KCPD no longer investigates police shootings in KCK. That means video can remain concealed
In the weeks after the second high-profile 2023 police killing in three months, Kansas City, Kansas, Police Chief Karl Oakman decided the Kansas City Police Department should no longer be in charge of the criminal investigations into his officers.
Instead, he turned to the Kansas Bureau of Investigations, which has conducted every KCKPD officer-involved shooting probe since.
But because Kansas City police led the investigations into the Feb. 3, 2023, killing of 50-year-old John Anderton and the April 26, 2023, killing of 25-year-old Amaree’ya Henderson, body camera footage of both shootings was ultimately made public in response to a Star records request.
Despite the Unified Government’s efforts to prevent the release of the videos — including suing the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners — a Platte County judge ruled last November that the footage must be made available under Missouri’s Sunshine Law. The statute does not grant law enforcement the same extensive powers as the Kansas Open Records Act to withhold records after investigations have concluded.
KCKPD spokesperson Nancy Chartrand told The Star the department’s decision to ditch KCPD as an investigative partner in favor of the KBI was completely unrelated to the handling of video and other criminal records. Instead, she said, it had everything to do with administrative challenges that were hindering timely investigations.
“As we all know, Kansas City, Missouri’s homicide rate is continuing to increase, and it was becoming more of a taxing situation, shall we say, from our standpoint of sometimes them showing up to do an investigation and then having to have people pulled because there was another homicide in Kansas City, Missouri,” Chartrand said. “It just didn’t end up working out.”
Kansas City police reported a record 182 homicides in 2023. Although that number decreased to 144 in 2024, the rate of nonfatal shootings soared to record levels.
10-year agreement with KCPD
When Oakman took over as chief in 2021, KCKPD was still conducting criminal investigations into its own officers who shot and killed people, despite the Department of Justice warning that it was against best practices.
The new chief quickly changed that, entering KCKPD into a 10-year agreement with the Kansas City Police Department to investigate each other’s police shootings.
According to the May 2022 interstate compact, obtained by The Star through a records request, the purpose was to establish “a neutral, impartial and thorough procedure” for investigations on either side of the state border.
“I definitely don’t believe in any entity policing themselves when a life is involved,” said LaDora Lattimore, a member of the Unified Government’s Law Enforcement Advisory Board. “It needs to be an independent investigation . . . for full transparency and an outcome that — even if it’s an outcome that everybody doesn’t support — we can at least say it was fair and it was transparent.”
Oakman contacted the KBI about taking over police shooting investigations in May 2023, Chartrand said. No record of any agreement between KBI and KCKPD exists, but the KBI routinely conducts outside investigations on behalf of other local police departments around the state. KCKPD’s 10-year agreement with KCPD was not exclusive, Chartrand said.
“It just says anytime for the next 10 years, we may call upon you, so theoretically if we had one next month, we could pick up the phone and call them. It doesn’t preclude us from calling anyone else. That’s why there’s no termination of an agreement,” Chartrand said.
Police shooting records
Of the eight fatal police shootings in Kansas City, Kansas, between 2019 and 2023, the department declined to release dashboard and bodycam footage of seven, a 2024 Star investigation found.
But in the case of shootings investigated by Kansas City police, there is no way for KCKPD to ensure records will remain closed. That’s how footage of the Anderton and Henderson shootings was obtained after the Wyandotte County District Attorney’s Office declined to pursue charges against officers involved in either fatal shooting.
“The crucial aspect of the Missouri Sunshine Law is that it creates a mandatory deadline for when police records must be disclosed to the public upon request,” said Max Kautsch, a Lawrence-based First Amendment lawyer. “In Kansas, the mandatory deadline is 70 years, which makes that an impracticality for individuals seeking access to police records in this state.”
Missouri officers “must reasonably expect that those records are going to become public,” he said.
Not so in Kansas.
“That promotes a culture of secrecy,” Kautsch said. “If you have the feeling that what you do and say is never going to see the light of day, which is the way it is in Kansas, well, how is that going to impact officer conduct and the quality of the service that the public receives from law enforcement?”
Chartrand said the suggestion that KCKPD’s motive for cutting KCPD out of the investigative process was to conceal records related to the killings of Anderton and Henderson — or anyone else shot by police — is ridiculous.
“Those officer-involved shootings, yes, occurred before this. But if you’re talking about requests for body camera (footage), that happened well after we had already made the decision to shift to KBI,” Chartrand said.
“It has nothing to do with (suppressing records). It’s about trying to keep that transparency going and having an agency that can respond and has the resources to be able to do so in a timely manner and the manpower to be able to conduct those.”
This story was originally published March 10, 2025 at 5:30 AM.
