MISSOURI
MSN
Kansas City Star
By Glenn E. Rice, Donna McGuire and Ian Cummings
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — For years, Kansas City police detectives failed to properly investigate some rapes, serious abuse and other crimes against the city’s children. And in many instances, detectives did no work at all, internal police department memos recently obtained by the Kansas City Star reveal.
A special squad assigned a year ago to help clear backlogged cases uncovered those problems and many others so serious that in January Police Chief Darryl Forte suspended nearly the entire Crimes Against Children unit of detectives and sergeants. At the time, Forte said cases were being worked too slowly.
But police never disclosed the depth and scope of the detectives’ inaction on reported crimes — sexual assaults, broken bones, near starvation among them. The department’s own memos describe 148 “severely mishandled” cases, “gross negligence,” “incompetence” and evidence of attempts to “cover up.”
“Never in my career with the KCPD have I seen such a systemic failure,” Maj. David Lindaman wrote in a Nov. 19 memo to a deputy chief that was among hundreds of pages of documents obtained by The Star.
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