Kansas City pays millions in yet another police brutality case — and the public’s shut out
The Star’s editorial board has learned that the state-appointed Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners has agreed to make a multimillion-dollar payment for yet another in a growing list of police brutality cases cleared this year. And while this settlement and other smaller payouts involve public dollars, they are handled with virtually no real public input, oversight or accountability.
It’s another consequence of Kansas City not having local control of its police department.
The five-member board of commissioners — four appointed by the governor, in addition to the city’s mayor — has not yet announced how much it has agreed in Monday’s closed-door meeting to pay to clear a brutality case connected to the May 26, 2019, police killing of 30-year-old Terrance M. Bridges. We expect the board to reveal the exact figure when all settlement documents are signed.
After a brief foot pursuit in the middle of the night in the 7000 block of Bellefontaine Avenue, Bridges — who was unarmed — was shot once in the chest by officer Dylan Pifer, who claimed he’d been attacked by Bridges, even though evidence suggests there was never a physical altercation.
Pifer never identified himself as a police officer, according to court documents. He’s still on patrol in Kansas City, and police won’t say whether he has ever faced any consequences for his actions that night. Bridges’ family filed a wrongful death lawsuit in August 2020.
The police board has agreed to a settlement that, according to sources close to the police board, could be as much as $5 million, which would be the largest payout in the history of the KCPD for a police brutality case.
There has been zero public discussion by the oversight board about what changes in training and protocol have been implemented at the police department as a result. Unfortunately, that’s par for the course for a board that lacks local accountability — even though the Kansas City Council and mayor are required to fund the department.
The lack of local control of our police force is an ongoing injustice to everyone in this city.
In this latest case, there was a lack of transparency at the board, which appears not to have followed Missouri’s Sunshine Law in the way it shut the public out of its meeting.
That the board called an emergency, last-minute meeting to discuss a matter related to litigation is well within the bounds of the state’s Sunshine Law. Usually, notices about meetings are posted 24 hours in advance, as required by law.
An exception to the 24-hour rule requires a board to open a public meeting and then enter into the minutes the legal reasons for breaking the rule. Then the board, still in open session, votes to close the meeting to handle its business out of public view or earshot. The public is required to be allowed to remain in the chamber while the board retires to the executive session.
Those steps were not taken, according to a police spokesman. The meeting, even the portion that should have been open, was held in a public-excluded video conference. That is not the definition of an open public meeting.
“Obviously, we are uncomfortable and have registered our concerns repeatedly about the way closed sessions are handled,” said Morgan Said, the spokeswoman for Mayor Quinton Lucas, who is a member of the police board.
Local control has been a primary demand from activists who have pushed for police reform in Kansas City. And judging from these multiple cases, reform is desperately needed.
This year alone, several KCPD cases have resulted in six-figure payouts. On Monday, the parents of 45-year-old Brian Prince, who died after being tackled by a Kansas City police officer at a Walmart store, were awarded a $500,000 settlement by a judge.
The police board also agreed to award a teen $325,000 after he was punched and tased by three Kansas City police officers. The board also agreed to pay $110,000 to a teenage girl who, along with her father, was pepper-sprayed near the Country Club Plaza during a protest against police brutality in 2020, and also paid $900,000 for a wrongful arrest that put a 15-year-old behind bars for three weeks.
In the aftermath of these payouts, what changes took place in the department? What discipline was imposed? What new training was implemented, if any? The public is left in the dark on all these issues.
What is clearer than ever is that Kansas City residents should have local control of the police board making decisions that are costing the city millions.