KCK mayor announces task force to help improve relations between community and police
Kansas City, Kansas, Mayor David Alvey on Monday announced a new initiative seeking to strengthen relations between police and the community amid a larger national conversation about police forces and funding.
Alvey unveiled the Task Force on Community and Police Relations on Monday morning at City Hall surrounded by most members of the eight-person task force intended to build dialogue between law enforcement and the city’s minority communities.
“The objective is to help build and strengthen trust between the community and law enforcement by identifying issues, perceptions, and challenges to that trust that exist today, creating awareness of these issues, and providing a vehicle and forum in which this information will be distributed and shared with law enforcement, local officials, and the community as a whole,” said Mike Taylor, public relations director for the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas, in a news release.
Unified Government commissioner Harold Johnson, who co-chairs the committee with Alvey, said just because George Floyd wasn’t a Wyandotte County resident doesn’t mean the department doesn’t need to take a closer look at its culture and practice. Floyd was recently killed after a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
“America had a breathing problem, and that breathing problem stems from an epidemic of inequity, violence and racism, and when one of us can’t breathe, then none of us can breathe,” Johnson said.
Alvey said the group, which hopes to begin meeting in the next couple of weeks, will not act as a “one-time listening session.”
Interim Kansas City, Kansas, Police Chief Michael York said the department adopted a community policing model in the early 1990s. Today, this includes 20 full-time officers.
This is a solid foundation, Said York, who is also a member of the task force, “however, there is room for improvement and we need to get there.”
The Rev. Tony Carter Jr. of Salem Missionary Baptist Church, emphasized the task force will be a community effort.
“I heard the chief say we’re ready to make some changes,” said Carter, also on the task force. “I pray we’re ready to make some drastic changes, some drastic improvements, because that’s what it’s going to take for us to get through this pandemonium we’re seeing and to get through these difficult times.”
When asked whether the task force will change the police department, including defunding as is being discussed in cities such as Minneapolis, the mayor said every topic and possibility is on the table for consideration.
But, he also defended law enforcement’s authority to implement appropriate use of force when combined with extensive training.
“Police officers obviously have to be able to use the force that is necessary to protect and serve because if we don’t give them that capacity then people are in danger,” Alvey said. “But it has to be the right measure of force. Only what is necessary.”
Johnson agreed that they will consider all possibilities, after he was asked about the possibility of defunding the department.
A woman in the crowd asked why no young black men were on the task force. The mayor said they aren’t trying to exclude anyone.
She also asked how the task force would address injustices and misbehavior in the police department.
“We’re not perfect. We make mistakes and we learn by our mistakes,” York said. “But this is a step in the right direction, what we’re doing today, because there are issues.”
He encouraged Wyandotte County residents reach out to him with their concerns.
Other members of the task force include Donnelly College student Yareli Castor, Randy Lopez of the Wyandotte Health Foundation, Donnelly College President Monsignor Stuart Swetland and Wyandotte County Sheriff Don Ash.
City Hall protest
About an hour after Alvey announced the task force, about 40 protesters gathered outside City Hall with a list of demands for their local police department.
Khadijah Hardaway helped organize the Monday morning protest with More2 (More Squared) and Proclaiming Pride KC. Hardaway, 46, said while a task force is a good start, “complete reform” is a better solution.
The protesters held signs listing three demands for their local officials: Authorizing an outside investigation of former detective Roger Golubski; the creation of an independent, bilingual hotline for victims of police misconduct; and community involvement in the hiring of police chiefs.
Hardaway said they have presented these demands to the department in the past.
“We’ve had these conversations before,” she said. “Same questions with different amounts of urgency because nobody around the country was protesting. Well now the noise is being made.”
Hardaway encouraged more Missourians to join protesters in Kansas.
”We should scratch each others’ back,” she said. “I have that idea that no man is left behind and Wyandotte will not be left behind.”
This story was originally published June 8, 2020 at 11:08 AM.
