Topeka activist calls for DA and city attorney to resign because of ‘broken trust’

Glenda Overstreet Vaughn says the Shawnee County district attorney and the Topeka city attorney have broken their trust with much of the Topeka community and should resign over the mishandling of information about the 2022 fatal shooting of Taylor Lowery.

“District Attorney Mike Kagay, City Attorney Amanda Stanley and involved police officers should be disciplined for lying, colluding and using their public professional roles that deceived the public while threatening their fellow legal colleague with misconduct,” Overstreet Vaughn wrote in recent letter to Judge Angel Mitchell. “They, in fact, are guilty of doing such with intentional malice!”

This call has coincided with a request for public input for a community policing survey from the city of Topeka and the Topeka Police Department. The brief survey asks: “What is your definition of community policing?” “What does ‘engaged policing’ mean to you?” and “What do you think are the biggest challenges to effective policing in Topeka?” among other questions.

Given the current community context, there should have been a couple of additional questions, such as: “Does the public deserve greater transparency from the police department and the district attorney (even though that is a county office)?” and “What should happen when police or the district attorney distort facts or outright lie?”

The city recently withdrew its request for sanctions against LaRonna Lassiter-Saunders from Mitchell for sharing October 2022 footage of the fatal police shooting of Lowery, a tacit admission that those sanctions should not have been filed in the first place.

It was Mitchell who ruled in December that the public had an interest in seeing body cam footage of Topeka police shooting Lowery in a convenience store parking lot. Press releases and a report by Kagay’s office insisted, contrary to video evidence, that Lowery charged police while holding a knife above his head. The video showed Lowery picking up a wrench and backing away from police when he was shot 34 times. The knife he supposedly had threatened them with was at the foot of one of the firing officers.

A two-year legal fight opened the video to public viewing.

Kagay “seemed to have absolute confidence that the video would never see the light of day,” said Overstreet Vaughn, president of Kansas People of Color Action Coalition, in a phone interview. “That angers me.”

Overstreet Vaughn wrote the letter after learning lawyers for the five officers involved in the shooting sought public sanctions for Lassiter Saunders, the lawyer and advocate for Lowery’s family who released the damning video to Kansas Reflector late last year. Lawyers representing the officers also asked that the mother of Lowery’s child also be reprimanded and possibly forced to pay for the officers’ legal fees.

In a legal filing in response, Da’mabrius Duncan, the mother of Lowery’s child, said neither she nor Lassiter Saunders deserved punishment, but that Kagay and Stanley did.

“When I was told about the sanctions, I let my attorneys know I wanted to express that it is contradicting to publicly admonish us for sharing the video with the public, when the defendants have not been punished for covering up the truth and keeping it hidden by not letting the public see the videos,” Duncan said in the court filing.

Overstreet Vaughn called the district attorney and the city attorney “a very dangerous team” in her letter, because each seemed willing to ignore the facts in the video.

“The person(s) that should be reprimanded are DA Mike Kagay, involved police, city leadership (including, and specifically the attorney, Amanda Stanley) as the video appears that the DA, police and City attorney may have colluded to justify their deceived standing that the police were justified in the killing of the victim in cold blood!” Overstreet Vaughn wrote. “The DA and city attorney no doubt saw the video a number of times, yet they supported a finding of justification. How appalling!!”

Topeka public safety spokeswoman Rosie Nichols has said because this matter involves pending litigation, the city would respond through the legal process, not the news media.

“Law enforcement officers face dangerous and unpredictable situations every day, risking their lives and mental well-being to provide safety and protection to our community,” Nichols said. “We will continue to vigorously defend our officers in this matter.”

That posture, the attempts to keep the video out of public view, and the requested sanctions aimed at Lassiter Saunders and Duncan represent, in Overstreet Vaughn’s opinion, Kagay’s “significant fracture” of public trust.

“He knew this information was false,” Overstreet Vaughn said in a phone interview. “This was an attempted coverup. He’s destroyed the public trust. We need to get people like that out of the office because they don’t serve us well. If another situation happens, where’s the trust? How do we know how many times this has happened before?”

She said it sounds as though the DA and the police protect and serve privileged segments of the Topeka community while heavily and brutally policing the other.

“It’s very evident that they will do anything to try to hide the things they’ve done wrong,” she said. “They have no sense of mercy, no grace for the family. They lie again and again. They have no kind of remorse at all. We cannot trust them.”

The public pays the salaries for the police, the district attorney and for the city attorney, she said.

“I’m ready to go downtown and ask for my money back,” said Overstreet Vaughn, who’s also the former state president of the Kansas NAACP.

Had Lassiter Saunders not shared the video with reporters, Kagay’s mischaracterizations would have continued unchallenged. As part of a possible settlement, the city and district attorney likely would seek a nondisclosure agreement, and the video and any trace of the truth would have vanished.

The video ultimately was made public through the persistent and valiant efforts of Lassiter Saunders, who should be commended, not reprimanded, Overstreet Vaughn said.

She closed her letter saying, “Now, more than ever, is time to speak truth to power!” and “Please know that this community supports Attorney Lassiter Saunders and need her values and support in our community.”

Mark McCormick is the former executive director of The Kansas African American Museum, a member of the Kansas African American Affairs Commission and former deputy executive director at the ACLU of Kansas. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.