The following video is body-worn camera footage from Chad Burnett's encounter with the police on the morning of his death.
A Colorado Springs man experiencing an acute psychotic episode died after he was tased and held down by five officers after he brandished a knife and threatened his neighbors in a gated community near The Broadmoor, according to his autopsy released last month.
Chad Burnett, 49, died May 24 as a result of the struggle, the El Paso County Coroner’s Office stated, as well as injuries from the Taser, bipolar disorder and cardiac hypertrophy, or an abnormally enlarged heart.
The 4th Judicial District Attorney’s Office has not ruled whether the officers involved were justified in their use of force, but mental health experts argue Burnett’s death highlights an alarming gap in resources for those experiencing mental health crises in Colorado Springs.
Some say he could still be alive if a different strategy — one geared toward helping those experiencing mental health crises — were used.
“When police, who are untrained to manage mental health response, respond, bad things happen,” said Vincent Atchity, president of Mental Health Colorado, a nonprofit that promotes equitable access to mental health resources for people across the state.
“And this is a classic case of what happens when police are responding to a mental health crisis and don’t know what they are doing.”
Given the overwhelming percentage of calls police receive that involve some kind of mental health crisis, Atchity called the lack of training among all officers “unconscionable.”
A CSPD spokesman declined to say whether the responding officers were trained in crisis intervention.
While de-escalation methods aren't always effective, the ability to recognize Burnett’s mental illness, and communicate in a way geared toward helping those in crisis states, could have drastically altered the situation, experts said after watching the body-worn camera footage of the incident.
Terri Hurst, policy coordinator for Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, called Burnett’s death “a failure in the mental health care system,” and one that shows the stigma around mental health disorders and the challenge in accessing mental health care in Colorado.
In the two weeks prior to Burnett's fatal encounter with police, the city’s mental health response team was called twice to his home, according to a history of 911 call responses made to his address.
It’s unclear if Burnett was connected with mental health care or if a follow-up with the mental health response team was scheduled.
“It seemed like there was information but, yet, nobody was there,” Hurst said. “Or given the adrenaline of the situation, nobody stopped to tie those pieces together and say, ‘Huh, something is clearly going on, maybe we need a clinician here to help us.’
“If that doesn’t happen, if that’s not commonplace, I think that’s something that needs to be fixed immediately,” Hurst said.
Effective tools
When the Crisis Intervention Team program first came to Colorado in 2002, it was among three states in the country that aimed to implement a statewide training program to help law enforcement officers recognize signs of mental illness, enhance their verbal crisis de-escalation skills and provide a more streamlined access to community-based mental health services, said Sgt. Attila Denes with the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office.
Denes, a founding member of the CIT Association of Colorado, trains law enforcement officers in crisis intervention across the state. Over the years, more than half of the state’s 14,000 peace officers have received the training, Denes said.
“I think as a state, we’ve done remarkably well,” he said.
Even so, Colorado still ranks among the worst in the nation for its prevalence of mental and substance abuse disorders. Law enforcement, by default, has become the first point of contact for many people experiencing a mental health crisis.
“Because of that, it is critically important that law enforcement officers be trained in the recognition of crisis states particularly when mental health disorders are part of the crisis,” Denes said.
Though Denes declined to speak specifically on the May 24 incident, citing the open investigation into the case, he said as a general rule, he teaches officers to keep distance between themselves and the person and to take their time.
“The more distance we have between ourselves and the person experiencing a crisis, the less pressure they feel and also, the greater reactionary gap we have in the event that there is some anticipated attack, it gives us more time to move or get out of harm’s way,” he said.
Communication strategies vary depending on the situation, but through crisis intervention training, officers are taught to recognize the behaviors that are indicative of one type of mental health disorder versus another.
“If someone is experiencing an acute psychotic episode and they are having trouble focusing on the instructions of a responding officer because of their hallucinations or delusions … then (use) short, simple, directive commands that aren’t threatening, but are clearly directive,” Denes said.
Getting a mental health clinician on scene as soon as possible is also among the best practices when responding to mental health calls, he said.
But verbal de-escalation doesn’t always resolve an issue, Denes said.
“If the situation turns on a dime, in a dangerous direction, we may have to break from that preferred model of time and distance.”
Atchity, who watched the body camera footage of the incident, argued police could have waited outside for a mental health professional to arrive as Burnett wasn’t threatening anyone when they arrived.
“The heightened situation" that the neighbors called about had eased, Atchity said.
“They could have left him in peace in his own home. … They could have come back with a clinical partner and talked to him. If they were worried about the neighbors, they could have sat there in the car all afternoon and evening and no one would have had to die,” he said.
In the body-camera footage, released nearly two months after Burnett’s death, Sgt. Michael Inazu and Officer Matthew Fleming are seen talking to Burnett through the front window of his home.
“Can you come talk to us, Chad?” Inazu is heard in the footage. “Can you come out?” Fleming asked.
“Yeah, that’s a big knife. Leave that there. Can you open the door?” Inazu said. Burnett appears to be talking to the officers, though he is inaudible in the body camera footage.
“I want to help you,” Inazu said. “Would you open the door, please? We won’t hurt you … We’re here to help you."
Minutes later, Burnett called 911 to report “fake police," telling the dispatcher he has just arrived from Japan and parked his jet at the Colorado Springs airport.
“This incident does present a challenge because he did threaten someone, but he was clearly suffering from an episode,” Hurst said.
The department’s mental health response team, which consists of a paramedic from the Colorado Springs Fire Department, a CSPD officer and a behavioral-health clinician from AspenPointe, was not called because the call was made in regard to “a violent felony,” said Lt. Jim Sokolik, a police spokesman.
More than an hour after police arrived, Burnett exited his home and three officers charged toward him and pushed him to the floor inside his house.
“For somebody who is in a psychosis, having a cop run at you, is certainly not going to de-escalate the situation,” Hurst said.
Officer Caroline Barth yelled “on the ground” and seconds later, deployed a Taser, striking Burnett in the stomach. He cried out in pain and fell to the ground.
The officers tried to place him in handcuffs, telling Burnett to stop resisting. Burnett continued to struggle with the officers while on the ground.
“It’s terrifying for any of us, but it’s exponential for anyone (with mental health issues)," said Lori Jarvis-Steinwert, Executive Director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Colorado Springs. “The chances of them being compliant when they are that terrified are not good.”
A mental health professional on the scene may have approached him in a manner in which Burnett felt understood, and he could have been transported to a psychiatric facility to be evaluated, she said.
“Any kind of aggression is going to escalate the situation,” she said. “You stay calm, you don’t overreact — if anything you under-react — when you realize you are dealing with a mental health situation. ... They are under the influence of their own illness. To the extent you can, you agree with them, you align yourself."
A history of mental illness
Burnett, an avid cyclist and well-liked former bike shop owner, was always professional and easy to talk to, said longtime friend Brett Lindstrom.
He said Burnett always “seemed to be in good spirits,” but the death of his parents in 2019 upset him.
Lindstrom said Burnett occasionally talked about himself getting mad and confronting others. But, in Burnett's telling, he usually found a reasonable way out of such disputes, Lindstrom said.
Though Lindstrom moved to California seven years ago, he kept in touch with Burnett. He said he wasn’t aware Burnett was taking medication for his mental health until after his death.
After watching the body camera footage, Lindstrom said he thought Burnett was having an episode and a mental health professional could have reasoned with him.
“I also don't think Chad was posing a threat to them," Lindstrom said.
In the weeks before his death, Burnett’s behavior had become a concern for his neighbors in the gated community.
In mid-May, Mark Sather and Pauline Sisson, who are identified in court documents as Burnett’s cousins, sought restraining orders against Burnett, alleging threatening behavior, and Sather is listed as a victim in a May 7 incident in which Burnett allegedly barged into his family home on Lake Avenue.
Neighbors reported his suspicious behavior, including a time when he was seen walking near his blue Corvette carrying an aluminum bat, said Sather and Sisson’s attorney, Danny Kay, reading from a report prepared by Broadmoor security.
The day Burnett died, a neighbor reported him to police for holding a knife up to another neighbor in the community. She called him “absolutely looney” and said that police have been to his house before.
“But we’ve been so concerned about him,” the woman told the dispatcher on the recorded 911 audio.
A system worth strengthening
It is situations like Burnett’s death that Jarvis-Steinwert said she often tells families who are are concerned about a loved one's mental health not to call 911 without stressing there is mental health emergency.
With a lack of training and or information about someone’s history of mental illness, officers aren’t fully equipped to handle the situation, she said.
“When you talk to people in law enforcement, fully half of their calls have a mental health component. … There’s a different way to deal with someone who is delusional and psychotic. They should know how to do that,” she said. “It is a liability when we have law enforcement on the streets responding to calls who are not well informed about the signs and symptoms of mental illness.”
Co-responder units, made up of a law enforcement officer and a mental health clinician, are successfully helping those in crisis and avoiding arrests, Jarvis-Steinwert said, citing the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office's Behavioral Health Connect Unit.
In its first two years, the unit's two teams have responded to 784 911 calls for service and diverted 99% of its calls from jail , recent data shows.
While Colorado law enforcement agencies have come a long way in their response to those in mental health crises, Jarvis-Steinwert thinks all law enforcement should become CIT trained.
“It’s not fair that we are not equipping law enforcement to deal appropriately with circumstances that they walk into over and over again,” she said.
“The Chad Burnett stories are out there still, they certainly aren’t as frequent as they were five or 10 years ago, but they’re still out there,” Jarvis-Steinwert said. “And we know better. We know there is a different model. There’s a different model for intervention.”
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