A former lawyer for the Kansas City Police Department sent a letter to several agencies Saturday morning alleging wrongdoing by leaders of the KCPD’s legal department.
In the letter, former assistant general counsel Ryan McCarty says he was fired Wednesday after challenging his superiors’ practices of withholding public records and suppressing potentially exculpatory documents in criminal cases during the six months he worked for the department.
The document, written on KCPD letterhead, was sent by email to several officials, including the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office, the Board of Police Commissioners, members of the U.S. Department of Justice, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson and Mayor Quinton Lucas. It was accompanied by hundreds of pages of what appeared to be police department documents and correspondence which The Star had not yet reviewed Saturday.
In the letter, McCarty says his boss and the KCPD’s top lawyer, General Counsel Holly Dodge “consistently, systematically, and unlawfully” closed records that should be made freely available to the public under Missouri’s open records law.
Dodge closes documents that should be open by claiming they are part of an ongoing investigation, McCarty says.
“Conspicuously, these records happen to be those that would or could present KCPD in an unflattering light,” he wrote. “That is not transparency, but cloaking the proverbial dagger.”
Dodge did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.
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