KCPD Chief Rick Smith responds to possible budget cuts with scare tactics, cheap tricks

Kansas City Police Chief Rick Smith’s blog post on the “devastating” proposed budget cuts necessitated by COVID-19 is more than a little hysterical, and we don’t mean hilarious.

Every city department has been asked to look into what possible cuts could be made if an 11% budget cut turns out to be necessary to address a $60 million decline in tax revenue. No city department, city official or city resident, for that matter, is gladdened by this situation.

But instead of looking at what trims could be made with the least dire repercussions, Smith has skipped straight to telling Kansas Citians that if these cuts go through, 911 calls wouldn’t be answered quickly enough, 400 people would have to be fired and those spared would have to take furloughs.

“Quite frankly, it would be devastating,” he wrote.

Quite frankly, Chief, take some deep breaths and stop trying to frighten people.

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said in an interview that six months out from a final budget, which will be voted on in March, these concerns are “premature.”

Why not at least consider the possibility that, as Lucas says, there are a number of possible administrative savings that could be made “long before firing anybody. My goal is that no one gets fired from any department.”

On the mayor’s Facebook page, Lucas answered someone who said all of this was a plot to defund police with sarcasm: “You got us,” the mayor wrote. “We organized a global pandemic about a year ago, got the president, every state and most cities to play along in stay-at-home orders that limited economic activity, just so that the KCMO could be $60 million short, just so that ‘defunding the police’...could be accomplished.”

If Smith is arguing that the police department, which along with fire and ambulance already get 75% of the city’s general operating fund, should be immune from the cuts every other department has to make, then how is the rest of the city supposed to run?

Public health is pretty important during a pandemic, as we’ve learned too late, and so are street repairs, code inspectors and public transportation.

The city’s finance department has already identified almost the entire amount of the projected shortfall, $59 million, in potential savings through cuts to medical and life insurance, communications, information technology, facilities and building maintenance and operations, data research and development.

And we agree with Lora McDonald, executive director of MORE², one of the civil rights groups that has called on Smith to resign. “These kind of scare tactics are meant to create a reaction from the community,” she said. “Reality is, this department needs to stand up to scrutiny.”

Smith says an 11% reduction would mean the Kansas City Police Department would have to close some police stations and the helicopter unit, fire all social workers and some crime lab employees, among other desperate measures.

One thing he said is true, though: “These cuts are not a foregone conclusion.”

Panic is free, of course, but it’s also a cheap trick.