Police bodycam footage in Colorado exposes ‘egregious’ misconduct

Nonprofit news outlet Blue Surveillance, with free legal support from a Reporters Committee attorney, recently obtained police body-worn camera footage showing an officer in central Colorado holding a gun to an unarmed man’s head and threatening to shoot him. 

The Wheat Ridge Police Department initially refused to disclose the recording in response to a public records request filed by Blue Surveillance Executive Director Andrew Fraieli. But the department turned over the bodycam footage after Colorado-based Reporters Committee attorney Rachael Johnson sent a letter on behalf of Fraieli demanding access. 

As Blue Surveillance reported last month, the two-and-a-half minute video shows Wheat Ridge police officer Carlos Bowdre and other officers chasing after an unarmed man in May 2025. When the officers finally catch up to the suspect, Bowdre presses his handgun to the man’s head and screams, “I’ll put a f****** bullet in your head.”

Bowdre was terminated for cause a few months after the incident, according to Blue Surveillance.

In an interview with the Reporters Committee, Fraieli said he obtained a copy of Bowdre’s termination letter from the police department after seeing the officer’s name pop up on a state database that tracks police certifications and decertifications.

The letter described Bowdre’s actions during the May 2025 incident and explained that the local district attorney dismissed the criminal case against the suspect, who had allegedly stolen a laptop, because the “conduct by Officer Bowdre was too aggravating for the charges filed.” A deputy district attorney called Bowdre’s behavior “one of the most egregious things I’ve seen.”

For Fraieli, whose news outlet exclusively covers police misconduct, reading the description of the incident wasn’t enough. He — and his readers — needed to see it. So in April 2026, Fraieli filed separate public records requests with the police department and the local district attorney’s office seeking access to bodycam footage of the arrest, as well as an Internal Affairs investigation report. 

Both offices denied Fraieli’s request. Officials argued that the bodycam footage could not be released because it was part of the criminal case against the man who was arrested, which had been dismissed and sealed. 

That’s when Fraieli turned to Johnson and the Reporters Committee for help.

After Fraieli explained the situation, Johnson drafted a three-page letter to the police department and district attorney’s office, challenging their denial of the journalist’s request. The letter noted that the sealing of the court file is “irrelevant” because the bodycam footage “exists outside of the context of the court file.” It also explained that both offices were withholding the recording in violation of two Colorado laws, including the police accountability law passed in 2020 and the state’s Criminal Justice Records Act. 

About a week after receipt of the letter, the city released the bodycam video, Blue Surveillance reported. Fraieli credits Johnson for making it happen. 

If not for her free legal support, “these records would have just languished on a hard drive somewhere, and no one would have ever been able to see them,” he said. “Sometimes all it takes is a strongly worded letter for an agency to go, ‘they’re serious.’”

Fraieli added that the Reporters Committee is an invaluable resource for police accountability reporting — one that he is excited to continue taking advantage of. 

“It opens up more of what we are capable of as Blue Surveillance knowing that I have that sort of backup,” he said. “It broadens what I think is possible for us.”