Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill has cleared a Salt Lake City police officer who fatally shot a man on Aug. 13, after the man allegedly pulled a knife and threatened to injure officers trying to arrest him.
Patrick Harmon, 50, whose most recent address, according to court records from November 2016, was The Road Home shelter, was shot at about 10:20 p.m. at 1002 S. State Street.
A patrol officer had approached Harmon after watching the man ride across all six lanes and a median of State Street, and without a rear red tail light, according to the district attorney’s report, which was released Wednesday afternoon.
When asked for identification, Harmon gave the officer a name that did not have any matches in his police computer. The officer asked the man for his name a couple more times, and “each time, the man gave a different name.”
The officer called for backup on his radio, and two more officers soon arrived.
When the man told the officer his real name, a check revealed that Harmon had multiple arrest warrants, including a felony warrant for aggravated assault. The officers told Harmon he was going to be arrested for his warrants.
Harmon pleaded with the officers not to take him to jail, an officer told investigators, and as police put the man’s hands behind his back to handcuff him, Harmon “bolted and ran north.” As the three officers pursued him, the man “turned quickly” back toward the south.
The officer who had originally contacted Harmon drew his stun gun, and another, Officer Clinton Fox, drew his gun. All three officers reported hearing Harmon threaten to cut them. They saw him reach toward his right pants pocket and that he had something in his hand, the report said.
Fox later told investigators he saw a knife in Harmon’s hand with the blade exposed. He believed another officer was dangerously close to Harmon, he said, and he fired three rounds at the man, the report says. Simultaneously, the other officer fired his stun gun.
Fox felt “terrified by how close Mr. Harmon was to the officers,” he told investigators. “Fox said that in ten years of law enforcement and two military deployments, it was the scariest situation he had ever been in,” according to the report.
Critically injured, Harmon was handcuffed and given first-aid at the scene by police, and then transported to the hospital by ambulance, where he was pronounced dead a short time later.
At the scene, investigators found a knife on the ground, the report says.
All three officers wore body cameras that recorded the incident, the report says. The report includes several still frames from that footage, showing Harmon turning toward officers, Fox firing at Harmon and Harmon on the ground near a knife. There’s also a photo of the knife, taken by investigators.
The district attorney’s ruling comes days after Harmon’s family came to retrieve his body and local activist groups demanded the release of the police body cam footage at a protest.
Friends and family members did not believe Harmon deserved to die, they said, adding that he was a good man at his core, despite struggles with drugs.
His sister, Antoinette Harmon, had not heard about the report or seen the footage when contacted by a Tribune reporter by phone Wednesday. She declined to comment at that time.
Court records show that a $10,000 felony warrant had been issued in April after Harmon failed to show for sentencing in 3rd District Court.
In that case, Harmon last year had pleaded guilty to second-degree felony aggravated assault with serious bodily injury for attacking another man in Salt Lake City. The victim’s jaw and nose were fractured, charges state. At the time of the March 2, 2016, attack, Harmon listed a West Jordan address.
In May, a judge issued a $15,000 warrant for Harmon when he failed to comply with probation requirements after pleading guilty in a misdemeanor drug possession case, court records show. In 2000, Harmon was sentenced to prison after pleading guilty in separate cases to second-degree felony robbery and third-degree felony burglary, Utah court records show.
Fox had been placed on “modified duty,” said Salt Lake City Detective Robert Ungricht, pending the department‘s investigation, which was ongoing Wednesday.
Chief Mike Brown issued a statement saying he and the department “trust the process and support the decision” from Gill‘s office. “I believe our officers have the training, judgment and ability to make split-second decisions in dynamic situations,” Brown said.