Incident: Monday, August 31, 2026, 400 South, Salt Lake City, Utah. Footage released by the Salt Lake City Police Department: September 18, 2026.
Salt Lake City Police Department officers were dispatched at 8:30 p.m. to a violent psychiatric problem. The caller said a man hit their car and was screaming in the street, and might be drunk. No weapon was mentioned in the call.
Officers found him at 575 East 400 South and told him to sit down. He refused. He tried to leave, ran into other officers, stopped, and brandished a knife at them. An officer fired a Taser. Four probes, no effect. He ran east. A patrol car tried to cut him off, and he went around it into a parking lot past 600 East, still holding the knife. Two officers fired and struck him.
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He lived. The department describes his injuries as non-life-threatening. No officers or bystanders were hurt.
Dallas Clint Fowers was charged September 8, 2026 in Utah’s 3rd District Court with assault on a peace officer, restricted person with a weapon, failing to stop for police, property damage, and disorderly conduct. Where that case stands now has not been reported. The shooting has not been ruled on. An independent protocol team led by the Unified Police Department is investigating, and the decision belongs to the Salt Lake County District Attorney, who has said nothing.
This is a short one. Forty-two seconds. Salt Lake City PD does not put setups or aftermath on its releases, and I am with them on that. You get the encounter. They already have him identified, they are already at guns, and they are running after a man with a knife through a parking lot.
The one thing I want you to pay attention to is the officer leading the commands, the one whose camera this is. Over and over, he is telling his partners to keep their distance. Distance. Distance. Distance. He knows that if anybody closes on this guy, the guy turns and somebody gets stabbed. You hear it again in the foot pursuit. That is a cop running the chase the right way.
Have they given him enough chances? Yes. Drop the knife, get on the ground, over and over. He has been given his lawful orders and he has ignored every one of them. Four Taser probes went into him and did nothing.
So why here, and why now? He is running, not running at them. But look at where he is running. This is a shopping complex at 8:30 at night with cars and people all over the place. You cannot let a man who is acting like this, holding a knife, ignoring police, and running from a foot pursuit get to civilians. You have to assume he is going to start stabbing people, because your primary job is to protect life.
He made the decision. Two officers fired and he lived. No officers were hurt and no bystanders were hurt. Nobody else got touched. That is the best outcome you can get on a call like this. Is it a good shooting? Absolutely.
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