Guilty plea in teen’s assault is welcome, but Kansas City police are still in crisis

Matthew Neal, now a former Kansas City police sergeant, pleaded guilty Thursday to the felony assault of a teenage suspect in his custody almost exactly three years ago.

It has taken far too long to reach this day of justice, but the plea is still welcome. “The family is extremely relieved to have this over with,” said Tom Porto, who represented the victim. “It’s frustrating that it took this long … but it was worth waiting for.”

Pursuant to a plea agreement, Neal was sentenced to four years of probation, not prison. He will lose his Missouri peace officer’s license, and has resigned from the department.

“We respect the judicial process and the outcome determined by the court,” the Kansas City Police Department said in a statement.

“The victim in this incident had a negative experience with a member of the KCPD,” the statement said. “This is extremely regrettable and the incident has been reviewed and discussed at all levels of the department. We expect department members to treat all citizens with dignity and respect at all times, and it did not happen in this case.”

We should not celebrate criminal convictions, and we won’t do so here. Instead, we hope Kansas Citians will use this day to reflect, and commit to making the police department, and its officers, better.

To review: In November 2019, two young people led police on a short car chase that ended at the Go Chicken Go parking lot on Troost Avenue. After the stop, officers ordered the driver and his passenger out of the vehicle.

The passenger, then 15 years old, did not resist arrest. He was told to crawl some distance from the car.

“I was being respectful,” the teenager later told police. “That is why I do not understand why they slammed my head like that and started choking me.”

Neal pushed the teenager’s face into the pavement during the arrest, breaking his teeth and gashing his face. The sergeant placed his knee on the suspect’s head, another officer later told investigators.

“I was telling them that I can’t breathe, and y’all are choking me,” the boy told internal affairs. He was taken to the hospital. He was never charged with a crime.

Neal confirmed these basic facts during the short hearing Thursday. In 2020, the Board of Police Commissioners agreed to pay $725,000 to settle a civil lawsuit in the case.

Yet issues raised by the appalling incident remain unsettled. Documents connected with the case show Neal was “disciplined” after a citizen’s complaint against him was sustained.

We still don’t know what the discipline was. We do know Neal remained on the police payroll after the incident, after the sustained complaint and after the civil settlement.

That’s absurd. A criminal suspect is always presumed innocent, but the plain facts of the case were visible to Neal’s supervisors months ago. The lack of any real sanction prior to Thursday sends a disturbing message to police officers: Even if you use excessive force, you’re protected.

It also suggests the state-appointed police board is far too willing to dismiss brutality among its officers. This is what happens when the force is governed by a board accountable to no one.

We also know the citizen complaint process still needs reform. The victim’s mother filed the original complaint against Neal and another officer, Dylan Pifer. The Office of Community Complaints sustained both, but after former Police Chief Rick Smith objected, the finding against Pifer was dropped.

Kansas City must rededicate itself to developing and implementing a truly independent public review process so that complaints can be addressed and appropriate steps taken.

We also hope Kansas City police officers learn lessons from this case. Policing is very hard work, and dangerous. Most officers are hardworking and dedicated. We support them.

At the same time, the rank and file know the bad actors in their ranks. Neal was a sergeant and a nearly two-decadeslong veteran of the department. He had supervisory authority over other uniformed cops. His behavior could not have been a secret.

In 2020, when this incident first became public, we said the KCPD was “in crisis.” That’s still the case. Thankfully, though, there is one less abusive sergeant in the ranks.

This story was originally published October 27, 2022 at 10:38 AM.