At 4:07 p.m. on Sunday, June 28, the 911 calls came in from 44th Street and Thomas Road. A man was acting erratically in the Bank of America parking lot. Rolling on the ground. Hurting himself.
Phoenix Police Officer Danny Olmos got there first. Alone.
What happened over the next twelve minutes is on his body camera, and the Phoenix Police Department has released it. Phoenix New Times built a piece from it last week as part of its extreme heat series. The Valley 10-8 watched it for a different reason. We wanted to see the job.
The call
The man on the ground was Devin Julius Alford, 34. Olmos walked up and spoke to him quietly. He told Alford it was the police. He told him to relax. He rolled him onto his stomach and handcuffed him, telling Alford he was going to be alright and that they were going to get him help.
Then Alford stopped moving.
Olmos took the handcuffs off, checked for a pulse, got on his radio, and started chest compressions.
For nearly five minutes, he did them by himself. No partner. No medic. A Phoenix parking lot in late June, a man who was not breathing, and one officer pushing on his chest and talking to him the whole time.
"Fight, man! Come on."
That's the line that stuck with everybody who watched the tape. It's not a command. It's a plea.
Help arrives
Officer Karissa Kroblen pulled in and took over compressions. A winded Olmos told her "I've got Narcan in my car" and went for it. The officers gave Alford a dose, then a second one about 30 seconds later.
Phoenix Fire arrived seven and a half minutes after Olmos started CPR. A firefighter took over compressions while the crew started IVs and readied the stretcher. Olmos didn't leave. He stayed on scene while they worked.
Fire transported Alford to Valleywise. He was pronounced dead there.
What the tape can't tell you
The Arizona Department of Public Safety's Major Incident Division is investigating Alford's death, as it does every in-custody death in Phoenix. The Medical Examiner will rule on the cause. Whether the handcuffing played any part is DPS's question to answer, not ours, and we'll report what they find, whatever it is.
What the tape does show is a patrol officer who, the second a man stopped breathing, dropped everything and tried to bring him back. Hard. Alone. Out loud.
It also happened in the middle of the deadliest heat season the Valley has had in years. As of early October, Maricopa County had confirmed 275 heat deaths, with 515 more still under investigation. Alford's cause of death has not been made public, and we won't guess at it. But the officers answering "man down" calls this summer were answering a lot of them.
The part nobody films
The body camera shuts off. The shift doesn't.
An officer goes home from a call like this and nobody claps. There's no rescue story on the news. There's a report to write, an investigation coming, a family who lost a son, and a guy who spent five minutes counting compressions on a stranger who didn't make it.
Phoenix PD does have a system for that. The department runs an Employee Assistance Unit built around peer support, the idea that the first call after a bad call should come from another cop. It opened a new Employee Wellness Center at Black Mountain Precinct this year, open to all of its more than 3,100 employees, alongside the main center at headquarters. And it just said goodbye to Chaplain Bob Fesmire, who spent eleven years showing up at critical incidents, officer shootings and hospital rooms.
All of that matters more when there are fewer people to share the load. As of July, Phoenix had 2,467 sworn officers, sixty fewer than two years ago. That's why Olmos was alone for five minutes. Not because anybody failed him. Because there's nobody extra.
What we're asking
We want to hear from Officer Olmos, or from his sergeant, if he'd rather not. Not about the investigation. About the job. What do you do with your hands after five minutes of CPR? Who calls you that night? Does peer support actually reach a patrol officer on a Sunday afternoon?
And we want to know from the department: what happens, step by step, for an officer after an in-custody death. Who's notified. Who checks in. How long before he's back in a car.
Most of policing never makes the news. This one did, and mostly for the wrong reasons. The Valley 10-8 thinks the tape is worth watching for the right one. We are in service.
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How we reported this: this account is drawn from Phoenix Police Department's June 2026 media advisory, released body camera footage as described in Phoenix New Times' Oct. 21 report, and public statements on Phoenix PD wellness programs, staffing and Maricopa County heat data. We have not reviewed the full unedited footage, and the DPS investigation and Medical Examiner's ruling are pending. We will ask the Phoenix Police Department whether Officer Olmos or his sergeant will speak with us, and what support officers receive after an in-custody death, and will update this story with the answer. Corrections and information: [email protected].