Woman’s calls to KC police failed to stop domestic violence. Can that change now?
When Kenya Bussey recently heard about Kansas City police urging domestic violence victims to speak up, she thought of all the times, all the years, she had done that.
The time that she filed for an order of protection for her and her children. Or when she reported that her ex-boyfriend had beaten her while she was pregnant, and she curled up in a ball on her front porch. And the times she said she begged officers in vain for help, fearing what Derek C. Jones, her ex-boyfriend, might do.
“I was basically on the phone with the police almost every day, crying for my life — I didn’t feel safe,” Bussey, 26, told The Star. “I was trying to warn absolutely everybody. … I literally cried and begged and I thought, ‘He’s going to hurt somebody.’ ”
None of her efforts, though, stopped Jones from killing her boyfriend, Darryl B Brown III, in March 2023 as she feared she and the children in the room would die, too.
As authorities dealt with a substantial increase in domestic violence homicides this spring, and worked to get ahead of it, Jones went before a judge and was sentenced on multiple counts to a total of 22 years in prison. His case alone highlights what can happen when repeat offenders aren’t held accountable before the pattern of domestic violence escalates.
Though the counts of second degree murder and armed criminal action, as well as others, were Jones’ first felony convictions, his criminal record in Municipal Court was chock full of warning signs. Of the 17 municipal cases between 2020 and 2023, the Jackson County prosecutor’s office said 12 of them were related to domestic violence.
They ultimately provided a road map of the violence that would come because, Bussey said, she didn’t feel some officers took her pleas for help seriously.
“I felt like I was legit drowning,” she said. “Like I was screaming underwater and absolutely nobody could hear anything I was saying.”
After Jones was sentenced in March, Prosecutor Melesa Johnson — who had only been in office about two months — issued a news release and mentioned that several children, which included Bussey’s four, were in the home when Jones shot and killed Brown.
“When the defendant chose violence that day, he forever changed the lives of six innocent children who witnessed an incident no child should ever have to see,” Johnson said. “My office continues to prioritize cases involving domestic violence and we will continue seeking justice for victims, while working to prevent future tragedies like this one.”
What she didn’t say is that her office had already changed the way some domestic violence cases are handled in Kansas City, with the goal of bringing greater accountability to repeat offenders like Jones.
The killing continues across Kansas City metro
Advocates and shelter officials, not only in Kansas City but across the metro where domestic violence is also shattering families, insist something has to change. Especially if they hope to curb the killing.
“We are seeing some of the worst cases,” said Heidi Wooten, president and CEO of Safehome, a Johnson County domestic violence shelter. “It’s happening everywhere. It’s not discriminating. It can be on the Kansas side, it can be on the Missouri side.”
On the second day of the year, police responded to a call in the Northland where a father and his son and daughter were found dead. Police said that Zachary Hatcher, 38, killed his children, Jeffrey Hatcher, 8, and Charlotte Hatcher, 6, before he killed himself.
One month later, three women — all from one family — were found dead inside a Platte County home. Kansas City police responded to that home after a 911 caller reported that someone had come to their door reporting that her mother’s ex-boyfriend shot her mother and shot at her.
Also in February, a Lenexa man was charged with two counts of first degree murder after allegedly admitting to fatally shooting his mother and aunt in their home. He told authorities, court records show, that the women had evicted him from the house.
By April, Kansas City had experienced 12 domestic violence homicides in 2025, which was the same amount for all of 2024. That left officials urging victims and survivors to come forward and work with authorities to ensure accountability.
“These incidents involve intimate partner violence and violence amongst family members, to include parents and their children,” Police Chief Stacey Graves said at that time. “It’s time to talk openly about domestic violence with your loved ones. Together, we must hold domestic violence abusers accountable each time.”
The killing has only continued since then.
As of early June, there have been 69 homicides this year in Kansas City, 14 of them involving domestic violence.
In all of last year, 1 in 12 homicides in KC had a “domestic violence nexus,” Johnson said. But so far this year, 1 in 5 homicides involve domestic violence.
It’s why police and prosecutors are brainstorming — and already implementing — ways to try to address the escalating violence inside families and relationships.
Sgt. Phillip DiMartino, a Kansas City police spokesperson, said the department is involved in focused deterrence efforts and also researching a new initiative that would help officers identify repeat offenders. The department would collaborate with others inside criminal justice and community stakeholders to accomplish this.
The Intimate Partner Violence Initiative would help KCPD “facilitate swift and coordinated prosecution and/or services provided to individuals involved in domestic violence,” DiMartino said.
“This Initiative is complex and involves much more than the KCPD, but we believe there is a potential for the initiative to be of great value to our community.”
A change in policy in Jackson County
Soon after taking office in January, Johnson sent a note to police chiefs and municipal prosecutors alerting them to a shift in how certain domestic violence cases would be handled.
“Our current system,” Johnson wrote, “has the Municipal Court handling dozens of serious domestic violence cases, allowing offenders to repeat offenses without proper consequences.
“I am requesting all domestic violence cases involving strangulation, stitches or staples, broken bones, weapons, or any of the other criteria in the more detailed attached list, be referred to our office for charging.”
That more detailed list includes incidents where the victim is elderly, pregnant or disabled and where children witnessed the assault or were injured. Also incidents where defendant has a domestic violence case being investigated or pending state level charges or is on probation for an offense related to domestic violence.
The policy change is “really an effort to give the police departments all over Jackson County more clarity as to where these cases need to go for first consideration,” Johnson later told The Star.
What had been happening, she said, was “at least 90 percent” of the domestic violence cases were going to the municipal court instead of the Jackson County Prosecutor.
The goal, she said, is to make sure that abusers receive the appropriate convictions for the crimes committed. For years, she said, police had been sending the majority of the domestic violence cases to municipal court where the charges are typically misdemeanors and often don’t carry much jail time.
“If our job is to serve our residents, especially our victims of crime, I found it my responsibility to do my part in trying to cut through some of that practice that I believe should not be happening,” Johnson said. “And let’s get it back to making sure that we are holding bad actors accountable.
“ … You cannot tell me that 90% of the domestic violence incidents should be handled at the municipal level, because we now see the cases.”
DiMartino said “many cases” are still referred to the municipal prosecutor because “this is the most appropriate disposition for many comparatively lower-level offenses.” Those include minor injuries and smaller crimes with no previous, reported incidents.
“Understanding there are often unreported prior incidents, prosecution still requires probable cause and reported history is a part of their consideration for State charging,” he said. “However, our partnership with the municipal prosecutor involves very open communication and, if/when the municipal prosecutor is concerned a case should be reviewed for potential state filing, the process exists to — in short order — halt a city charge and pursue further investigation into potential state charges when appropriate.
Conversely, the state will also return submitted cases back to KCPD for filing at the municipal level when their criteria are not met.”
‘I did everything they asked’
Bussey met Jones in 2019 and the couple have two children together.
When she said the relationship would turn violent, or after they were broken up and he would “stalk” her by driving by her home and watching her, she would call 911.
“I called like 1000 police officers. I went to court,” Bussey said. “I did everything they asked. I got a restraining order, I’ve done everything that I could on my end to try to defend myself. So it was just like nobody was taking it seriously.”
Often when she would report an incident, she said Jones had already left the scene. And police would tell her there was little they could do.
“I didn’t feel safe, and they just would come and they would sit for a minute, and they would tell me how they couldn’t sit there for too long,” Bussey said. “And they’re like, ‘Well, he’s not here now.’ They only judge it off of what’s going on right now. Not at the situation as a whole.”
DiMartino said domestic violence cases are “statistically some of the most volatile and dangerous calls to which the police respond.”
“There are certainly difficulties in gathering the required information in an organized and concise way when parties are often highly emotionally charged,” he said.
“Furthermore, in my experience, individuals in the heat of the moment can tend to rapidly report a lot of information to officers — some from the current incident, some historical — which can make difficult the articulation of what exactly has occurred and the subsequent identification of possible criminal infractions very often with the added context of civil issues.”
Another domestic violence case turns fatal
As authorities deal with this year’s jump in domestic violence homicides, Bussey said she hopes they’ve learned from cases like hers.
“I feel like they need to do more listening,” Bussey said. “Because, I feel like because that they deal with these same cases all the time, sometime that’s exactly how they see it. They don’t see it as a person with a unique situation. They see it as a case.
“And everybody’s situation is unique in its own way. And sometimes, yeah, there might be a person crying wolf, but that’s why you need to listen and assess the situation a little quicker.”
She points to two people — one at the police department and one at the prosecutor’s office — who she said did listen to her. She said she felt Kari Thompson, now a police major, and Claire Wyatt, the assistant Jackson County prosecutor who handled Jones’ case for the death of Brown, believed in her and listened. And a victim advocate at the prosecutor’s office provided guidance during the process.
She said she hopes more people in the justice system can be like them. Before it’s too late.
Bussey says she knows others have experienced what she’s experienced. And that some offenders aren’t stopped until someone is dead.
“I didn’t think I was going to make it out of that relationship alive,” Bussey said. “I prayed to God everyday.”
On March 12, 2023, officers responded to Brown’s home about 8:15 that Sunday night after reports of gunfire, court records show.
Bussey told investigators that there was a knock at the door — “it wasn’t a regular knock, somebody banged on the door” — and she asked, “who’s there?”
She looked out the window and saw Jones’ grandmother’s GMC Terrain across the street.
Brown — who armed himself — and Bussey went to the door, said the probable cause statement detailing the charges against Jones. Bussey said she unlocked the door.
“As soon as she unlocked the door, it was pushed open and she observed the father of two of her children, Derek Jones, standing there,” the probable cause affidavit said. “Jones stepped one foot inside the residence and discharged a firearm several times at the victim, who was standing right next to her.
“Jones backed up and re-approached the door, discharging several more rounds at the victim.”
He backed up a third time, the affidavit said, and re-approached the door again, discharging several more rounds at Brown. Jones then ran to his vehicle and fled.
Bussey told investigators that Jones had “assaulted her several times in the past and shot up her residence in August 2022,” the affidavit said. She had an order of protection against Jones when the shooting occurred.
Finally feeling free
Now, Bussey no longer lives terrified of what could happen. She’s in cosmetology school and raising her four children.
“I’m safe,” she said. “But somebody lost their life because of me, because they chose to step in the way and try to help me when that wasn’t their job.
“There’s people who are designed to do that, who are trained to do that, and they didn’t do that right, and that’s hurtful to me. There’s no way that Darryl should have had to jump in front of bullets for me when I called the police 1000 times.”
She said she finally feels free.
“I wanted to be free with him, you know, not by myself,” she said. “It’s not the same freedom, but it’s freedom.”
This story was originally published June 23, 2025 at 6:00 AM.
