Robert Riggs
On the evening of July 7, 2016, Black Lives Matter protesters marched in downtown Dallas and other cities nationwide.
They peacefully gathered in response to the police shootings of two black men, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling.
A few blocks from the site of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, an African American man who had left the U.S. Army following disgraceful conduct got out of his SUV, ready for combat.
The mass murderer arrived with a calculated plan to kill police officers, preferably white officers.
Wearing tactical gear, a bullet-resistant vest, and armed with a high-powered assault rifle, he, in effect, executed five officers and wounded eleven others.
A cell phone video by a witness in a nearby building recorded Johnson shooting an officer for the city’s transit system, DART, in the back and then standing over the officer to pump eleven more rounds into him at point-blank range.
The ambush marked the deadliest and bloodiest day for American law enforcement since 9/11.
In a fierce gun battle, officers cornered the shooter inside the downtown campus building of the El Centro Community College.
Larry Gordon, a crisis hostage negotiator for the DALLAS SWAT team, spent four hours talking with the gunman who pledged to take his life and the lives of more officers.
Gordon and Retired Dallas Police Lt. Bob Owens, a 40-year DPD veteran who served 20 years on SWAT, join Robert to reveal the inside story of what happened.
Robert Riggs
Be advised that this podcast is for a mature audience. Some episodes may contain profanity and graphic descriptions of violent crimes.
Speaker 1
But at the end of the day, we as the people have to be fed up and say enough is enough. Enough is Enough is enough. Enough is enough. Listen, we have to make a decision. Black, white, brown, tall, skinny, short-it doesn't matter. One injustice, one place is an injustice in every place, and we got to come together as a people.
Robert Riggs
On the evening of July 7, 2016, Black Lives Matter protesters marched in downtown Dallas and other cities across the nation. They peacefully gathered in response to the police shootings of two black men, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, a few blocks from the site of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, an African American man who had left the U.S. Army following disgraceful conduct, got out of his SUV ready for combat. Micah Johnson arrived with a calculated plan to kill police officers, preferably white officers. Wearing tactical gear, a bullet-resistant vest, and armed with a high-powered assault rifle, he in effect executed five officers and wounded 11 others. A cell phone video by a witness in a nearby building recorded Johnson shooting an officer for the city's transit system (DART) in the back, and then standing over the officer to pump 11 more rounds into him at point-blank range. The ambush marked the deadliest and bloodiest day for American law enforcement since 9/11. In a fierce gun battle, officers cornered the shooter inside the downtown campus building of the El Centro Community College. Larry Gordon, a crisis hostage negotiator for the Dallas SWAT team, spent four hours talking with a gunman who pledged to take his life and the lives of more officers. A robot armed with a bomb ended the standoff. Larry Gordon joins me to unfold the story of what happened on that tragic night in Dallas. Adding perspective to our interview is retired Dallas Police Lieutenant Bob Owens, a 40-year veteran of DPD who served 20 of those years on SWAT.
Bob Owens
Larry Gordon, I know you and Bob, co-host here, go way back. Bob, how did how'd y'all meet? How did it start? I was in. I was SWAT commander, and Larry applied for a job and got selected to one of my squads. And what year was that? I don't.
Larry Gordon
It was 2004.
Bob Owens
2004. I can't remember, but yeah. And he he came over there then from narcotics. You were in narcotics at the time, right?
Robert Riggs
And so, what was the work of most of the SWAT team at that point in history,
Bob Owens
as far as what each officer does.
Robert Riggs
Well, no, no. What the team were? You're running drug warrants mostly, or what kind of stuff?
Bob Owens
It's always drug warrants. I mean, it's drug warrants and fugitive warrants, but mostly drug warrants. I think you'll find that. I have a couple friends from New York, and and what do you think we do? I don't know drug warrants, you know. So it's it's always pretty much been drug warrants. Sometimes you run more than others, but it's the majority of the work you do.
Robert Riggs
So Larry, how was Bob as a a supervisor or leader? I'll put you on the spot.
Larry Gordon
I I think he was great because he one thing about a supervisor, they just lead from a distance, you know, and it's not micromanaging. I didn't see him much on callouts and operations. I would see him at the at the command post. But as far as being a lieutenant, you just let your sergeants run the squad.
Robert Riggs
And were you a sergeant eventually?
Larry Gordon
No, I wasn't sergeant at that time. I was a senior corporal, just the rank of a detective. When I came over there, it was a few police officers we call P.O.s that didn't have that rank that was in SWAT, and I think a couple of them are still there now. But it was mostly senior corporals that went into SWAT at that time.
Bob Owens
Yeah, and the organization on an operation is like Larry said. The sergeants and the senior officers make the plans mostly, and on some of them, like a barricaded person, hostage situation, they would go to the command post for approval. On drug warrants, they pretty much run it themselves, and. Like Larry said, during an operation, we have the command post out there. I'm in the command post, and the sergeants are out running. Yeah, one runs the perimeter, one runs entry, and one runs negotiations in the command post.
Robert Riggs
So, Larry, why SWAT? What was attractive? It
Larry Gordon
was. I always wanted to do be the best at something, and SWAT is really considered the the elite of the police department. A lot of guys that's not in not in SWAT hate that assessment, but it's it's true. Most of the time, as just as a group, we're the better shooters. As a group, we're better from a physical fitness standpoint. As a group, we're just better at. And one thing that the best SWAT officers do is critically think, and you have to make that assessment quickly sometimes. And I just got to be honest, the SWAT guys they do it often, so they're the best at it. So that's why I wanted to be in SWAT.
Robert Riggs
And did were you in negotiation before SWAT, or that became your job with SWAT?
Larry Gordon
No, that was the opening when they when they when the opening was put out. It was an a negotiator opening. It was a negotiator squad. So when we when I applied, I applied for that negotiator spot because it wasn't a coveted spot, the negotiator because it's not sexy, you know. You're not blasting through the doors or whatever, and because at that time we had the entry squad, we had a negotiator squad and a sniper squad, so I was I I was selected into the negotiator squad,
Robert Riggs
and you stayed there the for your tenure,
Larry Gordon
yes, I stayed as a negotiator, but eventually the the squads themselves became self contained. What I mean by that is, each squad they eventually put a negotiator and a and a sniper in each squad. So once we got the squads mapped out, I was put in a squad, and I was the primary negotiator of that particular squad.
Bob Owens
Yeah, and that's it's unusual in Dallas to be recruited as a negotiator because normally you get recruited like now as part of an entry team, and then once you get experience, you move to another job, a sniper negotiator, but you're still part of an entry team. You still have that function, and at the time, it was primarily you know they did other things, perimeter, and they they can still do entry. They're trained for it, but it's primarily negotiations.
Robert Riggs
We're going to talk to you about the incident on July 7 of 2016 when essentially five officers were assassinated, what prepared you to negotiate that with a gunman leading up to that point?
Larry Gordon
Honestly, the biggest thing was what happened 13 months prior to that. In 13 months prior to that, we had a guy come to our headquarters about around midnight in an armored personnel carrier that he bought off eBay. I think he paid like $6,600 for it.
Robert Riggs
Well, this was the like the armored
Larry Gordon
yeah car for
Robert Riggs
the banks and stuff. Yes, yes. Well,
Larry Gordon
it was actually a Guanequa County SWAT vehicle that they ran search warrants out of that he bought on eBay, and he came to our headquarters. He was upset about a custody, child custody issue that I guess the family court had taken his kid away, and he came parked the the APC armored personnel carrier in front of our headquarters, and just started shooting at headquarters, and I'm in SWAT, and I'm I'm working a a job that night, and I just never had my radio on, and just so happened I had my radio on, and I could hear it, and typically we don't respond until you know SWAT's called, but when I heard it, I texted my supervisor. Said, "Hey, we're about to get called out. So, anyway, we get in a pursuit. Patrol does, and we're behind the pursuit of this guy. We flatten his tires. The county did actually put stop six out. He pulls into a jack in a box, getting a brief shootout with patrol at that point. And our drivers, SWAT guys, we relieve patrol. Patrol is have a perimeter around either a house or vehicle or something, and we start relieving them and getting them out, moving them back to the command post. And while we're doing that, he called 911. The suspect did, and they let me know on radio, hey, this guy wants to talk. So I talked this guy about roughly four hours, trying to get him to come out of the van. He wouldn't come out. He he said, "Hey, I'll call you back. Hung up, armed a device at our headquarters, which eventually blew up an officer's car once they tried to move it. So I mean, this the. How it ended, I got him to raise up, and we shot him with a 50 caliber sniper rifle, one of our snipers, and it was it was a huge deal. It was a huge deal. FBI came out, and he had well, he was telling me he had 20 pounds of c4 in his van. I'm thinking, yeah, right. This guy's got 20 pounds c4, right. But once he hung up with me, and around about 430 that morning, they alerted us that an officer's car just blew up. I'm like, well, maybe this guy does have some explosives, and he did eventually. Once we shot him, we sent the robot up there, took pictures inside, and he did have it rigged. And he told me that I have it rigged. If you try to come up here, I'm gonna and open the door, it's gonna blow up. So, and really, just a side note: the idea was to use a robot with a device on it was born right there. So, and that was, and at that point, that was the biggest thing that I had been involved in.
Robert Riggs
And to explain here later, you would have used that same technique to blow up the gunman who had killed all these officers.
Larry Gordon
Yes.
Robert Riggs
So, how far along with that plan in the the armored vehicle did you get?
Larry Gordon
Well, unbeknownst to me, because I was in the command post, I was at the not in the command post, but I was at the command post in my little inner sanctum of my vehicle, talking to the bad guy, and they had came up with that plan, I didn't. I didn't know at that time because they were out on the perimeter of that the suspect's vehicle, but they tossed it around, and it just never came to fruition because I got him to raise up, and we had what had a code 100 on him, which was just basically green light for the sniper. If you see him, stop him, and that's what happened. And he raised up and got shot.
Robert Riggs
So at this point, I tell you, you don't. He's not coming out, and he's threatening everything with bombs.
Larry Gordon
Yes.
Robert Riggs
Yeah.
Larry Gordon
Pretty much. He was actually. Yeah. And and and the funny thing, it was our lieutenant at the time was Mark Vernon, and he said, "Hey, push him and see what happens. See if he will cook it off. So I said, "Okay, I'll do that. So what I did was, I mean, he he cursed me out for three hours. I mean, he was just, and I knew he had some mental issues because he was talking about that he told us where Bin Laden was. We're with every police officer in the cartel, and I'm like, this guy's obviously have some mental issues, and and he and one thing you can tell about mentally ill people that they can stay elevated emotionally for a long time. They're not on our clock. We can't be mad and screaming for hours, we just physically we can't do it. But and I knew he was upset for a very long time, and I couldn't push him to get the emotionality down. So when my lieutenant said, "Hey, push him and see what happens, I pushed him, and I talked reckless. I you know called him every word I could think of to, and but they had to. It had the opposite effect. They pushed them down, and I'm like, wow. I didn't even. I mean, just surprised me, and that's what causing caused him to raise up, just by me, being a butthole to him, basically.
Bob Owens
And that's what, as a SWAT commander, you know, you're you're trying to get this information, and the best information you get is from the negotiator because he's talking directly to the person. You ask him, "Yeah, well, first thing is he having hostages? You know he didn't. Is he coming out? What do you think? Well, let's try this. Let's try that. And finally, you know, you have to make a judgment in there. Okay, is it? Am I going to send my people to pull open that door and drag him out, or maybe have to shoot him face to face, or am I going to use some other means because it's too dangerous? He's already shown the intent. He shot at a bunch of officers several times. He's in an armored car. He has explosives. So how dangerous is it to just go face to face with him where it's a fair fight? So the commander has to make that decision based on input from, again, primary negotiators, but also the snipers and the people that are watching how he's acting and what bomb squad in this case. You know, what do you think? You know, he says he has bombs, and he's already shown that. I, I take his word for it.
Robert Riggs
You know, y'all probably didn't know it, but earlier, you know, time months, months earlier, in my hometown up northeast Texas, where my sister was a teacher, he had already caused the school shut down up up there.
Larry Gordon
Yes, in Paris, right?
Robert Riggs
Right.
Larry Gordon
Yeah, I remember that, and that was one of the reasons why they took his kid away because he had he had threatened to do a school shooting in Paris. He had threatened to do that, and the judge here in Dallas, the family judge, he threatened her to me, and I actually. Funny thing, I after it was over, I called her. I got her phone number. I called her, and I mean, to this day, I'm her hero. I just called her to make to let her know, you know, everything's okay. Because I think they sent some deputies to her apartment or house wherever she lives to make sure she was okay, because he was he threatened to kill her. He told me he was, and he he he talked in a derogatory way about her. He he didn't say what he did, but I'm like, we might need to go check on this judge. And when I learned him that he he was he wanted to kill this judge, they went to her house. She was fine, but I just called her just to maybe just kind of give her some closure. I called her maybe a couple days afterward.
Robert Riggs
Did she have any idea this guy was out there with irrational hate against her?
Larry Gordon
She had no idea. Not until the the deputies knocked on her door at four in the morning.
Robert Riggs
That's the scariest thing about this.
Bob Owens
Yeah, you can imagine. You know that things like that happen all the time, and and you just don't know, you know. You you made somebody angry like that, and you have no inkling that what's coming. So yeah, it's it is a very scary situation.
Robert Riggs
So was that your longest negotiation in your career up to that point, or most intense?
Larry Gordon
Most intense, most definitely, but longest. Sometimes when, like I've said, we were in a negotiated squad. We were negotiated with guys. We would sometimes switch out, and I think the longest. And Lieutenant, you might have been on this one. It was the guy down off of La Prada that caught the house on fire, apartment on fire. It was like maybe eight hours.
Bob Owens
Yeah, yeah, like good eight hours. Yeah,
Larry Gordon
eight. I think it was like eight hours that we had to actually had to switch out of SWAT teams because E unit. I was in E unit and I was there, and then they called an A unit and we were all E unit. We were all upset, but it was the right thing to do because we had been there for probably six hours in the heat, and it's just it is just very very daunting to be in all that gear in Texas. This guy was shooting at us. I actually tossed a device in the in the bedroom and caught the apartment on fire. I mean, it was a raging fire, and this guy was in the bathroom with like on the phone with a hey man, your house is on fire, like nine coming out. We had to get the fire department to get the fire out while he's shooting at us. It was that was about the longest.
Robert Riggs
I remember covering that, but your principal objective you want to try to talk them down.
Larry Gordon
Yes,
Robert Riggs
and is this by relating to them, trying to find some Common ground.
Larry Gordon
Yeah, that's basically what negotiations about. If you get the the visceral down, the cognitive will go up. It's almost like the old school seesaws used to ride when you were young. Once you, if you can get that emotionality down on one side, the rationality will go up on the other side, and that's what negotiators do. That's basically the bread and butter. What we do,
Bob Owens
that's the theory, anyway.
Robert Riggs
Oh, so in the yeah, in the armored car case, I mean, do you find with a guy like that that just can you he starts to wear y'all out as negotiators
Larry Gordon
without a doubt because he's not on our timetable and and we we've made that mistake in SWAT before you weren't here on a deal. I mean, you had you had transferred the deal. The guy was on the in the crane. He was on at SMU. He was in a crane for 15 hours, and it was the other unit. But they made the mistake that this guy can't be that angry for 15 hours, and he was, and that's why he basically jumped off the crane and died. But we learn that over time. You learn it over time that these people that have mental issues, they're not on our timetable,
Bob Owens
right? And that's, you know, like I said, that when I when I say it doesn't always work, well, it it doesn't. But while while that's happening, it gives the the commander, the the rest of SWAT people, time to make another plan. Okay, let's why don't we why don't we try this? It gives you the opportunity to slow things down, and where nobody's getting hurt, and it we still we're still hoping it's going to work, and most times it does. Most times people come out, but sometimes you just you know people are irrational and they're not they're not coming out.
Robert Riggs
So does a lot of instinct about whether coming out come into play or is it just experience? Because for instance, I covered the Bradia in siege for 51 days, got there early, and the moment I heard Koresh on the radio after shooting those officers, and you know, I'd gone up Sunday school in East Texas. I went, he's not coming out. This is Armageddon. This is the doomsday. He will never come out of there. Other fellow reporters and overseas, I thought I was done. So he's not coming. He will not come. Yes, ironically that you mentioned David Koresh, I was taught by Bob Sage. Bob Sage was the FBI negotiator that talked to David Koresh, and we talked about that. He we talked about that exact thing that he wasn't coming out, and Bob thought he could get him out. Yes,
Larry Gordon
but yeah, he Bob said he wasn't coming out, and he knew the Bible better than anybody. David Kresh did, and and he just it was. I think that Bob told me that was the worst one he had.
Robert Riggs
And as I understand, that really changed the way the FBI handled situations because they got crossways. The hostage rescue team did with the the negotiators.
Larry Gordon
Yeah, and that one and Ruby Ridge, yes. Ruby Ridge was Waco was right after Ruby Ridge, so they they were like, "Hey, we need to do something different because we had two bad incidences, so we need to revamp this. Because I've spent two weeks in Quantico to their at their hostage negotiation school, and they you know kind of relayed that to us.
Robert Riggs
Well, I think what's interesting here is that y'all have a different approach in that the negotiator is in part of the team and communication, yes, trust.
Larry Gordon
That's the that's the good thing about Dallas. We we Dallas we have what's called a totally integrated team where everybody's integrated. Either the snipers, the negotiators, it's a totally integrated team. But most of the country, the negotiators are just detectives, and that's where that that consternation and that angst between tactical and negotiating, like you see in movies, and it it can happen like that. But it doesn't. I have never seen it happen like that with us because we are actual SWAT guys, and they know we understand that we can we can have a and we've had barricaded subjects that I'm talking face to face to, and a SWAT guy standing around me does not say a word. They don't say a word, and that's very unusual for police officers. If it's an officer like the guy that was just telling me about that instance you had last night, when the officers pull up, if that guy didn't get out of car. You probably had 15 officers yelling at that guy, but the discipline of having SWAT guys to understand this is negotiator. You can have 15 SWAT guys there, and they won't. You won't even know they're there because they won't say a word because they know I need to connect with this guy.
Robert Riggs
One voice.
Larry Gordon
Yeah,
Bob Owens
and that's exactly what happened in Waco. Like you said, I've talked to Sage also. Think about what happened, though. You know, at the end, it was a tragedy. But how many people did he get out of there? How many kids did he get out? So you can't call it a success, but he saved a lot of lives in there. So the problem in Waco was you had a sack in charge from San Antonio. You had HRT from Quantico, and then you had negotiators, and they never dealt with each other. And it was a battle between we're going to go through, we're going to kick the door in and drag him out, and we're going to talk. And it was like you know, Daddy with his two kids, you know who is in favor, and the negotiators be in favor for a while, and then the then the the whole time the HRT is trying to undermine them to the the commander,
Robert Riggs
right?
Bob Owens
And the commander finally gave in, and that's why you had things like negotiators talking to wasn't Kresh; it was the his lieutenant. Yes, yeah, and he say, "Oh, everything's going fine. He says, "Well, why is that tank running over our cars? And the negotiator didn't even know it. They didn't tell him if we were going to do that. The negotiator would be told, "Look, okay, we need to do something. And hey, Larry, we're going to drive over his car or whatever we're going to do, we're going to shoot tear gas or whatever. We're going. He would know that
Larry Gordon
because you you lose credibility when you when as a negotiator you're talking to somebody and they he said why is the tank running over the cars? You're like, what tank are you talking about? I mean, well, why am I not talking to the person that knows?
Robert Riggs
Yes.
Larry Gordon
So yeah,
Robert Riggs
got to cut an irony there too. The Texas Rangers were responsible for the crime scene. They were going to do the crime scene, and the assistant U.S. attorney there asked the FBI, "Don't destroy this crime scene. Don't destroy these vehicles. And the next thing you know, they're tearing it all to pieces, and they're like, "How am I going to bring a criminal case eventually?
Bob Owens
And there was a there was an HRT guy wrote a book. He later became he was at Ruby Ridge. He was a sniper, and then he was at Waco as a sniper. And he wrote a book, and he was a consultant for the news. And he said, after Waco, they get back to Quantico. They start having classes on negotiation. He had no idea what negotiators did. You know what are they doing? What are they? What are we doing here? We're talking forever, and then he he didn't have any clue what they were doing. He didn't understand. It was like they were cross purposes.
Robert Riggs
So Larry, let's take you to july 7, 2016. Where were you when you heard the call, officer down?
Larry Gordon
Well, we were. We we in SWAT we don't do patrol work, but that day we were we were in patrol. We were pouting because we don't do patrol work. SWAT guys were pouting, and I was just sitting on a what we call a tag beat. It's an acronym for you know a beat with a lot of crime, and I'm sitting there, maybe, actually, I was sitting at Greenville and Ross, in a neighborhood right there, and and I was on the phone with my niece because Philando Castile had just happened on July 5, the shooting in Minnesota, at Alton Sterling, the shooting in Baton Rouge that just happened on july 6.
Robert Riggs
Right.
Larry Gordon
So my niece, who who has kids, and you know, I'm talking to her about you know uses of force, and she's she's crying. You know, my son's going to get killed by the police, and I'm trying I'm trying to to talk to her, and I hear officer down, and I'm like, hold on, hold on, I got, I got to hang up. I'll call you back. And ironically, I had the same conversation with the suspect when I got in the the hallway that I just had with my niece.
Robert Riggs
And the Black Lives Matter protesters-they were there protesting those two shootings.
Larry Gordon
Yes, it was, and that that day was a national day of protest.
Robert Riggs
Yes,
Larry Gordon
it was a national day of protest for all the large cities, and that was one of the. We were one of the cities, and normally SWAT works the protest. For some reason, we didn't work that one because we we worked the protest because we have counter snipers for intel or a sniper that may have to address somebody from an elevated position, and for some reason we didn't have those. We didn't have. We were in in patrol working for some reason. I don't know who made that call though.
Robert Riggs
So Bob, I think there's a perception out there that the the police are out there to give the protesters a hard time, but I don't think they realize they're out there to actually protect them.
Bob Owens
Oh yeah, and traffic. I mean, they're walking down Main Street in downtown Dallas, there's a lot of traffic. It's 7o'clock at night, so they're they're there to block streets off so they can get through. That's that's their primary job, and that's why the response teams are out there protect them.
Robert Riggs
You get the call. What
Larry Gordon
then? I then head downtown. I'm running code three. I'm maybe two minutes away. I'm not far. If you know where I was, I'm not far from downtown. And I'm thinking, I had did a watched a presentation about a a guy that was involved in a shooting in another state, and he said, "Hey, he knew that this person who did this presentation. He said I knew that I was going to be in a shooting when I got there. So he put his heavy vest on. So what I did, I pulled over, grabbed my rifle, charged it, put my heavy vest on, and drove like that. So I'm about 30 seconds out, and it is the worst transmission on the radio. People cursing on the radio, and you never hear that-that someone you actually using profanity on the radio, and I said I gotta call my wife. So I called my wife too because I said I don't know how this is gonna end because I know I'm driving in the middle of this and I hear officer down over here, officer down over here. I'm like, you know, how many shooters we have? I don't. I just didn't know. Of course, my wife didn't answer, but I left her voice message. Honestly, that's the reason why I called her because I said this is probably gonna be the last time I talked to her, but by the time I got there, the suspect was inside El Centro at that time.
Robert Riggs
So, can you describe what you know of though before he gets in there? What what happened?
Larry Gordon
The only thing I knew for sure was it was a black male with a rifle. That's it, and our radios are are equipped that if all three of us try to talk, it'll just make a buzzing sound, and people the transmission will just be a buzzing sound. You can't understand it. So it's it's 100 officers down. I think we had like 100 officers down there, and probably 50 of them were trying to talk at the same time because they see the suspect, they see the shooter, officer down. We need some help over here. These officers are down, and you just couldn't make anything out. So the the part of transmission that would come through is blackmail rifle officer down. That was the only thing we got. You can make out.
Bob Owens
And there, you know, I had a couple people ask me, "Have you ever been involved in anything like that? Nobody's been involved in anything like that. I mean, it was you can't prepare, you know, for that. Five officers killed and many more wounded, civilians wounded, suspected with a gun with a rifle. It's you know, it's not something that's supposed to happen in a in a city, attack on the police like that. So you know that's why you know when the officers, you know they lose all the radio discipline when they're you know they're they're in a tight situation. They got people that are hurt very badly. They need to get to the hospital. They need to find the suspect. So yeah, it's it's un. Resident and you know it's to their credit they did a heck of a job under you know terrible circumstances.
Robert Riggs
Well, our listeners are probably maybe wondering: Well, don't police wear a vest? How could they have suffered fatal injury?
Larry Gordon
Well, it was the AK 74, and that round travels through vests. The first officer that got killed was shot in the back through his vest, and the people who were there described it to me, and they said it was just a gruesome, gruesome sight to see him get shot, and and apparently that what they said to me that it broke his back, and I don't know why they said it broke his back. They said like his back was broken. So yeah, that it's it was just terrible.
Bob Owens
Yeah, the soft vests are made for pistol shotguns, small caliber pistols. They're all caliber pistols, but not rifles. That bullet is made to go through vest. It's a Soviet military bullet made to go through NATO vests, hard vests. So
Robert Riggs
when I was an embedded reporter in Iraq, we wore those, which you could armor up with over. We put a ballistic in there. In those days, it's about 60 pounds. Did we not have those?
Larry Gordon
Yes, we did. And I know a a particular sergeant asks if they can wear their plate carriers, but at that time, if you can remember, you know the militarization of police was was a hot topic, and our commanders didn't want us as DPD officers to look militarized, so they didn't want us standing out there with plate carriers and rifles slung, and no one had a rifle when this started. They had to go get them in their cars, but no, the commanders didn't want us to be intimidating to
Robert Riggs
the the
Larry Gordon
protesters. That's why they didn't let them wear
Robert Riggs
them. In hindsight, did we lose people because out of image, or
Larry Gordon
I would I would say so because after that that went out to out the window, all that that thinking went out the window for a while right after the shooting.
Robert Riggs
Do you think other departments learn from it too?
Bob Owens
Oh, I'm sure. You know, everybody's worried about you know, especially at that time, especially now. Everybody's worried about their image, and they don't want to appear as overly aggressive, intimidating. You know, we were here, like you said, like I said, and they were there to protect them, but it doesn't come across that way.
Robert Riggs
So he goes into the El Centro College. I need to tell our listeners this is about two blocks from where President Kennedy was assassinated.
Larry Gordon
Yes, and it was it was the school was going on at that time, so he he was shooting inside the school. So as a police officer, we do active shooter training, and that's what the officer's mindset went to. He's in here shooting students. He didn't shoot any students, but he was shooting inside the school. And what we did was we all went to went through different doors. We got what we call a cell. A cell was a group of officers. I think I was with maybe two other SWAT guys, and we just went through a door that was shot out, and just cert. And it was it was it was one of the worst situations to be in. It was one of the worst. I I just thought I was going to die in here. I did. I actually before I went through the door, I said, "I'm going to die in here. I said that to myself. But once you got in there, it was. And when you're searching something, you're trying to minimize the threats. Okay, I got a door here, got a hallway here, but it was like a an atrium. When you go through the door, it was just second levels, and it was terrible. It was it was it was a night. It was a tactical nightmare to find that guy in there. It was just by the grace of God that a couple SWAT guys went upstairs, heard him shooting at Sergeant Smith from the second floor in the library, and kind of cornered him. And that was just by the grace of God that happened.
Robert Riggs
Was this all SWAT in the building,
Larry Gordon
no, it was not. It was patrol. It was the LC Central officers because he what he was doing. He was shooting at the LC Central officers. That's what the shooting we heard, and
Robert Riggs
and he did he wound any of them?
Larry Gordon
Shrapnel. He that round hit the concrete where they were, and some of the you know concrete splattered up on them. They got in a shootout the El Central officers while he was shooting out the door to go into L Central. They got in a shootout with him at that door. So a couple of them are injured from the glass flying, swallowing of the glass flying. So yeah.
Bob Owens
And that's that's the way they're trained now. That came from Columbine, that we don't wait outside. We we we're going to find this person. We either we're going to get him trapped so he can't hurt anybody else. We're going to get him to surrender, or we're going to engage him and and shoot him. But we don't want to let him have the free run of this building. And that's like like Larry said. That's when he called when he shot the DPD sergeant out who was across the street from the elevated position. He wasn't in the building. He was across the street getting out of his car, and Mike Smith got shot there. So they were able to push him into a corner where he he he couldn't move anymore, and that that was the ideal thing to do is to he he can't shoot anybody else because he has no more targets except for us and we're we're holding our ground.
Robert Riggs
Well, but those college security officers they only have handguns.
Larry Gordon
They had rifles, but they yeah they they they had them stored. They had them stored in it. Of course, it had them slung and on on them, but because they kept asking for them, one of the I guess one of their supervisors said, "Hey, go get me a rifle. Go get me a rifle. So I'm sure they had them stored somewhere. When I got there, I didn't see any rifles. They didn't, but they had them. I don't know if they had them out and accessible, but they did have them,
Robert Riggs
and so Bob, you enter an atrium like that, where you know the shooter can have the high ground on you, and I guess it's just the case of it can come out of nowhere, and that's like that's what you're afraid of, right?
Larry Gordon
Exactly, and it was 100 threats because when you're searching, when you're looking for somebody, typically it's in a house or an apartment or something like that, right? I know a kid; he can shoot through the wall. He can shoot this doorway, this hallway. It wasn't like that. It was just you're standing like in the middle of a football field, seem like, and it just you can be shot from anywhere.
Bob Owens
And the the when a rifle goes off inside a building like that, you have no idea where it's coming from.
Robert Riggs
Right? It
Bob Owens
echoes and it's terrible. I mean, you have no clue where it's coming from. Did you have shields?
Larry Gordon
No, we did not. Patrol had one, but shields today in this style of searching is kind of obsolete because when you're searching, you search sometimes with what we call a heavy head, and a heavy head is, if if us three are searching, we would all have three guns up. We and all three of us can engage a target, but if I have a shield, it's only protecting me. So the shield is is really is used at a point where you're anticipating resistance. If you think about it, if we go through a front door and a bad guy's inside of a house or an apartment, where's the resistance going to be once we enter this door? Right, we enter this door and we don't encounter gunfire. The shield is obsolete because these guys are going to separate from me. They're going to separate and go to their points of domination in that room and look for the bad guy. So I'm the only one holding a shield. So let's just say we take this room and we go into the next room. Right? Where's the point where we're going to have the resistance at that next room? So you have the shield there. Once we break that, breach that room or door, there's no more resistance at that point because we're searching at that point. So the resistance is going to be the further part of house. So you have the shield that way. So my point is, searching with a shield is obsolete. If you look at the Navy SEALs or a lot of SEAL team guys, I mean the the searching techniques makes the shield the shield obsolete when you're searching. But if you're at the point of resistance, that's when that shield is important because we're anticipating resistance at this front door, right? So once we break, breach that door, and don't get any resistance, you push that shield to the next point of that you think you're going to have the resistance, and everybody's searching behind you.
Robert Riggs
And Barbara, these are the techniques that I would have seen infantry clearing buildings and stuff in Iraq.
Bob Owens
Yeah, pretty much the same thing. I think also the shields. You know, you're in a hurry, and the shields are-they have them. They're on their equipment trucks, SWAT SWAT are. But are you going to wait for them, or we? You know, he's shooting out the window at officers. So I think the the big priority was get to him, isolate him as quick as possible, and the shields are going to slow you down for that quite a bit. So
Larry Gordon
they're very cumbersome, and and very heavy. They're heavy, and just imagine searching a school with a shield. I'm in decent shape. And a young guy, you're the shield in SWAT. You're the shield guy, and it was a beating to search, and we search a small, 2000 square foot home. It'll take a while, and your your forearms are shaking. It it and you're anticipating this resistance from this bad guy who just shot at patrol officers or whatever. It's a beating. It's a beating. Do you?
Robert Riggs
Systematically, then, do you did they force the gunman into an area eventually?
Larry Gordon
Yes. What happened was he was in the hallway as those guys, Canadian, those guys were pushing down the hallway,
Robert Riggs
first floor, second floor,
Larry Gordon
second floor.
Robert Riggs
Okay,
Larry Gordon
right where he shot Sergeant Smith, Mike Smith from that that library. They encountered him. Just he just went across the hallway, and they they actually thought it was an officer because he had the BDU pants, brown BDU pants on. He had a vest on and a rifle, and they said, "Okay, I think I see somebody. And at that point, he was coming back around the corner. They could see the rifle. Canadian those guys could see the rifle coming back around the corner and start shooting at him. They engaged him and just held him right there. It was like in the little cove where all the the servers were. It was he just got trapped in that that little cove in the hallway.
Robert Riggs
And he was a military veteran. Yes, obviously that give him an advantage because I think he was like wasn't he wasn't infantry or anything, but still with the training.
Bob Owens
No, but he was he was in the United States Army, so yeah, he knew certainly knew some tactics either from the army or from YouTube. But he yeah he was not without knowledge of what he was doing.
Larry Gordon
Yeah, he told me he was. He he said he wasn't a soldier. He said I'm not gonna lie to you. I wasn't a soldier. I never fired a shot downrange. He said he was in construction. That's what he mean. He said we tore things down and built things. He said, but in our camp in Afghanistan, I was bored, and he said SEAL Team Three was in their camp, and he said all they did was PT. He said the the seals, that is the seals. All they did was PT. And he said he would go over there and ask them to show him some techniques. And he said they they showed him. He these these are his words. They showed him how to shoot and move. He the SEAL team three did, and that's what he told me. And whether it's a lie or not, he did say that to me,
Robert Riggs
but that's what he was doing.
Larry Gordon
That's exactly what he's
Robert Riggs
doing. It though that moment did you did strike you? I got a guy that's well trained here.
Larry Gordon
Yeah, I I thought about that, but honestly, I was I mean, in SWAT, you got to have a, you know, your. I thought we can get him. I thought we can defeat him.
Robert Riggs
So you get him cornered. Tell me again where he's cornered. Then how do you start talking with him?
Larry Gordon
Yeah, he's cornered in a hallway. And at this time, we're doing we're searching. You know, basically in our in my cell, I had two other guys with me. We're searching, and once we hear the shots, we trying to you know you push to the sound of gunfire. Basically, once we get in a corner and we're pieing corners slow, and what I mean by pieing, just looking around the corners slow. I guess that's the best description of it. Looking around the corners, taking an angle, taking an angle, taking. Finally, I see some officers, see some other SWAT guys, and once we locked eyes, they motioned us two of them. We went to them, and I could hear him yelling. I could hear him talking. So I'm the negotiator. So I just started talking to him.
Robert Riggs
Do you have a? Are you yelling to talk, or you have a megaphone? You got anything to help you?
Larry Gordon
No, we were close enough that he can. We can just, you know, talking high voice. How close? Maybe 3040, feet.
Bob Owens
It's very dangerous. Face-to-face negotiation is the worst kind of negotiations you can do, and that's very close.
Larry Gordon
And we had to be on top of him because we were kind of like at a Y intersection. If you can think about a Y, the letter Y intersection, just think if he's at the base of the Y, and we're at the top left of the Y. So if we're not that close, he can go out the other side of the Y. You know what I'm saying? So we had to be there because if we pushed back anymore, we didn't secure that area where he can go. So we had to be that close.
Robert Riggs
So as you're talking, are you you're exposed because you're talking about face to face, I mean, can he step out and get a roundoff on? Yeah,
Larry Gordon
he could have shot through the wall at us. We had one shield that patrol had brought up to us, and that's all we had. We had one shield. That was it.
Robert Riggs
And so he was African American.
Larry Gordon
Yes,
Robert Riggs
you're African American. Were you able to find any common ground with that? The that
Larry Gordon
after whenever you're negotiating with somebody, you want to have a hook. What we call a hook, meaning is it his wife, his job, something that means something to this guy, and the his hook to him is that I was a black guy, because I I have a habit of saying bro. So when he asked us to come back and kill him or something, and I said we can't do that, bro. He said, "Don't call me brother. You're not my brother. You're white. I'm black. You're not my brother. And I said, "Well, if it means anything to you, I am black. He said, "You don't sound black. And I said, "Well, that's because I graduated graduated from college." And he laughed. He laughed just like that. And I thought I can get that emotionality down.
Robert Riggs
Okay.
Larry Gordon
And that's what that's when I when I said that, and he laughed. I knew I can touch him. I knew I can. I mean, when I say touch him, I mean not physically, but touch his emotions to get the emotionality down.
Robert Riggs
And this goes on for four hours. Do you get him down, or does he go back up? Or
Larry Gordon
yes, I I got a real good rapport with him. I got to the point that I asked him. He he he wouldn't tell me his name. He just said called him X, and I'm thinking, what does that mean, X Malcolm X? X is the unknown in algebra. Why do you you know that was actually his middle name? It
Robert Riggs
was Micah Johnson,
Larry Gordon
Micah X X Xier Johnson, and X was his middle name, so I got to the point where I said, "Hey, X, if you come around this corner and see me, would you shoot me? He said, "I don't know, and he did. When I got there previously, he was like, "We're gonna die tonight. We're going. We're all transitioning. And I'm like, "What do you mean transitioning from this life to the next? I'm like, oh God, he's talking about dying because he was like, I'm gonna die by my bullet or yours, and he was talking about charging us at first, and I'm like, okay, and I had to get the emotionality down. After you know a little while, I had a pretty good rapport with him.
Robert Riggs
And does he ever share what his grievance is?
Larry Gordon
Yes, he told me he was upset about the recent shootings, and I teach classes on this, so I know all the numbers, right? So I memorized all the numbers. So I'm talking to him about it, and he he thought that black males were killed most most often by police. I said, no, Michael, it's not. It's not even close. I said black males kill most. I said it's white males that kills that are killed most by the police. About 51% of all the shootings. He didn't believe me. I said I'm telling you, look it up. And he he was just surprised that that happened. That white males are mostly shot by police, and that was his that was his gripe. He wanted to be a martyr, sort of speak, because he wanted to die for his people and bring a show a light on police shootings. And he said that's why he attacked
Bob Owens
us. And you getting back to the face to face. Think about this. He's 30 feet away. He's talking about charging you, and I know Larry had people covering him. But if he comes around the corner unannounced, you know, just comes at you, he does not care about dying, and you sit there for four hours and talk to this person. That's that's a pretty good job right there.
Robert Riggs
And he'd already done that to a dart officer outside. Yes,
Larry Gordon
he did.
Robert Riggs
And how did that end? The
Larry Gordon
dart officer. He killed the dart officer, and that changed our training. That video of the dart officer changing our training because the dart officer crowded his cover. It's called crowding your cover. Where if I have a a pole or something here, and you're on the other side of the pole, and I get real close to the pole, I lose the visual sight of that of the bad guy.
Robert Riggs
Right.
Larry Gordon
So you have to be off your cover so you can dance around the pole, dance around the cover. And it changed our training. That particular shooting changed our training. We train differently now.
Robert Riggs
And he came around the pole and surprised him. Yeah. Did he execute him afterwards? Yes.
Larry Gordon
Shot him 11 times. Stood over and shot him.
Bob Owens
You look at that. I mean, he only had a pistol, the Dardosser, and he, unfortunately, you know, the suspect came around behind him. But he tried to end it right then, like he was trained to do, and he's one of the heroes that night.
Larry Gordon
He is definitely Bryn Thompson is definitely hero because the the patrol officers didn't know where he was. They had no idea where he was because it's just the sound of the buildings downtown. They thought he was in a parking garage. They thought he had an elevated position. Nobody knew where he was, but Brent Thompson saw him, and that's how all the officers knew where he was. Pretty much, Brent Thompson sacrificed himself, and that's why the officers could okay, there he is, and start addressing him at that point.
Robert Riggs
Back inside now the negotiations. Where does it go?
Larry Gordon
It went everywhere. He was very intelligent. He allowed me, and maybe back up a little bit. the The shooting with at our headquarters that was first time ever happened in the history of law enforcement that we've shot somebody with a 50 caliber sniper rifle, and with a device and bomb, and it was an elaborate bomb that the bomb takes. Tell me from the ATF bomb tech came and tried to recreate it and couldn't recreate it. So I went to Quantico for two weeks because of that shooting, and I just had gotten back from Quantico 28 days from Quantico to the FBI great school FBI school, And sitting here talking to this guy, I tried to use every trick in the book, and basically, in negotiations, you you use active listening skills, and the FBI swears by social theory, and it's just it's an author, very good book. Dr. Chaldini wrote a book about six points of social theory. It's actually seven, but the seven one is redundant, so I only talk about it. But it's six points of social theory, and I was using all that on him, and it worked because he never shot again after that. He never shot again once we started talking, and I knew, like Lieutenant Owens is saying, if he came around that corner, he was going to kill one of us because it was a flash picture, and a flash picture is basically if someone's talking and you can't see them, and then they appear in the room, you have to make a decision. You have to make a decision, and it was we were it was we were to the point where I told the guys on this side of the hall, if you got if he push, if he comes around here and push to us, you guys shoot. We'll just try to get out of the way. We was just trying to move out of the way. I mean, it's nowhere for us to go. But and you're in a crossfire because he's going to be between us. So our own guys may have shot us because he's going to be between us, and we got to shoot him. So that was it. Was tough. It was it was a nightmare for four hours?
Bob Owens
Did you later? Did you get other ballistic panels or shields up there?
Larry Gordon
Yes, eventually we got the the panels up there, and the panels are about maybe five feet tall. So I'm six three, and I'm taller than the panels. So I'm like, okay, if he shoots through the wall again, he's gonna shoot me in the head, and while he's talking, I can hear his voice moving. So, because we're thinking about shooting through the wall at him, just just everybody just shoot through the wall. Maybe we can get him. So we didn't come up do that plan, and I'm thinking if I'm thinking that about him, he's thinking that about me because I'm the only one talking. So I started moving until we got the panels. I got a chair and I sat at the corner and behind the panels. So if he shot through the wall, would hit the panels.
Robert Riggs
Well, his career with the army had ended with you know so disgracefully,
Larry Gordon
right?
Robert Riggs
Psychologically, here you think that he was looking for his moment of glory, and nothing had gone well.
Larry Gordon
That's that's, I can I can see that. I mean, you know, a lot of people say he was crazy. I don't I don't say he was crazy. I've talked to some crazy people. He didn't sound crazy. You say somebody's crazy, you it's dismissive. You dismiss their motives. I don't. I don't. Honestly, I don't know. I don't know. I read some of his writings. It was kind of disjointed a little bit. You know, he he got kicked out of the military. Not not kicked out, but I guess asked to leave. But because he stole four pair of a woman's panties that he was supposedly dating, not dating. They found the panties in his his bunk or whatever. So he he had some mental issues, but you know, not a clinician. I don't not
Robert Riggs
qualified to know. Yeah, and so for our listeners who might think that's kind of silly and childish, you know, I knew Roy Hazelwood, one of the original FBI profilers who specialized in sex sex crimes and sadistic sex killers and all, and Roy would say, when you see that, you it's going to escalate. There's a sexual predator in the making there, so not to be taken lightly, right? So You've concluded he's going to kill us, or we're going to have to kill him.
Larry Gordon
Right.
Robert Riggs
What what takes place now? What's the decision? How's the decision get made to what you're going to do?
Larry Gordon
We had several ideas. We had a like we had a 50 caliber sniper rifle across the street. We we thought about contemplating about just shooting through the wall where he is. It's people in the school. The snipers don't know where we are. We scrapped that plan. Okay. What about an explosive charge on the floor underneath him to order our explosive charge on top above him to shoot down on him? Okay. We don't know all the rebar that go between the floors if it's going to really work. Okay, let's. We we we had a throw phone. Something is called a throw phone. The throw phone is in a hard like pelican box. We can throw it through windows, and and the person, the bad guy, just open the pelican box. Hello, and talk to me. Right. So we considered. Sliding that throw phone to him, and once he reached for it, everybody in creation just opened, just dump a mag at him, just to just to get him. So I said, "Hey, I got a throw phone here. I just want to slide you this phone. He's like, "No, I know what you're trying to do. I'm not going to take the phone. Like, yeah, he's right. He knew what we're trying to do. So, like I said before, the idea to blow James Bower up, the guy who shot up headquarters, was to drive the robot underneath his truck. So that's where the idea was born. So one of the youngest guys in SWAT said, "Hey, why don't we just put a device on the robot and drive it to him? And I heard him say that, but I'm I'm engaged in conversation and thinking of it, and eventually time is distorted. I don't know how long it was because it seemed like I was up there for 30 minutes, but I was up there for four hours. So they come and tell me my supervisors come and tell me, "Hey, this is what the plan we want to do. And so they gave me the plan. So I had to fix it and set the plan up at that point.
Bob Owens
One of the things I I the advantage. I've read the book, and one of the things I thought during the negotiations that you know I would have thought would work was what was the main thing that you told him that he needed to live for, and he needed to not go on this suicide mission. You know, right now things are you know we're shooting at each other. We're stopped now. Things are calmed down. What's the advantage for him to come out at this time?
Larry Gordon
I told him he was telling me about some of the issues that he had. You know with policing, and I told him your issues are valid. You have valid issues. I told him I have CNN outside. I'll let you talk to him while we're walking to the squad car. You can say whatever you want to to him. It's like, no, I said enough with his rifle, and I tried to get him to to live for his message, to live for his message, but he was like, he was just dead set against it, dead set.
Bob Owens
See, I would have guessed that would work because I mean think what a powerful message that would be you know and he's going to be on death row but he's going to be there for a long time and he's going to be able to get his message out and and reach a lot of people I thought that was a you know great strategy and I'm I'm really surprised it didn't work
Robert Riggs
now if you remember, they let Koresh go on the radio.
Larry Gordon
Yes,
Robert Riggs
and thought the same thing, and he he said, "Oh yeah, this will do it. And then now, not coming out. Well, this is after
Bob Owens
he surrenders. I mean, think about it. He surrenders a lot. He's alive now. Yeah. And why did you do this? Well, I'll tell you why I did
Robert Riggs
it.
Bob Owens
You know.
Robert Riggs
Yeah. It just didn't work.
Bob Owens
Yeah, didn't work.
Robert Riggs
Were you able when he was talking about race and all? Were you able to rationalize with him at all, or is he just was determined?
Larry Gordon
No, I think he was pretty determined. I started giving him facts about police shootings. He he gave me some facts about something that's called a Gullah Wars, and I have my my my iPhone with me, and I kind of use some social theory. One of the theories is called consistency, a theory of consistency, because people want to be consistent in their words and deeds. If I asked you, "Hey Robert, would you come to my party Friday night? You're like, "Man, I got something to do Friday night, but you're like, yeah, I'll be there. Chances are you'll be there because you just want to be consistent. And when I wanted to Google something, when he was talking about, I asked him, "Hey, X, will you do me a favor? I'm gonna look down in my phone. Will you promise not to come out, come around the corner and shoot me while I'm looking down? He said, "Yeah, I'm not coming out. Go ahead. I just wanted him to stay there so we can figure out what we can do with him, and I was just tricking him just to stay there, you know, because most people, most people, when they say they're going to do something, they do it. Even like when we, I have a jumper, and we have a lot of jumpers in Dallas for some reason. They're on side of a bridge, on on side of a building. I would say, can you do me a favor and not jump while we're talking, and okay, I won't jump. Okay, can you just do me another favor? Step back because it's going to really mess me up if you fall or something like that. And if they step back, usually it's going to be a favorable outcome because they're being consistent. That's what I was trying to do to him, and just making him be consistent. And and I was looking down and reading some of the stuff he wanted me to read it had a lot to do with, and basically was the Seminole Wars. The Gullah Wars were Seminole Wars when all the slaves died and they fought with the the Native Americans and they were basically martyrs. They died for their cause, and I'm like, that's what he's that's what he wants to do. He wants to be a martyr like one of the in the Seminole Wars, all the slaves, all the Native Americans died because they were fighting, trying to fight for their freedom. That's what he was. That's what he was doing.
Robert Riggs
And what was he? What he was reading was it historically accurate?
Larry Gordon
Pretty much. The what I quickly read. Well, I quickly read while I was in the hallway, and that's what happened. They they were. It was in kind of Florida. Georgia line there. That's where the the I guess that's where the the fighting took place in the South there, and and they all died. Nobody survived, and that's what he wanted.
Robert Riggs
This is his aspiration,
Bob Owens
and nobody surrendered either. They all died.
Robert Riggs
Does he hear the robot coming?
Larry Gordon
Yes, he does. Interesting story about that. I, you know, 28 days prior, I just came back from Quantico. Right. Matter of fact, those those the team that I was with was downstairs outside the command post, texting me, "Hey, do you need us? I'm like, "Yes, I do. I needed. I actually needed some help, and because it was just me, and it was problematic sometimes with us with in SWAT. I don't know how they're doing it now, but oftentimes the negotiator be left by himself, and which is a terrible mistake. And you know, I was I was honestly when I was in SWAT, I was too close to the elephant. I didn't really see the problem with it until I left SWAT, and now I can back up and see the entire elephant. That was that's a bad strategy. But anyway, they were asking me. The FBI guys were asking me, "Hey, do you need help? Like, yes, please. And they were just going to come up and help me. You know, I needed somebody to talk to. I needed somebody to bounce stuff off of. And I talked to them for a while, and it was just, it was rough. It was rough just being there alone. I had another guy with me, but he had he was one of the negotiators, but he hadn't been to a school yet. He just got to SWAT, so um, I really needed um a lot of lot of input. So when I was in Quantico, um, I don't know if you remember when, um, the Bundy clan kind of sovereign citizens. They took over a a Federal Reserve in Burns, Oregon, for like a couple of weeks, and the FBI negotiated with them. And the guy who was doing the negotiation, the guys, the group that was doing the negotiations, taught our class in Quantico. Great negotiators, and they told us a story that they knew that HRT, the Hospice Rescue Team, was going to assault them eventually. So what the guy was named is Mark, the negotiator. What they did was they would pull the armored personnel carrier up and drop food off and medicine or whatever they need to drop off. So they knew that they were going to assault them off of that armored personnel carrier, so they would move every day. They would move it up and drop food off or whatever. Move it back, move it up, move it back. So the Bundy clan or whatever the the guy's name was, he got used to that. So it was like, okay, so whenever the APC move up, they wouldn't be alarmed. I did that with the robots. We had the robots in the hallway, and I would move them up, move them back, move them up, move them back. I would lie to them and said, "Hey, my robot is down, man. You know how city equipment is. I'm gonna move it back. He said, "Don't try anything funny, right? So I move it back, let him stay back for a few seconds, and I'll tell the guy, "Okay, move it back up. Okay, X is coming back up. We fixed it, and I got it to the point where he didn't mind it moving up and moving back, moving up because I didn't want him to shoot it when the when I switched him. And what happened was, when the robot was ready with the device, I told him it was a phone. I said, "I want to. I how I had to set it up to get him to receive the the robot. I told him it was a phone, and he wanted to listen to some Pandora and everything, whatever he said, but I told him the phone is ready. I said, "Can I? In case he kept asking for the robot, "Hey, where's the robot with the phone? And I'm asking my supervisor. I'm asking Sergeant Cyber, "Hey, man, where's that robot at? And it took him forever to get that robot put together, and that's another crazy story. But once it got on the floor, we all had to leave that floor because it was a pound a quarter c4, and this have we have never done this, we have never done this, and we didn't know that.
Larry Gordon
And and and when you have an explosive device, you don't want any radio frequency around it because it could set it off. So that's why we had to leave the floor. So I remember they were telling me, okay, the robot is here, and I was so into talking to him, I didn't realize all the other SWAT guys had left. It was just me, Sergeant Seibel, and another guy, Jerry Wante, and that was it. And I was looking behind me, and and I had previously looked behind me. There was the whole FBI SWAT team down the hall. I could see him. I was like, "Thank God we have some help. But you know, after that, I looked down there. It was just a robot, and that was it. Just us three on the on the. I'm like, oh my god, it's just me here. So I say the robot is here, and I had I asked my open ended question. That's some of the active listening skills to make him talk, and I scattered across the hallway with with the shield so he wouldn't shoot me to get in the stairwell. So when the device go off, it was concrete. We were we were safe. So once the the robot got down the hallway, I could hear it passing out door, and I'm like, "Hurry up, robot! Hurry up! Go faster! Go faster! Now, and I asked him, "Hey, can you guide the robot in? He's and he almost got me. He said, "I know that robot has a camera on it. You're lying. I said, "Yeah, you're right. It has a camera, but a camera looks 90 degrees. It can't see the tracks at the bottom. I don't want him to just be hitting the wall. He said, "Okay, because I wanted him looking at the robot when it went off, just for the overpressure, but just the overpressure of that device may not kill him. It incapacitate him. That's what we wanted. But on the on the video, when the robot turned toward him to put the device toward him, you can see him laying prone, looking for us and not looking at the robot, thinking we're coming behind the robot. And then I wasn't down there looking at the camera, but they said he looked up at the robot. And what happened was Mark had had the had the device and the clamps of the robot, and he said, "All it look like a it looks like a robot holding the bomb. So basically, what he did was put black trash bags over it and put masking tape around it. And when I looked at the robot, it actually looked like a person. When I looked down all the way down the hall, because we had knocked all the lights out, so it wouldn't backlight us, so he couldn't see us. It actually like a person standing down there with muscles because it was taped up, and it was just yeah, it just had a frame. Like, is that a person? Like, no, it's the robot. Like, oh, okay. And when it turned, I'm sure that's what he looked at. He like, what is this? And then that's when it went off. And after it went off, he shot again. He started shooting again after it went off. But it was just him flinching from the his finger on the trigger.
Robert Riggs
What do you say, your niece or others, even listeners, for African Americans that feel like, particularly males that feel like they're treated differently?
Larry Gordon
And it's some validity to it because I mean, your perception is your reality.
Robert Riggs
Yes.
Larry Gordon
If you perceive that it's true, so it's incumbent upon us, on the police department, the officers, to refute that, to to have some empathy, have empathy, and and that's why I teach de-escalation and I teach this stuff because I to officers because you may think it's a bunch of nonsense, but it's not to that person. That and that was that was just a line of demarcation for me, July seven, 2016, because it it changed me, maybe a different person, because I would like, oh come on, we're not doing that, we're not beating people, we're not whatever their gripe is. Well, it's real to them. If they feel it, this is going on. It is real. It's real, regardless of what people feel. It's it's real, and we have to address it as police. We have to address that.
Robert Riggs
Well, thank you so much for talking to us. Any closing thoughts for the listeners?
Larry Gordon
Um, one thing I can think of is for the listeners: if you do see a shooting, police shooting, read about it, delve into it. Just don't look at it because people think social media is actually the media, but it's not. It's just people's opinion most of the time. So I would I would say to people just look into it and you know and hold everyone accountable, hold us accountable, and hold suspects accountable.
Robert Riggs
Bob, tell us about the book.
Bob Owens
Yeah, I'd like to make a plug for the book regarding the the july 7 shootout. It's called Standoff, Race Policing, and a Deadly Assault That Ripped a Nation by Jamie Thompson. It's I know I've I've got the hard copy here and I've got it on Audible myself. Excellent book and tells the whole story in a lot more detail than from the beginning and a lot of the other players besides Larry and the SWAT people. You know some some citizens that are there. I think it's really good story storytelling where you tell the story from different points of view. It's not just the police point of view or the suspect's point of view. It's kind of everybody's point of view that was out there. So excellent book. Highly recommend it. Standoff by Jamie Thompson.
Robert Riggs
Well, you know, we went. We had an incident here last night. I'm awakened at, gosh, two a.m. and I know what it is. It's somebody's driving on their wheels. You know, iron. You hear iron on pavement, and I'm like, what? The world ends up in my front, in the front of me, and one officer, an African American officer, Caucasian driver, and not following any instructions. You know, telling him I'm sure he was running, trying to run the check. He's and the guy keeps trying to get out of the car and open the you know stay in the car. And then finally, the guy just gets out of the car and starts coming, and does follow the order to sit on the curb, and then the guy is just becomes going off, screaming, hollering, kicking, banging-not against the officer, just crazy, crazy man, look like drugs, but of and I I've got a license to carry, and I wouldn't got it, I didn't go out, but I. Worried for the officer, and then eventually there were seven officers out there. But I tell you what I was struck by was the patience and restraint. Nobody raised their voices. At one point, the guy decided to get up and try to go, and three officers sat him back down. Didn't throw him down. Set him back down. Finally, got him handcuffed, and then he starts screaming that they're hurting him and everything. And then he gets in the squad car, and now and he's you. I mean, it's screaming clearly a mental thing going on, screaming that it's hot and he can't breathe. And they call an ambulance. Paramedics came, checked him out. He's fine, and you know they, but for about two hours, seven units were tied up here, and and I really just kind of felt they're all trying to make sure we follow protocol process. Nobody gets hurt, and and in a first responders, but I was I did say I wouldn't want to do that. Right, that's hard, hard to take.
Larry Gordon
It's it's a hard job. And one thing we used to do, I think we did it with Lieutenant Owens. No, maybe you were gone at the time. We put some of the citizens through what we call reality based training (RBT) and most of them fail miserably, shot everybody, and just normal, just normal, you know, normal scenarios. And it's a very difficult job, very difficult.
Robert Riggs
Larry Gordon, thank you so much. Bob Owens, thank you for bringing him here from your days together in SWAT. Stay tuned. We'll be back next week. We want to be your favorite true crime podcast, so please recommend us to your friends and leave a review wherever you listen. If you want to receive updates and bonus interviews, join our true crime community at truecrimereporter.com. If you have suggestions or know of a case that we should look into, email us at [email protected]. This podcast is a trademarked and copyrighted news organization based in Dallas, Texas. You can read more about our news [email protected]. Thanks for listening to our journey into darkness.
