A white Missouri law enforcement officer whose seven years with the Kansas City Police Department have been tainted with accusations of killing three civilians, police brutality and legal actions against him remains on the job, even as a new lawsuit accuses him of excessive force against a Black woman.
In a lawsuit filed Feb. 6 with the Platte County Circuit Court, Bermeeka Mitchell of Lansing, Kansas, accused Officer Blayne Newton of assault and battery stemming from events that unfolded on Sept. 11, 2022.
Mitchell was livestreaming an arrest at a Walmart in Platte County, Missouri, as Newton was working off-duty, reported the Kansas City Star.
According to the lawsuit, an unknown individual motioned for Nelson to arrest Mitchell for trespassing, at which time the officer “grabbed and twisted both her arms in a forceful manner” and took his boot’s heel and ground it into Mitchell’s foot.
His handcuffing during an arrest of Mitchell – which, according to the lawsuit, Mitchell said he had no legal basis to do – was done so tightly that it left visible marks, the lawsuit claims.
After being detained in a private room at the store, the officer told Mitchell she would not face trespassing and resisting arrest charges if she agreed to “not make a scene” as she left, the lawsuit states, according to the Kansas City Star.
In the lawsuit, Mitchell says she did not resist arrest. No charges were filed against her.
Court records obtained by the Kansas City Star showed that while the Kansas City Police Department’s Office of Community Complaints did sustain Mitchell’s allegations of excessive force against Newton, there were no details on the disciplinary action said to have been taken against him in a May 2023 letter from the department.
“I’ve been on a traumatizing emotional rollercoaster over a year. Keep fighting for justice!” Mitchell wrote on her social media page following the lawsuit’s announcement.
She said in the Facebook post that she hoped the officer was removed from the police department before he finds “another Black victim.”
This is not the first lawsuit involving Newton and his conduct on the job, which has included kneeling down on a heavily pregnant Black woman. He was also accused of shooting and killing Marcell T. Nelson and Kristen Fairchild, both 42, in Kansas City on June 9, 2023.
According to the Missouri State Highway Patrol, Newton saw a passenger exiting a pickup truck and approaching a minivan with a gun before getting back into the truck and speeding off, Atlanta Black Star reported previously.
Newton’s dashcam didn’t record the interaction because he pulled his vehicle alongside it, according to the MSHP. He allegedly shot several times into the minivan.
On Sept. 30, 2020, Newton held down Deja Stallings, who at the time was 25 years old and nine months pregnant, as he arrested her in Kansas City, Atlanta Black Star reported. Her baby was born two weeks early via emergency C-section following the incident.
Authorities said the arrest happened after Stallings interfered during the attempted arrest of local activist Troy Robertson by grabbing an officer. The footage of her arrest, which showed Newton’s knee on her back as he handcuffed her, sparked outrage, protests, and calls for then-Kansas City Police Department chief Richard Smith to step down.
When Newton shot and killed Donnie Sanders, 47, an unarmed Black man, in March 2020, his dashcam also did not record the shooting, though authorities say it recorded him passing Sanders’ vehicle and making a U-turn to follow him.
After Sanders pulled over and ran, Newton chased him down, ordering him to stop before shooting five times. Three bullets hit Sanders, who died in a hospital the next day.
His family filed a wrongful death suit against Newton and the city’s police commissioners, seeking at least $10 million in compensation. The ongoing suit filed in March 2022 in part accused the commissioners of failing “to properly train, supervise, screen, discipline, transfer, counsel or otherwise properly equip and control officers including those who are known, or who should have been known, to engage in the use of excessive force and/or deadly force.”
Newton countered another lawsuit filed against him in relation to Sanders’ death by “asserting he is entitled to qualified immunity” in the death. Last month, Newton requested an oral argument to discuss, in part, “whether the District Court erred in denying [him] qualified immunity for what was, under the circumstances, a reasonable use of force.”
