No, DeValkenaere isn’t the 1st KC cop tried for killing a Black man. That was in 1942

We’ve been reporting, along with every other news outlet I’m aware of, that KCPD Detective Eric DeValkenaere, who went on trial for involuntary manslaughter this week, is the first white Kansas City police officer ever tried for killing a Black man. That’s not correct: In 1942, officers Charles LaBaugh and Dewey Ellis were tried for second-degree murder in the 1941 killing of 49-year-old Harrison Ware. I’m so grateful to Star reader and self-described “amateur historian” Patrick Fasl for pointing out this mistake, and for making me aware of a case from 80 years ago that explains something about where we are today.

In The Kansas City Call, the banner headline was, “Police shoot, then kick a dying man.” Literally dozens of Black Kansas Citians saw the whole thing, and according to their testimony, it went like this:

Around midnight on July 26, 1941, which was a Saturday night, two members of the vice squad arrived at the often raided Autumn Leaf Club at 1704 12th Street, a private club where there was gambling. One of the officers, Charles LaBaugh, immediately started screaming and hitting people.

“He came in fighting,” the story in The Call said, “brandishing his pistol and shouting, ‘Get back to the wall, all of you.’” All obeyed, the paper said, and LaBaugh then went down the row, hitting each man in turn and yelling, “Who feels lucky tonight? Who thinks he can win?”

When he came to Ware, who was sitting down, LaBaugh grabbed him, brought him to his feet, knocked him across the room, then kept on beating him, eventually shoving him into a pool table, where Ware fell back, grabbed a pool ball and when LaBaugh started in on him again, hit the officer in the head with it.

At that point, LaBaugh yelled to his partner: “Shoot him, Dewey. Kill the Black son of a _____.” I can’t get a clear shot unless you let go of him, Ellis answered.

When LaBaugh finally did let go, Ellis shot Ware in the groin. Then Ware fell against the pool table again, and grabbed another pool ball, which he threw at Ellis. On this point, accounts differed: Some said it hit him in the hip, and others said it missed him entirely.

Everyone agreed on what happened after that, though: LaBaugh shot Ware in the back, and then so did Ellis.

As he lay on the floor, bleeding, LaBaugh stood over him, yelling for him to get up and get some more.

The Call reported that “LaBaugh was deterred from shooting again by Officer Ellis, who told him, ‘You’ve done enough now, Charlie. Cool down.’“

Charlie must not have thought so, because he kicked Ware even as he was dying, still yelling at others, “Who thinks they’re lucky? Who thinks they can win?”

Officer took money from dead man’s pockets

While Ellis called for backup from a phone booth, LaBaugh went through Ware’s pockets — I guess what’s theft in front of God and a crowd after you’ve killed a man — and took almost all of the $70 or $80 that Ware’s friends said he’d had on him that night. The coroner recorded that he’d been in possession of $1.25 when he died.

On Ellis’ way out, several people heard him say in Ware’s direction, “I didn’t want to kill you, boy; I shot low.”

The Call listed the names and addresses of the 24 witnesses who were taken into custody that night, in what the “daily press” — white us, they meant — called a gambling raid.

During the next 24 hours, some of them were beaten, and others signed statements agreeing to the official version of events, which was that the two officers had not been at all to blame for Ware’s death. On Sunday evening, the 27th, they were all released on $100 bond each.

On Monday, Police Chief Lear B. Reed announced that he had investigated and found that the officers had done nothing wrong. Reed is remembered as a reformer who fought corruption, firing about half of his employees in the process, and proclaiming premature victory over vice.

But in this case, he immediately ruled that the officers had been forced to shoot when Ware began “viciously resisting arrest.”

Which was funny/not funny, the 24 witnesses said, because the officers hadn’t even tried to arrest Ware.

Some 1,000 Black Kansas Citians “crowded into and around the Highland Baptist Christian to pay tribute,” The Call said, to “Sunday’s victim of unbridled police brutality that has Negro Kansas City in the grip of horror and indignation.”

A letter earlier that same year from the local NAACP to the editorial board of The Star showed that that horror and indignation had been going on for quite a while, and that their appeals to the police board and the police chief had gone nowhere.

Yet at Ware’s funeral, the Rev. C.S. Stamps said that “never in the history of Kansas City has a more brutal murder been committed by an officer of the law.”

Mourners covered Ware’s hearse with signs that said, “Victim of the UNAMERICANISM of Dewey Ellis and Charles LaBaugh.” En route to his burial in Lincoln Cemetery, the funeral coach and 100 other cars drove past police headquarters downtown to protest Ware’s murder. The papers reported that traffic was a complete mess.

Photo of bullet-torn body on The Call’s front page

The Call published a photo of Ware’s bare, bullet-torn torso on Page 1, while the rest of the press ran little items about how LaBaugh had been hospitalized with a concussion after an arrest gone wrong. (An attending doctor at Research Hospital told a reporter for The Call that he was “just fine,” which was maybe not what he was supposed to say.)

Then as now, the Jackson County prosecutor wasn’t too convinced by the police chief’s “investigation.”

Missouri Gov. Forrest C. Donnell feared a “race riot,” and Chief Reed was weakened by the scandal, leaving the KCPD not long after Ware’s death, on Sept. 30, 1941.

After doing his own interviews, Jackson County Prosecutor Michael O’Hern promised the community he would not close his eyes to what had happened.

He should have had a lot to work with, because LaBaugh had a history of problems, including, according to The Star, a suspension for fighting with another officer while on duty.

On March 30, 1936, The Kansas City Times ran a wink-wink feature photograph of LaBaugh that noted admiringly that he’d shot two men in different incidents in a single night.

Captioned, “His busy night,” the caption said, “After the Battle: Charles LaBaugh, city detective, shot two young men last night within three hours. Clement Owens was shot in the hip when he ignored the policeman’s order to halt. Later, LaBough stopped two bandits after a robbery and wounded Arthur Welton in the neck. Welton is shown here examining the toy revolver Welton flourished in the policeman’s face.”

After O’Hern sent what he had to a grand jury, it declined to indict the men. So he sent his findings to yet another grand jury, and this time, the officers were charged with second-degree murder.

Dozens of eyewitnesses from raided club at trial

If you think this story is headed to a just conclusion, however — oh, but you know better.

At the officers’ trial, which started on Jan. 27, 1942, the final witness was Ellis, who testified that he’d shot in self-defense. The Kansas City Times reported that “police records of several Negroes previously identified as having been in the club at the time of the raid were offered as evidence by the defense.” Of course they were.

On Feb. 7, after deliberating for 35 minutes, the jury found both men not guilty. They were reinstated, the papers said.

With dozens of eyewitnesses, this case was as close to a video of Derek Chauvin with his knee on George Floyd’s neck as could have existed at the time.

Yet the marvel is that the prosecutor even took it to trial at all, knowing, surely, how that was always going to end.

Ellis finished out his career at the KCPD, retiring at age 59. When he died, three years later, his obit said he was also the owner of Ellis Drive-in restaurant in Independence. Another Dewey Allen Ellis, which is not a common name, retired from the KCPD just a few years ago.

LaBaugh, who had shaved 11 years off his age, quit the department when he was demoted back to patrol by a subsequent police chief, and he spent the rest of his working life driving a cab. According to his death certificate, he died of a heart attack in 1952.

I’m sorry that we got it wrong, reporting that Eric DeValkenaere’s trial was a first. But I’m at least a little bit glad to know that it wasn’t.