‘Amateurish and unprofessional’: Kansas City police shooting training faces criticism
In a year that saw Kansas City police shoot and kill two Black men, in one case leading to the indictment of a detective, officers were told they shouldn’t feel guilty about being “the winner in a competition in which the winning prize is their life.”
They were shown images that depicted media coverage of police shootings as unfair and unreasonable. And they were told that their problems were made worse by local and national leaders who “made concessions” to “appease the inaccurate perceptions of the public.”
Those were some of the messages presented to sworn officers during an official in-service training in 2019 at the Kansas City Police Department, according to a slideshow obtained by an attorney as part of a wrongful death lawsuit and subsequently shared with The Star.
The slideshow, which runs 104 pages, includes instructions to officers on how to respond to police shootings and support the resulting investigations. Police say the goal was to show officers the importance of securing evidence, accountability, and consistency in investigations.
But criminologists and Kansas City community leaders who reviewed the presentation at the newspaper’s request said the training material strikes a defensive, argumentative tone and is dismissive of members of the public who have protested police brutality and systemic racism.
“It is incredibly amateurish and unprofessional,” said Samuel Walker, an emeritus professor in criminology at the University of Nebraska Omaha. “I might expect the police union to put this together but not the department itself.”
Gwen Grant, president and CEO of the Urban League of Greater Kansas City, said she worried the presentation primed police to see members of the public as adversaries, and she questioned the way it depicted Black men.
“The images feed stereotypes that lead to the fear and hatred of Black men,” Grant said. “It feeds the false narrative that Black men are dangerous predators and a threat to white lives.
“The under-girding messages are wrought with propaganda that has nothing to do with the training objectives,” she said. “It appears that the trainer was on a mission to nurture a ‘them against us’ mindset and culture.”
Police have defended the training slideshow, saying it was used only in 2019 for officers who attended in-service training.
It was created by a patrol division commander and two other supervisors who have significant experience investigating police shootings, according to Sgt. Jacob Becchina, a police spokesman. The presentation was approved by training division staff and executive command staff.
“It was deemed to be informative content for in-service continuing education,” Becchina said. “That content changes every year.”
But those who reviewed the presentation said it helps explain the distrust, suspicion and lack of confidence many communities have with law enforcement in Kansas City. For some, it raised questions especially about how Kansas City police investigated their own shootings.
“The training material’s general bent is to ‘take care of our people,’ . . . rather than focus on the just and fair enforcement of the law,” said the Rev. Vernon P. Howard Jr., president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Kansas City.
Howard noted that the presentation was created the same year officers shot and killed Terrance Bridges Jr. and Cameron Lamb, both of whom were unarmed according to prosecutors.
Their names, along with those of Ryan Stokes and Donnie Sanders, other Black men shot and killed by police, were chanted during protests last summer at the Country Club Plaza.
Demonstrators called for police reform and the removal of Police Chief Rick Smith because of his handling of police shootings and excessive use of force cases.
Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker has said her office was “stymied” by the police department when police did not hand over the probable cause statement in the Lamb shooting.
Prosecutors ultimately secured a grand jury indictment in the Lamb case, charging detective Eric DeValkenaere with involuntary manslaughter and armed criminal action.
Police shooting presentation
In the training slideshow, officers who have shot someone are instructed not to immediately give statements to investigators. Instead, they are told to wait for their union representative.
When responding to such a shooting scene, the officers are told they should turn off recording devices when talking to the officer involved in the shooting and park vehicles so that the news media cannot photograph the shooting officer.
Police say walkies and police radios are turned off because a person’s memory will constantly try to fill gaps in an effort to make sense of things. Investigators want to have only the officer’s memories of the incident, not a mashup of their actual memories and what they heard over the radio or during a conversation with another officer, Capt. David Jackson, a police spokesman, said in an email.
“[The brain] absorbs information and tries to reconcile it in an understandable way,” Jackson said. “[The presentation] also stresses the importance of preserving the crime scene and keeping out others who don’t belong there.”
Richard Rosenthal, a former public corruption prosecutor who has led civilian oversight agencies in the United States and Canada, described the presentation as “very police-centric.”
“The problem is, they’re sort of missing the point that the shooting investigations aren’t just to exonerate officers who haven’t engaged in appropriate use of force, but also hold officers accountable who have,” Rosenthal said.
“And we need to hold people accountable, not just defend officer conduct but we may also have to hold officers accountable,” he said.
A section of the presentation discussing public scrutiny of police shootings includes images of demonstrators, musical artists, athletes and media figures holding their hands up in the air, evoking the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” protest slogan.
“Sometimes it seems like the public has lost all trust in the police and everyone hates us,” one slide reads.
“In the eyes of the media and the public, when one of us fail (sic) it is an indictment of the entire profession,” another says.
Grant said there’s nothing wrong with the learning objectives in the presentation but the use of images from Black Lives Matter protests is problematic.
If the trainer wanted to provide a fact-based explanation for community distrust and lack of confidence in law enforcement, photos of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Breanna Hill, Cameron Lamb, Terrence Bridges, and other victims of deadly force and brutality at the hands of law enforcement officers would have painted a more accurate picture, she said.
“Over-policing in Black neighborhoods, high rates of racial profiling, deadly force against unarmed Black men, and repeated incidents of excessive force against Black people with impunity are the reasons Black people have no confidence in police. Period,” she said.
The swipes the presentation takes at the news media for doing their jobs are unnecessary, said Justice Horn, a community activist who helped organize protests on the Plaza.
A cartoon included in the slideshow depicts a couple sitting on a couch, watching a television news broadcast labeled “Fake News.”
“Today blood-thirsty cops shot a person committing a crime and pointing a gun at them,” the crying newscaster says.
The man watching, according to the caption, comments: “What were they thinking?”
“Everyone is saying enough is enough and that Black Lives Matter and we are tired of seeing Black unarmed people slain in our streets,” Horn said. “When there’s protests, instead of listening, they’re very dismissive.”
“No institution, no (police) department is perfect. It’s not a weakness to say that we did wrong and that we need to apologize to you all,” he said.
A section of the presentation references department policy and a police union contract provision that allow officers who have shot someone to wait up to 48 hours before speaking to investigating detectives. It goes on to describe 12 questions, approved by the police union, that officers can ask the shooting officer before a formal statement is given.
The questions include: “Are you injured?” “In what direction did you fire your weapon?” and “How long ago did the suspects flee?”
Police said officers can be compelled to make a statement in compliance with their employment requirements. But a statement that is not made voluntarily would generally not be admissible in a criminal investigation against that officer.
“If we thought on site that a police officer committed a crime, the same standards apply to police officers,” Jackson said. “If there was probable cause to believe the officer committed a criminal offense they would not be allowed to “walk away” and wait 48 hours.”
Walker, the criminologist, said some police departments have dropped policies giving officers a delay before making a formal statement.
Others have made changes to reduce the apparent advantages such delays give police officers who are under investigation.
In 2015, Maryland law granted a 10-day waiting period to officers before they were compelled to speak with investigators.
The policy came to Walker’s attention while he was working with the Baltimore Police Department after the death of Freddie Gray, who died of a severe spinal cord injury while in police custody.
Since then, the waiting period has been reduced to five days, Walker said.
“It’s ridiculous. It gives the officers an advantage and the officer time to put together a narrative, an explanation of the incident that will justify his or her actions,” he said. “Police unions have been very effective in negotiations and getting in these little extra privileges.”
‘A horrible lesson’
The slideshow was part of the evidence in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the parents of Bridges, who was fatally shot by a Kansas City police officer on May 26, 2019.
In the lawsuit, the parents allege the officer, Dylan Pifer, was not acting in lawful self-defense when he shot and killed Bridges, who was unarmed.
The shooting occurred after Pifer responded to a report of a domestic disturbance and carjacking in the 7000 block of Bellefontaine Avenue.
Police said Bridges was a suspect, and officers were told an armed confrontation had occurred between the suspect and a witness. The police department said Bridges allegedly ran away and resisted arrest, and the officer shot him during a struggle.
But police later admitted that Bridges was unarmed. He and Pifer were standing about two feet apart when the shooting occurred, according to police reports.
Pifer later told detectives that he thought Bridges was pulling a gun out of a sweatshirt pocket.
The shooting was investigated by the Kansas City Police Department. Months later, after the summer protests of 2020, the department began calling in the Missouri State Highway Patrol to investigate police shootings as an outside agency.
Baker said her office presented the findings of the investigation to a grand jury, which ruled that no criminal charges would be filed.
In a written statement to The Star , Baker’s office said prosecutors have not learned any more details of how the training presentation was given if whether the slideshow is still in use.
“Our office has not changed our position,” she said. “We seek investigations in all matters, including officer-involved incidents, that are neutral, credible and independent of conflict that would impair the quality of an investigation.
“We have repeatedly called for independent investigations on all officer/suspect cases. We believe this is also what our community expects.”
Tom Porto, the attorney who obtained the slideshow while investigating the Bridges shooting, said the final message of the presentation was especially troubling.
“It is okay if you feel upset, afraid or vulnerable. It’s also okay to NOT feel this way. There is nothing wrong with being glad to be alive and being okay that you were the winner in a competition in which the winning prize was your life,” the slideshow reads.
“What a horrible lesson for our police department to teach its officers,” Porto said. “Civilized societies don’t view taking a life as a competition for a prize between winners and losers. When a life is taken, we all lose.”
Police defended the message, saying it demonstrates that officers often feel conflicted after shootings.
There is nothing wrong with officers feeling “a range of emotions, including relief that they did not die,” Jackson, the police spokesman said in an email.
“Taking a life is a possible part of the occupation that officers hope they never have to experience,”Jackson said. “Some officers never fully recover from these incidents emotionally, some leave the profession altogether.”
