there, and taken away. Absolutely.

The other thing, if I can continue my rant here, is that when the backup officers got there, there was no teamwork. The guy who came out with the long gun and took a position of cover behind the door of the suspect vehicle, when the suspect was away a little bit and on the ground already shot, first of all, you saw him loading his shotgun. So that was not combat-ready.

Then he was looking over at the original officer like, “What are we going to do here? Why haven’t you killed this guy yet?” Then the third officer comes and parks down the road. Maybe they blocked traffic or something, but he was absolutely tactically exposed all the way down to an armed-suspect call where shots had already been fired, away from any cover or concealment.

There was no coordination, no teamwork. The first officer on the scene is your scene commander. You tell these officers how to deploy safely and effectively. I didn’t hear any of that. But the dispatcher knew what was going on because the first officer delighted in narrating the whole play-by-play.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:

My gosh, the radio was his best friend, was it not? My gosh. Take care of business. It just drives me crazy. They can’t live without that radio. Then, of course, he had a pistol, so he’s doing the one-handed thing with the pistol because he’s got to have the radio in his hand.

Speaker 2 – Guest, Dr. Joel Schultz:

Yeah, that was his security blanket. You knew he was waiting for backup not because it was the tactical thing to do, but because he wanted somebody else to handle the situation.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:

Yeah, I totally agree.

Well, it’s been another fantastic show, Chief Schultz. Again, we get these deep topics. I love it when you’re on the show and we go down the rabbit hole. I’m glad we were able to cover this one.

Speaker 2 – Guest, Dr. Joel Schultz:

I need blood-pressure medicine.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:

You need it now.

I want to mention The Wounded Blue at TheWoundedBlue.org, Lieutenant Randy Sutton’s 501(c)(3), helping LEOs around the world who are suffering from things like PTSD and other issues. I donate to them monthly. If you guys are interested or curious about The Wounded Blue, go to TheWoundedBlue.org and check them out.

Like I said, I donate monthly, and it’s a great organization to donate to. I don’t have to worry about them embarrassing me.

I also want to mention, guys, don’t forget that I have relaunched LEOAffairs.ch. It allows cops, agencies, or sheriff’s deputies to talk with anonymity and without fear of repercussion about what’s going on inside your agency. I previously sold another version of the site. They shut it down. I’ve relaunched it, and it is LEOAffairs.ch. So please check that out and sign up.

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We’ll see you guys back tomorrow at 12 noon Eastern.