TJ Webb: Getting Back To Where He Wants To Be

00:04
Brent Hinson
Between the lines with Virtual Academy. We all have a story to tell. Welcome inside. Another episode of between the Lines with Virtual Academy. We’re a podcast going beyond the badge to allow members of law enforcement, public safety and first response a place to tell their stories and also talk about the cases that have impacted their lives. As always, glad to have you listen in each week, and hopefully you’re a subscriber to the podcast. You can get episodes as soon as they’re released each and every Tuesday morning. I’m your co host, Brent Henson. And you know, sometimes in life we find ourselves in a slump. It’s not something we can necessarily define or even explain.

00:46
Brent Hinson
But then you hear a story not unlike the one we’re going to hear today, that serves as a catalyst for a change in our own attitude, one that inspires us to look inward, to take stock of our lives and cultivate a mindset of appreciation and gratitude. Our guest today is a retired law enforcement officer who gave of himself during his 20 year career and despite the circumstances that ultimately ended that career, continues to give of himself as a way to maintain that level of service associated with those in law enforcement. And Michael Warren. There are days when I have a pity party or I think I have it rough, and then I hear remarkable stories about the resiliency that certain individuals exhibit. And I’m somewhat embarrassed at the shallowness of my thinking. I don’t know about you today we’re.

01:44
Michael Warren
Going to talk to somebody who was resilient through a situation that you and I have talked before, that we don’t know if we would have done as well. And then we go back to our guests from last week. Miles, you ever met those people? It just seems like they seem to operate with 34 hours in a day instead of 24 hours in a day simply because of the effort that they put for it. And I think that’s what we’re going to find today is another person who just works hard. And unfortunately, a lot of times these folks, people talk about the fact that they’ve got talent or they’re just built different. It takes away from the fact how much work they put into it because this stuff isn’t easy.

02:22
Brent Hinson
Yeah. And really, sometimes you don’t know what you’re capable of until you’re put in a situation, too. I know. I found that out. You don’t know how strong you actually are until you have to go through something really tough.

02:35
Michael Warren
What is it? Turmoil and stress doesn’t build character. It reveals it. And I think that’s what we’re going to find today was the true character of our guest was revealed.

02:45
Brent Hinson
Yeah. Well, our guest today served as a law enforcement officer for 20 years with the Milford, Delaware Police department before medically retiring last year resulting from being shot six times, serving an arrest warrant with the Marshals Task force in December 2020, his injuries were so severe, doctors were unsure what the outcome would be. Today, he’s going to walk us through the event that led to those injuries and through his story, explain to all of us exactly what that outcome was and how he uses it to help others. We are, and this is an understatement. Honored to have him as our guest. We welcome TJ Webb to between the lines? Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story with us today.

03:32
TJ Webb
Yes, sir. Thank you guys for having me on. I really appreciate it.

03:34
Michael Warren
Hey, TJ, I asked most of our guests this, and I want to give you the same opportunity. How did you come to be involved in law enforcement? What was it that drew you into the career?

03:46
TJ Webb
Man, honestly, growing up, there wasn’t a lot that interested me. I just didn’t know what I wanted to do. And then as I got through high school a little further, law enforcement started appealing to me a little more kind of gravitating towards law enforcement. I didn’t have any family in law enforcement, but they had family friends that were law enforcement. So I was around it quite a bit, and I started down a path while I was in high school. Actually, there’s some police departments in my area, vacation area, where we have, like, seasonal police officer programs. So you can start there at 18, kind of do some parking tickets and some small misdemeanor crimes and whatnot. So I started out with that, gave it a try.

04:28
TJ Webb
I liked it, stayed with it for a couple of years, and then as soon as I turned 21, I was in police academy.

04:34
Michael Warren
And those programs, whether they’re seasonal police officers or cadet programs or police service aides or whatever, I am such a big advocate of those because it gives both sides a chance to have a peek behind the curtain. The agency gets to see a little bit about you, and you get to see a little bit about the agency and the profession, because the truth is, if you get that peak and you decide it’s not for you, we don’t want to waste the resources in sending you to a police academy.

05:00
TJ Webb
Right? Yeah, it’s a great program. I enjoyed it a lot. I saw a lot of people that did it with me, and they didn’t like it, which is great because it gives you an opportunity to see what you kind of like before you commit to a six month academy or whatever it may be.

05:16
Michael Warren
Now, I saw an article that was written about the incident you were involved in, and we’ll talk about the incident shortly. But one of the things that it seems like was emphasized in the article was that when you were growing up and you got into high school, you were really involved in sports. And so I like people coming into the profession that have played sports because it teaches them so much. Did sports help you at all as you were making the transition into policing?

05:42
TJ Webb
Yeah, I was an athlete definitely growing up, that’s all I cared about was sports. And then as I got in, it definitely helped me getting into law enforcement. And then I think, like anyone else in law enforcement, I think you would agree that once you get into it’s definitely hard to keep up on fitness. So I went through a period of that in the early stages of my career. It was just hard to keep up on and I got back into it later. But that’ll come along in the story.

06:08
Michael Warren
As we know, TJ one of the things I saw recently and we’re not here to badmouth any agencies, but there was an officer who was killed and the family is now suing because they said that the fatigue that was brought on by the mandated overtime, the amount of mandated overtime played a role in his death. So when you talk about keeping up on physical fitness, I’ve been retired since 2018, and I would imagine that’s even harder for people that are on the job now simply because they really do have fewer hours available to do that activity.

06:43
TJ Webb
Oh, for sure, yeah. I mean, you got to look at I don’t know, everywhere is different. Where I work, where I’m at. We work twelve hour shifts, you add overtime. On top of that, you court in on top of that. I mean, finding time to work out, it’s a long day. And to keep up your energy levels, to be well rested to do the job. It’s a grind to keep all that in and then keep it on a straight line for sure.

07:04
Michael Warren
People fail to recognize sometimes that there is a direct tie in between physical health and mental health. When you’re more physically fit, the more resilient you are likely to be on the psychological side. Not all the time, but most of the time. And when we neglect either of them.

07:21
TJ Webb
Bad things can happen 100%. And that’s something you’ll hear a little bit about in my story, is mental health. Mental fitness, as I call it, physical fitness is huge in all aspects of life. Not just your health, but your mental health as well. It prepares you for everything. It prepares you for hard things in life. If you’re in the gym, working out, putting your body and your mind through that kind of stress, it prepares you for the things that life throws at you down the road.

07:49
Michael Warren
Speaking of things that life throws at you, even though you’d been a seasonal police officer, when you turned 21 and you got the full time job, you had to go to a police academy. How was the police academy for you?

08:00
TJ Webb
It wasn’t terrible. I mean, I was 21. I didn’t really know what to expect. I never did military or anything like that, so I didn’t really know what to expect. But it wasn’t bad. I had a large class. I think we had, like, 52 guys in my class, so it wasn’t bad. It starts out rough. The first six weeks were pretty rough, and after that, you kind of just get used to the grind of it and realize it’s a game. You just go in there and you play the game and do the best you can and get out of there.

08:25
Brent Hinson
Non law enforcement, I expect there to be some guy who makes sounds with his voice and tackleberry kind of guy. That’s what I think goes on.

08:34
TJ Webb
Well, you probably have some of that. I’m sure there’s some of that. You definitely have some characters in there with you, for sure.

08:40
Michael Warren
The grind is the phrase that you used, I think we often forget because we’re kind of a TikTok world now with these 1520 2nd highlights that life many times is a grind. Even when things are going well, it can be a grind. And being able to keep that energy up, as you put it, is so important both on the professional side and on the personal side, because the truth is, if you burn it all up when you’re at work, you’re probably a pretty lousy dad and husband and wife and all those things right there.

09:15
TJ Webb
100%, yeah. I mean, life’s tough. It’s not meant to be easy, right? I mean, it is what it is. Life throws things at you. You got to be prepared for it. You got to know how to handle it. It’s a ride, but it’s a short ride, and you just got to make the best of it and then do what you can and have some fun.

09:29
Michael Warren
I like to say that life was meant to be meaningful, and in order to be meaningful, it requires input from you, and oftentimes that input is difficult. If we approach it that way, whether you’re in policing, whether you’re in the fire service, no matter what your job, you get much better results.

09:49
TJ Webb
Yeah. All right.

09:50
Michael Warren
You get out of the police academy, you get assigned. What was your first assignment before I.

09:54
TJ Webb
Made it to Milford? I actually worked at two smaller agencies, a couple of years at one, a couple of years at another. Then I finally made it to Milford, and both those I worked patrol at both those agencies, and finally I made it to Milford. I started out in patrol there as well, worked my way up through an array of special units throughout my career. My agency was about 40, so special units are it’s hard to get in special units there because it’s a small group, not a lot of spots. But I was very fortunate. Made it through patrol, made my way to Criminal investigations, narcotics, canine, SWAT, and then eventually the Marshals Task Force. So I was very fortunate in my career.

10:36
Michael Warren
Now, I never was a canine officer what’s it like having that animal in the vehicle with you?

10:43
TJ Webb
The first day you get it scares the shit out of you. I was scared of death, man. I picked that beast up. I didn’t know what the hell I was getting myself into, man. He was huge. But it’s awesome, man. Once you get into it and realize what it’s about, and you realize the dog’s your budy, he’s your friend, you become a team. It’s an awesome experience. People always ask me, what was more fun, canine or like, the Marshalls Task Force? And I would say my answer to that is the Marshalls was way more fun, but canine was way more rewarding than anything else I had done.

11:21
Michael Warren
All right, so then a question here, because, again, I’ve never been a canine officer. Do canine officers talk to their dogs when they’re on patrol? Do you talk to them like you would if you’d have had a human partner in there?

11:33
TJ Webb
Oh, yeah, for sure I do. Yeah, I did 100%. Just like he was a person. I mean, I sit there and have chitchats with him, long talks, whatever was bothering me, whatever. Just like talking to him like he was a person having fun, too. I mean, it’s just one of those things.

11:47
Michael Warren
I remember us always dogging on the dog handlers when it had the dogs that would as soon as they keyed up, the mic would always be barking and they’d forget to unkey the mic before they’re telling the dog, be quiet. And you’d get that on the radio traffic, having that ready made partner. Because we rode single officers at my agency and most of the agencies around here do, having that ready made backup, I think it emboldens officers to go out there and be more proactive in their work. Did you find that to be the case?

12:16
TJ Webb
Yeah, definitely. I mean, the dog had to earn my trust, and I had to earn his trust, and that happened. And I was confident whatever situation I was in, if he was there, he was going to have my back. And he proved that to me time and time again.

12:28
Michael Warren
Brent, I’m going to speak philosophically here for a second. It’s funny because I often hear canine handlers talking about that earning each other’s trust, and we talk about it with the dog, but very often when we’re talking about other human beings, our partners, we just expect them to trust us, right? And it’s weird. We don’t do a whole lot. It’s like we don’t go through the dating phase of trying to earn each other’s trust and respect. But that’s incredibly important, because if you’re a canine handler, you need to feel when your dog is acting different, don’t you? When you’re out there on a track, for example, if the dog starts acting out of the norm, that’s when you have to start really paying attention, isn’t it?

13:06
TJ Webb
Oh, yeah. You need to pay attention. Your dog, you need to know his actions, what’s bothering him, how it’s bothering him. And the same thing goes with us. They always teach you that your emotions run down the lead, they run down the leash, right? And your dog can sense how you’re feeling, how you’re acting. He can sense your emotions. And it’s the same pheromones, right?

13:26
Brent Hinson
That’s what they can pick up on that stuff.

13:28
TJ Webb
They can pick up on that stuff. Man therapy dogs, they know when you’re sad. They know when you’re happy, right? They know that. They can sense. And it’s no different when they’re work dogs. They can sense that.

13:38
Michael Warren
Can I just throw an unrelated story in here about animals picking up on those things? My sister loved riding horses, and she was stationed in Fort Campbell, Kentucky. So my mom and I went out to visit her, and she wanted to take us horse riding. So you had these stables that you could rent a horse. And I went to the person, I said, I want the oldest, slowest horse that you have. And so they gave me this horse, and I promise you, the horse could feel the fear running through the saddle, okay? Because as soon as we got over the hill on that trail and he couldn’t be seen, the horse stopped. And no matter what I did, I could not make the horse move.

14:14
Michael Warren
And about half an hour later, the rest of the group, they came back, and my horse just fell in line. And so literally, it was just but I think you’re right that animals can sense that. And you guys, canines, they train more often. I think that’s one thing that the public maybe doesn’t understand is the amount of training that goes into the canine handler and the dog so that you can develop that.

14:35
TJ Webb
Oh, yes, constant training. I mean, you have, like, for where I’m at, the initial training is six months, and then you get out, you have your monthly training, which I think we had two days a month. But aside from all that, it’s an everyday job with that dog. He lives with you. He’s a family member. He’s not a pet. He’s a family member, and he’s your partner, so you have to take care of him every day. You have to train with him every day. It’s not like you just, oh, we have training today, so we’ll train, and then two weeks later, you go train again. No, it’s constant. It’s an everyday grind with that dog.

15:08
Michael Warren
And now, Brent, I’m going to give you just a little bit of warning here, okay? Whenever a canine officer comes up to you and they have a big smile on their face and they say, hey, I want to ask you a question before they ask a question, just go ahead and give them the answers. No, because probably what they’re trying to do, the reason they’re being nice, is they want you to put on the bite sleeve.

15:29
TJ Webb
That’s a fact. That’s a fact.

15:31
Michael Warren
But most people, once they do it, once they’re not doing it again, and eventually they run out of targets.

15:36
Brent Hinson
Is it that bad? I’ve seen videos. It doesn’t look pleasant, but I maybe.

15:41
Michael Warren
Want to experience it doesn’t necessarily hurt, but the sight of this dog, and it always happens in slow motion, the dog running towards you, and my arm is not long enough to get it as far away from my body as I want to. Just be wary of those guys just saying because they’re sneaky sons of guns. But I do want to talk to you about the assignment to the Marshals Task Force. And before we talk about the incident again, explain to our listeners what a marshals task force does.

16:13
TJ Webb
Okay. So us. Marshal Service, it’s a federal agency. And what they do is they have a program called they have a fugitive task force, right? So what they do is they link in with other agencies, whether it’s municipal or state or whatever it may be, and they bring you on as a task force officer. So basically, they swear you in as, like a special deputy. So you now have authority as a US. Marshal when you’re operating in whatever you’re operating in within whatever mission you’re on. Right. So our job with the Marshals Task Force was to track and locate violent felons, anything from homicides to rape suspects, robberies, burglaries, anything of that nature.

16:55
Michael Warren
I think a lot of people, perhaps not in the law enforcement world, but I think in the civilian world, I don’t think that they have an understanding of the importance that task force officers play in federal law enforcement. Because if the truth is, if there were no task force officers, the ability of our federal law enforcement agencies would be significantly reduced.

17:19
TJ Webb
Oh, yeah, for sure. If you didn’t have the task force officers, you wouldn’t have a violent felony task force. If you didn’t have the officers from outside agencies to come in and join that. There’s just not enough resources within the Marshal Service for them to do that alone.

17:36
Michael Warren
Another thing on the marshal side, I think one of the biggest advantages of being a TFO with a marshal’s task force, as opposed to an actual US. Marshal is that you don’t have to do the courtroom stuff. Most of them serve six months doing fugitive apprehension, that type of work right there. But the other six months is spent handling federal prisoners inside federal courthouses, which I can’t think of anything I would rather do less.

18:03
TJ Webb
Yeah, it’s actually a small percentage of them that actually are on the fugitive task force. It’s a small percentage. A lot of their stuff is courtroom and security and whatnot like that.

18:12
Michael Warren
But because the marshals, again, they depend on TFOs like you to fill their ranks so that they can go out and do that. But a lot of people would ask, then what are the advantages to local agencies and local communities by having their officers go and serve on those type task force? If I’m the chief of police, what’s in it for me? Allowing you to go because I lose you off the road or lose you out of the detective section. What’s the advantage to having you go and work with the marshals?

18:40
TJ Webb
Well, there’s a number of advantages. Technically, you’re somewhat losing an officer, but you’re also gaining whatever number of other officers to help you with fugitive cases. And sometimes fugitive cases, a lot of times they can roll into other kinds of cases too, whether it be drugs or guns or trafficking, whatever it may be. It also opens you up to federal grant money. There’s opportunity for your agency to receive certain types of grant funds with certain projects, so there’s a lot of benefits to it.

19:11
Michael Warren
I served with DEA as a task force officer, and one of the guys that I served with was a guy named Greg Yon who worked in an agency that was adjacent to ours. And he told me the story once where they had an officer that was killed in the line of duty because they had somebody assigned to the task force. You’ve got these groups that show up at their PD and say, what do you need from us? Whatever you need. You need us to work the front desk? We’ll ride double in your car so half your people can be off. Whatever it takes to support this. And he talked about a force multiplier at the time that the agency needed the most. Is one of the biggest benefits that they got from having people assigned there?

19:55
TJ Webb
Oh, yeah, for sure. We had a lot of case. Any case I had out of our city, that was a fugitive case. I mean, my PD didn’t have to worry about it. We had enough manpower to cover it without bringing in other guys from the road to help if we needed to. Just definitely an asset, for sure.

20:09
Michael Warren
And that’s a tremendous asset because quite honestly, it comes free. The agency is not having to pay for it. They are having to pay their officer, which oftentimes is underwritten by the federal government. I think that there are great programs, and I can’t speak for you, I’ll ask you in a second, but I cannot recommend highly enough for police chiefs to allow and seek out those types of partnerships because it will make your PD better.

20:36
TJ Webb
Oh, yeah. The Marshals, the DEA, the ATF, Homeland Security, they all have great task forces and they all have their own benefits to local and state PDS. For sure. They’re great programs, especially for smaller agencies. Smaller agencies can definitely better from them. I know it’s hard for some administrations to understand that they don’t have experience in it, but all it takes is to sit down with whoever the chief is of whatever that organization may be.

21:04
Michael Warren
Oftentimes get access to equipment you never would have had access to intelligence. It just makes your people broader and better when they do come back to the road. I would imagine that if you had been able to come back and serve as a patrol officer, as a detective, you would have been much better in both of those capacities because of the experience that you gained working with the.

21:26
TJ Webb
Task force experience, not to mention your training equipment, but your training opportunities. The training opportunities I had with the marshals was fantastic.

21:36
Michael Warren
What was it that I don’t know how it is in your agency when a position comes open like that, but however it was that you found out that, hey, we’ve got an opening on the Marshalls task force, was that something you had considered doing before or was it just like a thing? Man, that sounds interesting. I think I’m going to put in for that.

21:53
TJ Webb
So we actually had never had anybody on that task force before, I think in years past, on and off. We had a guy here or there that was on a DEA, and we hadn’t had that for probably at least ten years, if not longer at this point. So at the time I was in the drug unit, I was helping our criminal investigations unit out with a fugitive case, and they met with the Marshal Service one day. So I was talking to them and the guys seemed really cool and the job seemed cool. So I started talking to my Admin about, hey, maybe I could get on this task force. And then they’re like, well, you’re in the drug unit, so why wouldn’t we do the DEA? I was like, well, we had a future problem at the time.

22:33
TJ Webb
We had a lot of violent cases coming up in CI and whatnot a drug unit was doing fairly well at the time, and I just figured it was something new. We had done the DA. Let’s try something a little different. We met with the Marshal Service and talked it out and sounded good to them, so off I went.

22:49
Michael Warren
Think back day one with the marshals. Was it kind of like first day of high school? Because that’s the way I felt my first day. I felt kind of awkward walking into this new place and they spoke a different language and all this type of stuff. Was that how it was for you?

23:04
TJ Webb
Yeah, I mean, it was kind of like you don’t know what to expect because coming from a small agency, going to a federal agency, you kind of expect things to be a little tight. But then I got in there and got new guy, knew everybody pretty well, and I was like, man, these guys are more lax than they are at my PD. You know what I mean? You get comfortable pretty quick, it’s really nice. So it was a good time?

23:24
Michael Warren
Were you like me? Where it’s like, what are these words that they’re using? The first operation is, hey, make sure you do your six.

23:34
TJ Webb
Yeah. I never learned any of that shit. That was just too much. What is that?

23:38
Michael Warren
The worst thing with DEA was how they did their drug processing. It was the most mind numbing, meticulous way, and they had this evidence tape you got at the PD that you pull off and put that’s bad enough, but this stuff had to have been made from tissue paper that had sat in the sun for a couple of centuries. It was so breakable terrible. But on December 10, 2020, you guys are out your word, working. What were you specifically working on that day?

24:13
TJ Webb
So that day was just like any other work day. I mean, went out and did our I don’t even remember what we did during the day. We just went out and did our normal things, surveillance. I think we might have apprehended a fugitive that day. I can’t remember for sure, to be honest with you. We got home from work that day. I got home at, like it was around 05:00, which is kind of early for when I would usually get home, because we usually started the day pretty early and worked later into the evenings. We stayed pretty proactive on my team, and I got home around 05:00, getting dinner ready with the family and whatnot, and we get a text about a fugitive in the area from Pennsylvania that they wanted to try to apprehend.

24:49
TJ Webb
In the morning, Pennsylvania was going to come down with their task force, meet up with us at a certain location and see if we can grab this guy up. And at the time, the location was only about ten to 15 minutes from where I was living at that time. So I was like, I’ll just run over there with the vehicle description, drive through, just make sure the vehicle is there. I’ll get a quick little overtime gig here real quick. Easy money, right? So they’re like, yeah, go ahead, swing on over. Swing on over. See the car, verify it’s there. Take up a spot, take a picture of it, send up a chain, confirm it. And as I’m on the phone, my suit suspect walks out. It’s a motel. Suspect walks out of the motel.

25:30
TJ Webb
He’s got a girlfriend, two small kids with him, which is what the intel we had was. I’m not doing anything. I’m by myself, obviously. So they get in the car.

25:38
Michael Warren
For people who haven’t been ever one of these task force before, you start questioning officer safety and stuff like that, it is a matter of doing business that you’ll stop and check an address on the way downtown or to the office or something like that, or on your way home, you’ll check an address. There’s no intention of taking enforcement actions. It’s. Just a matter of being proficient and therefore you living close. You can go and gather intel which is going to make your team that much more proficient and efficient the next day. Is that accurate there?

26:10
TJ Webb
Yeah. If I’m ten minutes away from something, why wouldn’t I go out and check to make sure the intel we have is good to this point? That way you’re not running into it completely blind in the morning. You’re also not wasting people’s time driving hours down to meet you. To do this operation, you got to get as much information as you can. And if you’re minutes away from something where you can do that, why wouldn’t you do it? And just like, we’ll just go in the morning, but like you said, there’s no intent to take action on it. It’s an intelligence thing, right? It’s an intelligence thing. You want to go out and gather as much intel as you can to put forward in your op.

26:43
Michael Warren
The intel matches up. He’s got his girlfriend. There’s two small kids there. What do you do at that point? You see him? Now what?

26:50
TJ Webb
I’m just hanging out in my truck waiting for him to leave because I don’t want to look suspicious. I don’t want my vehicle to catch his eye where he sees it again in the morning maybe. And he’s like, what the hell this car doing? I just saw it last night. He knows he’s wanted. That’s why he’s not in Pennsylvania. That’s why he’s down here in a motel. Right.

27:05
Michael Warren
What was he wanted for? Did you know at the time?

27:08
TJ Webb
Yeah. So he was wanted for an attempted homicide out of Reading, Pennsylvania.

27:14
Michael Warren
Attempted homicide? Did you have any more info besides that? Who was involved or what? It was over or anything?

27:21
TJ Webb
At the time, I didn’t have all the information yet. I knew he was wanting for attempted homicide and they had intel I’ll just leave it at that he was at this certain motel.

27:32
Michael Warren
Hence, the Violent Crime Task force was who they called. So you see him, you’re sitting there waiting for him to leave because you don’t want to take a burn. What happened then?

27:41
TJ Webb
So he leaves. He leaves. I give it a few minutes just to make sure he’s cleared air. It sits on a highway down here, like a major highway we have. So I let him get out in the highway and get down the road before I leave. So I leave, head back home, get home, and it’s stewing with me. I’m just not liking it. I know what the guy’s wanted for now, I’ve confirmed where he’s at. We have a team available. I mean, it’s later in the evening, but that’s what we do. We come out all hours of the day to do this stuff, right? And now we’re just going to sit around until the morning to go see if we can apprehend this guy. What do mean you?

28:12
TJ Webb
Who’s to say some random cop doesn’t pull this guy over for a traffic violation, some stupid ass traffic violation, and then he doesn’t know what he’s dealing with. We know what we’re dealing with. So I kind of feel like it’s our obligation because it is it’s our job to go get this guy to prevent any further violence. Right. Talking over with a couple of guys on my team that the state has, I don’t know, we have a number of task force officers broken up in like, a north team and a south team. And my south team had I think there’s four of us. So I talked to two of those guys. One guy wasn’t available. He was on another assignment, and they agree with me. So I called the supervisor back. He’s okay with it.

28:50
TJ Webb
He calls up Pennsylvania and makes sure they’re okay with it because it’s their case, their fugitive. They’re like, yeah, if you guys feel like you can do it tonight, go ahead and do it. All right, I head back out. He’s not back yet because I’m pretty close. I get back before he’s there, so I take the same spot I had. Two other guys on my team are en route. They get there. We have a number of guys coming from the north end of the state. We have another number of guys coming from Maryland, which is close by. It’s only about 45 minutes, hour because we did a lot of work with those guys because they’re pretty close waiting for them. So I’m there, two partners are there with me. We’re sitting there for a little bit and vehicle pulls in.

29:30
TJ Webb
Now, at this point, before he got there, before he got back, we had to have a discussion on what’s our obstacle going to be here. Right. There’s only three of us at this point. So the thought was, if he comes back before the rest of the team gets here, what are we going to do? Are we going to try taking with the three of us? Are we going to wait there’s pros and cons to both, right? If we let him pull in the parking lot and head on inside to his room, wait for everybody else, now we’re going to the hotel to make contact with this guy. And what happens if we make contact at the door and now we’re taking shots through the door? We get into a shooting at the door, the threshold right now, he has a hostage situation, right?

30:12
TJ Webb
He has a murder suicide situation. He’s shooting at us through a hotel room door. We can’t shoot back because now we know we have innocent people in there. Not to mention the rounds that he’s shooting at us are going to go into other rooms where there’s other innocent people. So there’s a lot to think about there. If we do it in the parking lot with just the three of us yeah, it’s only the three of us. It’s not ideal for a vehicle assault, but it’s been done, we’ve done it before. And it’s going to be a little safer. I mean, you’re going to have the girlfriend, you’re going to have the kids there, but at this point, regardless of where you do it, you’re going to have them there, right?

30:45
TJ Webb
He’s not going to leave them, but it will be outside in the parking lot in an open air setting. There’s less people. It’s about 745 at night. It’s not crowded out there. So I feel like if something does go south, it’s a little less chance of something happening, some innocent people. So he pulls in the parking lot, comes in, kind of a high rate of speed, does a lap around the parking lot or not. The whole building has like a the parking lot goes around the whole building, right around the back. He goes around the back, does a loop. Obviously he’s doing some counter surveillance. So he pulls in the parking lot. He’s in the row in front of me, down just like a few spots. One partner is off to the right of the parking lot, which would be his passenger side.

31:25
TJ Webb
And then another partner is off to the left of the parking lot, which would be his driver’s side. So the thought is we’ll come in and we’ll do this vehicle pin. I’ll come in the rear, I’ll pin the rear of this vehicle. My one partner on the passenger side will come in, pin the passenger side doors, and obviously the guy on the driver’s side will come in and try to pin the driver’s side door. He couldn’t pin the driver’s side door because there was a vehicle unrelated in the parking lot parked directly next to him. So we go ahead and move in. I come in the rear of the vehicle. The angle I came in at to pin the back of his vehicle was a terrible angle. It wasn’t ideal. If I had a failure that night, this is where I failed, right?

32:03
TJ Webb
So I came in at a really bad angle tactically, and I don’t expect everybody to understand that, but I came in at angle where it left me exposed, right? So as soon as I opened up my driver’s side door, I’m looking basically down directly at where his door opened up, his driver’s side door right on that driver’s side of the car. So as I step out, I’m gun up already because this is a homicide suspect. So I’m prepared. And as soon as I step out of the vehicle, his door pops open and I see his hand come out and I see muzzle flashes. And at this point I’m about 6ft away, six 7ft, I’m taking rounds. As he’s come out on 2ft, throwing rounds back. I think my first round went into his door.

32:42
TJ Webb
My second two rounds struck him center mass in his chest. Didn’t even phase the dude. He just kept going like a machine.

32:49
Michael Warren
There is a misunderstanding on the part of a lot of people, including law enforcement officers, that handgun rounds are man stoppers. The best way I ever heard it described where handguns are tools to get to your rifle, because it’s only when rounds are traveling about 2300ft/second that you start to have that instantaneous damage. And how many times have you seen I bet you’ve seen it in your training where people will hit somebody one time if you’re doing force on force training, and they stop. And there’s been no change in behavior right there, yeah.

33:21
Brent Hinson
Was he on anything? Did he have any drugs in his system? Was that a factor?

33:25
TJ Webb
No, the only thing he had in the system was marijuana. No alcohol, no other hard drugs, nothing like that. Now, he just didn’t want to go back to jail.

33:32
Michael Warren
You see him, he’s putting rounds towards you. You’re putting rounds down range. You’re successful. What happens then?

33:37
TJ Webb
So, yeah, I land two rounds on him, center mass. He doesn’t feel it. It sounds like a long drown story, but this is a matter of seconds. So I end up taking six rounds. I took one in my hand, I took one in my left shoulder, I took two in my right arm. I took one in my femur, shattered my right femur. I took one off my chest, off my plate carrier that actually ricocheted and landed in my chin. Once my leg was struck, I fell, obviously. And when I fell, I landed on both my hands with all my gear. So now my left hand’s broke from a gunshot moving, and my right hand’s broke because I just crushed it with all my weight. So both my hands are inoperable. I can’t move a finger. I dropped my gun.

34:17
TJ Webb
My gun’s on the ground underneath his car, behind the rear tire. I can see it just sitting there. And now I’m laying on the ground. I can’t see him anymore because of where I’m positioned at. But he’s only about if he takes three, four steps, he’s over top of a meeting. So he can just finish me off if he wants to. So now I’m on the ground, and I can still hear gunshots ringing. I don’t know if they’re still coming at me. I don’t know if my partners why I’m assuming they’re engaged with him, because it sounds like a war zone at this point, but I don’t know where he’s at. And now, as you can imagine, there’s a lot of things going through my head at this point. The obvious is going through my head. Life and death, right? Because I’m exposed.

34:52
TJ Webb
Like I said, I’m totally exposed. And for a moment, my sight kind of just blacks out, and I can see my wife and I can see my son. It was like watching, like, a dramatic movie where you have a scene where someone’s in this situation and they start seeing their life. That’s what it was for me. I just saw a black background. I saw my wife, I saw my son. And then out of nowhere this voice came in the back of my head, screaming at me and just saying, you failed. You fucking failed. And now they’re going to pay for it. My family, right? And that’s what got my ass moving. I don’t know if you ever heard the term, look for work. It’s a term I use all the time, look for work.

35:32
TJ Webb
So I was on the ground and I had to look for work. I couldn’t grab my gun because my hands don’t work. The only thing I could do was try to get the COVID the best I could. So I used my elbows and I used my left leg to kind of push and pull myself the best I could. And my goal was to try to shove myself underneath the rear of his vehicle because it’s the closest thing I have for cover. And I thought, well, if I can jam my body under here as far as I can, if he does come back here to try to finish me, hopefully he just pumps around to my legs and misses the arteries, if I haven’t hit one already, right? So I’m laying there for a while. Seconds. Gunfire stops. This is maybe 2030, 5 seconds maybe.

36:13
TJ Webb
Gunfire stops. I hear one of my partners gentle for me. He runs over, pulls me out. Throwing in the car. Grabbed the back of my vest and he grabbed my bad leg. Hurt like shit, obviously, because when I’m on the ground I knew my leg was in bad shape because one, I couldn’t move it and it hurt, but I could see it off the right side of my body at like a 90 degree angle so I could high five my foot, you know what I mean? So he pulls me out, throws a tourniquet on me. And I said, Man, I think I got around in the face. He was like, oh, yeah, you got one in the face, but you’re good. Don’t worry about it. I’m like, okay, as long as I look pretty still, we’re good.

36:47
TJ Webb
So he loads me up in his car. Mind you, there’s still three of us here, right? So now he’s loading up in his car. Our other partner is staying with the suspect who they engaged with in a gunfight as well. I think he ended up taking ten or eleven rounds before he went down. He went down in the middle of a reload, actually. So he went down in the park line, expired there in the parking lot. Mother partner loads me up, takes me out. Partner number two stays. I’d say within one to two minutes, other guys starting arriving. Finally they weren’t too far out. So we pull out the parking lot and in our pre op for our missions, we always go over like medevac right. Who’s going to be medevac? So and so is medevac.

37:29
TJ Webb
The keys are in my front right pocket, whatever it may be. Right? Well, we also always program in all of our phones. We always program in the nearest address to the nearest hospital. Right. And he did that. He was the designated medevac. We got in his car. He had the hospital programmed in his phone, pulls out of the parking lot, phone goes rolling off the dashboard, rolls underneath the seat. So now we’re out on the highway, and weren’t getting far. I think we had gone maybe two traffic lights. Fortunately, I’m awake this whole time, so I’m in the backseat, and I can see up out of the back window. So I’m seeing billboards that I recognize, and I’m like, hey, are you going south? He’s like, yeah, we’re heading south. We’re going to the hospital.

38:11
TJ Webb
And I was like, well, you got to turn around at the next light because the hospital is back northbound.

38:14
Brent Hinson
So you’re directing traffic.

38:16
TJ Webb
Yeah, I’m trying to try to explain to him where we’re going. You never know what’s going to happen in these situations. You can train, but you never know what your body is going to do when it comes to these kind of situations because you go in shock, your body goes in shock. You can’t control that. But we actually worked out pretty good. I mean, were both going into shock at some level, obviously, but we did a good job at communicating one another, keeping each other calm, realizing what we got, what we need to do. I mean, I was giving him directions to turn around. He was on the radio, notifying dispatch what was going on, where he was trying to get other officers to meet us out on the highway so he could follow them. He did a really good job with it.

38:58
Michael Warren
Was he an agent or was he a TFO, too? Was he task force?

39:01
TJ Webb
We were all three of us were task force officers.

39:03
Brent Hinson
Okay, I want touch on something you said real quick, because you said to yourself, I failed. And at that moment, when I heard you say that, I sunk down. And I think that’s an example of fight or flight, because you could have easily just said, okay, this is where I’m at. But you didn’t. And that’s what surprised me when you said, I found a way to use my elbows. That is a perfect example of just fighting forward.

39:31
TJ Webb
Yeah, for sure. And like I said, hindsight. Would I have done that if I wasn’t thinking of my family or if I didn’t have a family? I don’t know. I can’t tell you. I can tell you that in that situation, that was in the forefront of my mind, and that’s what got my ass moving in that parking lot. And now we’re in the backseat. I’m in the backseat in the way of the hospital. And again, being a tactical guy, being a cop, look for work. I got to look for work. I got to do something. I can’t just lay here in the backseat and bleed out, right? I got to figure out something. I can’t just lay here. I got to keep my mind occupied. So I start running through a checklist. What’s going on? Where are we at right now?

40:12
TJ Webb
Process what is happening. So. Okay. I’m processing. All right, dude, you’ve been shot. I don’t know where at. Everywhere. But we’re going to fix what we can here. So what we have all right, I have a gunshot wound to my leg, my hand, and I got one sticking out my face. Check if do I have any other ones? I don’t know. Can’t check them because my hands don’t work. Can’t fix my tourniquet because my hands don’t work. I can’t take my vest off because my hands don’t work. Kind of screwed. Not much I can do, right? But the one thing I can do I know I’m bleeding out because I can see it. It’s in my leg, and my leg’s the size of an elephant trunk. I mean, it’s just swollen up. My pants are ripping. It’s swollen up so bad.

40:48
TJ Webb
So I’m thinking the one thing I can do is slow down my breathing. Because if I can slow down my breathing, I can slow down my heart rate. And if I can slow down my heart rate, I can try to control as much blood loss as possible. It’s my only hope at this point. So I started working on that, and that was something I was used to doing, because I’m a runner. I CrossFit. I do triathlons. So working on my breathing is something that I do regularly anyway. So it was kind of like second nature to me anyway, so I did that. Got my breathing in check. I’m slowing it down, trying to slim my heart rate down. All right. I got down under control. What’s next? Keep working, look for work. I got to start thinking ahead, right?

41:25
TJ Webb
I got to start thinking what’s going to happen when I get to the hospital? They’re going to try to take my vest off. They’re going to do this, that, and the other, but I got to think even further ahead. I got to think even further ahead. So I’m confident I’m going to make it. I’m going to survive this. I know my legs in bad shape. I know when we get to the hospital, at some point soon, they’re going to knock me out, because they’re not going to keep me awake in the situation I am. It’s just no way, right? They’re going to knock me out. At some point, I’m going to wake up, and when I wake up, I want to look down, and that leg is not going to be there. I’m already convincing myself, like, this leg’s gone.

41:57
TJ Webb
It’s damaged enough where they’re not going to be able to save it. It’s gone. You know what? It’s all good. People do it every day. I can do it too. It’s just a leg. It’s not a big deal. I wanted to wake up and be surprised that it was there, not, oh, shit, I lost my leg. I accepted that right then and there. I just wouldn’t survive. So we get the hospital, sure enough, just like I thought. They didn’t know how to get my vest off because I had all these cool tactical buttons and clips and shit, which I knew was going to happen, so I had to tell them how to do that. And then eventually I just started telling them, like, look, you guys got to knock me the hell out, man, because this is brutal, right?

42:32
TJ Webb
So they knocked me out eventually. Now during this process, I’m out now. And what has to be done? Well, there has to be a family notification at this point. At the time, my wife and I were between homes, actually. We had just sold a house, and were just breaking ground on building our new home. So were living with my in laws at the time, which worked out pretty good, actually. So my wife actually found, like, this is where social media can just be a train wreck, right? Because people and Delaware is a small state, and the Leo community and Delaware is even smaller, and that’s anywhere. Leo community is small, right? We all talk. And so word started traveling about the shooting. It made its way to social media. My wife’s laying in bed with my son, reading my bedtime story.

43:20
TJ Webb
He’s seven years old at the time. And she starts getting text messages from some friends. Are you okay? Do you need anything? Blah, blah. She sees on Facebook that there was a Marshall involved shooting. It’s got to be TJ. It’s the only marshals task force, right? So before anybody can get back to her on a text, one of her friends finally calls her and was like, hey, what do you need? What can I do? Blah, blah. My wife’s like, I don’t know what Terry talking about, but you better tell me right now. So she found out through her friend that I had been shot. That’s all she knew, and that I was at nearest local hospital. So her dad gives her a ride to the hospital. My son stays home with my mother in law.

43:55
TJ Webb
She gets to the first hospital probably within 25 minutes or so of the shooting. I mean, it’s fast, easily within a half hour. And I was only at the hospital for about 45 minutes to an hour. And they flew me out to another one about an hour or so north. So they fly me north, get me in there that night, hold off on surgeries until the following day, around 02:00. Now, this is December of 2020. So what’s going on? COVID a train wreck still. You can’t go anywhere, you can’t do anything, let alone the hospital. So I’m not allowed to have visitors. So this is on a Thursday night. My family’s up there. Friday comes, I have my surgery, I come out of surgery, I don’t remember anything. I wasn’t really awake until Saturday. My family saw me Friday.

44:41
TJ Webb
They were able to see me for a moment and then they had to leave because visiting you weren’t allowed to have visitors. So I finally come out of it on Saturday, realized what’s going on. And when I first woke up, I looked down at my leg and it was there. Thankfully, my hands were bandaged up like boxed and gloves, so I was there. I was in ICU for seven days, and the one thing I had going for me, I couldn’t see my family. But the one thing I had going for me was I had an officer from my agency and a deputy from the Marshal Service with me 24 hours a day for the entire time I was there. I was never alone for one single second. I always had somebody with me.

45:19
Michael Warren
I can’t imagine what it would have been like being alone in a situation like that. There are times where you have too much time to think and it has negative impact. And I would imagine that would have been one of those times.

45:32
TJ Webb
Yeah, it came when I got out of there. So I was there on day six came and there was a lot of things going on with trying to get my wife in there to visit and the hospital wasn’t having it. But they did allow her up on Day six. Finally, she finally got there on Day Six. They caged and let her in. I saw her on Day six. Day seven. I got out. They transported me down to a live in rehab. It was a little closer to home. That was about 45 minutes from my house. Get checked in there. On the following Thursday night, they wheel me out of the ambulance, which I got to ride the ambulance with my wife and my son. That was the first time I got to see my son after a week, which was interesting.

46:15
TJ Webb
I mean, he was seven, so he didn’t really understand anything. He has never seen me cry before. And of course, I cried like a baby when I saw him. And I’m all wrapped up, my legs wrapped up, my hands wrapped up. I got stitches in my face because I had a bullet pulled out. I don’t want to say it was scary for him, but he was shocked. He didn’t know what was going on. But the ambulance ride was good because I got to relax with him and shoot some jokes and get him smiling and laughing and it was good. We get down there. Finally they take me out, wheel me into this rehab center. It’s later at night, so visiting hours there are done and they don’t have visitors because COVID they were going to be great with me, though.

46:52
TJ Webb
They said, you can’t have a bunch of people coming up here, but your wife can come up here anytime she wants between visiting hours, nobody else. So they take me up to this room. My wife’s there, me, some staff from the rehab center. It’s just a quick meet and greet, like, hey, welcome. This is who we are, this is what you can expect, and we’ll see you again in the morning and go over some further information. My wife leaves and now I’m by myself. Now I’m in this room and thankfully, I had a room to myself. I have to share it with anybody. But those rooms are like hotel rooms, man. Like, they close the blinds and it’s pitch black, you know what I mean?

47:30
TJ Webb
So there ain’t much going on and I’m not sleeping a wink because I’m finally alone and my brain’s running a million miles a minute. I’m just trying to process all this. After talking to some nurses and some doctors leading into this, my leg was pretty bad, so they expected my recovery to be upwards of two years before I could run again, which is soul crushing for me. Not to mention my hands are a big question mark. My hands were so bad, they don’t even know what to do or to think about it. So I’m in this room and the morning comes 06:00. A.m. Door swings in, swing door. I never forget. Door swings in for the nurse who’s coming in to check on me. The light comes blaring in from the hallway and I just thought to myself, man, this is just fucking awful.

48:16
TJ Webb
What am I doing here? How am I going to get through this? I don’t even know what to think. I thought back to a book that I read about five or six years prior. It was called the Trident. Written by Jason Revin. I don’t know if anybody’s familiar with him or not. Jason. Was he’s a retired Navy Seal? And back in, I want to say seven six seven. He was severely injured. In Afghanistan, I believe. Or Iraq. Severe catastrophic injuries. Way worse than anything I went through. And he wrote a book about it. And during his time at Walter Reed, he made a sign for his door. And it was a sign of encouragement, it was a sign of no pity, just a sign to help him overcome this, right? I thought, Man, I don’t know why, it just came to me.

49:00
TJ Webb
It just came to me and I thought, I need something. Like, this guy got through this stuff. I want to try using whatever trips he’s got up his sleeve. I want to try it. My wife comes in that day, sees me now, I’m like, hey, I need a poster board. I need a. Marker. I need to just slide that marker in my cast because I can’t hold shit. And I’m just going to write this sign out the best I can in my own words. I’m going to make my own sign I’m going to put up on this door, right? So she’s like, all right, well, I’m going to get it. So she goes and gets me what I need, and I write this sign out, and it says, to all who make entry here, you must enter with hardened minds and a strong ethos.

49:33
TJ Webb
I’m not here to get back to where I was. I’m here to better than I was. And I will surround myself with like minded people. Do not enter with dejection or disdain, sadness or empathy, anger or fear, or you will be turned away. I’ve received these injuries during a job that I love for the people in the community that I love. And I received them along some of my brothers, who all join again soon. And I stuck that up there. I slapped on my PD’s patch. I slapped on the Marshall’s patch, signed it the best I could. I put it up there for two reasons. One, for what it said. I didn’t want people coming there and give me a pity party. You know what I mean? I didn’t want people to come in.

50:07
Brent Hinson
People don’t know how to react sometimes.

50:10
TJ Webb
Yeah. And they come in there with these sad faces and of pity and they don’t know what to say to you. They’re uncomfortable. I didn’t want that shit. I wanted an environment of happiness. I wanted people to come in here with smiles on their faces and enjoy their day. And the other reason I put it up there was I needed something to hold me accountable. And I knew every morning I woke up when that door swung in, that sign was going to be the first thing that I saw. And if I didn’t live my day by my words that I put on that sign, then I was nothing but a fucking hypocrite. And I was not going to live my life that way. I refused to.

50:44
TJ Webb
So it was up there for about five minutes and then staff starts coming in through the door and making sure nobody pissed me off or anything. And I assured them that everyone there was great, fantastic. This is just a tool I’m using to get through this. And I just want people to know that they can come in here with a smile on our face. This is not a pity party. We’re here to put in work and have a good time and get on with life. And that’s what it was. And then from there on, I went to work. I just put in the work.

51:11
Michael Warren
I can’t imagine how devastating it would have been if they hadn’t caved and allowed your wife to come in and see you because this journey was going to be difficult enough. We need that type of support. Everybody says, hey, I don’t need reassurance. Well, yes, you do. Everybody needs reassurance. Hey, you’re on the right path. But part of holding somebody accountable is not only saying, hey, you need to make sure that you’re doing this, but, hey, you did a good job on this, too. That plays a huge part in it, for sure.

51:43
TJ Webb
I wasn’t allowed to have visitors, but they had guys find ways in there, man. Let me tell you. I had one guy coming in who I was friends with from another agency, and he was a detective with another agency. He came in there with a clipboard and a notepad and told him that he was there to interview me over everything. He didn’t have any interview. He worked for another agency. Nothing to do with it. But I come back to my room one day from a PT station. He’s in there hanging out, laughing. He’s like, I got in here, was like.

52:08
Michael Warren
He walks out and they say, did you get what you need? Yeah, he’s guilty.

52:13
TJ Webb
I had people doing that kind of stuff all the time. It was hilarious. But they were great. My wife was allowed up there for visiting hours all day, eight to eight, and she was there, man. It was great.

52:22
Michael Warren
How long were you in that facility?

52:24
TJ Webb
So I was there for two weeks. So going day one, like I said, they gave me their expectations, which was great. I had already locked in this mindset. So my thing was, you need to hear my expectations, right? Their goal was they want to get me out of there with a walker. We want to get you to the point where you can leave here on a walker. I don’t want a freaking walker, man. You know what I mean? I want to walk out of here under my own power. I want to walk out of this place on my own, 2ft without anything help me. I want anybody give me a wheelchair, a walker, a can. I want any of that garbage, I’m putting the work in out, and I’m walking out of here on my own hour. So the day came to leave.

52:56
TJ Webb
Two weeks later, I get released, and they come in. They’re like, hey, congratulations. It’s time to go. Everyone’s waiting for you. The wheelchair is my room. So I’m sitting in my wheelchair. They’re like, okay, we’re going to will you down. And I’m like, oh, I’m walking out of here, man. I’m walking out of here. They’re like, well, we’ll wheel you downstairs to the front door, and then you can use the walker and get to your car. I’m like, I’m not using anything. Like, I will sit here for another week until you guys understand I’m not freaking leaving with help. So finally they worked it out where I could walk on my own. They were going to have somebody behind me with a wheelchair and somebody ahead of me with a walker. And I was like, deal, just hands off, I don’t need it.

53:38
TJ Webb
So I did it. I made my way out, made my way downstairs out the front door of my wife’s car. So boom. Checkpoint, right? Short term goals. I set a list of goals, get my life back to where I want it. Right. Also my goal was you’re not going to be able to do the things that you want to do, like run for upwards of two years. Well, my goal was I wanted to run a half marathon within twelve months. That was my next long term goal. Short term goals. I wanted to walk out there on my own. So boom, checked it. Get home, get home. That day, it was January 30. Next day was New Year’s Eve. I started outpatient physical therapy that night on New Year’s Eve, called and made the appointment. They’re like, oh, you want to come in tonight?

54:19
TJ Webb
I’m like, I’m not going dancing. You know what I mean? Yeah, I’m going to do PC tonight, man.

54:24
Brent Hinson
Let me ask you a question real quick, because not everybody’s going to have that mindset. What do you attribute that mentality to? Do you attribute it to your law enforcement career or that’s just you? Because I think some people would sit there and it’d take them a long time to get to that point where like, no, I want to walk out of here.

54:46
TJ Webb
The long end of it is I wanted to get better for my family. I wanted to be able to go out and play ball in the backyard of my son. I wanted to wake up on Sunday morning and go for those long runs with my wife that we always enjoyed doing in the park. And also my wife will probably tell you this, I’m just stubborn, so if you tell me I can’t do shit, I’m probably going to do it. And I’m pretty sure all my supervisors at work probably tell you the same thing too. That’s just who I am, just stubborn. And I think the stubbornness part of me is really what played a big part on my willingness to push past all of that. So we get back and start outpatient physical therapy. Now. My outpatient physical therapy was phenomenal.

55:27
TJ Webb
The PT I had. She was amazing. Same thing on day one with her. She gave me her expectations of what she wanted and I gave her mine. And I’m pretty sure she’s never confirmed it, but I think she thought that I was crazy for the things I wanted to do. I was telling her, but she saw real quick I meant business. So I start that. This is New Year’s Day, January. Now they gave me upwards of two years before I could run again. April comes, I start running in April, short runs. I ran like a half block here, stretch it out to a block, work my way up to a mile, two, three, four. So I’m in this thing to win it, man.

56:01
TJ Webb
When I got home from the hospital, before I even got into running or anything like that, I automatically just signed up for a half marathon in November. I was like, there’s one in November, like, ten minutes from my house. I’m rocking and rolling with this thing, right? November comes, I go run this half marathon, and I ended up running the fastest half marathon that I’d ever run in my life.

56:21
Brent Hinson
Jeez and you signed up when you got home thinking, I may or may not be able to physically be able to do this, just what’s in front of me. And you ran the fastest? That’s incredible.

56:34
TJ Webb
Yeah, I ran the fastest one ever ran. Man I could tell you I live in a beach community. It finished on the boardwalk, and I collapsed on the boardwalk one because my leg was just on fire. I was in a lot of pain at that point after 13 miles, but the other was the amount of emotions I had going through my body. I mean, I had eleven months of happiness, anger, sadness, joy, pain, pissed off, love, hate. I had it all. And it was just all at one time, just exploding from within. And it was a really strange and odd feeling that I’ll never be able to explain, but it felt great. I got done, we got home, I was actually mad because on the run, I had to pee, so I stopped and pee, and it messed my time up.

57:31
TJ Webb
I could have ran even faster if I didn’t go to the bathroom, so I kind of missed.

57:33
Brent Hinson
Same thing happened to me when I did a half.

57:35
TJ Webb
I stopped to pee, had to pee, man. It slid me down. So I was really pissed about that. And then I thought, man, that was great. I want to keep rocking and rolling. So two weeks later, I ran another one, and I ran that one slightly faster. I just kept going from there, man. April came and I did the David Goggins four x 48, which is 4 miles every 4 hours for 48 hours, for a total of 48 miles. I did that, kept going. June came, I did a half Iron Man, which was 70 miles, and I just keep going from there, man. I’m just trying to push myself as much as I can every day.

58:11
Michael Warren
There was an article I read with an interview that you had given. You already talked about your son and when you were in the ambulance with him, he didn’t really grasp what was going on, but it sounds like what he did grasp was watching you put in the work that had an impact on the way that he goes about things. And I cannot wrap my head around how positive of a role model you portrayed to your son about sometimes life isn’t fair, but we’re going to outwork it.

58:45
TJ Webb
Yeah, thanks. It was interesting. He was seven. This is December. He turned seven. And then April was his birthday. He turned eight in April. So not too long after I got home from the hospital, people were coming over and visiting. So obviously were talking about what happened and he’s overhearing all this stuff. So it got to a point where one day I just said, look man, we’re going to have a talk. And I had a talk with him on a level that he would understand as a seven or eight year old. And I showed him I had a gunshot here. This is a boo here, Zaboo here. And they’re not like for those of you listening, it’s not like some gruesome scene that you would think like in a movie.

59:23
TJ Webb
It’s really that I mean, the bullet hole in me is the size of my pinky fingernail. It’s not that big. It’s 9 mm, so it’s not that big. And they were cleaned up and everything. So it’s not like something gruesome. But I let him see all that stuff because I didn’t want to hide anything from him, you know what I mean? He’s going to see me with my shirt off. I want him to know what things are, you know what I mean, how it worked out. And as I started going through my recovery, yeah, he was noticing that. And it got to the point where I ran every day. And if I ran in the morning and then later in the day it started raining, I have like a training out.

59:53
TJ Webb
I’m going to go run because I wanted to put myself in environments that suck toughen myself up a little. And it got to the point where one day it was raining and he was like, hey dad, are you going for a run? I was like, yeah, I’m going to go for a run. I was like, Why? He’s like, I’m going to go with you. I was like, in the rain? He’s like, yes. I’m like, all right. So he went ran like 2 miles with me in the rain and loved it, which was awesome because now he’s starting to understand a little bit. He understands what putting the work in is going to be. And he’ll be eleven soon. And he’s into baseball now. He plays travel baseball and stuff.

01:00:30
TJ Webb
And it’s showing in that he’s at a point where he understands what work needs to put in.

01:00:36
Michael Warren
Seeing the results of the work that you put in. My two younger boys, they wrestle and say, listen, you win the medals at practice, you pick up the medals at the tournament. That type of work and the whole thing can’t hurt me. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to stumble and have issues, but I’m going to finish this thing. It sounds like that’s the mindset that you embraced and whatever it takes for me to get to where I want to be, where I need to be. I’m willing to do the work.

01:01:07
TJ Webb
That’s something I’ll tell people, man. I’m like, hey, you know what? You know what your problems are? Your problems are your call to adventure. Make it work for you. Stop making your problems a problem and figure out how to work through it and figure out how you can learn from it and make yourself better and improve on it. Right? Your problems are your call to adventure. That’s the way you need to look at things.

01:01:23
Brent Hinson
Maintain and improvise. That’s what my dad would say all the time. Just figure it out, man.

01:01:28
TJ Webb
Right? Figure it out, man. You can’t let stuff beat you down and keep you down. You got to work through it. That’s life. That’s what life is about.

01:01:34
Michael Warren
Reframing it from, I have to do something to I get to do something. I get to work hard so that I get to go and run a half marathon. How did this end up affecting your career? What happened at the PD after all this?

01:01:47
TJ Webb
I was out on workers comp for a year and nine months, mostly because of my hands. I mean, I still have some issues with my leg, obviously, but it wasn’t to the point where I couldn’t return to work on my leg. My hands were the main problem. My left thumb doesn’t bend at the knuckle. My right thumb, I don’t have a ton of mobility in it. And then my index fingers are like they lock out sometimes. So my gun hand isn’t the greatest. So going back, I’m not just putting myself in jeopardy. If I went back, I’m putting my coworkers in jeopardy. I’m putting the public in jeopardy. So it wasn’t even an option. My doctor was just like, we’re not going to sign off when you’re going back, you’re going to have to go out on medical. So I went out on medical.

01:02:28
TJ Webb
I retired December 4 of just last year, almost a year. Exactly. I wanted to go back. The goal was to go back to the task force. My spot was there. They kept it for me. That was the mission all along. I tried. It didn’t work out. And it is what is. I’m not mad about it. I’m not mad about what happened to me. I’m not mad about any of it because do you sign up as a cop to get shot? No, you don’t. But you sign up knowing you can. And I knew that I’m not going to sit here and say worries me. I went out there and did a job that I love to do, knowing what could happen. And you know what? If I could go back tomorrow and do it again, I’d do it again because it’s awesome.

01:03:07
Michael Warren
And I love what you said earlier, and I want to make sure I highlight it. If not me, then who?

01:03:13
TJ Webb
Exactly.

01:03:14
Michael Warren
I have this information about this guy. Not only do I have that, I’ve got the training and I’ve got the knowledge and experience to handle it. It doesn’t mean it’s not going to be dangerous, but it will be more dangerous if he encounters another officer who is lacking all those other things that I have. It’s a responsibility. It’s part of the mission, and I hate saying that right there, but sometimes our job is to go in danger’s way so that others don’t have to. I can’t thank you enough for your willingness to do that, because who knows what would have happened that night? Maybe he gets stopped that night, or maybe he leaves early in the morning before you guys set up on him, and now he encounters somebody in a different state.

01:03:57
Michael Warren
We can’t predict all that stuff, but what I do know is that you did the right thing and you did it damn well, and you continue to do the right thing. That’s what has expected us as leaders and as human beings, is to do the right thing, and you continue to do it over and over, and it’s a shining example for those that you work with, for those in the community. But most important, it is such a great example for your son.

01:04:24
TJ Webb
Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. I really do.

01:04:26
Michael Warren
So what are you doing now? You’re retired. So what’s life for you now?

01:04:31
TJ Webb
Yes, I retired. One thing. My wife and I started a nonprofit. It’s called the Fit for Duty Foundation. And what we do is we press upon the importance of physical fitness and mental fitness, which to me is one thing, and we do that by we sponsor law enforcement officers to get into CrossFit or some sort of functional fitness style gym. And we do that by paying their first three months membership to try to get them in there and get them in a routine and try to get their body right, get their mind right, keep them ready for the job and life. Aside from that. I do public speaking now. I do a course on overcoming critical incidents. I do police departments, I do conferences. I do all that. I just wrote a book, just came out last week, actually. It’s called just one more.

01:05:15
Brent Hinson
We’ll put a link to that book up so folks can find it easily.

01:05:19
TJ Webb
Appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, so really excited about that and just trying some new stuff, man. Again, I was very fortunate. I had a lot of great job opportunities thrown at me early on in retirement, and I was very thankful for it. But I wanted to try something on my own, take advantage of the situation and do something for myself for once in my life. I’ve been in law enforcement since I was 18, and I’m 41. I want to go out and experience some different things, and I want to do something where I can share this experience and try to help somebody else. You know what I mean?

01:05:50
Michael Warren
It almost sounds like you’re trying to live a meaningful life that we talked about earlier, which is the highest calling right there.

01:05:56
TJ Webb
That’s it.

01:05:57
Michael Warren
That makes a difference.

01:05:58
TJ Webb
That’s it. I just want to make a difference wherever I can. That’s what I want to do.

01:06:01
Michael Warren
As we wrap things up, there’s one person we mentioned a couple of times, but we haven’t really recognized her, and that is your wife. Because if we’re going to be very transparent and blunt about things, if both your hands are jacked up simple things like brushing your teeth or helping around the house, those aren’t things that you can really do. But it sounds like she picked up the slack, and she carried forth the family mission.

01:06:28
TJ Webb
She did that, man. My wife, I meet a lot of people, and even early on when I was talking to guys, I know everyone wants to tell you’re a warrior, man. I ain’t shit. You got to meet my wife, because my wife is the warrior, man. And for all of us, all of our spouses, man, they go through a lot of shit with this job firefighter, police, whatever it may be. They deal with a lot of stuff, and sometimes they deal with a lot more than we deal with. It’s hard on them. And my wife handled this thing like none other. Dude, she’s a warrior, dude. She’s a straight warrior.

01:07:04
Michael Warren
And I’m not bagging on your agency or anything. They probably helped out for a long time. But your wife is still there because there are still things you got going on. Things aren’t back, and yet she’s still there. And that is the sign of a warrior. So please say thank you to her on my behalf for doing that, because it’s a lot easier to be resilient when you got that kind of backup right there.

01:07:28
TJ Webb
That’s it, man. That’s what’s all about.

01:07:30
Brent Hinson
All right, we want you guys to check out his foundation. The website is fitthenumberdutyfoundation.org. Fitfordyfoundation.org, name of the book. Just one more. We’ll have links to all that in the show notes section of the website so you can find out more about TJ and expand on his story.

01:07:51
Michael Warren
TJ, man, we can’t thank you enough, brother. I hope you continue to heal. Thanks for setting the example and doing what needed to be done, ma’am.

01:07:59
TJ Webb
Yeah. I appreciate you guys having me on. Means a lot. Thank you.