JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

It seems like there’s never a lack of action and major developments in Kansas City — even if some of it, like police shootings and sheriff’s deputies getting shot by inmates, is tragic.

But that’s the way it is in most large, urban areas, and we deal with it.

Let’s take a look at some recent developments…

Police shootings

Am I wrong or were the two recent police shootings — which occurred about an hour apart and left three people dead — about the weirdest incidents you could imagine?

In one case, a crazed Northland woman armed with a sword and apparently impervious to pepper spray, beanbag projectiles and maybe even tear gas was killed when she allegedly charged at Kansas City police officers.

If, indeed, 28-year-old Ashley Simonetti “ran toward officers with the sword,” as the police public information officer says, it’s understandable that they fired at her. If, however, she was confined to a garage where she had holed up, then, I think, police should have exercised more patience.

Simonetti

As I understand it, the standoff lasted three or four hours. In a case like that, it seems to me, the more time you can buy, the greater the likelihood of an incident ending with no one getting killed. Among other things, I’d like to know if Simonetti’s mother, other relatives, friends or maybe counselors had been summoned. The woman was obviously on hallucinogens and undoubtedly felt alone, trapped and paranoid. Had someone who knew her been summoned — and I’m not completely sure they weren’t, but police did not say they were — she might have calmed down and agreed to surrender.

In the other case — almost crazier — a guy armed with a semi-automatic handgun robbed a uniformed security guard of personal items and a golf cart near Barney Allis Plaza, and then he and another guy — a homeless man — got into a prolonged, multi-phase fight, with the handgun being waved around and fought over.

Again, if what police say is true — that 33-year-old Timothy Mosley pointed the gun at officers while he and 34-year-old Robert A. White were fighting — I can understand why officers began firing, with both men getting killed.

It’s extremely puzzling to me, however, how Mosley would have been able to intentionally point the gun at officers while, as The Star says, he and White were “physically intertwined.” It would seem to me that Mosley would have his hands full trying to maintain control of the gun and fend off White at the same time.

I’m not saying what the officers did in either case was wrong, but the police public information officer’s account of both incidents doesn’t put my concerns to rest.

I hope more information — more witness accounts — are forthcoming.

Sex-abuse cover-up

Despite its stated intention to clean up its filthy house, the Catholic Church continues to try to sweep priest sexual abuse under the rug.

The Star’s Judy Thomas, who has been all over this story for years, reported yesterday that a priest in the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas, John H. Wisner, was defrocked for inappropriately touching at least three men (boys back then) in the early 1980s.

Here’s the kicker, though: Archibishop Joseph F. Naumann quietly “laicized” Wisner last December, but it was not announced in The Leaven, the archdiocesan newspaper, until May 25.

Five months! That’s how much time elapsed between Naumann’s action and its public revelation. And even then, the archdiocese didn’t bother to inform  The Star — the area’s primary news organization — but instead reported it in the “in-house” paper that goes to Catholic households in the archdiocese.

…I’ve still got quite a few Catholic friends, but I’ll tell you I just don’t understand how they rationalize staying in the church. Its unwillingness to accept responsibility and to openly and quickly acknowledge newly uncovered cases of clerical assault and impropriety disqualifies it, in my view, as an organization worth people’s allegiance.

Jason Kander for mayor

Jason Kander for mayor? Give me a break. This guy is looking for a high-profile holding spot while scouting for bigger bodies of water to fish.

In The Star’s story about Kander perhaps announcing for mayor next week, on City Council candidate, Matt Staub, put it this way:

“(T)his seems like a move for the highest-profile office he thinks he can grab. He’s not been a real presence in the KC community for awhile while other candidates have been focused on city issues for years.”

I hope Kander comes to his senses and decides not to run. I don’t think he can win, anyway. Several outstanding candidates who know city government a lot better than Kander are already in the race and stand a much better chance of getting elected.

That group includes City Council members Scott Taylor, Scott Wagner and Jolie Justus and outsiders Phil Glynn, a businessman who was formerly on the city’s Tax Increment Financing Commission, and Steve Miller, a lawyer who formerly was chairman of the Missouri Highway and Transportation Commission.

Step aside, Jason, and let the people who know a thing or two about pot holes, streetcars, sewer-system upgrades, convention hotels and airport contracts lead the way.

Streetcar expansion

Voters’ 3-to-1 margin approval of the southward streetcar expansion should put to rest, once and for all, the question of whether leading streetcar opponents have any more of a constituency than pitiful Clay Chastain.

I’m talking, specifically, about lawyer Sherry DeJanes and Loose Park-area resident Dan Coffey.

Those two had months to build and wage a campaign against the streetcar expansion, and what was the result? A 2,529 to 858 drubbing.

I’m publishing their pictures so that if you see them and they offer to sell you some stock in a beefsteak mining company, you’ll know to run the other way.

DeJanes

Coffey

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Correction: In my post a few days ago about the killing of the two Wyandotte County Sheriff’s deputies, I quoted my source as saying that killer, prisoner Antoine Fielder, was paralyzed in the exchange of gunfire with Deputy Theresa King. My source emailed me Thursday night to say Fielder was not permanently paralyzed. He was transferred a day or two ago from a hospital to the Johnson County jail.