KC mayor, interim police chief head to White House as Biden urges public safety spending
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas and interim Kansas City Police Chief Joe Mabin are going to the White House on Friday to attend an event touting federal funding for law enforcement programs.
Lucas and Mabin will be part of a larger group of mayors and police chiefs as President Joe Biden’s administration is attempting to highlight money they’ve provided to local governments through the American Rescue Plan Act, a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill passed by Congress in March of 2021.
“Honored to return to the White House tomorrow along with @kcpolice Chief Joe Mabin as the President hosts us and mayors and police leaders from Houston, Detroit, Tampa, Tulsa, Toledo and others as we review necessary investments and plans for public safety in our communities,” Lucas posted on Twitter Thursday afternoon.
Lucas and Mabin are set to have a meeting in the West Wing with Biden, according to Morgan Said, Lucas’ chief of staff. They will be joined by senior advisor Gene Sperling and Susan Rice, the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council.
Lucas said they’ll be part of a roundtable discussion on how to support police departments and look at what violence prevention strategies are working elsewhere
Lucas attending the White House event alongside Mabin marks a change from the last two years.
Former Chief Rick Smith attended a ceremony at the White House in 2020, when the Trump administration was announcing a federal program called Operation LeGend. Smith, who stepped down from his role in April, was criticized for attending the Trump event.
Said said Lucas was not invited to the 2020 announcement of Operation LeGend. Hundreds of people in Kansas City protested the operation and called for police budget cuts, just weeks after thousands gathered at the Country Club Plaza for days protesting police brutality.
Lucas said he learned about Operation LeGend on Twitter. A member of his staff had sent a letter with his signature on it the day before to a Justice Department official.
Operation LeGend was named for 4-year-old LeGend Taliferro, who was fatally shot while asleep in a Kansas City apartment in June 2020.
The operation brought more than 200 federal agents to the Kansas City area to focus on solving additional shootings. It included national law enforcement officers from the FBI, the United States Marshals Service, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Already, 400 agents lived and worked in the Kansas City metro.
Lucas said Thursday there was a “stark difference” between the two administrations in their approach and that the Biden administration is interested in collaboration.
“I think what you’re catching from the administration here is trying to get a lasting way that we can have better alignment with law enforcement, with every other department in the city and making communities safer,” Lucas said.
On Friday, Biden will make a speech urging state and local leaders to invest more of the federal money into programs to make the community safer.
Kansas City used $12.4 million to fund the police department’s violent crimes division and used $5 million for hazard pay for police officers. The department will also use $10 million for new police radios and will hire 150 more officers.
The speech comes as Democrats are facing a difficult midterm election and Republicans have been critical of the party’s response to a spike in crime in some major cities.
In the Kansas City metro area in 2021, 244 people were killed, the second highest number of homicides on record. The only year with more recorded homicides was 2020.
There has been a debate in the Democratic Party about the slogan “defund the police,” with some moderates arguing the slogan hurts their election chances. Biden has said several times he does not want to defund the police and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said defunding the police is not the official stance of the Democratic Party.
Still, some progressives like Rep. Cori Bush, a Democrat from St. Louis, have said they will continue to use the phrase as she pushes to move funding from law enforcement to social services.
This story was originally published May 12, 2022 at 3:56 PM.
