Escaped Inmate Hostage Rescue

Jon Becker: On the afternoon of July 11th 2022 at about 2 pm, two Hamilton County Ohio sheriff's deputies observed an escapee from the River City Correctional Facility in Cincinnati in the parking lot of the Baymont Inn Hotel.

Although they were unable to make a positive identification before the suspect entered the hotel, they contacted the Mason Police Department for support. A Mason officer learned that the female observed in the parking lot with the suspect, whom she had just met was registered to room ‘310’. The two detectives as well as several additional Mason police officers knocked on the door of the room, and were immediately met with screaming, yelling, profanity and threats of violence made by the suspect.

Mason Police immediately requested the assistance of the Warren County Tactical Response Unit. The suspect then barricaded himself inside the room keeping the woman as a hostage and threatening to kill her if officers came through the door. Several times a suspect was seen at the window and officers observed a knife in his hand.

WCTRU used a negotiator through the night to talk to the suspect but at approximately 2:30 a.m. As negotiations broke down, the team forced entry into room 310 and observed the suspect holding a knife to the host's throat. A single TRU member fired one round into the suspect's face ending the standoff, and recovering the hostage.

In keeping with our standard policy, we will not be using the suspect's name or identifying him in any way. It is our hope that he will be lost to the sands of time. We will of course be using the officers' names because they are heroes, and need to be remembered.

My guests today are Sergeant Nate Trout who has been with the Lebanon Police Department for 16 years, and the tactical response unit for 13. Sergeant Jim Doddy who has been with the Warren County Sheriff's Office for 19 years and apart of the tactical response unit for 17 years, and Deputy Scott Williams a 25-year veteran of the Warren County Sheriff's Office and a 21 year veteran of the team.

My name is Jon Becker.

For the past four decades, I've dedicated my life to protecting tactical operators. During this time, I've worked with many of the world's top law enforcement and military units. As a result, I've had the privilege of working with the amazing leaders who take teams into the world's most dangerous situations.

The goal of this podcast is to share their stories in hopes of making us all better leaders, better thinkers, and better people.

Welcome to The Debrief!

Jon Becker: Guys thanks for being here. I appreciate you joining me on the Debrief.

Jim Doddy: Thanks for having us.

Scott Williams: There you go.

Jon Becker: So why don't we start with just kind of your individual backgrounds, how long you been on the team and all of that.

Jim Doddy: So next month will be 17 years total for me. Been a team leader for I want to say like 10 of those and that's been it. I've had other ancillary jobs on the team grenadier stuff like that but the bulk of it has been just entry and an entry team leader.

Jon Becker: Scott.

Scott Williams: Yeah, it was 2001 I think when I started getting involved with the team, back when it was old school tactics, old school ways of doing it and then it just kind of graduated in. I moved up the ranks of an assistant team leader to a team leader. Position came up open as the assistant commander, and I've been that for several years now.

Jon Becker: Got it. Nate, what about you?

Nate Trout: In February 2011 is when I started on the team so 13 years. Been a cop for 16. I took over team commander about 6 months prior to this call out that we're here for. So a couple years now but two and a half years now.

Jon Becker: Okay. Talk to me about the team right because it's always nice to give context to where we are. Nate explain the team me because multi-jurisdictional regional team, like there's a lot going on here, so help help me understand it.

Nate Trout: So the State of Ohio really doesn't have very many full-time teams, very few you. I think less than five. So it's very common to see multi-jurisdictional teams. Some counties have multiple. So you have like two or three agencies that make up one team, and like a sheriff's office and one other agency will make another team. Ours is different in the fact that we're the only one in the county. So every major agency like full-time agency, we have a few that don't contribute. Those are really small agencies, they contribute officers. There is no cap on it, so you can pretty much if somebody said, “We want to add six people” as long as they meet the criteria then we would take them.

Jon Becker: Oh nice.

Nate Trout: So we don't have that magic number. Right now we’re at 26. Every agency that contribute officers they're Chief or Sheriff I guess also they make up a policy board and that's how we're governed. So policy board picks Commander, assistant Commander by the policy they wrote. We have a meeting once a month with them. We can't spend any money without policy board approval, doesn't matter what the amount is. They approve our training schedule, and we give them a debrief on every single call that we have at those meetings also.

Jon Becker: So 26 operators, how's that kind of configured, split in two teams?

Nate Trout: We don't split. So it's just one team. The way that we respond to callouts though and the reason why there's a Commander, Assistant Commander and why that's important, is because whatever agency calls us they technically are the ones in charge.

Jon Becker: Oh interesting.

Nate Trout: So whoever is the On-scene Commander there could be a road Sergeant could be the chief it really doesn't matter whoever the ranking person is they are the one that is in charge of that incident. So when we respond then we'll give them a tactical solution to the problem that they have, and it's up to them if they want to utilize that or not.

Jon Becker: So that local jurisdiction is the Incident Commander and it stays that way and you are providing a service to that Incident Commander.

Nate Trout: Absolutely.

Jon Becker: Very interesting. How many jurisdictions or agencies are currently in the team?

Nate Trout: Eight.

Jon Becker: Eight separate agencies comprise the team. Give me an idea how many cities there are in the county?

Nate Trout: Oh, that's it.

Jon Becker: So every agency in the county contributes to the team.

Nate Trout: We have small villages. So in Ohio you have townships, cities, villages and like unincorporated areas that would fall under a township. So usually the sheriff's office will cover townships; some townships have their own police departments. We have two township police departments that are on the team. And then you have a city that has to be 5,000 residents or more, anything smaller than that's a village. So we don't have any village officers on the team.

Jon Becker: Because it's 5,000.

Scott Williams: Yeah, most of those village officers are full-time, part time thing.

Jon Becker: A guy that's just part time.

Scott Williams: Yeah one of our rules is you have to be a full-time officer.

Jon Becker: Yeah got it. What's the op tempo for the team like? How many Ops a year are you doing, and kind of what's your what's your bread and butter work?

Nate Trout: We do 14 to 26. So we've averaged one a month. This last month we had four. It just kind of depends. There's no rhyme or reason and there's no favorite month either. It just seems like whatever it is that's what it is. So we might go two months with nothing, and then we might have a month with six or eight.

Jim Doddy: We have a very good relationship with our drug task force. And they realize that some of the things that they're lacking are the tactics when they're doing their drug stuff. So they ask us to help out with that. Pretty much any kind of entry that needs to be made, or a surrounding call out something like that they just rely on us, so that's probably our bread and butter with it.

A lot of barricades, suicidals things like that. If it's a suicidal male, or if it's a suicidal person that's armed we still come out. Our tactics are significantly different, but we still respond. I know it's a ‘hot bed’ topic but we've got a team, we've got equipment, we're going to respond out.

Jon Becker: Suicides has become a real because frequently what happens with suicides is the agency or team goes out there and ends up killing the guy, which feels kind of counterproductive. The goal is to not get him to kill himself. Talk to me a little bit about is there a state team in Ohio that you can turn to, or are you the last resort for your county?

Scott Williams: We are absolutely the last resort for our County. We have a state team. We have a state highway patrol and we don't have a state police department. So state patrol that handles anything state owned prisons things like that they take care of vehicle crashes, speeding tickets, stuff like that. But as far as incidents inside of the county, outside of a prison we are the one-stop shop we handle that.

Jon Becker: Got it. I think one of the things that that gets lost in especially with multi-jurisdictional teams is people think, “Well there's these small towns these small counties” like yeah in the end it doesn't really matter how big the town or county is like in this case it's a hostage rescue and it should be a problem.

Scott Williams: Exactly.

Jon Becker: So maybe like Scott why don't we start with the beginning of this. How does this thing kick off initially? And then how do you guys get involved?

Scott Williams: So days before this starts: there's jails inside of Hamilton County. Hamilton County is just south of us. Hamilton County encompasses the city of Cincinnati.

Jon Becker: Okay, so you guys are just north of Cincinnati.

Scott Williams: Exactly. We're the county just north of Cincinnati.

Jon Becker: Got it.

Scott Williams: So two inmates escape from a halfway house. They're court ordered there, they went to prison. They're in this getting rehabilitation. Don't think anything of it for a couple days ‘cause it's Hamilton County's thing, they're doing their thing trying to locate them.

Jon Becker: What were the inmates in for?

Scott Williams: I only know one of them. One of them had a pretty bad rap sheet, but ultimately he struck his three-month-old child several times, spit in the child's face, and ended up recording the thing.

Jon Becker: This is our guy.

Scott Williams: This is our guy.

Nate Trout: That's why he went to the-- so he had he had time on the books. He originally went to prison for a shooting. So he went to prison for a shooting that occurred in Cincinnati then went to the halfway house after he got violated probably by his prole or probation whatever it was for that video he made with the three-month old.

Jon Becker: Yeah beating his three-month old child and spitting on him.

Jim Doddy: Not a real nice guy.

Jon Becker: No. Yeah, he's pretty much already pegged me. These two escape.

Scott Williams: Where this takes place is inside the city of Mason. City of Mason, a beautiful city. I think it's the seventh safest city in the United States. I mean they do a great job. It's a massive tourism. It's the home of Proctor and Gamble Fortune 500 companies, just a great city. There's a massive theme park there. The ATP tennis tournament is there.

Jon Becker: What's ATP theme park out of curiosity?

Scott Williams: Kings Island. I'm working a day shift that day patrolling the area around the city of Mason, and I start hearing grumblings about something going on at a hotel on Beach Boulevard which is up by the theme park. Don't really pay much attention to it because it's all like the road supervisor - call this detective - make these phone calls - something going on at the beach here. I really don't know what's going on. We have an app on our phone that we all share information with and somebody says, “Hey something's going on at the Baymont Inn on Beach Boulevard FYI”.

So I'm like “Okay, it's near my shift change. I'm going to head up there”. As I'm headed up there is when the city of Mason formally requests the Tactical Unit respond up that way. Ultimately what happened was Hamilton County detectives see the suspect in the parking lot they are able to confirm that's him he meets a girl an unknown girl in the parking lot they go into the hotel and ultimately get a room. They go up to the third floor and she has actually rented the room, room 310. They go into room 310 and that’s kind of what kicks this off.

Jon Becker: The Hamilton County detectives they're looking for this guy.

Scott Williams: Absolutely. They're doing phone pings everything they can do, they've gotten a tip. Somehow they knew that we need to check this hotel and sure enough it pans out.

Jon Becker: Got it. So they trace them up to room 310, you said?

Scott Williams: Yep, so 310.

Jon Becker: They pinned this down, they still don't know who the girl is. At this point you guys have been activated. What happens next?

Scott Williams: The three of us are all working. We pretty much get there at the same time, maybe within two minutes of each other we're rolling up on scene. We kind of asked “What do you got? Here's the situation.” When the door shut they went up and knocked on the door and said front desk.

Jon Becker: Oh room service.

Scott Williams: Room service, and he sees that he immediately runs to the window thinks that he's going to jump out the window but it's the third floor we know from the interview after the fact with Kelly (the woman inside the room) that she says looks down and says, “There's cops everywhere”. Turns the door says, “You come in here, I'm going to kill her”. And that starts the hostage situation.

Jon Becker: Yes, now we have like a righteous hostage situation. He's manifested intent to kill her.

Nate Trout: Well, there was some questions.

Scott Williams: There's some questions there though because we don't know who she is, does she know him, does she not know him his girlfriend, is she a willing participant. Through the night, we just don't know enough to make that decision until a certain time when something kicks off and we're like that made our decision for us.

Jon Becker: Got it. So Nate you guys get there and you're starting to do the initial investigation right? Obviously, different county, their dirtbag, now you're problem like what is your initial investigation?

When you guys first get there what are you doing for homework what information are you getting and gathering?

Nate Trout: We were a little behind just because we didn't find out that any of this was really going on till then. So Scott had heard it on the radio. The three of us were all work that day. I mean we started working at 8:00 in the morning. What time do we get the call like 3:45?

Scott Williams: 3:45.

Nate Trout: We're all getting ready to leave at 8 at 4:00. So we had already worked the whole day. I didn't hear anything about it. I don't think you heard anything about it so when we get there I looked at Scott I was like “What is going on?” Because in our county you don't usually have just a swarm of cops somewhere without us all knowing what's going on.

Jon Becker: Yeah, because I mean this is small agencies.

Nate Trout: We all know each other.

Jon Becker: All know each other.

Nate Trout: Yeah, so it's not like something big can't happen without us already all knowing so that was automatically odd and originally we were told that there was two females in there and that he had a gun in there. When we first got there we did a little bit of research with the units that were on scene. They had a whole task force assigned just to those two inmates.

So there's at least 20 of them there. I would say they had their command staff that had a lieutenant and a couple sergeants that were there just in charge of the detectives that were looking for the two. So we of course went back, and him kind of split the difference between the command people that were there just talking about  how did you get to this location.

Jon Becker: How do I know what you're telling me is true?

Nate Trout: How did any of this happen? I mean honestly the way it sounded and the way it was coming out so quickly they relayed real quick that he was going to kill her, he was in a hotel room with her just barricaded himself in there and that was all before we got there. I got on the app and I was like “The page hasn't even gone out yet but we need an immediate entry team right now. So whoever gets there get your stuff and run up there as fast as you can.”

So we did get a chance to slow things down a little bit, which was good. But originally I thought the three of us were going to be the entry team to go up in there, because we just didn't have a whole lot of information first responding.

Jon Becker: Everything about this is pointing to the crisis entry right of the gate.

Nate Trout: We didn't know who they were. I mean we border Haland County and Mason is not far from the county line. So where we were was not far from Haland County.

Jon Becker: How big is Mason?

Nate Trout: Population wise?

Jon Becker: Pretty small town?

Jim Doddy: No.

Scott Williams: It's probably got a daytime population of 70,000.

Jon Becker: Okay.

Scott Williams: Probably 50 full-time officers somewhere around there.

Nate Trout: I think it's more than that.

Scott Williams: Maybe more than that.

Jon Becker: I mean 70,000 is fairly big.

Nate Trout: In Ohio, it's fairly big.

Jon Becker: Now you got Mason guys on your team?

Nate Trout: Yes.

Jon Becker: How many Mason guys are on the team?

Scott Williams: Three, right? At the time or now?

Nate Trout: I'm trying to think at the time it's different.

Scott Williams: Yeah, somewhere around there.

Jon Becker: All right, so when do you first make contact or start to get direct-- because everything you're getting up until now is kind of secondhand intelligence? When do you start to get like your own direct intelligence?

Nate Trout: Probably not until we made contact by phone.

Scott Williams: So, as this is all going on the officers outside the door are shouting through the door and have a line of communication. It's not a good one but there's conversation between the doors that's kind of getting funneled to us.

So, we get the hotel evacuated as soon as we get enough guys together, send them upstairs with just whatever equipment we had in our cars in case we had to do a deliberate entry. We have a breaching shotgun, but we didn't have it at the time. We just took a 12 gauge shotgun with double auto up. Halligan tool, a ram whatever we had just in case this goes sideways.

Then as officers started showing up on scene our SWAT guys started showing up on scene they started relieving Road Patrol officers, and we can start formulating plans when all of our equipment starts to get in there. So we're replacing the shotgun, our patrol shotgun with a breaching shotgun start getting explosives together things like that, and getting ready in case we do have to do a to deliberate entry.

Jon Becker: Got it. So this kicks off 3:20 something what time does the full team get on scene or whatever full team you're going to have? How long does it take you to get everybody there?

Nate Trout: Yeah go ahead.

Jim Doddy: So I showed up fairly quick right after Scott and Nate. Nate had sent out after the initial page like “Hey, this is like a legit hostage rescue”, and so immediately I'm like we get in there. We got to get up there in case there's an emergency entry.

So it ended up being me, and three other guys that had just rolled up unseen in the patrol vehicles. We had no team equipment there like we said, we just grabbed everything we could out of our cars rolled up. So me and three dudes relieve the patrol guys, and then slowly his guys started kind of coming in, filtering more guys inside. So we kind of had it now.

We went from basic four-man emergency entry team too now we got enough guys that we can kind of start formulating a deliberate entry plan, and kind of get more resources in place. So kind of filtered I would say everybody was in probably within an hour.

Jon Becker: Oh okay yeah so it's 4:30/5 o'clockish and now you've got full team on scene.

Jim Doddy: Yeah.

Jon Becker: At what point do you guys take over? I'm going to use the word “negotiation” but it doesn't sound by your initial reactions that negotiation. What was happening through the door?

Scott Williams: I think our first phone call was made to him around 5:20. By this time he has a phone. It's Kelly's phone (the woman with him) he's calling everybody so by this time his mom is on scene. We push them all over to a different parking lot that's not visible to where he is. So Mom comes up and says, “Hey, I've got him on the phone here”. We're able to get that phone number, set up our negotiator, set up their equipment. And then once we get the road Patrol officers out of there, we start making phone calls to him.

Jon Becker: I'm sure mom being on scene was really helpful too.

Scott Williams: The local police department did a great job of keeping that aside from it.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's not going to end well for her son. Okay, you first made contact with him what's he say?

Nate Trout: He wasn't cooperative at all. He was playing games with us. He demanded we call him “Lord Super Sexy” on the phone.

Scott Williams: We didn't do that.

Nate Trout: We didn't do that. He just didn't really want anything he didn't ask for anything he always asked to see his people which--

Scott Williams: All he wanted.

Nate Trout: There was probably 50 people that were related to him that eventually showed up.

Scott Williams: In the course of an hour.

Jon Becker: Oh.

Scott Williams: By the time this was done there were over a hundred people that just saw it on the news and came.

Jon Becker: Crowd control problem now too.

Scott Williams: We didn't see any part of that and they did. I don't know what officers were involved in it but they did a great job because it never got to us. We don't know.

Nate Trout: That's really kind of a separate call inside of the overall call because that had to be handled, and we didn't have the ability to do that. We're dealing with the hostage in the hostage rescue situation. We don't have time to deal with a crowd control problem also. But it was very one-sided. He was calling everybody and telling him where he was and to come up there. So there was probably like 100 people.

Jon Becker: So he's building a show.

Nate Trout: Yeah.

Scott Williams: Yeah.

Nate Trout: That's what he wanted.

Jon Becker: Going to get it.

As you're going back with Lord Super Sexy what point do you find out about the girl and like what her relationship to him is?

Nate Trout: Like I said we were originally told two females. I think that kind of got lost in translation because the other inmate he escaped with met up with his girlfriend and they all four were in the hotel at one point.

I'm not really 100% sure where that information came from. We found out pretty quick, it was just Kelly that was in there with him.

We went for a long period of time with no contact with her at all and with him. I mean it was over two hours probably.

Scott Williams: Yeah, from start to finish we made 260 phone calls to him over the period of 10 hours, just trying to build a report. A lot of times he kick us to voicemail, wouldn't pick up.

We knew pretty quick the first negotiator that talked to him had butted heads. Something wasn't right there. I think it's just because he was the first negotiator to talk to him. Once things started to calm down a little bit, our negotiators switched out and that negotiator Adam started to get a rapport with him, started talking to him, the phone calls lasted longer, starting to get a little bit more information.

At the same time Doddy's up in the hallway he's hearing stuff through the door conversation. So it's still we're not sure, is she a willing participant, is she a hostage. We just didn't know.

Jon Becker: Yeah, is this a two-person barricade or hostage situation?

Scott Williams: Absolutely.

Nate Trout: He was living it up initially ‘cause he could see the news crews out there, and so he was at the front of the hotel on the third floor. So he had the window open. He was like waving his knife around and stuff and the third floor window initially, and we had snipers out there. We did not at that time have enough to say, yeah she's a hostage. She's not willing to--

Jon Becker: Yeah, him waving a knife in a window is not a reason to kill him.

Nate Trout: We never saw her from the window, so we didn't have enough at that at that time and then he quit doing that pretty quick.

Jon Becker: He may have seen your long guns. Don’t need a math major to figure out that's not going to go well at some point.

Scott Williams: He had shut the blinds pretty quick, and then never looked out again.

Jon Becker: He figured that out.

Scott Williams: Yeah.

Jon Becker: It's unfortunate. What point do you discover who this girl is and what their relationship is?

Scott Williams: Our negotiators eventually talk to her on the phone and they find out her name's Kelly Rose, able to get a Facebook profile.

The brief conversations that they had with her wasn't enough because he kept interrupting it. So it wasn't enough to say, why are you there. The negotiator couldn't talk to her one on-one. It was with him there. So we started piecing things together.

Family members were telling us “Oh she's so and so”. So we were able to find her Facebook profile that kind of said okay that's who she is but still.

Jon Becker: Who is she? How does she end up with this dirt-bag in a hotel room?

Scott Williams: So the story that we got was she is getting a room there for the night. They have a mutual friend in common and a woman in common. It may have even been his girlfriend I'm not sure but calls Kelly and says, “Hey, Cromwell needs a place to stay for the night. Can he stay with you tonight? He's got a warrant and needs to hide”, something along those lines. And she says, “Yeah that's fine” That's kind of how it kicks off in the parking lot.

Nate Trout: So supposedly they had never met prior to them. I don't know if she actually knew if he was one of the escaped inmates. I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't. I wouldn't be surprised if she did. I don't know but they were acquaintances, but I don't think they were any kind of relationship or anything like that.

Jon Becker: Nothing you're saying so far flips the hostage switch.

Nate Trout: Correct.

Jon Becker: She invited him into her room, and she's dumb enough to hang out with this guy. It's not feeling like you need deliberate entry yet.

Scott Williams: It's not a deliberate entry, but it's also not let's just throw some gas in there and see what happens we were beyond that. We're like “Arg, we're not comfortable doing that”.

Jon Becker: Yeah, because if in fact that is it whatever action you take may launch him.

Scott Williams: Correct.

Jon Becker: Yeah, this is a hard one.

Scott Williams: Yeah. At what point does the negotiation change? How long are we doing this? 260 phone calls, nonproductive, he's playing games inviting friends putting on his own little show.

Jim Doddy: Sure. We got a pretty good feeling from the guys up there in the hallway that there was somebody smoking meth in the room. They could smell it. Whenever that odor would come along he would calm down and then when that odor would go away he'd start getting more agitated.

As the night went on, his agitation at the peak was getting worse. There were times where he would calm but it was getting worse at the peak, and then all of a sudden it just kind of went stagnant.

Not until about 10:00/10:15 is where we decided we needed to do, something small. So the decisions were made we're going to shut the Wi-Fi off which is going to kill the TVs, and we're going to shut the air conditioning off ‘cause it was hot. I don't know what the temperature was but it was probably 90% humidity, 90 some degrees out it was hot.

Nate Trout: So it was middle of July, and it was hot that day.

Scott Williams: The hotel manager says, “I can shut off the air conditioning but it has to be the entire floor, and I can shut off the Wi-Fi to the entire building.” We said, “Do it”.

That ultimately sparks a response. That sparks him calling us and says, “What's going on? I don't like this”. He ultimately says, “I don't like the fact that I can't see myself on TV, you need to turn the TV back on”.

At that same time he says, “Hey, Kelly has a dog in here, this dog needs to go to the bathroom. You need to figure out how going to get the dog out of here.” So that conversation started because he called us so we were like “Okay this worked”.

Jon Becker: Got it.

Scott Williams: Ultimately a few minutes later once that phone call was made, decisions made, we're going to reroute his phone. He's had carte blanche to call whoever he wants to. We get a hold of Verizon, and we have his phone or her phone redirected to our negotiator phone.

Jon Becker: So he now has one friend as a negotiator.

Scott Williams: Absolutely. No matter who he calls on his phone it rings.

Jon Becker: Phone a friend will always be the negotiator.

Scott Williams: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Got it. I guess that probably doesn't go over particularly well.

Scott Williams: There's an interesting phone call that all of our phone calls that our negotiators made are recorded, and it's an interesting phone call he's like “Wait a minute why are you talking?”

Jon Becker: You called me.

Scott Williams: “What number is this?” And our negotiator goes, “You called me.” He goes, “No, I didn't.” He gets a little agitated but not--

Jon Becker: To be fair he's on meth, it's very confusing.

Scott Williams: At the time it worked great, it got the response that we wanted.

Nate Trout: We never done that before.

Jon Becker: Really?

Nate Trout: No.

Jon Becker: What made you decide to do that as a tactic when you hadn't used it before? Where did you learn that you could do that?

Nate Trout: One of our negotiators.

Jon Becker: Really?

Scott Williams: Yeah, they had heard about it or read about it he goes, “I think that we can redirect his phone” and we're like “How do you do that?” He goes, “Hold on let me call Verizon”. Call Verizon, Verizon says, “I'm going to email you this form to fill out this form. We'll take care of it.”

So he fills it out on his phone, emails it back within a few minutes they said it's done, “Any phone call he makes will go to you”. They ultimately said, “You had two decisions: we can shut the phone off completely where it won't call but you will not be able to call it”.

Jon Becker: Which you don't want.

Scott Williams: Absolutely, “Or we can redirect all phone calls to you”. He said, “That's what we want”. And they took care of it.

Jon Becker: All right, so now he's hot, he can't see himself on TV and the only friend he has is you.

Nate Trout: It's about right.

Jon Becker: What is the next step? Are we getting closer now to a resolution on who she is or why she's there?

Nate Trout: That's right around when her mom called him.

Scott Williams: Yeah so there's a lot that takes place in between there's a conversation that Nate has with Doddy and says, “How effective are we right now? You guys have been in place, no air conditioning, kitted up, ready for a hostage rescue for hours. How effective are we?”

And that's a conversation that these two have, and they'll have to fill you in on that because it ultimately leads to us doing something we've never done before.

Jim Doddy: So Nate had come up to the hotel. I walked down to the far end from away from the room so we could talk. He posed that question to me. I kind of thought about it. I was like “Man most of the guys had worked day shift. Ee'd been in place kind of jocked up ready to go for this hostage rescue if need be”. Since about 4:00 it's reaching 8 o'clock. By the time we had this conversation I said, “Dude if you can get us some relief by 10, I think the guys are good for a couple more hours. If you can get us some water and some food in between get us some relief by 10, I think we're good till then.” So ultimately that sparked Nate calling another team.

Jon Becker: Yeah I mean you guys are 12 hours and 90 and 90 in gear.

Jim Doddy: In gear. Yeah. the good thing for us at the time though was since the PD had evacuated the entire hotel we owned everything. So all the doors were open to us. We didn't have to worry about anybody else on any floor.

So at some point we started kind of cycling guys out of the stack like “Hey go sit down for a minute so we could kind of dip into these”.

Jon Becker: Air condition is still working on the second floor, I'm assuming.

Jim Doddy: We never left the floor, everybody was still on the third floor. We just had them go sit down and relax. But it was still fairly taxing.

Jon Becker: So as team commander, you're wondering about your operational effectiveness.

Scott Williams: Yeah when we started to get to a point where we weren't making a whole lot of progress with him, and I was like how long can you actually stand in all way ready to do a hostage rescue at any moment, and still be effective as effective as you should be. That's why I went up. I was like “I need to do a face to face with him” ‘cause he's been up there the whole time just to get the real world picture of it and that's what he told me. So I was like “We got to get started.

We have never done that before. I don't know if it happened prior to me being on the team, if we have ever called another team for anything. I can't think of why we would have.

Jim Doddy: We have a neighboring jurisdiction that we work really well with, and if there's some sort of presidential detail. There's a lot of politicians that come to the county. We'll call them for help but we've never given over a scene to anyone.

Scott Williams: We have called them to augment us.

Jim Doddy: Yeah to help out but we've never passed off before.

Jon Becker: So what's the other county that you call?

Nate Trout: Well it's not a county.

Jon Becker: Or the other team?

Nate Trout: The other team is Westchester Township which is in Butler County which neighbors us. There's two counties North of Hamilton County, Butler and Warren. So they are just on the other side of the county and into Butler.

We did not call them because they do not have explosive breaching capabilities. So we pretty quickly all three of us kind of had the same idea that this has got to be at least initiated by explosive breaching, and they don't have that capability at all.

So we ended up calling the Hamilton County Police Association. So there's Cincinnati, and then there's Hamilton County, the agencies that make up the rest of the county that's not Cincinnati.

So they have two teams: Cincinnati has their own team and Hamilton County Police Association has their own team. We called them because we knew they had the explosive breach capabilities. Scott you can tell them how that call went ‘cause he was the one that contacted.

Scott Williams: Yeah, I got a hold of their commander explaining the situation he said, “Absolutely we'll come out but I need the sheriff to request us”. I go “Okay”.

So I ended up calling our chief deputy and I said “Chief here's what we got going on. Can you make his phone call?” He says, “Give me a minute”. He makes the phone call. I call the commander back, he said, “We're on our way”. I said, “All right, here's where we are stage where you want once you get here we'll fill in”.

So it was probably an hour before they started showing up with equipment and members. And they ultimately decided that they were going to meet off site, maybe a couple hundred yards and then come in together as a team just kind of stay away from their command post.

Jon Becker: Sure. You made the call 8:00, 8:30, 9:00.

Nate Trout: It was around 9, and they started showing up around 10.

Jon Becker: 10.

Scott Williams: Yeah I think I forget what time. We put them or escorted them up. You guys know if it was we got relief at 11 o'clock?

Jim Doddy: So my Hope was when Nate and I talked that we would have relief by 10 and it was almost an hour and a half past that so like I said guys had been in place ready to go since 4, it's now about 11:30, I think or right around there when the other team was escorted up to the third floor and started relieving us on our positions.

Scott Williams: Ultimately we didn't get what we wanted because their explosive breachers were unavailable. So once we put our heads together the decisions made HCPA will take over but they need Nate and I to stay and they need our explosive breachers to stay.

Everyone else take their kits off we're going to send them somewhere to get some relief but we stayed on scene, so that they had their own command post. We had our own command post that had the negotiators inside of it.

So Nate decides, “I'll stay with our negotiators”. I go into Hamilton County's command post so that we have a radio channel in common, and we just start feeding each other information on anything new or anything that happens.

Meanwhile our team that was in the hotel is moved to a fire department maybe half mile down the road, and they basically take over that fire department, hit the recliners, they think they were sleeping on tables, recliners.

Nate Trout: Dudes were racked out everywhere.

Jon Becker: Sleeping on ping pong tables eating pancakes and playing Xbox.

Scott Williams: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Firemen and prostitutes the only two get paid for sleeping while on job.

Scott Williams: Yeah.

Jon Becker: This is evolving right where are we with a tactical solution to this? Have you already placed charges? You guys already come up with what your direct action plan is going to be if you have or deliberate action if you have to?

Jim Doddy: Initially it was just four guys we got up there made a real ad hoc like hey if this goes right now before we get other resources then this is what's going to happen. As guys and resources started kind of filtering in that plan slowly changed. We finally got some explosive breachers like they had already set up.

We knew from the Hamilton County detectives that he had barricaded the door with some furniture. But while we were up there we could hear them moving about inside the room using the restroom back and forth. It's barricaded but how barricaded is it?

So my initial fear was, if we put an explosive charge on the door, it would have to be too big to defeat all of that barricade which would put us too far away for minimum safe distance.

So the initial plan was to work the door with breaching shotgun, and follow it up with a ram if need be, and then we had two water charges one placed in the adjoining room to the right and one in a common bathroom wall to the room on the left.

Once that was in place I'm going to say all of that with the breachers and everything in place was probably about 5:30, maybe about 6 o’clock, and that’s how we kind of hung out until relief at about 11:30 like this is it. If we're got to do a deliberate or an emergency entry, it's all going to go on the same.

Jon Becker: Got it. But your breachers are going to be the ones that initiate the charge, and then their team will make the entry.

Jim Doddy: Yep. Yes.

Jon Becker: You guys had not trained with these guys previously?

Scott Williams: No. They did tell us right off the rip they said, “We will go in if we have to go in if he starts to harm her, but other than that it's up to you”. “We're going to sit out here, get you guys the rest that you need, but if you guys decide to go in and I respect that.”

Jon Becker: It's not their problem.

Scott Williams: Absolutely.

Jon Becker: They're doing you a favor, it's not their problem. If you're going to make a deliberate assault then it is your problem like he starts stabbing her or something they're going to move. Seems like a reasonable position.

Scott Williams: Absolutely.

Jon Becker: So what happens next? What's the next step forward?

Nate Trout: He posted a Facebook live video.

Deranged suspect: “Man shut the fuck up. What’s up y'all. I don't know what's wrong with people nowadays. I think y'all think this shit's a game. I think you think this shit is funny. Do you think this shit is funny? Do you think this shit is fucking funny? Do you think it's funny? I know it's dark, but I'm saying why the fuck y'all think this shit a game? See y'all keep playing with me man.

Hey, I told you what the fuck I wanted. I told you to stop talking to me unless I get it. You don't want shit to turn up then do what the fuck I said. I told you, I want to talk to my people. I'm trying to let her have a fucking phone call just ‘cause I'm not a bad guy but I'm saying y'all keep fucking with me, motherfuckers end up dead. Quit playing games.

All right then, do what the fuck I just said and I'm telling you right now “Shit will go a whole lot fucking smoother otherwise somebody's going to get fucking shot and someone's going to get fucking dead.

Quit playing with me. Yeah. Yeah, they don't, they don't need to know shit. Fuck what they talking about. Fuck with the shit they talking about. I don't fuck with none of that. I don't fuck with none of that shit. “

Jim Doddy: Like Scott said, we had pretty much established that she was not in there under her own free will just by the phone calls we were having and stuff he was saying yelling at the officers that were in the hallway. He knew that they were out there. He posted a Facebook live video just talking gibberish like none of it makes sense. He's high.

Jon Becker: Yeah he's smoking meth, I mean give him a break.

Jim Doddy: He keeps walking around like this big filet knife. I have no idea where he got it. We were operating the whole entire time that he had a gun and a knife. We had already seen the knife through the window initially.

Scott Williams: There were several phone calls where he said that he's going to shoot whoever comes in. We talked to his mom, his mom relayed to us. She said, “I don't know if he had time to get a gun, but if he did he'll shoot you if you go in there.” Okay fair enough.

Nate Trout: That's his mom that told us that we thought that was pretty good.

Jon Becker: Yeah, when your mom says you're willing to shoot cops I will call that a credible source.

Nate Trout: He just walked around in the hotel room, and he shoved the knife up to her face and underneath her throat.

Jon Becker: This is on the Facebook live video.

Nate Trout: On the live video and that was really the first time we saw any kind of escalating behavior. As soon as I saw I was in like he said we were split up. As soon as I saw it I was like there it is.

Jon Becker: Here we go.

Scott Williams: Yeah, so then I pretty much checked every box we needed checked.

Jon Becker: At that point and what was her demeanor in the video as he's posting?

Jim Doddy: She was scared to death. He's talking to us saying, “I think you think this is funny”. He puts the knife up to her throat, and says, “Do you think this is funny?”

Scott Williams: Scared to death.

Nate Trout: He made the comment that we thought he was just joking around.

Jim Doddy: Yeah, he's like “I'm not joking around”.

Jon Becker: Okay, well we're taking you seriously now.

Jim Doddy: Yep.

Jon Becker: Not a good that was not a good strategy on his part.

Now we're at a point where you're like “Okay we need intervene”. Your team is on recliners at the fire station, and the guys that currently have the problem will not do a deliberate intervention.

Scott Williams: Correct.

Jon Becker: So, it's wake up time.

Nate Trout: Yes. Me and Scott watched the video together. I left ours and went over to talk to him (we weren't that far away yeah just right next to each other) and he relayed the information to them to let him know like what we had just seen and that's why I called him on the phone. It was not a pleasant conversation.

Jon Becker: I know you just fell asleep but…

Scott Williams: This is 2:00 in the morning. They got relief, it's been a couple hours.

Jon Becker: Couple hours.

Jim Doddy: Yeah, I think we finally left the scene about midnight. Some guys stopped at the gas station got some water some Gatorade. A lot of guys just went straight to the firehouse. Dudes started taking over any flat surface they could, couches, recliners tables, the whole thing. Everybody's kicking off boots, everybody dropped gear. I'm sprawled out in a recliner with no boots on. I got my phone on my chest, and I'm out and about an hour and a half after I fall asleep. So right around 2:00.

Jon Becker: Right about the happy part of the sleep.

Jim Doddy: Nate calls so I pick it up, and he says, “Hey, man we're going to go ahead with this deliberate entry”. I don't recall if he told me about the fake Facebook live video at the time. It didn't really matter to me. He just said, “We're going to go with the deliberate I need you to get everybody up and get back”.

So I said, “Roger that”. Started getting everybody up.

I think we arrived back on scene maybe about 2:05. We were like about half mile away. Everybody was back ready to go in kit on scene about 2:05. I think we escorted.

We had a little pow-wow outside. Went over the plan again. I made sure everybody knew what the plan was. Everybody was good with the countdown what was going off on when everybody said they were good.

We went back up, relieved Hamilton County's team, had them all the way out the building. I think there was some discussion between them because they wanted to kind of stay and hang out and see if--

Scott Williams: Yeah. They didn't want to leave. They're like, “No, we'll stay here. We'll help.” Nate ultimately says, “Listen if this turns into an officer involved shooting, we don't need two teams taken out of service. I need you all to go outside it's a smart move so that you can help us out if we're taking out of service.”

Jon Becker: Yeah, that's a really smart move. Rather than compromise the entire tactical capability of both teams if one team's going to move, the other team clean and sanitized.

Scott Williams: It was interesting ‘cause they all walked out at the same time and they walked over to me and they said, “Will we hear this count down on your radio?” I said, “You will”, and they said, “Okay, we're ready”.

Nate Trout: We should probably mention what happened during our meeting in the parking lot with the pursuit.

Scott Williams: We've got this big pow-wow, and I say this during our presentations that we give, this has been rehearsed I don't know how many times. Every person knows exactly what they're going to do over and over and over again as the night went through are.

Jon Becker: You guys practicing on an adjoining room or something?

Jim Doddy: No, we didn't have enough people to kind of cycle guys in and out where we were doing kind of mockups and stuff. Since we had access to every room on the whole floor, everybody knew the layout we knew kind of what we were doing, so we talked about it like, “Hey, this is what's going to happen.”

Scott Williams: The suspects in 310. We own 308 and 312. So those guys that are in 308 are repping what they're going to do, a charge is going to go off we're going to do this NFDD. So we cover that. And just the look on their faces, everybody knew what this meant because just the tone and Doddy's voice when he said, “You all understand what we're getting ready to do? You know your job, go do it.” At the same time that he's doing that there's sirens going everywhere. The second escape drives up gets in a pursuit as this is all going on. So we hear this pursuit kicking around the road right in front of us and it's the second sus-- we didn't know it at the time but it's the second suspect.

Nate Trout: So he's with troopers going the wrong way down Interstate 71.

Scott Williams: They take care of that. It's game time for us. So everybody goes up, gets in possession. Hamilton County comes out.

Jon Becker: If I'm understanding correctly, you're in two adjoining rooms.

Scott Williams: Yes.

Jon Becker: You've got breaching charges on the wall like let's say 310 is it 308.

Jim Doddy: 312, yep.

Jon Becker: So 308 you've got a wall charge.

Jim Doddy: Yeah, it was deep in the room close to the front of the building so kind of towards the Windows like the exterior window. We had a wall char e in 308.

There was some discussion since we had two breachers finally show up on scene about where to put this second charge.

During the initial way earlier in the night, I'd gone down and had a face to face with them about, “Hey this is kind of my plan this is what I want to do they had kind of drawn up almost the exact same thing between the two of them. So all three of us were on the same page. There was some discussion about what to do with the second charge. I originally just wanted another wall charge. There's some debate between the other team leader Joe Gray and Scott about whose idea it was. I don't recall. There was a lot going on that--

Scott Williams: It was mine 100%. He's not here, it was mine.

Jon Becker: So if it worked, it was Scotts.

Nate Trout: Yeah. The second charge we ended up putting into the wet wall in between the bathroom in 312.

Jon Becker: So like the toilet pipes.

Jim Doddy: The toilet to 310 backed up to the toilet--

Jon Becker: Toilet's about to come into play.

Jim Doddy: Absolutely.

Nate Trout: The thought there was well if we start this entry we can't get through the door and he takes her and then barricades into the room we're back to square one. The thought being like “Okay well let's put a charge on there if he does pull it in there at least we've denied him access we got guys there that can deal with that problem”.

So ultimately that's what we did and like I said those charges had been in place for hours.

Jon Becker: These charges the intent is to port the wall.

Nate Trout: Correct.

Jon Becker: Not to make an entry but to make a port.

Nate Trout: Gun port.

Jim Doddy: For those viewers that know it's a 300 gram grain. Its 300 gram grain of debt cord attached to an IV bag, taped up placed against the wall with a prop stick that's the charge. We know that we're going to push that IV bag through the drywall that's going to give us a port.

Jon Becker: Got it. So we're making ports deep in the room and the bathroom.

Scott Williams: Correct.

Jon Becker: And then are we also trying to make entry in the primary door?

Scott Williams: So the plan was to have one dude on a breaching shotgun, and a guy right behind him with a ram. So start working the problem on the door with the breaching shotgun. If that doesn't pop it right away, dude with the ramp can start following it up.

Jon Becker: Inward swinging door?

Scott Williams: Yeah. So the two dudes in the stack at the very beginning both breachers, and then the assault team which is four guys were stacked up right behind them in the hallway. So after we relieved HCPA, everybody just filed back into their exact same spots that we had been two hours previous.

Nate and the negotiator Adam had had a conversation where I think Adam relayed to him like “Man I got him. He picks up every time I call”.

So one of the things that we want from our negotiators for our hostage rescue is can they push us intel, can they manipulate the target around the room and can they cause a distraction if need be sure for our initial assault. With Adam saying like “He's picking up every time” that was kind of the basis for our kickoff.

Nate was going to have Adam call him once we were on, relay to me he's got him on the phone and that was going to kick down or kick off the count.

Scott Williams: Yeah, he had ultimately asked for his first thing that he wanted. When Adam talked to him he said, “I want to get this dog out of here so he can go to the bathroom. I want a pack of Newports and a cheeseburger. If you can give me my new ports and a cheeseburger, I'll release the dog.” I said, “Okay, fair enough. We'll do it.”

Jon Becker: Bring the dog out to the door.

Scott Williams: Yeah and the thinking is somebody's going to be separated from the other person as they're letting this dog out the door.

Nate Trout: We did talk a little bit me and Adam because we had a lot of like 260 phone calls some of them lasted like 2 or 3 seconds. So I was a little worried it was going to be like one of those. So I said, “When you tell me you have them, I'm going to count to 10 and then I'm going to relay to Doddy up there that he's good to start the countdown for the explosive charges.”

Jon Becker: Got it. That point is the negotiator just promising him anything he wants to keep him on the phone.

Nate Trout: Pretty much he told him the dog warden was out there. Told him that we had a big crate for the dog and that we had cheeseburgers, Newports, he's just being extremely--

Jon Becker: Try and get him away from the hostage.

Nate Trout: Yes, being extremely agreeable with him saying that we have everything you're asking for ready to do it. So I'm counting and then telling him, and then he starts to countdown.

Jon Becker: I mean you are going to bring him something.

Nate Trout: Yes.

Jon Becker: Okay so here we go. Yeah, it goes to 10.

Jim Doddy: They relay to me on the radio that they got him on. Again we had talked about what the count was going to be. It was going to be an eight count starting at eight at 5. The shotgun breach was going to start working the door problem at 3. Both wall charges go off thinking that that would be enough time with the port charge going off after the breaching work on the door. That's going to divide his attention or that's going to be the last thing he hears.

So he's going to start and turn towards where those breaching charges are as the assault team's kind of coming through the front door.

So Nate gives me the go. We started an 8 count. I got to five. Breacher start hitting it. I think he put two or three rounds through the breaching shotgun into the door. Ultimately it did not pop like we wanted it too. So the guy with the ram starts working and hits it twice. First one put a hole in the door. I mean went right through it.

Jon Becker: Of course it did.

Jim Doddy: Yep I get to three. Both wall charges hit just like they should. We had originally wanted a flashbang through the wallport in 308 kind of following that up. So as he's turning bang comes in pops as the assault team's kind of coming through. So breachers bail out.

The assault team starts working and the door gets it open. There was some barricade there. He had put a coffee table, and a recliner chair and then like the mini fridge was kind of stacked up against it. They ended up pushing through that.

First operator through they start kind of pieing off on him, him and the second guy. Suspect is on a couch with the hostage Kelly. Grabs her up. Puts a knife to her throat. As he starts hearing something going on in the wall charge behind him kind of turns his head like that and the operator Chris took the shot ended up hitting him right in the face.

Jon Becker: So the guy that's going to actually shoot him as the first or second guy in the main door.

Nate Trout: First guy in.

Jon Becker: Gets a solution and fires one round.

Nate Trout: One round took care of the problem and immediately ended up hitting him just above his lip under his nose and dropped him immediately. He had her wrapped up. So they kind of fall. She springs up fairly quick the next couple of guys grab her up start escorting her out. They zip tied him and then that was kind of it. So from breach to bang was just under 20 seconds.

Jon Becker: That's fantastic work. I mean one round fired effectively.

Scott Williams: Yeah.

Jon Becker: I mean it's about as well as it can be done do we ever find out. How does this girl end up with this dirt bag? Is she just dumb enough?

Jim Doddy: I think it's a poor life choice. That's a good way to put it, yeah she made some poor life choices.

Jon Becker: I mean generally speaking you end up in a hotel room with an escaped inmate, you've made some poor life choices. In this case it's probably a series of poor life choices.

Jim Doddy: Correct.

Jon Becker: Made that make sense to her. I mean is this the first HRT you guys have done?

Scott Williams: Yes.

Jon Becker: The team?

Nate Trout: Yeah legitimate hostage rescue. That was the first. We'd had other ones that kind of came out as a hostage rescue.

Scott Williams: Like a family member or something like that.

Nate Trout: Where we ended up really--

Jon Becker: Captive.

Nate Trout: Yeah.

Scott Williams: We've had a couple that ended in suicides by the suspect. So we don't count those as hostage rescue.

Jon Becker: It wasn't a hostage even if you talk the guy into killing himself.

Scott Williams: When Nate had taken over we felt like that was the biggest hole in our game. We didn't have anyone around us that taught hostage rescue. Somebody had learned something from another person.

There just wasn't anything in Ohio that we were comfortable with saying this is the way we're going to do it, and Doddy can share on it. He did some research and found a place in North Carolina, sent him down there and we wrapped it every training. We start off every training doing something hostage rescue, and we nailed it.

Jon Becker: Oh yeah you nailed it. Hostage rescue is certainly the Super Bowl of the tactical world and this is a pretty high-risk operation. As you're coming in you're like, hey we need to have this capability you go to North Carolina what is your kind of lessons learned?

Jim Doddy: So that conversation between Nate and I had actually happened years before he had actually taken over. We kind of knew like Scott said that was the hole in our game where we were kind of like “Oh okay we'll do it kind of like this and that”.

We just weren’t comfortable with where we were at so ultimately. I ended up I think it was 2019 down at an intro to hostage rescue class in High Point North Carolina by a company called “Esoteric”. Phenomenal class brought those lessons back and it was just stuff like how do we posture on the door for a hostage rescue, the importance of those countdown timing between your breach and those port explosive distraction charges, all that kind of stuff.

So I brought those back under the old commander. We started doing that as our hostage rescue training. When Nate took over we started doing HR stuff every training at least for a little bit. If it wasn't a dedicated hostage rescue day, it was a portion of that training that morning.

So we had been repping it pretty good for a while. The problem was we had had I want to say like nine new guys start in May. This happened in July. They'd only had a handful of training and several of those guys were on scene.

So limited resources about guys that we could actually feel like handling a deliberate entry of that magnitude while also using the resources we had being those new guys all right so what jobs can we give them that are not actually going into the room.

So kind of playing those out as the night went along was kind of an interesting task.

Jon Becker: That's a scary op for sure. Let's kind of go through some lessons learn. Nate let's start with the good stuff. Obviously, a lot went well here but what are the particular Lessons Learned for the team from the positive nature?

Nate Trout: Positive nature is prior to this we had only used explosive birching once operationally.

Jon Becker: Wow.

Nate Trout: We have done multiple trainings with it. The previous mission that we did on this was three days prior. Our very first operational explosive breaching was 3 days prior to this and it was one door breach exterior that's operationally--

Scott Williams: On a search warrant.

Nate Trout: Operationally that is all we had done prior to this night and that was 72 hours before that.

Jon Becker: You're doing your second explosive breach ever, and your first hostage rescue ever.

Nate Trout: Yes.

Jon Becker: Oh yeah, you were probably in Pucker Factor 25 is a commander of this thing.

Nate Trout: It went just like we planned.

Scott Williams: It really did.

Nate Trout: It did.

Jon Becker: I'm gonna guess Nate’s blood pressure was probably about 250 over one.

Nate Trout: The biggest positive I think we got out of it is, what we are doing in training is exactly what we need to be doing in training. Does that make sense?

Jon Becker: Yeah totally.

Nate Trout: Like he said we had trouble finding that piece anywhere near us and we took that as what we were going to do we adopted it we made it happen in the training side of things so till everybody was comfortable with it. I guess you don't know if you're doing something correctly until you really have to do it in real life, and that was I that's the biggest takeaway from it positively.

Jon Becker: Because I mean this could have been the end of your explosive breaching program.

Nate Trout: It could have been.

Jon Becker: You guys are all in on this. There has to be a first but a hostage rescue in a hotel room is a that's a pretty tough first thing.

Nate Trout: We couldn't find any research and still we really haven't found another team that has done a simultaneous double breach while doing a shotgun breach interior. We haven't found it. I'm not saying it's not out there.

Jon Becker: Some of the full-time teams have certainly but not in Ohio.

Nate Trout: Yeah. I don't even know. This is what makes the most sense.

Jim Doddy: So the previous commander did an amazing job of getting us from point A to point B. I felt like the policy board did believe in us, and I was worried that they didn't.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Jim Doddy: Once this happened I mean it was almost like a light clicked. They've always been supportive of us but now it's like “These guys know what they're doing”. I don't know that we knew. I don't know that we had the confidence they did what we did after this.

Jon Becker: To put his future job on the line.

Scott Williams: When we go to the policy board now and ask for something they know that it's legit we're not going to them for something ply or something crazy. These are things that we need and just super supportive of us now.

Jon Becker: What was your training op tempo? How often do you guys get to train as a Collateral Duty Regional team? How often are you getting together to train a month, a year, what does that look like for you guys?

Nate Trout: It's like a lot of part-time teams we kind of go off of like the National Standard of twice a month solid week in the summer or at some point during the year then that's what we've got gone off of for a long time.

Jon Becker: You say the National Standards, you mean the NTOA’s guidelines?

Nate Trout: Yes. I wouldn't say that we followed the NTOA guidelines 100%, but we had been on that kind of training schedule for ever since I started.

Jon Becker: How long have you guys been training with explosive breaching?

Nate Trout: We had the capability 3 years prior to that?

Jim Doddy: Yeah. We burned through a couple spools of debt court just training wise. Ultimately my concern was that the breachers weren't confident. They did not exude confidence when I say, “All right, what are we doing?” They said “it should”. Yeah “This should happen.”  I was like “I don't need to”. It took us a while to build up to that but I got all the faith in them now I mean everything they say is to a tee I mean they've got it down to a science now.

Jon Becker: Yeah I mean it's one thing to say could you shoot an apple at 100 yards it's a different thing to say would you put it on your daughter's head and do it.

Jim Doddy: Yeah.

Jon Becker: The risk of a training op versus a live hostage rescue obviously, yeah it is certainly going to make the tummy shake a little bit.

Jim Doddy: Sure.

Jon Becker: What else from a positive standpoint Nate? What else is there? If because I think it's easy living in LA where I have two full-time SWAT teams that are two of the top teams in the world, less than an hour from me and probably 20 other municipal teams. It's very easy to go “Oh well you call the sheriff, you call-- this is rural Ohio. She's screwed if you're not there like let's just call it what it is. He's probably going to at some point rape her and kill her.

Nate Trout: Yes.

Jon Becker: So I think it's easy to look and go wow it was a risky move but at some point you have to make the move. There isn't an alternative here.

Nate Trout: I understand you saying it's a risky move. I've also never come from the world of LA, so I don't have that perspective on law enforcement. I don’t have that perspective on life. So for me it was actually pretty easy. I knew what we had. I knew me and Scott agreed on what we had and I knew that I could trust him and the other guys up there and I also knew that we were it.

Jon Becker: The thing is like it is easy to look at these situations and go, “Oh well just call somebody else”, there isn't somebody else.

Nate Trout: No.

Jon Becker: This is your problem to resolve. You guys are trained for it, you're prepared for it, you've done the research and obviously pans out.

Nate Trout: Yeah.

Jon Becker: I don't want to use the word “negative standpoint” but like any op like this even a successful one you can look back and go “We should have” or “if I did it again here's what I would change”. What is Scott's like “hey man…”?

Scott Williams: We've got a lot of lessons that led up to this. That charge we set off 3 days before we were on our way back from that and the fuel pump goes out in the command vehicle. It's a new vehicle. It's in great condition and the fuel pump just goes out.

So we have to offload all the equipment off of it have it towed to our County Garage. It's at the County Garage all of our equipment's back at our SWAT house. The page goes out for this hostage rescue. Negotiator says, “I'll get the command vehicle.” “So it's at the garage.” He shows up with the command vehicle with no equipment in it.

Nate Trout: Nothing.

Jon Becker: Yeah ‘cause the gear is in the SWAT house and he just brought the truck.

Nate Trout: He brought the truck.

Jon Becker: Which was nice of him.

Nate Trout: Absolutely.

Jon Becker: But it would have been better if gear was in it.

Scott Williams: So there was some shuttling that we got to send some people back, get all the equipment back. We joke about it now but we had one prop stick, a one by one prop stick that we propped the charge up in 308. We didn't have another one, so we had to cut a branch off a tree in the parking lot of the hotel.

Jon Becker: Southern engineering.

Scott Williams: As a second prop for the charge. What are some lessons?

Nate Trout: Breachers and the initiators. The two of our three breachers had an initiator but they kept it with them one of those was on vacation. So our first breacher that showed up didn't have an initiator. So we were like “Man that's not going to work so we ultimately called Hamilton County's bomb squad and said, “Hey we need some help. We need this.” And he was quick to do it. He said, “I'll be up there in a minute”. He ran that up to us. What else?

Nate Trout: Working out or training with the joining teams that ultimately relieved us we had done no training with those guys other than the knowledge that they had the capability that we needed them to have. We never practiced handoffs before, certainly not with HCPAs.

Jon Becker: How has that changed now?

Scott Williams: Some. The commander then had some changes so things that we had planned in the past, we have a good working I guess network with them now. Training hasn't happened yet but at least I know who to call.

Jim Doddy: They had changes and we just haven't gotten back with them.

Scott Williams: As soon as this wasn't even a year after this they had a whole entire complete change of lots of things. So we still have that connection and the communication now with them. We do have a radio channel that we can switch to with them now so we can have contact back and forth.

Jim Doddy: I think one of the biggest lessons, like Nate had said before it's up to that police agency that calls us what happens. There was a homicide that just occurred in that hotel. We have to go to that chief and say, “Okay there's an officer involved shooting who's investigating this? Are you going to investigate it or are you going to call someone else?”

Ultimately that chief has a couple decisions the Sheriff's Office could investigate it. We've investigated officer involved shootings before or they could turn it over to an investigative unit inside Ohio called The Bureau of Criminal Investigations. They have a shoot team so any if there's an officer involved shooting they can call BCI to come handle that shooting from start to finish.

Jon Becker: Yeah so that gets you an objective. Because in this case no one in the county is objective objective because--

Scott Williams: Absolutely, that argument can be made.

Jon Becker: The whole county has the guys on the team.

Scott Williams: Absolutely. So ultimately the decisions made we're going to have BCI do this investigation. So from there it was what we doing with our guys. We had had an officer involved shooting on the team previous so we knew where we were going to go, we knew what we were going to do.

We didn't know can we take our trucks out of the crime scene. We didn't use them but we can load our guys up in our armored cars head back to our drug task force to spread out and start to decompress but we didn't know what BCI wanted.

So we had told the chief at the time we said, “Hey, can we get our trucks out of here and he said I don't know I'll have to make that call.” So there was a long delay in us waiting in the parking lot mind you the crowd knows something happened. A bunch of SWAT guys go in and a bunch of SWAT guys come out.

Jon Becker: I forgot there's a bunch of his friends in the parking lot.

Scott Williams: More SWAT guys came out. Our biggest takeaway, our negative take away, was that it shouldn't have mattered what BCI said, we should have got our team out of there because ultimately what ended up happening was they made notification to mom as we're standing in the parking lot.

Jon Becker: Oh God.

Scott Williams: And Chaos ensues screaming crying people flopping on cars flopping on the ground. We went to HCPA and said, “Hey listen we're going to need some help here if something kicks off with this crowd I need your help”. And they 100% said, “We got you”. And they took over this kind of a perimeter around our SWAT trucks.

Ultimately the okay from BCI said, “Absolutely take your trucks, get your people out of there, leave any equipment that was pertinent to this”. “Sure. Fair enough”. That was left in place so we headed back and ended up making a phone call to the chief deputy and said, “We had used deadly force. We got an officer involved shooting everybody but the suspect's okay. I need a spot.” He said, “Head to the task force”.

He puts out an on call to all the road supervisors. They go, I don't know where. They went they found an open duty place at 3: in the morning 4:00 in the morning they raided a couple speedway gas stations of any snacks, drinks, whatever energy drinks. And by the time we got to the drug task force, the Road Patrol was walking in with just hands of stuff throwing it on the table and said, “Relax”.

Jon Becker: Yeah that is fantastic.

Scott Williams: Yeah, because at that point we were approaching the 24 hour daylight sun coming up.

Jon Becker: Yeah, you guys are exhausted and you just had an exposure to the result of that shooting that you definitely didn't want to see.

Scott Williams: Yep. Absolutely.

Jon Becker: Did you guys debrief that at that point?

Nate Trout: No. The term “ineffective” would be the best thing I could say. There were so many. We have there's a big conference room at our drug task force, and there's just it's a big long table with chairs around it and I think every single person was just--

Jon Becker: It's a bunk bed now.

Nate Trout: Yeah. We were waiting because we can't just leave now. We had to kind of go back and forth with BCI which we don't know any of them we do now because we've had some quite a few incidents back to back but at the time we didn't really know what they were getting expect of us that night.

We also had to notify chiefs ‘cause it's not just one chief we have to notify. So me and him split the chief list up to call each and every policy board chief at 6:00 in the morning whatever it was and tell them what happened. So that's what we were doing while we were waiting for BCI to come back.

BCI has like a a crime scene unit and then they have the investigative side of it and so they went to the hotel first and they're taking their pictures, and doing all that there and then their plan was to come over to us and ultimately we ended up just taking our pictures that night. We told him we were like we have we have training on Wednesday which was what 24 hours after.

Scott Williams: This was on a Monday.

Nate Trout: Yes. We have a training day scheduled on Wednesday so all of us are already allocated for a train day. I said, “Let's just do where you bring all of your Jons that you're going to bring being meaning BCI and then you can just we'll just all show up.”

We went to the Sheriff's Office and they pulled us aside and according to who they wanted to interview who and then we just did our interviews that day.

Scott Williams: Ultimately you have to coordinate it when that happens you have 20 some of us that need interviewed all of them that have union representation.

Jon Becker: Oh yeah.

Scott Williams: All of them that have certain attorneys lining all that up took a little while. But ultimately Wednesday Nate had sent out a page that said, “Dress down khakis and a polo. Let's get in here first, let's check our equipment and see what we have, what was taken as evidence, what wasn't, what do we have, what do we need.”

Jon Becker: Yeah ‘cause you still got a mission.

Scott Williams: Lunch was provided by one of the police chiefs. We ultimately just got interviewed that day.

Something that we started when Nate came on was at the end of every training we work out together and that was probably one of the best things was leaving those interviews, and everybody kind of didn't know. Do you talk to each other? Do you not talk to each other? It was just this weird feeling of man I don't want to jeopardize anything. Everybody hit the gym that day and it was worthwhile.

Jon Becker: Yeah, just kind of put everybody back together.

Scott Williams: Yep.

Jon Becker: Did you subsequently sit down and debrief the incident as a team and kind of walk through lessons learned? You put together a debrief for NTAO obviously.

Nate Trout: Yes.

Scott Williams: I don't know that it was anything formal but--

Nate Trout: We did not do a formal debrief.

Scott Williams: We all just kind of campfire talked about it. There wasn't anything negative to be said about it. We all, including the new guys, did what we needed to do and it worked out to our advantage.

Jon Becker: It's a fantastic operation. You guys should be really proud of yourselves.

Scott Williams: Thank you.

Jon Becker: Boys, thank you. I appreciate you coming in and sharing your story.

Nate Trout: Thanks.

Jim Doddy: Thank you.