Outrage: No charges, no justice for Wichita teen killed in custody George Floyd-style
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Death of Wichita teen at Sedgwick County facility
Cedric Lofton’s foster father called authorities in September 2021 seeking help because the 17-year-old was hallucinating and needed to go to a mental health facility. Instead, police took him to the Sedgwick County Juvenile Intake and Assessment Center, where he had to be resuscitated after he was held facedown for more than 30 minutes during an altercation. He died two days later.
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At least George Floyd’s killer was held accountable. There will be no such justice in the eerily similar homicide of 17-year-old Cedric “CJ” Lofton, of Wichita, who died on Sept. 26, two days after being held down in the prone position in juvenile custody.
Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett announced this week that no charges would be brought against multiple officers involved in restraining the 135-pound Lofton at the Sedgwick County Juvenile Intake and Assessment Center. The medical examiner’s office had determined Lofton’s death a homicide. An autopsy report said the young man had no pulse shortly after a struggle with officers who restrained him in the prone position and handcuffed him behind his back. The ME’s assessment is not a legal ruling; prosecutors decide whether to file charges, and Bennett suggested he couldn’t make a case, in part because of the limitations of Kansas law.
The DA’s logic? Correctional officers were only defending themselves under the Kansas “Stand Your Ground” law. That’s ludicrous on its face. How could Lofton have been killed if officers were only defending themselves — from a lanky teenager, no less? It doesn’t make any sense.
“Somehow, from a 135-pound boy, they were afraid for their life and needed to defend themselves from ‘imminent danger’?” asks a family spokesman, the Rev. Maurice Evans of Wichita.
Advocates, along with some 30,000 petitioners, have been seeking a special prosecutor in the case. Absent that, it’s becoming clearer every day that the U.S. Department of Justice needs to investigate the young man’s death.
The tragic incident is all the more perverse in that it happened as a result of a mental health episode that prompted the teen’s foster father to call police for help Sept. 24. And what help did the young man get? The Kansas Bureau of Investigation reports that police put Lofton in a full-body wrap — despite the fact that a federal judge last year ruled such a device unconstitutional “torture.” A juvenile official in Arkansas who tested such a device on himself recalled “difficulty in breathing and, in turn, increased anxiety.”
Then came the struggle at the juvenile facility from which Lofton never recovered. While Wichita police released body cam video of the arrest, no such video from the juvenile facility was available as of Thursday. We’re also told that the video might not show key moments and areas of the facility.
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Even without video, the facts, including the autopsy, indicate that someone caused the teen’s death. And the DA is good with no one being held accountable?
Or is it something lacking in Kansas law, as Bennett suggests? In the DA’s report on Lofton’s death, Bennett writes, “Homicides in Kansas generally require the state to prove one of the three following mental states: intentional, knowing or reckless. Notably, there is no negligent homicide in Kansas.” If he’s right, the Kansas Legislature must set to work immediately to fill that gaping hole in the state’s justice system.
The DA’s decision won’t end matters for those seeking justice on behalf of Lofton.
Besides petitioning a court this week to release the juvenile center video, Evans, the family spokesman, said national activist groups representing 300,000 individuals have promised support. “We have people who have pledged that they will bring busloads of people,” Evan says.
It’s heartening that Wichita Mayor Brandon Whipple has vowed “unprecedented action on how we handle crisis intervention in our community.” That’s long overdue and not just in Wichita. And a Wichita community task force will review the circumstances surrounding Lofton’s death.
Yet, as Evans noted, the task force members represent the very system that needs to be independently investigated: “These are all allies of Marc Bennett and law enforcement in general,” he said, “How could you be so tone deaf two summers from George Floyd?”
Besides, neither a task force nor the mayor’s promise is a substitute for justice, which so far has proven elusive.
This story was originally published January 21, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
