Federal prosecutors said they could not show the officer acted “intentionally” when he fired 13 shots into the minivan in two short bursts, in a killing captured by three police dash cameras. Six of the shots hit the driver. The decision, announced by the Justice Department’s civil rights division in Washington, was the second prosecutorial decision to exonerate former officer Clayton Jenison. wrongdoing. A month after the January 2018 slaying, the district attorney in Johnson County, Kan., also declined charges, saying Jennison had a reasonable fear of being hit by the van driven by Jon Albers, who had told friends a little minutes earlier on Snapchat that he was planning to kill himself. The friends called 911. The Justice Department said in a statement that to prove a federal criminal civil rights violation, prosecutors would have to prove that Jenison not only used force that was constitutionally unreasonable, but that he did so “intentionally,” meaning he “acted with bad purpose. to ignore the law”. “It is not enough for the government to prove that an officer acted out of fear, mistake, panic, misapprehension, bad judgment, negligence or gross negligence,” the department said. The statement adds: “Unlike many state jurisdictions that have laws that criminalize murders committed with lesser mental states, such as criminal negligence or recklessness, the federal government has no law that criminalizes the use of unreasonable force by a police officer, if intent cannot be proven. beyond a reasonable doubt.” Attorneys from the Justice Department met with Albers’ parents last month to tell them of their decision. “I am grateful that the FBI and DOJ conducted an impartial and fair investigation,” Sheila Albers, mother of John Albers, said Friday. “They clearly point in the direction that this should have been a state-level charge. And we have local officials who still haven’t done the right thing.” Overland Park, which gave Jenison $70,000 in severance pay less than a month after the killing, said it was cooperating fully with the investigation and that it was “thankful to the FBI and the Department of Justice for their investigation and review of this matter. The Overland Park Police Department strives to de-escalate and prevent the need to use force whenever possible. This situation was tragic and we in the city continue to keep the Albers family in our thoughts.” Morgan Roach, Jenison’s attorney, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. After Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe dismissed charges at the state level in 2018, Albers’ parents sued Jenison and Overland Park in federal court. After a federal judge ruled that a reasonable jury could find that Jenison was not in danger from the van, Overland Park in 2019 paid the Albers family a $2.3 million settlement. Howe could not immediately be reached for comment. Sheila Albers continued to press for information about the shooting and discovered that Overland Park had allowed Jenison to resign in 2018 without any notice to state shooting licensing authorities. Shortly after that revelation, the Justice Department announced it had opened a civil rights investigation into the case. Kansas police officer awarded $70,000 after shooting and killing unarmed teen driver Stephen R. McAllister was the US attorney for Kansas who started the civil rights case in 2020. He is also a law professor who teaches civil rights at the University of Kansas. He said in an interview last week that after meeting with Sheila Albers and then reading the federal court ruling that denied Overland Park’s motion to dismiss Albers’ civil suit or grant the officer immunity, which he said was “highly unusual” in a civil rights case, he met with Howe. Howe explained why he thought the shooting was justified, but McAllister was unconvinced and launched a DOJ investigation. Meanwhile, the Kansas City media sued over the details of Jenison’s firing and the release of the police case file. In 2021, Overland Park released its nearly 500-page case file, providing a rare glimpse into how police investigate one of their own. The Washington Post recently published a 20-minute film examining the investigation. The shooting happened at dusk on January 20, 2020. Jon Albers had been arrested for shoplifting earlier that day, and his parents said he was still upset and refused to join them for dinner with a relative. Once his parents and two younger siblings left, Albers wrote in his diary that he was planning to kill himself and then posted videos of himself on Snapchat making similar comments. Some of his friends called 911. Jennison and another officer, Ryan Newlon, were dispatched to the Albers home. Police records show they had no prior experience with Albers or any knowledge of his arrest that day. Dash-cam footage shows the two officers approached the home, did not knock on the door or make an announcement themselves, and then Newlon returned to his car to make a phone call. As Jenison stood alone in the front yard, the garage door opened. Albers’ Honda Odyssey minivan had its lights on and the driver slowly drove away. A video shows Jenison approaching the garage with his gun drawn and yelling “Stop!” three times, then stepped back and fired two shots. The van stopped. He then returned to the street, turned 180 degrees, and placed Jenison in the center back of the van. The video shows that Jenison quickly went to the side of the van. As the van backed into the garage, video shows Jennison fired 11 more shots into the side, killing Albers. An unarmed teenage driver is killed by the police, and a year with few answers follows Overland Park did not investigate the shooting. Johnson County police departments use an “Officer Involved Shooting Investigation Team” made up of non-involved departments to handle officer-involved shootings. A commander from nearby Olathe, Kan., then-Deputy Chief Shawn Reynolds, took over the investigation, which records show was completed in six days. Police records show that the OISIT investigation did not make a scene diagram, conduct a walk-through of the scene with Jenison, review Jenison’s personnel or military files, and did not challenge his claim that he was in mortal danger from the van. The interview with Jenison lasted less than 40 minutes, the police video shows. A digital 3D reconstruction of the shooting, created by the Washington Post, shows that Jenison was not in the van’s path during any of the 13 shots he fired. He, Howe and Reynolds, now a captain in Temple, Texas, all declined to discuss the investigation. Jenison has not returned to the police since the murder. An appointee of President Trump, McAllister stepped down as U.S. attorney last year when President Biden took office, but remained in touch with the Albers family and accompanied them to the meeting in Kansas City, Kan., with Justice Department officials from Washington when the decision was made was revealed for the first time. “I think the federal team did their job honestly, professionally,” McAllister said. “I disagree with the outcome, but at the end of the day, the federal standard [of willfulness] it’s high.” “If it was up to me as U.S. attorney,” McAllister said, “I would push hard to indict and let a jury decide. … I also think there is a strong consensus at least on the federal side that there is more than enough evidence to impeach [Jenison] with reckless homicide. So the state authorities were wrong to deny the charges.” McAllister strongly criticized the OISIT investigation, its missing pieces, and its emphasis on Albers’ juvenile court, of which Jennison was unaware. “It is tragic that the Albers are victimized twice: by what Jenison did and then by what the OISIT team did.” This is a developing story that will be updated.
