AKRON, Ohio — Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost released hundreds of investigative documents, pictures, video and audio clips in connection to the June 27, 2022 Akron police shooting death of 25-year-old Jayland Walker.
The reports are posted at the bottom of the Ohio Attorney General web page and include more than 100 audio interview files from the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, 95 police videos on a separate YouTube page, more than 900 evidence photos and 268 investigative documents with thousands of total pages including files on the 8 Akron police officers who shot Walker at least 40 times.
Yost said the release of the documents was a way to show transparency and to again confirm the BCI investigation was truly independent.
“We’re putting everything out on the web and that’s the reason we’re doing this, there needs to be confidence in the members of the community that this was independently investigated, that it was thorough, that it was expert," Yost said. “And I think that if you go through the whole file that’s available to you, you will come to the same conclusion.”
Philip Stinson, who is a Criminal Justice Professor with Bowling Green State University has looked at some of the police body camera videos that were posted, and while he wouldn't second guess a special grand jury decision not to indict the eight Akron officers involved in the shooting death of Walker, he did find issues with how police responded.
“I think it’s an unfortunate case, I think that it was not handled well, now that being said, I didn’t have all the evidence that the grand jury has, so I don’t want to second guess the results of a grand jury process, but in this case, it’s not clear cut from the videos that I did see," Stinson said. “We’re still going to see if there are federal charges forthcoming in the next months, and whether there could be administrative sanctions forthcoming within the agency."
Stinson said the officers involved could face penalties in the future.
"It’s possible one or more of the officers loses their job as a result of this shooting we’ll just have to wait and see," Stinson said. "Whether some of these officers need to be retrained, whether they need to rethink their academy training; because there seemed to be a loss of situational control in this case.”
CLICK HERE to read New 5's continuing coverage of Walker's death.
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