A 1968 post-riot report provided a roadmap for a better KC. Why didn’t we follow it?
Kansas City Police Chief Rick Smith’s crusade for more police officers continues.
“After Kansas City’s 1968 riots following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,” Smith recently wrote, “then-Mayor Ilus Davis convened a Commission on Civil Disorder. The report recommended in August 1968 that KCPD should have 1,500 officers.
“That was more than 50 years ago, and we have never met that goal,” Smith wrote.
He’s right. In 1968, a commission examined the city’s spring riots and found “a frightening shortage of officers to police our city.” It recommended adding 600 police officers to the force and giving all of them a raise.
But that isn’t all the commission recommended.
Kansas Citians don’t hear that fact very often. Yet it is critical: If local leaders and politicians want to use the 1968 report as a blueprint for more officers in 2020, they should use the whole document, not just cherry-pick one of its recommendations.
Here’s what the chief doesn’t tell you, for example: The 1968 commission argued emphatically for local control of the Kansas City Police Department.
“There would seem to be little reason why Kansas Citians could not better understand their local needs than can State Legislators and officials,” it found.
In case anyone missed the point, the commission repeated the finding three times. “The necessary steps should be taken to return the Kansas City, Missouri Police Department to local control,” its very first recommendation said.
Half a century later, the department still fiercely resists the idea of local control. “Under our current governance model, we are agile and adaptable,” the police chief wrote last fall.
Maybe. But “agility,” if it exists, has a cost: a credibility gap between the police and the people they’re supposed to serve, a gap that exacerbates the violent crime problem.
Would local control help rebuild trust? Yes, the 1968 report concluded: It would lead to “greater awareness and sensitivity to local problems.”
Other recommendations? The report recommends substantially increasing the number of black police officers, noting that just 6% of the force was then African American.
Today a little more than 12% of the force is black, which indicates some progress. But it isn’t enough. Kansas City’s population is 29% African American.
The commission said the police complaint process was inadequate and not transparent. That’s still a concern.
Crucially, the 1968 commission also recognized that securing Kansas City was not just a matter of more police.
“Trash pickup, maintenance and cleaning of streets, maintenance of parkways, playground and parks … have fallen to a low point,” it said. “This is particularly noticeable in the inner city.”
And this: “Bad housing is one of the most pervasive grievances of the inner city … the spread of blight must be arrested.”
More recreational opportunities are needed in the urban core. Public transportation “must be improved in order for the underprivileged to be able to go to and from areas where employment may be available.” Day care is “wholly inadequate for the needs of this community,” the report says.
Do these concerns sound familiar? Can anyone in Kansas City say the substandard urban core conditions identified by the 1968 commission have been fully addressed in 2020?
Yes, making Kansas City a better place means more police. But it also means a police department more responsible to, and reflective of, the local community. It also means better schools, houses, streets, neighborhoods. It means better jobs and better transportation.
That was the lesson of 1968. It remains the lesson today.
Everyone who cares about this city must ask themselves why so much remains to be done.
