This program contains mature content. Viewer discretion is advised.
NARRATOR:
In the summer of 2020, a group of murals went up in Salt Lake City. They included faces of people killed by police over the past decade. They went up amid the growing reckoning over police violence around the country and after Salt Lake City police officers killed 22-year-old Bernardo Palacios-Carbajal.
FRONTLINE reporter Taylor Eldridge retraced his steps from where police had been called to a nearby motel over reports of an armed robbery.
MALE POLICE DISPATCHER:
Charlie 513, 420 units, Utah Village Motel, #3. Male Hispanic adult, 30s, 5-foot-7. All black clothing, [inaudible] pointed the gun at him.
MALE OFFICER 1:
521 and [inaudible] at the motel.
MALE POLICE DISPATCHER:
Copy at 213. Find him at room #3.
TAYLOR ELDRIDGE, FRONTLINE:
Officers stopped here.
MALE POLICE DISPATCHER:
They said the suspect may be outside of room #3 right now, but that could also be you guys.
TAYLOR ELDRIDGE:
The officers see Bernardo right there.
NARRATOR:
The officers shouted to him—
FEMALE OFFICER 1:
Hey!
MALE OFFICER 1:
Show your hands!
FEMALE OFFICER 1:
Show me your hands!
NARRATOR:
—and then ran after him.
MALE OFFICER 1:
We have a male on foot, running fast, man. Show me your hands! Show me your hands!
NARRATOR:
A sergeant arrived.
MALE POLICE SERGEANT:
Drop it, drop it! Drop it!
MALE OFFICER 1:
Show me your hands!
MALE POLICE SERGEANT:
Cell phone, cell phone! He’s got something in his pocket!
NARRATOR:
The officers spotted something that turned out to be a gun.
MALE OFFICER 1:
He’s running down the alley, heading back up north towards 900.
TAYLOR ELDRIDGE:
So Bernardo comes around the corner here, and the chase ensues down this alleyway.
MALE OFFICER 1:
521, white cap, white lower coat, upper black coat.
NARRATOR:
Palacios-Carbajal ran across the street.
MALE POLICE SERGEANT:
He’s got a gun in his pocket. He’s reaching in his waistband.
MALE OFFICER 1:
Drop it! Drop it! Drop it! Drop it!
TAYLOR ELDRIDGE:
As he's running, he trips on this curb here.
MALE OFFICER 1:
Show me your hands!
NARRATOR:
He stumbled, dropped the gun and picked it up three times.
MALE OFFICER 1:
Show me your hands!
MALE POLICE SERGEANT:
Drop the gun!
NARRATOR:
More officers arrived.
MALE OFFICER 1:
Drop the gun! Drop it! Drop it!
NARRATOR:
The sergeant yelled to tase him.
MALE POLICE SERGEANT:
Tase him! Tase him! Tase him!
MALE OFFICER 1:
Drop it! Drop it!
NARRATOR:
But instead, 34 shots.
MALE VOICE:
Drop it!
MALE OFFICER 1:
Show us your hands! Show us your f---ing hands!
MALE VOICE:
3420, we've got shots fired.
MALE PROTESTER 1:
No justice!
CROWD:
No peace!
MALE PROTESTER 1:
No racist!
CROWD:
Police!
FEMALE PROTESTER 1:
No one deserves to have their life taken away. They shot Bernardo like he was nothing! More than 30 shots to his body! Thirty shots as he ran away!
NARRATOR:
The killing of Bernardo Palacios-Carbajal ignited outrage in Salt Lake City.
CROWD [chanting]:
Justice! Now!
Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you!
KARINA PALACIOS-CARBAJAL, Bernardo's sister:
Why did they have to shoot him that many times? That was my main thing that I kept wondering or asking. Why did it have to be that many shots?
MALE PROTESTER 2:
This is unfortunately where Bernardo was shot down by the police. Nobody deserves to die at 22.
KARINA PALACIOS-CARBAJAL:
He left this world alone. He was laying on the ground. It was just him, by himself, just surrounded by cops.
FEMALE PROTESTER 2:
It’s time for change! It’s time for change!
MALE NEWSREADER:
New developments in the officer-involved shooting—
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
—that took the life of 22-year-old Bernardo Palacios-Carbajal.
NARRATOR:
The killing was ruled justified.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
The use of deadly force by Salt Lake City police was ruled justified—
MALE NEWSREADER:
—ruled the shooting was justified.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
—was justified.
NARRATOR:
The case became a tipping point here.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
This has been a case that we’ve seen a lot of public outcry about.
NARRATOR:
At the time, Utah was on pace for a record number of police shootings—something the state’s largest newspaper had been documenting.
JESSICA MILLER, The Salt Lake Tribune:
After Bernardo was killed, it hit this tipping point where people were upset, and they wanted answers. They were hungry for more information about how these shootings are happening.
NARRATOR:
Jessica Miller covers the police for The Salt Lake Tribune.
JESSICA MILLER:
There are a lot of police shootings that happen in Utah every year. We've seen this increase over time. It’s not just a problem in Salt Lake City. It’s a problem throughout our whole state.
NARRATOR:
Miller, her colleague Paighten Harkins and others had been building a unique database of every time officers fire their weapons at someone, even if they miss.
JESSICA MILLER:
In 2014, one of my colleagues did a story that showed that over a five-year period, fatal police shootings was the second-leading cause of homicide in our state. The police were killing more people than drug dealers and gang members. And then 2018, we had this record-breaking year where the police shot at 30 people. Those were big numbers.
NARRATOR:
With cases mounting in the state, FRONTLINE and The Salt Lake Tribune teamed up and began trying to understand the patterns and factors that go into when police fire their weapons, fatally or not.
JESSICA MILLER:
Bernardo was the 11th person who was shot so far this year. Last year, in 2019, we had three shootings by this time.
NARRATOR:
There is no source in Utah that tracks police shootings statewide.
TAYLOR ELDRIDGE:
Well, right now, most of our data is coming from the police reports.
NARRATOR:
FRONTLINE and the Tribune filed hundreds of records requests.
FEMALE VOICE:
What record are you looking for?
PAIGHTEN HARKINS, The Salt Lake Tribune:
I've requested a bunch of police shooting stuff.
NARRATOR:
The team combed through court documents, 911 transcripts, internal investigations, media reports; examined body camera footage; and spoke to law enforcement officials, experts and families.
ANNIE ESPOSITO:
No warning to my son, he shoots him.
NARRATOR:
Two hundred twenty-six shootings, more than half of them fatal, over the past 10 years.
In some cases, the available data is incomplete and the numbers too small to draw broad conclusions. But as we began looking at the cases, the vast majority had one thing in common: They were ruled justified, just like the Palacios-Carbajal shooting in 2020.
SIM GILL, District Attorney, Salt Lake County:
We decline to file criminal charges against either officer for his use of deadly force.
NARRATOR:
No one has ruled on more of these cases than longtime Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill.
After ruling on the Palacios-Carbajal case, Gill reached his own tipping point and called for reforms to state laws on the use of force.
SIM GILL:
We need to start thinking about why we are shooting at our citizens and to narrow the conditions under which we do that. There are times, many times, when those—they may be legally justified, but were they absolutely necessary? But those are not the questions we get to ask.
NARRATOR:
Instead, Gill said he has to focus on a key question that arises in almost every shooting.
SIM GILL:
If a law enforcement comes across somebody and the situation rises to a level where they feel threatened or feel that somebody else is going to be harmed, the law creates a justifiable use of that lethal force.
NARRATOR:
Out of more than 100 police shootings he has reviewed, he has filed charges against officers three times, though none of them led to convictions.
When District Attorney Gill declined to bring charges in the Palacios-Carbajal case, many in Salt Lake had had enough.
LEX SCOTT:
What happened to Bernardo is a nightmare. And it's the formula.
Black lives matter!
NARRATOR:
Lex Scott is the founder of Utah’s Black Lives Matter chapter.
LEX SCOTT:
When Latin lives are under attack, what do we do?
CROWD:
Stand up, fight back!
NARRATOR:
She has spent years raising concerns about police shootings, especially among people of color.
LEX SCOTT:
It's the same exact process every time. The police officer claims he fears for his life. Sim Gill holds a press conference where he shows bits and pieces slowed down of the shooting, and then he justifies the shooting. And then it happens again, over and over.
NARRATOR:
Some of the cases that Gill has reviewed and ruled justified include people who turned out to be unarmed, like the shooting of Dillon Taylor in 2014.
GINA THAYNE, Dillon Taylor's aunt:
It's a constant heartache no matter what, but when somebody dies of such a violent, horrific way, you can’t make sense of it, no matter how hard you try.
NARRATOR:
Dillon’s brother Jerrail was with him the day he was killed.
JERRAIL TAYLOR, Dillon's brother:
Me, Dillon, my cousin Adam, we were heading to see my mom and dad's grave.
NARRATOR:
As the men were walking, a woman called 911, saying she saw one of them flashing a gun.
FEMALE 911 CALLER:
The guy in the red hat has a gun. The kid flashed a gun as he was walking by. They’re looking for trouble.
FEMALE 911 DISPATCHER:
What race was he?
FEMALE 911 CALLER:
Um, Black? No, they’re Mexican, right?
FEMALE 911 DISPATCHER:
Are you or anyone else in immediate danger?
FEMALE 911 CALLER:
No.
NARRATOR:
Officer Bron Cruz responded to the call with two other officers.
JERRAIL TAYLOR:
We walked in the 7-Eleven, grabbed a couple of tall cans and we walked out.
NARRATOR:
Cruz and the other officers were waiting for them in the parking lot, their body cameras running.
JERRAIL TAYLOR:
We didn't think they were there for us. We hadn't broke the law. Adam went one way. Dillon went the other. They went after my brother, who had his earphones in his ears.
NARRATOR:
According to Officer Cruz’s account later, Dillon refused to stop or heed commands.
OFFICER BRON CRUZ:
Get your hands out, now!
JERRAIL TAYLOR:
Dillon doesn't think they're going to shoot him. We've had guns drawn on us our whole life. Nine times out of 10 nobody shoots, including the police.
NARRATOR:
Then Dillon turned around.
BRON CRUZ:
Get your hands out!
NARRATOR:
He made a move with his hand that Cruz mistook for drawing a gun.
BRON CRUZ:
Get 'em out!
NARRATOR:
Cruz fired.
BRON CRUZ:
Shots fired, shots fired! Get me medical here now. Hands, give me your hands.
GINA THAYNE:
After he handcuffed him, he's patting him down and doing all that.
BRON CRUZ:
What the hell were you reaching for, man?
GINA THAYNE:
You can hear the nervousness on the bodycam.
BRON CRUZ:
I don’t know where the other shot went. I can't find a weapon on him.
NARRATOR:
That Dillon didn’t have a weapon wasn’t in dispute when District Attorney Gill reviewed the shooting. The question was whether Officer Cruz had grounds to believe there was a threat, whether he feared for his life or others.
Officer Cruz declined to be interviewed. In his interview with investigators after the shooting, he repeatedly talked about the fear he felt during the encounter.
SIM GILL:
The way he pulls his hand—he lifts his shirt up and brings his hand up. And the officer says that I reasonably believed that he was making a drawing motion. And at that point, the question was, was that reasonable for him based on the totality of the circum? And that was a very close call. And we said at that point, given what he knew, that it was not unreasonable for him to fear for his life.
ABBY ELLIS, Producer:
But Dillon didn't actually pose a threat.
SIM GILL:
Well, the officer certainly perceived it based on the information and the conduct that he was engaged in. He said, "This is the threat I perceived." So the question became for us, can we objectively say that that didn't happen? I'm not saying that he was right. What I'm saying is I cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he's unreasonable in that belief.
NARRATOR:
Dillon’s family filed suit against Officer Cruz and the department, but a judge dismissed the case, finding the use of deadly force “objectively reasonable.”
The shooting still troubles the Salt Lake police chief at the time, Chris Burbank, who has become an advocate for police reform.
CHRIS BURBANK, Center for Policing Equity:
We failed. Now, I'm not saying Officer Cruz failed. What I'm saying is the Salt Lake City Police Department should have done better because a young man lost his life.
NARRATOR:
Of the 230 people we found who were shot at over the past decade in Utah, 132 had a gun; 84 had some other kind of weapon; and 14, like Dillon Taylor, had no weapon at all, according to the law enforcement documents we reviewed.
We asked former Chief Burbank about concerns over police shootings, now and during his tenure leading the state’s largest department.
CHRIS BURBANK:
If you start to evaluate shootings on whether or not they're necessary, you could argue that the majority of shootings are not necessary given the totality, the overall event and every circumstance. And why are we showing up? Why are we not holding law enforcement ourselves to this question of, "Why are the police there in the first place? Why are we calling them? Why are we involving them?" But we've established a culture that if for any reason you make me feel uncomfortable, I can call the police, and the police come and deal with you.
NARRATOR:
The issue came into sharp focus just a few months ago with the case of a man named Chad Breinholt, who had been killed in police custody. The shooting happened in the basement of the West Valley City Police Department in 2019.
MALE NEWSREADER:
How could it have happened inside the West Valley Police Department?
NARRATOR:
At The Salt Lake Tribune, reporters began questioning what happened.
JESSICA MILLER:
The police department releases the bodycam footage of this incident, and it’s this very highly edited nine-minute video.
CHAD BREINHOLT:
There’s a gun in my shoe.
MALE POLICE OFFICER:
OK, sit down.
POLICE PRESS OFFICER:
You will now see portions of the video that include officers taking the shoe from Mr. Breinholt.
JESSICA MILLER:
There’s so much context that is missing. What led up to this? And it was just so different than any other shooting that we’ve covered—
POLICE PRESS OFFICER:
And the officer fires a single shot.
JESSICA MILLER:
—we decided that we wanted to get the entire bodycam footage.
NARRATOR:
After six months of appeals, the department gave the newspaper several hours of footage leading up to the incident.
JESSICA MILLER:
We just got the video for Chad Breinholt's case.
The police are called to this long-term care facility where Breinholt was at. His girlfriend worked there.
CHAD BREINHOLT:
Good. How are you?
MALE OFFICER 1:
Pretty good. What’s going on today, dude?
CHAD BREINHOLT:
I don’t know. It's my car. It's her car.
JESSICA MILLER:
The girlfriend tells the police that Breinholt told her that he took all these pills so that he would die.
CHAD BREINHOLT'S GIRLFRIEND:
I got a phone call from him while I was here, and he was—he told me he took like eight or nine pills. Yeah.
MALE OFFICER 1:
That’s a lot.
JESSICA MILLER:
They were just concerned about him being safe.
CHAD BREINHOLT'S GIRLFRIEND:
He just wants to commit suicide.
JESSICA MILLER:
But then Officer Atkin and Officer Matt Lane decide to do a Breathalyzer test.
MALE OFFICER 2:
And blow. Point 162.
MALE OFFICER 1:
You told us you drove here.
CHAD BREINHOLT:
Yeah.
JESSICA MILLER:
Very quickly the tone changes. It's not just, "Can we help this person?" Now this is a DUI investigation.
MALE OFFICER 2:
Do you have any weapons?
CHAD BREINHOLT:
No!
MALE OFFICER 2:
Hey, listen to me. Do you have any weapons or anything on you?
CHAD BREINHOLT:
No, I didn’t drive here, though.
JESSICA MILLER:
Then they take him to the police department for a more accurate Breathalyzer test.
CHAD BREINHOLT:
[Crying] I didn't do anything.
JESSICA MILLER:
They asked him for his name, and he gives a fake name.
MALE OFFICER 1:
Oooh. That's a Class A misdemeanor for giving somebody else's information to a police officer.
JESSICA MILLER:
They just keep threatening him with more and more charges.
NARRATOR:
After about 45 minutes, he falls to the floor.
MALE OFFICER 1:
A lot of drunk people have peed on that floor. Not sure you want to lay there.
NARRATOR:
The officers left Breinholt on the floor for more than 10 minutes as they waited for a medical crew to arrive.
JESSICA MILLER:
There's really no mention during any of this that he's suicidal or that he's taken pills.
MALE FIREFIGHTER EMT:
[Laughing] Let's go, man. Hey. We need you to sit up.
NARRATOR:
By now, Breinholt had been handcuffed in police custody for almost two hours.
MALE OFFICER 1:
That's it?
MALE VOICE:
OK.
MALE OFFICER 1:
That's all we need?
JESSICA MILLER:
He wouldn't consent to a Breathalyzer test, and so they needed to write a warrant. And that's when Sgt. Longman comes into the department.
SGT. TYLER LONGMAN:
OK, what do we got?
JESSICA MILLER:
I looked him up in our database, and I saw that he'd been in two other shootings.
NARRATOR:
Shortly after Sgt. Tyler Longman arrived, Breinholt told the officers he wanted to go to a psychiatric hospital known as “UNI.”
CHAD BREINHOLT:
I want to go to UNI.
TYLER LONGMAN:
UNI? Let me tell you this right now, OK? I’m not going to sit here all night and play games with you. You’ve already wasted our fire department's time by having them come out for some bull----. OK? I’m not taking you to UNI. I’m taking you to jail. That’s where you’re going. OK? So, cut the bull----.
CHAD BREINHOLT:
I want to go to UNI.
TYLER LONGMAN:
No. You’re not going to UNI. You are going to jail.
NARRATOR:
While Sgt. Longman helped to process the warrant, Breinholt remained handcuffed for another 30 minutes.
MALE OFFICER 1:
Sit down. Sit down.
CHAD BREINHOLT:
I got a gun in my pants.
MALE OFFICER 1:
[Laughs] OK, good try.
CHAD BREINHOLT:
I’m not even joking.
MALE OFFICER 1:
OK.
JESSICA MILLER:
They know he doesn’t have a gun in his pants. They searched him when they arrested him.
A little more time goes by, and Breinholt starts messing around with his shoe.
MALE OFFICER 1:
Is there a gun in your shoe, too? Sit down.
MALE VOICE:
Sit down.
CHAD BREINHOLT:
There’s a gun in my shoe.
MALE OFFICER 1:
Hey, sit down, dude.
CHAD BREINHOLT:
There’s a gun in my shoe.
MALE OFFICER 1:
OK, sit down.
CHAD BREINHOLT:
All right.
MALE OFFICER 1:
I’ll get the gun out. You sit down.
CHAD BREINHOLT:
There’s a gun in my seat.
MALE OFFICER 1:
Stay down. OK? Stay seated. All right? You don't want to fight with me. You definitely don't want to fight with this guy. Just sit your ass and stay.
Tell you what. Give me your shoe.
CHAD BREINHOLT:
No.
MALE OFFICER 1:
Yeah.
CHAD BREINHOLT:
No. I'm not giving you my shoe.
NARRATOR:
Sgt. Longman watches—
MALE OFFICER 1:
You got to be freaking kidding me, dude.
CHAD BREINHOLT:
I'm not giving you my shoe.
MALE VOICE:
I got it.
MALE OFFICER 1:
OK, f---, he’s got my gun! He's got my gun!
NARRATOR:
—and then rushes in—
TYLER LONGMAN:
You're about to die, my friend!
NARRATOR:
—and fires.
MALE OFFICER 1:
Let go! Let go! F---!
TYLER LONGMAN:
Don’t grab the gun!
MALE OFFICER 1:
Shots fired. Shots fired.
MALE VOICE:
You good? You good?
MALE OFFICER 3:
Shots fired. We're Code 4.
NARRATOR:
The West Valley City Police Department conducted an internal investigation.
MALE OFFICER 3:
You’re good.
NARRATOR:
And while they were critical of the way Breinholt’s arrest was handled, they said Sgt. Longman acted within department policy.
MALE OFFICER 3:
City Hall—
TYLER LONGMAN:
I’m going off camera.
NARRATOR:
No one in the department would agree to an interview about the incident. Breinholt’s family has filed a federal lawsuit against them, alleging Sgt. Longman and the other officers violated his civil rights.
SIM GILL:
Let me say before the onset that our team met with Chad Breinholt’s family early on in the process.
NARRATOR:
District Attorney Sim Gill announced his ruling on the shooting last summer.
SIM GILL:
Our hearts go out to them, and we forward to them our condolences for the loss of their family member. Sorry, these are just always tough. Um—
Sgt. Longman was faced with a deadly force situation in which it appeared possible that unless Mr. Breinholt was stopped, he would not stop grabbing Officer Atkin's gun from his holster. Under Utah law and under the facts of the circumstances that we are at, I cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that his belief was unreasonable.
MALE REPORTER:
Critics are going to say that they have a handcuffed man who seems very impaired. Why can't they use any other type of force to get his hands off that gun?
SIM GILL:
Well, and I think the critics would be right. I'm not saying that they wouldn't be right in that criticism.
While this is justified under the law, this was something that was preventable. This was something that was avoidable. And that's why I struggled with it.
NARRATOR:
The shooting of Chad Breinholt raised many of the issues we were seeing in our reporting. As with Breinholt, we found 94 other cases where police determined or family members reported that a person had a mental health issue, mental disability or was suicidal. And like Sgt. Longman, who’d killed two other people in his career—both ruled justified—we found 33 other officers had been involved in at least one other shooting in their career.
IAN ADAMS, Exec. Dir., Utah Fraternal Order of Police:
Police use of force is not usually some well-thought-out discretionary decision. It's an "Oh, s---" moment for most of us.
NARRATOR:
Ian Adams is the head of Utah’s Fraternal Order of Police. Over the course of two interviews, we shared the data we collected with him and asked about the trends we were seeing. Adams said that it’s difficult to evaluate trends with data that only tracks police shootings without comparing them to all encounters with police, even the ones that don’t end in violence—information he conceded isn’t available in the state.
IAN ADAMS:
The data around these things is so incredibly bad. And that's a national problem; it's not a Utah problem. But we don't have good single-source reporting across a whole lot of criminal justice outcomes, including police use of force. So I don't know. And nobody does. Nobody knows—nobody can tell you what drives specifically police shootings. We know that it's some combination of—there are crime effects. But a lot of it's driven through contact, right? Like the number of contacts that officers have with the public.
NARRATOR:
He also said the number of officers involved in multiple shootings doesn’t necessarily indicate a problem.
IAN ADAMS:
In your database, for example, is an officer who as a patrol officer, brand-new rookie, got shot in the face with a shotgun and returned fire. So several years later, he's in a specialty unit now that does violent fugitive apprehension, which is a high-risk, specialized assignment within policing. And so he was involved in another shooting. What's the lesson there? Well, I don't know. Drawing broader philosophical lessons off of that sort of case is difficult for me.
But so long as we're asking individuals to go into these situations, then we as a community have to accept the responsibility for those bad outcomes and stop pretending that it's an individual culpability problem, that there's something wrong with the officer.
What do you want officers to do? Do you want officers to be your front-line defense for homelessness? Do you want your officers to be the front-line defense for mental illness going untreated in the community? Well, then there's going to be some bad outcomes.
NARRATOR:
During our months of reporting with The Salt Lake Tribune on police shootings in Utah, there was another aspect to the issue we were trying to understand: the racial breakdown of people shot at.
TAYLOR ELDRIDGE:
In this chart the yellow lines are white people, and the red lines are people of color.
NARRATOR:
When we tallied shootings by race and ethnicity, we discovered that a third of the people shot at in the past 10 years—76 of the 230—were racial and ethnic minorities, though they make up only a quarter of Utah’s population. Forty-eight were Hispanic; 22 of them were killed, like Bernardo Palacios-Carbajal, Dillon Taylor and Chad Breinholt.
TAYLOR ELDRIDGE:
And where Utah really stands out is in its shootings of Black people. So Utah is 1.5% Black, but in the last 10 years, our database shows that Black people made up 7% of police shootings.
NARRATOR:
Over the 10-year period, 16 Black people were shot at, nine of them fatally.
The experts in crime statistics we spoke to said that to better understand these racial disparities, more data about police interactions overall would be needed.
But when we shared the numbers with the current head of Black Lives Matter in Utah, Rae Duckworth, she said they reinforced the concerns she and others have long had.
RAE DUCKWORTH, Black Lives Matter Utah:
Hearing those numbers—I’m 30, and I survived 30 years of those numbers. In a sad, sick way it’s inspiring to keep going because I survived 30 years of that, so—
We are failing. Utah is failing because we’re just—we're not paying attention, we’re not talking, we’re not promoting changes. I have a daughter and I’m a single parent and I’m Black, and I live here, and I stick out like a sore thumb.
NARRATOR:
She has her own experience with police shootings. In 2019, her cousin Bobby was fatally shot in Wellington, Utah.
FEMALE POLICE DISPATCHER:
Suicidal subject at the Wellington Pond in Wellington.
NARRATOR:
A family friend called 911 and said Duckworth was suicidal and holding a knife.
FEMALE POLICE DISPATCHER:
Are you making contact? [inaudible]
OFFICER GARRETT SAFLEY:
He’ll just be on the other side of the tracks.
RAE DUCKWORTH:
What we see from the bodycam footage, the officer showed up, knew him from his case prior.
GARRETT SAFLEY:
This is not OK.
BOBBY DUCKWORTH:
I can't do this anymore.
GARRETT SAFLEY:
What can't you do, man?
BOBBY DUCKWORTH:
Any of it.
RAE DUCKWORTH:
So he had prior knowledge of who Bobby was, knew that he was having other stuff going on.
GARRETT SAFLEY:
What's the plan here, man? What's your end goal? I'm not going to shoot you, if that's what you want. That’s the last thing we want to do, brother. We want to help you.
NARRATOR:
After a few minutes, Duckworth started approaching the officer from the field, knife in hand.
GARRETT SAFLEY:
Put the knife down. I don’t want to shoot you, but I will. Put the knife down.
[to dispatch] He’s approaching. He’s got a knife in his hand.
Put it down, man. It ain’t worth it.
[to dispatch] Still not listening to commands, still has a knife.
Put it down or I’ll shoot you. Put it down!
[to dispatch] Shots fired. Suspect down.
RAE DUCKWORTH:
I just wish I had a little bit more time so we could have had that conversation, where I’m like, "Hey, the police are dangerous. The police might kill us, too."
NARRATOR:
The officer who shot Duckworth was cleared of any wrongdoing.
In response to questions, the Utah Department of Public Safety objected to our comparison of the number of people shot at to their population size, saying it presents an “inaccurate depiction of law enforcement’s contact with communities of color” and is “akin to having facts but not reaching the truth.”
They provided other data: arrest totals broken down by race, which showed a similar racial disparity. While incomplete, they said this data was a better indicator of which Utahns are at risk of being shot by police. But in the cases we reviewed, we found that police had also shot at people they had not been called to arrest, including bystanders and those experiencing mental health issues.
And there was something else that stood out: Over and over, officers referenced their training.
MALE POLICE TRAINER:
Our goal as law enforcement is to stop the threat. It’s not to hurt someone, it's not to kill someone—
NARRATOR:
Police get their basic training in Utah during 16 weeks at Peace Officer Standards and Training, known as POST. They spend time inside the classroom and out, and towards the end go through five days of intensive “scenario” training.
Salt Lake Tribune reporter Paighten Harkins and producer Abby Ellis were allowed to observe sessions over several months.
SGT. SCOTT LAURITZEN, Basic Training Supervisor, POST:
What is the most important thing we've got to take care of when we first get to any scene?
CLASS:
Officer safety.
SCOTT LAURITZEN:
Officer and scene safety.
NARRATOR:
Sgt. Scott Lauritzen oversees the scenario training at POST.
SCOTT LAURTIZEN:
—and we continue our investigation.
The absolute most important thing is officer safety, so all of the other procedural stuff that they learn will be at their own individual agencies. And so we really highlight that officer safety issue.
Do we allow people to point guns at us?
CLASS:
No.
SCOTT LAURTIZEN:
We go home. Those that we're dealing with will go home if they choose to, right? But we go home, we protect ourselves, protect our partners, protect those innocent bystanders.
MALE CADET 1:
Was there anything that happened during the argument?
MALE ROLE-PLAYER 1:
Hey! Why are the cops here?
NARRATOR:
The cadets are put through role-playing, from traffic stops—
MALE CADET 2:
You ran that stop sign over there.
NARRATOR:
—domestic violence situations—
MALE CADET 3:
Hey! Taser, taser, taser!
NARRATOR:
—to dealing with someone experiencing a mental health crisis.
SCOTT LAURTIZEN:
We have role-players and an evaluator. We have guidelines in how we want the role-players to respond to certain stimulus that the cadets are giving them.
CASEY HADFIELD, POST trainer:
Is there a weapon behind there?
MALE CADET 4:
I haven’t seen one.
CASEY HADFIELD:
You don’t know. Will our officer safety become laxed in these or will it become heightened?
CLASS:
Heightened.
CASEY HADFIELD:
But what are you seeing?
CLASS:
Relaxed.
MALE CADET 4:
I just wanted to get down to his level and try and talk to him.
CASEY HADFIELD:
OK, so you’re trying to be empathetic at the sacrifice of your officer safety.
SCOTT LAURTIZEN:
And so as we're going through these different scenarios, we're trying to get them to understand the importance of "If I'm going to be safe, I have to understand everything that’s going on around me."
MALE CADET 5:
Cassie? It’s the police. Come out and talk to us, would you?
FEMALE ROLE-PLAYER 1:
I’m not coming out.
MALE CADET 5:
You’re not coming out?
NARRATOR:
The instructors push them to make life-and-death decisions.
MALE CADET 5:
Put the gun down. Cassie, can you put the gun down for me?
FEMALE ROLE-PLAYER 1:
I don’t want to put the gun down.
CASEY HADFIELD:
No, no, stop. You see the problem here? What happened to our officer safety?
MALE CADET 5:
Went down the toilet.
CASEY HADFIELD:
Why are we not recognizing that as a gun pointed at us? When you think of a gun be pointing at you, what do you think? You think this, right? Do we think of this? Or this? Or whatever it is? Is that what we think of?
MALE CADET 6:
No. It seems casual. It doesn't seem threatening.
CASEY HADFIELD:
OK.
MALE CADET 1:
Well, she's spinning it.
CASEY HADFIELD:
And where is her finger?
MALE CADET 1:
On the trigger, right. But that’s why it would've been hard for me.
CASEY HADFIELD:
So would you have shot?
MALE CADET 1:
That's—that's really hard.
CASEY HADFIELD:
No, it's not really hard.
MALE CADET 1:
It is hard for me.
CASEY HADFIELD:
It's really simple.
MALE CADET 1:
Because if I shot her, and then I don't think—
CASEY HADFIELD:
Do you let a gun be pointed at you? Yes or no?
MALE CADET 1:
I want to say no, but—
CASEY HADFIELD:
Do you let a gun be pointed at your partner?
MALE CADET 1:
No.
CASEY HADFIELD:
Then what's the argument? Why is this so hard?
MALE CADET 1:
Because we have to live with it.
CASEY HADFIELD:
You're in the wrong profession, my friend, if you can't live with that. How many of you have made that decision? One out of seven. You are three weeks from that being a real gun, a real bullet, a real death. And you don't know if you can live with that? Wow. How many brothers do you have out here? How many sisters? They mean less to you than some mental subject. You go home, you soul-search, and you figure it out. And if that question hasn't been answered tomorrow, I suggest you don't come back.
SCOTT LAURITZEN:
Being a police officer, you may in your career be required to take a life. When you're faced with that situation, if you have not come to the reality that you may have to do that, and now you're processing through it, how effective is your decision going to be? So, yeah, absolutely. To put on this badge and to put a gun on your hip, to go into somebody's house to protect them, if you haven't made that decision, that taking someone's life may be a possibility, it's too late then.
CASEY HADFIELD:
We don’t want to shoot people, OK? But who makes that decision?
MALE CADET 3:
They do.
CASEY HADFIELD:
Bear with me for a minute. When you picture a criminal, what do you think?
MALE CADET 3:
Gang banger—
CASEY HADFIELD:
Have you pictured somebody you love? Look in the mirror and ask yourself, "Can I kill a kid? Can I shoot a grandma? Can I shoot a mom? Can I shoot a dad? Can I shoot a brother?" Because if you can't, it's not you that's going to get hurt. It's your partner.
How many of you have been to an officer’s funeral? How was it?
MALE CADET 6:
Very grim.
CASEY HADFIELD:
Did you know him?
MALE CADET 6:
I didn’t.
CASEY HADFIELD:
How bad would that be if that was your partner and you knew that was your fault?
MALE CADET 6:
Life-changing.
MALE CADET 1:
Way worse.
NARRATOR:
Over the past 10 years, 15 police officers died on the job in Utah, 10 of them killed by a suspect.
PAIGHTEN HARKINS:
As you're walking the halls doing these trainings, there's this giant memorial to all the officers in Utah who have been killed. It's massive. The wall is this physical reminder of what they learn in training: If you mess up, it means either your life could be taken or your partner's life could be taken. And you're taught you don't want your name to end up on this wall.
CASEY HADFIELD:
You ready?
CLASS:
Yes, sir.
CASEY HADFIELD:
All right. Next up.
NARRATOR:
Many of the scenarios we observed would turn out to be worst-case and end in a shooting.
FEMALE ROLE-PLAYER 2:
I heard shots inside, and now I'm too afraid to go in there. Please—
NARRATOR:
LIke this one, where a woman calls 911 and says her husband and son have shot themselves.
MALE CADET 7:
Police. Is anybody in there?
NARRATOR:
It’s not long after the cadets show up that she ends up stabbing one of them—
MALE CADET 8:
Hey! Get off! Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang! Dispatch, we have an officer down. Full medical.
NARRATOR:
—and her husband wakes up and starts firing at the others.
MALE CADET 8:
Put the gun down now! Bang! Bang, bang, bang, bang!
NARRATOR:
And this one—
MALE CADET 2:
We’re just going to let you off with a warning today, OK?
NARRATOR:
—where a routine traffic stop turned into a hostage situation.
FEMALE ROLE-PLAYER 3:
Oh, please! Oh, my God! Oh, my God, wait! Oh, my God! Please, no!
SCOTT LAURITZEN:
Every situation that we send police officers in doesn't require lethal force. But if we take an officer's career, how many situations are they going to be in let's say in a 20-year career? Thousands, right? But we only have these cadets for five, six days, maybe seven days at the most. So we have to take this experience of a 20-year career and condense that into a few days. And so we try and hit such a wide variety of scenarios to open their eyes to the possibility.
FEMALE ROLE-PLAYER 3:
Oh, my God, wait! Oh, my God! Please, no!
NARRATOR:
But the focus on worst-case scenarios has become increasingly controversial among experts in the field who are concerned about police shootings.
RANDY SHREWSBERRY, Inst. for Criminal Justice Training Reform:
The essence of what we would call fear-based training is the training on the possibility of an action versus the probability of an action.
FEMALE ROLE-PLAYER 2:
I'm afraid to go in there. Please, can you go check on him? I heard shots inside.
NARRATOR:
Randy Shrewsberry worked as a police officer in multiple departments around the country. He now advocates for reforming police training. We showed him some of the scenarios we filmed at POST.
MALE CADET 2:
Gun, gun, gun! Put it down!
RANDY SHREWSBERRY:
Part of the problem that we have resides in this scenario-based training, because it's this kind of endless exploration of what could happen, for which then officers, in every circumstance of their job, is feeling some level of threat. But the problem becomes is that when you're reacting to anecdotes or to situations that could possibly happen, you start to create a narrative into the officer's mind which is placing them on edge.
FEMALE CADET 1:
Get on the ground or I’m going to shoot you! Get down! Get on the ground now!
MALE ROLE-PLAYER 2:
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! My hands are up! Black lives matter! You guys know the drill!
CASEY HADFIELD:
Why did you shoot?
FEMALE CADET 1:
Because they’re large guys, they jumped out of the vehicle, they’re both coming at us.
CASEY HADFIELD:
Is this death or serious bodily injury?
CLASS:
No.
CASEY HADFIELD:
Why is our gun our first resort?
FEMALE CADET 1:
Panic button.
RANDY SHREWSBERRY:
The reality is is that policing is as safe as it's ever been. So it doesn't match up to this disproportionate emphasis that we place when we're constantly telling officers that at any moment they can be murdered, at any moment that they can be killed.
NARRATOR:
We brought these critiques to the director of Utah’s POST program, Scott Stephenson.
ABBY ELLIS:
Is it possible that by training with worst-case scenarios, cadets go out into the field with a heightened sense of paranoia, seeing threats where there might not actually be threats?
MAJ. SCOTT STEPHENSON, Director, POST:
I think that's a valid observation, but I do not believe so. How would you want us to train? If those situations are so infrequent, do you want somebody going in without any type of experience at all? And if so, how do you expect them to perform? We put officers in ugly situations, we really do. And then we expect it to be perfect every time. If I can teach them in that situation, where the potential outcome is a shooting, then maybe they'll try to avoid it.
NARRATOR:
Of the 226 shootings we examined, 107 involved at least one officer who had graduated from POST five years earlier or less. POST Director Scott Stephenson said that kind of statistic needed further investigation.
SCOTT STEPHENSON:
One, I want to know each situation. I want to know if it was a poor choice, bad decision. And then I'd want to interview them to find out OK, what in training did you gain either in the academy or in the field training experience that you relied upon to deal with that situation? And then I would be able to segment and say, "OK, yeah, that was learned in the field training, so that's an area where we may want to focus," if this were an unnecessary shooting or a poor choice. Then I would say, "OK, something in field training needs to be tweaked." And then you've got to go, "Is it the field training officer? Is it the culture?" But if it's in the academy, then I can say, "OK, we need more hours in this area." That's how I would start to dissect that statistic.
NARRATOR:
In 2019, in Ogden, Utah, four officers, each with less than five years of experience, killed Jovany Mercado in his parents’ driveway.
JUAN MERCADO:
This is the original vehicle that got hit. It was parked on that side.
NARRATOR:
His father, Juan, and his sister Ruby showed us the bullet holes that are still there on the front of their house.
JUAN MERCADO:
There's one, two. That’s when they were shooting at him on the ground.
NARRATOR:
Juan was out of town the night it happened. His wife and children were inside.
JUAN MERCADO:
My youngest son just got out of the shower. Otherwise he could’ve possibly get hit.
NARRATOR:
Jovany had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, and on the night of Aug. 16, he started walking around the street with a knife in his hand. A neighbor called 911.
MALE 911 CALLER:
There's a gentleman that’s at my house, and he’s got a knife.
FEMALE 911 DISPATCHER:
OK.
MALE 911 CALLER:
He's not making any sense.
FEMALE 911 DISPATCHER:
You said he’s not making any sense. He just has the knife?
MALE 911 CALLER:
He looks very confused, and then he has a knife pulled out.
FEMALE 911 DISPATCHER:
So he hasn’t threatened anybody with it, or has he waved it around or anything?
MALE 911 CALLER:
He’s got it out—
FEMALE 911 DISPATCHER:
OK.
MALE 911 CALLER:
—and he walked into my driveway.
NARRATOR:
Four officers from the Ogden Police Department responded. Officer Karson Garcia graduated from POST two years earlier. Officer Brandon Sevenski graduated four years earlier and had been involved in a shooting nine months before. He had a civilian “ride-along” with him and had been directed by the department to respond to any calls that "seemed interesting." And Officer Nigel Bailey graduated from POST one year earlier. He was training Officer John Poulsen, a probationary officer. The call wasn’t in their assigned area, but Bailey later said he thought it would be a good training experience.
As the officers were on their way to the Mercados' house, the family’s home security camera was rolling.
RUBY MERCADO:
So 8:57 he was back in, on our side of the fence, where he should have been able to feel safe.
JUAN MERCADO:
He's turning back like he's talking to someone. But it's nobody there. It’s like he’s definitely having an episode.
RUBY MERCADO:
And from this point he heads to the back part of the house. So that's where he was when the officers finally arrived.
NARRATOR:
At 9 p.m., the four officers approached the Mercados’ house.
MALE OFFICER 1:
Drop it now!
MALE OFFICER 2:
Drop that knife.
MALE OFFICER 1:
Drop the knife now! Drop it!
NARRATOR:
The officers shouted at Jovany to drop the knife and come towards them.
MALE OFFICER 2:
Police, drop the knife!
NARRATOR:
Knife still in hand, he started walking towards the gate.
MALE OFFICER 1:
Drop it now!
MALE OFFICER 2:
Drop it! Drop that knife! Shots fired! Stay back, stay back!
RUBY MERCADO:
They went straight for lethal force.
JUAN MERCADO:
My son didn’t even step one foot outside of his own property when they shot him dead.
RUBY MERCADO:
Yeah.
JUAN MERCADO:
It blows my mind.
MALE OFFICER 2:
All right, he got blood on you.
MALE OFFICER 1:
Where are you at?
MALE OFFICER 3:
I gave them the address.
MALE OFFICER 1:
Keep breathing.
MALE OFFICER 4:
Did your rookie shoot? [inaudible] Where's your keys?
MALE VOICE:
Yeah, rookie, rookie shot. Bailey shot. Sevenski shot.
NARRATOR:
All four officers were cleared of any wrongdoing. The department declined to speak to us, citing ongoing civil litigation by the Mercado family.
In the investigative report, Bailey recalled a training scenario he’d done at POST a year before that involved a suspect with a knife. In the scenario, when the cadets tried to retreat and not use force, one was taken hostage.
MALE CADET 7:
What’s your name?
FEMALE ROLE-PLAYER 4:
Just leave. I don’t want to tell you that. Get out!
MALE CADET 7:
My name is Officer Williams—
NARRATOR:
Ian Adams of the Fraternal Order of Police said there are specific reasons why recently graduated officers might be involved in shootings.
IAN ADAMS:
In policing, the traditional professional progression here, you come out of POST and you go to patrol for the first five to seven years of your career. And then there's a chance at that point usually to proceed into an investigative spot off the street. Well, where do the majority of shootings occur? They occur in patrol, not a property crimes detective, not a training officer, not somebody working in a school.
NARRATOR:
In recent months, Utah lawmakers have begun making some changes. They passed bills that provide more de-escalation and mental health training to police and require agencies to collect more data on use of force, including every time an officer points a weapon at someone.
SIM GILL:
Data is critical, because if you and I can't honestly look at what the topography, what the reality of what we're trying to address is, then we don't know what we need to do to make that change.
NARRATOR:
District Attorney Sim Gill is still advocating for changes to the laws around police shootings.
ABBY ELLIS:
What do you say to people who might say the lack of accountability is contributing to this problem?
SIM GILL:
I think the lack of accountability is the byproduct of the structure we have. The lack of accountability is the byproduct of the standards that we have set.
There are many men and women in law enforcement who do their job honorably and with great deference to protecting our community. But the integrity of a system is not measured by the 98 that I may find justified. It's our ability to hold accountable in a meaningful way that one officer that does not follow the law.
What is the moral expectation of our citizens? What do they expect from law enforcement? That question really is, do we have both the societal will and the political will to do something different?
NARRATOR:
As of early November, there were 26 police shootings in Utah this year—similar to 2020’s record pace.
