A gunman opened fire on Douglas County sheriff’s deputies responding to a domestic violence call in a Highlands Ranch apartment complex early Sunday, killing one deputy and wounding four other deputies and two civilians. The shooter was shot and is believed dead, the sheriff’s office said at 9:32 a.m. The body of the slain deputy was moved from Littleton Adventist Hospital in a black hearse, accompanied by dozens of law enforcement vehicles and motorcycles as it drove south on Broadway. Firefighters stood on their trucks along the procession route, and some residents stood on street corners with American flags.
Courtesy Denver Post

As the Denver Post is reporting, “A gunman opened fire on Douglas County sheriff’s deputies responding to a domestic violence call in a Highlands Ranch apartment complex early Sunday, killing one deputy and wounding four other deputies and two civilians. The shooter was shot and is believed dead, the sheriff’s office said at 9:32 a.m.

“The body of the slain deputy was moved from Littleton Adventist Hospital in a black hearse, accompanied by dozens of law enforcement vehicles and motorcycles as it drove south on Broadway. Firefighters stood on their trucks along the procession route, and some residents stood on street corners with American flags.”

The deputies were responding to an early morning report of a domestic violence situation in Littleton, Colorado outside of Denver when someone opened fire on the officers.

More as it becomes available.

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68 COMMENTS

    • <crickets/>

      The “cop hating” comments on this site generally accompany stories about cops violating the Constitution (like the stop and frisk story yesterday), being corrupt (like the NYC carry permit scandal), or shooting people in questionable circumstances (like in Wichita).

      This is a story of a cop who got murdered (potentially in a terrorist-style ambush, like Dallas or Baton Rouge) while trying to do the right thing and serve his community.

    • Echo5Bravo,

      I don’t hate police officers who capture and arrest brawlers, armed robbers, rapists, and murderers.

      I do hate police officers who arrest, beat, torture, and/or kill people for victimless “crimes” such as having the means to defend themselves from violent criminals (e.g. having a handgun in a holster on their belt).

      Saying it another way, I despise police officers who enforce the whims of the ruling class rather than serving justice and upholding the dignity of human life.

  2. But I thought they just banned “high capacity” (actually standard) magazines so this couldn’t happen?! It’s almost like someone, who by definition is a criminal (domestic violence call officers were responding to) has no problem breaking laws against: murder, using a firearm to commit murder, shooting at police, discharging a firearm in a residential area, evading police / refusing to comply with police orders, and any other various laws that were broken throughout this situation. Who’d have thought? /s

    In all seriousness, my condolences to the officer’s family and the Police Department. I hope and pray that Denver will next time focus on and pass legislation that actually makes them safer, rather than feelgood bullshit.

    • No doubt there are thousands of standard cap magazines still out there. Once they’re all used up and empty, this type of thing won’t happen anymore because people won’t be able to buy them anymore.

      “I will tell you these are ammunition, they’re bullets, so the people who have those know they’re going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of these high capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot and there won’t be any more available.”
      –Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette

    • I bet it was a Glock 19 or some other pistol that wasn’t neutered by the 15-round limit law. You don’t need more than 15+1 to shoot 7 people.

    • Yeah right. I live in Southwest Colorado, Denver is full of hopeless retards. It’s ok though, those of us literally anywhere else in the state just laugh at them and continue buying/owning our standard capacity magazines and doing our private sales (with the full blessing of local law enforcement, by the way). It’s annoying I can’t buy 30rd PMAGs online, but every gun store in town openly sells them, so… yeah, fvck Denver! They’ve got enough meth and gang problems you’d think they might actually try to focus on that instead of worthless grandstanding….

    • They are also the ones that don’t get to pick the calls they respond to. On this one it looks like they were possibly ambushed responding to a Domestic Violence call in the dark. They are expected to move toward violence rather than hiding behind a computer keyboard making ill-informed, agenda driven, self serving, smart assed, Libitard comments when some criminal decides to start shooting folks. Everybody else in the neighborhood was alerted to shelter in place while the police had to face this murdering low-life criminal on his own ground. 1 deputy is dead, 4 other deputies and two civilians were wounded in this incident so unless and until you can prove that you could do the job braver or better maybe you should exercise your constitutional right to remain silent and just STFU. At least until the facts are in.

        • Really? Name me the other professions with the possibility of another human being actively, and willfully trying to kill you as part of your daily routine.

        • Echo5Bravo,

          “… other professions with the possibility of another human being actively, and willfully trying to kill you as part of your daily routine.”

          That would be just about any profession in urban Hell holes.

          At any rate why are you limiting your scope to ill-will from humans? Animals, weather, machinery, and other work conditions subject people to danger as part of their everyday routine as well.

        • Echo5: pizza delivery, store clerk in bad neighborhoods, bank teller in bad neighborhoods. Etc…

          Statistically speaking, cops have an extremely low chance of dying on the job.

        • However, police are in the top 20 most dangerous jobs and they are the only one in the top 20 where part of your job to confront and control armed criminals and other violence prone types, and where people will try to kill you for just doing your job. It isn’t the same as dealing with personal negligence and workplace mishaps.
          We are all born ignorant, but remaining that way over the course of a lifetime requires effort. Good work!

        • Ebvan – The vast majority of on duty police deaths are also the same types as the other dangerous professions. Death by homicide is very rare for police and is less than 10% higher than for the average person. No need for violins there.

        • Echo5Bravo, name me one other profession where you are not just allowed but required to carry a gun, have immediatw access to automatic weaponry, and the legal authority to use force, up to and including deadly force? Oh, and that also has such a lack of oversight that you can literally commit murder, on camera, and then have people tell you how great you are for “risking youe life” to “protect people”? And from which it’s pretty well impossible to be fired from (you can be fired from a department, of course, but fired from the profession as a whole? Nah)

        • So true.

          I once ran a recruiting business and we rented a small office space in S. Houston. It was a mixed neighborhood, but, I hardly gave it a thought when I signed the lease.

          There was MacDonalds across the parking lot and, well, too often that was the source of my daily gruel as recruiting is a time and attention consuming business. One day I went across to lot to get some burgers for me and the staff and while I was in line I saw two cops sitting in the dining area enjoying their own lunch and chatting amicably.

          One was in rather traditional police officer garb, very understated but definitely official. The other was dressed like robo-cop with every form of weapon, tactical light, holster, gun and magazine, etc. hanging off of him.

          I’d never seen anything like that before and when my order was available I made a point of walking out the back door so as to pass nearby the officers and so as to determine the units they served. I fully expected that the less ostentatious cop was local and the robo-cop was SWAT or something like that.

          Boy, was I wrong…or half wrong.

          As I passed by I noted the one dressed in traditional law enforcement garb was, indeed, a local municipal police officer. But quite to my shocking surprise the other WAS IN A UNIFORM WHICH BORE A PATCH WHICH SAID HE WAS AN ALDINE INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT COP. He probably patrolled a high school or maybe even an elementary school.

          If that guy is any indication of the attitude that local police have towards the rest of us we’re in very real trouble already. Sheeeze, and they say Trump is a fascist. This event was almost 20 years ago…and long before Trump was even in Moscow enjoying the fabled yellow showers on Obummer’s previously occupied bed.

        • Rt66Paul According to Websters and Oxford online dictionaries as well as Dictionary.com you are incorrect. While each uses slightly different wording, they seem to be in agreement that a “civilian” is a person who is not on active duty with a military, naval, police, or fire fighting organization.

        • Hey, here’s our meaningless distinction for the day. Not only are you incorrect by many dictionary definitions, but who cares. I’ve heard garbagemen call non-garbagemen “civilians.” Welcome to the lexicon.

      • For the record, cops are civilians too. They are not military. Cops are civilian citizens sworn to uphold and enforce the laws of their jurisdiction.

    • Mama, your comment was inappropriate, not to mention stupid.

      I often enjoy reading your comments on this blog. This one, not so much.

  4. Glad I’m not headed back home today. From what my wife tells me a ton of the roads are closed.

    Also, this happened in Highlands Ranch.

    As for the mag thing, read the law. Oh, and the law isn’t enforced because it basically can’t be.

      • This happened at the Copper Canyon Apartments. That’s not a complex I am intimately familiar with.

        It’s on the edge of the cities Highlands Ranch and Southglenn. Highlands Ranch is a pretty well-to-do neighborhood. Big houses, high prices. Southglenn isn’t as nice but it’s not terrible.

        This apartment complex is located near a number of shopping areas. It’s between S. University Blvd and S. Colorado Blvd. It’s not in a ghetto.

        I’m somewhat surprised here based on the location. If this happened in Aurora I wouldn’t be shocked. Just goes to show that crazy shit can happen anywhere.

        • Definitely not the ‘hood. I don’t think there is a rough neighborhood anywhere in Douglas County.

        • A rough neighborhood in Douglass County is one that doesn’t have a wine bar that serves artisan pizza.

  6. My dad retired 20+ years ago from the Detroit police Dept, and always said the Family trouble calls (as they were referred to back in the day) always had the most potential for officer involved shootings.

    • Every single cop I know hates domestic violence calls because they pretty much always involve extremely high tension levels between multiple parties, and angry people tend to be less rational then calm people. It is even worse in the area where I live. My county is very rural (my nearest McDonald’s is 35 miles away). Roughly 6,600 people spread out over 600+ square miles. Within the county we have roughly 15 law enforcement officers between the sheriffs department and three local police departments. That usually means that they are no more then 3 -4 officers on duty at any time in the county and it can drop to as low as 2 on duty if you toss in some vacations and people getting sick. The general policy of all of the local departments seems to be that EVERY on duty officer and as many off duty officers as possible will respond to any domestic violence call regardless of where it happens in the county. Though given the size of the county the first officer to respond can still find himself alone for 15 – 30 mins.

  7. The fake news hacks at Huffpo are sensationalizing this as “Another Mass Shooting in Colorado”.

    It isn’t.

    • I think the FBI stats count anything with more than 4 as a mass shooting so it would be technically true. I’m not sure I’d call it anything else really, high speed serial murder, I guess.

      If I were a cop, this would be the kind of call you dread, like the SWATting BS, you are completely blind, if its an active shooter, the approach would be different, but a DV runs the gamut from a kid calling to complain they got spanked to a nutter killing his entire family with a chainsaw.

  9. I would not like to be a police officer. I admire them for what they do, the constraintnent on defending themselves when attacked on this site speaks volumes to me. Not all cops are bad. Support your Local Law Enforcement.

    • Some deserve our support.
      Some deserve to be stripped of their arrest powers.

      All should receive that which they deserve.

  10. We really need to write our politicians and convince them to pass a law making murder illegal!

  11. 10 seconds watching the shooter’s youtube videos makes it abundantly clear that he should have been in a nuthouse.

    • Apparently his grudge against DCSO was because a deputy tried to have him hospitalized on a mental hold during an encounter. Too bad they weren’t successful. That guy was batsh*t crazy.

  12. I think this was probably a lunatic who sought revenge against the cops for maltreatment at the hands of the cops. And, to be this extreme, he must have been mightily mishandled by them perhaps over years.

    Let me tell you a short story. I live in an upscale neighborhood of executive homes surrounded by, well, every convenience you might imagine…gyms, walking trails, residential tennis courts, etc. And, there’s a nearby elementary school.

    One day on my way to work I drove by the elementary school and witnessed an assault on a teenager who, I learned later, was a problem child. He’d stolen a bicycle and was apprehended in the parking lot of the then holiday-closed elementary school. As one cop put the bike in the truck of the cruiser the other chocked him out, despite the fact that he wasn’t resisting at all the entire duration of the encounter…because I witnessed the whole thing.

    And, that’s how you train a young person to want to set up ambushes to kill cops.

    There are always two sides to a story like this one about an ambush of cops. Sadly, most of us never hear the shooter’s side because…

    • So by your logic Charlie Manson must have had a legit beef against Sharon Tate, right? Because otherwise why would someone go through such effort to hurt someone else?

    • Your story conjures up a myriad of scenarios. First of all, I see a criminal-in-training who gets caught and is likely underage. Perhaps the cop, who was overstepping his boundaries, but was trying to help, was punishing the kid cause he knew the kid would escape any repercussions for his transgressions. While I don’t necessarily agree with this, I see morality in this scenario. Its certainly something interesting. On the other hand I see a youth being bullied by a man with a badge because he STOLE A BIKE. Personally, I have found that the key to avoiding police brutality is to not be a criminal. My brother was a criminal, until he got thrown in the big house for the remainder of his days. He was well known by the local PD, and harassed constantly by them. My brother was an adult and while I thought the police were probably acting questionably at the time, they ended up catching him on a parole violation ( every time ) and sent him back to prison. If the first time my brother stole a bike when he was 10, the cop punished him, instead of relying on my family to do it’s job, would things have turned out differently for my brother? Likely not, but it’s fun to analyze and discuss it.

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