Hostage Rescue Under Explosive Threat

On October 12th, 2020, Bakersfield police responded to a hospital on a domestic violence call to a female who had been hit in the head with a hammer by her ex-husband. When patrol officers arrived at the suspect's house, the male suspect exited the home screaming at police and threw an improvised explosive device at officers. Negotiations with the suspect began, who initially appeared to be negotiating in good faith. But after two hours, it became apparent the suspect was not going to comply, and the Bakersfield Special Operations Group was activated. In the ensuing 12-hour standoff, the team became aware that the suspect had his four-year-old son with him and was an Army combat veteran who had explosive devices in the home. With me today are Captain Ted King and Sergeant Travis Harles from Bakersville Police to discuss the case.

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, thank you for being here.

Ted King: Thank you for having us.

Travis Harles: Thanks for having us.

Jon Becker: So, Ted, let's start with kind of tell me about the city of Bakersfield, police department, all that.

Ted King: Yeah, the city of Bakersfield is centrally located in the state. We're in Kern County. We have probably about 400/420,000 people in the city. The department has a little over 500 people I think 512 or something like that. We have a collateral duty SWAT team. It's part of our special operations group which consists of our canines and drones and bomb squad and all the fun stuff. Bakersfield itself is heavily agriculture and oil. A lot of blue collar jobs.

Jon Becker: So the team, you said team's collateral duty, Travis, talk to me about the team. How big is the team?

Travis Harles: Yeah, so our SWAT team is 32 operators. It's divided up into three teams, gold, blue, and red. And then a semi full time element called VCAT. It's like an undercover apprehension team, snipers, breachers, gas guys like any other SWAT team. And again, we're a collateral duty assignment.

Jon Becker: What's the operational tempo of the team like? How many activations do you guys get a year? How many days to train?

Travis Harles: So yeah, we train three days a month. so 30 hours a month. Our operations tempo for full team call outs are what do you say maybe between five and 10 per year? Full team call outs. Those are usually like on suspect barricades. Traditionally we don't get utilized for narcotic search warrants. That's starting to change a little bit. We're getting like partial team deployments. So we'll send out like one of the colored teams with the Bearcat for like a narcotic search warrant or something like that.

Jon Becker: Got it. But historically it's been like the narco unit that's serving their own warrants.

Travis Harles: Yes. Yeah.

Jon Becker: Got it. Give me background on you, Ted. How long have you been on?

Ted King: So I've been with the department for a little over 20 years now. I was in the army before that. My time at the department since I started went to patrol and then went to our gang unit, got on our SWAT team fairly early. Promoted through the ranks. I was a homicide detective for a little bit and then promoted to sergeant, worked in our apprehension team and as a team leader on the SWAT team and then promoted up to lieutenant and I was a watch commander for a little bit during the riots and COVID. And then as soon as all that went away I was able to start our special operations division with Captain Bobby Wollard. I was the first special operations group lieutenant and that was my role at the time of this incident.

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

Travis Harles: Been with the department almost 18 years. Prior to that I was in the Marine Corps as an infantry in the Marine Corps. I, similar to Ted patrol gang unit, got on the SWAT team fairly early about three and a half years into my career. At this time of the incident I've been on the SWAT team for seven years, a little over seven years. I spent five of those years as a sniper. Sorry, nine years. I spent seven of those years as a sniper and I had just been promoted to sergeant about six months prior to this incident. So I was a new team leader, a new sergeant. What was the other question?

Jon Becker: Yeah. So well for this event and we can start walking through the timeline but for this event like what is your role on the team this night?

Travis Harles: Yeah. So we, like I said before, we had the three color teams. I was the red team team leader and our role when we arrived, the Bearcat was already on scene. So we took over that position with the Bearcat and became sort of the React team to the one side of the problem.

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

Ted King: I was the tactical commander.

Jon Becker: Okay. All right. Part of the reason I wanted to sit down with you guys is this is a crazy ass call.

Ted King: Yes.

Jon Becker: I mean, even for Bakersfield, this one's kind of crazy. It starts as a domestic violence call.

Ted King: Right.

Jon Becker: Okay. Walk me through what happens when patrol officers arrive and what the background is.

Ted King: Yeah. Initially the officers had responded to the hospital for an assault with a deadly weapon. A lady had been hit in the head with a hammer by her ex-husband. And so officers go to the area that it occurred looking for the ex-husband. And ultimately, as they approach the house, he presents himself at the front door and throws an explosive device at the responding officers.

[VIDEO FOOTAGE OF THE INCIDENT]

I continued to yell at them to stay back. And ultimately the officers figure out who he is, who, what his number is, and they get one of our collateral duty negotiators who was on duty at the time in contact with the suspect.

Jon Becker: What's the female's injuries at the hospital?

Ted King: They were significant, but at that point life-threatening, but she did not die. She survived.

Jon Becker: Okay. But he fractured her skull if I remember correctly.

Ted King: I believe.

Travis Harles: So, skull fracture, blame, brain bleed.

Jon Becker: So he hit her with a hammer.

Ted King: He was under the impression that he killed her.

Jon Becker: Okay. So patrol officers set up initial negotiations. Walk me through what happens next.

Ted King: So patrol officers were there. Our gang unit that was on duty at the time. A lot of them are part of either our SWAT team or our strategic response or kind of like a mobile field force team. So a lot of them were immediately available to be on scene. So they had the scene locked down pretty quickly. And then it was just trying to negotiate with the suspect. I got a phone call from one of the gang unit sergeants saying, "Hey, this is what we got and what we're working on. We feel like he's going to be able to be talked out at this point." Then the phone calls kept coming and it was like, "Hey, this guy is not going to get talked out." So, that's when we initiated a full team call out and responded out there.

Jon Becker: So yeah, because one of the one of the things that sticks out right away is it's two hours until the team gets activated, but initially it looks like they're having patrols having in the gang unit are having kind of productive negotiations with the guy and it looks like he's probably going to give up.

Ted King: Yes. Yeah. And you know, and we're going to talk about lessons learned. This is one of those that I wish that I'd have activated the team more quickly. At the time just going through the motions of what we had and what we needed to do I didn't.

Jon Becker: So Travis, when you first get activated, what do you walk into? Set the scene for me.

Travis Harles: Yes. So when I arrived on the one side of the house, the gang unit was mostly with the Bearcat. And like Ted said, the gang unit consists of a lot of those guys who are on the team as well or like on our street response team or either test or testing for the SWAT team. So like in the process. So they're they're they're a good crew. They're good. They're good to supplement our SWAT operators. So yeah, I get there, those guys are those guys on scene. We take over that position and then one of our other teams takes the three-side and then another team takes our county Bearcat arrives to assist and the other team takes the county Bearcat on the three-four corner.

Jon Becker: Okay. And Ted, from a command and control standpoint, you get on scene kind of set for me how you're seeing the problem.

Ted King: Yeah. So, the house it's a typical smaller residence. I don't know the exact size, but I would imagine a thousand square feet-ish type home. couple bedrooms along the three-side. The front door faces the right in the middle of the one side. and the street is north-south. We can show the map or whatever. But the way that we were positioned is like Travis said, we had the city Bearcat was on the one-two corner. We had the county Bearcat on the one-four corner.

Travis Harles: Four corners.

Ted King: Both in the street, and then we had a team on foot on the three-side. And the reason that we put everybody positioned that way was that there's a door on the front, the middle of the one side. There's a kitchen door on the near the one two corner, but on the two-side, and then there's a door to the bedroom, a walkthrough door there that is on to the master bedroom, which is near the three-four corner, but it's on the three side. So, I'm sorry, it's on the four-side. And so the idea was that not knowing if this kid is a hostage or or you know, we'll get into that, but if we had to make a crisis entry, we got three teams that are positioned for three doors.

Jon Becker: Got it. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So, okay, you're in position, you're negotiating. How's the negotiation going? Like what's he doing? What's he saying?

Ted King: So, that is again another one of the lessons learned. So the information that I'm getting because I did not listen to the negotiations directly, I'm getting it through a runner. And so the information that we're getting or that I'm getting that we're getting at the command post was that the negotiations are going good. That it is positive that we're in a positive dialogue. They're not, you know, necessarily cooperative, but it's not something where he's making threats initially. He's just saying, "Hey, I want some more time with my kid. I want to hang out. I want to put my kid to sleep, but I'll come out. I'll come out in a little bit."

Jon Becker: And when does that change?

Ted King: Well, it just kept going like that for a while and then as the negotiators started pushing it and we started, you know, saying, "Hey, you really need to come out."You know, we're not planning on being out here all night. And he just got more and more upset. I think at one point he ran out of alcohol and was demanding more alcohol and it was clear that he had some meth on board, he had some alcohol on board and it was just going downhill. Like I said, one of the lessons learned that we can talk about is that I wasn't listening to him directly myself. So, that the filter of the negotiator who's listening to him and then the second filter of the runner that's running that information back and forth I didn't realize exactly how elevated and escalated he was getting. So, which came into play a little bit later.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So your initial impression is he's having a good conversation with the negotiator like “Ah it's not going so great” and the runner's like “it's going okay” and by the time it gets to you it's like “Ah it's fine”. Yeah. Yeah.

Ted King: Absolutely.

Jon Becker: So when did you first figure out that the kid was in the house? Like how far into this do we figure out that he's got his four-year-old with him?

Ted King: We knew at the time of the call out that the kid was in the house. Okay. I don't remember if the patrol officers knew immediately.

Travis Harles: Yeah. The assault actually took place during the child custody exchange. So, the victim had dropped the kid off. And she said that the suspect invited her into the house, which she thought was unusual ‘cause they don't have a good relationship. And then once she got inside, there's a chain link fence about a 4ft chain link fence that surrounds the property. And once she got on the inside of the fence, that's when he attacked her. And so, she told the officers that she had dropped the child off. So, we knew right away or were fairly confident right away.

Jon Becker: So, they were married. This is a divorce couple child custody exchange and they have a contentious relationship already.

Travis Harles: Yes.

Jon Becker: Okay. Is there any other background that we need to take into account as we're hearing the story that we need to know?

Travis Harles: Sure. Yeah. So the kind of the logic that went behind it and again meth induced kind of logic is that the suspect believed that the four-year-old had been victimized sexually molested and that the mother was facilitating that molestation like she was trafficking the child. And he specifically believed that police officers were the ones that were victimizing his child. And so that created even a more contentious relationship between him and us the police when we got there.

Jon Becker: And is that the reason that he attacks the mom theoretically?

Travis Harles: Yes. So he believed that she was trafficking the child and so the reason for the assault was because of that. And he set her up because like she had said he normally doesn't allow her to come in the house and he invited her in. He actually said, “We're having some pizza. You should come on in”. And she said in her statement she thought that that was strange because they had such a contentious relationship that she would stay outside. And so he was basically sucking her into an ambush. And when she got inside that fence and she was kind of contained in the yard, that's when he went after her.

Jon Becker: And he hits her in the head with a hammer.

Travis Harles: Yeah. Multiple hammer strikes to the skull, skull fracture, brain bleed.

Jon Becker: So he's trying to kill her.

Travis Harles: Yes.

Jon Becker: In the front yard.

Travis Harles: Yes. She's able to get away, get out of the yard, get to her vehicle, and she escapes. And she self-transports. Or she might have been transported by a friend or family member, but she gets herself to the hospital.

Jon Becker: All right. So, we're moving forward. Negotiations are continuing. They're not productive. When does the circumstance start to change for you guys?

Ted King: Well, it was escalating the entire time. So, the negotiators as we get the, you know, the big vehicles out there and now the negotiator is not operating out of his patrol car. He's back in the negotiator vehicle. We have the SWAT command post and we have the EOD truck and everything else. We're just kind of getting ready to be ready. It was something where he says he's got the whole house booby trapped. He's got enough explosives to level the neighborhood. When we got there, our initial guidance was to do the evacuations, mitigate damage to the surrounding area. Exacerbate and create any separation between the suspect and the  kid and then take the suspect into custody. So, we're looking for opportunities to do that. Travis and I and some of the other team leaders were talking about ways that we could do that without forcing an explosive event or anything like that. So, positioning canines or positioning the react teams and using the weapons and the and the tools that we had to get more intel into the house, things like that was the primary kind of effort and which went on for several hours.

I'm gaining a little bit of intel from the negotiations, a little bit that we're observing. He's acting kind of erratic coming out and he brought a crate of Molotov cocktails out at one point and then he had it in his head that he needed to play music for us. So he's bringing music out and there's a couple things that were unexpected on his part where we were discussing if this happens can we do this or you know what I mean? So, it was an interesting problem because we didn't really know where to go. There wasn't “Hey, let's just do this. This is how we're going to create this separation or this is how we're going to breach this or or whatever”.

I'll speak for myself that that idea that there were booby traps really kind of put me on my heels. and not knowing how to deal with that and not knowing, you know, if we're going to send a team in, are we going to jeopardize one, their safety as well as the child's anyway? So it's not quite as straightforward as a I don't know, as a hostage situation that I would think would be, you know, quote unquote more traditional, right?

Jon Becker: So, at this point, are you having any contact with the kid? Are you guys getting any information about the child? Like, what's the status of the four-year-old?

Ted King: So, the kid has free run of the house. He can go wherever he wants to go. He's free. He's not held. He's not stuck in a room or anything like that. He's very protective of his dad. He's four years old. So, you know, I can't presume what's going through his head, but he's very protective of his dad. He's coming to the door and the window and jumping on the phone and “F you police”. You know, he's not cooperative with us. He's very very I don't want to say combative, but very hesitant to do anything that…

Jon Becker: As combative as a four-year-old can be.

Ted King: Right. Right. So, and then that played into is he a hostage? Is he not a hostage? Like we had kind of talked about as we're prepping for this is that you got a kid that's exposed to danger. It's not his choice to be exposed to danger. So on that side, we're kind of leaning toward a hostage, but his actions and the and the dad's actions, the dad's not threatening the kid. He's not being mean to the kid. He's actually talking very nice to the kid. He's making sure that the kid has movies to watch and music to listen to and food to eat and things like that. So, it's really this kind of I don't know juxtaposition of is he threatening this kid or is this kid there voluntarily? Is there going to be a situation where we can grab the kid and pull him out through a window or, you know, talk him out through this door over here or incapacitate dad using whatever and go grab the kid. It was different. It was different not having a cooperative victim.

Jon Becker: It's a weird one, right? Because like on the one hand he's four years old.

Ted King: Right.

Jon Becker: So you instantly lean towards the hostage. But then he's combative. He's insulting the police, right? So that certainly pulls him away from the hostage. Dad isn't threatening him, which pulls him farther away from the hostage, right? But dad's maybe got the house booby trapped, which pulls it back towards the hostage.

Ted King: Right.

Jon Becker: So you're in this weird kind of in between land, which is the reason I wanted to sit down with you guys. It is this kind of weird in between land where you're having to position you know the way that you initially assess the case really kind of drives your posture and everything else. Travis from an on the ground one side perspective. What are you guys thinking? What are you seeing? How are you viewing the situation?

Travis Harles: Yeah. So as it develops especially early on he actually had a lot of contact with us directly at the front. He would open the door. Sometimes he would open it just to crack and kind of stick his face out and yell obscenities at us and call us child molesters. Sometimes he would open the door and step out on the front step. And there were a couple of times where we actually got far enough from the front door where I think if we would have been in a better mindset and position, we could have gotten a cannon deployment. We had enough separation between him and the house. Like at one point he comes out and on the front I guess lawn or the grassy the dirt area of the front of the house inside the chain link fence but in front of the house he had a vehicle parked there and at one point he actually came down opened up the door got in and grabbed a pack of cigarettes out of the vehicle and then made his way back up. I was in direct contact with the canine handler. We had a canine handler, one of our small canines there and he almost deployed the dog. But it was kind of like right about to let go of the leash and then he turned around and he was close enough to the house where he didn't feel like he had enough and didn't do it. And we had a discussion like, hey, we kind of missed an opportunity there. If we get this opportunity again, then we're going to take it. And we're trying to get the canine handler in position. And we got close like one or two more times where we almost deployed the dog, but just not quite enough separation where we felt comfortable doing it.

Jon Becker: So, you guys are in the you're behind the Bearcats at what distance from the front yard of the house, you think?

Travis Harles: So, the Bearecats positioned in the street kind of nosed in on the driveway and the driveway is at the one two corner of the house.

Jon Becker: Okay.

Travis Harles: The front door is like dead center of the one-side. and they're between the bearcat and the house is his car where he was getting the cigarettes out. So, at one point we tried to maneuver up in front of the bearcat, but behind the car was kind of like a position of concealment so that if he came out, we would be close enough to deploy the dog. But again, that opportunity just didn't present itself after that.

Jon Becker: As he approaches the car, he's closer to the house than you are to the car.

Travis Harles: Yes. Yeah. I'd say.

Jon Becker: So, if you move on him too late, the K9 may end up in the house biting the kid.

Travis Harles: Yes.

Jon Becker: Or he may just get back in the house.

Travis Harles: And we were probably from the front of the Bearcat to the front door, I'd say 40 to 50ft. And from the driver’s side door, the car to the front door was maybe 2 or 15 ft. So he was pretty close to the house.

Jon Becker: No matter how well positioned you are and know how much of a react mindset you're in, you don't expect the suspect to walk out the front door and open the car door and grab a pack of cigarettes. Like that's not I would not put that in the normal lexicon of barricade.

Travis Harles: Yes.

Jon Becker: So there's probably going to be an initial like what the--

Travis Harles: Yeah. It was- it was a shock to the system and then and then again by the time we realized oh here's an opportunity we were behind the curve and he was already on the way back in.

Jon Becker: Makes sense.

Ted King: Another thing that u led to more I don't want to say indecision but just discomfort with making a decision maybe that's the same thing but the way he had a, what we believed to be a pipe bomb with a fuse that we didn't know was a fuse at the time it had been wrapped in purple tape and it looked like a switch and anyway so just not knowing what it was was enough too to just hey if if we do this, is it going to set off that? You know, if that's set off, is it going to lead to this? You know, and kind of looking at those second, third, you know, fourth order effects, trying to mitigate what damage we're going to do to that situation was just something that it was for me it was a little overwhelming. I know that, you know, we were talking at the command post several times about, man, we're very likely going to kill this kid, you know, and, we don't really know how to not do it at that point.

Jon Becker: Well, I mean the suspect has thrown an explosive device at you.

Ted King: Right. So, I think you have to take any threats that he has explosive devices very seriously, right? Like a lot of people threaten explosive devices and it turns out not to be an explosive device.

Jon Becker: When he's thrown one at you and it's gone off, right? I think it's reasonable to assume that he legitimately has what he says he has.

Ted King: Yeah. Yeah. And he was presenting what appeared to be a pipe bomb with what appeared to be a switch. It was a fuse. And also the Molotov cocktails. Ted mentioned that also. He had said that he had Molotov cocktails and then he came out with like a milk crate full of bottles which later turned out to be Molotov cocktails also. And he kind of set it down on the porch at one point, went back inside for a few minutes, and then he came back out and he grabbed him and he went back inside again.

Jon Becker: It's an interesting way to threaten you.

Travis Harles: Yeah. A lot of meth-induced actions.

Jon Becker: When you guys when the patrol officers get there and the initial device is thrown at them, do they believe it's a pipe bomb or do they believe it's like a firecracker or some kind of firework?

Ted King: So, initially, I don't know exactly what the first patrol officer thought. However, the sergeant that called me had looked at it and said, "Hey, it looks like an M80. It's a cardboard wrapped kind of firecracker is the way it was described to me. So, you know, and again, speaking for myself, I was thinking, okay, it's a firecracker, you know, like, yeah, you don't want to close your hand on it, but is it really that big of a deal?

Jon Becker: So, yeah, which then plays into waiting to activate the team like he threw a firecracker, he didn't throw a pipe bomb.

Ted King: Right.

Jon Becker: When the bomb squad gets there, are they able to then assess the device? Do they at any point recharacterize that device in your mind? No, I don't think they looked at it, but I don't remember it being recharacterized at that point. By the time that they were able to look at it, we had already seen him with this other pipe bomb and he's already telling us about it.

Travis Harles: Additional devices. Family members said that he had devices and that he had been making them for some time.

Jon Becker: Okay. So, yeah, I mean, you got to take the explosive threat seriously and obviously if the house is booby trapped, it's going to kill him and the kid.

Ted King: Right.

Jon Becker: Okay. Yeah. And I mean, it's again, it's one of those cases that's just kind of in between. Everywhere you go, there isn't a clear bright line where you're like, "Oh, no. We're just going to do this. It's this." Well, maybe it's a hostage, maybe it's a captive, maybe it's a booby trap, maybe it's not. Maybe we can make an entry. Travis, from you, from your perspective, you know, on the one side, are you I know you guys are trying to get an opportunity to separate the kid, but have you made an entry plan? Are you looking at having to go in and how you guys are going to deal with devices if there are devices?

Travis Harles: How to deal with the devices? And we had a contingent of the bomb squad with us that were part of our entry team. but I mean specifically at the moment the plan if we were going to execute would be to try to recover the kid if possible and create separation and get back out of the house. And as this developed, I don't know if we haven't gone into some of the tactics that were used that we executed and how and why. So we, at one point a decision was made to deploy our throw phone and that was that was sent over to us on the one side and part of the reason was we had access to his driveway. So, we had opened up a section of the 4ft fence that had a gate on it. We opened up that section and we were able to drive our Bearecat up and get pretty good coverage all the way up to where that door that's on the two side right at the one-two corner. It goes directly into the kitchen and the upper half of that door is like a three three ft of like glass pane windows. And so the plan was to just smash those out with a hulie or some sort of you know blown object and then push the phone through and into the kitchen.

part of that was to try to establish communication. They had been talking to him on a cell phone, but also to kind of get eyes on what looked like on the inside of that kitchen.

Jon Becker: And does that work?

Travis Harles: Yeah. So, the deployment was successful. but pretty quickly into it and I wasn't at the command post, but he had come over and he was really upset that we had smashed the window. He threw a blanket over the throw phone. He was really paranoid over the phone. So, I don't think that they were able to have good eyes on right after I'm not sure how long they had eyes on with the throw phone.

Ted King: Yeah, he covered a couple of the cameras on the throw phone. Interestingly though on that, and I don't mean to cut you off, but just real quick, one of the cameras that was still working was pointed back at the door knob of the kitchen door and it had there was a chair in front of it that was barricading the door. Throw phone kind of goes. I don't know if it was on top of that or whatever, but the door knob had something wrapped around it and going down behind the chair. And so, spoiler alert, it was a little dog bell so the dog could go out and go pee. But at that point it was like, "Holy shit is this actually a booby trap?"

Jon Becker: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, well, you have to be biased towards booby trap because he's giving you all kinds of signs to do that. And yeah, something's wrapped around the door, right? You've got to think it's a booby trap if nothing else to protect your team, right?

Travis Harles: And another tactical consideration during the deployment was we weren't making entry at that point. And so we decided that we were trying; we didn't want to make it a secret. It wasn't like a clandestine movement. We wanted him to know what we were doing. And so we had a negotiator with us at the Bearcat speaking over the PA and telling him exactly what was about to happen. So we didn't want to be surprised when we smashed his window. We didn't want to be a surprise when the phone was deployed and to kick off him detonating some of these devices.

So we were very clear in communicating. I think we told him over the phone, but then also as we moved up with the Bearcat, we were telling him over the PA, we're not making an entry. We're going to be deploying a phone.

Jon Becker: And so that you know that way he wouldn't think that we're you know booting the door and torch off one of those devices with the throw phone. Do we gather any more information about the kid?

Ted King: It as a matter of fact that we don't get any more from the kid which because of where the throw phone was just inside the kitchen that actually led to the belief that if we ported windows at the 14 corner we would get more intel more observation into the structure. So, the kitchen had a relatively small area that we could see through, whereas the those other windows that I was talking about in into the main living room area would have opened up a view in one into the kitchen, but also down the hallway and into the main area where the suspect was spending most of his time.

So, the information that we did get or the intel that we did get when that throw phone was deployed was that and stop me if I'm wrong in my recollection of this, but that the suspect pretty much just stood there. He didn't react violently. He didn't make any movements or anything like that that would have gone toward you know threatening behavior or anything like that.

Travis Harles: Yeah. We had had success breaching a window and pushing a device through. So that led us also led us to think that we would potentially be successful doing that again. Part of one of the kinds of the makeshift plans we were thinking of during the time is if we could create some sort of separation between our suspect and this child that we could potentially make a limited entry to get a hold of that child. So, we knew that they were moving around. You could see that there were different windows at different points in the house and you could see at points when he would walk by or you could see a shadow behind a curtain, you could see him move and so we knew he was moving around. We knew the kid was moving around, so they weren't constantly together. And sometimes he would come out with the kid, sometimes he would come out without the kid.

So, one of the considerations was if we could get better OBS into the house and we could see that they're separated, that might give us an opportunity to take control and take that kid out of the house.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Either go in and snatch the kid or move on him and separate the two.

Travis Harles: Yes.

Jon Becker: Okay. So, you make a decision then we're going to port the one-four corner.

Travis Harles: Yes. A decision was made.

Ted King: Yes, that was my decision.

Jon Becker: Okay, you make a decision. We're going to port the four-corner.

Ted King: Yeah. And the team that was on that corner, they came up with a plan and they ran it up and I said, you know, that sounds like a good plan based off of the fact that we've been able to approach the structure several times without any additional explosives being thrown out. We've breached the windows already when we delivered the throw phone. the windows, just kind of reasoning it through, were less likely to be booby trapped than the doors were.

Jon Becker: Sure.

Ted King: So, we decided to port those windows and at the same time we were going to use the noise from that, port to or from that breaking rake to open up the door that's on that four-side. So, and when I say open it up, it's an inward opening wooden door with an outward opening metal screen door. And we were going to pop the screen door so that if we needed to, we would just have the inward opening wood door if there was a crisis entry that was necessary we had another option.

We felt like that was a reasonable action to take given the lack of response that we'd had so far, the information that we would be gaining, the tactical advantage that we would be putting ourselves in. And so I authorized that.

Jon Becker: Okay.

Travis Harles: It is important though to talk maybe about what was being communicated or what was being said by the suspect during the first window breach and the deployment of the throw phone and wasn't necessarily routed back around, right? If you want to hit on that.

Ted King: Yeah, absolutely. I just said how the observations were that the suspect was non-reactive to the throw phone deployment. Over the phone, it was a whole different story. And going through those filters that I didn't take care of. It was very clear listening to it later, when I actually went back for the after action and listened to the audio myself, he was pissed. He was making threats. He said, "If you guys ever come up here, I'm going to throw different explosives." He said he had stuff that would stick to cars.

(Criminal: And, bro, next time you guys break my window, we're going to find out what my shit can do. I'll call you when I'm ready in the morning. And if not, bro, if not, I don't know. Somebody's got to die. I'm pulling the fuck debt fuse on the whole neighborhood. I'm going to kill all you demon motherfuckers bro.)

Ted King: He's making all these threats. He said that he would leave the house as a crater and that he'd rather see the kid in heaven than with us. He's very adamant and very violent in his description of what he's going to do and the threats that he's making. But I'm not close enough to listen to that firsthand and the runner didn't relay that. So, again, not on them. I could have positioned them closer. So, it was just a bit of information that I feel I would have absolutely loved to have had before making that decision to send those guys.

Jon Becker: Yeah. No, it makes sense. Okay, so you make the decision, we're going to port it. What happens next?

Ted King: So, the team that is near the county Bearecat, they're at the 14 corner. The team leader designates several people to do the break and rake of the window and also designates several additional people to make a crisis entry if necessary through that port on the one side. So that became another issue but either way they move up to go breach the window they're doing the break and rake.  I didn't mention it earlier but we had pre-staged some fire hoses up there just in case. So those were with that same team and so it was very close. I don't know if you remember but I don't know if one of them had the hoses when they did the break and rake or if they went and grabbed them but either way it was all real close.

Travis Harles: We had a line charged just outside of that 4ft fence and pulled all the way up and charged and ready to go. So it wasn't inside the yard, but it was steps away from the operators.

Jon Becker: Is that something you guys would normally do on a barricade or was it just the explosive devices in this case that made you go let's have fire standby?

Ted King: So, it's an interesting question. We've had a couple call outs that we've used fire hoses successfully to help as a less lethal tool to disarm folks and to pin folks into position. It's not completely uncommon for us, but this one we'd had those past experiences in mind and then also the threat of explosives and the Molotov cocktails. We figured that it was a pretty strong chance of the house going up.

Jon Becker: Yeah, smart move.

Ted King: So, they start moving up. I don't know, an element of maybe five people that go up to do the break and rake and provide the lethal coverage. As they start breaking out the window, the suspect has two pipe bombs inside the residence and he lights and throws both of them at the officers.  Thank god neither of those pipe bombs made it out. They hit the wall above the window and dropped flat inside the house and detonated there. The suspect to his credit shielded his son and kept his son from absorbing any of the shrapnel that was in those pipe pumps. It was enough to blow the roof literally off of the walls.

(Explosion)

(Oh shit)

So it was  pretty strong. operators, a couple of them were knocked down. They do evacuate. They get back. We start pouring water into the house. And there's now a fire going on inside the house. We don't know if the suspect's alive. We don't know if the child's alive.

(Water, water, water

What do you want for cover?

Give us cover over here.

(screaming)

Go back to the window.

Hey. Go back to the window.

Get the boy. Get the boy. Get the boy.

(Screaming)

Turn the hose off.

(screaming)

What's your other device? Look for other device. They got the boy.

Back out. Back out. Back out. Go. Go. Move.

Get him out. Get him out.

Fire.

Get him out.

Back him out. Get him out.)

Ted King: The captain and I were back at the command post thinking we just killed this kid, you know, and as luck would have it, that fire hose that was being sprayed into that same window that they had just ported ultimately sprayed the child out the front door. It was a pretty crazy scene and Travis can describe it better, but there's fire in the water. It's all mixed up with the Molotov cocktails and what had ignited and what was on fire. It was very chaotic.

Travis Harles: Yeah. So like he said that he did have those Molotov cocktails and it appears that when the devices detonated it broke the glass that contained the gasoline that was in the Molotov cocktails.  So a fire immediately started. And they had the hose on it within probably 10 seconds and they were spraying it on the fire. But when you hit gasoline with water it spreads the gasoline. So the initial probably 10 or 15 seconds it made the fire bigger because it just spread the gasoline around and and spread fire everywhere. During that time the front door opened. I don't know if it was cracked or how it came open but the door comes open and you can see the fire and you can see high pressure water coming out of the front door and down the front like steps. And a few seconds into that, with the water gushing out and down the front steps, this kid, this four-year-old, just comes squirting out like a water slide and slides down the steps out into the front yard. And so our team on the one side immediately ran in, picked up the kid, and within a few seconds after he came out and was down the front steps, our suspect came, same pattern, squirting out, sliding down the steps and out of the front door.

Jon Becker: That's insane.

Ted King: Yes, it's pretty crazy.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So, I'm assuming the line is spraying kind of angularly through the house, probably through the wall and and catching the door, blowing the door open, and then if they try to cross it, they just get picked up and thrown out the front door.

Travis Harles: Yeah. So, it's from the foreside towards the two-side and at an angle and coming so, from the foreside coming through at an angle and out the front door that's directly in the center of the one side. So it's just sprang through the living room and into the kitchen and out the kitchen door essentially.

Ted King: Yeah, it was pretty crazy. So, and what I say incredibly lucky because I could have gone, we could have sprayed the kid back into the hallway, we could have made a bigger problem for ourselves, but the big man is on our side.

Jon Becker: Wow. So, the suspect now, so you got you grabbed the kid, suspect now gets blown out the front door and you guys just grab him and take him into custody.

Travis Harles: Yeah, there was a dog deployment and one of the issues was the fire also with the water. So, the house is on fire at this point. And the fire was growing and it sprang out of the front door. So, we were fighting with the suspect and he was also being engaged by a canine as the fire was squirting out and onto like the officers and the suspect. So, we had to hastily move him from that position at the front door into a safer position away from the fire and also the other explosive devices which, you know, we didn't know if there were going to be additional explosions or not. The kid was easy to get out because he's a 40lb child. One operator grabbed him and just ran back to the command post. but this he was a bigger dude, our suspect and so picking this guy up with a dog attached to him and moving him out to the street was one of the tactical problems we ran into.

Jon Becker: All while fire is squirting out the front door. Yeah.

Ted King: Yeah. And we're waiting for the house to ignite because we think there's explosive. I mean there were explosives. Thankfully none of them went off from that. But yeah--

Jon Becker: It's like a bad nightmare, man. It's like a hell dream.

Ted King: Yeah. And we can talk about it, but afterwards, we're thinking like what could we have done other than the decision-making that was on me, but what equipment could we have gotten? What shielding can we use? What can we do about explosive threats? There were definitely some things we could have done better, for sure. But, a lot of the military folks that we contacted and were talking to about that, they're pretty much like, "Hey, it's explosive. You're fucked. You know, like it's tough. You know, it's tough dealing with that.”

Travis Harles: So, you're talking about the consideration between like what type of force to use, like whether or not we should, does this justify deadly force, does it not? Like we said, is the kid a hostage? Is he captive? What is his status? And how does that play into our decision-m with the snipers with other force options that were available?

Jon Becker: It's interesting because like up until the point that he throws the pipe bombs, Mhm. I would argue that there's no reason for deadly force. As he throws the pipe bombs, I would argue that's attempting to kill the officers, right? So, at that point, I think he moves, clearly starts stepping into the lethal force thing. But at that point, you got another problem, which is you just started a fire.

Travis Harles: Yes.

Jon Becker: Or he just started a fire and that's spreading rapidly. So, I'm not sure. Did the team that went up to do the rake and break see him? Do they see him throw the pipe bombs at him?

Travis Harles: I believe they see the devices come towards the window and then they donate. It was pretty quick from the time that they started the break and break to the time that the devices detonated. There were curtains on the other side of the windows too. So, part of the plan was to get the window out using the bang pole and it's got the spikes on the end of it that are designed to kind of get caught in the curtains. So, they wanted to get it caught in the curtains and rip the curtains to the outside to get a better view into the house. So, they couldn't see him directly, but I mean there were some lights and some shadows kind of moving around throughout the whole operation.

Jon Becker: Wow. Okay, we got them both in custody. The house is on fire. Does the house end up burning to the ground? What ends up happening.

Ted King: I don't know how I-- I think--

Travis Harles: The hose ended up putting it out. There's that initial 15 minutes where the hose is making the fire worse but once it got to that point the fire wasn’t spreading anymore, the hose was able to put the fire out. One of the lessons learned later on was that you can request from fire to have foam. They, actually have--

Ted King: They have stuff for that.

Travis Harles: They have stuff for that.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Travis Harles: Believe it or not, the firemen know how to stop that. But, we don't know any better. Let's just get some water and spray it on it.

Jon Becker: That's probably a good place for us to kind of pick up with lessons learned. Talk to me as you guys walk away from this thing and you debrief it, obviously there's a hundred decisions that you can second guess here and make yourself crazy with, but like looking back on it, what are the real lessons learned for the team?

Ted King: There were a lot of different aspects as well. One of the primary lessons that I learned was just setting up the command post, right? Setting it up in a way that information flows rather than you have to push information. And by that I mean like I mentioned a couple times not hearing what was being said with the negotiators and relying on the negotiator himself and his filter and the runner and and that filter. I did not get the information that I should have gotten. And it's not their fault. It was my fault. I didn't realize that I didn't get that information until after the fact listening to audio and going over stuff for the AR and lessons learned. I didn't realize that when Travis's team moved up and deployed the throw phone and it sounded like he had little to no reaction and you know that kind of lulled me into a false sense of security as far as then authorizing that other team to go up and breach. I expected the same thing. I didn't have anything to really expect differently.

Going back and listening to the audio, I found that he was pissed. He was very adamant about if we approach the house again, he's going to use explosives, that he's going to kill officers, that he has stuff that'll defeat our armor, things like that. It seemed like a small thing at the time, you know, to just have the runner and not really worry about the trucks being up next to each other. It's an older area of town with thinner roads, slimmer roads. So, I just figured out that that'll work. It's not necessarily even a shortcut, but in that just failure to think it through, lost out on some valuable intel that was really,  really could have been pertinent and could have saved some of our folks that the injuries that they sustained.

Jon Becker: That makes sense. What else?

Ted King: The EOD, I mentioned that they were pushed forward. they were not in direct line of sight with the problem, but they were close to where they could deploy the robots and you know put all the gadgets and technology into the structure. I should have brought one of them back to the command post, one of the techs to be an intel source, and say like, “Hey, this is a safe standoff distance with this size explosive roughly, right?” Or based off of, you know, what we're seeing in this window or at that doorway, it's likely to be, you know what I mean? Like just giving us a little bit more of an educated guess rather than us just not knowing, is this booby trapped? Is that booby trapped? What's the standoff distance if this does ignite, if we shoot him while he's carrying this thing? How far away do we need to stand? Or, if he detonates, we were worried about dead man switches and all the stuff that we hear about, right? if it detonates, how far away do we have to keep the kid, things like that. I didn't do that. I really wish that I had because I feel like if we'd have been able to provide more information to the guys that were up there on the ground, they could have made potentially another decision even earlier on as far as what that separation looks like. Is it significant enough separation to go grab the kid or is it not worth it? You know, is that separation not to that point where the kid's safe, even if we sent the dog or or whatever it was. So I wish that we'd have done that. I wish I had done that.

Some of the information that came in through the negotiators, we had some information that came through that the negotiator said, "Hey, it sounds like a metal-on metal sound that is that sounds the same or consistent with him loading a magazine." We had done some homework earlier and found that he had a firearm that was registered to him, but that that firearm had been seized in a domestic violence arrest previously. But he's not at his house. He's at I don't know if it's a brother's house or a friend's house or something like that, but it was somebody else's house that he was living in. So, does that mean that there's more firearms there? As we pulled on that thread a little bit more and thought about that, the fact that we've got an officer, a negotiator saying that this is what it sounds like, they are informed, they know what a magazine being loaded sounds like, but they're not looking at it. They're just hearing some sounds.

So as we put that information out, yes, it's good information to be put out to the to the team, for safety purposes and situational awareness, but one of the results of that is that the sniper team leader calls me up shortly after that information goes out over the radio, and he says, "Hey, I think that this needs to be a sniper initiated assault." So we talk through it a little bit and he says, "This guy's making comments about his son. He'd rather see his son in heaven than with the police or with the mom. There's a metal on metal sound similar to a magazine being loaded which he took to mean a magazine was being loaded. And this kid has been running around this place and and he's referring to this kid as a hostage. Again, I couldn't say that he wasn't at that point, but we just had to be real careful because that little bit of of that metal on metal sound and adding that context that context that that we had added, we're doing it for safety, but now we're going to use it as a fact that we're going to rely on for this sniper initiated assault to me was dangerous. We don't know that that's what it is. That's what we think that it is. That's what somebody that is on our side is saying that it could be. And somebody else is now saying, "Okay, I'm checking another box. So that was something that, I told him that it was not there for me yet. Because one, that was just officer safety information for me. That wasn't something that was, I was comfortable relying on as fact. What I didn't count on was that he would take that to mean that I was taking away his reactionary authority, that they were not going to use snipers. We're not going to use him and his observations that essentially what his opinion was and all the experience that he had just didn't count for this.

I never thought that he would take it that way. I wish that I'd have explained previously just more thoroughly what you know the expectations of reactionary authority were, and the latitude that's there and that you don't need the commander's approval to take lethal action if you know you have the facts and circumstances lined up in front of you. The difference is that you're on the hook for explaining it you know and and we do it all the time shouldn't say all the time but any lethal force encounter that we have we have to explain ourselves. So it was just again a lesson learned that I should have one explained on the front end to the entire team. If one person doesn't understand it the same way I do, then there's probably another one that doesn't understand it the same.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Sure.

Ted King: So that was another lesson learned. But then also in that instance to say, hey, just because it's not there right now doesn't mean I'm taking anything away from you and your independent ability to react. I wish that I'd had done that because he's actually one of my best friends and it created quite a wedge between us personally as well until we got to talk about it later and all that. It took a while.

Jon Becker: It also brings in the kind of long-standing debate with California legislation and other states and even other countries starting to manage this like well was it really an eminent threat. I think that that has to be going through your mind right is kind of weighing this math of like are we at a lethal threat yet he's got explosive devices, he may have a gun, gets his kid but the kid is tree and moving around the house. This whole thing is kind of hanging on this line of hostage captive, lethal, non-lethal. What else is kind of rolling through your mind as you're looking at this thing?

Ted King: Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. Fear alone is not enough, right? and then take that back to when I was in SLP, we were talking about the I want to say it was Pierce County, Washington back in 2013 where the suspect had his infant son and the SWAT team that was and it was barricaded. The SWAT team treated it like a hostage. Ultimately the suspect with son comes out to the front door, comes out to one side. The SWAT commander makes the call to not let him go back inside with the kid. Team in the back breaches, goes inside. I believe it was an explosive breach. Goes inside, shoots a couple dogs. The guy that's outside, the suspect, doesn't know what's going on, runs back inside, and as he turns to go back inside, he's shot by the sniper on the one side and killed. Later on, the jury found that that kid wasn't a hostage in their opinion. So again, not that we're not that we're making decisions based off of a jury, but that was weighing pretty heavily as well, like and not just the fact that the jury found found them culpable of all the monetary awards and all that stuff, but the fact that these people didn't think that this kid was a hostage. And we've talked about it here today. I wasn't convinced that this kid was a hostage. So that,  it kind of I don't know, it just hit a little close to home, and it was like I don't feel good about saying that this guy is going to hurt this kid.

Jon Becker: Yeah. I mean, this whole case is just kind of hanging on that balance point between hostage and captive. And is he really threatening the kid? Obviously, he's a threat to you guys and maybe some secondary explosive is a threat to the kid, but he's not directly threatening the kid. In fact, he's being nice to him. And it just kind of gets on that teeter totter of like I don't know. Sitting here hearing the whole thing. I don't know if this kid was a hostage.

Ted King: As well as that sniper initiation, what's step two to that? It's an assault. Either an assault or we try to call the kid out. And either way, I was worried about the booby traps.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Ted King: Anything that's, sending a team in that could potentially jeopardize the kid or jeopardize themselves, or, like I don't get a lot of flack for it, but even the idea of, priority life. Like trading these good guys that I know for somebody that I don't know, you know what I mean? Like a kid that's not necessarily a hostage.

Jon Becker: That may not be harmed.

Ted King: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Right. No, that's why I wanted to sit down with you guys. Like this is such a difficult balance. Travis, what are your thoughts?

Travis Harles: Yeah. So, some lessons learned on my end from a more of a strategic level. I could have done a better job of really communicating like what the end state was to the team, like also framing the problem like what do we want to have happen. What do we not want to have happen? Really pushing Ted kind of hit on a little bit about the reactionary authority and this wasn't really a concept. I was confused as well if I'm being honest when the sniper team leader made that call and we he and I had a conversation so he made the call to Ted and then it was communicated back something to that effect of like well there's saying, "No, we're not going to we're not going to utilize the snipers on this." And so, the concept the the the whole concept of reactionary authority being communicated better to to my guys on on the one side and being more creative and thinking like through the problem a little bit better because initially because like Ted said the negotiations seemed to be we were under the impression that the negotiations were going to were going well and that he was just going to come out.

If I'm being honest, like the way I envisioned it ending was he was just going to get tired and finally just give up and he was going to come out and surrender and then we were just going to put handcuffs on him. We're going to leave. I wasn't really thinking through like what if he refuses to do that? Like how are we going to force this thing to end? until a little bit later on and some of those missed opportunities like I talked about earlier. And if I would have been more creative and more forward thinking and more I don't want to say aggressive but willing to take action as opposed to kind of sitting back and waiting for the incident to resolve itself. I think that we could have utilized some of those windows of opportunity that he opened up and either got a dog deployment on him or got in a position of concealment to get a taser deployment on him when he came out or some do something other than essentially, sit there and wait for this thing to come to a conclusion.

Jon Becker: I think it's difficult though because, you think about it like Gary Klein, who I interviewed on the show, talks about, kind of “Recognition, prime decision-making”. You have a set of paradigms that you're applying to the situation. You're looking at it and you're trying to make it fit one of the paradigms that you previously had. Is it a barricade? Is it a hostage? Because if it's a hostage, you're going to take the opportunity. But if it's not a hostage, maybe you're not. And because this thing is sitting so in the middle of all of those different, recognizable paradigms.

Travis Harles: Yeah.

Jon Becker: It's easy to get sucked into inaction. Because you're not hitting the normal trigger.

Travis Harles: Correct.

Jon Becker: Right. For a barricade, you're not thinking about intervening. You're thinking about the guy coming to you.

Travis Harles: Yeah.

Jon Becker: And for a hostage situation, you are thinking about intervening, but this isn't really a hostage situation.

Travis Harles: Yeah. And then add the explosive devices as well. So when he's coming out and he's got explosive devices, we're worried about kill switches and that's also factoring. Like you said, on a simple barricade, you usually when they come out, they're surrendering. But on a simple barricade, if somebody comes out 20 ft in front of the door and then turns around to walk back in, we'll send the dog, we'll do, we'll take an action to prevent him from getting back in. Not like a lethal force action, but something.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Some form of less lethal just to interrupt his loop.

Travis Harles: Exactly. But we're also considering if we put this guy down and what if this device we cook off one of these devices.

Jon Becker: With the kid in the house.

Travis Harles: With the kid in the house sometimes but also sometimes he would come out with the kid attached to him or really close proximity which was another hesitation for deploying the dog. Like if we send this dog and it gets mixed up between the suspect and the and the kid now are we going to be dog biting a you know a four-year-old kid and what's that going to what's that going to cause? So yeah, like you said, it didn't fit into one clean box and so it was easy, like you said, to get sucked into inaction. That's a great way of putting it.

Jon Becker: So Ted, from your perspective, retrospectively looking at this thing, how would you frame it differently? I mean even sitting here it's still not like it's knowing everything I don't know that it still falls into a box that makes sense, but Monday morning quarterbacking yourself and looking back at it how could you have framed this differently or what information could you have gotten that might have changed your approach to the problem?

Ted King: I think that that's a really good question. I think that there's so many of these types of problems, not just this one, but the types of problems that law enforcement encounters that it's an unknown situation until, like you said, it's recognized and you can put it in the box that it belongs to. The pieces were out there, but I didn't do a good enough job putting the recognizers that we had in place, i.e., like CNT or EOD or utilizing the snipers or putting those people in place in the right amount of time to provide the decision makers and the action takers with the information that they needed. So some of that stuff like I talked about with EOD, if they don't have that information to help put this situation into this box or take this action because of this, then I think that it just exacerbates and stretches out a problem, right? If they've got all the intel that they need and they've got the authority, they're confident with their skills, they're confident with what it is that they're faced with, I think that it makes it a little bit easier to pull at the different things that need to be pulled to put it in to one picture and put it into hey, this is what we're going to do and this is why.

So, I would say that in terms of framing, just getting them the information that they needed would be kind of a priority one, and I think that the guys would take care of the rest to be honest.

Jon Becker: What would have changed? I mean, you're biased for action here. What information was available that would have changed the way that you guys would have responded at a tactical level you think?

Travis Harles: I think that if we would have known specifically how upset he was at that initial breaching and deploying of the throw phone, I think that we kind of already covered it. That would have definitely made us second guess the thought of doing another window breach, another break and rake. That would have probably changed our decision-making there. I think that additional information would have been useful.

The concern that we had about the kill switches on the devices in hindsight again hindsight being 2020, it's an actual kill switch on a device is so rare. The majority of explosive devices are just like hobby fuse and not like a kill switch. I think that we were placing a lot more concern on a potential threat that was very unlikely. The devices were not actually as dangerous as we perceived them as long as they weren't lit, they were, you know, they're not, they're not that big of a problem. Unless he gets a torch to the fuse, the device isn't going to hurt you. I think that we were a lot more concerned about how dangerous these devices were going to be because of their ability to cause harm. They blew the house up. but because of the difficulty that it would take to get the device to cook off.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So, if you sent the dog.

Travis Harles: If we send the dog and it bites him and he drops a device, it's not going to matter. It doesn't matter. And that was a consideration that we had is like, well, we if we take an action, he's going to, he's going to drop this device and it's going to go off, it's going to kill him and it's going to kill this kid. and and so that caused a lot of hesitancy. So, I guess just having a little bit better knowledge on how these devices work than I had at the time.

Jon Becker: Which goes back to, as you're doing this, like the thing I'm thinking of is harvesting the available knowledge.

Travis Harles: Right.

Jon Becker: It's like, okay, you've got the bomb guys there trying to maximize what Bomb is providing, trying to maximize what CNT is providing but it's also a dynamic situation. It's like there's a lot going on here. Looking at it retroactively and going, “Well you know we didn't know but this information was available”. I think from a going forward how has this changed the way you are interacting like as a SWAT commander are you going to handle your CNT or EOD differently than you would have prior to this incident?

Ted King: Yeah, I think Travis is better to answer that because I left the team a couple years ago. I think you guys right now you're doing more to cross training operators with CNT duties and drones. Drones have changed the game as well, which we didn't really have.

Travis Harles: We didn't really have it in 2020 at that time. That's another option that wasn't available that would change the kind of the arithmetic on this problem with drones for sure. The formulation we're a lot more integrated now than we were then. We do a lot more cross training with our operators. We're sending operators to crisis negotiator training schools and also sending breachers to explosive breaching schools. And then we're now integrating tac medics. They're fire firefighters that are tac medics who could help us with the hose and the firefighting side which came into play here. and what other cross trains are we doing? It's just a lot more integrated and cross-trained and better. We're all part of the special operations group, but that group is more integrated now than it was at that time. We're not as siloed as we were. So, it's easier to talk to the bomb guys and have them explain what we're looking at and what this might be. It's easier to communicate with our CNT guys and have a better understanding of what's actually being said in there, what information is being because a lot of that wasn't getting to us. So, just being better integrated as a special operations group, it would have helped us to have some of the information that we didn't have that would have changed some of the decision-making.

Jon Becker: Yeah. We've talked about culturecentric leadership. We talk about a lot of lessons learned. The problem with siloing people is that you don't have the relationship with them that you can just go up and go, "Hey, man. What do you think?" And trust what they're saying. They also don't have the relationship with you that allows them to go, "Hey, Travis, I don't like the way this feels." It is kind of part of harvesting the wisdom of the group is creating an environment where you can either push or pull that information.

Travis Harles: Yeah.

Jon Becker: From the whole group. It's not something that happens intuitively in human beings and it certainly isn't something that happens intuitively between disciplines.

Travis Harles: Yeah. And then also like Ted's talked about this before, but this siloing those elements. The SWAT guys want to swat the problem, the negotiator guys want to negotiate the problem, the bomb tech guys want to robot the problem. Like everybody's got their specialty skill that like this is my tool and this is what I'm going to use to solve this problem. It's almost like it's not like a real competition, but there's the mindset that my answer to my solution to this problem is the best solution.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Well, it's specially biased, right? Like if you're a bomb guy, it's a bomb problem. You know, they always say like, the problem with seeing a surgeon is he's a surgeon, so he solves it with surgery.

Ted King: Right.

Travis Harles: Right.

Jon Becker: It's the same thing here. Like a bomb guy sees it as a bomb problem. A CNT sees it as a negotiation problem, and a SWAT guy sees it as a SWAT problem.

Travis Harles: Yes.

Jon Becker: It's a question of where do those come together and who fuses those perspectives? And it sounds like what you're saying is that that fusion should have happened at the command post.

Ted King: Absolutely.

Jon Becker: And wasn't.

Ted King: Right. It's great if it can happen down low, but it's essential to happen there at the hub where all the information is coming in. I give you a good example of that at one point listening to the audio again after the fact. One of those was the commander's intent, was to create separation between the kid and the suspect, right? Create and take action on it. One of the negotiators, when the suspect says, "Hey, I'm going to come outside. I'm going to play some music for you guys. You know, I'm going to bring a speaker out and play some music.” The negotiator says, "Yeah, it's not a good idea. You need to stay inside.” So there's a little bit more to it, but that's the gist of it is that, the instate, the guidance that was given was very different from what the information that was being relayed to the suspect which is just again another…

Travis Harles: Yeah. And in a hypothetical world, if he can encourage that behavior and get him to come out as far as he can, but also communicate that that's about to occur, it would help us to, like you have a dog ready to go, but a dog can't be ready to engage for five straight hours.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Travis Harles: You know what I mean? Like if we have that information coming like, "Hey, in just a minute he's going to come out to bring you and play you some music." Well, then that can key us up to be like, "Okay, we're going to get in position and we know it's about to happen and be ready to go, and shorten our reaction time, I guess."

Jon Becker: Do you think that that's an instate problem? Is that like a divergence of instate? Is it CNT has one instate in mind, you have a different instate in mind and that they're not common?

Ted King: Yeah, I do think that's what it is. I think that it is a symptom of the problem that Travis was talking about with having siloed training and siloed focuses. Again, we moved in the right direction by creating this special operations group and putting everything under one umbrella, but there was still the growing pains of now we're all next to each other, but we don't talk. We don't train together, things like that. So, it was never as obvious to me as it was during this call out. I wasn't somebody who just came to the team as a lieutenant or as a sergeant. I was on the team for 15 years and had never been off the team. And I've moved up through the ranks. So it wasn't something where I was scared of action or the typical company guy or…

Jon Becker: Yeah. You're not the new guy that just rotated in from the school resource position.

Ted King: Yeah. I don't say that to mean that I make all the right decisions, obviously, but this wasn't something that was just wildly wrong to me. You know what I mean? It was just kind of again the way we had done things and we think, “Oh, we're making this progress,” but that progress doesn't actually get made with the idea. It gets made with the application and the action that's taken behind it. Right? So, all the great ideas in the world are nice, but they're just a starting point. And it was just a growing pain that was made unfortunately pretty glaringly obvious on this one.

Jon Becker: Well, it's also interesting because it goes to the way that teams train. Right. Teams train generally speaking for a single instate for the specialty that's training.

Ted King: Right.

Jon Becker: Right. So if it's a bomb problem, then it's handled as a bomb problem and the bomb guys think of it as a bomb problem.

Ted King: Yes.

Jon Becker: Or it's a SWAT problem. And there isn't, you know, most teams don't train this level of integration where like, oh, it's a bomb problem that is now transformed into a hostage situation.

Ted King: Yeah.

Jon Becker: You know, or vice versa. And because this thing again is sitting in the middle of all these recognitional decision paradigms.

Ted King: Right.

Jon Becker: Those are the things that could pull it, that ability to commonly articulate an evolving instate are the things that can pull it into a direction where an action will make more sense. How has this trained the way? How has this changed the way you train? How does the team train for now for an integrated solution?

Travis Harles: Yeah, we definitely do a lot more integrated training now. And like I said, I kind of touched on a little bit before is from the SWAT side, we have started to branch out instead of just being, you know, working tactical problems, you know, weapons drills and and and and that we're we're we're branching out and we're we are now integrating with our bomb guys instead of it's it was always like we were the the team and then these other guys would kind of tag along with us.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Travis Harles: And now our training is more diversified, I guess. So, like I said, we have some some of our operators who have been to CNT school now and they and they and they train on that side and we have some guys that are that are explosive breachers and they're training with our bomb guys and and we're we're getting a I guess integration through that training and through kind of expanding out and being less focused on just being SWAT only and and trying to be a little bit more diverse on our end on the on the SWAT side with those other teams and those other elements.

Jon Becker: Well, like when I teach Lessons Learned, one of the things I talk about like with medic programs is this idea of having a broad and deep program. Having a broad enough awareness of the skill set in the case of medics being able to stop bleeding that everybody on the team can stop bleeding, but also having that deep capability of having a legitimate paramedic, who knows, oh, he can give drugs, he can solve these problems. Because there are those scenarios where you need to have the depth of, “Hey man, what's that thing he's holding in his hand?”

Travis Harles: Yes.

Jon Becker: “And it's got a fuse sticking out of it. And does that look like a dead man switch to you?”

Travis Harles: Yeah. And it's little things that you don't think that are important. So we have since this incident implemented a more in-depth medic program. And like I said, we have some of our city fire guys that are part of our team and they come out to all of our calls. They go to our training. And when that first program first started, I was an advocate for sending these guys to rifle school. And then when they went to rifle school, we put them through our SWAT school. And then like they're doing entries and they're doing all of this SWAT stuff. And one of the arguments that came up against this like “Why are you having the fireman like carry a rifle and shooter course? He's never going to do that.” And I'm like, “Yes, but he has a much better understanding of what our job is. And so he has an understanding of how he can be effective to help us the more he knows what we're doing.” And we're trying to do that with all the other teams as well.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So they understand how the team is going to move, how the team makes decisions, how it intervenes. Yeah. That makes perfect sense. I think it's more and more that you are seeing a move more towards what you see at national level counterterrorism teams where you have very deep levels you know tactical bomb techs and medics and intel guys and those circles are overlapping. I think even in a collateral duty team now you're starting to see this recognition that specialty bias and silozation creates barriers that in this case the suspect exploited. He didn't know he was exploiting him, but he inadvertently stepped on the lines between SWAT and bomb and SWAT and negotiation and like he's kind of standing in the gray space.

Travis Harles: Yeah.

Jon Becker: The whole time.

Travis Harles: Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. Great way to put it.

Ted King: The part of going a step above that as well is it's great to have everybody cross-trained in everything, but that creates such a training burden as well that you know in 30 hours a month, which is a lot for a collateral duty team.

Jon Becker: It is a lot for a collateral duty team. It shouldn't be a lot for a collateral duty, but it's a lot for a collateral duty team.

Ted King: Especially now I'm in a different position and it's a little--

Travis Harles: Worry about staffing and overtime.

Jon Becker: He's doing all the captain math.

Ted King: Super exciting stuff. Yeah. It becomes a real thing, you know, because if we can't get out there to do our day job because everybody's off on training, like we can have all the tactical GI Joes in the world, but we're still letting go of 99% of our work. There's a lot of dynamics to it for sure.

Jon Becker: Well, I think this is one of the problems, so this is the challenge that collateral duty teams face all the time is is building, what the Marine Corps would call a “Medal”, building this mission essential task list and being able to look at it and say, "We have to be able to do these things and train to these things and we need to have this level of capability and especially with shrinking budgets and and departments that are 15, 20, 25% short staffed”. This is why every team I work with now is struggling to even get enough guys at training and all that. You can see again that that tension is pulling right through the middle of this problem which is why I wanted to sit down with you guys because this is kind of hitting on all of the struggles of full-time and collateral duty teams, but it is in the middle of everything.

Ted King: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Is there anything else looking back at it that you think now if you're giving this debrief, you're sitting down with another team, you're like, "Hey man, think about these things." Is there anything else that we haven't covered?

Ted King: I'm sure there is. This one was one. Oh, yeah, individual readiness is another one. I talked about the team leader that was on the one-four corner. Making the plan to do the break and rake and then also assigning some people to do a crisis entry through the door on the one side if necessary. I didn't realize that the crisis entry portion of that had gone out as a directive from that team leader. Not that it's a big deal. It sounds pretty reasonable. However, what those operators received was that they were going to go do an entry. And so, ultimately because of the explosions and everything else, it was just such a cluster that that plan even didn't go to plan, right? Or the actions didn't go to plan. But afterwards, as we were debriefing this and working through it, as a team and, you know, the decision-making and what we could have done better and that sort of thing, there were a couple of, operators that had lost faith in us up the chain as far as like actually caring for them.  They thought that they were being sent into an explosive environment essentially to trade their lives for this kid.

Again there's a little bit of some personality involved in that. But it was something that it hit pretty hard. The way that it hit me was frustration. I was actually getting frustrated with them about it, like “Why would you think that?” Then it took me a little bit of time to work through that and be like, well, obviously I didn't explain it well enough, you know what I mean? Or that's just not a known thing. So it was something that kind of left that gut punch feeling like I don't want the guys to think I don't care about them, you know what I mean? When we're out there and we're making decisions and we know that it's dangerous and that guys could get hurt, I expect all of them to understand that it's pretty dangerous stuff and that this is a thing that you might not come home from. We're going to do everything we can to not get to that point. But if you don't understand that that's the risk of doing one of these one of these special teams, then you're probably either in the wrong spot or somebody didn't tell you everything, right? I didn't want to be that guy that didn't tell him everything. So that was something that was difficult to work through.

One of those guys was on that approach team for the explosions that went off and ultimately retired from this. We had a couple more like one with permanent injury to his hearing. Another one had a brain injury out of this still working for us. He made a recovery.

Jon Becker: From the over pressure.

Travis Harles: Yeah.

Ted King: Yes. There's stuff like that that I don't know that I don't know that, like I mentioned earlier, that there was any any special equipment or anything that we could have done, but just knowing what we pulling in the information that some of us had would have been enough to say, “Hey, let's not let's not move up on that”. Or if we are going to move up on that, maybe using a robot or something like that. He had specifically said, “Hey, if you send a robot up here, I'm going to throw bombs at it” and blow it up and all that stuff. So that was the reason we didn't send the robot. But looking back, “Man, I would have much rather traded a robot that works half the time, as opposed to six of my six guys”.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Travis Harles: So, yeah, for me, I think there's that old saying, never mistake good luck with good tactics. and this was one of those scenarios where you could look at the outcome and say, “Well, we rescued the kid. We didn't go over the injuries, but the kid had basically no injuries. The suspect had some blast damage and some burns to his lungs, you know, but that was all self-inflicted. He survived.” You could look at that outcome and and and we had he kind of touched on some of the injuries for the operators which were significant enough to be to cause some issues, but it could have been much worse for the operators. It could have been much worse for the suspect and for this kid. So the outcome at the end of the day was a pretty good outcome all things considered. It's easy for some people to say, “Well I mean it all worked out so that means we must have been doing something right.” One of the things I'm actually pretty I guess in this incident the thing I'm most proud of for our team is actually everyone universally has the mindset of like actually no we kind of screwed the pooch on this. There's a lot of things we could have done better and we got real lucky on this instead of allowing yourself to be lulled into this like self backpadding sense of like great job guys, you did it. So that's the thing I'm most proud of for the team is not mistaking the good luck that we had on this operation with good tactics .

Jon Becker: Yeah. I mean, if he throws the bomb a little better, he blows up your operators. If he throws it a little worse, he kills himself and the kid.

Travis Harles: Yeah.

Ted King: Yep.

Jon Becker: That is the point of debriefing, right? Is it to retrospectively look at it and say, "Okay, what what could have happened, not what did happen, what could have happened, and what could we have done to more positively influence that effect?" And I think that that's a step that a lot of teams don't look at. They don't take the time. They go, "Oh man, the guy shot at us and he just about hit us in the head, but everything went great." Like, no, no, he just did, he didn't shoot well.

Ted King: Yeah.

Travis Harles: Right.

Jon Becker: In this case, yeah, shooting him out of the door with a fire hose, certainly there's an element of luck there, unless it was intentional. If it's intentional, I'm willing to give you credit, but it didn't sound like it was. Is there anything that we haven't covered?

Ted King: No, I don't think so. I don't know. There's I can think of other calls where it's where it's had a significant impact on the structure of the team. Like going to the three color teams that we have, it was a a different call out that we had to have a team, doing a manhunt for a couple weeks. We had to have a team that's ready all the time, right? So it structurally changed the makeup of the team, you know, or we do a thing and now we get a piece of equipment because we had this particular problem. And so there was a problem and then there was affirmative action. That took care of that problem or worked to address it. On this one, I don't know, it probably led to a little bit of that feeling of just that gut punch, where it's like other than just the individual information pieces, and getting that together. There's not really a thing that can keep you safe from the explosive. There's not really a thing that would say, “Well, we're not going to have this problem anymore, you know”. It's just a just “Man I hope that doesn't happen again, you know”.

Jon Becker: Yeah. No, it is a really hard problem. Travis, anything else?

Travis Harles: No. No. I just like I was kind of mentioned before being more proactive in my mindset and the way that I think about how I'm going to work through this problem and not just allowing myself to kind of like you said get sucked into like this is the box we're going to put this in and this is the result that's going to come of it.

Ted King: Yeah. I think just to add to that, I think you and a lot of the guys do a really good job of proposing ideas, of pushing information up and things that like, “Hey, we could do this, Hey, we could do that. And having some reasoning behind it.” I don't know if it's just again those growing pains and it's again it's been a couple years since I've been on the team. I know some of those other teams are much more likely to just kind of sit back and not take action until (elements of our team, I'm not saying other SWAT teams), elements of our team have traditionally been a lot more hesitant to step up and push that information. So I think that some of that as well where it's just encouraging the cool guys to go talk to whoever's on this team or that team or this element or that element say, “Hey, what's in your head is valuable to us. We can't get it unless you give it. So if you see a spot to find work and put some work in do it you know just like just like an entry if you can if there's work to be found get on it.”

Jon Becker: Well it's creating a culture of harvesting the entire wisdom of the team.

Ted King: Yeah, right.

Jon Becker: Both by push and by pull. And teaching everybody, you know, you think in terms of a lot of our soft units use “Rankoff Planning”. And the whole point behind using Rankoff Planning is that the newest guy on the team has more perspective on the team than anybody else on the team does.

Ted King: Right.

Jon Becker: And he looks at the problem differently. So it is creating that underlying culture of, “Hey, if you see something, we want to know.”

Ted King: Yeah.

Jon Becker: “Yeah you're on the team but you're not the FNG you're another set of eyes who's gathering information and seeing the problem differently than we are as a commander.” It's opening yourself up to that and being willing to periodically be wrong and have your ego bruised and all the stuff that comes with that. But it is that idea that we have to harvest every bit of brain that's available to solve the problem right guys this has been fantastic. I appreciate you doing this. It was a positive resolution. I actually think that more positive than the resolution was the team's retrospective on it and this kind of a conversation. So, thank you for doing this.

Travis Harles: Thank you.

Ted King: Thank you.