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SALT LAKE CITY — The dynamic situation unfolded without warning.
Just as three Salt Lake police officers knocked on Michael Anthony Brand's door — two officers standing on one side of the door and one officer and a caseworker on the other — Brand opened the door and immediately pointed what appeared to be a gun at the officers.
All three officers grabbed their guns from their holsters and one officer fired at Brand, striking him. The officer also inadvertently hit a police officer in the shoulder who was standing across from him, and behind Brand.
"I've been shot guys. I've been hit," the officer can be heard saying on body camera video.
The Salt Lake City Police Department on Friday released the video from the three officers involved in the July 15 incident, per the mayor's executive order that police video be released within 10 business days of when a critical incident occurs.
Officers were called to the Sunrise Metro Apartment complex, 580 S. 500 West, where Brand, 43, was a resident.
Brand, who has schizoaffective disorder, was threatening the staff at the apartment complex, said Salt Lake Police Capt. Ty Farillas. Staffers reported to police that he was "going off the rails and being kind of aggressive and threatening."
Three officers, including at least one member of the Crisis Intervention Team, and a caseworker who works with the apartment complex responded, Farillas said. Police have not released the names of those officers involved.
The body camera videos start with the officers walking toward Brand's fourth floor apartment. The conversation is light and the officers do not appear to have any indication of the potential danger.
When Brand opened the door, he pointed a gun at officers without saying a word. The weapon was later determined to be a paintball gun.
After Brand was on the ground, the officer who appears to have fired the shots handcuffs and attends to him in the video while the other officer attends to the wounded colleague.
"I’m sorry, he had it pointed it at your … head, dude," the officer who fired the shots says to the injured officer. "I’m sorry."
When the wounded officer and the officer assisting him go downstairs to wait for an ambulance, the officer who fired the shots stays with Brand, who is lying motionless on the ground.
"Mike, breathe for me, man, breathe for me, bro," the officer says.
Moments later, another man appears in the doorway of the same apartment Brand came out of. The officer handcuffs him.
"He … opened the door with a gun in our face, dude," the officer tells the man.
The man says he did not know that Brand was going to open the door with a gun, telling the officer, "I'm just as shocked as you are."
The officer who was shot was taken to a local hospital for treatment and was released the same day. The Unified Police Department is conducting an independent review of the officer-involved shooting. That investigation will then be turned over to the Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office to decide whether the shooting was legally justified.
This is Salt Lake City's fourth officer-involved critical incident this year and the second person who has died from an officer's use of force.
The other fatal shooting occurred April 8 when officers from at least three police departments fired their weapons at Harold Vincent Robinson, 37, of West Valley City, after he randomly fired at people in downtown Salt Lake City before leading officers on a chase that ended in a crash near 3300 S. State.
The Sunrise Metro Apartments opened in 2007 to help those who are chronically homeless, many of whom suffer from addiction or mental illness, get back on their feet and into housing.
According to court records, Brand was charged four times in 2018 for misdemeanor crimes that included shoplifting, intoxication and trespassing. His home address for each case is listed in court documents as a residential treatment center in Ogden.
The four court cases last year are all of Brand's criminal history in Utah, according to court records. In most of those cases, he was ordered to attend homeless court, a court developed in Utah to specifically address the needs of the homeless population.
Brand was also arrested on March 23 for investigation of disorderly conduct and intoxication. The arresting officer spotted Brand at the intersection of 400 South and 300 West "walking around and displaying erratic behavior in the middle of the intersection," a police report states.
"I made contact with the subject and instructed him to calm down and clear away from the intersection. The male subject became more erratic, waving his arms in the air, yelling inaudible utterances," the officer wrote.
Brand eventually walked into Pioneer Park, where he "continued to display weird and strange behavior," the report states. "The subject was instructed multiple times to calm down, but all of my instructions were ignored. He continued to yell and wave his arms. The subject nearly started a fight with several people at the park. A different male subject was identified as a friend of the subject and informed me that he had been drinking, and when he drinks, his schizophrenia is activated and becomes more severe."
Contributing: Gretel Kauffman
