‘Hardly enough training’: Teen killed by police in Kansas City suburb had BB gun
Days after Grandview police fatally shot a teenager in crisis, Jackson County prosecutors said the teen was holding a BB gun when he was killed.
Grandview police have said the officers had crisis intervention training, but police accountability and mental health experts said the training may not be enough.
Lantz Stephenson Jr., 17, died at a hospital after two officers from the Grandview Police Department shot him during a confrontation at Meadowmere Park in the 13600 block of Byars Road, according to the Missouri State Highway Patrol, which is investigating the shooting.
On Friday, Michael Mansur, a spokesman for the prosecutors office, said Stephenson had a Glock 19 BB pistol equipped with a slide that “reportedly looked like a firearm.”
The highway patrol had said shortly after the shooting said investigators recovered a type of handgun from the scene. On Friday, patrol spokesman Sgt. Andy Bell, said: “We stand by our original statement, the Patrol investigators recovered a type of handgun at the scene.”
Officers responded to the call about 6:45 a.m. May 16 on a report of an apparently suicidal person with a gun, according to the highway patrol. Authorities later said it was Stephenson who placed the call.
Stephenson told dispatchers that he was armed with a gun and wanted to confront police officers, Bell said. But instead of a firearm, he carried a BB gun, which uses air pressure to fire small metal balls that are called BBs.
Three police officers arrived at the park and saw Stephenson from a distance. The teen then “aggressively approached officers” with a gun, the highway patrol reported. Two of the officers fired shots at him.
The teenager was taken to an area hospital, where he died, the highway patrol said Sunday night. No officers were injured.
Mansur said he could not provide additional information Friday. Their investigation of the shooting remains ongoing.
The police department has a body camera program, but police declined to say whether body camera or dash footage was part of the highway patrol’s investigation.
Without seeing the officers’ body cam footage, Lauren Bonds, legal director for the National Police Accountability Project, based in New Orleans, said she could point out that the best approach would have been for the responding officers to use de-escalation tactics to either restrain or detain the teen.
“This really raises the question about whether armed police officers are the appropriate agency that should be responding to people who are in a mental health crisis.”
The family has launched a GoFundMe to help with funeral expenses.
“Lanny was brilliant and funny. He was going to be a successful young man who was already accomplished in several hard coding languages,” the organizer wrote. “He finished high school early. He worked diligently. It was just he beginning of a beautiful life.”
‘Hardly enough training’
Grandview police said the officers who responded to Stephenson’s call Sunday had each completed at least 40 hours of crisis intervention training.
In addition, the department practices de-escalation techniques during annual training.
The department aims to have all officers trained in crisis intervention within two years of their hiring, Sharp said. The training, supported by the National Alliance of Mental Illness, includes on-site visits to mental health facilities and conversations with those suffering from mental illness.
But those 40 hours of crisis intervention training may not be enough, said Shawn McDaniel, a Kansas City-based licensed psychologist specialized in assessment and behavioral treatment.
“That’s about the same amount of time that Starbucks trains a barista to make coffee,” McDaniel said. “That’s hardly enough training to expect somebody to effectively deal with a suicidal person. Plus, that would only be a portion of that training anyway.”
McDaniel said that limited amount of training is especially unfair to the officers who are tasked with responding to those types of emergency calls.
“There’s expecting them to be so good at writing tickets to working with kids in the school, to stopping an active shooter, to also dealing with a mental health crisis,” McDaniel said. “Nobody’s trained that well to do all of those things, and then also switch it from moment to moment.”
No one knows what the officers were doing before responding Stephenson’s call that might have impacted their judgment and made them feel more threatened than otherwise, he said.
“There’s a whole host of factors that makes that scenario,” McDaniel said.
He added that it would better serve smaller police and law enforcement agencies to pool their resources, as some school districts have done, and share a psychologist or a mental health responder who is trained specifically to deal with suicidal individuals and other similar crisis.
“They felt he was approaching them aggressively and weren’t able to see what was in his hand but proceeded to be a weapon,” Bonds said. “But nothing that I’ve seen indicates de-escalation.”
Police accountability
Bonds applauded the decision by the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office to say that the teen was armed with a BB gun. Doing so helps inform the public and ensures police accountability, she said.
“Whenever there’s a situation involving an officer involved shooting, more transparency is better to ensure that there’s public confidence in the police going forward,” she said. “And so when there are when you’re releasing half truths, or misinformation — that’s going to logically lead people to be suspicious and to be skeptical.”
Both of the officers who shot the teen have been placed on paid administrative leave, a standard procedure for officers who discharge weapons resulting in death or injury, Capt. Ryan Sharp, a spokesman for Grandview Police Department, said Monday.
According to data compiled by The Washington Post, 12 minors with toy weapons have been killed. And more than 200 adults carrying a toy weapon, BB gun or airsoft gun have been shot and killed by police since 2015 across the country.
A police officer shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was carrying a replica toy gun, in Cleveland in 2014. Last month, a Maryland State Trooper shot and killed 16-year-old Peyton Ham who was carrying an Airsoft gun.
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline can be reached at 800-273-8255. The Crisis Text Line also provides emotional crisis support and can be reached by texting HELLO to 741741.
This story was originally published May 21, 2021 at 3:20 PM.
