KCK settles lawsuits with police arrested but not charged after a sting

At noon on January 4, 2011, a 10-man tactical unit descended on a house in Kansas City, Kansas. But no arrests were made until after the police van returned to an underground garage at Kansas City, Kansas, police headquarters.

Awaiting the tactical unit was a group of commanders, including the former and current chiefs, who ordered the officers out of the van, disarmed them and placed them in handcuffs.

It was a sting operation. Members of the department’s Selective Crime Occurrence Reduction Enforcement unit (SCORE) were suspected of stealing from homes they entered and secured while executing warrants. The FBI and KCK police department had arranged for the SCORE unit to serve a warrant at a house near Sumner Academy. Investigators placed $2,500 cash, video games, an iPod Touch, drugs and a handgun in the house before the unit arrived. (No people were in the house.)

Three SCORE officers took the bait. Their haul wasn’t much: the iPod, some Nintendo games and $640 of the cash. But it was enough to land three officers — Jeffrey Bell, Darrell Forrest and Dustin Sillings — in federal court on criminal charges. The officers received prison sentences ranging from eight months to one year and lost their state certifications to work in law enforcement.

The officers who were not charged, meanwhile, accused the department of violating their rights. In four separate lawsuits, filed in late 2011 and early 2012, the officers contended that the arrests and detentions were unlawful. Their complaints described the fear they’d experienced when guns were trained on them, and the humiliation they’d felt while they were held in custody for 12 hours. 

The cases were finally resolved earlier this year. The Unified Government of Wyandotte County paid a total of $305,000 to the seven officers. County spokesman Mike Taylor calls the figure “significant” because the plaintiffs had asked for awards totaling $10 million. The county spent $1.59 million in legal fees defending the suits.

Arthur Benson, one of the lawyers who represented the officers, had no comment.

The settlements conclude a saga of ruined careers and billable hours that apparently began when the wife of a suspected drug dealer complained about a missing PlayStation.

One day in 2010, the SCORE unit assisted narcotics officers in searching a suspected drug house on Haskell Avenue. The search produced more than 100 grams of crack cocaine, drug paraphernalia, pills, a small amount of pot and 18 firearms.

Ricky Webster, who owned the house, and another man were indicted on drug and weapons charges. Webster’s wife, Tamika, in the meantime, told the KCK police department that during the search of their house, officers had stolen an iPhone, a PlayStation console, a Flip camcorder and $100. 

The complaint was taken seriously. The January 4 sting operation took place six months later. 

Two of the officers charged with stealing items from the sting house were also charged with stealing from the Websters. Prosecutors said Bell had taken a portable PlayStation; Forrest was alleged to have taken the camcorder. (Bell and Sillings were also accused of stealing video games during other searches.)

The indictments suggested that theft had become routine among some members of the SCORE unit. Prosecutors said Sillings was overheard saying that he was disappointed that the sting house did not contain more “swag.” (Sillings admitted to taking $340 when he entered his plea.)

When the indictments were announced, then-Chief Rick Armstrong said the arrests sent a message that dishonest officers would not be tolerated. Barry Grissom, then the U.S. attorney for Kansas, asked anyone who believed they’d had items stolen during a search to call the KCK police. “Not everyone who has had their home searched is a bad guy,” Grissom said.

Defense lawyers and some community leaders, meanwhile, were skeptical that residents would be willing to the risk the attention. Nathan Barnes, a Unified Government commissioner at the time, told The Kansas City Star that he had heard complaints about police theft. People were reluctant to speak up, Barnes said, because some had a “checkered past.”

A month after the indictments of Bell, Forrest and Sillings were announced, the SCORE officers who were not charged began filing lawsuits against the Unified Government of Wyandotte County.

Officers Mark Gambrill, Michael Mills, Trung Hoang and Jeff Gardner were co-plaintiffs in one suit. The suit describes the unit’s van being met at police headquarters by Armstrong, current Chief Terry Zeigler and other commanders, who wore tactical vests and pointed assault rifles at the SCORE officers. The suit stated the officers’ fear was intensified by the knowledge that “it had been a very long time” since most of the commanders had used an assault rifle. The bullets in the guns, they knew, could cut through their protective vests.

In the lawsuit, some of the officers complained that hours in handcuffs had left them with wrist and shoulder injuries. They said they were “paraded” around headquarters and were forced to use the bathroom with armed escorts.

The officers remained in custody until 2 a.m. and were placed on administrative leave.

Officers Patrick Callahan, Jason Pitman and Scott Hammons filed separate lawsuits making similar claims. In his suit, Pitman described his 12 hours in custody as “insulting, humiliating and embarrassing” and said he had lost opportunities for promotion and to work overtime and as an off-duty officer.

The court consolidated the four civil cases against the county during the discovery phase. After discovery was completed, U.S. District Court Judge Kathryn Vratil severed the case with four plaintiffs into four separate cases, indicating that each officer would receive a separate trial.

Jury trials were held in three of the cases. In each of the three cases, the jury ruled in favor of the Unified Government, according to Taylor, the county spokesman.

The county settled with Pitman for $200,000 as his trial was getting underway. Mills received $75,000. Taylor says the remaining five cases, including the three cases in which the Unified Government prevailed at trial, were settled for a total of $30,000.

A KCK police spokesman did not respond to requests for information about the employment status of the officers who brought suit. Mills, for one, is no longer a police officer. A few days after the lawsuit was filed on his behalf, he was charged in an event unrelated to the SCORE investigation. He was accused of shooting into an occupied car near his home while off-duty. He eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge and surrendered his state certification.

Meanwhile, Ricky Webster, the husband of the woman who complained about items being stolen during the execution of a warrant, is in federal prison in Arkansas. Earlier this year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled that the evidence of criminal activity gathered in the search of his home was not tainted by the SCORE officers’ theft.