A Kansas officer lied, lost his police license. Now his Missouri license is under review
A man who lost his license to be a police officer in Kansas after he repeatedly lied has been able to continue working as an officer in Missouri in the 10 years since he was caught making “false representations.”
Officials in Missouri finally caught wind of the Kansas incident and now Terrence Brown’s Missouri police license is in jeopardy.
In 2009, when Brown was an officer with the Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department, he told a supervisor he needed three days off to attend a funeral. He later presented a funeral program which investigators determined was “fictitious,” according to state records. He then changed his story saying he went to visit a sick aunt, which also wasn’t true. His Kansas license was revoked.
In November 2020, Brown applied to be recertified in Kansas, saying “people live and learn and change for the better,” according to the records from Kansas. An investigator who reviewed his petition found he had lied again: Brown reported he had not been in law enforcement in the interim years, but had in fact worked for several Missouri police departments.
Brown’s case illustrates the lack of coordination between agencies, which can allow officers with a troubled history to continue working in a different state. That can be especially problematic for places like the Kansas City metro where the state line can easily be crossed.
“It creates liabilities for the community and creates a black eye for law enforcement and for the citizens who expect their police officers to be ethical,” said Mike Becar, executive director of the International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training.
The association compiles the National Decertification Index, a nationwide database that keeps track of law enforcement employees who have lost their licenses.
Brown, 40, declined to answer questions when he was contacted last week.
“As the sole owner of this phone, do not reach out to me no more via any forms of communication,” a text message from his number said.
Brown’s lies
In 2004, Brown earned his police license in Kansas and worked for the Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department.
But in August 2009, he made several “false representations” to a supervisor, according to documents from the Kansas Commission on Peace Officers’ Standards and Training (CPOST).
Brown told his supervisors that his grandmother had died and requested funeral leave. When a supervisor informed him that he’d already received leave for both of his grandmothers’ funerals, he told the supervisor it was actually his great-grandmother who had died.
But she had died ten years before.
Brown had his father help him create a fake funeral program for his great-grandmother, according to the Kansas records. When the department again confronted him, he said had requested leave because an aunt had been sick. He had actually attended a family reunion, an investigation found. The commission held a hearing in March 2012 and revoked his license a month later.
“(Brown) showed he no longer possessed good moral character and the public trust in him was no longer justified,” the commission’s order said.
Officer in Missouri
In 2010 — after Brown had lied to his supervisor in Kansas City, Kansas, but before he had lost his Kansas license — Brown got his Missouri police license.
He began working as a part-time officer in 2015 for police departments in Orrick, Northmoor and Lake Tapawingo. It’s unclear how many of the departments knew Brown had lost his license in Kansas. Lake Tapawingo police chief Tammy Taylor later told the licensing commission in Kansas that she did not know Brown’s license had been revoked.
In October 2019, the Lake Weatherby Police Department hired Brown as a full-time officer.
Lake Weatherby Police Chief Kevin Davis declined to comment.
Brown left that department in February 2020.
In November of that year, Brown filed a petition with Kansas’ commission asking to be reinstated, saying he had been rehabilitated. When an investigator for the commission interviewed Brown, he told the investigator he had not worked for any law enforcement agency since his Kansas license had been revoked.
He described his work as “court stuff.”
In June 2021, the commission rejected his bid for recertification concluding its investigation “revealed a lack of rehabilitation,” and that Brown’s lies to the investigator was evidence he “lacked honesty, integrity, a sense of duty, and respect for his certification and the Commission,” according to the state records.
That same month, the Missouri Peace Officer Standards and Training filed a complaint against Brown, citing his troubles in Kansas.
In a response to the complaint, Brown said he did not “mislead or misrepresent (the) Missouri Department of Public Safety when filing for my Missouri POST License.”
Brown has a hearing scheduled before Missouri’s Administrative Hearing Commission at 9 a.m. May 5, 2022, according to state records.
Lack of federal support
There is no national standard for decertifying police officers, according to Matthew Hickman, a criminal justice professor at Seattle University who has conducted research on the topic. Each state handles decertification differently, usually through a state Peace Officer’s Standards and Training commission.
Some states only take certification action on felony convictions, Doug Shroeder, executive director of Kansas CPOST said in an email to The Star.
“Some states do not even have authority to take certification action, or decertify an officer, at all.”
Shroeder added that he thinks Kansas has a good relationship with other state commissions, including Missouri’s.
Becar, who runs the National Decertification Index, said the database captures information about officers who have lost their licenses, including cases like Brown’s which was not criminal in nature. But participation in the index is voluntary. Missouri has more than 600 police agencies, according to state data. Fifty-five participate in the NDI, according to Becar.
“Sometimes it takes a good background investigator to go to the state and sit down and dig through the information,” Becar said.
Another way Brown appears to have slipped through some of the safeguards that are in place was he chose police departments that could be classified as rural, Hickman said, which are not highly sought after.
“And as a result, they’re desperate for officers,” Hickman said. “So you got somebody who is otherwise fully trained and can perform the duties of law enforcement, I can see that pressure as to why somebody would be motivated to make that hire.”
Brown’s case speaks to some of the difficulties in a country where law enforcement oversight is fragmented. Hickman said the challenge is that there is not good federal leadership on coordinating decertification throughout the country.
“This is one of the key issues in police reform nationally, is that all the states should participate in the NDI to prevent that problem,” he said.
This story was originally published March 16, 2022 at 10:11 AM.
