OPA faults cop for shooting at thief who stole his Hyundai

The accountability agency sustained findings against Det. Jeremy Bohannon for firing at the man as he was driving away and leaving his gun in his car overnight.

Seattle police detective Jeremy Bohannon violated policy by firing a shot at a fleeing man who stole his car in Edmonds last year, according to a disciplinary report obtained by DivestSPD.

In the early morning of Sept 11, 2023, Bohannon was leaving for work in plain clothes. He recognized the sound of his car starting and rushed into the parking lot. Bohannon saw his car backing out of his reserved space and ran in front of it, yelling, “Stop!”

The car drove into his leg, and he rolled off the hood onto the ground. Bohannon got up and fired a shot with his off-duty weapon, striking the vehicle in the door. Using an AirTag Bohannon left inside, the King County Sheriff’s Office tracked the car and found it abandoned in South Seattle.

The equipment Bohannon left in the vehicle overnight, including his ballistic vest, radio, ammunition, and duty weapon, were not recovered.

In his interview with the Office of Police Accountability, Bohannon justified his use of lethal force by arguing that the thief had struck him once, and he feared that they would turn around to finish him off: “I did not perceive this threat to be over. I did not know that it was over. I mean, I'm having to make all of these calculations in such a compressed period of time after I've been struck by a car.”

However, according to the report, the entire chain of command for the Force Investigation Team disagreed. Former Force Investigations Captain Yvonne Underwood, now assistant chief, wrote: “The use of deadly force appears to be outside of department policy, in that the threat to the officer had passed. After the officer was struck, the vehicle continued to drive away to leave the parking lot at a high rate of speed.”

The Edmonds police detective investigating the incident also found “a lack of evidence supporting the vehicle remained an immediate threat as Bohannon initially described” and forwarded it to the Snohomish County prosecutor for consideration of felony assault charges, but they declined. The municipal court also declined misdemeanor charges.

According to OPA data, the agency sustained allegations that Bohannon violated the use of force policy and the law by firing on a fleeing suspect who didn’t pose an immediate threat. It also found that Bohannon failed to adequately secure his equipment, including his duty weapon—one of 23 reported missing since 2017

Though the investigation was completed in August, the department still hasn’t issued final discipline. This is Bohannon’s first sustained complaint, but he was previously ordered to undergo retraining in de-escalation over a struggle to arrest a trespassing woman that left her breast exposed for more than a minute.

Hired in 2017, Bohannon made $136,155 in 2023 and received $55,000 in backpay under the SPOG contract.