Public Safety Debate Shapes Jackson County Prosecutor Race  Meet the Candidates

One candidate left the military for a career in criminal justice after a beloved family member was murdered – a victim of a random drive-by shooting. 

Another grew up in neighborhoods vexed by Kansas City’s most violent crime, before leaving to earn an undergraduate degree at an Ivy League school. 

A third portrays herself as someone “who shouldn’t be here.” It’s a nod to the scrappy resilience that took her from being a high school dropout and later a single mother with four children living in public housing, to graduating with a law degree and defending clients in courtrooms. 

Each of these Democratic candidates are seeking the role being vacated by Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker. 

They are John Gromowsky, a Jackson County assistant prosecutor, Melesa Johnson, the director of public safety under Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, and Stephanie M. Burton, a defense attorney. 

Many expect that the voter’s choice to replace Baker (appointed in 2011) will effectively be made during the Aug. 6 primary. The county leans heavily Democratic. 

The sole Republican running, Tracey Chappell, will face the Democratic candidate on November’s general election ballot. Baker defeated Chappell in 2020, garnering 191,021 votes to Chappell’s 131,979. 

Chappell, a former prosecutor for Blue Springs, has not taken part in as many of the recent forums as the Democrat candidates. 

But, like her Democrat rivals, she is running on a platform promising to address the fact that Kansas City has remained an outlier, with continued high rates of violent crime even while other major cities have begun seeing declines. 

“The current prosecutor’s office has failed at their job,” Chappell said during a July 8 forum held in Lee’s Summit. “They have failed at leadership, which has led us to where we are now.” 

---

Get Ready

---

High-Stakes Race 

Given the high social costs of crime, the election of the Jackson County prosecutor is considered one of the most pivotal races on the ballot. 

Each homicide – Kansas City had a record 182 last year – is estimated to cost millions in lost human capital, tax revenues and the mental and social health of families and neighborhoods, among other impacts. 

There have been 79 murders in Kansas City so far this year, compared to 111 at the same time last year. (Kansas City Police Department data does not include officer-involved homicides.) 

The prosecutor can play a huge role in not only holding people accountable for crime, but also in violence prevention through crime strategies, said Marijana Kotlaja, a University of Missouri-Kansas City criminal justice researcher leading a team to assess the city’s crime prevention efforts. 

“They have to work collaboratively with a lot of different entities,” she said. 

That means that the office can also be viewed as somewhat political. 

The research, a five-year project that’s just begun, is funded by Kansas City’s Violence Prevention Fund. 

“We’re really going to have to have a more coordinated approach in Kansas City,” Kotlaja said. “So that’s what I’m also hoping for the next prosecutor because we have a lot of different things going, but I think we need to figure out how to work together better on addressing violence.” 

Equally important will be a prosecutor’s office that uses data to help inform priorities and decisions, Kotlaja said. 

But it’s Baker’s use of data to shape priorities that informs some of the most strident critiques of her time in office – both from the female Democratic candidates and the general public. 

She is criticized for not putting enough emphasis on low-level crimes such as car thefts and break-ins. 

Prosecutorial discretion is the latitude given to decide which cases to file charges on and pursue. 

In 2020, Baker began research that led her office to focus on drug cases with a nexus to violent crime. The shift was partly due to a disproportionate number of non-felony drug cases charging African American offenders (81 % of buy-bust cases had a Black suspect while the county is 39% Black). 

The prosecutor’s decision has been inaccurately portrayed by some candidates as not charging drug dealers who can be proved to cause deaths by fentanyl. 

Baker has served the county through some tumultuous times. Those include the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter movement, excessive use of force cases by law enforcement, and a misdemeanor charge against a Roman Catholic bishop for not reporting suspected child sexual abuse by a priest (who was later convicted of possessing child pornography and is now serving a 50-year sentence). 

She led the office through the city’s first attempt at “focused deterrence,” an effort that seeks to affect violent crime by focusing on the small percentage of people who cause the most violence, colloquially called “trigger pullers.” 

But KC NoVA, for No Violence Alliance, was relatively short lived. After seeing some initial success in 2014, it was effectively dismantled, lacking the support of the then-Chief of Police Rick Smith. 

The new version of focused deterrence kicked off in late spring. It’s called SAVE KC, or Stand Against Violence Everyone/Everywhere/Everyday. 

The effort involves law enforcement, community members, probation and parole, the health department and social service workers. But the prosecutor’s office will be integral. 

“It’s also important to realize that if those programs aren’t implemented with fidelity and how they’re supposed to be, they could fall apart in Kansas City,” Kotlaja said. 

Meet the Candidates 

Stephanie Burton 

Stephanie Burton admits that many voters are likely unfamiliar with her law practice, let alone her candidacy. 

“People look at me now and say, ‘Stephanie, you don’t have any money. You don’t have the backing. You don’t have the political grooming. You shouldn’t be here.’” 

Such sentiment, Burton says, “is the story of my life.” 

She dropped out of high school, married and then later earned her equivalency degree. 

Later, she found herself a single mother living in public housing, Kansas City’s Wayne Miner Housing Court. 

The cinder block walls helped protect her family from frequent bullets shot around the housing project. 

She enrolled at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, earning a degree in criminal justice. 

But when she tried to enter law school, she received rejection letters. 

Instead, Burton earned a master’s degree in criminal justice from the University of Central Missouri and took a job working with probation and parole. 

Then, she reapplied to law school and eventually graduated early from UMKC. 

She started her law firm, first in her basement, reaching out to help older attorneys with their caseloads. She visited prisoners on the weekends, building a defense practice. 

“I would go and I would fight for people who were like me, that didn’t have a voice,” Burton said. 

She’s completed about 40 jury trials and more than 100 bench trials. 

“I stand before you with a world of experience, because for the last 14 years I’ve been a criminal trial attorney,” Burton told one audience. 

Burton, 42, first began thinking about running for prosecutor several years ago. 

She believes the current system allows too many cases to languish, to “get stale.” 

Subsequently, witnesses get disinterested, or even die. 

Burton emphasizes her time working with the Wyandotte County prosecutor’s office, helping to develop policies and best practices for the office’s Conviction Integrity Unit. 

“Once you are convicted, it’s hard to un-ring that bell,” she said. 

That’s been a target of criticism for Baker. Her office has such a unit, but Burton said that it’s largely “smoke and mirrors.” 

This is despite so much attention that has been given locally and nationally to exonerations. 

Burton, like the other candidates, also emphasizes repairing the relationship between the prosecutor’s office and law enforcement. 

Her 20-year-old son is training at the regional police academy. 

“So I’m giving you one of mine to go out and protect and serve because I believe that the officers that are doing the work need to be supported,” she said. 

John Gromowsky 

John Gromowsky had graduated from West Point and was serving as the executive officer overseeing a 130-person infantry unit. 

Then tragedy intervened. 

His cousin, 21-year-old Bryan Gromowsky, was murdered in 1993. He was shot walking near 40th and Main streets, while walking to John’s brother’s apartment. 

“That changed the course of what I wanted my service to be,” the candidate said. 

Law school at DePaul University came next, followed by a return to Kansas City to begin his legal career. 

Gromowsky is currently a Jackson County prosecutor in the violent crimes unit. 

But he has also spent time as the county’s drug task force prosecutor, working with federal law enforcement agencies on cases. 

Gromowsky also points to his experience with the prosecutor’s office working with the KCPD’s Central Patrol Division as the community prosecutor. 

He kept an office at the division, which kept him closer to crime in the community. Meetings in people’s homes were common. There, police and neighbors would work together in problems. 

“Criminal justice has to be a partnership, at a lot of different levels,” he said. “And one of those levels is we need a prosecutor who knows what it means to be a community prosecutor who can engage this community, who can be out in these houses and help people stand up and be brave.” 

The experience informs his views on the need to hold “trigger pullers” accountable, sending the people to prison who have shown that they are a danger to the rest of the community. 

But leniency is also called for, an acknowledgement of the role poverty plays in crime and that opportunities are limited for some members of the community. 

He also spent 16 years as a federal criminal defense attorney and has tried death penalty cases. 

In public discussions, Gromowsky often reaches back to his military experience for his approach to how he’d run the prosecutor’s office. 

He stresses that the job of being county prosecutor is akin to running a 150-person law firm. 

For example, a current open position for an assistant prosecuting attorney includes the job description of “maintaining a criminal docket of 20-30 felony and misdemeanor cases.” That’s in addition to handling special action assignments, legal research and supervisory approval of dismissals and resolution of charges in cases, along with other duties. 

The military uses a “battle book,” or a guide of standard operating procedures to ensure everyone is properly trained and cared for so they can do the job. 

“I learned that you need to take care of people,” Gromowsky has said of his military experience. “That you manage their welfare. That you make sure that they’re safe and make sure that they’re trained. Because there are consequences in the military.” 

The prosecutor’s office currently doesn’t have such a battle book, he said. 

“We are inefficient,” he said. “We need to do better at getting cases from the start to the finish line.” 

Melesa Johnson 

Melesa Johnson grew up in the Oak Park neighborhood, raised by a single mother who worked three jobs to put her daughter through Bishop Miege High School. 

She often comments about family members and people she meets who have bullet holes in their homes, the result of the urban core’s high rates of gunfire. 

“I have felt violence at the deepest level,” Johnson has told audiences as she campaigns. “I live around seniors that are in their homes for 40 and 50 years and they are scared to walk outside.” 

Johnson graduated from Columbia University in New York with a bachelor’s degree in political science. She was also on the school’s track and field team. 

Her law degree is from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. 

Johnson interned during college for former Kansas City Mayor and current U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. 

“I was at that time that I realized politics may be in the cards for me, because I got to witness somebody maintain and retain their moral compass in a very tumultuous environment like Washington D.C.,” Johnson has said while campaigning. 

After graduating, Johnson worked in the Jackson County prosecutor’s office, trying cases under Baker, before going into the private sector. 

In 2021, she was tapped by Mayor Quinton Lucas to take a new position within his office, as director of public safety. 

As the mayor’s liaison for public safety, she participates in the revised focused deterrence strategy, SaveKC. It puts a heavy focus on the small percentage of people who cause the most violent crime.  

These people, and their social circles, are as likely to become the next homicide victim as they are the next perpetrator. They’re told this by a broad coalition representing law enforcement, federal criminal justice partners, probation and parole officials, health department and social service workers. 

Johnson touts the fact that she was chosen in May to go to the homes of those people that SaveKC first began focusing on, as an example of her connectedness to the community most harmed by violence. 

“I am at the table making sure that it’s not a snitch program, that we are employing more restorative practices,” Johnson has said. 

Johnson also advocates for organizations and people in the community who are doing anti-violence work but have trouble accessing funding. 

Johnson, like the other candidates, has mentioned COMBAT funds to fund her initiatives. 

She’d like to see it help with affordable housing for those reentering society after incarceration. She also promotes collaborating with area schools, including charters, to give early intervention for behavioral issues. 

“If you hurt somebody in Jackson County, you will receive consequences,” Johnson said. “But we also have to help a lot of people too. We have to prevent them from going down the road to criminality in the first place.” 

Key Issues 

Each candidate, to differing degrees, portrays themselves as a changemaker. 

They all cite widely acknowledged community dissatisfaction with rates of crime, with the perception being that too many perpetrators are not being held accountable – especially for property crimes such as car thefts and break-ins. 

Each has also called for the need to restore community trust in law enforcement. 

The city’s last push for focused deterrence imploded partly because of a lack of support from the former chief of police, 

Other similarities are renewed attention on COMBAT, the 45-year-old tax that funds a wide range of anti-violence programs, police and court initiatives. 

The tax generates about $23 million annually. That money can play a vital role in police reform measures that many support. 

Since 2018, COMBAT has been managed by the prosecutor’s office (a change prompted by an audit). 

---

---

Differences between the candidates have revolved around style and word choice, especially when there are racial implications. 

Black Kansas City residents are disproportionately homicide victims and perpetrators of gun homicides, factors that have already stirred accusations by and about the candidates. 

Crime tends to happen within people’s social circles. The phrase “white on white crime,” which is rarely used, would be statistically just as accurate as saying “Black on Black crime,” a word choice that is made so often that some people do not understand its pitfalls. 

Attention to such nuances, and how the candidates demonstrate they are attuned to the community most affected by violent crime, has surfaced during the campaign. 

Gromowsky has drawn criticism for comments that some said were racially coded during a meeting with the South Kansas City Democrats when he used the term “Black on Black crime.” 

One attendee, an African American woman, commented shortly after the event that she felt like he was being racially insensitive in his remarks. 

But it was subtle, not overt comments, she said. 

Johnson has also drawn criticism for her rhetoric, especially sharply worded discussions about what she sees as problematic behavior within the Black community, when she is speaking to the Black community. 

She has expressed concerns about young Black women, choosing firm and explicit wording. 

“Who’s being the getaway drivers these days? Who’s carrying the illegal firearm in their purse, trying to be a good partner?” she asked during a recent candidate panel. “We need to educate and talk to our young women about how they can land themselves at the center of something negative simply by trying to be a good girlfriend or a ‘ride or die.’” 

Missouri’s near ban on abortion has also highlighted some differences between the candidates. 

After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the state made it a felony to perform or induce an abortion. 

The group My Body My Choice Jackson County was supportive of Burton, who has said in forums that she would not prosecute such cases. 

“We are not prosecuting women and doctors under this abortion ban,” Burton said. 

She has discussed her own miscarriage and the trauma involved. And she’s addressed the difficult decisions that she made to have her children, despite struggling financially and without other support. 

“For some people, you don’t understand what that anguish is,” she said. “You don’t understand how hard that decision is.” 

Burton has also starkly addressed the male Missouri state legislators calling for tougher laws around women’s reproductive rights. 

“And it’s always the man who wants to tell you what is right for your body,” she said during one candidate panel discussion. 

Johnson has also been clear about her intentions not to prosecute under the state’s abortion ban if she is elected. 

She has said that she views the prosecutor as “the first line of defense for women’s productive rights here in the state of Missouri.” 

“Prosecute, absolutely not,” she told KCUR’s Up to Date. “As a woman, I cannot play a role in telling other women what to do within the context of the criminal legal system.” 

The My Body My Choice group gave Gromowsky an “F” out of fear that he would prosecute women or health care workers. 

During the KCUR’s discussion he addressed the issue, saying that it’s been over-simplified by some for easy soundbites. 

He said the state statute gives concurrent and original jurisdiction between the Missouri attorney general’s office and the Jackson County prosecutor’s office. 

That means that if the Jackson County prosecutor’s office says it is “closed for business on these types of cases, you are forcing the police to take the case to the attorney general’s office to prosecute.” 

As for his specific stand, Gromowsky said: “I want the shield that will protect Jackson County women from Jefferson City justice. And you do that … (when) we review the cases and figure out what the best method is for handling them.” 

Mary Sanchez is a senior reporter for Kansas City PBS.

Enter Email