#16 Chief Hallgrimson - Guilty of Assault After Rescuing Baby from Murderer

Chief of Police Greenwood, MO Greg Hallgrimson contacted me over 2 years via email to let me know how much a video I made on social anxiety helped him. After reading his email and googling his name I found out what a hero this man is and invited him on the show. The email is linked below for everyone to read. Chief Hallgrimson saved a 6 month old baby girl from being murdered by her father and then was charged with assault. He has lost not only his position as Chief of Police but also his entire career, his retirement, and his identity. He is now seeking employment. If you would like to contact him, his email is linked below along with all of his awards and his support page. Please sign his petition. Greg's Email and Support Page: [email protected] https://www.facebook.com/groups/962002557970022/?ref=share https://www.change.org/p/the-the-court-whom-it-may-concern-show-we-stand-behind-greg-hallgrimson?signed=true Email from Greg to Shawn: https://static.bashcrash.io/016/hallgrimson_1.png https://static.bashcrash.io/016/hallgrimson_2.png Awards: https://static.bashcrash.io/016/IMG_0325.jpg https://static.bashcrash.io/016/IMG_0326.jpg https://static.bashcrash.io/016/IMG_0327.jpg https://static.bashcrash.io/016/IMG_0328.jpg https://static.bashcrash.io/016/IMG_0329.jpg https://static.bashcrash.io/016/IMG_0330.jpg https://static.bashcrash.io/016/IMG_0331.jpg https://static.bashcrash.io/016/IMG_0332.jpg https://static.bashcrash.io/016/IMG_0333.jpg https://static.bashcrash.io/016/IMG_0334.jpg https://static.bashcrash.io/016/IMG_0335.jpg Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website - https://www.shawnryanshow.com Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/VigilanceElite TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnryanshow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/shawnryan762 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:07Shawn Ryan?

  Let's move into December 17th, 2018. When you saved that little girl.

• 1:16Speaker 04

  Tonight, the baby's father is charged with domestic assault. Police say they didn't know about the child until the father walked in saying he drowned his six-month-old.

• 1:27Shawn Ryan?

  I want you to be very descriptive. I want you to talk about every little detail that you saw, that you felt, what you were feeling, what your mindset was, all that kind of stuff.

• 1:43Speaker 05

  It looked like the soul was gone. There was no soul behind his eyes, and that's exactly how he looked when I ran past him going down the hall to go to that call. It's just a different kind of evil.

• 1:56Speaker 06

  The child's father, Jonathan Ziccharelli, said he planned to kill his daughter for over 24 hours. He said he came down here to this pond, got out of his car, walked down here at least three different times, trying to determine if he could kill his child right before he put her in the water and watched her sink.

• 2:17Shawn Ryan?

  So you get out of the car, you're running down to the pond.

• 2:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:20Shawn Ryan?

  And the first thing you see is a six-month-old baby girl.

• 2:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:25Shawn Ryan?

  Face down in a pond.

• 2:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:27Shawn Ryan?

  Who was murdered by her father.

• 2:32Speaker 05

  I can see the back of her head.

• 2:35Speaker 05

  That's an image that's still there. Little curls on her hair.

• 2:42Speaker 06

  Police say it took them around five to six minutes from the time the father confessed to when they pulled the six-month-old out of the pond here off Dock Henry, just south of Cherokee. Chief Halgerson said she wasn't moving, that she looked like a little porcelain doll just floating on the surface.

• 2:59Speaker 05

  The next memory that I've got is me being basically punched, kicked, choked, yelled at, screamed at by my lieutenant and another officer who's trying to get me off the guy.

• 3:18Speaker 05

  I hope at some point, you know, eight or nine years down the road, I'll get to meet her. I would love that.

• 3:25Shawn Ryan?

  I hope you get to meet her too.

• 3:33Shawn Ryan?

  Welcome back to the Sean Ryan Show. This episode 016 is exactly why I do what I do here at Vigilance Elite. He's a local hero and he's in desperate need of all of our support. I want to start off, as always, by saying thank you to Patreon and all the patrons for the support that you've given me and Vigilance Elite to produce these shows. These stories would never be heard if it wasn't for you guys. If you haven't left us a review on iTunes, please go down to the description, hit the link, and leave us a review on iTunes. Leave us one word, that's all we need. We really appreciate it. Thank you.

• 4:18Shawn Ryan?

  The gentleman who's our next guest found us from a social anxiety video I posted several years ago. You can read that email, it's attached along with all of his awards that he's received throughout his career, and his support page, and his email address. He's a local hero who saved a six-month-old baby from being murdered.

• 4:45Shawn Ryan?

  By her father. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, please welcome Chief Greg Hal Grimson to the Sean Ryan Show.

• 5:04Shawn Ryan?

  Chief Hal Grimson, welcome to the show, man.

• 5:08Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 5:08Shawn Ryan?

  I've been trying to get you out here forever, but we had some court stuff, we had to wait to settle down for to get you out here, to get your story in. And just, so just to kick it off, I want to start it by telling the audience a little bit about you. So basically, you saved a six-month-old baby girl from being drowned by her father in a pond. And then got a little rough with her father, who tried to kill his daughter. And you're stripped your badge, your gun, you're a chief of police at the time. Basically, I don't know if it's the city, the county, or the department, basically tossed you out on your ass with, with no support.

• 5:53Shawn Ryan?

  And, and that's the end of your law enforcement career, long law enforcement career. So, me and you have talked a couple of times, and I tried to get you on the show. Finally, I've got you here. The last conversation we had, the last text conversation we had was you were saying, "I just want to be a protector. I've always been this, that's all I want to do, that's what I'm good at." Now you're selling, no, you're not selling, you're working in the service department at a car dealership in Oklahoma.

• 6:30Speaker 05

  Right.

• 6:31Shawn Ryan?

  So, I said, "Why don't you come on the show, I don't know how many people are going to watch it, I can never, you know, I can't control that." Usually, we have a really good viewership, so if anybody watching is looking to hire a former police chief hero, somebody like yourself. Your email address, Greg's email address, is in the description, and you can reach out to him there, or if you just want to support. So, moving on, before that day.

• 7:03Shawn Ryan?

  Everybody that comes on the show gets a little, a little something. Most people anyways.

• 7:10Speaker 05

  Most.

• 7:11Shawn Ryan?

  But, uh, there you go. Little keepsake for you.

• 7:15Speaker 05

  Uh, do I open this?

• 7:16Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, go ahead. Open it up.

• 7:22Speaker 05

  Uh, look at that.

• 7:26Speaker 05

  So, my wife, my wife doesn't know, um, about the Vigilance Elite gummy bears.

• 7:32Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:33Speaker 05

  Uh, but she, uh, no doubt is probably gonna fight me to the death for, for these. Uh, that's awesome. Wow.

• 7:42Shawn Ryan?

  I'll give you a couple extras.

• 7:45Speaker 05

  Wow, and a hat. Hey, that's-

• 7:46Shawn Ryan?

  From the private stash.

• 7:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's awesome.

• 7:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you very much, John. I appreciate it.

• 7:54Shawn Ryan?

  Thanks for coming out.

• 7:55Speaker 05

  Oh, I'm glad to be here. It's, it's been a long time coming and, and I'm, I'm really, uh, humbled to be here, for sure.

• 8:05Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I'm ready to dive in, man. Are you nervous?

• 8:08Speaker 05

  I am. Yeah, I sure am.

• 8:10Shawn Ryan?

  Well, if it helps you at all, everybody that's been on this show says the exact same thing, how nervous they are and, and to be honest with you, I get just as nervous, you know? I don't like being in the limelight. I always get a little anxious. And then, uh, but once it goes on, once the show kind of rolls on, you'll get more comfortable, it'll be fine. And, uh, and, uh, you looked kind of nervous in that restaurant last night, too.

• 8:38Speaker 05

  Uh, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, this is a, I mean, this has been going on since, um, what I think the first time I had contact with you was in early 2019, January, February, March, something like that. Um, so it's, it's been, uh, building for a couple of years now and to have it, uh, finally come around and happen, uh, is a really big thing for me. So, and I'm really, I'm very happy to be here, but yeah, nervous as hell. Yeah.

• 9:05Shawn Ryan?

  Well, don't be too nervous. You know how many people sat in that chair that have saved a six-month-old girl from being murdered by their father?

• 9:13Speaker 05

  No.

• 9:14Shawn Ryan?

  Probably none of them. So.

• 9:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:17Shawn Ryan?

  Uh, so, you know, there's that.

• 9:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, there is. Yeah, well.

• 9:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, it's difficult to be in limelight. It's a tough thing.

• 9:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I know. But, all right, moving on. So, we met initially from an email. And I actually read that email before you got here, so the audience can hear it. And you talked about some of the struggles you were overcoming, and you were even humble in that email. You were saying that, you didn't even tell me what you did. I had to Google it. You dropped that little, "If you want to know more, you can Google my name." So, sure as shit, I Google your name. And I was like, oh, man. And so, we kind of connected. And I've been going back and forth over the past, what, two years?

• 10:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 10:11Shawn Ryan?

  I think, maybe a little bit longer. And now, here we are today. But, you brought up a couple of different incidents

• 10:23Shawn Ryan?

  that you've dealt with being a law enforcement officer. And I wanted to kind of bring that up because when we get into, you know, what happened on that day back in December of 18?

• 10:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, December 17th of 2018.

• 10:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yep, December 18th of 2018.

• 10:47Speaker 05

  It was 10 to 8 in the morning, too.

• 10:48Shawn Ryan?

  I'm just gonna quit.

• 10:51Shawn Ryan?

  But, I kind of want to paint a picture. That's not, I don't think that's a rare occurrence.

• 10:57Speaker 05

  No.

• 10:58Shawn Ryan?

  You know, for somebody like you. And how long have you been in law enforcement?

• 11:03Speaker 05

  You know, I started, I actually started my career in 99. Had a super bad experience with the agency I was with and got out of it, and then got back in it in late 2003. So, I was in it from 2003 to, you know, just before 2019 started.

• 11:18Shawn Ryan?

  So, the better part of 20 years. And that's, I mean, would you say things like that are a daily occurrence?

• 11:27Speaker 05

  In my career, what I saw every day, all up through the ranks and as a chief even, it wasn't necessarily a daily occurrence, but it was most definitely something that could occur any day, every single day.

• 11:41Shawn Ryan?

  You'd brought up in your email, fighting for your life in the middle of the highway.

• 11:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, that that happened more than more than I ever wanted it to, that's for certain. And I had that actually, I'd forgotten, you know, like I said, I couldn't find that email. So I kind of forgot about some of this a little bit, but yeah, there was a few occurrences like that that happened to me when I was when I was with my first agency and, you know, I wasn't the only officer that ever had to deal with that. And I'm sure, you know, there's been, you know, thousands of officers since that have, but, you know, all through the academy, you know, I went to the law enforcement training center in Kansas and for the academy, and they taught you through there. They kept talking about the warrior mindset, you know,

• 12:29Speaker 05

  your adrenaline, you know, the dump, everything. And until a person experiences it, you just don't, and none of that clicks because it's just words on paper until it happens to you. And, you know, when you've got a guy a lot bigger than than you are, and I was a decent sized guy, but when you've got somebody that's bigger than you and you're just, you're not only having to fight that person, but you have to fight that person to stay away from the weapons that you possess so that they can't use those against you. There's a lot that goes into that. And it's, it's definitely, I would compare it with sliding in the mud toward a hundred foot drop and just trying to grab anything you can to keep it from happening. That'd probably be a really good comparison.

• 13:13Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Well, real quick. So I have a thing called Patreon, which is basically a subscription account. And basically what we do there is we have a bunch of behind the scenes type footage. We do video teleconferencing with our subscribers. And basically what our subscribers on Patreon do is they, they are the ones that support this show. They're the reason that it happens and that we're able to put all this together, all the equipment, the salaries, everything. And so one thing I promise them is I give them a heads up on

• 13:54Shawn Ryan?

  who's coming on the show before, a couple of days before they get here. And I pick a question or two that they have for the guest. So this question is from Nate Hills.

• 14:10Shawn Ryan?

  He just says, "In your opinion, do you think police officers get sufficient training to do the job these days?"

• 14:17Speaker 05

  No, not even close. Not even close. No, most academies are usually about three and a half months long. And when you take into, when you throw into the mix that you've got one individual that you expect to go out and do all these things, and it's not going to matter if it's an officer working for a rural city, you know, of 1,800 people, or a metropolitan city, you know, with several hundred thousand. The training's just not there in the academies at all. And having been through two different states and seeing the different training in the two different states, some states definitely need it way more than others.

• 15:01Speaker 05

  And there should really be some kind of a nationally mandated training that they have to go through, whether it's developed by, you know, an allegiance of chiefs of police or sheriffs or whatever it is. The training has to be upped, and it has to be upped a lot.

• 15:17Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. I've heard that from several different police officers.

• 15:24Speaker 05

  I bet.

• 15:25Shawn Ryan?

  And, yeah, it sounds like they need to up the funding and not to decrease the funding, which is...

• 15:34Speaker 05

  Well, and I was fortunate enough, when I was a chief, that the city that I was a chief for, most of the government for that city and the citizens for that city were very pro-police. And I was able to take my officers out and just do extensive training almost every single week. And, you know, I never really got balked at by except maybe a couple of board members. You know, they couldn't understand why we were spending the money we were to train officers. I'm confident I know who those two guys voted for.

• 16:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Do you think, it's a tough question, do you think there are a handful of officers out there that do let the authority go to their head and they take advantage of it?

• 16:25Speaker 05

  Absolutely. I would go so far as to say...

• 16:33Speaker 05

  At some point, especially in a young career, that's, that's gonna happen to probably forty percent or greater.

• 16:41Shawn Ryan?

  That many?

• 16:42Speaker 05

  I believe so, yeah, simply based on, based on my experiences with the officers that I, I was privileged enough to work with over the years and, and seeing things. Yeah, and, you know, I'm not a hundred percent sure, you know, what you mean by take advantage of, but in my mind, I call it badge happy, where they, they pin that badge on and then they feel like they're, they're the shit. And they take, they don't take no for an answer and they're delegating law and in their own mind, they're, they're, they've kinda got a little bit of a god complex, you know, you're gonna do this because I said so, you know, that's that type of thing. And that, that puts law enforcement in a bad light and that's, that's another place where, where training would, would be a big plus.

• 17:27Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 17:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, oh, I think so, yeah.

• 17:30Shawn Ryan?

  What kind of training do you think would help with that?

• 17:33Speaker 05

  Well, you know, nowhere in the academy training that I received or the continuing education hours that I went through, and there, there was a lot, at least seven hundred continuing education hours that I went through, nowhere in any of that did I ever hear the word humble. And I think being humble is something that has to go with that badge, it has to, it, it, it gives it value.

• 17:56Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. Would you say, you said younger in the career, or, or early on in a young officer's career, do most people grow out of that?

• 18:11Speaker 05

  Oh, I think so, yeah, I mean, there's, I think there's gonna be a few that probably never will and it's just not the right place for them and I, I believe they'll be weeded out. One thing I've definitely learned about law enforcement is when somebody gets in that doesn't belong, they're, they're weeded out. They, whether it's by their fellow officers, or administration, you know, or, or citizens, they, they end up getting weeded out eventually. But yeah, it's, it's the, the people in the first couple of years of their career, they don't have the experience yet to learn, you know, what the compassion part is all about.

• 18:48Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 18:50Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. Well, let's take just a real quick break. And when we come back, I want to go into some of the worst things that you've seen as a police officer to kind of paint a picture of what you guys are dealing with every day.

• 19:05Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 19:10Shawn Ryan?

  I want to take a minute to tell you about Vigilance Elite Patreon. Patron support is what makes this show possible and gives me the ability to bring these one-of-a-kind stories to the public. Go to patreon.com/vigilanceelite and support The Sean Ryan Show today.

• 19:33Shawn Ryan?

  All right, we're back from our 30-second break there. But what are some of the worst things that you've seen? What are some of the worst scenes that you've rolled up on as a law enforcement officer?

• 19:49Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, obviously not counting, you know, the child in the pond.

• 20:01Speaker 05

  As a sergeant, I would show up on a scene. And the one in my mind right now is just a fatality accident. Pretty much any officer has to work a fatality accident at some point or another, or at least be a part of one, a part of an investigation on one. And I worked a fatality accident. I was the first one on the scene. It was right at the edge of my city limits when I was a sergeant. I was actually eating dinner at the time when the call came out. And I heard where the restaurant was located compared to where the crash occurred, I heard the crunch from the crash.

• 20:44Speaker 05

  So I was already up and leaving the table when I got the call. I was first on the scene, on the scene for about 16 minutes by myself, waiting on other officers to get there, deputies, things like that. And it ended up being a three-car accident. And what had happened was one vehicle, and a Toyota 4Runner ran a stop sign out into a 65 mile an hour four-lane intersection. Hit one vehicle, knocked it into another one.

• 21:13Speaker 05

  And when I got on scene, there was a young Hispanic male walking around and seemed fine. I thought he was a witness. And so I grabbed him and stood him to the side, told him, "Don't leave," you know. I wanted to get a statement from him at some point when I was done dealing with the people. Went and dealt with the first vehicle. It was a 16 year old that had passed away already. Ended up being somebody that was good friends with my kids. So, kind of familiar with her. And then the other vehicle was a family. Mom and dad were both injured. Dad was unconscious. But anyways, I assessed everything, got back

• 21:54Speaker 05

  on with dispatch. Eventually, got coverings put over the 16 year old. Public doesn't need to see that. And then went over to the Hispanic male. Once EMS, you know, Emergency Medical Services showed up, I went back over to the Hispanic male and started talking to him. Turned out, he was the operator of the Toyota 4Runner that had caused the accident that actually blew the stop sign and hit these vehicles. And so immediately, there was a deputy that showed up on scene. He was very adamant that this was in his jurisdiction, not mine. I said, "Okay, here he is. I've smelled alcohol on him. This is the driver

• 22:38Speaker 05

  and the cause of this accident. He's in your custody now." There was no field sobriety testing done by that deputy or anything else. And long story short, that individual ended up with a $75 fine for running a stop sign. That was it. You gotta be shitting me. No. No. So that was a bad one. But... That's infuriating. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I agree.

• 23:09Speaker 05

  One of my officers, when I was a sergeant, damn good officer, really good man. He had a child pass away while he was giving him CPR. If I remember, it was an eight-year-old boy having an asthma attack. And the inhaler was with the parents. Couldn't be found. They weren't unseen. They were elsewhere. I'll just, I'll leave it at that.

• 23:34Shawn Ryan?

  What were they doing?

• 23:37Speaker 05

  Partying.

• 23:38Shawn Ryan?

  Partying?

• 23:39Speaker 05

  Yeah. But, you know, that officer ended up getting sued by the parents for wrongful death. So, I mean, it's, the world that law enforcement has to deal with is, is pretty incredible when you dig in deep. And there's a huge amount of officers out there that just, and I know anybody in a profession like this, fire department, hell, even social working like we spoke about, knows how to compartmentalize. They've learned it somehow and they just do it. And so you just go through your career and try your best not to open those boxes.

• 24:23Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. I can definitely relate to that.

• 24:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:27Shawn Ryan?

  And you get real good at it.

• 24:29Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:30Shawn Ryan?

  Until it catches up with you.

• 24:31Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 24:32Shawn Ryan?

  But, you know, I guess kind of what I'm, what I'm kind of trying to bring out of you here is, law enforcement, you guys deal with the worst of people.

• 24:47Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:48Shawn Ryan?

  The worst of people, and you deal with the worst people on their worst days.

• 24:55Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 24:56Shawn Ryan?

  And, and that, I'm assuming, is damn near a daily occurrence, sometimes probably three, four, maybe five, six times a day.

• 25:05Speaker 05

  Yeah. Well, I know in my career, I was never just randomly invited to a birthday party. So, I mean, it's, no, it's, when I was a chief, my lieutenant at Fordham, he, wonderful man, really good guy, he, he used to say, "We have a front seat to the greatest show on earth." And that's obviously just a way to look at it to make it seem much smaller than it is, you know, and change it into something that's acceptable.

• 25:38Speaker 05

  You know, it's, uh, there's, there's, there's a lot of good days, but even the good days are going to involve, you know, a domestic violence situation, or a fatality accident, or, you know, a two-year-old getting mauled by a pit bull. I mean, that's, you know, you're gonna have good days in law enforcement, don't get me wrong, it's, it's a wonderful career, and I, I wish to God I was still in it, but every good day is a bad day, too.

• 26:07Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Let's move into December 17th, 2018, when you saved that little girl.

• 26:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 26:18Shawn Ryan?

  So, I want you to be very descriptive. I want you to talk about every little detail that you saw, that you felt, what you were feeling, what your mindset was, all that kinda stuff. So, let's just start at the very beginning. What were you doing? What was the call?

• 26:38Speaker 05

  Um, yeah, on December 17th of 2018, I was, uh, I was sitting in my office doing payroll for my officers. And, uh, I heard my, I heard my corporal down the hall, my corporal, my lieutenant, and another officer were all in my lieutenant's office, I believe. I heard my, my corporal scream for me, and I could tell by the tone of his voice, it was something really serious. So, I, I got up and ran out the hall, and, and as soon as I entered into the hallway, um, he said something to the effect of, "There's a baby drowning in a pond on Duck Henry Road."

• 27:18Speaker 05

  We ran out. Um, as I was running down the hall, to the right was my lieutenant's office, the doorway, and the door was open from the hallway into his office. And I saw a man sitting in a chair, unrestrained.

• 27:31Speaker 05

  He just had that million mile stare and I my brain associated, hey, this is a suspect in this somehow. Somehow when we got in the parking lot, we're getting into our cruisers to go. I believe my lieutenant had told me or my corporal told me that's that's the father. He drowned his baby. And so we knew exactly where the pond was. You know, and I got to tell you, in my in my career, I've never experienced running hot to a call where you didn't have to hit the brakes. I mean, hitting the brakes, swerving, getting out of traffic, getting into other traffic, wrong way, you know, whatever you got to do to get to a call. Didn't experience any of that on this. It was like the the streets just parted.

• 28:16Speaker 05

  The cars were out of the way before we ever had to get to them. We got to that call faster than I've ever gotten to a call. As soon as I arrived, I bailed out of my car, ran down the bank into the water. My corporal was right there with me. He ended up in the water. He ended up having the baby in his hands and he couldn't get anything to happen. And he turned the baby to me. We dug all kinds of mud and dirt and stuff out of her throat, out of her eyes, cleared her eyes up. Millie turned her over, started again, you know, just doing compressions on her from the back.

• 28:54Shawn Ryan?

  This was in Kansas City, Missouri?

• 28:59Speaker 05

  Greenwood, just yeah, just in Jackson County, same county as Kansas City, Missouri.

• 29:04Shawn Ryan?

  Southern Rookhand City?

• 29:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 29:06Shawn Ryan?

  In the middle of December.

• 29:07Speaker 05

  Right.

• 29:08Shawn Ryan?

  Right? December 17th. So what was the temperature?

• 29:12Speaker 05

  That day, I believe it was in the low 20s. There was ice that we had to break to get in the pond, right there by the bank.

• 29:23Shawn Ryan?

  You had to break ice to get to?

• 29:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, we broke, yeah, we broke through ice as we entered the pond, yeah.

• 29:29Shawn Ryan?

  So was she under?

• 29:30Speaker 05

  She was, she was face down, floating. And she wasn't under the ice, there wasn't ice as far out as she was, it was just around the bank, around the edges. Of course, the water was pretty cold, but.

• 29:45Shawn Ryan?

  So you get out of the car, you're running down to the pond.

• 29:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 29:48Shawn Ryan?

  And the first thing you see is a six-month-old baby girl. Face down in a pond.

• 29:54Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 29:55Shawn Ryan?

  Who was murdered by her father.

• 29:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. I could see, I could see the back of her head. That's an image that's still there, little curls on her hair. And I'm not sure, you know, I never, my corporal and I never really had a chance to talk about it afterward. To this day, him and I really haven't sat down and had any kind of discussion about it. But I'll get to that part later, but we.

• 30:27Speaker 05

  I, I believed at that point, before we ever touched the baby, I believed that this was a hoax. Because of the color of the baby, it was just pure white, it was like a porcelain doll. I really felt like it was, it was just some guy that had a real bad mental illness problem and believed that he threw a baby in the pond and he didn't. But it turned out to be a real baby. As soon as, as soon as we put hands on it, we knew that.

• 30:58Speaker 05

  It was, it was really frantic. My corporal, at that time, had two little children. A little girl and I believe a little boy. And, you know, so he was still a pretty new father. My kids were, you know, grown, gone, you know, that sort of thing. But I know it had a lot of effect on him at that point, I could, I could definitely see that.

• 31:24Speaker 05

  But when we were up on the bank with the baby and my corporal held the baby out and we're yelling at each other and I can't hear him and I would imagine he probably couldn't hear me. It's just nothing soaked in. We're just going off of just pure actions. More as parents than anything else at that point. But I reached down to the baby's throat and dug out an enormous amount of mud and dirt and grass. And we turned her over and I had her

• 32:02Speaker 05

  long ways on my forearm. It started compressions again. And at some point, you know, she just, she let out a whimper. And she was, she was coming to you. And as we turned to run back up the bank with her to my corporal's vehicle, because he left his vehicle running, and I wanted to get her in the heat as quick as possible. As we turned to run back to that vehicle, sorry, I, when I turned, I saw the look on his face. And I know that he, he

• 32:46Speaker 05

  just, he was ready to fall apart, just like I was. But we, we got up to the car, got the baby in the passenger front seat, got the heat blowing on her as hard as we could. I stripped down out of the rest of my uniform on the side of the road and wrapped her in it, trying to get her warm. It seemed like every minute went by, she got a little more coherent. She started moving her hands and looking around. You could see the movement in her eyes finally, you know, things that we weren't seeing at first that was really scaring us. Because at that point, we had no idea how long she'd been in that pond. And in my mind, I didn't even know if the father had driven from the pond to the police

• 33:29Speaker 05

  department, or if he had walked. I didn't know. And so, the more coherent she became, the better we felt, you know. And then I started, I kept talking to her, trying to get her attention, get her to look at me. I wanted to, I wasn't even worried about hearing or anything like that. I just wanted her to just.

• 33:51Speaker 05

  Just be more coherent, you know, and come to more and start acting like a baby should.

• 33:58Speaker 05

  Then I started calling her Goose, and I don't know why, but started calling her Goose and nicknamed her that. But, you know, she finally started looking at us. She was looking around the car.

• 34:10Speaker 05

  And then a guy had pulled up that lived close by, a citizen. And, you know, I wonder if everything was okay. I asked him if he had any blankets, anything in the car we could use. And he said, no, but he lived right down the street. He'll go get some. And so he took off and went back to his house to get some.

• 34:31Speaker 05

  Which, you know, the people in that area, that's the way they are. But the fire department showed up with their bus, their ambulance.

• 34:44Speaker 05

  When they finally came over and took custody, I almost didn't want to give the baby to them.

• 34:49Speaker 05

  I almost felt like that she needed to stay with me.

• 34:54Speaker 05

  But that's not how it works. But, so they got her on the bus, started working with her.

• 35:03Speaker 05

  Five or six minutes went by, I would guess, you know, that she was on that bus. And I couldn't even tell you what my corporal was doing at that time. He, for all I know, he might have been on the bus. It just, you know, there's a lot of, a lot of things going through your head, you know, at that point. So you don't, you kind of lose touch with what's going on around you, at least in my case. But my corporal, I remember my corporal approached me and he said, they're telling me that she's gonna be okay. She's, she's gonna be stable. She's suffering from severe hypothermia and she'll be okay. Something just, you know, clicked in my head back to the suspect, the father, sitting in my lieutenant's office unrestrained as I ran past.

• 35:48Speaker 05

  That, that image went right back in my head. And I got back in my, my police car and ran hot, straight back down to the police department.

• 35:58Shawn Ryan?

  Before we go back into that.

• 35:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 36:00Shawn Ryan?

  Before we go back into that, what's this little girl's name?

• 36:08Speaker 05

  I don't know. I really couldn't tell you. I honestly couldn't. I don't know her name. And I, to be honest with you, and I know this isn't gonna sound very good at this moment. Right now, I don't wanna know her name.

• 36:22Speaker 05

  But, uh, I, I hope at some point, um, you know, eight or nine years down the road, I'll get to meet her. I would, I would love that.

• 36:33Shawn Ryan?

  I hope you get to meet her too.

• 36:36Shawn Ryan?

  The report says that she was underwater for an estimated, I think, eight to 10 minutes.

• 36:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 36:44Shawn Ryan?

  Uh, before you guys got there.

• 36:46Speaker 05

  Right.

• 36:47Shawn Ryan?

  That's a long time in totally very weather.

• 36:50Speaker 05

  It is. And.

• 36:50Shawn Ryan?

  Underwater.

• 36:51Speaker 05

  You know, uh, my corporal, uh, he's been promoted since then, but my corporal, he's probably one of the best guys I ever trained, probably one of the best guys I've ever worked with.

• 37:04Speaker 05

  And I, one of the things that him and I did talk about, um, when we got back to the police department after everything was, was over with, you know, he, uh, he said the baby's body temperature was measured at eighty-six point seven degrees, I believe. I know it was, it was either eighty-six point seven or eighty-seven point six. Either way, it's extremely low. Um, I'm not taking anything away from my corporal or myself, uh, in any means, but I'm, I'm telling you, if that child's body temperature wasn't what it was, we would never have been able to save her. Um, so we were just an after effect.

• 37:43Speaker 05

  Her, her organs slowing down the way they did because of her body temperature is, is, is a big part of what saved that child's life. Definitely.

• 37:54Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, man. That's some heavy shit.

• 37:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 38:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, but.

• 38:04Shawn Ryan?

  Is there anything else that happened on scene that you want to talk about?

• 38:09Speaker 05

  On scene, um, no, you know, it just, uh,

• 38:16Speaker 05

  you know, I've, I've had to tell a story a couple of times, but I do it from a very far distance, if that makes sense to you.

• 38:23Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:23Speaker 05

  Um, so the closer I get to the story, the tougher it is to tell. But, uh, it just, uh, on scene, you know, the, the memory of the guy pulling up and, and asking to help, you know, that's, uh,

• 38:39Speaker 05

  that's, that's just where those people are around that city. And, uh, the support that, that the citizens gave me afterwards, uh, was a big reflection of that, too. But, um, back to, uh, back to the story, what, uh, what happened was, uh,

• 38:55Speaker 05

  when I entered into the police department parking lot, there's, when you enter the building, there was an outer door that you'd go into and then you're in a little foyer area. You've got two different doors you can go through. There's one that goes, if you go straight through, um, that door takes you down a hallway, uh, goes to our squad room, evidence room, my office, another office. If you take an immediate left and go through that door, straight into my lieutenant's office, which is where the suspect was. So the only way to get into either one of those doors is with a four-digit code. And it's by policy, those doors have to be shut, which that code's always activated no matter what when they're shut. Um, when I got out of my police car, ran through the parking lot, I remember grabbing

• 39:38Speaker 05

  that door to the outer foyer, the public entrance. I yanked it open, entered that foyer.

• 39:45Speaker 05

  I don't remember ever putting a code in. Um, I don't remember opening a door. The next memory that I've got is, is me being, uh, basically, uh, punched, kicked.

• 39:56Speaker 05

  Choked, yelled at, screamed at by my lieutenant and another officer was trying to get me off the guy. I remember seeing the guy on the floor underneath me and it was very easy for me to figure out what I did. You know, that, that, that kind of a picture, you, you don't, you don't mistake what, what you just did to somebody. And I didn't. I immediately called my, well, actually my city clerk, great woman, she, she heard some of the ruckus from city hall, they're connected to the police department. And she came over and was screaming, wanting to know what's going on. Is everybody okay? And I said, yeah, yeah,

• 40:40Speaker 05

  it's okay. I was in a pretty bad state at that point. And I just said, I resigned. I quit. She said, no, we're not gonna let you. And I shut myself in my office and stayed in there for about 20 minutes, trying to get myself calmed down. And then I called my mayor, Levi Weaver, good, good man. I told him I was gonna resign. I said, I resign, I quit. I resigned my post. And he didn't know what had happened. He had zero idea.

• 41:19Speaker 05

  And he said, chief, no, never. And he wouldn't let me. So that's, that's kind of people I was with. So that, that was big.

• 41:34Shawn Ryan?

  That sounds like a hell of a, hell of a team.

• 41:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:39Shawn Ryan?

  You want to take a break?

• 41:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:41Shawn Ryan?

  Let's take a break.

• 41:46Shawn Ryan?

  I hope you're enjoying the Sean Ryan Show. Let me take a minute to tell you about Vigilance Elite Patreon. Our patron community receives exclusive behind the scenes content from the Sean Ryan Show, as well as an extensive library of Vigilance Elite videos not seen anywhere else. I also engage in live video chat with Tier 3 members once a month where we discuss a variety of topics. Vigilance Elite Patreon is what makes the Sean Ryan Show possible. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your support. And head over to patreon.com slash vigilance elite and get your subscription today.

• 42:34Shawn Ryan?

  All right, so we're back.

• 42:37Shawn Ryan?

  Get a stiff drink, numb it out a little bit. And, uh, but where we left off, it basically, it sounds like the mayor, the clerk, it sounds like everybody kinda had your, had your back or was behind you.

• 42:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, they definitely did, um, in a way that I never really saw coming. Uh, my, my mayor demanded, um, that I be, cause by the policies that I developed myself,

• 43:07Speaker 05

  a person that was involved, an officer that was involved in a critical incident such as that one, um, if there were anything that happened that would be in question at all or up for investigation, they had to go on paid administrative leave or unpaid administrative leave. That choice had to be made by the mayor, um, or the board of aldermen and the mayor. But, um, I was put on administrative leave, paid administrative leave. Um, and, and I can't really be accurate with how long, but I would say it was probably a good two months, uh, maybe a little bit longer. Talked to my mayor every day, uh, every single day, the man called me. Wanted to know, you know, make sure things were good, uh, where my mind was.

• 43:53Speaker 05

  Kept talking to me about other problems in the city, you know, things going on. He wanted to make sure that my guys were doing, uh, what I wanted them to do to keep the, the city running the way I wanted it to run.

• 44:07Speaker 05

  I was, I mean, don't, I don't want to paint a picture of myself that's not, that's not accurate. I, I was a big fish in a little pond is what I was, and that's how I look at that. But, uh, yeah, they, they, they stood behind me, um, you know, and then, uh, you know, my city clerk, my core clerk, uh, the utilities lady, I mean, they were all texting me, calling me, uh, a few times a week, checking on me, seeing how things were going.

• 44:39Speaker 05

  One of the policies that had been put in place was, uh, that came into effect immediately after that happened. Uh, I had written a policy, uh, with the help of my captain Hawkins, uh, which was, uh, he's probably the best cop I've ever met in my life. Um, but that policy stated if, as an officer, if you're involved in a critical incident, uh, immediately you have to be disassociated from that incident, um, from your duty. Uh, the counselor has to be called. You have to, you know, I, I don't remember now what I had in the policy. I think it was within eight hours, you had to be in a session with the counselor. Um, somebody unassociated from the department, unassociated with that event, had to come

• 45:22Speaker 05

  in and run the show. Um, so obviously if it was just an officer that was involved or, you know, a corporal, sergeant, whatever, I'd still be running that show without any problems, no, no hiccups. Uh, but because I was involved, my captain had to come in and run the show. He was off duty that day, completely uninvolved. So he came in and ran the show, ran the department in my absence. Um, he set everything up himself for us to go see the counselor, myself and the, and the corporal in separate sessions. Uh, so by gosh, man, that happened. The guy walked into the police department, the father walked in the PD 10 to 8 in the morning. Um, somewhere around one o'clock in the afternoon, we already

• 46:04Speaker 05

  had our appointment set for like five and 5:30 that evening, uh, with the counselor. And so we, we did that, did our counseling sessions. Um, I ended up continuing, going back to that counselor because he was actually an ex-police officer himself. Uh, so it was kinda easy to talk to the guy, but, uh, uh, you know, it, uh, it, it's just kind of a side note and I, I'm getting away from the story just for a second, but, uh, man, if there's police departments out there, especially rural ones, that don't have a, a policy like that in effect, my guy, get it on the books. Uh, that was, that was detrimental, especially for myself and my corporal. Uh, but it was detrimental for my department and the liability

• 46:48Speaker 05

  on my department for us to be taken out of that picture completely. Um, that, uh, that helped everybody go on with their business and, and keep being cops, um, for the rest of that day and, and, uh, it got us some, some immediate attention to, to the trauma that we just experienced.

• 47:08Shawn Ryan?

  That's, that's good.

• 47:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, it was, it was a good thing. Uh, and, you know, my captain and I spent a lot of time and I know,

• 47:20Speaker 05

  God, I know, looking back, my officers probably thought, you know, chief and captain, they'd probably go out and drink after work, they'd probably hang out all the time. To this day, I've never been to his house, ever. I've known the man, uh, God, since, well, in law enforcement, I've known him since 2004. Uh, he started working for me in, what, I think, 2016? Um, and I've, I've never been to his house, he's, he'd never been to mine, other than to come and pick up my cruiser. Um, but, uh, you know, him and I would sit and just hash things out, what if, what if, what if, you know? Um, and, uh, that, that helped develop a lot of, uh, a lot of good training and a lot of good policies.

• 48:04Shawn Ryan?

  So you don't remember exactly, you don't remember exactly what happened when you tuned the father up? Who tried to drown his, or who did drown his daughter? But, when did you, it sounds like you completely shut that out of memory?

• 48:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, um, so...

• 48:25Shawn Ryan?

  What did you see? How, how bad was it? When you came to?

• 48:31Speaker 05

  Uh, it was, the, the, the dump that I was having, the adrenaline dump that I was having when I came to you, I, I,

• 48:41Speaker 05

  I had people there to hold me up, and if I didn't, I'd been on the ground. Uh, it was, it was, uh, it was very sudden.

• 48:49Speaker 05

  And, uh, I still had, uh, just this, uh, this, this, this, uh, this rage.

• 48:58Speaker 05

  You know, and I, I...

• 49:02Speaker 05

  I know, looking back and having seen the body camera footage, I know personally what would have happened if those officers weren't there to get me off.

• 49:13Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:16Speaker 05

  But my mindset, when my conscience came back to me, immediately wasn't really on the father. You know, of course, he's injured, you know, he's got some blood on his face and stuff. And the million miles stared never went away. I mean, it never left that man. It looked like the soul was gone. There was no soul behind his eyes, and that's exactly how he looked when I ran past him going down the hall to go to that call. It's just a different kind of evil. It's the best way for me to put it. And I recognize that when my memory came back to me, that's one of the first things I remember was in my head,

• 49:57Speaker 05

  just thinking, man, that's a brand-new kind of evil. I haven't seen that. And, you know, and then everything just came to mind, the realization of what I'd just done to my career, what I just did to myself, what I did to my department, so.

• 50:16Shawn Ryan?

  But he wasn't seriously injured or anything?

• 50:21Speaker 05

  No, as far as I know, no broken bones. You know, some lacerations and things to his face, and maybe some bruised ribs and things like that. But nothing permanent, no dismemberment or anything.

• 50:35Shawn Ryan?

  All right. So, I mean, you just...

• 50:40Speaker 05

  I assaulted the man.

• 50:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, you saw, well, I mean, your emotions, I mean, that's a lot to take in. And then to see the man that did it, right after you saved this girl, you know, I mean...

• 50:55Shawn Ryan?

  I don't think there's a whole lot of people out there that could have held that together to begin with, but um, so you're on two months leave, when then what happened?

• 51:05Speaker 05

  Um, I was on leave for a couple of months and then uh, I had an FOP attorney.

• 51:14Speaker 05

  And they, they need to work on their game, but uh.

• 51:19Shawn Ryan?

  What's an FOP attorney?

• 51:20Speaker 05

  Federal Order of Police, Fraternal Order of Police, like a union attorney.

• 51:24Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 51:25Speaker 05

  Provided to me by the FOP and uh, you know, I was told he was a very good attorney and, and, and I won't mention his name or anything like that. And I'll just say that I, it didn't work out for me. But as soon as we learned that it was going federal, which was right about the end of that two months of my paid leave.

• 51:45Speaker 05

  I, I had FBI agents show up at my door at my home. Um, and I, to backtrack a little, so that happened on December 17th of 2018, on December 23rd, which was the Friday after that. That happened on a Tuesday. On that Friday, I had surgery on my right shoulder from lifting weights. I uh, I ended up tearing up my, my shoulder pretty bad and had to have a couple surgeries on it. So I was down with that also. And so anyways, go forward a couple of months, I'm still in a brace and stuff on my shoulder. And FBI shows up at my door and, and serves me with an indictment for civil right violation against the father.

• 52:25Speaker 05

  The two FBI agents that, that came to my door were extremely professional, good, good people, I would say.

• 52:34Speaker 05

  They, they were compassionate and, and um, you know, I appreciate them for the, for the job they did. And I know that's the, that's what they were doing was, was their job.

• 52:45Speaker 05

  But um, getting that federal indictment.

• 52:51Speaker 05

  Opened my eyes up to the fact that,

• 52:56Speaker 05

  man, you know, what's, what's the smallest thing you can do in law enforcement? As an officer or as a rank or as a chief even?

• 53:07Speaker 05

  And, and not be put under a federal indictment, you know?

• 53:11Speaker 05

  Because to me, the, the, the punishment outweighed the, the act a lot. And, and it, I know things don't have to be fair and, and, you know, I violated my oath that I took. I, I understand that, understood that from the moment that I, that I came to.

• 53:29Speaker 05

  And I have to live with that for the rest of my life because I was, and still am extremely serious about that oath. But,

• 53:39Speaker 05

  you know, the first thing I did when I got that indictment,

• 53:44Speaker 05

  was try to figure out what to do. I, I, first person I spoke with was my mayor. And, uh,

• 53:50Speaker 05

  ended up talking to, um, the actual union rep, uh, from the county and, uh, ended up getting the name of an attorney, a federal attorney. I got in touch with him. He was actually a prosecutor for the Justice Department at one time. Got in touch with him and retained him, went in, talked to him, told him my story.

• 54:12Speaker 05

  And he was, uh, he was the right choice for sure. Damn good man. Glad I've got him. But, um,

• 54:19Speaker 05

  it's, uh, looking back on this entire thing and thinking about the, you know, the, the, what is it, two and a half years, you know, since it happened?

• 54:29Speaker 05

  You know, I, I'm a firearms instructor. You know, I taught pistol combat, tactics, rifle combat tactics.

• 54:38Speaker 05

  Patrol rifle instructor, uh, instructor for, uh, active shooter, response to active shooter.

• 54:45Speaker 05

  You know, and a few other things and it's, uh, you know, it was always in the back of my mind, my retirement gig was going to be,

• 54:53Speaker 05

  to, to go around and train law enforcement. And, uh, you know, a federal indictment, you, you can't be in possession of firearms. You, you can't even, uh, can't even own them. So the day after I got that indictment, what I ended up doing was going to the local gun store. It sold, uh,

• 55:12Speaker 05

  Sold both my Daniel Defense rifles, my Mark 18, well, yeah, my Mark 18 and my DDMR 7 or 7R. And then my SIG 320, 365, a couple of 1911 Springfields I had, sold, sold everything.

• 55:29Shawn Ryan?

  Sold all of them?

• 55:30Speaker 05

  Sold it all, got a receipt, so I'd have something to turn in as proof. I'm not, I'm not saying I'm the best rule follower that there is, but you know, in that case, at that time, I felt like following the rules is exactly what I needed to do. And I know I had the option to, you know, sell them to friends or have somebody do safekeeping for me. But at that point, I felt like the best thing to do was to do something that was on paper, that I had a receipt for, I had paperwork for, and they could be checked into real easy for them, for the, for the US Justice Department. And so that's how I did that.

• 56:11Speaker 05

  But, you know, it was almost like, and I'm gonna catch some slack from my kids for saying this, but it was almost like I went back home after, after selling the guns, and it was like, all my kids had just left home for the first time. It just, it was rough.

• 56:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:28Speaker 05

  Because, you know, guns are pretty things.

• 56:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:31Speaker 05

  But, yeah, so there are some life changes that take a lot of getting used to, and I'm not used to them at all yet, you know.

• 56:38Shawn Ryan?

  Who, who's the one that decided that, who was behind all this, this big push to indict you?

• 56:47Speaker 05

  The, the federal prosecutor, and to be honest with you, Sean, I'd have to look at the paper to tell you what his name is. I, when I read through those, I don't look at the headings, I just, I just look at the content and that's it. But, yeah, the federal prosecutor for the Justice Department in Kansas City, yeah. You know, and

• 57:10Speaker 05

  I'm not saying that they're bad people or that they got their head screwed on wrong or anything like that whatsoever. What I'm saying is, um, man, you know, there's black and white and there's gray. And the best officers I've ever seen on the planet, the best law enforcement people, federal down to a town of 200 people, the best law enforcement I've ever seen, know where that gray is and know to look at that gray to make a decision. And I don't feel like that was done.

• 57:39Shawn Ryan?

  I think it sounds like, you know, there's a time to give a slap on a wrist and there's a time to throw the fucking book at you.

• 57:50Speaker 05

  Right.

• 57:51Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh, these guys threw the book at you for saving a six-month-old baby.

• 57:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 57:58Shawn Ryan?

  Are they still there or in Kansas City?

• 58:01Speaker 05

  They are, yeah, yeah, they are, yeah, they are. Um, yeah, uh, it was really a strange thing. We went to the, to the Justice Department, the federal courthouse, a couple of different times, my attorney and I, for a couple of meetings that we had to do with them. Um, I had to get a, a PO, um, which in this sense is a pre-trial officer, but it's, a PO is a PO. Um, I was fortunate enough that the one I got in Kansas City was, was great. Um, she knew her job very well. Um, she, she told me exactly what I need to do, when I need to do it, and I followed those rules and I never had any problems at all. Um, she

• 58:42Speaker 05

  came out and did her first house check, uh, with me because under a federal indictment, so they, I had to check in once a week with the PO to let them know, hey, you know, I'm still alive, still in this area, I haven't left. Um, if I wanted to travel outside of, uh, I think it was three different counties there around me. If I wanted to travel outside of that area, I had to call and get permission to do that. Um, you know, it, uh, changing jobs, I had to notify them. Um, and, and those are things that, uh, you know, a, a free person is not used to doing. And that's, that just, you know, it sinks in when you go to bed at night.

• 59:28Speaker 05

  But she did her job well. She was great. I have no complaints whatsoever about her. She's a pretty decent person. When she came out and did the house check,

• 59:37Speaker 05

  I had a stairwell that went down to my basement. And my basement was my man cave, had all my awards and crap. My old chief used to call it a "love me wall." And so I had my love me wall down there and, you know, all my junk. She spent some time looking over those things. And when she was done looking at those things, she was done with her house check. And that was the only one that I ever had to deal with, you know, while I lived in that area.

• 1:00:06Speaker 05

  Later on, I ended up moving and they had to come out and do a house check. But that was in a different residence altogether.

• 1:00:14Speaker 05

  You know, I can't complain about the Justice Department because I realize if I go black and white, they're doing their job. You know, I mean, to me, they're going after something that they probably shouldn't have. But I know in the end, they're doing their job.

• 1:00:43Speaker 05

  When law enforcement started getting a really bad light, and I mean by bad light, good shootings, good arrests were being made, but being seen as bad and publicized through the media, I got scared and my attorney got scared. I initiated a phone call with my attorney and I said, "Look, I'm not sure about this." You know, doing a jury trial on this is scary at this moment because of the way law enforcement is being looked at.

• 1:01:22Speaker 05

  He agreed and...

• 1:01:25Speaker 05

  So we approached the Justice Department with a plea. And the plea basically was, you know, plead guilty to this in exchange for so much time in probation. It would be something that my life wouldn't be altered too much from its current state. However, you know, there's, there's nothing set in stone on that. The, the Justice Department agreed to it, as, as you saw. But the judge does, has, he has the option to, to throw out my plea and take it to trial or to instill a harsher punishment. You know, and out of everything that I've heard about it so far, and, and you got to

• 1:02:10Speaker 05

  understand by this time, and I'm sure I'm, I'm not the only person that's experienced something like this, but by this time, anytime that, the new information comes forward to me about my case on the federal level, it just, it's like throwing clothes in the washing machine. It just gets mixed together. And, you know, it's just, it's just more shit thrown into the mix. And the last thing during the plea hearing after it, the last thing I knew of, and I, and I think you saw it in the paperwork that I gave you, they're also calling for restitution for the father.

• 1:02:48Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:49Speaker 05

  For me to pay restitution to that man out of my pocket. That's tough to swallow. That's rough. That one, I'm not really sure if my brain's ever going to get wrapped around that. That's, that's just me, it's, man, you know, that's like, you know, that's like giving a bully a gold star for a day, you know? It doesn't make sense to me.

• 1:03:14Shawn Ryan?

  I don't think it makes sense to anybody, but probably those prosecutors.

• 1:03:19Speaker 05

  Right. Yeah, they, yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:21Shawn Ryan?

  You know?

• 1:03:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:23Shawn Ryan?

  I don't think there's anybody that's going to see this, that's going to understand why they would, why that would, why that would even be a thing.

• 1:03:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:33Shawn Ryan?

  You know? Wow.

• 1:03:40Shawn Ryan?

  So where does it stand? Where is everything right now?

• 1:03:44Speaker 05

  So, right now, in the first week of December, I've got a sentencing hearing that I have to appear for. I don't know, I don't know the time off the top of my head right now, but anyways, I have a sentencing hearing that I have to appear for, and that's where I'm going to find out the end result of what's actually going to happen, what's going to be set in stone.

• 1:04:08Speaker 05

  I'm really nervous about that, because I just, with some of the things I've seen so far, nothing has gone anywhere near the way I thought it would.

• 1:04:23Speaker 05

  And I always try and look at things as how I would do it, how I would handle it, or what decision I would make in it, and it just doesn't apply to this, because there's already decisions made that I never would have made. It's just, you know, there's some comfort to things in my mind about it, but I don't know, I don't even know what the best-case scenario is now, to be honest with you.

• 1:04:53Speaker 05

  If it gets thrown out, if the justice decides to throw it out, throw out my plea, then we withdraw my plea and we go to trial. If we go to trial, I mean, hell, it took the Justice Department two and a half years to get here.

• 1:05:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:06Speaker 05

  You know? How long will it be until the trial, you know? And will I still be on this, this pre-trial thing, you know, or pre-sentence thing with a pre-sentencing officer? You know, I still have questions about it, and I still don't know what the outcomes are, and until December happens, I just won't know. If it goes to trial, my personal feeling is, they can't find 12 people to put on a jury that are going to agree that I'm guilty. I just don't see where that would happen. To me, out of 12, there's going to be a parent, there's going to be somebody that has a brother or sister as a law enforcement officer, and they're going to look at this and go, you know what?

• 1:05:50Speaker 05

  You know, you see a baby come back to life that was drowned by his own father, and all you do is assault a man.

• 1:06:00Shawn Ryan?

  Who did it?

• 1:06:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. It's, it's, it's... So I, I just don't, I don't, I don't know where it's gonna go, but that's, that's definitely a worry of mine. You know? I'm trying to build a, trying to get my future going. Trying to make things work out for me and, and, and my new wife and, uh,

• 1:06:20Speaker 05

  you know, this is just a cloud, you know, just hangs right over the top.

• 1:06:26Shawn Ryan?

  Where is the father now?

• 1:06:28Speaker 05

  So, about a month, about a month ago, I saw that he was sentenced to 15 years. Uh, but it's to my understanding that he is currently in a mental health institution. Um, which, the hitting that I saw, the head, the, it said that, uh, he was sentenced to 15 years in, I wanna say Jackson County Jail.

• 1:06:53Shawn Ryan?

  So, sorry if I interrupted. If I remember right, last night you said, you were possibly on the hook for 20 years. And this guy got 15 years?

• 1:07:06Speaker 05

  Or 12. Yeah, me on 12, yeah. Yeah, possibly 12 for me, yeah. Yeah, he got, so he got 15 years.

• 1:07:14Shawn Ryan?

  So if you punch somebody who drowned their six-month-old baby, you're gonna get 12 years. But if you decide you wanna drown your six-month-old baby, all you have to do is add another three years.

• 1:07:25Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's the math. Um, but I, you know, I gotta add to that, to be fair to my, to myself. You know, I acted under the color of law. And, and I didn't, going into this, I, I had no experience with the federal side as far as sentencing and, and things like that. And they have guidelines that they follow. And basically, if you do this, it's, it's this many points and this, this many points. And then if you, if you confess or you plead guilty, then it's this many points taken away. Well, they go through this point system and that's how they figure out what kinda time that you're gonna do. It, uh, it's pretty interesting, um, and scary as hell. Uh, because it makes zero sense to me.

• 1:08:08Speaker 05

  Um, and I'm, I'm not an idiot, but, man, that made zero sense to me.

• 1:08:15Speaker 05

  But, uh, I mean, it, there is still, there's a good possibility that, you know, the judge could say, you know what, you... Two years confinement will do you some good, let's put you there, you know, or he could, he could put me in a, in a mental health institution, you know.

• 1:08:31Shawn Ryan?

  Do you have a gauge on that judge?

• 1:08:33Speaker 05

  I don't.

• 1:08:34Shawn Ryan?

  No?

• 1:08:34Speaker 05

  No, I don't. He's been practicing for a long, long time, and he seems like he's, he's a very sharp man.

• 1:08:44Speaker 05

  But my plea hearing is the only experience that I have with him, so I, I just don't have any kind of a gauge on him yet.

• 1:08:51Shawn Ryan?

  All right.

• 1:08:54Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I don't want to go into, I mean, we spoke last night about how much this has damaged your, your life afterwards and, and with previous relationships and family, and I don't want to, I don't want to make you go back into that, and I think we have exactly what we need for the audience, but, you know.

• 1:09:20Shawn Ryan?

  I said at the beginning, you know, what you were here for.

• 1:09:25Shawn Ryan?

  I want you to say, you know, why, why you came here and what do you want to get out of this interview to the people that are watching?

• 1:09:34Speaker 05

  Okay. There's, there's two things that, that I, that I hope this accomplishes. Well, three, I mean, I got to meet you, so that's one, you know, you're, you're a star, so, but the two things are, you know, first and foremost, there's, there's a woman on, on Facebook that reached out to me from Ohio, her name is Charlene, and she started this support group on Facebook, just she, she reached out to me one day and just said, hey, do you mind if I do this? I said, no, knock your socks off, you know, have at it, and I don't know, there's like, almost a thousand people on that support page now. And then recently she started a petition.

• 1:10:18Speaker 05

  This is all out of the goodness of her heart.

• 1:10:22Speaker 05

  It was, it's an amazing thing, but there's close to 400 people in that petition now, I think. I don't know that the support page or the petition would do any good on the federal side. They might look at something like that and just kind of giggle to themselves. I don't know. But those things are out there and I'd love to see, I'd love to see both grow.

• 1:10:47Shawn Ryan?

  We'll link that below in the description.

• 1:10:49Speaker 05

  And then, you know, the other thing is, obviously I've still got a lot of, a lot of friends in law enforcement. And there's a lot of people that have made contact with me that just started their careers. I couldn't, I could show you after this, the messages, but I've had people contact me from South Africa, from Australia, from all over the world, languages I don't understand. And one of them, I really, I'd like to show you just so you can tell me, maybe you know what language it is. But it kind of almost looks Russian, but I'm not sure. But anyways, I've had people contact me from all over the world, giving me support and messages. And it's so humbling, it's unreal.

• 1:11:34Speaker 05

  Then they, it's, it's, it's, it's good to know that there's that many people on the planet, you know, that have good hearts because when you watch the news or something now, it's just scary as hell. It just gets worse every day.

• 1:11:52Speaker 05

  But what I'd like to accomplish, the second thing is, law enforcement that's on duty now needs to understand that the administration and their bosses, the, the, the board members,

• 1:12:06Speaker 05

  you know, the commissioners, they, they all have got to understand that mental health is not only something law enforcement has to deal with on duty. They have to deal with it themselves, in their own body, at home, with their families. And that's not being recognized and it needs to be. It really does. I've got my battles. I know plenty of other officers that have their own battles that are, that are as bad or worse than mine.

• 1:12:34Speaker 05

  And they, unless they do the seven free business they get through their job with a counselor that's never, ever been in law enforcement and probably most likely never held a gun in their life, you know, what are they gonna get out of it? You know, they're not gonna get anything and that, that needs to change. That really does. So I'm hoping somewhere, somehow, somebody, somebody pays attention to that and at least does something for their own guys.

• 1:13:00Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I'll bring up the fourth thing then. The fourth thing is you want, you're looking for employment to be a protector.

• 1:13:10Speaker 05

  I am.

• 1:13:11Shawn Ryan?

  And so if somebody out there knows of a position that would be perfect for you, your email is in the description. Do you want to say your email?

• 1:13:21Speaker 05

  Uh, it's very simple, but I mean, they're not gonna be able to spell it unless they look at it in the description.

• 1:13:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:13:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, the last name was, was, it pissed me off pretty bad in kindergarten. It was rough.

• 1:13:32Shawn Ryan?

  All right. And then one last question. Do you know where this girl is now?

• 1:13:38Speaker 05

  Um, the last I heard, she went through a foster program. Uh, and, and one thing I didn't talk about, uh, when I told the story, immediately after, uh, after that incident at the police department with the father happened, um, after I got pulled off of him and everything, uh, one of the very first things that happened was we sent officers over to, um, the local grade school to take the other two children from that family into protective custody. So there were three kids altogether. Um, the other two were older, obviously, they're in grade school. Took them into protective custody. To my knowledge, they all entered the foster program. Um, and then, uh, they all ended up with a distant aunt, um, that, uh, from what I understood is, is taking very good care of them.

• 1:14:23Speaker 05

  Uh, and the parents don't have, uh, I don't believe they have visitation, as far as I know. I'm very, I'm confident the father doesn't at least. Um, uh, and I didn't talk about the mother. Um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna probably keep it that way. That's, that's probably best.

• 1:14:42Shawn Ryan?

  All right.

• 1:14:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:14:44Shawn Ryan?

  Well.

• 1:14:47Shawn Ryan?

  I think you're a hero in everybody's eyes, other than these two federal prosecutors in Kansas City. And I hope when we release that you feel that way and that something good comes to us. And, man, I really hope that, I know you're gonna cross paths with that little girl at some point in time again. And that'll be, that'll be cool to hear about.

• 1:15:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:15:21Shawn Ryan?

  I just want to tell you, Chief, it was a real honor to have you here, sitting in that chair and to get your interview. Like I said, it was like, I've been trying to get you on here for a long time now and finally got you here and I'm really glad that you were able to tell your piece. So, thank you for coming.

• 1:15:43Speaker 05

  I appreciate the opportunity, absolutely. I've looked forward to this for a long, long time and hoped it would happen and, you know, I'm really, I'm really pleased with the way things went. This is a far better experience even than I'd hoped for, so I appreciate it very much.

• 1:16:00Shawn Ryan?

  Good. Best of luck, brother.

• 1:16:03Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 1:16:04Shawn Ryan?

  Cheers.

• 1:16:05Speaker 05

  Cheers.