Family of Utah man killed by police demand justice as videos are released


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SALT LAKE CITY — After numerous commands to "get on the ground" were not obeyed, officers can be heard on police body camera video yelling, "He's got a gun!" and "He's pointing!"

Moments later, five officers fire their weapons, striking and killing 30-year-old Cody Paris Belgard.

But as of Wednesday, police say no weapon was found at the scene or on Belgard.

His family now wants justice.

"He’s just standing there. It’s so pathetic what I’ve seen. He’s my son. You don’t even have any idea what it fees like to see a person as good as Cody get shot down like a dog,” his father, Mike Belgard, said outside the Salt Lake City Police Department.

"They murdered my son.”

The department released body camera video Wednesday from four of the five officers who fired their weapons on Belgard, a popular rap artist from the Glendale area who used the moniker "See Smoke." The fifth officer, whom the family claims was standing closest to Belgard, did not have body camera video.

Why no video exists from that fifth officer is part of the ongoing shooting investigation, the department says.

The incident on Nov. 9 took place at two separate locations in Salt Lake City. It began with officers looking for a vehicle that had fled from them a week earlier and finding the car in a parking lot at 2274 S. 1300 East.

Belgard's brother contended Wednesday that even though it may have been the car police were looking for, Cody Belgard was not the suspect who fled from them.

As officers approached the vehicle in the parking lot, Belgard was in the passenger seat and a woman in the driver's seat.

The body camera video shows officers approaching the car from both sides. Something prompts officers to draw their guns. Officers are heard yelling, "Hands up" and ordering Belgard to get his hands out of his pocket.

"Please, don’t be stupid, dude. Oh, my gosh,” one officer is heard exclaiming.

The woman gets out of the car and is ordered to lay on the ground. An officer asks her if Belgard has a gun.

"No. He does not have a gun,” she tells the officer in the video.

Belgard continues to disobey the commands of officers and slides into the driver's seat, prompting one officer to say, "He's going to try and flee."

Despite cries from the woman for Belgard to stop, he puts the car in reverse, striking a police patrol car. He then goes forward, striking another vehicle before finally backing out of his parking spot and speeding away. Officers have their guns drawn in the video but no shots are fired. Body camera video shows heavy damage to the front end of Belgard's fleeing vehicle.

Belgard got onto I-80 and reached speeds of 90 mph, police said.

"At times the driver's door opened and he swerved in and out of traffic," said Salt Lake Police Capt. Lance VanDongen.

Officers pursuing Belgard believe he was looking for a place to bail out of his car, according to audio from the chase recorded from the officers' police radios.

Less than 20 minutes later, police confronted Belgard again at 800 N. Sir Michael Drive (1955 West). He is seen in body camera video away from his car, standing on a sidewalk. He is not putting his hands up. VanDongen said Belgard "kept his hands in his pockets and continued to make furtive movements."

"Get on the ground now. Get on the ground, bro!" an officer yells.

"It's not worth it man, it's not worth it. Relax," another yells.

According to police, officers told Belgard to get on the ground at least seven times and to put his hands up at least four times.

Shortly after one officer yells, "He's got a gun!" and another say "He's pointing!" four officers fired their handguns and a fifth fired a shotgun. At least nine officers then converged on Belgard and after securing him with handcuffs, began administering first aid.

"Where's the gun?" an officer is heard on body camera video asking.

"I don't know," says another.

"I think it was a (expletive) cellphone," an officer is heard exclaiming.

VanDongen said no weapon was found.

Belgard's family, who also attended the press conference and said they watched the body camera videos extensively the night before, questioned why the fifth officer's video does not exist.

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After the press conference outside the police department, a visibly upset Marvin Oliveros told reporters that at least 10 shots were fired and his younger brother, Belgard, was hit two to three times in the back. The other bullets, he claimed, hit nearby homes and a parked car.

Police would not say Wednesday where Belgard was shot.

Oliveros stressed that his brother was unarmed, was not making any threatening movements, and that the officers, who also had a police K-9 on scene, had him surrounded and could have used less-than-lethal force to arrest him.

"They had the area contained before Cody got there. There was no public safety issue,” he said. "There needs to be justice and accountability for Cody. … This was a set up. They executed Cody."

Based on the body camera videos that were released, some of them with obstructed views of Belgard, Oliveros questions whether police actually saw anything in his brother's hand or if they were just saying that as a "tactic" because they knew they were being recorded.

"The majority of the time I believe his back was turned to these officers — even as they were saying, ‘He has a gun. He has a weapon. He’s pointing.’ If you view the footage in relation to the time they’re saying these, the footage doesn’t match what they’re saying,” he said.

"They had no other reason to believe he had a weapon other than this tactic police use when they know they’re being videotaped, when they know there might be potential witnesses around. And they throw out things like, ‘He has a weapon. He has a gun.’ They all said that. But yet we find no weapon and no gun. And those statements are what triggered five officers firing on this young man," he said.

According to court records, Belgard's criminal history includes misdemeanor offenses for drug possession, retail theft and providing false information to police. His family said he was not violent.

"It’s hard. It’s so hard. It makes you angry and so upsetting. Because he’s so sweet and nice,” his mother, Penny Belgard, said.

When asked why he rammed several cars and sped away from the parking lot when police confronted him, Oliveros said his brother was like a "deer in the headlights."

"He was scared. He was afraid he was going to go to jail. You have all these cops pointing guns at you. I mean, he was scared to death. I know Cody. He was scared,” Mike Belgard said.

But by the time his brother was shot on Sir Philip Drive, Oliveros believes the immediate threat that officers faced in the parking lot when Belgard rammed his car into other vehicles, was over. At that point, Belgard was out of his car, was not fleeing, and did not have a gun, he said.

Mike Belgard said it was just the night before that he had a conversation with his son about being smart and not giving police an excuse to shoot him.

"I know he was being careful not to act like he had a gun,” his father said.

Salt Lake police are conducting an internal investigation into the shooting, while West Valley police and the Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office are reviewing the shooting.

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Pat Reavy is a longtime police and courts reporter. He joined the KSL.com team in 2021, after many years of reporting at the Deseret News and KSL NewsRadio before that.

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