The Denver Police Department on Friday released body camera footage of two shootings that occurred within a four-hour span on Oct. 19 in Elyria-Swansea and at a Whole Foods near Union Station.
One man was shot multiple times by officers after pointing what appeared to be a gun at them at the intersection of East 46th Avenue and York Street.
The man is still hospitalized but is in stable condition and expected to survive, said Major Crimes Division Cmdr. Matt Clark. Police later determined the man was brandishing an airsoft gun.
In the second incident, no one was injured when an officer fired their gun during an encounter with a man brandishing a knife in a Whole Foods near Union Station.
Clark and Police Chief Ron Thomas provided new details about the shootings during a news conference Friday afternoon at Denver Police Department headquarters on Cherokee Street.
During the first incident, officers responded to reports of a man pointing a gun at multiple people near a Burger King in the 3000 block of East 45th Avenue at approximately 2:35 p.m.
An undercover detective first saw the suspect and was waiting for backup when the man approached the detective’s unmarked car in the area of East 45th Avenue and Josephine Street.
The man had what appeared to be a gun in his hand, according to police, and the plainclothes detective got out of his vehicle, identified himself as a police officer and told the man to drop the gun. The man walked away.
Four uniformed officers arrived at the scene shortly after, and body camera footage shows the two-minute encounter before the shooting.
Immediately after exiting their vehicles, officers identified themselves as police and ordered the man to drop his gun and get on the ground. The man started yelling “Shoot me, shoot me, shoot me!” at officers as he walked backward on East 46th Avenue toward York Street. A dog is seen walking alongside the man.
Officers continued to tell him to drop the gun and asked how they could help him and what he needed. At one point, an officer can be heard telling him, “Come on, bro, it’s not worth it.”
The man was in the intersection of East 46th and York when he raised the gun and pointed it at the officers, who then began shooting, according to Clark.
The man fell to the ground and officers approached him, told him to put his hands to his sides and started administering first aid, including putting a tourniquet on his arm, according to body camera footage.
Four officers fired 12 rounds during the incident, Clark said. The man was shot multiple times in his torso and arm, but Clark did not know the exact number of times the man was shot.
The man was carrying a black airsoft gun that closely resembles a semiautomatic firearm, Clark said.
The man is being charged with multiple counts of felony menacing in the case. The dog that was walking with the man was reunited with its owner, who lives in southern Colorado.
The second shooting occurred at approximately 6:15 p.m. inside Whole Foods at 1701 Wewatta St. when a man walked behind the deli counter and grabbed a butcher’s knife from a food preparation area.
Four uniformed Denver police officers were hired by Whole Foods to monitor the store, and one of those officers reported seeing a man who looked “out of it” walk into the store, according to Clark.
Store employees waved at the officer to get his attention after the man grabbed the knife, Clark said.
Body camera footage shows the man standing in the area in front of the deli with the knife by his side as officers attempt to talk to him for about 12 minutes. While telling him to put down the knife, officers also asked the man if they could buy him a meal and if he needed a place to stay, a ride or a place to charge his phone. The man did not respond.
During the encounter, the man went back behind the deli counter and grabbed a different, 13-inch serrated knife and returned to the aisle in front of the deli, occasionally looking at his phone.
At one point, the man asked police if they had real bullets in their guns.
After 12 minutes, the man started walking toward officers and two officers simultaneously deployed a taser and fired a gun.
The man went rigid and fell to the ground, according to body camera footage.
The bullet hit the glass door of a freezer behind the man, Clark said. One officer fired one round during the incident.
The man who brandished the knife is being investigated for felony menacing, but Denver police are working with the Denver District Attorney’s Office to determine what mental health treatment options are available, Clark said.
The officers who fired their weapons during the shootings are on modified duty while they participate in an eight-week reintegration program, Clark said, which includes meeting with a psychologist and participating in virtual scenarios and live fire training.
Police are seeing more armed individuals in the Denver area, Thomas said, and have confiscated 1,800 weapons so far this year.
Airsoft guns that look like real guns are also a concern, he said.
“It certainly poses a danger because they do look like real weapons, and I don’t think it’s reasonable for us to be able to try to make that distinction,” he said. “Sometimes we’re unable to make that distinction even if we were to see a side-by-side comparison. I’m not going to be the one to make that legal determination, it’s going to be the district attorney, but I think it’s appropriate for an officer who believes they’re being threatened with a deadly weapon to respond with force.”
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