Taken from JRE #1943 w/Joel Turner:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/1YDa8RfIGtJAjTIrP1yDDa?si=8e0913816ec24d52

When it comes down to like life or death stuff, that's where, you know, you're a very determined person just in the way you live your life.

So That's how you get to where you get to.

It's the first ingredient in this whole control factor is having enough determination to do that.

You have a why as to why you're doing this.

But it is the mindset of most cops because they don't have a why.

in a gunfight or a shooting, their why is artificial, right?

And that's, it's scary the first time that you do that, you know, having that why and seeing like, I was in

a HR where I, you know, had to use lethal force on a person that was, I had to put a round this far from another human being's face, right?

So when I do training on the team, it's like, you guys don't understand when you're, when you see, when you're looking through your optic at a reticle and there's somebody's face on the edge of the...

I mean, their face is fully in your scope

and the reticle's right on the edge, right?

And you have to put the round past their head.

So that's your why for all this tactical training that you do.

But if you've never been there and done that, you have to learn how to manufacture determination.

Can you imagine what failure would be in that situation?

told me about the guy who was methed out.

So I got a SWAT call out of a hostage rescue.

There was an unarmed barricaded subject with a hostage.

That's all the information you get on the call out.

I get there and it was weird because on the brief, I walked up to the house and the SWAT commander briefed me at the head of the garage there, and it was light colored concrete.

You know, we didn't have a bunch of lights on because the operation is active in that house right there, but the room was in kind of the back of the house.

And I remember he's talking to me, tell me the situation.

I'm like, what is all that stuff on the ground, right?

And I'm looking at these dark patches on the ground.

So I turn my flashlight on and it's blood.

There's blood all over the place on this, on the walkway down from the garage.

And he's like, well, this guy stabbed his cousin and then took his own daughter hostage.

Used her as a human shield with a knife to her.

So that's how SWAT got called and all this stuff.

I'm up on a ladder over a wood fence, and we're about, I'm only like 15 yards from the from the window, but we can't see anything in the window and The negotiator is on the phone with this guy and he's not really making a lot of sense He wants to talk to his girlfriend blah blah blah He's got the his daughter in there with him and we can hear her through the wall, right?

We can hear her, sometimes she's screaming, sometimes she's crying, sometimes she's laughing.

So we don't know what is going on in there, right?

And this goes on for, the negotiators are on the phone with him for a while.

And then finally the decision's made, like we have to get in there, because it's starting to go south in negotiations.

So you're worried he's going to stab his daughter.

I mean, he's already done that to his cousin, right?

I mean, stabbed him in the face and the legs and the arms.

When the cops, what happened is there was a big fight went on.

Then they realized the daughter was hiding behind a couch.

So they go back and they restack up, they go back in now he's got the daughter around the waist, using her as a human shield, knife to her and he kicks the door shut on a bedroom.

So I'm looking at this window, it's got blinds on it, you know, negotiations are going south, we lose comms with the guy.

So finally, we're like, we got to get comms with this dude, so we're gonna put a throw phone in.

So we put a throw phone, a throw phone's like a, it's like a box, It's got a phone in it so the negotiators can talk to the dude.

the right corner of the room, and I'm over this fence.

And the window guys are yelling at him to drop the girl, drop the knife, get him on the commands.

And he's kind of working his way along the wall.

He's got her around the waist so he would hold her up, up above, you know, so they can't get a shot.

And so he's moving his way across the wall and then he moves his way across this wall and ends up in this corner, sits down and pulls her up over the top of him.

And so the window's on the same wall as this corner, and I can't see any of

I'm like, they called fire priority to the window team.

So, because he's got, there's like 6 dudes at the window and nobody's shooting.

I'm like, why in the F are these guys not shooting?

Because I couldn't see what they saw, but that's what's going through my head.

So I get off the ladder, I run to this gate, and it's weird, the stuff you remember.

They had this, it was like 1 of those latch type of locks, and it had a bolt through it with the nut all the way buried, and this bolt was like, it felt like it was this long.

So I'm having to unscrew this fricking bolt, right?

I'm screwing, it's the finest threads I've ever felt, right?

So I'm unscrewing this bolt, finally, bing, I get that.

I go through the gate, I come around, I come up to the window and there was another officer that was, had his, basically his face planted against the window so that he could just barely see through the sliver because it was on the same wall.

And he wasn't shooting and I'm like, why are you not shooting?

And so we actually end up having to remove him off the ladder because I don't know what he was thinking.

We were giving him commands to get off the ladder so I could get up there and evaluate the situation.

It was a gas-operated .308, and lowest power on the scope was 4 1⁄2.

And I've told the admin years ago, I'm like, I need lower power because it's going to be close, probably, when it does happen, and sure enough, it was.

So I get up on this ladder, and I put my face against the wall, I can just see through the sliver, I can see him sitting and I can see her on, you know, sitting in his lap basically, and he's got his arm around her.

And so, and the team keeps giving him commands, and I'm looking at this shot

and I'm evaluating what's going on, and I'm thinking to myself, I'm going to have to shoot him left-handed.

And I'm thinking lowest power is 4 and a half.

So I'm thinking to myself, I'm going to have to shoot him with my pistol.

When you say optic check, is it because it's moving too much?

So there was a picture of something on the wall.

So I brought my rifle up and looked at it.

I'm like, this isn't, I don't have the right tool.

So I'm thinking I'm gonna have to shoot my handgun.

And then I'm thinking, I always preach, handguns suck for killing stuff, right?

So that's why I always tell my guys, Handguns suck for killing stuff.

We don't use handguns if we don't have to.

There's 6 guys standing at the window that have the

Because they all have their assault rifles.

so the first guy, and it just happened to be the guy that we pulled off the ladder I'm like give me a rifle he's like what go give me a rifle so we we swap rifles and he says HK 416 and the reason he said that was because on HK 416 if you flip the safety twice you go to full auto.

And so I got up and the window's broken at this point.

So when you step up to the window, you're literally walking on broken glass.

Okay, so I step up, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, the glass all pops underneath my feet.

And I push the rifle, I got to shoot left-handed, right?

So I push the rifle in and I come around the corner.

Now, the rifle butt is in my bicep with somebody else's rifle, right?

But I know this rifle is zeroed because it has to be zeroed because to get through my qualification a month earlier, it had to be zeroed, right?

But I also knew that you got to aim 2 and a half inches higher than where you want to hit because that's a mechanical Offset right difference between bore height and sight height 2 and a half inches So I pushed the rifle in the window and I come around the corner and I look and the little girl is looking right at Me right

because all the broken glass So she's looking right at me and I bring the reticle up and it's full pop brightness.

because it's, he had it set for a white light shot.

So when you turn your super bright flashlight on, on your rifle, it will, it will blur out your reticle.

So you got to have your reticle turned way up Well, he had it set for a white light shot, but I wasn't gonna do a white light shot.

So I looked at him like oh No So just like you're thinking your thing didn't turn on when you're looking at this nil guy, I'm looking at this red sun in a dimly lit room.

So I pulled the rifle back out of the window.

And now I got to work on the buttons on this site.

So now I got to find the button that dims the red dot.

So I'm messing around with this thing, and the whole team is outside, and they're watching this, right, because they're going to go on my shot.

Now, this dude had the door barricaded with a TV and a TV stand, all that stuff.

So they were going to have to hit the door hard, but they were going to get a running start at it.

But I moved them out because they were right on the other side of the door, but I didn't know if my round was going to go through the wall or not.

So they're all watching this shit show, basically, of me on this optic.

And they're thinking, what are you doing, Turner?

So I mess with the buttons and I finally get to the right 1.

So I go back up to the window, you know, glass breaks again, pop, pop, pop underneath my feet.

I don't know, because he was, I mean, who knows what kind of mental state he was in.

That's why I didn't turn on any lights or anything.

So I come around the corner again, and I look in there, I'm like, okay, I got the right brightness, but it's too close, right?

Like her head was like an inch, because what I'm looking at is this.

And remember that almost, so this was on, this was in December, a year earlier, it was 364 days after

I made that decision in that tree stand when I mapped things, right?

So now between 14, December of 14 and December of 15, now I'm, I have control

of what's going on and I made that vow Right long ago that I'm not gonna shoot an uncontrolled shot So I come around the corner and I'm looking and she's

of course looking at me and it's close I'm like nah, I'm gonna do that.

So I'm waiting and Then he moves his head back, right?

half inches of mechanical offset, but his face is all covered in hair, like this giant mop of hair.

So I couldn't see the geography of his face at all.

Like I'm going, I want to put it in his eyeball, but I don't, I can't see it, Right?

So I'm just going by the curvature of his forehead.

And then when I'm working on rifle stuff, it's kind of an audible exhale.

So, I put it 2 and a half inches over where I

Boink, and he pops it back against the back of her head.

And it's funny, the stuff you remember, because I remember his hair swishing.

So now he's back and it's too close again.

Now I've got better, you know, it's faster for me to aim where I need to aim.

So it but worst-case scenario in terms of tension in terms of consequences It messed up guy right knife to this girl.

I mean, it's just the whole that was the culmination of everything

Because now I'm like this is no bullshit, right?

This is how to concentrate in high-stress events, right?

So And it was cool because I had lots of high-level military operators that I was able to bounce ideas off of.

Because I'm not getting in gunfights every day.

So I go, hey, man, is this real or is this not real?

They're like, yeah, how'd you figure that out?

And so I was able to bounce things off of people that had been there and done that.

And that's, when you're looking for solving a problem, you have to find those people that have solved it before.

But it's so rare to find somebody that solved it before and blueprinted how they did it.

You know, that's what's rare in the instruction and just in life in general.

You know, there's lots of mentors out there that have been there and done that in whatever field you're looking for, but did they blueprint it?


Speaker 0: The Jerogen Experience. When it comes down to like life or death stuff, that's where, you know, you're a very determined person just in the way you live your life. It's Cam, very determined person, right? So That's how you get to where you get to. It's the first ingredient in this whole control factor is having enough determination to do that.

And like you have a why. You have a why as to why you're doing this. My why was I was scared to

Speaker 1: death, man, in the sniper world. I was like, man,

Speaker 0: I hope it doesn't go bad.

Speaker 1: And I'm like, that can't be the mindset. Holy mackerel.

Speaker 0: But it is the mindset of most cops because they don't have a why. You know, if a cop's never been

Speaker 1: in a gunfight or a shooting, their why is artificial, right? And that's, it's scary the first time that you do that, you know, having that why and seeing like, I was in

Speaker 0: a HR where I, you know, had to use lethal force on a person that was, I had to put a round this far from another human being's face, right? And it was, that's my why. So when I do training on the team, it's like, you guys don't understand when you're, when you see, when you're looking through your optic at a reticle and there's somebody's face on the edge of the... I mean, their face is fully in your scope

Speaker 1: and the reticle's right on the edge, right?

Speaker 0: And you have to put the round past their head. That's your why, right? So that's your why for all this tactical training that you do. But if you've never been there and done that, you have to learn how to manufacture determination. Can you imagine what failure would be in that situation?

Speaker 2: Well, tell the story, if

Speaker 3: you don't mind,

Speaker 2: the story you

Speaker 3: told me about the guy who was methed out.

Speaker 0: Yeah. So I got a SWAT call out of a hostage rescue. There was an unarmed barricaded subject with a hostage. And you never know. That's all the information you get on the call out.

Right. So we go there. I get there and it was weird because on the brief, I walked up to the house and the SWAT commander briefed me at the head of the garage there, and it was light colored concrete. It's dark. You know, we didn't have a bunch of lights on because the operation is active in that house right there, but the room was in kind of the back of the house.

And I remember he's talking to me, tell me the situation. And I'm looking on the ground and

Speaker 1: I'm like, what is all that stuff on the ground, right?

Speaker 0: And I'm looking at these dark patches on the ground. So I turn my flashlight on and it's blood. There's blood all over the place on this, on the walkway down from the garage. I'm like, what is up with that? And he's like, well, this guy stabbed his cousin and then took his own daughter hostage.

Used her as a human shield with a knife to her. So that's how SWAT got called and all this stuff. So I get there, and I got to be... I'm up on a ladder over a wood fence, and we're about, I'm only like 15 yards from the from the window, but we can't see anything in the window and The negotiator is on the phone with this guy and he's not really making a lot of sense He wants to talk to his girlfriend blah blah blah He's got the his daughter in there with him and we can hear her through the wall, right? We can hear her, sometimes she's screaming, sometimes she's crying, sometimes she's laughing.

So we don't know what is going on in there, right? And this goes on for, the negotiators are on the phone with him for a while. And then finally the decision's made, like we have to get in there, because it's starting to go south in negotiations. And we lost comms with the guy.

Speaker 2: So you're worried he's going to stab his daughter.

Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, we don't... I mean, he's already done that to his cousin, right? I mean, stabbed him in the face and the legs and the arms. Big Ka-Bar knife.

It was... It was not a good situation. So yeah, and he's already used her

Speaker 1: as a human shield, right?

Speaker 0: When the cops, what happened is there was a big fight went on. The cops got in, got everybody out. Then they realized the daughter was hiding behind a couch. So they go back and they restack up, they go back in now he's got the daughter around the waist, using her as a human shield, knife to her and he kicks the door shut on a bedroom. That's what starts the SWAT call out.

So I'm looking at this window, it's got blinds on it, you know, negotiations are going south, we lose comms with the guy. So finally, we're like, we got to get comms with this dude, so we're gonna put a throw phone in. So we put a throw phone, a throw phone's like a, it's like a box, It's got a phone in it so the negotiators can talk to the dude. And so we put that in there. My buddy rips the blinds out.

We rip the blinds out. There's the dude again. I can't see him because I can only

Speaker 1: see like half the room. And he's in

Speaker 0: the right corner of the room, and I'm over this fence. And the window guys are yelling at him to drop the girl, drop the knife, get him on the commands. And he's kind of working his way along the wall. He's got her around the waist so he would hold her up, up above, you know, so they can't get a shot. And so he's moving his way across the wall and then he moves his way across this wall and ends up in this corner, sits down and pulls her up over the top of him.

And so the window's on the same wall as this corner, and I can't see any of

Speaker 1: this stuff. I'm the sniper team leader. So I work my way around, and

Speaker 0: I get to this gate. I'm like, they called fire priority to the window team. I'm like, I'm on the wrong team. Right? So, because he's got, there's like 6 dudes at the window and nobody's shooting.

I'm like, why in the F are these guys not shooting? Because I couldn't see what they saw, but that's what's going through my head. So I get off the ladder, I run to this gate, and it's weird, the stuff you remember. They had this, it was like 1 of those latch type of locks, and it had a bolt through it with the nut all the way buried, and this bolt was like, it felt like it was this long. So I'm having to unscrew this fricking bolt, right?

I'm screwing, it's the finest threads I've ever felt, right? So I'm unscrewing this bolt, finally, bing, I get that. I go through the gate, I come around, I come up to the window and there was another officer that was, had his, basically his face planted against the window so that he could just barely see through the sliver because it was on the same wall. And he wasn't shooting and I'm like, why are you not shooting? And so we actually end up having to remove him off the ladder because I don't know what he was thinking.

He wasn't hearing us. We were giving him commands to get off the ladder so I could get up there and evaluate the situation. And I'm shooting my sniper rifles. It was a gas-operated .308, and lowest power on the scope was 4 1⁄2. And I've told the admin years ago, I'm like, I need lower power because it's going to be close, probably, when it does happen, and sure enough, it was.

So I get up on this ladder, and I put my face against the wall, I can just see through the sliver, I can see him sitting and I can see her on, you know, sitting in his lap basically, and he's got his arm around her. And so, and the team keeps giving him commands, and I'm looking at this shot

Speaker 1: and I'm evaluating what's going on, and I'm thinking to myself, I'm going to have to shoot him left-handed. And I'm thinking lowest power is 4 and a half. So I do an optic check on the wall. I'm like, that ain't going to work. So I'm thinking to myself, I'm going to have to shoot him with my pistol.

Speaker 2: When you say optic check, is it because it's moving too much?

Speaker 0: No, because it's too much magnification. So there was a picture of something on the wall. So I brought my rifle up and looked at it. I'm like, that ain't gonna work. It was just blurry.

It's 4 and a half power. The shot's only 11 feet, like 12 feet,

Speaker 1: 11 feet. So

Speaker 0: I'm like, this isn't, I don't have the right tool. So I'm thinking I'm gonna have to shoot my handgun. And then I'm thinking, I always preach, handguns suck for killing stuff, right? So that's why I always tell my guys, Handguns suck for killing stuff. We don't use handguns if we don't have to.

I'm thinking, I got the wrong tool. What am I gonna do? So I'm thinking, wait a minute, stupid. There's 6 guys standing at the window that have the

Speaker 1: right tool, right? Because they all have their assault rifles. And

Speaker 0: so the first guy, and it just happened to be the guy that we pulled off the ladder I'm like give me a rifle he's like what go give me a rifle so we we swap rifles and he says HK 416 and the reason he said that was because on HK 416 if you flip the safety twice you go to full auto. Right? So don't want to do that. Right. In a precision environment.

Right? So I'm like, Roger that. And so I got up and the window's broken at this point. So when you step up to the window, you're literally walking on broken glass. Okay, so I step up, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, the glass all pops underneath my feet.

And I push the rifle, I got to shoot left-handed, right? So I push the rifle in and I come around the corner. Now, the rifle butt is in my bicep with somebody else's rifle, right? But I know this rifle is zeroed because it has to be zeroed because to get through my qualification a month earlier, it had to be zeroed, right? So I knew that things were good.

But I also knew that you got to aim 2 and a half inches higher than where you want to hit because that's a mechanical Offset right difference between bore height and sight height 2 and a half inches So I pushed the rifle in the window and I come around the corner and I look and the little girl is looking right at Me right

Speaker 1: because all the broken glass So she's looking right at me and I bring the reticle up and it's full pop brightness. Right? I can't see anything

Speaker 0: because it's, he had it set for a white light shot. So when you turn your super bright flashlight on, on your rifle, it will, it will blur out your reticle. So you got to have your reticle turned way up Well, he had it set for a white light shot, but I wasn't gonna do a white light shot. So I looked at him like oh No So just like you're thinking your thing didn't turn on when you're looking at this nil guy, I'm looking at this red sun in a dimly lit room. And I'm like, this ain't gonna work.

So I pulled the rifle back out of the window. And now I got to work on the buttons on this site. Well, this isn't my rifle, right? So now I got to find the button that dims the red dot. So I'm messing around with this thing, and the whole team is outside, and they're watching this, right, because they're going to go on my shot.

Now, this dude had the door barricaded with a TV and a TV stand, all that stuff. So they were going to have to hit the door hard, but they were going to get a running start at it. But I moved them out because they were right on the other side of the door, but I didn't know if my round was going to go through the wall or not. So I moved them out. So we got them out.

So they're all watching this shit show, basically, of me on this optic. And they're thinking, what are you doing, Turner? Right? And I'm

Speaker 1: thinking, I'm like, I just gotta

Speaker 0: get this thing turned down, right? So I mess with the buttons and I finally get to the right 1. So I'm like, okay, good. So I go back up to the window, you know, glass breaks again, pop, pop, pop underneath my feet. I come around the corner.

Does this

Speaker 2: guy know you're there?

Speaker 0: I don't know, because he was, I mean, who knows what kind of mental state he was in. And I was trying not to be too... That's why I didn't turn on any lights or anything. So I come around the corner again, and I look in there, I'm like, okay, I got the right brightness, but it's too close, right? Like her head was like an inch, because what I'm looking at is this.

So like this is the back of her head. I'm looking at his eyeball.

Speaker 1: Oh, wow. So I got like an inch. I'm like, nah, it's too close.

Speaker 0: And remember that almost, so this was on, this was in December, a year earlier, it was 364 days after

Speaker 1: I made that decision in that tree stand when I mapped things, right? So now between 14, December of 14 and December of 15, now I'm, I have control

Speaker 0: of what's going on and I made that vow Right long ago that I'm not gonna shoot an uncontrolled shot So I come around the corner and I'm looking and she's

Speaker 1: of course looking at me and it's close I'm like nah, I'm gonna do that. So I'm waiting and Then he moves his head back, right? I'm like, okay 2 and a

Speaker 0: half inches of mechanical offset, but his face is all covered in hair, like this giant mop of hair. So I couldn't see the geography of his face at all. Like I'm going, I want to put it in his eyeball, but I don't, I can't see it, Right? So I'm just going by the curvature of his forehead. I know I got to aim 2 and

Speaker 1: a half inches over that. So I put it up there. Safety's off. Fingers on the trigger.

Speaker 0: It's a two-stage trigger. So I took the first stage out. Here I go. I remember saying that. And then when I'm working on rifle stuff, it's kind of an audible exhale.

So, right? So, that's my concentration guidance. So, I put it 2 and a half inches over where I

Speaker 1: wanted to hit. Safety's off. Takes the stage out

Speaker 0: of the trigger, here I go.

Speaker 1: And he moves his head back, right? Boink, and he pops it back against the back of her head. And it's funny, the stuff you remember, because I remember his hair swishing. Right? And he's...

So now he's back and it's too close again. So I'm like, I'm waiting. And he moves his head back again. So he moves his head back again. Now I've got better, you know, it's faster for me to aim where I need to aim.

So I put it where I need to. Stage is out, Here I go. Mmm, and the shot broke and

Speaker 2: the rest is history. So it but worst-case scenario in terms of tension in terms of consequences It messed up guy right knife to this girl.

Speaker 1: I mean, it's just the whole that was the culmination of everything

Speaker 0: That was the start of shot IQ

Speaker 1: Because now I'm like this is no bullshit, right?

Speaker 0: This is how to concentrate in high-stress events, right? So And it was cool because I had lots of high-level military operators that I was able to bounce ideas off of. Because I'm not getting in gunfights every day. So I go, hey, man, is this real or is this not real? They're like, yeah, how'd you figure that out?

I'm like, I don't know. I'm just a dumb cop, man, just thinking. And so I was able to bounce things off of people that had been there and done that. And that's, when you're looking for solving a problem, you have to find those people that have solved it before. But it's so rare to find somebody that solved it before and blueprinted how they did it.

You know, that's what's rare in the instruction and just in life in general. You know, there's lots of mentors out there that have been there and done that in whatever field you're looking for, but did they blueprint it?

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Former SWAT Sniper Recounts His Most Intense Hostage Situation