Sept. 11--The families of three people shot this spring by the Wichita Police Department demanded answers Tuesday morning from the Wichita City Council.
Often angry and sometimes in tears, the families of Marquez Smart, Timothy Collins and Karen Jackson demanded grand jury investigations of the deaths. Marquez Smart was shot in Old Town in early March after police said he opened fire into a crowd of people. Timothy Collins, Smart's cousin, was shot April 13 in a neighborhood near Pawnee and Seneca. Jackson was shot July 10 as she approached police with a knife and whiskey bottle, police said.
What the families got was an immediate meeting with Deputy Police Chief Tom Stolz to shed more light on the shootings, a request the family members also made of the council.
"The Wichita Police Department must stop the killing," said Randall Smart, father of Marquez Smart. "He was a hard-working young man who never had the chance to live his life and have a family of his own. This takes a big chunk out of our lives."
Randall Smart and Shakeitha Scales, mother of Timothy Collins, said police claims that their sons were in gangs weren't true. Both claimed police have steadfastly dodged their requests for information, dating back to the hours following the shootings.
Smart said police initially denied that they had his son, then went "back and forth" at the hospital about allowing family to see Marquez.
"They wouldn't let us see him for three days," Randall Smart said.
"I feel that the judicial system is a failure," he said. "We want the truth and the facts. Our son did not deserve to be slain down by the Wichita Police Department."
Scales said her son was trying to surrender to police when he was shot in the forehead. She asked the council to demand that police use "non-lethal" methods to subdue suspects.
She said police are using her son's picture in Wichita schools as an example to schoolchildren of "what happens when you're in a gang."
"To this day, I haven't heard from the Wichita Police Department," she said. "He was right across the street being cut open at the autopsy place, and I didn't know anything. I'm not knowing anything about him being dead. I don't know what it is with the police and our black kids. Marquez wasn't in a gang, and my son definitely wasn't in a gang."
Tyra Williams, the daughter of Jackson, delivered a tearful account of her mother's death in July.
"She was murdered within 16 seconds of the police approaching her," she said. "The police know that's a mistake, based on the manner they handled the east-side Burlington shooting. ... This is the most tragic thing that could happen to me and my family."
Copyright 2012 - The Wichita Eagle
