In a letter last week, Kansas City councilwoman Melissa Robinson explained to federal prosecutors why she and other Black leaders do not trust Kansas City police and are asking for an outside investigation of the shooting Ralph Yarl.
As Robinson described in the April 17 letter to U.S. Attorney Teresa A. Moore, Yarl, a Black teen, was shot and seriously injured by a white man when he went to the wrong house to pick up his siblings in a Northland neighborhood four days earlier.
The shooting angered many in Kansas City and across the country, with many feeling race played a role in the slowness of local law enforcement to arrest and charge a white man for shooting a Black teenager.
The accused shooter, 84-year-old Andrew D. Lester of Kansas City, North, was released by police within two hours of being taken into custody after the shooting. Four days passed before Clay County prosecutors charged him with first-degree assault and armed criminal action and he surrendered himself at the county jail.
In her letter, Robinson, who represents the Third District which includes neighborhoods on the city’s East Side, explained that many Black residents had already lost trust in Kansas City police. She asked the federal prosecutor in Kansas City to pursue a hate crime investigation.
“This situation scares me, quite frankly,” Robinson wrote. “The uprising I could feel during the period when the suspect had yet to be charged was frightening. Kansas City needs this investigation to be thorough and done right . . . we need assurances of such. Specifically, Black citizens need to feel confident that we cannot be ‘hunted’ in this City.”
“It would greatly help the confidence of Kansas City, specifically the many residents that have learned a distrust for KCPD, if your office was willing to step in and conduct a hate crime investigation,” Robinson wrote. “I personally would be very grateful as I have two young black boys myself. I believe the community needs federal help and support at such a critical moment.”
Black community leaders have for years pointed to problems with the Kansas City Police Department, which has had five officers charged with violent crimes against Black people, including one detective convicted of shooting and killing a Black man in 2019. The department is already the subject of a U.S. Department of Justice investigation of racism in its hiring and employment practices. That investigation, announced months after a Star series showed how Black officers were driven off the force through discrimination and harassment, would be separate from any probe conducted in response to the Yarl shooting.
Don Ledford, a spokesman for the federal prosecutor Moore, has said the Justice Department is aware of the shooting and would monitor the criminal case to determine whether federal action is appropriate.
Melissa Robinson letter by Ian Cummings on Scribd
The shooting
On the night of April 13, Yarl had been sent to pick up his younger twin brothers at a home on Northeast 115th Terrace.
By mistake, he went to an address one street over on Northeast 115th Street.
Yarl rang the doorbell and Lester, answering the door, opened fire “within a few seconds” of seeing the teen on his doorsteps, Clay County prosecutors said. He shot Yarl once in the head and then, after the teen fell, shot him again, according to charging documents.
Lester allegedly said to Yarl, “Don’t come around here.”
The Staley High School junior escaped from Lester and sought help at three homes before someone assisted him, family members said.
With Lester released by police less than two hours after being taken into custody, a weekend of protest and outrage made national news before Clay County prosecutors filed charges the following Tuesday.
In announcing the charges, Prosecutor Zachary Thompson said there was a “racial component” to the shooting. Thompson did not elaborate on that point, but explained that he did not file a state-level hate crime charge against Lester because Missouri law would have limited the effect of the charge and might have raised double jeopardy problems.
‘We’re paying attention’
At Tuesday’s monthly meeting of the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners, Police Chief Stacey Graves said the department conducted an internal review of their investigation, “to ensure we recognize and continue to put forth the needed efforts in our investigations.”
Graves did not elaborate but said “the tragedy of our Kansas City teen, shot in our city, remains at the top of our minds here at the Kansas City Police Department.”
The department was continuing to find ways to further collaborate with residents to foster better relations and to fight crime, Graves said.
“We want our city to know that we’re committed to justice in every case and work everyday to seek that justice for the victims of all crimes,” Graves said.
“I want our Kansas Citians to know that their police department, we’re paying attention. We’re listening, and we are responding,” she said. “We care about all neighborhoods in Kansas City, and we want all areas of our city to be safer.”