Police Tactics, Public Outrage, and the Politics of Accountability

Speaker Identification

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock. Identified from the introduction, where the speaker states that his name is Chip DeBlock and that he is the host of the law enforcement discussion.

Speaker 2 – Captain Brett Bartlett. Identified from the host’s introduction as Captain Brett Bartlett, founder of Exumber Defense Solutions, with 32 years of law enforcement experience. The exact spelling of the company name should be verified.

Speaker 3 – Prerecorded Galls Promo Voice. Identified by the polished commercial-style sponsor segment beginning with “My family only cares about one thing: that I come home safe.”

Speaker 4 – Video / Body-Camera Audio. Used for brief quoted or paraphrased audio heard during video clips, including officer commands and suspect statements when they are understandable from the transcript.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
Welcome to Leo Roundtable at leoroundtable.com. My name is Chip DeBlock, and I’m your host for a group of law enforcement professionals who talk about today’s news and issues, but we do it from a law enforcement perspective.

Let me introduce the crew. You recognize him: Captain Brett Bartlett, founder of Exumber Defense Solutions at ExumberDefense.com. He also has 32 years, and he makes me say this last part, 32 years of exemplary law enforcement experience. Whether that’s true or not, who knows? But thank you for being on the show, Captain.

A shout-out to our sponsors. Our title sponsor is Galls at galls.com. Don’t forget that discount code. It’s Radio 15, and normally you get 15% off your next purchase at galls.com. I’m going to mute Brett’s microphone again for the second time, and here we go.

Don’t forget about Galls at galls.com. Use Radio 15. Also, Compliant Technologies is our satellite sponsor at complianttechnologies.com. We’ve got GunLearn.com, MyMedicare.live, and TwoBells.com. They’ve built our new online store at leoroundtable.com. Make sure you check it out. You can get cool gear like the mug I have behind me. We’ve got shirts. I’ll kind of stop there, so make sure you check that out.

Our Green Beret Delta Force member wants us to mention all the outlets we’re on. Yes, we’re on Spotify and Apple iTunes, but we’re also on every podcast outlet or platform known to man. We’re also on social media, including Rumble, YouTube, Facebook, X, formerly Twitter, and Truth Social.

A special shout-out to Brian Burns for the Tampa Free Press, RetiredFormerLawman.com, and Travis Yates with LawOfficer.com. Thanks to all those entities for helping make this show happen.

Now let’s whet the appetite and talk about what we’re going to be covering today. Our first story: New York offers free health care to prostitutes. If you guys are paying health-care bills like me, that will rub you raw.

We also have an Olympian arrested. I’m going to stop there. There is some stuff going on with the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. There is an Olympian who was arrested, and there is an ABC guy who was arrested, but the real story is that people are attacking our country and the goodwill of the president by going after these things. I want to cover that briefly.

LAPD releases body cam of officers shooting an armed carjacking suspect on the freeway. Then we’ve got a couple of guys tasing handcuffed people. We have a Greene County grand jury declining to indict a former deputy after a handcuffed suspect was tased, but this deputy was fired and arrested. Then we’ve got body cam footage showing a Central Falls officer using a taser on a handcuffed man as well. I think he just got suspended.

Then we’ve got another body cam. It shows a stolen car ramming a police cruiser in Hanover while the suspect ends up being arrested. That’s what we have to talk about.

Captain, if you’re ready, let’s jump into this and get this party started.

Moonbattery.com is the name of the site. I’m not familiar with Moonbattery, but I am familiar with New York offering free health care to prostitutes. Brett and I used to do a lot of prostitution gigs together.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m paying, for me and my wife with no kids, over $2,500 a month in health care, so this rubs me the wrong way. The New York Post reports that New York Governor Kathy Hochul has quietly extended a pilot program that provides free health care to sex workers, with taxpayers footing the nearly $2.5 million bill.

Think about that for a second: $2.5 million. This is just for New York. I believe there have been some increases in the amount, but the state health department, back in 2023, awarded $1 million of public funds to two contractors as part of Hochul’s plan to help the world’s oldest profession. New documents revealed by the Post show the program extending through June of 2028, with $1.5 million more in costs. So that’s increased by $1.5 million.

The benefits of moral turpitude under this liberal rule of Kathy Hochul: what do they include? Under the initiative, sex workers in New York City and the Buffalo area will continue to receive primary care, sexual care, behavioral care, and dental care. Others have to pay for dental care out of pocket, but there’s no problem for prostitutes in New York. It will be just like it is for meth addicts under Karen Bass in Los Angeles.

There you go. Captain, what do you think about free health care for the oldest profession on Earth?

Speaker 2 – Captain Brett Bartlett:
You’re talking about the legislature? Those whores are already getting their free medical care, so it’s not a big extension just to give it to all the other ones.

I can’t believe New Yorkers are standing by, but you change things at the polls. If you don’t, you can live there and put up with it.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
If they’re okay with it, then who are we to say anything about it?

Anything more on that, Captain, or is that all you have for the main topic?

Speaker 2 – Captain Brett Bartlett:
I’m good.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
All right, guys. That’s what’s going on in New York in case anybody’s interested.

Let’s go ahead and move along here. We’ve got an update story. This is from Tampa Free Press at tampafp.com. Our buddy Brian Burns runs that publication.

We have an Olympian arrested as Trump blames vandalism for peeling, not peeing, but peeling, in the Reflecting Pool. Fourteen million dollars. I know what Brett was thinking.

President Trump claimed on Saturday that law enforcement has arrested multiple individuals for allegedly vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, linking the incidents to ongoing maintenance and water-quality issues at the site. That would be a major issue if you were trying to fix something that other presidents had dropped the ball on, and then you have these issues going on and find out it is because of saboteurs.

These incidents are linked to ongoing maintenance and water-quality issues at the site. The claims come shortly after the completion of a major multimillion-dollar renovation project on this iconic landmark. I remember Trump saying that he got bids, and the projected costs were a lot lower, at least at one time, than what other people had said it was going to be. I think a lot of people get used to the government picking up the tab on the check, and they just want to pad the costs.

The United States Park Police have arrested multiple individuals for vandalizing this Reflecting Pool. This is what Trump wrote on Truth Social. He said, “Who would do such a thing?” These are very serious crimes having to do with the destruction of national monuments, followed by years in jail.

The president stated that officials met with contractors on Saturday to do immediate repairs, noting that the workers would probably be forced to release and drain much of the water in the pool because of the alleged damage.

The water-quality issues quickly resurfaced. Remember, that is why we wanted to take it over, because it was algae, green, and nasty. Within days of completion, when Trump fixed it, all of a sudden there was a green hue and clumps of algae appearing across the water. In response, crews from the Interior Department used hydrogen peroxide and nano-bubble technology, which I don’t know what that is. I know what hydrogen peroxide is, and they were using that to control the blooms.

Additionally, the new blue paint began peeling away from the pool floor and started floating to the surface. That is where the issue is with people getting arrested. One of the floating paint fragments led to the arrest of 67-year-old David Hearn on Friday. Hearn is a Maryland resident and a former U.S. Olympian who competed in the slalom canoe racing course. He was detained for nearly five hours on the charge of destruction of government property.

The article says that he picked up a piece of floating debris. I suspect there is a lot more to that, but we will go down the rabbit hole when we get more information. Hearn denied any intentional wrongdoing in an interview on Saturday. He said, “I didn’t vandalize anything. I did not want to destroy or break or peel anything. By the time I realized what was going on, I was being put in handcuffs.” He explained that he merely reached into the water and grabbed the end of a piece of paint that had already peeled off.

That is what he says. I know there was an ABC guy, if I remember correctly, who said he had just touched a piece of something floating. Then there was something I read about him grabbing it and pulling it and peeling it off the inside of the pool, which would not be a good thing. Judge Nancy Pirro weighed in on that, who is the head prosecutor now.

Captain Bartlett, what do you think about all this stuff going on in the Reflecting Pool?

Speaker 2 – Captain Brett Bartlett:
It’s not that they hate the Reflecting Pool. They hate him. They don’t like him. The Reflecting Pool is an in-your-face representation of what Donald Trump has done. He has brought the monuments in D.C. back to life. A lot of the fountains are back to life.

This is easy for the hate-Trumpers to go to a place that is right in front of their face and try to do damage to it. Whether those guys did damage or not, that’s up to the court. My point is, it’s right there. It’s in your face. He could have written “Trump” on the bottom of that Reflecting Pool just to make it a little bit worse.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
What is the answer for something like this? What do you think?

Speaker 2 – Captain Brett Bartlett:
Put people in jail and publicize that you’re putting people in jail. But make sure it’s a righteous case, not a borderline case.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
I’m with you. I agree. You would think they would have camera equipment there and people there who can move in and grab people who are doing that. I suspect it is sabotage as well. There are no excuses. You’re right. Every opportunity they have to make Trump look bad or sabotage a plan that he has, even if it would better the country, they just don’t care.

We’ve got a new guy, Steve Bartlett. Where did he come from? Looks like he’s on Facebook. We won’t hold that against you, Steve, but welcome to the show.

If you guys are ready, let’s move on to our next story. We’ve got four stories with video components, and we’re about a minute away from our first commercial break, so let me see how far I can get through this first one.

We’re going to jump over to L.A. Rumble.com, our favorite law enforcement video channel called This Is Butter. LAPD releases body cam of officers shooting an armed carjacking suspect on the 210 Freeway.

Speaker 4 – Video / Body-Camera Audio:
You’re going to get shot. Drop that. Drop it. Drop it. Drop the gun. Drop it. Get on the ground. Drop it.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
This is in California. This is how they roll. There are definitely some critiques here. I know Brett is going to be all over one particular item.

The Los Angeles Police Department confirmed a police shooting that occurred at 12:44, in the middle of the afternoon, that struck the suspect as he was running across westbound lanes. LAPD officers told CBS L.A. that detectives with their Mission Area Narcotics Enforcement Detail were in foot pursuit, chasing a bad guy, and he decided to run onto the interstate, or the freeway.

They were searching for a known, wanted guy. He has been identified as 21-year-old Jason Vega, because, as Brett knows, all bad guys are 18 and 21.

Someone hold on there, guys. We have to go to our first commercial break. Stick with us. We’ll be right back.

Speaker 3 – Prerecorded Galls Promo Voice:
My family only cares about one thing: that I come home safe.

At Galls, every order begins with a promise made with purpose, stitched for support, packed 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.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
Welcome back to Leo Roundtable at leoroundtable.com, the law enforcement talk show. My name is Chip DeBlock, and I’m your host. We’re joined by Captain Brett Bartlett, founder of Exumber Defense Solutions at ExumberDefense.com.

During the commercial break, I was thinking about the sex workers getting free health care in New York. I just started to think how much money I would save if I put my wife to work. If I’m paying over $2,500 and she got free health care, I’d at least be saving $1,250 or so, right?

Speaker 2 – Captain Brett Bartlett:
But you’d have to buy a yellow Cadillac, though, to go with the whole pimp thing.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
I got you. If I had to move to New York, the cost of living there is going to be a little pricey. It may not even be a wash. I might still be in the hole. No pun intended.

All right, here we go. Back to L.A. We left off talking about LAPD releasing body cam involving officers shooting an armed guy. He tried to carjack a dude at the end, and he is up on the freeway. They are chasing this guy, and our iconic unit is chasing him because he is up on the freeway.

I think we have all been there. I’ve certainly chased enough guys up there. When you get up there on the interstate and you have cars that are not going 55, they’re going 70-plus, not everybody at speed can judge how to maneuver and how to judge the distance of somebody. It gets very dangerous on the interstate when you’re chasing people and you’re not in a vehicle.

Our bad guy is running. He attempts to carjack another driver. At this point, the officers give commands for him to drop the handgun, which is already pointed at an officer, and he refuses. They open fire.

I’m going to go to what they missed here, and I’m going to jump to my show notes, although I pretty much know it by heart. They’ve got the chase, which is interesting enough, but it really gets good when you get up on the interstate. There is a semi tractor-trailer coming by, and he is hitting his horn because this dude is running from the cops and he is right in the path of the semi.

The semi goes by. I swear, the guy disappeared. I didn’t know whether he was being dragged underneath. I’ve got to admit, I didn’t really care. It would have made for a better show. Apparently, the semi truck misses the guy, but it brakes and stops, which is a good thing because the semi truck can provide cover for the cops.

Now the bad guy is in the middle of the interstate, in front of a big white truck. It looked like maybe a dually or some big truck. So we’ve got the semi truck and then we’ve got a slightly smaller white truck, and the bad guy is behind the hood of that truck.

In the body cam, you can see the female officer to his left. She is using that semi tractor-trailer for cover. It was a beautiful thing. Our male cop is standing out in the open lanes of traffic. There is no traffic at that moment, but still. The first time you see the gun, the bad guy has it pointed right at the cop. The cop does not shoot. He waits and waits.

They say the bad guy tried to carjack. It’s kind of hard to tell what is going on over on the driver’s side of that white truck that he is using as cover, but they say he tried to carjack. Eventually, he separates from that white truck.

I thought our male cop took him out, but then they went to the female officer’s body cam, and her gun moved first. To me, it looked like she fired the first shot, and she was the one using cover. I have more good things to say about her than him.

Let me go back. They used a 40-millimeter less-lethal launcher on him to make sure he did not go back after the weapons. He went down. A knife fell, and the gun fell. Then they went 10-15 with him. That is the way it ended.

What do you think, Captain?

Speaker 2 – Captain Brett Bartlett:
I don’t know why they didn’t shoot him a lot sooner than they did. It was so obvious. He had a gun. He was heading toward the other side. If they had not shot him, he was going to hop that median and be on the other side. Maybe it would stop traffic, but he could have carjacked somebody and been gone.

Another one: officer, shut up. How many commands did he say? “Drop the gun.” My theory is, if you say it three times, “Drop the gun,” and they don’t drop it, you say, “Drop the gun,” and that means you are serious. That is exactly what happened in this video. Shut your mouth, give a command, enforce the command, and shut up.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
You don’t think one more command would add to the hundred that they gave?

Speaker 2 – Captain Brett Bartlett:
No. If the hospital said he didn’t say it just one more time, I would drop it.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
As seasoned cops like Brett and I are, Brett has more time on than I do. He has 32 exemplary years, by the way. The backdrop fascinates me. Doing police work and covering shootings like this, I always look at the backdrop, and the backdrop can change. It did in this case. The backdrop was different for our female officer than it was for the male officer who was out in the open.

I was so impressed with what the female officer did. The backdrop wasn’t necessarily ideal. It was probably a better backdrop when he was closer to that truck because the female had a bead on him, and he was above the hood. It would have been a headshot. But it really was not a great backdrop. If she had missed, there were things back there you did not want to hit.

Lower down, there were some concrete pilings behind the bad guy, but they were low, maybe three feet high. She would have had to do a headshot over the hood of that white truck, and the backdrop had stuff back there that you did not want to risk hitting. Nobody had a long gun that I saw. That would have been a nice answer to part of the problem.

The female taking that first shot, I don’t know if you thought she did or not, but I didn’t think she did until I saw her body cam. You’re right. If they had let him hop that concrete median and get to the other side, the backdrop would have been worse than what they even had.

Speaker 2 – Captain Brett Bartlett:
The backdrop, whatever is behind the bad guy, is always a consideration, but it’s not a stop. They have a split second to decide the worst-case scenario. Do I take a shot now because he is a danger, and I might miss and hit something, or do I let him go and he most assuredly causes more trouble down the road? It’s a balancing act. It’s not a good one.

Here is a piece of trivia for you. I saw California on one of the radio transmissions. I heard somebody say, and I saw it in the words at the bottom, “shop 861” or something like that. Out at LAPD, the officers call their police cars “shops.”

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
Really? I thought they were calling for air service.

Speaker 2 – Captain Brett Bartlett:
“Shop” is short for the shop number. That five-digit number on every LAPD car is an accounting number. When they turn it in for repairs, that is the number for that vehicle. Whenever they say, “I’m going back to my shop,” it is short for shop number, which is the accounting number on that vehicle.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
Brett, how did you get so smart?

Speaker 2 – Captain Brett Bartlett:
I don’t know. It’s more of a curse.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
Is it a gift or a curse?

Your sound and your audio are doing great, by the way. Keep it that way. Don’t touch a thing.

Guys, we’re going to take our second commercial break. Stick with us. We’ll be right back.

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Welcome back to Leo Roundtable at leoroundtable.com, the law enforcement talk show. My name is Chip DeBlock, and I’m your host. We’ve got Captain Brett Bartlett from Exumber Defense Solutions at ExumberDefense.com.

If you’re ready, Captain, we can move on to the second topic, which also has a video component. Does that sound good to you?

Speaker 2 – Captain Brett Bartlett:
I’m ready.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
This next story, guys, has two in a row that are somewhat related because it is the tasering of handcuffed people. Brett used to run Internal Affairs, did you not? You were in charge of IA. It is kind of funny, actually, with your history, that you ended up being, well, maybe I shouldn’t say that publicly. I’m curious what your opinion on this is going to be because we’ve got one guy fired, and then we’ve got one guy suspended. Different agencies, and there are video components from both of these.

Rumble.com, our favorite law enforcement video channel, This Is Butter. Greene County grand jury, this is in Georgia, by the way, declined to indict a former deputy. That is the first flag: former deputy. He lost his job after a handcuffed suspect was tasered.

Speaker 4 – Video / Body-Camera Audio:
You’ve got to stop. 17 Greene County, taser deployed.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
Body cam footage obtained by 11 Alive provides a first-hand look at the incident that led to the arrest and termination of a Greene County sheriff’s deputy in Georgia, whose case was later presented to a grand jury that declined to indict him.

The video, obtained through Georgia’s Open Records Act, captures the July 2025 incident between former Greene County Deputy Robert Klein and a man named Cornelius Allen. Allen was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence after he had crashed on Interstate 20.

The key footage resulted in our deputy being charged by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation with aggravated assault and violation of oath of office. This is where our buddy Karen, or our girl buddy Karen Hammer, works or worked for GBI. I don’t know if she is still there or not. You remember Karen, married to Ted?

Speaker 2 – Captain Brett Bartlett:
Oh, yes. I used to work for Ted.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
The Greene County Sheriff’s Office terminated Deputy Klein and requested that GBI investigate after learning that he deployed his taser on a handcuffed suspect. They actually approached GBI about this. Our deputy was arrested by GBI. They looked into it, and on July 9, 2025, they arrested him and booked him into the Greene County Jail.

According to GBI, the incident occurred after deputies responded to a crash shortly before midnight on July 6, 2025. Allen was arrested for driving under the influence. He was later transported to St. Mary’s Good Samaritan Hospital, and they were going to do a blood draw on him there.

Body cam shows Allen being questioned by deputies at the crash scene. He did a field sobriety test, was placed under arrest, and was transported to the hospital. Inside the emergency room, Allen remains handcuffed behind his back. He is in a wheelchair, awaiting treatment. The deputy and Allen exchange words throughout the encounter, so they get into it verbally.

I know you guys might be thinking they are both bad guys because the deputy used a taser on a handcuffed man. We’ll talk about that. It is just easier for distinction. We have the arrested dude, the one wearing handcuffs. He is definitely the bad guy, and then we have the deputy.

As they get into it verbally, things escalate. Our bad guy remains in handcuffs. He is in the wheelchair. Klein repeatedly tells him to stop moving and lean back. Moments later, the deputy tasers him. From my memory, it was a probe deployment. It was not a drive stun. The footage obtained by 11 Alive shows that Klein contacted them. They imply that he said he had been found not guilty and wanted to talk with them and do a media interview.

When they checked on it, they found that it was an evidentiary thing, with a grand jury deciding not to indict him. It was not like he went to court and was found not guilty, so they made an issue out of that in the story. That is what we have: arrested, terminated, but not indicted by the grand jury.

Brett, I wonder why they didn’t make sure they got a grand jury indictment before they arrested him, since they roll that way. They put him through the arrest and booking process, and then they take it to the grand jury and they lose.

Speaker 2 – Captain Brett Bartlett:
I don’t know. That depends on the laws in that particular state. It is all about tactics and laws, and do we like this guy or not? Is this going to look good in the paper? There is just so much crap that goes on.

If somebody is in handcuffs, there is an assumption that they are under control, but that is not always the case. You can run, fight, and hurt other people while you are handcuffed. But if this guy did it just because he was mad at the person, that is a huge problem.

In the one we are going to see in a little bit, let’s say the guy was disobeying commands and you wanted to bring him into compliance. Absent a taser, what would you do? You give pain compliance, you punch him in the mouth, or you drop him to the ground. Something is going to happen to force or at least encourage compliance.

A punch in the mouth is going to hurt the deputy, and it is going to leave marks. You could break your hand. You could break his jaw. You could put him in a carotid restraint and knock him out, but that never looks good. What is an officer going to do with somebody who is in handcuffs and is not obeying lawful orders?

You have to do something to break into that cycle of disobedience and make him stop doing it. If it is a ride on the taser for a few seconds, whatever. But if they do it because they are mad at the person, that is a huge problem.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
I know it all boils down to the SOP, and we have rules of engagement, for lack of a better term. That use-of-force continuum is kind of like the military’s rules of engagement, where that falls on the scale. I’m with you. The fact that you are using a taser on a handcuffed guy, or even the fact that maybe you shoot somebody who is handcuffed, can all be justified.

Speaker 2 – Captain Brett Bartlett:
Yeah.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
There are situations where you could shoot someone who is handcuffed behind their back and shoot them in the back, and it could be justified. There are easily scenarios where it would be completely justified and should be.

So I have to think there is a policy. Maybe the policy is good, or maybe it is a bad policy.

Speaker 2 – Captain Brett Bartlett:
There is also the way you tell your story. When you are finally asked to tell your story, people think CYA means cover your butt. CYA means, “Can you articulate?” That is what it means. Can I put into understandable words, understandable to the layperson, why I did what I did? Not just, “Well, he resisted me.” That is not enough. You have to go deeper so that a person who is not in the business can hear your words and say, “You know what? That makes sense to me.”

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
Let me ask you something, Captain. If I am a police recruit and I have everything nailed down, I’m the most fit guy, I can ace tests, but I have an articulation problem, is that going to be an issue for me?

Speaker 2 – Captain Brett Bartlett:
Oh, yeah. At some point, you are going to be done. It is all about how you say the words.

The problem with these events is that a lot of citizens don’t know this, but when officers make a decision, there are four items they have to cover in their head, in order of importance: law; rules and regulations; SOPs; and training. That has to go through your mind in that half a second.

At the beginning of your career, you kind of model it: What is the law? What are the rules? What are the policies? What is the training? Eventually, they all get blended together. When you make your decision, they are all floating in there together. People who don’t understand police work are not going to understand this, but when you are making your decision, there are four distinct areas that you have to include: the law, the rules, the policies, and the training. That fast.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
That is a good point. You are right about articulation. When we teach, we say we teach to the twos, people on a level two on a scale of 10. The tens are going to get it. You have to reach the twos because you reach everybody above them automatically.

If you cannot articulate and justify it to that civilian review board, or whoever is going to be reading it, and the paper gets hold of it a year later and people are reading it, you want everybody to be able to get it.

Speaker 2 – Captain Brett Bartlett:
Do you remember years ago, two decades ago, when we had an officer chasing a bad guy? He was a confirmed armed robber. He had already shot at some people in the business. He was up on the interstate, running across. The officer’s name was Johnson, and the officer fired a shot. It was perfectly within law, policy, SOP, rules, and training, but when they asked him why, he said, “I was getting tired.” Are you kidding me?

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
Yeah, I remember that.

Speaker 2 – Captain Brett Bartlett:
If you can’t articulate, shut your mouth and let your PBA rep articulate for you.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
That was unfortunate. He needed some handholding.

Speaker 2 – Captain Brett Bartlett:
I heard that bad guy take his last breath. Me and Sal Ruggiero were the backups.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
Really?

Speaker 2 – Captain Brett Bartlett:
Yeah. I heard him. He had that rattle, that horrible, horrible death.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
When you hear that, you know.

Saved by the bell. We’ve got another one, very similar. I’m curious what our audience is going to think about the second one. Leave your comments. We’ve got a commercial coming up. This is our third commercial break. When we come back, we’ve got another story, another taser, and you guys are going to love it. We’ll be right back.

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Welcome back to Leo Roundtable at leoroundtable.com, the law enforcement talk show. My name is Chip DeBlock, and I’m your host. We’re joined by Captain Brett Bartlett, founder of Exumber Defense Solutions at ExumberDefense.com.

We’ve got another taser story. If you guys can believe it, the odds of landing two stories like this back to back. Of course, they involve completely different disciplines.

As a reminder, we just talked about a deputy who tasered a guy who had been arrested for DUI. He was in a wheelchair at the hospital. The deputy and the suspect get into it verbally. There is some distance between the deputy and the bad guy, and he tasers him, launches the probes, the guy goes down to the floor, and the deputy gets arrested and fired. But when they take it to the grand jury, he does not get indicted. That is the way his career ended.

On this one, Rumble.com, This Is Butter again. The channel has body cam footage that shows a Central Falls police officer in Rhode Island using a taser on a handcuffed guy.

Speaker 4 – Video / Body-Camera Audio:
Hey, get up. Now get up. On your feet.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
Let’s see what happened on this one. Newly released body cam video shows a Central Falls police officer holding a taser to a handcuffed man’s back last fall. Now we’re talking about a drive stun. You are still tasering a guy, but instead of deploying the probes, it is contact. It is more like, how do you describe it? With the taser and the probes launched, you are going to seize up. You are going to lock up. But when you do a drive stun, it is like getting shocked. It is not as debilitating because the distance between the two contact points is only this much versus the darts being spread apart. The further the darts are apart, the more muscle reaction you get.

At this point, it is pain compliance. It is no different from punching him in the mouth or driving your finger under his ear. It is all compliance.

Officer Timothy Toczko was suspended earlier this month in connection with the incident. It happened outside of a bar, because there are never issues when you have people drinking alcohol. The only thing we are missing here is females. Liquor and women, like you always say, right?

This happened back in November. The police report says Officer Toczko and another officer got a call to Central Street Bar because there was a guy refusing to leave. If you are trespassing, we call it trespass after warning. They give you the opportunity to leave. This guy didn’t.

The owner of the bar told the officers that the unidentified man was told to leave several times. He was not listening, and the guy was holding onto the door in an attempt to avoid being taken out while the owner was speaking with the officers. Both Officer Toczko and the other officer escorted the guy out the front door. He again refused to leave. The guy was highly intoxicated.

They were asking him questions in English and in Spanish. He was unable to answer them. By listening to him talk, or try to talk, this dude was gone. He was wasted.

The footage shows the man falling on the ground outside the bar and staying there for several minutes before standing up. Then he starts aggressively punching a wall. The officer says, “Hey, dude, we’re not going to do that.” The cops are pretty cool with him. They are cool with him until they are not cool.

Toczko steps in right after the punching of the wall and says, in essence, “Dude, just go home. I’m not going to tell you again. You’re going to be arrested for disorderly. I really don’t want to do this.” They are giving him all the chances.

Then the guy tenses his body up. It looked like he brushed up against the cop a couple of times. The cops tell him, “Dude, you’re going to jail.” They go to handcuff him, and now they are trying to walk him to the cruiser. He drops to the ground, drops all his body weight, and they have to pick him up and carry him. He is fully horizontal. The female officer has one of his legs, and he is flailing his other leg around. She is trying not to get kicked.

They are trying to get him in the cruiser, and he doesn’t want to go. Unless you have tried to put someone in the backseat of a cruiser or cage who does not want to go, it is hard. People think, “Just throw him in and close the door.” No, that is not the way it works.

The guy is horizontal. They are trying to get him to sit up, and the cop is in the back there. The guy is not sitting up, so they can’t get his feet in and close the door. The cop is getting frustrated. He takes his taser and drive stuns the dude, gets his feet in, and closes the door. It is like, “Wow, I’m glad that’s over.”

That is kind of the way it goes down. Central Falls Police Colonel Anthony Roberson confirmed that an IA investigation was launched after the man’s arrest. It says that they caught it while reviewing body cam footage. The officer is accused of violating seven department policies, including use of force, de-escalation, reporting, truthfulness, and ethical and professional conduct.

Remember, this is Rhode Island. The first one was a deputy. This is an officer. I don’t know if there is any correlation with them getting treated differently because this guy was suspended. The other guy was fired and arrested, then not prosecuted.

Captain Brett?

Speaker 2 – Captain Brett Bartlett:
When you start talking about untruthfulness or truthfulness, depending on how it is written, that is always a flag that something bad happened, because no matter what happens, you just can’t lie about it. You can’t lie about it.

Here is a problem. In the heat of the moment, when you are doing something, when somebody is fighting you and you are trying to overcome that, you may not remember a detail, or you may misremember a detail about the event. That is why it is a good idea to go back and review your body cam, not because you are trying to concoct a story, but because the body cam doesn’t have mis-memories. It remembers exactly.

Now, the problem is that it doesn’t show anger and emotions, but at least you can go back and see that. What are they going to do? The guy is kicking, screaming, shouting, and refusing. Like you said, unless you have tried to fold a bad guy into the backseat of a police car, you just haven’t lived.

When they are sticking those legs straight out and they don’t want to go, you just can’t put them in there. Here is the deal, Mr. Citizen: if you go into my police car, then I won’t drive-stun you. That’s the deal. You don’t want the deal? Guess what? This is what’s coming. This is a learning environment.

You never hear the chiefs say this. None of the chiefs ever say, “All the person had to do was obey the lawful commands.” Our motto is not “serve and protect.” It is “if, then.” That is our motto: if, then.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
Brett, I’m asking a stupid question, but have you ever hogtied somebody?

Speaker 2 – Captain Brett Bartlett:
Oh, yeah. It is a last resort.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
I know we’re talking about asphyxia, positional asphyxiation, and things we didn’t know about back in the day or that were not as prevalent. If you hogtied someone in a bad position, it could lead to them having difficulty breathing.

Speaker 2 – Captain Brett Bartlett:
You have to monitor them, obviously.

I’ll tell you what, if somebody tried to bring my legs up behind me, I’m going to go into a spasm. I’m going to break that rope. You’re going to think this is some superhuman. When my legs cramp, baby, get out of the way. I will destroy you for that.

Here is another problem. We hurt ourselves because what is our name for this event? Hogtied. It is like saying choke hold. Let’s stop doing that. Let’s say enhanced restraint or rope restraint or whatever. When you tell someone, “I hogtied him,” it just doesn’t ever sound good.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
I don’t think they are even allowed to use that anymore. In fact, I believe they have different ways of doing it now. But back in the day, it was pretty cool.

For people who want to know what hogtied means, you attach their feet to their hands behind their back. They have the handcuffs on, and there is a loop with an attachment. It goes around their feet and keeps their feet restrained.

Where I was going with this is that once this cop drive-stuns this bad guy and gets him into the car and closes the door, it is not necessarily over. The way it can escalate after that is that this guy is now in a position where he can start kicking out the windows. He can kick out the side windows of the car. He can work on the rear window or on the cage or plexiglass that is in there. There is all kinds of severe damage he can do, which you do not want to happen.

When it escalates, that is when you literally cannot transport somebody who is in the throes of doing that. Their movement has to be restricted. That is where the hogtie came in. We don’t do it that way now. Now they have a strap that goes down into the door and into the seat, and it kind of hangs out.

People don’t understand that when you are fighting somebody and you are down around those feet because they are kicking, that is a dangerous place to be. They can hit you one time right on the nose, and it could kill you stone dead. What are you supposed to do with somebody who is trying to kick you or kick out the car? Here is what you do: you punch him right in the snot locker and knock their behind into next week. But they can’t do that.

We’ve got Bill BC on Rumble saying, “I pulled out one guy that stiffened up, and I put him in the puddle outside the cruiser. Before that, I said, if you want to be a gentleman, we’ll treat you as such. He continued being a...” I can’t say it, and he was treated as such.

Look at the clock. Are we behind on something?

Speaker 2 – Captain Brett Bartlett:
Well, it’s The Wounded Blue.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
I was kind of running over into The Wounded Blue time a little bit, but yes, we are there.

Captain Bartlett, it has been a great show. Thank you so much for being here. If you want to check out the captain, he is at Exumber Defense Solutions at ExumberDefense.com, and he is also on LinkedIn.

I do want to mention The Wounded Blue, Lieutenant Randy Sutton’s 501(c)(3) charity. Guys, please support our sponsors. We have Galls.com. Don’t forget the Galls discount code, Radio 15. We also have CompliantTechnologies.com, GunLearn.com, MyMedicare.live, and TwoBells.com.

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