Lucas, City Council vote to hold KC police department accountable. Cue the screaming

The Kansas City Council and Mayor Quinton Lucas have at long long last forced accountability on the police department we fund, yet until now have had no control over.

Thursday, Lucas introduced, and the City Council passed by 9-4 votes, ordinances that will shift more than $42 million from the department’s budget into a new “community services” line item that would pay for specific performance contracts between the city and the Board of Police Commissioners.

In other words, the KCPD, which has for so long been accountable to no one but its state-picked cheer squad, will have to negotiate certain markers to get paid.

“What we’re doing right now ain’t working,” Lucas said Thursday, referring to the city’s appalling murder rate.

This is not defunding the police. Instead, Lucas and a majority on the council were ready to stop writing blank checks to Police Chief Rick Smith and others, in an effort to force some absolutely necessary changes.

“I respect our police department,” Lucas said during Thursday’s City Council debate, with obvious heat in his voice. “Why are you scared of the people of Kansas City?”

The plan will work like this: The council cut this year’s police budget back to 20% of the general fund, the minimum required by Missouri law. The savings from those reductions, about $42.3 million, will be rolled into a new Community Services and Prevention budget, which would be subject to City Council control.

The money will be spent on prevention, intervention, mental health services, and other alternative strategies to address violent crimes.

The city is authorized to negotiate contracts with the police board, with specific performance requirements and outcomes, and pay for those agreements with the new budget.

If the police department fails to meet contractual goals, or ignores the spending agreements in other ways, the contracts could be amended or canceled, or cuts could be made.

We’ve called for more police department accountability for years. This plan stops short of local control of the department — and local control is still the goal, whether the new plan becomes law or not.

But a mechanism that requires the department to answer to the public, instead of just to itself and a rubber-stamp police board, is not just welcome but long overdue.

The department will likely complain that the new arrangement would erode the chief’s flexibility to adjust spending where it’s needed. Nope. The department would still have millions to spend on whatever priorities it wants. That should be enough.

The proposal also includes $3 million for a new class of police recruits, which Smith has called essential. That brings total redirected spending to $45.3 million.

The department will actually have more money now than it did before the plan passed. But the City Council -- the people -- will have a more direct say in how part of the police budget is spent.

Speed was important, since the Missouri legislature recently decided to hamstring every city in the state when it comes to funding for police (the governor has yet to sign the bill.) That’s one reason why a majority of the council voted to enact the proposal immediately.

Some councilmembers, and the police department, expressed surprise and disappointment with the Lucas proposal. “I want this to be vetted,” Councilman Dan Fowler said during Thursday’s debate.

But skeptics could not have been unaware of increasing frustration with the lack of local control of police, and the need for remedies. These measures were the result.

Mayor Lucas, it turns out, wasn’t bluffing.

It’s been nearly a year since George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis. In that year, Kansas Citians have had a chance to reexamine their city’s police department, and its record, and its spending habits. Very little has changed in that year, and that’s not acceptable.

Mayor Lucas and others on the council are now doing what they can to finally make the police answerable to the people. We applaud them for this proposal.

This story was originally published May 20, 2021 at 11:30 AM.