DENVER — Max Garcia could smell the burning rubber.
Someone had called 911 to report a person carrying a possible assault rifle, and Garcia was in a police SUV about a mile and a half away from where the man carrying it had been spotted.
The car wheeled around, its emergency lights flashing.
"We're really in it," Garcia recalled thinking.
A few minutes later, they approached the scene and saw that a few officers were already talking to someone in the parking lot behind a car wash.