ALBANY - Joshua Dean Westbrook was 24 years old. He was a drug user, his friends say, and he was known to steal cars sometimes. Early on the morning of Sept. 29, he was behind the wheel of a stolen car when he was stopped by police.

Jeff Hinrichs, an Albany police captain, smashed out the window of the car in an effort to get the keys from Josh. It was a judgment call, the kind of quick decision police have to make all the time, Capt. Ben Atchley said.

In this case, it didn't work the way the officer had hoped.

Josh took off, and Hinrichs was dragged about 40 feet. Josh crashed the car, and a week later he was dead.

Albany officers and an expert on the use of force by police both say that Hinrichs was in no way to blame for Josh's death.

But Geoffrey Alpert, who has studied police procedure for 20 years, said it's not standard police practice to smash a car window and try to grab the keys.

"If they're training to break windows with batons, they've got some real issues," he said.

Alpert said it's highly unusual for police to break out a window with a baton. He is director of research for the College of Criminal Justice at the University of South Carolina and has done research for the National Institute of Justice, a program of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Atchley, a spokesman for the Albany Police Department, said it's not the first time police have broken out a window to get control of a stolen car, and it's one of a range of options police have in that situation.

"When you have a stolen car, you can't just say, 'Oh, gee whiz, I'm going to stand back and let you drive off with it,' " he said.

He said Hinrichs could have pointed his gun at Westbrook or sprayed pepper spray into the car.

"He had refused a lawful order, and the next step was for Jeff to gain entry," he said. "He chose the method that was the lowest level he could do."

Alpert said he's never seen a police officer trained to break a window or grab the wheel of a car. "Trying to grab the keys is a very dangerous tactic and strategy. Someone is likely to be hurt. No one is ever trained to do that. "

However, he added, it's clear police didn't cause Josh to crash. "It's not their fault he took off. He was on his own when he did that."

Alpert believes the best thing to do in such a situation would be to get the driver out of the car so there's no chance he could drive off or try to run down an officer.

"If you knew the car was stolen, or even if you have to check on it, you don't check it with him in the car," he said. "You try to get him out without letting him know you know it's stolen."

The case sparked comparisons with an incident in Portland where a woman, Kendra James, started to drive away from a traffic stop with an officer partially inside the car and the officer shot her.

In the Westbrook case, there was no shooting and the officer was out of the car well before the crash. Still, Atchley said, officers run a risk of things escalating to a dangerous level anytime they stop a car.

"Could we have had an incident like the Portland Police Bureau and Kendra James? We certainly could have," Atchley said.

Atchley said there was no reason to think Hinrichs did anything wrong during the traffic stop. If Josh had done what Hinrichs told him to, he very likely would have been simply cited and released.

"The tragic thing is, it could have been very different," Atchley said. "Unfortunately, you as a police officer can't control what that other person is going to do."

On Sept. 5, Lebanon police had arrested Josh for car theft, and three weeks later, Josh was again driving a car that didn't belong to him when Hinrichs spotted him.

Hinrichs, 35, is a 13-year veteran of the Albany Police Department who was recently promoted to the position of captain in charge of patrol services.

He was out on the road at about 1:30 a.m. on Sept. 29 when he saw a white 1984 Datsun parked on 28th Avenue Southeast with its lights on. Once Hinrichs had driven by, the Datsun started moving down the street, according to the police report.

Hinrichs turned around to observe the car and followed it as it cruised through southeast Albany.

"I suspected the driver was trying to avoid me," Hinrichs wrote in his report. "As a city we have numerous small foreign cars stolen and numerous cars prowled. … The route the vehicle traveled was suspicious."

After he clocked the Datsun at 15 mph over the 25 mph speed limit on Geary Street, it turned left and went even faster on Grand Prairie Road. He turned on his overhead lights, and the car turned north and stopped on Kennel Road.

Hinrichs had checked the license plate and found the car was registered to Carrie Sue Rainwater of Albany. When he walked up to the car, he saw a thin young man with brown hair and brown eyes sitting in the driver's seat. The man said his name was Josh Dean Westbrook.

The ignition of the car was turned off, but the lights were still on. For the first part of their conversation, Josh was polite, saying he understood that he'd been speeding and admitting his license was suspended. He claimed the owner of the car was a friend of his who had given him permission to drive it.

"Josh tried to appear very calm and open, but I felt there was more to the story," Hinrichs wrote in his report.

Hinrichs noticed a slight odor of alcohol on Josh's breath but didn't see any other signs of impairment. He told Josh he'd be issuing him some citations, and Josh said he understood.

Hinrichs went back to his car to write citations and talk to police dispatchers. In the meantime, Linn County Sheriff's Sgt. Art Sprague had arrived and was standing by. Dispatchers called Carrie Rainwater, who said no one had permission to be driving her car.

As Hinrichs returned to the Datsun to clarify Josh's story, things were about to take a turn for the worse.

Josh had rolled the window almost all the way up, and the door was locked. Sprague went to stand on the passenger side of the car.

"The ignition was still off, but I now suspected the statement Carrie had given to dispatch was probably accurate," Hinrichs wrote.

Hinrichs asked Josh again who had given him permission to drive the car, and he said it was Carrie's boyfriend. Hinrichs asked Josh if he could see the keys to make sure they fit the car.

"Josh questioned my intentions and for the first time seemed outwardly nervous," Hinrichs wrote.

Debra Pack, Josh's foster mother, said Josh was afraid of the police after other scrapes with the law in California.

"I imagine he was scared," she said. She remembers him saying he would never return to jail.

Josh pulled the keys out and showed them to Hinrichs through the window but wouldn't hand them over. Afterward, police found that he was using an "old, filed-down key, consistent with the ones used by some car thieves."

Josh began putting the key back to the ignition, and Hinrichs pulled out his police baton.

"I suspected Josh would try to start the vehicle and drive off, and I was prepared to break the window in an attempt to stop him," Hinrichs wrote.

He added: "Josh continued to complain that he had done nothing wrong and had permission to drive the car. I yelled at least two more times, 'Do not start the car,' and 'unlock the door or I will break the window.' "

Josh ignored him. He put the key in and turned it.

Hinrichs smashed the window with the base of the baton, and Josh paused briefly, looking at Hinrichs in surprise.

Hinrichs reached in and tried to grab the keys, yelling at him to stop the car. Josh put the Datsun into gear and pushed down on the gas pedal, with Hinrichs' head and arms still in the vehicle. The spinning tires pelted Sprague with gravel, and he had to jump out of the way.

Hinrichs tried to grab the wheel and force the vehicle off the road into a field, where he hoped it would stop. Josh tried to turn it to the left, toward Hinrichs and toward the road, still pushing down on the gas. He was going about 15 mph, Hinrichs estimated.

When the officer had been dragged about 40 feet, he realized Josh wasn't stopping. He let go of the wheel and backed away from the car, his forearms cut and bleeding.

Sprague had run back to his car and was getting in to follow Josh, but the Datsun was speeding away, probably at 70 to 80 miles an hour, according to police reports.

Before Sprague had a chance to put his overhead lights on, he could see a 90-degree right-hand turn about a quarter of a mile ahead.

The Datsun, with Josh inside, had not made the corner.

When the officers arrived, they found him slumped unconscious with head injuries between the two front bucket seats, his gray sweatshirt and black pants covered in blood. He was not wearing a seat belt.

Sprague and Hinrichs called for medics, who took Josh to Samaritan Albany General Hospital and then to Oregon Health & Science University in Portland. An ambulance transported him to Portland after bad weather grounded efforts to fly him by helicopter.

He was there for a week. He suffered a stroke and, on Oct. 5, he died.

At least one relative still has questions about what happened that night.

Amy Gutierrez, Josh's cousin, said she will search for answers and will consider a lawsuit if she finds anything amiss.

"Something doesn't feel right here," she said. "I know he stole cars, but it's weird he would drive off like that. He's the kind of guy that would run and hide."

A note from the District Attorney's Office is now tucked inside the case file: "Based on the confirmation that the defendant is now deceased, no charges will be filed."

The wrecked Datsun ended up at Aerostar Towing in Lebanon, where it is scheduled to be crushed next week.

Police removed Josh's final possessions from the car: a key ring with nine keys, a carabiner with two rings, a metal torch-type lighter, a Motorola cell phone battery charger and cover, a methamphetamine pipe, a marijuana pipe, a Salvation Army card in a woman's name, a 76 gas card in another woman's name, and 75 cents.

Out on the road, skid marks are still visible leading up to the corner. In a tree at the crash site there is a wooden cross, not too noticeable unless you're looking for it, bearing his name: Joshua Dean Westbrook.

Reporter Sean Wolfe contributed to this story.