KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Over the last two years, the KSHB 41 I-Team has investigated the MMIP (Missing and Murdered Indigenous People) crisis in our community.
It’s a national movement that highlights how Indigenous people, particularly women, face much higher rates of violence, including assault, rape, murder, and trafficking.
The I-Team covered the disappearance of Quana Big Spring, a Belton teenager, and the Independence cold case murder of Lakota Renville.
Those are two examples of how the crisis is playing out in the Kansas City area.
This is a place the public may not think is part of this nationwide epidemic.
During our investigation, we also learned Kansas lawmakers passed a bill in 2021 that offers free training to law enforcement officers on how to investigate MMIP cases, as they have certain cultural and jurisdictional aspects that set them apart.
“It was Kansas’ first step for MMIP,” Kansas Representative Christina Haswood said, a Democrat from Lawrence who co-sponsored the bill and helped it pass.
The I-Team wanted to find out just how many law enforcement agencies actually took that step.
We reached out to every one of them, more than 300 police departments and sheriff’s offices across the state. We asked how many were aware of the MMIP training and had taken the class.
The class is voluntary, not mandatory.
37 agencies responded. 27 of those were aware of the training and nine agencies had already taken it, which is 3%.
Our findings shocked and disappointed Haswood, who is one of the only Native American lawmakers in the state.
“And you said you reached out to everyone?” Haswood said when we handed her our findings. The data was compiled onto a spreadsheet.
“That really gets me fired up because we can see with your findings that there’s such a big gap of communication and education, that there’s definitely work that needs to be done,” she said.
Fighting for this training is personal to her. Many of her constituents in Lawrence are Native and represent tribal nations across the country.
“It really angers me that we come together, and we say, ‘Here are the resources that you ask [for] and can hopefully get you elevated on your knowledge,’” Haswood said. “But when it’s given voluntarily, the resources are not being used.”
Haswood says there’s a perception at the statehouse that Native Americans don’t exist. She says she has spent a lot of time explaining to other lawmakers that Native Americans don’t just live on reservations and that Native issues are still relevant today.
Another perception the I-Team noticed was multiple law enforcement agencies saying the MMIP training isn’t a high priority because they’re not close to a reservation or they don’t know of any MMIP cases.
“This is an issue that even though you might not see every day with your own eyes, it is happening, and if we continue to operate like this, when it does happen, that we don’t have a system that’s robust enough to help Indigenous peoples,” Haswood said.
Kansas is home to four tribal nations: Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas, Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska, and Sac and Fox Nation of Missouri in Kansas and Nebraska.
Although MMIP cases don’t happen as frequently in Kansas as in other part of the U.S., the issue still hits close to home for many families.
We met some of those families last spring when we visited the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation for a MMIW walk and ceremony.
“The MMIW movement is new, but the issues are not,” one speaker said.
Much of the movement focuses on Indigenous women, which is what the “W” stands for, though it was expanded to include all Indigenous people.
We talked to sisters Jessi and Rachelle Blacksmith, who run the MMIP chapter of northeast Kansas. They’re advocating for their brother, Willie Blacksmith, who was murdered in July 2022.
“We’re trying to make something good out of what happened to our brother to help others,” Rachelle said.
They learned about the state’s MMIP training and took it themselves. They say it would be beneficial to all police agencies.
“What are you supposed to do if a murder happens? This tells you what to do, this goes through the steps [of] what to do,” Jessi said.
Haswood says its about livelihoods and knowing that government systems have their back.
She hopes she can add more teeth to the training by making sure all agencies are aware of the training and set aside an hour to take it, and make it mandatory, instead of voluntary.
“I’ll continue to fight for this issue,” Haswood said.
Only one law enforcement agency, the Galena police department, out of the 325 in the state, said they’d make the training mandatory.
Several agencies said they’d take it or would consider taking it after we reached out.
The Gardner police department took the training the day we called.
During our investigation, we contacted Salina police about the training and a 2019 MMIP case in their jurisdiction. We later received a call from one of the department’s detectives, who told us he spent four hours investigating that 2019 case after we reached out. He discovered the missing man was an unclaimed body in Columbia, Missouri.
Although it’s a sad ending, the man’s daughter, who had spent years contacting morgues across the country, told us she was grateful to have closure and finally know what happened to her dad.
We shared that story with Haswood, who said the training is “literally helping people.”
Anyone can take the online training by going to the Kansas Law Enforcement Training Center page.
