I presented awards last week to investigators from multiple agencies who broke a multi-state pharmaceutical theft ring wide open. The investigation was led by Detectives Paul Thilges, pictured at left above, and Detective Steve Morgan of our South Patrol Property Crimes Section. Here's what they and our federal and local partners did:
What would soon become a massive investigation began with a burglary on January 2, 2011, at the Omni Care Pharmacy Distribution Center in the 400 block of E. Red Bridge Road. Thieves had taken 43,000 pills of narcotic pain killers and Xanax.
Detectives Steven Morgan and Paul Thilges of the South Patrol Property Crimes Section took the case. They reached out to other area police agencies to see if their cities had experienced similar burglaries. They learned the same types of crime had been going on since May 2010 in Overland Park, Kansas City, Kansas, Lenexa, Lee’s Summit and Independence. Detectives Morgan and Thilges called a meeting with investigators from all these jurisdictions in which they all shared and combined evidence. The detectives held multiple meetings and built the case under the leadership of Detectives Morgan and Thilges.
With the help of other members of South Patrol Property Crimes, the Career Criminal Squad, the FBI, ATF, U.S. Marshals and Independence Police Department Career Criminal Squad, many hours of surveillance were conducted, leads were pursued, search warrants were served and interviews were conducted. All this work resulted in two men being charged in a 10-count federal indictment for a $1.4 million drug-trafficking conspiracy that included nearly 100,000 pills and the illegal possession of many firearms. The FBI has informed KCPD the investigation has expanded into three other states, and they will be pursuing more indictments in the future.
I've been talking about it for a while, and it's finally here: the full change-over to E-ticketing and a new criminal justice information system, REJIS. A ceremony at Municipal Court this morning marked this transition. Kansas City is the first major municipality in the country in which the city's criminal justice system is paperless from the time an officer gives you a ticket to the time the case reaches its final disposition in court.
At the police department, we’ve already begun electronic ticketing, which gets officers back out in the field much faster than the hand-written kind. As of this morning, I heard the record for issuing an e-ticket is down to two minutes. They’re also far more accurate. No longer will someone at Municipal Court struggle to read an officer’s hand-writing. And no more hand-carrying stacks of tickets. In a meeting in the process of this, I once heard that up until REJIS, the greatest technological advancement in information sharing between KCPD and the Municipal Court was that officers started carrying tickets over in metal boxes instead of wooden ones.
The LE-Web portion of REJIS also is going to benefit the police department greatly. This new electronic criminal justice information system notifies police about wants and warrants and is much easier to use than our old system, which was technology from the early 1990s. It also allows police to pull up driver’s license photos and license plate and vehicle information from the Missouri Department of Revenue so they can know who they'll be dealing with before they enter a potentially dangerous situation. This system went live at midnight August 28 and is humming along quite nicely.
The transition to REJIS took place in one year and was on time and on budget. It was a huge undertaking, and I congratulate the KCPD project team who worked very closely with Municipal Court and REJIS staff to get it into place. Our KCPD staff trained more than 1,500 officers and support staff on the new system. The City estimates it will save $1 million annually and more efficiently move the 300,000 citations written by Kansas City Police annually through Municipal Court. This is a huge step forward that will benefit the people of Kansas City.
Be aware that there are multiple races going on this weekend presented by The North Face Endurance Challenge that will shut down roadways. A total of 150 road closures will take place at some point for the Challenge. The event will feature a 50K race, marathon and marathon relay on Saturday followed by a half-marathon, 10k, and 5K on Sunday.
On Saturday, the 50K will begin at 6 a.m., and the marathon and marathon relay will begin at 7 a.m. On Sunday, the half-marathon will begin at 7 a.m., the 10K at 7:30 a.m. and the 5K at 8 a.m. All races begin at Theis Park at Cleaver II Boulevard and Oak Street.
Police will open up roads after the last runner passes, and they will try to let traffic cross the route when it is safe to do so. But if you're traveling anywhere in the area of the below map this weekend, please try to take an alternate route or allow yourself plenty of extra time. The below is the map for the 50K race. If you'd like to see maps of all the races, check out the race packet on the North Face Endurance Challenge web site.
To say Officer Toby Sicks is a good shot would be an understatement. He is such a good shot that he was able to save an innocent woman's life when her son was threatening to kill her, and today I presented him with the Distinguished Service Medal for his efforts.
On Feb. 28, 2010, officers from the Tactical Response Team were planning to arrest a man for robbery in a carjacking. Members of the team were setting up the area as another officer conducted surveillance in plain clothes from an undercover vehicle. Not long after starting surveillance, the suspect left his home and walked in the under-cover officer's direction, not knowing he was a police officer. The suspect reached into his pants to retrieve what looked to be a weapon. The under-cover officer believed he was going to be the victim of a carjacking and called in the tactical unit. As the suspect saw the tactical team approaching, he ran into his house and began arguing with a woman. Shortly after, the woman, identified as his mother, attempted to run out of the house but was restrained by the suspect.
Knowing that there was a victim in danger, Officer Toby Sicks acted as team leader and directed members of the tactical team into their positions. The suspect refused to leave the residence, and the argument with his mother escalated. The suspect attempted to flee out of the back door and realized he was surrounded by officers. He retreated into the house and moments later re-emerged with his mother, holding a knife to her throat. Officer Sicks, a police sniper, saw that he was the only one in the correct position to disarm the suspect and save the woman’s life. Police asked the suspect multiple times to drop his weapon, but he ignored the officers' direction. With little room to fail, Officer Sicks discharged his weapon, fatally wounding the suspect and saving the mother’s life.
No police officer ever wants to kill another human being, but sometimes they must make the split-second decision to do so in order to save the innocent. That's what Officer Sicks did, and he did it with precision. An inch or two one way or the other, and the mother could have been harmed instead. It was a pleasure to present him the Distinguished Service Medal.
The KCPD 2010 Annual Report now is available for you to download in .pdf format. It contains information about the department’s organizational structure, 2010 crime statistics, personnel and salary statistics, department highlights and photos.
A big highlight is the drop in violent crime outlined on page 31 of the report. Our statistics, which have been verified by the state and FBI (in fact, several of our numbers are a little higher than the FBI's preliminary report because some of the cases got reclassified with further investigation, and we wanted to show as accurate a count as possible), show a 12.5 percent drop in violent crime from 2009 to 2010. Many people in Kansas City like to throw around words like the "City's rising crime rate," but it's simply not true. Crime has been falling in Kansas City since the early 1990s. Property crime remained nearly static from 2009 to 2010, with an increase of 0.1 percent. The only types of crimes that saw notable increases were arson and embezzlement.
These numbers are contrary to the scary rhetoric bandied about by those who seek to instill fear. I urge you to check out the report and see it for yourself. Kansas City is getting safer year after year.
On Monday, we begin a "soft roll-out" of E-ticketing. The whole system, in conjunction with Municipal Court, goes live August 29. But starting Aug. 22, KCPD officers will no longer "write" tickets. This video gives you a good visual of how the process will work:
I've told you before about the amazing things that have resulted from our Lethality Assessment program - many, many more domestic violence victims getting the shelter and services they need. This program began in June 2009 and trained every patrol officer - about 900 of them - to administer an assessment of about a dozen questions to victims to determine how likely they are to be killed by their abuser. If the assessment shows the victim is in danger, police at the scene immediately will put her in touch with a domestic violence victim advocate from the Rose Brooks Center, a domestic violence shelter and services agency.
Last year, Lisa Fleming, Rose Brooks Center's Chief Operating Officer, explained what a game-changer this Lethality Assessment and partnership with the police department has been. She said, "When I look back over the years at community collaborations that resulted in such a big systems change in how we go about responding to victims of domestic violence, this is huge – one of the biggest.”
This partnership has protected many women and children, so much so, that it's created overcrowding at Rose Brooks. It's a good and bad problem. The good is that so many more victims are being shielded from abusers and receiving services that are helping them put their lives back together. The bad is that so many victims are being served there simply isn't room for all of them, and Rose Brooks has had to turn some away. The Center began an emergency fund-raising campaign last year to build onto its shelter to make more room for the victims being sent there by police through the Lethality Assessment Program. They broke ground on the project yesterday. We're excited about the continued partnership with Rose Brooks and the possibilities the expansion brings to get more victims of domestic violence to safety.
The sobering fact is that impaired driving contributes to nearly 30 percent of all Missouri traffic fatalities. In 2010, 234 people were killed and 957 seriously injured in crashes involving an impaired driver. In KC, 63 percent of all fatal accidents involved an impaired driver. That’s why the Kansas City Missouri Police Department will join other Missouri law enforcement agencies to crack down on drunk driving Aug. 19-Sept. 5, 2011.
The Kansas City Missouri Police Department will participate in statewide sobriety checkpoints and DWI saturation patrols enforcing Missouri’s DWI laws and keeping impaired drivers off the road.
Consequences of drunk driving include jail time, loss of their driver licenses, or being sentenced to use ignition interlocks. Insurance rates go up. Other financial hits include attorney fees, court costs, lost time at work, and the potential loss of job or job prospects. When family, friends and co-workers find out, violators can also face tremendous personal embarrassment and humiliation.
“Driving drunk is simply not worth all the consequences,” Sgt. Ron Podraza said. “Our message is simple and unwavering: You Drink and Drive. You Lose.”
The latest Narcotics and Vice Quarterly newsletter is now out, and I urge you to read it. It features stories about the Gun Bounty Program, how police are combatting a new kind of money laundering, a profile on our rarely seen Financial Investigations Section, the results of Operation Vice Grip to combat violence at bars and taverns and the latest statistics on drugs, weapons, and prostitution in Kansas City. It also introduces you to our newest drug dogs, Wendy and Julie. They're a friendly pair who work to stop the transport of large quantities of drugs through Kansas City, but we also used them in our latest Violent Crime Initiative to sniff out drugs in homes and businesses where we had warrants to search.
Finally, I pasted one of the articles from the newsletter below about the impressive amount of national recognition the investigators of our Narcotics and Vice Division are receiving lately.
Several members of the Narcotics and Vice Division have been recognized as the best in their field in the nation in a number of categories:
Detective Anthony Garcia of KCPD’s Interdiction Section was named the 2011 Detective of the Year by the International Narcotics Interdiction Association at the group’s annual conference. Since he has been assigned to the Interdiction Section in 2002, Det. Garcia has intercepted the transport of 4,761 pounds of marijuana, 101 pounds of cocaine, 5 gallons of PCP, almost 20 pounds of meth and more than $2 million in cash.
On June 21, the Kansas City-based Midwest High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Investigative Support Center was named the top HIDTA in the nation by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, besting 26 other centers nationwide at an awards program in Washington, D.C. Staffed by several KCPD members, Midwest HIDTA was recognized for providing critical intelligence linkages that support federal, state and local law enforcement officers.
Members of the KCPD Gang Squad who participated in Operation Smokin’ Aces won the Homeland Security Investigations 2011 Director’s Award in the Category of Gang Investigations. The Operation began in 2009 when the Gang Squad started an investigation involving several gang members in Kansas City who were involved in a large-scale narcotics trafficking operation. It culminated in big arrests on June 9, 2010, and was one of the largest drug-trafficking rings ever busted in Kansas City. The Gang Squad partnered with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on the initiative and indicted 23 people on drugs and weapons charges. The federal indictment alleged that all 23 defendants participated in a conspiracy to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine and 50 grams or more of crack cocaine since July 1, 2009.
Students of the Kansas City Missouri School District went back to class today. They're just one group heading back to the books in the area Kansas City Police serve. Soon to follow will be the Center and Park Hill school districts tomorrow, the North Kansas City School District on Aug. 24 and a host of parochial and charter schools in between. This means many more children, school buses, and inexperienced teen drivers on the road. Please watch out for them and drive cautiously.
When school is in session, KCPD conducts extra traffic enforcement in school zones. Those lower speed limits are there to enable you to stop quickly in case there are school children in the road. We'll also be looking out to ensure drivers are obeying laws when school buses are loading and unloading. Additionally, as we've done in year past, officers will pay special attention to bus stops where children are waiting to be sure they're safe.
If you commute, you may need to build in an extra minute or two for slowing down in school zones or stopping behind school buses, but the children you're protecting will thank you for it.
