Thursday will mark the one-month anniversary of the shooting death of 63-year-old Douglas Harless of Lily, who was killed in his home by a London Police officer as the agency was attempting to serve a search warrant in regards to a stolen weed eater.
The shooting happened at 511 Vanzant Road shortly before midnight, according to Kentucky State Police. The search warrant was for 489 Vanzant Road, according to Laurel County 911 audio.
The KSP Critical Incident Response Team is leading the investigation into the officer-involved shooting, which is standard procedure.
There has been quite a lot of community outrage over the shooting, and there are a lot of people demanding answers to a lot of questions regarding this shooting and rightly so.
Based on my three decades of experience, I can tell you that it is doubtful most people will get the answers they are seeking about the investigation anytime soon. These type of investigations just don’t work that way.
Now that things have calmed down slightly regarding this shooting, I thought it might be useful to explain a little bit about what the public can expect to find out from state police regarding this investigation, which probably won’t be most of what they are wanting to know.
My experience is that KSP often times doesn’t even announce the outcome of officer-involved shooting investigations when the investigations are complete.
Given the sheer amount of publicity, I think KSP will release a little more information about the Harless shooting than usual. At the very least, I expect KSP to announce at some point that they have completed their investigation and will be presenting the case to the Laurel County Grand Jury, which is pretty standard procedure in the case of a police shooting investigation.
I know there is an active contingent on social media, who want to see someone criminally charged in connection with Harless’ death. Be forewarned that this may never happen though.
Just because the case will be presented to a grand jury, does NOT necessarily mean that state police are even looking to pursue charges against the officer, who shot Harless, or any of the officers involved in the shooting or the investigation.
In fact, I can’t recall a police officer ever being charged in connection with an officer-involved shooting case that I have personally reported on in this region of Kentucky.
Usually, the case is presented to a local grand jury, which issues no true bill or no indictment. This means that 9 out of 12 grand jurors don’t find that it was more likely than not that a crime had been committed.
The Breonna Taylor case is a good example of what I am talking about. Taylor was shot by the Louisville Metro Police Department in 2020.
The officer, who fired the bullet that killed Taylor, was not charged criminally in her death. However, some other officers were charged with various offenses in connection with the case.
If state police announce that they are asking for the FBI or United States Attorney’s Office to review their findings or investigate the shooting further – possibly in connection to a civil rights violation – then who knows what could happen.
In regards to when state police will complete their investigation, two or three months is probably the minimum time frame. Six months or longer is the more likely possibility.
In fairness to KSP, these are thorough investigations with quite possibly hundreds of pages in the final investigative report.
Will the public ever find out details about this officer-involved shooting? Eventually is my best answers to this question, but don’t necessarily expect those details to come directly from law enforcement.
Once the investigation is complete, look for media outlets to file open records requests for documents related to the KSP investigation.
I don’t see foresee any realistic scenario here – possibly short of the City of London ponying up a HUGE settlement – where the victim’s family doesn’t file a very detailed wrongful death lawsuit against the City of London, the London Police Department and probably others outlining everything that allegedly went wrong.
This is when I think you will see most of the details about the shooting come out publicly.
