KC Mayor Quinton Lucas: GOP refusal to aid cities is why police cuts are necessary

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas is proposing a $12 million cut to the budget of the Kansas City Police Department, and that’s not going to be painless, either practically or politically.

But given that so much of our city budget is spent on public safety, there is no way, in the middle of this pandemic that won’t be over until most of us get vaccinated, that the KCPD could or should be spared this 4.3% cut.

As Lucas has been saying for months, it was the refusal of congressional Republicans to send any pandemic relief to cities that will now necessitate some degree of “defunding” all over the country.

Because it’s cities, of course, that actually fund our local police.

“We hear all the time about irresponsible cities” that because they’re run by Democrats deserve no COVID-19 relief, the mayor said in a Tuesday night interview. But “if we’d received CARES Act funding that allowed for revenue replacement, there would be no cuts to the police department.”

This is a little bit like those in the pro-Donald Trump mob at the U.S. Capitol who were carrying Blue Lives Matter flags — while attacking police officers. It doesn’t track, does it?

It’s “because of our Republican defunding of government,” Lucas said, that “we’re being forced to reevaluate” how to keep the city as safe as possible with less funding for police officers.

So what might that look like? “In budgets past, we said there’s one way to address violent crime,” and that was by hiring more officers. Last year’s budget did that, and for a lot of reasons, we still had our most violent year ever.

Now, “rather than being afraid” because that’s not even an option, “rightsizing gives us the opportunity” to look at alternatives, Lucas said. Like “better collaboration with social services.”

(Though he didn’t mention it, we could also save millions on excessive force settlements if the behavior of some officers didn’t keep making those payouts necessary.)

President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill includes $350 billion in the direct aid to state and city governments that the $618 billion Republican alternative completely eliminated. And the $900 billion COVID-19 relief package passed in December, when Republicans controlled the Senate, provided no aid to state and local governments, either.

Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt has criticized the Biden relief package, saying it’s too much and too soon, and that the job losses cited to justify coronavirus relief for cities are mostly the school bus drivers and cafeteria workers and janitors who aren’t getting paid because schools have not been teaching in person. Empty storefronts tell a different story.

When asked about Blunt’s opposition, Lucas said he often hears Republicans making a false distinction between working people and people who work for the government, “which is ironic because they work for the government,” too. And so, of course, do police officers and firefighters. And employees of the Kansas City Health Department, which the mayor says “is doing COVID vaccines without any money to support staff to do it.”

At least Blunt does pick up the phone and listen, says Lucas, and does, the mayor believes, care about Missouri’s cities.

“We’ll make our position clear to Sen. (Josh) Hawley as well. I don’t know what his level of responsiveness will be.”

The budget proposal the mayor released on Thursday afternoon said no one in city government would lose his or her job as a result of the cuts. And yes, he said Thursday night, he really does believe that’s possible, “through the magic of unfilled positions” and other fiscal moves. “And I’m not smoking the marijuana we’ve decriminalized.”

In response to his proposal on funding for the KCPD in particular, Lucas said, he’s already heard both from police reform activists who are angry because the cuts are too paltry and from police supporters who are angry because they go too far.

Some comments from the latter group were “vile,” he said. A couple of the examples he repeated were racist, sexual and an ugly reflection on their argument.

Their anger at a mayor who has no choice but to cut is misdirected.