PA Bill Number: SB945
Title: Consolidating the act of August 9, 1955 (P.L.323, No.130), known as The County Code; and making repeals.
Description: Consolidating the act of August 9, 1955 (P.L.323, No.130), known as The County Code; and making repeals. ...
Last Action: Third consideration and final passage (199-0)
Last Action Date: Apr 17, 2024
Colorado woman uses red flag law against officer who shot and killed her knife-wielding son :: 01/15/2020
FORT COLLINS, COLORADO- I’m trying so hard to stop laughing so I can tell you how stupid a Colorado woman is. I hate to speak ill of her since she has lost a child, but there really is no better word to describe her based on what she’s trying to do.
I’ll compose myself now, but only because besides being entertained, I’m also a little frightened by her intent. And by the possibility of her intent becoming a reality.
Let me back up. In 2017, Jeremy Holmes encountered 2 police officers, Colorado State University Police Corporal Phillip Morris and Fort Collins Police Services Officer Erin Mast.
Holmes was holding a large hunting knife and telling the officers to shoot him. On the officer’s body camera footage, viewers can hear Corporal Morris telling Holmes to put his knife down 36 times in 2 minutes.
As Corporal Morris started to put his gun away (he later stated that he intended to use his taser to subdue the subject), Holmes charged at the Corporal with the knife unsheathed and raised.
Corporal Morris and Officer Mast both fired at Holmes, which resulted in his death.
District Attorney Clifford Riedel said that the shooting was “clearly justified.”
But Holmes’ mom, Susan Holmes, was not satisfied.
Susan has taken advantage of a new “Red Flag” gun law, enacted January 1 of this year, and filed for an extreme risk protection order (ERPO) against Corporal Morris.
I’ll say that again: Susan has filed for an ERPO against the police officer involved in the justified shooting death of her son.
Yes, I’m serious, and yes, that’s why I couldn’t stop laughing.
The terms of an ERPO in Colorado require a person to be a family member, household member or law enforcement officer to petition the court to take a person’s firearms from them if the person is considered to be a danger to himself or others.
In her petition, which is signed under penalty of perjury, Susan says Corporal Morris is a family member. More specifically, that they have a child together. Susan has told reporters that she plans to offer a different interpretation of the term “child in common.”
As if that wasn’t sick and twisted enough, Susan goes on to say in the petition:
“Phil Morris used his firearm to recklessly & violently threaten and kill 19-year-old Jeremy Holmes.”
Oh, Susan. Stupid, stupid Susan.
After Jeremy’s death, Susan began advocating for the release of an officer’s body cam footage related to the shooting. Not the footage of Corporal Morris or Officer Mast, because those were released in a reasonable amount of time, as per policy. Susan wants a 3rd officer’s footage, an officer who wasn’t even on scene with the involved officers at the time they encountered Jeremy.
Susan has seen the footage and wants it released to the public to show that Corporal Morris “unnecessarily escalated a situation that could have been resolved peacefully.”
It’s unclear if Susan believes that the unnecessary escalation occurred before or after Jeremy ran towards him with a knife raised in the air yelling for the Corporal to “Kill me!”
Susan alleges that the video shows Corporal Morris “completely losing control” after the shooting. In her words:
“All of his [Jeremy’s] blood is flowing out — he’s bleeding out right there on camera — and the officer is still pointing his gun at him and screaming at him to drop his knife.”
When I read that, I was a little bit sorry for laughing. We all know that continuing to point a gun at a downed violent suspect and demanding they drop their weapon is Officer Safety 101, but Susan doesn’t know that.
Susan is stupid for filing for the ERPO, and illogical in her thought process, but she’s a grieving mother and just wants to point the blame at someone so she doesn’t have to point it at her son or herself.
But then I read more about the incident and what led up to the shooting. I don’t feel sorry anymore.
Jeremy was allegedly dealing with “chronic pain” and decided to self-medicate with marijuana. Feeling sick the next day, Jeremy went to the hospital, where they discovered high levels of THC in his blood.
Susan believes Jeremy suffered from a rare condition called cannabis-induced psychosis. She said:
“His eyes never looked right and he had emotional swings. Sometimes he would seem fine, but other times, he would talk about all kinds of weird things. He was never the same after that.”
For whatever reason, Jeremy started making threats against his older brother, Alex, who lives on the CSU campus with his wife. Jeremy purchased the aforementioned knife 3 days prior to his contact with police.
On the day of the shooting, Jeremy was depressed and angry that Alex told him he was too busy for a visit.
Susan believes Jeremy had smoked more marijuana prior to leaving the house with his knife and heading to Alex’s house after telling Susan that he wanted to kill Alex.
Susan called Alex to warn him, but he didn’t answer, so she called the police. Susan said she called police to have them go to Alex’s house and warn him not to answer the door.
“I also said Jeremy was mentally ill,” she later said. “I used that term specifically.”
Ok, cops, we are all thinking the same thing: Susan sent the police to a home to warn someone that someone else was coming to kill him with a large knife and then told police he was mentally ill and possibly high.
What in the hell else did you expect the officers to do when said mentally ill, high, homicidal person charged at them?
Well here’s what Susan didn’t expect them to do. She says:
“The CSU campus police officer [Corporal Morris] drove up to Jeremy with his lights on — drove up really quickly, as if it was an emergency. He jumped out of his car with his gun, and when he saw that, Jeremy started to act suicidal.
He pulled the knife out of the sheath and started waving it around, saying, ‘Kill me. Please kill me. I want to die.’ The officer kept barking at him to drop the knife, but Jeremy kept walking toward him. He didn’t charge him in the beginning. He was just walking, and the officer was backing up.”
She continues:
“Another police officer, from the city [Officer Mast], drove up, did a U-turn and pulled her gun out. She told Jeremy to drop the knife, too, and that’s when Jeremy moved more strongly toward the CSU campus officer, and they started shooting him. They both fired. There were six shots.”
I know we’re still on the same page here with these statements, so I’ll just move on.
An online Colorado publication, Westword interviewed Susan a year after the incident. Susan was frustrated because she had been unsuccessful in getting the 3rd officer’s footage released. The Westword reported:
“Susan feels strongly that if these officers had treated Jeremy like someone in the midst of a mental health episode rather than a criminal, he’d still be alive today.
And she sees the decision to release the body-camera videos associated with Morris and Mast but not the one from Aron [the 3rd officer on scene] as a coverup on the part of District Attorney Riedel.”
A coverup for what? Officer Aron wasn’t even on scene.
Susan continued in the interview with Westword:
“Jeremy was an innocent nineteen-year-old, a big kid who skateboarded and designed computer games. He was in a mental health crisis from a reaction to cannabis. He never committed a crime in his life.”
Well, he never committed a crime in his life until threatening to kill his brother and then charging at police officers with a large hunting knife. But yes. He was innocent.
Back to the ERPO. A judge is scheduled to hear the case this Thursday. Colorado House Minority Leader Representative Patrick Neville said on social media that this case shows the bill was “horribly written.”
In the beginning of this article, I told you I was laughing, and it was true. But I also said that I’m a little scared of her intent, as well as the possible outcome.
I want to say that the entire thing is so ridiculous that a judge will barely let Susan say her name before dismissing the ERPO petition. But with the way society is these days, with the ridiculousness of the laws that are being passed and the people who are (and aren’t) being put in jail…I just don’t know.
The possibility, combined with Susan’s creepy “child in common” argument, is what’s scaring me. A fear which, much like Corporal Morris’ shooting of Jeremy Holmes, is “completely justified.”
