 Feelin' is spelled P-H-E-L-A-N. Patrick Common Spelling. Again, he's the commander of Special Operations, which comes to SWAT and other units. Joe, have him say it as well, please. First name's Patrick, last name's Feelin. That's spelled P-H-E-L-A-N. It's like, how you feelin'? Okay? I like that. Thank you. Yes, commander. Can you tell us, can you kind of walk us through how can someone of your own highly trained officer get shot by his own folks at a violent situation? Well, I think that's pretty simple, simplifying a little bit, but I think one thing you have to recognize, the officers of Metro SWAT Unit train for this every day. These are dynamic situations. We're hunting people that are wanted, that are dedicated to escape, that are dangerous, that we don't want to get into the community, so they train at this every day. Unfortunately, we do a lot of these operations. This doesn't happen, this is the first time I've known it's happened, so it's something that, you know, it's devastating. It's not only devastating to the officers involved, it's devastating to the police department. It was dedicated to escape. He didn't care who he hurt, whether it was his father, whether it was his girlfriend, whether it's the public. These people are dedicated to escape and they don't care what the police apprehend him. He ran, tried to escape via a vehicle, could have killed anybody doing that, crashes into a house. They pin him into that location. They try several times, probably almost 20 minutes to negotiate him out of the car. They're able to rescue his father who was there and also his girlfriend. He refuses to comply, over and over again, at nauseam, at repetition, trying to get him to surrender. We don't want to shoot you. We don't want to hurt you. Please give it up. He refuses to do that. He tries to get in the community, jumps a fence, tries to escape. Fortunately for us, we have a canine in position, an officer in position. He turns, try to fire at an officer. Officer takes the action he needs to take. The suspect is terminated at that time. Where is your SWAT officer in relation to that? Well, and what happens? And to answer that question, obviously, these are fast-moving situations. We're trying to keep this person contained. Unfortunately, he's breaking containment. Unfortunately, the other officer breaks what we call a plane around the corner. Once he realizes he broke that plane, is it exposed? It's actually a little bit too late for that. Before he can get in position of cover, shots go off and he's injured. It's fast-moving. What's the training in terms of officers? Is it too fast for that to happen? It's fast. Obviously, we, tactics are used. I don't want to give up a lot of tech, but tactics are used. We don't want to, you know, have crossfires. If we could possibly avoid crossfires. Obviously, these officers are highly trained. If there's a crossfire situation, hopefully their training will take care of that. But unfortunately, because he was moving from quick advancement into the neighborhood where he could take hostage or whatever. Unfortunately, he got a little bit ahead of him. He got himself in a crossfire, which he knew better. To do that, we're still reviewing that. Tactical review, we're going to do that. And unfortunately, what we call kind of broke a plane, which he knew he shouldn't have done, but it was exposed. But in simple English, can you speak between the bad guy and the good guy? Right, I guess. Actually, he's on the other side. So what we try to do is a basic alambush that wants to fart in a certain direction. There's nobody behind that individual, except the suspect is there. Beyond him, it's clear, so it's okay to engage that suspect. Unfortunately, that officer got him behind the suspect. He held up, he came around the corner. What they're trained to do is hold that corner and not to expose himself. Unfortunately, he came out. Once again, his best effort to try to contain that suspect, that's what he's thinking. He's doing his job trying to contain that suspect so it doesn't get into the community. It doesn't cause more of that. Take a hostage wherever he can. This guy was a dangerous individual. And he was suspect at all? Right. You guys are kind of men and or related to the shooting of the officer? Well, we're doing a review right now. Obviously, we feel there's some errors we're probably made, and we'll deal with that internally in our policy. One officer, the suspect, the other officer, where everybody was kind of in relation to each other? It's a little tough without a chalkboard. But basically, he, the suspect jumped a fence and was traveling northbound in a backyard, any backyard, parallel to the house. There was an officer that was perpendicular to him that had him engaged. One officer went around the house that he was running perpendicular to, if this makes sense, and exposed himself at that other corner. So then we have this crossfire. I know it's a little tough to explain. But he was trying to get ahead of that, the suspect. In doing so, he got out in front of the suspect and in line of fire with the officer that engaged him. That helps. And did the officer who sought and fired, did it happen so fast that he didn't, I mean, essentially, did he just kind of run out? As he was firing or why did he see? It sounds like it was simultaneous. It's hard to say exactly how he was hit, whether he was hit. But the ricochet was threw around. We really don't know that. We're certain. And you said that these are rare. Like, in my memory, I don't know when in Denver, one happened in Lakewood, my very tragic one. Right, right. In Denver, when was the last time something like this happened? You know, without checking, I don't know. I can't think of a time that happened. And once again, these guys train day in and day out. These are tactical SWAT officers, Metro SWAT, full-time SWAT team. Tactically trained everyday firearms, tactics, weapons. It's a rare occasion. Anomaly that this happened. How were the officers? You know, it's devastating. It's devastating not only to the officer that did the shooting. It's devastating and painful to the officer that was hit. Is he okay? He's fine. He's back to work. As a matter of fact, he just got released back to work. These are guys, like I said, who are dedicated their profession and get back in the game as soon as they can. Is he back on SWAT? Right. And we'll do a tactical review on that too. Like I said, that's still in the review process. No, I don't think, I think the day's letter is pretty specific or I don't think it's conclusive where the shot came from. What officer shot, what round it was. I don't think it's conclusive on what happened. It's information about the suspect's father saying he told his son to stop the car. Right. And his son was quoted saying he would not stop it for any time. I think, you know, and I just want to let you know that, and we deal with this every day and maybe not everybody understands this in the public, but there's people out there that are armed and dangerous and dedicated. They're dedicated to getting away, no matter the cost. Whether that means jumping in the car and running over people, shooting people, whatever it takes. And that's why we have these officers to do that, to train that, to combat that. So that's the point I want to make here. And it sounds like I'm going to clarify, it sounds like you're safe, but it appears is that the officer, whichever officer fires, it's almost simile to me and uses other officers coming around him. The suspect is moving, trying to escape the perimeter that we have him in, the containment we have him in. They're trying to move the containment with them, still trying to give them, give it up. You know, obviously they had plenty of time if they wanted to shoot him out of the way, they probably had the justification, but they're trying to get him to give it up. He's moving, they're trying to do containment. Simultaneously the guy comes around, he's moving, the officer comes around the corner, breaks his, the plane of that corner, officer fires, two officers fire. He's, he's struck, one of the officers struck. So that's... And I think all of us here have read the report, you know, the criminal history of the guy you were hunting, we understand why you were after him, but I think it's important to ask the question for you, to be able to reiterate to the public why it is that you had to shoot and kill this man, because a lot of the feedback sometimes you get from Joe Public, when there's an officer in the shooting, well, why did you have to kill him? And obviously we took every ad nauseum, talking to this guy, his father was talking, his girlfriend was talking, we got them out of the car. We're firing less lethal at him, trying to make him surrender to the officers. We introduced some chemical agent into the car to try to get him, he continues to want to escape, he's actually at one point in time, he's hit with a 40-millimeter round and he drops the gun, he immediately re-engages the weapon. So he's dedicated, he jumps the fancy, he goes fancy, he sees an officer, he decides, he's going to turn, in my opinion, he turns with the weapon, like he's going to fire the weapon. At that time, the officers have no choice but to engage him. After, was it that you had this gas leak in the fire? Well, I mean, how much time do we have, we don't know. They're smelling gas, we're using some pyrotechnic devices, we want to make sure we get, obviously, the innocent people out of the way, the people in the house, we actually cleared that house as fast as we could to get people out of that house that he crashed into. Also, the father and his girlfriend at the time, we get them out of the way and we're trying to get him the best we can, but that's part of our job. We have to stay in that environment to resolve that situation. Well, SWAT officers actually engaged in that suspect, it was probably about six that actually engaged him. The suspect didn't actually fire him? No, no. In this particular instance, we use a 40-millimeter exact impact round. It's a sponge round, it's fired from a 40-millimeter shoulder weapon and it uses kinetic energy and impact to hopefully produce, let make the suspect surrender, cause him some pain, compliance, hopefully he'll give up. It's a sponge round and I could show it to you if you want to see one.