MLM Counties News. Notices. Need-to-know Information.
The sister of a man fatally shot by police in 2010 reached a series of settlements with some of the agencies involved, but a federal judge dismissed the primary two defendants, ending the litigation.
Mahir Al-Hakim died March 18, 2010, after officers from multiple Kansas City-area police departments fired on him after responding to a report that he’d refused to leave a man’s apartment.
When police found Al-Hakim in a wooded area near the apartment in Riverside, Al-Hakim allegedly pointed a handgun at them, prompting them to fire. The weapon was later determined to be a BB gun.
Al-Hakim’s sister, Noelle Roselyn Aipperspach, filed a federal civil rights suit in 2011 against the law enforcement agencies involved and numerous officers. According to court records, Aipperspach partially resolved the case earlier this year with a series of settlements with some of the agencies.
The city of Platte Woods paid $15,000, and Platte County and the city of Gladstone each paid $5,000. Under the terms of the three settlements approved by the court on Jan. 22, 75 percent of the proceeds went to litigation expenses. The remaining $5,000 was apportioned between Aipperspach and four of Al-Hakim’s half-sisters, Kimberley Williams, Rebecca Arbuckle, Bonnie Arbuckle and Sunshine Arbuckle.
Aipperspach also reached an out-of-court settlement with North Kansas City in September 2012. According to her attorney, Robert Sullivan, of Sullivan Morgan & Chronic in Kansas City, that settlement was for $75,000. An attorney for North Kansas City, D. Keith Henson, did not return a call seeking comment.
Litigation continued against the city of Riverside and the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners and those agencies’ officers. Sullivan said the Kansas City and Riverside officers were believed to have fired the fatal shots.
But on Aug. 2, U.S. District Judge Greg Kays granted summary judgment in the defendants’ favor. Kays wrote that the officers’ use of deadly force was reasonable in such a split-second life-or-death situation.
Sullivan had urged the judge to rely on aerial footage of the incident that a news helicopter had captured. The video, he said, shows that Al-Hakim didn’t threaten the officers with the gun. It also shows that the packaging for the BB gun lay nearby, which could have alerted the police that Al-Hakim didn’t have a real weapon.
But Kays said he would not exercise “hindsight judgment,” noting that the video wasn’t shot from the officers’ point of view.
“That technology now allows the Court to travel back in time to determine whether decisions were reasonable in hindsight does little to affect the reasonableness of decisions in the moment,” Kays wrote.
Sullivan acknowledged that overcoming the officers’ versions of events was a very tough standard and said he probably wouldn’t have taken the case if not for the news footage, even if it was shot from the air.
“It’s all we had available,” he said.
Steven Coronado, an attorney for the city of Riverside and its officers, said the shooting was unfortunate but that the judge made the right decision.
“No law enforcement officer ever wants a situation like this to occur,” he said. “They did what they had to do under the circumstances.”
Wrongful death
Breakdown: City of North Kansas City, $75,000; City of Platte Woods, $15,000; Platte County, $5,000; City of Gladstone, $5,000
Venue: U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri
Case Number/Date: 4:11-cv-1225/Aug. 2, 2013
Judge: Greg Kays
Caption: Noelle Roselyn Aipperspach, as Personal Representative of the Estate of Mahir S. Al-Hakim, deceased v. Patrick McInerney, Alvin Brooks, Angela Wasson-Hunt, Lisa Pelofsky, Sly James and Robbie McLaughlan; Platte County, Richard Anderson and Daniel F. Green; City of Riverside, Gregory Mills, Trevor Ballard, Matthew Westrich, Larry Cory and William Babbitt; City of North Kansas City, Glenn L. Ladd and Kyle A. Pansing; City of Gladstone, Michael Hasty and Christopher Morales
Plaintiff’s Attorney: Robert C. Sullivan, Sullivan Morgan & Chronic, Kansas City
Defendants’ Attorneys: Diane F. Chirnside, Missouri Attorney General’s Office, Kansas City (Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners); Steven F. Coronado and Christopher L. Heigele, Coronado Katz, Kansas City (Riverside); David S. Baker, Fisher, Patterson, Sayler & Smith, Overland Park, Kan. (Platte County); Robert Jester, Ensz & Jester, Kansas City (Platte Woods); Tim J. Mudd, Cummings McClorey Davis & Acho, Kansas City (Gladstone); D. Keith Henson, Paule, Camazine & Blumenthal, St. Louis (North Kansas City)
