Speaker 1: Previously on Taser Incorporated.
Speaker 2: Nobody's getting beat up, nobody's getting hurt. So it was
Speaker 2: like revolutionary door comes flying open and dude's running out.
Speaker 2: He's got the cash register in one hand and a
Speaker 2: gun and the other and shot him like five times.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until you rolled him over that you realized
Speaker 1: how young he was.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, he looked like a kid. I'm glad he
Speaker 2: didn't kill him. He was a fifteen year old kid
Speaker 2: with a bb gunde.
Speaker 3: I get hugged by police officers and the code conventions
Speaker 3: will come up and they'll say, hey, thank you, I
Speaker 3: didn't have to kill somebody last week.
Speaker 2: The Taser is so much better, you know, because we
Speaker 2: just tase him and then you just pick him up
Speaker 2: and brush him off, and they've got handcuffs on, and
Speaker 2: you know, here you go.
Speaker 1: Remember that visit to Taser's headquarters that I told you
Speaker 1: about when they had to let me in with the
Speaker 1: retinal scanner and then I saw the Taser assembly line,
Speaker 1: the place dedicated to a future with no violence. Well,
Speaker 1: I went there because of a guy from Moberley, Missouri,
Speaker 1: a few towns away from where I was living. He
Speaker 1: was twenty three when I first heard about him. That's
Speaker 1: how old I was too. I went to Taser International
Speaker 1: to ask if they had any idea of what killed him.
Speaker 1: His name was Stanley Harlan and he got pulled over
Speaker 1: by some Moberley cops. One minute, he was perfectly fine,
Speaker 1: his hands were in the air talking to officers. Then
Speaker 1: he was tased in the chest, and then he was dead.
Speaker 1: In the medical studies and training manuals on Taser's website
Speaker 1: offered no explanation. I only found evidence that the taser
Speaker 1: is perfectly safe. But Stanley Harlan was dead. I wanted
Speaker 1: to know what killed it. This is absolute. Season one,
Speaker 1: Taser incorporated a story about unchecked power. I'm Nick Beredini.
Speaker 1: Episode two, Living in the Red Back in Kansas City,
Speaker 1: when Officer Matt Masters got called to the scene of
Speaker 1: an armed robbery and ended up shooting a kid, he
Speaker 1: didn't have a taser. The Kansas City Police Department wouldn't
Speaker 1: get tasers for another couple of years, and it would
Speaker 1: be a few more years before a taser would turn
Speaker 1: Matt's life upside down. What Matt was holding in his
Speaker 1: hand was a Smith and Wesson police issue Sigma forty
Speaker 1: cow semi automatic handgun. When he first told me the story,
Speaker 1: I thought he was going to say it was a
Speaker 1: turning point. They never wanted to shoot anyone again after that.
Speaker 1: But I was wrong.
Speaker 2: I didn't struggle as much with shooting the fifteen year
Speaker 2: old with a BB gun that robbed his store as
Speaker 2: much as I dealt with the opinion of me as
Speaker 2: a cop and missing my target. I mean literally within
Speaker 2: a day or two of that, like people were just
Speaker 2: fucking around, joking, saying I needed to go back to
Speaker 2: the range, you know, and correct my dipping problem. What
Speaker 2: really bothers me is had not choose to shoot at all.
Speaker 2: What would have been the fallout from that? Officers knowing that,
Speaker 2: like he pointed a gun in your direction and you
Speaker 2: didn't shoot him, Well, what are you? Are you a coward?
Speaker 1: Like almost made you feel like you had to prove
Speaker 1: yourself more. Yeah, Matt wanted other cops to know they
Speaker 1: could count on it, and he decided to prove it.
Speaker 1: He was going to train for the kcpd's elite swat team.
Speaker 1: Matt says that for six months he sprinted up staircases
Speaker 1: in full tactical gear, a door ram in his hands.
Speaker 1: He studied jiu jitsu and chromagau at the firing range,
Speaker 1: his aim became virtually perfect.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's certainly guys that were much bigger, stronger,
Speaker 2: you know, faster than I was. But I don't think
Speaker 2: anybody that had more desire than I did.
Speaker 4: He always wanted to be part of something.
Speaker 1: Looking back, Matt's wife, Stacy says that he went all
Speaker 1: in because he had to void to fill.
Speaker 4: I think that was allowing him to be part of
Speaker 4: a brotherhood. I don't know if he would agree with
Speaker 4: me or even admit this, but it became a supplement
Speaker 4: for what we had kind of left behind.
Speaker 1: When Matt and Stacy first got together, they didn't have
Speaker 1: any support from their families. They were both raised in
Speaker 1: strict evangelical houses, but they started flirting in junior high.
Speaker 4: Anyway, he was the annoying guy that sat behind me
Speaker 4: in chapel.
Speaker 2: I kicked her chair a lot and with jack with
Speaker 2: her a lot sitting behind her, and she would you know,
Speaker 2: it was flirtatious.
Speaker 1: Of course, as they got older, Matt sent her flowers
Speaker 1: and candy. He made her feel special, but their teachers
Speaker 1: and families made them feel like sinners. Stacy wasn't even
Speaker 1: supposed to go to the movie or listen to pop music.
Speaker 1: Matt and Stacy didn't quite understand how they were risking
Speaker 1: eternal damnation by sneaking out to go on dates. And
Speaker 1: by the time Stacy graduated high school, they decided to
Speaker 1: move in together.
Speaker 4: And of course our families had a major issues with
Speaker 4: that because we were living together outside of marriage.
Speaker 2: Nobody supported us. There was none of that. It was like,
Speaker 2: you're wrong, You're going to hell. You know, this is
Speaker 2: not what God wants.
Speaker 4: Their ideas about us and us wanting to still at
Speaker 4: some level please them is why we got married young.
Speaker 2: We can live together now because we're married, so' go
Speaker 2: fuck you.
Speaker 1: So by the time Matt joined the police force, Stacy's
Speaker 1: theory is he'd already lost one family. He wanted KCPD
Speaker 1: to be his new one. He put a thin blue
Speaker 1: line sticker on all their cars, the blue American flag
Speaker 1: with the light blue stripe across the center.
Speaker 2: If somebody stops my wife or somebody stops one of
Speaker 2: my kids, I always wanted to know, as a police officer,
Speaker 2: if you're a police family, especially their immediate family, I
Speaker 2: wanted to know that, right I mean because it's a brotherhood.
Speaker 1: This was all back in the early two thousands. Matt's
Speaker 1: police department didn't have tasers yet, and at the time
Speaker 1: Matt certainly wasn't thinking about carrying a non lethal weapon.
Speaker 1: But in other parts of the country, tasers were starting
Speaker 1: to catch on. Like in Oakland, California, the police department
Speaker 1: was using tasers under the leadership of a very different
Speaker 1: guy from Matt Masters, more of a renaissance cop. He
Speaker 1: grew up in the underground club scene in San Francisco,
Speaker 1: a guy who dabbles in black and white photography.
Speaker 5: I haven't gone over to the digital side yet.
Speaker 1: Mike Leansio's energetic and upbeat, white goatee, strong jaw. He
Speaker 1: looks like a cop, but he grew up thinking he'd
Speaker 1: be a firefighter in Oakland, his whole family had been
Speaker 1: for generations. Mike decided he wanted to be a policeman.
Speaker 1: His dad eventually got over it. Mike was still relatively
Speaker 1: new on the force when he saw a video about
Speaker 1: this new weapon called the Taser. The video where Hans Morrero,
Speaker 1: the famous marine from Taser International's first promo video, fell
Speaker 1: to the ground.
Speaker 5: I don't know if you're familiar with Hans, But Hans
Speaker 5: is about five foot six maybe and about the same
Speaker 5: with this guy is nothing but solid muscle. This guy
Speaker 5: is like, like you look up marine in the dictionary
Speaker 5: and there's Hans.
Speaker 1: Mike says. He and a bunch of other officers gathered
Speaker 1: around the TV in the station conference room. What are
Speaker 1: your impressions as you're as you're watching now.
Speaker 5: Well, we were all sitting around at a conference table at
Speaker 5: the department. The training staff was pretty much crossed the board.
Speaker 5: The initial response was that's not real. No, no, that's
Speaker 5: not no, that's not real.
Speaker 1: But my boss sent him to a local taser training session.
Speaker 1: It was an all day affair at a hotel in
Speaker 1: San Francisco. A bunch of other agencies from northern California
Speaker 1: were there to check out this new weapon too.
Speaker 5: They knew we were all coming in skeptical. Yeah, we'd
Speaker 5: seen the videos. It's all staged. Come on, guys, and
Speaker 5: so the first thing they did we got there, no introductions, made,
Speaker 5: no nothing.
Speaker 1: They all stepped up and got the same treatment that
Speaker 1: Hans got a shock from the advanced Taser M twenty six.
Speaker 5: They hooked the alligator clip to my shoelace and then
Speaker 5: the other alligator clip in my shirt on my shoulder,
Speaker 5: and they said, okay, you ready, and I said, yeah.
Speaker 1: Sure, I was on the ground.
Speaker 5: I mean I was on the ground.
Speaker 1: Stop stop, stop. And they only hit me for like
Speaker 1: a couple of seconds.
Speaker 5: It's incredibly painful, and then it's not it's just done.
Speaker 5: It's gone, and it's just so bizarre. Your brain doesn't
Speaker 5: quite know how to deal with it. The first couple
Speaker 5: of times you get hit, can't describe it.
Speaker 1: Mike says that everyone in his training laughed hysterically as
Speaker 1: they watched each other fall to the floor.
Speaker 2: Ah.
Speaker 1: I've seen lots of videos of cops being trained on
Speaker 1: the taser, and there really is something funny about watching
Speaker 1: a big, tough cop, a guy who is always in control,
Speaker 1: loses shit for a couple seconds. If I meet the
Speaker 1: guy that can stand up to that, I'll turn in
Speaker 1: my badge again and become a florist.
Speaker 5: And they shocked us all and then at that point
Speaker 5: they had our attention and the rest of the day
Speaker 5: went smoothly. But yeah, they had a room full of
Speaker 5: believers at that point.
Speaker 1: This was a game changer. Oakland's chief put Mike in
Speaker 1: charge of the taser program and eventually signed up to
Speaker 1: become a Master instructor. That meant he would travel to Scottsdale,
Speaker 1: Arizona to get certified to tea each other cops how
Speaker 1: to use tasers. They held what they called Instructor School
Speaker 1: at the same futuristic building.
Speaker 2: I saw.
Speaker 5: It's an impressive place. I mean, it's like a spaceship.
Speaker 5: It's very high tech, you know. Obviously, they take you
Speaker 5: on a little tour of the place to impress you,
Speaker 5: you know, immediately, and you get to see the manufacturing,
Speaker 5: and you get to find out where all the engineering
Speaker 5: is done, although you don't get to go in there.
Speaker 5: Behind that glass wall is where the magic is made.
Speaker 1: Mike was with a group of cops from all over
Speaker 1: the country.
Speaker 5: And the thing you have to remember, too is the
Speaker 5: vast majority of police agencies in the United States are
Speaker 5: under twenty people. So you get somebody from a three
Speaker 5: man department in Oklahoma somewhere who has an opportunity to
Speaker 5: travel to Scottsdale, stay in a decent hotel, get wined
Speaker 5: and dined by the company, go on this tour, see
Speaker 5: this amazing building with all of the technology. I mean
Speaker 5: I met people at some of these trainings that this
Speaker 5: was the first time they'd ever been on a plane.
Speaker 5: I mean, you see somebody who's never been outside of
Speaker 5: the state, never been on an airplane, It's not hard
Speaker 5: to see how they become starstruck. And I saw a
Speaker 5: lot of that. I mean, people walking around wide eyed.
Speaker 5: I mean it was just like Wow.
Speaker 1: Oakland was one of the biggest police departments in the country,
Speaker 1: and so Taser International really pushed Mike to get every
Speaker 1: officer in the department to carry a taser. Mike attended
Speaker 1: special offsite training sessions that felt more like luxury trips
Speaker 1: than classes.
Speaker 5: They'd always do it at some resort.
Speaker 1: It was work hard, play harder, and they.
Speaker 5: Had they'd have food and alcohol, and they'd have guys
Speaker 5: sitting there wrapping cigars for you. They'd have all these
Speaker 5: little competition they'd bring people out and you'd have gunfights
Speaker 5: with these little laser guns. I mean, it was like
Speaker 5: a festival kind of at you know.
Speaker 1: Hans was often at retreats too, the action hero Taser's
Speaker 1: very own Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Speaker 5: He had an entourage around him the whole time. People
Speaker 5: would follow him around and wanted to train with him,
Speaker 5: and they had matt rooms set up where there'd be like,
Speaker 5: you know, fifteen eighteen guys in there, and they just
Speaker 5: want to wrestle with Hans.
Speaker 1: You know. It was like a church revival, but with
Speaker 1: way more booze celebrating this miracle. The Taser a safe
Speaker 1: weapon that literally transformed a person's body with a higher power,
Speaker 1: and this higher power was backed up basically by holy books.
Speaker 5: They would wheel this card out and it was a
Speaker 5: cart that was full of books, and they would wheel
Speaker 5: this thing out and they would put their hand on
Speaker 5: top of it, and the thing was like two three
Speaker 5: feet tall.
Speaker 1: This was all the research that proved the miracle of
Speaker 1: Taser's awe inspiring electric current. It was just like this
Speaker 1: incredible amount of paper, right. They would put their hand
Speaker 1: on top of it and say, you know, we've got
Speaker 1: this research compangn all of the research compiled that we've done,
Speaker 1: that other people have done, and every single one of
Speaker 1: them says it's completely safe. Once Mike was back in
Speaker 1: Oakland City, officials were more skeptical of the weapon than
Speaker 1: he was, so we went way beyond what Taser International provided.
Speaker 1: When he held his trainings, he wrote policies that said
Speaker 1: how and when his officers could use tasers. He created
Speaker 1: training scenarios based on real world circumstances. Once every cop
Speaker 1: had a taser, he documented every single time an officer
Speaker 1: used it, not a requirement for lots of other departments.
Speaker 5: We were using these weapons at that point, probably three
Speaker 5: hundred to three hundred and fifty times a year, and
Speaker 5: in the entire time I was running the program, we
Speaker 5: never had an injury, we never had a lawsuit, we
Speaker 5: never had a IA complaint. These things are completely safe.
Speaker 5: I mean, I'm convinced.
Speaker 1: Tasers were designed to be used against people who were
Speaker 1: violently was arrest, people who might eventually be shot if
Speaker 1: things got out of hand and cops couldn't get them
Speaker 1: under control. But as taser use exploded across the country,
Speaker 1: cops found just about any and every reason to use them.
Speaker 2: Lots of people were.
Speaker 1: Getting taste for simply arguing with cops, like this guy
Speaker 1: in Utah, put your hands behind your back, who didn't
Speaker 1: agree with the speeding ticket. Put your hands behind your back,
Speaker 1: Now you turn out.
Speaker 2: Turn around.
Speaker 1: He got shocked in front of his wife and kid.
Speaker 1: There were elderly women getting zapped like this seventy two
Speaker 1: year old woman in Texas who also didn't want to
Speaker 1: sign a speeding ticket. The officer got her out of
Speaker 1: her car to arrest her.
Speaker 6: I'm getting back in car. You're gonna be paid. Stop Mariglow.
Speaker 1: The reason cops were using the taser so much all
Speaker 1: went back to how they were trained on the weapon.
Speaker 1: They were learning, don't put your hands on people who
Speaker 1: argue with you, Taser them.
Speaker 2: It's safer.
Speaker 1: That was true for children too, like in Miami, when
Speaker 1: a six year old boy and a twelve year old
Speaker 1: girl were tased during school within weeks of each other.
Speaker 1: The boy was allegedly holding a piece of glass and
Speaker 1: the girl was running away toward traffic. In both incidents,
Speaker 1: the department claimed the taser was used for both kids' safety,
Speaker 1: but the headlines were rough.
Speaker 6: In a letter said to Miami Dade's police chief, the
Speaker 6: school superintendent asked that police quote refrain from deploying tasers
Speaker 6: against elementary school students so that leads us to our
Speaker 6: last conquest.
Speaker 1: The original idea of the taser was getting lost. The
Speaker 1: taser wasn't being used as a replacement for a gun.
Speaker 1: It was a compliance tool. The National Institute of Justice
Speaker 1: use the phrase lazy cops syndrome to describe the phenomenon
Speaker 1: of officers using tasers against nonviolent people. A reporter from
Speaker 1: ABC Nightline asked CEO Rick Smith about it right, because
Speaker 1: cops figure, hey, no must, no fuss, just pull the taser.
Speaker 2: How do you deal with the lazy cops syndrome? They
Speaker 2: call it.
Speaker 3: That's our technology. It's like our baby, and when it
Speaker 3: gets misused, it does hit you in the gut.
Speaker 1: But that's why we But there were other stories that
Speaker 1: were much worse than cops just getting taser trigger happy.
Speaker 1: A lot of articles were about how people died after
Speaker 1: being tased.
Speaker 6: Debate in Ford Worth lingers over the use of tasers.
Speaker 3: Five people died after being tased by police.
Speaker 1: Fifteen year old Brett Elder died early Sunday after being
Speaker 1: tasered by police officer.
Speaker 2: For Taser's Rick Smith sales and profits are skyrocketing, but
Speaker 2: so is another statistic taser related deaths.
Speaker 1: CEO Rick Smith was getting bombarded with reporters asking if
Speaker 1: the taser was truly safe, answers He told the public
Speaker 1: the same story he'd been telling cops. Has he explained
Speaker 1: to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the taser could not kill.
Speaker 3: Look, I've been hit with this thing seven times. Every
Speaker 3: senior employe this company has been hit with a taser.
Speaker 3: Many of our wives, many of our children have been
Speaker 3: hit with tasers. So we believe this is the safest
Speaker 3: way to get a violent.
Speaker 2: Person under control. That's huge.
Speaker 3: We're very proud of what we do and it is
Speaker 3: like a religion to us.
Speaker 1: When the CBS Evening News ran a two part investigation
Speaker 1: because they had found over forty deaths associated with the taser,
Speaker 1: reconsisted that his weapon played no part in killing them.
Speaker 3: None of these cases has the person died while being
Speaker 3: hit with the taser.
Speaker 2: You're saying that this was a coincidence.
Speaker 1: They would have died anyway.
Speaker 3: In every single case, these people would have died anyway.
Speaker 5: You read the media reports, and I mean they made
Speaker 5: this weapon look like it was you know, people were
Speaker 5: out there dying left and right every time an officer
Speaker 5: used it. It was basically lethal force.
Speaker 1: Back in Oakland, Mike began talking with other cops about
Speaker 1: the news. They'd all seen the research taser showed at demos.
Speaker 5: It started to become a topic of conversation and agencies
Speaker 5: across the country were looking for explanationist, we're seeing deaths
Speaker 5: that are in some way associated with taser use, and
Speaker 5: the manufacturer was adamant that it's not the weapon.
Speaker 1: Rick and his team had a different theory, one that
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with the taser and everything to
Speaker 1: do with the violent nature of policing, a condition called
Speaker 1: excited delirium. The idea was that some people got so
Speaker 1: worked up they were on drugs in a psychosis or
Speaker 1: violent rage, that their bodies gave out from.
Speaker 5: The exert it's drugs, it's you know, whatever, exhaustion.
Speaker 1: Mike spent hours on the phone talking about the taser
Speaker 1: with other cops, and they told me about how he
Speaker 1: started similar conversations with people he knew who worked at
Speaker 1: Taser International, like his friend and sales rep Jim Halstead.
Speaker 5: Jim it assured me that, you know, we do all
Speaker 5: of this research. We're doing constant research, ongoing, all this
Speaker 5: published research from all these like world class scientists and engineers,
Speaker 5: and that's when it basically kind of opened the door.
Speaker 1: Mike asked Jim if he could watch Taser scientists in
Speaker 1: action while they conducted their studies of the weapons.
Speaker 2: Safety.
Speaker 5: That'd probably would be pretty interesting to see something like that.
Speaker 5: You think he could, I could attend one of those,
Speaker 5: And then he says, yeah, I don't see why not.
Speaker 2: Let me check.
Speaker 1: By the time Mike Leansio called up Taser and asked
Speaker 1: if he could see their research and action, Matt Masters
Speaker 1: had become the point man for Kansas City's most elite unit,
Speaker 1: s New Tack, the Street Narcotics Unit Tactical Team.
Speaker 2: It was just like that was the shit, kicking indoors
Speaker 2: and like you know, rifles and chasing bad guys and
Speaker 2: like that was a level up.
Speaker 1: This was the kind of shit you see in shows
Speaker 1: like The Wire. Matt was the first man through the
Speaker 1: door on over one thousand high risk Warran arrests, and
Speaker 1: his team was also the first in Kansas City to
Speaker 1: get trained on tasers. Perks of being the best.
Speaker 2: They start off the whole introduction with this video of
Speaker 2: this bowl being tased.
Speaker 1: In this promo video, there's a bowl in a dusty
Speaker 1: pat A guy wearing black sunglasses and a black turtleneck
Speaker 1: aims his taser at the animal from behind the fence.
Speaker 2: And he just like falls over, locks up and is
Speaker 2: I don't even know how much that sucker weight is
Speaker 2: big bull and they tase him and he's like falls
Speaker 2: over and his legs are out like this, and they
Speaker 2: let off the taser and he jumps up rams the
Speaker 2: gate that they were standing on the other side of
Speaker 2: with the taser. That's what they show you. That's the
Speaker 2: first video that I ever saw about taser, you know,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, holy shit, that's cool, Like look at that.
Speaker 2: And they made all of our guys get tased, and
Speaker 2: they all crumpled up on the floor, you know, the
Speaker 2: from the smallest guy to the biggest guy.
Speaker 1: Then it was Matt's turn to get tased for the
Speaker 1: first time.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's probably not appropriate to say I cried
Speaker 2: like a little girl, but like I cried like a
Speaker 2: little girl, Like I was like screaming. It was the
Speaker 2: most excruciating pain. You don't breathe. I mean maybe you breathe.
Speaker 2: That doesn't feel like you breathe. It feels like you
Speaker 2: just lock up. That shot goes through you and you're
Speaker 2: just like, to me, it's excruciating pain. But I will
Speaker 2: say that once it's over and done with, there is
Speaker 2: no more pain. It's weird.
Speaker 1: Matt, just like Mike Lenesio became a believer.
Speaker 2: At the end of the day, if you have to
Speaker 2: put your hands on somebody, you got to scuffle with somebody,
Speaker 2: why risk that, you can just shoot them on the taser.
Speaker 2: So it became more of a compliance tool, in an
Speaker 2: everyday compliance tool where hey, put your hands behind your back,
Speaker 2: fuck you, okay, watch this, you know, And it was,
Speaker 2: you know, a taser deployment, and that was how we
Speaker 2: were trained.
Speaker 1: The thing is, even though they got tasers first, they
Speaker 1: weren't designed for the kind of police work Matt and
Speaker 1: Hiss newtech brothers were doing. For the taser to work reliably,
Speaker 1: you have to fire it at close range and both
Speaker 1: probes need skin contact. The technology was still no match
Speaker 1: for lethal force in these life and death situations. The
Speaker 1: taser wasn't the tool they needed to get the job done,
Speaker 1: and in Matt's case, using the wrong weapon could get
Speaker 1: someone killed. There was the time they shot the man
Speaker 1: holding a gun to his wife at McDonald's, threatening to
Speaker 1: kill her and everyone inside. Or the grenade op when
Speaker 1: the guy pulled the pin on it, daring Matt's unit
Speaker 1: to take him down. He fell to the ground and
Speaker 1: the grenade exploded. Splitting his body in half.
Speaker 2: You have we would call out a career op, or
Speaker 2: you go on an operation that is like a once
Speaker 2: in a lifetime thing like I had like five of those.
Speaker 4: He really did enjoy it, and he threw himself into it.
Speaker 4: It became part of his identity. It became part of
Speaker 4: who he was instead of.
Speaker 2: What he did.
Speaker 1: Stacy says that when he wasn't on duty and Matt
Speaker 1: was bulking up the gym with his squad, they even
Speaker 1: all got matching tattoos. The archangel slicing a demon's neck
Speaker 1: on Matt's shoulder is actually this new tac tat all
Speaker 1: the guys got that one. Matt's free time, his work time,
Speaker 1: his lunch dates with Stacy, even family dinner, it all
Speaker 1: revolved around being a cop.
Speaker 4: It came to a point where I would really resent
Speaker 4: that question at the dinner table, Hey, Maut, what's a
Speaker 4: good story? You know, because I didn't want him to
Speaker 4: be that in that moment. I wanted him to be,
Speaker 4: you know, a cousin or a son or a husband,
Speaker 4: or I wanted us to shift and okay, well, you know,
Speaker 4: because immediately his body language would change and he would
Speaker 4: take on that persona and he would say the words
Speaker 4: that would impress them in the terminology, and and he
Speaker 4: would just you would just you would just see him
Speaker 4: leave with him being right next to you. I was
Speaker 4: very resentful of him because, you know, he had this cool,
Speaker 4: sexy job and he was in the limelight, and they
Speaker 4: were in the news and they did this and they
Speaker 4: did that, and it was called cool. And I was
Speaker 4: just by myself with the kids and they drove me nuts.
Speaker 4: They were little boys and they were like crazy, you know.
Speaker 4: And I hated him for it for a long time.
Speaker 2: But you know, I don't know.
Speaker 4: I'm not proud of that, but I hated him.
Speaker 1: Tactical cops have this phrase living in the red. It
Speaker 1: means living without the fear of consequences. Matt was living
Speaker 1: in the red. He spent years in snowtak kicking down
Speaker 1: doors until the consequences.
Speaker 2: Caught up with him.
Speaker 1: I told you I've known Matt for a long time.
Speaker 1: I think I might have heard all his cop stories.
Speaker 1: In my head, I see his life as a cop
Speaker 1: as divided into three parts, and each part revolves around
Speaker 1: a different shooting. The first part you already know when
Speaker 1: he shot the fifteen year old kid in the legs,
Speaker 1: and it pushed him to become part of the most
Speaker 1: elite unit in Kansas City. Before we get to the third,
Speaker 1: which involves a taser, I need to tell you about
Speaker 1: the second. Matt and his partner Paul, were trying to
Speaker 1: find a gang leader when his car cut them off
Speaker 1: and rammed into a fence. Matt and Paul drew their guns.
Speaker 1: The tinted windows made it impossible to see inside. They
Speaker 1: told them to get out of the car, but no
Speaker 1: one got out. Paul ran up to the driver's side
Speaker 1: door and tried to kick out the windows so he
Speaker 1: could see inside.
Speaker 2: You know, in that moment, I thought I heard gunshots,
Speaker 2: but I was like, wasn't sure, Like this just like
Speaker 2: this weird slow motion type thing going on. And I
Speaker 2: remember seeing Paul fall and he fell on the ground,
Speaker 2: and I remember thinking, fucking dummy, you just fell down,
Speaker 2: like like what is going on? Like why are you
Speaker 2: falling down? And I remember looking down at him.
Speaker 7: He had fallen like right by the the car had
Speaker 7: he had his gun up trying to protect himself, and
Speaker 7: he's like, I've been shot.
Speaker 2: I've been shot.
Speaker 1: A gunman in the back seat had fired through the
Speaker 1: driver's side window, hitting Paul three times. One of the
Speaker 1: bullets hit his spine, paralyzing it.
Speaker 2: And I remember a lot of emotions going through my
Speaker 2: mind that because I was furious because I realized Paul
Speaker 2: had been shot. And then all of a sudden, I'm like,
Speaker 2: I feel this cool wetness on my arm, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: what is going on? Like the stained sensation. I pull
Speaker 2: up my arm and I'm like, there's a hole in
Speaker 2: my arm, and I'm like, well, shit, did I get shot.
Speaker 2: I don't want to be like a whoosy here, but like, hey, guys, like,
Speaker 2: I's got something going on here. I'm not sure what
Speaker 2: it is. I don't know if it's a bullet.
Speaker 1: The department got ahold of Stacy to let her know
Speaker 1: Matt had been shot, and she panicked.
Speaker 4: Can't get a hold of him. So I got to
Speaker 4: drive the whole way to the hospital, thinking that when
Speaker 4: I got inside he was gonna be gone.
Speaker 2: Oh just sitting there just like and then all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, the chief comes in, Ty comes in, my
Speaker 2: wife comes in, and they're like, are you okay? And
Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, I'm fine.
Speaker 1: So this became that second big turning point for Matt,
Speaker 1: Stacy was not fine. She was relieved, but she was
Speaker 1: also rattled, and in that moment, she gave Madison simple choice.
Speaker 2: She said, it's either you either commit to be with
Speaker 2: me and this family and leave that part of the job,
Speaker 2: or I'm leaving, you know, And what are you gonna do?
Speaker 2: You know, You're like, okay, you know, give me some time.
Speaker 2: I'll figure it out.
Speaker 1: He traded the drug squad for a desk job in HR.
Speaker 2: I mean it was boring, you know, it wasn't fun, But.
Speaker 1: Boring also meant that he had time to be a dad.
Speaker 1: He finally started going to his son's football games, something
Speaker 1: he'd missed for years. Matt and Stacy both wanted to
Speaker 1: be parents who supported their kids and let them have
Speaker 1: freedom that neither of them grew up with. When they're
Speaker 1: oldest Colin got his license, Matt brought them car shopping.
Speaker 1: They found a used gray Pontiac Grand Prix with leather trim,
Speaker 1: tinted windows, and a ground effects package straight from Fast
Speaker 1: and the Furious.
Speaker 2: It was funny because when we bought a guy told me,
Speaker 2: he's like, you'd be careful, man. He's like, the cops
Speaker 2: do not like this car. You know what. I was like,
Speaker 2: That's okay, because I'm a cop. I ain't gotta worry
Speaker 2: about it, right.
Speaker 1: Matt bought the car and that's when he put a
Speaker 1: thin blue line sticker on the back windshield. A few
Speaker 1: years later, the master's younger son, Bryce got the car
Speaker 1: from his brother and seen. Bryce was driving everywhere to
Speaker 1: his job at Baskin Robbins and to hang out with friends,
Speaker 1: and that car did start getting attention from cops. Stacey
Speaker 1: and Matt both told me about this. One time when
Speaker 1: Bryce and his friend Curtis weren't sure about their plans,
Speaker 1: so they pulled over to hang out and discuss, and
Speaker 1: that's when two Independence police officers caught them with half
Speaker 1: a joint. They put Bryce in the back of the
Speaker 1: squad car while they searched the Pontiac. When they didn't
Speaker 1: find anything else, they let the kids go. Bryce didn't
Speaker 1: tell his parents about it at first, but then a
Speaker 1: few weeks later he was leaving a friend's house one
Speaker 1: morning after a night spent playing video games. An Independence
Speaker 1: cop was pulled over nearby. He got out of his
Speaker 1: patrol car and shoved Bryce up against the Pontiac Grand
Speaker 1: Prix he dug through Bryce's pockets and pulled out a
Speaker 1: small bag of marijuana. He put Bryce under arrest for possession.
Speaker 2: So he calls me. He's like, hey, Dad, I'm really sorry.
Speaker 2: He goes, this is what happened. I was leaving Jason's
Speaker 2: house and they swooped in on me. I had a
Speaker 2: little bit of weed in my pocket and he, the officer,
Speaker 2: found it, and I'm in jail for possession, you know.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, well, what did he stop you for.
Speaker 2: He's like, well, they said my car was stolen.
Speaker 1: Independence police had gotten a call about a suspicious vehicle
Speaker 1: parked on the street all night.
Speaker 2: And I go, okay, well what were you under rest for?
Speaker 7: What?
Speaker 2: How'd they find the weed? Well, he went through my pockets.
Speaker 2: I'm like, well, what's he going through your pockets for?
Speaker 2: Are you under arrest? Well? No, I'm like, well that's
Speaker 2: an illegal search.
Speaker 1: So Matt and Stacy were mad to learn that Bryce
Speaker 1: was smoking weed, but listening to him described the stop
Speaker 1: got Matt worked up too. Matt remembers Bryce telling him
Speaker 1: about it. It sounded so adversarial. Bryce described how one
Speaker 1: of the officers pulled the thin blue line sticker off
Speaker 1: the car's windshield after he told them that his dad
Speaker 1: was a cop. Plus, Matt knew the search was illegal.
Speaker 1: The other officer had no probable cause to dig into
Speaker 1: Bryce's pockets. He reminded Bryce that cops can't do that
Speaker 1: without a reason, and that Bryce had every right to
Speaker 1: ask why and if he was being arrested.
Speaker 2: To know what for.
Speaker 1: Privately, Matt and Stacy thought that Bryce was being profiled.
Speaker 2: They didn't like the tin windows, they didn't like the
Speaker 2: ground effects package on the car. They didn't like that
Speaker 2: this kid, you know, matched his shoes and his clothes
Speaker 2: up and kind of, you know, dressed a little too
Speaker 2: flashy for them.
Speaker 4: Bryce didn't just hang out with a munch white kids.
Speaker 4: He had white friends, but he hung out with everyone.
Speaker 4: And one of the lovely things about him is his
Speaker 4: ability to find a piece of almost every individual and
Speaker 4: identify with them. I have sometimes wondered if some of
Speaker 4: the friends that didn't look like him caused people to
Speaker 4: make assumptions about his character. I do think that there
Speaker 4: was a level of racism that was going on in
Speaker 4: the police department, and I think that Umbress had black friends.
Speaker 4: His absolute best friend. Since he has been five years old,
Speaker 4: is a young black man, and I think that Bryce
Speaker 4: was judged because of that.
Speaker 2: To be honest with you, I'd literally think they thought
Speaker 2: he was like a gangster or something. You know what
Speaker 2: I'm saying.
Speaker 4: There was just a whole line of events that led
Speaker 4: to that fateful day, and all of it completely unnecessary.
Speaker 1: It was a perfect late summer day in September of
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen. The football season was just getting started, and
Speaker 1: in Kansas City, the Chiefs are the center of the
Speaker 1: universe on Sundays, so.
Speaker 2: We were kind of like getting ready to you know,
Speaker 2: turn the game on and you know, sitting and watching football.
Speaker 2: And we were in our front room and Bryce said
Speaker 2: he was going to go pick up his check from
Speaker 2: Basket and Robbins, and he was going to go to
Speaker 2: the mall and buy some shoes, and then he was
Speaker 2: going to go over to his friend Curtis's house and
Speaker 2: they were going to play some video games. So, you know,
Speaker 2: of course, we were like, okay, fine, just keep in touch,
Speaker 2: you know, we'll see you later.
Speaker 1: Later Matt's phone rang. It was Bryce's friend Curtis.
Speaker 2: And he's like, hey, Bryce is getting stopped out in
Speaker 2: my front yard. And he's like, I don't know what's
Speaker 2: going on, but the cops trying to get him out
Speaker 2: of a car, and I was like, okay. Really initially
Speaker 2: I didn't really I didn't panic or anything. I didn't
Speaker 2: like think, oh my god, you know, my kid's getting stopped.
Speaker 2: At the time, cops got free passes from me. Maybe
Speaker 2: Bryce did I'm wrong, maybe Bryce, I don't know, speeding there,
Speaker 2: you know, did something that he deserved to get stopped.
Speaker 2: And the cops just doing his job and getting me
Speaker 2: out of the car. And I wasn't too worried about that,
Speaker 2: and I just kind of said, okay, well, you know, thanks,
Speaker 2: keep me posted. And then uh, shortly after I know minutes,
Speaker 2: you know, Curtis called me back and he goes, you
Speaker 2: need to get here, and I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: you know, like what is going on?
Speaker 4: And I didn't pay much attention to it until he froze,
Speaker 4: until his the look on his face told me that
Speaker 4: somewhere somebody wasn't okay.
Speaker 2: I hung up the phone. I told Stacey, I'm like
Speaker 2: that something else and something's not good, something's all right.
Speaker 2: Something happened. And I remember Stacey just like what's going on?
Speaker 2: And I'm like I don't know. I know, Brice Scott
Speaker 2: just got stopped and we just need to get there.
Speaker 4: It's a ten minute, eleven twelve minute drive probably, And
Speaker 4: in that period of time of us getting in the car,
Speaker 4: Curtis is calling us and saying where are you at.
Speaker 2: They just tasered him.
Speaker 1: And he's not moving and he's not breathing, and we're
Speaker 1: like what. Matt weaved his way through traffic and they
Speaker 1: pulled up to the scene.
Speaker 2: By this time there was a fire truck there and
Speaker 2: ambulance there, and of course we walk up to the scene.
Speaker 2: Of course, you know, the cops are like get back,
Speaker 2: you know, and you're like, don't fucking touch me, man,
Speaker 2: do not touch me, you know, I'm like, that's my kid.
Speaker 1: It was chaos. It's about a half dozen Independence officers
Speaker 1: marked off the street and rifled through Bryce's car.
Speaker 2: So the first words out of my mouth for you
Speaker 2: bunch of fucking cowboys, like seriously, what is going on?
Speaker 1: Neighbors were out in the yard. Curtis Bryce's friend was scared.
Speaker 2: When they put him on the gurney. They had put it.
Speaker 2: They'd put a tube down his throat and were innovating
Speaker 2: him with a bag and then I was over the
Speaker 2: top of him, looking into his eyes and he was
Speaker 2: completely limp. And I remember looking over.
Speaker 7: Ready on the top head, looking over at his face
Speaker 7: and looked into his eyes.
Speaker 2: There was I'll never forget that. It was just a blake.
Speaker 1: Next time. On Absolute Season one Taser Incorporated, we were in.
Speaker 5: The back of a semitruck trailer and so we spent
Speaker 5: the whole day out there with pigs and in the
Speaker 5: back of a sweltering hot metal truck in the Arizona heat.
Speaker 5: Were you surprised, Oh, absolutely, because that's not supposed to happen.
Speaker 5: I mean cardiac effects. They told us for years that
Speaker 5: this doesn't have cardiac effects.
Speaker 2: That was the first thing that came out of our
Speaker 2: mouth was like, what happened?
Speaker 4: I get right back there and it's bad.
Speaker 1: It's really, really, really bad. Absolute Taser Incorporated is a
Speaker 1: production of Lava for Good in association with Signal Company
Speaker 1: Number One. Be sure to follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook,
Speaker 1: and threads at Lava for Good. Follow me at Nick
Speaker 1: Beredini on Instagram and Twitter. Taser Incorporated is written in
Speaker 1: by me Nick Berendini. Our executive producers are Jason Flamm,
Speaker 1: Jeff Kempler and Kevin Wordis. Kara Kornhaber is our senior producer.
Speaker 1: Jackie Paul is our producer. Hannah Biel is our writer
Speaker 1: and producer. Joe Plored is our sound designer. Music composed
Speaker 1: and produced by Alexis Quadrado at the Plaza Rojas Studio.
Speaker 1: Marianne McCune is our editor. Fact checking by Dania Suleiman.
Speaker 1: Jeff Cliburn is our head of marketing and Operations. Our
Speaker 1: Social Media director is eat Marie Guarda Rama, our social
Speaker 1: Media manager is Sarah Gibbons, and our art director is
Speaker 1: Andrew Nelson. Additional reporting by Matt Stroud.