KCPD took 2 years to investigate its failed child crimes unit — but what did it find?

After two years, the Kansas City Police Department is reviewing a recently completed internal affairs investigation into its failed Crimes Against Children unit.

The Police Department has not said when its review will be finished or if any more information will be released. Police officials have said the investigation is a personnel matter and as such is not a public record. Some information may be revealed if police detectives face discipline or are fired and appeal those decisions to the Board of Police Commissioners.

The investigation, begun in the fall of 2015, delved into evidence that for years detectives in the unit failed to properly investigate rapes, child molestation and other crimes against children, in some instances leaving cases untouched for more than a year and engaging in deception to cover their tracks.

The Star first revealed the extent of the failures in September 2016, showing how some victims were denied justice after years of waiting.

Among the unit’s shortcomings, as recently described by the leader of a child advocacy group: The detectives almost never showed up to the forensic interviews where specialists recorded child victims describing the crimes committed against them.

But in the past two years that has changed, showing marked improvement in the police unit’s work after nearly the entire unit was suspended for about a month and replaced in January 2016. Seven detectives and two sergeants were removed from the unit and reassigned to patrol.

Whether any of them will face discipline is one of the questions expected to be answered following the internal affairs investigation, and one that police officials have declined to comment on so far.

The mother of one child victim, when told by a Star reporter that the investigation was finished, said she would like to know the results. Her daughter was 12 years old when she was the victim of a 2013 statutory rape by three men.

“I have not heard a word,” the mother said. “I definitely would like to know. Are they going to reach out to each individual family?”

Prosecutors said her daughter’s statutory rape case produced no charges in part because of the mistakes and questionable credibility of Kansas City police detective Latondra Moore, who also has used the name Moore-Harrison.

“They should be fired,” the mother said of the detectives who worked her daughter’s case. “If they only knew the stuff my daughter has gone through.”

Capt. Stacey Graves, a Police Department spokeswoman, said in a written statement that police officials took the internal affairs investigation seriously and have made changes in the department.

“The Crimes Against Children investigation is under review,” Graves wrote. “We hope to have the review complete as soon as possible. We want our community to know that we have taken this investigation seriously, investigated thoroughly and made internal changes to ensure all cases submitted have the greatest chance for prosecution and conviction.”

The size of the investigation, and the number of people involved, might explain why it took two years to complete, said Mike Gennaco, a former civil rights prosecutor in California who has assisted law enforcement agencies across the country in internal affairs investigations and other policing issues.

One Kansas City police commander, Maj. David Lindaman, wrote in a memo obtained by The Star that the child crimes unit was part of a systemic failure, over a period of four years, that reached from detectives to sergeants and commanders — even himself.

Internal police memos written long before the investigation was completed describe 148 “severely mishandled” cases, “gross negligence,” “incompetence” and evidence of attempts to “cover up” problems.

“It sounds like it’s significant in scope,” Gennaco said. “Considering the number of subjects and the breadth of the investigation, I wouldn’t consider two years too long. You have supervisors — it’s a big deal.”

Still, he said, “Two years is a long time.”

In California, internal affairs investigations by law must be completed within one year or the officer can’t be punished. Generally, it is best to complete those investigations quickly, Gennaco said, because the longer it takes, the less effective is the accountability.

If officers must be fired, it is better to do it sooner, he said. And if there are victims, they are better served by swift action.

“While each officer has individual accountability, it sounds like this was a structural, systemic issue,” Gennaco said. “So I would hope the investigation is geared to answer some of those issues. Identifying the issue is one thing, putting changes in place to prevent it is another.”

Internal police documents identified the suspended detectives as Gleanice Brown, Latondra Moore, Tamara Solomon, Amy Klug, Robert Roubal, Travis Menuey and James Foushee. Klug has left the Police Department. Solomon is assigned to a supply unit and the others remain in patrol.

If Kansas City Police Chief Rick Smith recommends firing any of the remaining detectives, or either of the sergeants, the decision can be appealed to the police board.

The police board will conduct public hearings for each officer. Such hearings are conducted similarly to criminal trials. Attorneys for the Police Department and for the officer can present evidence and call witnesses to testify before the board.

If the board upholds the recommendation, the officers can appeal to the circuit court.

If the investigation results in criminal charges against any officers, those records would eventually become public.

‘A hard look’

Child welfare advocates and observers of the police department say a lot of effort has gone into improving the quality of the unit’s work and into finishing the internal affairs investigation.

In the two years since the Police Department replaced nearly all of the unit’s detectives, child advocates have seen a big difference, said Lisa Mizell, chief executive officer of the Child Protection Center.

The center specializes in interviews of children who are victims of crimes, and works with Kansas City police on hundreds of cases each year.

When the unit was failing, Mizell said in a recent interview, detectives rarely, if ever, showed up to participate in the interviews — which are recorded on video and often become important evidence in prosecutions of abusers and child molesters.

The new detectives show up “100 percent” of the time, Mizell said.

She attributed the change in part to the efforts of Kansas City Police Capt. Sondra Zink-Groves, who “came in there and she told them that they were going to do it and she called us every month and had us report back to her on whether they are showing up until they got to 100 percent participation,” she said.

“We were grateful when things were revealed and they had to take a hard look at how they were handling these cases,” Mizell said. “But at the risk of sounding like a Pollyanna, they did an exceptional job of bringing that unit up to where it needed to be in a short amount of time.”

Over the same two years, Merrell Bennekin, executive director Kansas City’s Office of Community Complaints, said he has seen internal affairs investigators working long hours, and on weekends, to finish the job. The OCC shares building space with internal affairs.

“You saw the cars out in the parking lot early in the morning and late at night. It was huge,” Bennekin said. “I know them to be thorough, because they take the same thoroughness to OCC complaints.”

Law enforcement experts and child welfare advocates around the country said the revelations in Kansas City, and the suspension of almost the entire child crimes unit, were virtually unheard of.

Joy Oesterly, executive director of Missouri KidsFirst, a statewide nonprofit child welfare advocacy agency, said she suspects similar problems occur elsewhere as well.

“I am not at all surprised that this happened,” Oesterly said. “If I were a betting person, I would be willing to bet a lot of money that it happens in many law enforcement units.

“Because of the line of work that law enforcement is in, as a society we just generally trust law enforcement to do what they are supposed to do. Just by the nature of that, we don’t hold them accountable.”

Damaged cases

During the investigation, local prosecutors said the unit’s failures had damaged a substantial number of cases — and cost them some convictions.

Platte County Prosecutor Eric Zahnd’s office dealt with a man accused of molesting a 3-year-old girl while a Kansas City police investigation of earlier molestation allegations against him languished for months. That man was eventually convicted.

When told that the internal affairs investigation was complete, Zahnd said he trusted in the department to take the right steps.

“It is vital that all crimes — especially crimes against children — are promptly and thoroughly investigated. There were substantial questions surrounding the Crimes Against Children Unit within the Kansas City Police Department. I am pleased the department initiated an investigation, and I trust the department will make any changes necessary to ensure that people who abuse children can be swiftly brought to justice.”

Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker declined to comment on the pending review of the investigation. In 2015, her complaint about one of the detectives sparked the Police Department inquiry into the unit.

Last December — a year into the investigation — an assistant prosecutor assigned full time to deal with the resulting damage to child crimes cases in the prosecutor’s office said the extent of the fallout was still unclear.

Over the past two years, some of the cases handled by the failing unit have worked their way through the courts. In some instances, prosecutors secured convictions despite disadvantages imposed by the delays as well as a sudden flood of flawed cases.

In at least one case, they eventually dropped charges, setting a defendant free.

A Kansas City man accused of molesting several children walked free in June after prosecutors with the Missouri attorney general’s office dismissed the charges against him. DNA evidence had linked Parrish Smith to a semen stain on a 3-year-old girl’s underwear, according to court documents. But a relative of another victim was told by a prosecutor or a detective that someone had “dropped the ball” on the case.

Some suspects went on to commit other crimes after detectives delayed investigating them.

Take the case of Tyrell L. Staten. Before being sentenced in May to 10 years in prison for sodomizing a girl under the age of 14, Staten, a 22-year-old Kansas City man who was out on bond, shot and injured his girlfriend on Valentine’s Day. Staten had been reported to police for the molestation in 2012, but it took nearly three years to arrest him and his case was still working its way through the courts.

The child molestation case against Eric J. Shores, 36, ended with his conviction last month on four counts of statutory sodomy, even though his case was one of those listed as mishandled by the department. Police were first alerted to the accusations against Shores in 2011, but the case apparently languished for more than three years, until October 2016, after The Star reported on the Crimes Against Children unit’s failures.

As part of a review of the unit, police officials wrote that Brown, the detective assigned to the Shores case, did not investigate it for more than a year and left behind signs of suspicious activity or possible deceit.

Detectives Brown and Moore were the subject of a highly unusual letter from Baker, the prosecutor, to then-Kansas City Police Chief Darryl Forté, declaring the two detectives unfit for police work.

This story was originally published December 8, 2017 at 7:00 AM with the headline "KCPD took 2 years to investigate its failed child crimes unit — but what did it find?."