‘Clearly unconstitutional’: KCPD told arrested protesters not to return, lawsuit says
After a protester was arrested this summer in Kansas City, police officers gave a verbal order prohibiting her from participating in future demonstrations, her attorneys say.
That banishment order — which also prohibited her from returning to the Country Club Plaza, where most protests were held — is “clearly unconstitutional,” according to her lawyers with the ACLU of Missouri and MacArthur Justice Center.
On behalf of the woman, Theresa Taylor, the organizations Thursday filed a federal lawsuit against the Board of Police Commissioners, which sets policies for the Kansas City Police Department. The suit argued that the order violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
Taylor was arrested for ordinance violations during a June 1 protest against police brutality and racism. When she was released, officers told her if she returns to the Plaza, she would be arrested and held without bail, according to her attorneys.
Many others were similarly threatened, the lawsuit alleges.
Asked about the lawsuit, Officer Doaa El-Ashkar, a police spokeswoman, said the department does not generally comment on pending litigation.
Over the summer, thousands of protesters raised their voices in the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. They gathered near what at the time was called J.C. Nichols Memorial Fountain along J.C. Nichols Parkway — named after the local developer whose use of racist restrictive covenants accelerated the city’s racial divide.
In a news release about the lawsuit, Amy Breihan, co-director at MacArthur Justice Center, said the Plaza, given its history, is an important area for people to protest against racial injustice.
The banishment order, she said, “demonstrates law enforcement’s power to silence dissenting voices, including and especially, when those voices are raised in objection to police violence.”
‘As if each arrest was a trophy.’
Taylor was arrested while walking back to her car following a dispersal order, her attorneys said. Officers shouted at her to “get on the [expletive] ground” before zip-tying her hands behind her back, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit noted that Taylor’s mask was taken from her when she was arrested. She did not see any officers wearing one.
Officers told Taylor and others they were “stupid” for protesting, the lawsuit claimed. They mocked their signs, her attorneys said. The officers allegedly taunted: “Why are you throwing your life away?”
Taylor heard police officers exchanging stories of arresting protesters, “as if each arrest was a trophy,” the suit said.
“I got mine,” it quoted an officer as saying, “did you get yours?”
At the East Patrol station on Prospect Avenue, where she was held, Taylor saw officers play with what she thought were tasers and pretend to handcuff each other, her attorneys said. She also reported hearing an officer slap a protester.
At the time, Taylor had not been told what she was being charged with, the suit said.
Taylor also told her lawyers that officers made rude comments to her and others.
One officer, for example, allegedly asked if the detained protesters had seen the television channel Animal Planet because the demonstrators “looked like meerkats peering out” of their cells.
Though Taylor’s municipal charges were later dismissed, the banishment order remains in place, her lawyers said. A resident of the metro area, she has avoided other local protests because of it, they said.
“Taylor has had no opportunity to be heard as to why she should not be barred from the Plaza,” her lawyers wrote in the petition.
