Kansas City mayor says Missouri GOP ‘spewing lies’ about local control of police
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas says the Missouri Republican Party is “spewing lies” by linking the push to restore local control of the city’s police department with efforts in other parts of the country to defund the police.
Missouri Republican Party Executive Director Jean Evans released a statement this week accusing presumptive Democratic gubernatorial nominee Nicole Galloway of wanting to defund the police because she supports local control of the Kansas City Police Department.
Evans referred to the push for local control as “an initiative in Kansas City that would transfer power to Democrats who support defunding police departments.”
Lucas called the characterization a “bald-face lie” by “party hacks who aren’t invested in long term conversations about how to make our communities stronger.”
“Nobody in Kansas City government, and certainly not this mayor, has ever suggested local control is some move to defund or dismantle the Kansas City Police Department,” Lucas said.
Eric Slusher, Galloway’s spokesman, told The Star that the Democratic candidate “opposes defunding the police and supports local control of the KCPD.”
“This is the only police department in the state not locally controlled,” Slusher said, “and whether they are under state or local control has no bearing on local funding decisions.”
Kansas City is one of the few large cities in the U.S. that doesn’t have local control of its police department. While Kansas City taxpayers still fund the department, oversight is handled by a state board appointed by the governor.
As mayor, Lucas also sits on the board.
Control of the department was taken away from the city in the 1930s because of Pendergast-era corruption.
The Missouri General Assembly would have to agree to return management of the department to the city, and Lucas wants the issue on the fall ballot so Kansas Citians can decide whether local control should be a legislative priority next year.
Evans insists that the criticism of Galloway is not an indication that the GOP is opposed to local control in Kansas City. Yet she emphasized that the department should not be turned over to the city council because many of its members have “repeatedly taken anti-police actions” and “have not opposed or denounced the ‘defund the police’ movement.”
“We oppose giving more control to anyone who wants to defund the police,” she said.
In an effort to buttress her argument, Evans pointed to the police department’s inclusion in across the board budget cuts proposed in response to plummeting city revenue during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The proposed cut would total nearly $11 million out of the department’s $270 million budget.
Lucas called Evans’ argument proof that the GOP “appear to have no clue of what’s happening in Kansas City.”
He and the council voted in March to increase the Kansas City Police Department’s budget. The recently proposed cuts were suggested by the city manager’s office and finance department, which asked all city agencies to identify cost-savings in the upcoming year due to the economic downturn. The council will still need to review the suggestions.
Evans also pointed to the recent council vote to bar prosecution of nonviolent demonstrators who took to the streets over the last month to protest police brutality, and that one of the council’s 13 members refused to sign a letter thanking the Kansas City Police Department for their service.
And she noted that Lucas appointed someone to the city’s health commission who includes “defund the KCPD” in his twitter handle.
Lucas said he made board appointments “well before the current protest moment, and I’ve appointed numerous current and former members of the Kansas City Police Department to boards and commissions.”
“Defund the police” has become a rallying cry for many protesters in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. While the phrase means different things to different people, it is largely understood to mean reducing police budgets and reallocating the money to areas like education, public health, housing and youth services.
It has also become a political cudgel for Republicans hoping to paint Democrats as anti-police during an election year.
Lucas, who has repeatedly stated that he opposes defunding police departments, said the GOP is distorting Galloway’s record and the facts on the ground in Kansas City.
“My Republican friends are grasping at straws rather than trying to have a real debate on issues,” he said, “and that’s too bad.”
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson has said over the years that the issue of local control is ultimately up to the people of Kansas City. If they decide it’s a priority, Parson has said the question would need to go through the legislative process.
Lucas said he hopes the governor will ultimately abide by the same principles that guided his COVID-19 response, where he resisted calls for statewide action and instead put most authority in the hands of local elected officials.
“As I’ve said time and time again, I commend Gov. Parson for his approach to local control in connection to all our COVID-19 and health issues,” Lucas said. “When it comes to policing or criminal justice, I would hope the governor would have the same perspective.”
Until 2013 St. Louis’ police department was also under state control. But after years of failed efforts to get the legislature to pass local control legislation, GOP mega donor Rex Sinquefield bankrolled a campaign to put the question on the 2012 statewide ballot. It was approved by voters, and the city took control of its police the next year.
This story was originally published July 1, 2020 at 2:19 PM.
