In recent years, I’ve written about two god-awful car crashes that took lives — crashes that were a direct result of motorists driving not just irresponsibly but with I-don’t-give-a-shit-what-happens abandon.
In one case, a guy driving a Cadillac Escalade plowed into the back of a car near the Adams Dairy Parkway exit on I-70 and killed the two children of a couple who were headed home to Warrenton, MO, after a vacation. The father of the two children was left paralyzed from the waist down.
In the other case, a guy in a pickup was driving 90 miles an hour down the 23rd Street ramp in eastern Kansas City and caused a chain-reaction crash that killed a 3-year-old girl, a 16-year-old girl and left the father of the 16-year-old with a serious brain injury.
In both cases, the worms in their big, heavy steel cocoons walked away uninjured. The guy driving the Escalade is now doing 25 years in prison, and the other guy died of cancer before he could be tried or plead guilty.
Now we’ve got an equally egregious case — the then-Kansas City police officer who was going 76 miles an hour one second before plowing into the rear of a much smaller vehicle in his Ford E350 police van on northbound I-435 near the Truman Sports Complex.
Terrell E. Watkins
Terrell E. Watkins, 34, was headed to an off-duty assignment at Arrowhead Stadium last October 21. (He resigned from the police force last month.) Late for his game-day assignment, he was weaving in and out of traffic, using his cellphone and not the least bit concerned about public safety — which was his sworn duty to protect as an officer.
Possibly without hitting the brakes, Watkins hurtled into the rear of a Mitsubishi Lancer being driven by 17-year-old Chandan Rajanna, a senior at Shawnee Mission South. Chandan was killed, and his father and sister were seriously injured. As in the 23rd Street ramp wreck, a couple of other vehicles were involved, but no one in those vehicles was seriously injured.
And, once again, predictably, the worm in his big, steel cocoon was not seriously injured.
Earlier this week, the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office charged Watkins with first-degree involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree assault and a misdemeanor count of careless and imprudent driving. If convicted, he could be sentenced to several years in prison.
…After the crash, I wondered if Watkins would get preferential treatment because of his status as a lawman.
Yesterday, we learned that, unfortunately, he did.
Longtime police reporter Glenn Rice reported on The Star’s website that Watkins got preferential treatment in three ways. First, he wasn’t arrested; he was, instead, served with charging documents. Second, because he wasn’t arrested, he didn’t have his mugshot taken. And third (and most maddeningly to me) Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker decided not to put his home address on charging documents but instead let her staff use the address of the police station where he once worked — 5301 E. 27th Street.
What a sham! Not only did Baker allow her staff to plug in a bogus address, the address they used is for a station that closed three years and eight months ago after East Patrol moved to a new building at 27th and Prospect.
When Rice asked Mike Mansur, Baker’s spokesman, if Watkins had been treated differently because he had been a police officer, Mansur said, “We have given him no special consideration.”
Utter balderdash.
Wisely, Rice put the same question to a well-known, local defense attorney, John Picerno, who said: “They gave him a break on that one. It is obvious they did that because he’s a police officer.”
The whole thing — Watkins driving with complete disregard for his fellow human beings and then getting special treatment for having been a cop (a horrible cop, as it turns out) makes me want to break some boards over one of my replaced knees.
I can understand if a driver screws up, gets distracted for a moment or two and plows into somebody. That’s a tragedy. But these guys — the Escalade driver, the pickup driver and Watkins — who feel invulnerable in their big hogs and just don’t give a shit about anybody else — they are dangerous criminals.
I would like to see Watkins go to jail for a long time, like eight to 10 years. That’s what he deserves. Unfortunately, he’ll be out in a few years at the most. He might even get probation…And we may never know exactly where he lives.
Baker’s always underwhelmed me, especially since her outrageously preferential treatment of one local, erstwhile Bishop.