Mountain Home – (Ammoland.com) – An Arkansas Game and Fish Commission wildlife officer helped defuse a potentially dangerous situation last week in Mountain Home. Wildlife Officer Cpl. Doug Small was on daily patrol Feb. 5, when he heard radio traffic about a pursuit on U.S. Highway 62 in Baxter County . . .
Jerry Dean Hopper Jr., 41, led enforcement officers on the chase that ended at a house on Hopper Road with Hopper barricading himself inside. After the chase, enforcement officers said Hopper was reportedly armed and negotiations for his surrender had begun.
Small knew Hopper personally and went to the house. After about 10 minutes of negotiations, Small asked to speak to Hopper. “I walked out into the open and addressed him by name,” Small explained. Small said Hopper responded by saying, “Doug Small, I’m glad there is someone here that I can trust.”
Small said he was able to get Hopper to unlock the door and let him in. “I knew I needed to get him out of sight of all the law enforcement to settle him down. I told him to come downstairs and unlock the door and let me in where we could talk face to face,” Small explained. “We talked about what was going on with him and at one point we retrieved guitars out of the bedroom and began to play them,” he said.
After several minutes of conversation, Small told Hopper they were going to go outside the home. “I notified all officers outside that we were coming out. I walked him to my truck, put him in the passenger’s seat, put his seatbelt on him, and headed toward the Baxter County Detention Center,” Small said.
At the detention center, Small escorted Hopper and stayed with him until he was booked. “Before I left we went into a private room and had more conversation. I told him that I would be there to help him find counseling and help him through this situation,” Small said.
That was very brave of Cpl. Small and it ended well. Good job!
Well this is a first. Police stand off with no shots fired. Great job CPL small
No, it’s not a first. Maybe a millionth. Stuff like this happens all the time.
When police do their jobs well and no one gets hurt, it doesn’t make the news.
Is it supposed to be newsworthy when someone does their job correctly?
Nope. But as long as the media execute their usual philosophy of “if it bleeds, it leads,” the public (such as Frank up there) will have a warped perception of the general level of law enforcement competence.
Holy echo chamber Batman! Apparently the setting for Mr. Small’s activity was so important that Mr. Farago was compelled to write it twice!
The post was originally published on Ammoland, and was reproduced word for word here, including the doubled sentence and the original author’s confusing of “diffuse” with “defuse.” Good editors are hard to find these days.
oops–made my post before I saw this one. My apologies to RF re “defuse” vs “diffuse.”
This is how it was done for generations in this country. To bad he will lose all his guns in our half Stalinist state. Should be required reading in police academies.
That there, ladies and gentlemen, is a true peace officer!
This also highlights the importance of local, community policing where the members of the community know the police and vice versa. There is no substitute.
Couldn’t agree more!
Without Small interceding, this incident would likely have ended very differently, and maybe tragically.
Agreed…..Real law enforcement officers have have balls! When I see officers shoot suspects 80% of the time I can’t help but feel the officer didn’t know how to control his fear and had poor firearm training. Everyone is fearful but it’s how you handle your fear that matters. I think a lot of PD’s need WAY better training. Before you say I don’t know what I’m talking about I DO. I worked for the government and trained all types military and federal agents. FBI (A+), DOJ agencies (A-B-C) depending on the agency and agent, Marines (A+), Army (A+), Navy (A), though honestly it’s really dependent on individual. The more they practice the better they are. Also live fire training and Sim-Ammo training make a HUGE difference.
What to say–a brave man did a brave thing and it ended well. More reports like this would be good to see. But I will note, just because it’s a pet peeve–fogs might be diffused by wind and sunlight; dangerous situations, like dangerous bombs, are defused by competent, courageous men and women.
Hey a story involving Police and Farago can’t spew his hate. I guess you posted this to show that every now and then there is a standoff where the Police don’t shot suspect 100 times in the back. Well I can tell you most situations like this one end the same way! I as a SWAT precision marksman have had at least 10-15 armed suspects in my scope… got the green light at least 8 times and I never had to kill any of them.
Sorry this story ended peacefully and the Police didn’t screw up Robert!
Except Robert isn’t anti-cop or a cop hater and you’re always completely free to ignore the stories wherein they’re rightly called out on their bad behavior. Heaven forbid anyone should ever sharply criticize the bad actors (and the otherwise good actors that knowingly enable them), lest you should have go out of your way to apologize for them.
So you’re disappointed that you couldn’t confirm your prejudices about Robert being disappointed about his inability to confirm his prejudices? Man, that’s some circles within circles shit right there…
I’ve either had too much or not enough to drink for that.
“SWAT precision marksman”
So, is that what government assassins are calling themselves these days?
You pretty much just agreed with Michael Moore…I will let you dwell on that.
At least Whit knows what his job as a SWAT Officer is. I am so tired of the term “sniper” being used.
This doesn’t surprise me at all. Arkansas game wardens tend to be old-school cops who make a point of knowing everyone in their area. They know, for instance, exactly who the poachers are and are usually on a first-name basis with them. They know who the subsistence hunters who poach occasionally are and they know who the shoot-anything that moves a**holes are. The subtext of this story is that this game-warden saved this man’s life. This was just routine cop-work back in the day. No doubt the modern thinking LEO’s surrounding the house thought he was crazy.
That was a great clarification between a “I want to shoot something!” poachers and subsistence hunter poachers who feed their families.
Believe it or not, there are a lot of people who are dirt-poor and have no other means to feed themselves. Shooting one deer out-of-season to keep their family from starving is much better than taking tax money from the rest of us to feed them.
Now that’s a good ending!
They got lucky. I’ve seen two similar situations go the other way with the good-guy and the bad-guy both dead. You never really know how those things are going to play out.
Fish and Game officers have one of the highest rates of injury on duty from perps. They also encounter folks with high powered weapons all the time. Good judgement and reading the intent of people comes out of that. They are definitely are on the good guy side.
Good man.
It’s good when something like this can be worked out, and it does help if it’s the type of community where the leos know the people who live there.
Mountain Home is my old stomping ground, and I still have family there (but i don’t think any of them are Hoppers). It’s a good place to raise kids.
Mr. Small sounds like a competent, brave peace officer, excelling at a challenging job. Thank you, sir!
Surprise…surprise….not even any dead dogs.
Gee how quaint… I remember those days, when many cops would’ve done the same, instead of the govt terrorist legion we now have occupying USSA at every levels.
That, would be one of the FEW GOOD apples in an entirely toxic orchard.
Yup, no dead dogs, no racial angle, no flash bangs, no crooked politicians, and it still made the news. ther may be help for America after all! Thanks for posting it. Wont be on the lame street media though. Too bad.
Maybe I’m missing something, but what was he doing wrong, exactly? What I got from the article was that he barricaded himself in his home….. Since when is that illegal? Damn, I actually wish this had turned violent. If you’re such a jack-booted thug that you would turn your weapons toward a man who is doing nothing wrong, you deserve to die.
Yeah, you missed something. It states he had led officers on a high speed pursuit and ran inside his house.
Good for him,,.Kinda’ nothing to see here and move along. A cop didn’t want to shoot his acquaintance…
If more LEO had the mindset of Cpl Small instead of ‘Sgt Eugene Tackleberry” we’d see many more
peaceful resolutions like this and a lot fewer funerals. Problem is the system doesn’t really want
people like Cpl Small….they want Tackleberry’s.
Funny what happens when police are actually part of the community instead of the huge disconnect we have now. Which is only getting worse as they get less funding and waste what they do have on Tanks. :p
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