As a criminal defense attorney, Stacy Shaw has been handling traffic law cases for decades and has seen her share of drivers appear before Kansas City municipal judges.
So it will be no surprise to Shaw if police are targeting minority motorists and those in the city’s poorest neighborhoods, as described in a lawsuit filed Monday in Jackson County Circuit Court by a 21-year veteran of the Kansas City Police Department.
It would also be no surprise to her, Shaw said, if Kansas City police are pushed to meet ticket quotas, as the lawsuit also describes, even if it is against the law.
“Everybody knows that they have quotas and we have known that for years. They can deny it all they want,” Shaw said. “This whistleblower is confirming what the community already knows.”
Racial profiling is a violation of the federal Civil Rights Act and enforcement of the law could come from the U.S. Department of Justice or a lawsuit. And in Missouri, ticket quotas are also illegal under a state law passed in 2016, billed at the time as a deterrent to local governments relying on revenue generated through citations.
But if the Kansas City Police Department is flouting that law, it’s unclear how it will be enforced. The statute, which was sponsored by U.S. Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Republican who was a state senator at the time and later served as the state’s attorney general, includes no mechanism for holding anyone accountable for breaking it.
The entire law reads: “No political subdivision or law enforcement agency shall have a policy requiring or encouraging an employee to issue a certain number of citations for traffic violations on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, or other quota basis. This section shall not apply to the issuance of warning citations.”
Shaw and community activists in Kansas City say the quota law does nothing if the Missouri Attorney General’s Office does not enforce it.
“Why doesn’t the attorney general’s office do anything — it’s because they’re racist,” Shaw said. “This is a systemically racist country, Missouri. And there’s no political will to hold anyone accountable in Kansas City.”
Reached for comment at the office of Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, spokeswoman Madeline Sieren said the attorney general’s office “is committed to enforcing the laws as written.”
In the lawsuit filed Monday, Edward Williams, a Kansas City traffic cop, said police leaders are disregarding the law by continuing to encourage officers to meet ticket goals by targeting drivers in Black and other racial minority neighborhoods.
His attorney, Gerald Gray, said Williams filed the lawsuit because he felt the discriminatory ticket quota was not only a violation of policy “but it was just morally wrong with how they were instructed to do things.”
When Williams reported the violations to his superiors, he was reprimanded and overlooked for transfers and other opportunities, Gray said.
“He’s a career police officer who wants to do things the right way,” he said. “At the very least he wants to bring awareness and effect change.”
Kansas City Police Chief Stacey Graves said in a written statement this week that officers do not direct enforcement activities based on demographics. But, she said, the department does direct traffic enforcement in high crash locations as well as citizen traffic complaint locations.
Shaw said Graves’ comments were not based in reality.
“That’s been our collective lived experience,” she said. “At some point, the police have to stop telling us don’t believe your lying eyes. It’s insulting, don’t believe your lying eyes.”
‘Plain and simple’
Chloe Cooper, executive director of the Kansas City Community Bail Fund, said the group launched Project GreenLight in March as an effort to decrease the number of illegal drivers in Kansas City.
In preparation for their launch, the Kansas City Municipal Court provided the group with demographic information about those charged with driving with a suspended or revoked license in 2022.
Of the 2,191 people charged 1,455 — 66.4% — were Black. Kansas City is less than 30% Black, according to the U.S. Census data.
On the other hand, 693 of those charged — 31.6% — were white, Cooper said.Kansas City is nearly 60% white.
“There are twice as many whites than African Americans living in Kansas City, so it’s impossible to come up with any scenario other than the intentional targeting of non-white citizens by Kansas City Police Department leaders described by Edward Williams,” she said.
Those numbers were similar to The Star’s findings in 2017 when the newspaper analyzed traffic tickets issued in the police department and processed through the municipal court.
Traffic law attorneys in Kansas City said it is their experience that Black motorists and those from racial minority neighborhoods disproportionately appear in traffic court.
“Historically, African Americans have been getting stopped for (playing loud) music, for tint(ed windows), wheels, for just about anything, especially in the inner cities,” said Phillip Brooks, a Kansas City lawyer who handles criminal and traffic violations.
“It’s just plain and simple. You don’t get that in the suburbs.”
Brooks said the police department will typically position traffic officers on U.S. 71, between 63rd and 55th streets.
“Who are you going to pull over? You’re going to pull over African Americans,” he said.
Tracy Spradlin, a criminal defense and traffic attorney, said the city’s municipal court has seen a significant decrease in the number of traffic tickets that have been issued.
“That being said, I think we do have an issue with (police) patrols and citations being issued in primarily poor or minority parts of town,” she said.
In poorer areas of Kansas City some motorists have to choose between paying their light bill or paying for their insurance. If they get in an accident the month that they can’t pay their insurance, then they’re more likely to be cited.
“So it’s kind of an unfortunate chicken and egg situation,” she said.
Real consequences
Police departments throughout Missouri have a disreputable history of targeting Black and Brown people, which has led to disproportionate traffic stops and searches.
The disparities are clear in the Attorney General’s Vehicle Stop Report, said Tom Bastian, a spokesperson for the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri.
“Year after year, Black people, who make up about only 11 percent of Missouri’s population, are subjected to more than 42 percent of traffic stops. In contrast, the 80 percent in Missouri’s white majority only account for less than 25 percent of all traffic stops,” Bastian said.
“While these disparities have real consequences to the communities they burden, it is not a huge surprise that one or more police officials would say explicitly what is the policy of racial profiling as understood by officers across the state,” he said.
Williams’ lawsuit comes months after the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it is investigating the police department for racial discrimination in its hiring and employment practices. The investigation was announced after a six-part series by The Star showed Black officers were forced off the job after being targeted for harassment and unfair discipline.
Williams, who is white, is suing the department for alleged violations of the Missouri Human Rights Act, including race and age discrimination, and a state law meant to protect whistleblowers. He alleges white KCPD commanders subjected him to racist rhetoric that “minority officers would have certainly reported,” the lawsuit says.
Lora McDonald, executive director of MORE2, a Kansas City social justice group, told The Star that the officer is echoing what Black citizens and officers have been saying for decades: Racism drives this department, and many people are paying a penalty for trying to combat it.
“We hope the public is paying attention,” McDonald said. “This lawsuit represents something new... a white officer who could have gone along with, ignored, or even benefited from racism took a stance against it, and was allegedly penalized.”
“If we don’t back up our officers who are taking a stance against systemic racism in KCPD, aren’t we saying it’s acceptable?” she said. “This is not a conversation about “a few bad apples,” but, rather, an alarming lawsuit that suggests the whole barrel is rotten.”
