How will Lee’s Summit police regroup after Downtown Days chaos, cancellation?
After three years of disruptions culminated in a series of fights at Downtown Days in Lee’s Summit this weekend, the Lee’s Summit Police Department said it planned to revisit security procedures for the city’s largest festival.
Now, the department won’t have that venue to prove it can improve its response.
The Board of Directors of Downtown Lee’s Summit Main Street announced this week that Downtown Days will not return to the city in 2027.
This year’s event ended with a rash of fights among teenagers Saturday night that took law enforcement nearly two hours to shut down, with multiple jurisdictions called in to respond.
As of Tuesday, no injuries were reported and no charges have been filed against any of the teens involved in the ruckus at Downtown Days, though two were temporarily detained.
At least one teen allegedly brought a 3-D printed “ghost gun” to the event, police previously told The Star, while another brought bear spray and allegedly unleashed it into the crowd.
Newly elected Lee’s Summit Mayor Beto Lopez issued a statement Tuesday night calling the incidents at Downtown Days “unfortunate” and saying that the tone of the event did not reflect ongoing efforts to make Lee’s Summit a “public safety-minded city”.
“This incident does not define our city or reflect who we are,” Lopez said. “Lee’s Summit is a strong, thriving community… It is extremely unfortunate that this occurred at the end of what was otherwise a great weekend.”
The department’s policies for large-scale public events will be tested again soon as tourists begin to arrive in Lee’s Summit and the Kansas City area for the 2026 World Cup.
Lee’s Summit Police Department spokesperson Kelly Johnson said Sunday that the department had discussed event safety ahead of time after incidents at the past two Downtown Days, which proved to be less violent than this year’s event.
“We had more enforcement there in personnel, in drones, in security cameras,” Johnson said. “Presence is what we have to do in those situations.”
However, Johnson said, police were unprepared to sustain a response on foot as multiple fights broke out in different areas of the festival Saturday night.
Johnson previously said that a series of fights, not necessarily connected to each other, started around 7:40 p.m. and continued for an hour and a half. Local law enforcement responded to the chaos by calling in backup from both the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office and the Missouri State Highway Patrol, The Star previously reported.
Security staffing plans
Downtown Days has been taking place in Lee’s Summit for nearly 40 years. According to the organizing group Downtown Lee’s Summit Main Street, the early summer event is typically popular, drawing about 80,000 people in an average year.
The event was initially intended to help revitalize downtown Lee’s Summit, said Donnie Rodgers, director of the Main Street group. When it started in 1989, the city’s now-thriving commercial district was marked by 18 vacant properties.
In a Sunday news briefing, Johnson and Rodgers said that the event was staffed by 20 LSPD officers plus thirteen private security officers through Titan Security. They were joined by two police drones and a camera trailer.
When the fighting started, LSPD called the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office, which sent two deputies, Johnson said Sunday. The fights, Johnson said, were largely concentrated in the entrance area to the festival, and officers split their focus between breaking up fights and evacuating other festival attendees.
LSPD initially also called the Missouri State Highway Patrol to send officers, Johnson said, but the department rescinded its request later Sunday evening.
Johnson said that officers activated their Tasers and threatened to discharge pepper spray but did not follow through with either tactic. However, video footage captured at the event and obtained by The Star seems to show officers pinning teens to the ground, handcuffing at least one.
Johnson said Sunday that the video with the widest circulation on social media, which shows an officer pressing a teenager to the ground with all four limbs, was attempting to protect the teen from other assailants at the time.
Officers “easily outnumbered”
Johnson said Sunday that during large public events like this, officers are typically assigned to festival coverage alongside typical downtown patrol, while others stand by monitoring feeds from mobile camera units. Those in the area who are on their normal routes can be sent to “flood” festival routes if necessary, which is how LSPD’s response started to shape up Saturday, she said.
She said that the number of officers assigned to the festival has “absolutely” increased over the years, but noted that as the fights multiplied and spread throughout Downtown Days, the police presence was stretched thin.
Officers were “easily outnumbered” Saturday despite the evolving response from multiple jurisdictions.
“We’re on foot, we’re moving through large crowds,” Johnson said. “We can’t just leave the problem that just existed, so some officers are there.”
KCTV5 previously reported that last year’ event had 20-30 officers and three camera trailers used along with drones to monitor the crowd. Union Pacific also provides security officers to patrol the train tracks in downtown Lee’s Summit during the festival, Johnson said Sunday.
This year’s Downtown Days festival was also an hour shorter, Johnson said, though that change was made by event organizers and not directly by the LSPD. Some larger carnival rides were also excluded from this year’s festivities in an attempt to tone things down, Johnson said.
“We thought closing at 9 o’clock would help a lot more, reducing the hours to reduce the potential late-night shenanigans,” Rodgers said. “Unfortunately, I think they started earlier this year.”
Years of disruption
The disruptions at this year’s Downtown Days carried over from 2024 and 2025, where shouts of “gun” could be heard in the crowd.
Police told KTV5 last year that they believed the false warnings were part of a viral internet hoax involving yelling “gun” or “run” at large public events to cause crowd chaos.
“That seems to be a tactic of drama,” Johnson said. “We’ve seen that any time there’s a group of teenagers, they’ll yell ‘gun’ so everybody will start running.”
Johnson said that this year’s fights did not seem related to past years’ issues and were potentially more personal. If charges do follow, Johnson said, they will be handed down through family court, which could take several weeks.
“They seemed like disturbances, like actual fighting between groups of people,” Johnson said.
Residents of all ages have taken to the Internet to mourn the end of the decades-long event, which some describe as one of the only Lee’s Summit-specific events designed for young people to explore downtown independently.
Vendors have also taken to social media to mourn profit losses, saying that the security risks and general pandemonium alienated some customers and led to lower sales figures.
“Downtown Days is the #1 weekend of the year for my business,” resident Foster Huggins wrote on social media Tuesday. “This is highly disappointing. I understand the chaos from this past weekend, but I feel like there has to be another way to still support our local small businesses while also creating a safe environment.”
The Star’s Eleanor Nash contributed reporting.
