KC’s Quinton Lucas needs Jeff City allies to cut through ‘defund the police’ hysteria

The critical funding dispute between Mayor Quinton Lucas and the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners is now in court, where logic and common sense should prevail.

(If reason did prevail, no one would be referring to a plan that would give the Kansas City Police Department $3 million more than it would otherwise receive as “defunding.”)

The plan may also be headed to the Missouri General Assembly, where logic and common sense were discarded long ago. And while lawmakers can be head-shaking hypocrites, they can still do enormous damage.

Just last week, a handful of Republican legislators from the St. Louis area promoted a special session designed to punish cities that actually want some say in how their police departments are run.

State Rep. Nick Schroer, a Republican from O’Fallon, said Missouri should re-seize control of the St. Louis Police Department, which escaped dictatorial supervision a few years ago. “Our state’s two largest cities are in crisis right now due to crime,” Schroer asserted.

Our two largest cities have been in crisis for years, and it’s a crisis partially of Schroer’s making, and that of his GOP colleagues. They’ve relaxed our gun laws into nothingness, and repeatedly refused to give cities the tools to get guns away from criminals.

But his claim also ignores fiscal reality. The departments in Kansas City and St. Louis were fully funded last year, when murders in both cities exploded. Why would even more money without any other changes for the police make any difference? Funny how that line about how more money for schools doesn’t make them any better never applies to police.

And if more money is the answer, as they claim, then why won’t the state of Missouri provide it?

A special legislative session on police control and spending in Kansas City and St. Louis would be wasteful, authoritarian and counterproductive.

“For a party that claims they want less government control … they sure are working hard to take the choice out of the people’s hands and into politicians’ hands who are not from these communities,” said state Rep. Michael Johnson, a Democrat from Kansas City.

Johnson is correct, but Kansas City legislators must be more willing to step forward and defend the rights of their constituents if Republicans decide it would be fun to meddle in local issues again.

To date, most lawmakers south of the river have been strangely silent. While statements from state Sen. Tony Luetkemeyer, state Rep. Doug Richey and other suburban Republicans have dominated news coverage, legislators who actually live in Kansas City have seemed reluctant to step up.

Part of this is on Mayor Lucas. It’s increasingly clear that the rollout of his plan to redirect more than $42 million of the KCPD budget left some stakeholders in the dark about the goals of the plan, and how it would work.

But it’s not too late.

Republican supermajority, Gov. Parson versus big cities

We strongly support the mayor’s proposal, and think it will prevail in court. We think Kansas Citians should oversee their own police department, like every other city in America.

We also understand the mayor’s haste in passing his plan. Kansas City has discussed local control for more than 50 years, with no results. Lucas and his allies deserve credit for taking a tentative step toward even minor supervision of the police force.

But being right is just part of the battle. Legislating is not just Twitter, or radio show appearances, or news conferences. Protecting the city’s interests in Jefferson City is extraordinarily complicated, made worse by Republican supermajorities and a Republican governor whose hatred of cities is made clear on a daily basis.

Mayor Lucas simply cannot pursue this crusade alone. He should hold public meetings with state lawmakers from Kansas City to discuss police issues. He should hold his own hearings, in urban neighborhoods, to explain the need for police accountability and transparency.

He should prepare and publish a detailed outline of how the $42 million in redirected police funds might be spent. He should make his correspondence with other police board members public.

He has to counter the KCPD’s quasi-endorsement of a rally last week, north of the river, which was designed to show “support” for police officers. Fans of state control say it keeps politics out of policing, yet here the department is, diving headfirst into this political matter.

Once this campaign is underway, state lawmakers, the Civic Council of Greater Kansas City, Jackson County Executive Frank White, county legislators, the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce and neighborhood groups must step forward to support police reform.

“It seems appropriate to allow our local policy makers to consider innovative approaches,” said state Rep. Ingrid Burnett, a Kansas City Democrat. “I support our mayor.” Kansas Citians should hear that more often, and in stronger language.

It was brave of Mayor Lucas to make this move, but he cannot depend on facts and logic alone to convince others to follow.

And he can’t rely on the courts, either, when even now, GOP lawmakers are plotting ways to make Kansas City less safe, less accountable and less free. The stakes are too high to allow them to succeed.