Outside investigations of police shootings up for negotiation in KCPD union contract Glenn E. Rice, The Kansas City Star
Feb. 2 On a summer day last year, with protests ongoing at the Country Club Plaza, Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker arrived at a scene where a police officer had shot and killed a man.
At the protests, which had been going on for two weeks in Kansas City, demonstrators were chanting the names of Black men gunned down by police. Questions about how the police could effectively investigate themselves were burning.
And here at 23rd Street and Lister Avenue, on June 13, the Kansas City Police Department was taking control of the shooting scene again even though they were not supposed to anymore, according to a recent change made by police leaders. Days earlier, the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners had announced that outside law enforcement would investigate all fatal police shootings.