CCW Safe Podcast- Episode 83: OCPD Officer Katie Lawson Part 2

Transcript:

 

Rob High: Hi. Welcome to the CCW Safe podcast. I’m Rob High, joined by my partner Phillip Naman. Once again, we’ve got Katie Lawson on gracing us with her presence. We’ll continue on and finish up her story. Thanks for coming back, Katie.

Katie Lawson: Thank you very much for having me.

Phillip Naman: Katie, on our last one, we were talking about what physically happened to you. You’re at a traffic stop. For those of you who haven’t seen that one yet, you’re at a traffic stop, you’re assisting another agency. Unbelievable story about how these people were talking to you and they ended up being the bad people. They already were bad people but they ended up proving it later that evening by shooting 26 rounds of the high-powered rifle at you at close range, unprovoked, which is the definition of ambush.

One of the things that Rob and I really want to talk about is your mindset. You’ve lived through one heck of an ordeal. High-powered rifle, 26 rounds, impacted six times, dark, alone, if you could paint a really bleak scenario, I think you checked all the boxes. You got all. “What bad things could possibly happen to Katie tonight?” It’s like, “We got them all.” “Okay, good.” But God was with you and you lived through that.

Tell us about, just in your mind, like you said in the last show that the sound’s cut out but walk us through just from the point of, “Hey, there’s a guy. I wonder what he’s doing?” Just what happened in your head, your thought process.

Katie: Initially, I think I detailed it when I stopped, the shooting starts taking place. The initial first response is the shock factor, you feel like you freeze for a second, thinking, “Is this really happening?” Then immediately after that is when I kick into the fight mode. I’ve been asked in the past, “Why didn’t you just drive out the line of fire? You got flight, fight, or freeze. In my thinking of that, and I will address that just so nobody has to wonder just because it is a question I’ve been asked.

I did not draw out a line of fire because, one, it was not my go-to first response. My first response was fight back, get your gun out, shoot back. Second, I’d already had the car in park, so finding that magic button at the time which was on the floorboard to initiate my gearshift and drive out of line of fire, that was just going to take too much time. That’s why I went with fire response.

After that initial freeze, like, “Is this really happening?” I remember thinking, “This guy’s trying to kill me.” There was no doubt in my mind. The guns pointed right at my face. He is trying to kill me. I’ve got to do something to save my life and if I don’t shoot back, that’s what’s going to happen, he’s going to kill me. That’s when I went into the reaction mode, get your gun out, start firing back.

As I’m doing that, I remember they say that, so many things go through your head in an instant, I remember, as I’m getting my gun out, being able to think several things through my mind. I remember thinking, “Okay, get your head out of the window. He’s going to take it off with the round.” I also remember seeing- I didn’t actually see the bullet but I remember the bullet impacting the front windshield and glass flying towards me. I can remember feeling all the bullets coming, whizzing by me. It was just very chaotic. Inside the car, I can remember things just whizzing by me and the car just feeling very chaotic.

Phillip: I think that 26 impacts would be chaotic.

Katie: It was very chaotic.

Phillip: I think that’s a minor understatement, but we will go with that.

Katie: I remember just being able to feel all of these things and think all these things, even though it happened within a matter of seconds. I can’t give you an exact number of seconds but I would say less than 30 seconds, by the time he started shooting and ran away. As you’d already mentioned, I got the tunnel vision, the auditory exclusion, I didn’t hear one of my rounds go off.

The time distortion, it did happen to me because again, I was able to think all these different things as it’s happening rapidly. Did I cover your question? I know that was kind of long.

Phillip: Yes. The other thing is the exclusion. Maybe all of us had a scrap or two, but I remember being solely focused on that person that did this. That was the number one thing, I was going there. I think that’s what with you too, it’s like, “I’m getting that guy”.

Katie: Yes, “I’m going to try to shoot him. I’m going to shoot back definitely and try to get him”.

Phillip: Yes, there is nothing– I’m going to have to be physically stopped to stop that. Unfortunately, you were shot in the legs and you weren’t able to do that, but it was just like the intent switches from, “I can’t believe this is happening,” to all of a sudden, “I’m putting an end to this right now.” That’s where you were focused on him and tried to go after him down the fence line. Wish you would have got him.

Katie: Me too. That’s another segment, having to get past that part.

Phillip: How old was this person?

Katie: 18.

Phillip: The family was illegally in the country?

Katie: Mom and Dad were both immigrants. The Dad was illegal. The Mother had a visa to be here. It was not a work visa, so I’m not really sure what the visa was but she had a visa to be here. Then the two boys were born here.

Phillip: Great. Anyway. You got an eighteen-year-old, who’s grown up– I just can’t imagine. Anyway, it’s a whole different mindset that somebody would just say, “Hey, I got an idea. Let’s go kill two police officers, so our dad doesn’t go to jail for drunk-driving.” Let’s do the risk-cost analysis here.

Katie: Exactly. I have a little back history of the 18-year-old if you want it.

Phillip: Sure.

Katie: He was part of a gang here, Southside Locos. He was not an active member of the gang, so he wasn’t really playing the whole gang attitude– not attitude, but he was not an active member who was running around with the gang. He was just an associate of the Southside Locos.

Phillip: [unintelligible 00:06:56].

Katie: Exactly. The night of the shooting, his dad was actually going to go to the strip club. His dad asked him to drive him to the strip club and then drive him home. I’m sure he was going to plan on drinking, so he wanted the son to drive him to the strip club. This was told to the FBI during the study, the son actually did not like his father. He described it as hating his father. He thought it was disrespectful that his father was going to the strip club. He thought it was disrespectful to the Mother, so he told him he would not take them.

At the point he’s coming home, he’s coming home driving drunk, so the son internally takes that on as it’s his fault because he told his dad no, he wouldn’t take him. At the point, they were in the front yard, he knows that he’s going to go to jail and be deported probably. He basically says that blood’s thicker than water. He knows if his dad gets deported, he’s not going to have the money to support the family anymore. At that point, he decides he’s going to try to take our lives to get his dad out so his dad can work and provide money for the family. Very senseless.

Phillip: He came up with that great wisdom all on his own.

Katie: All on his own, yes. Don’t really think he had a plan after the point of killing the deputy and I, but that was part of the plan.

Phillip: The plan is to stay in the States. If you’re in jail for attempted murder, you’re in the States longer. You’re not deported so that is much better plan all the way around. Ambush, the most deadliest thing. We’ve seen an uptick on this in what? In the last three weeks, Rob? These officers being ambushed?

Rob: This year has been horrible. We did the deal, where Gary and I went down to Florida and did the Retired Sergeants Association with the NYPD and they just had two officers killed. They were able [crosstalk].

Phillip: A young guy, I think a twenty-one-year-old, right?

Rob: Yes, it was just horrible. It’s one of those that law enforcement feels everywhere. It’s just part of that fraternity. You get the good and the bad. You get a Rodney King incident and that was a California thing. I’m telling you, police officers felt that all across the country. The blowback from that came back on them all across the country. You get a police officer that’s dirty and steps out of line. It stains everybody.

Katie and I were lucky enough to work at an agency that really does do a remarkable job at policing themselves. I’ve always felt very strongly that if you can’t keep your own house in order, you should never be allowed to go do that to the general citizenship, you shouldn’t be able to do that to the population. I had a tremendous sense of pride to get to serve where I served.

It was just one of those that I was in the police academy when the Oklahoma City bombing happened, the Murrah bombing occurred. My class was activated for a portion of that to provide scene security and to see the community support, the outpouring of support during that incident, just absolutely solidified my commitment to what I was doing it and the town I was doing it in. It was a point of pride for me because I grew up here in the Metro, I’ve been here my whole life.

Phillip: You look a little like a city boy.

Rob: Like a city boy. It’s one of those– and Oklahoma City is not a city if you’ve been here.

Phillip: I heard you say Metro.

Rob: It’s just one of those that when somebody gets hurt, it hurts everybody as well. It was a remarkably emotional response that night in Katie’s case. I mentioned previously that the response was so overwhelming, and Katie touched on it. There was other agencies. Everybody that could come, came. They jammed the streets up so bad that they really couldn’t get her out in the ambulance. I don’t even know if you remember, Katie, but you went through yards.

Katie: I’ve been told that one of our officers actually took the driver’s seat out of the ambulance and drove me three yards.

Rob: He sure did. You make it work however you make it work.

Phillip: Everybody got other cars looking for the guys, so the cars were just locked or opened, no keys in this.

Katie: Everywhere.

Rob: Everywhere. Every canine in the city was coming because you can only run those dogs for so long and they need a break. You’ve got a handler and a dog, and then you’ve got cover guys with them and you’re going backyard to backyard and through creeks and everything else you can think of.

Phillip: Let’s put an end on this, on one of the things– What punishment did these [unintelligible 00:13:10] get?

Katie: Originally, they all pled not guilty and of course, got-

Phillip: “I barely got here. I don’t know nothing”.

Katie: They know nothing, didn’t do anything.

Phillip: “It’s not my magazine”.

Katie: We were out in the front on a traffic stop. They originally all pled not guilty, got bound over for trial, and the trial took place a little over a year after the incident. Up until– I think it was about two weeks, a couple of weeks before the actual trial was to begin, the older boy, the actual shooter came forward and said that he committed the crime, he acted alone, his family did not know about it.

Phillip: Was he in jail the whole time?

Katie: Yes. The younger brother and the older brother, both in jail the entire time for about a year, and then mother had actually bonded out so she was not in jail the whole time. As the elder boy comes forward- Sorry, go ahead.

Phillip: She left her kids in jail.

Katie: Great Mom, left her kids there. Looking out for number one. Anyways, as he pleads guilty, the other two, they know nothing about it, didn’t do anything so they go to a jury trial. It was a week-long jury trial which another credit to my department and the blue family, and just to touch on that a little, digress a little bit.

Being four years on, you hear about a blue family, but you really don’t know what it means until times like these. That is when I realized what a great family my police family was and how much they backed me and supported me through this whole entire incident.

Anyways, went to a jury trial and officers packed the courthouse out, so that was nice to have all that support there with me. Went through a week-long and at the end of the jury trial, the jury found the mother not guilty, so they acquitted her and then they found the little brother guilty and sentenced him to three years. That was before the sentence came down.

Phillip: What did they try and charge Mom on, accessory after the fact?

Katie: They actually charged her was shooting with intent as well, just because they charged a conspiracy charge but it got rolled up wrong so the judge actually had to kick it out because it was not the correct conspiracy charge, but they continued on with the shooting with intent with her.

Phillip: Because she didn’t physically shoot, then they couldn’t put her away.

Katie: Yes, and talking to the jury– we had to talk to the jury afterwards and they said that the citizen that had the most evidence against her, the one who actually saw her approach the car and then fade back towards the house, the patrol car, they said they did not find him very credible so they didn’t feel like they could find her guilty because of that witness, they didn’t find credible.

Phillip: He’s also the guy that said, “I saw him running in the back door”, and that was true, right?

Katie: I think it was actually two different ones. We had one that looked out the back window and then the other one is the one who saw her approach the vehicle. They did find him guilty but again, only gave him three years. All this took place before we actually sentenced the shooter. As you can imagine, at the end of the trial, when one gets three and one gets acquitted and nothing’s happened to the other one just yet, very disheartening.

Phillip: They wonder why we drink, right?

Katie: Exactly [laughs]. Drowned our sorrows. Anyways, when it come time for the sentencing of the shooter, it was by Judge Deason who, I didn’t know him at the time, he was the one that presided on the case but came to know him afterwards in my work and impact with doing a lot of search warrants, I became friends with him afterwards. He was fabulous, he sentenced the shooter to life plus 10 years. In Oklahoma, life is 45 years, of course, it’s 85% crime. He went in the round of at 18 and his first chance of parole will be around the age of 60.

After that happened, I let the other go and I felt justified then. I have a statement read by Judge Deason that him talking to the suspect and it was great. He is very pro-law enforcement. We actually lost him about three years ago to a stroke, but he was an awesome judge.

Phillip: I’m sorry to hear that, we need some more of those. I like the judges that have a Gallows’ tattoo, I think that’s just a good sign.

Katie: [laughs] Yes. Wears their cutoff shirt in the courtroom so everybody can see it.

Phillip: Then they’re packing their own piece, that’s the guy.

Katie: He did do that. He didn’t let it show, but he always had his gun in the courtroom.

Phillip: That’s pretty good. Tuesday night I was training with this guy and we were talking about firearms and stuff like that, and he was saying, “Well, a knife’s way better.” I’m like, “I don’t know.” There’s so many differences. Can you pull your gun before you pull your knife?” He’s like, “Well.” My point to him was ambush is what wins. If you’re six feet away from me or three feet away from me and you don’t know what I’m doing and I pull a firearm and shoot you, you didn’t get–

It’s the ambush, it’s action beats reaction every time, and it’s the person who takes the impetus. Here you are you’re looking like– you’re at the stage of, “Hey, there’s a guy, crap, incoming rounds.” There’s nothing else going on with that. I think people need to realize when someone says, the keyboard warriors, keyboard commando. My head’s always on a 360. Rob, you hear this stuff. I’m always looking wrong, I’m always aware of my surroundings like, “No, it’s an ambush ding-dong. There’s a guy laying in a ghillie suit on a hill”.

Katie: You’re not seeing that person.

Phillip: “Yes, they’re in the shadow, they’re doing this, they’re hiding. This is a nefarious act coming upon you”.

Rob: They come up from behind. You don’t get to pick the time. Think about a car.

Phillip: A couple of police officers killed sitting down in a diner -this is under Obama’s timeframe- with these two psychos and then they had a shootout in Walmart later that day.

Katie: I think that was Las Vegas, wasn’t it?

Phillip: Could have been. You’ve got your back turned, you’re talking to somebody and somebody who’s nefarious has an ambush. My point is that you can’t see everything, you’re not God, you’re not omniscient, you can’t see everything coming. As an officer like yourself you can’t feel bad that you were ambushed, it happened. Throw this out there, they didn’t shoot at you because you were a woman, they shot at you because you were a cop and he wanted to go kill the other cop. He thought that was you. He didn’t know. Again, he’s an idiot. He’s shooting at the job, you’re shooting at the person in that car. There’s nothing you did to provoke it and you did everything you could to stop it.

I think the firing, like you said, your car is in the park, what you’re going to do? You’re going to run into a telephone pole and you’re going to take more shots? You did everything right. I think you may have had some good training.

Katie: I did have some great training.

Rob: There’s so much that that is is mental, though. The determination-

Phillip: Determination on that.

Rob: The will to freaking live, the will to win. It’s why I talk about it. I may not be able to put my body through the same physical wear and tear that I used to. I can still get training repetitions mentally. I can still imagine that. My training Sergeant told me this, I tried to pass this on to kids that I trained and it was one of those that sit there and just think about the scenario, “Run yourself through it, put yourself through it before you’re ever there for real”.

Honestly, if you’re are going to do it the right way, put yourself in the worst-case scenario and how are you going to respond coming out of that. There are so many different things that we don’t have control of, but there are things that we do have control of. If we’ve prepared our mind for that, you’re just that much closer to stepping towards a victory there.

Phillip: It’s like you said, it’s we can’t control being ambushed, a true ambush. Now can you be negligent? We’re not talking about that. This was an ambush, you’re driving down the street and somebody in the shadows opens fire on you. Those are ambushes. We had a couple of sheriffs in southern California, they’re sitting in their car, filling out the reports, a guy walks up, “Hey, how you doing?” Boom. They live, thank God.

Those are things that happen to you. It’s how you react that your training kicked in. Rob, you trained her. She did exactly what she’s supposed to do. She put rounds on the target it, and of course, just like always, they run like cowards. Did I say that again? Did I say that criminals were cowards? We got some mail on that.

Rob: We got some negative feedback from that. Phil. You’re going to get me in trouble.

Katie: Saying they’re cowards?

Rob: Yes.

Katie: Oh no. That’s exactly what Judge Deason actually called him as well out in the courtroom.

Phillip: Yes. I’m in good company.

Katie: Yes, you are. He’s a great guy.

Rob: That was such a brilliant brilliant statement that he made at the end of that. It was perfect.

Katie: It was awesome.

Rob: We lost a true friend when he passed away. He was so good. Like Katie said, the guys that were doing drug warrants and things like that, got to have an awful lot of interaction with him, even at his home catching him after hours. He’d agree to meet you anytime, day or night, just come by.

Phillip: [unintelligible 00:23:42] No warrant.

Katie: You wake him up. He tells you to come over. You get over there. He tells you to come in the house as he’s reading it and finding it. He was awesome.

Rob: He and his wife were just absolutely just wonderful to law enforcement. I’ve seen him be really harsh on law enforcement when he didn’t feel like they were performing the level that they should have been performing.

Phillip: They have to have a standard. When guys are slipping, like we’ve talked about before the sloppy things and or mal intended of charges and stuff like that. I’m glad he is holding that account because we as a civilian, we need to be able to trust our legal department. We need to know that if we just asked so much malfeasance happen with the Kyle written house thing.

It’s like, what is that district attorney doing? It made no sense. We want to know that the people who are in our legal system are doing the right things for the right time. We’re seeing that that’s not happening. When someone gets called on the carpet for misbehaving, or I think that’s– they absolutely should be. They have to be held accountable or we can’t trust our legal system. We want to trust our legal system.

Katie: Now, he was very fair. Like I told you, before that they were all charged with a conspiracy charge. He actually looked at the state statute and realized it was not the right conspiracy charge. He felt like he had to dismiss it. He did the right thing in dismissing it, because it was not the charge, even though it was detrimental to my case, but he did the right and fair thing. I can appreciate that.

Phillip: That’s what he had to do. Katie, what would you say to a graduating class of rookies entering Oklahoma service? Just confess out of the academy.

Katie: All right. Rob actually touched on it a little bit. I was going to jump in there when he is talking about the scenarios, because I do remember during the academy, them telling you to run the scenarios through your head. I did that often. I ran the scenarios. What if I show up on a domestic that come out with a gun? I ran all these different scenarios. Now, did I ever [unintelligible 00:26:04] up that big? Probably not. That was a new one. When-

Phillip: When let your imagination be your guide.

Katie: Exactly [laughs]. Never imagine the one I actually went through, but now that I tell them,” Now that you’ve got me telling you this story, you imagine yourself locked down, pin down in a car. What are you going to do?” You play that scenario through your head. That’s a bit of information that I pass on. Was passed on to me and I pass it down. Also when I speak to them, because I do get to speak to the academy, one of the biggest things I tell them about is big– You all touched on this already, the mental toughness mentally prepared to face the worst.

The resiliency part of it, being able to bounce back from life circumstances that seem totally overwhelming at first. The mental toughness part is just that if you get into a fight, no matter what it is, don’t give up. As long as you are there and you’re capable, keep on fighting no matter what, you’ve got to learn to be mentally tough and to never accept defeat.

I give them a couple of quotes I like from Grossman’s books. I can’t remember the exact quotes, but it’s about not being the toughest or the biggest, but I have a big heart. As long as you’ve got the heart and the will to survive, you will until the Lord calls you up. You have the mental capability to survive something like this.

Phillip: You can’t tap out and start over on the street.

Katie: No tapping out. You keep on fighting until you can anymore. By that time you won’t know

Rob: Phil, they did something. You’ll have to remind me, Katie, how long it had been because you went to the hospital that night. They had you there for a good little while actually. One night we all went up and we held line up at the hospital. You just got that your entire third shift shows up. I don’t remember who it was, they even had a lectern there so that we would have a proper line. It was so cool because at the very end of the whole thing, Katie grabs a radio and she puts all of third shift 108 available for service. It was pretty cool.

Katie: It was awesome. emotional. For me, it was emotional because not only had youall not seen me since it. You did a little bit in the hospital in the emergency room. That was the first time we all got as a shift again, I got to see you all. You all got to see me and we were all good. For me it was emotional. I wanted to see you all as much as you did me. It just brought us all back together. It was really cool.

Phillip: I think the other thing that we touched on our last episode that Rob was when that evening from the hospital, she was able to speak, so everybody could hear that she was okay. I think that was an amazing thing.

Rob: I’m telling you, you talk about renewed vigor to just keep searching. You don’t get tired in anything like that. It’s pretty crazy.

Phillip: You’re motivated.

Rob: We are at a loss. We have no earthy idea what’s going on with Katie. It’s a super, super personal thing for me. The very first recruit I ever trained died in the line of duty. His name is Jeffrey Romanger, amazing man. He lost his life in a vehicle pursuit. There’s that loss. I had a classmate that was killed in the line of duty. You go into that profession with the understanding that that can happen. We are just a bundle of nerves out there searching through the darkness and you don’t have a clue what’s going on at the hospital and then for Katie to key up. That should be [unintelligible 00:30:26] for anybody that injured in the line of duty.

If they’re good to go, even with injuries, if they’re going to be okay, let everybody know that they’re going to be okay. That was such a shot in the arm for everybody that was out there in the field that day. I just can’t tell you how emotional that is when it’s somebody that’s family. I keep saying, she’s my spare daughter.

Katie: I’ll claim you. And to add a little bit to Rob, I will say, as he’s telling you, I also had some other officers later down the road tell me that when I got loaded up into truck I looked really pale and they honestly thought that I was going to lose my life that night and that they were never going to see me again. As he’s saying that, they said the same thing. When they heard that radio traffic, it was one of the best things they could heard.

Phillip: Awesome. Now, let’s put a bow on this. Tell us about your recovery. Now, your running career after being shot twice in the leg, and once in the calf. Tell us about that.

Katie: Okay. Spent three days in the hospital. After that, I think we talked about it, maybe on the other one, there were several visitors. They wanted to kick me out of the hospital. They were getting overran and overloaded. I had to go live with my mom. I lived on my own, but I had to go live with my mom so she could take care of me because I couldn’t walk or get–

Phillip: What was worse, getting shot or going back home?

Katie: Goodness.

Phillip: Tie? Okay, you won.

Katie: A little bit, because I was one of those people once I moved out, I’m not going back. No, my mom was good to me. She took care of me. My grandparents come down. I had had to have home healthcare come out every day, clean wounds, and treat them just so they didn’t get infected.

It took me a while, about a month to get back up on my feet to where I could walk again and still that was with the walker, but made a full recovery, took a while, it took 4 months being off totally recovering, and then I was able to go back light duty after four months. Then after 6 months total of being off the streets, I went back to patrol. Able to physically capably recover from everything. I do still have shrapnel metal lodged in my body in all different areas. A couple of those I can feel they’re making their way to the surface. Doctors told me I could be 60 and still have metal coming out of my body. Other than that, like I explained earlier, one side gets tired faster than the rest. Then the middle of my body. I feel pretty good. I’m doing good.

Phillip: You’ve actually been able to run marathons since this–

Katie: Ran marathons, never ran one before, but it’s always been on my bucket list. After this, I decided to get on that bucket list.

Phillip: Check off things a little faster yet–

Katie: There’s never promised tomorrow, so got on that bucket list and I’ve ran three marathons. Now I am not the fastest, I’m not going to brag about a time.

Phillip: We are the fastest but with two forrest gump and a cap shot.

Katie: There you go.

Phillip: Congratulations.

Katie: Got some marathons under my belt. Thank you.

Rob: Katie, you got any takeaways for us?

Katie: The biggest thing is– and this I tell the recruits as well. I tell this and when I go to the speaker on the nation, one, I’m very thankful to God for saving my life that night. I have to give him the credit every time because without the Lord, I wouldn’t be here. The other is to spend time with your friends and family, make sure they know you love them. Tell them you love them, because we are not promised tomorrow. We never know when our last day is going to be. That’s very important to me, is just making sure those loved ones know that you love them.

Then the last that I just touched on is just learn to be mentally tough. You can survive things. We’re all going to face adversity in life, but as long as you’re mentally tough and you know that you can make it through it. If you’ve made it through it here. I think you could make it through it in real life. And just the resilience part of it. We’re going to get knocked down again. We’re going to face adversity, whether it be in our professional life or personal life. Look at that adversity as a chance to overcome. Don’t look at it as a setback and don’t let it change who you are. Keep who you are in your heart and keep on moving forward.

Phillip: Can’t see anything better.

Rob: Pretty good. How about you, Phil?

Phillip: No, you, how can I top on that? I’m just going to leave that there.

Rob: Katie, I cannot thank you enough for sticking with us today. I absolutely love you, little lady. You are so special to me.

Katie: I love you too. It’s my honor to be here.

Rob: Again, thank you all for tuning in again. We appreciate all of our members out there. As always, you are more than welcome to give me your questions, comments, suggestions, critiques.

Phillip: That’s for me.

Rob: That’s you.

Katie: You can feed those over to me too.

Rob: You can directly to me, Rob at CCWsafe.com. We thank you all and tune back in next time. See you.

Phillip: God bless.