Speaker Identification

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock
The host identifies himself at the beginning of the show and leads the discussion, introduces sponsors, frames each story, asks questions, and closes the broadcast.

Speaker 2 – Frank Loveridge, Former Secret Service SAIC
The speaker is introduced as former Secret Service SAIC Frank Loveridge. He comments on Secret Service terminology, the intelligence community, the Todd Blanche segment, White House security, the Chicago officer shooting, and Minneapolis police leadership.

Speaker 3 – Rich Staropoli, Former Secret Service SAIC
The speaker is introduced as former Secret Service SAIC Rich Staropoli. He comments on intelligence briefings, William Pulte, trust issues in the intelligence community, White House Correspondents’ Dinner security, the Chicago officer shooting, and Minneapolis police leadership.

Speaker 4 – Galls Promotional Voice
This speaker appears in a prerecorded sponsor message promoting Galls and first-responder gear.

Speaker 5 – Compliant Technologies Promotional Voice / Host-Read Sponsor Segment
This sponsor segment promotes Compliant Technologies and its CD3 / The Glove product. The segment appears to be read by the host.

Speaker 6 – GunLearn Promotional Voice / Host-Read Sponsor Segment
This sponsor segment promotes GunLearn and firearm-specialist training. The segment appears to be read by the host.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
Welcome to LEO Round Table 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. Guys, for the video portion of our show, they are back: the dynamic duo. Yes, we’ve got former Secret Service SAIC Rich Staropoli and also former Secret Service SAIC Frank Loveridge. He threw the extra letter in there. He’s trying to throw me off, because he has to be different. Thank you guys so much for being on the show.

And yes, there is a distinction with the Secret Service. I forgot. Frank, you’ve got to open up your mic because I want to make sure I get this right. SAC stands for Special Agent in Charge. Is the Secret Service the only agency that uses the “I” in there? How are we rolling with this, Frank?

Speaker 2 – Frank Loveridge:
I mean, obviously, we’ve been Special Agents in Charge in the Secret Service. I’m not sure what other agencies do. I know the FBI has SAC, which is different. But we are Special Agents in Charge. We don’t forget the “in.” The “in” is very important, so that’s why we added it to the acronym. It’s SAIC.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
All right. But you still pronounce it the same?

Speaker 2 – Frank Loveridge:
Exactly the same. SAC.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
All right. I’m just making sure that I’m on the same page. So I call it right. It’s just one of those things.

What got you guys kicked off that Flight 1729 by the FAA, Rich?

Speaker 3 – Rich Staropoli:
No, I think it had something to do with the number of weapons we brought on board, as well as the explosive devices.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
All right. See, I deserve that because I asked that publicly. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.

Hey, shout-out to our sponsors. Our title sponsor is Galls at galls.com. Don’t forget that discount code. It’s RADIO15 in order to get 15% off your next purchase. We also have complianttechnologies.com, our satellite sponsor, gunlearn.com, mymedicare.life, and Two Bales dot com. They built a new online store at leoroundtable.com, so please check that out.

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Also, people want to know how to carry the show. We’re on every podcast platform known to man, including Spotify and Apple iTunes, so you can find us on podcasts. Also, on social media, we are on Rumble, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, formerly X, Truth Social, and a ton more. So check it out as well.

Now, what in the world are we going to be talking about today? Let me go ahead and whet the appetite with some of these stories. We’ve actually got three main stories now. These guys sprung one on me.

The first two were going to be: housing boss William Pulte tapped as acting DNI after Tulsi Gabbard steps down. That was a surprise to me, actually. Also, acting AG Todd Blanche details missing DOJ files and Trump’s near prison sentence. So there is some old and some new information in that one.

Then the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. We have a new date that has been announced, and I don’t have all the details. These guys will have to educate me because I’m assuming they listed the location in there. I’m kind of hoping that they did not, but I’m assuming they probably did. I’ll have you guys talk about that, but I can’t wait to hear about it.

Also, we’ve got SCOTUS declining to hear a qualified immunity case, kind of leaving a Michigan officer hanging out to dry. Of course, he’s being sued civilly.

Then COPA, which of course is Chicago, released body-cam footage of a Chicago officer being accidentally fatally shot by her partner. I’m going to read that again in case you thought you heard something but you’re not sure. There is body-cam footage of a Chicago cop accidentally killing his partner with a gun. They were dating. There was some stuff going on with them splitting up. It’s just a horrible story.

Then we’ve got body-cam footage showing a Miami-Dade deputy fatally shooting a woman armed with a knife. We’ve got a couple videos here with women coming out of bathrooms armed. I don’t know what’s going on.

In Minneapolis, Police Chief Katie Blackwell was replaced after one week. Of course, she had just replaced the former chief. It’s just a mess there.

Then in Louisville, we have body-cam footage showing police fatally shooting a woman holding a glass object during a mental health crisis, and she’s coming out of a bathroom. So yeah, we’re going to talk about all this stuff.

Without any further ado, let’s go and start off with our housing boss. This is at Tampa Free Press, at tampafp.com: “Housing Boss William Pulte Tapped as Acting DNI After Gabbard Steps Down.”

Can I stress enough the importance of the job that Tulsi Gabbard has held and has been killing it? President Donald J. Trump has chosen William J. Pulte, P-U-L-T-E, and hopefully I’m pronouncing the name correctly, to serve as the nation’s acting director of national intelligence. It doesn’t get much bigger than that, guys.

The appointment comes shortly after Tulsi Gabbard announced that she’s leaving the position she’s been in to care for her husband, Abraham Williams. He has been diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer, unfortunately.

Right after Pam Bondi leaves, we found out that she has thyroid cancer and she’s going to treatment on that, too. This is not anything you would wish on your worst enemy. Unless you guys know something I don’t, this decision had to have been very difficult for Gabbard.

She shared her resignation news last month, explaining that she could not keep up with the heavy burdens and demands of her job, which makes sense, while helping her husband fight his illness.

This new guy, he’s currently the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. I know everybody is thinking, like I was, “Okay, he’s got an intelligence background. He’s like the number two in the office or whatever.” No, no. We’re not so lucky. He’s currently the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. He holds the title of chairman for both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

According to the release, he’ll continue to lead these housing finance organizations while taking on the new responsibilities in the intelligence community. I’m sorry, but are you freaking kidding me? I mean, okay, I’ll let you guys do this, but I’m in awe. Trump has appointed people so much better than he did in Trump 1.0. I’m sorry, but I’ve got to second-guess this one.

The president pointed to Pulte’s background in handling large-scale financial operations as a major factor in the decision. In his announcement, he stated that this guy brings deep experience managing the most sensitive matters in America, the safety and soundness of the markets, and over $10 trillion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. So that’s what we have.

Wow. I’ll let you guys dissect it. We’ve got two more coming up, but whoever wants to go first. I see the stare-down. Rich Staropoli, you win the contest.

Speaker 3 – Rich Staropoli:
Well, I’ll tell you. Let me just give you a little bit of perspective here. Every day the president gets at least three main briefings to start his day.

One is a press briefing, usually given by the press secretary or it could be the deputy. What this does is assist the president in finding out what the hot-button topics are that the international press, as well as the local and national press, are talking about. So he doesn’t have to read 200 newspapers and watch hours and hours of the news.

The second briefing is known as the PDB, the president’s daily briefing. These are synopsized articles and clippings that have to do with international as well as national events that could affect some of the policies and some of the statements he may be putting out as the day unfolds.

Then there’s a third briefing, and this is the briefing from usually the director of national intelligence, the DNI, which this guy, Pulte, will be assuming. Sometimes it’s given by the deputy. This is the culmination of all the information from the U.S. intelligence apparatus. I think at last count there were 24 or 25 different agencies that contribute to this thing.

The DNI who is giving the briefing will usually select three or four hot-button topics that are of national interest, usually that have some sort of military, security, or enforcement prerequisite to them. The president can prioritize what kind of assets and services he’s going to devote to dealing with these things.

Why is that important? Because in this particular case, of the three briefings he’s getting, we’ve got someone whose only experience has to do with overseeing the mortgage-application process for people who are buying homes and, in some cases, commercial real estate in the United States. The guy has zero experience with regard to the intelligence apparatus, has no idea what half of these agencies even do, and more importantly, has no idea how these agencies intertwine with each other to give the president what I think would be a more cohesive recommendation on what to do next once certain things are set into motion.

Bad pick. Frank?

Speaker 2 – Frank Loveridge:
Well, Rich, I’ll tell you, you’re right about everything you just said about the experience level that William Pulte has. But you have to realize he’s a good soldier. He’s done a lot of work for President Trump, and he has loyalty to President Trump.

We’ve got a lot of things out there we need to investigate that are very important, not as Republicans, not as Democrats, but as Americans. We need to find out what happened on that Trump-Russia probe. We know something happened in December, right before the inauguration when President Trump became president, where everything changed. The whole narrative changed with the Russia probe going on.

Obviously, you had all of this information basically going back to the DNI and saying, “Change everything. Now we want to look in this direction.” Something happened back then. We need to find out what it is, because if it was targeting the president-elect to basically take care of his four years as president and keep him on the ropes the entire time, which may or may not have happened, we need to get to the bottom of this. We need to find out.

That’s one of the things that he needs to keep moving forward. We’ve got all kinds of things with the declassification of documents. We look at the JFK files, the RFK files, the election probes. We need to get to the bottom of it and find out what happened.

So he needs to be a loyal follower of President Trump, and that is why he has been put in that position. Also, we have to realize that there was some White House sidelining that went on. We know that Tulsi Gabbard was excluded from some meetings because of her interventionist foreign policy views that she had.

She was a good pick at the time, but I think obviously she has personal reasons why she needed to resign, which I feel sorry to hear. But bottom line is she’s moving in a different direction. He needs to come in and be a loyal Trump advocate and get it done, because there’s a lot of stuff on the table right now that Tulsi was moving on. He needs to fix it.

Speaker 3 – Rich Staropoli:
He will be a loyal Trump advocate. But you know what, Chip? You expressed some incredulity with regard to how this guy with no experience becomes the DNI. You see this all over the government. The higher people are, they’ve got some unbelievable titles. You dig into them a little bit and you realize that these people aren’t anywhere near qualified to hold the positions that they hold.

So this isn’t unheard of. It’s just a little more unusual given such a high-profile position.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
So my next question would be, I know we’re going for commercial break, but think about this. I’d like to cover this when we get back. Does he not trust the intelligence community below Tulsi, where he has to appoint this guy? If someone is going to be holding this guy’s hand, I’d have to assume so, and helping him do his job.

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

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Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
Welcome back to leoroundtable.com, the law-enforcement talk show. My name is Chip DeBlock, and I’m your host. We’re joined by two former Secret Service SACs and SAICs. I know you pronounce it the same way. I’m just having fun. We’ve got Frank Loveridge and Rich Staropoli.

We’ve been talking about Tulsi Gabbard essentially retiring, leaving her job. She’s got to take care of her husband and stuff. Frank brought up some good points about some controversial stuff during her time as the intelligence director. But now we have a new appointee who has a finance background and housing.

My question before we went to the commercial break was whether you think there is a trust factor, or a lack of it, with Trump and the people below Tulsi. In other words, why he wouldn’t pick the next in line or someone high up in the intelligence world, which would be the natural pick to do this. And do you think someone is going to have to do a lot of hand-holding for the new director? Whoever wants to take that.

Speaker 3 – Rich Staropoli:
Well, yeah, to a certain degree, absolutely. He’s going to need somebody to do nothing other than explain to him where this information is coming from, how it correlates to all these other agencies, and what the ramifications are if we do X. What does that mean, the implications behind that?

But yeah, I’ve got to say, to a certain degree, the president can’t trust a lot of the folks in the intelligence apparatus. The entrenched government employee who’s been involved in agencies such as the CIA for the last 30 years has proven that, quite often, Trump was a target of a lot of their collection efforts. So I wouldn’t trust them either.

You look at some of the luminaries who have come out of the intelligence community. You’ve got people like Abigail Spanberger. I wouldn’t trust folks like that either. So I don’t blame the president one bit for picking somebody he’s got confidence in and he can trust.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
All right. See, that makes sense. Frank?

Speaker 2 – Frank Loveridge:
Comey, Clapper, Brennan. Think about it. These are people he’s dealt with. You don’t think he has a reason to distrust the intelligence agencies and what they’ve done to him? I mean, this is all factual information. You don’t need to be a genius to know. This is not guesswork. This is factual information.

Things happened in the intelligence community that were adversarial toward President Trump’s administration. I’d put someone there, too, that I could trust to get it done. That’s probably what he’s thinking when he’s making these appointments.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
All right. Now, when I enter conversations like this, and this is not a debate, number one, I have to acknowledge that my two guests have a lot more knowledge than I do about this, even though I have more knowledge than probably most. These guys are over the top. You guys are way above the pay grade on this.

Now I’m taking all that into consideration, learning from what you guys have said. Now I get it. As unpopular as that decision is going to be, even still with me, I still can’t get over it. But I guess if I were in a position where there was a trust factor, now I get it. I’m hoping that the hand-holding will let this guy do his job well.

But yeah, it would really suck to be in a position of such power and not be able to trust the people in the intelligence community. That’s your right hand. I can’t stress enough for people who simply don’t know how valuable the intelligence community is. I don’t know that there’s an entity more powerful or more valuable than the intelligence community.

Speaker 3 – Rich Staropoli:
Yeah. I’ll give you a great example. Look at what happened at Mar-a-Lago. You had four incredibly high-ranking folks who totally went out of their way to discredit and basically usurp not just President Trump, but the entire Trump family by executing that raid.

You had the attorney general, who, granted, is outside the intelligence community, but he runs DOJ. You’ve got the head of the FBI, the head of the Secret Service, and the CIA all weighing in to put together what turned out to be bogus documents to execute that warrant at Mar-a-Lago and stage, and this again is not supposition. Frank is right. This is fact. They staged those classified documents as having been laid out in public view. I wouldn’t trust any of these folks either.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
You’re absolutely right on that.

Well, guys, moving along, we have two other main topics. I’m going to make the jump over to AG Todd Blanche, who I saw in Dallas over the weekend. I believe that was Friday.

Tampa Free Press, at tampafp.com: “Acting AG Todd Blanche Details Missing DOJ Files and Trump’s Near Prison Sentence.”

Let me go ahead and fast-forward through this. I’m not going to spend as much time as I initially was. I’m going to do the highlights here.

Sean Hannity with Fox News has a pretty cool podcast. It’s called the Hangout with Sean Hannity podcast. The whole setting and everything is just kind of a relaxed environment. He’s got some pretty important people on there, and AG Todd Blanche is there.

He’s talking about a bunch of different stuff. Blanche said that if Trump had not won the presidency on this round, in Trump 2.0, he would almost certainly be facing prison time. He talked about, and even quoted Dan Bongino, regarding the burn bag used to destroy extra copies of classified materials. But they had found it in a little-known safe room. They suspected that maybe a good actor, an honorable FBI agent, is the one who perhaps put those there so they could be found and maybe not be destroyed. I thought that was interesting.

It also talks about Blanche revealing his own team discovered a similar situation at the DOJ a few months ago, involving another room that contained files from special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation. He said it was not necessarily a secret room, but a room that a lot of people really didn’t know about, and it had a lot of material in it. The implications are substantial, and they’re still going through it.

They’ve been releasing the files to Senator Chuck Grassley and Senator Ron Johnson. Notice Chuck Schumer’s name was not in there. Oh, that’s right. He’s no longer in charge of the Intelligence Committee. What do you know about that?

It kind of goes on. Hannity cited an estimate from Dr. Oz, of all people, who’s been in the media a lot lately, suggesting that home health-care fraud alone in Los Angeles exceeds $100 billion, and Blanche agreed with that figure.

Blanche goes on to talk about the 34 felony charges in New York against Trump, and he said he undoubtedly would be facing prison time if the election had gone the other way.

Commentary. Frank, why don’t you start us off on this one?

Speaker 2 – Frank Loveridge:
Okay. I think the first thing we need to do is find out about these documents that were discovered in this room, whether they were put there by a good actor or however they got there.

The first one on the top was the Trump-Russia probe, which is the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. We know that they found a lot of documents involving that investigation, which I think will be very advantageous to getting to the bottom of this.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
Go ahead. I see we’re going to a commercial break. All right. It’s a good start. Thank you, guys. Time for a second commercial break. These things are coming quicker and quicker after these commercial breaks. Stick with us, guys. We’re going to break this down for you. 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 former Secret Service SAICs Frank Loveridge and Rich Staropoli.

We’ve been talking about Acting Director Todd Blanche and some of the details that he gave to Sean Hannity on the Hangout with Sean Hannity podcast. Guys, I know that we were kind of into it before the commercial break. During the commercial break, I know Frank was saying some stuff. After this, we’ll get to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and the new date for that.

Any more commentary on this last one involving Todd Blanche? Frank?

Speaker 2 – Frank Loveridge:
I’ll just finish what I was saying. I think the most important thing is to find this evidence that has been stored, for whatever reason it may be, on the Trump-Russia probe. It would be the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

You’ve got the Durham report, which we know has some stuff that ties the intelligence community into some of the shenanigans that we saw. Then you’ve got the alleged foreign warning that Russia actually predicted this attack against President Trump, and then obviously the grand conspiracy, more evidence that the weaponization of the Department of Justice was done.

Allegedly, this is all what we’re hearing. But if it is true, it needs to come out to the American people for consumption.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
Thank you. All right. If you guys are ready, let’s move to our next one. This wasn’t on the agenda. Something kind of got thrown in here, so I’m a little bit at a disadvantage because you guys know more than I do on all these topics, but especially on this one.

I read yesterday that they have announced the new date for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, because of course the last one went south when there was an assassination in town of Donald Trump. So let’s talk about that. I know it’s hot in the news. I suspect over the next day or so it’s going to get a little bit hotter.

What do you guys know, and what can you tell us about this date change? Have they released the venue, Rich? Do they have the venue out there yet?

Speaker 3 – Rich Staropoli:
Yeah. The president has come out publicly. Actually, he came out publicly immediately following the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and the events as they unfolded a couple of months back, and he said he was going to go to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner when they next scheduled it.

It has come out now that the next Correspondents’ Dinner will be held July 24, and they’re looking at holding it in the ballroom at the Waldorf, which occupies the same hotel space that the Trump Post Office did, the old Farley Post Office in D.C.

Given that we’ve got about seven weeks’ notice on that, I think the challenge has been issued, not just by the president but by the bad guys and every subversive and terrorist group out there in the world, to see how close they can come to causing some sort of disruption at the next dinner.

Speaker 2 – Frank Loveridge:
Rich is right. I’ve got to tell you, Richie and I have both been on other networks talking about the biggest situation we have to deal with, and that is the location of the event.

To have an event of this nature, with the guest list that they had at the time, vice president, nine cabinet officials, head of the FBI, DNI, all of them in the same room, and literally having it in an operational hotel, I said to Richie, “They’ll never do that again.” Well, guess what? They’re doing that again.

So what did they learn from that? We know lately they’ve done pretty well. They’ve had two shootings on the perimeter in which the bad guy was neutralized, one down on the National Mall, the other one at 17th and Pennsylvania. So the Secret Service is getting a lot of practice at this, and they’re getting good at it.

But one thing you have to realize is that you still have the problem that you’ve got to separate the guests from the hotel. If you’re going to maintain the operational capability of that hotel from the attendees, you’ve got to separate them. You can’t have a guest in that hotel come from his room down the nine flights of stairs and literally pop out in front of the magnetometers. That cannot happen.

You’ve got to secure it. You’ve got to sweep 263 rooms, and you have to hold it. Once you sweep it, you have to make sure that nobody brings any guns, weapons, or explosives into those rooms. Therefore, you’ve got to hold it.

On top of all that, you’ve got all types of architectural vulnerabilities. It’s a luxury hotel. You’ve got a 24/7 fitness center. You’ve got meeting spaces. You’ve got common areas. You’ve got a 24/7 fitness center. The bottom line is there are a lot of things that you have to look at.

I’ll get to this real quick. The one thing I saw from the last one was access control. They had paper tickets, and the paper tickets had table numbers on them, not even names. We’ve got to do a better job at identifying who is coming into that hotel and also who is coming into that event. It has to be done correctly, and a guest list has to be generated.

Lastly, I will say this before I end my dissertation. You’ve given President Trump and the Secret Service two months to prepare for this, but that also means the terrorists or adversaries have two months to prepare for it also. That’s what you have to keep in mind. With that being said, I’ll send it back to you, Chip.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
Wow. That’s a lot to think about and digest, but you’re so right. I know he’s getting a lot of blowback on the ballroom, and I know that the construction cost is covered. I know we’re talking about some security issues and some paychecks involving that, some financing. But that certainly would be the ideal location. Good points.

Any final words, guys, before we move on to a video component?

Speaker 3 – Rich Staropoli:
One thing I’ll just quickly say about the construction of this ballroom: at the end of the day, the White House and the Secret Service control who comes and goes with regard to access onto the White House facility.

I can never understand why the Secret Service would acquiesce to the National Park Service, the U.S. Park Police, the White House ushers, the Landmarks Preservation Committee, and I can name five other agencies.

That ballroom needs to be built. It needs to be built securely and functionally as we come into the second quarter of the 21st century. Just go ahead and build it, because at the end of the day, what are these other agencies going to do? They don’t have any ability to enforce anything.

If I’m the White House, certainly from the Secret Service, I’d go and grant admission to every construction crew that’s necessary, get this thing built, and then move on with this topic.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
Wow. All right. I love it. I do know that construction has moved on despite what some judges have tried to do, and someone has got some stones at the White House to make that happen. So I love that.

If you guys are ready, we’ve got a story with a video component that we’ve been holding that I want to cover. It’s in Chicago. This is at rumble.com, our favorite law-enforcement video channel called This Is Butter.

COPA, which is the oversight committee that watches over the Chicago Police Department, released body-cam footage of a Chicago officer being accidentally shot by her partner.

Video audio:
Stop fighting! Police!

Tell them what they want. Just hold that, police.

Shut up!

Police!

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
Look, there’s a lot of stuff going on here. I’m going to go through this quickly.

These videos were released showing the fatal shooting of Chicago Police Officer Crystal Rivera, a female, by her male partner. It happened in June on the city’s South Side. Rivera, 36 years old, died from friendly fire on June 5, 2025. She and her partner, who had been dating, chased a suspect inside an apartment building in the Chatham neighborhood.

This happened about 9:50 at night, so it’s dark. Obviously, Rivera and her partner, Officer Carlos Baker, tried to stop this guy. He’s later identified as Adrian Rucker. He runs into a nearby apartment building, prompting the officers to pursue him inside this building.

Body-cam shows Officer Baker and Rivera. They both chase this guy up a flight of stairs. Baker, the male officer, kicks in the door to an apartment that Rucker had run into. Video shows another guy inside the apartment, and he’s pointing what looks like a rifle at the doorway.

Our male officer is in the lead. The female is pursuing behind him. The body-cam shows him falling back out of the doorway, and he fires a shot behind himself where his partner, the girl he had been seeing, Rivera, was in pursuit.

Baker, our male guy, calls on his radio, “Shots fired.” He retreats up the flight of stairs, so he separates from his female partner. Then he says, “Hey, Crystal, are you good?” before calling an ambulance to the scene.

There is a lot of time that goes on. She’s not answering him. There is a lot of time. This doesn’t happen just within a second. He finally gets to the point where he moves down and drags her down another flight of stairs. Then there are responding officers rendering aid.

Rucker, our bad guy, runs from the residence and is later taken into custody. They found three guns recovered at the scene.

Officer Rivera suffered a gunshot wound to the back, and she ended up dying at a nearby hospital. Her death was ruled a homicide, of course.

The family of Officer Rivera filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the Chicago Police Department and Officer Baker in December, claiming that he never should have been on the force when he fatally shot her during the chase. But there’s more.

The lawsuit claims that when Baker shot and killed Officer Rivera during the chase, he was struggling to accept the end of his romantic relationship with her. Attorney Antonio Romanucci represents Officer Rivera’s surviving family. He said that she was wounded and was never rendered aid, and that her partner ran to a different floor in the apartment building and did not radio dispatch that she had been shot, which goes against his training and department policy.

The attorney also said that Rivera, with a weak voice, was trying to tell dispatch that she had been shot, but her injuries were so severe that she was not able to.

The attorneys added that Officer Baker never admitted or clarified that he was the only one who discharged a weapon. The lawsuit says that he should never have been a police officer. He had more than a dozen misconduct complaints and three suspensions. Baker was relieved of police powers on August 15.

We’re going to cover all that when we come back. First, a break. 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 are joined by former Secret Service SAICs Frank Loveridge and Rich Staropoli.

We left off, and I just finished the COPA story, which of course is for the Chicago Police Department. We have a female officer chasing a bad guy up the stairs. Her male partner, and the guy she had been dating, was in front of her. When he kicks in the door, there’s another dude inside with a long gun pointed at him.

I don’t know how it happens. He ends up firing behind him. He shoots his partner. They were in the process of breaking up, apparently. The family’s suing. That’s what goes down. We’re going to take commentary on this one.

Frank Loveridge, the floor is yours.

Speaker 2 – Frank Loveridge:
Thank you for giving me the floor, Chip.

I would just say this: a lot of red flags here. But as I told you before, as an inspector in internal affairs, I did two assignments in internal affairs. We don’t make statements unless they are substantiated and investigated.

I think there’s a social-media avenue here. We need to look at some of that. The relationship between the two of them, what’s going on there, is a red flag. Why didn’t he call in for backup? Why did he not perform lifesaving steps on her? These are things that have to be answered.

But the bottom line is, I’m going to reserve making any conclusions until a thorough investigation is completed. Once that’s done, then we can move on to the next stage.

Rich?

Speaker 3 – Rich Staropoli:
Well put, SAIC Loveridge. I can’t disagree with a thing that you said. But I’ll just add, taking off the investigator hat here for a second and putting the investigation aside, I’ve seen a million of these videos, and pretty much they all play out the same way.

This one, man, there was so much in this video. I don’t even know where to start. But it almost appears as if at one point this guy just decides, “Okay, I’m not going into the apartment to go after the perp.” He turns around and just shoots his partner in the back.

I’ve got to ask myself, what the hell is going on here? For those of you who haven’t seen this video, if you’re going to watch one video, make it a point to watch this one.

I just can’t, for the life of me, figure out what this guy is thinking when he shoots this girl in the back, no less. So answer that question.

Speaker 2 – Frank Loveridge:
Yeah, Rich, I agree 100% with you. Obviously, it doesn’t look good. It’s more than just red flags. But once again, a little more investigation needs to be done. The forensics need to be done. Let’s find out why he didn’t call for help and why he didn’t give lifesaving support. We need to get the answers to those questions first before we come up with our judgment.

But I think looking at this from face value, you’re right, Rich. This is definitely a problem for the department and for Officer Baker.

Speaker 3 – Rich Staropoli:
Yeah. And keep in mind, these aren’t two 20-year-old recruits on their first day out on the job. She was 36, and I think he was 39 or something. They’ve got some time on. For this to go down the way it did, you have to account for all these other ancillary facts that are now coming to light.

I think there’s much more to this story than just what plays out in that video.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
Guys, your choice. We can try to handle the two videos with the females in the bathroom, or we can jump to Minneapolis and the musical chairs that are playing out with the chief of police job.

Speaker 3 – Rich Staropoli:
I think Minneapolis would be a good place to go.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
All right. Now remember, you asked for this, so just be careful what you ask for.

At alphanews.org, while we’re talking about Alpha, let me just remind people that Liz Collin, we love Liz Collin. She’s actually married to Bob Kroll, who has been a panelist. Bob has kind of taken a back seat now in the panelist position. He’s kind of enjoying retirement and stuff, but he of course was a lieutenant with the Minneapolis Police Department. He was the leader of the union for like a decade or more.

This has a lot of Liz Collin in the article. Of course, now she’s with Alpha News because they picketed her former news station when she was a news anchor, when she was dating or married to Bob Kroll. She lost that job, and then she went to Alpha News.

“Acting Minneapolis Police Chief Katie Blackwell Replaced After One Week.”

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who is no friend of law enforcement and certainly no friend of Lieutenant Bob Kroll, announced Tuesday that First Precinct Inspector Bill Peterson will serve as the interim chief of the police department following the resignation of former chief Brian O’Hara.

Well, gee, I thought they had appointed a female employee. Yeah, we’re getting to that.

Chief O’Hara resigned on May 26 after investigators discovered that he interfered with a prior investigation involving allegations that he engaged in sexual relationships with city employees. Although the investigators have concluded, according to our article, that the underlying allegations from the original investigation remain at this point not substantiated, he interfered with the investigation, risked the integrity of the investigation, and that constituted a significant breach of trust, according to the mayor.

At the time, Mayor Jacob Frey said in an email that the police department would be taken over by Assistant Chief Katie Blackwell. That name stuck out to me, and there’s a reason why. She had been acting chief effective immediately, but of course now that’s done.

He said, “I’m confident in her ability to provide steady leadership for the department.” Just a week later, he named Peterson as the interim chief.

With Blackwell, the female, she previously sued Alpha News journalist Liz Collin, our friend. It was over their reporting of the documentary The Fall of Minneapolis, and Liz Collin wrote a book that we promoted for years on the so-called thin blue line.

Hennepin County Judge Edward Wahl dismissed that lawsuit. He ruled that the multiple challenged statements questioning Chief Blackwell’s testimony in the Derek Chauvin trial were actually substantially true.

Imagine that.

As part of that case, 14 current and former Minneapolis police officers signed sworn declarations saying that they believe Blackwell, the one Jacob Frey appointed as acting chief after he fired O’Hara, perjured herself while testifying during Derek Chauvin’s trial.

A total of 33 officers signed declarations saying that the restraint Chauvin used, which Blackwell denied, was actually what they were trained to do by the Minneapolis Police Department.

Mayor Frey said that Peterson will serve as interim chief now while the city conducts a national search for a permanent chief.

All right, guys, there you have it. I’ll let you break it down. Rich, you’re up first.

Speaker 3 – Rich Staropoli:
Listen, anytime you talk about Minneapolis, the names that come to mind are Tim Walz, Jacob Frey, Blackwell, O’Hara. To quote the president, what a collection of retards. This is unbelievable.

Of course they weren’t going to be able to keep her in office, because she’s got a sordid, colored past as well. So you know what? Let’s go to the next name on the list.

That police department, that city, under that mayor, talk about people who should be in prison for dereliction of duty. I’m amazed that the mayor, Jacob Frey, had time to come up for air and regain his composure, because he’s so devastated over the George Floyd killing and everything else that’s gone on.

You’re talking about people who have no regard and no respect, not just for the police, but for the tax-paying American citizen in Minnesota. Does this surprise anyone? I’m not surprised by this one bit. It’s one more travesty after another in that city.

Speaker 2 – Frank Loveridge:
Amen to that, Richie. Honestly, when you saw what went on up there, the shenanigans with the ICE agents and the lack of support for ICE, these are fellow officers. These are law-enforcement officers who are just doing their job. They’re enforcing federal law, and you’re up there and you’re not supporting them. You’re leaving them out to dry.

It was just a terrible situation, and it’s all because of lack of leadership and ulterior motives. They didn’t want ICE there. They didn’t want ICE arresting the community and removing them, because those are voters. We know that those people vote, and the word gets out. So they can’t support that.

You see what happens when politics becomes part of law enforcement. This is what happens. It’s a disaster. All of those leaders up there, and I use the term loosely, need to be gone. That’s it. Gone. Enough.

Speaker 1 – Host, Chip DeBlock:
Well, guys, great commentary. Thank you.

We’ve got a minute left. I see that we’ve got some good commentary going on. I’m bouncing between Rumble, YouTube, LinkedIn, and all the areas.

I’ll tell you, Minneapolis is one place I wouldn’t want to live. I certainly wouldn’t want to be a police officer there. Minneapolis and St. Paul are essentially the same area.

We started the leoaffairs.ch website, and you guys might remember that I used to own it as a dot com. The main purpose was really because of this debacle going on in Minneapolis and what Frank has talked about.

Minneapolis cops are not allowed, and I would like to think that these guys want to do their job. They have not been active at leoaffairs.ch, which gives them an opportunity to talk about what’s been going on anonymously, without fear of repercussions, so they can do it confidentially.

They haven’t been doing it, but they’ve been stuck in police headquarters and not allowed to go do their jobs and do crowd control. So ICE is having to roll with Border Patrol in order to do that. Then everybody is shocked and surprised when they end up having to shoot and kill somebody like Renee Good, who actually, that was a completely justified shoot. I would have shot her all day long, except I would have done it sooner.

They want to be in charge of the investigation into these cops that are doing so. It’s just crazy stuff. Leoaffairs.ch, if you guys get a chance to check that out.

Frank Loveridge and Rich Staropoli, thank you guys so much for being on the show. You guys have added great value to it.

I want to mention The Wounded Blue, thewoundedblue.org. If you guys are looking for organizations to support that are not going to embarrass you, The Wounded Blue, thewoundedblue.org.

Also support our sponsors, please. We have our title sponsor, galls.com, Compliant Technologies, GunLearn.com, MyMedicare.life, and Two Bales dot com. Don’t forget the Galls discount code RADIO15. We’ll see you guys back tomorrow, 12 noon Eastern.