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In the early morning hours of Aug. 19, Phoenix police officer Jordan Rezac shot 47-year-old Rocky Joe Ellis outside an IHOP near Northern and 21st avenues. Then, according to body-worn camera footage released by the Phoenix Police Department, officers waited six minutes to render life-saving aid as Ellis lay motionless on the ground.
Ellis was later pronounced dead, becoming the fifth person killed by Phoenix police this year. Phoenix cops killed a sixth person later that same month.
On Tuesday, Phoenix police released a “critical incident briefing” video on the shooting and Ellis’ death. The department’s briefings are narrated by officers and made public after any police shooting or in-custody death. They typically include a limited selection of dispatch audio and body-worn camera footage.
The briefing on Ellis’ killing shows the moments leading up to his death, during which he kept approaching officers with a hatchet and a knife despite being hit with two rounds from a less-lethal 40-millimeter stun baton launcher.
However, the department’s briefing does not include body-cam footage from after Rezac shot Ellis. That footage, released by the department in response to a public records request, showed multiple officers standing idly, guns still trained on Ellis, for six minutes before moving to attend to his wounds. At one point, an unidentified officer fired another stun baton at Ellis to seemingly make sure he was immobile.
Phoenix police spokesperson Sgt. Lorraine Fernandez told New Times that "we typically do not show medical aid being rendered in CIB videos," which are meant "to show what led up to the shooting. For transparency, the body-worn camera is always available by request."
Ellis’ killing isn’t the first time relevant information has been left out of the department’s video briefings. After police shot and killed Sergio Alvarez in May 2024, the briefing on his death included no body-cam footage from officers who rendered aid or from a nearby surveillance camera. The latter footage, which was obtained by Alvarez’s family, showed officers kicking the thrice-shot Alvarez and waiting several minutes to render life-saving aid.
Asked at the time about the lack of post-shooting footage in the department’s briefing, Phoenix police spokesperson Donna Rossi said, "We don't use that body camera footage because it's not pertinent to what the community wants to hear.”
That post-shooting body-cam footage is available at all is unique. Requests for most body-cam videos are caught in a years-long backlog by the department’s public records office. Footage from officer-involved shootings is expedited, however, since Phoenix police must prepare that footage for critical incident briefings.
Phoenix police have also been previously criticized for waiting to render aid to those they’ve shot. In June 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice found in its searing report on Phoenix police that its officers often unreasonably delayed rendering aid to people they shot and used force — including from supposedly less-lethal weapons, as was used on Ellis — against people who were already incapacitated.
After six minutes of standing around following the shooting of Rocky Joe Ellis on Aug. 19, an officer fires a less-lethal stun baton at Ellis before police rendered medical aid.
Phoenix Police Department
What happened
Phoenix police were summoned to the IHOP around 4 a.m. on Aug. 19. In 911 call audio included in the briefing, one IHOP employee said Ellis was walking around the restaurant with a hatchet, a knife and a chisel. A customer also called the emergency line and said Ellis kept entering the restaurant.“I’m actually — I fear for my life,” the woman told a 911 operator.
According to a police incident report obtained by New Times, a cook at the restaurant later told officers that Ellis had entered the restaurant an hour before without a shirt, asking for water and an apron to wear. He was given water but asked to leave. One IHOP employee told police that Ellis had been a “continuous problem for the restaurant all day.”
The police report says Ellis later returned with a hatchet and a knife and confronted the restaurant hostess. Per the report, a customer intervened by flashing a gun at Ellis, who commented something akin to “I have knives for days.” (The report said the man’s gun was collected by police as evidence.) The woman who called 911 told police later that Ellis then began cutting himself with the hatchet and stepped outside when police arrived on the scene.
Body-cam footage shows what occurred next. Upon arrival, one officer ordered Ellis to drop his knife, but Ellis said no.
“You’re gonna get hurt, dude,” the officer responded.
The officer then grabbed a 40-millimeter stun baton launcher from the trunk of a police Tahoe while another officer began yelling at Ellis more aggressively to drop his weapon.
“Hey, I don’t want to hurt you. I will,” the officer with the less-lethal weapon said.
With at least three officers pointing weapons at Ellis from the sidewalk, Ellis began to walk toward them as they yelled several times for him to drop his knife. After the officer with the stun baton launcher fired twice at Ellis, Rezac fired a rifle at least four times. Audio from Rezac’s body camera from before the shooting is not available; footage showed he did not activate it until after he shot Ellis.
After being shot, Ellis dropped to the ground and remained motionless. For the next six minutes, almost nobody moved.
“Hold on,” said the officer with the stun baton launcher as he put on rubber gloves. “Let’s take a beat.”
After two minutes, officers noted that a knife and a hatchet remained on the ground near Ellis. After six minutes, the officer with the stun baton launcher shot Ellis again, issuing a brief warning to a motionless Ellis to move away from the weapons beforehand. Only then did officers move in to render aid.
Ellis was the fifth person killed by Phoenix police this year. Phoenix police later shot and killed a sixth person on Aug. 31. Last year, Phoenix officers shot and killed 14 people, an increase from 12 in 2023 and 10 in 2022.
Fernandez said Rezac has not yet returned to patrol duty. The Arizona Department of Public Safety is conducting a criminal investigation into Ellis’ death, the conclusions of which will be reviewed by the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. The Phoenix Police Department is also running its own internal investigation to determine if the officers’ actions were in line with policy.
