‘What are they hiding?’: Family gets body cam in KCK police shooting nearly 2 years later
Police body camera footage released this week shows a Kansas City, Kansas, officer firing nearly a dozen gunshots, fatally wounding 50-year-old John Anderton who ditched his bicycle and ran as he was being questioned.
Anderton had called 911 for help after one of his friends overdosed in February 2023.
Family members won the release of the footage after a months-long court battle for access to police records.
Police have said Anderton had a gun, and one was recovered from the scene, though the family has questioned that fact in the absence of clear-cut proof on the video snippets Kansas City, Kansas, police provided as required by law.
The footage, shared with The Star by the National Police Accountability Project, shows a lone officer pull up to the 5400 block of Haskell Avenue shortly before 6 p.m. on Feb. 3, 2023. Anderton is standing near the street curb and holding a bicycle.
A brief time earlier, Anderton called 911 and left a nearby house as two people inside were suffering from a drug overdose. Police officers chased him when he left.
“What’s going on, brother? Why are you leaving that house?” the officer says as he approaches Anderton, who responds that he had helped his friends and left because “I can’t do no more.”
After the officer says to drop the bike and put his hands on his head, Anderton drops his bike and runs a short distance towards a grassy stretch along the roadside. He hunches down toward his right, as the officer yells twice for him to “stop reaching.”
The officer, whose name was not released, fires about 12 bullets at Anderton. He continues to shoot as Anderton turns his back toward the officer and falls to the ground.
In the video, Anderton can be heard moaning as the officer takes cover behind a parked car on the street, his gun still drawn and pointed.
The officer calls for backup, yells several times more for Anderton to put his hands out because “I need to help you,” and then calls for paramedics. He says over the radio he believes Anderton is still armed with a gun.
No gun is visible in the video shared with The Star. Later, as other officers arrive with a ballistic shield and approach Anderton, one mentions seeing a gun on the ground.
In August 2023, roughly six months after Anderton was killed, the Wyandotte County District Attorney’s Office determined the shooting was justified under Kansas law, clearing the officer who shot Anderton from criminal liability.
‘A headache and a runaround’
For the better part of two years, Eric Anderton has sought answers to why his older brother ended up shot by police that day.
He watched a segment of the footage in the presence of police, an opportunity reserved in Kansas for people whose family members are killed by law enforcement. He believes the department has been trying to hide the shooting from scrutiny.
“It’s just been a headache and a runaround,” he told The Star Thursday, saying he had not yet worked up the courage to watch the entire video recently released.
Nancy Chartrand, a spokeswoman for Kansas City, Kansas, police said the department follows the law with regard to the release of body-worn camera footage.
The footage and other police files would likely never have seen the light of day if not for an interstate agreement with Kansas City, Missouri.
In 2023, when John Anderton was shot, police across the state line handled use-of-force investigations involving Kansas City, Kansas, officers, as part of an external review practice adopted in recent years.
The National Police Accountability Project sought the records on Eric Anderton’s behalf under the Kansas Open Records Act and in Wyandotte County District Court without success.
In October, The Star sought records in Missouri for Anderton’s case and others investigated by KCPD that involved Kansas City, Kansas, officers. Lawyers for the Unified Government of Wyandotte County fought the disclosure in court but lost.
Capt. Jacob Becchina, a KCPD spokesman, told The Star on Thursday its records request was still being processed.
The National Police Accountability Project obtained the footage of Anderton’s shooting from the Kansas City police under Missouri’s open records law, said Lauren Bonds, the group’s executive director.
Bonds said the effort to get the records and videos was aimed to ensure “that what happened to John wasn’t shrouded in secrecy, whether it was justified or unjustified.”
“It’s important for the public to be able to see this,” Bonds said. “It’s obviously upsetting. It’s not something that’s fun to watch. But people should have a sense of what happened.”
Little public disclosure
A Star investigation published in March found many agencies in Kansas frequently decline to share videos of police shootings with the public.
In the five years from 2019 to 2023, police officers fatally shot 47 people in Kansas. Officers were cleared of criminal charges in all of those cases. The Star requested videos from all of the shootings under the Kansas Open Records Act. Where recordings existed, officials declined to release them to the public 67% of the time.
Eight of those fatal police shootings were in Kansas City, Kansas. The department released one video in 2022. The department declined to release footage from the other seven fatal shootings, which included Anderton’s.
Eric Anderton said Thursday nearly two years had lapsed since he started to ask questions about the shooting.
“Finally we got it. What are they hiding? They should go public immediately,” Eric Anderton said. “Let society decide if the cop was right or not. We’re letting the police department decide.”
This story was originally published December 5, 2024 at 7:17 PM.
