By Ilana Arougheti
The Kansas City Star
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Jackson County jury awarded a $10.8 million judgment Tuesday to a Kansas City police captain who sued the Kansas City Police Department, saying he faced retaliation and discrimination after testifying on behalf of a supervisee in his own discrimination case.
Jackson County jurors returned a verdict in Jim Swoboda’s favor on both charges Tuesday afternoon. The jury awarded Swoboda $9.6 million in punitive damages, along with $1.2 million in compensatory damages, accounting for legal fees, lost wages and other costs associated with the lawsuit filed in 2019.
Swoboda, who is white, said he became the target of other officers when he testified in favor of former officer Scott Wells, who is Black, in a 2015 lawsuit against the Police Department naming the Board of Police Commissioners and KCPD sergeants Brian Schoen and Greg Manning.
Wells, who has diabetes, alleged that supervisors — particularly Schoen and Manning — berated him about his symptoms, made racist comments and nitpicked his every move with punitive intentions.
Wells also noted in court documents that he began to feel unsafe after filing his first complaint against the department, with multiple officers opting to stop speaking to him.
Wells was among several Black officers who spoke to The Star for a 2022 investigation of racism in the Kansas City Police Department. The investigation found that the Police Department disproportionately disciplined Black officers compared with their white colleagues, and that more than a dozen had been forced out of the department because of the racist treatment they endured.
According to police memos obtained by The Star during the investigation, Swoboda investigated complaints lodged against Wells, referencing alleged improper use of overtime among other violations, and found them “frivolous.”
Swoboda had felt since 2014 that a group of officers had begun targeting Wells unfairly and he stood up for Wells on multiple occasions, according to court records and internal police communications obtained by The Star. However, before he shared this in testimony at Wells’ trial in late 2016, a KCPD attorney allegedly warned Swoboda that he needed to think about his career and how his testimony might hurt the force.
Swoboda’s testimony on the stand led to the retaliation referenced in his own lawsuit, jurors found Tuesday, which names all five members of the 2022 Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners. Swoboda said after he testified, the department stripped him of his gun and police vehicle, placing him on limited duty for three months until Wells settled with officers and the BOPC.
“We hope that this case has a positive impact on ensuring transparency in policing, not just for employees, but for the community as a whole, “ said Attorney Katherine Myers of Edelman, Liesen & Meyers, one of the Kansas City law firms representing Swoboda.
“We’re hopeful that this sends a strong message to KCPD that retaliation and discrimination will not be tolerated by our community.”
Forms of retaliation
While on limited duty, Swoboda was prevented from wearing his uniform and was locked out of his email, according to the lawsuit. He was also barred from department events including training events and celebrations, and stripped of his additional responsibilities as Custodian of Records and as Information Management Unit commander.
Swoboda also believed he was being surveilled and followed by other officers as a further form of retaliation, Myers and Wilson said. Though he reported his concerns to KCPD’s human resources department and to other officers, the attorneys said, no internal investigation ever followed.
Swoboda’s legal team found that current Kansas City police chief Stacey Graves had known about Swoboda’s claims regarding illicit surveillance efforts, but had declined to look into them, attorney Emma Wilson, who was part of the team that tried Swoboda’s lawsuit in Jackson County court, said Tuesday.
“[Graves] hasn’t done anything about that,” Wilson said. “So hopefully this will put her on notice that she cannot continue to remain idle and ignore these complaints from her officers when they’re brought to her.”
The Board of Police Commissioners was not immediately available for comment on Tuesday’s verdict or on Myers and Wilson’s description of court proceedings. Attorneys for the BOPC were also unavailable for comment, as was a spokesperson for Jackson County courts.
“We are aware of the verdict and we are evaluating our options,” Kansas City Police Department spokesperson Sgt. Phil DiMartino said Tuesday.
Swoboda’s lawsuit also included a disability discrimination element, alleging that after Swoboda returned from a brief leave in December 2018, he was not reinstated to full responsibilities in line with his doctor’s approval. Instead, the lawsuit reads, he spent a month sorting other officers’ coats in alphabetical order while officers allegedly delayed administering the examination that could return him to duty.
Swoboda took the leave due to a combination of stress and medication issues, according to the lawsuit, after a 2018 jury trial surrounding Wells’ case ended in a mistrial.
To Wilson, Swoboda’s experience with medical leave as a catalyst for discrimination speaks to a culture of abuse of power within the Kansas City Police Department.
“That hospitalization led to them essentially abusing their ability to keep him off work,” Wilson said. “That is not the only time that that had happened.”
‘Salt in the wound’
Though jurors decided that the Board of Police Commissioners should pay Swoboda upwards of $10 million, Missouri law theoretically caps punitive damages at either $500,000 or five times the amount awarded in compensatory damages, whichever is greater. In Swoboda’s case, this law could cap his punitive damages at either the $500,000 or at $6 million.
Swoboda’s legal team plans to engage in further litigation arguing that Swoboda’s case falls under exceptions to the damages cap, said Myers.
Even if his punitive damage award is capped at $500,000, Swoboda still stands to acquire more than 3 times the amount of damages as Wells. After the 2018 mistrial, the former officer settled his 2015 lawsuit with the Board of Police Commissioners in March 2022 for nearly $515,000.
In a closed session in April 2024, the Board of Police Commissioners unanimously approved an additional $100,000 to be set aside toward legal fees in Swoboda’s case.
Throughout the course of trial proceedings around the lawsuit, members of the Board of Police Commissioners declined to apologize to Swoboda for any of the alleged violations, Myers said.
Wells’ original lawsuit did not name racial discrimination as a motivating factor in the abuse he experienced from other officers. However, Wilson feels that jurors were informed by strong awareness of Swoboda’s identity as a white captain allegedly punished for defending a Black subordinate.
“I think you can definitely draw that conclusion that that was salt in the wound for [former Kansas City police chief Rick Smith], a white officer crossing the ‘thin blue lines’ to stick up for an African-American officer,” Wilson said.
Swoboda’s attorneys hope that the verdict, along with the substantial potential punitive damages awarded, works to discourage retaliation against future officers asked to testify in cases related to police misconduct.
However, several current Kansas City police officers who testified on Swoboda’s behalf have already begun to report experiencing retaliatory actions of their own, Wilson said.
“The trial was focused on protecting officers who do the right thing under the law, including telling the truth when they are required to do so under oath,” Myers said. “When officers are subjected to retaliatory behavior and discriminatory behavior by their co-workers or by their supervisors, that leads to a rightful fear that they might not be protected by their co workers or supervisors in all situations, including situations of life or death.”
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