Speaker Identification

Speaker 1 - Host, Chip DeBlock. The host identifies himself at the beginning of the episode as Chip DeBlock and leads the discussion, sponsorship reads, topic transitions, and commentary.

Speaker 2 - Chief Ralph Ornelas. The host introduces him as Chief Ralph Ornelas from California, formerly with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and later a police chief. He provides commentary throughout the show.

Speaker 3 - Prerecorded Galls Promo Voice. This voice appears during the sponsor segment beginning, "My family only cares about one thing: that I come home safe."

Speaker 4 - Prerecorded / Video Audio from Police Body Camera. This includes shouted police commands during the Southampton, New York, body-camera clip, such as "Drop the knife" and officer communication during the incident.

Speaker 1 - Host, Chip DeBlock: Welcome to Leo Roundtable at leoroundtable.com. My name is Chip DeBlock, and I am your host. We are a group of law enforcement professionals who talk about today's news and issues from a law enforcement perspective.

Let me introduce Chief Ralph Ornelas. Yes, he is from California and still in California. He was formerly with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and also became a police chief after he retired from there. He has had the distinct privilege, and not many people do, of wearing both an SO hat and a PD hat. God bless you. Thanks for being on the show, Ralph. We appreciate it.

A shout-out to our sponsors. We have our title sponsor, Galls, at galls.com; our satellite sponsor, Compliant Technologies; GunLearn.com; MyMedic.live; and TwoBells.com. They are also in our new online store at leoroundtable.com. Going back to Galls, I forgot to mention, Chief, that the discount code is RADIO15. Use it to get 15% off your next purchase. I want to make sure people remember that.

Also, a shout-out to Brian Burns from the Tampa Free Press. Thanks for streaming our content. Thanks also to Reed Deidric from Lawman.com and Travis Yates with Law Officer. Guys, if you want to watch the show, the best way is to go to our website, leoroundtable.com. It has all the outlets: TV, radio, podcast, and social media. We are certainly on every podcast platform known to man, including Spotify and Apple iTunes, two of the most popular. As far as social media, we are on Rumble, YouTube, Facebook, X, formerly Twitter, Truth Social, and more. Thanks for watching the show. We appreciate it.

Now, to whet the appetite and tell you what we are going to talk about, we have some good stories. I am glad we have Chief Ralph on the show, because we have a California story coming up. The first one we are going to cover quickly is that the Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration on removing green-card holders accused of crimes. That is a big deal, and it is a good win, not just for the Trump administration, but for us, for the country. We will talk briefly about that.

Then we are going into what I think we all really want to get into. The Supreme Court says an ex-LAPD officer may be sued for excessive force in a street shooting. Yes, we are talking about Officer Toni McBride from six years ago. Shots five and six are driving me crazy. Her dad, Jamie, has been on the show a number of times. He is with the union over there. We are going to talk about that, and I expect the NPA and Betsy Brantner Smith to be involved in this one.

Also, a former Sherborn police chief was awarded $1.2 million, and we will discuss why he sued the town. We have dash-cam video showing the moments before an Anderson deputy shoots and kills a suspect on I-85. Two officers were injured and a suspect was shot when he tried to flee from a traffic stop. That is a wild one.

We also have body-cam footage showing a deadly shooting of a man who stabbed his mother over 40 times on Mother's Day, and the cops take him down when he goes back and starts stabbing her again. Then we have body-cam footage showing the moment a deputy ends up getting shot during a gunfight at the Humble apartment complex. What a name.

So, Chief Ralph, do you want to cover the green-card thing real quick?

Speaker 2 - Chief Ralph Ornelas: Yes. You are the boss.

Speaker 1 - Host, Chip DeBlock: No offense. I am not sure what your status is here, but no offense in case that offends you.

Speaker 2 - Chief Ralph Ornelas: It is not an offense. Nothing. It is greatness.

Speaker 1 - Host, Chip DeBlock: AmericanGreatness.com: "Supreme Court sides with Trump administration on removing green-card holders accused of crimes." This is not a slam on green-card holders. My wife's family came here from Colombia. I know the Chief and I both know a lot of people. Look, this country was built on immigrants. However, we have a serious issue here.

The border being open is one of the most asinine things I have ever seen in my life. I cannot believe that we actually had former President Biden responsible for that. It has put us in the position we are in today, with people getting raped and killed and all kinds of horrible stuff because the borders have been open. This green-card thing is along those lines. Listen to it. It makes sense.

In a 6-3 decision, and I am surprised it was that close, the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday morning in favor of the Trump administration. They held that green-card holders can, not will, but can, be stripped of their status if they travel abroad while they are in the process of facing criminal charges involving moral turpitude, finding that pending allegations are sufficient to subject them to removal proceedings.

Crimes of moral turpitude are serious. Here in Florida, if you commit a crime of moral turpitude, such as a financial crime involving stealing money or a sexual offense, you can lose your pension. They are going to yank your pension. So these are serious offenses.

The court said immigration officials do not need clear and convincing evidence, and they do not need to meet a higher threshold of a crime at the moment a green-card holder re-enters the country in order to treat them as an applicant for admission by the Department of Homeland Security. It dates back to a case involving a Chinese national, but I am not going to get into all that.

This decision allows DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, to treat green-card holders facing pending criminal charges as returning aliens awaiting inspection and later removal proceedings, rather than simply readmitting them as residents. They lose that privilege because they left the country in the middle of a criminal investigation. Chief Ralph, any commentary?

Speaker 2 - Chief Ralph Ornelas: Yes, real briefly. I agree with this. I like the fact that the Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration. It is because of the abuse of power that took place in the Biden administration, allowing all these people to come in, that this administration has to take these positions, fight these cases, and go to the Supreme Court. Luckily, we got a 6-3 decision.

These are the steps needed to correct the idiotic behavior of the previous administration and Joe Biden's people who signed all these things, allowing these people to come in and causing death, fraud, and people taking advantage of our country. We cannot have this anymore. We have to set the tone about law and order in this country and coming here the proper way. We cannot have criminals coming over the border as if there were no border at all.

Speaker 1 - Host, Chip DeBlock: Yes, that Chinese national this story came from had a little pucker factor when he came back to the country, didn't he? Can you imagine?

Moving along, and thanks for letting us cover that first, Chief. We are jumping to California, from MSN.com. I think it started off in the LA Times, but yes, it made MSN: "Supreme Court says ex-LAPD officer may be sued for excessive force in street shooting."

Before I get into this, we are all familiar with the Toni McBride shooting, especially shots five and six. We have been covering this for six years. Qualified immunity comes into this. I know a lot of people have issues with qualified immunity, and a lot of uneducated people have issues with it because they say cops should not get it. My response is always, "What is the first word in that?" It is called qualified. They do not get it automatically. They have to qualify for it.

People who complain about qualified immunity say nothing about absolute immunity, which is what judges and prosecutors get. That is where they should really have the beef. I have sued a prosecutor before, and that had nothing to do with me being a bad guy. They still gave him absolute immunity, and the law did not even apply to it.

In this particular case, the reason we have things like qualified immunity is to get rid of frivolous lawsuits. If we did not have qualified immunity, and we still have to jump through hoops to qualify for it, the Chief and I would have been sued for everything we did throughout our careers. We would have been in the court system and never able to get anything done. That is why they have qualified immunity.

You can sue a cop, and that is mostly for civil litigation, for trying to get money and stuff. It normally does not have much to do with criminal acts. It is going after the purse, right? People want to get money after you have done something to them as a police officer. That is what we are talking about here. This is not a criminal court thing.

The Supreme Court of the United States refused on Monday to block an excessive-force lawsuit against a former Los Angeles Police Department officer who shot and killed a knife-wielding guy whose speeding truck had slammed into several cars in downtown Los Angeles. The court turned down an appeal petition from the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office over the objections of Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito Jr. Those two guys have it going on, but we only got two.

In yesterday's show, I think it was the same two justices who were sticking up for trying to do the right thing. Litigation over the six-second shooting incident has extended over six years. There are a lot of sixes here. We have a 6-5 vote by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. We have a six-second shooting that happened over a six-year period, and it deals with shots five and six. If people start getting confused, there are a lot of sixes in this.

Federal judges in California agreed that Officer Toni McBride had reason to fire the first four shots at the suspect in April of 2020. But remember, there were two other shots. They do not agree on the two final shots, shots five and six. They say those were the ones that killed him. I know there is an after-death investigation, and I will accept on its face that shots five and six killed him, but I am not a total believer yet.

Daniel Hernandez was allegedly under the influence of methamphetamine when he got out of his truck and walked toward Officer Toni McBride. On a side note, she is an Instagram model, a very pretty girl. Her dad works with the police union, which did not help her or do her any favors in this instance. She is also a competitive shooter. The girl is famous for shooting and trained with Keanu Reeves before he did John Wick. All six shots landed.

The Ninth Circuit, by about a 6-5 vote, ruled last year that a jury could decide whether the officer went too far when she fired the two final shots after the suspect fell to the ground. I am going to slow down there. We have more coming up on this. We are going to dissect this and see what you think. I think Toni is going to be okay. I just do not like the fact that they are letting it get this far. We will stick with this, guys. Our first commercial break is coming. We will 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, backed with pride, and 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 am your host. We are joined by Chief Ralph Ornelas, all the way from California. Sheesh, he made the trip all the way here today.

Speaker 2 - Chief Ralph Ornelas: Remotely.

Speaker 1 - Host, Chip DeBlock: You are welcome, Chip and audience.

Speaker 2 - Chief Ralph Ornelas: Virtually.

Speaker 1 - Host, Chip DeBlock: It is amazing. You look like you are right there.

We left off talking about Toni McBride. The article is titled, "Supreme Court says ex-LAPD officer may be sued for excessive force in street shooting." They are really talking about not giving her qualified immunity, so she is going to have to go to a civil suit. She no longer works for LAPD. This happened six years ago, and we have been covering it for six years. It is disappointing to see where we are on this thing.

The federal judges in California agreed that she had been completely justified in the first four shots, but there was a little pause between shots four and five, and those are the ones they have an issue with. Those are the ones they say killed the bad guy. The bad guy's name was Daniel Hernandez, and he was under the influence of methamphetamine. After he crashed in downtown LA, he got out of his truck and walked toward Toni McBride.

She was cool, calm, and collected, as the Chief and I were talking about earlier. She was trying to make sure people were safe. There was a woman in a car next to her, and there was a backdrop. She was at an intersection in a business district with places and people around. It was pretty active. In the backdrop, there were people congregating.

When I say backdrop, where I am going with this is that when you pull the trigger and shoot at somebody, you need to be concerned not just with the bad guy but with what is behind him. Is it a business? Is your bullet going to go through a window, through a car, into a passing car, onto an interstate, or into spectators? Can it ricochet off the roadway and go up? Remember that store where the guy chased the bad guy and the cop shot a rifle, and it ricocheted off the floor and went into a dressing room and killed a little girl? I think that was in California, if I am not mistaken. All these things come into play.

She ordered him to drop the knife repeatedly. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, by a 6-5 vote, ruled last year that a jury could decide possibly that the officer had gone too far when she fired the two final shots after the bad guy fell to the ground. The majority reasoned that, during the one-second pause between shots four and five, Toni McBride, or a cop, could have and should have reassessed the situation and possibly concluded that the suspect no longer posed a danger. They say she should have done that. My counter is: why do you think she did not do that?

The ruling would have sent the case to trial, but the LA City Attorney's Office appealed to the Supreme Court in October and urged the justices to review and reverse the Ninth Circuit's decision.

I have to say, I am kind of impressed with what the City Attorney's Office did, at least from what I am reading. The City Attorney said the appeals court failed to consider what they called the totality of the circumstances. We hear that a lot in law enforcement, from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene. I love the wording. They said the decision refused to allow for reasonable mistakes in fast-moving, life-threatening encounters.

The only issue I have is that it almost seems they may be implying there may have been a mistake made, but due to the circumstances, it is okay. From the outside looking in, I am not viewing a mistake.

UC Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, representing the Hernandez family, filed a response for the surviving family. He urged the court to stand aside and let the chips fall where they may. In other words, let the jury decide. Put Officer McBride on the chopping block and let a jury decide whether she should be held responsible and whether her actions were reasonable. He said the Ninth Circuit simply held that it should be for a jury to solve the factual dispute over what happened.

According to the article, the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that police officers may be sued for unreasonable searches or seizures only if it is shown that they knowingly violated clearly established law. That means they will not get qualified immunity if they have violated clearly established law.

Now, the doctrine gets into the nuts and bolts of qualified immunity. It has divided judges on whether a particular rule or limit has been clearly established. The Ninth Circuit majority said that shooting a fallen suspect crosses the line, which I think is BS. Judge Jacqueline Nguyen said it has been clearly established for more than a decade that when an officer shoots and wounds a suspect and he falls to the ground, the officer cannot continue to shoot him absent some indication that he presents a continuing threat. Well, yes. No duh.

But here are the dissenters. The five dissenters said the officer made a reasonable, split-second decision. Judge Ryan Nelson said that Toni McBride was justified in shooting Daniel Hernandez to alleviate the risk that he posed when he advanced toward her armed and ignoring commands to stop. She cannot be reasonably expected or required to reassess her shooting in a tight six-second period during an intense and dangerous situation throughout which Hernandez was rising and never stopped moving.

Then we have Judge Patrick Bumatay echoing the same concern. The story originally appeared in the LA Times, which I think I mentioned earlier. We have less than two minutes, Chief Ralph.

Speaker 2 - Chief Ralph Ornelas: There is a lot to cover there. Number one, I was actually glad when you mentioned the LA City Attorney bringing that from the Ninth Circuit to the Supreme Court, which means the City Attorney's Office believed in what Toni McBride did. Number two, I have to commend Judge Nelson and Judge Bumatay and their commentary.

I like what Bumatay said at the end. He said it does not require this radical parsing of events. He said the touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is reasonableness. It does not require the superhuman discipline the majority demands. The majority court said they had to look at each second and the last two shots.

Listen, I looked at the video. I watched the body-worn camera. She was concise, explicit, calm, cool, and collected in her commands to her partner and the community. She even said it in Spanish, to your point. She told the community, "Back off, back off, move away." She was very calm, cool, and collected in the manner she addressed that whole issue.

The way she shot this suspect, even the fifth and the fourth round, the guy was still moving in a very small amount of time. In fact, there were 1.4 seconds between the fourth and fifth shots.

Speaker 1 - Host, Chip DeBlock: Hold that thought. Guys, we are going into a commercial break. We will 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 am your host. We are joined by Chief Ralph Ornelas from California.

We are still talking about a qualified-immunity case involving our favorite Toni McBride, the former female LAPD officer. She is no longer active, but we are huge fans. We have had her back for the last six years on this thing. It looks like SCOTUS, the Supreme Court of the United States, has decided not to officially weigh in. Even though we had two justices who wanted to take this thing up and fix it and help Toni out, they are going to let nature take its course and let a jury decide whether she can be held liable for shots five and six, essentially, in shooting a bad guy with a knife.

Chief Ralph, we were talking about this. We will try to wrap it up in the next four or five minutes. Go ahead.

Speaker 2 - Chief Ralph Ornelas: I will. You mentioned some things off the air. Let me reiterate. The judge stated that being on the ground relates to a case, Zion v. County of Orange. She used that case to go after Toni, using it as the premise for why Toni violated the law with the last two shots. Well, the person was on the ground and was moving. I viewed the body-worn camera three times. He was still moving, and she did exactly what I believe I would have done and what Chip would have done.

Zion v. County of Orange is a totally different circumstance. There was a suspect who killed a mother with a knife. A deputy sheriff got there. The guy went after one deputy. Another deputy, Michael Higgins, came in and shot the guy. The guy was still moving, and he stomped on his head. Basically, they used the premise of that case as an example to go after Toni. It is a totally different circumstance.

That deputy sheriff from the Orange County Sheriff's Department was held liable for $360,000 paid out of his pocket and $1.1 million from the Orange County Sheriff's Department to the family of the suspect. I personally reviewed that case. When you review Toni's case, it is a different circumstance. That is why I truly commend Judge Nelson and Judge Bumatay's commentary in dissenting on this case with Toni McBride.

The other thing I have to circle back to is Toni McBride. I said this from the beginning, and I will say it again. She demonstrated being cerebral, not emotional, in her voice, tone, and commands. When I sat back and evaluated shootings, that means a lot. Even to the point, in her favor, when she requested of her partner, "Do we have the .40 caliber and the less-lethal?" That says a lot in the mind. When she started seeing this guy aggressive, she did exactly what she had to do to save herself and the other people around her.

Speaker 1 - Host, Chip DeBlock: Good analogy and good commentary, Chief. I appreciate that. Watching the bad guy start to move again, still armed, the backdrop is changing now. He is over on the civilian side of the street. There were cars there, and he may have been between two cars if I remember correctly. My concern was him getting concealment and possibly cover and then getting to one of the civilians. Even if he decided not to go for her, was he compliant? No.

Every time I see a use of force, the first question I ask myself is: was the bad guy compliant? This guy definitely was not. He still had the weapon and was moving. He was not following commands, and he was a threat not just to her but to the civilians.

Speaker 2 - Chief Ralph Ornelas: If I may, Chip, just so the audience is listening, between the second and third volley it was 1.4 seconds. We are human beings. We are not computers. She made those decisions like that, in a very cerebral manner.

On top of that, Chip and audience, when I saw the body-worn camera video, she was coordinating an arrest team after the shooting. She did not make the arrest. She coordinated an arrest team to carefully approach this person very tactically. I have to tell you, Chip, it is very disappointing to see what took place.

Speaker 1 - Host, Chip DeBlock: No, I agree. We have six minutes, so I am going to skip over the update story and go to our story with video, if that is okay.

Speaker 2 - Chief Ralph Ornelas: Yes, sir.

Speaker 1 - Host, Chip DeBlock: We have some interesting ones here. Something is telling me to jump to the Mother's Day one. I hate to do it, but we are going to video three from Rumble.com, our favorite law enforcement video channel, This Is Butter. We have body-cam video showing a deadly shooting of a guy who stabbed his mother over 40 times on Mother's Day.

Speaker 4 - Prerecorded / Video Audio from Police Body Camera: Drop the knife. Drop the knife. Drop the knife. Drop the knife. Back up, back up, back up. Drop the knife. We got one. Drop the knife. Tommy, watch out. Drop the knife. Tommy, watch out. He is coming in. Drop the knife. Tommy, Tommy, I am coming in. Where are we? Go, go, go, go. Police. Shots fired.

Speaker 1 - Host, Chip DeBlock: This is a wild shooting. We are in Southampton, New York. Body-cam footage was released related to a police-involved shooting. This guy is accused of stabbing his mother over 40 times. They say accused, but they have it on video, for goodness' sake, on Mother's Day.

Stephen Eastwood, 28 years old, was fatally shot by Southampton Town Police on May 10 after officers responded to a 911 call from his mother. She reported that he was intoxicated and acting violently inside their home.

Officials had previously said that responding officers found him in the house with a knife and attempted to de-escalate the situation. Body-cam footage from multiple officers shows them yelling, "Drop the knife," several times. He is seen with what appears to be his mother's blood on his sweater, sleeves, and hands. An officer says over the radio, "We have one at gunpoint. Send more units."

I watched the footage. This guy briefly steps out the front door of the house with a knife in his hand. We have about three cops backing up. They are giving commands. He is kind of blowing them off. Then all of a sudden, he turns around to walk back into the house. One thing I picked up on was that it sounded like the main cop called out to someone, saying, "He is going back in." It was almost like he was letting the guy inside the house know, because they had been in the house originally. It sounded like he was saying, "Hey, the dude is coming back in with a knife."

When they went in after him, I did not see the cop I thought might have been inside, but I did see the guy getting on the floor next to his mom, who was moaning, and he just starts stabbing her again. They load on him. He falls down and is pronounced dead. I think there were two knives lying on the ground next to him. That is the way it goes down. Chief Ralph?

Speaker 2 - Chief Ralph Ornelas: Very sad situation. Obviously, there was something mentally wrong with this suspect, Steven, I think his name was. You are 100% right. There were three officers. Tommy was inside, to the left, in some living room or TV room with the mother and suspect. The mother was laid out near the kitchen area.

What gets me is this, Chip and audience. The initial body-worn camera shows when they originally engaged him. If you look, the knife blade was just coming up from her body. That was the point when, if it had been Ralph, I would have shot him. I would have shot him because I am thinking: do I save this mother's life?

They backed out. This guy and Tommy were inside. There was good communication from the officers outside who backed out, saying, "Tommy, are you okay? Are you in there?" He was all right. He was in another room, but he had to be alert either to the left of him, to a doorway, or to the front of him going toward the front door.

I have to tell you, that suspect got on the porch, and I looked at those eyes. That told me a lot. He went back in and went to stab her, and that is when everybody shot him.

That just brought a case to my mind that I had when I was a commander. A mother used to visit her son. She did not die, but the mother was stabbed 17 times by this suspect, and she would come to visit her son almost every other day. I got a chance to talk to her. I said, "Wow, how can she?" She said, "Listen, my son, drugs got his mind." I have to give the mother credit.

In this situation, Chip and audience, I would have shot as soon as I went in, because I saw the knife blade coming up from her body when they first went to that doorway looking into the kitchen.

Speaker 1 - Host, Chip DeBlock: Right. People who are not cops do not get it. There are a lot of things they do not know. Even when you arrest somebody or detain someone, now you are responsible for that person. If you get surrounded by a crowd, if you are in the hood or the projects and people start throwing rocks and bottles, guess what? I am worried about me, but now I am responsible for that person too. I am justified in using whatever means, including lethal force, in order to protect them and myself.

For them backing out of that situation, what if the guy was walking to the doorway, they backed out, and he closed the door and locked it? Now there is one guy inside. That could have happened. You do not give up ground in those situations. I am glad you pointed out that there was a guy inside, because I could not verify that. Thank you.

Speaker 2 - Chief Ralph Ornelas: You know, Chip, I would never have left my partner inside.

Speaker 1 - Host, Chip DeBlock: That could have been so much worse. Plus, let's face it. We have had this before. You have a bad guy who is armed and with a victim who is bleeding out. Maybe he is not stabbing the victim, but he is just standing there with a knife. You cannot go in and render first aid because you have this guy standing there. What do you do? The victim is going to die if you do not render aid, but the guy is standing there, knowing that, and you cannot get close.

Speaker 2 - Chief Ralph Ornelas: Chip, I have to say this again. I have mentioned it on numerous shows with you. In shooting incidents like this, one person speaks. One.

Speaker 1 - Host, Chip DeBlock: You are right. That was another issue. We are going back into another commercial break. We will 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 am your host. We are joined by Chief Ralph Ornelas from California. We just got done talking about a story involving a bad guy who stabbed his mother on Mother's Day over 40 times. The cops took him out, but we have been critiquing how that went down. There were definitely some things that could arguably have been done better. Any final words on that before we jump to the next one, Chief?

Speaker 2 - Chief Ralph Ornelas: No, sir.

Speaker 1 - Host, Chip DeBlock: Our next one is also at Rumble.com. Dash-cam video shows the moments before an Anderson deputy shoots and kills a suspect on I-85.

We are in Anderson County, South Carolina. Dash-cam video was released by SLED, which is a group of law enforcement agencies involved in what is kind of like a task force. It shows the moments leading up to an exchange of gunfire that left an Anderson County sheriff's deputy injured and the suspect dead earlier this year. This is some wild footage.

It is from April 20 on Interstate 85 northbound. The video starts with the deputy and the suspect's vehicle pulled over on the side of the highway at exit 11 near Townville. We are looking at the dash cam. The bad guy's car is in front of us, and there is another car with overhead lights on in front of it. The Chief knows where I am going with this. When I initially watched it, I thought maybe the overhead lights were on the car in the middle, with the bad guy in the back. I was thinking, "What is he doing, getting inside the cop's car to get the gun?" I could not tell from the dash cam, even on my big 34-inch monitor.

Investigators say the suspect was initially in the back of the deputy's vehicle, which I do not believe. I think he was in the front passenger seat. It looked like the door was open on the side, and there was a canine in the back. You can clearly hear the canine on the dash cam. No way that dude is in the backseat with that dog, even if they had a split canine backseat, which I have never done. I do not know if there is any such thing, but the dog would be going crazy with the bad guy sitting next to him with only a cage between them. There is just no way.

I think they had opened up the front passenger door, and regardless, they were going to go 10-15 with this guy. These two cops start fighting him. He comes into view of the dash cam as their fight is along the side of the interstate, with cars zipping by. The fight is moving closer to the bad guy's car, and they are on the shoulder of the interstate.

The article said the officers used their Tasers, and they did. The bad guy gets up off the ground. You have cops on both ends of him, and he gets to his car. He opens one of the passenger doors. The cops immediately go to the Taser. I have to tell you, Chief, I do not know if that would have been my move. He is going to the passenger side, so I am more worried about him going for a weapon than I am about him getting into the car and driving away, because he is accessing the passenger side.

Sure enough, 32-year-old Austin Robertson of Pennsylvania turns around and shoots one of the cops. I only heard one gunshot. Sometimes it is hard to tell what the dash cam is going to pick up. The cop who was shot goes running down away from the car and the cruiser with the dash cam. They both run away. The bad guy looked like maybe he was shot or something, but he was still slumped in the backseat.

The main cop, the one who did not get hit, comes back and loads on that guy a couple times. The bad guy ends up dying. The injured deputy, Alex Albrecht, gets airlifted to Greenville Memorial. It was not looking good for him, and he was released a week later after undergoing several surgeries. Thank God he survived. Not so much for the bad guy. Chief Ralph?

Speaker 2 - Chief Ralph Ornelas: I looked over this a number of times after you sent it out. Number one, I am always concerned about the positioning of patrol cars. If the second unit was backup, why did he pull in front? Why didn't he pull behind? That is something I just do not like, because there is an exchange now and you have crossfire issues.

Number two, I agree with you. Were they going to put him in the front seat of that patrol car with a canine? Number three, there was poor control of the suspect's hands and body. There were two officers on scene. If this guy starts fighting, you have to get control of him. If I were the canine officer with the dog, I would have hit the button. I would have released that dog to bite him relentlessly before he got to that car.

So control the body, control the hands, and let the dog out. He gets to the car. He is fighting you. You are losing your mood. Two guys are losing. If he went into that car, my mindset would be that he is going for something. I might have shot him right away instead of going for the Taser, because in my mind, if he has that much anger and disdain for us, he is going for something.

The officer in the dark uniform, not the light uniform, who was the canine handler, got shot in the left shoulder. He is blessed and lucky. He unloaded rounds, and so did the officer who had the dash cam. He unloaded on him too. They are both fortunate in this incident. But I always go back to the initial contact. We could not see all that. What was the initial contact? How did that take place? Did you take command of that initial contact?

Speaker 1 - Host, Chip DeBlock: Yes. The dog was going crazy because the dog could see what was going down. He could see his master. I know it is an interstate, and there was a moment where I thought the canine handler was trying to remotely release the dog from the cruiser, but it did not happen. It is an interstate, but the dog could see what was happening, so I suspect the dog would have been okay, not running into traffic.

Then I am thinking, we have three people fighting. I have scars all over my arms from canines, but I still would have released the dog. I can handle getting dog-bit. That dog would have made it three on one instead of just two on one.

Speaker 2 - Chief Ralph Ornelas: The other thing I noticed about the two officers, and everybody listening should not take this negatively, but I did not see anybody throwing punches to the face.

Speaker 1 - Host, Chip DeBlock: No, they were grappling. It was just holding legs and getting him in a chest bear hug. You do not see a lot of pressure points. You do not see impact weapons. This certainly was a justifiable case for an impact weapon. I do not care if it is a police radio, a flashlight, or whatever, but you do not see guys using impact weapons anymore either.

Speaker 2 - Chief Ralph Ornelas: That is troublesome.

Speaker 1 - Host, Chip DeBlock: It is troublesome because, and I know the Chief and I are on the same page without even asking, when you get in that kind of a fight, or any fight, you want to end it quickly. You want it over, and you have to have overwhelming force. That was simply allowed to go on too long. When you have people fighting and not doing strikes and things like that, why are you not going there?

Speaker 2 - Chief Ralph Ornelas: I sent this video to my drill instructor, who is 84 years old. This morning, he sent me a text: "Ralphie, if they would have had the side-handle baton, they would have broken his knees, and he would never have gotten back to that car."

Speaker 1 - Host, Chip DeBlock: Yes, too bad. There are some things, and it was Rodney King that got rid of that, right?

Speaker 2 - Chief Ralph Ornelas: Yes.

Speaker 1 - Host, Chip DeBlock: What are you going to do? We only have a minute left before we wrap. Not really enough time to cover another story.

We have two videos. With the Mother's Day one, they did not say whether the mother died. I thought it did.

Speaker 2 - Chief Ralph Ornelas: I thought they said she died in the narrative.

Speaker 1 - Host, Chip DeBlock: You think? Okay. I was having trouble finding it, but with 40 times, and we go through a lot of stories on the show prep, guys. Please do not think, "How can you not know? It is just in print." There is a lot of prep involved with this stuff. Either way, it was completely justified. In fact, it arguably should have happened before that. Maybe Mom may have been alive.

Speaker 2 - Chief Ralph Ornelas: I do not think so, Chip. On the initial contact, he was coming up with the knife from her body. The blade was facing down, and he was holding it in this manner. She was moaning even when Tommy was by himself and the other two cops had exited. You know how it is when somebody is dying.

Speaker 1 - Host, Chip DeBlock: Yes. Once you have been a cop and you have been around as much death as we have, and you have seen a lot of guys die in your arms, in your hands, whatever, you know. Sometimes people are critical about not doing CPR, and they do not realize that there are a lot of times when it is that bad, you are just making them die quicker. You are just pushing the blood out. Sometimes you reach a point where, especially with head trauma, there is nothing you can do. Sometimes it is just optics.

Chief, thank you so much for being on the show. I wanted to mention the Wounded Blue at thewoundedblue.org. I am going to have him talk about a Spentano crisis that he gives in just a second, guys. Do not forget about our sponsors: Galls.com, discount code RADIO15; CompliantTechnologies.com; GunLearn.com; MyMedic.live; and TwoBells.com. Thanks, guys, for watching. We will see you back tomorrow at 12 noon Eastern.