by Sean Hull
Managing Editor
mhudso27@jccc.edu
On Thursday, Feb. 18, two students from the college were lost in Lenexa searching for St. John’s Catholic Cemetery for a geology assignment on the weathering rates of tombstones. At roughly two in the afternoon, the sun was high on the uncharacteristically warm day when Abdulrahman Ghanem and David Manzi, who is studying here from Rwanda, found themselves being trailed by a Lenexa patrol car.
A classmate had given them poor instructions to the cemetery, so they had become lost in an unfamiliar area. They searched online for a different cemetery, and followed the directions on Google Maps. This is when, according to Manzi, the patrol car first appeared behind them while stopped at a traffic light.
“We made a right turn, and then he followed us,” said Manzi, interrupted by Ghanem saying, “for like 10 minutes or something.” Manzi reassured Ghanem, “It [is] just a regular thing, you know, the cop is just doing his job.”
After being followed for a while, Ghanem became concerned the officer was still following them. Manzi assured him once more that it was fine, and the officer was “just doing his job.” Looking to get back on the highway, Ghanem made a right turn onto a residential street, so they could go back the way they came. The officer pulled into the neighborhood as they were leaving, making eye contact with them as he turned.
According to Manzi, this is the moment they realized “This sh*t is very serious.”
The officer turned on his lights at roughly W 87th Street Parkway and Quivira as they were returning to the college. According to the police report obtained by The Campus Ledger, Ghanem and Manzi pulled into the Zarda BBQ parking lot. The reporting officer, Kelly Eads, notes the movements the passengers make within the car as suspicious, and reports this as one major reason he decided to pull them over. In the report he says the passenger and driver continuously look back at him to identify his location, and the passenger is seen stuffing his hands between the console and seat. He also mentions the turns they make onto residential streets as suspicious, as if they were trying to avoid him. Eads had called for a second officer, identified as MPO Cortright, to assist him with the stop because he believed they were involved in criminal activity.
At this point the stories diverge. According to Ghanem, there were more than two officers that pulled them over, though the report only mentions MPO Cortright. Ghanem claimed, “It was his car, and there was like three other huge cars, and a cop on a motorcycle.”
This is explained by Thomas Hongslo, the Chief of Police at the Lenexa Police Department.
“When the officer is standing there and these guys continue to move around in the car and reach between the seats, he asked to hold the air and he wanted an additional officer. So anybody that’s not on a call for service hears an officer say ‘hold the air I need another car’ they’re gonna go, because they might get there quicker,” said Hongslo.
According to the report, Eads approached the car from the passenger side. Saying he saw Manzi place his hand on the door “as if he planned on getting out of the vehicle,” Eads instructed them to put their hands on the dashboard. On the driver’s side now, Eads reports seeing Manzi place his left hand down towards the center console. This alarmed him, so he took a step back and drew his pistol.
According to Manzi, he was putting his phone on the center console so he could put his hands on the dash. That’s when, according to the students, Eads yelled that Manzi was grabbing a gun, and all the officers drew their weapons. Hongslo who has reviewed the tapes claims that guns were never drawn on the students, just unholstered. The Campus Ledger was unable to obtain the tapes for review, per department policy.
Manzi was stunned this was happening to them.
“I was like, seriously? You can not invent anything like that,” Manzi said. “Immediately I feel like seriously like what is he trying to do? All I was thinking about like, oh the stories you hear about black people get shot and stuff.”
Manzi said that he didn’t believe those stories were real because when people are pulled over, they are often aggressive with police. But in this moment, he wasn’t so sure.
“Hearing him saying, ‘He’s grabbing the gun’ and he didn’t see any sign of a gun. Oh, man, I felt so scared that I’m gonna lose my life. In a matter of seconds I was gonna lose my life,” said Manzi. He added later, “In my mind I was like, ‘God, please, speak to this cop for not making a stupid decision.’”
After the officers had reached for their pistols and Manzi had put his hands on the dash, the officers separated them for questioning. According to Ghanem, they pushed him on the hood of the car to pat him down for weapons. Manzi says they kept him in the car with two guns trained on him.
Ultimately, officers concluded that their stories checked out, and released the students. Ghanem says that after questioning, they searched the car for any illegal contraband, which is corroborated by the report. Ultimately no fines were issued or charges pressed.
Ghanem and Manzi said the officers apologized, and even gave them instructions to the cemetery.
In the report it is mentioned that the Lenexa PD crime analyst had notified officers of a string of burglaries occurring in Lenexa on Thursdays, and between the hours of 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. The suspects are reported to also be in their late teens to early 20s and are three black males with one white male.
While Hongslo says that it’s impossible to determine the race of suspects from the driver’s seat of a patrol car looking through the rear window of a car, in the report Eads says, “the subjects in the vehicle appeared to be either black or possibly one being white or of middle eastern descent.”
Hongslo denies that bias played any role in the escalation of the car stop.
“Absolutely not and the reason being is that when we have the suspect information out on these burglaries we don’t know if they’re white males, black males, asian males, anything like that. And the officer even said he did not know, he could not tell inside the car what race they were. So that made no preclusion whether they stopped them based on race or not,” said Hongslo.
Ghanem said that he does not believe the stop had anything to do with race. Manzi, however, disagrees.
“If I was white sitting next to [Ghanem], honestly I’m telling you [the officer] would have minded his own business,” said Manzi. He added later, “I’m not from here, I’m from Africa. When I saw in the news about this stuff going on between white cops and minorities … I used to say, ‘Oh you know the black people. They are aggressive when they pull them over, they don’t stay calm and they don’t comply with the officers,’ that was my thing. But after getting pulled over in that way, I was like, ‘Wow, this thing is real,’ and needs to be heard.”
Despite their encounter with police, Ghanem and Manzi completed their geology assignment on time.