Chief Hallgrimson - Chief of Police Guilty of Assault After Rescuing Baby from Murderer | SRS #016

Hey everybody it's the night before i release episode 016 i'm just down here just started raining and uh thinking about everything that guy's been through and um on the last episode i asked you guys to please like comment and subscribe to the channel turn the notification bell to all because i was having a problem reaching my audience and you did that and it worked and i just want to say thank you for doing that that means the world to me i love you guys please do it again all right enjoy the show one last thing

guys that's not just for my channel like comment subscribe to every channel that you watch helps more than you know all right love you guys let's move into december 17 2018. when he saved that little girl 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 as six-month-old 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

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 different kind of evil the child's father jonathan zicarelli 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 sing so

you get out of the car you're running down to the pond and the first thing you see is a six-month-old baby girl face down in a pond who was murdered by her father you see the back of her head that's an image that's still there little curls on her hair 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 doc henry just south of cherokee chief helgenson said she wasn't moving that she looked like a little porcelain doll

just floating on the surface the next memory that i've got is is me being basically a punched kicked choked yelled out screamed at by my lieutenant and other officers trying to get me off the guy i hope at some point um you know eight or nine years down the road i'll get to meet her i would love that i hope you get to meet her too 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 in 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 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 by her father ladies and gentlemen without further ado please welcome chief greg hal grimsome to the sean ryan show chief hal grimson welcome to the show man thank you i've been trying to get you out here forever but uh we had some court stuff we had to wait to settle down for to get

you out here to get your story in and uh just so just to kick it off i want to start it um 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 your 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 and and that's the end of your law enforcement career long law enforcement career so me and you've talked a couple 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 right so i said why don't

you come on the show i don't know how many people are gonna watch it i can never you know i can't control that uh 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 them there or if you just want to support so moving on before that day um everybody that comes on the show gets a little a little something most people anyways most but uh there you

go a little keepsake for you do i open this yeah go ahead open it up Oh look at that so my wife my wife doesn't know um about the vigilance elite gummy bears yeah uh but she uh no doubt is probably gonna fight me to the death for for these um that's awesome wow i'll give you a couple extras that's awesome yeah yeah absolutely well thank you very much john i appreciate it thanks for coming out oh i'm glad to be here it's it's been a long time coming and i'm i'm really uh humbled to

be here for sure well i'm ready to dive in man are you nervous i am yeah i sure am 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 you always get a little anxious and then once it goes on once the show kind of rolls on you'll get more comfortable be fine and uh and you look kind of nervous in that restaurant last

night too yeah yeah well yeah absolutely yeah this is uh 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 finally come around and happen it's a really big thing for me so i'm really i'm very happy to be here but yeah nervous as hell yeah 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 no probably none of them so yeah so you know there's that yeah there is yeah well yeah yeah it's uh it's difficult to be in limelight it's this that's a tough thing yeah i know but uh all right moving on so we we met initially from an email and i actually read that email before you got here so the audience can hear it and uh 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 [ __ ] i google your name and i was like oh man And uh so we kind of connected and uh been going back and forth over the past what two years yeah i think maybe a little bit longer and uh and uh and now here we are today but he brought up a couple of different incidents um 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 yeah december 17th of 2018. december 7th december 18th 17th 17th of 2018 10 to 8 in the morning too i'm just gonna quit but um but i kind of want to paint a picture that's not i don't think that's a rare occurrence no you know for somebody like you and how long have you been in law enforcement um you know i started i actually started my career in 99 um

had a super bad experience with the agency i was with and got out of it then got back in it in late 2003 uh so i was entered from 2003 to you know uh just before 2019 started so the better part of 20 years and um and uh and that's i mean would you say things like that or a daily occurrence um in in In my career what i saw every day um all up through the ranks and as a chief even i wasn't it wasn't necessarily a daily occurrence but it was most definitely something

uh that could occur any day every single day yeah you'd brought up in your email fighting for your life in the middle of the highway yeah that uh that happened more than um more than i ever wanted to that's for certain um and i had that actually i've 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 uh yeah there was a few occurrences like that that happened to me when i was uh when i was with my first agency and um

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 uh you know all through the academy uh you know i went to the law enforcement training center in kansas and uh for the academy and they taught you through there they kept talking about uh the warrior mindset um you know your adrenaline you know the dump everything and and until a person experiences it you just don't none of that clicks because it's just words On paper until

it happens to you and uh you know when you've got a guy a lot bigger than than you are and i was a decent-sized guy um 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 uh i i would compare it with uh sliding in the mud toward toward a 100-foot drop and

just trying to grab anything you can to keep it from happening that'd probably be a really good comparison yeah well real quick um so i have a thing called patreon which is basically a subscription account and uh basically what we do there is we have a bunch of behind the scenes type footage uh we do video teleconferencing uh with our subscribers and 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 that we're able to put all this together all

the equipment the the Salaries everything and so one thing i promise them is i give them a heads up on who's coming on the show before a couple 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 and he just says in your opinion do you think police officers get sufficient training to do the job these days no not a not even close no most academies are usually about three and a half months long um and when you take into 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 1800 people or a metropolitan city you know with several hundred thousand um the training is just not there in the academies at all and and having having been through two different states um and seeing the the different training in the two different states some states definitely need it way more than others 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 up to a lot right on i've heard that from several different police officers a bit and uh yeah sounds like they need to up the funding and not decrease the funding which is well and i was i was fortunate enough when i was a chief that the city that i was a chief for most of the

most of the government for that city and 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 backed 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 don't know who those two guys voted for yeah do you think it's 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 absolutely i would i would go so far as to say at some point especially in a young career that's that's going to happen to probably 40 or greater that many 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 seeing things yeah and you know i'm not 100 sure you know what you mean by taking 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 [ __ ] and uh they they don't take no for an answer and they're delegating law and in their own mind they're they're they've kind of 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 um that that puts law enforcement in a bad light and that's that's another place where uh where training would would be a big plus really yeah oh i think so yeah what

kind of training do you think 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 700 continuing education hours that i went through nowhere in any of that did i ever hear the word humble um you know i think being humble Is something that has to go with that badge it has to it it it gives it value yeah interesting would you say you said younger in the career or early on in a young officer's career do most

people grow out of that oh i think so yeah i mean there's i think there's going to 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 um or administration you know or or citizens uh they they end up getting weeded out eventually but yeah it's uh it's the the people in the first couple years of

their career they don't have the experience yet to learn you know what the compassion part is all about okay right on well let's take just a real quick break and uh 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 sure What's going on patreon join me on vigilance elite patreon for our live video teleconference all right we're back from our 30-second break there but um what what are some of

the worst things that you've seen what are the some of the worst scenes that you've rolled up on as a law enforcement officer well i mean obviously not not counting you know the child in the pond um as a as a sergeant um i would show up on a scene uh and the one in my mind right now is just is a fatality accident pretty much any officer has to has to work a fatality accident at some point or another or at least at least be a part of one a part of an investigation on

one and i worked a fatality action i was the first one on the scene it was right at the edge of my 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 the crash occurred i heard the crunch from the crash so i was already up and leaving the table when 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 their deputies things like that and it ended up being a three-car accident and what had happened was uh 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 and uh 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 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 i went and uh and dealt with uh the first vehicle it was a 16 year old that was that had passed away already um he ended up being somebody that was good friends with my kids so man uh kind of familiar with her and then uh the other vehicle was a family um mom and dad were both injured dad was unconscious but anyways i i assessed everything got back on with dispatch eventually um got coverings put over the 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 the hispanic mail started talking to him turned out he was the operator of the toyota forerunner that had caused the accident that actually blew the stop sign and hit these vehicles and so immediately uh there was a deputy that showed up on scene uh 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 and the cause of this

accident he's in your custody now there was no fuel sobriety testing done by that deputy or anything else and long story short that individual ended up with a 75 dollar fine for running a stop sign that was it you got to be [ __ ] me no no so that was a bad one um but that's infuriating oh yeah yeah i i agree um one of my officers uh when i was a sergeant damn good officer a really good man he he had a child pass away while he was giving him cpr if i remember

it was an eight-year-old boy having a asthma attack and the the inhaler was with the parents couldn't be found they weren't on Scene they were they were elsewhere i'll just i'll leave it at that but what were they doing partying partying yeah but uh 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 uh is pretty incredible when you dig in deep and there's a huge amount of of officers out there that just you know and i know

anybody in a profession like this um 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 yeah i can definitely relate to that and you get real good at it oh yeah until it catches up with you exactly but um you know i guess kind of what i'm what i'm kind of trying to bring out here here is law enforcement you guys deal with the worst of

people the worst of people and you deal with the worst people on their worst days yes and uh and that i'm assuming Is damn near a daily occurrence sometimes probably three four maybe five six times a day yeah well i know in my career um i was never just randomly invited to a birthday party so i mean it's uh no i said milo when i was a chief my lieutenant fordham he uh a wonderful man really good guy he used to say we have a front seat to the greatest show on earth um 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 um you know it's uh i there there's there's a lot of good days but the even the good days are going to involve you know a domestic violence situation or um 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 a wonderful career and i i wish to god i

was still in it but every good day is a bad day too yeah let's move into december 17 2018 when you save that little girl yeah 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 kind of stuff so let's just start at the very beginning what were you doing what was the call all right um yeah on december 17th at 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 another officer wall uh in my lieutenant's office i believe i heard my corporal scream for me and i 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 doc henry road we ran out 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 and he just had that million miles there 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 uh he drowned his baby and so we knew exactly where the pond was um you know 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 um didn't experience any of that on this it was like the the streets just parted the cars were out of the way before we ever had to get to them uh 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 um 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 uh Millie turned her over started again um you know just uh doing compressions on her from the back um this was in kansas city missouri yeah

greenwood just yeah just in jackson county same county as kansas city missouri suburb kansas city yeah in the middle of december right right december 17th so what was the temperature uh 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 um i had to break ice to get to yeah we broke yeah we broke through ice as we entered the pond yeah so was she under she was she was face down floating um and she wasn't under the

ice there was an ice as far out as she was it was just around the bank around the edges um of course the water was pretty cold but uh so you get out of the car you're running down to the pond yeah and the first thing you see is a six-month-old baby girl face down in a pond who was murdered by her father yeah exactly um i could see uh i can see the back of her head uh that's an image that's still there uh little curls on her hair and uh i'm 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 uh 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 uh it was just some guy that uh had a real

bad mental illness problem and believed that he threw a baby in the pond and he didn't but um it turned out to be a real baby uh as soon as uh since we put hands on it we knew that 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 um i know it had a lot of effect on

him at that point i could i could definitely see that um but when uh when we're up on the bank with the baby and uh my corporal held the baby out uh 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 just pure actions more as parents than than anything else at that point but i reached down that baby's throat and dug out an enormous amount of mud and dirt and grass and we turned her

over and i had her long long ways on my forearm and started compressions again and uh at some point you know she just uh she let out a whimper and she was she was coming too 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 uh the look on his face um and uh i know that

uh he he just he was ready to fall apart just like i was but uh we uh we got got up to the car got the baby in uh in the passenger front seat um 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 can 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 um in in my mind i didn't even know if the father had driven from the pond to the police department or if he had walked i i didn't know and so uh the more coherent she became the the better we felt you know and then uh yeah 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 um just be more coherent you know and and and come to more and and start acting like a baby should um then i started calling her goose and i i don't know why but started calling her goose and and nicknamed her that but uh you Know she finally started looking at us she was looking around the car um and then uh a guy pulled up that lived close by uh citizen and uh 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 nobody live right down the street he'll go get some and so he took off and went back to his house to get some um which you know the the people in that area that's that's that's the way they are but uh the fire department showed up with their bus their their ambulance when they finally came over into custody i almost didn't want to give the baby to him i almost felt like that she needed to stay

with me but that's not how it works but uh so they got her on the bus uh started working with her um five or six minutes went by i would guess you know that she was on that bus and uh 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 uh You know there's a lot of a lot of things going through your head you know at that point so you don't uh you kind of lose touch with with

what's going on around you uh at least in my case but uh my corporal i remember my corporal approached me and he said she 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 um 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

department uh before we go back into that yeah before we go back into that what's this little girl's name 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 going to sound very good at this moment um right now i don't want to know her name but uh 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 love that i hope you get to meet

her too the report says that she was underwater for an estimated i think eight to ten minutes yeah uh before you guys got there right that's a long time and it is the weather it is and underwater you know my corporal uh he's been promoted since then but uh my corporal um he's probably one of the best guys i ever trained probably one of the best guys i've ever worked with uh 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 86.7 degrees i believe i know it was it was either 86.7 or 87.6 either way it's extremely low i'm not taking anything away from my corporal or myself uh in any means but i'm telling you if that child's body temperature wasn't what it was we would never have been able to save her so we were just in after effect her her organs slowing down the way they did because of her body temperatures is is a big part of what saved

that child's life definitely Damn man that's some heavy [ __ ] yeah yeah yeah but uh is there anything else that happened on scene that you want to talk about unseen um no you know just uh you know i've i've had to tell the story a couple times but i do it from a very far distance if that makes sense to you yeah 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 asking to

help you know that's uh that's that's just the way 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 when i entered into the police department parking lot there's when you enter the building there was an outer door that you 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

that door takes you down The hallway 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 that door to the

outer foyer the public entrance i yanked it open entered that foyer i don't remember ever putting a coat in i don't remember opening the door the next memory that i've got is is me being basically punched kicked choked yelled at screamed at by my lieutenant and other officers 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 um you know that that that kind of a picture uh you don't you don't mistake what what you just

did to somebody and i didn't i immediately called my uh 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 it's okay i was in a pretty bad state at that point and i just said i resigned i quit um she said no no we're not gonna let you and uh i shot myself in my office and uh stayed in there for about

20 minutes trying to get myself calmed down and then uh i called my mayor uh levi weber good good man um i told him i was going to resign i said i resigned i quit i resigned my post and uh he didn't know what had happened he had zero idea and uh he said he's a chief no never and uh he wouldn't let me so um that's uh that's kind of beat blubs with so that that was big that sounds like a hell of a hell of a team yeah you want to take a break

yeah let's take a break so All right so we're back we got a stiff drink numb it out a little bit yeah and uh but where we left off but basically it sounds like the mayor the clerk it sounds like everybody kind of had your has your back or was behind it yeah they definitely did um in a way that i never really saw coming my my mayor demanded um that i'd be because by the policies that i developed myself um 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 or the board of aldermen and the mayor but i was put on administrative leave paid administrative leave and and i can't really be accurate with how long but i would say it was probably a good two months maybe a little bit longer talked to my mayor every day every single day the man called me wanted

to know you know make sure things were good where my mind was 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 what i wanted them to do to keep the city running the way i wanted it to run um 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 um but uh

yeah they they they stood behind me um you know and then uh you know my city clerk my core clerk uh got 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 one of the policies that had been put in place was that came into effect immediately after that happened i had written a policy with the help of my captain hawkins which was uh he's probably the best cop i've ever met in my life but that policy stated if as

an officer if you're involved in a critical incident 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 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 a counselor um somebody unassociated from the department unassociated with that event had to come in and run the show um so obviously if it was just an officer that was involved or you know corporal sergeant whatever i'd still be

running that show without any problems no hiccups 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 my absence he set everything up himself for us to go see the counselor myself and the corporal in separate sessions so by gosh ma'am that happened the guy walked in the police department the father walked in the pd 10 08 in the morning somewhere around one o'clock in the afternoon we already had our appointment set

for like 5 and 5 30 that evening with the counselor and so we we did that did our counseling sessions i ended up continuing going back to that counselor because he was actually an ex police officer himself so it was kind of easy to talk to the guy but uh You know it uh it's just kind of a side note and i i 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 policy like that in effect my guy get it

on the books that was that was detrimental especially for myself and my corporal but it was detrimental for my department and the liability on my department for us to be taken out of that picture completely 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 the trauma that we just experienced that's that's good 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 god i know looking back my officers probably thought you know chief and captain they probably go out and drink after work they 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 since 2004 uh he started working for me in what i think 2016. um but i've Said i've never been to his house he's never been to mine other than to come and pick up my cruiser but you know him and i was

sitting 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 so you don't remember exactly you don't remember exactly what happened when you tuned the father up who tried to drown or who did drown his daughter but when did you sounds like you completely shut that out in memory yeah um so what did you see how how bad was it when you came to 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 i had people there to hold me up and if i didn't i'd been on the ground it was it was uh it was very sudden um and uh i still had uh just this uh this is this this uh this rage um you know i i know looking back and and having seen the the body camera footage i know personally um what would have happened if if those officers weren't there to get me off yeah but uh My mindset when

when my my conscience came back to me immediately wasn't wasn't really on the father um you know he was of course he's he's injured you know he's he's got some blood on his face and stuff and the million mile stair never went away i mean it never left that man he 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 different kind of evil it is the best way for me

to put it and i recognize that when i when i when my memory came back to me that's that's one of the first things i remember was was in my head just just thinking man that's that's a brand new kind of evil i haven't seen that and uh you know it uh and then everything just just came to mind the realization of what i just done to my career what i just did to myself what i did in my department so what um but he wasn't he wasn't seriously injured or anything no as far as

i know no broken bones um you know he Some some lacerations and things to his face and maybe some bruised ribs and things like that but nothing nothing permanent no dismemberment or anything all right so i mean you just i assaulted the men 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 save this girl you know i mean 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 um i was on leave for a couple months and then uh i had an fop attorney um and they they need to work on their game but uh um what's an fop attorney a federal order police fraternal order please uh like a union attorney okay um 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 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 i Had fbi agents show up at my door at my home 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 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 months i'm still an embrace of stuff on my shoulder and fbi shows up my door and serves me with an indictment for a civil right violation against the father the two fbi agents that came to my door were extremely professional uh good good people i would say um uh they they were compassionate and and um you know i appreciate them for the for the job they did um and i know that's that's what they were doing was their job but

getting a federal indictment opened my eyes up to the fact that uh man you know what's what's the smallest thing you can do in law enforcement um as an officer or as a rank or as a chief even um and and not be put under a Federal endeavor you know um because to me the the the punishment outweighed the act a lot uh and and it i know things don't have to be fair and and you know i violated my oath that i took i understand that i understood that from the moment that i that

i came to um 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 you know the first thing i did uh when i got that indictment uh i was trying to figure out what to do i first person i spoke with was my mayor and uh i ended up talking to um the actual union rep from the county and 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 and he was uh he was the right choice for sure damn good man glad i've got him but it's looking back on this entire thing and thinking about the you know the the was it two and a half years you know since it happened um you know i'm a farms instructor uh you Know i taught pistol combat tactics rifle combat tactics a patrol rifle instructor uh instructor for uh active shooter response to active

shooter um you know and a few other things and it's uh you know as always in the back of my mind my retirement gig was going to be to to go around and train law enforcement and you know a federal indictment you you can't be in possession of firearms 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 and sold sold both my daniel defense rifles my mark 18 well you have my mark 18 and my ddmr7 or

7r and then uh my sig 320 365 a couple of 1911 springfields i had sold sold everything sold all of them sold it all got a receipt so i'd have something to turn in this proof um i'm not i'm not saying i'm the best rule follower that there is but you know in the 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 safe keeping 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 have paperwork for and and they could be checked into real easy for them for the for the u.s justice department and so that's how i did that but you know it's almost like and and god i'm gonna kiss some slack from my kids for saying this but it was almost like uh 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 yeah because you know guns are pretty things yeah but uh yeah so it's there are some life changes that that take a lot of getting used to and i'm not used to him at all yet you know who who's the one that decided that uh who who's behind all this this big push to indict you and uh 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 um yeah the federal prosecutors for the justice department in kansas city yeah um you know and I'm not saying that they're bad people or that uh 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 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 you know i don't feel like that was done 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 [ __ ] book at you right and uh these guys threw the book at you for saving a six month old baby yeah yeah are they still there or thank you 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 uh a p.o which in this sense is a pre-trial officer but as a p.o as a pos I was fortunate enough that the one i got in kansas city was was great she knew her job very well 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 she came out and did her first house check with me because under federal indictments 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 if i wanted to travel outside of uh i think it was three different counties they're around me if i wanted to travel outside of that area i had to call and get permission to do that you know changing jobs i had to notify them 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 um but she she did her job well she was she was great i have no complaints whatsoever about her uh she's pretty decent person when she came out and did with the house check Mine i had a a stairwell that went down to my basement my basement was my man cave had all my awards and crap all my 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 and she uh she spent some time looking over those things and when she was done looking at those things she was done with their house check and that was the only one that i ever had to deal with you know while i lived in that area 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 but um you know i i i can't complain about

the about the justice department because i i realize if if i go black and white they're doing their job you know i mean they're to me they're they're they're going after something that um that they probably shouldn't have but i but i know in the end they're doing their job when uh When law enforcement started getting a really bad light uh in in and i mean by bad light good shootings um good arrests were being made but being seen as bad yeah and publicized through the media um i got scared and my attorney got scared

i made i i initiated a phone call with my attorney and i said look i i'm not sure about this you know uh doing a jury trial on this is scary at this moment because of the way law enforcement is being looked at um yeah he agreed and uh so we approached the justice department with a plea and the plea basically was um you know plead guilty to this in exchange for uh so much time and probation um it would be something that my life wouldn't be altered too much from its current state um however

uh you know there's there's nothing set in stone on that the the justice department agreed to it as you saw but the judge does has it has he has the option to uh to throw out my plea um and take it to trial uh 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 understand by This time um and i'm sure i'm not the only person that's experienced something like this but by this time anytime that uh the new information comes forward

to me about my case um 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 uh it's just more [ __ ] thrown into the mix and the last thing uh 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 now for me to pay restitution to that man out of my pocket uh 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 uh man you know that's like uh you know that's like giving a bully a gold star for a day you know it doesn't make sense to me i don't think it makes sense to anybody but probably those prosecutors right yeah they appreciate yeah yeah you know yeah i don't think there's anybody that's gonna see this that's gonna understand why they would uh Why that would well that would even be a thing but um you

know wow so where does it stand where is everything right now so right now uh in the first week of december um i've got a uh sentencing hearing that i have to appear for i don't know i don't know the time off top of my head right now but anyways i have a sensing 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 um i'm really nervous about that because i just uh with some of

the things i've seen so far nothing has gone anywhere near the way i thought it would and i always try and look at things that as how i would do it how i would handle it or or what decision i would make in it and it just doesn't apply to this uh because there's already decisions made that i never would have made Um it's just you know there's there's some comfort to to things in my mind about it um but uh i don't know i don't even know what the best case scenario is now to

be honest with you um if if it gets thrown out if the judge 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 helen took the justice department two and a half years to get here yeah you know um how long will it be until the trial you know and will i still be on this this pre-trial thing you know uh or pre-sentence thing with a pre-sentencing officer you know i there i still have questions about it and i still

don't know what the outcomes are and um until december happens i 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 they're 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 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 yeah you know you you see a baby come back

to life that was drowned by his own father and all you do is assault a man who did it yeah yeah it's it's it's so i i just don't uh 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 um trying to make things work out for me and and my new wife and uh you know this is just a cloud you know just hangs right over the top where is the father now so about a

month about a month ago i saw that he was sentenced to 15 years but it's to my understanding that he is currently in a mental health institution which the hitting that i saw the head the it said that uh he was sentenced to 15 years in i want to say jackson county jail but sorry let me interrupt if i remember right last night you said you were possibly on the hook for 20 years and this guy got 15 years 12. yeah me on 12 yeah yeah possibly 12 for me uh yeah he gets so he

got 15 years um so if you punch somebody who Drowned their six month old baby you're gonna get 12 years but if you decide you want to drown your six-month-old baby all you have to do is add another three years yeah that's that's the math um but i you know i got to add to that to be fair to my to myself um you know but 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 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 kind of time that you're going to do it uh it's pretty interesting and scary as hell because it makes zero sense to me um and i'm not an idiot but man that made zero sense to me uh but uh i mean it there

is still there's a good possibility that uh you know the judge could say you know what you two years can find me to 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 Do you have a gauge on that judge i don't no 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 um and but my plea hearing is the only experience that i have with him so i just

don't have any kind of a gauge on them yet all right 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 and with previous relationships and family and i don't want to i don't want to make you go back into that and uh i think we have exactly what we need for the audience but you know i said at the beginning you know what you were here for 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 um okay uh there's there's two things that i that i hope this accomplishes um well three i mean i got to meet you so that's one you know you're you're a star so um but uh the two things are uh you know first and foremost there's there's a woman on on facebook that reached out to me Uh from ohio her name is uh charlene and uh 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 uh i know there's like uh like almost a thousand people on that support page now and then recently she started a petition this is all out of the goodness of her heart 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 would do any good on the federal side they might look at something like

that and just kind of giggle to themselves i i don't know but those things are out there you know and i'd love to see i'd love to see both grow um we'll link that below in the description and then uh you know the other thing is um 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 um i couldn't i 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 um languages i don't understand and one of my 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 um giving me support in messages and and us as so humbling it's unreal uh then uh they uh 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 uh

when you watch the news or something now it's just scary as hell it just gets worse every day um but what i'd like to accomplish the second thing is uh law enforcement that's on duty now needs to understand the administration and their bosses the the the board members um uh 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 and they unless they do the seven free business they get through their job with a council that's never ever been in law enforcement and most likely never held a gun in their life uh 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 um so i'm hoping somewhere somehow somebody

somebody pays attention to that and at least does something for their own guys well i'll bring up the fourth thing then the fourth thing is you want you're looking for employment to be a protector 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 uh it's very simple but i mean they're not going to be able to spell it unless they look at it in the description yeah that last name was was it pissed me off pretty

bad in kindergarten it was rough right and then one last question do you know where this girl is now 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 what the father happened um after i got pulled off of them and everything uh one of the very first things that happened was we sent officers over to the local grade school to take the other two children from that family into protective

custody so there were three kids all together the other two were older obviously they were in grade school took them into protective custody to my knowledge they all entered the foster program um and then they all ended up with a distant aunt that from what i understood is taking very good care of them 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 uh i didn't talk about the mother um i'll probably keep it that way that's

that's probably best all right yeah well i think um your hero and everybody's eyes other than these two federal prosecutors in kansas city And uh and i hope when we release that that that that you feel that way and and that uh and that something good comes with us and and uh man i really hope that i know you're gonna cross paths with that little girl at some point in time again and uh that'll be that'll be cool to hear about but yeah i just want to tell you chief it was a real honor to

have you here sitting in that chair and 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 uh we finally got you here and i'm really glad that you were able to tell your your piece so thank you for coming oh i appreciate the opportunity absolutely i i've looked forward to this for a long long time and hoped it would happen and uh you know i'm really i'm really pleased with uh with the way things went this is a far better

experience even than i'd hoped for so i appreciate it very much good that's a lot brother thank you i'm cheers