City of Akron attorney had unprecedented access in state’s criminal probe of Jazmir Tucker’s killing

As special agents with the law enforcement arm of the Ohio Attorney General’s office conducted its criminal probe of the high-profile police killing of Jazmir Tucker late last year, a veteran City of Akron attorney was in the room during the first and only time the investigators questioned Officer Davon Fields and two of the officers present when Fields gunned down the 15-year-old on Thanksgiving night.

A municipal attorney had never before been documented in an Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation interview of an officer under investigation for homicide. The BCI did not document why City of Akron Assistant Director of Law Christopher Reece was there or if the officers asked for him to be there. His presence jeopardized the admissibility of the officers’ testimony if charges were filed against them and circumvented the agency’s guidelines warning of the “potential landmine” of employer involvement in criminal cases. It also had the potential to influence officer testimony, multiple attorneys told Signal Akron.

Mahoning County prosecutors presented the evidence gathered by BCI to a Summit County grand jury earlier this month. The grand jury declined to indict Fields for murder, the only charge presented to them.

“It was a corruption of the process and I am, frankly, shocked that anyone at BCI let that happen,” said attorney Subodh Chandra, who reviewed the documents obtained by Signal Akron that showed that Reece was in the interviews. Chandra previously served as the City of Cleveland’s law director before becoming a prominent civil rights attorney. He represented Tamir Rice’s family in their lawsuit against Cleveland (he is not representing Tucker’s family).

Chandra warned that the City of Akron attorney’s presence in the interview room could influence what an officer is willing to say about what they did or saw another officer do. Ohio law says cities can choose to not defend officers in civil lawsuits if they feel the officers acted outside the scope of their roles and they acted recklessly, maliciously, or in bad faith. That threshold is “determined by the employer of the officer.”

“At a minimum, it’s an atrocious appearance,” Chandra said about the city lawyer’s presence, “but it’s far worse than that as far as I’m concerned. This is unprecedented! I’ve never heard of this, never heard of such a thing.”

At the end of BCI’s 46-minute interview of Fields on Dec. 20, 2024, the special agents asked the city’s attorney if he wanted to say anything. Reece, who spent decades with the city defending allegations of police misconduct prior to accepting a job with the Summit County Prosecutor’s Office earlier this year, declined the offer.

Review of BCI investigations shows presence of city attorney unique to interviews in Tucker case

Signal Akron reviewed every completed criminal case file of a BCI investigation into homicides and other killings involving law enforcement officers in the State of Ohio. In more than 840 law enforcement interviews over more than 120 separate investigations, the presence of an attorney representing an officer’s employer has been documented only three times. All three instances were Reece in the interviews of the officers involved in Tucker’s death.

BCI did not respond to a detailed list of Signal Akron’s questions, including how many other times this has happened. If it has happened before, it wasn’t documented, which is contrary to the agency’s guidelines.

In the interviews about Tucker’s death, the officers’ union-sponsored criminal defense attorneys and union representative — Fraternal Order of Police Akron Lodge 7 President Brian Lucey — also sat in, which is commonplace in criminal interviews of police officers. The three interviews took place inside the Ohio Defense Firm’s office in downtown Akron on Dec. 20, 2024. 

Records from the investigation, including proof of the attorney’s presence in the interviews, were released after a grand jury declined to indict Fields or the other officers.

Akron Law Department: Attorney was there to protect city’s finances in impending lawsuit

Akron Mayor Shammas Malik said in an interview with Signal Akron that his law department did not try to sway the criminal investigation by sending the veteran attorney to sit in on the BCI interviews. Reece, the mayor said, was there solely to take notes to prepare for the city’s defense of an anticipated civil lawsuit from the Tucker family. 

“I want to be very clear: The only intent of the attorney being present was as an observer,” Malik said. “They were not there to object to anything, they were not there to chill anything — they were there solely to observe. … There has never been any intent on my part, for this administration, to influence the investigation in any way. I don’t believe we did that.”

City of Akron Deputy Director of Law Brian Angeloni agreed with the mayor: Reece was only there to protect the city’s financial interests later on, not to protect the officers from criminal charges. 

“I think that it’s prudent for the law department — whose job, primary job, is to protect the general fund and protect the city from liability — to be apprised of everything that it can be, right?” Angeloni said. “We need to understand information, we need to understand how witnesses are going to testify. And again, when you have the opportunity to watch and listen, we would take that opportunity.”

Neither Malik nor Angeloni could say how Reece, who began working for the city in 1990, found out about the interviews or who asked him to attend. 

“I don’t have any personal knowledge of that,” Angeloni said. “I don’t know who communicated — I don’t know who Chris communicated with. I don’t know. I’m saying that certainly our department would have been aware that he went. But how he actually literally was invited, I do not know.” 

Both Malik and Angeloni said it was their “belief,” but that they were not 100% certain, that the Tucker case was the only time a City of Akron attorney was present during interviews of Akron officers since BCI was tasked with investigating the city’s officer-involved killings when Jayland Walker was killed in 2022. 

The only people who would know for certain, they said, would be current Law Director Deborah Matz, who refused to answer questions from Signal Akron, and Reece, who now works for the Summit County Prosecutor’s Office and did not respond to five attempts by Signal Akron to seek comment.

The union-sponsored defense attorneys and the police union president who also sat in did not respond to Signal Akron’s questions about how Reece ended up in the interviews. 

Tucker family attorney: ‘Pissed’ but not surprised

BCI always records its interviews and then releases the files publicly when its investigations are complete and prosecutorial decisions have been made. While the city claims Reece only sat in to prepare for possible civil litigation related to the killing, attorneys for Tucker’s family were not given the same opportunity and were unaware it had happened.

“I’ve never heard of anybody admitting that it happened,” said Tucker family attorney Robert Gresham of the Cochran Firm about a city lawyer sitting in on a BCI criminal interview of an officer. He’s concerned about the city’s potential influence on the investigation and the potential bias of the BCI, which is tasked with conducting an impartial investigation. 

“We’ve always kind of assumed that those things occur. You can see that from the process in the beginning when the shooting occurs up through litigation,” Gresham said. “I’m not surprised — I’m pissed off like I always am with these cases, but I’m not surprised in any way, shape or form.”

Chandra said the city attorney “had no business being there” and said the city’s position that its lawyer was in the room only to prepare for civil litigation is “completely preposterous.” 

Gresham and Chandra both said they were concerned that Reece could have influenced the officers’ testimony — each said it could appear that BCI and city attorneys could be acting in tandem to clear the officers of wrongdoing. 

“There should be discipline for any BCI officer or supervisor who permitted such a thing to happen — to corrupt such an investigation,” Chandra said. “It is irrelevant if they didn’t ask a question. Their mere presence was suggestive to the officers about what the right answers are.”

Chandra said that when officers are sued, they are entitled to a civil defense from the city “if they acted in good faith and in the course and scope of their duties. That’s the legal standard, and the city could conceivably deny them a defense — so they better get with the program in terms of what they’re saying while civil attorneys are there.

“That’s just one example,” he continued. “The point is this was not a genuine, unbiased law enforcement investigation if they’re bringing in civil defense attorneys.”

Chandra blamed BCI for allowing it to happen.

“I cannot comprehend what they’ve done here. I cannot comprehend how you can claim to be conducting a law enforcement investigation — a criminal investigation as to whether criminal charges are warranted — and have civil defense attorneys there. There’s zero justification for that, and I would like to know BCI’s answer.”

BCI representatives won’t answer questions about the interviews

Ohio BCI, a unit of the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, investigates all on-duty killings committed by Akron police officers and by many other police departments throughout the state who request it. At the city’s request, BCI began investigating Akron police homicides when Jayland Walker was killed in 2022. During those investigations, the officers’ union-sponsored defense attorneys and the police union president are always in the interview room, which is a common practice. 

Signal Akron sought answers from the BCI leaders overseeing its “officer involved critical incident response team,” the agency’s assistant superintendent who wrote the best practices guide for investigating police shootings and the Attorney General’s office spokespeople. None would speak about the case or provide answers to specific questions. 

Instead, the department’s spokesperson issued a short statement: “BCI does not have the authority to compel an involved or witnessing officer to participate in an interview. As such, the location, circumstances and attendees of the interview are not dictated by BCI. The presence of non-participating third parties during the interview does not affect BCI’s criminal investigation. It is common for the officers who are giving a voluntary interview to bring counsel and union representation.”

Signal Akron’s review of BCI investigations, though, shows it was unprecedented for a municipal attorney to be there.  

Garrity rights and the admissibility of officer testimony

If any of the three officers interviewed by BCI in the Tucker investigation had said anything that led to criminal charges, the city attorney’s presence — and the lack of documentation from BCI about why the attorney was there and who invited him — could have rendered the officer’s testimony inadmissible in a criminal case, based on U.S. Supreme Court precedent against public employer-compelled testimony.

In Garrity v. New Jersey, a case from the 1960s, police officers in New Jersey were involved in a traffic ticket-fixing scheme. State investigators conducted the criminal investigation, advising the officers of their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. But the officers were also told that if they didn’t answer questions in the criminal probe, they could lose their jobs. 

The Supreme Court ruled that threatening public employees with the loss of their jobs after they invoked their right to remain silent violated their constitutional rights against compelled criminal testimony. 

While officers can be threatened with firing, and can be fired, if they don’t answer questions in an internal, non-criminal administrative investigation, the Garrity ruling requires a strict separation between employment and criminal investigations.

“This ‘wall’ between the two investigations is crucial because violations of Garrity rights can result in the exclusion of statements from the criminal case based on the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” BCI’s best practices guide for investigating “officer-involved critical incidents” states.

The Garrity ruling is why Reece’s presence — and the lack of documentation about who asked for him to be there — in BCI’s criminal interviews of the three Akron officers could have rendered any potentially damaging testimony useless for prosecutorial purposes. 

A document BCI shares with the law enforcement agencies that have requested an investigation of their police killings states that the local department may join interviews of witnesses who aren’t officers.

“No one from the requesting agency,” in this case the City of Akron, “may be present during the involved officer’s interview unless the officer specifically requests it. Again, this stems from Garrity concerns, with the officer potentially feeling compelled to speak if a superior officer or agency is present. Criminal investigations require any statement obtained to be voluntary, not compelled,” the document states.

Garrity-related concerns are also emphasized in many other BCI guides on investigations. 

The importance of disclosure

In the Jazmir Tucker case, the special agents documented Reece’s presence in their written summaries and in the recordings of the three interviews but never documented if any of the officers specifically requested for Reece to be there. 

In a review of every other BCI investigation of officer homicides available on the Ohio Attorney General’s website, Signal Akron found only one other documented instance of someone higher on the organizational hierarchy — someone who could hold sway over the interviewee’s employment — attempting to sit in on a criminal interview.

In that case, a sergeant in the Ross County Sheriff’s Department killed a man who had shot him in the chest and asked if a captain in the office could be present for the 2023 interview, according to the report from the BCI special agent who led the investigation. The agent’s report details the precautions he took to make sure the sergeant’s testimony was untainted. 

“[Special Agent] Collins explained it is typically not BCI’s practice to allow anyone from administration to sit-in on the interview due to potential implied Garrity statements,” the agent wrote. He asked the sergeant if he would consent to an interview without the captain there. The sergeant agreed and, according to a recording of that interview, the interview took place without the captain present.

In another case, a detective from the Franklin County Sheriff’s office sat in on the interview of a deputy who shot a murder suspect. The special agent didn’t ask about the circumstances of the shooting per the requests of the defense attorney, avoiding potential criminal testimony.

Will City of Akron representatives continue to sit in on future BCI investigations?

Signal Akron asked Malik if city attorneys will sit in on future BCI criminal investigations of Akron officers if given the opportunity 

“I don’t think we have anything on that,” the mayor said, indicating the relationship with BCI is still new. “So these determinations will be made going forward. [But] I want to be very clear that in this instance, there is no desire for there to be any appearance of anything improper, nor do I believe there was anything improper that occurred.” 

The Tucker family’s attorneys, in the meantime, are reviewing the records of the shooting that have been made public. While their hands were figuratively tied during the criminal investigation of the officers, they are assembling their civil complaint. 

“Our commitment is not only to Jazmir’s memory, but we want to protect other children from the fate he suffered from the hands of Davon Fields,” Gresham said. “… The civil process provides us some sort of mechanism where we can attempt to shine some light on the darkness of this particular procedure.”