The family of an 18-year-old Waldoboro man who was killed in a 2007 police shooting said they are not satisfied with the 2020 reopening of an investigation into that fatal encounter.
Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey said he wants to make sure a report on his office’s reopening the investigation into the shooting by a town police officer will be clear and organized.
The attorney general responded to a question from The Courier-Gazette during the Maine Public “Maine Calling” radio show on March 21.
The state’s top prosecutor said he did something that has never been done by the AG’s office – he took another look at a more-than-10-year-old closed case involving a police shooting. He said he knows there is a lot of interest in the case and he believes in transparency when it comes to deadly force investigations.
Frey said not only did his office review the existing file but had additional work done by a forensic examiner from out of state.
The office examined information provided by the family and other advocates, including the family’s attorney and a former state legislator.
Gregori Jackson
He said the information provided by the advocates was not complete nor an accurate representation of what the evidence showed. Despite this, he said, he has had two homicide attorneys review the information.
“I could have stopped after finding the basis for the request was unfounded,” Frey said.
The final report will take a lot of explanation and he wants everything to be organized before he releases the findings, he said.
He said he has shared this information with the family and advocates, but the family and an advocate say that has not happened.
Natalie Jackson, mother of Gregori Jackson, the man who was shot dead, said Sunday that the AG’s office is doing nothing.
“We have received nothing,” she said.
The AG’s office provided The Courier-Gazette with a letter sent to the family in November 2021 that included information from the original investigation and some from the reopened investigation.
Former Rep. Jeffrey Evangelos, an independent from Friendship, said Saturday that while some information was offered in 2021, nothing has been provided in the ensuing 2½ years. He questioned why, if no additional information has been gathered since November 2021, has no final report been issued.
Natalie and Millard Jackson stand outside the Cross Building in Augusta, home to the Maine Attorney General’s Office, in 2022. Their 18-year-old son Gregori was fatally shot by a reserve police officer in Waldoboro in September 2007. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer
“Frey’s statement is full of Orwellian doublespeak,” Evangelos said. “The fact remains that an unarmed 18-year-old boy took four bullets in the back from an untrained reserve police officer. And who signed off on the waiver for service to the Town of Waldoboro for this untrained officer? Chief of Investigations Brian MacMaster, the same person who conducted the cover-up.”
Frey announced in June 2020 that his department would reopen the investigation into the shooting of Jackson on Sept. 23, 2007, by then-reserve officer Zachary Curtis following a traffic stop on Friendship Road in Waldoboro. Curtis determined Jackson, a passenger in the car, violated bail conditions on prior charges of operating under the influence and failure to stop for an officer, police said. The alleged violation was that Jackson had been drinking.
In June 2020, the attorney general issued a statement: “To reopen this matter is a careful deliberative process involving experienced homicide prosecutors and we are prioritizing the completion of this review over other matters.”
In December 2021, he agreed to meet with Jackson’s parents but canceled the meeting when they said they wanted to bring a newspaper reporter with them to hear the results.
In January 2022, Frey said a report would be “forthcoming.” No report has yet been issued.
According to the official police report issued in 2007, when Curtis tried to arrest Jackson, Jackson resisted and was pepper-sprayed by the officer. Jackson ran down the road and then into the woods, pursued by Curtis.
The officer claimed Jackson resisted arrest and further claimed Jackson struck Curtis with a log.
Curtis said Jackson got on top of him, was trying to choke him and then put his hand on the officer’s gun.
The attorney general’s office, then under Attorney General Steven Rowe, issued a statement Nov. 30, 2007, saying its investigation found the shooting justified. There has never been a police shooting in Maine that was declared unjustified by the attorney general’s office.
District Attorney Natasha Irving said in June 2020 that she would file murder charges, however murder charges are the jurisdiction of the attorney general.
Irving said the forensic evidence showed inconsistencies in Curtis’ account of how the shooting occurred, including that very little blood was found on Curtis even though he said Jackson was on top of him when the officer repeatedly fired his gun into Jackson’s back.
The family was represented by attorney Amy Fairfield. Evangelos is an advocate for the family.
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