All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I'm the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and the brand new Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism, and I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2003, almost all on foreign policy, and all available for you at scotthorton.org.
You can sign up for the podcast feed there, and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthortonshow.
All right, you guys, on the line, I've got Ford Fisher, the independent journalist, and he has produced this new short documentary.
It's 23 minutes long, 24 minutes long.
It's called Johnny Hurley, the Anarchist Concealed Carrier Who Stopped a Mass Shooting.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing, Ford?
That's right.
Thank you for having me on.
Happy to talk to you again.
You do very interesting work.
In this case, you've really filled in a lot of gaps in the story for those of us on the outside here about this young libertarian, Johnny Hurley, who, well, I don't want to spoil it.
Tell us the whole story in whatever form you want.
I'll butt in, ask follow-ups where necessary, but I think everybody knows that he was shot by a cop in the middle of trying to save another cop.
Right.
Well, so there was an individual who, on June 21st, named Ronald Troiki, who apparently had a vendetta against police officers.
We don't know a whole lot about him, but police have since given the public six quotes that are apparently from some kind of manifesto that he had written.
We never got a scan or a photo of that manifesto, so we're sort of just taking the police's word for it, and obviously they lack context.
But they essentially show that this person was intent on killing police officers.
And so that person, Ronald Troiki, walked into Arvada Square, and he approached a police officer from behind with a tactical shotgun, and he shot him in the back of the head.
And he shot him again once he fell, and apparently began firing the gun at random at various cars.
There were supposedly police cars parked there, which he shot at, as well as businesses.
And after he finishes dumping the shotgun, and with one fatality, he returns to his car and puts the shotgun away and picks up an AR-15.
And what I've described so far is visible in security camera footage that the police did release.
That footage also shows that as those things are going on, Johnny Hurley can be seen running across Arvada Square from an army surplus store, which he was a customer at at the time.
And he ran across the square to a position of cover behind a brick wall.
And the video cuts off as Troiki returns to the area with an AR-15, but the police cut the video off.
And of course, it's not like the security camera actually stopped at the critical moment.
It's that the police did not want to show the public what happens thereafter.
And so what we know happened is that Johnny shot the shooter.
And somewhat is said that that was five or six shots.
And that the police, upon arriving, shot Johnny dead.
And so there was this four-day window of time in which the police said that Johnny was, they always acknowledged Johnny was a hero and a good Samaritan.
And they said this person had killed a police officer, and then Johnny killed the shooter and then died.
And it wasn't until four days later that they said that it was the police, not Troiki, who had killed Johnny.
The police claim that Johnny was actually holding, they said, a rifle.
But what they are implying is the shooter's rifle at the time that police shot him, which would sort of make the police, you know, the accident on the police's part seem somewhat more understandable or sympathetic.
But they never released the video or any kind of photographic evidence, which if that occurred, right, the spot that Troiki died at, you know, it's completely within the frame of the security camera footage.
So the police have it.
And if that happened, the police have the, you know, video photographic evidence of that.
But they have not released it.
They just said that Johnny picked up the rifle.
And many of his friends believe that that particular detail is not accurate.
And so I can't say for sure either way.
Obviously, I wasn't there.
But having visited, I spoke to many of his friends.
I visited the scene of the shooting three times actually during that trip.
And there are bullet holes, or what appear to be bullet holes, I guess I'll say, on the brick wall near where Johnny took cover.
And so that would seem to imply that the police shot him while he was behind cover, which would not be the position of, you know, standing over the shooter, which is where he'd have to be to pick up the rifle.
So the possibilities that exist are, number one, they could simply not be bullet holes, right?
You know, to put it simply.
Or assuming that they are bullet holes, though, he could have been shot there at the wall, having not picked up the rifle, in which case the police are lying.
And that's what many of his friends who I interviewed believe.
He could have gone and picked up the rifle, and the police just missed severely enough to have shot where he was before that.
Technically possible.
Or, you know, he could have picked up the rifle and then returned to that cover position and then been shot, which would be bizarre, to be frank.
Like why would he actually do that?
And so it's a confusing situation.
And I think that the thing that pretty much everybody can agree on is that, you know, the public has a right to know.
And so, you know, people have been calling on them to release the full footage.
The police, although they released that kind of incomplete part that stops before the kind of critical moments of question here, the police released this video.
But then when they cut it off, they say the district attorney will determine what if any additional evidence will be released to the public at the end of their investigation.
So it's been about a month and a half now, and we are awaiting the results of that.
You know, something that's interesting is that having talked to a lot of his friends, none of them are of the opinion that Johnny would want it tied up in sort of a court case or, you know, nobody thinks that the police officer who shot Johnny and we have no reason to think it was anything other than an accident, right?
Lying is on purpose.
But nobody seems nobody believes that it happened on purpose.
And none of them seem to believe that Johnny would want it to be tied up in a court case of some kind, like criminal charges or anything like that.
Just simply that the public deserves the truth about what happened.
Well, OK, I mean, at least he's a pretty consistent anarchist as far as that goes.
He doesn't even want his own killer indicted, although, I mean, it's at least some kind of negligence, especially if they're having to cover up by pretending he picked up a rifle when it doesn't make much sense that he would have there.
I mean, I guess if the guy that he had shot was still alive, it would make sense that he would kick the rifle away from him or something where the guy couldn't get it or maybe pick it up and carry it away from where the guy could possibly reach it again.
Something like that, I guess.
Well, so this is something that some people pointed out to me is Johnny was not your kind of just everyday concealed carrier.
He was not just kind of, you know, as one witness that I spoke to said, he wasn't just your sort of weekend warrior.
He took his training very, very seriously and he executed every part of what happened kind of perfectly.
Like as this witness told me in the doc, he said, you know, like it takes a special person to go up against somebody with an AR-15 in an act of shooting, you know, with a handgun and with that gun.
Right.
And so, uh, you know, it, in a situation like that, law enforcement or not, you're actually not supposed to pick up the shooter's weapon.
You're supposed to kick, you know, kick it away from them.
So some, some of his friends have noted, you know, it seems inconsistent with his level of expertise that he then would have picked up the rifle, you know, essentially knowing that that exact outcome could have happened.
Um, again, it doesn't make it impossible.
And if it does turn out that he really did pick it up, that wouldn't in any way negate the heroism, uh, or expertise of what he did.
Um, it wouldn't make it, you know, like he, like he deserved the shooting in any way whatsoever.
Um, you know, in, in either way.
But, um, I think the public's kind of viewpoint is just, we all deserve, uh, the truth.
And I think my documentary highlighted, um, that these things aren't as, as straightforward as they seem.
Right.
And so when people say, oh, well, he picked up a rifle and we shot them, um, you know, it could be true, but we don't have to take it at face value.
Um, the other thing though, that I think is a really important theme of the doc, cause I try to actually lay out who he was as a, as a person, right.
As opposed to just, here's what happened at the end of his life and we want to know about it.
And there's some kind of mystery element to that.
But what's not a mystery is, you know, who he was as a person.
And so he was somebody who was deeply critical of police, who was involved in police accountability protests for the last year.
Uh, he was skeptical of the entire state, I should say, right.
He had protested the federal reserve.
Uh, he had protested in particular, he really didn't like the TSA and kind of the security state.
Um, and it's interesting because now, you know, him and a police officer being, um, sort of the victims of this overall shooting situation, uh, you have these signs coming up around town that have his name, uh, next to the officer Beasley, the, uh, you know, the other officer who was killed, but you know, you've got the thin blue line flag on the same thing as him.
Right.
And that's not what he stood for.
Um, so that's something that I've really been trying to dive into is that, you know, as much as the police are saying, oh, he's a hero cause he saved cops and he did and he is, uh, but that doesn't mean that he would want his, his name attached to the thin blue line flag as his, as his legacy.
Especially when a cop negligently killed him while he was in the middle of saving them.
You know what I mean?
When they were about to be ambushed by this guy and he was trying to align him with the police or align him with the state.
And that's certainly kind of the opposite of, I think how he viewed himself, especially when they're in the middle of obfuscating the whole thing and dragging ass on telling the truth about what was really going on there and all of that.
But yeah, I mean, it sounds like if I understand it and everybody, please just watch the thing.
It's on YouTube and, and Ford goes and, you know, walk step by step through everything.
This guy was here and that guy was there and best we understand was this and all that.
So you can see for yourself, but I guess if I understand you right about where he was on the wall and all of that, apparently at the time that the cop was shooting at him, that he hadn't even had a chance to move from the wall to the body of the guy he had just killed.
He was still behind the wall, essentially behind his cover.
When the cop got there and got him, making it that much less likely that he had even had a chance to kick the rifle away, much less pick it up.
Something like that.
Do I understand?
I would say that that's, that's basically the theory that many of his friends would say that the bullet positions and what they've heard from witnesses would suggest.
But I think that there's no way to really know conclusively until they issue the video.
And this is what's frustrating about it.
They do have it all on video.
The police certainly have the entirety of this video.
There's no ambiguity that whatever happened to the police have it and it would be fairly straightforward whatever it shows in that footage.
And so they are describing it to people as if it is straightforward, but not showing that footage.
Ergo, we as the public just really can't know.
I think that especially given that it took four days for the police to admit that it was one of theirs who killed Johnny.
They're kind of in a situation where they don't have a great deal of trust going on between that community and with the police.
And I think it's interesting also because I was looking at, you know, didn't the police have body cameras?
What's going on with that?
And I was reading on their website, they actually examined the subject of body cameras in, you know, several years ago.
And the Arvada police's determination, of course, they were investigating whether to add this accountability tool to themselves.
And they concluded that they did not need them.
They said, well, there are some communities that have contentious relationships with the police and therefore body cameras might serve them well.
Arvada is not one such community.
Arvada, we don't have these issues with the police and the public, so we don't need the body cameras.
And then they actually, you know, they have this section on the website still that sort of explains why they don't wear them.
And then it says there's a, and they put it in quotes, Colorado's police accountability law.
Like they believe that it's not a real accountability law.
They're putting it in quotes.
But that requires them to acquire body cameras by 2023.
And so they are committed by state law to begin wearing them in a couple of years.
But at the time of the shooting of Johnny, the security camera footage is the only footage that would exist.
So we do know for sure that no body camera footage exists.
All right.
Sorry.
Hang on a second.
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Now I want to go back to one small outrage here that by itself is actually really huge.
It's this thing where for four days they let it seem like Hurley and the assailant had taken each other out rather than taking responsibility.
You know, even then it seemed like maybe they thought they could get away with it altogether until something changed their mind that now I guess we're not going to be able to.
And what is that?
They may not have even told the public that within four days had it not been for the fact that apparently it leaked from the police department.
So it was a couple of days later that apparently a source within the police department was telling the media that it was a cop who shot him.
But the media was finding out in off record anonymous conversations at first and then the police, uh, you know, conceded that point.
And while releasing, you know, video, except for the footage that shows that happening, right.
So, um, it seems like, you know, once the meat, once the, the story went from, you know, good Samaritan dies, killing a mass shooter, uh, to, uh, maybe the police are the ones who shot him.
Um, then the police came forward and said, yep, it actually was us who shot him.
And by the way, here's video of, uh, only the shooting of the cop, the first cop.
Let's just focus on that.
Right.
Uh, of course they literally say the words, let's just focus on that.
But it's, it's felt like they were trying to redirect the attention on the fact that a policeman lost his life, which of course is tragic.
Um, but there's, but there's more to what happened there.
Um, and, and certainly the avoidability of, uh, what happened to Johnny.
Yeah.
All right.
Now I think if you just got here from falling off the turnip truck or something and was just coming at this cold, you might say, well, what do you mean the same police department that did this are the ones investigating it?
That can't possibly be right.
I mean, what, is it not the Colorado Bureau of Investigation coming in or something?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So the, the shooting of, uh, Johnny is being investigated by the, by their, uh, county DA.
Um, what I, what I was referring to before about the self investigating was they, they, the police were the ones who explored the possibility of body cameras, um, and determined we don't need them because we don't have any problems that that was the police saying that about themselves.
No, it is a district attorney, which theoretically is independent from the police, but obviously, you know, the, there, some would suggest that the state serves the state, right?
So, um, we will see to what, to what degree the district attorney, um, you know, wants to, uh, inspire kind of transparency, um, when their investigation concludes.
But, uh, theoretically it will be at the district attorney's, uh, discretion, uh, whether and to what degree they release evidence, um, once they conclude their investigation.
I see.
So it's, it's not actually detectives from the same police agency, but it is their local, their partners in prosecution there, right?
The shooting of John.
And, and in fact, that's because it was a police shooting of someone else.
So that my understanding is that, uh, they get to investigate the shooting of their own officer, even though that happens, that happened seconds before the shooting of Johnny.
But those are actually technically two separate investigations.
All right, well, we'll see if, uh, you know, if they're even honest going forward here when they finally do, uh, you know, tell their story, I guess as you're saying, we know the footage exists.
So at some point, I guess at some point it'll leak if they don't want to put it out.
Apparently, you know, somebody inside that police department, uh, you know, would rather people know the truth about this.
Well, we'll see.
I mean, I, I, I would like to think that leakers within the government are going to show the media everything that we always want to see.
But I mean, I would, I would use as an example, you know, one of the stories that I covered, um, you know, this year was the shooting of Andrew Brown in, uh, Elizabeth city, North Carolina.
And in that case, um, when they concluded their investigation and that was a very controversial shooting, um, they showed some of the footage, um, in a press conference, you know, on a PowerPoint screen, but they said, this is not a release of the footage and we're never releasing the footage.
Right.
So, so they said, oh yeah, we tried to do first aid on it.
This was a, to people who don't know, this is someone who was shot while driving away.
And um, you know, he was hit several times in the side, but one of the bullets hit the back of his head.
Right.
And so they showed some of the shooting from a couple of the body camera angles.
There was, there was more shooters than they showed the body cams for.
And then they said, oh, and they, they really tried their best to resuscitate him.
Um, you know, but, and the media was asking, why don't we get to see the footage of that?
And they were like, it's just, it's very graphic, right?
Like, um, you know, and I'm chuckling not because it's funny, but because of kind of the absurdity of suggesting that that's transparency.
Right.
Like, uh, fortunately that footage probably will never be seen by the public.
Um, you know, we'll see if it ever gets leaked somehow, but, um, I, I wouldn't bank on the possibility of body camera footage being leaked to have it, um, you know, see the light of day.
Well, we'll see.
It did happen in the case of, uh, George Floyd.
It was actually, I believe it was the daily mail who caught a leaked body cam footage, um, which is what caused it to be officially released.
Um, so it could happen, but, uh, who knows?
I mean, I'm, I'm obviously crossing my fingers that whatever the outcome of that investigation is that they release everything.
But, um, you know, I, I don't entirely have my hopes up for that.
Yeah.
All right.
Now I'm sorry, cause I interrupted you when you were changing the subject to who this guy was and what a great anarchist and libertarian, I guess, uh, activist he was there in town and all his friends and all that cool stuff.
So please do talk about the guy.
Well, so this is what's kind of interesting is that as much as his final act of heroism was essentially protecting police officers.
And I guess we'll never know whether he knew that he was just protecting life or that he was protecting cops' lives.
But you know, his friends, you know, told me repeatedly that like, uh, it wouldn't have made a difference to him.
He would have been protecting life and that's what would have mattered.
But, um, he, uh, was a kind of police and state overall accountability, uh, you know, an opposition person.
Right.
Um, some of his main issues were that he was against the security state.
Um, he, you know, would do these, um, very visual, uh, demonstrations, like interviewing people in the airport while wearing only his underwear along with another, uh, we are changed Colorado activists named turtle, um, obviously a nickname, but they, they would interview people like, how do you feel about the naked body scanners?
They want to see you more naked than this.
Um, so they would ask people like that.
And obviously they were making a point by doing that.
He also, uh, was involved in labeling GMOs.
He got, he actually, he and several of his friends managed to get such a big campaign that they managed to get, uh, labeling GMOs onto the ballot, um, as a ballot initiative there.
Um, you know, and more recently in the last year he was very passionately driven as, uh, you know, into police accountability.
And so you can look at some of his own posts to see it in his own words.
Um, but he didn't like the idea of kind of the thin blue line, the kind of collective, uh, you know, the police standing together.
He was saying, you know, essentially if you're still a police officer as these other cops are doing these things, then you're complicit.
And um, there were a couple of photos that were taken that I actually used as the thumbnail of the documentary, um, which are that when he attended a, um, you know, sort of anti-police brutality protest, he, rather than holding a poster or a sign, he held a mirror.
He went up to the police officers, um, simply holding a mirror, look at yourselves.
Um, and so I think that says a lot more about him.
And I think that what I'm trying to, uh, get away from is how the media has just been echoing the same narrative.
Oh, he was a hero.
Oh, he was a good Samaritan.
Oh, he saved the cops.
But they haven't actually been going into what did he actually, uh, believe because, you know, as you're seeing these images like that are, when I visited Colorado that are around town, uh, you know, they have his name on the same poster as they have a thin blue line fat flag.
I think he'd be pretty furious if he saw, uh, the way that he's being portrayed or sort of tied to police narrative that way.
Yeah.
All right.
And then tell us a little bit more about the history of his activism in town.
Cause he's apparently members of all these groups and had all these different friends doing all these different activities and stuff.
Yeah.
So, uh, we are changed Colorado.
Um, basically they are a voluntarist, I guess is the term that they, uh, prefer to be used now in the documentary.
I referred to them as an anarchist media collective.
Um, but it sounds like in, in recent years because of the way that the term anarchist has kind of been, um, portrayed and used and, and whatever that, uh, the term voluntarist, which I view as essentially synonymous is what they, um, prefer as a term.
Um, but basically like libertarian, um, they, as a group, uh, opposed kind of the state, uh, from every, every direction that you could think of.
Um, he was, uh, I think what would conventionally be referred to as a conspiracy theorist.
And I think I'll say, look on, if you watch the documentary, you can see, see for yourself the types of things that he, uh, believed in, which, um, me showing those things doesn't, you know, endorse me as believing in the same things he did.
But I think it's important to say, you know, this is who he was beyond just his kind of final moments, but he had been heavily engaged in the activist community there since, uh, around 2008.
Um, so I believe he was 40 when he died.
Um, but he had been, uh, kind of a leader for a long time, even as a young man.
And it's also important to note, I think in describing him as a person that he, um, was a chef and a, uh, musician.
And so those things were also very important to him.
I have a couple of clips in there of, uh, him doing like kind of hip hop performances and so forth.
So, uh, he contributed to their community in a lot of different ways.
Um, and you know, his concealed carrying, this was another thing that a lot of them talked about.
Um, some of them did not even know that he carried a gun, right?
He was not kind of a gung ho, like he wasn't showing off the fact that he carried, this was sort of a silent, uh, protector role that he had taken on and that during COVID he had gone through, um, you know, a lot of serious training, um, again, somewhat in private, right.
Not showing off his talent or skills about this.
Um, but just so that, you know, for such a time as this, that he would be able to defend people and it turned out that he was, you know, sort of right to do that.
Yeah, that's cool.
I mean, one thing is certainly evident in the documentary that you put together here for it is that he had a lot of friends.
Yeah, that is, that's absolutely true for sure.
And, uh, you know, all of them spoke very highly of him, especially the fact that, um, you know, when you, when you enter that kind of a world of anarchism and so forth, um, you have a lot of different types of political views.
So he himself was an anarcho-capitalist, um, he believed in sort of free markets, uh, and so I spoke to one person who describes himself as anarchist anti-capitalist, but they said that they were still, you know, they'd have these lively debates, um, but that at the end of the day, they were, you know, they considered themselves friends and allies.
They weren't, you know, in opposition to each other because they viewed, uh, the, the kind of world they were trying to build differently from one another.
Um, so he had a lot of friends, but also a lot of different types of friends and allies.
Cool.
All right.
So, uh, it's news to share on YouTube and can we count on you for the followup when we have more to follow up on here?
Yeah, I certainly will, uh, be posting them whenever that investigation concludes, I will be sort of breaking it down and something I plan to do kind of regardless of, um, what it ends up showing is whatever they end up releasing.
I want to kind of compare to, you know, this is what his friend said at the time.
I think that it'll be, um, interesting if the police do end up saying, oh, you know, we made a mistake.
He didn't pick up the rifle or something like that.
I want to show, you know, these are his, these are his friends who have been saying this since the beginning and the media largely locked them out.
Um, you know, and if it turns out that, uh, you know, everything happened exactly the police, the way police said it did, you know, I'd be prepared to, to show that to people as well.
So whatever happens, I'm, uh, you know, I will certainly be advocating for the release of as much video, um, and evidence as possible.
Um, you know, and I'll be showing it to people regardless of what it shows.
All right.
Okay guys, that is Ford Fisher.
The documentary is called Johnny Hurley, the anarchist concealed carrier who stopped a mass shooting.
And of course it was killed by a cop he was saving there in, uh, Arvada, Colorado.
So thank you so much for coming on the show and, uh, I hope we can talk about this again soon.
Yep.
Thanks again for having me on.
The Scott Horton show anti-war radio can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in LA, APS radio.com, www.antiwar.com, scotthorton.org, and libertarianinstitute.org.
