The Ohio Attorney General’s office appears to have accidentally leaked the names of eight officers who were involved in the shooting of Jayland Walker in Akron last year.
The revelation came to light late Tuesday after the attorney general reportedly published a redacted portion of the investigation into the shooting but improperly redacted the names of the officers involved, leading users on Twitter to publish the names of the officers and the document.
According to people online, the documents appeared to be improperly redacted and as such, users could highlight portions of the redacted text and paste them without the black box meant to obscure the names.
The documents, which were released after the conclusion of an investigation into the shooting, appear to have since been removed from the attorney general’s website and replaced with documents that users are not able to copy text from.
Now, users on social media are trying to keep their names in the public eye.
The 25-year-old Walker was killed by police on June 27, 2022. Officers fired 94 rounds at him in under seven seconds—after a car and foot chase. According to an autopsy, Walker suffered 46 entrance wounds or graze injuries after he fled his vehicle. According to the report, seven of the eight officers fired shots. Walker was unarmed at the scene, but police said he shot at them from his vehicle, where a handgun was found.
The error from the attorney general’s office allowed users to publish a partially unredacted report for public viewing.
The document uploaded without redactions appears to match a file currently hosted on the attorney general’s office titled “Garrity Review,” which is an advisement of rights to government employees involved in an internal investigation and includes officer interviews.
This isn’t the first mistake from the attorney general’s office in attempting to keep the names under wraps. A mutual aid account for the people of Akron published screenshots of body camera footage that the attorney general’s office accidentally released during a presentation on the case earlier this week.
The stills from the body camera footage shown on the presentation included the names of the officers wearing them, and match up with the names from the improperly redacted report.
According to the Akron Beacon-Journal, video of the presentation is no longer available online.
Activists have been claiming the names in the report were the officers involved since late October.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost announced on Monday that a grand jury declined to indict officers after a lengthy investigation into the shooting. The announcement comes nearly ten months after Walker was fatally shot in June 2022. The Akron Police Department announced an internal investigation on Tuesday that will determine if officers violated any department regulations.
The department originally attempted to keep the names under wraps, saying at a press conference that they wanted to protect the officers’ safety.
“As advised by the law department, we will not be releasing the involved officers’ names as the threats made against them are still believed to be active, viable, and credible,” Akron Police Chief Steve Mylett said at a press conference Monday. “For their safety and the safety of their families, we will not release their identities.”
The Akron Police Department and attorney general’s office did not respond to requests for comment from the Daily Dot.
