I’ll be honest, I’m struggling with words here. This has been such a flashback to a shocking period in all our lives I want to ramble on about my feelings on this matter and the deep level of betrayal I feel from our members of law enforcement. There is also a message of hope that is starting to emerge, like beams of light oozing through the cracks of a dark, dirty tomb.

For the sake of expedience, I’ll try and condense my content and initially stay with facts and details.

Monday 7/31/18

I anticipated seeing a monster on the stand as Officer 1 (O1) was scheduled to testify first thing at 9:00 AM.

I was also anticipating a different person, one that has a tattered record and who matched up with timelines and historical behavior of who I thought might be O1.
The person who took the stand was similar in build and structure but younger than the OSP Captain I thought sure was O1.

O1 took the stand and to my surprise was nervous, but fairly articulate and well spoken. His memory seems to be marginal as he miscounted several items on exhibit as his own former testimony but nothing substantial.

Once the Judge got past his moment of confusion regarding the sketch artist, the prosecution led off with questions regarding his assigned role and details about how that changed dramatically.

He was NOT assigned a shooting role. He outlined his assigned role as a communications contingent. and his position being beyond the road block to the North. He was there to monitor civilian traffic and make sure they were contained and provide communication if Finicum breached the road block.

It’s unclear why he left his post and moved on scene at the roadblock. He mentioned radio reports he received and positioning of the HRT trucks which formed a V in the road with an egress in the center. He described a spike strip placed directly in front of the trucks. When asked if he thought that to be effective he said it would been obviously ineffective.

When he heard on the radio that The Finicum truck had fled he took position on the back bumper of the HRT truck which was facing South in the Northbound lane. He was able to establish a tactical position with one foot on the bumper and one on the snow berm and one which positioned him in as the first to be able to see the Finicum truck round the corner.

His statement was that he would asses the threat of the oncoming truck and jump from the bumper down into the other side of the berm if it appeared the truck was not going to stop.

He testified that they had been given detailed information of the members in the truck but that it was not specified that two females were to be there. He also had been detailed on the fact that suspects were heavily armed, a definite threat and that Officer 2 radio’d ahead stating “it looks like you’re going to have to shoot him.”

Seeing the truck approach he said he feared for his life and that of he other officers so he fired “multiple rounds” at the driver of the truck and the truck itself directed at the engine.
He was not able to recall the number of shots fired at that point. This seems odd because we all know at this point including himself I’m sure that the number was 3. Still, he persisted, he did not know how many rounds he fired and under cross examination he maintained that it was not unusual for a policeman to be unsure how many rounds he/she fired in a lethal force shooting.

I have to dig in to this a minute. It didn’t measure up to me that he didn’t know how many shots he fired. Later in his testimony, he testified that he fired two rounds into Finicum and he knew he had 24 rounds remaining in his duty rifle, in fact was very certain of all of this yet he was unable to compute the 3 shots he fired at the truck initially. The defense let him off the hook here and didn’t pin him on his lack of clarity.

back in sequence…Next he recalled the truck driven by Finicum coming in going very fast. Asked if the truck slowed at all he said no but that it might have actually accelerated.
Again, neither the prosecution nor the defense questioned him on why he didn’t jump off the bumper as intended, rather held his position with a 6,000 lb truck apparently threatening his and his teammates lives traveling at a high rate of speed and tried to stop it with a .308 caliber projectile.

At this point, video was played and for the first time, I saw footage from a different FLIR system. This confirmed that there was more than one aerial video camera or FLIR filming the events that day. An angle I had not seen in the released footage showed. This angle was filmed from the East pointing West at the roadblock and showed Officer 1 leaving his position after firing the three shots at the truck and moving West behind the two trucks in the front of the road block and initially taking cover in front of his truck in the center of the road, then behind the rear bumper of the truck in the South Bound lane.
Interestingly, at this point a great deal of time was spent detailing what he remembers about the 8-10 seconds after Finicums truck came to rest in the snow as O1 moved toward the truck and in fromt of Astarita and the other HRT officers. First he tesified that he heard “a noise” to his right as he ran past Astarita. He would have been 4-5′ from Astarita’s position due South of him.
Enhanced video was played and photo’s were offered
into evidence as exhibits 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, and 3.4 showing his position(s) at various intervals.

Next, a video was entered and segments from 25.3 seconds to 28.0 he indicates where his position should be but he virtually disappears for roughly;y 3 seconds in front of his truck on the center line between the other two trucks in the roadblock. I remember seeing this in the released video which was less defined. There is a period as he moves across the road where he virtually disappears. I believe this was another edit to disguise his or someones actions in those moments but that’s a personal opinion. Oddly, this is the precise period of time when Finicum was fired upon by an “unknown” Officer.

Going back over the released footage it shows him disappearing as well but at the 9:20 time frame just as it transitions to 9:22. I wrote about this two years ago and it was still evident in the enhanced video that was submitted.

https://www.fbi.gov/…/newss-complete-unedited-video-of…/view

This is where O1 was tripped up a bit by the defense. He testified that he remembered hearing a noise to his right as he went by Astarita. The defense asked him if he reported that to investigators to which he answered yes. In fact, they asked him to read his testimony from the original interview and two subsequent interviews. As he read this there was no indication of him hearing anything at all. Even in subsequent interviews, for two years, no report of hearing anything. Then, he changed his testimony to having heard a “noise” in the vicinity of Astarita in June of THIS YEAR!

He explained and reasonably in my opinion that he had been focused on other segments of time until recently when he was discussing the hole in the roof of Finicums truck he suddenly remembers hearing a “noise” a few feet to his right in Astarita’s direction.

The defense played hard on this however and I think the jury may have been influenced here. It very well could have been an “glove doesn’t fit” episode playing strongly against the prosecution.

Much more time was consumed with the potential for an accidental misfire by O1 as he was crossing the road. All just adding reasonable doubt to the charges against Astarita.

O1 communicated convincingly that he did not fire inadvertent round(s) as he was crossing the road.

The prosecution rebutted with a long drawn out display of having O1 recite his loading protocol for his AR15. discussing why he “strips one” from the magazine purposefully with each load leaving only 29 rounds instead of 30.

The defense then crossed with a report from ballistic experts who examined his mags and found that they are pmags labeled as 30 round but actually hold 31.
The defense missed an opportunity to do the math for the jury but I think most probably did some quick calculating.
Some quick math and basically it was established that O1 COULD have loaded 31 rounds into his clip, fired three at the oncoming truck, two at finicum as the “mystery shots” then two into his back thereby leaving 24 rounds in his AR which is what he had remaining…. The glove doesn’t fit…

Of course this doesn’t prove anything but it does, in my opinion, create reasonable doubt which is all the defense has to do to get an acquittal. Advantage defense.

I personally didn’t find it highly credible that this is what happened, if so,why would they be prosecuting Astarita? The prosecution must have some evidence that ties Astarita to the shooting, we just haven’t seen it yet, but it’s going to have to be very compelling to overcome the deft display of the defense.
Moving forward, O1 was questioned about his thoughts and motives as he then ran out in front of everyone into the snow bank and fired two rounds into Finicums back.

He first said he was initially concerned about the FBI agent who dove in front of the truck and narrowly missed getting hit. He said this was his first concern as he moved in that direction. Then he appeared to change his testimony and said his first concern was the occupants of the truck. he then described the moments leading up to the point where he actually fired into Finicum which were consistent with what we’ve all heard since the beginning, reaching into his jacket etc, etc.

He then testified that he laid his rifle in the back of his truck and rode into town with Major Hampton, then to Deschutes County for processing with Officer #3 Joe Pollard.
He stated it was still dusk when he left.

I found it noteworthy that O1 was never debriefed until January 31st. He was “processed” that evening by Detective Vanderkamp who has processed just 3 subsequent lethal force shootings in his career but all this involved was photographing O1 and all of his tac gear.

It is not permissible to interview officers on the same day of a lethal force shooting so no interviews were conducted via union regulations.

The shocking pictures we saw of this showed O1 in full body photo’s literally holding a grocery bag over his face. ALL OF THEM! Each angle he held a brown grocery bag in front of his face. This was astonishing to me.

If ever someone performs a precision task at the top of their game and are so convinced that they did an amazing job, would they likely hide their face?

I for one can say that entire strategy of concealing his identity from the beginning was seriously flawed.I imagined him being such a deviant, a killer and a monster until I watched him on the stand and was able to discern his character. It diffused my entire speculation and I found him to be far less of a villain than knowing him as a story line only without an identity.

Going back in sequence a bit I just visited my notes and O1 actually admitted at one point that he “might” have fired the rounds that went through the roof of the truck to which he explained he was left with no other explanation and it was extremely bothersome for him until they revealed they believed it to be Astarita.

In the end, his testimony Monday was “I don’t recall moving and shooting”

Exhibits 2007, 3299 and 126 were entered relating to the 31 round mags and the spare mags that were processed the evening of the shooting.

The prosecutions closing display was very strange and in my opinion very risky.
They had O1 come down from the stand, stand in front of the jury and handed him an empty 30 round pmag, a brown paper bag full of live rounds, and had him demonstrate how he loads a magazine. So he did of course fairly convincingly until the mag was full, presumably with 30 rounds until the bag was empty. He then removed one round, looked directly at the jury, shook it at them and dropped it into the bag.

The prosecution then asked him to remove the rounds one at a time and count out loud as he dropped them back in the bag. He did so, and of course proudly announced ‘TWENTY NINE” as the last round was removed. It all seemed very theatrical. The prosecutor then asked him if they had ever talked about this or rehearsed this in any way to which he proclaimed definitively, “No we have not”

End of O1 testimony as a witness.

There are two more witnesses Later in the day Monday which I’ll outline when I detail Tuesday and Wednesday in a subsequent post. Wednesday was fairly insignificant but Tuesday had some highlights and I hope to be able to interject some more observations and concerns about the trial itself as time permits.

Mondays testimony for me outlined an obvious unnecessarily overstated and elevated threat, something we learned of in the Bundy trial as well.
Someone invoked fear in the men tasked with handling something small and easily negotiated by the Harney County Sheriff which was escalated far beyond the scope of reality.
Our Governor lit the fuse, Senators Wyden and Merkely fanned the fire. Death and destruction are the byproducts of one failure after the other.

There are also numerous examples of Atypical protocol where normal procedures were purposefully averted and unusual tactics were employed. It won’t be until the wrongful death lawsuit where we see some of these explored but this trial is beginning to flush them out and there’s a ray of hope that this is if nothing else, a segue to the truth.

It is most certainly bizarre to watch as a 91 year old judge heads up the efforts of the Federal Government to prosecute a member of the Federal Government where the defendant who is the highest rated marksman in the nations law enforcement allegedly missed his target TWICE from 20’ away then allegedly lied about it and the OSP SWAT team leader killed the target the other missed and is now the key witness against him…

And the best part of it all, we’re paying for the entire production still after those made to appear as dangerous criminals were fully acquitted and those intending to do them in are now the defendants.