Slain Officer’s Wife Sues Oxnard Police Department

The widow of Oxnard Police SWAT Officer James Rex Jensen Jr., slain by a fellow officer in a botched drug raid, filed a $15-million federal civil rights lawsuit against the department Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

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

Her husband was mistakenly shot and killed by fellow SWAT team member Sgt. Dan Christian in the raid last March. Christian was a close friend and mentor of Jensen, and after the shooting Jennifer Jensen said she believed no one was to blame for the tragedy.

But as the weeks went by, she began to believe that 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.

The report faulted the SWAT team for shoddy surveillance and poor planning, but ultimately laid responsibility for the shooting squarely on the shoulders of Christian, although the report concluded that there was not enough evidence to prosecute him for criminal negligence.

Police officials said they could not comment on the shooting because of Jensen’s lawsuit, but attorney Alan Wisotsky, who represents the department in 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 [former Los Angeles Police Det.] Mark Fuhrman was made famous. There was no cover-up here.”