Kansas City Star sues Overland Park for records in 2018 police killing of 17-year-old
The Kansas City Star is suing for records related to the police killing of Overland Park teenager John Albers in 2018.
In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, The Star and its owner, The McClatchy Company, argue that under the Kansas Open Records Act, the resignation and severance agreement for Clayton Jenison, the officer who fatally shot Albers, is public record and therefore should be turned over.
The city has denied multiple requests by The Star for a copy of the separation agreement with Jenison.
“Overland Park has engaged in a years-long pattern of deception, dissembling and doublespeak in an effort to hide, first, the fact of its severance payments to Officer Jenison, and now, the actual severance agreement,” the suit alleges.
Jenison shot Albers six times on Jan. 20, 2018, as the 17-year-old backed out of the driveway of his family’s home. The officer had been called to the Albers’ family home on a welfare check on the teen, who was believed to be suicidal.
When Jenison left the department following the shooting, he was paid $70,000 in a severance agreement. He did not face charges in the killing.
Last month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed that federal authorities had opened a civil rights investigation into the fatal shooting.
Overland Park officials did not immediately respond to request for comment.
Suit alleges police chief misled public
At a press conference one month after Albers’ killing, Overland Park Police Chief Frank Donchez announced that Jenison, who had not yet been named publicly, had resigned for personal reasons.
The Star previously reported that Overland Park officials have maintained Jenison resigned for personal reasons before and after reporting on his severance pay.
The Star’s lawsuit alleges that Donchez misled the public.
About a year later, in 2019, the city of Overland Park paid $2.3 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit filed on behalf of Sheila Albers, John Albers’ mother. This suit claimed Jenison violated the teen’s constitutional rights.
The lawsuit filed Wednesday references an interview Donchez gave to FOX4 in the month following the wrongful death settlement. He was asked if Jenison was encouraged to leave the force.
“He was not,” Donchez replied, later adding, “He left before we even had those discussions.”
According to documents from the Kansas Commission on Peace Officers Standards and Training, Jenison’s resignation from the department was effective in March of 2018, six weeks after he shot and killed Albers.
In June of 2019, Sheila Albers discovered a database of city employee payrolls from the previous years, the suit says.
There she discovered Jenison had been paid $45,566 in 2016, $46,657 in 2017 and $81,040 in 2018, the year Donchez said Jenison resigned in February. This amounted to $70,000 in severance payments.
The argument for employment records
Overland Park has repeatedly argued that documentation of Jenison’s departure from the department is not an “employment-related contract or agreement.”
According to the lawsuit, The Star has defended its request for the documents multiple times, arguing that “the act of ending employment is ... related to employment.”
On Aug. 17, Overland Park City Manager Bill Ebel described Jenison’s leaving as “a mutually agreeable separation” rather than a resignation, as had been previously stated, the suit reads. Ebel said this in a letter to the mayor and city council.
Days later, the city’s legal department released a timeline of the events in which Jenison’s departure was described as a written “resignation and severance agreement” finalized on Feb. 16, 2018.
This year, at an Aug. 21 press conference, Overland Park Mayor Carl Gerlach said Jenison’s departure was a “negotiated” agreement, the lawsuit reads.
“We did not want him as an officer and we didn’t want a chance to have to put him back on the street because the civil service board wouldn’t agree with us firing him,” the suit quotes Gerlach as saying.
The lawsuit goes on to allege that these admissions by the mayor were “in stark contrast” to the numerous comments Donchez made on the matter in the years prior.
The Star and McClatchy argue in the lawsuit that the resignation and severance agreement between Jenison and the city is a public record because it is an employment related contract. They also note that Jenison was still an Overland Park employee at the time the agreement was reached.
“In fact, the Mayor stated that the very purpose of the agreement was to settle any potential (and what the Mayor said were valid) claims of wrongful termination, given that Overland Park did not have grounds to terminate Officer Jenison for cause,” the suit reads.
The Star requests that the court enter a mandatory injunction in which they order Overland Park to turn over Jenison’s agreement, as the newspaper has continuously requested.
“Overland Park’s intent to hide the agreement from the Overland Park taxpayers who funded the $70,000 severance payment is further evidenced by the fact the severance agreement contains a confidentiality clause, purporting to hide it from public view,” the suit reads.
A mother’s fight for transparency continues
When reached by phone Wednesday, Sheila Albers said she hopes the lawsuit results in a win for transparency.
“Ultimately, when there’s no transparency, there is no trust and no accountability, and that has been the problem from the start,” she said.
Albers said her son’s death and the fight for answers that ensued has been eye-opening.
“The first step in making sure that our government is working on our behalf is transparency, and that has not happened,” she said.
“Tragedies will happen ... Really the test of an effective leader is how do you respond to that tragedy, and clearly we had some leadership who have not responded appropriately.”
Come January, Albers said she hopes to again push for statewide policy that would alter open records law to provide greater transparency by requiring all Kansas law enforcement agencies prepare a written policy for investigation when police kill people and mandate that those investigations be handled by an outside agency.
“The fact that the Star is having to file a lawsuit to get a separation agreement just speaks to our legislation even more loudly,” she said.
This story was originally published October 14, 2020 at 11:33 AM.
