Kansas City, Kansas police ticketed, scolded innocent woman — while she was sleeping

It could have been any of us to be treated by Kansas City, Kansas police this way. But ironically, it just happened to be an activist seeking police reforms.

Nikki Richardson was awakened not long after 4:30 a.m. Monday to a call from alarmed relatives who said she’d been cited for speeding and even fleeing police at 100 mph — oddly enough while she was sleeping in her bed.

How? Turns out the real driver, still unknown, was sporting Richardson’s lost driver’s license — but Kansas City, Kansas officers didn’t note the difference between the two, or which car was registered to whom. They let the driver escape, since they had the driver’s license, but then recklessly left two tickets and a scolding note for Richardson in a relative’s mailbox, which was her old address and was still on the driver’s license:

“Ms. Richardson,

We aren’t sure why you decided to run … You had no warrants and a valid D.L.

I implore you to make better decisions and not place you or other innocent people at risk.

Respectfully,

KCK P.D.

P.S.: Here’s your tickets :)”

Respectfully? Hardly. They didn’t even verify the driver’s identity before lecturing an innocent woman and leaving her with two tickets and a sarcastic smiley face.

What the heck kind of police department are they running in Kansas City, Kansas?

A department spokesperson explained away the officers’ actions in a statement to The Star, but added, “While the note was intended to encourage more responsible behavior, it nonetheless was unprofessional and outside of department policy. This incident has been addressed with the officers involved.”

To her eternal credit, Richardson isn’t nearly as animated about this insult as she could be. And she even discounts the remote possibility that it might have happened because she’s a leading activist for police and community reform in Wyandotte County. Instead, she chalks it up to a huge error in judgment, perhaps a gap in training — or maybe a larger problem of smugness toward the public.

“There was clearly a training gap there,” Richardson told The Star. “But I think it speaks to a bigger problem. A talking-to is going to fix the (ticket) delivery issue — the process, the procedure. But it’s not going to fix the level of arrogance that went along with that decision — to say, ‘Oh, well, you know, this is clearly this person. I’m just going to roll up to her house and write her this note, and tell her shame on you, you should make better decisions.’”

Mercifully, superior officers at headquarters canceled the tickets when Richardson brought them in. But what a shiner the department gave itself, especially considering that in June Richardson created a Wyandotte County Police and Community Reform petition at change.org, now with more than 1,200 signatures. Since then, she also co-created the bigger-picture Justice for Wyandotte organization seeking not only justice but prosperity for all. In short, to make things better where she lives.

“This community is my home. I love it with all of my heart and soul,” she says.

Even now. Even after such sloppy police work terrified her relatives and could have easily sent her to jail.

“This could’ve really become a problem. This could’ve steamrolled into something major,” she notes. She’s right.

What happened? How was an officer so easily deluded into thinking that was Richardson behind the wheel? She can only guess. “He either didn’t look at the person, or there was some form of bias that seeped into his decision-making that made him just so sure that that must be the right person.

“If you’re working in a community, you have to be able to know your community. You have to be able to look at an ID and be able to know that that’s not the same person.”

Richardson doesn’t know what, if anything, happened to the two officers involved. But she hopes that it’s something the department can learn from.

“I definitely think it was a ‘we all look alike’ mentality. In a community that you serve that has predominantly Black people in it, you can’t make that mistake.

“We’ve got to get away from this idea that police are so perfect. They’re human. They’re going to make mistakes just like everybody else. But they chose a profession that deserves a higher level of scrutiny.”

Certainly before issuing either tickets or lectures.