Fatal Utah police shooting questioned

Incident on body cameras; prosecutors say fleeing man turned back toward officers with weapon in his hand

Authorities in Salt Lake City have cleared a police officer in the fatal shooting of a man who ran after being stopped on his bicycle, an incident caught on police body camera video that was released last week.

The ruling comes after a month-and-ahalf investigation into the Aug. 13 shooting. Police say they stopped Patrick Harmon, 50, because he was riding his bicycle erratically and did not have a red rear light. After finding that Harmon had multiple open arrest warrants, including one stemming from a felony aggravated assault charge, the officers informed Harmon that he was under arrest. That is when he ran, according to a police body camera video.

In their review, investigators considered accounts given by the three officers present during the shooting, including the one who fired the shots, Officer Clinton Fox, as well as footage from their body cameras.

The district attorney of Salt Lake County, Sim Gill, said in an interview that the use of deadly force was legally justified because Harmon was armed and turned back to lunge at the officers while running away.

“While the officers were in very close proximity to Mr. Harmon, he presented an opened knife as he turned towards the officers who were running at him,” Gill wrote in a letter explaining his office’s determination last week. “Officer Fox reasonably believed deadly force was necessary to prevent death or serious bodily injury to himself and/or others and therefore his use of deadly force was ‘justified’ under Utah State law.”

The body camera footage shows the moment that Harmon bolted from the officers as they began to arrest him. Harmon appears visibly distraught, and after one of the officers asked him to remove his backpack and put his hands behind his back, he takes off running. After a few paces, he quickly turns back toward the officers.

A split-second struggle ensues, with one of the officers falling to the ground, before Harmon keeps running. The footage is blurry in parts and the audio is muddled; it appears that one of the officers yells “I’ll [expletive] shoot you,” before three shots were fired.

All three officers told investigators they heard Harmon threaten to stab them.

Officer Fox said that Harmon had stopped running, turned, and yelled “I’ll [expletive] stab you,” with a knife in his hand. He told investigators it was the most frightening situation he had experienced during 10 years in law enforcement and two military deployments.

Officer Kris Smith, who had fired his Taser during the struggle, said he heard Harmon say, “I’m going to cut …” and saw him reach toward his pants. Officer Scott Robinson told investigators that Harmon said something about stabbing and that he saw him holding something in his hand.

Police said they found a knife near where Harmon had fallen after being shot, which is visible on video in the moments after the shooting. Gill’s office released still images from the videos that it said showed Harmon pivoting back toward police.

Gill acknowledged that the videos did not fully corroborate the officers’ accounts, saying that body camera footage doesn’t always capture what an officer sees.

The debate about use of deadly force by police and its potential racial implications has churned for years, and it continues to be a heated subject of national debate.

Harmon is one of 748 people who have been killed in interactions with the police this year, according to data compiled by The Washington Post. Mental illness played a role in one out of every five incidents, The Post has found. Harmon’s shooting joins a litany of others captured on video and released to the public, in what has become a grim facet of the modern news cycle. It is rare for officers to face charges and rarer still for them to be convicted, due in large part to the dangers they face and requirements of their jobs.

In Utah, a police officer is justified to use deadly force against a fleeing subject when making an arrest or preventing an escape from custody if the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a threat of death or serious injury to the officer or others if not arrested immediately.

The police officers said that they had stopped Harmon in part because his bicycle did not have a red rear taillight; but red rear taillights are not required by Utah law if a rider has a red reflector.

Video appears to show Harmon’s bike with a red reflector.

The Salt Lake City Police Department declined to comment on the case through a spokesman, but said that Fox remains on modified duty pending the results of an internal investigating into the shooting.

“Often times we end up being tried in the court of public opinion prior to any in-depth investigation,” Detective Richard Chipping told The Post. “So we appreciate people giving us time to work it out so we can do a thorough investigation, and other agencies can do an investigation so we can shed light on what the situation is.”