TKC BREAKING AND EXCLUSIVE NEWS!!! KANSAS CITY FACT CHECK UPON THE DEBUT OF NEW POLICE EAST PATROL STATION!!!

In an attempt to provide an alternative perspective on the press release coverage of a new Kansas City Police East Patrol station, our blog community reached out to a number of local residents and ask their thoughts on the new development.

Here are just a few facts that have been lost in today's mainstream media coverage.

- East Patrol is more than $20 MILLION over budget, probably the most important aspect of today's festivities from a taxpayer perspective that hasn't earned a single mention with all of today's fanfare.

- The argument that a police station can serve as an economic engine for a community is widely touted with little verifiable evidence ESPECIALLY given ongoing debate over City Hall MBE/WBE participation guidelines mostly unenforced on this project and so many others .

- Most importantly, residents displaced by eminent domain have fought valiantly against a narrative espoused by politicos and have been met with outright hostility by so-called representatives.

This year an exhibit by the KC Public Library offered an artistic and data driven summation of the East Patrol project that's apt to mention on the day of its debut:

"Roughly a four-block section of Kansas City’s east-side Wendell Phillips neighborhood no longer exists, at least as it once did. Dozens of homes on nearly 130 parcels of land were acquired by the city via eminent domain to make room for a new East Patrol police station and crime lab. Forty-three households were displaced, some forcibly."



Here is probably the most powerful statement on the project . . .

Former resident on the site of what is now East Patrol, Ameena Powell: "The notion that it is acceptable to take property from Black people arbitrarily and devalue the property simply because the owners are Black is appalling especially under the leadership of Sly James, Darryl Forte and others. The project demonstrates unnecessary spatial arrangement and shows that all the land acquired was neither needed or used."

Now . . .

HERE IS A POINT BY POINT ANALYSIS CRITICISM OF THE EAST PATROL PROJECT THAT SPEAKS TO COMMUNITY RESISTANCE TO THE DEVELOPMENT COMPLETELY UNREPORTED TODAY!!!

Take a look:

A Statement on East Patrol



1.It would be best to question the lack of transparency in the site selection process, and whether not they actually looked at the other sites.

Also the fact that the neighborhood was in relatively good shape as compared to other areas. Homeowners cared, and were actively making it better.

2. The process to develop this facility was unjust and inequitable.

The City failed to follow basic planning processes that would have been required in many other neighborhoods and for all privately owned projects.

The assembly of land for the project was completed without the involvement of basic due process and procedure – there was no planning commission hearing, in particular, for a major change of land use from residential to industrial/public facility.

This kind of major land use change deserves greater public scrutiny and careful planning.

The idea that the project is “economic development” implies that the economy of the neighborhoods east of Troost is based on incarceration. This is problematic to say the least.

3. "What is accomplished by this government investment in misdeed?"

How can citizens have confidence in their municipal government to protect them from...theft of their homes?

Will the Department of Justice certify a crime lab built in a residential neighborhood?

Do the neighbors surrounding their campus accept that they will be breathing the effluent of their black dead babies?

Is it significant that on the grounds of the Miller Plantation, one of the largest slave holding plantations in Missouri, a symbol of crime is constructed?

How will the truck traffic on Brooklyn and 27th affect the Crime Lab operations?

How many people are still paying on mortgages, or used their resettlement money to pay off mortgages that because of the City action were voided?

How many people received their funds awarded them? How timely?

Did the quality of the displacees lives get better, stay the same, pr were they worsened by their forced move from here?

What attorney actually believes the Court that approved this project did so without bias?

What citizen believes this project was allowed despite protections against such egregious behavior of government?

Who was paid and who was punished because the project planners "forgot" or include enough money in the budget to build AND furnish the facility?

Who provided protections for the public interests in the spending of the budget for this project? Was the architect acting independently of the contractor, and overseeing their financial performance with a keen eye? Or does the architect work with this contractor on other projects.....and have its judgment clouded?

This neighborhood is widely recognized has having historic importance, if only to those who lived here safely for years, if not.....for the honor it placed by its naming after Wendell Phillips....who was Wendell Phillips? What would he done if he were alive today?

So after years and years of neglect...now there are two gyms across the street from each other?

Did Beacon Hills' displacees ever receive their relocation benefits? Does this project represent a pattern of behavior by the City?

Does Community Development Block Grant (federal) funding allow for its use in displacing affordable housing, for any purpose? Does it allow for a Police satellite facility and a Crime Lab when there are other funds available for such governmental need?

Who told the Governor's ombudsman to shut up? The Governor?

What do professional housing or commercial developers say about the chances they will invest in the areas abutting and near this Police Crime?

Lawrence Goldblatt, architect, planner, development manager
Consultant to Ameena Powell and others
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