Sunday protest in Kansas City: Not as bad as Saturday, still disappointing to leaders
For a second night in a row, Kansas City police used tear gas on Sunday in an attempt to scatter protesters who gathered near the Country Club Plaza.
After a destructive night of protests on Saturday where 85 people were arrested and there was significant property damage, a crowd of more than 1,000 gathered near the Plaza on Sunday afternoon for what had been a largely peaceful demonstration.
The gathering was a third of its kind in Kansas City after a week of protests, some that turned violent and dangerous in cities like Portland and Atlanta, in response to the death of George Floyd.
Floyd died May 25 as a Minneapolis police officer named Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes, marking another occurrence of police brutality against a black man.
Going into Sunday’s demonstrations, local leaders exhorted the public to keep the peace and avoid another display like the evening before.
“Everyone had been assaulted in some way last night,” Kansas City Police Chief Rick Smith told reporters. “Kansas City is better than this.”
And for a while, things were peaceful on Sunday afternoon. Congressman Emanuel Cleaver, a Missouri Democrat, applauded the demonstrators on the Plaza at midday.
“This is about as beautiful a representation of the great rainbow of humanity that I have ever seen,” Cleaver said. “Black and white and brown, sitting on the ground. This is America.”
Kansas City police waived an 8 p.m. curfew that had been ordered earlier in the day on the account that the demonstration had gone well up to that point.
But shortly afterward, a crowd fled Mill Creek Park and its immediate surroundings when clouds of tear gas filled the air.
And while the problems on Sunday were not as severe as the night before, it was still another troublesome scene in Kansas City.
More than 100 demonstrators gathered on Main Street just north of the Plaza, where they faced a line of police just a couple hundred feet away near the JC Nichols Memorial Fountain.
Businesses along Main Street, several of which had windows and entrances boarded up with plywood, were strewn with graffiti. A blaze was set to a television news van belonging to KSHB-41, resulting in its complete destruction.
By about 11 p.m., there was a lull in activity as crowds thinned out.
Even so, top officials registered their disappointment that a third day of demonstrations in in Kansas City turned dangerous.
“The purpose of the night, of the day, of the moment is to try to address issues of community police relations, try to make sure we are looking at and addressing police brutality, try to make sure we are actually caring about black lives in our country,” said Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas during an evening briefing with journalists.
Destructive behavior wasn’t advancing that point, Lucas said.
“It’s not getting us anywhere,” he said.
A man was shot to death just east of the Plaza on Sunday night.
Officers responded to the shooting at Warwick Boulevard and East 46th Street, the Kansas City Police Department posted on Twitter at 10:52 p.m. Police said it was unclear if the shooting was related to the civil unrest.
The Country Club Plaza announced on its website that it would remain closed Monday.
Star reporters Katie Moore, Robert A. Cronkleton, Luke Nozicka and Anna Spoerre contributed to this report.
This story was originally published June 1, 2020 at 7:27 AM.
