KC area officer heads home for sheriff run, body camera push after Sedalia woman’s death
Brad Anders hadn’t planned on running for Pettis County Sheriff this year. Then, a 25-year-old unarmed woman was fatally shot by a deputy in Anders’ hometown of Sedalia.
When he learned that no body or dash camera footage existed of the fatal shooting of Hannah Fizer during a June 13 traffic stop, Anders, a sergeant with the Lee’s Summit Police Department, decided that was the final straw. He couldn’t wait four more years to do something.
Anders ran unsuccessfully against the current sheriff, Kevin Bond, in 2008. He launched his most recent campaign in late June, after the initial filing deadline passed. He will again face Bond in the November general election.
His last go-around, Anders said, he raised concerns during the election about lack of accountability and transparency within the department.
“Here we are 12 years later and it’s still the same issues are present,” Alders said when reached by phone Tuesday. “Obviously there’s no transparency there if you can’t have dash cameras, you can’t have any body cameras.”
He said in 2020, the department should have both cameras as basic protective equipment for the sake of both citizens and deputies.
“I wouldn’t ask my officers to go out and do something I wouldn’t do, and I wouldn’t go out without some kind of recording device in 2020,” Anders said.
The Pettis County Commission approved funding for 23 body cameras last week, Bond said. But Anders said he doesn’t believe the cameras were prioritized as they should have been.
“This is a man who is taking selfish advantage of an emotional and a traumatic situation for his personal gain,” Bond said of Anders when reached Tuesday afternoon. Bond added that he hopes the body cameras will be in use by the end of October.
Hannah Fizer’s death
The evening of the shooting, Fizer was pulled over for speeding and careless driving, authorities said. She parked her car at about 10 p.m. between two restaurants near the 3500 block of West Broadway Boulevard in Sedalia, the deputy stopping behind her. Family and friends say she was driving to her job at an Eagle Stop convenience store at the time.
The deputy who shot Fizer while she was inside her car said she refused to identify herself when she was stopped. According to the highway patrol, she told the deputy she was armed with a gun and was going to shoot him.
“Right now the only thing that we have is the word of a deputy and unfortunately a girl who is no longer with us,” Anders said. “And for the public, that’s never enough.”
The investigation into Fizer’s death was completed on July 30 by the Missouri State Highway Patrol’s Division of Drug and Crime Control and is now in the hands of Stephen Sokoloff, General Counsel for the Missouri Office of Prosecution Services.
Included in the investigative material is restaurant surveillance footage that captured the traffic stop and the shooting.
“The only thing you’re going to get is a distant representation of a deputy firing into a vehicle,” he said, adding that this doesn’t provide concrete evidence for the public.
Protesters have frequented the sidewalk outside the sheriff’s office in the weeks following Fizer’s death, demanding justice for her.
The name of the officer who shot Fizer has not been released. Anders stressed the importance of transparency, though he said he doesn’t believe releasing the officer’s name to the public is necessary while the investigation is ongoing.
Bond, who has been called on to resign by numerous community members, published an open letter in the days following Fizer’s killing in which he said uninvolved officers were being targeted and doxxed.
“Are you willing to allow Pettis County to become the test project for some Social Justice experiment for Rural America?” Bond wrote. “I certainly hope not.”
Anders said while he also hates to see deputies being targeted, he blames Bond for setting the stage for said social “experiment.”
In an interview with The Star after the shooting, Bond said the sheriff’s office obtained some body cameras — 10 of them, he believed — about three years ago with excess money available at the end of that year.
But the sheriff’s office had technical difficulties with the equipment and its data storage, which included a hard drive failure that deleted videos. The devices were used for about a year but then were not replaced before Fizer’s death, Bond said.
If he’s elected and if deputies still aren’t equipped with cameras by the time he takes office, Anders said he will make it a priority to get dash cameras at minimum, though he hopes to secure body cameras as well.
Gun violence will be the subject of a new, statewide journalism project The Star is undertaking in Missouri this year in partnership with the national service program Report for America and sponsored in part by Missouri Foundation for Health. As part of this project, The Star will seek the community’s help.
To contribute, visit Report for America online at reportforamerica.org.
This story was originally published September 1, 2020 at 4:40 PM.
