Officer shoots armed man in downtown Seattle

The first confrontation happened just before 3 a.m. A security guard at a downtown building called police about a man with what appeared to be a handgun.

Police arrested the 25-year-old man, who was taken to Harborview Medical Center for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries.

An officer used a Taser, but it failed to stop the suspect, according to police.

Police say the officers ordered the man to drop his gun and then fired shots, striking the suspect once. Video of the incident shows the man repeatedly refusing to follow officers’ orders to drop the weapon. Officers recovered the suspect’s weapon, which turned out to be a realistic-looking pellet gun. Callers said the male suspect had run away.

In another officer involved shooting incident, SPD officers in the North Precinct responded at 4:45 am to a report of a vehicle prowl in-progress in the Maple Leaf neighborhood. Near Roosevelt Way Northeast and Northeast 100th Street, the man threatened officers with a knife, he said.

The man was taken to Harborview Medical Center.

In the dash cam recording you hear an officer yell, “put your knife down”.

The department has placed two officers on paid administrative leave per standard department policy.

“We feel there is a lot of value for the public to see these videos as close to the incident as possible”, said Seattle police Sgt. Sean Whitcomb.

Of roughly 185,000 contacts between citizen and Seattle police in 2014, only 735 ended in use of force.

On August. 25, Seattle police shot and wounded a man at a homeless encampment after he allegedly fatally beat a homeless woman and wounded her husband.