DOJ official pulls out of meeting with KCKPD victims after cops call event ‘anti-police’ | Opinion

I had already started writing this warm and sunny column about how great it was that the U.S. attorney for Kansas, Kate Brubacher, and Kristen Clarke, the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Justice, had actually agreed to listen — no promises, but just listen — to some people in Kansas City, Kansas, with stories to share about police abuse and misconduct there.

But now both Brubacher and Clarke have backed out of a commitment to attend, via Zoom, a 6 p.m. Tuesday night “field hearing” at Grandview Park Presbyterian Church organized by the faith-based social justice group Metro Organization for Racial and Economic Equity, MORE2.

After someone in the KCKPD expressed concern to Brubacher that one of the flyers for the event was “anti-police,” Brubacher told MORE2 board member David Grummon that she wouldn’t attend after all, and neither would Clarke, Grummon told me. “One flyer said, ‘The people vs. the KCKPD.’ Someone from the KCKPD brought this to Ms. Brubacher’s attention, “ and she told Grummon that as a result, neither she nor Clarke could participate.

Brubacher did not answer a message asking about their withdrawal from the event.

The community has been pushing for a DOJ “pattern and practice” investigation into the KCKPD for years, and after President Joe Biden took office, there seemed reason to hope that it might finally happen.

It hasn’t, of course, and any glimmer of optimism that it still could has so far been made to look naive.

“This is a serious blow. They’ve stomped on the hopes of people who thought somebody in a position of power might finally listen,” said Cheryl Pilate, the attorney whose client Lamonte McIntyre served 23 years in prison for a double murder he did not commit because of police and prosecutorial corruption in Wyandotte County. “The Justice Department needs to hear this, and they are falling down on their responsibility. Who is this too risky for?”

Clarke’s official DOJ bio says this: “Throughout her career, Clarke has focused on work that seeks to strengthen our democracy by combating discrimination faced by African Americans and other marginalized communities. Her role involves ensuring civil liberties for all Americans.”

All, really? If people pushing for a DOJ investigation because of their own not-good experiences with police can’t say that they have had not-good experiences with police without being labeled anti-police, then I don’t know what else they can do to get the government to launch an investigation, or exactly how they should be labeling the event.

Sending staff members, not officials who need to listen

The way they did advertise it made it too scary, in any case. Not for victims, who have bravely stepped forward despite all kinds of threats, but for the officials who are failing them.

“It’s disappointing,” Grummon said, and “a little hard to swallow that this was all over the name of the event. In some ways, it doesn’t surprise me, but I was just hoping for something different from the DOJ” under Biden. “The runway’s getting a little short. I do have a sense of urgency. I understand they’ve devoted resources to the prosecution of Roger Golubski,” the former KCKPD detective charged with conspiracy in a sex trafficking ring and with federal civil rights violations involving rape and kidnapping.

But Golubski could not have done any of what he is charged with on his own during his 35 years on the force, and it’s not clear that the conditions that made his behavior possible are in the past now, either.

“Tell me one substantive change he’s made,” MORE2 Executive Director Lora McDonald said of current KCKPD chief Karl Oakman. “Everybody’s keeping their jobs here,” she said, by “not doing anything.”

“I’m advised they’re going to have staff” from DOJ sit in on the meeting instead of Clarke, Grummon said.

Instead of anyone who could actually do anything, in other words. Instead of anyone who needs to hear these accounts firsthand. The lack of respect here is stunning.

“I’m livid,” McDonald said, because “everyone is more worried about themselves than about these victims, or about righting a wrong.”

Though it’s not too late to change that, I’m beginning to feel foolish for even thinking that could still happen.