Name: Former SWAT Sniper Recounts His Most Intense Hostage Situation
Uploaded: 2023-02-17T18:46:59.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Former SWAT Sniper Recounts His Most Intense Hostage Situation' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-02-17. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Former SWAT Sniper Recounts His Most Intense Hostage Situation' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-02-17. Transcript available.

the Joe Rogan experience when it comes down to like life or death stuff that's
where you know
you're a very determined person just in the way you live your life it's cam
very determined person
right so that's how you get to where you get to it's the first ingredient in
this whole control
factor is having enough determination to do that and like you have a why you
you have a why as to
why you're doing this my why was I was scared to death man in the sniper world
I was like man I hope
it doesn't go bad and I'm like that can't be the mindset holy mackerel but it
is the mindset of most
cops because they don't have a why you know if a cop's never been in a gunfight
or a shooting
their why is artificial right and that's it's scary the first time that you
that you do that
you know having that why and seeing like I was in an HR where I you know had to
use lethal force on a
person that was I had to put around this far from another human being's face
right and it was that's
my why so when I do training on the team it's like you guys don't understand
when you're when you see
when you're looking through your optic at a reticle and there's somebody's face
on the edge of the I mean
their face is fully in your scope and the reticles right on the edge right and
you have to put the
round past their head that's your why right so that's your why for all this
tactical training that
you do but if you've never been there and done that you have to learn how to
manufacture determination
right can you imagine what failure would be in that situation well tell the
story if you don't mind
the story you told me about the guy who was methed out yeah so got a SWAT call
out of a of a hostage
rescue there's a an unarmed barricaded subject for the hostage and you never
know that's all the
information you get on the call out right so we go there I get there and it was
weird because on the
brief I walked up to the house and the SWAT commander briefed me at the at the
head of the garage there
and it was light colored concrete it's dark you know we didn't have a bunch of
lights on because the operation
is active in that house right there but the room was in kind of the back of the
house and I I remember
he's talking to me tell me the situation and I'm looking on the ground and I'm
like what is all that
stuff on the ground right and I'm looking at these dark patches on the ground
so I turn my flashlight on and it's blood
there's blood all over the place on this on the walkway down from the garage
and I'm like what is
up with that and he's like well this guy stabbed his cousin and then took his
own daughter hostage
user is a human shield with a knife to her so that's how SWAT got called and
all this stuff so I get there
and I gotta be I'm up on a ladder over a wood fence and we're about I'm only
like 15 yards from the
from the window but we can't see anything in the window and the negotiator's on
the phone with this
guy and he's not really making a lot of sense he wants to talk to his
girlfriend blah blah blah he's
got the his daughter in there with him and we can hear her through the wall
right we can hear her
sometimes she's screaming sometimes she's crying sometimes she's laughing so we
don't know what is
going on in there right and it go this goes on for the negotiators are on the
phone with him for a while
and then finally the decisions made like we have to get in there because it's
it's starting to go south
in negotiations and we lost calms with the guy and you're worried he's going to
stab his daughter
yeah well we don't I mean he's already done that to his cousin right I mean
stabbed him in the face
and legs and arms big k-bar knife it was it's not a good situation so yeah and
he's already used her as a
human shield right when the when the cops what happened is there was a big
fight went on the cops got in
got everybody out then they realized the daughter was hiding behind a couch so
they go back and they
restack up they go back in now he's got the daughter around the waist using her
as a human shield knife to
her and he kicks the door shut on a bedroom that's what starts the SWAT call
out so we're looking I'm looking
in this window it's got blinds on it you know negotiations are going south we
lose calms with
the guy so finally we're like we got to get calms with this dude so we're going
to put a throw phone
in so we put a throw phone throw phones like a it's like a box it's got a phone
in it so you can the
negotiators can talk the dude and so we put that in there my buddy rips the
blinds out when we rip the
blinds out there's the dude again I can't see him because I'm I can only see
like half the room
and he's on the right he's in the right corner of the room and I'm over over
this fence and
the window guys are yelling at him to drop the girl drop the knife you know
they get him all the
commands and he's kind of working his way along the wall he's got her around
the waist so he would hold
her up up above you know so they can't get a shot and so he's moving his way
across the wall and then
he moves his way across this wall and ends up in this corner sits down and
pulls her up over the top
of him and so the window's on the same wall as this corner and I can't see any
of this stuff I'm the
sniper team leader so I work my way around and I get to this gate I'm like they
called fire priority
to the window team I'm like I'm on the wrong team right so because he's got
there's like six dudes at
the window and nobody's shooting I'm like why in the f for these guys not
shooting because I couldn't see
what they saw but it's just what's going through my head so I I get off the
ladder I run to this gate
and I'm it's weird the stuff you remember they had this it was like one of
those latch type of locks
and it had a bolt through it with the nut all the way buried and this bolt was
like it felt like it
was this long right so I'm having to unscrew this freaking bolt right I'm screwing
it's the finest
threads I've ever felt right so I'm unscrewing this bolt finally bing I get
that I go through the gate
I come around I come up to the window and there was another officer that was
had his basically his face
planted against the window so that he could you know could just barely see
through this sliver
because it was on the same wall and uh so and he wasn't shooting and I'm like
why are you not
shooting and so we actually ended up having to remove him off the ladder
because he I don't know
what he was thinking he wasn't hearing us we were giving him commands to get
off the ladder so I could
get up there and evaluate the situation and I'm shooting a my sniper rifles
that uh it was a gas
operated 308 and lowest power on the scope was four and a half and I've told I
told the admin years ago
I'm like I need lower power because it's going to be close probably when it
when it does happen and
sure enough it was so I get up on this ladder and I put my face against the
against the wall and I can
just see through the sliver I can see him sitting and I can see her on you know
sitting in his lap
basically and he's got his arm around her and so and the the team keeps giving
him commands and I'm
looking at this shot and I'm evaluating what's going on and I'm thinking to
myself I'm gonna have to
shoot him left-handed and I'm thinking lowest power is four and a half so I do
an optic check on the
wall I'm like that ain't gonna work so I'm thinking to myself I'm gonna have to
shoot with my pistol
when you say optic check is because it's moving too much no because it's yeah
too much magnification so
there was a picture something on the wall so I brought my my rifle up and
looked at him like
that ain't gonna work it was just blurry it's four and a half power the shot's
only 11 feet
like 12 feet 11 feet so I uh so I'm like this isn't I don't have the right tool
so I'm thinking
I'm gonna have to shoot my handgun and then I'm thinking I always preach handguns
suck for killing
stuff right so that's why I always tell my guys handguns suck for killing stuff
we don't use
handguns if we don't have to but I'm thinking I got the wrong tool what am I
gonna do so I'm thinking
wait a minute stupid there's six guys standing at the window that have the
right tool right because
they all have their assault rifles and uh so I the first guy and it just
happened to be the guy that
we pulled off the ladder I'm like give me a rifle he's like what oh give me a
rifle so we we swap
rifles and he says HK416 and the reason he said that was because on HK416 if
you flip the safety
twice you go to full auto right so don't want to do that right in a precision
environment right so
I'm like roger that and so I got up and the window's broken at this point so
when you step up to the
window you're literally walking on broken glass okay so I step up pop pop pop
pop that the glass all pops
underneath my feet and I push the rifle I gotta shoot left-handed right so I
push the rifle in and
I come around the corner now the rifle butt is in my bicep with somebody else's
rifle right but I know
this rifle is zeroed because it has to be zeroed because to get through my
qualification a month
earlier it had to be zeroed right so I knew that things were good but I also
knew that you got to
aim two and a half inches higher than where you want to hit because that's a
mechanical offset
right difference between bore height and sight height two and a half inches so
I push the rifle in the
window and I come around the corner and I look and the little girl's looking
right at me right because
all the broken glass so she's looking right at me and I bring the reticle up
and it's full pop
brightness right I can't see anything because it's he had it set for a white
light shot so when you when
you turn your super bright flashlight on on your rifle it will it will blare
out your reticle so
you got to have your reticle turned way up well he had it set for a white light
shot but I wasn't
going to do a white light shot so I looked I'm like oh no so just like you're
thinking your your thing
didn't turn on when you're looking at this nil guy I'm looking at this red sun
in a dimly lit room
and I'm like this ain't gonna work so I pulled the rifle back out of the window
and now I got to work
on the buttons on this site well this isn't my rifle right so now I got to find
the button that dims
the dims the red dot so I'm messing around with this thing and the whole team
is outside and they're
watching this right because they're going to go on my shot now this dude had
the had the door barricaded
with a tv and a tv stand all that stuff so they were going to have to hit the
door hard but they were
going to get a running start at it but I moved them out because they were right
on the other side
of the door but I didn't know if my round was going to go through the wall or
not so I moved them out
so we got them out so they're all watching this shit show basically of me on
this optic
and they're thinking what are you doing turner right and I'm thinking I'm like
I just got to get
this thing turned down right so I mess with the buttons and I finally get to
the to the right one
so I'm like okay good so I go back up to the window you know glass breaks again
pop pop
pop underneath my feet I come around the corner does this guy know you're there
I don't know
because he was I mean who knows what kind of mental state he was in and I was
trying not to be
too that's why I didn't turn on any lights or anything so I come around the
corner again
and I look in there I'm like okay I got the right brightness but it's too close
right like her head
was like an inch because what I'm looking at is this so like this is the back
of her head
I'm looking at his eyeball oh so I got like an inch I'm like nah it's too close
and remember that
almost so this was on this was in December a year earlier it was 364 days after
I made that decision
in that tree stand when I mapped things right so now between 14 December of 14
and December of 15
now I'm I have control of what's going on and I made that vow right long ago
that I'm not going to
shoot an uncontrolled shot so I come around the corner and I'm looking and she's
of course looking
at me and it's close I'm like nah I ain't gonna do that so I'm waiting and then
he moves his head back
right I'm like okay two and a half inches mechanical offset but his hair his
head his face is all covered
in hair like this giant mop of hair so I couldn't see the geography of his face
at all like I'm going
I want to put it in his eyeball but I don't I can't see it right so I'm just
going by the curvature of his
of his forehead I know I got to aim two and a half inches over that so I put it
up there safety's off
fingers on the trigger it's a two-stage trigger so I took the first stage out
here I go I remember
saying that and then when I'm when I'm working on rifle stuff it's it's kind of
an audible exhale so
right so I that's my that's my concentration guidance so I put it two and a
half inches over where I
wanted to hit safety's off takes the stage out of the trigger here I go mmm and
he moves his head back
right bunk and he pops it back against the back of her head and it's funny the
stuff you remember
because I remember his hair swishing right and he's so now he's back and it's
too close again so I'm like
I'm waiting he moves his head back again so he moves his head back again now I've
got better you know
it's faster for me to aim where I need to aim so I put it where I need to
stages out here I go
mmm and the shot broke and the rest is history so it but worst case scenario in
terms of tension
terms of consequences right messed up guy right knife to this girl I mean it's
just the whole that was the
culmination of everything that was the start of shot IQ because now I'm like
this is no bullshit
right this is how to concentrate in high stress events right so and it was cool
because I had I had
lots of high-level military operators that I was able to bounce ideas off of
like because I'm not getting
gunfights every day so I go hey man is this real or is this not real like yeah
how'd you figure that out
I'm like I don't know I'm just a dumb cop man just just thinking you know and
so I was able to bounce
things off of people that were actually that had been there and done that and
that's you know when
you're looking for solving a problem you have to find those people that have
solved it before
but it's so rare to find somebody that solved it before and blueprinted how
they did it
you know that's what's rare yeah in the instruction and just in life in general
you know there's lots
of mentors out there that have been there and done that in whatever field you're
looking for
but did they blueprint it

Former SWAT Sniper Recounts His Most Intense Hostage Situation

the Joe Rogan experience when it comes down to like life or death stuff that's
where you know
you're a very determined person just in the way you live your life it's cam
very determined person
right so that's how you get to where you get to it's the first ingredient in
this whole control
factor is having enough determination to do that and like you have a why you
you have a why as to
why you're doing this my why was I was scared to death man in the sniper world
I was like man I hope
it doesn't go bad and I'm like that can't be the mindset holy mackerel but it
is the mindset of most
cops because they don't have a why you know if a cop's never been in a gunfight
or a shooting
their why is artificial right and that's it's scary the first time that you
that you do that
you know having that why and seeing like I was in an HR where I you know had to
use lethal force on a
person that was I had to put around this far from another human being's face
right and it was that's
my why so when I do training on the team it's like you guys don't understand
when you're when you see
when you're looking through your optic at a reticle and there's somebody's face
on the edge of the I mean
their face is fully in your scope and the reticles right on the edge right and
you have to put the
round past their head that's your why right so that's your why for all this
tactical training that
you do but if you've never been there and done that you have to learn how to
manufacture determination
right can you imagine what failure would be in that situation well tell the
story if you don't mind
the story you told me about the guy who was methed out yeah so got a SWAT call
out of a of a hostage
rescue there's a an unarmed barricaded subject for the hostage and you never
know that's all the
information you get on the call out right so we go there I get there and it was
weird because on the
brief I walked up to the house and the SWAT commander briefed me at the at the
head of the garage there
and it was light colored concrete it's dark you know we didn't have a bunch of
lights on because the operation
is active in that house right there but the room was in kind of the back of the
house and I I remember
he's talking to me tell me the situation and I'm looking on the ground and I'm
like what is all that
stuff on the ground right and I'm looking at these dark patches on the ground
so I turn my flashlight on and it's blood
there's blood all over the place on this on the walkway down from the garage
and I'm like what is
up with that and he's like well this guy stabbed his cousin and then took his
own daughter hostage
user is a human shield with a knife to her so that's how SWAT got called and
all this stuff so I get there
and I gotta be I'm up on a ladder over a wood fence and we're about I'm only
like 15 yards from the
from the window but we can't see anything in the window and the negotiator's on
the phone with this
guy and he's not really making a lot of sense he wants to talk to his
girlfriend blah blah blah he's
got the his daughter in there with him and we can hear her through the wall
right we can hear her
sometimes she's screaming sometimes she's crying sometimes she's laughing so we
don't know what is
going on in there right and it go this goes on for the negotiators are on the
phone with him for a while
and then finally the decisions made like we have to get in there because it's
it's starting to go south
in negotiations and we lost calms with the guy and you're worried he's going to
stab his daughter
yeah well we don't I mean he's already done that to his cousin right I mean
stabbed him in the face
and legs and arms big k-bar knife it was it's not a good situation so yeah and
he's already used her as a
human shield right when the when the cops what happened is there was a big
fight went on the cops got in
got everybody out then they realized the daughter was hiding behind a couch so
they go back and they
restack up they go back in now he's got the daughter around the waist using her
as a human shield knife to
her and he kicks the door shut on a bedroom that's what starts the SWAT call
out so we're looking I'm looking
in this window it's got blinds on it you know negotiations are going south we
lose calms with
the guy so finally we're like we got to get calms with this dude so we're going
to put a throw phone
in so we put a throw phone throw phones like a it's like a box it's got a phone
in it so you can the
negotiators can talk the dude and so we put that in there my buddy rips the
blinds out when we rip the
blinds out there's the dude again I can't see him because I'm I can only see
like half the room
and he's on the right he's in the right corner of the room and I'm over over
this fence and
the window guys are yelling at him to drop the girl drop the knife you know
they get him all the
commands and he's kind of working his way along the wall he's got her around
the waist so he would hold
her up up above you know so they can't get a shot and so he's moving his way
across the wall and then
he moves his way across this wall and ends up in this corner sits down and
pulls her up over the top
of him and so the window's on the same wall as this corner and I can't see any
of this stuff I'm the
sniper team leader so I work my way around and I get to this gate I'm like they
called fire priority
to the window team I'm like I'm on the wrong team right so because he's got
there's like six dudes at
the window and nobody's shooting I'm like why in the f for these guys not
shooting because I couldn't see
what they saw but it's just what's going through my head so I I get off the
ladder I run to this gate
and I'm it's weird the stuff you remember they had this it was like one of
those latch type of locks
and it had a bolt through it with the nut all the way buried and this bolt was
like it felt like it
was this long right so I'm having to unscrew this freaking bolt right I'm screwing
it's the finest
threads I've ever felt right so I'm unscrewing this bolt finally bing I get
that I go through the gate
I come around I come up to the window and there was another officer that was
had his basically his face
planted against the window so that he could you know could just barely see
through this sliver
because it was on the same wall and uh so and he wasn't shooting and I'm like
why are you not
shooting and so we actually ended up having to remove him off the ladder
because he I don't know
what he was thinking he wasn't hearing us we were giving him commands to get
off the ladder so I could
get up there and evaluate the situation and I'm shooting a my sniper rifles
that uh it was a gas
operated 308 and lowest power on the scope was four and a half and I've told I
told the admin years ago
I'm like I need lower power because it's going to be close probably when it
when it does happen and
sure enough it was so I get up on this ladder and I put my face against the
against the wall and I can
just see through the sliver I can see him sitting and I can see her on you know
sitting in his lap
basically and he's got his arm around her and so and the the team keeps giving
him commands and I'm
looking at this shot and I'm evaluating what's going on and I'm thinking to
myself I'm gonna have to
shoot him left-handed and I'm thinking lowest power is four and a half so I do
an optic check on the
wall I'm like that ain't gonna work so I'm thinking to myself I'm gonna have to
shoot with my pistol
when you say optic check is because it's moving too much no because it's yeah
too much magnification so
there was a picture something on the wall so I brought my my rifle up and
looked at him like
that ain't gonna work it was just blurry it's four and a half power the shot's
only 11 feet
like 12 feet 11 feet so I uh so I'm like this isn't I don't have the right tool
so I'm thinking
I'm gonna have to shoot my handgun and then I'm thinking I always preach handguns
suck for killing
stuff right so that's why I always tell my guys handguns suck for killing stuff
we don't use
handguns if we don't have to but I'm thinking I got the wrong tool what am I
gonna do so I'm thinking
wait a minute stupid there's six guys standing at the window that have the
right tool right because
they all have their assault rifles and uh so I the first guy and it just
happened to be the guy that
we pulled off the ladder I'm like give me a rifle he's like what oh give me a
rifle so we we swap
rifles and he says HK416 and the reason he said that was because on HK416 if
you flip the safety
twice you go to full auto right so don't want to do that right in a precision
environment right so
I'm like roger that and so I got up and the window's broken at this point so
when you step up to the
window you're literally walking on broken glass okay so I step up pop pop pop
pop that the glass all pops
underneath my feet and I push the rifle I gotta shoot left-handed right so I
push the rifle in and
I come around the corner now the rifle butt is in my bicep with somebody else's
rifle right but I know
this rifle is zeroed because it has to be zeroed because to get through my
qualification a month
earlier it had to be zeroed right so I knew that things were good but I also
knew that you got to
aim two and a half inches higher than where you want to hit because that's a
mechanical offset
right difference between bore height and sight height two and a half inches so
I push the rifle in the
window and I come around the corner and I look and the little girl's looking
right at me right because
all the broken glass so she's looking right at me and I bring the reticle up
and it's full pop
brightness right I can't see anything because it's he had it set for a white
light shot so when you when
you turn your super bright flashlight on on your rifle it will it will blare
out your reticle so
you got to have your reticle turned way up well he had it set for a white light
shot but I wasn't
going to do a white light shot so I looked I'm like oh no so just like you're
thinking your your thing
didn't turn on when you're looking at this nil guy I'm looking at this red sun
in a dimly lit room
and I'm like this ain't gonna work so I pulled the rifle back out of the window
and now I got to work
on the buttons on this site well this isn't my rifle right so now I got to find
the button that dims
the dims the red dot so I'm messing around with this thing and the whole team
is outside and they're
watching this right because they're going to go on my shot now this dude had
the had the door barricaded
with a tv and a tv stand all that stuff so they were going to have to hit the
door hard but they were
going to get a running start at it but I moved them out because they were right
on the other side
of the door but I didn't know if my round was going to go through the wall or
not so I moved them out
so we got them out so they're all watching this shit show basically of me on
this optic
and they're thinking what are you doing turner right and I'm thinking I'm like
I just got to get
this thing turned down right so I mess with the buttons and I finally get to
the to the right one
so I'm like okay good so I go back up to the window you know glass breaks again
pop pop
pop underneath my feet I come around the corner does this guy know you're there
I don't know
because he was I mean who knows what kind of mental state he was in and I was
trying not to be
too that's why I didn't turn on any lights or anything so I come around the
corner again
and I look in there I'm like okay I got the right brightness but it's too close
right like her head
was like an inch because what I'm looking at is this so like this is the back
of her head
I'm looking at his eyeball oh so I got like an inch I'm like nah it's too close
and remember that
almost so this was on this was in December a year earlier it was 364 days after
I made that decision
in that tree stand when I mapped things right so now between 14 December of 14
and December of 15
now I'm I