The Star moves to intervene in lawsuit between KCK and KCPD to get body camera videos
_fitted.jpeg "John Anderton, 50, shown here with his daughter, was shot and killed by Kansas City, Kansas, police.")
The Star has moved to intervene in a lawsuit over access to body camera footage and other reports from two fatal police shootings.
The initial lawsuit was filed Oct. 17 by the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas. The Kansas City Police Department’s Board of Police Commissioners is named as the defendant.
The Kansas City Police Department was brought in to investigate two shootings by police in Kansas City, Kansas. John Anderton, 50, was killed in February 2023 and Amaree’ya Henderson, 25, was killed in April 2023.
After those investigations concluded, Wyandotte County District Attorney Mark Dupree declined to press charges against the officers.
Under Missouri’s Sunshine Law, case files are subject to open records requests once an investigation has been completed. Kansas’ open records law is stricter.
The Star made requests to KCPD for the case files in April and June.
In its lawsuit, the Unified Government contends the use-of-force investigation records maintained by KCPD are the property of Kansas City, Kansas. Releasing the files to a third party, the argument continues, amounts to a breach of contract between the two agencies and would cause “irreparable harm.”
Platte County Circuit Judge Myles Perry on Oct. 22 granted a temporary restraining order preventing the records from release until a hearing on Nov. 6.
In a 27-page motion filed Wednesday, Bernie Rhodes, an attorney for The Star, says that the Sunshine Law overrides the contract between the two agencies, and that the agreement itself reads, “Dissemination of records will be in accordance with the laws of the State of the Agency holding the records.”
The motion goes on to say that questions remain about the circumstances of both shootings and that denying the records would be a violation of First Amendment rights.
“Public officials should know that The Star will fight their unlawful efforts to hide information from our readers,” The Star’s executive editor Greg Farmer said. “The big question here is, ‘What are they trying to hide?’ We will do everything in our power to find out.”
The Unified Government did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent Wednesday.
This story was originally published October 30, 2024 at 3:52 PM.
