Jason Pohl

jasonpohl@coloradoan.com

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Fort Collins police officers repeatedly shouted "do not make us do this" in the seconds before they shot and killed an intoxicated and suicidal man on the city's outskirts four months ago, newly released video shows.

They deployed their Tasers twice. Neither was effective on the 63-year-old man who stood dazed in a driveway, arms at his side, hands clutching a six-inch fillet knife he bought minutes prior at nearby Jax Ranch and Home.

Jerry Jackson squared off with officers who responded to a 911 caller reporting that he was pounding on the windows of a vehicle where his wife had taken refuge from Jackson. The man had recently violated multiple restraining orders, and one of his wife's female roommates found Jackson armed with a knife in her home.

Why we shared a fatal shooting video

In the rush to the call, Fort Collins officers responded to the north Fort Collins property just outside their jurisdiction. Walking down the driveway, they encountered Jackson.

They tried reasoning with him, calling him by name and pleading with him to drop the knife.

Then came the flurry of shots, three blasts from each of the three Fort Collins officers. A split-second cacophony followed immediately by silence.

Then blood.

Seven of the nine shots hit him.

Officers' attempts to keep Jackson alive long enough for emergency medical workers to arrive failed — they suspected efforts would be futile when they called the "code black" and pulled out the Quick-Clot they carry to stop serious bleeding.

The entire incident was captured on two officers' body-mounted cameras, the first time in city history that cameras recorded an officer-involved shooting. One video is shot from a camera mounted on an officers' glasses, the other from an officer's shoulder.

(WARNING: The video below contains graphic content. Viewer discretion advised.)

The video and accompanying audio released Friday by Fort Collins Police Services is among the most complete body-mounted camera footage of an officer-involved shooting in Colorado that has been made public to date. Its release comes amid heightened nationwide scrutiny of officers' use of force and provides additional public insight into the September determination that local officers worked within legal boundaries in fatally shooting Jackson.

The Coloradoan obtained the video Friday morning after filing multiple records requests. It shows in detail what happened during the roughly six minutes that passed between when Old Town Fort Collins officers responded to the scene to their efforts to render aid to the dying man as U.S. Highway 287 traffic passed a few steps away during the early evening of Aug. 25.

Fort Collins police to double body camera program

"In this case, the video provided an additional perspective that helped highlight the officers’ strong tactical decision-making and textbook responses to a dynamic situation," Fort Collins Police Chief John Hutto told the Coloradoan in a prepared statement. "This will be a valuable tool for future training within the agency."

Unlike fatal shootings that have dominated national headlines in recent years, there was no community uproar after the Aug. 25 encounter on North College Avenue. Larimer County District Attorney Cliff Riedel deemed the three officers' use of deadly force justified. Officers Bryan Brown, Allen Heaton and Nicholas Rogers took "all reasonable steps" to disarm Jackson before firing their guns.

"With the body cameras, it's just another thing that helps us get a mind’s eye of what the officers were facing," Riedel said Thursday.

An investigation ultimately revealed that Jackson called his son at 7:35 p.m. — 13 minutes after the 911 call — at which point he told his son he had purchased a knife, crossed the street to his wife's house and planned to slit his throat if police tried to take him down.

He told his son to get him before the cops did.

"If the cops get here before you, I am a dead man," he said, according to Riedel's letter on the matter.

Jackson had previously indicated to others he would make police shoot him.

Fort Collins police decided to wait for the entire investigation of the shooting to conclude before making the video public. That meant a criminal investigation by the Eighth Judicial District's Critical Incident Response Team, a review and decision from Riedel's office, an internal investigation centered around FCPS policy, a force review that hinged on training and, most recently, examination from the Citizen Review Board.

Hutto told reporters at a Friday afternoon news conference that he considered the situation an example of "exemplary training." Like many in law enforcement, he dismissed how people might armchair quarterback cases like this and say police should grapple with knife-wielding suspects or "shoot to wound" instead of firing to stop the threat.

"If you're going to what-if it in that direction, we have to what-if it the other way," Hutto said. "They might get lucky, or they might end up getting stabbed in the throat."

The priority is always to stop the threat.

This was the first time body-mounted cameras have captured an officer-involved shooting in Fort Collins, despite the agency's use of the technology since 2012. Top FCPS brass say they're not going to implement a set-in-stone rule about whether future videos must be subjected to that lengthy review process — four months in this case — prior to their release.

"Ideally, we’d like to respect the integrity of the formal investigation and review process and allow it to conclude before releasing video or other compelling information," Hutto said. "That being said, every incident is different and we will evaluate release timelines on a case-by-case basis."

In some ways, 2016 was the year of the body camera when it came to officer-involved shootings, at least in Northern Colorado.

In addition to the Fort Collins case in August, a police officer in Evans, south of Greeley, captured on his body-mounted camera the February shooting of a white supremacist gang member. That marked the first time the increasingly common technology recorded a Northern Colorado police shooting.

Elsewhere in Colorado, perhaps the most widely viewed shooting caught on a body-mounted camera happened in July 2015, when a Trinidad officer shot and killed a man hiding in a vacant trailer. The graphic video shows the suspect, a jail escapee, pointing a gun at the officer before the shooting.

Prosecutors in each of those jurisdictions, and in Larimer County, have found the video invaluable in determining what happened and ultimately clearing involved officers of any legal wrongdoing.

There is no system that tracks how many officer-involved shootings are captured on body-mounted camera in Colorado. Anecdotal evidence suggests they are few and far between — about 50 departments in the state have issued body-worn cameras. Other agencies are eyeing their use amid a heightened national push.

Officer-involved shootings in Fort Collins are relatively uncommon. Aside from the August fatal encounter, police fired their service weapons one other time in the line of duty last year — when a man who vowed to cleave his neighbor armed himself with a sword when an officer came knocking on the door. Neither the suspect nor the officer involved was injured in that incident.

Fort Collins police officers have fired at 22 people since 1992, according to records maintained by the Coloradoan. Twelve of those individuals were killed, including Jackson. Approximately 1,000 people were fatally shot during a police encounter nationwide in 2016, according to The Washington Post. No formal database of U.S. officer-involved shootings exists.

"It’s unfortunate that the suspect in this case chose to end his life by involving others," Hutto said. "I’m proud of the three involved officers and commend them for their actions on that tragic night."

"In this case, the video provided a perspective into the dangerous, rapidly evolving realities that police officers encounter. The camera program provides a mutual accountability that serves both officers and residents."

Reporter Jason Pohl covers law enforcement for the Coloradoan. Follow him on Twitter: @pohl_jason.

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