Blue Grit Podcast: The Voice of Texas Law Enforcement
#072- "Cops and Campers" with Eric Reynolds
Join us for an unforgettable episode featuring Eric Reynolds, a former police officer with a remarkable story to share. From a family legacy steeped in law enforcement to a life-altering incident where Eric was involved in an officer-involved shooting with a bank robbery suspect, during which he was shot several times, Eric's journey is a testament to courage and resilience.
In this episode, you'll gain insights into the mental and physical toll of policing, the barriers to seeking help, and the long-term effects of trauma. Discover how Eric's unwavering dedication and strength paved the way for his remarkable recovery and ongoing commitment to honoring his fellow officers and addressing his health challenges. This powerful conversation sheds light on the realities of life on the front lines and the incredible resilience required to overcome such profound adversity.
Don't miss this inspiring and eye-opening episode.
#police #ThinBlueLine #Copsandcampers #mentalhealth #BlueGritPodcast #TMPA #lawenforcement #copspodcast
email us at- bluegrit@tmpa.org
Join us for an unforgettable episode featuring Eric Reynolds, a former police officer with a remarkable story to share. From a family legacy steeped in law enforcement to a life-altering incident where Eric was involved in an officer-involved shooting with a bank robbery suspect, during which he was shot several times, Eric's journey is a testament to courage and resilience.
In this episode, you'll gain insights into the mental and physical toll of policing, the barriers to seeking help, and the long-term effects of trauma. Discover how Eric's unwavering dedication and strength paved the way for his remarkable recovery and ongoing commitment to honoring his fellow officers and addressing his health challenges. This powerful conversation sheds light on the realities of life on the front lines and the incredible resilience required to overcome such profound adversity.
Don't miss this inspiring and eye-opening episode.
#police #ThinBlueLine #Copsandcampers #mentalhealth #BlueGritPodcast #TMPA #lawenforcement #copspodcast
email us at- bluegrit@tmpa.org
Hey, it's Tyler Owen with TNPA. Do you want to come on the Blue Grit Podcast and share your story or know of an interesting story or incident you think would be neat? Hit us up at bluegritatnpaorg. That's bluegritatnpaorg. You guys, take care, be safe.
Speaker 2:God bless you and, as always, may God bless Texas and all of a sudden, that's when they saw the muzzle flash. And then I moved to my left and I'm like, oh shit, I'm getting shot at. And at that point I felt a tap on my shoulder. One of our SWAT guys had his long gun. He's like we got this, eric. I back up and then I start feeling the pain in my left foot, so you're sitting there. I got to call my wife, right?
Speaker 3:Hey, Blue Grit Podcast. We are back this week with your host, Clint McNear and Tyler Owen. Tyler Owen, how are you Good?
Speaker 1:good, how was your Memorial Day weekend?
Speaker 3:It was good. I worked at the ranch. We cut hay and that didn't sound fun. Vaccinated some calves and that was it. Just worked a little bit the entire time. How about you?
Speaker 1:Good, good. I had a good actually Blue Grit podcast listener fan, good family friend of mine, chris. Uh, chris, dennis and his wife and kids came down Longtime friends of mine came down and visit us in Wimberley and so we hung out on the San Marcos river, drank some, drank some beer, nice Uh, and then did the whole Wimberley thing and and uh by the creek and just chilled.
Speaker 3:It was great. It's hot, it was extremely hot, so so I'm back in the gym. Finally fat and 51 in the entire weekend friday, saturday, sunday I took pto monday in four days. On a holiday weekend, I drank two beers. I was really proud of that I am proud of you.
Speaker 1:I mean, I can't say that that happened to me this over last weekend. But I will say this, speaking of beer this guy, I love him to death, like he's, like my, and I don't have any brothers or sisters. And so, chris, I hope, if you're listening to this episode, I hope you don't get upset, but if you're going to go to the river, okay, guadalupe, san Marcos, and you know you're going to be there all day.
Speaker 3:I'm asking you how much beer do you think you would take if you're not?
Speaker 1:driving For you or a normal human, If you were going to go to the river at 10 o'clock in the morning to be there, you know, all day long for you and your spouse 18-pack probably.
Speaker 3:For me.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I would probably bring a 12-pack.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:For you, I would probably bring a 30-pack.
Speaker 1:Me and Curtis Billings absolutely.
Speaker 3:For you and Curtis Billings, I'd bring two 30-packs.
Speaker 1:So, to give you kind of an idea, we had a ride, me and Janet. We packed, because that's one thing I will never go without is beer. And uh, we had plenty of beer and chris bought six pack.
Speaker 3:uh, a six pack that's just enough to make a man angry yeah, and so when I checked out I was done.
Speaker 1:It was already. It was already too late. So he's, I see him walking to the truck and I'm just like curtis calls that breakfast. Yeah, that's right. So he gets in the truck. I said, uh, what's up, bro you? Uh, you forget the rest of that package there. He said I got beer. I said, okay, I know this is going. He said I got plenty. An hour into this his six-pack was gone. Anyway, that's how my weekend went. It was a good weekend.
Speaker 1:Who got on this podcast? Me and you were in DC. One of the most rewarding things that happened to us when we were up there is people walking up and telling us really the impact that this podcast has had. It's an honor to be a part of it from a TMPA standpoint and from a personal standpoint. But, man, you reached out and said, hey, I've listened to a couple of y'all's episodes. It's amazing what you guys are doing, and so I'll let you intro and talk about you. But, man, thank you for coming down or coming over, I guess, coming from Florida, and so you've got an interesting story and just an amazing story, you being a previous cop in Florida, so come on All right.
Speaker 2:Well, thanks. I'm Eric Reynolds. I'm from Boynton Beach, florida Actually from Miami, but I was a cop in Boynton Beach, florida for about 19 years. I left in 2019, right before COVID. Not for any particular reason, it was just that right time for me. I'm a son of a homicide sergeant from Miami-Dade. You may have seen her in the Griselda episodes. She's the detective June Hawkins that stars in that role the character was based off of, so that was a pretty cool story to see. Going back in history, when I was 10 years old, my mom was this super badass cop, my stepfather's in the show too, and seeing them both on screen as their old characters is pretty wild. Realizing I'm the third best cop in the family it kind of sucks.
Speaker 3:So you were born in Miamiami yeah, I was born in miami okay, yeah, actually born in key west, grew up miami.
Speaker 2:You know, the military thing bounces you around a lot, so you're like well, where did I really grow up? But miami is where I, you know, played high school football and that was like what made me, you know, and growing up down there with you know, obviously that obviously the cop influence and all that. I ended up going to Florida State University, getting my degree in 94, and catching shoplifters and I started with Boynton Beach in 2001.
Speaker 3:What was your degree in.
Speaker 2:Criminal justice minor in business yeah yeah. You know all the typical stuff that you know I'm going to be criminology. I don't know what the heck it's going to mean you know I like this stuff. It's crime, I knew it. You know it was an easier major to have. You know it wasn't a lot of hard like investigative work to figure out crime, but a lot of it's theory-based and research methods and all that crap.
Speaker 3:So my dad was a big homicide detective at Dallas PD. Your mom was a hotshot homicide detective at Miami. Did you know all along you were number one? Did you know how long you were going to be a cop and number two? It's weird. Growing up with in that environment, I mean it was really weird, cause you don't get away with stuff. They, they, my dad, would look at me and go okay, you're lying right now, so go ahead and, uh, tell me about that and and and. Did you know? Cause I didn't know. Real young, but I've, I realized, probably in my teens I'm like, yeah, it's all my family's ever done. I'm going to end up doing that too.
Speaker 2:I was kind of coached a little bit to go the federal route. My mom was like you don't want to be a local cop Cause she had. You know, she was thinking at that time I think it was uh, I was a customs was one of the issues our department was looking at I applied for Secret Service, fbi, all those, and they didn't want a college kid and I didn't have language, I didn't have computer skills and anything with law.
Speaker 2:I didn't have that. So those doors shut and then you're sitting around and you're like well, I'm catching shoplifters running down these guys through parking lot. And this is the 90s, we were cowboys down in Florida. We could chase you until we caught you.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And we're knocking other stores' stuff down. When we were running through there it was so much fun and you know it was hand-to-hand combat I didn't have any tools, yeah, so you better make sure you win it.
Speaker 1:I've seen that scene off Grand Theft Auto. I played a couple of those scenes. The game.
Speaker 2:And then we ended up. Just, you know the cops were like hey, man, when are you going to join us? You know you get a pension. That's what started sticking with me. I started thinking about the private sector and retail security and then they could just come Monday and say you're an expensive, you're gone. I was like, man, I do want a union, some protection or something like that. So I started applying at the police department in Boynton and got on. But you mentioned about you're trying to outsmart your folks. In 75, my mom got hired. I'm six, so now she's in homicide in three years because she knew Spanish, was able to go behind the scenes, and I'm trying to outsmart her right.
Speaker 2:And one of the things I had done one time was I kicked a hole in the hamper. I was all pissed at her. You know my dad wasn't around, so I always had this little edge to me and I flipped the hamper around. She won't find it Right. She found it. And then she came to the door with a broom and said give me your money, you're paying for that hamper. And I had to hand over my money.
Speaker 3:So my mom just literally armed robbed me to get the money for the hamper I broke and little things like.
Speaker 2:You're ground, you can't watch tv and I'd watch tv. She pulls in the driveway and I turn tv off and wash dishes and she comes out to tv and feel it freaking hot. Yep, you know so I couldn't get away with any of this stuff that's awesome.
Speaker 3:I mean, I got away with some stuff.
Speaker 2:I mean there's little white lies and things't get away with. Any of this stuff. That's awesome. I mean, I got away with some stuff. I mean there's little white lies and things you get away with, but the major stuff I was always accountable and I didn't want her to even have to ever come get me or anything like that. So I understand that fear. Mine was a woman.
Speaker 3:That's awesome. So about 14, snuck out, crawled back in the window, had a buddy spend the night. It goes on for a couple of days. I'm like dude, I got away with that so freaking smooth. I am slick. About three days later we're driving down the road. My dad's driving Never looks over at me and goes where'd you go the other night? It's like the other night. He goes yeah, where'd you go? I don't have any idea what you're talking about. He never looks over. Huh, so you didn't go anywhere. No, sir, huh. So the dirt on the inside of the window sill and the footprint and the flower bed that matches your tennis shoe that wasn't you. I guess the gardener did all that. I was like what? What had happened was if I could explain just a minute I was like son of a biscuit man, just colombo style. Let it go for two days before the interrogation commenced. I'm like god dang it.
Speaker 2:You built a case against you oh, it was a done deal.
Speaker 3:I freaking, I need a lawyer, dad.
Speaker 1:That's crazy and she's also your mom. Um, she was colombian, just cuban. Cuban, I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah, that's one of the things.
Speaker 2:They had the actress that was playing my mom. She's colombian, so they needed the uh, my mom would actually got hired on an advisor, so she was working with the dialogue of how someone who's Cuban would say something versus someone who's Colombian.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, dialects yeah.
Speaker 2:My mom was able to tell at one point someone's accents from Medellin to some of the other cities in Colombia. She could tell because she was that much into understanding the language and you know she's bilingual, she knows both languages, so she's very fluent. Um cities in columbia, she could tell because she was that much into understanding the language and you know she's bilingual, she knows both languages so she's very fluent in it yeah so she was able just to pick off, like he's from that town.
Speaker 2:And it's crazy, you know, because I'm not even fluent, you know I can survive, but I never practiced it like she did going to cuba, coming back, you know. I mean she was going there before castro and then, obviously, when that got taken over, she never, never, never has been back, ever since.
Speaker 3:And you dive into dialects and it's amazing how different, within a specific language, just all the many dialects can be. Yeah, so how old was your mom when she came from Cuba?
Speaker 2:Well, she was born in Miami.
Speaker 3:Oh, okay, okay, my aunt was born in Cuba.
Speaker 2:They came over in 19, I think it was like 47. My father was from, or my grandfather was from, north Carolina. He was in the textile business. They went down to the Caribbean, you know, for all the textile business. And that's where he met this attractive Cuban lady and brought her back Nice.
Speaker 1:Seems to happen that way sometimes.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you got to leave, find someone.
Speaker 1:So explain your department that you worked at. Was it a small quiet town? Was it kind of attached to Miami as far as the city life? Kind of talk about the department.
Speaker 2:All right. So Boynton Beach is, I'd say, about 16 square miles, about 160,000 roughly, our department's 160, man. Well short, like most departments, but it's manageable. We have the beach, we have our I would say, our poverty areas, we have our rich golf course areas, we have our shopping malls. It's got everything a big city has. You know, it's Boynton Beach. So we're in between Delray, west Palm Beach, you've got the Boca Raton.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So we're connected to Fort Lauderdale and Miami, so some of that riffraff makes it up to us.
Speaker 3:Middle class upper middle class.
Speaker 2:Middle class and you've got your lower middle class areas. But overall I would say it's a middle class area and we were very busy. We had little units. That would obviously work with bigger agencies, but we had our own units within. But that's also some of the issues. With a smaller department too, you step on the wrong toe when you're a rookie and you'll never save yourself. You know there's nowhere else to go sometimes.
Speaker 3:What year did you start there?
Speaker 2:In 2001.
Speaker 3:Was that, was it still big the cocaine cowboy days, or was that kind of towards the tail end of the big?
Speaker 2:They still. They love their cocaine down in Florida. Man, that was all we were getting. I mean until the opiate crisis hit and we started getting all the people you know pill mills and all that stuff, but it was, it's always been, the cocaine and the crack man. It's just that's our industry down there. That's what's booming. I don't know if it's they come down. They see miami vice or something you know it's oh, is it a scar face?
Speaker 1:and they're like I'm gonna do some blow or something yeah, well, in 2001 it probably there wasn't any like meth labs weren't a big deal in florida.
Speaker 2:No, no, here in texas.
Speaker 1:It was a I mean a huge problem, not probably so much in the metroplex but in the rural areas.
Speaker 3:That's what yeah, we had a bunch of labs, did you yeah?
Speaker 2:yeah, I don't recall us. I really haven't any labs nearby. You know, we we had a lot of the riffraff coming down to buy and purchase no dnm mcdowell's parking lot or some shit like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Don't you like customers?
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh yeah, we do it all the time. I don't want to be rude.
Speaker 1:Just don't tell her. Tell her said hell yeah.
Speaker 2:It was pretty, you know, and then we got into the investigations of some of the stuff our vice units and so we started looking at some of these doctors and then you start realizing in life that helped me understanding how corrupt the medical system was. This helped my own you know life and my own health issues I was having. But it was a it's a great little city man and we train a lot of really good cops that go on to other agencies so the sheriff will come down, pluck our best guys, you know typical, and you're like, oh, you don't take the, you know bad ones, you always take the good guy right, yeah, but you know it, I would never change it. I loved it.
Speaker 2:You know I did a lot of great things, from bicycle units to jump out teams to, um, you know, saturation patrols. I did some time in traffic, you know. So I was well-rounded. And then I was, you know, looking at maybe getting promoted, doing the fto, looking at starting the fto program, and that's when I got shot in 2012. And it kind of changed my whole direction of where I wanted to go.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And you know. That's why I'm here. Yeah, I'd still be working if I didn't get shot probably.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about that day. Let's talk about the kind of how the day started and walk us through it.
Speaker 2:So it was a typical day. Now I was everyone always starts off. It was a typical day now. I was leaving early to go play basketball with my friends and I knew I had to be out of there by six o'clock. So five o'clock they sent a bolo out bank robbery.
Speaker 2:Nearby jared jurisdiction, in del rey, there's a red crown vic with a white top. I'm like who the heck robs a bank with a red car and a white top? You know, that seemed right crown vic. You know some hoopie driving away with money and flying out the window or something. So I was like that's kind of odd. But most of the time they hit 95 or they disappear or something.
Speaker 2:You know, and this particular day I was just. You know, I remember they sent the night guys on and I was the only available unit. I'm like oh man, I'm going to get stuck with something and that means I'm not gonna be able to go home, you know. So I go dispatch, let me jump on this call. And they're like all right. So I'm bowling the area and then I see a red Lincoln coming over the bridge on the beach side and it's got a white top and didn't really know 100%. But you know you can investigate it. And as I drove by I remember looking and then one of the other guys on the radio was like Eric after I had vied.
Speaker 2:I said hey, there's a red car coming to the bridge. They're like can you see the driver? And that's why I was driving by, because I I wasn't behind him, I wasn't in front of him, I was just passing parallel to him and I look and I can see the hand, and it was a black male. All I could see was the hand. His hand was tapping on the steering wheel like he was. He saw me. I felt it to the core. He knew I was there and that was eerie.
Speaker 2:Most people when you pass them in traffic they're like oh, it's a cop. You know they might be nervous, but this he had to tell at that point. And when I turned back around I had to make a U-turn to see him and then he made a right. So now he's going the opposite direction. So I got to make another U-turn to get behind him and he gunned it. So I'm like, ah, it's not really a car chase yet I haven't hit my lights and I started to turn around and catch up to him a little bit and he slows down and I'm still trying to figure this cat out and he's got a handicap tag. Boynton Beach in Florida there's a lot of handicapped people. I'm like, ah, it doesn't mean it's the car. And then he stops right in the middle of US 1. I didn't light him up, he just stopped. It's a pretty busy road, so to be stopping is weird. And we do have a lot of diabetic patients. You know some of those diabetic comas and you know. So I'm still thinking of all these possibilities, how it's not the bank robber handicap tag, you know.
Speaker 2:And as we're sitting there and waiting for backup, I've already told dispatch. He stopped and it was about three or four seconds. It feels like an attorney looking back. And I remember sitting there I looked up at my camera and it was off. I had an old, I think it was a 2006. Mobile vision Well, sometimes the vibrations would disconnect the wires so you'd bang it and it would come back on. It was one of those old-school cars and I looked up and the camera wasn't even on. So I hit the power button, as I'm sitting there watching him, and they took off. He's left like oh shit. You know, here's my chase sirens taking off.
Speaker 2:Dispatch, that point. Our dui guy was coming on shift, just left the city pump to get gas and he was the closest um backup and he was waiting. He made a u-turn behind us and now we're in the chase and he drives through some parking lots. He side swipes a couple cars trying to squeeze through you know nothing like a direct impact and gave about a half mile, maybe a mile or so, and he goes down a little private industrial area called railroad avenue, railroad tracks, you know mechanic shops and warehouses, and it just seemed like he knew this area.
Speaker 2:At this point, you know, no one makes it right. When you got 95 and the big highway, why would you take this right? I'm thinking he's gonna dump, dump the car, he's gonna run something. And he happened to make a quick left turn as we were going down railroad a little tight and he hit another car that was coming the opposite way. They hit head on um, not in a very good tactical spot because I didn't expect him to come to a sudden stop.
Speaker 2:So all of a sudden I'm right there with him and as I get out of the car I see his door starting. You know there's smoke and you know the sirens are going, everything like you see in the movies or you see in dash cameras. Now everything like is going on. Getting out of the car is he gonna run. You know what's going on. I see the door. He can't get it open. It's you know he can open it partially. But you see it swinging for a second like, oh, what's he gonna do. And all of a sudden, that's when they saw the muzzle flash. It's like. And then I moved to my left. I'm like, oh shit, I'm getting shot at, you know, and I start firing. I think I hit the house behind the car. I was just trying to, like suppression fire, stop shooting at me until I can recover.
Speaker 2:At that time Monroe had pulled up and he was already out and he starts firing. So now we're both firing at this guy and then he moves with me and blades with me eventually and the suspect couldn't get the door open all the way to keep shooting. So he's like trying to shoot like this. Instead of going through the window, like most bad guys would, or us, we would just shoot through the damn window. Right, he wasn't thinking that and we peppered him. We put about 38 rounds into that car. We had him 14 times. He died on the scene.
Speaker 2:It was about a two minute shooting. I mean, if you go through the youtube video it's from the start to finish. That's a long time, because he was. He kept moving. You can see his hands moving. We never saw the weapon. He wasn't responding to our calls. Of course, he got all the other things going on the sirens and the gunfire and all that. I remember giving verbal commands and then Monroe and I walked up to the car looking and he was still trying to play with the gun and shit. Then we just laid some more rounds in and then stopped moving and at that point I felt a tap on my shoulder. One of our SWAT guys had his long gun. He's like we got this, eric.
Speaker 2:I back up and then I started feeling the pain in my left foot, like what the heck happened and I looked down I got three holes in my shoe and I got my right leg bleeding shoe. And I got my right legs bleeding and I'm like, oh shit, I got hit. So I back up. I'm not feeling anything yet it wasn't any bone or nothing, it was just muscle and nerves. So the adrenaline was enough to, uh, keep me in the fight and I back up and told another guy go, I think I got hit in the foot and you know. And then they're like then you know, oh shit, you know, officer shot and all this stuff. And then they cut the shoe off and I'm looking at my foot with a big-ass, freaking bullet wound through it.
Speaker 2:It was surreal. You're still in the excitement of everything. It's like scoring a touchdown or something. You're like woo, yeah, you're high-fiving everybody. And I remember getting in the ambulance or the paramedic truck and we're driving and I remember asking the guy I was like hey, what happened to bad guy? Because I still didn't get confirmation. I didn't see them pull him out, start CPR, you know, and all that stuff. And when they, I asked the paramedic and he's like no, he's dead. And I was like, wow, this is going to be big, you know, because you have the press, sorry, sorry, so you're sitting there. I gotta call my wife right? So call her. That's five-month-old son at home. That weekend was Father's Day, so it was my first Father's Day in my life, so it's hit me.
Speaker 3:I'm like, oh my.
Speaker 2:God, you know I just could do this shit. So I call her. I'm like hey, honey, you know a little incident got nicked in the foot, I'm going to get some stitches. And she's like okay. And you know, I hear my son crying in the background. She's a mommy. World has no idea what's going on in my world. And I felt good, get that off. You know the list. I'm like all right, she's good, the police car is going to be showing up scaring the hell out of her or anything. It's like all right, I got to call Mike because I'm not making basketball, because I was one of 10 guys, so now I got to call the guy that he goes. Why are you calling me, dude? You're on your way to the hospital.
Speaker 3:I go.
Speaker 2:I wantedall I was going to school, you off this.
Speaker 2:Well we had at that particular day we only had 10. So if you don't have 10, you got to run half court, right? It's always a big pain, yeah. So he was like oh, what are you calling me for? So I get to the hospital and you know they're doing all their things and all the brass comes and I got to go home that night they brought my wife and kid to see me. I remember sitting home that night watching. I was a basketball fan. Then, before any of this was fixed, I watched the Heat play in Oklahoma. I was like, wow, the Heat lost. Damn the day I got shot. My team loses that NBA championship game Probably Dwayne Wade back then.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he was on that it was 2012. It was 12. It was the LeBron. They hated Miami. I'm taking my talents to. It was 2012.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this was the it was 12.
Speaker 2:So it was the LeBron. They hated Miami and I'm taking my talents to South Beach stuff. So, yeah, I got home I remember I made like a triple vodka, they gave me some Percocet and I was like I'm just going to watch the Heat game and I had it on DVR and I watched it. They lost and then right away went straight to the news like the DVR tape and he goes tonight at 11, another cop shot. I was like oh, wow, Hello, that's me. Like you know, I was caught up in it Cause at that point we were having like three or four cops had been shot in the last couple of months.
Speaker 2:So it was just like this reoccurring theme and I was like, oh man, it's gonna be the news. And then it's like, oh, they're gonna release my name, ah, you know. And then it starts bringing in all the other stuff and you're like my family, who's this guy? Who's he know, who's his family, who's his sons, you know. And it starts to creep in, you know, and you know, two days later I'm in front of a therapist, are you okay?
Speaker 3:and I'm like, yeah, I think I'm good.
Speaker 2:You know they brought me in with mon. Two days later I'm in front of a therapist Are you OK? And I'm like, yeah, I think I'm good. You know they brought me in with Monroe. What do you think I'm going to open up with him next to me? But I wasn't ready to open up that. I didn't know anything was going on at the point. You know, at that point I was just like dude, I survived this law enforcement to catch the bad guy. You don't think you're going to get into a shooting, but you know we all played cops and robbers as a kid, you know, and I won. It was like fucking awesome. But then, you know, you start other stuff creeps in, you know, over the time, and meanwhile I do have a wound to heal from, you know, my foot was jacked up. You know my leg was just a graze, you know permanent or any real damage.
Speaker 1:But you know, there was some therapy and some stuff to go through was that whenever you discovered your, the heart condition.
Speaker 2:Now that happened in about 2018. I put on uh close to 40 pounds after that shooting and I was already about 40 pounds heavy. So when when that heart disease came, it was like 2018 so on.
Speaker 3:Your shooting still ended up being a confirmed, legit bank robbery yes, he ended up being a confirmed legit bank robbery.
Speaker 2:Yes, he ended up being the bank robber. He had the money. It's funny the dispatch is like subject had rubber boots on a gun and it's just like a rubber nose. He robbed it in like a work outfit or something. He was on his way home and just decided ah, I'm going to rob a bank today. Do you have any history?
Speaker 2:Yeah he's actually known as. He's from New Orleans, he was known as no N-O and he had recently just got let out of doing a home invasion on a 98-year-old lady who couldn't identify him in a photo lineup. Being out three months is what it took for him. I went back to the road, you know, and you get pats on the back officer of the month and all this stuff, and you're feeling good and wow, and you're replaying everything over and over again. What if I walked up to the car when he stopped originally, when I didn't know it was him, he would probably open fire to me then, yeah, was he baiting you then? So that's the kind of stuff that creeps in. And then I went back to the road feeling good.
Speaker 2:It was a little different. I felt that like more vigilant, hypervigilant, hypervigilant. I felt more seasoned, kind of cause I'd been through it now. So guys on my shift, now this is a whole different. I won my gunfight, I've got this, yeah, and you get it back out there. And the call to call. I'm, I'm overthinking shit, not to where it's hurting me, but we had a regular alarm call. You know, alarm goes off. Check the house. You're walking around checking doors, you know, and there was a bike leaned against the side of the house. I remember I could be the owner's bike. We walked to the back slider and was cracked open like, oh, that could be a dude in here, that's his bike, you know you fit everything together we clear the house.
Speaker 2:nobody there. You know you got alert tone every closet, you're opening doors and you know, expecting to find the boogeyman. No, it was just a false alarm. The bike was the owner's and 10-8, next call, right. Well, I was still high, I was still jacked up you were treating every single call like a shooter. Every call I thought how am I going to die?
Speaker 3:That takes a toll.
Speaker 2:And about two months later a shoplifter fled from like Walmart and as I'm driving up he runs by me and they're like that's him.
Speaker 2:You know, make a U-turn and go hunt him down in this apartment complex and I found his bike and I know he's close, you know. But I just read FBI statistics that show just because a shoplifter doesn't mean he's not wanted for worse stuff, and they've killed people before. So I got my gun out. Now I'm looking for this guy and I come around the corner. He's bladed up against the wall. I'm like get on the ground. You know typical verbal commands. And he reaches in his pocket and I run on him. I'm by myself at this point, you know, and I just throw him to the ground. He cuffed him and I I was like dude, why'd?
Speaker 2:you reach in your pocket. Man almost killed you bro. You know he's like I was so scared, sir, I've never had a gun pointed at me. I'll just get my id. Like his moment of crisis was to get an id. I almost blasted him, but you know guess what I'm thinking about, dude.
Speaker 2:I almost shot that dude you know he was unarmed, almost killed this guy. What would that have done, you know? And he was a white guy. But you know you start thinking what? It was a black guy and I shot him. He was unarmed, I'd be freaking seeing and they'd be persecuting me. And this is before shit went crazy. So you know, I started boozing a lot, calm my central nervous system down. You know same stuff not talking about because I don't want to upset the wife. You know all that stuff and I'm drinking more to kind of numb myself.
Speaker 2:And you think it's numbing, but it's not helping Not at all and it would get me through that moment, but then not realizing the damage I was doing within my family and the stress it was causing. And this has all happened over the next couple of years. That first year, my first son was six months to a year. They're crawling, moving around. It wasn't impacting him. It started to impact him later on, when I started getting mad at some of his actions as a, as a parent and what the heck you doing? You're not stupid?
Speaker 2:My reactions were a little bit more high throttled off, you know, off the cuff, real mean. You know all the shit that we go through, that we've suffered, you know. And knowing what it did to my kids, it's like, oh, but you know, going through all that and then thinking about it and then being cleared in the shooting was huge because I at least knew I wasn't being indicted. I mean, it's horrible to think that this guy shot me, but yet I got to think about being indicted because did we shoot him too much? Right, right.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like I said, he was hit 14 times. There's like four kill shots. Me and Chris always joke around it was my shot, killed him first.
Speaker 1:You shot a dead guy. I don't think it was overkill, but oh.
Speaker 2:I know. But you know it was. You know it was traumatic, but I didn't think it was bothering me that much at the time. I mean, I knew I was stressed out but it was normal. Hey, you know you've been through some shit. Sorry, I have a couple of drinks.
Speaker 3:Was it hard to manage your drinking around working?
Speaker 2:I never drank at work but, man, I couldn't wait to come home at 5 o'clock, 4 o'clock. So another thing I skipped over is, after those stressful times on the road of almost pulling the trigger and all this stuff, an evidence job opened up out of nowhere. Who wants evidence, right? Who wants to be stuck in that little room taking in stuff, checking stuff out? Man, I did at that point, because Monday to Friday you're only working with one other guy, you're not battling vacations, you're not working any holidays. It was like the perfect gig for me to get into to kind of recoup and figure things out and be a better father at this point and husband and figure out what I want to do at this point. You know I wasn't injured enough to go out on disability, even though that was mentioned. You know a couple calls I went on like a Boston coffee. He's like. You're still on the job, man in Boston.
Speaker 3:If you got shot, you're out.
Speaker 2:That's it. You're tired. And all the New York cops I talked to the same thing. They're like you're still work. I, you know I could still run, I'm still athletic enough to do things. I mean, I can't feel my big toe. So if I'm at a campfire and there's ants gnawing on my toe, I'm not going to feel it, you know, until they get to the next toe. But there's those things like that. But I never felt like it was a disability thing. No, and then also we had a new chief come in and he thought it was stupid to have a sworn guy in evidence. He's like why am I paying a cop $80,000? I'm going to pay, you know, civilian, 40 to do the same job. Well, the reason I was in there is because the civilians were stealing the freaking money five years before, and one of him was a. He was a retired cop that was stealing the money. So I mean it's that's why we had some more guys in there.
Speaker 3:How old were you and how long have you been on when you got shot? I?
Speaker 2:was 42, which is right at that median age. I was 10 years on, which is right there, you know. I mean that's usually when the stuff goes down.
Speaker 3:How long did you do in evidence room?
Speaker 2:I did six years. I got in there in 12, seven. I got in there in 2013 and I was there till I retired. But with the Chiefs coming in and all that, you know, it stressed me out because now I'm going back out there, you know. And then what do you do? I didn't know about EAP. I knew about it, but I knew you were a sellout. If you went to EAP, right, what is that? Employment Assistance Program? Okay, so that's where you would go if you're having problems and that's where your bosses tell you to go. You're almost kind of, I think guys think they're telling on themselves in a weird way. You know, and you do worry. Are you going to be put on light duty, are you going to get that stigma? And then are you going to be able to work again? You know there's all this pressure and that's why guys don't come out with it and talk about it.
Speaker 3:We have a lot of non-law enforcement listeners in. He's talking about employee assistance program. Is employer provided assistance and cops can be. Rumor is we can be a little suspicious at times, a little cynical at times, but if your employer is sending you to meet with someone among cops, a lot of times they feel that you can't trust them. If my employer's paying for them. Because if I go and actually tell them, well, I'm struggling, or yeah, I'm drinking, or yeah, I'm struggling, you know whatever, the first thing they're gonna do as soon as you walk out the doors, call your employer and be like man, this guy screwed up. Let me tell you what he's doing and right, wrong or indifferent, that's the generality, that's the feeling among law enforcement is you got to find something outside of an EAP if you actually want to get help?
Speaker 1:well, it's hard for cops to trust really anybody anyway. So for this to you know, venture out there.
Speaker 3:So yeah, if I may, I think that its system has improved because I think early on, eaps were there so the department could check a box and say well, we tried to help you. I went through a couple of incidents during my career and they had to send you to a shrink to get clear, to come back and literally you would show up in the shrinks like you doing okay, sure you, sure you still thinking about it. Sure, you'd having dreams about it. Sure, we know that's normal, right, okay, okay, well, thank you, I've checked the box. You can go back to work. We didn't accomplish anything. Did he really care if I was doing okay, or I don't think so. I think that has improved. Honestly, I think the mental health industry for law enforcement and even administrations, I think, are trying to be more vigilant about it. But back when we all started, I think it was a box to be checked so the department could cover themselves. Well, we sent them to the shrink, we tried to fix them.
Speaker 1:Look at Dallas. That's a great example of that. Would that not fall under the EAP? Would that not fall under a branch of it at least? Yeah, so Dallas PD's got a phenomenal program. Really, I would say the foundation of what other departments are looking at, the building blocks for mental health, for police departments and police officers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, especially after what those guys went through in 2016.
Speaker 1:Oh gosh, I mean it's okay to not be okay.
Speaker 2:I mean that's what to not be okay. I mean that's what you got to remember. Like that stuff is traumatic what you're seeing, and it's not normal. It's a man-made career. You know, when we were hunters and gatherers, we weren't sitting around. You know, mopey, because we killed a buffalo, right, that wasn't going on. Now it's you.
Speaker 2:You know we got into this to help people. So you know, like I killed a guy, I'm like I didn't get in this to kill anybody. You know I didn't get in to get killed either, but you know, within the department, what I ended up having to do. I broke down in front of a supervisor and actually been in a shooting himself and lost his dog and a canine incident, and you know I trusted him he's one of the few guys that would trust and because I had an outstanding or an open workers' comp case because of my foot, because I had another surgery in 2014,. So I kept that open, I was able to kind of piggyback off of that, but I still had to get a lawyer.
Speaker 2:I still had to go before the workers' comp board and sell my story that I needed help. They pretty much made me break down in front of a whole room of lawyers just to get the help. And then they're like, all right, you can go see this independent doctor. So I had to go see an independent doctor same thing, I talk about it, cry, do the whole thing. And then finally they let me go see, uh, dr barna and palm beach gardens, who was known to be helping first responders a lot of people from like uh, you know, from 9-11 he's helping and that's who I wanted to see. And they finally said, all right, I can go see him. And I saw him twice a month for the next five years that's it's awesome.
Speaker 3:Was that the first time you thought you were having some personal healing, some growth?
Speaker 2:when I when I remember walking in the first time with him and he goes eric, you're gonna have to learn how to dance with this because it's not going anywhere. And he nailed everything I was going through. You're hypervigilant. You're not sleeping as much. You don't want to go out in the public as much. You don't want your kids and family to go out as much. Unless you're there, you've got to be the protector, right?
Speaker 3:Everything it was like right down the list. Yeah, that's me. For non-le listeners, hyper vigilance alone is is a huge weight to bear after a critical incident, and even sustained, like working nights, when you're involved in a lot of stuff that repeated exposure causes hypertension. And for our non-le listeners, that's when your guard is on like red alert, the highest level of alert 24 seven, and it's exhausting mentally. It's exhausting physically. Well then, if you're fighting other issues already, some PTS or whatever else you may have going on, hypervigilance is like trying to drag around two gorillas. Honestly, it is. It is exhausting and you got to be aware. I mean in the military and law enforcement. You got to be aware. But hypervigilance, continued hypervigilance, it's a freaking beating man. It's like trying to tow an 18-wheeler behind your ass all day, every day.
Speaker 1:Well, and speaking of that, you had experienced the physical demand of being hypervigilant since that incident and that segued for many years, years, and it continued for many years in 2018. Uh, I guess you went to the doctor or were having some symptoms that led you to some cardiac issues. Uh, speaking of of carrying that, that burden and that weight, um, talk about that and talk about you know how, that, how, how that was exposed, and thankfully it was because you wouldn't be sitting here today. Tune in next week for part two.
Speaker 2:I went for that in 2019 to avoid the statins and all this other stuff, and I came back with a 1500 score when the top is 400. So I was massive, massive, corroded, with calcium in my arteries. Now, at that time I'm thinking it's soft plaque, I'm going to die of a heart attack. But it's actually solid plaque, that's. You know, it's like scar tissue healed up. I didn't know a lot about it then and the doctor's like you need stents. I got to get you to a cardiologist. I'm like doing the camping life and everywhere I would go I put up that Thin Blue Life flag. You know, to my blood. You know I've got officers that you know are on my body because of their sacrifice. And then one campground in New York says hey, man, you got to take down your flag. I'm like what no?
Speaker 2:way, yep, roundout Valley. So the guy rolled up in a golf cart didn't get out, introduced himself, just said hey, man, I walked over and just got done. Driving six hours from Niagara Falls and he goes. You got to take your flag down, I'm like oh, that's a good one bro.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, you got to take your flag. Oh, you're serious. I turn on my phone, I get to record for once, that was a weird thing and I go. What were you telling me to do? Again? He's like you need to take down your thin blue line flag.