Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker and Prosecutor-elect Melesa Johnson are once again meeting in Baker’s corner office on the 11th floor of the Jackson County Courthouse.
It’s just before Christmas and the mood is light as the two mull what Johnson will keep — or reject — from Baker’s 13 years in the office.
“I’d like to advocate for that wall,” Baker says, pointing to an accent wall by her desk in a color akin to neon lime green. “I know it’s a lot, but…”
“In full disclosure, Jean, I do kinda want it gone,” Johnson says.
“I object!” Baker says as they both laugh, then adds, “She gets to pick her paint.”
Johnson will also get to choose which of Baker's progressive policies implemented during her three terms to keep. The tumultuous years Baker spent in office included a record-high homicide rate, the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement, Kansas City's first conviction of a white police officer for killing a Black man and a statewide loosening of gun laws.
Since November, when Johnson was elected, the two have been working on the transition from the Baker era to a future with the first Black female prosecutor in county history. Johnson, 35, will lead what amounts to a medium-sized law firm, with 175 full-time staff who take on 7,000 criminal cases every year.
Already, Johnson has met with unit leaders in both the downtown and eastern Jackson County offices in Independence. She will also keep Baker’s deputy, Dion Sankar, in the number two position in the office.
Baker said she’s comfortable handing the office over to Johnson, especially given Johnson's integral role in establishing SAVE KC, a focused-deterrence program aiming to bring down the city’s high rate of gun violence, while she was Mayor Quinton Lucas's director of public safety.
Johnson, who started her law career in the prosecutor’s office in 2014, said the best advice she’s received from Baker is to trust her own intuition and integrity. Johnson said she’s watched as factions across the community criticized Baker and made known their displeasure with some of her decisions.
“She’s literally gotten it from all sides, and so in those moments, knowing that you are in this position for a reason and you have to trust your gut,” Johnson said. “Your gut may not always make people happy or afford you more grace, but your gut is how you got here, and your gut is what is going to have to govern in those tough moments.”
Notably, one of the last things Baker did in office last year was to rebuke the Kansas City Police Department for a series of what she called intentional “false narratives” about several police shootings. In a novel report from Baker’s office released on December 28, Baker said the many falsehoods from police officers and their union leaders “have built distrust in the system of evaluating and considering these tragic incidents.”
During last summer’s spike in property crimes, Baker wrote a September blog post titled “The Troubling Myth of ‘The Prosecutor Won’t Prosecute,'” reporting that she charged people in as many as 88 percent of motor vehicle thefts, despite allegations that she was under-charging people who went on to commit more crimes. Baker said that if people in her office spoke about law enforcement like the police talk about her, she would discipline them.
“Bluntly, I don’t know if people give a damn about facts,” Baker said. “They’re looking for a villain and I’ve been their villain. I can’t defeat 1,200 (police) officers that make statements that are wildly untrue and I’ve heard them so many times.”
Asked Tuesday about Baker's comments, Police Chief Stacey Graves said she hadn't fully reviewed the report, which she's had since mid-December. But Graves added that she thought it was "dangerous" for Baker to accuse police of spreading false narratives.
"I think a broad statement saying that officers provide false narratives is concerning," Graves said. "I think that's concerning to say that about the men and women who dedicate their lives and their service to the people of Kansas City."
Johnson will edit some of Baker’s programs and add her own.
On the campaign trail, she promised to create a property crimes prosecution division, which would respond quickly to nonviolent cases and add a law student clinic to work on cases. Johnson also wants to create an assessment tool for prosecutors to use when they negotiate plea agreements to gather more information on the root causes of crime and direct funds more appropriately, she said.
Praising Baker’s support of crime victims, Johnson said she will try to add a focus on witnesses, as well.
“Our witnesses, sometimes, are key pieces to getting some of these cases solved and prosecuted,” she said. “They are often as vulnerable or more vulnerable as some of our victims.”
Johnson said she may tweak Baker’s policy against charging low-level nonviolent drug crimes, instituted in 2021 to prioritize cases involving a violent person who poses a high risk to public safety. Johnson said she is looking at charging more people distributing drugs.
Johnson will also continue to use Baker’s policy of race-blind charging, masking the ethnic background of suspects and victims to hopefully fight bias when making decisions about who gets charged.
Johnson said she will keep the Crime Strategies Unit, a division Baker instituted to use crime data analysis to create violence reduction initiatives and to offer transparency.
“I believe prosecutors' offices need to move out of the dark and move into providing their data for the public to grade on their own, instead of it being a mystical thing,” Baker said. “That’s why we have these dashboards, so the public knows it belongs to them.”
Another valued piece of advice Baker gave her, Johnson said, was that the job is very mentally-taxing and that she needs to surround herself with family and friends in order to get through the tough times.
“Honestly when she gave me that piece of advice – I was sitting right over there on a Sunday afternoon,” Johnson said, pointing to two easy chairs in the office corner, “and it was one of the things that kind of continued to affirm me in getting to yes when I would have those mornings when I would wake up and ask myself, ‘Alright, Melesa, is this something you really want to do, that you are really ready for?’"
Johnson said she’s been grateful for the support during the transition, especially since Baker has been a mentor to her for so long.
“Sometimes in those relationships, your mentor will expect you to be in lockstep with them on absolutely everything. Jean is not like that,” Johnson said. “Jean gives me room to be Melesa, the next prosecutor.”
