Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker infuriated by notion Cameron Lamb deserved to be shot
Now that former Kansas City police detective Eric DeValkenaere has been sentenced to six years in prison for killing a 26-year-old Black man, Cameron Lamb, in his own backyard, Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker wants to talk about a case that could and should impact policing in this town for years to come.
On Dec. 3, 2019, DeValkenaere rolled up without a warrant or any probable cause and started firing nine seconds later. He says that’s because he saw Lamb point a gun at his partner, Troy Schwalm. Prosecutors believe the gun was planted as Lamb bled out, while EMTs on the scene were denied entry.
In an interview, Baker said Schwalm’s actions that day tell us that there was no gun: “You know by his conduct what the truth is,” she said. How’s that? Standing just feet in front of where Lamb was backing his truck into his garage, he had a direct line of sight. “Troy’s a veteran just like DeValkenaere is. No one is going to point a gun at him without him raising his weapon, and he never did that. He was actually talking to Cameron, saying, ‘Hey man. Turn off the truck. Let’s just talk.’“
Though Baker won the case in court — and on the law, there was never any doubt — she’s galled about the disinformation that she says police officers were fed and then spread about the case. In fact, they were so determined to throw mud on Lamb’s memory, she said, that they tried to get her to file charges against him weeks after his death.
You might have noticed that everyone shot by a cop anywhere is then painted as a thoroughgoing menace to public safety. But actually trying to charge a dead man, well, were they going to drag his bloody corpse into court?
And the vilification of Lamb to excuse DeValkenaere, who had no right to even be in Lamb’s yard, infuriates Baker. Rank and file officers, she said, were given “misinformation about Cameron Lamb” that then led the public to wonder “was he good enough for the rule of law to apply to him? I don’t give a goddamn if the police department thinks he’s not entitled to the rule of law. He’s a human being, and I think he is.”
The official narrative, according to outgoing Police Chief Rick Smith, was always, as Smith suggested while he was still at the scene, that everything had gone exactly as it had to. “Everybody’s good,” the chief said. “House is clear. Bad guy is dead.”
Everybody was not good, but the implication from DeValkenaere’s defenders that Lamb was a “bad guy” it was somehow OK to kill definitely caught on with the public.
‘We heard him described as a cowboy’
Just recently, I received this note from a reader: “You may be right about the DeValkenaere case. But when you write about it, please consider including the following information: Cameron Lamb was no angel. Shortly before being shot, Cameron Lamb hit his girlfriend in the face, stabbed her car with a screwdriver, threw lug nuts at her, and chased her car at 90 mph while her two kids were in the backseat.”
Shall I also include that DeValkenaere knew nothing about any of these allegations when he violated Lamb’s Fourth Amendment right to be protected from unreasonable searches? All he knew when he ran in with his gun drawn was that Lamb had been seen speeding. And when we start deciding who does and does not deserve to be protected by all rights laid out in the U.S. Constitution, we — oh, but we’re already there.
“Cameron could have been wanted for murder and it wouldn’t change anything,” Baker said, because “Eric DeValkenaere didn’t have that knowledge.”
She also questioned DeValkenaere’s own angel wings. “We heard him described as a ‘cowboy.’ A judge had ruled him not credible to testify in a murder case, and that don’t happen. That speaks more to character than 300 letters talking about what a great coach he was.”
After the veteran officer’s November bench trial, Circuit Court Judge J. Dale Youngs found him guilty of manslaughter and armed criminal action. Recently, after Youngs received those 300 letters praising DeValkenaere, the judge decided that the former officer could remain free on bond while appealing his conviction. Youngs himself said doing that was “unprecedented for me.”
In his original ruling on the case, Youngs said DeValkenaere had not been either protecting his partner or acting in self-defense when he shot Lamb. The car chase spotted by a police helicopter “previously had deescalated,” the judge found. And by running into Lamb’s backyard anyway, Youngs found, the officers had themselves “created or exacerbated the risk that ultimately occurred. The court concludes that this conduct was a gross deviation from the standard of care a reasonable person would exercise in this situation, and constituted criminal negligence as that phrase is defined under Missouri law.”
Will Gov. Parson pardon convicted police officer?
Now Baker has new worries. For one thing, that Missouri Gov. Mike Parson could give in to pressure to pardon the former detective.
And is Chief Smith really going to leave his job next month? Though Smith and his allies insist otherwise, there had been no public notice that he was ready to retire before DeValkenaere was found guilty. That announcement came within days of the verdict and within hours of a meeting with the mayor and head of the police board of commissioners about when he would go.
In choosing to defend what DeValkenaere did that day, Baker said, Smith essentially “picked him over 1,200 other police officers” who, whether Smith realizes it or not, now suffer from the perception that the KCPD thinks it’s OK to roll up with guns out based on zero evidence that a crime has been committed. The civil case being brought by Lamb’s family is going to cost the city, too: “The department is going to be bleeding cash on this case.”
Smith only listens to those who agree with him, Baker said, and reassigns to “North Zone Dog Watch” anyone who tells him what he doesn’t want to hear.
In a recent interview with NewsNation, Smith wasn’t asked about the Lamb case, or any other local issue, but mainly complained, at his interviewer’s invitation, about how unfairly police officers are treated. He still believes that the unrest that followed George Floyd’s murder was all “because of one incident in Minneapolis.”
And he made clear, as he has throughout his tenure, that he doesn’t think any officer should ever be held accountable for any wrong action. Oh, you think I’m exaggerating? He believes as a matter of policy that all shootings are good shootings. In the NewsNation interview, he said these things and more:
“I always tell community leaders, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t go out and bash the police and then say, ‘Why don’t we have good police?’ And this is so wrong over here, but gee, we sure want programs and police athletic league and other things. You can’t have it both ways.” You can’t support good policing and still want police wrongdoing punished?
“You can’t go out and say how rotten this is but then by the way, we want good people in policing.” Of course you can.
“We do a great job, if the public would look at what we do day in and day out, but not the one call that went bad or the one instance that went bad.” Doesn’t every criminal you cuff want you to ignore “the one instance that went bad?”
Smith has always held, to the detriment of his own department, that if his officers did it, then it had to have been beyond reproach. But for the good of the police and the policed, his us-versus-them claims of both perfection and victimhood need to be retired along with him.
This story was originally published March 4, 2022 at 4:15 PM.
