How bad is crime in Kansas City? If you believe recent international headlines, we’re a “Mad Max-style hellhole,” a reference to the post-apocalyptic movie franchise. Ouch.

I grant in the piece that the headline came from a news outlet known for being sensationalist, but as Kansas City prepares to host the World Cup in 2026, our international reputation is important.

Speaking to Pete Mundo on KCMO Talk Radio the morning of May 23, Mayor Quinton Lucas, just back from a junket to Qatar, said this [at 2:32]:

Of course the Qataris were very interested in saying, “we can send people over, free of charge, to come help you.” I’ll make sure I have a chat with [KC Police] Chief Stacey Graves and some of the others before we do that, but, [it’s a] well-resourced country.

That statement came right after a discussion about transportation, but Chief Graves does not handle city transportation, nor does she serve on the board of KC2026, the committee formed to organize efforts to host the 2026 FIFA event. It appears the mayors’ understanding was that the Qataris were expressing a security concern and offering to send assistance.

Federal law does not permit foreign nationals to exercise any police powers on U.S. soil. While there may be plenty of coordination among governments and their law enforcement agencies prior to events like the World Cup, I doubt that would be handled by the hosting city’s police chief.

Just as Mayor Lucas would have been in no position to coordinate security with a foreign entity, it’s possible that the Qatari making the offer was in no position to provide it. I don’t know.

What is clear, even if Lucas doesn’t realize the implication of the offer, is that Kansas City is seen internationally as a place that cannot provide public safety to its own citizens or international visitors. That won’t be solved by advertising on buses in London, but by competent management of city resources—something we have yet to see.

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The mayor is not a small player in Kansas City policing. As I argued in 2018, “No Missourian has more power over policing in Kansas City than the mayor,” so it’s a matter of concern when the mayor is promulgating incorrect numbers.

First, note that the blue columns in each chart seem to show police funding. The labels in the bottom show two years because the city’s fiscal year runs from May 1 to April 30 the following year. But the totals do not match police funding in the city’s annual reports. No explanation for the discrepancy was given.

Kansas City Councilmember (and former Show-Me Institute intern) Nathan Willett issued his own tweet regarding the mayor’s numbers, pointing out that a slightly different version of the slide failed to adjust for inflation. Were the numbers so adjusted, he pointed out, the chart would show Kansas City has yet to get back to pre-pandemic police funding levels.

One of the slides details crime numbers each year, such as homicides. Assuming that these depict calendar year crimes, as opposed to the fiscal year spending numbers on which they are superimposed, they still don’t match police crime stats.

The most embarrassing slide is the one examining priority call times. I wasn’t able to quickly find the numbers they refer to, but the times on the line chart are clearly wrong. The Priority 1 Response Times (in yellow) can’t be both 8:36 in ‘19/20 and in ‘20/21, because they are placed in different places on the line graph. And the 6:95 listed in the Priority 2 Response Times (in red) isn’t even a time.

I asked Mayor Lucas for the source of the information on the chart after the Public Safety Committee meeting on Tuesday night. He told me to file an open records request with his office. In Kansas City, that seems a polite way of saying “get lost.”

I don’t know the purpose these charts are meant to serve. But they don’t reflect a command of the facts on this issue.

The post Kansas City Mayor Gets Basic Policing Numbers Wrong appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The piece featured a quote from the mayor bemoaning the passage of Amendment 4 in Missouri, which required the city to up its spending on the police from 20% to 25%. The author begins with a quote from the mayor:

“The current system doesn’t work. We need more accountability, not less . . . We need more innovations in policing, not less.” Lucas explained that he doesn’t believe an increase in funding for the KCPD will be useful in countering rising violent crime.

This is interesting because in his latest budget, Mayor Lucas was eager for the Kansas City Police Department to significantly increase salaries for existing officers as well as new hires. Why would he want that if he didn’t think it would be useful?

The Pitch, perhaps to back up the mayor’s reaction to Amendment 4, offers the following:

A body of evidence shows that increasing police funding has no major impact on reducing local crime rates. One of the tropes used during the campaign for Amendment 4 was the need to fund the KCPD while skewing the increase in homicide rates in Kansas City to present the Lucas administration and the Kansas City Council as far-left partisans who care not for the safety of their constituents.

The first link (“body”) is to a page of Human Rights Watch. It doesn’t expressly conclude that police funding doesn’t reduce crime. Instead, it provides a two-stage yet still heavily qualified claim:

Studies show that investing in health care, housing, universal basic income, child care, universal pre-K, and public safety programs outside the criminal legal system infrastructure would reduce poverty and inequality, and research suggests, is likely to improve community safety. [emphasis added]

All of that may be true. But plenty—in fact most—people living in poverty and suffering inequality do not commit crime. Policing is about getting criminals off the street and deterring crime. And we know that the most common victims of crime are exactly those same poor people.

The second two links (“evidence shows” and “Increasing police funding has no major impact”) are about a single study of the 20 largest cities in Canada. Those may be compelling. But I suspect the dynamics of crime and policing between the United States and our neighbor to the north are sufficiently different to be unhelpful for Kansas City.

The last link (“reducing local crime rates”) has nothing to do with the relationship between crime and police funding. The article merely makes the argument that many places accused of defunding the police have actually increased police funding.

Instead, consider the conclusion of a 2018 study conducted by Princeton University, titled, “More COPS, Less Crime.” The author examined the impact that federal COPS funding (Community Oriented Policing Services) had on crime and concluded, without qualification, “one officer-year was added for every $95,000 spent by the federal government and that the social benefit associated with the ensuing crime reduction [was] on the order of $350,000.”

Another paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in 2020 concludes, without qualification, “Each additional police officer abates approximately 0.1 homicides.”

Issues surrounding crime and law enforcement are not easily settled. They are made even more complicated by partisan politics. I suspect Mayor Lucas knows better than what he claimed, and The Pitch should be a little more thorough with its facts and research.

The post The Pitch’s Half-hearted Crime Research appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

And what’s being done? Judging from the latest press conference held by the police chief and mayor yesterday, not much:

The Violent Crime Reduction Initiative first unveiled at a news conference in mid-May and doubled down on by officials Wednesday after the latest spike in violence involves what’s described as an aggressive collaboration between police and a host of other groups, who have ventured into some of the poorest neighborhoods to knock on doors, offering social services, and promising enhanced city services to further spread the gospel of crime prevention.

Several community activists and those working with KCPD say the new strategy encourages more collaboration between police and local organizations. But they also say it’s not all that new of a concept. Others are even less optimistic, pointing to a fractured relationship between police and the community, and a focus on criminals instead of the underlying causes of violence. [Emphasis mine]

With continuing attempts at defunding the police, city leaders have done a bang-up job of making Kansas City less safe. While I’m as big a booster as any of my hometown, it’s become increasingly isolated from the rest of the state in its effort to adopt California’s prerogatives rather than Missouri’s.

Like most things involving human interactions, Kansas City’s crime problem is complex. But it shouldn’t take, or appear to take, a professional sports team considering a new home in a neighboring city and county for Kansas City officials to get serious about their most fundamental charge of public safety. Sure, it may be more fun as a government official to show up to parades and wear construction helmets at groundbreakings, but the hard work of governing is far more mundane—and far more important—than waving a pennant during winning years and taking credit by proxy for the athletes assembled by the city’s professional sports franchises.

Kansas City officials need to get back to basics—not just to keep the Royals, but because it’s what they owe all their citizens. We’ll see if it’s too late to keep the baseball team, but to hear the governor talk about it, it’s possible that cake is already baked.

The post Kansas City Leaders Need to Get a Handle on Crime Situation—Now appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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City leaders’ influence over policing was confirmed when I spoke to a number of former members of the police board last year. And it was confirmed again when Kansas City Police Chief Rick Smith was interviewed this week by KCMO Radio’s Pete Mundo. Smith said (starts at 3:44):

We’re still funded by the city. So we still talk with the city manager and go through the budget process just as every other department head in the city does. We go through this process and talk about, “hey, where can we make gains, where can we not?” The last two years we’ve had additional officers, it’s been a handful.  Sometimes it’s 25; I think last year a dozen. We’re getting some, it’s just slow.

There are plenty of discussions to be had about what ought to be done to help the Kansas City police better respond to rising crime rates, and not all of it can be done through policing. But we know that policing matters and specifically that increasing the number of police reduces homicides. The fact that the number of police in Kansas City has fallen during a years-long spike in homicides is unconscionable. Whatever policies are adopted to combat this increase, it is good to know that those charged with making the decisions understand how policy is made.

The post Kansas City Controls Its Police Department appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The three-mile route opened in August, running along Armour Boulevard in Midtown. Advocated for by groups such as BikeWalkKC, the $700,000 project was highly praised by both city officials and the media. However, the lack of foresight in planning these lanes quickly became evident.

Protected bike lanes, where bikers ride in between the curb and a row of parked cars, have the potential to help keep riders safer than they would be if they were in the main traffic lane, side-by-side with moving cars. According to a story from KSHB news, some residents have complained of extremely limited visibility when turning out of cross streets onto Armour Boulevard. But the same story noted that the Kansas City Police Department had not seen an increase in accidents along the road where the bike lanes were added, so cyclists and drivers seem to have been fortunate so far.

The onset of winter, however, has revealed another problem, as the lanes have been obstructed—first by large piles of leaves, and later by snow and ice, rendering them unsafe and almost unusable. Many bikers are using the popular neighborhood site Nextdoor to vent their frustration:

“I had to be in the middle of the street on Armour on my daily morning bike commute, which completely defeats the purpose of the bike lanes…Everyone seems to have a problem with these new bike lanes, myself included, and I’m a cyclist!”

The need to keep the new bike lanes cleared should hardly be a surprise. People continue to bike, whether to work or for fun, year-round – not just during the warm months. It takes only common sense to recognize that bike lanes, just like streets for motor vehicles, need maintenance and upkeep if they are to remain usable in bad weather. But as the picture above shows, there’s little evidence that bike lane got any attention after the snowfall earlier this month. (And yes, that snow-covered area just to the right of the row of cars really is the bike lane.)

No one wants to see cyclists put at risk, whether by motor-vehicle traffic or by treacherous bike paths. But spending over half a million dollars on a bike path—especially one that is rendered useless by bad weather—is hard to justify. According to a 2016 report from the League of American Bicyclists, only 0.4 percent of Kansas City commuters ride their bikes to work. I don’t know what fraction of those riders take this specific stretch of Armour Boulevard, but we aren’t talking about a large number of riders.

I hope that in the future, city leaders will think carefully about the benefits and costs, and the future obligations, that come with projects like the Armour Boulevard bike lanes.

The post There’s a Bike Lane Around Here Somewhere appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

“There is still work to do because even one homicide is too many,” [Mayor] James said. “But I have faith in the collaborative and strategic approach of KC NoVa. This year’s data tells us that so far we are making great strides in the right direction.”

Fast forward to today—after years of a nation-leading spike in homicides (currently #5 in the nation with 108 in 2018 as of this writing)—and those same people seem to want to deny any affiliation with policing. The mayor, whose role as a member of the police board was highlighted in 2014, seems to shrug off any role in policing today. In a KCPT panel discussion about the 50th anniversary of the Kansas City Race Riots, moderator Nick Haines raises a question about minority hiring in the police department, “Mayor, you’re on the police commission.” James responds, “Yes . . . and…?” to laughs from the audience. (Starts at 35:32.)

In a more recent press conference, Mayor James complained bitterly about lack of gun control legislation and political ideology in the state legislature. But as a recent KSHB report on homicides made clear, there is no evidence that Jackson County, Missouri, has significantly more gun ownership than, say, Johnson County, Kansas, or that gun ownership in Kansas City has increased over the same time frame that homicides have spiked. It’s not the guns.

There is research, however, that indicates that increasing the number of police officers does reduce crime. KSHB’s Andy Alcock makes that point in his report, too. In fact, according to FBI statistics, Kansas City has fewer police officers per capita than all other cities with high homicide rates. What’s worse, since 2011, the number of uniformed police officers in Kansas City has declined.

As I laid out in a Kansas City Star guest column, no one in Missouri has more power over policing in Kansas City than the mayor’s office. What is lacking is not power, but will. And until Kansas City leaders get serious about adopting policies and policing methods that actually contribute to reductions in violent crime, we are figuratively whistling past an ever-growing graveyard.

The post Kansas City’s Unrelenting and Unaddressed Homicide Problem appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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In 1939 the power to appoint members of the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners was given to the governor in order to combat rampant local corruption. Kansas City is the only major city in United States whose local elected political leadership does not control the police. In speaking with several former members of the Board of Police Commissioners—appointed by different governors and serving at different times with different mayors—I learned that governors are not all powerful nor are mayors powerless.

First, the observation that the Kansas City police department lacks local control is misleading. Members of the commission, including a seat reserved for the sitting mayor, are all local figures who must be residents of Kansas City. The tradition for appointing commissioners is to choose people who already have distinguished themselves in the community—thus reducing the chance that people use their position as a political platform. And while the appointments are made by the governor with Senate approval, none of the former commissioners with whom I spoke ever felt as if they were serving a gubernatorial agenda. Some reported hearing from the governor’s office about every 12 to 18 months, and then just to be kept abreast of lawsuits. Despite the power of appointment, Republican and Democrat governors alike do not exercise significant authority over the KC police in practice.

While the police board provides local control, they do not represent local political control. In other cities, police chiefs must be wary of municipal politics and palace intrigue that can only distract them from their main concern: public safety. In Kansas City, police chiefs are a step removed from politics because they do not owe their position directly to elected officials.

None of this is to say that the mayor does not have a significant amount of power. Commissioners all indicated that there was deference given to the various mayors who served on the commission—even though their level of participation varied. For example, Mayor Funkhouser was engaged in police processes. Mayor Berkeley was attentive but passive. Mayor Barnes’ attendance was sporadic and picked up toward the end of her tenure.

Though Kansas City has a city manager form of government, the mayor has one power that researchers have found is among the most consequential any mayor can have: the veto. While a mayoral veto can be overridden by the vote of 9 councilmembers, it presents him with a great deal of influence over legislation—including the budget of each city department. What greater power over local policing could there be than the budget?

If a mayor wanted the police department to hire more social workers, hire more uniformed officers and/or provide more and different training, decrease the number of officers with take-home cruisers, or increase foot patrols and community policing, he has a great amount of leverage to do so. The power of the purse makes the mayor a more consequential figure than any single governor, any single police board commissioner, any single police chief. No Missourian has more power over policing in Kansas City than the mayor—should he wish to use it.

The current extraordinary challenge to public safety requires an extraordinary response from city leaders. The tools are in place—but will we have the leadership?

The post Who Runs the KCPD? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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This legislative afterthought was brought to mind after reading Councilwoman Teresa’ Loar’s guest column in the Star last month. She wrote.

We have spent an inordinate amount of time on this issue [building a new single airport terminal] at City Hall. And while it is very important, we are neglecting areas that are critical. Two of those issues that greatly affect all citizens of Kansas City are the escalating homicide rate in our city — currently 30 percent higher than last year — and the impact on families of higher water and sewer bills.

Loar is right; so much political attention is being spent on issues that are not important to Kansas City families. As this is being written, there have been 85 homicides in Kansas City, 50% higher than last year, the highest so far in a three-year spike. What good is a new airport terminal or a convention hotel if Kansas City has a national reputation for homicide? What could be more important than getting a handle on murders?

Our mayor likes to complain that Kansas City is the only major city in the country that does not control its own police board. But the mayor is not without his own considerable power over policing. In addition to sitting on the Board of Police Commissioners ex officio, Mayor James has veto power over the city budget. Not a dime is spent by any Kansas City department—including the police department—without his tacit approval. There is no greater power any politician can have than the power of the purse. Yet this power isn’t exercised to tackle the hard problem of violent crime; no, it is spent pursuing civic luxury items our city neither needs not can afford.  

If the city officials at 414 East 12th Street have trouble focusing on their priorities, perhaps they ought to ask themselves with each ordinance, “How does this help reduce the number of homicides in Kansas City?” Would that be good for the children? Most definitely yes. 

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But the Kansas City of right now is floundering. Our population growth is flat and our economic growth is weak. We’re in the midst of a years-long spike in the homicide rate, which is one of the nation’s highest. As The Sentinel pointed out in a recent article, “in Kansas City you were seven times more likely to be murdered than you were in New York City.” Though Chicago grabs headlines for having had an almost-unfathomable 762 homicides in 2016, The Sentinel points out, “Chicago is only 4 percent more lethal. There is no solace in that.”

How did we get where we are? The question seems unanswerable. One answer may be police resources.  The Sentinel tells us that New York has “more than twenty times as many police officers to handle those killings. In sum, the NYPD had seven times more officers per homicide than the KCPD.” Meanwhile, the Kansas City police department annual reports show that there are fewer officers in uniform today then there were in 2009. While the new city budget includes an increase for public safety, it is not clear if this would allow for new officers to be hired, or if the police and fire departments are spending efficiently.

To no one’s surprise, The New York Times reports that high crime hinders economic and population growth. New research indicates that:

when violent crime falls sharply, wealthier and educated people are more likely to move into lower-income and predominantly minority urban neighborhoods….

 “When cities feel safer, that opens people’s eyes,” Ms. Ellen said of the willingness of new groups to consider these neighborhoods.

All the subsidized coffee shops and condominiums will be for nothing if the city is unable to deal with runaway crime. And tax increases to spur development will likely fail if the basic safety needs of a community are neglected. What Kansas City needs is not more wide-eyed development schemes, but more effort delivering basic services efficiently and effectively, if we are to have any hope at growth.

The post Kansas City, Economic Development, and Homicide appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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The Kansas City office had been struggling with its finances, a difficult time made worse because key members of its small administrative staff were in ill physical health.

Nearly 30 percent of NAMI-KC’s revenue came from a share of the Jackson County Community Mental Health Fund tax levy.

Robertson does not mention that due to an extension of The Kansas City Star’s property tax abatement, the paper of record does not pay into the mental health fund levy. Nor does he mention that the Community Mental Health Fund did not receive over $891,000 in 2015 alone due to Tax Increment Financing (TIF) and tax abatements in Jackson County. (The Star’s 15-year extension is worth $245,000 alone!) Those funds are kept by property owners or diverted back to developers.

Defenders of Kansas City’s development policies respond that this money was never being collected in the first place, so it isn’t fair to say that it’s being taken away from schools, libraries, or the mental health fund. Once the TIF or abatement is ended, they say, those funds will be better off than before. But this ignores the specifics of the Star, which sought to extend a 10-year abatement for another 15 years.

Supporters of such subsidies also give too much credit to TIF policy for driving up property values. A study by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill looked at TIF policy in Chicago and found that

After controlling for potential selection bias in TIF assignment, this paper shows that TIF ultimately fails the “but-for” test and shows no evidence of increasing tangible economic development benefits for local residents.

Developers are reaping a windfall from development subsidies in Kansas City. That money is diverted from other worthy causes, notably schools and mental health services. When publicly funded organizations like NAMI-KC are forced to shut their doors, the blame lies largely at the feet of pro-development policymakers.

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The report includes numerous violations of public records and public meeting requirements. The following government bodies failed to abide by the proper procedure for making meetings closed to the public:

• Gentry County
• City of Savannah
• Ste. Genevieve County
• City of Liberal
• Southern Dallas County Fire Protection District
• Daviess County
• City of Brentwood
• Department of Public Safety/State Emergency Management Agency
• City of Buckner
• City of Diamond
• Cedar County
• Caldwell County
• McDonald County
• Lake Lotawana Community Improvement District
• Vernon County
• Montgomery County
• Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners
• Clark County
• Stone County
• The School District of Springfield, R-XII
• Monarch Fire Protection District
• Natural Resources/Soil and Water Conservation Program
• Higher Education/Southeast Missouri State University
• Madison County

Most of the government bodies that failed to keep meetings open were cities and counties, but some of these bodies, including the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners, the Department of Public Safety/State Emergency Management Agency, and the Southern Dallas County Fire Protection District, are charged with ensuring public safety. The Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners, for example, failed to comply with the provisions of Missouri law that require a body in a closed meeting to properly document issues discussed, to discuss only authorized topics during the closed meeting, and to properly disclose the final disposition of matters discussed in closed sessions.

Government bodies have the power to deprive us of life, liberty, and property. They are charged with providing public safety and education services that Missourians depend on. They are given the power to extract payment for these services whether an individual wants them or not. The open government requirements of Missouri’s Sunshine Law are essential safeguards against abuse of government power.

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First, its charge of being an ‘adult discussion’ about building a new $1.5 billion terminal at MCI seems hollow, as the Kansas City mayor and City Council already have urged the Aviation Department to go ahead with its plans anyway.

Second, the first meeting, held two weeks ago at Union Station, was marred when Kansas City police escorted opponents of the plan off the premises. Meanwhile, just a few feet away, group leader Bob Berkebile was telling participants that the meeting was to be open to the public regardless of their view on the matter. Oops.

Now, according to the Kansas City Star, the task force is to meet again on Tuesday, and again in the Stillwell Room at Union Station. Union Station officials issued a statement saying it is a private space — despite receiving millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies — and so, they say, Union Station officials can set special rules about whether the public can enter the building and under what circumstances . . . even when there’s literally a “public meeting” taking place within its walls.

If the city is serious about listening to the task force, it ought to halt the Aviation Department from spending money on a new terminal pending a committee conclusion. If the task force is serious about its job of involving various views, it ought to seek and receive public assurances from Union Station that it will respect the rights of the public to attend public meetings.

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Since January 2009, accidents increased at 11 of 17 monitored intersections, and fatal crashes increased at 13 of those locations. Kansas City is not the first to see this happen with its red light camera program. The Star interviewed University of Illinois at Chicago Assistant Professor Rajiv Shah, who studied a red light camera program in Chicago:

“I’d say [Kansas City’s results are] very consistent with what cities across America have found . . . There’s really not a hard connection between reducing accidents and red-light cameras.”

The results of this study should have red light camera proponents reevaluating their positions. As we have pointed out before, red light cameras have many problems: they invade privacy and create a constitutionally suspect presumption of guilt. They are also prone to mistake. Brenda Talent, executive director of the Show-Me Institute, was fined for a violation she did not commit in Kansas City last year, and 1,000 lucky drivers were falsely accused of running red lights in Arnold, Mo., just two weeks ago.

Not surprisingly, American Traffic Solutions, the company that runs the program, publicly criticized the police department’s findings. ATS identified weather patterns, impaired drivers, and cell phone usage as the cause for increased wrecks. In other words, ATS identified anything but the red light cameras, which the company receives $1.6 million a year to operate, as the culprit for the increased crashes.

Despite the police study, it is likely that camera proponents will not rest. The Star editorial focused on a study by city engineers that found a decrease in total violations at monitored intersections. The Star praised the decrease in violations and declared that “red light cameras are working in Kansas City.” Fewer people running red lights, maybe; but if more accidents are occurring at monitored intersections, it is a stretch to conclude that red light cameras improve safety just because total violations have dropped.

Much to the dismay of proponents like the Star, the police study just confirmed what we already knew. Red light cameras are not about public safety, they are about generating revenue through traffic enforcement. The program has been very lucrative in Kansas City. The police study reports that officers have written nearly 200,000 tickets at $100 per ticket — adding $20 million to the city coffers.

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