$10 Million Suit Filed after White KC City Cop Shot Black Man to Death w/o Warning While He was Talking on Cellphone in Car in His Own Driveway; Ofc also faces Involuntary Manslaughter Prosecution

IN THE PRESENCE OF COLOR WHITE COP ACTED GENOCIDALLY From [HERE] Police tracking a car involved in a traffic incident in December 2019 followed Cameron Lamb as he was pulling his red pickup truck into the garage of his backyard in Kansas City, Mo. Without a warrant or permission allowing them on the property, two plainclothes detectives “stormed around the side of the house” and demanded to know where he was, according to a federal lawsuit.

Then, while Lamb, a Black man, allegedly had one hand on the steering wheel and the other on his cellphone, Detective Eric DeValkenaere, who is White, offered no warning before shooting him four times while the man was still in his truck in the driveway, hitting him twice and killing the 26-year-old, attorneys say.

Now, a federal lawsuit filed Monday on behalf of Lamb’s four young children accuses the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners and DeValkenaere of violating Lamb’s civil rights when they entered the property without permission and fatally shot him in his truck.

The 20-page lawsuit, filed in the Western District of Missouri, seeks $10 million in damages and alleges that the police board “failed to properly train, supervise, screen, discipline, transfer, counsel or otherwise properly equip and control officers” to avoid the use of deadly force against Lamb.

“The Kansas City Police Department has a well-documented, continuing, widespread, and persistent pattern of utilizing excessive and often deadly force,” the family’s attorneys wrote in the lawsuit, obtained by The Washington Post.

The 42-year-old DeValkenaere, who was charged with first-degree involuntary manslaughter and armed criminal action last year, has pleaded not guilty before his criminal trial scheduled for September. A member of the force since 1999, DeValkenaere says that he fired after Lamb pointed a gun at Detective Troy Schwalm. But prosecutors say in the lawsuit that Schwalm told a grand jury that he did not see Lamb with a gun.

The lawsuit comes as Lamb’s family has sought answers for more than 18 months in a fatal shooting that the former officer’s criminal attorneys say was not reckless and that the police union argues was a justified use of force. Family and activists have repeatedly questioned DeValkenaere’s account. Prosecutors have noted how authorities had refused to give a probable cause statement in the investigation and did not inform them how DeValkenaere’s former supervisor was conducting the probe.

Lamb’s story took on a national scope when civil rights attorney S. Lee Merritt, who has represented families of victims of police brutality including relatives of George Floyd, became co-counsel for the 26-year-old’s children. Merritt described the fatal shooting to the Kansas City Star as a “warrantless search” that “violates one of the highest protections that is anticipated in the court.”

“That’s a really important reason why Cameron’s case is a central case in terms of where we are today in policing,” Merritt told the newspaper.

Police were investigating a crash on Dec. 3, 2019, when an officer who saw the incident reported a red pickup chasing a purple Ford Mustang, authorities said in a news release. Officers in a police helicopter located the truck driven by Lamb and followed the vehicle shortly after 12:20 p.m.

Lamb had his left hand on the steering wheel and his right hand on his cellphone, in the middle of leaving a voice-mail message, the family’s attorneys say in the lawsuit.

DeValkenaere’s criminal defense attorneys said in a recent court filing that Lamb was slowly backing his truck down the driveway into the garage when the detectives yelled at him to show his hands. Though he did at first, the detective’s defense team said Lamb pointed a handgun at Schwalm.

“He’s got a gun!” DeValkenaere shouted, court documents show.

After the detective fired his weapon and killed Lamb, DeValkenaere and Schwalm “hurried for cover,” the defense attorneys wrote in a motion.

The detective’s attorneys have argued that Lamb pulled a gun with his left hand. Police said their investigation found Lamb “with his left hand hanging out the truck’s window with a gun on the ground underneath it.”

But that detail has been disputed by prosecutors, who say that Lamb was right-handed and that a prior injury left him unable to fully use his left hand. Schwalm, who is not facing charges, told a grand jury last year that there was no gun in Lamb’s left hand.

Police were criticized after assigning Kansas City Police Chief Rick Smith, a former supervisor for the detectives, to investigate the shooting, the lawsuit says.

DeValkenaere was indicted by a Jackson County grand jury in June 2020. The involuntary-manslaughter charge carries a punishment of three to 10 years in prison, while armed criminal action has a minimum penalty of three years.

“The defendant’s reckless behavior began by entering the victim’s property without consent, without a warrant, knocking over the fence to gain entry into that backyard, and firing his weapon, killing Cameron within seconds of entry,” Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said in a news conference last year.

DeValkenaere has found support from the Kansas City chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, which called the shooting justified and denounced the grand jury’s indictment as “political overreach by a failing prosecutor.” The case received additional attention in December when Sandy Osmond, the wife of “Leave It to Beaver” actor Ken Osmond, said she would donate all royalties from a book her husband co-wrote to help raise money for DeValkenaere’s legal defense.

A judge in April denied the motion from DeValkenaere’s criminal defense team to dismiss the charges.