Suit Over Officer’s Death Settled

The city of Oxnard agreed Monday to pay $3.5 million to the widow and two children of Police Officer James Jensen, who was accidentally killed by a fellow SWAT team member during a botched drug raid in 1996.

The settlement between the city and the Jensen family is the largest of its kind in Ventura County history, attorneys said. The agreement was finalized during a brief hearing in federal court in Los Angeles.

“I have a real mix of emotions right now,” said Jennifer Jensen, the slain officer’s widow, who lives in Huntington Beach with her children. “It’s a bittersweet victory for us. But this is the only way I could get the kind of answers I was looking for. It’s the only way I could get the truth of what happened to my husband.”

Original reports from the Oxnard Police Department partly blamed Officer Jensen, 30, for the shooting, alleging that his failure to follow SWAT team tactics contributed to confusion that prompted his colleague Sgt. Daniel Christian to shoot him three times in the back.

But Edward Steinbrecher, attorney for the Jensen family, blamed a “code of silence” within the department for hiding what really happened on the morning of March 13, 1996.

Steinbrecher said an internal report just two months before the shooting recommended that Christian be removed from the SWAT team because of overly aggressive behavior. The report, written by Cmdr. Joseph Munoz, was written after an argument Christian had with a department dispatcher.

In the fatal incident, SWAT team members stormed an unoccupied Oxnard residence. Christian, described as a close friend and mentor to Jensen, was the raid commander.

While in the house, Jensen threw a flash-bang grenade onto a second-floor landing. He then entered a bedroom on the second floor of the home, where Christian mistakenly shot him three times at close range with a 12-gauge shotgun.

After the shooting, Jennifer Jensen said she did not blame Christian or the department for the tragedy. But she changed her mind after city officials refused to talk to her and began releasing statements to the media that appeared to blame her husband for the accident.

Attorney Alan Wisotsky said Jensen appeared to have broken from standard SWAT team tactics by throwing the flash-bang grenade and then running into the home ahead of his team members.

The district attorney’s investigation concluded that there was no criminal wrongdoing in the shooting, but the report criticized the department for poor planning and was critical of Christian.

A blood test seven hours after the shooting showed Christian had traces of phenobarbital, a medication sometimes used for migraines, in his system. But authorities concluded that the amount was not enough to affect his judgment.

Steinbrecher, however, said the department should have tested Christian immediately after the shooting to get a clear idea of how much of that drug, and any others, were in his system.