Kansas City officer who shot Donnie Sanders also involved in arrest of pregnant woman
The Kansas City police officer who fatally shot an unarmed Black man last year is the same officer whose arrest of a Black pregnant woman in September is under review, sources say.
Blayne Newton, 24, shot Donnie Sanders last March, according to an unredacted incident report provided by the Kansas City Police Department. His name was also listed in an unredacted letter written by the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office that offered a detailed narrative of the case, photographs and legal analysis.
Earlier this week, Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker announced there was not sufficient evidence to charge Newton in Sanders’ killing. Baker said the officer told investigators that Sanders held up his hand toward him as if he had a firearm. The day after his death, the police department announced Sanders was not carrying a weapon. Instead, they found a cell phone in his pocket.
About six months later while making an arrest, Newton was captured on video as he allegedly put his knee on 25-year-old Deja Stallings’ back with her belly on the ground. She was nine months pregnant at the time. Stallings’ attorney confirmed Newton was the officer who arrested the woman.
Police did not confirm or deny Newton’s involvement and did not provide unredacted documentation of the incident.
Newton is still employed with the department, officials confirmed Wednesday.
“Having (Newton) there, still working, I think it’s a slap in the face of the community,” said Henry Service, an attorney who helped organize protests last summer.
Police said Stallings had interfered with the arrest of a suspect on Sept. 30. She was issued a municipal citation for hindering the arrest of another, according to court records.
A review of Stallings’ arrest is ongoing by the prosecutor’s office.
But the investigation into Sanders’ killing was wrapped Monday, when Baker concluded that interviews with witnesses and statements by Newton corroborate each other and the officer’s use of force was justified under Missouri law.
As a result, there was insufficient evidence to support criminal charges being filed against Newton, she said in the letter.
Newton pulled Sanders over as part of a traffic stop on the evening of March 12, 2020, near Wabash and Prospect Avenues. Sanders pulled into an alley near 51st Street and got out of his car. Newton ran after Sanders and shot him about a minute into the foot chase, according to the incident report.
“As human beings and members of this community, we are sensitive to issues of race, implicit bias and imperfect balance of power,” Baker said. “However, the carrying out of our legal responsibility is not guided by feelings or suspicions. Rather, our sworn duty requires us to be faithfully bound to the evidence and law.”
Sean McCauley, listed as representing Newton in the prosecutor’s review of the shooting, declined to comment Wednesday. The police department said Newton was not available for comment.
‘A slap in the face to the community’
Newton has a valid Class A peace officer license and is currently commissioned by the Kansas City Police Department, Missouri Department of Public Safety spokesman Mike O’Connell confirmed Wednesday morning.
Newton has been with the department since January 2017, Sgt. Jacob Becchina, a spokesman with the police department, said. He is currently assigned to the patrol bureau.
A source told The Star that Newton has been reassigned to another patrol division located north of the Missouri River, out of the urban core. When asked about his assignment, Becchina told The Star he couldn’t say what part of Kansas City Newton is assigned, citing “individually identifiable personnel records.”
Service, the attorney who also helped organize summer protests, said allowing law enforcement, like Newton, to continue working as police officers “under a cloud of suspicion” shows the department’s “total disdain for the communities that they police and feeling of superiority to all of those communities.”
“It says exactly what Black people have been saying about the KCPD for years. It’s what Black cops have been saying about KCPD for years. It has a race problem,” he said.
“They want us to believe that somehow you put on that badge in the uniform and somehow you’re now exempt from all of the racism we see going on within America,” Service said. “And there’s none of that in the police force.”
Sheila Albers, whose 17-year-old son John Albers was shot and killed by Overland Park police in 2018, said she’s concerned that officers in police investigations aren’t held to the same standard as civilians.
“The goal is to de-escalate and what the officer did was escalate,” she said of Newton’s handling of the traffic stop that left Sanders dead. ”Okay, so there was a minor traffic infraction and he runs away. Okay, at some point, you’ll catch up with them and you issue him a ticket.”
Albers has been outspoken about police reform and accountability since her son, who was believed to be suicidal, was shot six times on Jan. 20, 2018, as he backed out of the driveway of his family’s home. Since then, Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe has declined to file charges against Clayton Jenison, the officer who killed Albers. Federal authorities have opened a civil rights investigation into the shooting.
“If we continue to tolerate the misconduct and we continue to investigate potential excessive use of force in such a biased manner, the system will never change,” Albers said.
Newton was placed on administrative leave following Sanders’ death, as is protocol, police said. Officers involved in shootings are then required to undergo a psychological evaluation conducted by the department’s psychologist.
“Simultaneous to that the investigators are conducting an initial investigation and consultation with prosecutors to determine the best course of the investigation moving forward,” Becchina said of police shootings. “Once they are released by the psychologist to return to work they return at the discretion of the chief of police, that process takes a different amount of time for each instance, it’s a case by case basis”
Newton was back to work by at least late July, police said last summer.
“Officer-involved shootings are traumatic events that can shake the faith of citizens in their government,” said Nick Mitchell, A former Independent monitor of the Denver Police Department and a police accountability consultant.
He said many cities and states have initiated civilian independent review boards to examine police shootings in order to enhance public trust.
“It’s time for Kansas City to do so as well,” he said.
In July, the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners had announced that outside law enforcement would investigate all fatal police shootings.
But Sanders was shot before that decision was made.
The police department completed its investigation in the fall of 2020 and gave the file to the prosecutor’s office. Instead of beginning its review immediately, the prosecutor’s office handed the case over to Missouri State Highway Patrol, considered an outside agency.
“As a matter of public policy, I believe that police agencies can no longer review incidents allegedly committed by its own officers. That was why we called the Highway Patrol,” Baker said in a statement Monday. “Every officer-involved incident must be investigated by outside, independent detectives.”
On Monday, Becchina said the police department mourns any loss of life in the community, especially when a police officer is involved in that loss.
“The Kansas City Missouri Police Department provided the prosecutor with all the facts known in the case, and we respect the judicial process and the outcome in which it resulted,” he said in a written statement.
Becchina also mentioned the police department has initiated several reforms that were requested by Mayor Quinton Lucas, protesters, clergy and community leaders.
“I will say that we focus daily on community relations and we invest heavily in those relationships with programs related to youth interaction, social service, and community interaction officers, to name just a few,” he said.
But some community members say that’s not enough.
‘This is a pattern’
On Wednesday, attorney and activist Stacy Shaw wore all black for Sanders. It was part of 47 days of mourning, representing each year he had been alive.
Police violence has become “par for the course” in Kansas City, she said, noting that Newton isn’t the only officer involved in multiple violent incidents.
Officer Dylan Pifer fatally shot Terrance Bridges, an unarmed Black man, in May 2019. The following year, Pifer was allegedly also involved as another officer slammed a 15-year-old suspect’s face into the concrete, breaking two of his teeth and gashing his face. The Kansas City police commissioners agreed to pay $725,000 to settle the excessive use of force allegation. No criminal charges were brought against Pifer in either case.
Dakota Merrill, a former Kansas City police officer, was involved in two shootings that cost the police department $6.3 million in legal settlements. Merrill left the police department in July 2019. The department said in May that it could not discuss his tenure with them, which began in 2012.
“This is a pattern,” said Shaw, who also blamed Kansas City Police Chief Rick Smith and Sgt. Brad Lemon, president of the Kansas City Fraternal Order of Police, for “actively shielding people who are a known and credible threat to the safety of the community, specifically low income and Black and brown communities.”
On Wednesday, Shaw, the attorney for Stallings, said she and her client did not yet know the extent of the physical or emotional trauma experienced as the result of the arrest.
Stallings spoke outside City Hall in early October, several days after her arrest.
A sign affixed to the statue behind her read “Who Killed Donnie Sanders?”
“KCPD wants you to believe that they are the victim but they are not,” she told the crowd. “I am a traumatized pregnant woman. I am not a threat. Now I can barely walk. I cry every day because I am scared for my baby.
“My baby girl has not even been born but she is a victim of police brutality. I am trying to stay strong.”
Two months before Stallings’ arrest, Reshonda Sanders, a sister of Donnie Sanders, told The Star she was worried that the same officer who shot Sanders was back on the streets. She feared someone else may get hurt.
Now she knows the officer’s name. And she knows that her fears from over the summer were realized.
She wants to know why Newton pulled the trigger, and why he was allowed back on the streets after doing so. She, along with Sanders’ other family members, are demanding answers and criminal charges.
“If you are here to protect and serve, then protect and serve. Protect us. Don’t kill us,” she said.
This story was originally published March 4, 2021 at 2:41 PM.
