Without policy, critics say outside investigation of KCPD shootings is ‘for the trend’
When a Kansas City police officer shot and killed a man suspected of carjacking Saturday afternoon, the Missouri State Highway Patrol was called to investigate the shooting.
This will be the department’s practice for the “foreseeable future” when a Kansas City Police Department officer is involved in a shooting, said department spokesman Sgt. Jacob Becchina in an email to The Star.
The change, however, has not been written into formal policy and, Becchina said, it is uncertain at this time whether it will be.
Creation of new policy, he said, takes time.
The change, Becchina said, followed discussions with the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners at a closed emergency meeting on June 4.
The meeting followed a weekend of demonstrations in Kansas City and nationwide expressing outrage over the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and calling for an end to police brutality and systemic racism.
Following the meeting Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, a member of the board, announced a series of steps he said would be implemented. In a news release he said one of those steps was to require the police department to send all officer involved shootings and “major use of force complaints” to an outside enforcement agency for independent review.
After Saturday’s shooting, however, Lucas said in a statement that an outside agency was required to investigate any police shooting.
Lucas’s spokeswoman, Morgan Said, said in an email Wednesday that the board decided independent review and investigation of police shootings was warranted.
“Long-term details with third-party law enforcement agencies and the Department are still being finalized,” she said.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol was not available to comment in time for publication.
‘Keeping it in the family.’
Justice Horn, an activist who has led protests calling for changes to the department, said there has been a lack of communication and transparency from police.
The lack of formal policy requiring the outside investigation, he said, lacks accountability for the department.
“It shows they’re shifting just for the trend,” Horn said. “There’s still the opportunity to walk that back when all this heat is off of them which is what I think they’re going to do.”
Furthermore, Horn said he wants police shootings to be investigated by the county prosecutor’s office or an independent non-police agency. The Missouri Highway Patrol, he said, was still “keeping it in the family.”
Lora McDonald, the executive director of the Metro Organization for Racial and Economic Equity, said the directive to have the highway patrol investigate police shootings was a good first step but it “remains to be seen if that is the right solution or just a decent temporary solution.”
However, McDonald said that the organization does not support the existing governance of the police department so any policy formal or informal would be scrutinized if the department comes under local control.
“Without local control the chief can do whatever the chief wants to do,” she said. “In Kansas City we are at the mercy of Chief of Police Rick Smith right now, so he can absolutely withdraw it tomorrow.”
Since 2015, the department has had a memorandum of agreement with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Jackson County Prosecutors Office saying that the agencies would review shootings and excessive force complaints. The review would determine whether there was a possible federal civil rights violation or state law violation.
Whenever there is an indication of possible misconduct, federal investigators and prosecutors remain involved in the case, according to the agreement. If the use of force was obviously justified federal authorities would back out.
This story was originally published June 17, 2020 at 4:47 PM.
