Johnson County DA defends police shooting investigations amid criticism from Albers family
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John Albers shooting
Overland Park police were called on Jan. 20, 2018, for a welfare check on 17-year-old John Albers. Former Overland Park police officer Clayton Jenison fatally shot the teen as he backed out of the driveway. The Johnson County District Attorney’s Office did not file charges on Jenison, who was given a $70,000 severance for leaving the department.
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The Johnson County district attorney lauded the local team that investigates police shootings as a national model this week, despite criticisms levied against it in the wake of the 2018 slaying of John Albers and months of public disclosures from the team’s case files on that investigation last year.
District Attorney Steve Howe told Overland Park leaders Wednesday night that the Johnson County Officer Involved Shooting Investigation Team is the leading police shooting team in the region and sets the standard for best practices nationwide.
The presentation served as Howe’s first public defense of the team and a de facto rebuttal to demands it be reformed after Steve and Sheila Albers, John’s parents, and other experts raised questions about its procedures when its files on Albers’ death were made public.
“No one says ‘Well, we’ve got a perfect system, we don’t ever have to fix it.’ To think you have a perfect system would be folly,” Howe said. “It’s just like anything else, if you want an efficient and effective organization, you need to strive to be better and I think that’s what the organization does.”
But the presentation infuriated Albers’ parents, who were not permitted to speak at the meeting but openly scoffed during parts of Howe’s presentation from across the room in city council chambers — one of the first times they have been face to face with Howe in the four years since their son’s death.
They believe Howe’s decision not to criminally charge former Overland Park police officer Clayton Jenison, who contended he feared for his life when he shot and killed John Albers outside the family’s home during a welfare check in January 2018, was a miscarriage of justice and they have been on a mission to force changes to the police shooting investigation team since.
“We were so upset at the end of that presentation that we drove home in silence, because it was like reliving Feb. 20, 2018, all over again but this time with a pat on the back from city council,” Sheila Albers said after the presentation, referencing the day Howe announced Jenison would not be criminally charged.
“Disappointment would be an understatement,” she continued. “The questions were pointless, they were absolutely pointless. This was a dog and pony show for Steve Howe. Nobody was going to ask any tough questions.”
JoCo investigation team
Howe and assistant district attorney Chris McMullin presented an overview of the police shooting investigation team, or OISIT, to the Overland Park Public Safety Committee as part of a running series of informational sessions with council members about the inner workings of the city’s various police and fire department teams.
The unique investigative team was set up around 2005 under the Johnson County Police Chiefs and Sheriffs Association and pulls together a roster of the “cream of the crop” investigators from almost every law enforcement agency across the county. Those investigators, crime lab officials and either Howe or McMullin all respond to the scene of a police shooting and work it “full tilt” until the investigation is complete.
The ubiquity of mobile and security camera footage, plus police body and dashboard cameras, means investigators usually know the basic facts of the case within hours and frequently exhaust all of their investigative leads within a matter of days, Howe said.
The meeting was not about the team’s response to the Albers shooting — and it was never mentioned explicitly during the presentation — but it came against the backdrop of sharp criticism of the team’s techniques in the Albers case and subpoenas issued last fall amid a federal civil rights investigation into the shooting, The Star has previously reported.
But the Albers and experts who reviewed the investigation into their son’s death have raised questions about whether that team, unique to Johnson County, is a better procedure than the Kansas Bureau of Investigation’s procedures throughout most of the rest of the state. They also have questioned how quickly the team closes its cases and why there are no outside reviews of the district attorney’s charging decisions in such cases.
Both Howe and McMullin dismissed those concerns, however, arguing their team is the best suited for the job.
“We handle it within the county and not to sound arrogant, but I think our officers and investigators are as good as anything you’d see from any other jurisdiction,” Howe said.
They also emphasized that no review board has authority to review charging decisions in any criminal case, let alone police shootings, and that the team is accountable to the district attorney, an elected public official.
“The buck stops here,” Howe said.
‘Serious flaws’
Sheila Albers has become a vocal advocate for reform in the four years since her son’s death, which sparked controversy throughout the community even before the high-profile deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police caused a wave of protests nationwide about police use of force in 2020.
She raised a slew of questions about the investigation into their son’s killing, from the operation of the team to the city’s severance agreement that paid Jenison $70,000 to leave the department shortly after the incident. Controversy was further fueled after the city in April released OISIT’s investigative case file as a result of records requests and lawsuits.
In May, The Star obtained a previously undisclosed laboratory report that revealed new details about the trajectory of the bullets Jenison fired through the Albers van and hundreds of photographs related to the investigation were released in June when they were reportedly discovered by city officials in an unlabeled folder. Even more documentation and video was released last fall — including that city officials agreed to list Jenison’s departure as a “voluntary resignation under ordinary circumstances” — that led some experts to raise further questions about how the investigation was handled.
The Alberses had hoped city leaders would probe Howe for more details this week and that it would prompt further debate about how to manage the police shootings team, but that did not happen Wednesday night. Council members asked few questions.
“The system has serious flaws and tonight we did not discuss those flaws, we just pretended like everything was okay,” Sheila Albers said. “If everything was okay, the FBI wouldn’t be investigating John’s death and if everything was okay, [city manager] Bill Ebel wouldn’t have had to pay Jenison $70,000 to go away.”
Kansas City FBI spokeswoman Bridget Patton declined to release any additional information about the federal investigation Thursday, but records obtained by The Star last fall revealed subpoenas were issued to several local police agencies seeking records on Jenison’s police academy training.
Howe declined to address the criticisms levied by the Albers’ parents after the presentation, saying he had answered all questions about the investigation, but he adamantly defended the team in his public remarks to city leaders during the meeting.
“I have to make tough decisions and sometimes people don’t agree with those decisions, and that’s okay, because that’s part of the job,” Howe said. “But what I want them to know through communication is at least the reasons why I made the decision I made. That’s one of the things we’re very proud of, we made clear the reasons why we made that decision ... we think that’s the type of transparency that should happen in the criminal justice system
“Unfortunately not every tragedy is a criminal case. There are lots of tragedies we have to deal with. We have to face people who are rightfully so distraught because they lost a loved one, but our job is to follow the law.”
This story was originally published February 10, 2022 at 12:53 PM.
