A captain that I knew tells me the story and jokingly says, “Make sure this guy doesn’t die.” I even smiled, a little bit, good-natured gallows humor. It turns out four hours later we shoot this guy to death in the hallway. The captain who was by then off duty called me up and apologized.

In his apartment the guy had his eighty year old father at gunpoint. Our tactics and response unit drilled a hole from the apartment above and put down a little filament which is a television camera, a little wire hanging down over his refrigerator.

This guy wanted cigarettes.

We could see him standing at the door with the gun. We said no. This is a bad guy. As a tactic we cut off communications.

He wants to talk to us now. He threatens, “If youse don’t talk to me I’m going to set the house on fire.”

You’ve got a building with forty families in it, and he’s on the first floor. We call in the fire department stand ting by, all lined up in the streets with their hoses.

The guy does in fact start a fire. It’s starting to go good in there, but you can’t run in because he’s got a gun.

All of a sudden the smoke starts to get real heavy. Through the smoke we see he’s got his father in front of him, this eighty year old man. He’s pushing him forward. One cop grabs the father and pulls him out of the smoke.

There’re two guys with rifles in the hallway. They shoot this guy on the spot. He goes down. Every body gives him quick CPR. You don’t want him to die. We put him on a stretcher ran him out past the firemen.

They say, “What happened to him?”

One of the cops says, “We shot him.”

“For starting a fire?” He didn’t know what was going on in the hallway.

The tactical lieutenant said to us, “Our guys need to see him. Tell him to turn all the lights on.”

We tell him, “We need you to do us a favor, Bob.”

The guy turns them all off, and comes back on the line, proud as a peacock, “OK, I turned them off.”

“No Bob. We need them on. Turn all the lights on.”

“Oh, sorry.” He drops the phone and goes through the house turning the lights on. He’s compliant, but confused, like a little kid.

We can’t see because there’s a fence there, but Tactical radios us, “OK, they’re on.”

Now, without consulting anybody, the negotiator says just like this, “No, Bob. I wanted a Bud Lite.” We just all burst out laughing and laughing.

Then he starts laughing.