KC police arrest volunteers serving free meals in Kansas City parking lot. Why?
KC police arrest volunteers serving free meals in Kansas City parking lot. Why?
Kansas City police arrested two volunteers with Kansas City Food Not Bombs on Sunday for trespassing in a parking lot where the group has long served meals, the group said.
Two people were charged in Kansas City Municipal Court on Monday with trespassing for alleged violations at the address where the group serves meals, according to court records.
The group — a volunteer, mutual aid organization that provides free, hot, vegan meals on Sundays in a parking lot in Kansas City’s Lykins neighborhood, near the intersection of Independence Avenue and Monroe Avenue — posted a video of the Jan. 4 arrests on social media Friday. The video shows a group of Kansas City police officers placing two people in handcuffs in a parking lot and shooing other people away from the area.
“I told you that you are on private property, and you’re trespassing,” one uniformed officer says as he secures handcuffs around one person’s wrists.
Later in the video, a voice can be heard addressing people gathered near the arrests: “You’re trespassing. Leave. Or you’re going to be in handcuffs too. Does everybody understand? This is your warning. You can film all you want, you’re welcome to, but you are trespassing, and if you don’t leave right now I’m going to arrest you.”
Kansas City Food Not Bombs said in a social media post Wednesday that police forced all of its volunteers to leave the area and dispersed anyone arriving for its meal under threat of further arrests.
“Food is a human right,” the group said. “We have the right to public spaces, and the right to demonstration.”
In an email to The Star Saturday, Officer Alayna Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for the Kansas City Police Department, said police received “multiple complaints from nearby businesses and residents after asking this organization to leave their private property.” She said police took an initial report about the complaints on Jan. 1.
“The two individuals observed being arrested in the video shared had been previously trespassed and refused to leave, resulting in a response from KCPD,” she wrote.
Michael McConnell, a Kansas City resident and one of the two volunteers charged with trespassing, told The Star in an email Friday that he and the other volunteer were not informed they had been officially trespassed until their arrests. McConnell confirmed that he and the other volunteer were arrested for allegedly trespassing in the parking lot of the strip mall where the free meal is served.
He said the group has been serving meals at that location for around 13 years, and has never had any negative encounters with Kansas City police previously. In fact, he noted, the police department lists the group and its weekly meal as a community nutrition resource on its website.
Serving meals for 13 years
McConnell said some business owners in the area have claimed that those who show up for the meals the group serves have “caused trouble in their businesses, supposedly shoplifting, and messes,” he said. The group has been respectful and regularly cleans up trash in the area, he said.
“We cannot be responsible for every action taken by one of the scores of neighbors that we help at some point after they come by our tables,” he said.
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Kansas City Food Not Bombs sets up an outdoor food line on the edge of the sidewalk for an hour to an hour and a half and serves 50-100 meals and hundreds of pounds of bread and produce each week, McConnell said. Items served include peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, soup, pasta, salad and coffee, and most of the food comes from grocery stores and restaurants and would otherwise go to waste, he said.
He said Kansas City Food Not Bombs planned to adapt its serving setup to avoid trespassing charges in the future, and said the group hoped to continue to be good neighbors to people and businesses on Independence Avenue.
“Like all other Food Not Bombs groups,” he said, “we do this as a protest against the wastefulness of war, the choice by the government to not solve poverty, and the environmental destruction caused by our wasteful food systems.”
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