Kansas City police arrested two volunteers with the Kansas City Food Nut Bomb on Sunday for trespassing in a parking lot where the group has long eaten, the group said.
The two were charged Monday in Kansas City Municipal Court with alleged trespassing at an address where the group eats, according to court records.
The group — a volunteer, mutual aid organization that provides free, hot, vegetarian meals on Sundays in a parking lot near Independence Avenue and Monroe Avenue in Kansas City’s Lykins neighborhood — posted video of the Jan. 4 arrest on social media. The video shows a group of Kansas City police officers handcuffing two men in a parking lot and shooing other people away from the area.
“I told you that you’re on private property, and you’re trespassing,” a uniformed officer said as he placed handcuffs around one of the man’s wrists.
Later in the video, a voice can be heard addressing people gathered near the arrestees: “You’re trespassing. Leave. Or you’ll be in handcuffs too. Does everyone understand? This is your warning. You can film all you want, you’re welcome, but you’re trespassing, and if you don’t leave now I’m going to arrest you.”
Kansas City Food Not Bombs said in a social media post Wednesday that police forced all of its volunteers to leave the area and dispersed anyone who came for food under threat of further arrest.
“Food is a human right,” the group said. “We have a right to public space, and a right to demonstrate.”
In an email to The Star Saturday, Kansas City Police Department spokeswoman Officer Alaina Gonzalez said that “this organization has received numerous complaints from nearby businesses and residents asking them to leave their private property.” She said that the police received a preliminary report on the complaint on January 1.
“The two individuals captured in the shared video were previously trespassed and refused to leave, resulting in a response from KCPD,” she wrote.
Michael McConnell, a Kansas City resident and one of two volunteers charged with trespassing, told The Star in an email on Friday that he and the other volunteer were not officially informed of trespassing until after their arrests. McConnell confirmed that he and another volunteer were arrested for allegedly trespassing in the parking lot of a strip mall where free food is served.
He said the group has been serving food at that location for about 13 years, and has never had a negative encounter with Kansas City police before. In fact, he noted, the police department lists the group and its weekly meal as a community nutrition resource on its website.
Serving food for 13 years
McConnell said some business owners in the area have claimed that those who show up for the food the group serves “have caused problems for their businesses, allegedly shoplifting, and mess,” he said. The group has been behaving respectfully and regularly cleans up litter in the area, he said.
“We cannot be responsible for every action that one of the neighbors who helped us at some point after they came to our table,” he said.
Kansas City Food Nut Bombs sets up an outdoor food line for an hour to an hour and a half along the sidewalk and produces 50-100 meals and hundreds of pounds of bread and produce each week, McConnell said. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, soup, pasta, salad and coffee, and most food comes from grocery stores and restaurants and otherwise goes to waste, he said.
He said Kansas City Food Not Bombs plans to adapt its service setup to avoid trespassing charges in the future, and said the group hopes to be a good neighbor to the people and businesses on Independence Avenue.
“Like all other Food Not Bomb groups,” he said, “we do this as a protest against the wastefulness of war, government choices that don’t solve poverty, and the environmental destruction caused by our wasteful food system.”
