Comment Nykon Brandon was running across the street in his socks and underwear when Salt Lake City police officers tackled him, tackled him to the ground and tried to restrain him. Brandon struggled with multiple officers for about five minutes until his labored breathing appeared to stop, according to video of the Aug. 14 incident. An officer tapped him on the shoulder and asked, “Can you hear me?” shows video. “He is alive;” Another officer can be heard asking on the body camera footage. Police treated Brandon, according to the Salt Lake City Police Department, but less than an hour later, the 35-year-old was pronounced dead. The Salt Lake City Police Department on Friday released body camera footage of the fatal Aug. 14 incident, announcing that its internal affairs division and an unnamed outside agency were investigating. The department did not immediately respond to questions from The Post early Monday. A department spokesman told The Associated Press that the situation “unfolded quickly.” “It was a chaotic situation and our officers had to make very quick decisions to bring a very tense situation under control,” the spokesman added. Brandon appears to have been unarmed. The videos released by the department do not show Brandon holding a gun. The department said no weapon was found at the scene. However, officials noticed that early in the encounter, Brandon appeared to grab an officer’s belt. Footage shows him placing his hand near the officer’s gun before another takes him to the ground. A 911 caller noted that Brandon appeared to be a danger to himself and possibly others. The caller requested that “mental health resources” respond. “We are committed to carefully reviewing the findings of the investigation in this case,” Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown said in a statement. “As a forward-thinking department, we will use these findings to evaluate our policies, training and procedures to continue to ensure we are making our city safer.” Brandon’s death comes as police departments across the country struggle with how to deal with people experiencing potential mental health crises. While the Washington Post doesn’t track the number of non-police shooting deaths nationwide, 21 percent of the more than 7,680 fatal police shootings since 2015 involved a person with a mental illness, according to Post tracking. In recent years, departments have implemented de-escalation policies and training to reduce instances in which police resort to the use of physical or deadly force. One such policy was imposed in August 2020 by Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall (D). It requires officers to use de-escalation techniques, such as building rapport with a person and engaging in techniques that lead to “voluntary compliance.” About two years after those reforms, police were called to respond to Fisher Brewing Company, where a man wearing only underwear tried to steal beer before running into the street, the caller said. They added that the man was “definitely a danger to himself” and that he “more or less” attacked someone at the entrance to the brewery. Minutes later, an officer found a man later identified as Brandon running across the street, the department said. The officer said “stop,” approached Brandon and immediately tried to grab him, the officer’s body camera footage shows. Brandon then appeared to grab the officer’s belt and gun, according to body camera footage from another officer who arrived on the scene seconds later. That officer approached and pushed Brandon to the ground. Both officers attempted to subdue the man. “I’m going to Tase you,” one of the officers says, according to the video. “Do you want to get Tased?” After a third officer arrived and joined in the effort to restrain Brandon, the man appeared to put his hand on one officer’s holstered gun, prompting one to announce, “He’s got his hand on your gun.” More officers arrived as the struggle continued and officers eventually forced Brandon’s hands behind his back and handcuffed him. About four minutes after the collision, four officers held Brandon face down on the ground as he moaned and breathed heavily, according to the video. Almost five minutes into the encounter, an officer said, “We can seat you if you stop.” Brandon didn’t answer and continued to breathe deeply. After moaning a few more times, he appeared to pass out. The body cam footage ends as the police begin to roll him onto his back. The department said in a statement that officers rendered aid to Brandon, including administering multiple doses of Narcan, a drug to reverse the effects of an opioid overdose. Brandon was taken to the hospital and pronounced dead less than an hour after the collision began, according to the department. It is unclear if Brandon had drugs in his system. The city medical examiner has not publicly shared the results of his autopsy, and the office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Post early Monday. Hours before the violent encounter in Salt Lake City, police in neighboring South Salt Lake found Brandon drunk in a park and dropped him off at a rehab facility about three blocks from the brewery where the 911 call was made, KUTV reported. Local activists say nothing Brandon did justified his death. “Stealing a beer is not a death sentence,” Lex Scott, founder of Black Lives Matter-Utah, told The Associated Press. “I don’t care if this man robbed 10 banks in one day. He didn’t deserve to die. He deserved to go to court.”
