Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Episode 231 - Keelin Darby

Episode Date: May 2, 2022

Keelin Darby is an active law enforcement officer and the wife of Ben Darby. Officer Ben Darby responded to a suicide-by-cop scenario in 2018. After recognizing that his partners were not utilizing sound officer safety tactics by placing themselves in a potentially deadly situation without cover and concealment within a few feet of the armed subject, without their firearms drawn, Officer Darby placed himself in front of his partners and gave multiple warnings to the subject to put his gun down, which he was pointing at his head. After making a furtive movement with his head, shoulders, and firearm and after believing that his life and the lives of his partners were in imminent threat of great bodily harm or death, Officer Darby shot the subject, who was a known white supremacist. It was later discovered that the subject told his neighbor (a witness) that he intended on luring police officers into his home to kill them because he hated cops. After an Incident Review Board was conducted by the Huntsville Police Department, the department found that Officer Darby's actions were within policy and justified under the rule of law. The first two officers were sent back to the academy for remedial training and later resigned. Officer Darby returned to work, and within 2 months a secret grand jury was convened by the district attorney. Officer Darby was charged with murder. Officer Darby was given a plea deal consisting of probation and NO CUSTODY time if he accepted an aggravated manslaughter conviction, which he refused. The police chief, city council, and mayor of Huntsville supported Ben Darby and paid the initial legal fees. During the trial, the judge prevented exculpatory evidence from being heard by the jury, including relevant testimony by the neighbor and others, as well as applicable case law that would have exonerated Officer Ben Darby (Graham v. Connor, Tennessee V. Garner, Montoute v. Carr, Garczynski v. Palm Beach Sheriff's Office). This trial was closed to the public—not open to family, friends, or me, due to Covid restrictions. He was denied qualified immunity and after multiple plea deals consisting of NO prison time, my husband went to trial. During the trial, the DA compared Officer Darby to a regular civilian who barged into a random person's house, shooting, and killing them. Officer Ben Darby was sentenced to 25 years.

What's going on, everybody? Hope your Monday is going well. By now, you should know who this episode is brought to you by. That's right. Black Rifle Coffee. This episode and the rest of the episodes for this year. So what can I say that I haven't said already? Not much. They're an amazing brand, founded by amazing people. And if you go to Black Riflecoffee.com, they have everything you could possibly want or need in the coffee ecosystem. From coffee itself, obviously, to everything that you would need to make it to have. to shirts to, yeah, everything in between. Stickers, can't forget those, of course. So go to black rifle coffee.com and go wild. Do it at work when you're supposed to be working. I don't know, maybe don't do that. That's what I'm going to do. And that's it.

Let's talk about my guest today. My guest today is Keelan Darby. Keelan is here on behalf of her husband, Ben, who was previously a Huntsville police officer that was involved in an on-duty shooting in 2018. of a suicidal subject armed with a gun. And he was cleared by his department after an incident review board determined

that he was justified and followed all of the applicable policies and laws as established by the United States Supreme Court. So as you can tell, there seems to be a discrepancy between what his department thought and what the district attorney thought. There are a lot of things that go into this. And Keelan does a much better job of describing them than I ever could.

So I'm just going to get into it. Episode number 231 with Keelan Darby. Enjoy. To the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. Can't be clear not. How many podcasts have you done? You're my third.

I mean, it's still on the podium. You were booked first. But when I went to visit with the Resilency Project last week in California, I did a formal interview with them. And then they hooked me up with two podcasts. while I was out there. So you were the first book podcast. You just aren't the first one to hear it. Yeah.

Third is still on the podium. Yeah. I mean, it's not the greatest place on the podium. Some people would say, you should be happy just to have participated. And I'd say, fuck you to that.

That's not a good theory to have. But I'm glad you made the time to come out. I appreciate that you were willing to sit down and chat with me. Yeah, I appreciate you just, I know Mike, I think Mike was the one that got us together. Mr. Glover.

Yes. How did you meet Mike, by the way? So we're fans of his, Ben and I, and I actually am from Prescott, Arizona. Okay. And that's where his business was first started out of, was that at Prescott. Before he wanted to Heber City, right? Right. So we were back home visiting my parent.

I think it was in 2018. I was talking to Ben about it last night. And he said, hey, when we were there, he's like, hey, we should go see if he's at his store because, you know, we follow him or whatever. So we drive down there and he wasn't there, but we, like, we, everyone was super cool. and like, you know, we talked to them, whatever. And we left, and as we're leaving, we see Mike pass us. And so we were those creepy people who turned around and followed him back to headquarters. And we walked back in.

We were like, hey, we wanted to meet you. We were your fans or whatever. And so we started talking. And he's like, what do you guys do? We're like, we're both cops. Yeah. And just going down that rabbit hole. And my husband's story had come up.

And we were talking about it. And Mike was like, yeah, you guys know I do my own podcast. And we said, yeah, we listen to it. He said, well, when you're done with the legal system, call me, and I want you to come on my podcast. Oh, the trial was still ongoing? Yeah, so this all happened in Ben's shooting was in 2018, April. And then I think it was either Thanksgiving or Christmas. We went home to go see my parents.

Okay. So we, like when Mike said that, we were like, okay, you know, like, we'll see, you know. And we took a picture, which is like, like, to us, like, he's this Instagram, like, he's a. Influencers. Influence. Yeah. Influencer. He prefers.

An influencer, a thought leader. What other words does he use for himself? I hear him call himself handsome often. Chiseled features is another term that I've heard him used to describe himself. None of that's true, by the way. I'm just taking the opportunity to talk shit about Mike. He's one of my favorite people. He is fantastic.

Yeah. And like we just looked up to him, you know? And so we took a picture with him and everything happened. everything happened this past year we went to trial and then we had sentencing in August and I was like maybe I'm just going to reach out to him on Instagram. And so I forward, I sent him our picture and I was like, hey, I don't know if you remember us or not. Just so you know, we're real people. Yeah. And I was like, don't know if you remember us, but my husband just got sentenced to 25 years. And within six hours, he replied.

And I was like, holy cow, like, you know, that he was legitimate. Not that we doubted him, but it's just like he has so many other things going on. And it's like we're just two people from Alabama. You know, we're nobody. And he's this big influencer in the career that he's had. And we weren't allowed to talk about anything until we got all of our appeal paperwork filed. Okay. So Mike and I had been in contact.

And he said, I really want you to get on Andy's because I think you'll have a bigger people group to hear. Audience. Audience. Maybe. Who knows? So I was like, okay. Mike swings a pretty big bat. That's what I thought.

His audience is huge. Yeah, that's what I thought too. But I'm just happy to, you know, the connection that we made with him and then to get to you. Yeah. And just it's a different people group to hear our story and hear the true story of what happened to my husband. So have you guys, is there an appeal in now? Yes. Okay.

Obviously, we're getting a little bit ahead of ourselves. Yeah, no, it's fine. So you met Mike. The trial was ongoing. There was the verdict, the sentencing. The appeal came through. And then you reached out to Mike. I'm just kind of putting it together in my head.

Um, so April 2018 was my husband's incident. And then we saw Mike later on that year, Thanksgiving Christmas. And then the judge had ordered a gag order. So we weren't allowed to go public at all. Like local media covered it, but they didn't really cover it in depth. Yeah. And it was somewhat slanted against us. Is that a normal thing for a judge to do?

No. No. Yeah. I'm going to tell you right now, my knowledge of the legal system is thick. I don't know. So I don't know what would be considered normal behavior. Do they give you a justification when they do that? No, she didn't give us any reason.

I think it was because from the get-go, Ben's police chief, the city council, the mayor, everyone, the department backed him, said he did the right thing. He followed his training and policy, all that stuff. And then the DA's office got up and was like, no, he's a murderer. He's a horrible person. And I don't know if she did that because they were. going back and forth or what her reasoning was. But she said, I'm issuing a gag order. No one's allowed to talk about it.

So from 2018 to 2021, we couldn't talk about it. We couldn't go public. And then he had his trial in 2021. We had sentencing that this past August. And per our lawyers, we had to wait until we got our stuff out just because of strategy. Yeah. And now that I've been given the green light, I'm trying to let, because no one knows the story of Ben Darby. So is the appeal in now?

It'll be in by May 1st. So we put our appeal brief in and then the attorney general is now the prosecutor. So he replies to whatever we put in. And now we are replying to his reply. And the best case outcome would be he gets another trial? They could cancel it. They could fix it all at this level when he come home. Okay.

That's best case scenario. the most likely is that he would get another trial. Okay. Both of those, well, obviously the first option would be the most straightforward. But the second option, you know, worst case being that he gets another trial, at least in my mind, seems like it would be a step in the right direction. Yeah, I mean, because the trial that he got was unconstitutional. It was close to the public, including myself, I wasn't allowed in the courtroom with him. That's a Sixth Amendment violation.

So we were allowed to watch it from another room through a Zoom feed, but periodically, judge would cut the feed. So we'd be watching it and then the screen would go black and we wouldn't hear anything. And the people that were in there with me are looking around like, what happened? Like, why are we seeing and why aren't we hearing? And then it would come back on and different people would be on the screen. All what we could see was the witness box. So we didn't see like the state and the defense and the jury and the judge. All we saw was whoever was testifying. Let's rewind so people have a better idea of who you guys are. Yeah.

First off, what did you two meet? First off, hold on, we've got to go even further. You need to introduce yourself. Okay. Even further back. Okay, so I'm Keelan Darby. Originally I'm from Arizona. Ben is Ben Darby.

William Benjamin Darby goes by Ben. He's from Decatur, Alabama. And we both met at college in Pensacola, Florida. We both were criminal justice majors. and we both worked for campus security. We knew each other throughout college, obviously, because of classes and work, but we didn't start dating until senior year. And I was actually his boss on campus at the job that we worked at.

I was his supervisor. Controversial. Yeah. Workplace romance. So, but I mean, we knew each other throughout, you know, classes and just lunch and whatever. and we graduated in 2015, got married October of 2016. We both, so he worked for Huntsville Police Department, and I worked for my department. We both started in February of 2016.

Did you go to the same academy? No. So his department is big enough where they run their own in-house, where I went to, like, a state, regional academy. So a bunch of different departments went to that. It was kind of like a farm academy. Did both of you, it sounds like you had a desire to serve in a law enforcement capacity from pre-college, pretty early on? Yeah, so his dad was a retired lieutenant, so he grew up in policing in that culture, first generation. Where'd the bug bite you for law enforcement?

So in high school, I was a police explorer, and I just did that thing with our local PD, Prescott Police Department, and I just liked it. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I actually went into college thinking I was going to go federal. And then you have to do internships, which you can't get a federal internship unless you know someone. So I went back and did my two internships with Prescott and loved it. Didn't realize what it was actually to be a police officer. And I was like, yeah, I'm all in. I want to be a cop.

I've actually spent a good amount of time in Prescott, but I'm trying to remember. Do they have sheriff's department as well as PD? They do. Yeah, so you have Prescott Police Department and then you have Pike County Sheriff's Office. That's what they have up here as well. The KPD is literally right behind my back and then the four sheriffs are somewhere in the valley. Yeah. Doing sheriff stuff.

Yeah. And like back home, it's the same way you have local PD and you have sheriffs. But the PDs are bigger departments where like in Florida, your sheriff's office are the main agencies and the PDs are the less. What criminal justice degree, what is that actually comprised of? Like, what kind of classes are you taken? So, like, introduction to criminal justice is your 101 class. It's just basically, like, every, it's your umbrella class of everything that you could possibly get into. You'll take, we took, like, criminal law, we took a couple psychology classes, policing 101, probation, stuff to do with corrections.

Is that a normal path for law enforcement officers to take? Or maybe a better way to ask that would be, what do most people do with the criminal justice degree? Where does that lead them occupationally? Policing, pardons and parole corrections. You can go the federal route, but usually you have to know someone to get a Fed job. If I could go back and things I still get together with Ben

and we live our life together, I'd probably go back and get a business degree just because if I ever got out of policing, I'm kind of stuck in that box where like business or something else would be more. Broader? Right. Do you feel that the criminal justice degree has direct application to what you do now as an officer? It does in some ways. And in some ways it doesn't because you go the degree is just a broad.

Yeah, I was going to say it seems like it would be the broadest strokes. Right. But then you get to your department and your agency and that's, state because all the states are different like in alabama uh like for example murder you just have a murder charge where in other states it's murder one murder two murder three Alabama does not break out no it's just murder what if somebody did something really bad and they and they need it and you didn't have time to premeditate it's all just murder so like you have aggravated assault or uh aggravated manslaughter which is something that they try to offer ben um but it wasn't that constitutes

recklessness and it wasn't reckless, which I don't want to jump ahead and we'll get to that. So you guys graduate from college. You guys move to Alabama, I'm assuming. Yeah, so he's from there. He was going to move to Arizona where I'm from. And I came to visit and I was like, no, I'll move here. Stupid reason. I thought you weren't Prescott. I do. I do. But I just wanted something different. And it's brown in Arizona. I mean, it's very brown and Prescott too. Yeah, it's kind of like when I got here last night and just driving around today, it was kind of, I was like, oh, this is kind of like Flagstaff and kind of like Prescott. Just that, I mean, there's mountains and it's not as beautiful as it is here. But I'd say it's comparable a little bit.

I used to fly into Prescott all the time. And pretty much all of the terrain around it, except for Flagstaff, is like the high desert. I get it. I can see why you want to move. I don't know necessarily. I love everybody in Alabama. there's more scenic places than Alabama. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty.

It's a different type of pretty. When you're used to 20 through two years that I was in Arizona, everything's deep brown and dirt and dead. And then you go to Alabama, I think the first, I still do it. But Ben and I would be driving down the road. And I'd be like, man, this is so pretty. Man, look at how green that is. Or man, look at that.

And he was like, yeah, but he was used to it because he grew up in it. You know, where when we would go back home to see my parents. He's like, man, look at the mountains and look at this. So it's if you don't grow up in that or if you're not used to living in that and you see it, it just hits you differently. My kids consistently tell me to shut up because pretty much every time I'm with them, we're driving, I'll look out the window, be like, it is so beautiful here. We're so lucky to live in there. Like, shut up, Dad. You can stop saying that.

We get it. Yeah. I'm like, sorry. Yeah, no, it's beautiful. Yeah. I'm sorry that I have a deep appreciation for the snow cap mountains in the spring. Yeah. A little bastards.

Let's get back on your phones. Yeah. Did you guys finish your academy? Is it roughly the same time? Yeah. So we started February 2016. We were, we graduated July of 2016. And then by October, the end of October, I think we were cut loose.

So again, we're doing. To your individual departments. Right. So he did all his field training with his department. I did all mine with mine. We got married in the middle of that. So that was crazy trying to plan a wedding while going through the, Academy and field training.

Logistically challenging, if you will. Yeah. Yeah. Was it what you thought it was going to be, your experience at the academy? But, well, and I guess that's a question. Obviously, you'll be speaking for him a little bit, but I find oftentimes the, to include my service in the military, you have an idea of what you think it's going to be. And then you go through the pipeline.

You're like, hmm, some of this is awesome. Some of this is not what I thought. Yeah. So, again, I didn't go through Huntsfuls, but we would like, so I would be gone Sunday through Thursday. night I would come home and then we'd spend Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning together before I'd go back to my academy. And we would compare stories.

And so in my department, we have a mini academy. So it's just based off of our department. And we go over like our policies and we see, we go over case law and, you know, criminal and all that. But it's strictly just for our department. And that was harder for me physically than the state academy was. Really? Mm-hmm.

I was in better shape before I, left for the state academy. And I don't know if that's because the state academy is just a conglomeration of so many different departments and they just want you're there to learn how to be a police officer and then you go to your own department. Yeah. But we would come home, I would come home and we would go for a run and I'd be sprinting the whole mile and a half to keep up with him and he'd be making fun of me where at his academy it was very physical. they P-Ted every morning and every night, and they would get smoked. And we would compare stories.

Physically, I wish our academy was like his. Because it prepares you better. And when you get to the road, you're better off in better shape. I mean, I have the self-discipline to go to the gym and stay in shape as it is. So that's not as much of an issue. But it's something that I think law enforcement lacks is. being physically fit and able to do your do the job that you face every day. I feel like and I say this having spent zero seconds in law enforcement and I know people listening to the podcast if they know anything about me, they know I have nothing but respect for first responders of every kind.

There are some out of shape cops out there. Yeah. And firefighters and Navy SEALs by the way. There are some fat fucking Navy SEALs out there. And if that offends you and you hear this, fuck you because I am talking about you. It doesn't start out that way, though. They go, in the pipeline, you do a lot of preparation. And I have found sometimes, not always, but it's tied to length of time in the occupation.

And I feel like it's almost as if the longer you're in, the easier it would be to self-talk. And be like, it's okay to skip the gym. I've been doing this forever. It's worked out so far. Yeah. It's a dangerous mindset to get in, especially when you need your body and you need to rely on your body in that moment and you're not prepared or somebody else needs. you to rely on your physical ability. It's the standards I found are great on the entry gates.

I think all of the communities that I talked about would probably be better. And I know there's logistical challenges associated with this, but consistent standards that you have to meet or get out of here. Yeah. Like we have, and it's it's statewide in Alabama. You have to do a physical fitness test every year. But let me ask you this, though. What is the test?

So because let me tell you, the Navy PRT physical readiness test that is pushups, situps, pullups running, and I think for seals swimming has absolutely no bearing on your actual physical fitness. Yeah. So you have to do 25 situps in a minute. Yeah. 22 pushups in a minute. You have 15 minutes and 28 seconds to run a mile and a half. And then you have 90 seconds to do an obstacle course, which consists of pushing a car. You run a little bit, jump a six foot fence, run a little bit, go through a window, run a little bit, go across a balance beam, and then you have to drag a dummy, like a 165 pound dummy, and then you're done.

Did you say 15 minutes and 28 seconds? For a mile and a half. What kind of asshole came up with that number? I don't know. Why isn't it 1530? I don't know. Or just like 15. Like, I don't know the, yeah, I don't know why the 28 seconds.

I could be there when these things were created. Somebody in their room was like, no, not 1530. It's 1528. Right. Okay. Right. I don't know. I thought that was, it is, that's just what Post put it out as.

So let me ask you this then. As an officer in Alabama, how much do you think that that test is actually indicative of the officer's ability? It's not. It's not. Your facial expression showed all. You could literally sit on your ass. for most people and pull a heroic effort out and pass something like that. Well, and it's sad because people will come to, like they apply.

And when I came in, I got my letter and then I was told, you know, your PT test is in two months. And when I started, I can only do five pushups. And so I did a pyramid every day, you know, one pushup, one sit up to 10 and down every night. And when I got to my PT test, I rocked it. And there's guys and girls who show up and they can. can't. And it's like, they're minimum standards and you still can't pass. Like, it shouldn't be that hard. And it's not that hard. It's just, that's today's culture. There, you know, no one is out there exercising. Everyone's looking at their phone or on YouTube or whatever they're doing.

I'm fine with people doing that. But also exercise. Yeah. Just throw, throw a, throw a couple walks in every day. Partition some of your time where you're going to do something that, especially in a professional capacity, like the one that you and your husband hold. It's like, listen, people rely on you. 911 is not the number you call to pass a long birthday wishes to people. It's the number you call when you're having the worst day of your life. Right. The people responding that, I mean, it's a, I mean, I can only imagine it's a, it's a beautiful burden, but also privilege to be able to person to be on the receiving end of that. But if you don't take it seriously, in my opinion, you don't deserve to have that job. Right. And your other, you, you,

your other officers, your other teammates count on you, you know, when you get a fight or you're, you're in a fight and you're waiting for them, you know, you hear the Calvary coming. You're like, man, I hope they get here quick and you're fighting for your life to stay alive. You hope that the ones that are coming to back you up can handle their stuff and help you. Yeah, you want the varsity team shown up, not the JV squad. Right, exactly. And unfortunately, people don't take it seriously. on my squad, one of few that I know regularly go to the gym. And I hold myself.

Why do you think that is? Because people don't like pain and, you know. But I feel like they're just delaying the pain. You look at, again, so somebody has to respond to something like that. Let's say you don't want to go to the gym because you're delaying the short-term pain. But then you do find yourself in a fight, but you're losing it. So, you know what I mean? the pain is still going to come somewhere.

You're just pushing it down the road. I don't think people, everyone thinks it's not going to be me. You know, I'm not going to be the one that gets in a life or death fight. I'm not going to be the one that has to physically fight some guy off of me. It's going to be the other person. It's not going to happen to me. That's not the case. That's a dangerous mentality.

Yeah. Huh. It's interesting to me, again, not coming from the law enforcement background, but having a good amount of my friends who are in that world. The diversity of academies and how they landed at where they work now, whether they're a sheriff, a PD, even a federal organization. And I don't, maybe you would have a better answer to this. But to me, it seems like your academy and Ben's Academy, they both, at the end of that, you're a police officer, but it's at a varying baseline. So even inside of your own state, you have a product. that to an outside perspective is a uniform and a badge,

but internally it sounds like there's some vast differences. Yeah. And I have to assume that's going on all over. Nationwide. I don't know. That can't be a good thing. I mean, you, the state, so Post puts out, you know, these are the standards you have to, these are the requirements you have to mean to become a police officer.

So everyone gets, I think it's 520 hours of training. And then you have to do at least 12 hours of training every year once you become certified. and, you know, so much of that has to be firearms and so much of that has to be mental health and, you know, whatever the requirements are. But there's a lot of wiggle room. And I think that comes down to funding and training because his department is bigger than mine by a couple, three or four hundred people off sworn. Yeah. You know, and then funding, it just depends on how that department wants to fund if they want to, how much they want to go into. to training or how much they want to do whatever they're going to do with the money.

Is it even possible to create a baseline system that all officers would be trained to nationwide? Or is it just kind of the way that it is based off of the size of the municipalities? I would say you probably could, but I think it would be difficult to do just because of the size and funding and how many people? Would it be worth it though? Like everybody, because then everybody at the end of that, it's one of the things I appreciate about, some of the military selection pipelines is that at the end of the day, using being a seal as an example, six months of buds. And now they have like an additional 18 months to two years of seal qualification training where static line and free fall, parachuting, cold weather, operating in all the environments. And at the end of that, you are awarded your trident.

But you know that the person to your left or right has the same. training and you could go to the East Coast or West Coast team and anybody who is wearing a Trident, you have this, you know what I mean? It's baseline. Yeah. And so I think there's less variables. Obviously, much smaller community. We're talking about a community of about 3,000 active duty people. I just, I wonder if the headache of setting that up or creating a system like that would be worth it in the end because then everybody, every officer that you ever encountered, at least once a system like that was implemented, would have a baseline, uh, uh, uh, template that they're building from.

I mean, I don't know. I just... Yeah. I mean, that would be nice. Because in everyone takes... Like, there's a thousand different ways to police. And as long as you... You're not breaking the law and you're not violating someone's rights, you know, you're good to go.

But everyone just has a different idea of how it should be done. And I don't know if they'll ever get it nationwide where everyone's going to do this and everyone's going to do that. I think loosely there is. But when you break it down to each department... in each agency, you see. Yeah. And I also think there's about 800,000 police officers throughout the United States. So slightly bigger numbers.

Just a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes I'm a good idea fair. I'm just throwing stuff out there. No, there's a good idea. Yeah. Well, I mean, it might be a good idea, but it might fail in execution.

You know, the practicality of it might be a problem. So how did, how'd you enjoy being a police officer out of the academy? I loved it. I ate it with a spoon. We would, so I would come home and we would compare stories. Of course. You know, and you know, they tell you, you know, don't bring work home with you. But what if you're married to another cop?

Have fun with that. That's all you do, you know. And we had fun with each other. You know, like, well, my department's better because of this and my department's better because of this. Good nature, ribbing, if you will. Yeah. Yeah. And we get on each other's nerves, I guess.

But it was all in good fun. Yeah. So kind of the standard after the academy, you work with a FTO. about a year-ish and then they... It's actually three months. Okay. That's a lot less than a year. Yeah.

I think we were both cut loose the end of October. Okay. And we started FTO July. So... How was your first day out there running solo? When I got in my car and I was like, I'm all by myself. Like, what are we going to get into? You know?

What was your first call? Oh, man. I honestly... Actually, it was a man with a gun call. Okay, so you started right off with the fastball down the center. Yeah, it was in a neighborhood. The guy was supposed to be, he had a shotgun, I think, and he came outside with it, and his neighbor called on him. And so I was going to it.

And, like, I was two blocks away from when the call came out. And my lieutenant got there the same time I did. And the guy was inside his house at that time, and it was, everything worked out. We made contact with him. Everything was safe. I'm not going to lie. Sometimes I come outside of my house with a shotgun too. Yeah. I mean, I don't have any neighbors for 60 acres. Yeah, so you're okay to do that. But when you live in the city, I don't remember if he was shooting at stuff in his yard, like at a squirrel or something. I don't know. I don't remember the exact specifics.

I have a hard time judging a man for shooting a squirrel or turkey or some other animal that comes out in his yard. However, you need to be aware of your backdrop. And if you live in a city, reconsider. Right. Get a pellet gun. Right. And. Which people will still call for you on. Well, that's because those people have shitty tactics. Obviously, you open a door or window and you go back into the back of the room and you shoot it through the window and pretend that you don't know why the squirrel fell out of the tree. Right. Hypothetically.

Hypothetically. If you were ever to do that. If you were ever to do that because then your neighbors aren't going to see you and nobody will be the wiser. And if it's turkeys in your yard, your yard's not going to be full of shit. Right. And you might have something eat for Thanksgiving. I don't know if it would be. be good to eat a town turkey for Thanksgiving because I don't know what they have been eating. Yeah,

that's true. Yeah. But like for you for example, you know, being on a bunch of different acres, yeah. Yeah, they're eating nothing but whatever turkeys are supposed to eat. But they do come and they shit on my patio. And I have a furious vengeance for them. And anytime they come on the property, we have a little party. Yeah. It's game on. And if you're game worn listening, don't worry, have all my tags and only during spring or fall turkey season. It's okay. I can scare them without killing them. True. Yeah.

Ben's experience was kind of the same, so three months with the FTO, and then I bet he probably, that first day when you're by yourself has got to be probably a pretty seminal moment in a law enforcement officer's career. Yeah, it's a big deal. It's a big deal because you, you know, obviously the city is trusting you to carry that position and you're cut loose. So you don't know what your first call is going to be and you're brand new. So you don't want to mess anything up. But you want to go out there and help protect and serve the community and make a difference and make sure bad guys go to jail and good people prevail. And, you know, that's what he was able to do for 18 months. And then he had his incident.

How was that 18 months? Relatively straightforward for lack of literature? We never saw each other because my department worked 12s. My department worked 12s and he worked eights. So he worked second shift from 2 to 10. and I worked seven to seven. 2 p to 2 p or I'm sorry 2 p to 10p. That actually doesn't sound that bad.

He went to work and was just running calls the whole time. Yeah, I bet. So like as a brand new police officer, that's awesome. Well, and you also get some daylight in your life and you can go to bed when it's still dark. Right. Where I worked 7A to 7P. So I woke up with the sun and, you know, went to sleep with it too. With the moon, yeah.

Yeah. So I worked through. 312's where he worked 5-8s. So that's a little bit different, too. I think the first... Interesting. We maybe had three solid days together where neither of us were working out of an entire month. So there was a lot of notes in lunch boxes, notes next to coffee.

Hey, remember to do this when you get off or, hey, make sure this is done. You know, and then phone calls during shift or whatever. Which one of those schedules do you think is better for longevity? I think it depends on the side. the department. It works where I work at. How many days? So you do, what was your schedule one more time? I work three days off, three 12 hour shifts rotating, so I don't have set off days. Okay. So But you do three on three off? Right. So like my shift is supposed to work Saturday, Sunday, Monday, this week. And then we off Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Okay. And then work. But you're set in the

three and three. Right. And what was Ben's schedule? He was five eight. So I think his off days, At the very beginning, he had Tuesday, Wednesday, off days, which are horrible. But you're the rookie, so you get bottom of the list. Right. Right. So he would get two and then five, and then two and then five. Interesting. And they still do that in Huntsville.

I asked that question because I trained Jiu-Jitsu with a bunch of the sheriffs, and they'll be at like every class for a month and then vaporized like the wind. And I talked to them about their schedules, and they have three days. swings and nights. And I would murder what exactly they are. But they rotate through every month. And it seems horrendous. Well, it seems horrendous.

Yeah. It's like, okay, this month, I'm on vampire schedule. Yeah. And next month, I'm on swings or however they rotate through. So their life is an upheaval, it seems like, like a lot of the time, whether it be personally or professionally. Because literally, when they're not, when they're on nights or swings, we usually train at midday.

It's like, they're all there. Yeah. And literally the next month, you text them and it's like green. You're like, that's weird in the middle of the day. And they're like nine o'clock at night. Like, hey, man, just waking up. Yeah. And it seems like it ages them in dog years.

Yeah. So I was seven to seven for five years. And then I got promoted to working two to two to two. Two P to two A? Yeah. Yeah. I got promoted and put over a different shift. And we worked two P to two A.

And it wasn't horrible because it went by. quickly, but I didn't love it. I think you can manage it. I feel like it's the shift in the schedule that is just hammering these guys and gals. And now I'm working 7p to 7A. They dissolved the shift that I was working, and I'm working strict nights. Yeah.

Well, I bet you on Fridays or on midnight, it's exciting for you at least. Yeah. Friday's, Friday, Thursday, Thursday are usually, it's hopping. Yeah, I bet. So how was Ben's 18 months in his department leading up to his incident? Um, it was, he loved it. Uh, he got a well, he got a long well with everyone that he worked with. Um, he got a community service award, um, or community action award. I don't know exactly know what the title of it was, um, but just for being proactive in a certain part of Huntsville and, um, just like as an

appreciation thing, uh, what's kind of weird, I guess is he was given that award the day of his incident. So he actually never got it until after. because he was involved in the call that he was on. So he didn't realize he was supposed to go to the ceremony. And he got it after the fact. So we have a plaque commemorating something good that he did, which was probably, you know, it was a bad day for him. For sure.

Tell me as much as you can about that day. Obviously, you're speaking for him a little bit, but if there's anybody that knows what happened, it would be you. Yeah. And so really no one knows what happened because the judge, issued a gag order. So I'll get to that. Before you get into it, does your department and his, do they do body cameras?

Yes. Okay. Yep. And you can YouTube or Google his name and his body camera comes up. What people don't realize is body cameras don't tell the whole story. Not even remotely close. No. So you get all these keyboard warriors who think that they know how to be a police officer and they have no idea.

And they well once you watch like 30 60 seconds of body camera you're definitely an expert. Yeah. It's kind of in your commentary. Yeah. Yeah. You definitely have an understanding of everything that may have led up to that incident that isn't covered on the body camera and what the penal system should or should not do to the individuals. Right. And what people don't understand is because people ask me, you know, what I thought about it.

And I was like, well, number one, I wasn't there. So I can't say. but you can't you can try to replicate a situation but you're never going to get the exact situation because you're not going to have the weather the temperature the emotions that you're feeling on that call the sense of but just that feeling inside the room like you know when when something bad's about to happen the hair's on the back of your neck stand up yeah yeah that six cents is real yeah you can't replicate that so um in any body camera footage, viewers need to realize you can't judge that officer. Number one, if you're not a

police officer, you don't know what it's like. So random Joe blow down the street doesn't know what it's like to be put into that situation. But April 3rd, 2018, Ben was on duty for Huntsville Police Department, and he was, he just finished up a call and he was going back to headquarters to download his body camera from that call. And dispatch had got on the radio. And a man had called headquarters and said, I've got a gun. I'm fixing to blow my brains out. The front doors open. This came through the 911 system? Okay. Yeah. He called 911 and he'd said that. And the dispatcher said, hold on. I'm going to try and get you some help. And he said, no, I'm good. It hung up. this is a shitty question but how common are calls like that all the time really yeah suicide threatened

or suicide attempt calls come through a lot people a lot of people I'm assuming that's a call for help I guess metaphorically and physically for most people it is but in this situation he wasn't looking for help because the dispatcher told him hang on with me I'm going to connect you and he said no I'm good yeah so he didn't want help um and I'll get into that further later on. But he had said, I've got a gun. I'm fixing to blow my brains out. The front doors open.

So any officer that would hear that automatically, that's an ambush. Something bad is going to happen when we get to that call. Yeah. And so dispatch put it over the radio that they had a suicide attempt or a man with a gun call come out. And there was no officers available for the call. So two officers, Officer Piggis and Officer Beckles, they cleared from their call and said that they would be en route. And so dispatch gave the call out again so they could hear it. And Officer Beckles said, is there any other units available?

And when you work with someone and you can probably relate to this, you can hear when something's not right in their voice. You can hear their inflection. Something's off. They may be more concerned about something than just any other random call that you get. You can, especially people that you know, well, you can instantaneously tell to a large degree what's going on in their head based on how they sound on the radio. Right. Especially if your job relies around radio and you're used to communicating over that medium. Right.

And so Beckles had said that over the radio and Ben was nearby and he heard that concern in Beckles' voice. And so he got on the radio and said, I'll be en route. Cancel me from my original duty. So he turned around. And nationwide, it's taught that if you. You have a call involving a guy who has a gun or some type of weapon and they're inside their house. You surround the house, pull a perimeter, and get them to come out. Surrounding call out.

Right, because that's their castle. So they know how everything's set up and you don't know what it's like. So why would you put yourself in that situation? Slightly and aside, I'm curious, when, so the call comes into the 911 center. The 911 center puts the call out to the officers. Does, I mean, this is probably broad and maybe it changes per department, but as the officers are in route, do they get any information about the person who made the call? Is there like a data? I'm just curious as to what they could potentially be exposed to information-wise as they're on the way.

Yeah. So there's different systems that are hooked up to your MDT, the computer you run in your car. Which somehow is legal for you guys to type on, but I can't text and drive. Just saying. I know. Just saying. I've thought of that as well. Yeah.

Oh, texting and driving is not okay, but this fucker's over here writing an email. Or typing a report or doing whatever. Yeah. But yeah, there are, we have access to things that we can look up and get your criminal history or how often you've called 911 from that house off your address card or stuff like that. It would be possible. And again, this is probably depending on how far you have to drive, how much time you have. You could gather some more information. Right, yeah, depending on the how fast you need to get there.

Yeah. And where you are. If it's a two-block drive, you're not going to have the time. Yeah. Right, you're not able to look up all that information. And so to my knowledge, the officers did have time to look all that stuff up. Okay. I don't know what they saw because.

Yeah. Well, it may not be relevant. That was just my own question because I don't know. If I put myself in the shoes of somebody like that, again, it's impossible because maybe you're two miles away. maybe you're two blocks away. I would try to at least, hypothetically putting myself in that situation, try to figure out as much as possible

about the situation I would be going into. Right. So when Ben was an echo unit, which in Huntsville is a training unit, he had a similar call of a guy with a gun and they surrounded the house and called the guy out and the guy was able to be given treatment

and everything was fine. So because of that and because of how officers were trained, he was thinking, okay, we're going to set a perimeter and call this guy out. So he pulled up to the block, and like every officer for officer safety, you always park three or four houses away from the actual house you're going to, just so you have that element of surprise and they don't see you walking up. And so he does that, and he doesn't see piggy's or beckles.

So immediately he's thinking, well, crap, you know, where are they? What happened? Did he see their cars? He saw their car, but he didn't see them. Okay, so he knew they were there somewhere, just not where. Right. Gotcha. So thinking they were going to do a perimeter, he grabbed a shotgun,

loaded a slug into it because perimeter shot, a slug would be better than buckshot because it's more, the shot would be more precise than buckshot. Yeah. And so he runs up to the house because now he's thinking, okay, well, if they're not outside, where are they? You know, the guy has a gun that came out over the radio. So he's thinking they are in danger. and as he's approaching

he sees Officer Beckles in the doorway on the stoop so the fatal funnel you're stuck and then he is as he gets closer he can see Officer Piggyz inside the house with her gun at Seoul so low ready down against her leg

but out of the holster it's out of the holster but it's not ready to she is she's not ready to do anything with it and she's standing behind a couch and the guy is 20 feet away with her from her with a gun. Standing or seated?

He is seated. The gun is pointed at his head. Okay. So he's sitting there like this. 20 feet away from her. Yeah. And she is behind a couch. So.

Not known to stop bullets. Right. So cover and concealment, which you're familiar with, but I'll say it anyway. Sometimes people confuse the two. Yeah. So cover is something that's going to stop a bullet around.

So a brick wall or something like that. Yeah. Concealment. Yeah, a couch is concealment. But a bullet is. Not if you're standing behind it. Well, no, it's going to zip through it. Yeah, yeah, if you're standing behind, it's like, oh, I can see you over there.

When you're playing hide and seek and you're laying behind a couch, that's concealment. Right, right. But if you're, you know, just your waist down is covered from it, you know. That's really shitty hide and seek. Right. And so she's staying in there. The guy's got his gun to his head, you know, like this. And she's directing traffic with her one hand talking to him and her guns down against her leg.

Yeah. And so Ben sees that. And so this was. April of 2018. In October of 17, we had both attended an FBI officer survival school. It was a three-day class put on by the FBI, and you learn officer survival tactics and how to deal. One of the situations was dealing with a man with a gun, and it being a suicidal subject. So we had him and I, and the other people in that class had that training on how to deal with a situation like that. I bet most of those situations were based off of real-world events as well. Correct. Yeah.

So we had already gone through a very similar scenario to what he's about to face. What did the FBI recommend? We shot. We shot it. We shot the suspect. Really? We shot the subject. Was there an attempt to get him to come out of the house?

Is there an attempt to, or you encounter the subject with the gun to the head and you shoot? No. So a lot of different things go into it. Your surroundings, if they're being compliant or not, you always tell the person to drop the weapon. Yeah. But in Ben's case, before he got there, I think the other two officers gave Mr. Parker four or five commands to drop the gun. Yeah. So he was already told so many times to put the gun down.

Yeah. You're not going. So in the 911 call, he showed his intent that he didn't want help because when the dispatcher said, hey, hold on for me. He said, no, I'm good. So right there, there's your first instance of him not wanting help. he's calling because he wants to die and then the two officers give him

four or five verbal commands put the gun down and he doesn't do it so there's four to five more now we're up to six you know opportunities for you to help yourself and you're not taking them so Peggeese is trying to talk to the guy and she's vapor locking

not being able to clearly communicate with him and as Ben gets up there he was like point your gun at him he can shoot you because his gun is here. Yeah. And it's for him to just go like that, he's going to be faster. He'll be able to come and oriental weapon before you can come up and go out.

You can rotate his wrist. Right. Action is faster than reaction. And we're taught that in the academy. And one of the training instructors, training advisors, when Ben went to the academy, he was a SWAT operator, so he had extra training. And he had to answer a call. where it was a domestic, and the guy was on his front porch with two long guns pointed at the ground.

And so this officer, he gets there, he's got his SWAT rifle out. You know, he's not engaging, but he's got his on target. He's prepared. Right. And he told Ben's academy class was the first class that he was able to teach his story with to them. So he told them, he said, you know, all I was waiting for was shoulder movement. I'm going to see this guy move his shoulders ever so slightly, and I'm going to send the round. And that guy was able to flick his wrist and get a shot off, and that officer got shot in the face with birdshot.

Thank God. Thank God. Thank God. It was birdshot. But he got shot in the face. And why? Because action is faster than reaction. The actor, I'm going to shoot you. I'm going to be able to point my hand at you and shoot you before you tell me.

Because I know when I'm going to go like that. Correct. You don't. Yeah. And that's what happened to Jason. And so having that training, you know, Ben relied on that also. So the FBI training and then that. And then Jason's account.

Yeah, Jason's account in class, okay. So, and you can watch all three body camera footage. Piggyz. She finally brings her gun up and points at Mr. Parker. And you can see, she's talking to him. And then you can see her drop her gun. and look away. Her whole body shifts. So now if he wanted to shoot. And she was the closest one to yes. She's close. If he, if Parker wanted to shoot, that was his perfect opportunity to do it.

Because now you got a cop who had her gun out, lower it, and then totally take her eyes off of him and look at Ben and say, he's not going to do it or I don't think he's going to do it. I don't know what her exact verbiage was. But she told Ben, he's not going to shoot us. Okay. So. Is telepathy a part of the? training modality at the academy? Not to my knowledge. I mean, it wasn't at mine and it wasn't at Ben's. I haven't seen it on any curriculum ever so far, but, you know. In what the media and everyone who thinks they know about this case, you know, they're like, well, the other two officers have so

much more knowledge and experience than Ben Darby, because Ben Darby only had 18 months on the job going into that call. Officer Piggy East was only one year ahead of Ben. They were separated by academy classes. So she wasn't this rock star veteran 15-year cop who knew how to handle every situation. Beckles did have a little bit more experience than Ben and Piggy's, but she wasn't this awesome cop. She wasn't Jason Bourne. No. Not to say that Ben was either, but Ben had control the situation. She didn't. And so, um... How many situations like that had she been in? To my knowledge, not that many. I have talked to,

I'm friends with several Huntsville officers. Yeah. And so they both, Huntsville is broken down to west, north, and south. And then you're broken down to east and west side in each of those areas. The area that she worked was busy and you had multiple person with a gun calls.

Yeah. But she never volunteered to go to any of them. Yeah. And neither did Beckles. They kind of were the ones that just sat in the parking lot and waited until their number was called. Well, and I didn't ask that to be, by no means am I trying to judge anybody. You know far more about this than me, but I'm just thinking in my head, it's easy to associate

time on the job with depth of experience. Right. And they're very different things. Right. A lot of people think that, oh, you know, that guy is a seal. He might, you know, like, they think it's like saving Private Ryan every day on the job. And the reality is the vast majority of seals actually. don't see that much combat, if any.

So there's a huge difference between somebody who has been in for 20 years, experience-wise, say pre-9-11, and somebody who's been in for 10 or five with consistent rotations on a combat deployment. So it's something for people to consider when they think of just how long somebody has been on the job. That doesn't necessarily equate to the amount of time in situations like that. And I can tell you from my own experience, people's behavior to include my own. Some days you have good days and some days, you're like, fuck. That wasn't awesome. Right.

You know? Right. And people don't realize that. So when she had put her gun up and then dropped it and Ben was like, he realized this is about to go bad because she's not. His behavior change, the subject's behavior when she actually pointed the weapon at him? I don't remember seeing it change. The whole time Ben described it, he was very. deadpan

he was the guy was calm but it was almost flat line yes but it was you wouldn't be calm in that situation something was off yeah and so um also officer pgeese did not relay that there was the guy's fiancee was in the house

so piggy's and beckles knew that but that never got over the radio so she 10 3 the radio which is emergency traffic only so that you know basically they own the radio yeah and but she never relayed to beckles hey there's someone else in here so now you're potentially got a hostage situation you could get to that um so ben didn't know that walking running up there he just saw she's in the house with no cover with a gun out but pointed at the ground there's a guy

20 feet away from her with a gun in his hand and he's not listening to her did beckles have his gun out he did but it was also at uh soo low ready okay so um when And she took her gun back off him and put it down at Sewell, Ben got in. He walked in. And he raised a shotgun and he gets on target with the guy. He's like, dropped the gun. And the guy said, no, I'm not going to do it. And Ben said, I'm not going to tell you again.

Drop your gun. And he's still, you know, dead on the guy. And Ben said that the guy, again, he's got the gun to his head. So he's like this. And the guy said, no, I'm not, not going to do it. And as he did that, he shrugged his shoulders and the gun moved ever so slightly. And Ben shot. Because, again, action is faster than reaction.

And you're not everyone is going to see. Everyone's going to see this. Yeah. But not everyone's going to see this. Yeah. Or this or whatever. And he shot Mr. Parker. and he stopped the threat to his life and the other two officers' lives that day.

Because of what Ben did, they didn't have to have one or two or three officers' funerals. And that might sound callous or mean of me to say that, but every police officer, their goal is to come home at the end of the day. And when they were put in that situation on April 3rd, if Peggy and Beckles kept handling it the way that they did, one of them was going to get shot. So Ben broke his shot. He goes up, he checks.

As he's going up to him, he's clearing the rest of the house. The other two kind of just were stuck in space, not really realizing what had happened. Ben handcuffed him and removed the gun. And then the fiancé is upstairs, and she hears the boom and comes downstairs. And Piggyz turns around, And the fiancé's like, oh my goodness, what just happened, you know, freaking out.

She didn't know what the hell was going on downstairs? No. She didn't know the cops were there. The fiancé had no idea that they were downstairs. Holy shit. Yes. So. That her fiance was down there in a, in a chair or a couch or whatever, with a gun to his head talking.

She had no idea. Fuck. Yeah. So, again, Peggyz is 20 feet away with a guy with a gun to his head, guns in his hand. he's not a threat to her though because obviously if she if he was she would have been drawn down on him right so his fiancee comes down the stairs and still in her pajamas obviously not a threat you know her hands are she's got nothing in her hands and piggy says show me your hands show me your hands come to my sound of my voice and she's engaged with her you know both hands out pointing her gun so i don't know

why she thought girl in her pajamas was not a threat, but guy with a gun is not. Other way around you mean. I'm sorry, yeah. Girl in the pajamas is a threat. You know, she has nothing, nothing has hurt her. But a guy with an actual gun is not. Well, you know, again, I say this with no experience as a law enforcement officer. The sound of Ben shot in the aftermath of that likely elevated her to an emotional state that was beyond what she was maybe prepared for.

that moment. So it seems likely to me that's probably what happened. So they get her out of the house and then Ben gets on the radio and says, you know, offender down and send everyone. And everyone at this

point, because shots fired, a fender down. I remember exactly what he said, but you know, everyone's coming. So he, Officer Beckles takes Ben's gun from him because now he just, that's evidence. And, yeah, I was going to ask you, what happens in the aftermath of that?

Yeah, so he had his gun taken from him, and the lieutenant got there, and Ben was told to sit in the lieutenant's car. Well, first, he had some other officer was there to, like, babysit him while the lieutenant went to the actual scene. Is this common procedure? I've never been involved in a shooting, so, and I don't work for Huntsville, so I don't know exactly what their policies and procedures are. I know you are to get your you do get your gun taken away. You usually do that not in the public view because you don't want the public to see an officer disarmed. Yeah. I'd have to imagine it's very structured and templated what they do in that situation.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, you know, he's separated and he goes to, he has to go do a P test and go get a breath test and everything. And so I'm working this day. I'm on shift. It was around 5 o'clock, I think, and he called me. I was on my way to an alarm call.

Like a business had just closed for the day, and cleaning crew set an alarm off. And he called me, and he said, hey, what are you doing? I said, I'm on my way to a call, what's up? And he said, if you hear anything, just know that I'm okay. And I was like, I laughed. I was like, okay, what, did you wreck your car again? Because when he was an echo unit, he went to go across the road. and because it was three o'clock in the morning

and there was bad lighting, he didn't see that it was actually a covert, not a covert, but like a dip. And so he tore up his car. Yes. And so I laughed and I was like, what did you wreck your car again? He's like, no, I didn't wreck my car.

I have to go to the hospital. Just know I'm okay, I got to go. I love you, you know. And I was like, well, why is he going to the hospital? And then it hit me. He was involved in a shooting. Because why else would you go to the hospital? Why else are you?

I mean, unless you, it's standard policy and procedure between both of our departments and I'm sure nationwide. If you wreck your vehicle or if you get into shooting, you have to go get tested. Oh, for sure. Yeah, they're going to go. Right. Yeah. And so I answered, I, you know, I was right there on my call. I went in and did my thing and I called my supervisor.

I was like, hey, I have to go home. Family emergency. And it was close to the end of shift. So he's like, yeah, you know, I didn't go to detail with him. I was just like, I got to go. So I went home and I waited. and he got home at like 11 o'clock, 10 o'clock that night. And he walked in and I could tell he was visibly tired, you know,

and I was like, are you okay? And he said, yeah, I'm okay. And I said, you want to talk about it? And he's like, not really. And I said, well, did you shoot someone? You know, were you involved in a shooting? Which I was 99.9% sure. Yeah.

And he said, yeah. It's okay. So we went to bed. That was my day three. of the rotation. So I was working off. So I had the next three days off, which he did too because of their procedure. That's fortuitous timing.

Yeah, it worked out, which I would have taken off. Regardless. But so he goes back to work to do his interview. So he had to do an interview with internal affairs and major crimes investigations.

So the day of the shooting, they did a very brief you know, what happened. but then three days later they did like the actual real interview so um he did that and then he had to go see a like a psychiatrist to make sure he was fit for duty and all that and uh so he was off the street for two weeks um at huntsville in i'm sure every department but in huntsville they have an incident review board so every major incident or every time um you use your weapon your service weapon they have an and senior review board and they review everything to make sure it was within policy, no laws

were broken, anything like that. Who sits on that board? So at his department, it was members of Huntsville Police Department and then members of the Madison County District Attorney's Office. Okay. So the district attorney and then several ADAs and people from the department. So that was two weeks after his incident. So they call them all in separately.

they give their testimony of reversion. Yeah, their officers, you mean? Yeah, Ben and the other two officers come in. They tell their side of the story of like what happened from their perspective. And they all, the people on the board talk about it. And then they say, yes, it's in policy or no, it's not. So they concluded that the shooting was within policy. It was justified.

No laws were broken. And, you know, it was a good shoot. They also found that Officer Piggyz and Officer Beggles did not view the threat that was in front of them. So they had to go through remedial training for lack of threat assessment. Ben did not. Ben did not have to go through any remedial training or any type of refresher course on anything. He was good to go all the way. The other two officers had to go through remedial training.

So they were both. everyone was clear to go back to duty. I think they went back April 23rd, so 20 days later after the incident. And then right before Memorial Day, Ben gets pulled into the chief's office and they say, hey, we're putting you on admin duty because the DA is looking to charge you for murder. And he called me and he was like, hey, and he told me, like, I'm on admin now. And I was like, why? You know, the incident review board said you were good. You were within policy.

And the DA was part of that, Evan. He was. The review board, right? He was. And before the review board was decided on, everyone involved is, you know, questions are asked, and what about this? And why was this done this way? And they all come to the agreement of if it's in policy or if it's not. So April, I think it was April 18th.

whenever it was in April, they all agreed that it was in policy and it was good to go. To include the DA. To include the DA and the ADA and everyone from his office. Okay. And then a month later, they're like, oh, we changed our mind. So he gets put on admin duty and he goes and works at the academy. So he's helping train new cadets. And that was the end of May, August.

The end of July, there was a secret grand jury that, the DA had and they held a hearing about Ben's case and they indicted him. When you say they held a hearing, what does that mean? So a grand jury, they get people from the community and they present the case in front of them, but they also present case law and their training and all of that. Yeah. And then they vote and decide if there is reason to make a reason to make a a charge. And Ben was unaware that this proceeding was going on? I don't think he knew about it. I don't

know exactly if he did or not. I don't remember. But other people in his department did because they had to go and testify. And those people were training instructors that were his training instructors when he went through the academy. And that taught him action versus reaction and how to deal with suicidal subjects and people who have guns and weapons that can be used against you. And they presented that to the grand jury. And the grand jury realized, you know, he did what he did was right. And then somehow that changed. After the TAs went and talked, somehow their focus and their mindset was swayed to charge him.

I don't know because I wasn't there. Yeah. And neither was been. So he got charged August 3rd of 2018. He was formally arrested. We had to go in. He turned himself in on the charge of murder and was formally booked in, you know, the whole thing at the jail. And he had a $20,000 bond.

We posted that. And he came home. The chief immediately had a press conference and got up and said, I stand with Ben Darby. I don't believe Ben Darby did anything wrong. Ben Darby is not a murder. Those were his words. The mayor also echoed that.

Ben Darby followed the training. State policy, law, department policy and procedure, he's not a murderer. So how can the DA charge you with murder if you're following the set policy of your organization? There's bad blood between the DA's office and Huntsville Police. department and politics got involved. Okay. From Ben's shooting until within a couple years after that, there was five officer-involved shootings.

None of them are in prison, which I'm thankful for. I would want anyone to be going through what we've gone through the past four years. But one of the incidents was very similar to Ben's, and those officers, are good to go, a good shoot. And it was a good shoot. But I don't know what the DA has against Ben Darby. In politics are involved.

So Ben was chart, or when Ben was, after his shooting, the DA's office called the chief before they indicted him and said, hey, if you fire him, we're not going to depress charges. And the chief was like, no, he didn't do anything wrong.

He followed. his training, he followed Huntsville Police Department policy and procedure, he didn't break any state federal law. He saved those other two officers' lives. I'm not firing him. He didn't do anything wrong. And they went back

and forth. Well, if he just fire him, we won't press charges. You know, we'll get this, we'll solve it. And the chief was like, no. And from the beginning, Chief McMurray has stood with us, and he has continued to stay, stand with us. Even he's retired now. Yeah.

And that makes me ask the question, why did you, why would you, why would you give that offer? Well, as you're telling, as you're saying that, I don't understand why whether or not somebody was employed with the police department would change whether or not, looking at it in the broad scope, right? If you're looking at it blind, if you're going to charge somebody with murder, who fucking cares what their job is at the time? Right. And Chief McMurray was smart enough to know, even if, let's say he did take that and say, okay, fine. will fire him, that doesn't guarantee the DA's going to hold his word and not charge him. You know, he could say, fire him because then that way the city can't back you like they did. Put him on an island. Right.

And Chief McMurray, through his wisdom, said no, because he believe and he still believes Ben Darby did what he was supposed to do. And Ben Darby's not a murder. You know, so we're thankful that he held that standard and said, no, I'm not dead. doing it. So and furthermore, Ben was investigated by his department. If you don't have the probable cause to make the arrest, then, I mean, if he was guilty of murder, why didn't they arrest him on April 6th, 2018 when they interviewed him? Yeah. I mean, if he cleared an internal investigation where they're looking at policy and tactics and techniques and procedures, and if he was found to be inside of that

policy and then the DA and the ADA were there at the meeting. And then one of those investigators that investigated him, once they got off record, he shook his, Ben's hand. It was like, hey, man, you did the right thing. Don't let anyone Monday morning quarterback you. You did the right thing. So how do you get, how do you have all that happen? And then, oh, we're going to charge you with murder.

I have no answers to that. I'm not asking you one for it. But it's just like. I mean, I have some suspicions and all of them are fucked up. Yeah. And so, um, he gets. Yeah. So what was it like after he got out on bond?

I mean, what does life look like after that? Yeah. So the city still kept him employed, um, on admin duty. So I don't remember if he was on admin leave again. So he, I think he might have been at home for maybe a week. I don't really remember because it's, it's been four years. But, um, he returned back to work on admin duty. So yeah, they took his badge.

his gun and he wore like a polo and khakis to work but he worked within um accreditation so uh hansful is accredited by kalea which is a national uh standardized training organization um and there's only it's a very small percentage of departments nationwide that have that certification huntsville is one of them and so he helped go through all the policies of hansful police department to make sure that they lined up with what Kalia required. And compliance essentially. Yeah, compliance, yeah. So he did that from August of 18 until his last day was July of 2021.

Even after the trial, he was still employed. And I'll touch on that once we get there. But so he would go to work every day, you know, five days a week. And he did whatever they asked him to do is what he did. I was still at work, did my thing, and we walked through this trial being told, hey, the system will work its way out, just go through it. You know, you are protected by case law, Grand v. Connor, as bedrock case for use of force in law enforcement. And it states that the beat of the weapon does not have to be pointed at you before you shoot. If you are in fear for your life or another person's life, you are to eliminate that threat.

And so that was August of 18. So like I said, the chief and the city council and the mayor were like, we support Ben Darby. He's not a murderer. Here's $125,000 for your defense. So he paid for that, which is a huge blessing to us because you don't make money being a cop. You make some money. You make some. You're just not making like G5 money.

Right. So they supported us all the way. And then the DA got up there and was like, no, he is a murderer. He's a horrible person. He should never have been a cop, you know, and everything else. And so the judge was like, I'm issuing a gag order. No one's a lot of talk about this. So I wasn't allowed to do what I'm doing today and what I've done in the past two weeks until our story and what I actually

happened. Yeah, local media did cover it a little bit, but it was somewhat slanted. And they don't know, you know, they're journalists. They don't know everything that was going on. So, we go, that's 2018. 2019, they're trying to figure out when they're going to go to trial, and then COVID hits. So jury trials are suspended. So finally, beginning of January 2021, the DA's office walks over across the street to our lawyer's office and says, hey, how about he takes aggravated manslaughter, no prison time, five years probation. So a murder charge in Alabama with a weapon, with that enhancement, it's a 20-year minimum. And they were offering aggravated manslaughter, which would basically just, it was a recklessness

charge. So yeah, it's still a felony, but it's saying that you recklessly killed someone, where murder in Alabama is person A, kill person B by this means. That's it. And Ben was like, no, I didn't, I didn't commit murder and I didn't commit aggravated manslaughter. I'm not, I'm not taking the deal. And, um, why would the DA be willing to offer that deal? The DA didn't care if he spent one day in prison. What did they care about? honestly, I don't know. Again, it's inner department politics. Yeah, because, you know, again, listening to this, they go through the investigation. The DA is part of that, the interviews. They agree that it was inside of policy. Then the DA or people inside of the district attorney's office decide

that they are going to charge him with murder, but then decide to offer him a plea for less. And I don't know shit about case law or DAs, but why make the step of charging him with, murder if your intent is to offer them something lesser. I don't think they wanted to go through the hassle of going through trial because during the trial they didn't, they'd never prove the prima facie of murder. They never, they never specifically. Listen, you're going to need to use words that I understand, all right? Sorry.

So what is prima facie? They never, they never proved murder. Gotcha. Okay. They tried, but they didn't. And they were successful and not allowing us to. present things that would have exonerated Ben, which I'll get to in a second. I don't know why, you know, one, they said, just fire him and we won't charge him.

And then, hey, just take this deal. No prison time. Just take it. That way we don't have to go to trial. Okay. No prison time might sound sexy, but a big old capital F in your record is not sexy. He would never be able to be a cop again. Yeah.

He would never be able to carry a firearm. And now he's a felon. Yeah, good luck getting a job with that on your resume. Right. And he's like, no, I didn't do that. I'm not, I'm not bound out. And even more important, he stood his ground for three years now at that point, from 2018 to 2021, that I didn't do what they're saying I did.

And I can prove that. So if he took that, if he took that deal, he just lost all that credibility and all that stand that he had for three years with everyone that had supported us and still continues to support us. Yeah. You know. And so he said no. And a couple months go by and COVID calms down.

And would they say, hey, you're going to have a trial in May. Total side note, but I was thinking when you said that COVID hit and jury trials got shut down. Did that put everybody who was supposed to have one into this suspended status where nothing occurred? Yeah, there was no court. Wow. And that was in, I work in a different county. And that was even within my county, there was no court. So complete gridlock on the legal system if you required a jury trial.

Holy cow. Yeah. And that's a problem in and of itself. Yeah. So I missed, let me go back to 2019, a year to the day. So April 3rd, 2019, Ben had a qualified immunity hearing. So qualified immunity says basically you're immune to prosecution because you did the job, your job. And the execution of your duties.

Right. And so, um, it was like a mini trial just in one day. And we had expert witness come and speak on Ben's behalf. testified, piggies and beckles testified. Who runs this hearing? The judge. Okay, so it's a judge. Yeah, so it's a judge and it's also the same judge for his trial.

Okay. So the judge that got assigned to his case. And so everyone testified and the judge said, I'm going to take this into consideration. I think it was a Wednesday. We had this Wednesday or Thursday. She said, I'll have an answer by Monday because I've got some other cases I have to get squared away. before like they're more important than what's going on here okay we're like okay um and the very next day she issued her opinion uh denied no opinion so she didn't give a reason

why she denied it she just said no not giving you immunity um so that was frustrating because well why not there's got to be a reason behind it so it went to the alabama court of criminal appeals which is the next step. And they denied it also on a technicality stating that we didn't give them required paperwork that they needed. Well, we never got that paperwork from the trial courts. And when our lawyers submitted the required paperwork, they had a note in there saying, hey, because we have not received this paperwork, we can't give it to you.

But by the time that you read this, it should be uploaded online. to whatever. So we don't have it now, but it should be in place when you need it. Right. You can have access to it, but we don't have access to it right now because the trial courts never gave it to us. Well, they used that against us and said, no, we're denying it because of that. So then we appealed it to the Supreme Court of Alabama, and they denied it no opinion.

Again. So no one wanted to touch this case because some people think it's controversial. because there was no overt. It was just this. You can't see this where you can see this. Yeah. So if he had been in the qualified immunity portion of it, if they had found or ruled in his favor,

I don't know what that would look like. Would that have stopped? Yes. The future proceedings? Yes. Yeah, we would have been done. Okay. Civily, we probably, I mean,

because we're fighting a civil case too right now. But civilly went on, but the criminal part of it We would be in the clear. Okay. So that was 2019 and then COVID hit. So we're delayed 2020 by COVID. We get our jury trial for May 3rd.

So I take the whole week off, you know, obviously. And the judge decides that she's because of COVID, we're not going to have an open courtroom, which is a Sixth Amendment violation to a public trial. So the only people allowed in the courtroom were Ben in his defense, the state, so the DA's office, the judge, the bailiff, and the jury. Whoever media, family, friends, Joe Blow, who's just interested in the case, we had to watch it in a separate room through a Zoom feed. And, you know, they had it everyone six feet apart and COVID friendly or whatever. and so the very first day Monday, May 3rd, they did the jury selection. So that was closed to the public, which usually it's not.

And from what Bennett said, he's in there with his lawyers and then the DA's in there and the judge and the bailiff and 60 people to choose from. They opened up the jury pool selection because of what the case was. they open up to a broader selection of people to choose from. And so during jury selection, the assistant district attorney gets up there and he says, how many of you think there's a war on cops? And, you know, Ben's sitting in there. And Ben said, everyone raised their hand.

And one of the ladies was like, this guy, like, hello, you know, this guy right here, there's a war on him. and Tim Gang, his next follow-up question was, well, how many of you think it's warranted because you have bad apples like Derek Chauvin and Ben Darby? So he just compared Derek Chauvin in that whole debacle to Ben Darby. Totally different cases, totally different elements. Yeah.

Not similar whatsoever. The only similarity is that there was a law enforcement officer or officers and civilians. That's the only similarity. Yeah, that's it. And so you're already tainting Ben's character by comparing him to a corrupt police officer. Because he had said Chauvin and some other people. Yeah.

And like Brianna Taylor and Mattingly was brought up actually with that too. I know you just had him on. But so they're already painting Ben as the bad guy. And the judge allowed that. and Ben said that when Gann had asked that question, everyone just kind of looked at it. Like no one raised their hand, but it was just a weird feeling came through the room.

So jury selection gets done. They pick the jury. We go in Tuesday and, you know, opening statements are made. That's fast. They picked him on a Monday and they started the trial on a Tuesday? They took all day Monday to pick the jury. Okay. And then so we start Tuesday and they do opening statements and say, you know, Ben Darby should never have been a police officer.

He's a disgrace to the badge. And you'll see why we say that once we give you our side of the case. So they go back and forth. A lot of evidence and a lot of testimony wasn't allowed to be heard by the jury. Why? Part of it they said was it spoke to the ultimate issue. exculpatory evidence so it was in favor of the defendant. So they don't want the jury to hear something that's going to exonerate him.

Why? Because they wanted to make an example out of Bend Darby. But isn't it the judge's job to make sure that everybody has the opportunity to present all of the facts or evidence? Supposed to be. Okay. Yeah. For clarity, my courtroom experience is largely based around law and order.

So just so you have an understanding where I'm coming from. At this point, I'm strenuously objecting to something. Yeah. Yeah. So, again, first major flaw with his trial was the closed. It was closed. So no one was allowed, including me, his wife, was not allowed to be in the courtroom. Before the trial started, like after jury selection, because I have their transcripts now, it's 1,500 pages.

But I've been going through them, and I see in there they pick the jury and then they have a meeting between. the two sides and the judge and the DA doesn't want uniform police allowed in the courtroom and or the public. So no uniform police, no public. What would that leave family? Public. That's family friends. So nobody.

They just wanted to close. They just wanted closed because they didn't want the jury to be intimidated by police officers. I don't even think that was that. They didn't want to see an officer being supported by other officers. That's exactly what it was. That's exactly what it was. And this ADA used to work for Huntsville, and there's bad blood between him and the department. So that's a whole other issue.

But so the judge decides, yeah, that's fine, closed trial. So they have a witness to come forward. It was actually his neighbor, Mr. Parker's neighbor. And he contacted our lawyers and said, hey, I have some stuff he might want to know about. this incident. And so, um, the neighbor gets with our lawyers and, um, tells them of several conversations that he and Mr. Parker had, um, about Mr. Parker told this neighbor, I'm going to get a cop in my house and I'm going to kill him. It's kind of a big deal. Yeah. Just a little bit. And so, uh, the neighbor gets on the stand and, um,

Our lawyers start, you know, question him, you know, how did you ever live on Dremus Avenue? And he said, no. And he said, well, why did you never live on Doremus? Which is the street that Parker lived on. He said, well, I was scared to because of Mr. Parker. And he said, well, why was that? And he said, because Parker told me that he hated police and immediately, objection, objection, from the state, from the DA's office.

and so they kicked the jury out of the room and this is all coming from Ben because I wasn't there and at this point the TV was turned off so we have no video and no audio coming into the room Is it still in the transcript somewhere? Yeah so yeah

so the neighbor was allowed to testify to the court record so it's on the record but the jury never heard it but the jury wasn't allowed to hear it so if it's allowed to be on the record why can't the jury hear it? Well what's the point of testifying to the record.

Does the jury get to see the record? No. What the fuck is the point then? If it gets appealed. Okay. But. Okay. So that could actually be a huge benefit in Ben's favor.

Yes. Maybe. Yes. Okay. Yeah. It is going to be. Okay. Because the neighbor...

I was going to say otherwise what? And the fuck is the point. Right. So the neighbor gets up there. Let me back up. The DA's office is like, that's hearsay. Okay. So hearsay is a third party.

your recollection of a third party account. Okay. No, it's not. It's direct witness testimony. It's me, like if it's between you, this conversation is a direct witness, a direct testimony. Yeah. Well, this one's going to be on YouTube, so we're totally fucked. Yeah.

But like, probably admissible somewhere. You and me right now, we're having a direct, a direct conversation. And they were trying to say that that conversation was hearsay, which it wasn't. And so the judge said, well, how soon? how close to the incident was your conversation to the shooting and i think it was like a year a year before and the judge said well he may not have felt that way anymore so i'm not going to allow you to testify to the jury you can put it on the record but you can't tell it to the jury so um the neighbor goes on to say how he had told him over several conversations that he didn't

like police officers he hated them he was a white supremacist at limestone county um prison. He became one there and he hated cops and how he wanted to kill a cop. He was going to lure a police officer into his home and kill him. So he obviously had a criminal record. Yes. What was he in jail previously for? I think petty theft and drugs. Yeah. And I asked that, I mean, some people like, well, it doesn't matter what happened in the past. And I'm not saying people can't change. But I also think it might paint a more accurate picture as to the headspace. individual. So he gives his testimony and we're still in our room wondering what is going on, you know, and the TV turns on and the neighbor is off the stand and a uniformed officer is on

the stand talking about a tattoo that was on Parker's body. And the tattoo was a white supremacist gang symbol. So he gets off the stand and they go further down witnesses. and Jason, we pulled Jason, the training advisor. Oh, the one who got shot at the face? Yes. So from what Ben had said, because again, I'm not in the room to see this, his lawyers contact Jason like, hey, it's time for you to come in, and Jason walks in, and the DA and the two ADA's working the case,

see Jason walk in, and Ben heard them say, he cannot testify. Why? Why? Because it gave, it exonerated Ben. But how do the DA and ADA have the ability to stop him from testifying? I don't know. Did he ever get up on the stand? He got sworn in. So Jason gets up there.

We see him on the TV. And I knew Jason's story. So I was like, this is good. You know, the jury needs to hear Jason's story. Is his call sign buckshot by any chance? I have no idea. Or birdshot? It would have been birdshot.

Yeah, no. Jason's an awesome guy. He supported us, you know, from the get-go. And again, he works for Huntsville and I don't. So I don't know. I'm hopeful. I will find out and get back to you. And so Jason gets on the stand. He gets sworn in. We see him. And then we hear, Judge, we need to have a conference. We need a recess from the district attorney from the state side. Yeah. So TV gets cut off. And I'm in my room or in the room with, you know, everyone. And the people that I'm with, I had people from my department escort me in and out every day so that I didn't have to worry about a target on my back because I'm his wife. And so we're talking. And same thing. The DA's like, no, it speaks to the ultimate issue of Ben's case.

But isn't that what they're there to do is to speak to the ultimate issue of the case? Yeah, you're there to exonerate and show that what he did was correct. And he followed policy. but you're not going to allow a neighbor who had multiple direct accounts with Parker, and you're not going to allow a training advisor who taught Ben action versus reaction and why he acted, why Ben acted the way he did that day. I mean, I can understand why the DA wouldn't want them to testify, but I mean, that's why there's a prosecution and a defense.

The defense, correct me if I'm wrong, it's their job to have those people prepared and to testify. and then the DA can bring in people to testify, but how do they have the ability to stop people from testifying? I don't know. I don't have an answer for you for that. I need to watch more law in order to get to the law of this. But Jason wasn't a lot of testify. He was a lot of testify to the court record.

So again, I think that's, I know jack's shit about the law, but I feel like that could also be big. Oh, yeah. As long as it exists somewhere. Because he was trained. to do that and that guy like that's a direct like what jason went through directly correlates with what ben derby went through yeah like to a t thank god jason didn't die that day yeah you know because he he reacted slower than he needed to and he got shot ben reacted quick enough

or he acted i would say yeah quick enough to prevent himself or piggy's or beckles from getting shot and killed that day so um Um, Jason's not a lot to tell his story, um, of the standoff that he was in and how the guy had the two long guns pointed at the ground. And all Jason was waiting for was shoulder movement. And he had that special, more special training because he was a SWAT operator. Um,

because you go through more training on SWAT than you do. Yeah, you get additional training for sure. Right. Right. And so, um, he got, the TV turned back, turned back on and someone else was on the stand. and then Ben took the stand and he testified

he was on the stand for like two or three hours I think he testified and then he got crossed and then he his lawyer questioned him again and then he got recrossed and Thursday

it was after lunch but Thursday we were done you know everyone presented their stuff the prosecution and the defense yes Okay. Did the other two officers happen to testify? They did. So Piggis, the female, testified against Ben during the trial and during the immunity hearing both times. She said that she didn't feel like she was in danger and that she felt that she followed policy and procedure and didn't do anything wrong.

Okay. Officer Beckles got on the same. stand and supported Ben. So the defense or the state called that those were their witnesses. They weren't witnesses of the defense. And Beckles testimony, they basically, they wanted Beckles to testify for them in support of the prosecution. The prosecution.

And he didn't do that. And so they, he turned on them, which in turn, they got in basically got to do an argument over the, on the stand as to why. he wasn't helping them get Ben convicted. Beckles testified that he was pulling the slack out of his trigger when Ben's shot broke. So Ben wasn't the only one that was going to shoot. Yeah. Like he was, he just Ben beat him to it.

Does Beckles body camera show him actually pointing his weapon? I don't remember. I'd be curious on that one. It's easy to say you're pulling the slack out of your trigger. Right. But if it's a chest-mounted camera, you had better have somebody at full presentation. Right. You would have to be like this for it to see it. That's what I'm saying. You'd have to be at full. But if you're pulling the slack out of the trigger, probably a good idea to be at full presentation.

Right. Right. Yeah. You're not going to do it from the hip or whatever. You could, but I'm going to say that probably violates policy. You're safer and you have a more direct hit. You know, obviously both hands on the gun. The days of Wyatt Earp are slightly past. Yes. Yes. Very much so. So. But if another officer is testifying to that, that to me, again, from a completely, untrained professional in the law enforcement realm is indicative of the threat that another person felt in that environment right officer beckles realized it's about to go down someone's about to get hurt and it's not going to be us we didn't kind of siderm did you have um they carried guac uh 19

whatever the full size is 19 or 17 yeah we i carry sig so i don't know the whole glock rule god i mean at least all the numbers i don't what kind of sig uh p 320 all right all right i like like your head's a fine weapon. Yeah, that's what. I mean, Glock's cool if you're into plastic shit. You know, guys who carry plastic guns, I'm just saying. No, I ask because, you know, each guy, I know I have a 320 and I have a couple versions of Glock's for testing only.

I would never be caught dead carrying it. Yeah, I was just thinking about how much slack there is in a Glock's. Yeah, I've maybe shot a Glock less than 10 times. So, just because I carry SIG, so I train SIG stuff. Yeah. I mean, that's just, that's just 10 times. many. Yeah, exactly. So, but yeah, they carried Glock and he was pulling the slack out of his trigger and Ben beat him to it. And he testified for Ben with that witness or with that testimony.

So Thursday afternoon, they broke and the jury went to go deliberate. And it was, it came to like five o'clock and they brought, they asked the jury, hey, do we have a decision? and they said no. And so they said, okay, we'll return tomorrow. So we go home that night. How has Ben feeling that night? Or how are you feeling, too? We were both confident.

So we were both confident that it was going to be a hung jury, meaning they wouldn't be able to come to a unanimous decision because that's what you, to convict you had to have a unanimous decision. What happens if they do come to a hung jury? It gets retried. Okay. So it's either guilty or innocent. or they will, I mean, there's got to be a number of times, a limit, right?

The number of times you come to a hung jury or is there not? I don't know. Like, what if you got to court again and you go through that? It's hung jury again. I don't know. I don't have the answer to that one. Oh, that sounds like a nightmare. Yeah.

I mean, that was a very long week. But it has to be definitive and it has to be unanimous. Yes. Yeah, either guilty or not guilty. Okay. And so we woke up, we went to bed Thursday, woke up Friday, you know, went in. He hung out with his lawyer at their office. We hung out at headquarters.

And our civil attorney actually called me. He said, hey, the verdict is in. And I immediately called Ben. I was like, hey, I just got a phone call. So the verdict is in. And he said, hold on. And I could hear him talk with our lawyer. He's like, yeah, I'll see you at the courthouse.

Which, again, I still had to go to my segregated room. And Ben was in the courtroom. And so we fly over there. and as I'm walking in, the judge is giving like the thank you for doing your civil service to the jury. And she says, okay, I'm going to read the verdict. And I don't know the vernacular, but, you know, she goes on and she says, we find, this jury finds William Benjamin Darby guilty of murder. And I collapsed. walking into that the night before in that morning,

because we're talking obviously every night that week. I was 99% sure he was going to get a hung jury, and 1% sure he was going to get a conviction. Or I'm not a conviction, I'm sorry. Innocent. Conviction was not in my mindset, and it wasn't in his either. Even though those two witnesses weren't allowed to testify to the jury in evidence,

like Ben Darby did not have to go to remedial training, and the other two officers did. The other two officers had... That was never presented to the jury. That was never allowed to be told. That just was they weren't allowed to. We were not allowed to present that as evidence. I'm so confused. Again, because it spoke to the ultimate issue of his innocence.

Yeah, I'm so confused in how, again, don't know shit about the legal system, but how that can be prohibited from being presented to a jury. I mean, isn't the basis of a jury of your peers based upon having all of the evidence presented to them and having them make a reasonable or come to a reasonable conclusion? Right. And when police officers, you know, unfortunately, just like in Ben's case, they do end up going to trial over things. And for it to be a reasonable jury of your peers, that would mean 12 cops. That wouldn't be 12 laymen. I don't know if it would be 12 cops.

I could see having a couple on there. So, okay, but you would still have police officers in your jury. At least available in the jury pool, I would say, yeah. Yeah, but those always get knocked out because there were going through the transcripts. There were multiple either in law enforcement or had some tie to law enforcement. Well, that's going to be a nightmare for the prosecutor. Yeah. And they were outed immediately.

Like those were the first. Their sticks were drawn against them immediately. Case law was not allowed to be presented. Like I said earlier, Graham versus. Connor, which is one of the bedrock cases of law enforcement. What did they allow them to present? Case law-wise, none of the major ones. Graham versus Connor wasn't allowed.

Tennessee versus Garner wasn't allowed, which talks about mainly if a violent fleeing felon, you can't just shoot someone if they're running away. They have to be a danger to the public. Generally a good policy. Right. But it also states in there if you are in fear for your life or someone else's life. Montut versus Carr, Grisdinsky versus Palm Beach out of Florida. Those are also other cases where an officer was presented with a threat and he took action against that threat and was cleared for it.

And that was not allowed to be presented. None of them. God, I'm so confused by how that happened. So, and then different state statutes. weren't allowed to be presented, saying how an officer, when faced with, I think it's 13A3, 23, or 27 for all the Alabama officers, or just people who want to look it up, state statute, when an officer is faced with an imminent threat to his life or someone else's life, they can eliminate that threat by whatever means necessary. And Ben did that, and that defense was not allowed to be given to the jury. So the jury didn't get the whole story. And that's now my duty as his wife and as an officer to tell the world, hey, he wasn't given a fair trial because of ABCD and the rest of the alphabet. All these things weren't allowed to be shown to the jury.

All you saw was, and a lot of people think, well, he was only, he got by the time that he got there and the time that the incident was over was 10 or 11 seconds. that's too fast. Well, no, it's not. And like I had said earlier, you cannot replicate that situation. You can try the best you can, but you can't get how you were feeling. Did you get good sleep that night? Did you eat something good that day? Are you just going off of a monster and a beef jerky stick?

Did you exercise that day? Were you tired from that? Or there's so many things that play into every call that you. you go on and things that you don't even realize that factor into that that and let alone did you or did you not deviate from the accepted policy of your organization right there's policy and procedures set up when you deal with a man with a gun you are supposed to set a perimeter and surround and call out that was not taken because the piggies and beckles for whatever reason decided let's go into a house with a guy with a gun have they ever expressed why they did that

No, she would not, and she can't now, but she would not talk to Ben. How come she can't now? Because he's in prison. Oh, okay. Ben and Beckles had spoken after, you know, they cleared the ear because obviously that's a very critical situation that they were in. And they talked about it afterwards. Ben tried multiple times trying to talk to the geese, and she wouldn't talk to him. I'm curious as to why they deviated from the procedure to set the perimeter.

I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. Interesting question to ask them. Yeah. So what happens when that verdict comes in? What are the actual steps that happened at that point? So Ben knew the verdict before the judge even read it because the jury's in.

He walked in and the jury's seated and he said all the females were crying. And then a couple men were like raking their face. Yeah. You know, obviously under stress because of the decision that they'd come to. Let me backtrack a little bit. So we came back Friday and the jury was still trying to deliberate and one of the jurors had a panic attack and had to go to the hospital. So an alternate jury member had to come in. Okay.

I don't know this to be true, but I would believe why did she have a panic attack? Was she the holdout? because they took the rest of Thursday to make their decision to go into Friday and they get their Friday and she's still holding out he's not guilty of murder. He did what he was supposed to do. He protected his life and those other two officers' lives.

But the other people in the jury were like, no, you need to just, we want to go home or we don't want to do this anymore, just say that he's guilty so we can go home. I don't know if that happened, but that's a thought that I have. So she had to go to the hospital and a new jury member was brought in.

Do the alternate sit in through the trial as well, too? They'd have to, right? Yeah, so 14 people sit in on the jury, but you don't know if you're an alternate until it's time to go to deliberate. No shit. Yeah. So, like, the judge knows in the state and the defense know who the jury is and who the alternates are, but the jury pool doesn't know. Like, they know I'm selected to go to the jury or go to the trial, but I don't know if I'm going to be an actual jury member. Interesting.

So they go to deliberate and they say, okay, you 12 are them. You two, you're not in it, but you got to stand by just in case something happens and you have to fill their spot. There's a panic attack. Right. So panic attack happens and that other person comes in. So now because it's a new person, they have to completely restart because that new person wasn't in on all the prior conversation of the deliberation. So right before lunch, the verdict comes in, judge says, you're, we find you guilty of murder. and, you know, I was just blown away because I didn't, we know, no one expected it.

We didn't expect a conviction. We expected either a hung jury or an innocent verdict. And, you know, people gave me the room and a deputy came up to me and said, Mrs. Darby, I need you to come with me. And I was like, where are we going? Like, I just found out my husband's going to prison, you know, I don't want to come with you. And he said, I'm bringing you to him.

So he led me and his mother, Ben's mom, down to the basement, and we were able to see him. And he said, it's going to be okay. I might be able to come home tonight. Just hang on. It's going to be okay. You know, I love you. See you soon. And so he was found guilty of murder.

And the judge set his bond for $100,000. Someone graciously posted that. So he was able to come home that night. Within a couple hours, we got a phone call saying, hey, come pick him up. Someone just posted his bond. So he came home. And the next day, we're devastated, you know, obviously. And the next day, one of my captains called me, and he said,

I'm coming to your house with food. What do you want? And I was like, Cap, I appreciate it, but we're still in bed. I really don't want to see you right now. We're not hungry. Thank you, but no, thanks. And he's like, no, you need to eat. If you don't, you got an hour and a half to tell me

or I'm bringing you McDonald's. So we got dressed, and he brought us some food. And he's like, if you need anything, let me know if you don't come into work until you're ready you know you're good yeah so um that was friday you know the verdict came on Friday so we had the weekend um we got up Sunday just like we always do we went to church and uh we weren't going to let the conviction keep us from continuing to live our life um because he wasn't incarcerated yet how much time do you have between the conviction and the incarceration so you're

Usually you only have three or four weeks. It's usually pretty quick. I don't know why, but the judge said you're not going to have your sentencing until August. So we had... Oh, that's right, because the verdict doesn't necessarily entail the sentence. Right. So we, because, you know, we originally filed for a motion for a new trial and all that, and she denied it. But she gave us three and a half months.

So we got everything in order that we need to get in order. You know, I became his power of attorney and all that stuff. And he went back to work Monday because it's like, well, what do we do? Like, he didn't know what to do because his farm was just like, just go home and, you know, we'll figure this out. And he went back to work on Monday, or Tuesday, I'm sorry, he went back to work because Monday we had to go speak with his lawyer about. Well, now what is going on, you know. And his department said, hey, you're going out on FMLA sick time because you're under severe stress, obviously, because you just got convicted of murder. And that is time that Ben earned because there's a big outrage of Huntsville Police Department is still supporting a convicted murderer, cop and pain.

him and he's a convicted murderer. No, that's his time. Was it a sick time basically that he accrued? Yeah. It's five years at this point of sick time that he accrued. That's his. It's not the departments. So he used that until it went out and then he resigned.

He was given the option to resign graciously and we took that. And I don't know if he realizes this, but Ben, but his he was a cop for exactly five years. Like to the day? His graduation, like, I mean, he started in February, but like the day he graduated the academy to the last day he was employed by HPD was five years. And so he, you know, we went in together. He resigned.

We spoke with the chief. Chief McMurray thanked him for everything that he did for Huntsville Police Department. And he said, you know, I still support you and I will continue to support you. So we got our lives in order not that it was like crazy chaotic like we that we are, you know, out of sorts, but we're facing a 25 year sentence now or a murder sentence of 20 years. Um, is the minimum. So it's like, okay, you know, that's a long time. Um, we're 29. So that's 49 when he would get out. And so, um, we go to sentencing. And between May, between his conviction date and sentencing date, we asked people to write character witness letters on his behalf, stating how he was a good person and he was not a criminal like the jury had decided he was. And we were able to get 72 letters talking about Ben's moral character and how he was a good man. and we presented that in a binder to the judge and to the district attorney because they get a copy of everything.

Is this the same judge presiding over the sentencing that did the court? Yes. So we've had the same judge the entire time. So we give those to her. She's supposed to read them. I really don't think she did based off of her sentencing. And so we go in there. It's also closed to the public.

It's open, but it's like one person for every three seats. So after the media gets first dibs, there was only one seat left, so his mother got it, which she should have. His father and I were part of his witnesses to talk to the judge. So we were allowed, the main three of us were allowed in the courtroom. And I remember walking in there with him. We walked across the street from his lawyer's office, and the street was a line. with people who supported us from the beginning. Huntsville police officers, people from my department,

people from church, people that he grew up with from grade school, people from college, different jobs that he held prior to a police officer. Those employers were there. His grandma, 86-year-old grandma, was standing outside, and he gave her a hug and told her that he loved her, knowing that he probably wouldn't see her after that day. And that was a very long, it's only like a 30-minute drive from our house to Huntsville, and it seemed like it was a two-hour drive because this was it.

You know, there was a chance that she ruled in his favor for sentencing, but based on how everything had gone. He had no reason to believe so. I didn't, yeah. I was like, well, you know, I'm praying and hoping that, this works out for us, but there's a high probability that is not. So I think I said it earlier, murder in Alabama with a weapon is a 20-year minimum. So if he only got only 20 years, he would be eligible for an appeal bond,

meaning he could come home during his appeal. 20 years in a day or longer, he had to stay in until his appeal came through. So the witness letters were presented, and then he had his childhood friend that they've just been friends his whole life. He, one of his supervisors from Huntsville Police Department, she testified in favor, obviously, for Ben. They both did. Our pastor testified for Ben. Ben's dad took the stand. I took the stand, and Ben took the stand pleading with the judge.

Please show him leniency. He's not a murderer. Even though what happened in May happened, he's not a murder. He's not. And I noticed when I took the stand, you know, I got sworn in, raised my hand and had direct eye contact with her. And she said, you can be seated. And I sat down and she said, what is it that you want to say? And so I started to talk and immediately she would just, she looked away from me.

she got her pen out and I could tell she wasn't taking notes she was just scribbling and she wouldn't look at me the entire time I was talking and um which is rude I mean I'm trying to talk to you about something very important and you oh yeah because it's just you and her at that point right I mean there's other people in the room but she's the one who's going to be making the decision yeah she's making decision so I'm trying to convey to her why you should be lenient to my husband yeah why I need him to be in my life every day. Why he's not a murderer. I'm having that direct conversation with you and I'm trying to get you to realize that and you're not giving me the light of day. How was she with the other people who took the stand? So I asked them afterwards because I'm, she was the same. She had that direct contact with them when they got sworn in and immediately when they sat down. Are we done yet? You know, like totally not paying attention to what that witness was trying to conveyed her. So the DA gets up or the chief district attorney, Tim Gann gets up there and he says, Judge, we recommend a 25-year sentence because Ben Darby has not shown remorse for his actions he took that

day. Ben Darby's not sorry that he had to kill. He's not sorry he killed someone. He's sorry that the incident had to happen, but he was going home at the end of the day. Just like any other police officer. That's your goal at the end of the day to go home. And they, the DA's office was mad that he didn't come and say, I'm sorry, I killed him. He's sorry the incident had to happen, but there was no other way around because Parker wouldn't cooperate with police. He was given seven commands in total to drop the gun. And he didn't. And he had ample opportunity to do so. So, um, the whole time, Gann is talking. He says she's taking notes. Okay. Everything he's saying

she's taking notes on. And then when we get up and we talk, she's just sitting there. She might look up every so often, but she's not really paying it. From my perspective, she's not paying attention. And she says, okay, give me a second. She looks at whatever she's looking at. She says, okay, I sent you to 25 years and $120,000, fines in restitution. And when the...

Where do the fines come from? What's that about? I don't know because... Where does the money go? Some of it went to the DA's office because there's some type of filing fee or something. But I don't know where the other $19,000 would go to. Interesting.

Because I thought the same thing. Later on, we found out that because they never had a follow-up hearing with Ben present, that the 120 was dropped. So his punishment or his sentence is the 25 years. But when Gann got up there and said, we recommend a 25-year sentence, I knew he wasn't coming home.

And so she gives him his sentence, and the bailiff comes over, and he, Ben gives me his wedding ring and his ID, and, you know, we say goodbye. Or see you later. We don't say goodbye. and I'm trying to hold it together because I don't want him, his last memory of me losing it.

You know, I mean, obviously I'm upset and I'm tearing up, but I'm not uncontrollably crying. You know, I did the best I could to wait until he was gone because I didn't want him to see that. And so we leave and go to the lawyers across the street and figure out, you know, well, now. would like what do we do now and Ben called me from once he got booked in he called me and he said I'll call you the next chance that I get so he was held in the Madison County jail

for 30 days I'm sorry because he's a police officer he is considered protected they're not going to throw a cop in a mom general population so Madison County doesn't have a pod for PC protective custody. So Ben was stuck in a 6x8 cell for 24 hours by himself. He would get one hour out of his cell. So 23 and one out, that one hour he would call, he would take a shower and he would call me and call his parents. And he did that for 19 days. And then with COVID, he also had to be, every time you went into a facility, you had to be isolated. So he's isolated for 19 days and gets moved to Kilby, which is one of the main processing centers, prison centers in Alabama. It's near Montgomery. So it's about three hours away from where we were. So he gets

transported down to Kilby again is put into COVID isolation, even though he hasn't been around anyone for 19 days. But he puts put in COVID isolation. And then while he's at Kilby, he gets a break out of his cell every four days. So he's going 72 to 96 hours at a time with no break. The media found out before I did that he got moved. I found out someone called me and said, hey, Ben got moved. And I was like, what are you talking about? And they said, he's at Kilby.

And I was outraged because I'm his wife. And I didn't find out. Like, I should be the first person to find out, not the general public. Because it's my husband. Do they have an obligation to tell you? I don't know if they do, but I mean, common courtesy. You know what I mean? Like, I'm his wife.

So I called Kilby, and I don't know, whoever I talked to was unpleasant to say that nicely. And just had an attitude with me the whole time. Asking me for information about Ben that obviously, like, there's only one William Benjamin Darby in the state of Alabama. And everyone knows who he is because his, his mugshot has been on the news, you know. So she's giving me a hard time. And I said, well, can you tell me when he got there? And she's like, nope, all I can tell you is that he's here.

And then she hung up on me. And that just ticked me off. Yeah. So I know he's there, but I haven't heard from him. So I think I went 56 hours before I finally heard from him from the time that he got to kill me to the time that he was a lot of phone call. And so you have to go through the process of like putting money on his account and every time he calls me there's a 22 second recording of some lady saying,

hello, this is the Alabama Department of Corrections and a correctional inmate is trying to call you, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. And so he's at Kilby for 30 days in a 6x8 cell by himself. At one point, he was put in a pod with other inmates that weren't PC. status, which is against the law. Thankfully, they never found out who he was. Yeah.

Because obviously his life is in danger. One of the inmates that he was in with killed a cop. So his life is in direct danger now because he's wrongfully imprisoned. And now he's around inmates that are of general population, so they're not the same status as he is. And, you know, if they were to find, if they were to find, if he's not. they would have found out who knows what they would have done to him. Yeah.

You know, nothing good for sure. Yeah, nothing good. So, um, he finally got moved to limestone, which is a,

um, protective custody prison. Um, it's only 45 minutes away from me. Um, but he got moved up there in October. So let me go. Of 21.

Of 21. Yeah. Let me backtrack a little bit. So, um, he gets sentenced August 20th of 2021. The following week, the Attorney General for Alabama is in Huntsville

at a pro-police back the blue event. So I was like, well, I'm not going to let that opportunity slide by. I'm going. Because now he is the prosecutor of Ben's case during the appeal. So he came up and he, you know, said, I appreciate it. whatever all the law enforcement does for our state, and I wish people understood how great of people you are. And I wish, he said, the words he used, he said, I wish people had a righteous

anger like Jesus did in the Bible against people who hate police. I wish people had as much anger against those people that hate police, just as Jesus did against. Powerful words. Yeah, pretty powerful, okay. And so he got done talking and the banquet was concluded and I went over there and I said, Hi, Mr. Marshall, my name is Keelan Darby and I'm a police officer for my agency. And I'm also the wife of formal Huntsville police officer, William Darby, who was just convicted of murder. And I need you to do something about it since now the case is in your hands.

So ethically, he can't talk to me about the case. Yeah. Totally understand that. But I wasn't going to let the opportunity to introduce myself go away and not take that opportunity. And so we have these business cards made up because we have a website and trying to get people to know more about what actually happened. And so I handed the attorney general that card. And he looked at it and he just looked down. And then he raised his head again and he looked at me.

He said, you're a police officer too? and I said, yes, sir, I said, I'm... No, I'm hearing a fucking Halloween costume. Well, I wasn't in uniform. Oh, damn it, you just ruined my story. No, I wasn't in you. It was just a plainclose like banquet or whatever. And I said, yes, sir, I'm a police officer too.

I said, so not only does this affect me personally because it's my husband, but this affects me and every other cop in the state because professionally we could end up like him tonight. and he he dropped his head and you could tell like he realized the importance of what I just said and he put his hand out to me again he said well I appreciate you introducing yourself and he shook my hand and that was it and I understand he can't talk to me about the case because he's the prosecutor now and but you'll be reintroduced to him in the appeal process I'm assuming yeah yeah so um there was some there was some conversation there was some meetings after sentencing, I went and spoke to our police training and standards commission,

A post, and I said, hey, you know, we have 10 academies in the state, and they said, yeah, we do. And I said, okay, are we still teaching them that if officers are faced with them in a threat to themselves or another officer, that they are to eliminate that threat? And they said, yeah, we're still teaching that. And I said, so we are still teaching brand new baby rookie cops that concept. and the secretary looked at me, he said, yes, ma'am, we are. I said, then why is my husband in prison? And he looked at me and he said, I can't give you an answer for that.

Yeah, I was going to ask you that. I was going to ask you if they had made any doctoral changes or shift in policy based off that incident. Nothing. Nothing departmentally at Huntsville PD, no changes. And statewide, no changes. So we are still teaching cops in Alabama when you are faced with an imminent threat to your life or another person's life, whether that's a citizen or an officer, you can eliminate that threat. We are still teaching that in Alabama. I would read that as a cop if I'm ever put into that situation and I took

those actions. I said, expect to be tried for murder. Well, yeah, and that's what... Especially if they're not changing the doctrine and that's been the outcome previously, why would anything shift? When Ben was sentenced, when Ben was convicted and that may, I know for a fact, police as a whole in North Alabama stopped. No one did their job because they just saw a fellow officer, a fellow member of their team just get sent to prison for doing his job. And so, you know, the post was like, well, our lawyers, you have to talk to your lawyers

because we asked them to write an amicus brief, which is a friend of the court letters, basically supporting the actions taken by that officer. And they're like, well, they played the whole legality. card. And so we reached out to other entities, including the National Fraternal Order of Police. And they did write an amicus brief in support of Ben and stated how he should be given a new trial based on it being a closed courtroom and pertinent case law that would have exonerated him not being allowed to be presented to the jury. So, and like why would they, why would

the department in the city as a whole and the national FOP, which is a very well-known organization for police training and tactics and like what you should do why would they stick their neck up for them for him if he really is a murder if he did do if what they're saying is if what the jury decided is true and that he did the wrong thing why would they stick their neck out for him well why would they also not change the training that they provide right exactly by standing behind that training in a way you know they're voicing their support for him and the actions that he took. Right.

Because if his actions were incorrect based off of what he was, the standard that he was trained to, they would need to change it. Right. You know, he's not a corrupt cop or a cop that was a disgrace to the badge, which was said in closing arguments. So closing arguments, you don't have to prove anything. You can say whatever you want to. So what the DA's office?

Very familiar with that from Law & Order. Okay. Yeah. So. They go big. Yeah. So, and that's what the DA did. He said, Ben should have never been a cop.

He's a disgrace to the badge. He's a rookie cowboy. He doesn't know what he's doing. And you don't have to support any of that. So the last thing the jury's hearing is this guy's a horrible person. And, you know, they compared Ben to some random person. I'm not going to say you because I know you have a little bit of experience with your military background being a seal. But your average Joe Blow walking down the street.

busting into your house and shooting you with a shotgun. They said that that person and Ben Darby are the same. I'm sorry, but you're wrong. Yeah, they're not. There's a reason why you go through an academy, and there's a reason why you're a sworn peace officer, and there's a reason why as citizens, we empower you and provide you additional levels of authorities

to make decisions like that. It's absolutely nothing like somebody, first off, don't go for a fucking walk with your shotgun. Right? That's a bad metaphor or analogy right there. And I don't know, unless your shotgun identifies as a fucking weiner dog. I don't know in this day and age what you can say and what you can do. Right. They're completely and utterly different.

Right. And when you call the police, when you call the police and you still have a weapon and you know that we're trained to eliminate threats, you are asking for whatever happens to you, you're asking for it. Yeah. I mean, I think some people might describe that as a harsh statement. but I understand exactly what you're saying. I was having a conversation with somebody today. They were asking about actions on target and interpretations of ROEs. And they flat out asked me, you know, why do some people live on target and why do some people get killed?

And the answer to that is it's based off of their behavior. So they may not intentionally be asking for it, but I have on target, if I'm lucky, a quarter of a second to make a decision that may have lethal consequences. Is this action dangerous to me and the dangerous to the people around me? And obviously, scenarios are a little bit different. My job was more offensive than that of a law enforcement officer. And I do not want law enforcement officers to operate in that more offensive role. There's a time and place for that. Right. Absolutely. But the reason why people lived or died, it had everything to do with their behavior and my reaction to that.

So it's not like they were asking for it necessarily. Their behavior drove me to a decision point where I had very limited options and I took the one that I deemed to be the most correct in the moment. Right. He only had 10 or 11, whatever, you know, whatever it was. Which might seem like a very short time to people, the vast majority of times that I have ever pulled the trigger, I'm telling less than a second. And for people to give some perspective, that's three blinks of an eye.

I'm talking less than that. Yeah. And it's based off of behavior and perceived threat. Right. And he wasn't Joe Blow like the DA's office presented him as. He was a trained police officer who was on duty that day. Yeah, it was a very poor comparison to say he was like a civilian walking around. Right, right.

Like he had the training to back up his actions. It was also information was given to me that people, from the department had spoken to the attorney general after he was been sentenced or before his sentencing. I don't remember now, but there was a conversation between these people and the attorney general. And the attorney general said, well, when it gets to my desk, I'll handle it. It'll be resolved. Meaning if the appeal gets to his desk, it'll be handled differently? So the appeal is going to his desk because he's now the prosecutor. So he said that he would

handle it when it got there. So that, I mean, that begs me to ask, are you going to do what you said you are going to do? Well, only time's going to tell on that one. Right. And it's unfortunately in an election year, so I don't know. He, the Attorney General runs on the platform that he supports law enforcement. There was a shooting in 2018 in Hoover, which is right outside of Birmingham of an officer. It was an active shooter at a mall a couple of Thanksgiving's a go. And the officer shot a guy who had a gun who matched, the description was a blackmail with a gun running through the mall. Well, that officer saw a blackmail with a gun, shot said person, ended up not being the guy. That's unfortunate.

Yes, very. Yeah. The attorney general said it would be unethical based off of case law, which is the same case law that we cited, Grand v. Connor, Tennessee v. Garner, Montu v. Carr, Grisinski v. Palm Beach Sheriff's Office, it would be unethical for me to charge said officer with murder. I feel like there's something else operating with this case, with your husband. My husband is a political football. And he right now is sitting in a prison in Alabama among, yes, he's in protective custody, okay, but he's the only guy in his pocket. for a line of duty action.

There's other cops in there that killed their spouse or messed around with kids or committed theft or whatever. They did that. There's other government officials are also in there with him. But Ben is the only person in there for doing his job.

And he said when he walked in there, there was a, because I mean, his mugshot has been on the news and they get the news in there. And he said, he had a line of people once he got out of booking come up to him and say you don't belong in here. So when a true bad guy comes up to you and says, hey, you don't belong in here, they know that they did wrong and they told Ben, like Ben has had conversation with them, which he's in turn

told me over the phone since I'm not a lot of see him until next month. Why aren't you allowed to see him until next month? I was going to ask you that. Yeah. If you've been able to go see him. Yeah, I haven't been a lot to see him because of COVID. and then they opened up visitation, but they said you have to go through a full-blown strip search. And then after that, you have to wear a mask and have to talk through Plexiglass.

And I said, no, thank you. That's excessive. What will be after that? Like when it goes back to an airport, what would be? Yeah, so normal. So I get to go visit him next month. And for that, you just go through regular search. just pat you down. You don't have to strip or anything. And you can have direct contact so I can

hug him. And you still have to wear a mask, at least into the facility. I don't know, once you get in there, if you can take it off. Yeah, I'll do that, absolutely, because I'm not going to get violated to go and see my husband. And he told me he's like, I totally understand, and I really don't want you to go through that. Yeah, nobody would want there. No. Somebody they care about to go through that. No. So how often would you be able to go see him? Under like a normal, like removing COVID from this? I don't know because that's all that we've known is the whole COVID thing since he's been in.

Right now it stands, I can go visit him once a month for two hours. So by the time that I see him next month, it'll be nine months since I've seen him in person. We talk on the phone every day. He's a lot of call me. He gets his, he gets a tablet. They issue him. So he has phone privilege. He can download.

certain podcasts unfortunately not this one because why not the jail says no they're only there's only who the fuck in the jail is saying i want a goddamn email address and point of contact i uh yeah what's wrong with my podcast they like he can listen to the art of manliness he said um he's allowed to um like there's a very strict list of what he's allowed to what if i could get one of those other podcasts to repost this podcast on their platform huh fuck you alabama talk to those people for me Because I would love for him to hear. So he only knows. So everything's recorded.

Everything that we talk, every time I talk to him, it's recorded. So I can't go into full detail with him because, unfortunately, people listen to our phone calls. Yeah. So when I see him next month, obviously, we're going to have very. More detailed conversations. Because I can actually talk to him like a real relationship person. What a nightmare. But so last week, I was in California with.

Nick Wilson and the Resiliency Project and they 100% have taken us on to support us as much as they can and while I was there we did a lot we did a big social media push because now that I'm a lot of speak publicly and I did a formal interview with them and their team and local news back home caught wind of it and one of the inmates Ben was taking some notes in like I guess it's a day room I don't know because I've not been there but he He was at some table taking notes on something. And the guy came in, it's like, hey, your chief is about to be on the news. And Ben was like, no, he's not. Like he's retired. And then he remembered what I was doing that week and how Chief McMurray and I have been in contact this whole time. And he walked in. And he said when he walked in, he saw the news playing a clip of one of the videos that I had posted on social media. And he said he smiled because he saw it was really happening. Like, I'm getting. our story out. Yeah. And people are hopefully hearing and seeing. I don't know how many people still watch the news, but, you know, through podcasts and social media and getting on the news.

More people get their news that way now, I think, than traditional outlets. Right. And he called me that night and he said, hey, I saw you on the news. And I smiled when I saw you. And I said, well, I said, Ben, I said, I'm doing. I said, I'm not trying to get you out. I'm going to get you out. It's not a matter of if.

It's a matter of when because case law backs him. Case law out of the 11th Circuit, which Alabama's under, and then, like, there's so many states that make up every circuit. Yeah. But the cases that we cited that would have exonerated him or out of Alabama, some of them are out of Alabama. So it's not a matter of if he gets out of prison. It's a matter of when. And I am doing, I'm not just trying. I'm actively doing what I can in asking other people to help me to see he's an innocent man who's in prison for the better years of his life.

How does your department feel about you publicly discussing it? So I didn't tell them originally. That's the move. Ask for forgiveness, not permission. That's pretty much the move. But, I mean, we do have a social media policy and, you know, what you do in uniform or uniform. directly reflects the department. Yeah.

And I came back to shift Monday night, and my chief and my captain were at the shift meeting. I saw their cars when I pulled in. And I was like, oh, man, they're here to talk to me, you know, because I've been on the news. And they weren't. My captain, he knew I went to California. He said, do you have a good trip? And I said, yeah, I was very profitable. And, you know, the story, the real story is getting out.

He's like, that's awesome. I'm really happy for you. And my chief looked at me, and he said, you were in California. And I was like, yes, sir, I was. And he said, why? Like, why did you go to California? Just because it's so liberal. Sections of it are liberal.

Yeah. And I forgot you're from San Diego. I'm from Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz. Extremely liberal. No. I'm sorry. Well, most of the coastal cities in California are liberal.

You'd be amazed how red it gets as you go inland. Really? The voting population density, though, is mostly in the blue areas. Okay. Yeah. So he said, well, you know, why are you in California? California and I was like, oh, I was on a business trip for Ben. And he was like, oh, awesome. He's like, did it go well? And I was like, yeah. And like, he had no idea. I'm not doing anything against policy by talking about my husband. And it's not immoral or unethical. So it's my duty as his wife to do everything that I can to get him out because he's innocent. What are your legal next steps? So right now we're in the appeal process. We submitted our appeal brief February 1st, I think it was.

And the attorney, so our main points in the appeal brief were the unconstitutional closing of the trial courtroom, the inadmissibility of the case law that would have exonerated him. And then if you take the great totality of the evidence, a jury would not have convicted him if they heard everything. And so those were among the. There's 33 reasons why we requested a new trial when we filed that motion. The main three of those 33 we presented, but the other 30 of those reasons are intertwined within that brief. The Attorney Journal answered our brief March 28th, I think it was, end of March. And then I just found out today we are replying to that brief and it's supposed to be due on Monday. But because of Good Friday being a holiday, the Court of Criminal Appeals said, hey, we're going to give you until the 26th.

So we did not ask for that extension. They are giving it to us because of the good Friday of the holiday. And so the briefs, is that leading up to a determination as to whether or not there will be a retrial? Yeah. So it's going to the Court of Criminal Appeals, which is a panel of five judges. Okay. And right now we're asking for oral arguments. So they'll either say, yes, we're going to give them to you or no, we're not.

If they give them to us, then our lawyers and the Attorney General's office will come together in Montefiard. Montgomery and they'll have an hour to speak about whatever the issue they want to talk about. And then the judges will, they'll either make a decision to deal with it at that level, or they can kick it back to the trial courts. So we would get a new trial, or they would not deal with it and they would kick it up to the Alabama Supreme Court. We are very hopeful that we can get it solved at the current level, at the appellate level for criminal appeals. if they if they kick it up we'll have then we're getting into the federal realm and at that point the 11th circuit which would be years down the road um this would be the fastest or rat right now would be the fastest so they could either they could remand it so kick it back to the trial court um or they could they could they could uh reverse and remand so take the conviction out and give it back or they could reverse and render and he would be acquitted and the criminal aspect of it would be done.

So at the end of March, the paperwork is done? When will you find out whether or not they give you those oral arguments? The end of April. Okay. Considering that we are actually in April. We are in April. Check the date. Carry the one.

Good. We're out of March. So what people don't realize is where we're at in the legal process is huge because it's once we get our, when our brief gets submitted, at the end of this month, it is in the judge's lap to make that decision. So we are like, we're at the cusp of a very big decision being made. Yeah. You know, at that point, Ben would have been in prison for nine months. How can people help you? And what can they do? Yeah. So what right now, we are in desperate need of support funding-wise, because this is a lot of money.

We have a website, standwithdarby.com, and it has our whole story of everything that happened. All the paperwork are brief, the Attorney General's brief, the National FOP's brief is on there, everything that supports why Ben did what he did and why he was just to do so. We have a donate link on there from Fund the First, so they can go click on that donate link and directly donate to that to help with appeal costs. Anyone, you know, we need help with advocacy to try and get his story out. Very thankful for the opportunity presented to me today to speak with you and just get our story out on your platform because you have so many different people

that listen to your show. The Resiliency Project took us on and did the formal interview and then hooked me up with a couple podcasts, law enforcement-wise, because the law enforcement community, no one knows who Bend Darby is. They're now finding out because we're allowed to talk about it. But the reaction that I saw within the last 10 days, people are outraged because he did what he had to do and was correct in doing so, but he's sitting in prison. So, you know, we need help financially. We need help in advocacy. We need state senators and, I mean, in Alabama, because that's where the case is.

but we need our state officials to realize everything that went wrong in how he doesn't deserve to be where he's at. We have social media set up on Instagram and Facebook is at Stand with Darby. I did a podcast with 10-8 memes and then also I think that's going to drop on the 21st of this month. 10-8 means something. You're good to go, ready to go. Which ones are you going on a break? it depends. I think it depends on the department, but usually it's 10-6. That would be my favorite call.

Yeah. And it like my department and Huntsville used different 10 codes. So it's funny because Oh, there could be no confusion there if you guys were to have to come together to do something. Yeah. And so like I'll talk to guys from Huntsville and they'll say a 10 code. And I have to like remember it's not my 10 code, which my department doesn't even use them anymore. But when we did, it wasn't the same. So, um, What could possibly go wrong? It's very funny when you have to try and differentiate which code you're saying. But, yeah, we need as much support and just people to see what actually happened.

And, you know, go from there. It's tough for me to imagine what you and Ben have lived through. And then to layer on top of that that you are still serving your community in that capacity. seeing firsthand what has happened to your husband who was doing exactly the same thing. I could imagine a lot of people losing faith. Yeah, it hasn't been easy. I'll be the first to say that. But my strong, the system didn't fail.

Ben Darby, three or four people from Madison County did. The criminal justice system, yes, it has its flaws. but for the most part it it sends bad people to jail or to prison yeah you know and good people come through and unfortunately in this in this case the opposite happened um my ben and i are very strong um believers in god in that our faith um personally i don't know how you could be a law enforcement officer and not have a relationship with the lord um and i know that's controversial and people get into that, but that has been something that has grounded me and given me the faith to press on and to keep going. And then my support system, people from my family, my church,

people from my department, his department, there's a group in Pennsylvania called the Blue Justice Project. They were in contact with Ben at the very beginning. And Ben was like, Like, no, I appreciate it, but give the money to someone else because at the trial level, it was all paid for by the city. And when Ben was sentenced, I called Lisa, and I said, hey, I know, you don't know who I am, but I'm Ben Darby's wife. And she said, I'm so sorry about what happened. And within a month of me talking to her, they were at my house doing fundraising and got us money to help with his legal fees. I'm very thankful for the support system and for the people that I know I can truly count on

because you have those outliers who are like, well, I don't agree with what he did, but they disagree with him. And again, you can't replicate that day, no matter how hard you try, you can't 100% replicate what happened that day. So, and you weren't there. So even though you'd say, well, I wouldn't have done that.

Well, you weren't there. So I don't really care what your opinion is. Yeah. And you've never been asked to make a decision like that in your entire life. Exactly. Exactly. It's one of the negative things about the internet. It gives us all the ability to voice our opinion about all things.

Right. I fall back on, I believe that the internet should come with an IQ test. We can all have connectivity, but if you're a dumb dumb, you get dial-up. Yeah. And if you're Elon Musk, you could broadband. Yeah. And everywhere in between. Yeah. So we're hopeful for the next step. We realize it's a marathon. It's not a sprint. And Amy, we're four years. We're four years into this right now. So I'm four years behind trying to get out the story because we weren't allowed to talk about it for three years. And then with the courtroom being closed, I've got a lot of work to do. But I'm going to do it because it's my duty.

Fuck. He will come home. You know, it's not a matter of, I know, obviously I'll see him again because I'm going to see him next month, but I will see him as a free man. Absolutely. What do you think he would want to do with his life when he gets out? I don't know if he's thought about it or not, because right now it's not an option. Yeah. You know, he's a very strong, minded individual and very focused.

So he's focused on the fastest way for me to get, for him to get home. Probably best to focus on that at this stage. Because I mean, there's really no point of thinking about what if or what else to do because it's not an option. Yeah. Unfortunately, for 24 years and three months if this were to stand that long. I don't know. I think he would still want to help people and teach people as much as he could. I know he enjoys helping out with youth in our church and just through different activities that he participated through college, like mission work and stuff like that.

So I would see him doing something along those lines. I don't know if he would go back into law enforcement or not. And honestly, I wouldn't blame him if he didn't. But that's something that it's not an option, so we're not discussing it because it's just wasted air. Yeah, that's fair. I will let you close it out. What would you want to leave people with? Again, thank you for letting us, you know.

Thank you to Mike, Mike Lover. Mike Lover gets absolutely no thanks for anything. Well, um, he just happens to be my quantitative. I hit him up with complicated math problems. That's it. He, uh, for him taking the time, you know, we were, you were younger, obviously, and just, he had that, social media, you know, influence your status and for him to take the time and to listen and to understand what we are going through and then to get us connected to you.

I'd like to thank everyone who has supported us from the beginning and who are continuing to support us and all these new people who are finding out and are standing with us to get him home. Like I said, it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when Ben Darby will come home and I will do everything that I can to do that. He's a lucky man to have you in his corner. Yeah. We'll leave it at that. Thank you for your time.

Thank you so much. Yeah, of course.