Faith leaders call for federal civil rights probe into Kansas City police misconduct
A group of Black clergy who had sought to bridge the divide between law enforcement and urban core communities is now asking the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the Kansas City Police Department for civil rights violations and officer misconduct.
Organizers of Getting to the Heart of the Matter have been speaking out about the March 25 fatal shooting of Malcolm Johnson. The group has said publicly that the Johnson shooting, parts of which were captured on video appear to contradict what authorities said what happened.
“This investigation will verify what everyone already knows, is that the incompetence of the present leadership of the Kansas City Police Department and to uncover what we believe, is ongoing and long standing corruption,” Darron Edwards, lead pastor of United Believers Community Church said Wednesday.
Earlier this week, The Urban Council, a coalition of civil rights organizations announced they have asked the Justice Department to investigate the police department and noted a “disturbing patterns” of officer misconduct and violent policing that targets minority communities.
The Urban Council includes the Urban League of Greater Kansas City, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Urban Summit, the Kansas City Black United Front and the Kansas City branch of the NAACP.
In the group’s letter addressed to U.S. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, the group wrote: “Our request for a thorough investigation of the leadership of the Kansas City Police Department is a by-product of this case (Malcolm Johnson shooting) and other cases that show a lack of leadership, that creates bad policing and questionable conduct in the Kansas City Police Department.”
Edwards said his clergy group hand-delivered its letter to U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver about two weeks ago. The group has also reached out to Missouri Auditor Nicole Galloway and the Kansas City auditor’s office.
“One of the main reasons we want is a performance audit to objectively evaluate the competency as well as the character of the Kansas City police department as it relates to the office of the Chief of Police,” Edwards said.
In response, police spokesman Sgt. Jacob Becchina wrote in an email that the police department “has participated with the DOJ via an MOU agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the FBI and the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office since 2015.”
The agreement ensures reporting incidents that could rise to the level of civil rights violations or excessive force, Becchina said.
“We take very seriously the quality of relationships and respect between the community as well as members of the organization,” he said. “We have mechanisms in place to ensure that members can report any incident of discrimination or racism anonymously and we take every incident of reported racism very seriously and investigate fully whether it involves department members or the members of the community.”
Broken relationship
Edwards had for months been a public ally of the police department, helping to launch Getting to the Heart of the Matter, a community-police relationship building initiative.
The March 25 police shooting of Malcolm Johnson changed that for him and the other faith leaders.
Johnson, 31, was fatally shot by an on-duty Kansas City police officer, who was shot in the leg, during an attempt to arrest Johnson inside a gas station at 63rd Street and Prospect Avenue. Edwards and others obtained videos of the events, which they said raised questions about the police version of what happened inside the gas station.
The ministers have described the killing of Johnson as an “execution” and called for the officers who were involved in the arrest to be immediately fired.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol investigated the shooting and has turned over its case file to the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office who will determine whether criminal charges will be filed against the officers.
Since the shooting, Edwards said his group is no longer with working with the police department.
“There has been no engagement, there’s been no phone calls, no emails, no ongoing anything,” he said. “As we’re watching an increasing violent murder, crime statistics go up, we would think that KCPD would want to speak to urban core clergy to come up with some solutions and remedies. But to this day, that has not occurred.
Becchina, a police spokesman said: “We continue interact and share info with Pastor Edwards as well as dozens of others in the faith based community on a weekly basis.”
