Independence wants lawsuits filed by officers kept secret. What are they hiding?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Two Jackson County judges issued opposing rulings on sealing police-related complaints.
- One judge denied a joint request to seal a complaint about internal affairs probes.
- Another judge granted the city’s motion and ordered a complaint sealed on June 26.
Two Jackson County judges have reached opposite conclusions over whether the public should be allowed to read allegations contained in retaliation lawsuits against the Independence Police Department.
Weeks apart, judges ruled differently after the City of Independence argued two lawsuits filed by police officers should be sealed because they referenced internal affairs investigations that are protected under Missouri’s Police Officer Bill of Rights. The state law enacted in 2021, generally keeps records from those investigations confidential.
One judge denied the request twice. Another granted it, leaving one lawsuit publicly available while the other, and the city’s response, remain inaccessible through Missouri’s online court records system.
The lawsuits accuse officials of retaliating against officers after they reported or investigated alleged misconduct within the department.
One lawsuit centers on allegations that department leaders interfered with an internal affairs investigation into claims that supervisors drank alcohol before driving city-owned vehicles. The other alleges retaliation after an officer reported a fellow officer was driving a vehicle with stolen license plates. Both of the lawsuits remain ongoing.
The conflicting rulings raise broader questions about whether Missouri’s Police Officer Bill of Rights, which generally keeps police internal affairs investigation records confidential, also allows courts to shield lawsuits that reference those investigations.
The limited access to police records in lawsuits isn’t new. Earlier this year, The Star successfully intervened in former Kansas City police Sgt. Kathy Coots’ whistleblower lawsuit resulted in previously redacted court filings being released and revealing the identities of officers named in allegations of timekeeping misconduct.
“Court records have historically been the most transparent branch of government,” said Dave Roland, senior legal adviser with the Freedom Center of Missouri.
While Missouri law allows government agencies to withhold certain internal affairs records from public disclosure, Roland said “it’s not a foregone conclusion” that those protections automatically extend once the same allegations become part of a civil lawsuit.
Details from the lawsuits
The first ruling came in April after Independence police Capt. Billy Pope sued the city, alleging retaliation after raising concerns about interference in an internal affairs investigation.
Because Pope’s petition referenced internal affairs investigations, attorneys for both Pope and the city jointly asked Jackson County Circuit Judge Jennifer Phillips to seal only the complaint, arguing Missouri law prohibited public disclosure of those records.
Phillips denied the request. Weeks later, after both sides asked her to reconsider and proposed filing a publicly available redacted complaint instead, she again refused to seal the pleading.
A different result followed in another retaliation lawsuit filed by Officer Jason Steward. City attorneys again argued the complaint referenced confidential internal affairs investigations protected under Missouri law.
This time, Jackson County Circuit Court Judge James Kanatzar granted the motion, ordering both Steward’s complaint and the city’s answer sealed from public view on Missouri’s CaseNet system.
City spokesperson Sherae Honeycutt declined to comment on the rulings, saying the lawsuits remain pending.
Setting a higher bar
Roland said judicial records operate under a different legal standard than records requested under Missouri’s Sunshine Law because court proceedings generally are presumed to be open.
“It is not a foregone conclusion that just because government officials say, ‘Oh, well, this is an internal affairs matter,’ that all of a sudden they get to close records related to active litigation,” Roland said.
“The mere fact that somebody might be embarrassed by allegations against them is not a basis for closing records,” he said. “Generally speaking, the bar for sealing a record from public access is supposed to be quite high.”
John Torrence, a former Jackson County Circuit Court judge, said trial judges have discretion when deciding whether to seal court records, but that discretion is not unlimited.
“Discretion does not mean carte blanche,” Torrence said. “You have to wisely and properly use your discretion.”
Torrence said he does not believe the section of Missouri’s Police Officer Bill of Rights cited by the city was intended to govern pleadings filed in civil lawsuits.
“I don’t think that applies to actual litigation,” Torrence said. “The language in this statute clearly doesn’t apply to civil litigation. It applies to the records generated by the internal investigation done by the department.”
Torrence said the analysis could be different if parties were attempting to file actual internal affairs records with the court rather than simply alleging an investigation occurred.
“If their motion papers talk about how they are necessarily going to have to include documents generated by the internal affairs investigation in the court file, that’s a horse of a different color,” Torrence said. “But just having a petition which says there was an internal affairs investigation ... I just don’t see where the statute would be applicable.”
Torrence said he generally denied requests to seal civil cases during his time on the bench unless they involved recognized exceptions, such as juvenile matters.
“Our courts are, by constitution, to remain open,” he said. “We don’t want to start heading in the direction of societies where judicial proceedings happen in private.”
