By Ian Cummings
The Kansas City Star
KANSAS CITY, Kan. — After a detective’s violent death Monday, the Kansas City, Kan., Police Department drew on a vast reserve of resources —and an outpouring of community support — to start the healing.
Death’s immediate effects could be seen by anyone walking through the detective bureau. Investigators, some in tears, gathered in clusters as they talked about Brad Lancaster.
Soon, new faces appeared. Officers from surrounding cities arrived to help cover job duties while the department prepared for a public funeral expected to draw thousands Saturday.
A week packed with vigils, visitations and a capital murder case set off by the detective’s death kept people busy.
Lancaster, 39, died hours after being shot while trying to help other officers stop a fleeing suspicious person Monday near Kansas Speedway.
The police department’s internal machinery for taking care of its own starts with a peer support group of about 10 officers organized by the union for helping others with problems big and small. As it began picking up the pieces, the family of 39-year-old Detective Brad Lancaster — he left a wife and two daughters — came first.
“It’s one of those kinds of things like ‘all hands on deck,’” said Officer Amber Thomas-Hickerson, a department spokeswoman. “We’re a pretty tight-knit group.”
There would be officers selected to guard Lancaster’s house and keep away anyone who might disturb the family, and there would be officers to help sort through the insurance, benefits paperwork and make funeral arrangements.
Chaplains and victims services workers stood by. But most important would be the peer support group, which officers normally would turn to for any kind of personal or professional advice.
“When anything tragic happens, they are the go-to people,” Thomas-Hickerson said. “It’s basically that hand and that ear to talk, and any kind of guidance.”
The Metropolitan Crime Commission, through its Surviving Spouse And Family Endowment Fund, delivered a $25,000 check to Lancaster’s wife within a day of the detective’s death to help the family cover immediate expenses.
By all accounts, the agency lost a popular and respected detective. A nine-year member of the force, Lancaster left behind a cadre of friends who came up with him in the department’s East Patrol.
For most, Lancaster’s was the first on-duty death they have experienced. A few have been around long enough to remember 1998, when a stolen vehicle hit Sgt. Richard James Asten while he tried to stop it with a device to puncture its tires.
By that measure, the job is safer today than ever.
Across the country, police deaths in the line of duty have been declining since the 1970s, according to the American Enterprise Institute. The years 2013 and 2015 marked all-time lows for fatal shootings of officers, with 42 last year.
In recent years, gun deaths have been more numerous for preschoolers than police.
This department in Kansas City, Kan., has seen more losses than most in the state. Now numbering about 330 sworn, it has lost 18 members killed in the line of duty since 1889, most by gunfire.
For the officers in this department, their loss will be measured in empty spaces and in silences.
The chief of police, Terry Zeigler, will miss the times smart-aleck Lancaster came by the office for free coffee and to razz the public information officers.
At union meetings, Scott Kirkpatrick, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #4 will notice an empty chair in the back row to his left, and no Lancaster adding his two cents at every opportunity.
Other detectives will step in to finish the homicide case of a 7-year-old boy whose body allegedly was fed to pigs last year, a boy for whom Lancaster had been dedicated to finding justice.
Some will be involved in the prosecution of Curtis Rand Ayers, who is accused of shooting Lancaster. Ayers, 28, was arrested in Kansas City Monday after being shot by a police officer at Bannister Road and Bruce R. Watkins Drive. Ayers has been charged with capital murder and other crimes.
All that will come after Saturday’s public funeral at Children’s Mercy Park at 11 a.m.
The Missouri Highway Patrol will be among the many law enforcement agencies attending. The patrol sends someone anywhere in the country every time there is a funeral for a state trooper killed in the line of duty.
“Emergency services, whether is police or fire, is essentially a large family,” said Sgt. Collin Stosberg of the patrol’s Troop A, which includes the Kansas City area. “Anytime you lose an officer in the line of duty, it hits home.”
Many in Troop A knew Lancaster from his nine years with the Platte County Sheriff’s Office.
The Missouri patrol, sadly, has plenty of experience with loss. In its history, 32 troopers have died in the line of duty, 14 in just the last 20 years. Nine involved vehicle crashes or a trooper being struck by a vehicle, such as when 25-year-old Trooper Michael L. Newton died when his patrol vehicle was struck from behind on Interstate 70 during a 2003 traffic stop.
Two other troopers died in helicopter crashes, two were killed by gunfire and one drowned in flood waters.
The Missouri Highway Patrol has a program called The Masters that helps the families of fallen troopers emotionally and financially. The patrol also has peer support programs for colleagues of fallen troopers.
“Everyone deals with grief differently,” Stosberg said. “We rely on our training and our experience but it is difficult. We have debriefings on any critical incident ... where officers are given a chance to communicate their grief. That helps to be able to have your fellow colleagues in a room and talk about the difficult circumstance of losing a colleague.”
The Kansas City Police Department also has resources in place to provide support when tragedy strikes.
“It has been several years, thankfully, for Kansas City, since the last time an officer has been killed in the line of duty and that was a motorcycle accident,” said Dennis Dewey, senior pastor at Hope Fellowship Baptist Church, one of several chaplains for the Kansas City Police Department.
That officer, Craig Schultz, was headed to an accident scene in 2001 when his motorcycle crashed on Interstate 29 — exactly 15 years to the day before Lancaster’s death. The department has lost 119 officers in the line of duty since its founding in 1874.
“Immediately in a situation like that, chaplains are notified and often will accompany command staff to make the death notification” to the family, Dewey said. “Chaplains generally will try to follow up by sitting in on roll calls and just making our presence known. I know there is a psychiatrist the department works with closely that would be available for anyone that would request it.”
Losing a colleague is particularly devastating for a smaller police department “where we know everybody, we know everybody’s family, we know everybody’s kids,” said Riverside Police Chief Greg Mills.
Riverside police officer Jeff Taylor died in 2011 when he was struck by lightning while volunteering in the wake of the Joplin tornado. He was 31.
“Our officers had never experienced anything like that,” Mills said. “We were fortunate in that Gladstone and North Kansas City chipped in for staffing on the night of the visitation and for the funeral so that everyone in our department was able to attend. That was huge.”
Zeigler also has been struck by the importance of outside support in the wake of Lancaster’s death.
“This has been very overwhelming,” he said in a special edition of the Unified Government’s online newsletter. “I never fathomed in my wildest dreams the impact of social media. I probably received well over 1,500 messages on Twitter from people and law enforcement all over the country in support of our department.
“It’s just amazing that there’s a tool out there where people can reach out and express their feelings, and we appreciate all the outpouring from the community.”
Copyright 2016 The Kansas City Star