KCPD officials reviewed 32 times police fired their guns. None led to policy changes.
After hearing gunshots, a Kansas City police officer working in an off-duty role in June 2014 fired his gun toward muzzle flashes he saw coming from a vehicle in a parking lot. The vehicle he shot at was never found.
In December 2017, a police captain shot a suspect who was holding a “silver item” and started to move it toward an officer as he hid under a vehicle in a parking garage.
And as police chased a possible homicide suspect at high speeds a month later, an officer on Interstate 35 in the Northland fired his weapon “in an attempt to stop the pursuit.”
These were among 32 police shootings and other major incidents reviewed within the last three years by the Notable Event Review Panel, a team of high-ranking Kansas City Police Department officials, in a process meant to identify potential training or policy changes.
The police shootings reviewed in that time left nine suspects dead and at least 14 wounded. That included a man who was shot at least 16 times by two officers as his car rolled backwards toward their squad car.
Within those three years, none of the shootings or other events reviewed by the panel led to policy change within the department. Seven led to training recommendations, a Star review of police records found.
The reports also show that at least 52 members of the police department — which has more than 1,300 sworn officers — have been involved in a shooting in some way since early 2014. That includes four who played a role in two shootings.
In at least six of the 32 cases, the panel’s reports detailed suspects who had shot at officers or bystanders. There were eight additional incidents during which a suspect pointed or pulled out a firearm.
Henry Service, a Kansas City attorney who organized recent protests calling for police reform, said the panel’s conclusions illustrated a lack of willingness to change. He called the absence of policy changes “a cover up.”
“It’s absolutely ridiculous in my opinion that there was not one policy recommendation and so few training recommendations and that they’re doing everything perfectly,” Service said. “They’re not.”
Capt. David Jackson, a spokesman for the Kansas City Police Department, said the panel’s reviews are useful even when it does not make a recommendation.
“The purpose of that meeting is to talk about more, like, training. Do we see a trend, is this something that we could work on in training, is this something we could do better?” he said. “If after an officer-involved incident occurs, we saw the need for a policy change or something that needed to be addressed, or obviously criminal charges, anything like that, that’s addressed way before the (Notable Event Review Panel).”
Some of the panel’s reports do not acknowledge that the suspect was wounded or fatally shot. In one summary, police officials described officers as having incapacitated a suspect when, in fact, he was killed.
Repeat shooters
The panel, which includes the patrol bureau’s executive officer, the commander of the violent crimes division and majors, captains and sergeants, receives cases after criminal and internal affairs investigations have concluded.
In some instances, that can take years. One shooting, during which an officer fired at a vehicle after it hit his motorcycle in August 2015, was not reviewed until January of this year.
Jackson said while one of its purposes is to identify trends officers face in the field, the panel is effective even if it takes a long time for a case to be reviewed.
“The general purpose would be to put the supervisor of the officer, the people in the patrol bureau, the people that are investigating and people that do a lot of our tactical training, like our tactics unit, to put them in the same room, review the information from an incident,” he said.
In one case, an officer fired three rounds in the early hours of Jan. 3, 2016, at a gray Chevy Tahoe that was driving at him near Linwood Boulevard and Park Avenue. The vehicle drove onto a curb and around the officer, speeding away.
That shooting led to training recommendations discussed at the panel more than a year later in November 2017. A sergeant said 2018 training would include objectives such as an officer’s responsibility when encountering moving vehicles that pose potential threats as well as kinetic energies “present with moving vehicles and mechanics of injury.”
But by the time the panel made those recommendations, the officer and a colleague had fired their guns on Oct. 8, 2016, at the driver of a 2005 silver Mercury Sable that started to roll backwards toward their squad car following a chase.
The shooting left the 23-year-old driver with more than a dozen gunshot wounds. After the man’s lawyer inquired about the shooting, the police department paid out $1.5 million.
When the panel gathered on that shooting in June of this year, its members said “regrettably” the case did not receive a timely review, noting the civil litigation that followed. But, the panel said, a month after the shooting, the department’s firearms policy was changed to indicate that officers “generally should not” shoot at or from moving vehicles.
The panel also noted the incident began because the suspect vehicle was seen leaving an area where gunshots had been reported.
“These factors alone no longer meet the criteria for a department approved vehicle pursuit,” the report stated.
The reports reviewed by The Star show one officer was involved in two shootings within eight months.
In September 2015, the officer shot a man he believed was going to throw a grenade at officers outside of a home in the 4400 block of Monroe Avenue. Then in June 2016, he was among five officers who fatally shot a suspect who pointed a firearm at them in the 3500 block of Bellefontaine Avenue.
Neither shooting led to training recommendations.
Another officer was involved in two shootings in 16 months. One was in February 2017, when he was among officers who fatally shot a 68-year-old man after he exited a home following a four-hour standoff and pointed a handgun at them.
In assessing that shooting, the review panel discussed the need to maintain a scene while clearing a building in a timely fashion; it led to training recommendations within the tactical response teams.
Then in June 2018, one of those five officers was among two who shot and killed Ashley Simonetti after she allegedly ran toward them with a sword in the Northland. Police, including a negotiator, had tried for hours to talk to Simonetti after she barricaded herself in a shed.
Eventually officers forced their way in with a battering ram. Simonetti took off running and the officers killed her. Those who knew her best said she would not have harmed anyone.
The department’s review of the shooting did not recommend any changes in policy or training.
No recommendations
Lora McDonald, executive director of the Metro Organization for Racial and Economic Equality, known as MORE2, said she felt the panel’s reviews were nothing more than a bureaucratic process.
“I never understand the purpose of process unless you can tell me that there’s been something that’s changed,” she said.
McDonald said she wanted to know why there were not more policy discussions on how officers should handle people with non-lethal weapons.
In a November 2017 shooting, for example, an officer in a parking lot in the City Market shot a suspect who had a screwdriver. The man “closed in on one of the officers” and ignored verbal orders, police said.
“When it comes to (the police) showing up on the scene of a crime, the first thing they should be thinking, is how do we de-escalate?” McDonald said.
De-escalation training, Jackson said, has been implemented for several years.
Three years passed before the high-ranking panel of police officials reviewed the June 2014 incident in which the off-duty officer fired his gun at a flash of light in the distance.
It was about 10:30 p.m. when the officer saw two vehicles pull into a parking lot at 633 Grand Ave.
When he heard gunshots and saw a muzzle flash coming from one of the cars, the officer pulled his duty weapon and fired toward the flashes to “stop the immediate threat to human life,” the panel’s report said.
But the vehicle left the scene. Police did not find the people inside.
As the panel convened, its members discussed firing at the muzzle flash and reviewed six policies and procedures. They said at the beginning of every training session, instructors at the range review the cardinal rules of firearm safety.
That includes rule No. 4: “Be aware of your target, what is beyond it and what is surrounding it. Firearms training are going to continue to train around the concept of reasonableness in use of force situations.”
The panel made no recommendations for training or policy.
‘Monday morning quarterbacking’
Michael Gennaco, a police practices expert based in Los Angeles, said having a review panel was positive feature for the department.
But with scant details in many of the reports, he wondered what the point of the review was without a more comprehensive analysis.
One report had a two-sentence summary of a January 2018 shooting that said: “Officers were pursing a suspect. One of the officers in an attempt to stop the pursuit fired a weapon and the pursuit ended.”
Under a section for comments from the panel, the report read: “None.”
The most effective reviews, Gennaco said, take a “Monday morning quarterbacking” approach.
“We like to examine every deadly force incident microscopically with ideas of ways of doing things differently,” he said. “You’re always going to find things that could have been done better.”
In some cases, Gennaco said, that could include an analysis of whether there were other alternatives that could have been used instead of deadly force.
He also suggested the panel include an independent participant outside of the police department so that issues the panel hasn’t identified could be raised.
Gennaco was surprised the panel did not find one policy that could be tweaked within three years of reviews.
“It might be helpful for them to up their game and to do a deeper dive into some of the issues that will come out if you look hard enough,” he said.
The Star’s Katie Bernard contributed to this report.
