Pleasant Prairie officer won't face charges when Jacob Albright killed himself in the back of the police vehicle
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The Pleasant Prairie Police Department released body camera and squad camera video Wednesday from the day a man in handcuffs ended his life in the back seat of a Pleasant Prairie squad car.
Three Pleasant Prairie police officers arrested and were transporting 36-year-old Jacob Albright to the Kenosha County Jail on July 20, when he managed to shoot himself in the head.
WISN 12 News is not showing the moment Albright pulled the trigger of the gun.
Squad camera video shows Albright had a gun in the back seat of the squad car after officers initially searched him.
"I'm going to detain you," Officer Brandon Matz said to Albright in the body camera video from July 20.
Matz arrested Albright at the Super 8 hotel in Pleasant Prairie. Pleasant Prairie Police officers said someone saw Albright with a gun.
As a felon, he could not legally have one.
Video shows Matz escorting Albright outside in handcuffs. After a brief struggle near the squad car, officers search Albright and then put him in the squad car.
"Anything in your pockets?" one officer asks Albright.
"No. Just my knife," Albright said.
He is still in handcuffs, but officers in the video see him appear to reach for something.
"If you've got something in your pants, we need to know about it," Matz said to Albright. Matz asked again, "Do you have drugs on you? Or do you have a gun in-between your butt cheeks?"
Albright said he did not.
According to the video, officers ultimately decide they will search Albright again, but only after they drive him to jail intake at the Kenosha County Jail - a roughly eight-mile drive.
Video in the back seat of the squad shows Albright shifting around and saying the handcuffs hurt his wrist.
"Ow (expletive), the cuffs are making me numb, dude," Albright says.
At one point, Albright unbuckles his seat belt. Periodically, he lays down horizontally on the seat.
Later, the gun appears in the video. According to PPPD, Albright pulled it from inside his shorts.
As the squad car pulls up to the Kenosha County Jail, Albright gets his finger on the trigger and fires one shot into his head.
Albright died at the scene.
Albright's family says they are devastated and still left with questions.
"He was able to change positions two or three times with the gun out and visible. Had the officers just glanced back," said Albright's niece, Kailah Bergstrom.
Bergstrom and her family said with the release of the police video, they will continue to fight to get justice for Albright.
"I just want it not to happen to another person. And I just want some humility," Bergstrom said. "And I just want Jake to know that he was worth the fight, because clearly, he didn't think he was anymore."
Albright's sister, Shawna Little, said in a statement to WISN 12 News:
"We are still left without real answers. Why was Jake arrested for a weapons charge without locating said weapon? After failing to locate a weapon, why did the officers allow Jake to fidget around in the backseat without checking what he was doing?"
On October 30, Kenosha County District Attorney Michael Graveley told Pleasant Prairie Police Chief David Smetana there would be no criminal charges against the two officers in the squad car with Albright, and another officer involved in his arrest.