Missouri Gov. Mike Parson got Chiefs coach’s son out of prison. Is ex-KC detective next?

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson’s sudden commutation of former Kansas City Chiefs assistant coach Britt Reid is raising fresh fears that he will soon free the first Kansas City Police Department officer ever convicted of killing a Black man.

The Republican governor’s unexpected clemency for Reid arrived like a thunderbolt on Friday. Republican and Democratic officials quickly criticized the decision, with few vocally defending it.

But the case of former KCPD Det. Eric DeValkenaere, who is serving a six-year sentence for fatally shooting 26-year-old Cameron Lamb in 2021, has long simmered in the public eye. Parson has openly entertained the possibility of clemency for DeValkenaere and, unlike Reid, his supporters have mounted a public campaign for a pardon.

On Tuesday, the Missouri Supreme Court declined to take up DeValkenaere’s case, effectively ending his appeals process in state courts. That means the former detective’s chance for early freedom almost certainly now rests with Parson, a former Polk County sheriff who has long cast himself as a staunch supporter of law enforcement.

“This news is bittersweet,” Sheryl Ferguson, an organizer with It’s Time 4 Justice, said in a statement of the Supreme Court’s decision. On one hand, the courts agree justice has been served. On the other, Parson has “always shown his Back the Blue mentality.”

“The Supreme Court may believe in justice, but the Governor does not,” Ferguson said.

Since DeValkanaere’s family made a formal request for clemency in October, Parson’s office has consistently said a decision hasn’t been made. In November, Parson called it “one of the toughest issues that’s really on my desk” and criticized Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker’s handling of the case as “political,” seeming to begin to build a public case for a potential pardon.

A Parson spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for an update on Wednesday. Michael Mansur, a spokesperson for the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office, said the office hasn’t heard from the governor’s office about DeValkenaere since the request in the fall.

Amid the search for clues about Parson’s intentions, Reid’s commutation provides a stark demonstration of the governor’s willingness to make politically volatile clemency decisions. Prior to Reid, Parson’s most controversial clemency action had been pardoning Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis couple who waved guns in front of Black Lives Matter demonstrators.

That decision followed a public promise made by Parson soon after the 2020 incident that he would pardon the couple if they were convicted, a move that had effectively placed Parson in a box. Reid’s commutation made clear that this kind of controversial clemency action wasn’t a one-off.

Parson has the power to delay, reduce or eliminate the punishment of state-level crimes under the Missouri Constitution. He has used the clemency power far more than his modern predecessors, issuing more than 600 pardons in the past three years – more than any other Missouri governor since the 1940s, according to the Associated Press.

Clemency for DeValkenaere would be politically explosive, especially in Kansas City, which has a state-controlled police force that has long grappled with community mistrust. Parson has called KCPD “one of the best police departments in the state.”

DeValkenaere shot Lamb as Lamb was backing his pickup truck into his garage in November 2019. The shooting happened roughly nine seconds after DeValkenaere and his partner arrived at Lamb’s home — after a Kansas City police helicopter followed the young man’s pickup truck to his residence in the 4100 block of College Boulevard in response to a series of alleged traffic violations.

“It’s not going to be received well,” U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat who was the city’s first Black mayor in the 1990s, said of possible clemency.

“But that probably means little, that it’s not going to be received well. I don’t think that’s going to register for him.”

Gwen Grant, president and CEO of the Urban League of Greater Kansas City, said the Reid commutation “absolutely” makes her more worried that Parson could pardon DeValkenaere. She noted that the governor had commuted Reid’s sentence without communicating with the victims in the case, which she called a “lack of respect.”

“I just hope that he will not allow his history in law enforcement and his fealty to the Kansas City Police Department to cloud his judgment and that he would … not act, but that he would allow the justice system and the letter of the law to prevail in this case,” Grant said.

James Harris, a Jefferson City-based Republican consultant who has long known Parson, said the governor doesn’t take politics into consideration in clemency decisions.

“I think he really looks more at the person, the situation, have they changed?” Harris said.

While Reid pleaded guilty, DeValkenaere has maintained his innocence following his conviction on charges of second-degree involuntary manslaughter and armed criminal action in 2021. He remained free while he appealed his sentence, but reported to prison after the Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed his conviction in October.

DeValkenaere’s wife, Sarah DeValkenaere, made an impassioned plea on Tuesday for supporters to urge Parson to issue a pardon after the Missouri Supreme Court announced it wouldn’t hear the case. Appearing on Facebook Live, she said her husband had been in prison for too long.

“What has been done to him is really just a travesty, a miscarriage of justice,” she said.

Those are the type of appeals that his supporters hope – and opponents of a pardon fear – will persuade Parson to act. Rep. Eric Woods, a Kansas City Democrat, said a pardon would be “wholly unnecessary” and would show a lack of judgment on the governor’s part.

“I don’t think he has any incentive to do a bunch of high-profile commutations,” Woods said. “But, I mean, maybe, at this point, he is no longer afraid of any scrutiny. And so he’s just going to do as he sees fit. I really can’t speak to his motivations.”

Parson, who took office in 2018 after the resignation of Eric Greitens and won a full term two years later, has about 10 months left in office. By all accounts, the 68-year-old from Bolivar has no plans to again seek elected office.

Already, the center of Missouri Republican politics is moving away from him as candidates fight for the chance to succeed him. But the clemency power is one of the most potent powers he will retain until the moment he leaves office.

“It seems like this is really like after this year he’s going back to the farm and that’s sort of it,” said Greg Vonnahme, a political science professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

“That opens up a political space and an opportunity to sort of take more risks.”

The Star’s Daniel Desrochers and Glenn E. Rice contributed reporting