BADGE 387-Robert Sberna

So sign up now at Chumbuckcasino dot com to claim you're free welcome bonus at Chumbuck Casino dot com and live the Chumba Lane.

a cop, he never shied from danger. He was involved in numerous gun battles and killed five people in the line of duty, all ruled justifiable notoriously equitable. As a cop, Simoni was more interested in doing the right thing than honoring the blue code. Badge three eight seven recounts the brave exploits that earned simone hundreds of commendations. In nineteen eighty three, while searching a church basement for a gunman,

he was shot in a face. Despite his wounds, he managed to shoot his assailant, saving himself and two other cops. And in two thousand and nine, he plunged into a frigid river to save a woman. Simony was Cleveland's Patrolman of the Year in nineteen eighty and two thousand and nine, the only officer in the city's history to receive the

award twice. The book that we're featuring this evening is Badge three eighty seven, The Story of Jim Simoni, America's most decorated Cop, With my special guest, journalist and author Robert Sperna. Welcome back to the program and thank you for a green diest interview. Robert Sperna, Thank you, Dan,

thanks for having me back. Thank you very much for joining me on this programmed this evening with this incredible book The question I want to ask is, because i'm is, how did you make the decision to write this book at this time? With everything going on in America right now? True crime author, with all kinds of options, I would think for you to be able to write a book, why did was this book important? Why was a book about Jim Simone and his police work an important book to write? Now?

a real good piece of that book. In investigating that case, I discovered that Ariel Castro, who was a Cleveland school bus driver, had been Jim Simony had done a traffic stop on him a couple of years before. The women had escaped like two an eleven or so, and he had a dash cam of the traffic stop. And because Castro was a school bus driver, and Simoni knew that if he arrested him because he was he was riding a motorcycle with improper plates, arrested him, he'd lose his job.

So Simoni gave him a warning let him go. So national news, national news shows were interviewing Simoni about that traffic stop because there was a big hunger for any news about the case, of course, and it even got as far as some broadcasters accusing Simony of letting the Cleveland kidnappers slip through his fingers, as if Jim would have known he had three women in his basement. Right.

So I didn't get that book deal. But in talking to Simoni over the next year or so, and we had the Ferguson case with Michael Brown, we had Eric Garner in New York, we had two people in Cleveland that were killed by police. I just started getting interested in what happens in a police involved shooting. In other words, Dan, what happened to that split second where some police shoot

and some police don't. I realized that I had a real gem in Simony not to be light hearted about this of course, because Jim had been involved in five fatal shootings, all will justifiable. So I pivoted towards him and start you know, I just proposed a book to him and we got it done. My goal in doing the book, of course, was to surface some issues about police involve shootings.

given preferential hiring by police departments. They wanted that type of proactive, aggressive personality regimented like Jim was. That's a no nonsense you know Bosster the wall officer, that's the guy that would chase danger and not shy from danger and maybe face it head on. Okay, So if we look at it from that standpoint in twenty sixteen, now, maybe we can judge that. We can say, well, why did you run into that basement? The government wasn't going anywhere,

he was trapped. Why not wait for swat? Why not wait for a supervisor to get there? So we can judge the actions beforehand, I think. But once an officer is face to face with somebody and they feel danger, it'd be very hard to second guess them. As to the question about the media, what I found out was, and I used to be a reporter for newspapers, I think the meetia nowadays were for They're forced into a position where they have to cover events, not news. Police

shoots on our man that's the headline. Well that's true, maybe, but we don't have the whole story. It's gonna take a couple of days, maybe a week to find out really what the story was, What was he holding his hand? Why did the police officer feel like he was gonna

kill him? We don't get that background anymore up front, you know, before electronic media, before blogs, you know, and citizen journalists, reporters had kind of an unspoken rule with police, you know, give us a couple hours, give us tomorrow morning, let us figure this out, and you know, we'll give you a story. Well, doesn't happen that way anymore. There's so much competition to get cliques coverage that they're just

covering incomplete stories. Second, to add to that, collaterally, I think some special interest groups have discovered that they can almost partner with the media to get agendas across and in somewhat of a sensational way by blaming police for shootings. Now, I'm not an apologist for police. I'm not making excuses for them, but a very small percentage of police do make mistakes of millions of law enforcement officers out there, and we're seeing that in some cases that these situations

are being seized on to push in. So I don't know that that's fair to a policeman, and society's going to pay for that, I think jumping in just a little bit, it's going to be harder to recruit police officers to an environment that they feel is hostile.

So when you're talking about writing an entire book about a cop, you've got to make sure that this is an extraordinary police officer and someone that's out of not typical. And that's what you found in Jim Simoni. So let's go back to his upbringing and how and what things shaped Jim Simony so that he could We talked about him going to Vietnam, So let's talk about his early childhood, his character, and what prompted him to be the kind of man that he became a war hero in Vietnam.

Let's talk about his early life.

not think about it. So I interviewed people around him, his brother, relatives, old friends, and he was raised by a very strong mother, very ethical, divorced at a young age, so he had a very close bond to his mother. His brother filled in a lot of the blanks. Mom was, you know, black and white. She didn't see great. Either something was right or it was wrong, and she wouldn't tolerate wrong. I think she instilled those ethics in Jim.

His relatives, his stepfather's father, were all military veterans, combat veterans, so from a young age he had that filtered down to him. You know, the patriotism, willingness to serve sacrificial life for the country, those sort of ethics, and they were so strong that he you know, it was the type of individual didn't question them. So now we look back at Vietnam and you know, maybe we really have some serious concerns about why we were there. Jim wasn't

that personality. He felt it was duty, his duty go to Vietnam. Now, every step of Jim's way, not only did he want to join to be in the infantry, but he wanted to be a paratrooper. So there always seemed to be some sense of proving himself. And I'm asking Jim, you know he wanted to be in combat. Jim, why did you pick situations or occupations that would put yourself at risk? And you know, he never really knew.

He could never really explain, And just guessing with what I know, I think, you know, he's always maybe trying to live up to somebody's vision of what he should be, whether that's his own or his mother's. I'm not sure. I'm not sure what drove him, but I think I mean, he was a great soldier. I talked to his company commanders in Vietnam, and you know, if they needed to go, have somebody charge an enemy machine gun nests, Hey, Simoni, take somebody with him, get it done. And he do it.

I don't know, I don't know why he put himself in those situations, but that's just what he did. He was, you know, obviously proving something to somebody. Okay, So comes out of Vietnam a young guy and goes into police work, and of course he takes he gravitates towards the most

dangerous job of police has, which is traffic duty. Traffic stops the middle of the night, where you know, most the most dangerous people are you know, are you interact with, so they're always you know, throughout his life there's always that that willingness, almost compulsion to put himself in a situation where he could prove his his uh gallantry, his his courage. I would have to trigger to something. You have to attribute it to something in his childhood if I you know, as a layperson, you.

these tunnels. But tell us a little bit just to describe the amount of the level of bravery, what these tunnels involved, and what involved Jim going into these tunnels.

extended all the way throughout the country. And those had been built during the French Indo China War where the Vietnamese were power out numbered and out gunned, and they went underground. They had hospitals, they had ammunitions cachets down there, they hit out dining halls. So the order came down from from the top that whenever you guys came across one of these tunnel openings, you couldn't just walk by it. You had to go in. You had to find out

if there's anybody in there. So Jim, who had lost a lot of weight, and it's kind of a short guy, he's about five seven, he's one of the few guys that could that could slip in there. And you know, as I say in the book, they'd go in bare chested with just a forty five in a flashlight, maybe a knife in their teeth, allright in head first and you know, look for viet Cong. Try to avoid booby traps.

I mean the booby traps were almost comically lethal. I mean, snakes and that would be tied to posts and poisoned bamboo sticks. But you know, your commander tees you do something and you just do it. They you know, I guess you know, technically he asks for volunteers, but you know they're looking at you when they're asking for volunteers. So Jim another way for Jim to distinguish himself, to show his metal and he, uh, you know, he did it. He got the job done at his own risk.

This Lieutenant Bill Meechim and Simone is again risking his life out in the field and where he didn't have to, and he is shot in the throat and so just take us to what his prognosis is in terms of people looking around on his likelihood of surviving. And this incredible story about this Lieutenant Bill Meacham that doesn't have to it's a helicopter pilot doesn't have to fly in there, but he does tell us about this.

the same time. You got to keep everything straight. So Jim had that kind of mind that he could do that and just digressing for a second here when he was I have some tapes of him on police chases. Same organized, calm, under pressure mind. He's communicating with dispatch, with other officers, relaying his position, just very calm, like he's reading the newspaper. So even at eighteen or nineteen years old, some of the company commanders saw this and said,

you know, you're back here. You're a radio operator. You're not out in the field as much as we are. We want you out here with us. So they get him out. And first of all, corporals and sergeants were always the first ones in. They were very visible, even though they took their stripes off in battle. The enemy knew who was leading the charge because they were the first ones out of the fox worlds, etc. So they

were losing corporals and sergeants quite a bit. So on this one particular battle, they were out on patrol the company and they got nighttime. They were setting up an ambush. They thought they'd get a small group of Vietnam coming, you know, passing through this trail intersection.

got surrounded on nearly surrounded on three sides. They're running low on ammunition. There was just no way to bring a helicopter into replenished their ammo, or even take out the wounded. The order came down to fix bannets Jim. What happened does Jim? A medic got killed. Another medic went to take his place. At that exact moment RPG, a rocket propelled grenade exploded rating That medic absorbed the shock, saving Jim's life, killing him and two other guys. Jim

got some shrapnel's throat, so he was laying there. He had a severe wound, bleeding to death, stuck his finger in his throat, still manning the radio. Though he's still working the radio, his company commander came over. Didn't think he was gonna make it, but knew there was nothing he could do about it, so he went back to his position, made sure the guys were still firing. Whoever had AMMO left, Jim tells it. And this isn't a lass we forget by Bull Meachum, the helicopter pilot Jim

was just as he was passing out. He felt a guy lift him up and said time to go. Sarge threw him in a helicopter and carried him away. Now that helicopter pilot Bull Meachum, he is part of a group called the Kingsmen. They called themselves.

claim you're free. Welcome bonus. That's Chumbuck Casino dot com. And lived the chumber line.

mentioned this. He had been promoted to a platoon sergeant acting platoon sergeant at age nineteen for a couple of reasons, his leadership abilities and also the fact that they really needed personnel in those positions. So Jim had been in Vietnam for about ten months at that point. He ended up recovering back in the States after that wound and decided that he had enough. It was the second Purple Heart, second Bronze Star. He just didn't want to go back. He's seen enough death.

would be a good police officer. And so, as you write in the book, very interesting, he shows up on their door maybe a year later in a Cleveland police uniform, and so Jim Simone is on his way.

didn't get much constantly when they came back. You can't go through something traumatic like that is as a teenager see your friends die killed here one minute, gone the next without that rewiring your brain somehow. And of course that's uh, as we talk about in the book PTSD that was never addressed. So Jim comes back, he becomes a police officer. Now you know a lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman, who does a lot of lecturing, and he's fond of

talking about the wolves, the sheep and the sheep dogs. Okay, the sheep being citizens us, the wolves being you know, the bad guys. Of the criminals, and of course the sheep dogs would be the police officer who protect us. That's kind of that fastile way of police looking at their role in society as protecting us. Well, Jim had that.

Jim very much adopted that ethos of him being the best person to protect us, and he brought that back to him for Vietnam, which is one of the reasons why he was a tunnel rat while he was first in. He felt that he could do that function better than anybody else, so it should be him going first. He had a lot of confidence in himself, So it wasn't just Ubrius that caused Jim to be the first in. It was probably mix your self confidence also, so Jim

brings back that like a lot of other Vietnam vets. Now, as I mentioned the book, and I tried to be fair and objective in the book, it was I'm not just being a cheerleader for anyone police officer. If you come back from from war where everybody's not, where your uniform is an enemy, you maybe bring a little bit of that back here. Especially in Cleveland early seventies, there was a lot of racial conflict. There was rioting, police

were not well liked, the community became the enemy. Well we know of course that the citizens, we are not the enemy. We have to be viewed differently than the the you know, the army viewed their enemy. So I think some of that was brought home with some of the returning veterans, and Jim just sunk his teeth into the business of being a police officer. He enjoyed it. I think he enjoyed the physicality of it. It was an opportunity to work off, maybe work out some issues.

I don't know, but he definitely Back in those days, there was a lot of headbusting, you know, a lot of a lot of fighting, a lot of brawling. I think it was just the way, at least in Cleveland. You know, in some cases, the way business was done, police business was done. And that's how Jim. Jim approached it all or none, black or white, his way or no way. And I think that that mindset contributed, you know, you know a lot of ways to him being involved

in situations where there was a confrontation with somebody. Back then, there really wasn't There didn't seem to be an effort to really talk somebody down or negotiate or try to try to wait somebody out to see if they could get them to a different level mentally, whether you could disarm them. It was pretty much over in a flash. And Jim's first shooting was nineteen seventy seven, a couple

of years after getting on the force. Guy with a gun on a rooftop pointed it at him and Jim fired, and that was his first shooting.

Jim shot had a very similar profile. They were all depressed, separated from their spouses, had indicated they were suicidal, had drug problems. Reeser was the same. He was a dishonorably dishonorably discharged marine, living in his car, had separated with his from his wife, had told his wife he wanted to die. I guess, you know, to use a cliche, suis side by top. When he aimed his gun, he wrote his he wrote his own script when he aimed his gun at a police officer. I mean, that was it.

And you know, Jim was the Jim was the guy that fulfilled that wish. I guess.

and police. And it was incredible that again his bravery and his willingness to go into areas of conflict was very interesting, to say the least.

that excitement, that adrenaline Vietnam. I mean, it must have been incredibly an incredible rush to be jumping a helicopter, be shoppered into a landing zone. In seconds later you're trading gunfire with an enemy. I mean, you can't imagine the adrenaline involved there. And I suppose that gets addicting so Jim. Jim enjoyed that it was and it was another way for him to show his bravery and distinguish himself from other policemen, make a name for himself. Almost. Yeah,

he just he couldn't avoid it. He wouldn't have missed that opportunity. Couldn't work nights on weekends, he'd be angry. He wanted Friday and Saturday nights. That's when you know, that's when all the action is. Couldn't sit at a desk, would have Jim would have could have never set at a desk. Just wasn't It wasn't his thing.

in conflict. There are numerous cases in this book where he disarms somebody where other people would have other officers on the scene said that guy would have got shot. So he's conflict resolution is what he's interested in. And also he just goes out of his way in so many different ways to help out. He really is unusual. And then the big thing that I thought was again very very admirable and unusual even for all the other police, is that his line that he drew in terms of

his policing. He offered no one any breaks, and you offer great examples of that. So tell us a little bit about examples of how he never offered anybody a break, regardless of who it were.

a very bright guy. And if he could talk somebody down. That's the way he do it, and he was very successful doing that. So yeah, I should kind of make the point that Jim was involved in five shootings, but he was a very active police officer with thirty eight years of service, so that's it seems like a lot, but he did his job. Yes, there were so many situations where he was able to handle this situation non violently.

So I'm glad that I was able to get some of those in the book, and thank you for mentioning that you And I'm sorry, Dan, what was the I got myself last year?

you just don't know the circumstances. Not being very sensitive to the people that are out there that are seeing this videotaped seems to be regardless of whether what's going to happen in a year at the trial, but it sure looks like an unjustified shooting. So when we talk about Jim Simony and the five homicides that he regrets having anything to do with, there are numerous cases of him risking his life to disarm somebody that would have been shot by police.

So he'd go in this situation, and I can't say that Jim went in recklessly. He went in because he knew he was the best guy for that job. Because he had that military experience. He knew tactics, he knew strategies. He wasn't going in trying to shoot somebody. He just wanted to defuse the situation. Now, you you had mentioned about his how equitable he was in treating people. Yeah, I talked earlier about his mom, black and white, right or wrong. Jim has that that same set of ethics,

very by the book. If it's wrong, it's wrong, no matter who's doing it. He was not averse to arresting his fellow officers, even his supervisor. He's a real stickler for drunk driving. He made a tremendous number of drunk driving arrests. And there were a couple occasions where he caught police officers behind the wheel when they shouldn't have been.

And there are cases where Jim made the arrest. In fact, if other officers caught somebody behind the wheel, you know, a well known figure in Cleveland, or another police officer, and they felt that this person should be arrested, they'd sometimes called Jim because they knew he'd do it. I mean, he wasn't afraid to put himself on the line and do that, and that's all part of his h I think I can attribute that to his upbringing, his mom, that that code, that strict code that she instilled in him.

I mean, he couldn't. It was hard for him not to do the right thing.

But at the same time, even though and you, I guess you can explain it, even though he did would bust a fellow officer's kid for impaired driving or even a fellow officer, how did he maintain that line of respect within the police force?

this guy a warning, dropped this case in homicide. He didn't want to take bribes, which is another reason he got out of that so he could go to back to the street. So when the brass not that Jim SIMONEI wasn't gonna play ball, and not that they were corrupt. I'm not saying they were corrupt, but in certain situations they put a little lean on Jim a little bit. Hey give this guy a break, he's a friend of

the forest. Things like that. Jim won. Well, once he did that, he became a praia, a little bit of a liability, a threat. They couldn't control him. So he put himself in a position almost and he would he would say this where he almost had now to arrest another police officer if he was doing something wrong, because if he cut that person to break, he wasn't following orders, he wasn't following the rules, and now he's breaking the

rules and they'd have a case against them. So Jim put Jim was in a situation now where he had to do everything right. His videos were a god send to him. They backed up everything. Cases would depleted out in court once the defense it's attorneys Jim's video. But yeah, he started out with that that code of ethics ended up being something that he had to adhere to because

he made enemies among the brass. And not just not just because he was willing to, you know, arrest fellow officers, but not that he went hunting for him, but he just didn't see color. Something was wrong and was wrong. So not just that, but Jim was very active. Jim worked, He wasn't he wasn't a slacker. His statistics for arrests, founty arrest, misdemeanors, traffic stops, drunk driving, they were all very high, much higher than in the other people in

his uh, in his district, in his unit. So it you know, there was a little resentment of jealousy towards him from other police officers, of course, because he was out shining them. It's normal in any profession. So Jim ended up, you know, he as he would say, he wasn't real popular in the locker room at times, but he didn't care. He was doing his job. He had nobody to please but himself. He had set his own standards, he lived up to his standards, and he was pretty

much a loaner. He had a couple partners that he worked with very closely, but for most of his career, he wrote alone, he was a one man unit. He preferred that that way. Then he could work at his own pace and his own style.

He ran into the high school and told the principal that he needed to save all the kids, and let's take him down to the basement. The principal was quick thinking. She saw the gun in his waistband by the way, and she said, hey, look, why don't you go to your church because he had told the worst church was and I'll bring the kids there. He said, great, I'll meet you at the church. So they tracked the stolen car that he's to the church. In front of the church.

They knew he was there. They knew he was down in the basement. The altar was overturned.

checked all the doors on the first floor. Jim, you know, knew he's probably in the base, so he starts heading down into the basement. Didn't ask anybody to go with him, but two other officers, John Thomas and Brian Miller. They couldn't let him go alone, so they followed him down there, checked all the doors except one door. There was a supply closet, so Jim had the guy stand behind him. He got down on one knee, thinking if these this guy shoots, they'll shoot over his head. Jim swung the

door open. The muzzle of the Dennis Workman's gun. He wrested it, sorry, rested it against Jim's cheek and waitn sorry about that a little phone problem. He placed the gun barrel against Jim's cheek and shot and went in in Jim's left cheek, under his eye, at the back of his head, hit John Thomas's femoral artery, his leg, the officer behind him, and immediately blood started spurting from him. Workman then shot again, shot Brian Miller in his shooting hand,

so he disarmed three police officers or two shots. Uh. Thomas, who was losing a lot of blood, crawled behind a wall. Miller fired back, but he you know, he was shooting with his non dominant hand. Jim Jim. When the bullet went through his head, Jim's head, Jim fell backwards, his head slammed against the linoleum floor, and he was semi conscience. He's losing blood. Workman fired at Jim point blanket somehow

missed him. And this is maybe a mystery of the book because Workman was a former marksman in the army. He was a hunter from West Virginia. He was a dead shot according to his wife, and for him to miss Jim from three feet away is mysterious. But anyhow, he disappears back in the closet. Jim somehow summons up enough energy to get up on his knees and shots. Once went through the closet door and killed workmen. He

shot him in the chest, then he passed out. They take him to the hospital and even though he shot in the head, somehow the bullet missed anything vital. They didn't even know there was an exit wound. He left the hospital two days later. Thomas was in the hospital for weeks because of his injury. Jim leaving in the hospital two days later after getting shot in the head, that maybe began his nickname super Cop. Do you have?

The legend of super cop began? Then there was quite a bit of media coverage, of course, in a situation like this in nineteen eighty three, and Jim became kind of a you know, darling of the media. He was very quotable, always accessible, and the media liked them, the public liked them, and this was the beginning of Jim's super cop persona and his public recognition. This situation, Now, if we look at that case just quickly, I guess

you can second guess it. You can second guess any situation, you know, maybe wait for swat, maybe wait for a supervisor. But in Jim's mind, I am you know, I am nine to one one. I am, you know, the White Knight. I'm I'm swat. I mean, there's danger in the base, Jim's gonna go down and confront it. That's what he was, you know, at some point, that's what he was hired to do. I mean, you can't fault them. We gave him the badge, the equipment, the training to go down

to do that. There's a little second guessing on that, but in the end, you know, he the care of the situation. Dennis Workman had told his wife that he wanted to die. However, he had religiously felt if he committed suicide, he wouldn't go to heaven. You know, if we were to surmised, maybe this was his way of leaving the world without not by not by his hand. So Jim he was a self duty for several weeks and he came back, came back to duty.

call in his forty six year old mother. Tell us a little bit about that. Again against shaping Jim's character.

department had got there, so he didn't hesitate. Maybe, you know, his mom's death and a fire motivated him. But he entered the house. He ran in again, just Jim's nature hard wired to rescue. The protector got in there, did the searge found that there weren't children in there but did get overcome by smoke. A couple other officers went in after him and we're able to drag him out. Jim. That particular incident resulted in Jim being named Police Officer

of the Year for Cleveland. And you know, again we have the you know, the super Cup legend growing here. His willingness to risk his life to save others everything. We you know, that's what we wanted, police officer, protector, fearless, doing the right thing, and Jim, Jim was doing that. You know.

had each other's back, and you know, his partner died. Yeah, they were quite a partner. They were so effective. They had pens. They were what were they three to eighteen A. I think they were. I probably have their their car number rock, but there were car to eighteen A. They had pens made that. Uh, you'll never get away from two eighteen a. So throughout the neighborhood, throughout the district, they patrolled, They were they were very popular, except with bad guys of course.

police officers as he drove by them. That precipitated to chase Jim in the lead. He stops his car in front of the house that he was staying at. There were oh maybe a dozen officers there. There is tape of this and you can hear the officer screaming put the gun down, put the gun down, and Chachi didn't put the gun down. He wasn't aiming at anybody, but

he just didn't want to comply. For whatever reason. They didn't want to let him go in the house because his friend and his wife and their child was in there, and they were afraid they were going to have a hostage situation. So this is a difficult situation. You got a guy with a gun that wants to go in a house where there's a child.

somebody that maybe just didn't want to live anymore. Another officer. During the gun the gunfire, a bullet muster ricocheted and hit Jim in his vest. He thought he thought he'd been struck by Chachi, but it was a friendly fire, so he went down. He went to the hospital. And that shooting took a long time to sort out. The police prosecut dien't rule on it for a while. So those eight officers were off duty in Cleveland, they would

spend time in the gym. They took them off the street and put them in the gym for a while, quite a long while actually, till that got sorted out, and it did eventually rule justifiable, and Jim was back on the street. And do you want to talk about the fifth shooting? Now?

their gun. Why so questions were asked. And then, of course, now we've got an additional fact that changes a story. The gun was unloaded, but that fact becomes part of the story, becomes part of the narrative, even though it wasn't a fact known to the police, has been seen at the time. So we've got a little bit of the tide turning against Jim. From a holistic standpoint that yes, he shot four people, those are four lives lost. Were they justifiable? Yes? Was he in fear of his life? Yes,

of course. But it was getting to the point where the public was starting to say, what's going on here? The media, in particular a couple columnists, I think one of them actually called Jim a serial killer with a badge. So he became a target. It became somewhat somewhat easy

to brand him as somebody that's trigger happy. Never mind that there were eight other police officers there, and then now, whenever there was a police involved shooting at this time period after this, the newscasters would manage to bring Simone's name into it. You know, they'd say, well, police officers, you know, they just bring him up randomly. They'd use him as an example of a police officer that was

involved in a lot of shootings. So Jim's reputation was kind of preceding him a little bit, uh, and that caused some problems for him. He became the go to guy when people wanted to charge, you know, logic case of police brutality, they named Simony. In some cases he wasn't even working the day they claimed that he beat him up. So yeah, Jim became kind of a lightning route at this point for charges that police were heavy handed, we're trigger happy.

of somebody else. The chat case was difficult. He wouldn't comply, he wouldn't drop his gun. If he would have complied, he's still here today, There's no question. I talked to the neighbors that were there, you know, they pretty much confirmed the investigator's account of it, that the gun barrel was lowered, it was in a position to fire. What else could they have done. So, on one hand, Jim regrets it. On the other hand, he's okay with it.

He's okay that he did the right thing, and he did something that most cops probably would have done in that situation.

They're gonna defuse the situation, remove the danger, fire until it's over. Yes, it was a lot of shots. You know, there's some thinking there by the anti police establishment, the special interest groups that all police fire, because then it makes it harder to determine who It makes it harder to make anybody culpable for a shooting. You know, they find all the bullets, so who really fired first? You know, you hear those theories too. I just think it's the

fear is contagious. They don't want to be shot, so you know they took action.

in there. He knew immediately when Jim walked in the bank something was wrong because the tellers all knew him. They'd all waving him and talked to this time, they looked very upset. It was very quiet in there. He immediately figured out who what was going on and who the robber was. The guy saw Jim. He ran out of the bank. Jim not in uniform, but had his gun in his tucked in his belt. However, his radio

was in his car. He gave chase. Now the individual Hackworth had stuck his hand in his pocket to simulate having a gun in there when he robbed the teller. So he's running from the bank. A lady driving by. I wish I could have interviewed her. I never found her, but she might have recognized Jim. She said that guy robbed the bank. Jim said, I know. She gave him

a ride. They chased him. She stopped him. As Hackworth got into the jeep to stawn jeep to escape, The lady dropped Jim off right in front of the jeep, so he was in Hackworth's line of fire right there. So Jim screamed, dropped the gun and uh, you know, hands up, hands up. Hackworth reached down towards his pocket.

Jim shot one time, killed him. Turns out that Hackworth was unarmed, there was no gun, and what he was probably doing was he the die pack from the money that he had stole had exploded, and that die pack contains tear gas and it was burning his crotch actually, and he was probably trying to remove that money from his crotch. It was painful, and that's the motion that Jim saw. Jim, the prosecutor in this case, decided to take this case to the grand jury. He felt that

Jim was not justified in shooting Hackworth. So a couple of things were going on. There was some demonstrations. Hackworth's girlfriend did some TV interviews saying that Jim acted rashly, had no business shooting him, he was unarmed. She died a couple of weeks later of a heroin overdose actually, and they just had a child together, Uh, tragically. So Jim's going to go to the grand jury on this case, and there was a lot of media. The media really was starting to get on him about this case. Jim

shot somebody over money. Well, it wasn't over money. He thought the guy was armed and he was running around with a gun. If he was going to rob a bank, who knows what else he was going to do. Called nine to one one, Jim, Jim likes to say, well, I am nine one one. This is my job. So he had his position, others had theirs. The fact was, though this was the first fifth person he's killed. That's

a very high number. Now, a reporter actually did some research throughout the United States and found out there was no other active duty police officer with that many fatal shootings that was still on the job. So Jim, Jim had, you know, distinguished himself in a very infamous way with his shooting. So he decided that he wanted to talk before the grand jury. Kind of an unusual tactic to have the person talked before the grand jury because that can be used against him. But whatever he told that

grand jury influenced them to return a Nobel. He was not indicted. He's still I think that shooting might have left him with a black eye. You can't escape the fact that the guy didn't have a gun, And then that fact became part of the story after the fact we now know he was unarmed. It colors the story unfairly, you would say, because he pretended he had a gun. So Jim, yeah, you know, Jim's a little by that.

A year later, though, if I can move forward to the rescuing the women from the Frozen River, Jim again distinguished himself a woman, two women intoxicated walking through an area of Cleveland downtown by the river was frozen. They decided to walk over the river as a short cut, and one woman fell in. Jim got to the scene. Rescue scouts were there. He immediately starts stripping off his clothes. They're like, where are you going? He goes, I'm going in,

and he went in. After the water was so frigid that he managed to grab her. They saved her, but he went under and fire department had to go in and save him. That that action was his here in the second police officer the award award for that for Cleveland, the only the only officer in the history of the city to durn that award. So Jim was back in

the spotlight. Supercop was back. He was a hero. If you will again, I guess you could say it redeemed himself from that Hackworth shooting, because that was controversial, even though Jim it was essentially ruled justifiable. Jim followed procedure. I guess you could say it did leave a bad taste in some people's mouths. But now here he saved a life at the risk of his own life.

least talk to me first. She took him up on that, on his courtesy call, she rode with him, And I think that a couple of things happened. Jim's charisma, Jim's been, you know, incredibly charismatic. He's very straightforward and direct. You feel very comfortable around him. He is the guy you want next to you. If there's she probably gravitated towards his personality number one, and secondly, actually saw on the streets at a late hour of night what happens and

what could happen. She saw for herself that it's that's dangerous out there, and you don't have to go looking for danger in certain areas of certain cities. It's there. And if you want to do your job effectively and come between the bad guys and the good guys, there's going to be situations where you have to use your weapon. I think she saw that, and she ended up writing several complimentary columns about Jim. And it didn't help, of

course that the switchboard is playing dealer. After her first couple of negative columns, columns was deluged with supporters of Simonis who felt that she had branded him unfairly. So she even she admitted that that was a big, big part of her deciding to take the ride along, all the negative backlash she had gotten. She wasn't expecting that. I think she said in one of her colmns she got five hundred negative comments. So now as a columnist,

I mean she's smart. Now she saw that Simoni was she was going to get a lot of a lot of readership from writing about Simony. He was a controversial guy. He had at a lot of supporters and she kind of jumped on that bandwagon. Now, so yeah, it was quite a conversion. Actually.

profound effect on Jim. And I think, yeah, he shared that, he opened up about that, he opened up about Vietnam. He got it out, and maybe for these four guys that came back from Vietnam, maybe they could have had some consoling and been able to speak about things when they came back instead of years later. But you know, it happened for Jim when it happened Coda Luck dying, Jim saw at a young age how final death was and you know, that could have influenced his approach to danger.

He didn't want to die. He didn't want other people to die, ironically, so he put himself in a situation to protect other people. Maybe you know that Kenny kotoluck death impacted him so much. Other soldiers that I talked to the service, Jim said it really devastated him. So he finally got those feelings out when he was ready to get the feelings out. And it's probably a lot

of burden for a veteran to carry around Vietnam. We just didn't have again those social services available, or or maybe the veterans weren't really encouraged or incentive to take advantage of those services. But yeah, he he opened up. And even now when you talk to him about Vietnam, he'll tear up. We'll cheer up about it.

It's just who he is. I don't think he could be anything else. It's what made him, what made him a good cops, who made him a great cop.

like we haven't evolved too far at all whatsoever. And the Black Lives Matter and the movement, So tell us what Jim Simone was, what he had to say when when he was to deconstruct the shootings of Russell Williams and Tamir Rice, Well, uh.

they thought they were being shot at. There were a lot of mistakes made by the police officers that night. There were a lot of officers at that scene that shouldn't have been there at the scene. There are supervisors there that shouldn't have been there. Yeah, there was some some strategic, many strategic problems with that that shooting. But Jim just said, you know, you're you're the adrenaline is flowing, your limbic system takes over. You're not necessarily thinking rationally,

we just start shooting because other people are shooting. That's that case. Now, that was part of the Justice Department decree came down for that to rehaul overhaul Cleveland's police department. That was one of the one of the situations that they looked at carefully and the Justice Department didn't like. So there's being there's some changes being made in the Cleveland Department Police Department Division of Police because of that. That's one of the cases. All right. Now it's Mere

Rice shooting. That's a little different because we have video, and that was a twelve year old, twelve year old boy playing with a replica gun in a gazebra at a park. He had removed the orange safety tip from the gun though, so it looked like a real gun. There were a lot of mistakes made in that case, and Jim himself says, in any shooting, there's a series of mistakes that lead up to the shooting. Somebody made some bad decisions and compounded those bad decisions that led

to that. And this is a good case. Tamir Rice, twelve years old playing with a toy gun. A dispatcher, somebody reported a dispatcher that a guy was playing with a gun. Now, Tamiris large big for his age. So this person said it could be a child told the dispatch of that that information was never relayed to the police officers responded, they didn't know that. All they heard

was somebody with a gun. So if you see the tape and Jim analyze the tape for a TV station, that cars comes driving up towards the kid Tamir rather very quickly and skids on the snow. So those police officers now are rate in front of Tamir rights whom they think is older and has a real gun. And from there, you know, tragedy unfolded. The police officer shot Tamir a couple of times, we find out he's twelve

years old. We find out it's a replica gun. Of course that's not you know, that's going to be something that the public is going to recoil against. And uh, tragedy all the way around. Now what one of the things though that occurred was that the police officer the tactics. Maybe the car shouldn't have been so close, but Jim says, that's you know, that's procedure because most people run when you show, you know, when you the police show up

and Tamir didn't run. So we've got a lot of you know, a lot of situations there that somebody might have done something differently in that situation, Jim didn't necessarily want to second guess that officer that was on the scene because again Jim wasn't there, but that information the dispatcher then that didn't relay that crucial information that it might have been a child just quit her job. She wasn't really available to debrieth. So that was a tough case.

That was a very difficult case in the sorry go ahead, No, I'm sorry, go ahead.

protect citizens. It's just a great thing, but also what are the other things that Jim Simone basically was a big advocate for in terms of helping the police have relationships, positive relationships with citizens, and just to be able to do proper policing. What were the kinds of things that were most important to him, Things that he had done, things that he recommended and advocated for.

occupying army. They're not vested in that community. They don't. It's a job for them in a lot of cases. So, Uh, community policing, part of the community. Be visible, talk to the people. Uh don't just ride around and your your your four wheeled capsule and make arrest, but actually, uh walk around, patronize beyond, you know, beyond the streets. Uh. People like that. Now. We talked earlier, very early in

the conversation, we talked about the anti police bias. Well, I have to be a little bit of a contrarian here. I don't think that's necessarily true. In the worst areas of the city, the most crime in areas of the city, those people depend on the police. Those people like the police because that that crime is right there. They see it, the break in, the drugs, the danger. They know the police are the only thing protecting them from danger, so

they appreciate the police. I don't think there's anti police bias in a lot of situations in the inner city. I mean, I talk to people who appreciate the police. So I think that some of these anti police a bias that we're seeing is perpetuated by special interest groups, groups that are pushing an agenda, good or bad. I'm not judging their agenda, but they've found that they can get their message in the media very effectively. But I don't think that anti police sentiment is as widespread as

we might think. I don't and I quotes well, I'll leave it at that. I think that that the people that we might think our most against the police really appreciate the police.

But just what an indomitable spirit this man has and a real, a real you know, a real a good cop, basically giving cops a good name everywhere This is one of those stories, and in the in the face of police being criticized everywhere and all being lumped into the same mold as as the bad cop will say or the cop that's it's irresponsible, this is an incredible story of a very very decorated cop and very very deserving

of that. So I want to thank you very much and coming on and talking about Jim Simoni, America's most decorated cop.