Kansas City police disband command post in Lisa Irwin case

Kansas City police have shut down the command post where investigators had been working exclusively on the Lisa Irwin case.

Detectives and FBI agents who had been working as a task force out of a room at Kansas City’s police training academy now are back in their usual offices, police said Tuesday. Police said the move reflected a necessary shift in resources as leads in the case have slowed and other crime cases have piled up.

For more than six weeks, a large group of detectives from the Crimes against Children unit had been focusing solely on finding Lisa Irwin, who was 10 months old when she disappeared Oct. 4 from her home on North Lister Avenue.

But that put a strain on the detectives left in the unit to investigate all the city’s other reported child abuse, sex abuse and neglect cases, police said. The other cases and victims were suffering from the lack of available investigators, police said.

A core of seven or eight detectives will remain assigned to the baby Lisa case, police said, but the detectives now also will take on other cases from their respective units. FBI agents also will continue to work with police at the same level as before, police said.

If new leads develop, police said they can call upon other detectives from other units who previously have assisted in the case.

“The people who are working this are not going to let this go,” Capt. Steve Young said. “But we have other cases and other victims.”