There was a large turnout of Northlanders from Platte and Clay counties at a town hall meeting last week regarding funding for the Kansas City Police Department.
The town hall meeting was held Thursday, May 27 at Northland Neighborhoods Inc., located in the old Antioch Mall. Northland representatives on the city council, including Dan Fowler and Teresa Loar of Platte County and Heather Hall and Kevin O’Neill of Clay County spoke at the standing-room-only event. The meeting was also live streamed and remains available at NNI.org and on YouTube.
One week prior on Thursday, May 20, Kansas City mayor Quinton Lucas and the majority of the Kansas City council — with the exception of the four Northland representatives — approved ordinances shifting $42 million from the Kansas City Police Department’s budget into new funding for community services and crime prevention. The uses of those reserved funds would be approved by the city manager and Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners.
In response, the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners — a body of state-appointed officials — filed suit against the mayor, city council and city manager on Friday, May 28.
In the suit, the board cited RSMO 84, which covers state oversight of the Kansas City Police Department. This law has stood since the era of Tom Pendergast to keep municipal politics out of police business and handed control of the Kansas City and St. Louis police departments to the state.
Lucas has long voiced his opposition to this state oversight and has called for local control of the KCPD. St. Louis regained local control of its police board in 2012 through a statewide vote.
On Tuesday, June 1, Jackson County Circuit Court judge Kevin Harrell issued a stay order on the police board’s suit, postponing court action. Harrell gave the City of Kansas City 14 days to answer the board’s request to block the two ordinances in question.
Lucas fired back in a statement.
“Kansas City will fight vigorously this effort to keep our hands tied in solving one of our greatest challenges for decades,” Lucas said. “Kansas City will fight to shine light on best practices and community collaboration with our police officers, rather than stay in the dark about where taxpayer money goes, what we’re doing, and how the hell we can once and for all get out of this situation. We have a murder problem and it’s getting worse. I’m committed to solving it, even if it takes us going all the way to the United States Supreme Court.”
Town hall attendees and council members also called for a special legislative session in Jefferson City to address crime and police funding in Kansas City.
Lucas responded to these calls for action as well in recent statements.
“While I welcome my Republican friends’ newfound interest in the plight of Kansas Citians, particularly in our inner-city neighborhoods, respectfully, our community, my community, has been in a violent crime crisis for my entire lifetime,” Lucas said. “With more than 100 murders per year in Kansas City for generations, we have to work non-stop and creatively to fix our serious gun violence problem, not continue to look the other way as our state legislature majority has done for too long.
“Our plan increases funding to the police department while we also as a city and with separate investments are addressing the root causes of crime, like poverty, lack of adequate mental health, and housing instability.”
NNI TOWN HALL
At the town hall meeting last week Fowler said there was a lot of misinformation floating around about what the council did on that day and a tremendous amount of uncertainty regarding what the funding reallocation actually means. He said while he’s upset the Northland council members were left out of the process, he was more upset that Northland residents were left out.
“Tonight, we’re going to try to give you that voice,” Fowler said.
Loar said she learned of the budget realloca tion from her son – a police officer – who was watching Lucas’ press conference live on television.
She said cities who have taken money from police budgets have suffered economic impacts from the decision.
“This is the hill we die on – we’re not backing down,” Loar said.
Residents took the podium for the bulk of the nearly two-hour meeting, voicing concerns about the ordinances, calling for Lucas’ ouster from office and suggesting the Northland secede from the City of Kansas City to form its own municipality. Another common complaint was the feeling that Northlanders are often ignored by city hall, with this as just the latest example.
A sprinkling of state representatives and others, such as Brad Lemon, president of the Kansas City Fraternal Order of Police also spoke.
“I’m ashamed of this city,” Lemon said. “Today we’re looking at a department that only has 1,250 police officers. In 2007 we had 1,460. We are going backwards at a speed no other community in the country can even imagine. We talk about crime and what we’re going to do about it – we’re not going to call social workers to protect this city.”
He said this is not a north versus south issue, but he understands that Northlanders were ignored in the decision-making process.
The meeting became combative when a social worker spoke in support of the allocation of funding to mental health services, with Fowler calling for everyone to remain respectful.
“I want to hear this lady,” Fowler interjected. “I want to hear her, and this is not the Northland to shout people down like that. We need to hear every viewpoint. I want to hear both sides – I want to hear all sides.”
Fowler called for order once more when a man wearing a Black Lives Matter shirt spoke out about the makeup of the crowd, which he said was overwhelmingly white.