No surprise: Lack of accountability for KC police who kill leads to more of the same | Opinion

Of course a lack of accountability for police officers who use excessive force inevitably leads to more excessive force.

So let no one profess any surprise that Blayne Newton, the Kansas City police officer who fatally shot two people last Friday night, also shot and killed an unarmed man in 2020 and has been accused of excessive force in two other cases.

If we want even more such tragedies, then we should definitely keep such people on the force no matter how many times they pull the trigger.

If we want even more such tragedies, then officialdom should definitely continue to behave as though former KCPD “cowboy” Eric DeValkenaere was never found guilty of manslaughter.

(He was, and rightly so. But his protectors in our very unevenly applied system are determined to see that he never pays his debt.)

If we want even more loss of life and even more big payouts by taxpayers, then we should definitely continue to pretend that deterrence only works for those without a badge.

Around 9 p.m. last Friday, he killed two people and injured a third near the McDonald’s at 31st and Van Brunt.

How many people, we wonder, would he have to hurt before being disqualified from service?

On March 12, 2020, he shot and killed Donnie Sanders, who was not armed, after a traffic stop near Prospect Avenue.

That same year, he was accused of putting his knee into the back of a woman who was nine months pregnant.

And rounding out his violent CV, Newton was one of three officers accused of beating and using a stun gun on a teenager in 2019.

Even now, though, he’s shielded by his badge.

The Kansas City Police Department, which receives a giant share of city funding from taxpayers, and wants even more, does not think that we need to know any details about this latest or any other police shooting.

That’s why we don’t even know how many Kansas City police officers have shot and killed more than one person. And who does this opacity protect? Neither the public nor the many officers who don’t use excessive force.

A 2015 Star investigation of police shootings showed that seven officers had been involved in two shootings each over the previous decade. But the department makes this kind of headcount as difficult as possible to track.

“We have not named the officer” responsible for Friday’s shooting, “nor do we ever unless there are charges filed and the identification becomes a public record,” a KCPD spokesman told The Star. That’s not the case elsewhere, and shouldn’t be here, either.

The public has a right to know what those on our payroll do.

Yet Missouri law actually prohibits the police department from releasing personnel information about an officer. And that, too, would be upside down if accountability were the goal.

But it isn’t, which is just one reason the community has no faith in law enforcement that sees itself as above the law.

This story was originally published June 13, 2023 at 5:07 AM.