Denver Police Department on Thursday released body-camera footage of police officers shooting 57-year-old Jose Medina on March 20.
That day, police received a call about a man sleeping behind Annunciation Catholic School in northeast Denver. The caller reported he had a knife and possibly a gun.
Two body-camera videos show officers approaching Medina, who was lying behind a cardboard box in an alley in the Cole neighborhood. The school is on the 3500 block of Lafayette Street.
They pulled away the cardboard, asked him to show his hands, and saw he was holding a gun. What looked like a firearm turned out to be a replica handgun with Smith & Wesson markings.
The officers pointed their guns at the man and asked him at least 19 times to drop his gun. He asked why they had approached him, and officers told him they were responding to a call.
“Drop your gun, and I’ll drop mine,” one officer says multiple times.
The man lifted the replica gun and four officers opened fire, shooting 16 rounds toward Medina and what appeared to be a basement window behind him.
Medina collapsed and the officers approached, telling him again to drop the gun. One officer held a firearm to Medina’s head — an unusual move officers are not trained in, according to DPD Chief Ron Thomas.
The officers confiscated the replica handgun and cuffed Medina as he moaned.
An ambulance took Medina to Denver Health Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead less than two hours after police first confronted him.
Denver police officers had encountered Medina multiple times since 2005; he had been living in the alley where officers shot him.
“No officer wants to take a life,” Thomas said. “I think that you could see the effort that they went through to make sure that he complied, dropped that weapon. It was their desire to simply end that situation. And they only responded with, ultimately, deadly force, because he moved that weapon in their direction and put them in fear of their life.”
All the officers were wearing body cameras, and none had been involved in previous shootings, according to Cmdr. Matt Clark, who oversees the Major Crimes Division.
Denver’s Office of the Independent Monitor is overseeing the investigation into the police shooting.
The officers involved have temporarily been put on “non-line” assignments — meaning they aren’t on patrol duty.
The District Attorney’s Office has not said whether it will press charges against the officers.
