TKC QUESTION: SHOULD NEW CHIEF WORK TOWARD KCPD LOCAL CONTROL?!?!



Behind the scenes there's a lot of talk about the future of Kansas City Police governance amid the current homicide spike.

To wit . . .

THE MOVE TOWARD KCPD LOCAL CONTROL IS UNDERWAY AGAIN AND INSIDERS LOOK TO THE NEW CHIEF FOR GUIDANCE!!!

A few years ago this idea was shut down but the threat of a statewide vote emerged late last year and will soon resurface.

Here's a quick rundown . . .

- Kansas City rank & file and some members of the FOP have flip-flopped and now support the local control effort because it will give them even more room to operate politically.

- Conservatives have also pulled a switcheroo on this topic . . . However, they still (naively) accept a pipe-dream proposal that promises to  keep the KCPD pensions away from City Hall - Which will be impossible to enforce further down the line and once the hand-off occurs.

- A loose coalition of lawyers, political consultants and grassroots leaders are all excited about the new opportunity to move the prospect of KCPD local control forward given that Kansas City has the only police department in the country that’s controlled by the state and not the city.

The debate looks more like an inevitability as some of the more thoughtful locals are looking toward a governance model that focuses on City Council and Mayoral appointments to a bigger police board.

And so we ask . . .

IS LOCAL CONTROL OF THE KCPD A NEW HOPE OR A RECIPE FOR DISASTER?!?!?

The only disappointing factor in this conversation is that nobody ever brings up the very real RISK OF CORRUPTION -- the reason that control was stripped away back in the 30s . . . We like to pretend that's a long ago phenomena and don't view the current 12th & Oak large scale corporate patronage as remarkably similar to the graft which defined the Pendergast era.

You decide . . .

Comments

  1. The Chief of Police has one job and that is public safety. He needs to stay the hell out of politics.

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  2. Those pensions are protected by state law. Any attempt by Bowtie, the city, or anyone else to "take it over" will be met with serious and swift legal resistance. Believe that.

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  3. 6:47am is exactly right.
    There is NOTHING under the current system of the Police Board that prevents the new chief from implementing the recent consultant recommendations for long-overdue changes in the department and some much more serious leadership for the KCPD.
    Hire more officers.
    Work through the fact that the department is top heavy.
    Objectively review all the money spent on nonprofit "anti-crime" programs, discontinue funding most of them, and use the money to hire more officers.
    Utilize existing resources more effectively.
    What the new chief needs is some buy-in and vocal support for those initiatives.
    But that will take much more effort on the part of Sly and the council to learn enough about what's going on in the PD and will take some spine on their parts to change the status quo and those who benefit financially from it.
    And with the latter, I can only say Good Luck!

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  4. FACT :
    The NEW Chiefy, 1st priority should be to ARREST Mayor SLY JAMES, Troy Schulte and Prosecutor Jean Peter Sucker Baker !!!

    for what ???

    for being the Degenerate Lying Criminal Coddling Scum they are amongst other numerous charges !!!!

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  5. I don't care who controls it, but someone needs to bring that department under control and find ways to modernize and move forward. Given the fixed chief selection process you can count on KCPD being akin to backwoods Mayberry RFD for years to come.

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  6. The Hee Haw Police Department.

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  7. Local control is a BAD idea! Why did everyone watch Forte destroy the department in the first place?

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  8. The city already has local control of KCPD through the power of the purse. That's the principle reason we don't have enough officers.

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  9. Absolutely not. Our city leaders are corrupt thieving liars, and above all else incompetent. The less they control, the better.

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  10. KCPD same old crap different day.
    Same old excuses for high crime.
    KCPD sounds like a broken record.
    I wonder what new acronym crime fighting program will be next?
    Or what new committee, or task force "to study" the problem will be created?
    Or maybe the hiring of "consultants" to do the job he were suppose to be doing all along.

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  11. 7:06, yeah and no one has ever changed state law before. You have to change state law to put the department back under city control. You don't think after that the pensions wouldn't be next? If not, then you're pretty naive.

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  12. If it keeps scumbag sLIE off the board and real life saving decisions can be made then by all means get rid of state control. People have forgotten sLIE is a board member and has a say in what goes on anyway, but at least wait till that scumbag is out of office before doing it

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  13. KCPD stays losing.
    So what else is new?

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  14. The new Chief will not be able to bring the PD under local control till he shows the whole world he is capable of operating the department correctly.

    I really doubt like hell we will see that.

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  15. Slie and company have already demonstrated that they have little interest in the general well-being of the citizens and taxpayers of KCMO. The Clowncil repeatedly enables his corruption for the benefit of developers. A few of which may actually live in Killa City.

    Do you want Slie and Troy-Boy to be able to put police pressure on political opponents or deny their businesses and neighborhoods police protection? Slie and gang will build new police stations to benefit developers and diminish protection of the peasants.

    Killa City has already had police harassment of a potential council political opponent. Several years ago a district commander was made promises of advantage and promotion from City Hall in exchange for an effort to unjustly fabricate criminal charges against a prospective Council candidate. Several officers co-operated but their scheme eventually fell apart. Ask a sitting Northland Councilmember, with previous time on Council, for insider details on this flagrant abuse of power.

    Do you want Clowncil members and political consultants carrying badges and guns?

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  16. the state needs to come in and take control of the fire dept and EMT

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  17. Welcome to a brand new episode of Hee Haw !

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  18. The Kansas City Atheist Coalition has no position on this situation, nor anything to contribute.

    But if you see kids from the International House of Pray wandering around Grandview with their bibles, please notify the KCAC President so he can arrange a protest.

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  19. If local control was a reality, Rick Smith wouldn't have become chief in the first place. Why would he agree to it?

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  20. Let the gangs kill each other off, no decent people are getting shot at.

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  21. The poster at 7:09 has some good ideas, but misses the fact that the PD has no control over the funds for the various non-profit/anti-crime groups. The funding of those organizations is from the city, county/COMBAT tax or various charitable bequests (think Kaufman Foundation).

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  22. KCPD is a big flop

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  23. A bunch of overweight do nothings in meter maid uniforms.

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  24. Other than raising money for the city piggy bank do we really need a police department given the state of things in Kansas Shitty?

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  25. @4:02pm
    Good observations and certainly true.
    But you would think, or maybe hope, that a town of only 472,000 population that regularly has homicide numbers fully one third that of New York City, which has a population 17 times the size, would get serious at every level of government and provide the leadership and collaboration necessary to make addressing that corrosive issue and all-hands effort.
    Isn't it possible for the mayor, chair of the council public safety committee, and members of the police board to collect a list of nonprofits which claim some "anti-crime" efforts and review both their funding sources and amounts, and objectively gauge their effectiveness?
    Isn't it possible for the same group to meet with various funders of such organizations, share their findings, and make recommendations as to how to better spend the money?
    COMBAT one raises around $20 million every year, much of which is spent on yard signs, picnics, neighborhood clean-up efforts, and other activities which clearly demonstrate a desperate search for any way at all to spend the money.
    Aim4Peace has been a joke from the start.
    NoVa is a bust and is managed by KCPD and the Jackson County prosecutor's office.
    Mothers in Charge hasn't accomplished much of anything.
    Ad Hoc has been around since 1977 and simply stands by and watches as the violence continues to rachet up.
    And who knows how many other "groups" are out there doing whatever they do?
    The levels of violence and murders in KCMO is an emergency and it seems well past time for leadership, collaboration, cooperation, much better utilization of resources, and some accountability for the expenditure of taxpayer money.
    KCMO is becoming a sucking chest wound on the entire region in spite of all of Sly's and the Chamber's wild claims, promises, and pie-in-the-sky fanciful ideas.
    Time to get serious.

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  26. KCPD sucks.

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  27. @6:56 - EXCELLENT COMMENT!

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  28. Fuck the local control debate. When the hell are we going to move KCPD into this millennium?

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  29. @6:56 mentioned New York City, which has done a great deal to successfully reduce the level of violent crime.

    NYC credits its policy of "QUALITY OF LIFE POLICING" as being the cornerstone for the success of its efforts. This policy is simple, it merely involves ENFORCING the laws. This means writing traffic tickets, parking tickets, tickets for excessive noise, illegal dumping, littering, all those "little" things that erode the "quality of life". Enforcement of these laws has been shown to flow upward, causing a decrease in the level of crime, apparently by making things noticeably better, and thus causing the citizens to "buy in" to the program, report violations more frequently, and eventually develop a sense of trust, respect and cooperation with the Police and Courts.

    If you are willing to accept such a thing, in other words if YOU are willing to obey the law, then something similar might be worth trying here. It works in other places, surely we aren't impossibly worse than they are.

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