KC firefighter kept his job after rape charge. Why others were protected too

The details were graphic and brutal.

A Grandview woman said she was bound with plastic ties, threatened at gunpoint, raped and then forced to shower in an attempt to destroy evidence of the assault. Her attacker, she alleged, was a longtime family friend who told her he’d been planning the incident for months.

He also was a Kansas City firefighter.

Police quickly arrested Deonte’ Watson in January 2023 and he was charged with first-degree rape and first-degree sodomy, with kidnapping and harassment charges added later. Facing more than two consecutive life sentences for the four felonies, Watson pleaded guilty in Jackson County Circuit Court to one count of harassment and was sentenced last October to three years of probation.

Kansas City Fire Department records obtained through a Sunshine Law request indicate that Watson remains on the employee roster. And his situation is not unique. Watson is one of multiple Kansas City firefighters convicted of serious crimes who are still on the employee rolls, thanks in part to the powerful union that represents them.

Watson, 34, told The Star that he couldn’t discuss the details of his situation. Since the incident, court records say, the woman he was accused of assaulting has become a fire department employee.

“I don’t believe it’s something that I can talk about at this point, because I’m still going through the process with the department,” he said in a recent phone call. “I am not currently working, but I’m going through the process of the collective bargaining agreement … as of right now, I’m still fighting the situation.

“I’m working with the union through meetings and through the city and everything.”

Battalion Chief Michael Hopkins, a KCFD spokesman, declined to answer questions about why employees with felony convictions were allowed to remain with the department, saying those were personnel matters. He also did not respond to a question about whether the department has a policy that addresses what happens when an employee is convicted of a felony.

Dan Heizman, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 42, the union representing Kansas City firefighters, medics and emergency medical technicians, did not respond to requests for comment.

Critics say the issue raises serious public safety concerns.

“The city, the county prosecutor, the fire department and Local 42 need to step up and protect the citizens of Kansas City,” said attorney Lynne Bratcher, who has represented several Black firefighters in successful discrimination lawsuits against the KCFD. “While many, if not most, of the firefighters are courageous first responders, their valuable work is overshadowed by the acts of these bad apples.

“When you add the history of illegal discrimination against women and Blacks to these criminal acts, the city’s reputation is sullied. Local 42 needs to recognize that the protection of citizens is paramount and not defend those firefighters that create injustice to the citizens of Kansas City.”

Bratcher said Local 42 has become too powerful in its representation of members.

“Local 42 has a duty to represent its members, but things are getting out of hand,” she said. “While I believe in general that labor unions are important to protect firefighters from unfair actions, Local 42 needs to be aware that the purpose of the fire department is to protect the public.”

Road rage attack

In 2019, Kansas City firefighter Pleaze Robinson III was charged with third-degree assault after he allegedly attacked a woman during a road rage incident near Raytown High School.

Prosecutors alleged that Robinson, then 52, grabbed the victim from behind and “body slammed” her onto the pavement, then sat on her back and punched her in the head about 30 times. Police said the victim was taken to a hospital with serious injuries. The alleged attack, the victim said, stemmed from a long-standing neighborhood feud.

Robinson pleaded guilty in 2022 to second-degree assault and leaving the scene of an accident. He was sentenced to four years’ probation and ordered to complete 30 days of shock incarceration with his first year of probation. He also kept his job with the fire department.

Robinson faced legal problems again in 2024, charged in Platte County with two more felonies — first-degree harassment and first-degree property damage — for allegedly urinating on a female co-worker’s personal and professional belongings. 

Court records said that on Sept. 10, 2023, the KCFD medic — who had recently returned to work after being off about four months because of an injury — smelled a strange odor in a medical storage closet that she had converted into a small office space. The medic noticed that her possessions, which included a CD player, CDs, medic training books and a wakeboard, were wet. 

When she wiped the wakeboard with a white paper towel, she said, it turned yellow. The medic realized that her belongings — valued at around $3,000 — had been urinated on, according to the probable cause statement. 

When investigators asked the medic who could have done it, she said there had been previous issues with Robinson and another firefighter. DNA test results strongly supported that the liquid on the victim’s possessions came from Robinson, court records said.

Robinson pleaded not guilty last June and the case is ongoing, with the next hearing scheduled for June 12. 

Last fall, the medic, Rebecca Reynolds, received a $1.3 million settlement from the city to compensate her for years of what she said was mistreatment and abuse from male co-workers and her superiors because she was a woman, a lesbian and older than most of her peers when she graduated from the fire academy at age 40.

She had two other discrimination lawsuits heading toward trial and was poised to file one regarding the urine incident when the Kansas City Council approved the settlement agreement.

Fire department employee rolls show that Robinson is a fire apparatus operator with a 2025 salary of $104,332.

Ambulance patient struck repeatedly with laptop

In 2021, fire medic Peter Hansen was captured on hospital surveillance video repeatedly striking a patient with a laptop computer at Truman Medical Center — now University Health Truman Medical Center — after the ambulance pulled up outside the emergency room entrance. It appears that no criminal charges were filed in the incident.

Hansen was terminated, but Local 42 filed a grievance on Hansen’s behalf. Union leaders said Hansen was singled out by officials and that the patient initially attacked Hansen, who defended himself.

The arbitrator ruled that Hansen should be reinstated and his firing be changed to a one pay-period suspension because Hansen had not received de-escalation and anger management training. He called Hansen’s misconduct “extremely serious” but said what helped his case was that Kansas City fire chiefs in the past had failed to discipline other employees who were involved in “similar or worse incidents of violent misconduct against members of the public” and therefore terminating Hansen would amount to disparate treatment.

A fire department spokesperson said in a statement that “while we accepted this decision to maintain a positive working relationship with our union, our commitment to accountability and fairness remains unchanged.”

KCFD records indicate that Hansen is a fire apparatus operator with a 2025 salary of $85,739.

Fatal Westport crash

On Dec. 15, 2021, firefighter Dominic Biscari drove a pumper truck at full throttle through a red light in a busy Westport intersection, hitting several cars and a pedestrian before slamming into a building, causing it to collapse. Three people died as a result of the crash.

Biscari, 21 at the time, was assigned to desk duty at fire department headquarters immediately after the wreck. Six months later, with no charges yet filed, the city and the union agreed to let him return to full duty as a firefighter, but he was prohibited from driving a fire truck. 

Biscari was charged in February 2023 with three counts of involuntary manslaughter. He immediately pleaded guilty, avoiding a jury trial in which he faced the possibility of being convicted on the charges and sentenced to up to 12 years in prison. A judge instead sentenced him to three years’ probation and 40 hours of community service.

The fire department then suspended Biscari without pay, and the fire chief said he would seek Biscari’s termination.

Local 42 filed a grievance to block Biscari’s termination, and an arbitrator ruled in Biscari’s favor in March 2024, saying he deserved no more than a three-day unpaid suspension for causing the fatal crash. The arbitrator also ordered the city to pay Biscari back wages and benefits as well as the legal costs that Local 42 accrued in pursuing the grievance. And the arbitrator directed the city to wipe Biscari’s personnel record clean of any reference to the crash. 

The city, which has paid out $3.6 million in settlements to the families and loved ones of the deceased and the owner of a building that was damaged in the crash, appealed the arbitrator’s decision, alleging that he exceeded his authority. The appeal has been the subject of court action ever since, with a proposed $915,000 settlement rejected by the City Council last week.

Biscari has been suspended without pay since pleading guilty, but KCFD records show he’s still on the department’s employment rolls pending the outcome of the litigation.

Assault in Grandview

When a police officer arrived at the Grandview residence shortly after 2 p.m. on Jan. 9, 2023, he found a woman crying in her living room, frightened and holding a pole in her hands.

She said that Deonte’ Watson, a longtime family friend, had come to her home around 1 p.m. to pick up a portable air conditioner unit she had borrowed from him, according to the probable cause affidavit. After loading it into his pickup, she said, he came back inside, asked to use the restroom and told her he wanted to talk about their friendship. 

The two had known each other since she was 14, she told the officer.

After using the restroom, she said, Watson sat on the sofa with her in the living room and they talked about her new boyfriend. He told her he was happy for her, then said that before he left, he wanted a hug, the affidavit said.

As they hugged, she said, he picked her up, then pinned her face down on the sofa. When she screamed for him to get off, she said, he told her to shut up, then pulled out two zip ties and bound her wrists behind her back.

She said Watson told her he was suicidal, that he loved her and that every time she screamed, he would push her face harder into the sofa. She told the officer she feared for her life.

Watson then pulled a black Glock from a holster on his waist and pointed it at her, the woman said, telling her he’d had been dreaming for a month about how it was going to go down. 

She said he took her to the lower level of the residence, put her on the sofa and blindfolded her, then cut off the zip ties and placed black restraints on her wrists. She told the officer that as she was being raped, Watson said he had been “waiting for this for a long time” and demanded that she apologize “for not loving me,” according to court documents.

Afterward, she told the officer, he forced her take a shower to get rid of the evidence. Before leaving, she said, he gathered her clothing, the zip ties and her towel and stuffed them into a duffel bag he’d brought with him. As he left through the garage, she said, he turned around and told her, “Sorry for doing that.”

The woman was taken to a hospital, where a rape kit exam was conducted. A police detective who canvassed her neighborhood found surveillance video that showed Watson leaving the area around 2 p.m. in a Dodge pickup, court documents said.

Watson was charged two days later in Jackson County Circuit Court with first-degree rape and first-degree sodomy. A court document said that his father, a volunteer reserve officer with the Kansas City Police Department, posted his $15,000 bond.

A superseding indictment filed Sept. 12, 2024, added the charges of first-degree kidnapping and first-degree harassment. Watson pleaded guilty to the harassment charge on Oct. 8, 2024. He was sentenced to four years in prison, then the sentence was suspended and he received three years’ probation.

Court documents said that Watson’s victim had become a KCFD employee at some point after the assault. One of the conditions of Watson’s probation was that he couldn’t be within 100 feet of the victim.

In November, he filed a motion to remove that condition of his probation, arguing that because she was now a fire department employee, if an emergency situation arose, the two could possibly be deployed to the same site. 

The Star generally does not name victims of sex crimes without their permission.

Then-Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker opposed the motion, criticizing Local 42’s involvement in the case.

“The State would like to note that Local 42’s website states it has a deep-seated tradition of ‘fighting for all of our members’ to provide better wages, benefits and ‘safe working conditions,’” Baker’s Nov. 20 motion said. 

“It does not appear that Local 42 is representing the victim in this case or her expectation to be in a safe working environment by advocating for her harasser to return to work alongside her.”

In December, the judge denied Watson’s motion.

The Star’s Mike Hendricks contributed.

This story was originally published May 19, 2025 at 5:00 AM.

Judy L Thomas

The Kansas City Star

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Judy L. Thomas joined The Kansas City Star in 1995 and focuses on investigative and watchdog journalism. Over three decades, she has covered domestic terrorism, clergy sex abuse and government accountability. Her stories have received numerous national honors.