 Good afternoon, everyone. I thank you all for coming. I'm Denver Chief of Police Ron Thomas here with Major Crimes Division Commander Matt Clark to provide an overview of the officer involved shooting incident that occurred Saturday, August 5th in the 2300 block of West Cedar. But before I turn it over to Commander Clark, I understand that you all have had an opportunity to watch the video. Hopefully you will be able to provide some additional context. But I also want to acknowledge the fact that this is a tremendous tragedy and certainly a life was lost of family will forever be impacted in so will an entire community and so I'd ask for some respect there. So thank you, Matt. Good afternoon. Thank you for being here and giving us an opportunity to provide an overview of the incident as we know it that occurred on Saturday, August 5th 2023 just after 8pm in the 2300 block of West Cedar. I'm Matt Clark, the commander of the Major Crimes Division for the Denver Police Department. This briefing today is intended to be a follow-up based upon the information we've gathered after interviewing numerous witnesses, speaking with the involved officers, reviewing available body camera footage and analyzing evidence that was collected at the scene. There may be information that I do not know or cannot disclose at this point which may limit our ability to answer some questions but to the degree we're able we'll take questions after we go through. On Saturday, August 5th 2023 at 7.56pm, the Denver Communication Center received a 911 call from an individual reporting a domestic violence incident occurring in the 2300 block of West Cedar Avenue. While the caller did not know exactly what occurred, it was reported that a male had possibly pushed his wife who was in a wheelchair out of the chair and onto the ground. The caller had not seen any weapons and did not know if the female was injured. The call provided a detailed description of the male half who she identified as Brandon and reported that Brandon was possibly under the influence of alcohol. At one point during the call, the witness reported the male was going after his teenage son and yelling could be heard in the background of the call. This call for service was dispatched to patrol officers within a minute of being received. Two uniformed Denver Police officers driving separate marked police vehicles were nearby and arrived at the location at 8pm. When the officers arrived, a female was observed propping herself up in a gutter on the north side of the street. An empty wheelchair was nearby and was found with two wheels on the gutter and two on the sidewalk. An officer had a brief interaction with the woman on the ground inquiring if she needed medical assistance. Without providing the officer details regarding the nature or severity of her injuries, the woman related she needed an ambulance. Before an ambulance could be summoned or further investigation conducted regarding the possible domestic violence incident, the attention of both officers became focused on the male half of the incident who was reaching into the driver's area of a vehicle that was parked on the north side of Cedar Avenue. When the subject stepped away from the vehicle, he began challenging a uniformed officer who was directly in front of him by taking an aggressive stance and yelling let's go. The female officer who was behind the subject observed him holding an object in his right hand that she believed to be a knife. The officer described observing the subject moving the object back and forth from his back area to his front holding it in a threatening manner. The subject began moving in the direction of the male officer who was in front of him. This officer presented his taser and began moving backwards away from the subject while attempting to de-escalate the male by calling his name and speaking calmly with him. The subject then turned his attention to the female uniformed officer who would reposition herself behind a vehicle on the south curb line. As the subject began moving towards the female on the sidewalk, the male officer discharged his taser device. Every patrol officer in Denver is issued a taser device. These less lethal conducted energy devices are used to incapacitate individuals allowing officers to safely approach and take control of a person. While these devices have been effective in countless situations in Denver, there are limitations specifically that the device functions by firing two probes at a target and both probes must make contact with the individual to be effective. The maximum range of the device is 21 feet. In this case it appears that only one of the two probes struck the moving subject and as a result the taser did not have an effect on the individual. The male disregarded multiple commands to stop. He went around a vehicle to the south side of the street and aggressively approached the female officer on the sidewalk. Quickly closing the distance with her as she backed away. When he was within several feet of the officer, the officer explained that she feared she would be stabbed and potentially overtaken by the subject. She discharged two rounds from her duty firearm. The subject fell to the ground and dropped the object from his right hand. The officers immediately called for an ambulance and began rendering aid. Both officers including one who had prior training as a paramedic began life-saving efforts including the application of a chest seal, multiple tourniquets, and the administration of chest compressions until Denver Fire and Denver Health paramedics arrived at the scene. The subject was transported to the hospital and despite resuscitative efforts he was pronounced deceased. Male subject has been identified as 36-year-old Brandon Cole. His birth date is December 7th, 1986. Investigators are still working to understand the nature of the interaction between Mr. Cole and the female prior to the arrival of officers including how she came to be out of the wheelchair. Through the investigation it was determined that the object Mr. Cole had in his hand during the interaction with the officers was a black marker. Multiple individuals were interviewed during the initial investigation. Several independent witnesses believed Mr. Cole was armed with a weapon as they approached the officer who discharged her weapon. Only one Denver police officer fired a weapon during this incident and a total of two rounds were fired. The officer who discharged her weapon is a patrol officer assigned to District 4 in southwest Denver. She's been with the department since 2019 and has not been involved in a previous police shooting incident. The body worn camera devices for both officers were activated and captured both audio and video of their interaction with Mr. Cole. The involved officer will complete the department's reintegration program before returning to a patrol assignment. The investigation of this critical incident as any other critical incident is investigated in cooperation with the Colorado Bureau of Investigations, the Colorado State Patrol, the department's homicide unit, and the district attorney's office. It's overseen by the Office of the Independent Monitor which is a civilian oversight entity. I'll conclude by just asking anyone who may have additional information about this incident who we haven't spoken with to please contact the police department or crime stoppers with any additional information. Now address any questions you may have. I don't believe they did. It transpired very quickly. It's in fact it's almost just over 40 seconds between when the officers arrived and the shots were ultimately fired. So it happens very quickly. They are quickly addressing and trying to calm Brandon and get his compliance and that wasn't effective. Part of the escalation is specifically calling him by name, speaking calmly with him, trying to get his compliance, and that just wasn't effective to him. And then we see Mr. Cole moving towards the officer. Yeah I can address that question. I can certainly appreciate the thought that that might have been the appropriate tactic however. So in our training when we have less lethal deployed, regardless of how many officers are on scene that have less lethal options deployed, we have to have one officer that has a lethal weapon deployed in case those less lethal options are not effective. And certainly in this situation there are only two officers on scene at the time of force and so it would have been appropriate for her to have her duty weapon out while the other officer was deploying the less lethal option of the taser. And as you can see there just wasn't an opportunity to transition to a taser. Well again I think you can see in the video that when she finally deploys her duty weapon the person is so close to her that her view of that young child and that other person are not even clear to her. And so you know certainly that was a consideration. But I think it was just not much time to act before she was overrun by that individual. Yes in fact we have met with the family and some representatives of the family. We've showed them the video, we've connected them with victim services so yes. So she is elected not to be to provide a statement to investigators at this point. So she did not provide us a specific explanation as to why she was out of the wheelchair. So we don't have specific information about how she got out of the wheelchair. I think just to provide additional context either for those who elect not to watch the video it is graphic or in this setting who are watching to go over some slides to put some context into some of the spatial distance between the officers and the individual and some of what they may have seen. This first is from an officer, the officer's body camera. He's positioned to the west of Mr. Cole there in the 2300 block of West Cedar. This is essentially the distance they were when they first when he had just come out of the driver's area of the door. He had closed the door. The yellow object in the officer's hand is a taser or tasers are all their yellow. And this is where they specifically start talking. The other officer, the female officer had arrived from Yuma and so she's east of Brandon there. So this is the distance initially. Brandon begins approaching the officer as he's backing away. He has a taser and then he is the officers backed up to this point behind his vehicle. That's how close Brandon had come before Mr. Cole turns his attention to the south to the officer who had repositioned herself on the sidewalk and behind a vehicle. Of specific note and as described by the officers, the way he's holding his hand and that there's an object that they believe to be a knife in his hand at that point. This is the view from the female officer who positioned herself on the sidewalk and put a vehicle between her and the subject to create a barrier. Mr. Cole is coming around that vehicle. She is given up ground and continues to back up. She's backing up to the west, backs up farther. And this is her location and Mr. Cole's location as the prior to the shot being fired. In response, as you can see at this point, the young child who was behind Mr. Cole is not visible to the officer or it's not visible in this frame, excuse me. Any other questions? So we always train our officers to be conscious and aware of their target and beyond and certainly we we do both live shooting and virtual reality scenario shooting where we're in crowds where we're amongst people where there are targets that that we're not supposed to hit and there's a failure when we when we hit those targets. Yes ma'am. No, so again, when we deploy less lethal weapons, we need to have at least one person that has a lethal weapon, a handgun, just in case those those less lethal options do not work and in case it escalates to the deadly force encounter. Absolutely, absolutely. As yeah, correct. You had a question, ma'am? We're ready to get answered. Okay, correct, correct. So, you know, we worked with Colorado Bureau of Investigation and State Patrol to conduct the initial scene investigation that investigation continues and that investigation is being done on the watchful eye of the officer of the independent monitor. And that complete investigation will be turned over to the district attorney for review. We're going to have to continue to evaluate that, certainly. And so, you know, we're going to wait until after the review by D.A. McCann is complete before we begin our administrative review. We have not, unfortunately, toxicology reports are quite a distance out. We will not at this time, but obviously those names will be included in the report that's released by D.A. McCann. Well, unfortunately, we don't know exactly what that means. And we did interview the caller. We did interview a number of other witnesses on the scene. And so we're not exactly sure we were not able to determine whether or not an actual domestic violence incident had occurred involving the why for the son. That's just a couple of years old. Well, thank you.