Mayor’s revived push to have Kansas City police patrol KCI airport faces opposition
During a year in which both police resources and municipal budget concerns occupy the public spotlight, a proposal — some say a costly one — to move Kansas City Police Department officers to patrol Kansas City International Airport is attracting scrutiny.
Mayor Quinton Lucas and Councilwoman Teresa Loar, 2nd District at-large, introduced a resolution in June to have the city manager come up with a plan to replace KCI’s current police force with KCPD officers.
The move would not affect passenger screening performed through the Transportation Security Administration, or TSA.
The discussion isn’t new to Kansas City. Officials have considered the idea on and off for years and went as far as hiring a consulting firm to study the issue in 2003. The firm determined it would cost more and not improve service.
But Lucas said he has believed for years that having KCPD officers there would be best for the sake of public safety.
“I continue to think as a substantive matter, it’s better to have your most trained law enforcement at the airport,” Lucas said, adding that KCPD officers train for large-scale attacks.
KCPD has a patrol station near the airport terminal just off Interstate 29.
Having KCPD take over the operations, Lucas said, would allow the city to shift some of those officers to the Aviation Department’s budget. He said he started thinking about the idea again earlier this year because Police Chief Rick Smith told him officers respond to incidents at KCI but are not compensated by the Aviation Department.
“Right now, the police department budget’s just eating that, (which) has created, I think, a budget challenge,” Lucas said.
Police officers at KCI, who make up an independent police service, are certified through the Missouri Peace Officer Standards and Training program, which licenses law enforcement in the state. There are 96 total staff in the airport police division, 50 of whom are law enforcement officers.
Public safety takes up a significant portion of the city’s strained general fund, which has taken a hit because of the economic downturn caused by the spread of coronavirus.
But Lucas said he didn’t think it was fair to say it was solely a budget issue.
Aviation officials and the airlines that serve KCI have been consistently opposed to the idea because of cost and a concern that using airport funds to pay for KCPD officers might run afoul of Federal Aviation Administration rules regarding diverting revenue from airports.
Southwest Airlines, KCI’s largest airline by passenger volume, was not keen on the idea. In a statement, a Southwest spokesman said the proposal would add to the cost of the airline doing business at KCI. That cost, he said, would be passed along to travelers, which Southwest thought would be “irresponsible” to do given the ongoing impact of the coronavirus.
“According to a recent study, this move could cost the airlines up to $4 million more than what we are paying today for the same policing duties,” said Dan Landson, the Southwest spokesman
Right now, the proposal is stalled. The council’s Transportation, Infrastructure and Operations Committee passed it 4-1 in June, but the full council put off voting. Lucas said discussions are ongoing.
Since that time, Lucas’ office also received a letter from the FAA asking the city to slow down.
“The (FAA) commenced a revenue use audit of Kansas City International Airport, which has not been finalized,” the letter says. “In view of the pending issues that arose during the audit, the FAA is presently in dialogue with the airport to resolve these issues expeditiously.”
Lucas said he didn’t know what issues arose in the audit.
Kansas City Aviation Director Pat Klein in January sent a letter to interim city manager Earnest Rouse about the proposal, which The Star obtained through a Missouri Sunshine Law request. The letter said the proposal would increase annual costs at KCI somewhere in the range of $3 million to $7 million. The letter said that was primarily due to increases in salary classifications for taking on KCPD officers and doesn’t include costs of retirement payouts and equipment.
“KCAD does not see any service level benefits from moving our officers to KCPD officers to justify such dramatic changes,” Klein’s letter said.
In an interview Friday, Klein said the cost increase is likely around $4 million annually, a figure that he said would be borne by the airlines that use KCI.
“That’s where the airlines are like, why would we do this?” Klein said.
In June, several airlines that serve KCI, including Southwest, wrote to the City Council that they were “greatly concerned about a potential shift in any service providers that would increase the airlines’ cost to operate at KCI without a known need or increase in service.”
“The airlines simply cannot accept any cost increases during a time when the aviation industry is fighting for survival,” the letter says.
Lucas didn’t see that as a reason to keep KCI’s current police force.
“I guess they’re saying, ‘Hey, we pay our people less, so therefore it’s problematic to have higher-paid people that may have more training at the airport,’” Lucas said. “That just seems the opposite of what actually is the public safety mission.”
The nature of policing at the airport is different, Klein said. He said that while airport police do occasionally deal with crime at KCI, much of the work involves getting drivers off the curb at pick-up and drop-off areas and guiding passengers through the terminals.
“We do have crime, but it’s not a lot of crime,” Klein said. “It’s a different philosophy.”
A KCPD spokesman did not respond to a request for comment about the proposal.
The airport police department is independent; KCAD hires them and sends recruits through the police academy. Officers are not private security contractors.
The proposal poses other issues, Klein said, including to what extent he and other civilian employees at KCI can direct KCPD officers, given the unique and separate governance over KCPD with a state-appointed Board of Police Commissioners.
Lucas called that argument a “red herring.”
“I think Kansas City police officers would know if there is an active shooter how to respond to the situation,” Lucas said. “I think they have shown a willingness to work with many of the different agencies and departments throughout our city.”
When the council’s Transportation, Infrastructure and Operations Committee considered the proposal in June, Councilman Eric Bunch, 4th District, was the lone vote against it.
“I, unlike some of my colleagues...tend to trust the staff,” Bunch said, “and the staff in the Aviation Department said that this is not a good move, this is not supported by the airlines, this is not supported by facts, a study that we’ve done.”
Bunch said Loar framed the issue as a way to reduce the police budget to deal with the economic downturn brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. But he argued in a city with such a severe violent crime problem, that wasn’t a good idea.
“If the problem is that we don’t have enough officers on the street, which is commonly stated, this doesn’t allow us to do that…,” Bunch said. “It’s just making sure that we’re holding the police department harmless in this budget cut.”
A similar issue came up in 2008, which was also the most recent time that an economic downturn posed crippling budget cuts at City Hall. At that time, a proposal was floated to consolidate airport police with the KCPD. Part of the proposal involved having officers stationed at KCI also patrol areas of Kansas City, North.
The airlines caught wind of the proposal and wrote a letter to then-City Manager Wayne Cauthen disputing the propriety of the idea, saying that FAA regulations prohibit using revenues generated by airport functions to support broader community services.
The letter warned that federal authorities could hit City Hall with $50,000 in penalties and lose future federal grants. The proposal was later dropped.
Lucas said KCI was a “vital asset” that needed good security.
“We need to continue to actually police at the airport as well,” Lucas said. “I think they will be a superior department for the KCI Airport.”
