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Speaker 7: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 7: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 7: written about them Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every
Speaker 7: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 7: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 7: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 6: Good Evening. For nearly forty years, Jim Simoni patrolled Cleveland's
Speaker 6: Second District, a drug plagued area with one of the
Speaker 6: highest violent crime rates in the US. Named Supercop, Simoni
Speaker 6: generated headlines in public interest on a scale not seen
Speaker 6: since Elliot Neest searched for the Clevelands for Cleveland's Torso
Speaker 6: murderer in the nineteen thirties. Simoni entered police work after
Speaker 6: serving in Vietnam with the one hundred first Airborne, where
Speaker 6: he earned two Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts. As
Speaker 6: a cop, he never shied from danger. He was involved
Speaker 6: in numerous gun battles and killed five people in the
Speaker 6: line of duty, all ruled justifiable notoriously equitable. As a cop,
Speaker 6: Simoni was more interested in doing the right thing than
Speaker 6: honoring the blue code. Badge three eight seven recounts the
Speaker 6: brave exploits that earned simone hundreds of commendations. In nineteen
Speaker 6: eighty three, while searching a church basement for a gunman,
Speaker 6: he was shot in a face. Despite his wounds, he
Speaker 6: managed to shoot his assailant, saving himself and two other cops.
Speaker 6: And in two thousand and nine, he plunged into a
Speaker 6: frigid river to save a woman. Simony was Cleveland's Patrolman
Speaker 6: of the Year in nineteen eighty and two thousand and nine,
Speaker 6: the only officer in the city's history to receive the
Speaker 6: award twice. The book that we're featuring this evening is
Speaker 6: Badge three eighty seven, The Story of Jim Simoni, America's
Speaker 6: most decorated Cop, With my special guest, journalist and author
Speaker 6: Robert Sperna. Welcome back to the program and thank you
Speaker 6: for a green diest interview. Robert Sperna, Thank you, Dan,
Speaker 6: thanks for having me back. Thank you very much for
Speaker 6: joining me on this programmed this evening with this incredible
Speaker 6: book The question I want to ask is, because i'm is,
Speaker 6: how did you make the decision to write this book
Speaker 6: at this time? With everything going on in America right now?
Speaker 6: True crime author, with all kinds of options, I would
Speaker 6: think for you to be able to write a book,
Speaker 6: why did was this book important? Why was a book
Speaker 6: about Jim Simone and his police work an important book
Speaker 6: to write? Now?
Speaker 2: I took kind of a circuitous route to this book.
Speaker 2: I originally in May twenty thirteen, Ariel Castro, the so
Speaker 2: called Cleveland kidnapper, who had held three women hostage in
Speaker 2: his house for ten years. He was in the news
Speaker 2: one of the women had broken loose, and the world
Speaker 2: saw the rescue of these three hostages. I wanted to
Speaker 2: do something on that book that was a Cleveland story.
Speaker 2: I'm a Cleveland dirt, but international media descended on that
Speaker 2: and I really couldn't. I didn't find I could get
Speaker 2: a real good piece of that book. In investigating that case,
Speaker 2: I discovered that Ariel Castro, who was a Cleveland school
Speaker 2: bus driver, had been Jim Simony had done a traffic
Speaker 2: stop on him a couple of years before. The women
Speaker 2: had escaped like two an eleven or so, and he
Speaker 2: had a dash cam of the traffic stop. And because
Speaker 2: Castro was a school bus driver, and Simoni knew that
Speaker 2: if he arrested him because he was he was riding
Speaker 2: a motorcycle with improper plates, arrested him, he'd lose his job.
Speaker 2: So Simoni gave him a warning let him go. So
Speaker 2: national news, national news shows were interviewing Simoni about that
Speaker 2: traffic stop because there was a big hunger for any
Speaker 2: news about the case, of course, and it even got
Speaker 2: as far as some broadcasters accusing Simony of letting the
Speaker 2: Cleveland kidnappers slip through his fingers, as if Jim would
Speaker 2: have known he had three women in his basement. Right.
Speaker 2: So I didn't get that book deal. But in talking
Speaker 2: to Simoni over the next year or so, and we
Speaker 2: had the Ferguson case with Michael Brown, we had Eric
Speaker 2: Garner in New York, we had two people in Cleveland
Speaker 2: that were killed by police. I just started getting interested
Speaker 2: in what happens in a police involved shooting. In other words, Dan,
Speaker 2: what happened to that split second where some police shoot
Speaker 2: and some police don't. I realized that I had a
Speaker 2: real gem in Simony not to be light hearted about
Speaker 2: this of course, because Jim had been involved in five
Speaker 2: fatal shootings, all will justifiable. So I pivoted towards him
Speaker 2: and start you know, I just proposed a book to
Speaker 2: him and we got it done. My goal in doing
Speaker 2: the book, of course, was to surface some issues about
Speaker 2: police involve shootings.
Speaker 6: Now you talk about you said, there's a couple of
Speaker 6: weighty questions. You said, what are the inciting factors compel
Speaker 6: a police officer to take legal lethal action? And you say,
Speaker 6: and this I think is important for all of us,
Speaker 6: is that can civilians fairly judge a cop split second
Speaker 6: response to perceived deadly situation and as the media acting
Speaker 6: objectively in its second guessing of police discretion or is
Speaker 6: there an agenda?
Speaker 2: No, I don't think at that split second we can
Speaker 2: really put ourselves in that police officers shoes. It's a
Speaker 2: matter of them believing that they're in fear for their lives,
Speaker 2: and how can we judge that? We can, however, looked
Speaker 2: at the context some officers most shootings, A small percentage
Speaker 2: of police officers are involved in a large percent of
Speaker 2: shootings in you know, the lates in the seventies, people
Speaker 2: coming out of Vietnam, such as Jim Simoni. They were
Speaker 2: given preferential hiring by police departments. They wanted that type
Speaker 2: of proactive, aggressive personality regimented like Jim was. That's a
Speaker 2: no nonsense you know Bosster the wall officer, that's the
Speaker 2: guy that would chase danger and not shy from danger
Speaker 2: and maybe face it head on. Okay, So if we
Speaker 2: look at it from that standpoint in twenty sixteen, now,
Speaker 2: maybe we can judge that. We can say, well, why
Speaker 2: did you run into that basement? The government wasn't going anywhere,
Speaker 2: he was trapped. Why not wait for swat? Why not
Speaker 2: wait for a supervisor to get there? So we can
Speaker 2: judge the actions beforehand, I think. But once an officer
Speaker 2: is face to face with somebody and they feel danger,
Speaker 2: it'd be very hard to second guess them. As to
Speaker 2: the question about the media, what I found out was,
Speaker 2: and I used to be a reporter for newspapers, I
Speaker 2: think the meetia nowadays were for They're forced into a
Speaker 2: position where they have to cover events, not news. Police
Speaker 2: shoots on our man that's the headline. Well that's true, maybe,
Speaker 2: but we don't have the whole story. It's gonna take
Speaker 2: a couple of days, maybe a week to find out
Speaker 2: really what the story was, What was he holding his hand?
Speaker 2: Why did the police officer feel like he was gonna
Speaker 2: kill him? We don't get that background anymore up front,
Speaker 2: you know, before electronic media, before blogs, you know, and
Speaker 2: citizen journalists, reporters had kind of an unspoken rule with police,
Speaker 2: you know, give us a couple hours, give us tomorrow morning,
Speaker 2: let us figure this out, and you know, we'll give
Speaker 2: you a story. Well, doesn't happen that way anymore. There's
Speaker 2: so much competition to get cliques coverage that they're just
Speaker 2: covering incomplete stories. Second, to add to that, collaterally, I
Speaker 2: think some special interest groups have discovered that they can
Speaker 2: almost partner with the media to get agendas across and
Speaker 2: in somewhat of a sensational way by blaming police for shootings. Now,
Speaker 2: I'm not an apologist for police. I'm not making excuses
Speaker 2: for them, but a very small percentage of police do
Speaker 2: make mistakes of millions of law enforcement officers out there,
Speaker 2: and we're seeing that in some cases that these situations
Speaker 2: are being seized on to push in. So I don't
Speaker 2: know that that's fair to a policeman, and society's going
Speaker 2: to pay for that, I think jumping in just a
Speaker 2: little bit, it's going to be harder to recruit police
Speaker 2: officers to an environment that they feel is hostile.
Speaker 6: Now with this book, and you talk about the environment,
Speaker 6: and we all know people listening to this program in
Speaker 6: America and outside of America know they know of the
Speaker 6: situation in America right now, the racial tension and the
Speaker 6: tension between civilians and police. I don't know if it's
Speaker 6: ever been worse, but it's a very crucial period right now.
Speaker 6: So when you're talking about writing an entire book about
Speaker 6: a cop, you've got to make sure that this is
Speaker 6: an extraordinary police officer and someone that's out of not typical.
Speaker 6: And that's what you found in Jim Simoni. So let's
Speaker 6: go back to his upbringing and how and what things
Speaker 6: shaped Jim Simony so that he could We talked about
Speaker 6: him going to Vietnam, So let's talk about his early childhood,
Speaker 6: his character, and what prompted him to be the kind
Speaker 6: of man that he became a war hero in Vietnam.
Speaker 6: Let's talk about his early life.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, I yeah, I think Freud, you know, might
Speaker 2: have a field day with Jim. He in talking to Jim.
Speaker 2: I decided to focus on Jim because Jim had been there,
Speaker 2: so to speak, he'd been involved in shootings. But what
Speaker 2: I really wanted to know is why were you there?
Speaker 2: Why did you put yourself in those positions? I never
Speaker 2: really got that from him. Jim. You know, he's not
Speaker 2: I didn't find he's not completely an introspective person. He's
Speaker 2: a duer. He's a type as he's a get done person,
Speaker 2: not think about it. So I interviewed people around him,
Speaker 2: his brother, relatives, old friends, and he was raised by
Speaker 2: a very strong mother, very ethical, divorced at a young age,
Speaker 2: so he had a very close bond to his mother.
Speaker 2: His brother filled in a lot of the blanks. Mom was,
Speaker 2: you know, black and white. She didn't see great. Either
Speaker 2: something was right or it was wrong, and she wouldn't
Speaker 2: tolerate wrong. I think she instilled those ethics in Jim.
Speaker 2: His relatives, his stepfather's father, were all military veterans, combat veterans,
Speaker 2: so from a young age he had that filtered down
Speaker 2: to him. You know, the patriotism, willingness to serve sacrificial
Speaker 2: life for the country, those sort of ethics, and they
Speaker 2: were so strong that he you know, it was the
Speaker 2: type of individual didn't question them. So now we look
Speaker 2: back at Vietnam and you know, maybe we really have
Speaker 2: some serious concerns about why we were there. Jim wasn't
Speaker 2: that personality. He felt it was duty, his duty go
Speaker 2: to Vietnam. Now, every step of Jim's way, not only
Speaker 2: did he want to join to be in the infantry,
Speaker 2: but he wanted to be a paratrooper. So there always
Speaker 2: seemed to be some sense of proving himself. And I'm
Speaker 2: asking Jim, you know he wanted to be in combat. Jim,
Speaker 2: why did you pick situations or occupations that would put
Speaker 2: yourself at risk? And you know, he never really knew.
Speaker 2: He could never really explain, And just guessing with what
Speaker 2: I know, I think, you know, he's always maybe trying
Speaker 2: to live up to somebody's vision of what he should be,
Speaker 2: whether that's his own or his mother's. I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure what drove him, but I think I mean,
Speaker 2: he was a great soldier. I talked to his company
Speaker 2: commanders in Vietnam, and you know, if they needed to go,
Speaker 2: have somebody charge an enemy machine gun nests, Hey, Simoni,
Speaker 2: take somebody with him, get it done. And he do it.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know why he put himself
Speaker 2: in those situations, but that's just what he did. He was,
Speaker 2: you know, obviously proving something to somebody. Okay, So comes
Speaker 2: out of Vietnam a young guy and goes into police work,
Speaker 2: and of course he takes he gravitates towards the most
Speaker 2: dangerous job of police has, which is traffic duty. Traffic
Speaker 2: stops the middle of the night, where you know, most
Speaker 2: the most dangerous people are you know, are you interact with,
Speaker 2: so they're always you know, throughout his life there's always
Speaker 2: that that willingness, almost compulsion to put himself in a
Speaker 2: situation where he could prove his his uh gallantry, his
Speaker 2: his courage. I would have to trigger to something. You
Speaker 2: have to attribute it to something in his childhood if
Speaker 2: I you know, as a layperson, you.
Speaker 6: Write in a book that's an interesting scene where he's
Speaker 6: eighteen years old and his stepfather walks into his room
Speaker 6: and says, hey, you know, you're eighteen and there's a
Speaker 6: war going on and basically tells him go and list tomorrow.
Speaker 6: So that's it's a testament to the kind of family
Speaker 6: comes from that they expect this from their family members.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he really in his mind he didn't
Speaker 2: have a choice. He could have gone Navy, he could
Speaker 2: have gone air Force, but you know Jim, Jim picked
Speaker 2: one hundred and first Airborne a fighting unit. Yes, you know.
Speaker 2: Now you talk about better way to see action, go ahead.
Speaker 6: You talk about his service in Vietnam, and it's impressive
Speaker 6: because because of the bravery that he he shows towards
Speaker 6: its fellow fellow military and doing things like you call
Speaker 6: him a tunnel rat where to go see if there
Speaker 6: was either bombs or you know, an army personnel in
Speaker 6: these tunnels. He was a small enough guy that he
Speaker 6: had gone in there at one hundred and sixty pounds,
Speaker 6: you saying he was down to one hundred and twenty pounds.
Speaker 6: It was five foot seven, and he could get into
Speaker 6: these tunnels. But tell us a little bit just to
Speaker 6: describe the amount of the level of bravery, what these
Speaker 6: tunnels involved, and what involved Jim going into these tunnels.
Speaker 2: During the Cat Defensive, I think there was nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 2: the new year, the Viet Kong Viet Cong in the
Speaker 2: North Vietnamese Regular Army made a series of devastating attacks
Speaker 2: on the US and South Vietnam these bases, and they
Speaker 2: did it through that through a maze of tunnels that
Speaker 2: had built been built in the Kuchi district and really
Speaker 2: extended all the way throughout the country. And those had
Speaker 2: been built during the French Indo China War where the
Speaker 2: Vietnamese were power out numbered and out gunned, and they
Speaker 2: went underground. They had hospitals, they had ammunitions cachets down there,
Speaker 2: they hit out dining halls. So the order came down
Speaker 2: from from the top that whenever you guys came across
Speaker 2: one of these tunnel openings, you couldn't just walk by it.
Speaker 2: You had to go in. You had to find out
Speaker 2: if there's anybody in there. So Jim, who had lost
Speaker 2: a lot of weight, and it's kind of a short guy,
Speaker 2: he's about five seven, he's one of the few guys
Speaker 2: that could that could slip in there. And you know,
Speaker 2: as I say in the book, they'd go in bare
Speaker 2: chested with just a forty five in a flashlight, maybe
Speaker 2: a knife in their teeth, allright in head first and
Speaker 2: you know, look for viet Cong. Try to avoid booby traps.
Speaker 2: I mean the booby traps were almost comically lethal. I mean,
Speaker 2: snakes and that would be tied to posts and poisoned
Speaker 2: bamboo sticks. But you know, your commander tees you do
Speaker 2: something and you just do it. They you know, I
Speaker 2: guess you know, technically he asks for volunteers, but you
Speaker 2: know they're looking at you when they're asking for volunteers.
Speaker 2: So Jim another way for Jim to distinguish himself, to
Speaker 2: show his metal and he, uh, you know, he did it.
Speaker 2: He got the job done at his own risk.
Speaker 6: Now there's all these exploits that he has in Vietnam
Speaker 6: which again shape him and make him the person that
Speaker 6: he is, and he's more than prepared to be a
Speaker 6: police officer when he gets back. But let's talk about
Speaker 6: just the incredible scene that you have here where and
Speaker 6: again it's important because well it's important in the story.
Speaker 6: This Lieutenant Bill Meechim and Simone is again risking his
Speaker 6: life out in the field and where he didn't have to,
Speaker 6: and he is shot in the throat and so just
Speaker 6: take us to what his prognosis is in terms of
Speaker 6: people looking around on his likelihood of surviving. And this
Speaker 6: incredible story about this Lieutenant Bill Meacham that doesn't have
Speaker 6: to it's a helicopter pilot doesn't have to fly in there,
Speaker 6: but he does tell us about this.
Speaker 2: Story, right, Simony, you'd be you'd been trained as a
Speaker 2: radio operator if I could just digress for really quickly.
Speaker 2: A radio operator in Vietnam just had to be quick thinker,
Speaker 2: He had to be sharp, He had to be organized
Speaker 2: because you're you're communicating with so many different people, the
Speaker 2: the artillery, guns, your commanding officer, your platoon all at
Speaker 2: the same time. You got to keep everything straight. So
Speaker 2: Jim had that kind of mind that he could do
Speaker 2: that and just digressing for a second here when he
Speaker 2: was I have some tapes of him on police chases.
Speaker 2: Same organized, calm, under pressure mind. He's communicating with dispatch,
Speaker 2: with other officers, relaying his position, just very calm, like
Speaker 2: he's reading the newspaper. So even at eighteen or nineteen
Speaker 2: years old, some of the company commanders saw this and said,
Speaker 2: you know, you're back here. You're a radio operator. You're
Speaker 2: not out in the field as much as we are.
Speaker 2: We want you out here with us. So they get
Speaker 2: him out. And first of all, corporals and sergeants were
Speaker 2: always the first ones in. They were very visible, even
Speaker 2: though they took their stripes off in battle. The enemy
Speaker 2: knew who was leading the charge because they were the
Speaker 2: first ones out of the fox worlds, etc. So they
Speaker 2: were losing corporals and sergeants quite a bit. So on
Speaker 2: this one particular battle, they were out on patrol the
Speaker 2: company and they got nighttime. They were setting up an ambush.
Speaker 2: They thought they'd get a small group of Vietnam coming,
Speaker 2: you know, passing through this trail intersection.
Speaker 4: And.
Speaker 2: They look in the distance at night and they see
Speaker 2: what looks like, you know, reeds reads waving in the wind,
Speaker 2: and it turns out to be a couple of companies
Speaker 2: of Vietnamese soldiers coming back from attacking a fort. So
Speaker 2: they tried to relay the message to the lead guy
Speaker 2: not to spring the ambush, because you know, there was
Speaker 2: like fifty of these guys and two hundred of them
Speaker 2: of the enemy. Well, they couldn't do it. He sprung
Speaker 2: the ambush. So that battle raged all night long. They
Speaker 2: got surrounded on nearly surrounded on three sides. They're running
Speaker 2: low on ammunition. There was just no way to bring
Speaker 2: a helicopter into replenished their ammo, or even take out
Speaker 2: the wounded. The order came down to fix bannets Jim.
Speaker 2: What happened does Jim? A medic got killed. Another medic
Speaker 2: went to take his place. At that exact moment RPG,
Speaker 2: a rocket propelled grenade exploded rating That medic absorbed the shock,
Speaker 2: saving Jim's life, killing him and two other guys. Jim
Speaker 2: got some shrapnel's throat, so he was laying there. He
Speaker 2: had a severe wound, bleeding to death, stuck his finger
Speaker 2: in his throat, still manning the radio. Though he's still
Speaker 2: working the radio, his company commander came over. Didn't think
Speaker 2: he was gonna make it, but knew there was nothing
Speaker 2: he could do about it, so he went back to
Speaker 2: his position, made sure the guys were still firing. Whoever
Speaker 2: had AMMO left, Jim tells it. And this isn't a
Speaker 2: lass we forget by Bull Meachum, the helicopter pilot Jim
Speaker 2: was just as he was passing out. He felt a
Speaker 2: guy lift him up and said time to go. Sarge
Speaker 2: threw him in a helicopter and carried him away. Now
Speaker 2: that helicopter pilot Bull Meachum, he is part of a
Speaker 2: group called the Kingsmen. They called themselves.
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Speaker 2: Supply helicopter, he wasn't even a meta back. I mean,
Speaker 2: he just decided to drop down and and help it,
Speaker 2: just a basically defying orders from the base because they
Speaker 2: felt it was too hot, too dangerous from the land.
Speaker 2: So Jim's Jim was just very fortunate that you know
Speaker 2: that an individual was willing, you know, I guess as
Speaker 2: brave as Jim really willing to take that risk to
Speaker 2: drop down and pluck him out at nineteen years old,
Speaker 2: and he had been promoted. I don't know if I
Speaker 2: mentioned this. He had been promoted to a platoon sergeant
Speaker 2: acting platoon sergeant at age nineteen for a couple of reasons,
Speaker 2: his leadership abilities and also the fact that they really
Speaker 2: needed personnel in those positions. So Jim had been in
Speaker 2: Vietnam for about ten months at that point. He ended
Speaker 2: up recovering back in the States after that wound and
Speaker 2: decided that he had enough. It was the second Purple Heart,
Speaker 2: second Bronze Star. He just didn't want to go back.
Speaker 2: He's seen enough death.
Speaker 6: He had seen his friend die in his arms as well,
Speaker 6: man named Ken, and he had seen a lot of death.
Speaker 6: And so you say when he came back he was
Speaker 6: not really prepared for the anti war sentiment too. Somebody
Speaker 6: called them a you know, people spitting at veterans. But anyway,
Speaker 6: he came back and he was again you talk about
Speaker 6: how he was working as a phone operator, came back
Speaker 6: home and then he was working at the home of
Speaker 6: a police officer couple, and they took a shining to
Speaker 6: him and then they said, hey, I think maybe you
Speaker 6: would be a good police officer. And so, as you
Speaker 6: write in the book, very interesting, he shows up on
Speaker 6: their door maybe a year later in a Cleveland police uniform,
Speaker 6: and so Jim Simone is on his way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just think he did. In his words, he
Speaker 2: missed the adrenaline rush, he missed the camaraderie. Living on
Speaker 2: the tip of the knife edge. He wasn't getting that
Speaker 2: kind of satisfaction being a phone installer. He had that mentality.
Speaker 2: And this is him talking to I'm not putting words
Speaker 2: in his mouth, but in Vietnam it was kill or
Speaker 2: be killed. They were the enemy, you kill him. I
Speaker 2: think in some cases some of those veterans, uh, they
Speaker 2: didn't get much constantly when they came back. You can't
Speaker 2: go through something traumatic like that is as a teenager
Speaker 2: see your friends die killed here one minute, gone the
Speaker 2: next without that rewiring your brain somehow. And of course
Speaker 2: that's uh, as we talk about in the book PTSD
Speaker 2: that was never addressed. So Jim comes back, he becomes
Speaker 2: a police officer. Now you know a lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman,
Speaker 2: who does a lot of lecturing, and he's fond of
Speaker 2: talking about the wolves, the sheep and the sheep dogs. Okay,
Speaker 2: the sheep being citizens us, the wolves being you know,
Speaker 2: the bad guys. Of the criminals, and of course the
Speaker 2: sheep dogs would be the police officer who protect us.
Speaker 2: That's kind of that fastile way of police looking at
Speaker 2: their role in society as protecting us. Well, Jim had that.
Speaker 2: Jim very much adopted that ethos of him being the
Speaker 2: best person to protect us, and he brought that back
Speaker 2: to him for Vietnam, which is one of the reasons
Speaker 2: why he was a tunnel rat while he was first in.
Speaker 2: He felt that he could do that function better than
Speaker 2: anybody else, so it should be him going first. He
Speaker 2: had a lot of confidence in himself, So it wasn't
Speaker 2: just Ubrius that caused Jim to be the first in.
Speaker 2: It was probably mix your self confidence also, so Jim
Speaker 2: brings back that like a lot of other Vietnam vets. Now,
Speaker 2: as I mentioned the book, and I tried to be
Speaker 2: fair and objective in the book, it was I'm not
Speaker 2: just being a cheerleader for anyone police officer. If you
Speaker 2: come back from from war where everybody's not, where your
Speaker 2: uniform is an enemy, you maybe bring a little bit
Speaker 2: of that back here. Especially in Cleveland early seventies, there
Speaker 2: was a lot of racial conflict. There was rioting, police
Speaker 2: were not well liked, the community became the enemy. Well
Speaker 2: we know of course that the citizens, we are not
Speaker 2: the enemy. We have to be viewed differently than the
Speaker 2: the you know, the army viewed their enemy. So I
Speaker 2: think some of that was brought home with some of
Speaker 2: the returning veterans, and Jim just sunk his teeth into
Speaker 2: the business of being a police officer. He enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: I think he enjoyed the physicality of it. It was
Speaker 2: an opportunity to work off, maybe work out some issues.
Speaker 2: I don't know, but he definitely Back in those days,
Speaker 2: there was a lot of headbusting, you know, a lot
Speaker 2: of a lot of fighting, a lot of brawling. I
Speaker 2: think it was just the way, at least in Cleveland.
Speaker 2: You know, in some cases, the way business was done,
Speaker 2: police business was done. And that's how Jim. Jim approached
Speaker 2: it all or none, black or white, his way or
Speaker 2: no way. And I think that that mindset contributed, you know,
Speaker 2: you know a lot of ways to him being involved
Speaker 2: in situations where there was a confrontation with somebody. Back then,
Speaker 2: there really wasn't There didn't seem to be an effort
Speaker 2: to really talk somebody down or negotiate or try to
Speaker 2: try to wait somebody out to see if they could
Speaker 2: get them to a different level mentally, whether you could
Speaker 2: disarm them. It was pretty much over in a flash.
Speaker 2: And Jim's first shooting was nineteen seventy seven, a couple
Speaker 2: of years after getting on the force. Guy with a
Speaker 2: gun on a rooftop pointed it at him and Jim fired,
Speaker 2: and that was his first shooting.
Speaker 6: But you talk about the result right after that, he
Speaker 6: said that research told Simoni, I will kill you if
Speaker 6: I have to, and he says, if you do shoot me,
Speaker 6: my partner has a revolver aimed at your right ear.
Speaker 6: And then he said, I'm not going to prison, and
Speaker 6: so Simoni had to. He pointed his pistol at Simoni,
Speaker 6: and Simoni fired a shotgun.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 6: And he said that other officer said that he went
Speaker 6: to the edge of the rooftop and vomited over the side.
Speaker 6: That's how upset he was that he to resort to
Speaker 6: deadly force.
Speaker 2: Right, No doubt that it, you know, did affected him emotionally. Reser.
Speaker 2: One of the maybe my primary objective in writing the
Speaker 2: book was to analyze those five shootings that Jim and
Speaker 2: Binion talked to the relatives talked to survivors to see
Speaker 2: what the fact, what the dynamics were of that shooting,
Speaker 2: What what were the steps that brought that person in
Speaker 2: conflict with the police officer. All the five people that
Speaker 2: Jim shot had a very similar profile. They were all depressed,
Speaker 2: separated from their spouses, had indicated they were suicidal, had
Speaker 2: drug problems. Reeser was the same. He was a dishonorably
Speaker 2: dishonorably discharged marine, living in his car, had separated with
Speaker 2: his from his wife, had told his wife he wanted
Speaker 2: to die. I guess, you know, to use a cliche,
Speaker 2: suis side by top. When he aimed his gun, he
Speaker 2: wrote his he wrote his own script when he aimed
Speaker 2: his gun at a police officer. I mean, that was it.
Speaker 2: And you know, Jim was the Jim was the guy
Speaker 2: that fulfilled that wish. I guess.
Speaker 6: You talk about it in the book two.
Speaker 2: We just go ahead, No, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, go ahead, Dan.
Speaker 6: What you'd read in the book too, is to explain
Speaker 6: the situation at that time. And it is incredible. You said,
Speaker 6: in nineteen seventy two there was three hundred and thirty
Speaker 6: three homicides where ten years before there were fifty nine
Speaker 6: and seventies ushered in a new era of while the
Speaker 6: drug era basically, and he volunteered or was placed or
Speaker 6: wanted to be in a place where there had been
Speaker 6: riots Glenville, and there was a noticeable tension between Blax
Speaker 6: and police. And it was incredible that again his bravery
Speaker 6: and his willingness to go into areas of conflict was
Speaker 6: very interesting, to say the least.
Speaker 2: I would almost take it a step further, his need
Speaker 2: to go into these areas he was when that car
Speaker 2: went out for a police down or police needed I mean,
Speaker 2: his car was the first one there. I mean, he'd
Speaker 2: tell me they did deask can video of other officers
Speaker 2: driving away from the from the scene, and as he
Speaker 2: was going towards it. It's just how he was wired
Speaker 2: to get involved. I think he got a taste of
Speaker 2: that excitement, that adrenaline Vietnam. I mean, it must have
Speaker 2: been incredibly an incredible rush to be jumping a helicopter,
Speaker 2: be shoppered into a landing zone. In seconds later you're
Speaker 2: trading gunfire with an enemy. I mean, you can't imagine
Speaker 2: the adrenaline involved there. And I suppose that gets addicting
Speaker 2: so Jim. Jim enjoyed that it was and it was
Speaker 2: another way for him to show his bravery and distinguish
Speaker 2: himself from other policemen, make a name for himself. Almost. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he just he couldn't avoid it. He wouldn't have missed
Speaker 2: that opportunity. Couldn't work nights on weekends, he'd be angry.
Speaker 2: He wanted Friday and Saturday nights. That's when you know,
Speaker 2: that's when all the action is. Couldn't sit at a desk,
Speaker 2: would have Jim would have could have never set at
Speaker 2: a desk. Just wasn't It wasn't his thing.
Speaker 6: And even though he appreciated the promotion to homicide at
Speaker 6: one point in his career, he really just wanted to
Speaker 6: be a patrolman so he could be in on the action.
Speaker 6: And also just to him, because we haven't really described him,
Speaker 6: because it sounds like he's a little bit of a
Speaker 6: hot dog, but in reality, he's more of a I know,
Speaker 6: it sounds cliches, it sounds like something off television, but
Speaker 6: he's a guy that's trying to have even though he's
Speaker 6: in conflict. There are numerous cases in this book where
Speaker 6: he disarms somebody where other people would have other officers
Speaker 6: on the scene said that guy would have got shot.
Speaker 6: So he's conflict resolution is what he's interested in. And
Speaker 6: also he just goes out of his way in so
Speaker 6: many different ways to help out. He really is unusual.
Speaker 6: And then the big thing that I thought was again
Speaker 6: very very admirable and unusual even for all the other police,
Speaker 6: is that his line that he drew in terms of
Speaker 6: his policing. He offered no one any breaks, and you
Speaker 6: offer great examples of that. So tell us a little
Speaker 6: bit about examples of how he never offered anybody a break,
Speaker 6: regardless of who it were.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, first of all, I wanted to address that
Speaker 2: about Jim's conflict resolution. Yeah, Jim, Jim would try to
Speaker 2: Jim was a protector. Jim was a sheep dog, and
Speaker 2: his objective wasn't, of course, to go out and hurt
Speaker 2: people or kill people. And he's too I found him
Speaker 2: to be too compassionate, too kind for that. That wasn't
Speaker 2: his goal. His goal was to disarm, to disarm danger,
Speaker 2: to defuse situations. And if he could do it. He's
Speaker 2: a great talker. He's very quick on his feet, he's
Speaker 2: a very bright guy. And if he could talk somebody down.
Speaker 2: That's the way he do it, and he was very
Speaker 2: successful doing that. So yeah, I should kind of make
Speaker 2: the point that Jim was involved in five shootings, but
Speaker 2: he was a very active police officer with thirty eight
Speaker 2: years of service, so that's it seems like a lot,
Speaker 2: but he did his job. Yes, there were so many
Speaker 2: situations where he was able to handle this situation non violently.
Speaker 2: So I'm glad that I was able to get some
Speaker 2: of those in the book, and thank you for mentioning
Speaker 2: that you And I'm sorry, Dan, what was the I
Speaker 2: got myself last year?
Speaker 6: What was this?
Speaker 2: The question that was on the table.
Speaker 6: Basically, what I was asking was the examples of how
Speaker 6: he did. When we talk about an officer that shot
Speaker 6: five people and then we put in brackets, but those
Speaker 6: were justifiable. In the climate that is today, it would
Speaker 6: sound like maybe we're just pro police because you see
Speaker 6: the sort of that blue code in play today that
Speaker 6: no matter what is on that video, somebody says, well,
Speaker 6: you just don't know the circumstances. Not being very sensitive
Speaker 6: to the people that are out there that are seeing
Speaker 6: this videotaped seems to be regardless of whether what's going
Speaker 6: to happen in a year at the trial, but it
Speaker 6: sure looks like an unjustified shooting. So when we talk
Speaker 6: about Jim Simony and the five homicides that he regrets
Speaker 6: having anything to do with, there are numerous cases of
Speaker 6: him risking his life to disarm somebody that would have
Speaker 6: been shot by police.
Speaker 2: Not only did Jim see himself as a sheep dog
Speaker 2: protecting the sheep, let's just use that term for us,
Speaker 2: but he also was protecting other officers. Jim because he
Speaker 2: had his military experience. He was a great shot, he
Speaker 2: was a pistol instructor. He had confidence himself that he
Speaker 2: could resolve a situation, handle a situation probably better than
Speaker 2: anyone else. That was his leadership ability. That's part of
Speaker 2: his character, that leadership. That's why people gravitated around him.
Speaker 2: So he'd go in this situation, and I can't say
Speaker 2: that Jim went in recklessly. He went in because he
Speaker 2: knew he was the best guy for that job. Because
Speaker 2: he had that military experience. He knew tactics, he knew strategies.
Speaker 2: He wasn't going in trying to shoot somebody. He just
Speaker 2: wanted to defuse the situation. Now, you you had mentioned
Speaker 2: about his how equitable he was in treating people. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I talked earlier about his mom, black and white, right
Speaker 2: or wrong. Jim has that that same set of ethics,
Speaker 2: very by the book. If it's wrong, it's wrong, no
Speaker 2: matter who's doing it. He was not averse to arresting
Speaker 2: his fellow officers, even his supervisor. He's a real stickler
Speaker 2: for drunk driving. He made a tremendous number of drunk
Speaker 2: driving arrests. And there were a couple occasions where he
Speaker 2: caught police officers behind the wheel when they shouldn't have been.
Speaker 2: And there are cases where Jim made the arrest. In fact,
Speaker 2: if other officers caught somebody behind the wheel, you know,
Speaker 2: a well known figure in Cleveland, or another police officer,
Speaker 2: and they felt that this person should be arrested, they'd
Speaker 2: sometimes called Jim because they knew he'd do it. I mean,
Speaker 2: he wasn't afraid to put himself on the line and
Speaker 2: do that, and that's all part of his h I
Speaker 2: think I can attribute that to his upbringing, his mom,
Speaker 2: that that code, that strict code that she instilled in him.
Speaker 2: I mean, he couldn't. It was hard for him not
Speaker 2: to do the right thing.
Speaker 6: And this is a time when Cleveland police force. Other
Speaker 6: police forces too, but Cleveland was notorious for officers taking bribes.
Speaker 6: So you as you chronicle in the book many cases
Speaker 6: where they said, no, no, it's okay, Jim, the case
Speaker 6: is you know, it's been handled, or it's been dealt with,
Speaker 6: or we're dropping it. And he said, no, we're not.
Speaker 6: So he really he didn't. He went against the brass.
Speaker 6: They called him super but he went against the brass.
Speaker 6: But at the same time, even though and you, I
Speaker 6: guess you can explain it, even though he did would
Speaker 6: bust a fellow officer's kid for impaired driving or even
Speaker 6: a fellow officer, how did he maintain that line of
Speaker 6: respect within the police force?
Speaker 2: Well became difficult for him. He had a dash cam
Speaker 2: before they were even equipped in cars. He had his
Speaker 2: own dash cam. Mother's against drunk driving and given one
Speaker 2: as a prize, an award for making so many arrests.
Speaker 2: And then when Jim was arresting a couple officers and
Speaker 2: a couple friends of officers, he almost became a political
Speaker 2: liability to the brass. You know, Jim, you just give
Speaker 2: this guy a warning, dropped this case in homicide. He
Speaker 2: didn't want to take bribes, which is another reason he
Speaker 2: got out of that so he could go to back
Speaker 2: to the street. So when the brass not that Jim
Speaker 2: SIMONEI wasn't gonna play ball, and not that they were corrupt.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying they were corrupt, but in certain situations
Speaker 2: they put a little lean on Jim a little bit.
Speaker 2: Hey give this guy a break, he's a friend of
Speaker 2: the forest. Things like that. Jim won. Well, once he
Speaker 2: did that, he became a praia, a little bit of
Speaker 2: a liability, a threat. They couldn't control him. So he
Speaker 2: put himself in a position almost and he would he
Speaker 2: would say this where he almost had now to arrest
Speaker 2: another police officer if he was doing something wrong, because
Speaker 2: if he cut that person to break, he wasn't following orders,
Speaker 2: he wasn't following the rules, and now he's breaking the
Speaker 2: rules and they'd have a case against them. So Jim
Speaker 2: put Jim was in a situation now where he had
Speaker 2: to do everything right. His videos were a god send
Speaker 2: to him. They backed up everything. Cases would depleted out
Speaker 2: in court once the defense it's attorneys Jim's video. But yeah,
Speaker 2: he started out with that that code of ethics ended
Speaker 2: up being something that he had to adhere to because
Speaker 2: he made enemies among the brass. And not just not
Speaker 2: just because he was willing to, you know, arrest fellow officers,
Speaker 2: but not that he went hunting for him, but he
Speaker 2: just didn't see color. Something was wrong and was wrong.
Speaker 2: So not just that, but Jim was very active. Jim worked,
Speaker 2: He wasn't he wasn't a slacker. His statistics for arrests,
Speaker 2: founty arrest, misdemeanors, traffic stops, drunk driving, they were all
Speaker 2: very high, much higher than in the other people in
Speaker 2: his uh, in his district, in his unit. So it
Speaker 2: you know, there was a little resentment of jealousy towards
Speaker 2: him from other police officers, of course, because he was
Speaker 2: out shining them. It's normal in any profession. So Jim
Speaker 2: ended up, you know, he as he would say, he
Speaker 2: wasn't real popular in the locker room at times, but
Speaker 2: he didn't care. He was doing his job. He had
Speaker 2: nobody to please but himself. He had set his own standards,
Speaker 2: he lived up to his standards, and he was pretty
Speaker 2: much a loaner. He had a couple partners that he
Speaker 2: worked with very closely, but for most of his career,
Speaker 2: he wrote alone, he was a one man unit. He
Speaker 2: preferred that that way. Then he could work at his
Speaker 2: own pace and his own style.
Speaker 6: You say that it was your task to examine these shootings,
Speaker 6: and it's a good thing that you did. So let's
Speaker 6: talk about the David Workman shooting where Jim Simoni gets
Speaker 6: shot in the face, goes through his cheek and exits
Speaker 6: his body, even hits another officer. So tell us about
Speaker 6: the David Workman shooting. And in nineteen November nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 2: Jennis Workmen again fit that profile. Unhappy man in his thirties,
Speaker 2: relationship problems, job problems, drug problems, had expressed an interest
Speaker 2: in dying. Previous to this, he'd been up for about
Speaker 2: three nights. He was drug induced insomnia. Again. I interviewed
Speaker 2: his wife. His wife was very helpful wife, and his
Speaker 2: pastor might have been hallucinating. He was paranoid. He hijacked
Speaker 2: the car to high school and he holed up in
Speaker 2: a church. He somehow he told the high school principal.
Speaker 2: He ran into the high school and told the principal
Speaker 2: that he needed to save all the kids, and let's
Speaker 2: take him down to the basement. The principal was quick thinking.
Speaker 2: She saw the gun in his waistband by the way,
Speaker 2: and she said, hey, look, why don't you go to
Speaker 2: your church because he had told the worst church was
Speaker 2: and I'll bring the kids there. He said, great, I'll
Speaker 2: meet you at the church. So they tracked the stolen
Speaker 2: car that he's to the church. In front of the church.
Speaker 2: They knew he was there. They knew he was down
Speaker 2: in the basement. The altar was overturned.
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Speaker 3: Family vdW group. No pech's necessary. I believe we're privited
Speaker 3: by loss. He terms and conditions eighteenth plus have been was.
Speaker 2: Working in juvenile division. He'd angered superior officer because he
Speaker 2: wouldn't drop a case against a highly connected attorney. So
Speaker 2: you know, they dinged him a little bit and they
Speaker 2: put him in juvenile Jim, here's the chatter over the radio.
Speaker 2: Even though he was this wasn't his call. He was
Speaker 2: actually doing court in an hour. He charged over there,
Speaker 2: because that's Jim's nature. You know, he's danger. He knows
Speaker 2: he's the guy to take care of it. He gets
Speaker 2: to the church, he quickly sizes up the situation. They
Speaker 2: checked all the doors on the first floor. Jim, you know,
Speaker 2: knew he's probably in the base, so he starts heading
Speaker 2: down into the basement. Didn't ask anybody to go with him,
Speaker 2: but two other officers, John Thomas and Brian Miller. They
Speaker 2: couldn't let him go alone, so they followed him down there,
Speaker 2: checked all the doors except one door. There was a
Speaker 2: supply closet, so Jim had the guy stand behind him.
Speaker 2: He got down on one knee, thinking if these this
Speaker 2: guy shoots, they'll shoot over his head. Jim swung the
Speaker 2: door open. The muzzle of the Dennis Workman's gun. He
Speaker 2: wrested it, sorry, rested it against Jim's cheek and waitn
Speaker 2: sorry about that a little phone problem. He placed the
Speaker 2: gun barrel against Jim's cheek and shot and went in
Speaker 2: in Jim's left cheek, under his eye, at the back
Speaker 2: of his head, hit John Thomas's femoral artery, his leg,
Speaker 2: the officer behind him, and immediately blood started spurting from him.
Speaker 2: Workman then shot again, shot Brian Miller in his shooting hand,
Speaker 2: so he disarmed three police officers or two shots. Uh. Thomas,
Speaker 2: who was losing a lot of blood, crawled behind a wall.
Speaker 2: Miller fired back, but he you know, he was shooting
Speaker 2: with his non dominant hand. Jim Jim. When the bullet
Speaker 2: went through his head, Jim's head, Jim fell backwards, his
Speaker 2: head slammed against the linoleum floor, and he was semi conscience.
Speaker 2: He's losing blood. Workman fired at Jim point blanket somehow
Speaker 2: missed him. And this is maybe a mystery of the
Speaker 2: book because Workman was a former marksman in the army.
Speaker 2: He was a hunter from West Virginia. He was a
Speaker 2: dead shot according to his wife, and for him to
Speaker 2: miss Jim from three feet away is mysterious. But anyhow,
Speaker 2: he disappears back in the closet. Jim somehow summons up
Speaker 2: enough energy to get up on his knees and shots.
Speaker 2: Once went through the closet door and killed workmen. He
Speaker 2: shot him in the chest, then he passed out. They
Speaker 2: take him to the hospital and even though he shot
Speaker 2: in the head, somehow the bullet missed anything vital. They
Speaker 2: didn't even know there was an exit wound. He left
Speaker 2: the hospital two days later. Thomas was in the hospital
Speaker 2: for weeks because of his injury. Jim leaving in the
Speaker 2: hospital two days later after getting shot in the head,
Speaker 2: that maybe began his nickname super Cop. Do you have?
Speaker 2: The legend of super cop began? Then there was quite
Speaker 2: a bit of media coverage, of course, in a situation
Speaker 2: like this in nineteen eighty three, and Jim became kind
Speaker 2: of a you know, darling of the media. He was
Speaker 2: very quotable, always accessible, and the media liked them, the
Speaker 2: public liked them, and this was the beginning of Jim's
Speaker 2: super cop persona and his public recognition. This situation, Now,
Speaker 2: if we look at that case just quickly, I guess
Speaker 2: you can second guess it. You can second guess any situation,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe wait for swat, maybe wait for a supervisor.
Speaker 2: But in Jim's mind, I am you know, I am
Speaker 2: nine to one one. I am, you know, the White Knight.
Speaker 2: I'm I'm swat. I mean, there's danger in the base,
Speaker 2: Jim's gonna go down and confront it. That's what he was,
Speaker 2: you know, at some point, that's what he was hired
Speaker 2: to do. I mean, you can't fault them. We gave
Speaker 2: him the badge, the equipment, the training to go down
Speaker 2: to do that. There's a little second guessing on that,
Speaker 2: but in the end, you know, he the care of
Speaker 2: the situation. Dennis Workman had told his wife that he
Speaker 2: wanted to die. However, he had religiously felt if he
Speaker 2: committed suicide, he wouldn't go to heaven. You know, if
Speaker 2: we were to surmised, maybe this was his way of
Speaker 2: leaving the world without not by not by his hand.
Speaker 2: So Jim he was a self duty for several weeks
Speaker 2: and he came back, came back to duty.
Speaker 6: Now you talk, there's all kinds of stories that you
Speaker 6: chronicle in here about his bravery and again once he's
Speaker 6: attached to super cop sort of title, and also that
Speaker 6: he's the darling of the press. He goes on to
Speaker 6: save a person burning in a that's and it runs
Speaker 6: into a burning home. But let's talk just a little
Speaker 6: bit about a couple sad things and a couple good
Speaker 6: things in Jim's life. Namely, he meets a woman. But
Speaker 6: to part of the reason why he runs into a
Speaker 6: burning house is that five years earlier, he gets a
Speaker 6: call in his forty six year old mother. Tell us
Speaker 6: a little bit about that. Again against shaping Jim's character.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jim's mother a very strong influence in his life.
Speaker 2: I need a very strong bond with her every night
Speaker 2: on his dinner. How we'd go over there and should
Speaker 2: make him dinner. Tragic fire, electrical fire in her house.
Speaker 2: She died. I imagine Jim was devastated. A couple long
Speaker 2: after that, he's driving by burning house with his partner.
Speaker 2: He knew he had been, he'd been on a case there.
Speaker 2: He knew there were children that lived in that particular house.
Speaker 2: He knew it would take a while before the fire
Speaker 2: department had got there, so he didn't hesitate. Maybe, you know,
Speaker 2: his mom's death and a fire motivated him. But he
Speaker 2: entered the house. He ran in again, just Jim's nature
Speaker 2: hard wired to rescue. The protector got in there, did
Speaker 2: the searge found that there weren't children in there but
Speaker 2: did get overcome by smoke. A couple other officers went
Speaker 2: in after him and we're able to drag him out. Jim.
Speaker 2: That particular incident resulted in Jim being named Police Officer
Speaker 2: of the Year for Cleveland. And you know, again we
Speaker 2: have the you know, the super Cup legend growing here.
Speaker 2: His willingness to risk his life to save others everything.
Speaker 2: We you know, that's what we wanted, police officer, protector, fearless,
Speaker 2: doing the right thing, and Jim, Jim was doing that.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 6: It's some story that later. You have a story that
Speaker 6: later that day though, while Simone was in the hospital,
Speaker 6: another officer comes and gives him a tip on a
Speaker 6: murder suspect. Yes, yes, Jim gets dressed and they go
Speaker 6: make an arrest and they find some machine guns and
Speaker 6: all kinds of weapons.
Speaker 2: Right, I mean there was these guys were machines, they
Speaker 2: were outliers. They just uh just wanted to fight crime.
Speaker 2: They just wanted to just wasn't a job for him.
Speaker 2: Jim likes to say, if they knew how much fun
Speaker 2: I was having, they wouldn't have paid me. Yeah, incredible.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's interesting too. You talk about a man that
Speaker 6: met him at that time that the officer that got
Speaker 6: him to go arrest these guys with the shotguns and
Speaker 6: the machine guns. And this guy's a former marine and
Speaker 6: his name some some Skiensius and and so they partner together.
Speaker 6: And it's a real good police partnership, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Yes, it is. They both had a tremendous work ethic
Speaker 2: any hour of the day, they were policemen twenty four
Speaker 2: to seven. It's just what they enjoyed doing. It was
Speaker 2: a passion for them. So Jim, Jim, you met his counterpart,
Speaker 2: and they were great teams. I think Dave was fifty.
Speaker 2: He had Dave Sumskis. He had to open heart surgery
Speaker 2: and he didn't he didn't make it through surgery. But yeah,
Speaker 2: that was probably very tough for Jim. Here he meets
Speaker 2: the guy with the same values and ethics and they
Speaker 2: had each other's back, and you know, his partner died. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they were quite a partner. They were so effective. They
Speaker 2: had pens. They were what were they three to eighteen A.
Speaker 2: I think they were. I probably have their their car
Speaker 2: number rock, but there were car to eighteen A. They
Speaker 2: had pens made that. Uh, you'll never get away from
Speaker 2: two eighteen a. So throughout the neighborhood, throughout the district,
Speaker 2: they patrolled, They were they were very popular, except with
Speaker 2: bad guys of course.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Now you talk about a couple of the other
Speaker 6: shootings that he is unfortunate enough to be involved with,
Speaker 6: Why don't you discuss the next shooting that he's involved
Speaker 6: with and the particulars of that.
Speaker 2: That would be the bank shooting. Yes, uh no, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: That was Michael Chacci. Michael Chachi. Uh. Young guy had
Speaker 2: a drug problem. It injured his leg, couldn't work his
Speaker 2: construction job, had an argument at home with some family members,
Speaker 2: had to move out. Depressed, just depressed, kind of angry
Speaker 2: at authority. I got this from some of his childhood friends.
Speaker 2: He had a gun. We don't know why he had
Speaker 2: the gun, but he was standing on the front lawn
Speaker 2: with the gun and he had waved it at some
Speaker 2: police officers as he drove by them. That precipitated to
Speaker 2: chase Jim in the lead. He stops his car in
Speaker 2: front of the house that he was staying at. There
Speaker 2: were oh maybe a dozen officers there. There is tape
Speaker 2: of this and you can hear the officer screaming put
Speaker 2: the gun down, put the gun down, and Chachi didn't
Speaker 2: put the gun down. He wasn't aiming at anybody, but
Speaker 2: he just didn't want to comply. For whatever reason. They
Speaker 2: didn't want to let him go in the house because
Speaker 2: his friend and his wife and their child was in there,
Speaker 2: and they were afraid they were going to have a
Speaker 2: hostage situation. So this is a difficult situation. You got
Speaker 2: a guy with a gun that wants to go in
Speaker 2: a house where there's a child.
Speaker 1: What do you do?
Speaker 2: So there's screaming at him, yelling at him. Jim tried
Speaker 2: to position himself so he could pepper spray Chachi, but
Speaker 2: he at that point, Chachi turned and lowered the gun
Speaker 2: barrel and he died. They fired at him. Jim was
Speaker 2: one of the one of eight police officers that shot him.
Speaker 2: Turns out that the gun that Chachi was holding was unloaded.
Speaker 2: His an empty gun. Well, they couldn't know that, of course,
Speaker 2: they didn't know that. I mean, just another situation of
Speaker 2: somebody that maybe just didn't want to live anymore. Another officer.
Speaker 2: During the gun the gunfire, a bullet muster ricocheted and
Speaker 2: hit Jim in his vest. He thought he thought he'd
Speaker 2: been struck by Chachi, but it was a friendly fire,
Speaker 2: so he went down. He went to the hospital. And
Speaker 2: that shooting took a long time to sort out. The
Speaker 2: police prosecut dien't rule on it for a while. So
Speaker 2: those eight officers were off duty in Cleveland, they would
Speaker 2: spend time in the gym. They took them off the
Speaker 2: street and put them in the gym for a while,
Speaker 2: quite a long while actually, till that got sorted out,
Speaker 2: and it did eventually rule justifiable, and Jim was back
Speaker 2: on the street. And do you want to talk about
Speaker 2: the fifth shooting? Now?
Speaker 6: Sure? What I wanted to mention just before that, is
Speaker 6: that in that shooting you talk about sometimes maybe the
Speaker 6: media has an agenda or they have a narrative that
Speaker 6: they want to push or use a story as an example,
Speaker 6: what did they make of that case? Where wasn't it
Speaker 6: a black man and was shot? And regardless of justifiable,
Speaker 6: the stories weren't so heroic or depicting Simony as such
Speaker 6: a hero and those in that anyway, well.
Speaker 2: Yes, what happened, well though Chachi was white, through all
Speaker 2: of Jim's victims were white. Yes, what happened was even
Speaker 2: though after the third shooting or so it was just
Speaker 2: rule justifiable. Jim was in defense of his life. However,
Speaker 2: and now you get a fourth shooting, now justifiable and
Speaker 2: not justifiable. People are starting to ask questions, why why
Speaker 2: one guy involved in so many shootings? What's going on here?
Speaker 2: Other officers go through their whole career without even drawing
Speaker 2: their gun. Why so questions were asked. And then, of course,
Speaker 2: now we've got an additional fact that changes a story.
Speaker 2: The gun was unloaded, but that fact becomes part of
Speaker 2: the story, becomes part of the narrative, even though it
Speaker 2: wasn't a fact known to the police, has been seen
Speaker 2: at the time. So we've got a little bit of
Speaker 2: the tide turning against Jim. From a holistic standpoint that yes,
Speaker 2: he shot four people, those are four lives lost. Were
Speaker 2: they justifiable? Yes? Was he in fear of his life? Yes,
Speaker 2: of course. But it was getting to the point where
Speaker 2: the public was starting to say, what's going on here?
Speaker 2: The media, in particular a couple columnists, I think one
Speaker 2: of them actually called Jim a serial killer with a badge.
Speaker 2: So he became a target. It became somewhat somewhat easy
Speaker 2: to brand him as somebody that's trigger happy. Never mind
Speaker 2: that there were eight other police officers there, and then now,
Speaker 2: whenever there was a police involved shooting at this time
Speaker 2: period after this, the newscasters would manage to bring Simone's
Speaker 2: name into it. You know, they'd say, well, police officers,
Speaker 2: you know, they just bring him up randomly. They'd use
Speaker 2: him as an example of a police officer that was
Speaker 2: involved in a lot of shootings. So Jim's reputation was
Speaker 2: kind of preceding him a little bit, uh, and that
Speaker 2: caused some problems for him. He became the go to
Speaker 2: guy when people wanted to charge, you know, logic case
Speaker 2: of police brutality, they named Simony. In some cases he
Speaker 2: wasn't even working the day they claimed that he beat
Speaker 2: him up. So yeah, Jim became kind of a lightning
Speaker 2: route at this point for charges that police were heavy handed,
Speaker 2: we're trigger happy.
Speaker 6: What did Jim feel like in terms of having that
Speaker 6: sort of spotlight on him and that sort of view
Speaker 6: of him as a as a police officer. What did
Speaker 6: how did he feel about that?
Speaker 2: I think he seemed to have regretted it, But he
Speaker 2: also his mantra, and I think he's right, is that
Speaker 2: if you weren't there. You don't know what happened. I mean,
Speaker 2: I have never had a gun barrel pointed at me.
Speaker 2: I don't know what I do. I'm sure I would
Speaker 2: be afraid. I'm sure i'd react maybe the same way
Speaker 2: he did. Unless you've been in a life or death situation,
Speaker 2: a national situation where you feel like you're going to
Speaker 2: lose your life, it's very hard to judge the actions
Speaker 2: of somebody else. The chat case was difficult. He wouldn't comply,
Speaker 2: he wouldn't drop his gun. If he would have complied,
Speaker 2: he's still here today, There's no question. I talked to
Speaker 2: the neighbors that were there, you know, they pretty much
Speaker 2: confirmed the investigator's account of it, that the gun barrel
Speaker 2: was lowered, it was in a position to fire. What
Speaker 2: else could they have done. So, on one hand, Jim
Speaker 2: regrets it. On the other hand, he's okay with it.
Speaker 2: He's okay that he did the right thing, and he
Speaker 2: did something that most cops probably would have done in
Speaker 2: that situation.
Speaker 6: You talk about a split, split moment decision. But what
Speaker 6: I think a lot of people have issue again, and
Speaker 6: maybe you spoke to Jim about this, this question that
Speaker 6: always comes up was it necessary to have that many
Speaker 6: shots to shoot that person that many times? What is
Speaker 6: his take on how many sometimes how many bullets are
Speaker 6: used to kill somebody, which obviously more or spent than
Speaker 6: are needed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this gets in, This gets into a tricky area here.
Speaker 2: I talked to a free psychologist of prints of psychologists,
Speaker 2: who he's an expert strang an aggression, and he said,
Speaker 2: the fear is contagious. Once one officer fires, the other
Speaker 2: ones are gonna fire. We're talking about it right now.
Speaker 2: We're very relaxed, there's no danger. But in that rapidly
Speaker 2: evolving situation at nighttime with a guy with a deadly
Speaker 2: gun in his hand, anything could happen. They want to
Speaker 2: go home at night, so you know they're gonna fire.
Speaker 2: They're gonna defuse the situation, remove the danger, fire until
Speaker 2: it's over. Yes, it was a lot of shots. You know,
Speaker 2: there's some thinking there by the anti police establishment, the
Speaker 2: special interest groups that all police fire, because then it
Speaker 2: makes it harder to determine who It makes it harder
Speaker 2: to make anybody culpable for a shooting. You know, they
Speaker 2: find all the bullets, so who really fired first? You know,
Speaker 2: you hear those theories too. I just think it's the
Speaker 2: fear is contagious. They don't want to be shot, so
Speaker 2: you know they took action.
Speaker 6: Now you talk about the we haven't talked about the
Speaker 6: final shooting that he is accused of, or or that
Speaker 6: he's involved in the fatal shooting. So let's talk about that,
Speaker 6: the final the fifth shooting.
Speaker 2: Okay, Uh. This guy, Robert Hackworth, he fit the template,
Speaker 2: middle aged, our thirty year old white male, depressed drugs,
Speaker 2: lost his job, had a record he had earlier they
Speaker 2: taken a test drive of a jeep at car dealership
Speaker 2: with a Stone driver's license, and he took off. The
Speaker 2: jeep drove down to a bank on Jim's day off.
Speaker 2: Jim used to go in there on his day off,
Speaker 2: and he was you know, he's, you know, the last
Speaker 2: guy to cash his paycheck at the teller window. He's
Speaker 2: in there. He knew immediately when Jim walked in the
Speaker 2: bank something was wrong because the tellers all knew him.
Speaker 2: They'd all waving him and talked to this time, they
Speaker 2: looked very upset. It was very quiet in there. He
Speaker 2: immediately figured out who what was going on and who
Speaker 2: the robber was. The guy saw Jim. He ran out
Speaker 2: of the bank. Jim not in uniform, but had his
Speaker 2: gun in his tucked in his belt. However, his radio
Speaker 2: was in his car. He gave chase. Now the individual
Speaker 2: Hackworth had stuck his hand in his pocket to simulate
Speaker 2: having a gun in there when he robbed the teller.
Speaker 2: So he's running from the bank. A lady driving by.
Speaker 2: I wish I could have interviewed her. I never found her,
Speaker 2: but she might have recognized Jim. She said that guy
Speaker 2: robbed the bank. Jim said, I know. She gave him
Speaker 2: a ride. They chased him. She stopped him. As Hackworth
Speaker 2: got into the jeep to stawn jeep to escape, The
Speaker 2: lady dropped Jim off right in front of the jeep,
Speaker 2: so he was in Hackworth's line of fire right there.
Speaker 2: So Jim screamed, dropped the gun and uh, you know,
Speaker 2: hands up, hands up. Hackworth reached down towards his pocket.
Speaker 2: Jim shot one time, killed him. Turns out that Hackworth
Speaker 2: was unarmed, there was no gun, and what he was
Speaker 2: probably doing was he the die pack from the money
Speaker 2: that he had stole had exploded, and that die pack
Speaker 2: contains tear gas and it was burning his crotch actually,
Speaker 2: and he was probably trying to remove that money from
Speaker 2: his crotch. It was painful, and that's the motion that
Speaker 2: Jim saw. Jim, the prosecutor in this case, decided to
Speaker 2: take this case to the grand jury. He felt that
Speaker 2: Jim was not justified in shooting Hackworth. So a couple
Speaker 2: of things were going on. There was some demonstrations. Hackworth's
Speaker 2: girlfriend did some TV interviews saying that Jim acted rashly,
Speaker 2: had no business shooting him, he was unarmed. She died
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks later of a heroin overdose actually,
Speaker 2: and they just had a child together, Uh, tragically. So
Speaker 2: Jim's going to go to the grand jury on this case,
Speaker 2: and there was a lot of media. The media really
Speaker 2: was starting to get on him about this case. Jim
Speaker 2: shot somebody over money. Well, it wasn't over money. He
Speaker 2: thought the guy was armed and he was running around
Speaker 2: with a gun. If he was going to rob a bank,
Speaker 2: who knows what else he was going to do. Called
Speaker 2: nine to one one, Jim, Jim likes to say, well,
Speaker 2: I am nine one one. This is my job. So
Speaker 2: he had his position, others had theirs. The fact was,
Speaker 2: though this was the first fifth person he's killed. That's
Speaker 2: a very high number. Now, a reporter actually did some
Speaker 2: research throughout the United States and found out there was
Speaker 2: no other active duty police officer with that many fatal
Speaker 2: shootings that was still on the job. So Jim, Jim had,
Speaker 2: you know, distinguished himself in a very infamous way with
Speaker 2: his shooting. So he decided that he wanted to talk
Speaker 2: before the grand jury. Kind of an unusual tactic to
Speaker 2: have the person talked before the grand jury because that
Speaker 2: can be used against him. But whatever he told that
Speaker 2: grand jury influenced them to return a Nobel. He was
Speaker 2: not indicted. He's still I think that shooting might have
Speaker 2: left him with a black eye. You can't escape the
Speaker 2: fact that the guy didn't have a gun, And then
Speaker 2: that fact became part of the story after the fact
Speaker 2: we now know he was unarmed. It colors the story unfairly,
Speaker 2: you would say, because he pretended he had a gun.
Speaker 2: So Jim, yeah, you know, Jim's a little by that.
Speaker 2: A year later, though, if I can move forward to
Speaker 2: the rescuing the women from the Frozen River, Jim again
Speaker 2: distinguished himself a woman, two women intoxicated walking through an
Speaker 2: area of Cleveland downtown by the river was frozen. They
Speaker 2: decided to walk over the river as a short cut,
Speaker 2: and one woman fell in. Jim got to the scene.
Speaker 2: Rescue scouts were there. He immediately starts stripping off his clothes.
Speaker 2: They're like, where are you going? He goes, I'm going in,
Speaker 2: and he went in. After the water was so frigid
Speaker 2: that he managed to grab her. They saved her, but
Speaker 2: he went under and fire department had to go in
Speaker 2: and save him. That that action was his here in
Speaker 2: the second police officer the award award for that for Cleveland,
Speaker 2: the only the only officer in the history of the
Speaker 2: city to durn that award. So Jim was back in
Speaker 2: the spotlight. Supercop was back. He was a hero. If
Speaker 2: you will again, I guess you could say it redeemed
Speaker 2: himself from that Hackworth shooting, because that was controversial, even
Speaker 2: though Jim it was essentially ruled justifiable. Jim followed procedure.
Speaker 2: I guess you could say it did leave a bad
Speaker 2: taste in some people's mouths. But now here he saved
Speaker 2: a life at the risk of his own life.
Speaker 6: You talk about that columnist, a journalist that basically called
Speaker 6: him a serial killer with a badge, and then that
Speaker 6: person's reversal too, going on a drive along with Jim Simone.
Speaker 6: So that I thought was very interesting. Maybe tell us
Speaker 6: a little bit about that conversion of attitude towards Jim
Speaker 6: Simoni once she went on a with him during a shift.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have to I think I have to commend
Speaker 2: her for that. Actually, she's a very popular journalist and
Speaker 2: columnists in Cleveland, and she took a chance and started
Speaker 2: bashing Jim in her columns and questioning his tactics and
Speaker 2: essentially branding him a gunslinger and a guy that took
Speaker 2: unnecessary risks and was reckless. And Jim called her, and
Speaker 2: you know, Jim, very cool headed professional. He called her said, hey,
Speaker 2: you have the right to say what you want about me,
Speaker 2: but it would have been a nice if you at
Speaker 2: least talk to me first. She took him up on that,
Speaker 2: on his courtesy call, she rode with him, And I
Speaker 2: think that a couple of things happened. Jim's charisma, Jim's been,
Speaker 2: you know, incredibly charismatic. He's very straightforward and direct. You
Speaker 2: feel very comfortable around him. He is the guy you
Speaker 2: want next to you. If there's she probably gravitated towards
Speaker 2: his personality number one, and secondly, actually saw on the
Speaker 2: streets at a late hour of night what happens and
Speaker 2: what could happen. She saw for herself that it's that's
Speaker 2: dangerous out there, and you don't have to go looking
Speaker 2: for danger in certain areas of certain cities. It's there.
Speaker 2: And if you want to do your job effectively and
Speaker 2: come between the bad guys and the good guys, there's
Speaker 2: going to be situations where you have to use your weapon.
Speaker 2: I think she saw that, and she ended up writing
Speaker 2: several complimentary columns about Jim. And it didn't help, of
Speaker 2: course that the switchboard is playing dealer. After her first
Speaker 2: couple of negative columns, columns was deluged with supporters of
Speaker 2: Simonis who felt that she had branded him unfairly. So
Speaker 2: she even she admitted that that was a big, big
Speaker 2: part of her deciding to take the ride along, all
Speaker 2: the negative backlash she had gotten. She wasn't expecting that.
Speaker 2: I think she said in one of her colmns she
Speaker 2: got five hundred negative comments. So now as a columnist,
Speaker 2: I mean she's smart. Now she saw that Simoni was
Speaker 2: she was going to get a lot of a lot
Speaker 2: of readership from writing about Simony. He was a controversial guy.
Speaker 2: He had at a lot of supporters and she kind
Speaker 2: of jumped on that bandwagon. Now, so yeah, it was
Speaker 2: quite a conversion. Actually.
Speaker 6: Now this police work took this toll in terms of
Speaker 6: his private life. He's divorced at thirty four, and he
Speaker 6: has three daughters. But you do tell about that he
Speaker 6: does have a good relationship with his daughters and they
Speaker 6: have a good relationship with him. They have a good
Speaker 6: attitude towards him, as you written a book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's a dad. I mean he
Speaker 2: took care of his daughters. He's a protector, is not
Speaker 2: around a lot. He spent a lot of a lot
Speaker 2: of overtime. Jim's a workaholic. I mean he would have
Speaker 2: been that way no matter you know what what field
Speaker 2: he was in. It's just the way he approaches life.
Speaker 2: While or none. So maybe he probably wasn't around as
Speaker 2: much as they would have liked. But yes, I met
Speaker 2: all three and they all have a very good relationship
Speaker 2: with Jim.
Speaker 6: You did father tell us about the scene, the very
Speaker 6: profound scene that you have with the one daughter asking
Speaker 6: a question of her father and finally getting that answer
Speaker 6: after all those years, it's very profound.
Speaker 2: Oh God, Dan, can you refresh me just a little
Speaker 2: bit on that one.
Speaker 6: Well, I guess it was the he had never spoken
Speaker 6: about Vietnam, so I guess mentioning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like a lot of combat veterans, he just didn't
Speaker 2: talk about it. And you know, one day, I mean,
Speaker 2: Jim's very just in general, Jim gets very emotional about Vietnam.
Speaker 2: I mean, he's got He's not a cold hearted person
Speaker 2: as someone might think. He actually is very compassionate and
Speaker 2: very in touch with his feelings. And he is just
Speaker 2: losing a couple of his friends. That Kenny Kodaaluck that
Speaker 2: you mentioned earlier, that medic that died, that had a
Speaker 2: profound effect on Jim. And I think, yeah, he shared that,
Speaker 2: he opened up about that, he opened up about Vietnam.
Speaker 2: He got it out, and maybe for these four guys
Speaker 2: that came back from Vietnam, maybe they could have had
Speaker 2: some consoling and been able to speak about things when
Speaker 2: they came back instead of years later. But you know,
Speaker 2: it happened for Jim when it happened Coda Luck dying,
Speaker 2: Jim saw at a young age how final death was
Speaker 2: and you know, that could have influenced his approach to danger.
Speaker 2: He didn't want to die. He didn't want other people
Speaker 2: to die, ironically, so he put himself in a situation
Speaker 2: to protect other people. Maybe you know that Kenny kotoluck
Speaker 2: death impacted him so much. Other soldiers that I talked
Speaker 2: to the service, Jim said it really devastated him. So
Speaker 2: he finally got those feelings out when he was ready
Speaker 2: to get the feelings out. And it's probably a lot
Speaker 2: of burden for a veteran to carry around Vietnam. We
Speaker 2: just didn't have again those social services available, or or
Speaker 2: maybe the veterans weren't really encouraged or incentive to take
Speaker 2: advantage of those services. But yeah, he he opened up.
Speaker 2: And even now when you talk to him about Vietnam,
Speaker 2: he'll tear up. We'll cheer up about it.
Speaker 6: It's interesting line you have in the book about they said,
Speaker 6: when was the last time you were in Vietnam? And
Speaker 6: they said, everyone would say last night?
Speaker 2: Right, still can't watch war movies, They still bother him. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Now, when it comes time finally for Jim Simony to retire,
Speaker 6: tell us about the non retirement.
Speaker 2: Basically, yeah, Jim had to retire he was at a
Speaker 2: certain age and the pension board had required to him
Speaker 2: to retire, he would have never left. He leaves, He
Speaker 2: waits out the sixty days that he has to by,
Speaker 2: you know, stay pension law, and then he hooks up
Speaker 2: with a couple suburban police officers and he's also doing
Speaker 2: warrants for the city. So Jim likes to say that
Speaker 2: retirement's been great. He's down to working sixty hours a week.
Speaker 2: He's still busy, still out there. He's still the sheep dog.
Speaker 2: It's just who he is. I don't think he could
Speaker 2: be anything else. It's what made him, what made him
Speaker 2: a good cops, who made him a great cop.
Speaker 6: In the last part of your book, you talk about
Speaker 6: you ask Jim Simone to talk about and deconstruct the
Speaker 6: shootings of Russell Williams and Tamir Rice. And these are
Speaker 6: the ones that have sparked so much controversy, so much unrest,
Speaker 6: and a complete rehaul of the way people think police
Speaker 6: and civilian relations have evolved over the years. It looks
Speaker 6: like we haven't evolved too far at all whatsoever. And
Speaker 6: the Black Lives Matter and the movement, So tell us
Speaker 6: what Jim Simone was, what he had to say when
Speaker 6: when he was to deconstruct the shootings of Russell Williams
Speaker 6: and Tamir Rice, Well, uh.
Speaker 2: Jim, Jim's not a hypocrite. He is not a hypocrite.
Speaker 2: His mantra was you don't know if you were there,
Speaker 2: and he wasn't there for either one of those shootings. However,
Speaker 2: he does have theories, so he couldn't you know, he
Speaker 2: couldn't speak of course to how the how the officers
Speaker 2: felt that shot is what I meant. But the fear
Speaker 2: is contagious once you think somebody's shooting and and the
Speaker 2: police that were on the scene for the Russell and
Speaker 2: the Williams, the couple that was killed, they heard backfiring,
Speaker 2: they thought they were being shot at. There were a
Speaker 2: lot of mistakes made by the police officers that night.
Speaker 2: There were a lot of officers at that scene that
Speaker 2: shouldn't have been there at the scene. There are supervisors
Speaker 2: there that shouldn't have been there. Yeah, there was some
Speaker 2: some strategic, many strategic problems with that that shooting. But
Speaker 2: Jim just said, you know, you're you're the adrenaline is flowing,
Speaker 2: your limbic system takes over. You're not necessarily thinking rationally,
Speaker 2: we just start shooting because other people are shooting. That's
Speaker 2: that case. Now, that was part of the Justice Department
Speaker 2: decree came down for that to rehaul overhaul Cleveland's police department.
Speaker 2: That was one of the one of the situations that
Speaker 2: they looked at carefully and the Justice Department didn't like.
Speaker 2: So there's being there's some changes being made in the
Speaker 2: Cleveland Department Police Department Division of Police because of that.
Speaker 2: That's one of the cases. All right. Now it's Mere
Speaker 2: Rice shooting. That's a little different because we have video,
Speaker 2: and that was a twelve year old, twelve year old
Speaker 2: boy playing with a replica gun in a gazebra at
Speaker 2: a park. He had removed the orange safety tip from
Speaker 2: the gun though, so it looked like a real gun.
Speaker 2: There were a lot of mistakes made in that case,
Speaker 2: and Jim himself says, in any shooting, there's a series
Speaker 2: of mistakes that lead up to the shooting. Somebody made
Speaker 2: some bad decisions and compounded those bad decisions that led
Speaker 2: to that. And this is a good case. Tamir Rice,
Speaker 2: twelve years old playing with a toy gun. A dispatcher,
Speaker 2: somebody reported a dispatcher that a guy was playing with
Speaker 2: a gun. Now, Tamiris large big for his age. So
Speaker 2: this person said it could be a child told the
Speaker 2: dispatch of that that information was never relayed to the
Speaker 2: police officers responded, they didn't know that. All they heard
Speaker 2: was somebody with a gun. So if you see the
Speaker 2: tape and Jim analyze the tape for a TV station,
Speaker 2: that cars comes driving up towards the kid Tamir rather
Speaker 2: very quickly and skids on the snow. So those police
Speaker 2: officers now are rate in front of Tamir rights whom
Speaker 2: they think is older and has a real gun. And
Speaker 2: from there, you know, tragedy unfolded. The police officer shot
Speaker 2: Tamir a couple of times, we find out he's twelve
Speaker 2: years old. We find out it's a replica gun. Of
Speaker 2: course that's not you know, that's going to be something
Speaker 2: that the public is going to recoil against. And uh,
Speaker 2: tragedy all the way around. Now what one of the
Speaker 2: things though that occurred was that the police officer the tactics.
Speaker 2: Maybe the car shouldn't have been so close, but Jim says,
Speaker 2: that's you know, that's procedure because most people run when
Speaker 2: you show, you know, when you the police show up
Speaker 2: and Tamir didn't run. So we've got a lot of
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of situations there that somebody might
Speaker 2: have done something differently in that situation, Jim didn't necessarily
Speaker 2: want to second guess that officer that was on the
Speaker 2: scene because again Jim wasn't there, but that information the
Speaker 2: dispatcher then that didn't relay that crucial information that it
Speaker 2: might have been a child just quit her job. She
Speaker 2: wasn't really available to debrieth. So that was a tough case.
Speaker 2: That was a very difficult case in the sorry go ahead, No,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 6: The legacy of Jim Simone is is not only that
Speaker 6: he's a Patrolman of the Year in nineteen eighty in
Speaker 6: two thousand and nine, but also that he was again
Speaker 6: a sort of a pioneer in terms of putting things ahead,
Speaker 6: that put forward things like dash camps and the important
Speaker 6: of dash cams and so other than the dash cam importance,
Speaker 6: and we obviously can see why that's important to protect police,
Speaker 6: protect citizens. It's just a great thing, but also what
Speaker 6: are the other things that Jim Simone basically was a
Speaker 6: big advocate for in terms of helping the police have relationships,
Speaker 6: positive relationships with citizens, and just to be able to
Speaker 6: do proper policing. What were the kinds of things that
Speaker 6: were most important to him, Things that he had done,
Speaker 6: things that he recommended and advocated for.
Speaker 2: He one of the things to was very big on
Speaker 2: is being not only policing a community, but being a
Speaker 2: part of the community policed. He lived in the district
Speaker 2: that he policed, he was always visible, always accessible. People
Speaker 2: knew they could contact him at home. He was okay
Speaker 2: with that. He encouraged that. I mean, nowadays Cleveland doesn't
Speaker 2: have a residency require, and a lot of policemen live
Speaker 2: outside the city, and as Jim puts it here, they
Speaker 2: come into the district for work every day like an
Speaker 2: occupying army. They're not vested in that community. They don't.
Speaker 2: It's a job for them in a lot of cases. So, Uh,
Speaker 2: community policing, part of the community. Be visible, talk to
Speaker 2: the people. Uh don't just ride around and your your
Speaker 2: your four wheeled capsule and make arrest, but actually, uh
Speaker 2: walk around, patronize beyond, you know, beyond the streets. Uh.
Speaker 2: People like that. Now. We talked earlier, very early in
Speaker 2: the conversation, we talked about the anti police bias. Well,
Speaker 2: I have to be a little bit of a contrarian here.
Speaker 2: I don't think that's necessarily true. In the worst areas
Speaker 2: of the city, the most crime in areas of the city,
Speaker 2: those people depend on the police. Those people like the
Speaker 2: police because that that crime is right there. They see it,
Speaker 2: the break in, the drugs, the danger. They know the
Speaker 2: police are the only thing protecting them from danger, so
Speaker 2: they appreciate the police. I don't think there's anti police
Speaker 2: bias in a lot of situations in the inner city.
Speaker 2: I mean, I talk to people who appreciate the police.
Speaker 2: So I think that some of these anti police a
Speaker 2: bias that we're seeing is perpetuated by special interest groups,
Speaker 2: groups that are pushing an agenda, good or bad. I'm
Speaker 2: not judging their agenda, but they've found that they can
Speaker 2: get their message in the media very effectively. But I
Speaker 2: don't think that anti police sentiment is as widespread as
Speaker 2: we might think. I don't and I quotes well, I'll
Speaker 2: leave it at that. I think that that the people
Speaker 2: that we might think our most against the police really
Speaker 2: appreciate the police.
Speaker 6: It was interesting to point out what you're saying is
Speaker 6: that al Sharpton was ready to pillar Jim Simone, but
Speaker 6: when he found out that the victim was white, he
Speaker 6: abandoned it. Which is very interesting.
Speaker 2: Uh, right, the Hackworts shooting, he requested Jim's personnel file,
Speaker 2: found out that Hackworth was Caucasian and dropped it, dropped
Speaker 2: the request.
Speaker 7: That's amazing.
Speaker 6: Just before I let you go, Robert, what is the
Speaker 6: story of Jim Simone today? What's Jim Simone doing today?
Speaker 6: Tell us about that.
Speaker 2: Jim still patrolling. He's working for a couple of suburban
Speaker 2: Cleveland police departments. He's working midnights, sixty seven year old
Speaker 2: years old. He still does a midnight shift. Then he's
Speaker 2: serving warrants for a Cleveland agency. He's still working. He's
Speaker 2: still out there hustling. Still uh, still be in the
Speaker 2: sheep God.
Speaker 6: Yeah, amazing. I want to thank you for coming on
Speaker 6: and talking about Badge three eighty seven. He really is
Speaker 6: a story of America's most decorated cop. But this is
Speaker 6: one colorful, actually very humorous kind of guy as well.
Speaker 6: But just what an indomitable spirit this man has and
Speaker 6: a real, a real you know, a real a good cop,
Speaker 6: basically giving cops a good name everywhere This is one
Speaker 6: of those stories, and in the in the face of
Speaker 6: police being criticized everywhere and all being lumped into the
Speaker 6: same mold as as the bad cop will say or
Speaker 6: the cop that's it's irresponsible, this is an incredible story
Speaker 6: of a very very decorated cop and very very deserving
Speaker 6: of that. So I want to thank you very much
Speaker 6: and coming on and talking about Jim Simoni, America's most
Speaker 6: decorated cop.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Robert for this, Thank you Dan,
Speaker 2: thank you for having me on.
Speaker 6: Okay, thank you very much, and good
Speaker 2: Night, good night.