Candidate for Congress touts endorsement from KCPD cop convicted of killing Black man
More than a year after being freed by Missouri’s former governor, the first Kansas City police officer ever convicted for killing a Black man stepped back into the political spotlight over the weekend.
Former Kansas City police detective Eric DeValkenaere, a convicted felon, was pictured at a GOP fundraiser supporting council member Nathan Willett, a Republican candidate for Missouri’s 6th Congressional District.
DeValkenaere’s wife, Sarah, shared photos online of DeValkenaere standing alongside Willett and Will Scharf, who works in the Trump White House, at Saturday night’s Clay County Lincoln-Reagan-Trump Day dinner in North Kansas City. DeValkenaere wore a “We Want Willett” sticker in the photos.
“Happy to support (Willett) for Congress,” Sarah DeValkenaere wrote in a social media post. She did not return a call for comment on Monday.
The remarkable endorsement came roughly 16 months after former Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, commuted DeValkenaere’s prison sentence in the 2019 fatal shooting of Cameron Lamb, a 26-year-old Black man who DeValkenaere shot while Lamb was backing his pickup truck into his garage.
Parson’s explosive decision freed DeValkenaere, but did not wipe away his involuntary manslaughter conviction. He later surrendered his law enforcement license in 2025.
Willett’s embrace of DeValkenaere is certain to infuriate police accountability advocates and community members as he mounts a Republican campaign to succeed U.S. Rep. Sam Graves in Congress. DeValkenaere’s conviction represented a landmark moment of police accountability in Kansas City, which does not control its own police force.
But DeValkenaere’s case has also been a cause célèbre of sorts in Republican circles and served as a symbol of a cop targeted by an overzealous prosecutor. Willett touted DeValkenaere’s backing on Monday, casting it as evidence of his support for law enforcement.
“Eric and Sarah are great friends of mine and have done so much good for our community,” Willett said in a text message to The Star. “I firmly stand with law enforcement and all first responder families throughout Missouri.”
Willett in hotly contested primary
Willett has been embroiled in a hotly contested Republican primary for Missouri’s 6th District, which stretches across northern Missouri and includes Kansas City’s Northland. The endorsement will likely play a role in a Republican race that could focus heavily on support for law enforcement and overtures to right-wing voters.
Scharf, who was the special guest at Saturday’s event, told The Star on Monday that he has not endorsed a candidate in the Republican primary. Scharf, who served on President Donald Trump’s legal team, previously ran unsuccessfully for Missouri attorney general.
Willett and nationally syndicated radio host Chris Stigall have traded barbs in recent weeks as they vie for Republican votes to succeed Graves, who is retiring.
Stigall, who has earned Graves’ endorsement and is backed by prominent GOP consultant Jeff Roe, pointed to his own law enforcement bonafides in a statement to The Star. He touted an endorsement from Republican Attorney General Catherine Hanaway.
“I’ve been a strong back the blue supporter since I started on KC radio in 2006 — pointing out the folly of major cities defunding the police and the lawless Biden agenda,” Stigall said. “I’m pleased to have the endorsement of Missouri’s top cop, AG Catherine Hanaway, and many others in Missouri.”
Still, Willett’s alignment with DeValkenaere marks an extraordinary move by a Kansas City elected official vying to represent the city’s northern suburbs in Congress. Numerous courts have upheld DeValkenaere’s 2021 conviction, including the Missouri Court of Appeals. The Missouri Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
Jean Peters Baker, the former Jackson County prosecutor who prosecuted the case against DeValkenaere, said in an interview that Willett was “probably mistaken about the facts” of the case.
“Candidate Willett probably has not read the state’s trial brief, has not read the judge who convicted — his decision that he wrote,” she said. “And I’m sure as hell guessing he didn’t read the Court of Appeals’ blistering opinion about what the facts were here.”
Baker acknowledged, however, that DeValkenaere was free to endorse any candidate he chooses. She added that Missouri law would bar him from seeking state or local office himself due to his felony conviction.
“He’s free to do so,” she said. “He couldn’t run for office because of his own felony conviction, but he is free to endorse others.”
Backlash to clemency in Kansas City
DeValkenaere’s case provoked a furious backlash in Kansas City and Lamb’s family had repeatedly denounced his anticipated release from prison. Baker had previously warned that issuing clemency to DeValkenaere would “ignite distrust, protests, and public safety concerns for citizens and for police.”
Parson announced the commutation in the twilight of his term on the Friday afternoon before the Christmas holiday week in 2024. The move illustrated a major intervention by the state in the local justice system, one of Kansas City’s few avenues for police accountability due to the city’s lack of control over its police force.
While DeValkenaere was sentenced to six years in prison, he was able to remain free on bond as his appeal winded through the courts, a move that faced intense scrutiny due to his status as a law enforcement officer. He surrendered to authorities in October 2023 after an appeals court upheld his conviction.
Parson’s commutation of DeValkenaere followed a series of high-profile and controversial clemency actions by the former governor.
In 2021, he pardoned Mark and Patricia McCloskey, a St. Louis couple who waved guns at Black Lives Matter demonstrators outside their home. And, in March 2024, Parson commuted the sentence of former Kansas City Chiefs assistant coach Britt Reid, who was convicted of driving while intoxicated and causing a crash that severely injured a 5-year-old girl.
At the same time, Parson rejected every clemency application in a death penalty case since becoming governor and refused to intervene in several cases in which Black men convicted of murder had strong innocence claims, including Kevin Strickland, who was eventually freed, and Marcellus Williams, who was executed in 2024.
Lauren Bonds, executive director of the National Police Accountability Project, said Willett’s embrace of DeValkenaere was concerning. She also pointed to the fact that the 2019 shooting has cost Kansas City taxpayers after Kansas City police last year agreed to pay Cameron Lamb’s family $4.1 million to settle a federal lawsuit in the wake of his death.
Bonds added that the photo of Willett and DeValkenaere was “clearly telegraphing a message to voters.”
“The message that I would receive from that is that law enforcement officers should be able to get away with murder if, you know, they’re the right race and the victim is the right race,” Bonds said. “Frankly, that is the message that I would receive from that.”
When asked to respond to the criticism, Willett said in a text message to The Star that he has “Eric’s back, 110%.” He went on to criticize Baker as a “rogue prosecutor more interested in locking up first responders for doing their jobs than holding criminals accountable.”
“Kansas City and Missouri is better off with Jean Peters Baker out of office and out of town,” he said.
Saturday’s event was also not the first time the DeValkenaere’s have aligned themselves with Willett’s campaign. In a Facebook post earlier this month, Sarah DeValkenaere wrote that Willett “has our respect. He has our gratitude. He has our support.”
“He stood with us publicly when it mattered, and he fought for us quietly when no one was watching,” she wrote in the post, which included a photo of the couple with Willett.
