LODD on HRT Crisis Entry - Austin PD SWAT

Jon Becker: On November 11th, 2023, Austin Texas police officers responded to a call of a stabbing. The caller advised that there were several subjects that had been stabbed. When officers arrived, they made contact with one of the victims who advised two additional family members who were still inside the residence with the suspect.

Patrol officers forced entry into the residence and were immediately met with gunfire from within the house.

Austin PD SWAT was requested to assist and upon arrival, an emergency entry was made to save the lives of the victims. The suspect barricaded himself in a bedroom and ambushed the entry team as they made entry, killing officer George Pastore and seriously injuring officer John Connor.

With me today are Sergeant Raphael Rosales and officer Kevin Olajar who are here to share the event and to discuss their lessons learned.

In keeping with the policy of the debrief we will not be mentioning the suspect by name or discussing his agenda, as we hope that they will both be forgotten. We will however mention the names of the officers because they are heroes and need to be remembered. This episode will be dedicated to the memory of George Pastore.

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 with me. I appreciate you being here.

Kevin Olajar: Thank you. Glad to be here.

Jon Becker: Why don't we start just kind of with your backgrounds. So can we start with you?

Kevin Olajar: So in 2006 I joined a volunteer fire department up in my hometown in Lewiston New York. It's where I started Public Service. I worked there for a bunch of years, went to my first police academy up there and worked for a small agency up there in my hometown in Lewiston . Worked for them part-time. Got hired by the Ner County Sheriff's Office in the same county. Worked there for two years and then made my way down to Austin. I've been working with Austin PD now for 10 years and have been on the SWAT team down there for about 5 years.

Raphael Rosales: I've been with the Austin Police Department for 24 years. I started in October of 2000. I did about eight years on Patrol. From Patrol, I went down to our walking beat area. So I did about another two years there, and then I came over to swat. I did 10 years as an officer. In my time there as an officer I was a teaming leader, operations planner and so forth.

In 2019 I got promoted. So with our team when you get promoted you have to actually leave the team. I was fortunate enough to be promoted again to the rank of Sergeant. I was able to come back to the team. So I've been back to the team since March 2022.

Jon Becker: Talk to me about the city of Austin.

Raphael Rosales: The city of Austin it's about 2.2 million people. It encompasses two counties, Travis County and Wilson County. It's a college town, so there's a big university there. It's growing to where the whole metropolitan area is getting bigger.

Jon Becker: And importantly as a Californian, it is the weird part of Texas.

Raphael Rosales: It is the weird part of Texas. Correct.

Jon Becker: In fact that is the city slogan if I remember correctly, “Keep Austin weird.”

Raphael Rosales: ‘Keep Austin weird.’

Jon Becker: Which is a California I appreciate. Guys tell me about the team.

Raphael Rosales: So we are a full-time team. There are 24 operators. It's kind of broken down into three squads. So each squad has a sent and seven officers. Each team or squad there are two snipers on there three assaulters, a team leader, an assistant team leader and at least one energetic breacher on there.

The way we kind of work our team is there are two teams, or two squads that are on call at any time while the other squad is off call. That schedule stays for about the year. Everybody knows when they're on, when they're off.

We train Monday through Thursday. Monday is what we call an admin day. So guys come in and we start the week with the team meeting figuring out what training looks like for the week. Tuesday, Wednesdays and Thursdays are training days. Tuesday is normally like an entry and sniper split.

So the entry team works together on HRs, and structure clearing stuff like that, and the snipers kind of go and do their thing.

Wednesdays is a whole team training event. So it's either hostage rescue, linear assaults, anything that we have to meet through for the year that's kind of where it comes into play.

Then Thursday is normally going to be a PT, DT and a firearms day for us. That's kind of in the nutshell.

Jon Becker: Got it. Unless you're operating you’re training.

Raphael Rosales: Correct.

Jon Becker: You said three squads, two on at any time. So basically you're on call for two weeks, you're off call for a week. You're back on call for two weeks.

Raphael Rosales: That's correct.

Jon Becker: That's kind of the rotation.

Raphael Rosales: Yep.

Jon Becker: That makes sense. What's the op tempo for the team like?

Raphael Rosales: It comes and goes like everybody else. So we can be real busy one month where we have like three or four ops. We can go a couple months with nothing. When you kind of break it down, the major things we deal with are like everybody else, criminal barricades, we have high threat search warrants.

Austin's kind of unique because we have so many venues so a lot of our guys are tasked with providing an overwatch for concerts, festivals. In addition to those overwatch positions we plus them up with like a QRFs, so they have to do that as well.

The other part that we deal with is what we call a ‘partial team deployment’. So we send guys to plus up our narcotics units, our violent crime units and kind of help them with arrest and takedowns.

We also have a ropes team that does like rope safety stuff. So we get a jumper, say we get a jumper somewhere, we send a ropes team out there to basically hook up our negotiators to keep them safe, and kind of do that.

And now we're really busy with executive protection. It's election season. Austin is kind of unique for Texas so we're staying pretty busy with that now.

Jon Becker: Yeah. It sounds like a pretty busy team. So typically in a year how many operations are you doing and like what would you say the split of say search warrant to barricade?

Raphael Rosales: In 2023 we had 120 operations. I would say we had probably 22 barricades, about 15 to 20 high threat search warrants, and then again the bulk will be what we call other duties. So exec protection, overwatch all that kind of stuff.

Jon Becker: Makes sense. When did the team start? How old is the team?

Raphael Rosales: That's a good question. 1983.

Jon Becker: So early ‘80s.

Raphael Rosales: Yes.

Jon Becker: There are genres to teams.

Raphael Rosales: Correct.

Jon Becker: So it's like in the teams that started in the ‘60s had a certain feel, in the 80s had a different feel so it's always interesting kind of put in context. Additional capabilities. Does Austin have a bomb?

Raphael Rosales: We also have a reserve team. So in addition to the 24 officers, we have 18 reservists so they're part-time guys. Their main duty is like Patrol or detective positions and they supplement us. So anytime one of my full-time guys takes off they're getting coverage by-the-goal team.

Jon Becker: Oh interesting. Basically you have a 42-man team if you need it.

Raphael Rosales: Correct.

Jon Becker: Where you can reach back. I'm assuming that these so the these reserve officers fully qualified can roll into a stack with you, can do whatever. But it's just it allows you to keep full-time cost down while still having that augmented capability to do the stuff that you need to do in a city the size of Austin.

Raphael Rosales: And it's a pipeline to the full-time team. So you have to be on the reserve team to come over to the full-time team.

Jon Becker: Oh interesting so becomes your own little green team where you get a chance to kind of shake guys down, and see how they work.

Raphael Rosales: Correct.

Jon Becker: Very interesting. Let's talk about this event. How does it initiate? So it comes out as a stabbing hot shot call. A hot shot call for us is like the highest threat for a Patrol officer to go to.

[Incident: Do you need you need police, fire--

Woman: No. Help us.

Man: [inaudible]

911: What type of help do you need? Do you need the police or an ambulance?

Woman: Help us. Someone's stabbing us.

911: What's your address?

Man: Don’t go outside.]

Raphael Rosales: The text comes out as a female victim caller saying that she was stabbed by her brother, and that her mother and her other brother are still in the house but she was able to get out of the house. So that's the initial 911 call that we get dispatched to.

Jon Becker: Got it. Patrol officers arrive, what happens?

Raphael Rosales: So what's unique about this call is that it happens 2:39 in the morning. So she’s able to self evacuate from the house. She makes it about two blocks away from the house while she's on the phone with the 911 call taker. Officers get to her at the intersection of Westgate and Coba.

Officers get there, do an initial assessment of her to see that she's okay, they call EMS in. Once EMS gets there, they basically hand her off to EMS. And being mediators they decide they want to go to where the two additional victims that are still in the house are at. So they go to the crisis site.

They get there. It's a pretty chaotic situation. It's in a cul-de-sac. There's a little discussion on where the house is, 9318 is it 9308. They find the house. They do a pretty good job as far as approaching the door. It's my belief that they were anticipating encountering somebody with a knife. So they get some standoff from the door, they announce their presence, they go in and make an emergency entry.

Officer gets there. Ends up having mui kick the door a couple times, the door comes open. Immediately they're met with gunfire, about 11 rounds. It's just by the grace of God that no nobody's hit, they retreat back out. They take positions up for containment and they call for SWAT.

Jon Becker: Got it. First call is 2:38, Patrol’s there what time?

Raphael Rosales: I'd say like within five minutes.

Jon Becker: So we're rolling towards 3:00 when the activation call goes out for SWAT. What is your activation process?

Raphael Rosales: So the way it works for us. There's two ways that a Patrol officer can activate us. The preferred way is their supervisor calls one of the on-call SWAT supervisors, and we kind of triage the call. Is it something that we need to activate the team for? The other way is it's a situation where it's apparent that SWATs are needed and any officer can call for that.

Jon Becker: So if it's a hostage rescue or an active shooter anybody can flip the switch but if it's a maybe a barricade maybe not a barricade then you're going to screen it.

Raphael Rosales: Correct.

Jon Becker: And make a decision on whether the team activates. Which of those two approaches happens here?

Raphael Rosales: A little bit of both. An officer on scene request SWAT. We have a lot of turnover at our dispatch. So the dispatcher ends up sending out a supervisor page. So instead of activating the team on that it gets sent to the sergeants. The sergeant who's on call fields the call and tries to make the call back. Well nobody's answering because it's still a hot call so he makes several calls trying to ascertain what's going on.

Jon Becker: Calling the Patrol officer.

Raphael Rosales: Yes and he's not getting a response. Goes out, turns on his radio and it's listening to what's going on. It's pretty apparent that it's a chaotic situation.

We're pretty fortunate because with that situation. Once the shots rang out it became officer-needs-assistance. So all the units in the city are headed over there. So one of the officers that's headed over there has just recently been promoted from our team. He was a team leader. He hears the call and he calls the supervisor directly.

So, Sergeant Delaroo gets the call, gets updated on what's going on and that starts our process of getting paged out to go to that.

Jon Becker: Got it. So it might take a while for him for the traditional kind of longer route to work but because you have a former operator who's now I'm assuming is a Patrol Sergeant.

Raphael Rosales: He's a Patrol Corporal.

Jon Becker: Patrol Corporal who is now in Patrol, he recognizes like this is a team thing, calls the sergeant and goes, “Hey man, you guys got it.”

Raphael Rosales: Yes.

Jon Becker: How long does it take until the team is kind of in crisis mode, on scene assets, have arrived, we're ready to do something?

Raphael Rosales: So the team page comes out around 3:30. Guys get on scene what we do is the first officers get on scene the first four get on scene push to the crisis site. We call that a “Hasty React Position”.

So they move to the crisis site, they plus up Patrol get an idea of what we're dealing with. So as they go to the crisis site they position themselves behind one of our state DPS truck trucks. It's ballistic, it has a ballistic windshield ballistic panels so they utilize that for cover. Then while there's there they're waiting for additional officers to get on scene additional operators to get on scene.

Once additional more officers get on scene, it's pretty clear that this is something extenuated.

By the time we get about six operators on scene it's been an hour. So from the initial time that the officers got shot to the time that our guys get there.

Jon Becker: Got shot at.

Raphael Rosales: Shot at, correct.

Jon Becker: Got shot at. So we're maybe 4:00, three.

Raphael Rosales: It's like 4:00.

Jon Becker: 4:00 in the morning. And in this interim Patrol is continuing to hold a perimeter I'm assuming.

Raphael Rosales: Correct.

Jon Becker: Has there been any noise from the house? Is anything going on?

Raphael Rosales: No noise, no change, nobody sees any movement, nothing like that.

Jon Becker: So what is our interval you think between initial when the victims were actually potentially stabbed and teams on site, 90 minutes?

Raphael Rosales: About 60 minutes.

Jon Becker: 60 minutes. Okay what do we know? I know that the Patrol officers' mediators went to the house and handed the victim over to EMS. Was the victim debriefed before she was handed over to EMS?

Raphael Rosales: She wasn't, and that's kind of one of the first mistakes we make as an agency.

Jon Becker: Got it.

Raphael Rosales: We lose the ability to debrief her to get any additional information from her. It wasn't until 3:33 that officers relinked up with her at the hospital.

So again that's valuable information that when we debriefed the situation that was like one of the things we identified is we weren't able to get any information like “Hey what room is he in? Hey, what room is your mom in? What was the last time you saw?” All that valuable stuff that we would have liked to have had, we didn't have the opportunity to do that.

Jon Becker: Got it. So in your mind at this point you have at best a barricaded subject with wounded family members.

Raphael Rosales: Correct.

Jon Becker: And at worst in HRT.

Raphael Rosales: Correct.

Jon Becker: And it's looking like the worst. So what do we know about the house, the suspect? At the point the team arrives and you're preparing, what actual intel do you have?

Raphael Rosales: So prior to our guys making that emergency entry on the SWAT side of things, we knew that we had a mom, a brother who had received stab wounds. We also had information that one of the officers actually saw that the suspect was armed with the AR style rifle, with some kind of red dot siding system. This is what the officer said. And he's wearing a plate carrier as well.

Jon Becker: Oh boy.

Raphael Rosales: So that's the information that our guys get.

Jon Becker: Okay, so we've got a rifle, we've got armor and an optic. When you get there what else do you know? You do know that this is potentially an HRT by the time you guys have arrived on scene and are setting up.

Raphael Rosales: Correct.

Jon Becker: Okay, so what's the initial posture of the team? The team pushes to the crisis site and has kind of a scout, I'm assuming.

Raphael Rosales: So I think everybody who's responding to this call understands as soon as we get on scene that we're going to have to intervene because of what just transpired. It's one of those things where the team leader at the time is basically reiterating anybody else who's coming to the scene make it to the crisis site, because in our opinion we felt like it was existential for us to make an entry to try to save some lives.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I mean you potentially have two people that are bleeding to death.

Raphael Rosales: Correct.

Jon Becker: What's the critical mass that the team is going to form before you make it, and before the decision is made to make a hasty entry?

Raphael Rosales: Normally it's going to be six to seven officers. So we had seven initially and then two more followed on and then the rest of the team kind of trickled in. The first seven push in and encounter the situation they had to deal with. So the first entry we made was with seven officers.

Jon Becker: Okay, all so as the team makes an entry like walk me through the entry. You got seven operators entering the house what are they seeing, smelling, hearing?

Raphael Rosales: Kevin, you want to touch on this?

Kevin Olajar: Yeah so as we're behind the DPS vehicle officer Keruth now detective Keruth who's the team leader at the time working with Sergeant Delaroo come up with some hasty plans to to make an entry. So they come up with a plan: we're going to kind of use the darkness for cover, move down the garage of the house and then kind of make a blind approach to the front door.

The front door was wide open at that point, so we didn't really any issue getting into the house. So plan was to get to the front door and then deploy a nine banger at the front door, and then make entry into the house with a seven-man team.

Jon Becker: So where are you in that stack?

Kevin Olajar: So I was number four in the stack, officer Carrera was number one, Officer Shill was second behind him then Officer Connor, myself, Sergeant Belson, and then after that was Officer Keruth, I believe.

Jon Becker: And from a movement style standpoint, are you guys like Threshold Assessment, Floating Point, Dedicated Point, which?

Kevin Olajar: Yeah so our hostage rescue tactic is Dynamic. So soon as the nine bangers deployed at the front door, make an initial snapshot threshold evaluation at the front door, and we start making entry into the house. So as we go in the front room it was a living living room. So Officer Carrera took the known Break and then Officer Shill took the unknown and then everybody started filing. And after that a lot of clutter throughout the house especially in the front room. So we all got kind of channelized down the known wall to where the house broke into the kitchen which was straight ahead, and then to hallways and hallway which led to bedrooms, bathroom and then the garage.

Jon Becker: So give me kind of an idea like what are we talking about for a house here, how big is it, what's the neighborhood like, one story, two-story, how many bedrooms?

Kevin Olajar: It was a one-story house. I'd say probably at maybe 1500 square ft. I worked Patrol down in the sector that this incident was in for seven years. It's a neighborhood where not a lot of activity goes on but every once in a while you get some kind of hot calls, mostly family violence type stuff. So, yeah as far as like the neighborhood itself is pretty calm neighborhood.

Jon Becker: So as you guys are making an entry, what's the layout of the house as you're starting? We can put a picture of it up but from your perspective entering, what is the layout of the house look like?

Kevin Olajar: Yeah so the the front living room kind of opened up to the left, and then straight ahead from there was a kitchen that led back to a room at the back of the house and then another bedroom that was off the kitchen and then there was a hallway where the kitchen and the living room kind of met that went off. Then off of that it was almost like a circular hallway. It wasn't like a traditional linear hallway.

So when we got to that point we ended up having officers take the two different threats and then I remember looking over officer Shill's shoulder. And the best way I can describe it is it kind of looked like a spider to me just with openings and doors, and everything just off the central hallway. So ended up deploying a flashbang into that hallway as we're making an entry into that hallway.

Jon Becker: Yeah ‘cause at this point you're your Dynamic Movement, HRT, live and loud kind of stuff.

Kevin Olajar: Correct. Yeah. At this point, we had no information as to where the suspect was in the house.

Jon Becker: Got it. The team that moves towards the back are they finding victims? Are they finding anything? What are you seeing as you're moving through the house?

Kevin Olajar: Officer Carrera and Sergeant Belson end up going through the kitchen and they go into the first bedroom that they come to and locate a victim in there. We knew that there were two victims inside. So they continued to clear out that room. There was a bathroom off of that bedroom as well in a closet, so they were clearing out that bedroom.

Jon Becker: And is the victim the brother, the sister?

Kevin Olajar: It's the mother.

Jon Becker: The mother. So she is alive, deceased?

Kevin Olajar: Deceased at that point as far as we could tell there was no movement.

Jon Becker: No signs of life, got it. Okay so that's taking you back behind this cluster. This cluster of rooms is kind of in the middle of a house from what it sounds like.

Kevin Olajar: Correct.

Jon Becker: So now part of the team has gotten behind there. You clear what happens next?

Kevin Olajar: So while that's taking place, the other group of guys are starting to move through that hallway so after that flashbang is deployed in the hallway Officer Connor and Officer Shill make entry into that hallway.

I end up moving with Officer Shill into a laundry room that's to the right. So we move into that laundry room which leads into the garage. We end up making entry into the garage, clear out the garage and then we start coming back out of the garage to the house itself.

While that's taking place, Officer Connor and now Detective Keruth cleared a bedroom off of that hallway. And Sergeant Delaroo who's also made his way into that hallway as well noticed a small bathroom, and then cleared out the small bathroom. After all that was done, the only thing that was left was a closed door in that hallway.

Jon Becker: So you've found one victim but you haven't found a second victim. So you're still actively searching for a second victim who is potentially bleeding out.

Kevin Olajar: Correct.

Jon Becker: So at this point there is nothing to take you off of HRT.

Kevin Olajar: Correct.

Jon Becker: Now the problem is shrunk down to a single locked door.

Kevin Olajar: Correct.

Jon Becker: The rest of the house has pretty much been cleared.

Kevin Olajar: The only thing that hasn't been cleared yet at this point is the far back room of the residents, and that bedroom with the lock door.

Jon Becker: Got it. What happens next?

Kevin Olajar: So as Detective Keruth and Officer Connor come out of the bedroom that they had just finished searching, Detective Keruth went and checked the door knob on that closed door and encountered a locked door.

Officer Connor moved to the opposite side of the door, and called for a shotgun breach and detective Keruth started shotgun breaching the door. Delivered two rounds to the knob side of the door. Didn't have success with getting the door open, so he transitioned over and started attacking the hinge of the door, and fired breaching rounds into the hinges of the door at that point.

Jon Becker: When you say didn't have success getting the door, what do you mean?

Kevin Olajar: So the door. After the rounds were deployed to the knob, tried kicking the door a couple times and the door wouldn't come open.

Jon Becker: So it's barricaded.

Kevin Olajar: Correct.

Jon Becker: Got it.

Kevin Olajar: So like I said, attack the hinge side and at that point the top of the door starts folding in, and Officer Connor starts kicking the door to try to get the door to move in so that we can make entry into that room.

Jon Becker: So he's got basically the top of the door moving, the bottom of the door is still hung up on something.

Kevin Olajar: Correct.

Jon Becker: As he kicks the door what happens?

Kevin Olajar: So as he kicks the door and the door starts falling in just a barrage of gunfire comes out of the room. Officer Connor is immediately hit by gunfire. And at that point I see Officer George Pastore move kind of in front of me. I'm tucked back into that after myself, and Officer Shill came out of the garage. We ended up in the laundry room and he starts moving in my direction in front of me, and that's when he's hit with gunfire and goes down.

Jon Becker: So he's moving towards the threat?

Kevin Olajar: Correct. So after he sees Officer Connor go down, he's actively trying to get into the gunfight and that threat, and as he moves to start  being able to see into the room to deliver fire that's when he gets hit.

Jon Becker: Where is Officer Connor hit?

Kevin Olajar: Officer Connor was hit once in the right femur.

Raphael Rosales: Left femur. He gets hit right above the knee, he kind of goes in through the femur, gets his femur and then he also gets hit. We believe he gets struck in his rifle where the receiver's at, and that kind of goes through and hits him in the right pec area.

Jon Becker: So gets fragged basically coming off the right which is really very common. The one that hits him in the leg does it break the femur?

Raphael Rosales: Yeah, snaps the femur, he goes straight down.

Jon Becker: So he's down, hard femoral bleed.

Kevin Olajar: I don't believe it was a femoral bleed. So they ended up pulling him out into like that living area, the living room area tourniquets on the leg.

I believe Officer Castillo now also a detective applies a tourniquet to his leg and then Officer Keith. Now we have more guys that are filing into the house because we just told told guys that entry was being made and just to keep filing into the house. So Officer Keith encounters them starting to work on John in the living room and then starts working on his shoulder.

Officer Keith ends up packing Officer Connor's shoulder and dealing with that while Detective Castillo was working on his leg, and then we also at that point had our Tac Medics coming into the house.

Jon Becker: So as George is hit he goes down immediately, he's hit in the face, the head?

Kevin Olajar: Yeah struck him through the helmet.

Jon Becker: Through the helmet. The side of the head?

Kevin Olajar: Kind of like right above the left eye.

Jon Becker: So he goes down immediately. I'm assuming that the team then engages more of the suspect.

Kevin Olajar: Correct. So at that point Sergeant Delaoro was on the floor looking into the room where the suspect Officer Delaroo was behind Officer Connor. When Officer Connor goes down Sergeant Delaroo can see the suspect like see his arm inside of the room and leans over officer Connor to start engaging him from the left side of the threshold.

Detective Keruth was on the opposite side. When gunfire started, he was stowing his shotgun and then he also steps in from the right side of the threshold and fires rounds as well. The way the layout of the structure was, the laundry room was across the hallway so it was like a threshold deep.

So after George went down I ended up stepping over George and then could see into the room and could just see muzzle flashes inside the room. So I began firing at the suspect as well.

Jon Becker: So eventually he stops returning fire.

Kevin Olajar: Correct.

Jon Becker: What happens next?

Kevin Olajar: So at that point I believe it's Sergeant Delaroo yelling to have somebody have John pulled out. Detective Keroth is getting the team kind of back together to move into the room to take the suspect into custody. So Sergeant Sergeant Delaro, Detective Keroth, myself and another officer I think that was-- was it Kingsley?

Raphael Rosales: Yeah I think it was Kingsley.

Kevin Olajar: Yeah Officer Kingsley end up making entry into the room where the suspect is and then end up taking him into custody.

Jon Becker: And is he clearly deceased at that point?

Kevin Olajar: Not at that point when we made entry into there he was slumped over and was moaning at that point. He had taken up a position behind like a plastic tote that had other gear inside of it, so he was in a low position in the room shooting up at us through the door.

Jon Becker: Yeah, so he was lying in wait.

Kevin Olajar: Correct.

Jon Becker: Set up an ambush. Set up an ambush because of the HRT you have to deal with. Was it immediately obvious that George was…?

Kevin Olajar: Yes.

Jon Becker: Not going to survive.

Kevin Olajar: When I was seeing that take place, I knew that George's wound was not good because I was able to see him, and John both get hit. And the way I can kind of describe it is like John got shot and there was like some muscle tone there like to where he kind of lowered himself to the ground, where when George got hit it was just immediate that there was that he had no muscle tone or anything.

Jon Becker: So take the suspect into custody. I'm going to assume they will transport Connor as quickly as possible to the hospital, and probably also transport George.

Raphael Rosales: So we moved George out first. Our Medics called for us to grab a litter and take him out. While we're transitioning their care over to John and kind of working John.

While all that's happening the guys that are in the room with the suspect are taking him in custody providing Medical Aid for him, put him in recovery position and all that. And we're calling for additional ambulances to kind of now deal with the suspect as well. So we're waiting for medical assets to come in and assess the suspect as well.

So there's a lot of stuff going on, a lot of chaos going on. We're trying to get John in a position where we can stabilize him and then move him to the ambulance as well. Once we're able to do that a team picks him in another litter, and we take him out to the ambulance.

Jon Becker: Got it. So you get John to the hospital. He's going to survive, and I'm assuming probably has pretty significant injury.

Kevin Olajar: Yes. I believe they ended up taking him into surgery almost immediately upon getting to the hospital to patch him up and whatnot. Then he was in the hospital for a couple days after that.

One thing I do want to touch on as far as like the medical that was done on John at the scene is our Tac Medics for I don't know how many years at this point they've trained us on a technique that they use called “Trauma Pit Crew”. So what that is is multiple different officers have different jobs when we have a casualty like that. So everybody has a job, so that everybody can just focus on that one job so that's kind of what took place there.

We had our two Tac Medics that were working on John and then somebody's assigned to doing like interventions, tourniquets, packing wounds, that kind of stuff. We have somebody that's assigned to taking gear off, so that we can do a full assessment on them. And then somebody that's responsible for getting litter stretchers from the ambulance anything like that just to make the whole process as fluid as possible to get them to higher level of care.

So like kudos to our Tac Medics for training us up on that for so many years, and like pushing that on us to be very proficient at that.

Jon Becker: Are your Tac Medics fire department?

Raphael Rosales: They're EMS. They're Austin Travis County Medicals like paramedics.

Jon Becker: Got it. Got it. And are embedded with the team?

Raphael Rosales: They are yes.

Jon Becker: At what point does it become obvious to you guys that this has gone the way it's going to go like that that you're going to lose George?

Kevin Olajar: I don't know one that sunk in for me. I think somebody eventually told me because I had to remain on scene. So it was at some point on scene somebody told me that George didn't make it, and that John was going into surgery.

Jon Becker: Obviously this is a terribly traumatic event, it's an unfortunate consequence of hostage rescue. This can happen no matter what you do. No matter how you move this could be a consequence. Did you guys end up finding the other victim? Was the other victim in the bedroom?

Raphael Rosales: We did. He was in the last bedroom.

Jon Becker: In the very back.

Raphael Rosales: In the very back.

Jon Becker: Yeah. I mean to some degree it's like door roulette.

Raphael Rosales: Right.

Jon Becker: You clear where you go and you might find a victim or you might find the suspect.

Raphael Rosales: What's interesting is as the two guys are clearing the bedroom where their mother's at is when the shots ring out. So they never get the opportunity to go to the next bedroom because they're pushing past the problem.

Jon Becker: At that point it would admit a difference. The thing is like in so many circumstances like it's very easy to kind of have a results bias and look back and go well if we had cleared this bedroom or if we had done this. In the end it doesn't really matter right in the end it doesn't matter when the room's cleared because the situation is what it is and and it develops into what it develops into. This is a very traumatic event for your team, it's a very traumatic event obviously for everybody else but there's always lessons.

Raphael Rosales: Yes.

Jon Becker: There's always Lessons Learned in these things both good and bad. Why don't we start by kind of walking through what you guys see now looking back at what went right?

Raphael Rosales: So I'd say the first thing that we did was we fought through the ambush. We met a near peer as far as what the suspect was armed with.

Jon Becker: Yeah I think we should talk about that. This is not a guy who found a rifle in his backyard. This is a guy that has done that.

Raphael Rosales: AR15 rifle. He had PEC 15 on there, he had a sighting system on there, weapon mounted light. He had a plate carried with like three magazines fully loaded with green tips. He had a pistol belt on with a glock with the silencer on it, helmet in the room as well, two radios that were on about, eight more additional mags inside the room. Again his gear looked like our gear.

Jon Becker: I have refused to sell armor to civilians for four years, and this is exactly why. I know it's out there and people can get it but this is exactly why. This has always bothered me as I don't want him to be a near peer to you. No matter how much he wants to, I don't want to. He's well equipped, I'm assuming if he has all that gear he's also trained.

Raphael Rosales: Correct.

Jon Becker: He's spent that much money on gear.

Kevin Olajar: I believe he had training. I don't know what company he went through but I believe he did have some training as well.

Jon Becker: Yeah I mean if nothing else he's spending time on the range. He's got a large quantity of magazines and everything else. He's that. So yes you meet a near peer who is in a superior tactical position to you he has darkness, he has cover, well he's got concealment at least and he has surprise.

Raphael Rosales: The other thing that he had was what we encountered with that door being barricaded was he had a 60lb sandbag on the door barricading the door. So when officer Keruth goes to reach the knobs side it doesn't move because there are sandbags there. Again, training kicks in transitions to the hinges, gets the door open and we're able to eventually make entry into there.

So again we fell back to our training. We meet this near peer who set up an ambush. We're able to encounter him, put him down and make entry there. So something we did well.

The other thing that we did well was what Kevin was talking about the trauma pick crew. Everybody's medical training went into high gear. We're able to provide John with a lot of good Medical Aid and get him out as quickly as possible. I do believe that that training was paramount to making sure he made it through that.

And again, it's one of those things where nobody wants to train offs or down drills nobody wants to train trauma pick crew. Nobody wants to do that stuff but it's something you need to be doing. It paid dividends for us. So I think I truly believe that John's here because of that training that we did.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's interesting because obviously doing this shows that this is what I'm dealing with all the time, these are the conversations I'm having. I will tell you that the number of people that I consider friends who are still alive because somebody put the effort into Tac Med is a big number.

Raphael Rosales: Right.

Jon Becker: We were talking about it earlier today with the Victoria team who had six guys shot in a van with seven people in it, and had three that would have been fatal and it's like they'd spent a lot of time on it.

How much is the investment? What's the investment worth? The investment's worth John. I completely agree.

What were the points of friction? What are the things that are now looking back you go, “This is a lesson learned”?

Raphael Rosales: I think before we transition to that I also want to kind of touch on of the nine initial guys that end up going in there four of them are Reserve guys, and four of them have not even been a year on the team.

Jon Becker: Oh wow.

Raphael Rosales: So about five maybe six years ago we implemented a program where after you get selected to the reserve team you are mandated to do a four-week spinup. So we get these guys for four weeks and we can train them in hostage rescue, structured clearing vehicle assault pens and contain all the tactics that we utilize to make them proficient because once that 4-week period is over they're able to go operational with us and they can encounter this.

We believe that that process again paid dividends for us. Four of the nine guys that went in there had less than a year.

Jon Becker: And went in.

Raphael Rosales: Right, and went in.

Jon Becker: And fought through an ambush.

Raphael Rosales: Correct.

Jon Becker: Yeah that's a big statement.

Kevin Olajar: Two of those guys are now on our full-time team. They've now made their way over, and are now big contributors on our team.

Jon Becker: I would say at that point they've probably earned everything.

Kevin Olajar: Oh yeah it's definitely I like being jumped into a gang. At some point like yeah okay. So let's talk about the lessons learned.

Raphael Rosales: I think as an agency-- I think as a police profession we're all mediators we want to go to the crisis site. I think the first lesson that we want to talk about is the ability to gather intel. Nobody stayed with the initial victim had that happened, we may have been able to ascertain some more information.

Jon Becker: Weapons in the house.

Raphael Rosales: Weapons in the house location all that stuff right we weren't able to do that other other facets around Patrol the guy that breaches the door turns his back to the door and gives it three or four meal kicks. It's apparent that we needed some breaching equipment for Patrol assets so the department ponied up enough money to get 500 breaching kits.

So now there's 500 breaching kits that Patrol officers have access to now. In addition to that we were tasked with putting on some training so that they know how to utilize those breaching kits. So that was something we identified as a deficiency and something that department actually did to address that.

The other deficiency that we were able to identify was the lack of training for Patrol officers dealing with an emergency situation like they encountered. As cops we've all gone through active attack training, but all that training that we've been part of is in a business isn't a school, not so much in a residence.

So one of the things we took on and kind of championed was creating a program or a training course for our Patrol officers to implement those same tactics but in a different setting-- a residential structure, an apartment. So that we were able to roll that out and we are 6 months into that now.

Kevin Olajar: Yes.

Raphael Rosales: We're training the department on. So again, deficiency that we identified and then again just forward thinking and trying to make sure that our First Responders that deal with this have the opportunity to be successful.

Jon Becker: Yeah because I mean realistically Patrol really literally dodged a bullet here. If he's got his back to the door and he's kicking when they're shooting and he is extremely fortunate that the round didn't hit him there.

What else is there from a tactical standpoint?

Raphael Rosales: So transitioning to our response intel gathering. It isn't until after everything's said and done that we realize that it's been an hour and 12 minutes from the time that Patrols shot at till the time we're making entry. There are some opportunities for us to maybe gain more information.

One of the factors that we considered was there was a drone on scene but it was part of the fire department. So we hadn’t done any training with them and we didn't know what their capabilities were. Since this incident we have a drone program with the Austin Police Department, we've now adopted that program under Special Operations, so now we have SWAT drones. So every call out we go to they're dispatched with us. Any situation we deal with, they're dispatched with us. But where we see that 's going to pay dividends is now they're under our training command, we train with them regularly and this is something that we learn from.

Intel is important. The thing that we came away with the lack of intel is actually intel. We talked about there were no movements nobody had heard anything it had been an hour. So again the lack of Intel for us is the key though that's Intel like let's probe for some more information utilizing that drone to go in there and see where we're at. We all believe that once we cross that threshold we are going to get shot at.

So again utilizing the technology to our benefit, would have been a key factor for us going forward.

Jon Becker: Sure.

Kevin Olajar: Yeah we did deploy a sniper. There was a mailbox that was to the right of the where the HD react was set up that looked through the door. But then when came back to the Hasty React from looking in didn't see anything from there and didn't communicate that to the team later.

So doing some intel gathering and then not fully sharing that with the team prior to making an entry on me. I shared that with John because he was standing in front of me but that information could have also maybe changed our tactics maybe not.

So I think a big takeaway from that as well is like maybe there's a little piece of information that you gathered, but we don't know how big it is until the dust settles. So take away from that I think is even if you think it's just a little piece like still share it to everybody so that even better decisions can be made, or tactics tweaked or anything like that as well.

Jon Becker: Yeah because the whole cake is a series of small pieces, so it's like everything that comes back gives a bigger piece of situational awareness. I don't know if he's not seeing anything in a hallway. I don't know if that would have been necessarily informed. You're still doing a hostage rescue and the suspect is still in an unknown location, so it doesn't probably drive your tactics but it's certainly--

Kevin Olajar: It's a little bit of information.

Jon Becker: You want to know.

Kevin Olajar: Yeah.

Jon Becker: The more you know, the less you don't know, so the smaller your problem becomes. Talk to me about alternative entry points. Was there discussion at any point of probing for alternative entry points?

Raphael Rosales: There was but what it came down to was a sense of urgency and the small number of bodies that we had. So the way the house is kind of laid out that front door is wide open. So we would have had to cross a whole bunch of terrain to get to a bravo side of the house where there may or may not have been a door that we could have used.

Jon Becker: Now you have an open door that you can threshold assess.

Raphael Rosales: Right.

Jon Becker: Whereas you're going to have to move past windows past potential threats to maybe find another door that you're then going to have to breach.

Raphael Rosales: Correct.

Jon Becker: Yeah I mean it makes sense. What about shields?

Raphael Rosales: That was another discussion that we've had during our debrief. We utilize shields in linear assaults; so if we're doing plains, trains, rail cars. Our hostage rescue tactic really doesn't lend itself to where we can funnel the shield where we need it. That's something that we've looked at since then on maybe incorporating shields in hostage rescue but again definitely would have been something we could have thought about.

If we anticipated getting shot at as we cross that threshold utilizing that shield may not worked but again, at the time we just didn't use the shields in that manner.

We're not so thick headed and stuck in our ways that we haven't looked at other options since this incident. And we're still evaluating how to successfully integrate those shields in HR. Is that something we want to do as a team? And it's in our test and evaluation period right now.

Jon Becker: It's going to change your movement style especially if you go to like a fixed point at that point where whoever's a shield is going to be a constant point, and everybody else is going to be moving around behind him. So that is definitely going to require different movement and tactics.

Raphael Rosales: Correct.

Jon Becker: Make sense. What else?

Kevin Olajar: I think one thing we ended up implementing right away prior to me getting on the team when these guys were doing search warrants for dope and stuff like doing pretty much like three hits a week for dope everybody was carrying two flashbangs on them at a time. After that we kind of stopped doing stuff for warrant services for dope and whatnot.

As a team we kind of got lacked with flashbangs and we kind and we went to it was okay to have one as long as everybody had one on them. So myself, I know I was only carrying one on this night Detective Keruth was carrying two he was carrying the nine banger in a single bang but that was something that could or could not have made a difference. With the number of our reserve guys that were on the team they aren't issued flashbangs because with the ATF regulations they can't store them properly in their gear in their personal vehicles and stuff like that so they're under issue flashbang.

So when we were at that crisis item working on shotgun breaching the door and then when we encountered that gunfire, we didn't have any flashbangs that were available to us anymore at that point.

So having that ability to have more flashbangs on us like I said, could have made a difference maybe not. But after we were able to talk about that in debrief we went back to making it standard now that everybody carries at least two flashbangs on them.

Raphael Rosales: So transitioning from the operator level to kind of the command post level: Some of the things that we discussed was for this situation, it's a very emotional situation for everybody involved.

Jon Becker: Sure.

Raphael Rosales: We had a commander, and a lieutenant leave the command post and come to the scene that's not our SOP. There's a lot of stuff that needs to be done at the command post especially with this kind of situation. So having them come to the scene actually added more chaos to the scene that that needed to be. We've had discussions since then.

I would impart that I know as Command Staff, we're concerned about our people and we want to go out and make sure they're okay but follow your SOPs. Follow the training that the guys are used to. Don't add more chaos to a situation that doesn't need to be in that kind of note.

It was a hard conversation for us to have with our Command Staff but they're open to that criticism, and again they understood that “Yeah I don't need to be there. There's other things that I need to be taken care of.”

Jon Becker: But it's probably hard. I mean you're you're at a command post, you hear you've got two officers down it's probably if you care about your guys it's going to be it's going to require a great deal of self-discipline to say, “Yeah I'm going to stay here even though I want to go down there and try to do something”. So you can see where that would be a struggle but it's an important thing.

Raphael Rosales: The other thing that it affords is in the situation we had a commander ask one of the operators, “Hey, what happened?” The operator just goes on and tells him what happened, and that's all caught on our body worn camera.

Jon Becker: Oh boy.

Raphael Rosales: So all of his guaranteed protections are no longer afforded to him. Again, there it's an emotional situation. Had our Command Staff stayed at the command post this would not have been an issue.

Again, we understand that there's a lot of emotion involved in that, but as leadership you want to make sure you're taking care of your guys and the easiest way to do that is follow your SOPs.

Jon Becker: Yeah stick with it. After this happens obviously this is an emotional situation. Do you guys debrief this?

Talk to me about it. Obviously you've got to have a funeral for George, you got to deal with all that.

How are you guys taking care of yourselves? How are you taking care of the team?

Raphael Rosales: So we're not allowed to debrief officer-involved incidents with our department until everybody has given a statement to Internal Affairs or SIU. So it isn't normal for us to go three/four months without debriefing something, even something as significant as this.

Jon Becker: Wow.

Raphael Rosales: We are allowed the opportunity to do a Peer Support Emotional Debrief but we're not able to talk about tactics in that debrief. One of the mistakes that I'll take is that I could have pushed harder as a supervisor for that Peer Support Debrief to happen sooner but I didn't.

I think if I could do it all over again I would have been that squeaky wheel asking for that debrief to happen, so that we can identify who's having issues. We're all having issues with this thing.

Jon Becker: Of course, this makes a wake that affects everybody on the team and everybody in their families.

Raphael Rosales: Right. But we do our guys a disservice by not talking about it. There's a lot of healing that can happen in just an open dialogue with the team guys. I didn't push hard enough for that. It wasn't until several weeks ago, maybe December, January.

Kevin Olajar: Yeah.

Raphael Rosales: That we were able to actually do the peer support debrief. And by then like it's a little too late.

The other thing that we observed was since four of the guys that made entry were reserved guys their primary duty is Patrol. So we were able to ask for them to be sent us for on special assignment. They gave them to us for two weeks. After two weeks they went back to the service.

If I could do it again, I'd request a minimum of a month allowing us to get that debrief in and then making an informed decision on sending them back to work. Again, a very emotional situation. So again, if I could do it again I'd have been the squeaky wheel and like “Now we need-- we can't send these guys back until we're able to debrief this and allow that healing to start”.

Jon Becker: When you finally get an opportunity to sit down how does that go?

Raphael Rosales: Well again I made another mistake. I have all Special Operations come in and we debrief it. We're at our office and there's probably 50 people there, 60 people there learning from those mistakes. I would have done a smaller debrief with the guys that initially encountered the suspect in the hallway allowing them to talk through that. Allowing our reserve guys the opportunity to kind of voice their opinion on things. From there I would have gone into more of just a team, the SWAT team itself allowing us to process that and then a larger debrief when we're ready for that.

Jon Becker: Yeah, because it's hard to air your emotions in a public forum, and the bigger the forum the harder it is and the more likely guys are to just kind of skip over how they're really feeling. So it's been 10 months 9 months?

Raphael Rosales: Yep.

Jon Becker: Where are you guys?

Raphael Rosales: We're still healing. Yeah we're still healing.

Jon Becker: What was the effect? What has been the effect on the team?

Raphael Rosales: I think personally I feel like it brought us closer. I feel that it also added a lot of questions like guys wanting us to re-evaluate tactics not because it's our team but we're very open to reevaluating things. We're not so set in our ways that this is the way it has to be done. So we've gone out to other other tier one teams and tried to go to the source on how they're doing HR to make sure that we're not so far off and I think that has helped us continue to grow and develop as a team.

Jon Becker: Anything else you can think of from a debrief standpoint?

Kevin Olajar: I think pretty much hit everything.

Jon Becker: So final topic talk to me about George.

Raphael Rosales: So George was a phenomenal individual. He started with the Austin Police Department in 2019, prior to that he was a firefighter. He came from Florida with the goal of coming to Austin PD to make the SWAT team. In conversations that we've had with him he talked about how responding as a paramedic and patching people up brought him some satisfaction, but he wanted to be on the front edge of that sword and dealing with that.

So he transitioned from firefighter paramedic to become a police officer.

Kevin Olajar: That transition happened after he responded to the Parkland shooting. He was one of the paramedics that responded to the Parkland school shooting in Florida.

Raphael Rosales: So he comes over to try out for our reserve team. He's the kind of guy that no matter what we were training he had a smile on his face, always in a good mood, always with a positive attitude. It wasn't until after we lost George that I was able to see his influence not just on our team but within our department. He was on the honor guard not just with Austin, but with his agency and he was dedicated to training. The guy was always training, always had questions why this why that why this why that and it was a joy to be around him.

Kevin Olajar: Yeah. George is so with our backgrounds kind of being the same being in the fire departments and whatnot like me and George had a lot of conversations about different ways to make the team better and whatnot. In the last four or five years we've encountered a number of incidents where fire has been used as a weapon.

So that was discussions that I had with him at one point and then prior to this incident we were having discussions like our Seaburn response and how we can try to make that better and start working through those issues. Like Serge said he he just anything that he could do to help or make the team better that's what he wanted to do. He'd pay out of pocket for training before.

When he was on our Reserve team he sent himself through sniper school because that was a path that he wanted to go on with his ultimate goal of getting on the full-time team.

On our Reserve team we don't have snipers, they're just assigned to our full-time team. But he was dedicated and like that was where he wanted to go. And if it meant him spending his own money to do that then he was going to do that just to make himself better and to make the team better.

When I was talking to his wife after this incident she would talked about like numerous times where she would catch him like on the floor of the house like dry firing sniper rifle like during cypher school and just like keeping that skill fresh like when he wasn't even able to use it like operationally on the team yet. Just an upstanding guy like would do anything for you, do anything for the team and always just wanted to make himself, the team and anybody around him better.

Jon Becker: I understand as the foundation's been set up by his family.

Raphael Rosales: Yes, the Jorge Pastore Foundation. His wife has started that foundation. The ultimate goal is to create a training facility in the central Texas area, so that teams, agencies can go there and train. In the interim their goal is to provide funding for officers who want to go to additional training. So we're having a-- what's the best way to describe that?

Kevin Olajar: I believe she called it the “Humble Warrior Run” so it's a obstacle course and a 5K that's going to take place this November on November 10th Sunday November 10th in honor of George, and to raise money for the foundation to get more officers to training be able to start working on that process of getting that training facility going.

Jon Becker: We can link to all that stuff in the show notes.

Raphael Rosales: Please. Please do.

Jon Becker: Guys thanks.

Raphael Rosales: Thank you.

Kevin Olajar: Thank you.

Jon Becker: It's a tough topic to open up but you guys have done George's legacy well.

In addition to the team I had the opportunity to sit down with Kim Pastore George's wife.

Kim thanks so much for being here with me.

Kim: Thank you John. Thanks for all you do too. I think this is great for the guys and super helpful and so thank you for having my pleasure.

Jon Becker: So talk to me about George tell me about George.

Kim: Happy to. My favorite subject. George, he's remarkable. From the moment I met him I knew there was something special about him, and he just had a gift for relating to people, making things relatable, he was an incredible teacher.

I first met him as an instructor and I remember I had a business where I had instructors as well and I remember thinking, “He really has a gift and he doesn't even know it”. He made everything look easy, he was a quick learner, a great trainer and just could really make the best of any situation. Nothing intimidated him. He loved to learn. He did not have a problem diving into things. He didn't know how to get better every single day and he brought out the best in other people.

So he'd always say I was the most amazing person he knew and I was like “You are by far the most amazing person I knew”. And I just always admired his ability to stay calm in stressful situations to make everybody feel at ease and comfortable. And he really just was a remarkable human being. He was a wonderful husband. He was a wonderful friend. If you were lucky enough to have been loved by him he would protect you and literally give you the shirt off his back-- I know that's cliche or he'd buy you a shirt ‘cause he liked it he'd get everybody the same shirt but he was just a remarkable human being.

Jon Becker: Talk to me about so you've started a foundation in his memory tell me about the foundation.

Kim: Yes. I'd love to. So in addition to and I think you already touched on this in the podcast that he was a firefighter and a paramedic and then a police officer in on SWAT here when everything was happening after he was killed and there was a lot of outpouring from fallen officer organizations which was such a blessing and and the people were so wonderful-- and it's so necessary to get families back on their feet and really is a blue family or like that family is is really there for you.

I noticed that I wanted to do a little bit more for the officers who were still alive, the officers who were still doing the job, the officers who had to go back to work after this tragedy. George had a tough couple of years. It hasn't been easy for law enforcement officers since the protest and defunding and all of those things.

There's a lot of change happening in that culture. It's not an easy job anyway and then it's difficult when you don't feel fully supported by the community. It was a struggle to watch him go through that vast difference from being a firefighter and a beloved karate instructor to come here and be a police officer and experience a different level of lack of appreciation I guess I could say. So that was hard for me to watch especially when they're doing something that most people wouldn't be willing to do.

I thought as all these people were making t-shirts and patches and coins and hats to commemorate George which was so beautiful because everybody just wants to do something and he touched so many people's lives. I thought “What could we do that George would be really happy about and proud of?”

He certainly wouldn't want all this attention. So I thought “Guys if you could just sign up for training, take care of each other, stay fit, do good police work and just be better than you were the day before you're really honoring George in the best possible way”. So I thought “Well what can I do to turn my pain and what was a tragedy for me into something positive? Which is what George did and the way he lived his life was to start the foundation.

The three pillars of the foundation are: One to provide training to all First Responders, primarily tactical training critical incident training to officers like in that 5-year mark and under maybe where they're not able to seek it out, don't know how to seek it out and kind of give them that bug for training because George loved training so much. Then to potentially get a training facility built at least an extension of the academy, just a place where they could go and train and work out and do all of those things. It's something that's needed here as Austin's growing.

Then the second pillar was wellness and I kind of basket everything in there maybe mental and physical wellness where we can kind of look at a variety of ways to help them with the struggles that do exist with this job. And how can we help them whether it be through mentorship, whether it be through fitness classes and really look at some wonderful programs that are already out there that are looking at new and innovative ways of helping with mental and physical wellness of First Responders.

Then finally the third pillar is community engagement where we're trying to bridge that gap and get the community to see these are just real people doing a tough job. They have families, they're just like you and me.

We have more similarities and we do differences. By having like these humble Warrior games that we're having and inviting civilians to spend the day with First Responders in a fun relaxed environment, so that maybe they can go, these are great people, they're people just like you and me instead of having this notion that all police officers are bad or against us.

So really trying to change that sentiment and really trying to get people to see police officers for what they are, which is human beings.

Then we have a Blue Love initiative which is really trying to get business owners to be comfortable saying they support local law enforcement. And there's a sticker with a heart and a blue line through it, a flag with a blue line through it that just says “In partnership with the George Pastore Foundation”. Whether it be they give a discount to police officers on Tuesday or sell something where money comes back to the foundation or simply just provide the QR code so people can get on the website, see what we're all about. And kind of the notion that if police officers see that sticker in the window and businesses are proud to say they support local law enforcement that we can then kind of level it out a little bit and bring everybody down a notch. And just a simple “We care, we're here we're here to be part of the solution and not just the problem”.

So those are kind of where we're at with the foundation. We've already made some great headway. We've already provided some training. Staccato has been really helpful with that. And then we have our first annual Humble Warrior Games on November 10th which is the day before his End of Watch date where we'll have a 5K and an obstacle course Team Challenge, and a bunch of tactical events and stuff for the kids, and really getting the families to all spend some time together.

So that's kind of where we're at taking our pain healing all together and really putting it to a greater purpose and something bigger bigger than all of us which is sort of how George lived his life.

Jon Becker: So if people want to support the foundation where can they find more information?

Kim: If you just head to JPastore that's p-a-s-t-o-r-efoundation.com it will give you the whole story of what happened with George what his background is, there's some great pictures on there, it has all of our events we do sell merchandise and then there's a contact us if you've got questions or you want to help in some other capacity you can just do that all through the website.

Jon Becker: Kim, I really appreciate you joining me and I hope you recognize the community around you and the blanket that was around you. It's been less than a year and your willingness to engage this and go out and build this foundation truly is a testament to how who you are and how strong you are. And just know that the community is here and supporting you and we'll do everything we can to try to push the foundation and help you fulfill your mission.

Kim: Thank you John, it means a lot. I do feel it and they said it in the beginning and they've meant it and followed through and I couldn't be more grateful for all the love and support. So thank you for all you do and having the guys on, and yeah I really do appreciate it. Thanks so much.