Oxnard Officer’s Widow Sues Police for $15 Million

The widow of slain Oxnard Police SWAT Officer James Rex Jensen Jr. filed a $15-million federal civil rights lawsuit against the department Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, calling it her only hope to get justice for her husband.

“This is the only way I feel I can get some peace of mind and find out what really happened to my husband,” Jennifer Jensen said at a news conference in the offices of her Encino attorney, Ed Steinbrecher.

Her husband was mistakenly shot and killed by fellow SWAT team member Sgt. Dan Christian in a botched drug raid last March 13.

Christian was a close friend and mentor of Jensen. After the shooting, Jennifer Jensen said she believed no one was to blame for the tragedy.

But as the weeks passed, she said she began to believe department officials and Christian were lying to her.

That was confirmed to her, she said, when the Ventura County district attorney’s office released a 48-page report in November on the predawn drug raid.

“When the report came out, it was obvious that they were lying to me,” Jennifer Jensen said. “They don’t want to be honest with me.”

The district attorney’s report faulted the SWAT team for shoddy surveillance and poor planning, but ultimately laid responsibility for the shooting squarely on the shoulders of Christian.

District attorney officials, however, concluded there was not enough evidence to prosecute Christian for criminal negligence.

The lawsuit faults the department for such things as shoddy training, and levels harsh criticism for how the SWAT team conducted the raid.

It also alleges there was a conspiracy to cover up details of the shooting.

“The police--especially the Oxnard Police Department--have to be held accountable for the abuse of police power,” Steinbrecher said.

In the suit, Steinbrecher said there was a “department-wide custom and practice of a code of silence, cover-up and dishonesty.”

Police officials said they could not comment on the shooting because of Jensen’s lawsuit, but attorney Alan Wisotsky, who represents the department on the case, said the claims were without merit.

“I’ve seen a lot of these cases against the department for various things and there hasn’t been a claim that hasn’t included accusations of a cover-up,” Wisotsky said. “It’s the fashionable thing to do now that Mark Furhman was made famous. There was no cover-up here. There was an honest effort to get at the truth of what can only be seen as a tragic situation.”

Steinbrecher also criticized Christian for his “cowboy mentality,” saying he went into the morning raid primed to shoot.

According to the district attorney’s report, Christian had trace levels of phenobarbital in his blood. The report, however, concluded the phenobarbital was at such low levels that it could not have affected Christian’s judgment during the raid.

Steinbrecher said it is still unclear why Christian was taking the drug, which is sometimes prescribed for migraines.