America's Most Successful Stop Snitchin' Campaign

The failure to protect whistle-blowing cops is inexcusable.
Radley Balko | Reason Magazine
Oct. 19, 2010

Last month, when she awarded Barron Bowling $830,000 for the beating he suffered at the hands of a Drug Enforcement Administration agent in 2003, U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson went out of her way to acknowledge another victim in the sordid affair: Kansas City Police Det. Max Seifert.

On July 10, 2003, Bowling was driving down 10th Street in Kansas City, Kansas, on his way to fill a prescription, when Timothy McCue, an on-duty DEA agent, tried to illegally pass Bowling on the right of a wide one-lane street. Bowling accelerated to prevent McCue from passing, and the two cars collided. After the collision, McCue and another agent emerged from McCue's car. According to Robinson's ruling, McCue drew his gun, threw Bowling to the ground, then beat the hell out of him when he lifted his head from the pavement (which McCue would later describe as "resisting arrest"). According to witnesses, McCue threatened to kill Bowling, whom he called "white trash" and a "system-dodging inbred hillbilly."

It only got worse for Bowling. McCue, the DEA, and officers at the Kansas City Police Department then conspired to cover up the beating. Bowling was charged with leaving the scene of an accident and assaulting McCue with his car during the collision. He was later acquitted on those charges but convicted of possessing drug paraphernalia--a marijuana pipe police found in his car. Witness statements incriminating McCue for both the accident and the beating were lost or destroyed, as were photos of the damage McCue did to Bowling's face.

Only one of the officers who came to the accident scene that day had any integrity. That would be Seifert, a cop with an exemplary record who once shot an armed man to free two hostages. Seifert is the one who took the witness statements that implicated McCue. He is also the one who documented Bowling's injuries and testified for Bowling in Bowling's lawsuit. Here is how The Kansas City Star described what happened to Seifert next...

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