The police chief of Overland Park, Kan., suddenly resigned Tuesday after the mother of John Albers, the 17-year-old shot dead by an officer in 2018, sent an email to leaders in the Kansas City suburb saying the chief had disparaged her parenting and didn’t refute her claims that he had lied about the status of the officer’s employment in a televised interview.
Overland Park officials initially did not detail why Frank Donchez resigned, but they publicly released the email Sheila Albers sent to the mayor and city manager describing her encounter with the chief after the media inquired about the reason for his departure. Donchez, 63, who had been the chief of the department since 2014 and weathered controversy following the fatal shooting of Albers, defended his comments Wednesday night and said he resigned for personal reasons.
Then on Friday, Overland Park City Manager Lori Luther responded to Donchez’s remarks to The Post. City spokeswoman Meg Ralph said in an email that Luther considered the conversation the chief had with Albers “inappropriate and grounds for termination.” Ralph said that after Donchez confirmed he had the conversation with Albers, Luther “began the termination process. At that time, Donchez resigned.”
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Donchez declined to respond Friday.
Donchez was chief in January 2018 when Albers, after threatening to kill himself on social media, drove the family minivan out of his garage and was repeatedly shot by Officer Clayton Jenison. Jenison fired 13 times, nearly all of which were when he was not in the path of the van, according to experts and one federal judge who watched two different dashboard-camera videos of the incident.
Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe ruled the shooting was justifiable a month later. And Donchez found that the killing, including shooting into a moving vehicle at someone who may not have seen the officer, did not violate Overland Park policies. In March 2018, Overland Park paid Jenison a $70,000 payout, which wasn’t publicly disclosed until Albers’s mother discovered it in 2020, and Donchez certified to the state police licensing board that Jenison had left the force voluntarily.
Sheila Albers continued to push for transparency and improvement in the Overland Park police, and the department stepped up their training for officers in dealing with mental health crises. On Monday, Albers sent a message to the city council and Donchez advocating for more women on the force and then attended the city council meeting that night where the issue was discussed.
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Albers said Donchez approached her before the Monday meeting and told her he wanted to work with her on the female officer initiative. Albers said she told Donchez she couldn’t work with him because he was a liar, raising comments the chief made in a televised interview about her son’s killing. She said he claimed in the interview that Jenison had left the department “a week or two” after the shooting and that Jenison had not been encouraged to leave. Jenison actually stayed on the force for another six weeks after the shooting, according to his personnel records that were made public.
“His response was asking me if I have ever lied before,” Albers said of Donchez’s reply in an email she sent to Overland Park City Manager Lori Luther and Mayor Curt Skoog after the council meeting. Albers said she replied to Donchez that she had not lied in a professional setting, according to the email.
“I am sure you and Steve tell everyone you were the best parents,” Albers said Donchez responded, referring to John Albers’s father and Sheila’s husband. “And you left him at his time of need,” she said the police chief told her, referring to John Albers’s suicidal thoughts before his slaying.
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Sheila Albers said the conversation ended with Donchez telling her he would continue being the chief until he retired, according to the email.
In an interview with The Washington Post on Wednesday evening, Donchez said he resigned because of family matters. He said he was not fired and strongly denied he was forced to resign.
“Absolutely. I resigned, I’ve got a lot of things going on back home in Pennsylvania and that is drawing me back home, to be with family.” He said, “My conversation [with Albers] was my conversation. Obviously we haven’t seen eye to eye for five-and-a-half years. I guess I didn’t expect that was going to change anytime ever,” but he said it wasn’t linked to his departure.
“It is clear Donchez justifies the use of force because in his mind we failed as parents,” Sheila Albers said in the email to Luther and Skoog that she wrote Monday night after the conversation. “Victim blaming at its worst.”
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On Tuesday, Sheila Albers said, Luther called her to apologize for Donchez’s behavior and told her Donchez had submitted his resignation.
After 8 p.m. Tuesday, the city issued a brief press release saying Donchez had resigned. No reason was given.
After The Post asked Wednesday about Albers’s email and its relationship to Donchez’s resignation, the city released the email publicly. City spokeswoman Meg Ralph said that Donchez’s resignation letter was not a public record and wouldn’t be released, and that he did not have a contract or severance package with the city.
Luther, who became city manager last year, declined to answer any questions about Donchez’s departure. Skoog did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Skoog was a city council member when the payout was disclosed and he defended it in 2021, saying the negotiated agreement was the best way to remove Jenison from the department after Donchez had ruled that Jenison hadn’t violated any policies. Skoog spoke in response to a protest from a community group calling for Donchez’s firing.
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Jenison’s severance agreement shows that the city agreed to state that he resigned for “personal reasons” and that his separation papers with the state would be listed as “voluntary resignation under ordinary circumstances.”
Donchez previously headed police departments in Davenport, Iowa, and Bethlehem, Pa. His name was gone from the Overland Park website by Wednesday morning. The department has about 280 sworn officers to cover a city of about 197,000 people.
“I stand on my accomplishments,” Donchez said Wednesday night, noting his department had been accredited twice and launched a new mental health unit.
After the district attorney ruled the Albers shooting justifiable, the family sued Overland Park. A federal judge later ruled in a pretrial motion that a jury could find that Jenison was not in danger from the minivan or in its path, and Overland Park paid the Albers a $2.3 million settlement.
U.S. District Judge Daniel Crabtree wrote that “a reasonable jury could conclude that deadly force was unreasonable because [Albers] only posed harm to himself because [Albers] never had expressed a present intention to harm others.” Albers had committed no crime and was not fleeing from arrest, the judge said.
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The judge’s ruling also sparked the U.S. attorney in Kansas to open a federal civil rights investigation into the shooting. But last year, the civil rights division of the Justice Department declined to file charges against Jenison.
Jenison has not spoken publicly about the shooting. But when he was interviewed by investigators days after the shooting in January 2018, he told them he feared that Albers was going to run him over. The investigators did not challenge him on his location relative to the van, video of the interrogation showed. Most of the 13 shots he fired were when he stood to the side as the van backed up past him.
Sheila Albers said in an interview Wednesday night that she was shocked by Donchez’s sudden departure. She said she believed “there was an admission of guilt there” when the chief asked her if she had ever lied. “When I pointed out the specific incidents where he lied, he tried to turn the conversation to me lying. I’m not the chief of police, he is.”
“We’re human beings, at some point or another we’ve all lied,” Donchez said Wednesday. “The Channel 4 [Fox News] thing, I don’t remember all the details it was so long ago. That was 2019, I’ve probably done 100 interviews since then. She’s going to say I lied, I’m going to say I didn’t lie. She has her opinion, I have my opinion, at this point it’s pretty moot.”
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Albers said the city manager “apologized for the comments that were made and the way I was treated. There was a very genuine and sincere apology, that no employee of the city should ever treat a community member in that regard.”
Asked about his statement to Sheila Albers seemingly criticizing how she and her husband raised their teenage son, Donchez said Wednesday: “I have no comment on their parenting skills. I can’t even begin to imagine the difficulty of going through such a tragic loss.”
Donchez’s resignation is “a game changer for the city, in a good way,” said Sheila Albers, a former teacher and middle school principal. “This means the city can hire a forward-thinking leader. Public safety has always been a hallmark of Overland Park; we’re a low-crime community. Nationally we are having a conversation about reimagining policing, and we’re the perfect place for it.”
This article has been updated with additional comment from Overland Park officials.
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