Episode 21 – Critical Incident Review – Jordan MacWilliams Charged with Murder for Shooting a Hostage Taker

Jon Becker: My guest today is Jordan McWilliams. Jordan is a 15 year member of the RCMP Lower Mainland Division integrated Emergency Response Team, the second largest tactical unit in Canada. On November 7th, 2012, Jordan fired a single shot which killed a hostage taker while pointing a gun at the team after a five hour standoff at the Starlight Casino in New Westminster, British Columbia.

Although it was a completely justified shooting, this incident began an almost three year nightmare for Jordan and his family, which included Jordan being charged with murder by the newly created Independent Investigations Office, a civilian oversight board created just before Jordan's shooting. This was the first time a police officer had been charged with using lethal force in British Columbia since 1975, and Jordan was facing life in prison. Although the charges would later be dismissed, the damage to Jordan and his family had already been done.

Jordan's story is both a cautionary tale and a story of struggle, perseverance, and eventual victory over a politically motivated witch hunt. It's a fantastic conversation that should leave all of us repeating Jordan's mantra for the event. Be better, not bitter.

My name is Jon Becker.

For the past four decades, I've dedicated my life to protecting tactical operators. During this time, I've worked with many of the world's top law enforcement and military units. As a result, I've had the privilege of working with the amazing leaders who take teams into the world's most dangerous situations.

The goal of this podcast is to share their stories in hopes of making us all better leaders, better thinkers, and better people.

Welcome to The Debrief!

Jordan, thanks for being here with me today!

Jordan MacWilliams: Oh, it's my pleasure! Thanks for having me!

Jon Becker: Why don't we start with, like, your background. Tell me, you know, where'd you grow up? Why'd you want to be a cop? Give me that whole thing.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah. Well, I grew up in the lower mainland of British Columbia, which is outside the city of Vancouver. My dad was a police officer for 36 years with Delta PD and saw him being a cop as I was growing up. And once I got over my rebellious teenage stage, I decided that's what I wanted to do a little while. I wanted to do the exact opposite of whatever my dad did.

And then when I was about 17, I was like, I want to be just like dad, and I want to be a copy. I was involved in sports, played a little bit of hockey, soccer, and rugby. Growing up, I did a lot of martial arts, competed in taekwondo, and then into my late teens, where I actually was managing a martial arts school.

And then when I was 19, I went to Delta and tried to submit my application to get hired. And they're like, we're not going to hire a 19 year old, but you can volunteer for us. So I volunteered as a reserve constable and I decided I wanted to do some more to be involved in policing work. A job in policing. So I applied to be a dispatcher for, actually, Vancouver city police. And I worked there for about a year, went to a few calls. I worked every weekend as a volunteer with Delta until after about a year, they hired me and, yeah, foolishly hired a 20 year old to become a police officer.

Jon Becker: Well, they got a year of free labor out of him first.

Jordan MacWilliams: They did every weekend.

Jon Becker: So then, okay, so you go on the job at 20 and talk to me about early career, what you do, what you want to be when you grow up, all that.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah, I was living my dream, young guy, being on the job. Actually met my wife, who became my girlfriend at the time at the police academy. So everything was pretty awesome. As soon as I was on the job, I decided that I wanted to be on the SWAT team. Like, that was where I wanted to go. At that time, the team that my agency was a part of was a collateral duty regional team integrated between a few different agencies.

So pretty much right away, I started volunteering with them. I would be the guy at the guard shack for the Snipers to go to the range and I'd quarry for them as a role player for sims training, stuff like that. And then at about three years, I tried out and I made it onto the team. And that was just. Yeah, just early 2012 when I joined, and that was the municipal integrated emergency response team.

So then my day job stayed as a patrol officer and I was working part time collateral duty with the team. Similar to a lot of models we worked. We did a couple training days a month. We'd have call outs, moderately busy team, maybe like three, four calls a month. And, yeah, did that for just under a year before the incident. We're going to talk about today, and.

Jon Becker: I know we talked about this off mic, but I think it's interesting. Your dad was not a SWAT cop.

Jordan MacWilliams: No, no. My dad's career was more investigative. He did major crime, worked as a detective for a long time. And then when I got on the job, he actually. He was a watch commander. He ran a watch in our agency and we were just opposite or related.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So what was dad's reaction to, hey, dad, I'm going on the SWAT team?

Jordan MacWilliams: He thought that that was a cool thing to do for a little while that I should probably become a detective.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Well, it's not going to work out.

Jordan MacWilliams: No, it didn't work out. No.

Jon Becker: So why don't we kind of fast forward to the incident? Like, how long have you been on the job? How long have you been on the team when the incident occurs?

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah. So it was November 2012. I'd been on the job for a Shears, just under a year on the team when this happened. And it was, I remember really well, it was my first day shift. We worked two days, two nights was our kind of rotating schedule. And then four days off and I showed up for day shift. I'm sitting in the briefing room and I get a call over the radio from dispatch asking if I'll switch, be able to switch to Newestminster because they've just had a shooting and we were worked in a relatively busy patrol area, went to tons of shootings.

And I'm not going to say I was complacent to them, but usually everything's gone by the time you get there. Maybe you're trying to help somebody with first aid or looking at some shell casings on the ground, but very rarely do you actually have some type of interaction with the public when you're dispatched to a shooting.

So I switch the radio over and the first thing I hear when I listen to their channel is a member just yelling at the top of her lungs, drop the gun. I hear that screaming on the radio. And I was like, okay, they got somebody there. And I just sprinted out to my car, jumped in and started driving.

Jon Becker: You say a member? You mean a member of the ERT team?

Jordan MacWilliams: No, that was a patrol officer.

Jon Becker: Just a patrol officer?

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah. So I hear a patrol officer. And they'd asked for just if there was any on duty ERT members to switch to their channel. And that's how I got called originally.

Jon Becker: Got it. So as far as you know, it's a shooting and somebody's probably being held at gunpoint, but that's about all you've got when you roll up on it.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah, exactly.

Jon Becker: Got it. So why don't we set up? Because I think you're going to roll into it and figure it out as you go along. But I think for purposes of explaining the incident, why don't we set up what actually had happened prior to that and then what actually occurs before you get there?

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah. So before I got there, this is probably about, I guess it was 05:40 in the morning. There had been an ongoing domestic thing between this guy and his ex girlfriend. He'd been stalking her for a long time. He'd actually stalked her to the point where he had been putting gps devices on her car. He'd been breaking into her house, like, put a knife on her pillow, this kind of stuff.

A detective who worked the file actually was able to get surveillance on him, and surveillance picked him off following her around, and he was held in custody for a couple weeks prior to being released on a bail order. Within a few days of him being released, he goes to the casino where she worked, and he was waiting for her in the staff parking lot when she showed up for work that morning.

So she shows up for work, drives in, pulls into her parking spot, and he fires a shot into the air from a handgun he's got, and then tries to grab her at gunpoint, and he's now trying to force her back into her car. During this time, a number of people kind of come around him. He points the gun at them. He fires another couple shots off, and he's kind of fighting with her because she knows this isn't going to end well for her, so she doesn't want to go with him.

And she tries to get away a couple of times. He grabs her, pulls her back, throws her into the car at one point, and rips a round off, which just grazes the back of her hand really close. So this is all being seen live time by the casino surveillance camera.

So they've got really good surveillance of this casino, and they're updating in real time as this is happening, and patrol officers are getting there, and they roll up. And as they roll up, he's now got her in the car, and he's started to drive away with her. And he just kind of rolls to a stop. I think she actually pushed the shifter into neutral. And you see the car roll on the surveillance, and he sees the police there now, and he pops out of the car.

And as soon as he sees the police, he's kind of lit up by the spotlight from their car. You see him just bring the gun up right to his head, and now he's pointing the gun at his own head. He comes around the car, he grabs her. He's got her by her sweater and a gold chain around her neck, and he starts dragging her down the side of the casino.

I think it was a real challenging thing for these patrol officers to encounter. It's not easy without the context of everything that we got to see afterwards in surveillance of seeing a guy holding a gun to his own head and now dragging somebody away to make a decision. That's a real tough set of circumstances unless you know all the context.

Jon Becker: So, yeah, it's very confusing. I mean, if he's pointing it at her, it's a really easy decision. Yeah, but he's kind of, you know, dragging her to his suicide if you just kind of initially look at it.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah, exactly.

Jon Becker: Okay, what happens next?

Jordan MacWilliams: So he gets her down kind of the side of the casino. He pulls her down to this main road, which is now kind of parallels the highway. And the patrol officers do a good job of containing him there. So they've got some officers to the north who are trying to communicate with him. And then they've got a couple cars to the east with a supervisor there. And then some of their guys go around and they get into the ditch across the street.

So he's kind of contained where he is. And it's this little bit of a standoff where he's got her. He's holding her by the chain in the sweater. He's got the gun in his hand. He's pointing the gun at himself. And they're trying to communicate with him, trying to communicate with her. And they're not having any success.

So he's not answering them at all. They're just in the standoff. And to that is what I responded. So I've now been activated. I go, I'm the first ERT member who gets to scene. I'm there about half an hour after the incident originally started, maybe even less. Might have been 20 minutes. And I get on scene, and when I get there, I'm with these two guys who are to the east. And I remember seeing. They're probably about 100, maybe 25 yards away. And I can see this guy holding a gun to his own head and then holding her by the sweater.

And in my mind, I'm having that same thought you described, like, is this a suicidal guy? And she's trying to convince him to stop pointing the gun at himself? Or is she a hostage? Can she leave? I don't have the benefit of seeing that surveillance video. Just what I'd been told, which is there's been a shooting, and she's with him, and he's got the gun to his head, which is what I'm seeing.

And then in my mind, I'm like, okay, well, I've got to get closer if I'm going to be able to intervene at all. So I ask the patrol officers who are in the ditch to the south to try and communicate. Try and take over comms. So we're able to press up a little bit closer. And we do that and we end up getting within about 70 yards, I think it was.

Jon Becker: So you just kind of. You're trying to compress the problem. Get a little bit closer. You use the patrol vehicle for cover, if I remember correctly.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah, that's right. And we just kind of crept it forward slowly. And in my mind, I was. I just had a short barreled rifle with an eotech on top. I don't have any magnification. And I'm thinking to myself, okay, if this is a hostage thing and I need to take like a hostage rescue shot, I'm not gonna be able to do that from 125 yards with non magnified optics. So I'm just thinking, I want to get close in case I do need to intervene.

Jon Becker: And to set the scene. If I remember correctly, this is kind of like a freeway access road. It's like running right along the freeway, right?

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah. So it's like a parallel road directly north of the freeway. Then it goes on to the on ramp. So we've got this road now shut down. The freeway beside us is shut down. And there's no way for the people who are in the casino to leave. So they're all sheltered in place and there's a lot of people in the casino. And then behind us there's also the strip mall, which is just now opening up for the morning. And lots of people showing up.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So if he goes and either of two directions, he's going into large, crowded, populated spaces.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah, absolutely.

Jon Becker: Okay, so then what happens?

Jordan MacWilliams: We're trying to communicate, we're trying to facilitate, um, we're trying different people. We're using loud horn, we're using just our voice. And we're not getting any response at all. We're not getting him to even look at us. He just is looking at her. They're having some dialogue. And then at 1.1 of the patrol officers actually yells at her, like, come over here, come over here. And she kind of looks over her shoulder at us. And he lets go of her sweater for a second. And when he does that, she just backs up and he's still pointing the gun at himself. She's backing up, she takes a few steps, a few more steps, and now she's about 30 ft away from him.

At that time we were communicating, obviously, what we were seeing. And the team leader, who, he wasn't on scene yet, he broadcast for us to initiate a rescue attempt based on the separation. So we had, uh, three ERT members on scene. It was myself and two more. We break our cover, we run out, probably cross about 100 ft of open ground. We push past her.

Me and one other guy, we just go shoulder to shoulder, kind of block her from him. And the third guy grabs her, puts her head down to bring her back. And I remember when I was there in that position standing, and I looked at him. I looked him right in the eyes and he's holding the gun to his head. And I had my carbine up.

And like, I'm thinking to myself, okay, if he moves at all, I'm gonna shoot him. But I didn't. And it's an interesting thing. Like I've seen in my career now, I've done hundreds, close to a thousand operations, tactical operations, and I've seen lots and lots of people holding guns. And I haven't shot people just because they're holding a gun.

And when people ask me to explain the difference, there's kind of nuances and there's legal considerations and everything. But when you – When somebody truly is going to kill somebody else or kill you, you know right away looking at them, and I didn't see that in that moment, so I didn't shoot them. And I pulled back. We pulled back to cover. We had the hostage safe. She's recovered. She gets turned over, the detectives.

And then we just kind of transition right into our open air barricade protocols, which is trying to now contain him where he is with all those people. We already talked about being exposed to this threat and work towards a resolution of either him surrendering or another tactical intervention.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So, I mean, basically he's barricaded by the fact that he has a gun and can shoot himself or shoot you. So he's not. You can't move on him. But he's also not communicative and not cooperative. So you're just kind of at a stalemate.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah. And it was frustrating, for sure, because we now we make good use armor. We got a couple armored vehicles on scene and we're trying to communicate with him. The negotiators, they're using the bullhorn. We actually deliver him a throw phone with a robot. Drop the phone beside him. He picks it up. He says he's only going to talk to her and gets off the phone. And we have this kind of stuff repeat a little bit.

And so now in our minds as the operators, we want to try a tactical intervention, look, to move up to some less lethal or something. Because my fear is, and I'm a real strong believer of this. If we wait to react to somebody's behavior, you are just by nature now reacting. So it's going to be on their timeline, and you're never going to have as good of a success with your less lethal interventions, etcetera. If you're waiting to react, it's on his time now.

Jon Becker: Yeah. You've surrendered the initiative?

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah. He gets to have the initiative. And I have seen numerous times when we do that, when we give him the initiative, we end up in a violent confrontation, rather than us trying to intervene with some less lethal, et cetera, sooner and prevent that violent confrontation.

So I'm a big advocate of if there isn't meaningful negotiation, if there aren't other strategies that are starting to work or have some effect, we need to take the initiative. Otherwise, it may end much more violently than if we didn't.

Jon Becker: Well, especially if he's there to commit suicide by cop. You're giving him time to build courage.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah, absolutely.

Jon Becker: And either take a shot at you or provoke you, or, honestly, the longer you sit there, too, the greater the likelihood that somebody makes a mistake.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah. And that suicide by cop, that was in my mind when I'm looking at him. So now this has gone on for a couple hours. We've been attempting negotiation. No success. The crisis negotiators, they've called him, they've delivered that thrill phone. He's not talking to them. They're trying the pa. He does kind of shake his head or nod his head in response to some of their questions, but, he is not answering them. He's not talking to them at all.

And I remember what was going through my mind as I'm watching him. So I'm thinking to myself, okay, he's probably going to kill himself. I'm going to watch this guy shoot himself. And he's just sitting there. He's sitting on the pavement. He's holding the gun in his one hand. I'm to his east now, about 40 yards away. I'm just in behind the front of the armored vehicle, and I watch him. And he pulls the mag out of his gun. It's 1911 style, Colt commander. And he drops the magazine on the ground. And he looks up at our group. He looks at our element. He points at his gun. He holds up one finger.

And I see him say, I've got one left. And I see that. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna watch this guy shoot himself right now. But then the other thought I have is, okay, why is he telling us he's got one left, like he's telling us because he wants us to know he can still kill us with it. And I think now, okay, maybe he's gonna try and force us to shoot him.

Jon Becker: That's a really strange thing to do. Like, you're not unloading the gun. No, but I wonder what was going through. I mean, obviously crazy s*** was going through his head point. But for sure, it's a very odd thing to do because, like, if you unload the gun, you're saying, well, I'm not armed. If you load the gun, you're saying, I am armed. He kind of splits the difference and says, I have one bullet.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Which I guess means if I miss, you don't shoot me. Very odd. It's an odd play.

Jordan MacWilliams: I think you're right, with the suicide by cop thing, because I think he wanted to die in that moment, and he didn't want to shoot himself. He was trying to work up the courage to do it. And so now he's got the gun there. He's thrown the magazine on the ground. He's looking at us, and he stands up, and I watch him stand up. He's holding the gun up at his own head, and then he kind of holds it out just aimed up in the air. And he starts walking in these little circles, and his circles start to get a little bigger.

And then he just looks up at my element, and he starts walking right at us. He's walking right at us. He gets to about 25 meters away now, and in my element, there's myself and two other operators. One of them's got an Arwen with impact baton rounds. The other one's holding an NFTD. And the plan is, if he breaks out towards us, we're going to intervene, hopefully by a little bit with the flashbang and with the impact munitions.

So he's now walking right at us. We start that deployment. One teammate deploys the flashbang. It goes off. Absolutely no response. Right around the same time, the other teammate, he leans around the front of the Bearcat, and he starts firing his impact weapon. And I think he hits him a couple of times but barely reacts. He kind of pauses as he gets hit, kind of turns a little bit. He is looking straight at us.

And I watch him take his gun, which is pointing straight up, and he lowers it, and now he's aiming it right at us and watching the video back. It goes so fast, but in my mind, it's such a slow thing that's happening. And I'm having this internal dialogue. Okay. Like, he's got the gun, he's got it. He's pointing. He's pointing it right at us. Okay, Jordan, you got to shoot him. And I can, you know, I could close my eyes and see my eotech superimposed over his torso. I take safety off fire, send one round, and he goes down right away.

Jon Becker: And at that point, like, so how, what's your distance from the suspect at that point?

Jordan MacWilliams: 25 yards.

Jon Becker: Okay. Yeah, so, I mean, he's well within. We's well within effective range. Like, he can make effective fire with a cole commander 25 yards all day long. And the fact that the less lethal didn't affect him is interesting, too. Okay, so he's 25 yards from you. There's three of you behind that bearcat, right?

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Nftd Arwen and yourself?

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah. And then kind of off to my left is our TL, who's outside of the Bearkat. Then inside the bearkat, there's a couple negotiators and a driver and a police dog. So now, you know, I've sent the round, he goes down, and I'm just looking at him on the ground. He kind of rolls around a little bit. He reaches for the gun, grabs it, and then he kind of brings it back, and then he points at his own head again.

And at that time, the TL tells us, okay, get in the armor. We're going to pull up right beside him, and we're going to try and send the dog and drag him back towards us, away from the gun. I. That was a tactic. We trained a bunch. We did that for pulling people out of cars, etcetera.

So we get up right beside him, come out of the bearcat, we're on the other side. Now send the dog, and, you know, this happens to the best of us, but I think the handler got just a little bit jacked up and the line comes right out of his hand. So now he loses the long line that he was going to use to dry drag the dog back. And the dog latches on and grabs him, but it works out pretty good. So dog spins him and spins him away from the gun and just kind of spins him in a little bit of a circle.

And then he's now being pulled away from the dog. He's not really reacting now. He's really starting to feel the effects of the round. And we actually press up. I remember I just kind of reached down because the gun was in between us and him. Now I reached down, I picked up the gun and just pulled it away from the scene, put it down. And the other guys latched onto him, cuffed him up, but then really quickly just transitioned to medical.

Jon Becker: Got it. And where did the round hit him exactly?

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah, it was entered at the bottom of his rib cage, just offset to the right a tiny bit. Hit the bottom rib, went in, exited beside his spine. And really interestingly, we actually, the round that I hit him with was on the ground underneath him, like the actual bullet.

Jon Becker: That's weird.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah, dumped it. Did a good job.

Jon Becker: All of its energy, I guess. Yeah. Made it two inches past.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah.

Jon Becker: So you guys transitioned to medical?

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah, we transitioned the medical. The medics comes out, we're running Thames guys at that time, and they come on up, they start working on him. And tl just tells me to go over to the bearcat, and she's like, go hang out on the other side.

So I remember I go over there, I sit down just on the rail on the side of the bearcat, and, uh, one of the, one of my teammates is running by to just come to help. And he just kind of pauses for a split second, um, as he sees me sitting there, and he just hits me on my helmet. And he's like, f****** great job, Jordan.

And it was weird in that moment because I hadn't caught up with what had happened mentally, honestly. Like, I was just processing things as they happened, and it felt just like training day. Like, it didn't feel like this strange high stress incident. I wasn't super jacked up or anything, but I was just starting to process the thought of shooting somebody.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Because at this point in your career, have you been in a shooting?

Jordan MacWilliams: No. No.

Jon Becker: So you've never shot at anybody? Has anybody even shot at you at this point in your career?

Jordan MacWilliams: No. This is my first exposure to interpersonal violence at, like, a lethal force level. And as I'm sitting there and just kind of processing it, that positive affirmation from a teammate in that moment was really valuable. And I've tried to do that for others since, especially people newer in their career, because when you haven't had that exposure before, that can be psychologically a really vulnerable time for you.

And, you know, the fact is, we hire really good people to come into this profession. Like, people, you know, everybody, when they are standing in front of that board trying to get hired, what do they say when we ask them, why do I want to be a cop? I want to help people. We all want to help people, genuinely. And, you know, 99% of cops, like, they joined this job to help people. I didn't join policing to shoot somebody.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Jordan MacWilliams: I understood that that was a potential outcome of what I may have to do one day. But, you know, I'm a good person. I think of myself as a good person. And it can be challenging to reconcile that with your perception of yourself as a good person. But I don't have any issues with it now for sure. But for a lot of us, you have to work through that.

Jon Becker: You're four years on the job or five years on the job and 24 years old.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Like, you know, this is your first significant event. Yeah. You can see where that's. That's going to leave a mark and, you know, at least cause a little brief moment of introspection there.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah, I think that's a good way of putting it. Like, it should be introspective for somebody. That's a healthy response.

Jon Becker: 100%.

Jordan MacWilliams: If there is an introspection. Well, that's probably a psychopath and we should have them in place at minimum.

Jon Becker: Yeah, if you do, if you don't introspect after having to kill somebody, you're a sociopath.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Okay, so then suspect is put in an ambulance.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Called off to the hospital. Is he alive when he gets put in the hospital or put in the ambulance?

Jordan MacWilliams: He's alive. And I'm still kind of feeling almost like this is a training day, just kind of processing things as he gets wheeled by me on the gurney and put in the ambulance. That is the first moment where it really feels real, like I've killed somebody.

And that's the first time I actually really had that thought. And so he gets loaded up in there. A couple officers go in with him in the ambulance, and following him behind, gets to the hospital. He is on life support for a little while, for a few days, actually, before he dies.

Jon Becker: What were his injuries?

Jordan MacWilliams: Pretty significant. He, liver, colon, spleen, kidney, lung, collapsed lung. And, yeah, the pathologist report said died of exsanguination as a result of a gunshot wound. So fancy way to say he died from being shot.

Jon Becker: He bled out. Yeah. So, okay, so they take him to the hospital. You've now been in a shooting. You know, there's going to be a protocol. I mean, obviously there's, there's going to be a protocol and, and all of that. What happens next?

Jordan MacWilliams: That piece about there's going to be a protocol is really interesting because, like, for my agency at the time, maybe once every two, three years, we got into a shooting. Not very often. And until three months before this incident, all of our police shootings had been investigated by, like, internal investigations. Maybe another police department investigates it. But this was now going to be the very first one with our brand new civilian oversight agency.

So we got a civilian oversight agency in 2012, the independent investigations office. And their mandate became to investigate any incident where an officer has caused serious harm or death to a member of the community. And I know, you know, there's tons of civilian oversight down in the state.

There's push for it across the world, and. But this was brand new for us, and we'd been kind of briefed on it, but there certainly weren't, it wasn't a protocol we were familiar with, if that makes sense. This is a new thing for us. What we had been told were the new rules are you, if you get into a critical incident, you're not allowed to talk to anybody else who was there about what happened, and you will be going back to the office and waiting for further instructions. So that's exactly what happened.

So a couple of my teammates, they jumped in a truck with me. I'm still wearing all my kit. I'm holding my helmet and my carbine. And they start driving us back to the office. And it was the first couple minutes was this weird thing where they want to say something and they want to talk to me as my friends, but they know and they've just been told they're not allowed to talk about what just happened. We were told in no uncertain terms before we got in that truck. You guys can't talk about this incident. Drive Jordan back to the office.

So we're driving, and my buddy Dave up front, he's like, we should probably call your wife. We should probably call your wife. My wife's a cop as well, and she's obviously going to know something's going on. And I say to Dave, I'm like, okay, well, I'll call her. He's like, no, I can call her for you. I'm like, no, no, don't do that. Like, I'll stress her out. I'll call my wife. So I call my wife. I'm like, hey, steph, I just want to let you know I'm okay. All the guys are okay, been involved in a shooting. And she replies to me, okay, see you for the dinner. Bye.

Jon Becker: That's a hard a** wife right there. Only a cop wife would be like, okay, yeah, you shot somebody, whatever. I'll see you later.

Jordan MacWilliams: In her defense, as she will say this to her dying day, she's like, I didn't think you meant you shot somebody. I just thought one of the guys had shot somebody. And you happened to be there. But, yeah, shortly after that, she got a call from my dad, who was working for our agency at the time, and he told her that I'd been in, I'd shot someone. And she came to the office to meet me there.

Jon Becker: Okay, so you get back to the office. What do they do?

Jordan MacWilliams: Get out of the truck. I am still holding my helmet. One of the team guys grabs my carbine from me, and we walk into the office. We walk up the stairs, and we've been told to go down to the west boardroom. And I remember I snapped the corner to go down the hall towards the west boardroom.

And it's like every member of the brass of our organization was standing in that hallway, and they were all looking right at me. And nobody says a word. And I walk down, I'm walking past them. It was almost like the receiving line at a wedding, except nobody's talking and smiling. They're just looking right at me. And I walk by them, and I go into the room. And as I'm going into the room, the deputy chief stops the guys who are going in with me and shuts the door behind me. And I. At first, I'm in there by myself.

Jon Becker: So they basically just locked you in a room by yourself?

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah. That's how it started.

Jon Becker: That's good therapy.

Jordan MacWilliams: My teammates fought their way into that room pretty quick. I don't know what the conversation in the hallway was, but it didn't last very long. And they. They got in there pretty quick and joined me. And then we had that same deputy. He came into the room, and it was like he was our hall monitor, making sure we weren't talking. And there wasn't any conversation. He didn't. He never once asked me how I was or, um, said anything other than looking at me. He had some phone calls looking at my teammates, and I'm sitting there and I'm nothing. Talking to my teammates now, because we're worried about what we're gonna be if we say anything. We're getting s***.

And I'm staring at the wall, and I'm just sitting there for a couple hours until one of our union members shows up. And the police union guy comes on in and sees me wearing all of my kits still. He's like, why is Jordan wearing all of his stuff? Like, we gotta get him comfortable. Like, this is crazy.

And then the deputy chief walks out, and he's like, comes back in. He's all right. We've made arrangements. Jordan needs to go downstairs to forensics. So we get up, walk down the hallway again, walk downstairs, go into the forensics office, and the major crime supervisor is waiting inside there for me. He takes my helmet, takes my carbine, and then does photos. Has me take all my kit off one piece at a time.

So I take my helmet off, take my plates off, hand it over to him. He's photographing it or getting the forensics guy to photograph it. He's bagging everything up. And then he. I'm stripped down now just to my blues, and he's like, okay, I need your uniform and your boots. I don't have anything else to wear. He's just like, well, where's your locker? I'm like, it's at the north office. We had a couple sub offices, and I worked out of the north one. He's like, okay, well, we'll get you something.

So they send a patrol officer who goes and grabs me, sweats and a t-shirt, comes on back. I'm standing there the whole time waiting. He comes on into the room, gives me the stuff, and he has me change in front of him and gives him, give him my stuff. He bags up my uniform, and I'm sent back up to that boardroom.

Jon Becker: It's kind of a weird thing to take all of your clothes when nothing hit you. You weren't close enough to the suspect. I mean, just for those that don't know, like, you photograph people after shooting you, you document their gear, you document the status of everything, you know, number of rounds in the magazine and all of that, so that you can later go back if you need to reconstruct the shooting. But taking your clothes is kind of an odd one. How did that feel?

Jordan MacWilliams: I felt like a criminal. Yeah. I. I don't know to this day why he chose to do that. I think probably he was just erring on the side of doing the best evidence investigation that he could and seizing absolutely everything.

But at a certain point, like, I was thinking for a second he was going to bag my hands. He never said that, but I was like, I felt like a shooting suspect that we'd just taken into custody. I didn't feel like a police officer who had been doing his job.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And I guess, you know, nt to defend him, but maybe to put, you know, best eye on that, not. Not that they deserve it, considering what's about to happen, but maybe he just treated it like any other shooting and was like, I'm just going to document everything, because that's what I do. And, you know, a little foreshadow. Not really concerned about your wants or needs.

Jordan MacWilliams: No, no, they, unfortunately, that was not one of the their concerns. And he definitely was doing his best evidence investigation and gathering all that stuff. So we go back upstairs, go sit back down in the boardroom, and still haven't gotten to see my wife and dad at this point, who are outside and waiting.

And eventually my union rep is like, this is stupid. Like, Jordan needs to get out of here. Like, what are we waiting for? So the independent investigations office, before we can go, have to serve us with paperwork that says whether you're a witness officer or a subject officer, and the witness officers are compelled to give a statement and hand over their notes, etcetera. And a subject officer isn't. They've got the right to silence under the constitution and don't have to say anything, but I have to be served with that.

And then they'll ask me to give a statement and then I can decline and leave. So they decided that they wanted to speak to all the witnesses before they were going to speak to me. So they go to the scene, they go to new west headquarters, but they don't want to come see me. They're leaving me for last.

Jon Becker: These are the independent investigators?

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah. Yeah.

Jon Becker: So they're, they're running, you know, an FBI style criminal investigation where the last person they talked to is the one they want to arrest.

Jordan MacWilliams: Exactly. Yeah.

Jon Becker: Fantastic!

Jordan MacWilliams: So that takes 8 hours. So it takes 8 hours before they eventually come to the office. And they….

Jon Becker: So wait, shooting occurs at what time?

Jordan MacWilliams: 10:30 in the morning?

Jon Becker: So you don't see the independent investigators until 435 o'clock in the afternoon?

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah, that's right.

Jon Becker: Are they feeding you? Are they giving you?

Jordan MacWilliams: Well, they weren't until my union rep spoke up and said how crazy this was and demanded that Jordan be allowed to leave. And they're like, well, you can't leave. We got to wait for him to get here. No, no, he's leaving. He can't leave. And they have this argument back and forth, and then he's like, well, I'm going to take him for a bite to eat and. Okay, but you gotta bring them right back as soon as they're here. Okay, fine.

So we drive out, go to a little burger shack, grab a milkshake. Now my wife and dad are there, I'm able to see them. And we come back and I walk my way back into the boardroom, my little prison, and sit back down and then wait there for the next few hours until it was right around 05:00 when they show up.

So the independent investigation's office members, they show up, they come on in. I'm now taken out to a different office, to the patrol supervisor's office, and it's just me, my union agent, and these two investigators. And they turn on their audio recorder and start trying to ask me some questions. And my union reps, like, he's not going to answer any questions right now. He just needs to go home. And they keep asking some questions like, no, Jordan's going to go home. Serve him as paperwork.

So they give me my paperwork, says I'm a subject officer. I sign it. They again ask me if I'll give a statement. And at this point, my union agent's, like, getting pretty frustrated. He's like, no, he's not going to give a statement right now. He needs to go home. So get up. Union agent walks me to my truck, meet up with my wife, who's waiting for me down there, and we drive home.

Jon Becker: And what day of the week is this?

Jordan MacWilliams: It's a Friday.

Jon Becker: Okay, so now we're Friday evening, 06:00.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah, get home, probably 06:37. And I remember just, we went for a walk. We didn't really talk too much about the incident. I remember my wife saying that somebody had told her I should avoid watching the media. And I'm like, sure, I'm gonna watch the news.

Jon Becker: It's like telling you, don't look at the rock when you're mountain biking. You're gonna hit the rock.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I get that advice, and I've heard it again since, and other people have mentioned it. Don't watch the media. Don't pay attention to what they say. You are going to watch the media. This era we're living in of, you know, Twitter, Instagram, everything livestreamed. You're going to see it. You're going to hear it. Your family's going to see it. They're going to hear it.

The best approach is to be prepared for what you're going to see. You are going to see it. So just mentally prepare yourself for what you're going to see in here and know that the media is not going to say, Jordan showed up for work today like he does every other day and did his best to try and save somebody he's never met and then shot somebody who thought he was going to kill him. They're not going to say that. They never will.

Jon Becker: Oh, they're going to say, Delta police officer murders suicidal subject.

Jordan MacWilliams: 42 year old persian refugee. Yeah.

Jon Becker: So when is the first time, I mean, obviously, up until now, you're probably thinking like, this isn't going well. When is the first time you get an indication that this thing is going to go to s*** on you?

Jordan MacWilliams: Well, maybe just before we say that, I did want to mention the next morning something pretty cool happened that's had an impact on me for a long time since. And I remember I woke up the next morning, it was pretty early, and my doorbell's ringing. And I walked downstairs, open the door, and it's the chief of New Westminster police.

So the team I was a part of, Washington regional team. I worked for, Delta. New West was our neighboring agency. And then there was a couple other agencies part of the team, and this incident had occurred in New west. So their chief, who I did not work for, showed up at my house, and he knocks on the door. I open it up. I'm like, chief, how are you? He's good. Jordan, may I come in for a minute? Yeah, absolutely. Invite him on in.

And remember, he says to me, he shakes my hand. He says to me, jordan, I just want to thank you for what you did for my community yesterday, and I really appreciate it. And I want you to know that I appreciate it. And that was so impactful in that moment to feel like, okay, you know, because we talked about this already, you know, good person having to kill somebody first, exposure to real interpersonal violence. Like, I've been in fights before, but nobody ever shot at me. I never shot at somebody.

And now I'm getting that affirmation from a person in leadership, in authority, thanking me. He didn't, I didn't need him to get on the news and say, Jordan is a hero, and he did a great job. But I didn't even realize how impactful it was for him to say to me to my face, thank you for what you did and shake my hand.

Jon Becker: And at that point, did you talk to your own chief?

Jordan MacWilliams: No, no, I hadn't heard from him.

Jon Becker: So the chief, when you're back at the department, the chief never comes and sees you. There's no, like, you don't have a moment of like, hey, man, are you okay?

Jordan MacWilliams: No, no, we didn't have any of that. And yeah, I'd been around the department my whole life. Like, my dad worked for that agency for a long time, and I got on there pretty young, but I'd been to Christmas parties and I'd known these, these guys and their kids and, yeah, he, he didn't have anything to say to me?

Jon Becker: Lovely!

Jordan MacWilliams: So we get through the weekend, Monday rolls around. I get a call from the human resources supervisor, who tells me that they're just figuring out what they're going to do with me because this is a new process for them.

Normally, like, when they do internal investigations of shootings, they find out right away kind of what happened and they get like, an overview of the file, but they're getting none of that. The independent investigations office won't share anything with them until they're done. So he's like, we're going to have to remove you from operations until we get some more information about that.

And so he tells me I'm going to be removed from the tactical team and I'm going to be taken off patrol, and they're going to put me into the emergency planning unit. So 24 year old Jordan, who, 25 now, I turned 25 the day after the shooting. 25 year old Jordan, who my whole life now, to this point, all I've wanted to do is be this police officer, get on the SWAT team. This is what I'm really now wrapping my identity up in. And what I really care about is just getting ripped away from me.

And, you know, I'm not happy about it. I'm trying to, like, put on a brave face and just say the right things. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Where do you need me to be and what's my job gonna be? He tells me to show up Tuesday morning in the emergency planning unit. And I hope I don't offend anybody who works in an emergency planning unit.

But in our agency at the time, that was the unit where you'd go to go count staplers or life jackets and patrol cars. It was not what a young patrol officer, SWAT guy wanted to be doing. So I do. I show up. Now I'm working in the emergency planning unit, which fortunately for me, is in the same office as the training unit. And the training unit has a couple officers in there who, there's the firearms guy, there's the use of force combatives guy, and we're all in the same office, and they're good guys. They see that I'm not perhaps being used to my full potential in that emergency planning unit.

So they approach the patrol, the human resources supervisor, and just ask him if they could have me come give them a hand. And they say there's all kinds of paperwork Jordan could take care of, so they'd love to have me help out.

Jon Becker: Nice!

Jordan MacWilliams: They were just trying to.

Jon Becker: Look out for me, trying to rescue you from counting staples?

Jordan MacWilliams: And they did. Yeah. So they rescue me from the stapler assignment and just a couple awesome guys. I really look up to both of them and they start sending me on good courses. I go on some firearms instructors courses, use of force instructor courses, and start getting my certifications. And then they roll me slow, roll me into being a use of force instructor for the department where I'm now teaching this stuff. Ironically, I become like the top firearms instructor for the agency for about a year there.

Jon Becker: Yeah, that is ironic.

Jordan MacWilliams: But while all of this is going on, we are waiting for updates on the investigation and there's no updates. Not getting anything. So the union's hired a lawyer for me. I asked the lawyer, I'm like, hey, have you heard anything? No, haven't heard anything. Have you heard anything? No, haven't heard anything.

I prepared a written statement which we provided to them of my perspective. The event that was in consultation with my lawyer, we had sent that over to them. He thought that that would speed things up and help this go more quickly, but we still get no response. No response.

So now I'm working in the training unit. It's the best of a bad situation, but it is really wearing on me in my personal life. And just being removed from something that you identified so strongly with, you know, being an operator, being on the team, not having that was really hard for me. That was the hardest thing that was going through my mind for that whole time. And it took almost two years until we get the next update.

Jon Becker: Is there, I mean, obviously, if there's an independent investigations board, you know, office of Independent Investigations, there's kind of implicitly always a threat of being charged criminally.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah, right.

Jon Becker: What if this, if the – Is it office of Independent Investigations?

Jordan MacWilliams: Independent investigations office.

Jon Becker: So I. Oh, that's really, that there's basically two ways they can go, right. They can say good shoot or refer you to a prosecutor.

Jordan MacWilliams: Exactly.

Jon Becker: So over your head are hanging criminal charges for two years.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah, but it's funny you say that. That thought never even crossed my mind. Like, I was so confident in the shooting in my memory of what happened. And even the media of what happened wasn't bad. Like, these people, a bunch of witnesses saw what happened. They get on the news like, yeah, he took this girl at gunpoint and the police rescued her and then they shot him. Like it. There wasn't this big public outcry.

Jon Becker: There's nothing in that fact pattern that is even moderately troubling.

Jordan MacWilliams: No, and it wasn't troubling to me. Like, I wrestled for a short while with the fact that I killed somebody, but I was really confident in, you know, the choices I'd made. He made all the choices that led up to that moment.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Jordan MacWilliams: He made all the choices that led to me shooting him. He pointed a gun at us that he could kill us with, and I stopped him from killing us.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Jordan MacWilliams: So I was. I had no issues with that. I never thought for 1 second even that I was waiting for criminal charges. I just thought it was taking forever to get cleared.

Jon Becker: And you were frustrated because you were stuck in training until you did get cleared.

Jordan MacWilliams: Exactly. Got it. And that was a choice of the organization. And, you know, the organization. Nobody told them they had to do that. They took it upon themselves and they decided that in their best interests, it would be best if Jordan wasn't working on the road. Jordan wasn't working on the team, because.

Jon Becker: At this point, Jordan's a killer?

Jordan MacWilliams: I don't want to presuppose what they were thinking or they were just afraid because they didn't have information they didn't know.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And, I mean, for context, this independent investigations office is brand new. Who is running? Well, the IIO.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah. I don't want to segue too much, but when this whole thing kind of spooled up in the years leading up to 2012, they looked for their rockstar to come run this organization. So they decide they're going to hire a fellow who'd actually come down from LA. He'd worked in LA for a while, and he'd been one of the lawyers at the DA's office during the crash rampart investigation with LAPD. And he'd been involved with that prosecution.

And then subsequent to that, he'd left. He'd gone, and he'd run the Colorado's version of civilian oversight board. I don't know what it's called, but he'd done that for a few years. So he had a little bit of resume. So they hired him. He came on up, and now he was running this organization. And I had no knowledge, I didn't even know his name at the time, but we had no exposure to him. We hadn't gotten briefings from them or anything. All we'd been told was an email with instructions. What you're supposed to do if you get into a shooting now that these guys are in charge.

Jon Becker: Nice!

Jordan MacWilliams: So, yeah, so I'm working in the training unit. Yeah. My job is, you know, prep for training, help organize training, run training days working as use of force instructor, firearms instructor. And this goes on for, you know, almost two years.

And then one day we're working, myself and Jim, one of the other guys in the training unit, we're working at this house that we owned, that we were just, the organization owned. We're just putting up breaching doors in it so patrol officers can train at it. And while we're doing that, like good coppers, we kept the radio on in our car that we had, which was just an unmarked pickup with some emergency equipment on it. And we're just listening. We hear this call come in about, well, these, the firefighters, they've seen a car that's driving all over the road, and it's going on, coming, and they're worried it's going to kill somebody, and they're just following it from a distance.

And so, you know, the plate comes back. Now they're getting some more information, and it's been involved in armed carjacking. And this guy took this vehicle at gunpoint and was armed, involved in another robbery, etcetera. So, okay, well, this is legit. And we're just kind of listening to this, and we hear he turns and he turns, and now he's going down the street that this house is on that we're at like, oh, perfect.

Well, what we can do now, we're going to get into the truck. I'm driving. Jim's in the passenger seat. We're just going to keep a long eye on this car until patrol officers can get into the area and deal with this guy. So he crosses my bow, I pull out, get in behind him. I'm just start following him. And, yeah, he's driving like a bit of a maniac. There's not a ton of cars right now, though. He's just all over the road. It's a little bit of a quiet street. And now he's going down, he's taking the on ramp, and he gets onto the on ramp, and he goes onto the highway. And it is like 02:30 in the afternoon rush hour is just starting. And Vancouver rush hour isn't nearly as bad as la rush hour, but we still have lots of cars.

Jon Becker: Oh, it's impressive! I've driven in it. Yeah.

Jordan MacWilliams: And we get in behind him, and now I'm. I'm saying, okay, there's all these cars. He's going to kill somebody. I got to light this guy up. So I put my lights on, and pretty much as soon as he does, I do that. He now crosses the highway and he. There's a little break in the concrete median and he's now going northbound in the southbound lanes and he's driving them up the emergency shoulder. And I'm like, oh my God, he is going to kill somebody. I've got to stop this guy.

Jon Becker: You say the emergency shoulder, do you mean the, like the inside of the number one lane?

Jordan MacWilliams: Yes.

Jon Becker: So the shoulder closest to the northbound traffic. So he's basically driving into the fast lane.

Jordan MacWilliams: Correct.

Jon Becker: Right alongside the fast lane, the wrong way.

Jordan MacWilliams: As rush on a free riding as Russia. Okay, so cars are ripping towards us. So now I'm going to stop this guy. So I'm trying to get up beside him and push him into the concrete so I can stop him, but I can't get beside him because every time I pull out, there's cars coming at, you know.

Jon Becker: 130 miles an hour.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah, right at me.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Jordan MacWilliams: So fortunately, a real heads up patrol officer gets somebody with their semi to block the entire highway and stop traffic. And now if traffic thins out, I am able to get out. I get up beside this guy, I just pin him into the concrete and ride him to a stop. Then we challenge him, prone him out, take him into custody, high fives and belly bumps. And I think I've done a great job.

Jon Becker: Yeah, everybody's a hero.

Jordan MacWilliams: So hand them over to the patrol guys. I go home that night and just come back to work the next morning. Started at 07:00 a.m. and as I'm walking into the office at 07:00 a.m. the HR supervisor's there waiting for me. And he's like, jordan, you need to come with me. Come down to the deputy chief's office.

So I follow him down, we go into the deputy's office and for a moment I actually think I'm going to get a attaboy. Like, great job yesterday, Jordan. And I sit down and as soon as I sit down, the deputy chief just lights into me. He's like, I don't know what you were thinking yesterday with all this hanging over you, taking this upon yourself to intervene and to stop this guy, you shouldn't have done that. That's unacceptable.

And I'm just kind of taking it for a sec and then I'm, I do speak up and say, sir, I believe I had to do something. I couldn't let him drive the way he was. I thought he was going to kill somebody. And he just starts yelling at me. He's like, no, you're wrong. You shouldn't have done anything. Jordan, you are a disappointment. You have let this organization down. You've let your dad down.

Jon Becker: Oh, God!

Jordan MacWilliams: And you've let me down. And I'd known that guy my whole life. And I'm looking at him and I'm angry, but I'm also just. I'm super hurt. And I don't know what to say. I'm speechless. And I'm, like, basically in tears at this point. I don't even remember what he said to me after that until he's finished brow beating me. And I get up and I walk out of his office, and I'm just, like, processing what's happened. I think I've done a great job.

Jon Becker: Yeah, you're going in there thinking you're gonna get a commendation, instead you got a condemnation.

Jordan MacWilliams: And as I'm walking out, he yells at me. He might not even have been yelling, but in my memory, it is so loud that I am getting taken out of the training unit and being put back in emergency planning. And it was like that was his way of punishing me.

Jon Becker: Back to prison.

Jordan MacWilliams: Back to prison. More staplers to count. And I remember walking down the hall, just. And I go down towards Jimmy's desk, and I just kind of stop at Jim's desk, and I get a little dramatic, pull my badge off my belt and just slap it down on the table. And he jumps up. Jordan, what's wrong? What's wrong?

And I don't even have the words to tell him. And he just walks out with me. He walks me to my car, and we talk for a few minutes, and then I. He's like, you're sick for the rest of the day. Go home. So I get in my truck, drive home and get home, tell my wife. She's all up in arms, indignant about what way I'm being treated.

Jon Becker: Does she work at the same agency or she works….

Jordan MacWilliams: No, she works at a. She works at a different agency.

Jon Becker: Okay.

Jordan MacWilliams: So, yeah, she got to be a spectator.

Jon Becker: Fantastic!

Jordan MacWilliams: But, yeah, so I've explained this to her. Then I get a phone call from that HR supervisor, and he's like, hey, Jordan, you know, understand you're probably going through a lot, so you're being. You're going to be put off on sick leave. Okay, whatever. So I get off the phone with him. Now I'm off on sick leave. So I don't. I don't really know. I pretty much had never taken a sick day up to that point. I was a very conscientious young police officer, and unless I was, like, on death's door, I was not going to be taking a sick day.

So now there's just one more little piece of my identity being stripped away from me that I'm. I'm not this iron man showing up for work guy. Now I'm taking sick days because I can't handle what's going on. And that's what's going through my head. And so the rest of that week, I'm just at home with my wife.

And there's, you know, next to. There's nothing really going on. And then it's Friday morning, and I'm sitting there. I haven't been sleeping well, so I'm up pretty early. And I'm sitting there at the kitchen table just drinking a coffee. And I get a phone call, and it's my lawyer calling. And he's like, hey, Jordan, where are you? I just tell him, I'm just at home. What's, what's going on? He's like, I've got some terrible news for you.

There's no other way to tell you this, but you're going to be charged with murder, and you need to show up in court Monday morning or you're going to be taken in custody over the weekend.

Jon Becker: Yeah, that's terrible news.

Jordan MacWilliams: And I'm sitting there just like dumbfounded. I, trying to process, well, how does this happen? And I try and ask him some questions. He doesn't have any answers for me. We get off the phone, I tell him I'll see him Monday morning. He tells me where to meet him for the appearance. And I just have this thought pretty much right away after that, I must have made a terrible mistake. I have done something horribly wrong. I must remember it wrong. What did I do? And I am just crushed. Like, absolutely crushed in that moment.

And I don't know how much time goes by, but after a little amount of time, there's a knock on the door. And I go and answer the door. And it was my first patrol sergeant. I didn't work for him anymore, but he had shown up in my house. He'd somehow found out about this. I think he actually had been transferred to HR recently, and that's probably how he found out.

But he showed up at my house. He doesn't say anything. He just walks in and gives me a hug and, yeah, like, super, super powerful. I have so much respect for that man. Like, you know, it's. Remember we were talking earlier about, you know, when, when people, you know, are going through a hard time, you don't necessarily know what to say. You don't know what the right words are, but you can still be their friend and still try and be there for them. And that's what he did. And it was really meaningful.

Pretty quick after that, lots of other people showed up. My family, other guys I worked with. My poor wife is – We just had a baby recently before this. So we had our baby in March. This is October. So she's a few months old, and my wife's taking care of the baby. Her sisters are there trying to support her. My families are trying to support me.

And this whole time, I got my teammates there. I'm just in my own head thinking I've done something terribly wrong. What did I do? And that's the thought. Like I'm blaming myself somehow. This is my fault. We have some lawyers meetings on the Saturday and the Sunday. Then we show up to court on Monday morning.

And I remember coming into court, and they snuck me in a back entrance because there was going to be a whole bunch of media. And I walk in there, and I'm there with my dad, my wife, my legal team. There's like three people there, three lawyers there. And we walk down to the sheriff's office. So the sheriff's where we work. They run all the courts in the court system.

And we go down to the sheriff's office in the courthouse, and my lawyer says, you know, sheriff, this is Constable McWilliams. He's here to surrender himself on a charge of murder. And this poor young sheriff, he's just seen the look on his face, and he stands up and he says to my lawyer, I'll be right back. And he turns around, walks into the back, goes to his supervisor's office. Supervisor comes out, and she walks out, this sheriff staff sergeant and she comes to see me, my lawyer.

And she looks at me and she's like, are you Jordan? I'm like, yes, I am. She's like, I understand you're being charged with murder this morning. Yep, that's correct. And we're going to need to take you into custody. That's what I understand. And she says to me, you know what, Jordan? I think you can walk yourself to court. I don't need to take you anywhere.

Jon Becker: Good for her.

Jordan MacWilliams: So me and my lawyer, we walk on down, we walk through the courthouse, walk on up, walk into the courtroom, and I go to get into the prisoner's box, and the sheriff there stops me and tells me to sit down in the gallery.

Jon Becker: Nice!

Jordan MacWilliams: So I sit down. Now it's me. I'm sitting there with my dad, my wife and the lawyers are up, and they start arguing. And they read out the charge. I stand up, identify myself. Yes, I'm Jordan McWilliams. And the judge reads out the charge. And then they say, so it's one count of murder, one count of second degree murder. And the lawyers start talking.

And then my lawyer is starting to get pretty animated now. And I hadn't really been paying attention. And now he is arguing with the prosecutor because the prosecutor is saying that he's opposing bail. And my lawyer's like, my client is a strong member of the community. He's got deep roots, family. He's a police officer going on and on and on and on and on. And they are demanding that we need to put up bail.

So, fortunately, my dad's 36 years of police officer, he retired at the officer level as a inspector, which is like a captain. And his 36 years gave him enough income that he was able to put up my $50,000 bail with deposit.

Jon Becker: So your dad has to go and take $50,000. Cause canadian bail is different. You actually post a bond and, you know, you come up with a little bit of money, canadian bail, you. Your dad has to go, you know, cash out of savings bond or whatever, get $50,000 in cash and turn it over.

Jordan MacWilliams: He put it against the line, transfers the line of credit on his house. So my dad, 36 year cop, has to bail out his son, a copy for murder.

Jon Becker: And bad memories just keep coming.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah, they. Yeah, they really piled up. But we – I do get released, get bail, go home. And now, like things, I'm suspended with pay and charged with murder and on bail. And things are like, for Jordan, they've pretty much gone about as far off road right as they can get. And now, you know, I've got a new baby, my wife's home on maternity leave, and my life is just falling apart like I am. I'm trying to put on a brave face, but I'm not sleeping at night. I am laying there beside my wife, looking at my baby in a little crib at three in the morning, thinking about going to prison for the rest of my life.

And that is the thought that just keeps going through my head. And then I just keep circling back to, I must have done something terribly wrong. And I don't know what it is. I don't know what I've done. I haven't seen anything. I haven't gotten to see the surveillance videos or anything from the scene yet because that's all been held by the independent investigations office. And now I'm just believing that I've done something wrong, and I'm remembering it wrong.

Jon Becker: That's terrible.

Jordan MacWilliams: And this goes on for. This goes on for a couple months. So this is October goes through to November and December, and by December, like, I am not doing good. Like, I'm just staying up all night drinking, trying to sleep during the day. I am basically a useless husband and father doing absolutely nothing around the house, just engrossed in my own mind about what's happened, thinking about going to prison.

And I remember one day my wife asked me to take the recycling out. We got, like, the little bin underneath the sink. So I grabbed the recycling, I take it into the garage, and I remember I put the cardboard in the cardboard bag, and then, you know, there's this beer can. I throw that in the return it cycle pile. And then, oh, there's another can. Oh, there's a bottle. There's another bottle. And as I'm doing this, I'm like, is my wife telling me something here? Is she trying to send me a message?

Jon Becker: You've been set up by your wife to give a quick self assessment.

Jordan MacWilliams: Smart girl!

Jon Becker: Yeah, very smart girl!

Jordan MacWilliams: So I walked back inside, and pretty much as soon as I put the bin away, she's like, I need to talk to you about something. I've decided I'm going to go back to work early, and you are in charge of our daughter. You need to take care of her. And we've talked about this since, and I knew exactly what she was doing, and she knew what she was doing, but she's also very bravely leaving her baby with this borderline alcoholic murderer who now needs to.

Jon Becker: Well, borderline alcoholic accused murderer.

Jordan MacWilliams: Accused murder. Thank you. Chronically depressed, who needs to take care of her child? And it was one of the best things she could have done because what it did for me was it gave me automatically structure in my life.

So now instead of staying up all night drinking, well, I have to get up at 06:00 a.m. and take care of the baby because Steph's going to work. So I get up, I take care of the baby, I get her fed, and then. Okay, well, I got to do something. Now is 07:38 a.m. in the morning. Like, I can't just sit here with the baby and get pretty bored just playing with the baby for hours on end. Okay, well, let's find something to do. So then I take her to mommy and me reading time.

Jon Becker: Mommy and me class.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah, we go to.

Jon Becker: You're the one dude at the mommy and me class.

Jordan MacWilliams: I was. Yep. Parrot taught swimming lessons. And we're doing all these activities and, like, I got to have this connection with my daughter that so many dads never get to have during that time of their lives. And you want to talk about silver linings? There's a silver lining like that, for sure. I get, I got to have that really special connection with her.

But then, you know, I'd come home, and now it's time to put her down for her late morning nap. And I put her down for a nap, I'm like, okay, well, now what am I going to do? Well, I might as well work out. We have a little garage gym set up. So now I'm starting to take care of myself again. I'm starting to hit the gym. I'm working out.

And then, you know, get her up, feed her lunch now, take care of her for a bit, do something else, put her down for afternoon nap. And I'm like, well, I might as well get dinner ready. So now I start making these beautiful gourmet dinners for my wife. She loved the dinners I was making.

Jon Becker: Oh, yeah. She's at this point probably becoming okay with you being charged with murder because she's got a babysitter and a chef.

Jordan MacWilliams: To this day, she tells people I'm the better chef in hopes that it makes me cook more.

Jon Becker: Well played.

Jordan MacWilliams: But, yeah, there's just like that structure that I got by having to be dad was so important for me to now, like, start to get things back on track, manage myself and manage my own mental health. And then it'll say, well, now I need to really work on finding a purpose.

And the purpose is I'm going to help my lawyers and I'm going to work with them. And so I showed up to my lawyers office and I'm like, hey, you tell me what to do. And I started going through case law and reading stuff with them, and I do research with the legal assistants.

And then in January, so now we've gone charged in October. Wife goes back to work for December, January. Now we get the disclosure package from the prosecutors. So now we get a hard drive with everything that they're going to use to prosecute me. And so in Canada, we have this presumptive disclosure where everything that is going to be used during the prosecution has to be provided.

Jon Becker: Similar to the US.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah. So they provide this, and it's a Saturday that my lawyer gets the hard drive. So he calls me, he's like, hey, I got the hard drive. You want to meet on Monday? And we'll go over it. And I'm like, David, I am already in my car driving to your office. I will be there. And if you're not Monday….

Jon Becker: No, we're going to meet at your office, or we're going to meet at your house. It's going to happen in an hour. You choose.

Jordan MacWilliams: If you are not there, I am going to break into your house and I am going to get the hard drive and look at it.

Jon Becker: And then, I'll be accused of burglary.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah.

Jon Becker: And murder.

Jordan MacWilliams: And so he understood how important it was to me. So we got in there and we. I remember. I remember really real clear plugging in that hard drive, and then, like, there's tons of documents and media on it, and we're just kind of going through folders. And I knew there was a video from the robot we'd used to deliver the throw phone.

And so I'm looking for it, looking for it, and I find it and I open it up and, like, I can't talk. I'm so anxious to see this video. Two years plus later, after this shooting, I've never gotten to see any of the media of, you know, the videos, the audio that we had, helicopter overhead. I've never seen any of that. I just have my memory.

Jon Becker: Which at this point you're starting to really question, because if your memory is accurate, you should have never been charged with murder.

Jordan MacWilliams: I absolutely think I remember it wrong and that I've done something wrong. And I opened the video and I watch it, and I watch the guy move around. He's pointing the gun in the air. He levels it at us. I shoot him. He drops to the ground, and I'm like, David, that's what I remember happening.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Isn't that what I said happened?

Jordan MacWilliams: Like, and he, like, he's a bit of a dramatic guy. I love him. He's on my Christmas card list. He throws some papers up in the air, and he's like, I don't understand. Like, I don't understand neither. Nobody understands. Like, none of the lawyers understand. I don't understand. And so now we have our next appearance in court. And, you know, in the Canadian legal system, they have preliminary inquiries to, like, test the evidence to see if there's enough to go to trial.

Jon Becker: Yeah, we do preliminary hearings in the US.

Jordan MacWilliams: ,So very similar. But the prosecutors, if they receive the consent of the attorney general of that province, can skip the preliminary inquiry and go straight to trial. But in order to do so, they have to file their theory of the case in its entirety with the court. And that skipping a preliminary inquiry called a direct indictment in our province. That never happens. Never do that. They do it in my case. They choose to go by direct indictment. And as such, they, instead of having a preliminary inquiry to test the evidence, they now file with the court. The theory of the Crown.

Jon Becker: No. So they have to reveal. They have to reveal the evidence. They don't have to reveal their strategy.

Jordan MacWilliams: No.

Jon Becker: So now they have to reveal the strategy.

Jordan MacWilliams: So I remember they file it with the court. We get it right away. And I read it and it says that they essentially, that the prosecution believes that Mister Bayrami, the fellow that I killed, moved the gun from a full upward to a full downward position, apparently unconsciously. And as such, Constable McWilliams, killing of Mister Bay Rami constitutes murder.

Jon Becker: So your inability to perceive. I mean, let's assume that their theory is correct, which it's not, but let's assume that it is. Your inability to perceive his intent in a quarter of a second at 25 yards constitutes murder.

Jordan MacWilliams: That's their theory. So their theory. And we do the frame by frame. They've done a frame by frame analysis and we get to look at them one at a time. From the moment he points the gun at me and my teammates to when I shoot him is 0.37 seconds.

So, like, yeah, it's not instant, but human beings can instantly respond to something. And then to say that they think he moved the gun unconsciously, that he wasn't intentionally aiming at us, well, whether you intentionally aim a gun at me or not, you can still kill me with it. You can accidentally kill me when you hit a gun.

Jon Becker: I think when you step on a bug on the ground, the bug doesn't care whether it was intentional. No, I mean, it's insane.

Jordan MacWilliams: So, like, part of seeing that and when I read that, like, that empowered me, I'm like, there's no way I am going to get convicted of anything on this theory. This is absolutely ridiculous. And my lawyer agreed, but he also gave me that caution. Like, anything can happen in a courtroom.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Anything you stick in front of a jury can go sideways.

Jordan MacWilliams: You never know. So we're working through that. I'm trying to help out with the prep for court. And something really amazing happened that pretty much completely deflated the prosecution's case. And that was in the spring, about march. So the hostage who we'd rescued, when the independent investigations office, they'd done their investigation, they never actually spoke to her. So she gets no contact.

Jon Becker: And ever spoke to the victim. Well, that's a really independent investigation, independent of the facts.

Jordan MacWilliams: When they defended themselves on the fact they hadn't spoke to her, they said, well, the moment in time when Constable McWilliams shot him wasn't affected by that, which is, of course, garbage.

Jon Becker: Like, that's the entire reason Constable McWilliams is there.

Jordan MacWilliams: I couldn't agree with you more.

Jon Becker: Well, I guess the American, you know, the American lawyer in me is confused by their canadian theory.

Jordan MacWilliams: My Canadian lawyer was very much on the same page as you.

Jon Becker: I think that's the whole good lawyer, bad lawyer distinction.

Jordan MacWilliams: So she has never been interviewed. She sees on the news that I am being charged with murder, and she remembers my face. She remembers seeing me run by her and put my body in front of her so that she can be pulled to safety. And she doesn't particularly care for that. Jordan being charged with murder, she thinks I'm her hero. And she.

Jon Becker: Because you are her hero. Yet, to be fair, you are the reason that she's alive.

Jordan MacWilliams: So she drives to Delta headquarters and she goes to the office, and she walks to the front counter, and she's like. She tells them who she is. She's like, I need to speak to somebody. I want to tell them what happened. Like, he saved my life. And they're like, well, you know, the independent investigations office is in charge of this file. You need to talk to them. Here's their phone number. You can call them. Like, I'm going to drive there.

So she drives to their office. She goes. Bangs on the door. This is who I am. I want to talk to you about what happened. They take her phone number, say, we'll give you a call back. They don't call her back. So now she's waiting around. Nobody's called her. And she's like, she's had enough of this. So she drives straight to the news downtown, and she goes on the news and says, this is garbage. He shouldn't be charged with anything.

This officer risked his life to save me and pretty much this woman. Pretty much as soon as this happens, the prosecutors start calling all their witnesses, and they're like, we're gonna. We're gonna do pretrial interviews early. So they're starting to do these pretrial interviews, which is my teammates, the civilian witnesses, other officers who were there.

And I got to see some of the interviews afterwards. And pretty much everyone's like, of course Jordan shot him. He was going to kill us. Like, he pointed a gun at us. What do you think was going to happen? And there were, there was some yelling. They were, they were pretty unhappy with these prosecutors charging me, but they also did a really good job of articulating to them, like, you know, this guy needed to be stopped.

And yes, you know, at the moment in time he was shot. Maybe it was 0.37 seconds after he pointed the gun at the police, but, like, a normal human can't even perceive that. Like, you can't perceive that change and react to it in time. You have to observe things as they happen. You have to make decisions as a result of what you've seen, and you need to act. That takes time. That's a process. And as some of that stuff started to come in, as they looked at their file, they decided they weren't going to prosecute me anymore.

Jon Becker: And so, hey, sorry we completely f***** up your life and, you know, ruined everything. But….

Jordan MacWilliams: And this was – Here's a, here's a very canadian, right, sorry.

Jon Becker: Yeah, sorry.

Jordan MacWilliams: There was no sorry.

Jon Becker: Sorry we f***** up your life.

Jordan MacWilliams: So this takes some time, though. So now this is kind of march, and it actually takes them to July. And then on, in July they dropped the charges. But I should tell you something else that was going on during this time that we talked about how organizations can support their members when they're going through tough times, regardless of a critical incident, personal tragedy, whatever. And for me, I got to see a huge contrast in that during this time.

So this is about eight months that I'm off work. I'm charged with murder. Pretty much as bad as it can get for a police officer. And nobody from the command staff spoke to me. I didn't get one phone call, one email, one text message, nothing. Like, nobody talked to me for months until, I think it was in March.

It was right around the time that actually, the hostage went on the news and I get a phone call and. Is this Jordan? Yeah, yeah, this is Jordan speaking. Hi, Jordan. My name's Neil. I'm the new chief of the Delft police department. I've just been hired, and first thing I wanted to do as the new chief, I wanted to reach out to you and give you my support, and I'm sure everybody's doing a ton for you already, but you just let me know if there's anything I can do for you. And I'm kind of…

Jon Becker: Since you called.

Jordan MacWilliams: I'm kind of taken aback by this. And I say to him, well, chief, welcome. To be honest, you're the first person with any brass on their shoulders who's talked to me since I got charged. And he says to me, he's like, Jordan, where do you live? I tell him where I live. He's like, can I come meet you for coffee? And that morning, we go for coffee, and we're sitting down, and we're talking, and he's like, you know, Jordan, I don't know what happened. I just know what was on the news.

But what I saw is that police officers risked their lives to save somebody, and what happened happened afterwards. But, you know, you're a hero for doing that, and I really appreciate what you've done, and I want to know what I can do for you. And I was just so taken aback, like, I'm completely abandoned by my organization.

For months and months, nobody's even talked to me. And now this new guy's come in, and he's telling me he believes in me, and it was just so powerful in that moment. And I told him, well, honestly, chief, like, I don't really know. I'm just kind of sitting at home doing nothing now. He's like, do you want to come back to work?

I'm like, you can't have a cop charged with murder working for your department. He's like, I can find some light duties for you, obviously can't carry a gun. You can't go out on the road, but we're going to find something for you to do. If you want to be at work, you can come back to work. Like, well, I would like to. And that brings up something else that I really found going through this.

The importance of connection and feeling like you're a part of the community. Like the law enforcement community, the SWAT community, like, not having that and being separated from it was so negative. Stripping away my identity, like I was talking about before, the idea of getting to come back and getting to be around my brothers and sisters in this profession was very appealing. And I realized how much I missed and how much I wanted to do that. And so I said, yeah, absolutely. I want to come back. You know, I'll even count staplers. I'm pretty sure I said exactly that.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Because at this point, the stapler job is starting to sound pretty good.

Jordan MacWilliams: It does sound pretty good. And so he arranged for me to come back to work. And I did come back to work. I'm working some light duties. And then let's just fast forward now, because we're here July, I think it was July 14th or 15th, and I get a call from my lawyer, and I'm at the office now. And he says to me, Jordan, where are you right now? And instantly I flashback to the first time the lawyer called and said, jordan, where are you right now? Where I get charged with murderous.

So now I'm like, how can this get any worse? Yeah, I'm at work. He's like, well, I've got some wonderful news. The prosecution's entered a stay of proceedings this morning. Your bail is gone. You are a free man. And, like, I can't even tell you how I felt that way. I got off the phone, people, like, flooded into my office.

I remember the union guys coming in saying that they were going to pay for a party for everybody, which they did. And the amount of beers they bought for that lasted me about three months afterwards.

Jon Becker: Good.

Jordan MacWilliams: But, yeah, just overwhelming relief for me and for my family, um, to be cleared and just. Just to come back to. To equilibrium, to homeostasis, like, back to normal. And so then it was. It was a bit of a process because, yeah, I had been cleared of the criminal charges, but I was also sued by the fellow's daughter that I'd shot. And we ended up settling that suit for some counseling for her, which I actually was super supportive of. If that guy was my dad, I would need some counseling too. So let's pay for her to get some counsel.

Jon Becker: Yeah, because she's a victim in this whole thing too, right? She's just a little girl whose dad got smoked.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah, so that does get settled. Civil suit gets settled. And then they did a graduated return to work for me. I just kept working in that light duty spot for a little bit. And then I actually went to a detective section and worked there for three, four months, which was good. It was not operational. It was operational. But I wasn't out on the road doing much stuff and did some interviews and did a lot of paperwork.

And then I went back to patrol, worked on patrol for a few months. And it took about two months before I went to my wife and said, I want to go back to ERT. Like, I need to be back on the SWAT team. She's a wonderful, supportive woman. And she encouraged me to follow my dreams. And I did. I applied, went back, and I've been there since.

Jon Becker: That is a pretty amazing wife to not literally choke you out when you said, I want to go back on ERT.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yes.

Jon Becker: Last couple of years, or her life had not gone well from your service at ERT, right?

Jordan MacWilliams: No, no, they hadn't. But it was, you know, that was all positive on the professional side for me. But I felt a ton of anger towards my organization and I felt a ton of anger towards the independent investigations office.

And I remember, I'm back on ERT now and I'm working, and I still was certainly feeling that way. I was actually going down the road of a civil suit against the independent investigation Office for malicious prosecution. And I got a phone call and was offered the opportunity to speak with the head of the IIO.

During this time, after I'd been cleared, there'd been some other files that had a. Looked like their investigations were pretty garbage, which they were. And the fella from the states got fired. And they hired a new guy who was a prosecutor in eastern Canada. He came on out and, um, he'd made a bunch of statements in the media.

But we're going to really improve the quality of these investigations. We're going to have really good investigators here. He got the provincial government to agree to allow him to hire former police officers, rather than just strictly civilians, to give some expertise in there. And he'd made a bit of a thing about, you know, we're going to get better at this. We're going to be really good at this. And so I'd heard these things in the news, and I thought to myself, okay, well, I hate this guy because of what he does, like his role and what his organization did to me and my family.

But I remembered something that my mom always would say when I was growing up, like, you get to choose to be bitter or better. And I'm like, I want to be better. And so I took up that offer and I went down to his office and I sat down with him. And before I could say anything, he says to me, he's like, Jordan, I just want to tell you, I reviewed the file. You never should have been charged with anything. You did nothing wrong. You're a hero. And I am truly sorry. And, you know, here we are. This is five years after my shooting, so I've gone through being charged, civil suit.

There was an inquest, like all these things. I lost my job that I identified with so much, wrapped myself in, got to get back to it. Went off road, right? Basically in my personal life, borderline alcoholic, depressive. And now, like, here I am five years later hearing this guy say, like, you know, who is running the organization that did this to me?

And it felt good to hear that, obviously. And then he went on to say, you know what, Jordan? I want to make sure that we do a good job of our investigations moving forward. And we need to be balanced, and part of that is understanding the perspective of police officers, too. And I would love if you'd be willing to share with my staff the impact this has had on you and your family. And I said I would love that opportunity. And I did. I presented to his whole staff, and there were a lot of tears. A lot of them were crying, listening to me, talking about how this had affected me and my family, and just. And to them.

Jon Becker: They should be. Their organization destroyed your life.

Jordan MacWilliams: And to them, they're seeing this, and they're seeing me as a human now. They're not seeing me as a police officer on a body camera or on a surveillance video. And I felt like that was the definition of my mom saying, I got to be better, not bitter.

Jon Becker: That is absolutely the definition of being better than bitter, because I don't know that I'm enough of a man to go back there. I mean, that takes. You had to put on your big boy pants for that one.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah. I almost didn't go. There's a couple times where even that day I remember thinking, f*** those guys. I'm not gonna go.

Jon Becker: Yeah, yeah. I think I would have been exactly the same place. I'm just not sure I would have gotten past that stage.

Jordan MacWilliams: But I'm glad I went.

Jon Becker: So just, let's finish the career arc to where we are today, and then I want to talk some lessons learned here. So all of that, you know, you're doing that now. You're still at Delta as this is all evolving, right?

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah.

Jon Becker: And now your team transitions from a part time team to a full time team, if I remember correctly.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah. So around that time, there was a number of collateral duty teams in our area, and they all integrated into one big full time team, which was run by the RCMP. So when I came back to work and I wanted to get back on the SWAT team, I applied, got a spot on that team, and I was working there. But how it worked for Delta was they tenured their members. It's a bit of a union thing, give other people opportunity, et cetera.

So they said that I'd have a seven year term working on ERT, and I worked there for seven years and decided I didn't want to leave because it's a great job. And so I actually left Delta, and I work for the RCMP now.

Jon Becker: So basically, your choice was leave the team and go back to patrol.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Or leave the agency that had treated you like s*** anyways and go to work for the RCMP and stay on a full time team with your brothers.

Jordan MacWilliams: Exactly.

Jon Becker: Yeah. That's not a math problem, is it was….

Jordan MacWilliams: It was a pretty easy decision.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Yeah. I think you're probably buying your red suit that afternoon.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah. Looks pretty good on me, too.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Say what you want about the mounties, man. Nobody looks sharpen, sharper than the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Especially when you see them at funerals and events. And it's like the sea of red. Historically, our country does not like people in red coats.

Jordan MacWilliams: Well, you're warming up to us, but….

Jon Becker: We'll make an exception to the RCMP. So now you've been on this full time team for how long?

Jordan MacWilliams: We're going on seven years now. So 2016 is when I got back there. So 7 years, 2017.

Jon Becker: And just to give context, this is a tier one team, right? This is a, you know, the RCMP ERT is the national law enforcement asset for Canada. And because of Canadian police structuring, it's. It's difficult to. To give a direct analogy to the US, but it's kind of a combination of, like, La sheriffs, LAPD and FBI HRT in a provincial role.

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah. Like, we do have that kind of blended mandate, and it is unique. I actually haven't seen other than, you know, some European countries where they have, you know, one police force federal on down.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Jordan MacWilliams: Whereas we have, where we work, a municipal mandate where we serve a few million people for, like, your day to day SWAT type calls. Then we have, like, a provincial policing mandate where we're the hostage rescue team for our province, and then we also have a federal mandate. So, you know, unit members of our team have. Well, I've deployed across the country and we've had guys to play internationally. We have guys overseas right now.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And I went up recently, visited you guys, and can personally attest that it is a fantastic team.

Jordan MacWilliams: I appreciate you saying that!

Jon Becker: On par with any other national asset I've ever seen. Let's – So we end up with happy ending, right? We kind of end up with post murder charge, Jordan living his best life, still married to the same woman, still raising the same kids.

Jordan MacWilliams: Two kids now. Yeah.

Jon Becker: In better shape, drinking less, smiling more. Living a good life. What, retrospectively, with an eye on being better and not being bitter. What are the agency lessons learned here? Like, if I am a chief of police or I am an inspector in the RCMP or whatever, how do I not do this to my guys?

Jordan MacWilliams: I think if you just remember that we're dealing with human beings, and when I was a little kid, treat somebody how you want to be treated like that. That seems like such a simplistic way to answer that question. But if we remember, these are people. Like, I go back to what I said before I showed up to work that morning, like, truly believing, you know, I was there to help people. I still do. I didn't show up to work to hurt somebody. I was giving everything to my organization.

I put my body in front of somebody I'd never met before to protect her, somebody else I'd never met before who was trying to kill her with a gun. Like, I chose to do all those things, and I was willing to sacrifice all that for my community and for my organization. And then when my organization saw that there may be some controversy, they couldn't even bring themselves to talk to me.

And then when I got charged and things look really bad, you know, they definitely couldn't bring themselves to say anything positive. And in fact, they abandoned me completely. They wouldn't say anything. But then that changed because the new chief comes in and he remembered that I'm a human being and he couldn't change any of those things, but he could reach out and say he believed in me and supported me.

And what he knew I had done well, he thanked me for, and that took courage of leadership. Leadership. It's hard to do the right thing when you're the only one doing it, when everybody else is doing it, it's really easy.

Jon Becker: That's why it's called courage. Yeah, it's easy to do the right thing when everybody's doing it. One of my favorite sayings is that managers do what's right for their careers and leaders do what's right. And for me, the contrast between the initial chief, who subsequently retired and hopefully is suffering somewhere, and the new chief was that one of them was doing what was right for his career, and the other one was more focused on just doing the right thing.

Jordan MacWilliams: And he didn't even need to get on the media and say, I support Jordan. I didn't need that. But when he told me he appreciated me and supported me, that's all I needed. It doesn't seem like very much, and it isn't, but it means so much to people who, whether it's a critical incident at work or things have gone off road right in their personal life, or they've done something terrible, they didn't sign up that way, though. They were good people at some point, and we need to try and support them as people and help them.

Jon Becker: And, you know, the other contrast that I think is interesting is a contrast between the new west chief, who was. Wasn't even you. Like, that's, he's not even your chief, but he takes the time to go and see you and support you. Did you have any subsequent contact with him?

Jordan MacWilliams: I've seen him around since. He still works. He works for, as he's the chief of another organization in our area. And I just saw him at a call a couple months ago, and I have a ton of respect for that man. He didn't need to do that. He decided to do that. That was courage of leadership.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Which is unfortunately becoming more and more scarce. We recently attended a ceremony where we kind of saw this same kind of courage of leadership. And I won't go into detail about it because it's a different agency, but it is that same thing. The parallels between your case and the cases of others who are accused of things that they didn't do and everybody in the agency just runs, hoping to not get tainted is appalling. It really is.

And in this case, it's just such. I understand there are cases where they've got to do the math, and it's a close call, and this is not one of those cases. That's the thing that's appalling is it just strikes me as a new office that's trying to build a name for themselves and doesn't really care what they destroy in the process.

Jordan MacWilliams: And don't think about humans on the other side. It's really on point, all those things that you're saying, and I couldn't agree more. For an organization, they have to focus on their people and try and support their people. And just knowing that it's human beings on the other side. For me, I didn't need all of this fanfare. Thank yous in the media. I understand all the pressure we're under from special interest groups and oversight organizations. It's going to be really hard for a senior manager to get on the news and say, I support so and so. They did a great job.

I understand that that takes a ton of courage, leadership, and there may be times where they need to do that when there's community outrage over things, but that's not what I needed. I just needed that little bit of support. Just don't abandon your people.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Yeah. What about your teammates and friends? Like, what did they do that was right? What did people do? People that you were more connected to? What did they do that was right? What, what didn't. What should they have done that they didn't do?

Jordan MacWilliams: Yeah, I've talked to a lot of them. I talked to a lot of them at that time. And since, like, my friends reached out. Hey, Jordan, I'm here for you. I don't know what I can do to help, but I want to help. You just tell me. And then they're like, well, you call me anytime. Two in the morning, you can't sleep, you call me.

Well, I'm not going to call them at two in the morning. I'm going to lay there awake for hours. But it meant a lot that they said that. And I remember. I remember one message I got. So the highest ranked person who sent me a note of support after I was charged was a staff sergeant. So it's like. Like a lieutenant down here.

And she had been, you know, so she's not promoted to the management rank yet. She's still one of the rank and file. And she had been working with me when I first started. She'd been a supervisor. She'd been supervising my field training, actually.

And she sent me a message. She just sent me a text. And she's like, Jordan, I don't know what to say. I'm just thinking of you. And that meant a lot because she was thinking of me. She didn't have to say anything else. And I've talked lots of people since. Like, when I saw you, I didn't know what to say. I'm like, you didn't have to say anything. Just the fact you showed up really mattered to.

And that's what I'll say for, you know, people's support groups, like, just be there for them. That support that I got from my family, my wife making that tough call to go back to work early and forcing structure on my life, doing those things to help me recognize the destructive path I was taking my life on, those are huge.

Those are hard to do, and those take courage, too. Those are the things you need your family to do to give you that baseline of support so you can start to make some good decisions. We don't have that support network around us, and underneath it, it's going to be really hard to make good decisions.

Jon Becker: One of my favorite Maya Angelou sayings is, years from now, people remember what you said, and they won't remember what you did, but they will remember how you made them feel. And the one thing that is very clear in this conversation is that what really damaged you was how they made you feel.

Jordan MacWilliams: I struggled for a little while with killing somebody. It maybe kept me up at night for a night or two. The way my organization treated me, kept me up for years and took my mental health into the garbage. And it's so backwards to think that killing somebody was the least of my worries for three years. It's unbelievable.

Jon Becker: That is a perfect place for us to stop. Jordan, thank you so much, man, for doing this!

Jordan MacWilliams: No, it's been my pleasure! I really appreciate you having me on!