Overland Park shows no interest in getting to the real truth about John Albers’ death

At a recent meeting of Overland Park’s public safety committee, the city asked Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe to present the process used by OISIT, the police department’s Officer Involved Shooting Investigation Team. Although there have been questions about this process from the community for the last four years, Overland Park did not solicit community input before to the meeting, and did not allow public comment during it.

While committee members have time to post in social media about backyard chickens and the farmers market, no one from the public safety committee posted about this presentation from Howe until the day of the meeting. It’s pretty apparent that Overland Park attempted to keep this meeting under the radar.

Throughout the meeting, Overland Park pandered to Howe, allowing him to spew half-truths and falsehoods unchecked. The committee failed to ask one legitimate question. Rest assured, the committee was able to have the DA’s office clarify who is responsible for bringing coffee and doughnuts to the scene. This meeting was nothing more than Overland Park trying to prop up a district attorney who is under the microscope of the FBI and the Department of Justice. Birds of a feather flock together.

The questions I ask of Overland Park and Steve Howe are pretty simple: The OISIT report created after the 2018 police shooting death of my son, John Albers, was incomplete. While Johnson County has some of the most sophisticated crime reconstruction capabilities in the United States, there was no scene reconstruction as required in the “memorandum of understanding” between the city and OISIT.

Why isn’t there a reconstruction report (other than a childlike drawing you would expect to see from a kindergartner)? Why would the city accept an incomplete report? Why was the shooting officer allowed to see all the dashcam video before he made a statement, days after the OISIT investigators started treating John, my wife and me as suspects?

Unfortunately, I believe the only answer is $70,000. That’s the amount of the severance agreement Overland Park paid Clayton Jenison, the officer who killed my son, before the ink was dry on Howe’s incomplete report.

This process is anything but a legitimate investigation into a loss of life at the hands of an police officer, and it needs to change. At best, the Overland Park Police Department’s Officer Involved Shooting Team process is misguided. At worst, it is corrupt.

This story was originally published February 15, 2022 at 5:00 AM.