Another Case Closed w/o a Trial as Judge Declares Wichita Cops Immune. Instead of Taking Cedric Lofton to a Mental Evaluation Police Put Black Teen in a Straitjacket and Crushed Him To Death at Jail

From [HERE] A federal judge in Kansas ruled Tuesday that seven Wichita police officers are entitled to qualified immunity in a civil lawsuit over the in-custody death of a 17-year-old Cedric Lofton, who was restrained for more than half an hour at a juvenile detention center.

In his order, Chief U.S. District Judge Eric F. Melgren said the plaintiff, Marquan Teetz — Lofton's brother — did not demonstrate the officers violated clearly established law. He granted the officer's motion for summary judgment.

Melgren dismissed without prejudice claims for negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligent infliction of emotional distress against the Wichita police officers. These state law claims could be filed again.

Qualified immunity is a legal doctrine that protects officials from lawsuits, only allowing them when a clearly established constitutional right has been violated.

Andrew M. Stroth of the Chicago firm Action Injury Law Group, one of the plaintiff's attorneys said they would continue to seek justice for Lofton.

"An unarmed 17-year-old Black boy was unjustifiably killed and we will do everything we can to support this family," he said.

The complaint sets forth the following facts:

In the early morning hours of September 24, 2021, Cedric returned to his foster home after leaving without notice a day earlier. Cedric’s grandmother had recently passed away and upon Cedric’s return, his foster father was concerned about Cedric’s mental health.

Seeking guidance with concern, Cedric’s foster father called the Kansas Department of Children and Families (“DCF”). DCF told him to call the police and to not let Cedric in the home. The purpose of this instruction was to obtain a mental health evaluation and treatment for Cedric. This is why the Wichita police were called. Cedric had committed no crime; he was a child returning innocently home.

WPD officers arrived and encountered Cedric outside his foster home. Cedric was tired and afraid. He showed no signs of violence and presented no harm or danger. It was immediately clear that he was experiencing a mental health crisis, telling WPD officers that he was worried people were trying to “kill” him and that all he wanted to do was to go inside his home and go to sleep. Cedric asked the officers, “Y’all are here to protect me, right?”

This foster child needed help. But rather than provide it, WPD officers physically confronted him, unnecessarily escalated a benign scenario, arrested him, and entombed him in a WRAP restraint system — effectively a full-body straitjacket. The use of the WRAP predictably and inexcusably exacerbated Cedric’s fear and paranoia.

Worse, WPD did not then take Cedric to a hospital for mental health evaluation and treatment. Instead, they brought him to Sedgwick County’s Juvenile Intake and Assessment Center (“JIAC”)—a kind of juvenile detention—and locked him in a holding room still in the WRAP restraint. In other words, even though the entire point of WPD’s involvement was to get Cedric help and even though he had committed no crime, WPD refused to obtain help and treated Cedric like a violent criminal. This despite the fact that one officer admitted: “For me, I think we should have taken [Cedric] to [the hospital at] St. Joe [for treatment].”

Worse still, when confronted with JIAC’s intake questioning about whether Cedric required medical treatment, WPD intentionally falsified their response and swore that he needed no such treatment, knowing that was exactly what was needed and required. Indeed, a JIAC intake officer witnessed a WPD officer change his response to the intake form when he learned it would trigger WPD’s obligation to transport Cedric for treatment. As such, the officer prioritized his own convenience at the expense of this child’s welfare. And JIAC officials knowingly permitted it.

Within a few hours, Cedric was dead. Following a brief altercation, Cedric died after several JIAC officers forced him to the floor in the prone position and pinned him on his stomach for 39 uninterrupted minutes until he stopped breathing. The smiling child photographed above was condemned to die hooked to life-supporting tubes in a hospital bed, shown here:

Cedric posed no threat to anyone — not least of which the five able-bodied, adult officers who cycled-in and out of the room during Cedric’s slow death. These JIAC officers perpetrated a prolonged and abhorrent case of excessive force on a 135-pound, shoeless, shackled, and unarmed juvenile in the obvious throes of a mental health crisis.

Months later, the Sedgwick County medical examiner determined that Cedric was killed as a result of this incident and concluded that Cedric’s death was a “homicide.”

Teetz sued on June 13, 2022, filed an amended complaint in November and a second amended complaint in April 2023. He claimed the Wichita officers were indifferent to Cedric's mental health crisis in violation of his rights under the Constitution and said that the supervising officers, Tony Supancic, Amanda Darrow and John Esau participated in and did not stop violations of Lofton's rights. Teetz also claimed the officers intentionally and negligently inflicted emotional distress.

"Plaintiff fails to carry his burden of demonstrating that involuntary hospitalization and issuance of a mental evaluation were clearly established constitutional rights that the WPD Officers’ deprived Lofton of when they took him to JIAC. Consequently, the WPD Officers are entitled to qualified immunity, and the Court grants the WPD Officers’ motion for summary judgment," Melgren wrote in his order.

In early 2022, Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett, who is white, said he would not bring any charges against the officers due to Kansas' "stand-your-ground" law, the Associated Press reported at the time. (At least in regard to white citizens, “Stand your ground” law would be inapplicable here as “A person is justified in the use of deadly force under circumstances where a person reasonably believes that such use of deadly force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to such person or a third person.” [MORE] Here, no facts have been alleged that the black teen posed an imminent threat of death to jail authorities as he was crushed to death for 39 minutes while prone on the floor.)

Various defendants have been dropped during the course of the case, including Sedgwick County and the city of Wichita.

Sedgwick County Juvenile Intake and Assessment Center Officers Jason Stepien; Brenton Newby, Karen Conklin, William Buckner and Benito Mendoza remained defendants in the suit as of Tuesday night. They, too, have filed for summary judgment.