Inside the investigation of an officer who killed a teen threatening suicide Experts say the probe missed key steps and favored the officer’s perception of events
By Tom Jackman, Sarah Cahlan, Joy Sharon Yi, Atthar Mirza and Brian Monroe August 23, 2022 at 11:47 a.m. EDT

在一名警察射杀一名威胁自杀的青少年的调查中,专家表示,调查遗漏了关键步骤并偏向于对这名警官的见解。


The entire investigative file of an officer-involved shooting in Overland Park, Kan., was released, giving insight into how police investigated another officer. (Video: The Washington Post)

堪萨斯州欧弗兰帕克市一名警官涉事枪击案的全部调查文件被公开,让公众了解到警方是如何调查另一名警官的。

When 17-year-old John Albers posted threats of suicide on social media in January 2018, worried friends called 911 for help. The high school student was backing his family minivan out of the garage when he was shot 13 times by an Overland Park, Kan. police officer who responded to the call. Within a month, the prosecutor in Johnson County, Kan., Steve Howe, declared that the fatal shooting was justified and charges would not be filed.

2018年1月,17岁青年约翰·阿尔伯斯在社交媒体上发布了自杀威胁,担心他的好友们随即拨打911求助。当时这名高中生正开着他家的面包车从自家车库里倒开出来,随即遭到堪萨斯州欧弗兰帕克市接到报警后前来的男性警官连开13枪击毙。之后一个月内,堪萨斯州约翰逊县检察官,史蒂夫·豪宣布,这起致命枪击事件属正当行为,将不会提起指控。(注:美国各级行政区级别排名为,州、县、市,该文出现的对应行政级别为,堪萨斯州、约翰逊县、欧弗兰帕克市)

Every year in America, police fatally shoot about 1,000 people. In each case, police — often from the same department — investigate the officer, and it’s rare that details of the investigation are made public. But in the case of the death of Albers, something extremely unusual happened: the city of Overland Park released the entire police investigative file, after being sued by KSHB-TV. In this case, the Overland Park police did not investigate their own officer. Instead, Johnson County launches an Officer-Involved Shooting Investigation Team after each such incident, using officers from other departments in the county.

在美国,每年大约有1000人遭到警察枪杀。虽然每一起案件中的涉事警察都会进行调查,但调查人员几乎都来自同一个部门,且调查的细节过程很少被公布于众。但在阿尔伯斯死亡事件中,发生了一件极其不寻常的事情,在KSHB-TV(当地电视台)的强烈要求下,欧弗兰帕克市公布了整个警方调查文件。但在这起案件中,欧弗兰帕克的警察没有对本局的该警官展开调查。正常情况下,在每次此类事件发生后约翰逊县都会针对涉事警察成立一个调查小组,调查组人员由该县各警局抽调出的警官组成。

Written reports and photos from the investigation were made public, as well as videos, including dash-cam recordings that captured the shooting and the police interview with Clayton Jenison, the officer who shot Albers and said he feared he’d be struck by the van.

该案件书面调查报告、相关照片以及视频均被公开,其中包括行车记录仪记录下的枪击过程,以及警方对涉事警察克莱顿·詹尼森的询问录像记录。这位枪杀阿尔伯斯的警察声称,当时他担心自己会被(倒开的)车撞倒。

The nearly 500-page file revealed the investigation was concluded in six days. The Washington Post provided it to five law enforcement experts, veterans of policing, use-of-force investigations and prosecutions. All five found flaws with the investigation, and several said investigators approached the case favoring the perception of the officer, a stance the experts said is common in such cases. The Post’s analysis found steps missing from the investigative report, such as scene diagrams, that some experts said are typically performed in officer-involved shooting investigations.

这份近500页的调查报告显示,该调查6天内即为结束。《华盛顿邮报》向五名执法专家提供了这份报告并征求了他们的意见,这些专家均从事过警务、武力使用调查,以及起诉的老手。这五位专家均在调查报告中发现了问题,其中几位表示,调查人员在处理案件时偏向于这名警官的看法。专家们认为,这种偏向立场在此类调查当中很常见。《华盛顿邮报》的分析发现,调查报告中遗漏了一些步骤,比如现场执法记录。部分专家表示,在涉及警察的枪击调查中,常经历这些环节。

The Post also created a 3D reconstruction to show Jenison’s position at each of the moments he fired at Albers. The reconstruction was based on available evidence. It used a combination of drone flyovers, laser scanned geometry and low-resolution dashboard cameras to recreate the incident within a reasonable margin of error. Jenison was close to the van when it first backed out of the garage, and then briefly in the path of the van after it spun around, but he moved out of the van’s path each time and then fired, videos included with the file and The Post reconstruction show.

《华盛顿邮报》还制作了一个三维重建图像,展示了詹尼森警官每次向阿尔伯斯开枪时的位置。重建工作基于现有证据绘制。结合无人机航拍、激光扫描和低分辨率车载摄像头提供的图像拟真现实,在合理的误差范围内重现了事件的完整过程。调查文件和《华盛顿邮报》的重建视频显示,在车初次倒出车库时,詹尼森警官离车很近,货车后转弯驶向詹尼森警官所在的位置。 詹尼森多次躲开车子后退路线后,开始掏枪射击

Immediately after the shooting, Jenison said “I thought he was going to run me over.” He later told investigators, “From my memory, it felt it was going fast enough to be a threat and to cause bodily harm to me.” District Attorney Howe noted that officers are entitled to use deadly force “if they reasonably believe it is necessary to prevent death or great bodily harm to themselves or someone else.”
After he shot and killed an unarmed teen driver, a Kansas police officer was paid a $70,000 severance

枪击事件发生后,詹尼森说:“我以为他要开车撞我。”他后来告诉调查人员,“从我的记忆来看,车的速度快到足以对我构成身体伤害威胁。”地方检察官豪指出,警察有权使用致命武力,“如果他们有理由相信,这是防止死亡或对自己或他人的身体造成重大伤害的必要手段”。
在枪杀了一名手无寸铁的青少年司机后,这名堪萨斯警察获得了7万美元的遣散费

Ed Obayashi, a California sheriff’s deputy who trains police in conducting investigations of officer-involved shootings, reviewed the case file and said that “the most glaring flaw of the entire investigation is the interview [of Jenison]. All they did was one short interview,” lasting less than 45 minutes. He said a follow-up interview, with questions developed from the advancing investigation, is necessary in every case. “We always go back to the witnesses and reinterview them. There’s no reason the officer wouldn’t consent to a follow-up,” Obayashi said.

加州副警长埃德·大林(Ed Obayashi)负责培训警方对涉及警员的枪击事件进行调查,他在察看案件档案过后表示,“整个调查中最明显问题出在(对詹尼森警官的) 询问环节。”他们只对詹尼森进行了一个简短的询问,“持续时间还没到45分钟”。他说,对每一个案件都有必要进行后续讯问,并随着调查的推进提出问题。“我们总是回到证人身边,并重新对他们询问取证。警察没有理由不同意进行后续调查,”该副警长说到。
原创翻译:龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


Shawn Reynolds, the leader of the investigation as a former deputy chief in Olathe, Kan., and now the police chief in Temple, Tex., declined to discuss the investigation, as did Howe, the district attorney of Johnson County. Presented with a summary of The Post’s findings, Howe said in an email that “many of your conclusions are factually incorrect” but said he could not elaborate because of the ongoing federal investigation, which does not prohibit Howe from discussing the local investigation.

曾任堪萨斯州奥拉西市副局长的肖恩·雷诺兹(Shawn Reynolds)为此次调查的负责人。目前他是德克萨斯州坦普尔市的警察局长。约翰逊县地方检察官豪伊对此次调查发表意见。在收到《华盛顿邮报》调查结果的摘要后,这位地方检察官在一封电子邮件中表示,“你的许多结论与事实不符”,但他表示,由于事件正在进行联邦调查过程中,他无法详细说明,不过联邦调查并未禁止豪伊讨论地方调查。
原创翻译:龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


Detectives involved in the case did not respond or would not speak to The Post, nor would anyone from the Johnson County crime lab. Jenison and his lawyer also declined to comment.

此次枪击事件中的涉案警官没有回应,也不愿接受《华盛顿邮报》的采访,约翰逊县犯罪实验室的人同样保持沉默。詹尼森警官和他的律师也对此拒绝置评。