KC Mayor Quinton Lucas sends mixed messages with praise for police and calls for reform
This week, after historic protests against police brutality, Mayor Quinton Lucas wrote a two-page letter to members of the Kansas City Police Department.
“You have more support than you know, from more corners of the community than you may think,” he wrote.
That statement is probably true. Unfortunately, the letter skips over a deeper truth: Without major reform — and without the mayor’s aggressive pursuit of substantial changes in the city’s approach to law enforcement — thousands of Kansas Citians will remain fundamentally skeptical of their police department.
The letter is a distraction from that reality.
This isn’t a popularity contest. The people in the streets want real answers from the police department, and real change — an end to the use of excessive force, no tolerance for police leadership that hides bad officers, more civilian oversight over police behavior and local control of the department.
People who are seeking those changes thought they had a champion in Quinton Lucas. Just last week the mayor was with the protesters, marching, insisting black lives matter, claiming the revolution will not be televised.
“The foundation is rotten, with what we’re dealing with,” he told protesters at City Hall.
Now, many Kansas Citians have reason to doubt the mayor’s views. The Lucas letter seems to absolve rank-and-file officers from any real blame for the violence at the protests, or any systemic racial animus in the department at all.
“You work hard,” the mayor wrote, “and you care about people of all races and backgrounds in our community.”
The families of Terrance Bridges and Ryan Stokes would offer different testimony, and they will be heard, too. The two African American men were shot by Kansas City police officers. They carried no weapons.
If the mayor is committed to police reform, then he must deliver that message to all audiences — instead of hedging when faced with opposition or suggesting to officers that essentially all is well.
In an interview, Lucas said he began drafting a letter to police several weeks ago, before the George Floyd protests began. He said he wanted to reach out to the rank-and-file to support them and to get their help.
“I kind of stuck my neck out to say a lot of you are doing a good job,” Lucas said. “But that doesn’t mean we’re not going to actually say yeah, but this needs to change.”
If the mayor’s letter and his words lead to real change in the department, then the criticism he faces for the letter will have been worthwhile. But he surely must know the Kansas City police force has been deeply resistant to reform for decades, insular and skeptical of real civilian oversight.
His letter, which in words and tone appears to contradict his previous statements, could make it worse. It won’t make police happy — they’re furious about his support for limited amnesty for protesters -— and it will confuse demonstrators.
Like many people, Lucas believes the vast majority of officers in Kansas City are “good apples” who follow the rules. That’s true.
But every Kansas City police officer knows who the bad apples are. If reform is to work, those good officers will have to kick out the bad. Otherwise, nothing will change.
Lucas says that concern should have been added to his letter. But “the police department trusting their mayor, and not thinking he’s just an outsider trying to destroy them, is actually I think a good thing,” he said.
Fair enough. But the reverse is also true: It’s a good thing for the citizens of Kansas City to trust the police department, and not think it’s full of outsiders trying to destroy them. At this critical moment, not everyone in Kansas City has that faith.
So there is work to do. Building a better police department will be difficult, but it will almost be impossible without a clear and consistent agenda from the mayor. His letter is a distraction from that task, and a setback for reform efforts.