Two days before Independence Day in 2019, Kansas City bus driver Andrea Sturgis was driving her KCATA bus west on 39th Street in Kansas City with half a dozen passengers on board. Most were going to work at the University of Kansas Medical Center.
At 5:56 a.m. — about 15 minutes before sunrise — she stopped at the light at Main Street. The weather was clear and the pavement dry.
At the same time, Kansas City Police Department Officer Blake Ross was in his marked department Ford Explorer driving south on Main. His lights and siren were off, and he was not responding to an emergency.
The traffic light turned green. As Sturgis started to drive through the intersection, she looked right, and “here comes the police, not even threatening to stop,” she remembers.
The SUV slammed into the bus just in front of the passenger door, according to the KCPD crash report.
“I looked down for a second and upon looking up, I observed the light at the intersection of 39th/Main Street was red. I applied the brakes, but was unable to stop,” Ross told the accident investigator.
Ross got out of his car, walked to the driver’s side of the bus and looked at Stirgus.
“He never said a word,” she told KCUR.
Stirgus was so badly injured that she was forced to retire after 23 years driving for the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority. She settled with the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners for $100,000.
Just eight months after Ross rammed Stirgus’ bus, another Kansas City officer failed to stop at a light and hit a Chrysler PT Cruiser. The accident near 39th Street and Euclid injured both occupants of the Chrysler. The Kansas City Star reported that Officer Willis Authorless was chasing someone who backed into his car and refused to stop.
The department settled that case for $15,000, according to documents from the Missouri Office of Administration.
Over ten months, KCUR reviewed legal documents from two state agencies, crash reports from four police departments, several Jackson County lawsuits, plus driving and discipline policies for KCPD and the Missouri State Highway Patrol.
According to data compiled by KCUR, in a 36-month period between late 2019 and 2023, the department accepted liability for 66 crashes — about two a month.
The department used taxpayer dollars to pay out almost $1.08 million in legal settlements.
KCUR also discovered that KCPD officers are rarely, if ever, ticketed for crashes, and any department discipline is hidden from the public.
“KCPD operates over one thousand vehicles that drive millions of miles cumulatively each year. These vehicles are operated 24/7/365, in a variety of conditions, often in an emergency capacity with lights and sirens,” department spokesman Capt. Jake Becchina said in a statement. “Although we take many steps to train to avoid crashes, they do unfortunately occur.”
KCPD spends heavily on lawsuits
This fiscal year, KCPD budgeted $3.5 million to settle lawsuits.
Its costs are already much higher.
The department agreed to a $14 million settlement — its largest ever — May 2 with Ricky Kidd, who spent 23 years in prison for murders he did not commit.
In just the last year, KCPD paid $4.1 million to the family of Cameron Lamb and $4 million to the family of a Prairie Village mother who died after a botched 911 call.
KSHB reported in 2023 that Kansas City spent more settling police lawsuits than other comparable-sized cities.
Those huge settlements garnered an enormous amount of attention. But, KCUR discovered, most KCPD settlements involved car crashes.
The church meeting crash
Rosalind Taylor was on her way to a church meeting at a friend’s house in Raytown in July 2022. She had just picked up food for lunch. After the light at 14th and Prospect turned green, Taylor entered the intersection to get on I-70.
A KCPD Ford Explorer, driven by Officer Antonio Hill and heading south on Prospect, went through the red light. Hill and his partner were “enroute to a disturbance call for service and traveling Code 1 with lights and sirens activated,” according to the crash report.
That is when Taylor’s car hit the KCPD vehicle.
A KCPD accident investigator arrived just a few minutes after the crash. Shaken by the collision that deployed her airbag, Taylor remembered the first thing the officer asked.
“Some investigator came up and asked if I had been drinking or smoking,” she told KCUR.
The investigation said Taylor “failed to yield to an emergency vehicle with its emergency equipment activated.” But the investigation also revealed that the officer “failed to fully clear the intersection of all vehicular travel,” before racing through at 46 miles an hour.
The department settled her case for $75,000.
'Inherently distracting'
Twenty pages of rules dictate how KCPD officers are supposed to drive. The first rule is simple.
“All members will abide by the city traffic ordinances and state motor vehicle laws and regulations, unless operating Code One.”
The rest of the directive covers pursuits; the “stop sticks” officers throw down to puncture tires; and responsibilities for officers, dispatchers and commanders.
The State of Missouri requires 24 hours of driver training for police officers to graduate. KCPD requires 44.
“This training covers successful driving at different speeds, in difficult conditions, and during many kinds of police scenarios,” according to Becchina.
KCPD officers must qualify with their weapons every six months. No continuing qualification is required for driving, though more is expected of officers behind the wheel.
“The very nature of policing today is inherently distracting,” Chuck Wexler, Executive Director of the Police Executive Research Forum, told KCUR. He likened a police vehicle to an office on four wheels. “You're getting a multitude of messages while you're trying to pay attention to the traffic rules.”
The radio and the car’s laptop ping with information, often as officers also scan visually for a suspect. Wexler called it “a really inherent conflict” between doing the job and simultaneously driving carefully.
A study from the University of Iowa College of Public Health found the same thing, that officers absorb an ever-increasing amount of information in their vehicles.
“As roadways in the United States integrate more features such as roundabouts and speed controls, and as our expectations for emergency response times become lower, safe driving by emergency vehicles will become an increasing challenge,” the 2018 study concluded.
In Minnesota, 14% of all crash claims involving police resulted from distracted driving, a study by the League of Minnesota Cities Insurance Trust found. The study suggested a patrol car’s laptop could block the officer’s vision and suggested departments could adjust equipment “so that it is less likely to affect the officer’s ability to see and drive safely.”
Wexler said none of this excuses police crashes.
“Everything I say is not to defend or rationalize accidents as much as to put it in context with what we're expecting police to do,” he said
The Iowa study also discovered that police cars are nearly twice as likely to be involved in a crash when racing to an emergency, what KCPD refers to as Code 1.
But KCUR discovered that most often, KCPD officers who crash are not responding Code 1.
The Whataburger crash
The bulk of the KCPD crashes happened in city limits. But a handful occurred outside of Kansas City.
A KCPD undercover detective was driving a leased Ford F-150 pickup truck southbound on Missouri Highway 7 in Blue Springs in June 2023 when “he made a right turn across the right hand turn lane to enter onto Whataburger private property,” according to the Blue Springs Police report. The detective said he didn’t see the other car, a 2017 Chrysler Pacifica van.
There was only “moderate” damage to the Pacifica, according to the police report, and KCPD settled for $3,677.
KCPD settled two cases in North Kansas City where officers crashed into cars backing out of parking spaces. Those two accidents settled for a combined $17,069, according to state documents. In both cases, North Kansas City police found the KCPD officers at fault.
In January 2024, Keith Kirchoff, then a major assigned to the Patrol Bureau, was driving his department Dodge Charger east on Highway H in Liberty. There was snow and ice on the highway, according to the police report.
Kirchoff told police he was behind a truck and didn’t see a 2006 Toyota Sequoia as he tried to turn. The cars collided and the Toyota ended up in a ditch. KCPD settled for $50,000.
The Department wrote another $7,000 check to cover damage to the Sequoia, according to department documents obtained using the Missouri Sunshine Law. Because the car came to rest in a ditch, it needed a “specialty tow” and then 16 days of storage. That cost taxpayers another $5,678.
The department paid $1,972 for the victim’s rental car. And it cost KCPD at least $2,956 to fix Kirchoff’s police car.
Total cost for this one accident: $67,606.
KCPD could not provide information about how much it spends fixing its own vehicles damaged in crashes, on top of the $1.08 million in legal payouts. It does some of the work in-house, through the department’s Fleet Operations Unit.
In 2023, the department spent $953,000 on repair parts, according to budget documents — which would include routine replacements and wear and tear. That same year, KCPD spent $50,716 on “contract repairs” on such things as muffler and frame repair or glass replacement, according to budget documents.
Accountability
Kirchoff was not ticketed for the Liberty crash. Neither was the detective in Blue Springs, nor was Ross, who hit the bus. A veteran accident investigator who reviewed the crash reports for KCUR said he would have issued citations in those three crashes.
When police crashes happen in Kansas City, KCPD investigates itself. By contrast, the Missouri State Highway Patrol investigates shootings by KCPD officers.
“Our Accident Investigation Section is the most experienced and equipped of any in the metro area,” Becchina said in a statement.
When Kansas City officers are in a crash “involving a pedestrian, another vehicle, or causes damage to a fixed object” they must fill out Form 154 P.D., according to KCPD policy. That written report goes up the chain of command. How high depends on the severity of the crash.
KCUR requested Form 154 from a half-dozen crashes. The police department denied the request.
“Form 154s are considered personnel records. Under Missouri Sunshine 610.021 those records are not available,” KCPD spokesperson Sgt. Phil DiMartino said in an email.
Commanders decide whether an accident is “non-preventable” or “preventable.” They could discipline officers, but that, too, is a personnel record. Discipline ranges from “Instructional Notice” to “Suspension of time less than 7 days,” according to KCPD personnel policy.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol also has two categories for crashes, avoidable and unavoidable.
If a review board finds that a crash was avoidable, discipline can range from a talk with a supervisor to suspension without pay.
MSHP discipline is more streamlined because troopers are not unionized like KCPD officers.
Beyond Kansas City
Very little data exists on police crashes. The standard Missouri crash report has a box to check if a police car is involved, but that box isn’t always checked when it should be.
National data isn’t much better.
“The exact cause for the high rate of law enforcement vehicle collisions cannot be precisely stated because many law enforcement agencies do not keep meaningful records,” the International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training said in its driver training guide.
News outlets have filled in part of the picture.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported last year that St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department officers crashed vehicles at “alarming rates” over the past four years, reaching an eight-year high of 151 collisions in 2023.
Also last year, USA Today investigated a 10-year span of police crashes across New York. Data analysis from one city — Syracuse — “showed that from 2013 to 2022, hundreds of collisions involving law enforcement vehicles exacted a heavy human and societal toll.” Officers faced little or no discipline after many of those wrecks, some of which left victims permanently injured, the investigation revealed.
In addition to bus driver Andrea Stirgus’ career-ending injury, crash victims carry mental scars.
Rosalind Taylor, whose car was rammed by a KCPD officer at 14th and Prospect, said she’s a little more nervous now while driving.
“Ever since that happened, I’m scared to go through a green light,” she said. “I get scared when I hear a siren.”
