Alright, good morning.
Thank you for coming.
We're going to give you a quick briefing
on an officer involved shooting that
happened here at 201 Inman Street at
approximately 3:00 AM this morning.
I want to stress in the very beginning that
the investigation is still in its infancy,
so this information that we're giving
you right now is going to be pulmonary.
Is going to be subject to change,
so I want you all to keep that in mind.
There's gonna be a number of questions
you're going to have that I won't
answer because we're not leading the
criminal investigation part of it.
So if we get to that point and we have
some questions that we won't answer,
then that's why.
So at approximately 258 this morning,
officers were dispatched here to
201 in Main Street on multiple 911
calls about a male as a was described
as going crazy up in a breezeway,
knocking out a series of lights
in the hallway, banging on doors,
attempting to make entry into
a number of apartments.
Several officers were dispatched
because of the nature of the call.
We do teach our officers that when
they're going to a call that may possibly
involve someone experiencing a mental
illness crisis that they use time, distance,
and cover. They got here on scene.
They develop a plan.
They methodically approached the breezeway
and they made contact with this subject.
Officers spent amount of time
several minutes trying to get into
a dialogue with this subject.
He was in an elevated position.
Officers were on the ground floor and
they talked to him for like I said,
several minutes.
At some point an officer broke free
from there and was getting information
from one of the 911 callers.
When our subject came down the
stairs and it would appear to be
holding at least one frying pan,
a meat cleaver and possibly a third
object which we may have been a knife.
Officers again try to engage him in a
dialogue as he was coming downstairs.
They were giving him.
Very clear,
loud verbal commands to drop the the
items he had in his hand and they were
backing up again creating some distance
at one point when are subject gets
to the bottom of the staircase, he stops.
He pauses.
They have a very short
exchange officer again.
Tell him they're trying to help him there.
Drop the items he has in
his hands and are subject.
Just starts on some unintelligible words.
He starts saying,
and at one point or officers tell
him if you don't drop what you have,
we're going to deploy a Taser on you.
Officers then tried to.
They deployed a Taser one time.
Initially it looked like that
was going to be effective.
The subject dropped to the ground,
but almost immediately stood back up,
or officers then try it a
second round of Teising on him,
which was ineffective,
and at that point the subject charged
at the officers and in the ensuing
altercation we had an officer discharges
weapon and we have one officer that was
stabbed in the shoulder by the suspect.
Both the injured officer and the
injured party were transported to a
local hospital where the subject was.
Declared deceased and our officer
was treated and then he's been
admitted in stable condition.
At this time.
We don't think the officers
injuries are life threatening.
But I want to stress to you that officers
every day come to work in this profession,
hoping to get home.
But more importantly,
hoping that everybody that they
interact with get home as well.
And I think that played out in this occasion,
as is common practice for us here
in the Den Police Department.
The Texas Rangers are going to be the
lead in the criminal investigation
and concurrently will be holding
an internal affairs investigation
by our Internal Affairs unit.
The involved officer that fired his weapon.
He is going to be placed
on administrative leave,
which again is standard practice
and he is going to be interviewed
by Texas Rangers at some point,
as well as our internal affairs.
He is about a six year veteran
of the didn't Police Department
or officer that was injured.
He is brand new to our Department,
but he comes to us with well over 10
years of previous law enforcement experience.
So you're not talking about
new officers are out here that
don't know their profession,
don't know their job.
So with that,
I'll open up to any questions you have.
Again,
understanding there may be some
that we won't answer because of
the nature of the investigation,
and
you tell us how many.
So there are several
minutes between 5 and 10 minutes.
We're still collecting all the
videos from the officers that
were here that witnessed it,
as well as the officers that are involved.
It's going to take some time to
download that body Cam footage and I
intentionally try not to look at too
much of the evidence before I get it
presented to me from the Texas Rangers,
because we want to stay as transparent
and out of that process as we can
tell us how many shots were fired?
So we don't know at this
time we believe that you
lived here in the complex.
We haven't verified that yet.
There's still a number of witnesses
to interview both that witnessed the
altercation and witnesses behavior
prior to our arrival details.
How many shots were fired by the office?
So there was more more than one round fired.
But again, I don't want to get into too
many specifics 'cause I don't know them,
and I don't want to speak for the Rangers.
How many were called for
the initial 911 call?
How many officers responded?
So initially we had five officers
arrive on scene we had.
FTO field training officer.
They had a new officer with them.
We also had a couple of other officers
show up and then we had the other.
The last officer was attempting
to gain more information as
the events were unfolding.
Housing or.
I think there's a mix of student
and regular population here,
but again, I don't want
to speak on that. How?
So right now we're believing
that he's going to be a
black male in his 20s.
He has not been positively identified,
and we definitely don't want to get
any information that might identify
him prior to his family being notified
out of respect for the man for him.
You guys went house to house
apartment apartment to make sure
it was eight and elaborate on that.
Sure, absolutely.
After the officer involved
shooting our officers not only
started performing first aid on
our subject that end up dying,
but they also did a public safety
sweep of the apartment complex,
especially that building right there
to make sure that people there were
in the adjoining apartments behind
the backdrop of this were OK inside.
Dot.
So right now we don't have any
indication they actually made
entry into any of the apartments,
but we do know that he was trying to gain
entry from what we got about 911 calls.
Yeah, we haven't talked to.
I haven't been Privy to the interviews
that we've done with any of the witnesses,
but all I can tell you is that it was
someone's going crazy in the hallway
banging on number of doors trying to get in.
But I want to stress that this isn't
just a tragedy for law enforcement,
it's also a tragedy for the young
man that is no longer with us.
Anytime that a life was taken,
no matter the circumstances,
tragic and we don't want it to happen.
So we're going to be doing a
detailed and thorough review of it
like we do with everything else.
Every other critical incident that
were involved in and will be going
from there as we get information.
When you talk about the training
that law enforcement departments are
getting now with mental health, right?
How? How much training are you
guys going into that? Calls.
So you know, as you guys know,
mental illness is something that
affects a wide variety of our
country and it affects everybody.
There's no, there's no one segment
of our community that it affects.
It affects everyone.
Without getting into specifics
because we don't know,
we don't know the history of the
young man that is now deceased.
We just know, based on one calls,
that he may have been suffering
in a mental health crisis.
We don't know that yet or officers get
the 40 hours that are required by T Cole
Texas Commission on Law Enforcement.
But they also get ongoing
in service training.
When dealing with mental illness,
they get deescalation training
front in the form of icad,
which is you know really goes speaks
to us using time, distance and cover.
When you're talking about
dealing with people in crisis.
But the the training is ongoing and
we're never going to have enough.
Thank you,
thank you all very much appreciated.