Ep. 400: The Use of Lethal Force

00:00:05
Speaker 1: The last episode of bear Grease was on the drowning of Oklahoma Wildlife Officer Melvin Bucky Garrison in nineteen seventy one. The story that we’re going to tell today goes separated by forty four years, is eerily connected. It’s the story about the use of lethal force and the legal precedence of water as a means of potential murder. I really doubt that you’re going to want to miss this one.

00:00:33
Speaker 2: And he actually started shaking me under the water like he was trying to drown me, like you would see somebody on TV shaking somebody under the water. And he’s doing that, and I’m laying there and in my mind, I’m it’s slow. I mean, everything went real slow. And I was sitting there thinking, Okay, I know where I’m at, I know what I got to do.

00:01:09
Speaker 1: My name is Clay Knukem, and this is the Bear Grease podcast, where we’ll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and where we’ll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. Presented by FHF Gear, American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear as designed to be as rugged as the place as we explore, I’d like to introduce you to Oklahoma Wildlife Officer Jared Kramer. I’d say Jared is in his forties. He has a very serious demeanor. He’s kind of fit and wiry, and I could immediately tell he takes his job extremely serious. I want to jump right in and learn about his history and law enforcement. Meet Officer Jared Kramer.

00:02:10
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, So actually started in conservation right out of college. Two thousand and five. I went to work for the Missouri Department of Conservation, and it’s actually just an hourly temporary job doing some stream surveying, backpack shocking streams and doing a little study there in northern Missouri. And that turned into me staying and getting on as an hourly temporary employee with the wildlife guys. Worked all winter with them, and then I got a full time job with them on a conservation area as a wildlife technician. And all the while I’m trying to get on as an Oklahoma game warden, and I got that in two thousand and seven, and this Adair County was my first assignment and I’ve been here ever since.

00:03:02
Speaker 1: M Why do you want to get into wild life law.

00:03:08
Speaker 2: You know, I don’t really have a memory of the why. It just seems like that was always it. I don’t I don’t recall like deciding one day that’s what I want to do. But you know, since I was probably in junior high, I knew that, you know, that’s something I probably wanted to do. My brother is actually a game warden in Oklahoma, and he hired on five years before I did, And that’s that basically solidified that that’s what I wanted to do. Not only because I looked up to my brother and you know, wanted to work with him and enjoyed, you know that, but I got an inside scoop on the job, you know, and so I really got to learn all ins and outs of actually being an Oklahoma game warden because he was doing it. And so then it’s like, yeah, that’s what I want to do.

00:04:10
Speaker 1: Officer Kramer was involved in a life changing altercation in twenty fifteen. He knows what I’m here to talk to him about. He’s often been asked to share the story with other wildlife officers and trainings and with new cadets. His story shows a very extreme situation and one that you wouldn’t think a wildlife officer would find himself in.

00:04:34
Speaker 2: So it’s twenty fifteen in April’s Sunday morning, and I’m going I’m going to go to work for a little bit mid morning, and my plan was was to go make a circle, probably check some fishing licenses. I actually had a place on a wildlife management area where some people have been illegally driving four wheelers or pick ups off road, and I was going to go check on that. And I was hoping to be home early in the afternoon, going to have a short Sunday as what I had planned. So this spot that I’m going to go check on the wildlife management area’s not far from my house, so I hadn’t been gone long. And I’m over there and I hear my partner on the county radio to the dispatcher. He’s calling in a couple of individuals that are to run their status of their driver’s licenses and to check them if they have any outstanding warrants. And so I hear this, and he I believe, he tells the dispatcher where he’s at, and it was a place called Sanders Flat and I’m just right down the road from there. Well, within a minute they come back and say they’ve got two of these individuals have outstanding warrants out of Arkansas, and one of them’s fell any warrant. So I know this guy’s going to go to jail. So I start heading that way, and I raised.

00:06:06
Speaker 3: Is a guy.

00:06:07
Speaker 1: Forgive me for interrupted, this is a guy that he has got here checking.

00:06:13
Speaker 2: Out saw back up. So there was a little pond, little farm pond that it’s on private property, but it’s commonly being used by the public for fishing. Pretty small pond, and so he just went there to check see if anybody’s there fishing that morning, and these people are there, so he’s checked their fishing licenses, now having Oklahoma fishing licenses. So this contact progresses into him checking them for the warrants. So the county comes back and tells him, yes, this this one individual’s got the felony warrant. So I immediately know, okay, I’m going to his location, back him up, helping whatever. So I radio to him and tell him, hey, I’m just down the road. I’ll be there in a minute. So I’ll pull up there. He’s parked kind of up on this hill above the pawn The ponds one hundred and fifty yards away or so from where he’s parked, and he’s got this woman at his truck, and I already know that she has warrants as well, and he’s there with her. So I pull up and I immediately am looking down at this pond these other two guys, knowing one of those guys has this warrant and he’s with this girl. So I’m just my thought process is I got to go down here to this guy and take care of this, whether that’s hook him up right now or whatever. I’m gonna get over there. So I confirm with that it’s, you know, this one particular guy, whatever he was wearing. But I already knew that because when I pulled up, even from one hundred and fifty yards, I could see the look on his face in his body language that he was the guy. He knew when he’s seen me pull up, everything about him changed, and I knew that’s that’s the guys.

00:08:08
Speaker 3: So what did what did you see? What did he do?

00:08:11
Speaker 2: I just just could see it. I don’t know, I couldn’t describe it, but it was it was written all over him in his body language that I could tell he was the guy that was going to have this warrant. Most likely it was probably him looking at me directly and watched me pull up there, and I, you know, so I pull off and have to drive around down the county road and come back around the other side to get to where these these guys are parked on the other side of this pond. I was looking across the pond from him. They’ve got a truck parked down there by the pond. And I get out. This other guy is a middle aged man. I recognized him from another contact, and this to be a little side story that can go into this. So this guy, I took him to jail a year or two prior. He had an outstanding warrant. And I’m taking this gentleman to jail or we’re making the drive and he’s telling me that this is a big mistake, which I’ve heard, you know, it’s always well, I paid it, but you know they lost the whatever. You know. Well, he’s telling me that he’s a victim of identity theft and that somebody stole his identity and that person got arrested using his identity and then they bailed out of jail. Didn’t never come back after they posted bond never showed back up to court. So now he’s on the hook because it was his identity. Of course, I’m you know what I’m thinking, Okay, Well, he keeps telling me about it, and I start to believe in you know, I’m thinking, you know, this sounds legitimate. He’s pretty adamant about it. And I told him, I said, well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll look into it, so take him to jail, book him in which I explained to him. He knew, like he it’s not like I can’t take you to jail now, but we’ll look into it. So sure enough, the following week, because that was the weekend, I followed up and I ended up finding these, you know, the photos from the booking of this guy. It’s not him, and so he’s telling.

00:10:39
Speaker 3: Me the truth.

00:10:40
Speaker 2: And so I wrote up a deal and gave it to the district attorneys and you know, told him what i’d found, what i’d discovered, and got this guy off and got his charges dropped and all that deal because he truly was a victim of identity theft. Anyway, So now I’m on I’m at the pond, and there he is and he’s kind of excited to see me, you know, he you know.

00:11:01
Speaker 1: He knows you’ve done yeah, he or he.

00:11:04
Speaker 2: Knows that this deal all worked out and and he got off those charges because of that deal, and he knew that I had took care of it, yeah, or figured it out and got it took care of So anyway, he shows me his fishing license because Cody hadn’t checked him yet. I guess maybe he was at a different part of the pond or something whatever. So he shows me his fishing license. And this other guy’s standing at the pickup truck and he’s standing there at the bed with his hands his arms rested up on the bedrail, and I have he’s cross, you know, looking across the bed of the pickup front from me. So I have to look walk around to the back of him, and I do. And I decided that I’m just going to handcuff this guy, you know, and get him into custody. And so I told him and said, hey, you know, whatever I said. I don’t remember if I told him you’ve got warrants for your rest or whatever, but I instructed him to put his hands behind his back and go through that motion. And as he’s doing that, I’m reaching for my handcuffs at the same time, and he puts his hands behind his back, and then he bolts and he runs and he takes off to the right. The pawn’s right behind us, twenty yards or so, the edge of it, and so he bolts to the right and just takes off sprinting, and I presume and you know, probably in twenty yards, I’ve tackled Dean, and so now the fight’s on where he’s not complying. You know, I’ve tackled him, but he’s not going to lay there and let me cuffing. You know, he’s scrambling, trying to get up. And he’s quite a bit bigger than me. He’s probably got forty pounds on me, and you know, taller, a little bit taller than me too. He’s pretty stout guy. And so it’s all I can handle, not handling him. Can’t keep him on the ground. He gets up, well, instead of disengaging and trying to run again, now he’s attacking me, and so he’s trying to wrestle me to the ground. And so now I’ve went into defense and trying to keep my feet and so this this wrestling match of him trying to drag me to the grounds going on, and I’m merely just trying to stay on my feet at this point. And you know, in my mind, I’m thinking, Okay, I got to keep my feet, but I got to get back control of this guy because right now he’s just I’m just defending and I’ve got to get back on offense and get him under control. And this is going on, and I mean it’s it’s mere seconds, but it really felt like it’s minutes of fighting going on. And you know, he’s got me by the collar, trying to drag me down, trying to sling me to the ground, whatever he can do. But I’m maintaining throwing punching. Now he hasn’t thrown any punches. He’s just grappling you, just trying to get me, trying to drag me physically, drag me down, is what he’s trying to do. And I’m maintaining my feet and keeping that from happening. But I’m thinking in my head, where’s this other guy at? And I’d start thinking, I gotta check this other guy because I may be fixing to get smoked in the back of the head or something. And I managed to get to a point to where I could get a look, and I see the guy standing where he was standing when I left him, and he’s just standing there looking, you know, not doing anything, which at the time for me, I thought, that’s fine, that’s great, just stand there. You know, he’s not not trying to help me, but he’s not doing anything to try to hurt me either. This wrestling continues, and eventually this guy just lunges and just in a perfect form, tackle shoulder in my in my gut and wraps me up and we just launch into the pond and I’m on my back and so he’s you know, I’m under the water now and on my back and he’s on top of me, and he he’s you know, in full mount, you know, he’s I assume, of course I can’t see, but I assume his knees are laid over me right of like where my gun belt would be in my gun in my side arm, because I can’t get to it. I’m trying, you know, and I can’t. Well, he’s got me. Of course. My first instinct was to get up, but I can’t get up because he’s on me. But he also grabs a hold of me like by the collar or the shirt my chest, and he pushes me down and he actually started shaking me under the water like he was trying to, you know, drown me, like you would see somebody on TV shaking somebody under the water. And he’s doing that and I’m laying there and in my mind, I’m it’s slow. I mean, everything went real slow. And I was sitting there thinking, Okay, I know where I’m at, and I know what I know what I got to do, and I don’t have any recollection of how but my next my next thought is, or my next memory is he’s off of me, and I’m standing up, and I’m telling myself, get up and get your gun, Get up and get your gun. Get up and get your gun. And so I come up out of the water and I’m getting my gun and he had bolted, well, I say bolted. He was off to my left, and uh I had I think I had hollered at him. But he’s coming at me like he was over here on my left as what I was, what I remember, And he’s coming at me, and I believe I had hollered stop, you know, but he’s coming through the water. We’re still in he’s still in the water. I’m still in the water, but the water is like knee deep, and he’s coming at me, and it’s like somebody trying to run or hurry through the water. He’s really side to side and working at trying to get to me quick. And I have, you know, drawn my gun, and I’ve got the gun cleared the holster about the time he’s right at me, and I shoot him twice, and in my mind I had well, I’ll just say I shot him twice. And he he turns to his right and kind of puts his his hands up and says, I give up as he falls into the water, face down, And so I command him, put your hands behind your back, you know, and he does. He hears me, and he complies, puts his hands behind his back. I holster my gun and I cuff him, and I roll him over on his back and I drag him out of the water onto the bank, and that, you know, from there, I was trying to administer a first aid. I had stood up, actually back up, I had stood up, and I look up and my partner, he’s driving the truck. I see him pull up. He is just now pulled up to the scene. This whole time, he has no idea that this is going on, because about the time that I got over there, he got that gal loaded up in the truck and they started driving over there, and all that took place. And I think they had the time frame from radio traffic that it was like a minute had took place from him getting in his truck and driving over there and discovering what had just took place. And so I stand up from this pond and see him, and he gets out, and I holler at him to throw me as first aid kit because we all have a you know, a kit in our truck, and he does. And anyway, I try to give this guy some some aid to his gunshot wounds. I try to find them, but I can’t find them. Took a shirt put pulled his shirt up and was trying to find these these wounds. I knew I should I shot him twice, but I can’t find these gunshot wounds. And and I remember thinking, what in the heck, because in my mind I knew exactly where they were at when I pressed the trigger, they weren’t there. And anyway, he he didn’t make it, unfortunately, and we we radioed for help and you know, Cody was able to secure the other guy that was there, and we ended up having to you know, give directions to the county where we were at and how how to get there, you know, and they they showed up and and took over the scene and all that. So you know, from there, you’ve got, uh, this one guy that sat there and watched the whole thing, and and I remember thinking, you know, that guy, he’s going to have to tell this story. And I remember wondering what story was he going to tell?

00:21:08
Speaker 1: You know, And but this is the guy that you’ve helped, but this is also his obviously a buddy, a friend of his or whatever.

00:21:17
Speaker 4: You know.

00:21:30
Speaker 2: Fast forward to me having to sit down with investigators and and or the investigator for the Ocloma State Guirreau of Investigation and and tell my story.

00:21:43
Speaker 3: You know, can I can? I ask you?

00:21:46
Speaker 1: I don’t want to disrupt your flow, but what’s what’s going through your mind when you know this guy is not going to live?

00:21:55
Speaker 2: Are you?

00:21:55
Speaker 1: I mean like kind of just thinking what you know you’re now up against in terms of.

00:22:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this this time, you know, this was twenty fifteen, there was a lot going on with law enforcement there was riots, and and you know, there had been some incidents that were you know, in the news that from people that were unarmed that got shot by law enforcement officers, and that those sort of things were going on, and that actually crossed my mind, you know, not during the event, but right after it happened. I’m now thinking, you know, here we are with all this stuff going on, and law enforcement’s getting you know, hammered in the media and getting portrayed to be the bad guys constantly, and here this guy is. He ain’t armed, you know, And I thought about that while I was standing there. And this guy’s not made it, you know, he’s passed away.

00:22:55
Speaker 1: Less than a year earlier, on August ninth, twenty fourteen, eighteen year old unarmed Michael Brown was killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri, which created a national uproar in riots in the streets. When officers in twenty fifteen, this very year that all this took place with Officer Kramer, these officers in Ferguson were found justified in the use of deadly force. They were essentially acquitted. It’s hard to forget the tension in the air since that time, as law enforcement has been under intense scrutiny and has had to continue to do their job upholding the law. These were incredibly intense times and Officer Kramer has found himself right in the middle of it. What a nightmare. And secondly, you remember the woman that his partner had arrested that was connected with this crew. Well, his partner and this woman were completely out of view of the fight. They never saw a thing. But later in court she claimed that she had witnessed the fight and told a completely different story than Officer Kramer and this other guy that was standing right there beside him.

00:24:14
Speaker 2: My lawyer and I show up to give a you know, the formal statement to the investigators. They’ve already interviewed these other witnesses and whatever, and they’re waiting to do mine. And we sat down and do it. And so I tell that story just like I told it to you, and probably close to word for word. And after it was done, the investigator asked me if I wanted to see what the eyewitnesses story was. What he said, okay, So they handed me the statement and I read it, and it was almost word for word or what I said, and the only the only thing that was there might have been a couple of little things different because there always will be, but it was, I mean, it was the exact story. The main difference for me, and it was a piece of the puzzle that I’ve never been able to get back myself was he stated that I kicked this guy off of me, and that the guy landed on his butt in the water and then got up. But I have no recollection if that’s what really happened or not. I just know that the guy’s off of me, you know, and I got to get up.

00:25:32
Speaker 1: Well. Wouldn’t that make sense though, I mean, because because it’s it’s like you’re under water and then all of a sudden he’s off of you. If he was trying to leave you, feels like he would have kept going.

00:25:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he didn’t. He re engaged again for the second time, you know, and decided he wanted to, I guess, play this one one more time. But in my mind I had to, you know, I had to make that decision of I’m not going to fight this guy in the water again. You know, that’s not happening when I’m not going back down there.

00:26:07
Speaker 1: I’m not going back down there. I think that phrase paints a clear picture of the direness of the situation for Officer Kramer. Sometimes you just wonder what in the world someone is thinking. Who’s fighting a law enforcement officer who has the legal right to protect themselves with deadly force. Do people know this? Are they just rolling the dice? Are they crazy? Are they high? Do they care if they live or die? It’s hard to know, but it happens every single day. This logic makes it easy to think, well, this criminal got what he deserved and what he asked for. But I can’t help think of what a sad state of life, what dire straits a person would have to be in to act this way. I cannot understand it or reconcile it. Fighting a law enforcement officer is like fist fighting a black mamba. You’re probably going to get struck. But what’s gonna now happen for Officer Kramer.

00:27:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, and another kid bit there about the that witness. He did say at some point he told the truth because he believed I was a good guy, because I had helped him out and made that right for him, and he wasn’t gonna lie.

00:27:31
Speaker 1: Wow, Yeah, that’s man, that’s when when you told that part of the story. I was like God was looking out for you mean, he really was, because that could have gone completely the other direction, you know, I mean, just to have a witness there that you had just randomly done a good thing for.

00:27:52
Speaker 3: I mean, what are the chances of that?

00:27:54
Speaker 4: Yeah?

00:27:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, because who knows how it would have turned out if that guy wasn’t present that day and now it’s you know, you got my story and and get this other so called witness and her story. It would have been a completely different deal. I mean it would have.

00:28:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, if that guy had corroborated the same false story the woman told, this story could have turned out completely different. But what happens now the thing is just starting for Officer Kramer. Actually this was just the start of years of lack of resolution.

00:28:33
Speaker 2: Wow. But that’s that’s the short, not really the short, but that’s the gist of what happened there on the on the scene. And you know, from there there was of course the criminal side of it, which you know, every officer that is involved in such is going to be there’s going to be a criminal investigation. And of course that that was determined to justify, you know, I was justified in my actions, So there was no criminal ramifications or whatever coming there. But that following year, I think it was about right out a year after the incident, the family of the suspect they filed the federal lawsuit. So that was basically accusing me of violating Fourth Amendment right, you know, unlawful search and seizure, taking this guy’s life. And that played out for years, several years really yeah, just a lot of it was I think just the slow process of the federal court system. But the short version of that was it was it was deemed by the judge, federal judge that it would go to a trial and that I was being represented by the okahom Attorney General’s office, and they filed an appeal with the tenth Circuit District Court out of Denver, and they decided otherwise that it would be dismissed. So that was the end of that.

00:30:06
Speaker 1: But when all that was going on was that I was that stressful.

00:30:10
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that’s that’s the worst part, you know, I mean, I say it was the worst part. It was because of the duration how long that took.

00:30:20
Speaker 1: You know, can you walk me through your training in a situation like that, Like, I know, any level of law enforcement training these days I mean there is a prescribed action basically for any category of situation like you’re I know, there’s there’s probably there’s gray areas that they’re they’re just naturally it’s going to be. But like there’s certain just laws that if this happens, I do this, and I mean that’s just part of your job.

00:30:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the you know, we’re being trained and have to abide by what we call the use of force continuum laws governing the use of deadly force, which you know basically say that you know, if somebody is trying to do me physical harm, trying to kill me, or serious bodily injury, that elevates to the justification of the use of deadly force to prevent that from happening. You know, it doesn’t have to be on me, It can be on any citizen that they’re you know that I am justified to use that level of force to prevent somebody from harming you in that manner, taking your life, or doing serious bodily injury. So that’s the first and foremost is you know, was the person capable of inflicting that injury, did they have the intent to do it, and did they have the opportunity to complete it, and all three of those things have to be present in order for it to be justified for me to make that decision to use that deadly force. You know, they could have the intent and the means to do it, but it may not have the opportunity to actually do it, and so it doesn’t it won’t work. I would be unjustified, you know. And in this case, you know, the guy his means was his physical ability to hold me under the water and you know, subdue me and make that attempt. And it’s clear to me that he had that ability there. He obviously showed the intent and the opportunity was there and he seized it. So he met all that criteria, which is in my mind just my training. Not thinking about that. I’m not checking those boxes. They’re just that’s just trained in me. But I will say that at the those split seconds of time where I’m seeing what’s happening and I’m I’ve got my gun drawn, there was a thought process of is is this good? You know, I’m asking my I’m running that down. Is this good? Right? And that was the only question I asked myself, and I.

00:33:22
Speaker 3: Had to make that decision.

00:33:24
Speaker 1: I guess the water is what if you’re uncoverable with this question, we don’t have to put this on there.

00:33:31
Speaker 3: You probably wouldn’t have shot him if it hadn’t been for the.

00:33:33
Speaker 2: Water, though, right, that was his means.

00:33:36
Speaker 1: I mean, because like if you were just wrestling on the ground with a guy that was just trying to get you down.

00:33:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, he never would have. He would have had to have done something something.

00:33:45
Speaker 1: Being reached for your gun or if he had had a weapon.

00:33:49
Speaker 2: Right, that’s totally different. The water is what the means were. That’s the means of him having the ability to take my life. Was the water that was his weapon. Yeah, so that’s that’s exactly right. If it wasn’t for that, it’d have been just to fight on the ground, you know, and I’d have been trying to do it.

00:34:09
Speaker 3: You wouldn’t have been justified, right and deadly force.

00:34:11
Speaker 2: Just if he would have had to have done something else. You know, he’d had to have been picking up a rock and trying to beat me in the head with it, or you know, a stick or something. He would have had to have some other kind of weapon to to reach that threshold.

00:34:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that makes total sense.

00:34:28
Speaker 2: But we’re still standing in the water. You know, and he’s re engaging to attack me again while we’re still in the water, and so that that’s what justified that.

00:34:38
Speaker 3: Godly, that’s wild man.

00:34:40
Speaker 1: You know, probably never in a thousand lifetimes of a wildlife officer did something.

00:34:45
Speaker 3: Like that happen.

00:34:46
Speaker 2: Is that?

00:34:46
Speaker 3: Would you say? That’s probably accurate?

00:34:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don’t know of another, you know, incident like that. Yeah.

00:34:55
Speaker 1: Similar to justify the use of lethal force, the perpetrator has to have three things, the intent, the means, and the opportunity. And in this case, the most unusual and unprecedented thing was the means to kill being water. The water was equivalent to a gun or a knife, or a rock or a club. And if you’ve ever almost drowned, I think you’ll understand that. It goes without saying that any time a human life is taken, it’s extremely serious. And just because someone is a convicted felon on the run, it doesn’t lessen their value as a human and a fellow partaker of the breath of life. It is wild that this took place less than seventy miles away from where Bucky Garrison drowned in nineteen seventy one. Here’s Officer Kramer with a very interesting detail about the psychology of these types of situations.

00:36:02
Speaker 2: And I will backtrack to say to fill in a spot that I left open there about his gunshot wounds. And I don’t remember the terminology of what it is, but the I guess it’s pretty common that in that situation, In those situations, that your brain is not processing in real time, and so my brain is seeing or telling me what I think were what I know, and that this guy was squared up to me, and because I believed that I knew where I had hit him, but the reality was was he had turned to his let to his right when I had shot, but I didn’t see that. My brain didn’t process that it was behind. So I’m pressing the trigger, but my brain is still behind on where he’s located. And I guess that’s pretty common for somebody to get shot in the back, but that’s not what the officer intended because in their mind they were still facing them, but they had turned, and this.

00:37:14
Speaker 3: Was exactly what happened.

00:37:15
Speaker 2: He’s actually turned before those shots went off, and so he was hit in the side with the ribs and I’m looking for him on the front of his torso and can’t see him because in my brain I thought that I know exactly where they’re at, but they weren’t. They were around the side because he had turned to move away, tried to get away from me, you know, when he realized what was fixing to happen, you know. And I didn’t never knew that until I was told, you know, this is where he was hit. And that was a complete shock to me because I would have bet the farm and I knew exactly where they went.

00:37:54
Speaker 1: The razor edge of time is faster than the human brain can compute such a precarious thing. To be a law enforcement officer, Why couldn’t this guy have just run away when Officer Kramer’s kicked him off?

00:38:08
Speaker 2: He didn’t.

00:38:09
Speaker 1: He came right back. I’ve got another question, did that affect your career? I mean, did it make you Did you think, man, I maybe ought to get out of this business or or did it.

00:38:24
Speaker 2: You know, I don’t, I don’t think i’ve I didn’t really ever think about that about getting out, you know. But it’s definitely changed. I mean, I’ll never be the same person. And uh, it’s it’s uh, it has created uh an opportunity for the good where we have some training now because up to up to that point, we hadn’t had in a incident game warding involved shooting incidents. Sense I don’t remember. I think it was in the nineties retired officer now, but had gotten in it, had shot a guy and the rumors of that, how that played out with the agency and everything, it wasn’t good. It just was kind of like a disaster for the officer involved. And now, you know, we know as law enforcement agencies around the country, this is not uncommon to have these incidents, so they know more about mental health and how things should play out, what you do and how you do it. And my agency didn’t have any experience. There wasn’t anybody working at our administrative level that was working at the time when the last one happened, So there wasn’t any new scenario. Yeah, it was completely new.

00:40:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, and.

00:40:04
Speaker 2: Thankfully those that were in that those positions, you know, they handled it correctly. And the fact that they didn’t do anything if they were unsure about what they were doing, and that’s just and I’m saying that in regards to to towards me, But after this took place, I decided, you know, hey, our agency needs to be prepared how do we handle this? And so now we have some some good training on how do you respond, Like if you’re an officer that’s out working and you get the call that there’s been an officer involved shooting, how how do you respond to that? What do you do? What do you need to do when you get there, you know, And and then the other side of the for the agency, like the supervisors of that officer, the things that they should be doing to to help that officer you know, through this, you know, because there there can be a lot of struggles, you know, mentally the mental health thing can go south, you know, and it can be a bad It can turn out to be a really bad deal. And and that’s for me, that was an that was something I experienced. Was nothing real negative. Nobody did anything to me that you know, caused some negative impact. But your brains is it’s a weird deal. I mean, it does some crazy stuff. And I remember immediately after, you know, the next day and the next next two couple of days, there’s everybody’s trying to call me, you know, and people are wanting to know what happened, and you know, then a lot of them are just wanting to you know, hey, I’m glad you’re all right, you know, and they got that out of the way. Well I figured out that that’s that’s all we do, is we we get that out of the way and we.

00:42:09
Speaker 3: Go on about our lives.

00:42:11
Speaker 2: So what happens is it goes from all these all this attention and people, you know, saying these good things, and then it’s crickets and you don’t hear nothing, and that starts screwing you know, was kind of screwing with me, like, you know, what’s going on? How come nobody’s called you know? You know, is this bad? You know, because there’s there’s an investigation going on. Yeah, yeah, you know, am I being blacklisted or something? And you don’t. It’s like so that those kind of things that we’re aware of now that that’s going to happen, so we kind of know how to handle it, how to prevent it from turning into something that it shouldn’t or whatever.

00:42:51
Speaker 3: That’s interesting.

00:42:52
Speaker 1: That’s probably a similar thing with any kind of traumatic event, is that you you get a lot of people who care about you contacting you, and then yeah, it kind of.

00:43:04
Speaker 3: After some period of time, Yeah, it’s like nothing.

00:43:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you you you you know.

00:43:09
Speaker 3: That’s interesting. I wouldn’t have thought of that.

00:43:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, and your brain, you know, I guess maybe vulnerable would be a good term you get in you’re just it’s like it’s very susceptible to manipulation, and you know, you’re you don’t you know, you don’t know what’s what’s right and what’s you know, like, is this normal that they’re not calling me? I mean you can’t. You’re not processing that, you’re not understanding’ not grasping. Well, okay, well this is just everybody has said what they wanted to say and that’s it.

00:43:40
Speaker 1: Now you start thinking the worst. So what can what could we learn from all this? Like when you tell the story, I know, to law enforcement officers there’s a lot in terms of just like training and response and stuff. What do you what value is there too to us to hear the story?

00:44:12
Speaker 2: You know, it’s as a as a game warden. You know, it’s solidifies that you know, we’re we’re law enforcement officers out there dealing with the same people that may want to do us harm, just like any other law enforcement you know, I think a lot of times.

00:44:34
Speaker 3: We get.

00:44:36
Speaker 2: You know, maybe downplayed on what you know, we’re just a wildlife cop, you know, or not a real cop you you know whatever, But you know that’s yeah, this deal started out it’s a wildlife related thing. But the whole, the whole reason that happened was because this guy was a criminal that was wanted, you know, and we’re going to take him to jail. We’re going to make him you know, see the judge. So ah, I guess that would be one thing that this you know, comes should come of this situation as people realize, yeah, we’re out there dealing with bad guys.

00:45:13
Speaker 1: You know. I just think about how you see these videos now of people engaging with law enforcement and like in a fight or something, and it’s just like, you gotta be crazy. I mean, people should know when you feel like everybody should know. And obviously people aren’t in their rational mind when they like put their hands on an officer. But it’s like the rule of law that we have in this country because we all can walk around the streets and feel safe in most places this country is because we have law enforcement that has the right to protect the public but also themselves. And you lay your hands on a law enforcement officer, you might be in big trouble. I mean that that blows my mind when I see, you know, of people that start thinking straight.

00:46:02
Speaker 2: Well, like in this incident, this guy, he come out, you know, in testimony from the witnesses that they had just got done doing math. Well you know, and I think that was part of why he was wanted, you know, probably with some drug. I don’t remember exactly, but I believe it was something to do with that. But he had already told this other this other guy, that he wasn’t going back. He already had that conversation before I got over there. He made his mind up. It was about not going back to jail. You know, he’s going to do whatever he needed to do to not go back.

00:46:40
Speaker 3: So he’d already made.

00:46:41
Speaker 2: That decision, yea, And that explains why he was, you know, re engaging. He realized that I wasn’t going to let him go, wasn’t going to let him just run off, you know, So he knew I believe he knew that he needed to take care of me.

00:46:57
Speaker 1: In order to go away, to get away, I guess, you know, the ill saying you’d be surprised at what people do if they’re really desperate. It is eye opening to go behind the scenes with law enforcement officers, especially in the most stressful, difficult times of their career. I can’t thank Officer Kramer enough, first of all for his service and protecting our communities and our wildlife resources, but secondly his willingness to tell this story anytime human life has taken It’s an incredibly serious situation, and I think that we can all learn a lot from this. I cannot thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease Brent’s This Country Life and Lakes Backwoods University. I hope that everyone has a married Christmas and a wonderful New Year. And while you’re opening up those Christmas presents on December twenty fifth, remember keep the wild places wild, because that’s where the bears live.