SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — Salt Lake City police have released body-worn camera footage showing a fatal officer-involved shooting during a confrontation that unfolded on Jan. 9.
Chandler Dean Grillone, 32, approached an officer who was conducting a traffic stop in the area of 375 South and 765 West shortly before 1:45 a.m. Grillone, who was not involved in the traffic stop, startled the officer while he was inside his patrol vehicle with a female community member who was joining in on a ride-along. He asked the young woman if she would call out the vehicle identification number for him on the truck he pulled over. Within seconds, Grillone came out of the shadows shouting at the officer right at his door.
The officer immediately exited his vehicle and confronted Grillone, who began arguing with the officer, claiming that the driver who had been pulled over had done nothing illegal.
Officer: Bro, what are you doing? Get back. What are you doing dude?
Chandler Grillone: I came to assist you.
Officer: Get up here in front of the car right now.
Grillone: This is a citizen’s audit.
Officer: Do what I said.
It turns violent when Grillone takes a swing at him. Salt Lake City police said Grillone then asked “Do you want to die tonight?” And that was followed by something to the effect of, “cult power” and then an expletive.
Grillone became increasingly hostile, throwing his possessions at the officer and refusing to comply with his commands. At one point, Grillone raised his hands in a fighting stance, prompting the officer to yell, “Drop it!” Authorities later confirmed that Grillone was carrying a weapon, though they did not disclose the type. They did note that the responding officer sustained a non-life-threatening injury “consistent with a sharp-edged object.”
Officer: What the f*** are you talking about?
Grillone: What are you doing this is not illegal.
Officer: You better get away from me right now.
Grillone: Why, I snitched you.
The man the officer pulled over gets out of his truck as the officer commands Grillone to get on the ground. At that point, Grillone assumed a fighting stance and makes several karate-like movements.
He also said, that’s my possession referring to the cap on his head, he took off and threw it on the ground telling the officer to “beat it.” Then asks, “What did I do, I sniffed you. What’s your name.”
The video shows the officer taking out his night stick and then seems to realize he may have been slashed. Grillone then shows the officer the palm of his hand and says it’s a “tool.”
The officer repeatedly tells him to drop it, and Grillone asks him if his gun is a taser as he yells at him to drop it. Grillone then says, “Yeah, there’s a spring on that.”
Chris Bertram is a retired deputy chief of the Unified Police Department, an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice and a private investigator. He reviewed the body camera footage in advance of his interview.
He says about the officers’ actions. “He’s starting to realize that this may be a little more dire than he initially thought from somebody just maybe hitting you and you see his demeanor change.”
“At some point the officer realizes that something did happen to him you see him, he gets his night stick out he’s getting some of the tools that he has that are non-lethal and then all of a sudden you notice that he notices something and he immediately gives that up and he gets his gun out,” Bertram says.
Upon further analysis Bertram says, “When the officer draws his weapon and the subject starts to move toward the pickup truck that was stopped, the officer appears to pull the trigger on his weapon to shoot the subject. However, you hear a click and then the officer immediately racks the slide on his gun. This would appear to me the officer did not have a bullet in the chamber of his semi-automatic handgun and when the trigger was pulled and landed on an empty chamber, the officer immediately racked and loaded the weapon. At that point, the subject was not in what the officer believed a threatening position and the officer continued to give verbal commands to him. A short time later, the individual was outside the pickup truck and began to move toward the front of the police vehicle and then appeared to start to walk down the passenger side of the police vehicle however he was still in the front of the vehicle when the officer fired.”
The body-worn camera footage, which contains both graphic content and obscene language, showed the situation escalate when Grillone jumped into the bed of the pulled-over vehicle and continued verbally challenging the officer.
Grillone then begins walking backwards. The officer commands him to get on the ground but he refuses telling him he doesn’t have the authority to tell him to get on the ground. He then jumps in the back of the truck the officer had pulled over with the driver still sitting behind the wheel. He begins to mumble about a knife.
Grillone says, “It’s not a knife you liar. You don’t know what it is, identify it, how big, how many inches?” The officer again continuing to command him to get on the ground. Grillone mumbles, “I know you don’t have any ammunition on you.” You can hear the officer say, “Yeah.”
And then Grillone became fixated on getting to the car with the female on the ride-along sitting inside. Grillone then jumped from the truck and began walking toward the patrol vehicle, where the woman was still inside. The officer could be heard warning Grillone, saying, “You better stop.” Grillone is then seen walking toward her pointing at the patrol car saying, “Get out.” That’s when the officer opens fire, and five gunshots are heard.