A Juneau police officer has been cleared of any wrongdoing in a shooting that injured a Juneau man in December. The assistant attorney general investigating the shooting said the officer reasonably believed he was acting in self-defense.
The shooting occurred around 4:20 a.m. on Dec. 3, when Sgt. Chris Gifford and officer Darin Schultz attempted to apprehend a suspect at an Ocean View Drive crash scene. The suspect, 38-year-old Jeremie Tinney, was the driver of a vehicle that police said fled during an attempted traffic stop earlier that day.
Police claimed Tinney refused to cooperate with police and barricaded himself inside his vehicle, which the sergeant told dispatch. “Within one minute,” both officers requested emergency medical assistance because Gifford had fired a single shot at Tinney, striking him.
Tinney was taken to Bartlett Regional Hospital and later to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle for treatment of his wounds. He recovered and was eventually taken into custody by Washington authorities on an unrelated warrant.
Both officers cooperated with the investigation into the shooting, headed by the Department of Law’s Office of Special Prosecutions and Alaska State Troopers. Both men’s guns were taken as evidence and they were placed on temporary administrative leave.
In a letter to Juneau police Chief Bryce Johnson, dated for Friday, Assistant Attorney General June Stein with the Office of Special Prosecutions stated she believed criminal charges against Gifford were “inappropriate,” and outlined in more detail the series of events described by both officers, witnesses at the scene and even, in part, Tinney.
When Gifford and Schultz arrived at the scene of the crash, the passenger of the vehicle was walking around, while Tinney appeared to be unconscious in the driver’s seat, Stein explained. When Gifford tried to rouse him, Tinney began to move.
“The way Tinney was moving around made Sgt. Gifford think that he was not injured from the accident after all. These circumstances along with Tinney’s history raised the sergeant’s level of concern,” Stein wrote, noting that Gifford and Schultz had been warned by dispatch that Tinney made previous threats against law enforcement officers in 2012. “It was not just Tinney’s history; it was his erratic behavior in deliberately lunging for the console, his refusal to take direction, and his lack of injury from the accident that heightened the sergeant’s awareness because he could not think of any reason for Tinney to make that move except to reach for a weapon.”
Gifford backed away up the embankment, Stein said. He and Schultz armed themselves and waited behind Schultz’ patrol vehicle for Tinney to come out, ordering firemen and medical personnel who’d arrived at the scene to get back.
“I was afraid that I was going to get shot or Captain Johnson was going to get shot or any of the firemen,” Schultz told investigators, adding that he lost his view of Tinney and the vehicle while he focused on moving the fire chief to a safer area.
Schultz stated that when he turned back to deal with Tinney, he aimed his weapon at him, but didn’t fire. Gifford shot at Tinney then, breaking a window, Stein relayed in her letter.
Stein said Schultz concluded his retelling of the shooting by saying, “If the fireman not been where he was, I would probably at that point have shot….I was scared shitless that one of us was going to be shot.”
Both men yelled to Tinney to come out with his hands up after Gifford fired his gun. Tinney began complying with the officers’ orders and yelled at them that he’d been shot in the neck.
“They asked Tinney where the gun was, and he responded, ‘There’s no gun,’” Stein wrote. “Immediately after the shot was fired, as documented in the on-scene audio, Officer Schultz stated to Sgt. Gifford that he had seen Tinney swinging something around. Sergeant Gifford noted, ‘It had a hole in the end of it.’ And Officer Schultz confirmed, ‘Yes it definitely had a hole in the end of it.’”
Photos attached to Stein’s letter showed what the officers saw in Tinney’s hands — a long, black metal rod with an end that had a hole in it.
Images courtesy of Office of Special Prosecutions/Juneau Police Department
Gifford explained to investigators that he saw Tinney with a long object, which he said looked like the barrel of a sniper rifle.
“It was very thick like a Remington .308,” Stein wrote. “And when it was pointing in his direction, he believed that he was looking down the barrel of a gun. The barrel was pointed at him for more than two seconds but less than 10 seconds. When he saw the barrel, he thought that he was going to take a shot to the head.”
Medical personnel at the scene prepared Tinney for transport to a hospital and noted he had “multiple small wounds to the left side of his head with limited, controlled bleeding and one small wound to his chest near his left nipple,” Stein wrote. She also stated he suffered a concussion, the cause of which medical staff in Seattle could not determine.
Stein noted that at some point, Tinney became combative with hospital personnel, to a degree that three people had to hold him down.
In her letter, Stein said the wife of Tinney’s passenger was the original 911 caller who reported the crash and said her husband told her over the phone that he and Tinney had been drinking beforehand. Tinney’s blood alcohol level was tested and came back at .319, “well over three times the legal limit for driving,” Stein said.
While the criminal case against Tinney is ongoing, Stein stated her office had concluded its investigation into the shooting.
“It is clear from the investigation that Tinney threatened the sergeant and others at the scene, and Sgt. Gifford fired his weapon, reasonably believing that he was acting in self-defense and defense of others,” Stein wrote. “I will not institute criminal charges against Sgt. Gifford in regard to the wounding of Jeremie Shaun Tinney on Dec. 3, 2016. Under the circumstances in this case, Sgt. Gifford was entitled to use deadly force to protect himself, his fellow officer, firefighters, and civilians at the scene. The sergeant acted within the law when he shot at Tinney.”
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