Built like a tank, and trained to face armed suspects, Justin Dodge is the last man you would expect to have a hobby of growing delicate flowers. The 51-year-old SWAT sergeant for the Denver Police Department is learning to appreciate the finer things in life, perhaps because he’s learned how fragile life can be.
In 2023, Dodge nearly died in the line of duty. He survived but lost his left leg below the knee. Although he still leads teams of armed SWAT officers on operations almost every day, he enjoys planting perennials in his garden during his days off.
Less than 10 years ago, the model for SWAT members tackling high-risk search warrants—in which firearms or violent felons are often involved—was the stereotypical TV scenario: SWAT members armed to the teeth would huddle outside a door, then batter the door open and seize the suspect. Now that’s all changed.
“Our culture, everything we do, involves saving lives,” Dodge told The Epoch Times. “That is key.”
The new model is more cautious. SWAT members with armored vehicles work alongside hostage negotiators and detectives to do everything possible to bring suspects outside to ensure that everybody is safe at the end of the day.
Dodge trains every day for that self-defining moment when hostages’ lives are on the line. He said he faced about 10 such scenarios as a SWAT member and that each operation is unique and unpredictable. He brought those experiences back to base to train other SWAT members.
“You have a specific job,” he said. “A lot of times in the movies, people are thinking about their life and their family, none of that is actually accurate.”
The focus is on reaching the hostage and separating him or her from the suspect to save as many lives as possible.
Dodge lost his lower left leg by placing himself between innocent civilians and a potential threat.
More than a million people showed up for the Denver Nuggets Championship Parade in June 2023. To protect them from harm, Denver Police SWAT units were deployed. Dodge and his team were assigned to a part of the parade downtown where a raucous situation almost boiled over into mayhem.
The officers were patrolling in ATVs on both sides of the parade route when a fire truck carrying NBA player Jamal Murray in the parade stalled. The fire truck fell far behind while anxious fans were waiting to see the basketball star, who was signing hats and jerseys.
“As the truck was going, probably halfway through the parade people basically disregarded barricades and the barriers; there [was a] massive influx of people moving onto the truck,” Dodge said.
He led a response team to rescue the fire truck’s passengers amid throngs of fans seeking signed memorabilia.
“There were so many people surrounding [the truck], they had no idea who was even throwing items,” Dodge said. “They would throw this item back down into this mass.”
Fans swarmed the slow-moving 80,000-pound fire truck while SWAT officers worked to hold them at bay.
“There would be people fighting for that particular object, and the crowd turned into a very frenzied, frenzied crowd,” said Dodge, who guessed that 25,000 people had surrounded the truck.
A hazard amid the chaos caught Dodge off guard. The fire truck made a sharp turn along the route, and its wheels jutted out much farther from the wheel wells than he expected. Pressed against the fire truck’s passenger side by the crowd, his leg was caught under the truck’s huge front tire.
“The crowd was so large, there was so much noise, that once it grabbed my leg and started pulling me under, there was no way for the engineer who was driving the truck to realize that there was a Denver Police officer that was trapped and being sucked underneath the truck,” Dodge said.
His training kicked in and kept him conscious while he felt “every single bone” in his foot being crushed.
The driver was alerted within seconds. But the tires pivoted and ground Dodge’s leg into pulp before the truck finally backed up and freed him. SWAT members applied a tourniquet, which Dodge said saved his life, and rushed him to the hospital.
At Denver Health, a doctor made a wise decision that salvaged the officer’s career. For the first several surgeries, they avoided amputation, though that was a foregone conclusion. In doing so, they spared Dodge an above-the-knee amputation and allowed for one below the knee. That made a world of difference.
An above-the-knee amputation would mean the loss of mobility and many other things that could destroy a man: It could crater his mental and physical health, independence, and SWAT career.
“When I woke up after the first surgery and they had put my leg back together, I was actually really upset because I knew how badly injured I was,” Dodge said. “In Dr. Mauffrey’s genius, he knew that if he didn’t try to do some type of a salvation at the beginning, there weren’t going to be enough soft tissues that had an opportunity to heal.”
On the fateful day, Dodge had been courageous. The words “comeback” echoed in his mind. Though “dark days” fell upon him as he lay bedridden, Dodge started going back to the gym immediately after his third surgery. In January 2024, he received his prosthetic leg. On May 11, he returned to the team as a fully operational SWAT member.
According to Dodge, the loss of his leg has not affected his performance as a SWAT member.
“It actually, truly has not,” Dodge told The Epoch Times in September.
He passed the team’s “very rigorous” firearms and fitness tests with flying colors and said he’s a better SWAT officer than ever. Also a Brazilian jujitsu black belt, he still rolls on the mat. He’s in the best shape of his life, he said. Former NBA performance coach Steve Hess helped Dodge grasp the key to peak performance: “absolute consistency.”
When not leading ops, saving hostages, and arresting armed suspects, Dodge attends his kids’ lacrosse games and nurtures delicate blooms at home.
