Holly MatkinFarmington, UT – The family of an armed suspect who was fatally shot by police during a traffic stop earlier this month has accused police of “stonewalling” them and claim his death was a “brutal murder” (video below).
Farmington Police Chief Eric Johnsen released bodycam footage of the incident during a press conference on Thursday.
The footage released on March 9 was a compilation of five bodycams from the officers who were present at the time of the encounter, as well as dashcam footage from the initial officer’s patrol vehicle.
The incident began at approximately 3:22 p.m. on March 1, when a Farmington police officer stopped a blue BMW in the 100-block of East State Street due to an “illegitimate license plate,” Chief Johnsen said.
The driver, later identified as 25-year-old Chase Allan, pulled over in the parking lot of a post office at that location, dashcam footage showed.
The officer approached Allan’s vehicle and knocked on the window, then greeted him and told him he had pulled him over because he did not have registration on his vehicle.
“I don’t need registration and I don’t answer questions,” Allan quickly told him.
“Alrighty,” the officer responded.
“The driver immediately begins asserting his independence from the law,” the Farmington Police Department (FPD) noted in the video.
That’s when the officer radioed for additional units to respond to his location.
He then continued explaining the reason for the stop to Allan and asked him for his identification, noting he was being detained and was not free to leave the scene, bodycam footage showed.
“Are you going to provide me your identification?” the officer asked.
“I don’t answer questions,” Allan responded.
“Okay, so I’m going to take that as a no, that you are not going to provide me your identification,” the officer told him. “Is that the route we’re going? Or would you like to provide your identification to me, we can have a conversation, we can discuss the laws that you’re breaking, and then we can go from there?”
Allan then told the officer that if he complied with his request, it would “be under duress,” the video showed.
“If you want my identification, you will be under duress, and you accept surety and trusteeship over it, and you will be responsible for any debts that you are trying to incur here,” he informed the officer.
The suspect proceeded to rattle off various numbers and apparent legal codes as he continued to insist the officer was trying to incur a debt upon him.
The officer calmly explained that Allan did not legally have an option regarding identifying himself.
“You are lawfully required to identify yourself,” he reiterated. “The direction that this encounter goes is 100 percent in your hands.”
Allan ultimately showed the officer his passport through his slightly-opened car window.
“Wonderful! Do you have a driver’s license as well?” the officer asked.
“I am not giving you jurisdiction,” Allan retorted. “Do not stop. Do not detain. You are not allowed to stop me…”
The suspect finally handed over his passport after additional back-and-forth with the officer.
“That is not me,” he told the officer a moment later. “That is a piece of plastic paper.”
The officer then asked Allan if he was indicating his passport was fraudulent, which Allan denied.
The officer asked the suspect to step out of the vehicle, but he flatly refused, bodycam footage showed.
“I am not required to,” Allan retorted.
He told the officers they would “have an issue” if they pushed him any further, the video showed.
The initial officer made several more requests for Allan to get out of the car and a second officer warned him that they would break the window out and pull him from the vehicle if he did not comply.
Police noted that at nearly the same moment, Allan swapped his cell phone from his right hand to his left hand and moved his right hand down near a holster concealed beneath his jacket on his right hip, the video showed.
“You can clearly see the holster exposed as he’s pulled his coat back,” Chief Johnsen said during the video briefing.
As the initial officer opened the driver’s door of the car, Allan’s hand moved towards the holster on his right hip, the video showed.
The second officer attempted to pull the suspect out of the vehicle just before an officer started repeatedly yelling “gun, gun, gun!”
Multiple officers opened fire, shooting the suspect several times, bodycam footage showed.
Police then removed Allan from the car.
“An empty holster is visible on Mr. Allan’s right hip,” the FPD noted. “A gun is visible on the floorboard of the vehicle.”
The suspect was rushed to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead, NBC News reported.
No officers were physically injured during the incident.
All five officers fired their guns at the suspect, Chief Johnsen confirmed.
He said four of the five officers at the scene had been with the FPD for a maximum of eight months.
The fifth officer is a 12-year veteran of the department.
They have all been placed on administrative leave while the investigation is pending, as per protocol.
Chief Johnsen said he believes the officers “made a lawful and reasonable traffic stop and dealt with someone that was… noncompliant… I see them deal with him professionally, even-keeled, cool, calm, and collected temperament, and unfortunately then I see things go a really tragic direction.”
The Davis County Critical Incident Protocol Team is handling the ongoing investigation into the fatal officer-involved shooting.
Chief Johnsen said that the protocol team assigned the Bountiful Police Department with the task of contacting Allan’s family.
“I know that they made multiple attempts to reach out to the family,” the chief told reporters on Thursday. “The last I heard was that the family had not responded back. That offer was given to them – or at least attempted to be given to them – before you all viewed [the video footage]. I don’t know where that stands.”
Allan’s family has characterized his death as a “brutal murder” at the hands of police, NBC News reported.
They accused police of “stonewalling” them, and said they learned about Allan’s death through the media as opposed to being contacted by law enforcement.
The family said Allan recently graduated from Utah State University, where he had been studying law, NBC News reported.
They described him as a “loving soul” and as a “patriot doing what he could to defend the people’s freedom and liberty in his community,” according to the news outlet.
Reporters asked Chief Johnsen on Thursday if the officers at scene of the traffic stop were aware of the Allan family’s history with the FPD.
The chief said he does not believe they were, especially considering the fact that four of them have only been on the force for seven or eight months at most.
Allan’s mother, Diane Killian Allan, was stopped by Farmington police in April of 2022 for expired vehicle registration and subsequently sued the department that September over the case, KTVX reported.
The self-declared “sovereign citizen” is representing herself in the ongoing lawsuit and argued she is not under the jurisdiction of the city county, state, or federal government.
Watch the incident unfold in the video below. Warning – Graphic Content and Obscene Language:
Sandy Malone
