Phoenix Police Department
Audio By Carbonatix
On the morning of Sept. 28, a neighbor of David Steinbach called police, worried that the military veteran was going to kill himself. That afternoon, nearly six hours after officers arrived on the scene, Steinbach came out of the apartment with a gun and allegedly pointed it at police.
Then an officer, whom the Phoenix Police Department has publicly identified only by the last name Perez, shot Steinbach, who was later pronounced dead at a hospital. The 52-year-old Steinbach was the eighth person killed by Phoenix police this year; there has since been a ninth. Last year, Phoenix officers shot and killed 14 people, an increase from 12 in 2023 and 10 in 2022.
However, crucial aspects of Steinbach’s death cannot be confirmed — or refuted — by police records released by the department. Video of Steinbach’s killing was released Friday as part of a “critical incident briefing” created by Phoenix police. The department’s briefings are narrated by officers and made public after any police shooting or in-custody death. In addition to body-worn camera footage, the briefings typically include a limited selection of dispatch audio or surveillance footage from nearby businesses.
The body cam footage provided by police in Steinbach’s shooting — both on department channels and in response to a public records request by Phoenix New Times — reveals very little about the fatal interaction between police and Steinbach. Police provided no incident report, despite having done so regarding previous fatal shootings, and provided body-cam footage only from Perez.
Perez’s body-cam footage illuminates little. It shows him aiming a rifle from inside the top of a massive armored car. The camera’s view of what happened is completely blocked by the inside of the vehicle, though given that the cameras are chest-mounted, that’s to be expected for an officer pointing a weapon from behind cover. As a result, Steinbach is not visible on the footage until after he’s been shot, which means the camera did not capture the moment he supposedly pointed his gun at police.
While other officers on the scene were sure to have filmed more of the confrontation with the suicidal veteran, the department did not provide their footage in response to New Times’ request.
For several decades, Steinbach served in the United States Army in the command unit responsible for overseeing special operations forces, according to his LinkedIn page. Matt Larsen, who appears to have served with Steinbach, posted on Facebook about his death.
“Just found out about Dave Steinbach,” Larsen wrote. “He was a good man and a hell of a good Ranger. To all my old Ranger buddies and fellow Soldiers, we have to do better.”
Nicholas Irivng, a special operations sniper, also posted on X about the death.
“I knew him to be a great leader/NCO, and a legend in combat. Always smiling and looked after his men. NO MATTER WHAT. All around solid man!” Irving said. “It sucks to have to hear about another brother losing his life because of the battle within.”
The shooting
The briefing begins with audio from a 911 dispatch conversation between an operator and Steinbach’s frightened neighbor.
“He just pulled a gun out right now, put it at his head,” the neighbor said. “And he was shooting something else in the house. We’re afraid.”
Police spokesperson Sgt. Jen Zak said officers arrived around 10 a.m. and sent a drone into the residence around 3:45 p.m. The department did not provide any information about what happened during those five hours and 45 minutes. Body camera footage provided to Phoenix New Times only shows footage from about 3 p.m. until 3:50 p.m., three minutes after Perez shot Steinbach.
Almost all of the footage merely shows the inside of the armored vehicle. Some police negotiating can be heard in the footage.
“This all stops when you come out that front door and put your hands up,” someone says to Steinbach through an amplified speaker. “You have nothing to prove.”
Footage from the drone sent into Steinbach’s apartment shows him with a gun in his hand. Though it’s unclear if the drone’s presence prompted him to do so, Steinbech then walked with the gun outside a sliding glass door in his apartment. Seemingly shortly thereafter — the drone footage is not timestamped — officers could be heard on Perez’s body-cam footage yelling at him to drop the gun. Then Perez fired three rifle shots.
Perez then stands up enough to reveal Steinbach, on his back and writhing, with the gun on the ground next to him. “Hey, roll over on your stomach and crawl!” an unidentified officer says to him. Steinbach does not respond. About a minute after the shots, officers in military gear and riot shields approach Steinbach’s body while others enter his apartment to clear the scene.
Steinbach was taken to a hospital, police said, where he was pronounced dead.
Steinbach’s killing is being investigated by the Arizona Department of Public Safety’s Major Incident Division, and Phoenix police are conducting an internal investigation to ensure the officers’ actions were in line with department policy. The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office will ultimately decide whether criminal charges are warranted.
Though the Phoenix Police Department’s public-facing use-of-force database has not been updated in months, none of the police shootings included in it so far have been found to have violated department policy.
