The prohibited military tracer rounds were purchased privately by Fitzgibbons for use in his police issued military style assault rifle.
Fitzgibbons and another officer responded to early morning shots fired near the night club. When they arrived they found the suspect Sorl Shead, firing wildly into the air. When Shead saw the officers he lowered his gun and Fitzgibbons and his partner opened fire on Shead with multiple rounds from their assault rifles.
All the officers’ rounds missed the suspect, but fragments from two illegal rounds hit innocent bystander Diamond Demmer. Demmer was taken to a hospital to treat her non-life-threatening wounds.
Fitzgibbons was fired this week by Denver Manager of Safety, Charles Garcia for failing to follow department rules on prohibited ammunition in police weapons. Fitzgibbons was found innocent of any criminal charges by District Attorney Mitch Morrissey.
This year nine Denver
Any regular reader of the Wire, and I hope there are a few, knows that I often report on the militaristic attitudes and abusive practices of the Colorado
This type of ammo is used by the military to mark fire on a target several hundred yards away – at night. This capability is rarely, if ever, needed by law enforcement. The rounds are so highly incendiary and tend to fragment easily, sending burning pieces of metal into innocent bystanders.
Since both the police and the DA seem to think they are at war, as evident by no criminal charges being filed against any abusive officers, collateral “civilian” casualties must be an acceptable risk for our justice system.
Another unique aspect of the tracer round (and I would bet the real reason Fitzgibbons and his friends load their assault rifles with the burning bullets) is that when fired into human flesh at close range it creates a dramatic spark and fiery flash from the incendiary chemicals as it is fragmented by bone and ignites the fleas. Depending on the chemical coloring, the light show coming from the wounds can be either a dramatic green or a vibrant orange.
It is my guess that this dramatic fatal light show is what Fitgibbons and his fellow brothers-in-arms were after when choosing to break the law and load their assault weapons with tracers - not the intended purpose of the rounds to mass fire on an enemy objective 300 yards away. Why else would the officers choose to use assault rifles when service pistols would have worked just as well? The police can't argue accuracy and increased fire power in this case - they missed the suspect with every round...maybe the ''cool'' light show they wanted so badly distracted them. No, this was a case of wanting to shoot someone with their military weapons and tell comrades how awesome the tracers looked burning through flesh. This was a case, like all the others, of cops desperately wanting to live the delusion of combat soldier on our streets.
As is often the case in "real" war, the only causality in this incident was an innocent woman. I wonder if Fitzgibbons and his partner got the trill they were looking for when they watched the flaming metal burn into the flesh of Ms. Demmer? How they are not in jail is a mystery.
Kurt Vonnegut, the famous American satirist, predicted our current tragedy when he wrote almost a quarter century ago in his novel Bluebeard:
"Nowadays, of course, just about our only solvent industry is the merchandising of death, bankrolled by our grandchildren so that the message of our principal art forms, movies and television and political speech and newspaper columns, for the sake of the economy, simply has to be this: War is hell, all right, but the only way a boy can become a man is in a shoot-out of some kind preferably, but by no means necessarily on a battlefield.”
I guess if the “boy” Fitzgibbons has now made himself a “man,” what a small price the burns and wounds of Ms. Demmer.
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