‘They’re still blindsided’: Northland council members aghast over police reform
Kansas City residents have been angered and frightened. Council members have been marginalized and disrespected. Police officers have been demoralized even more than before.
It’s all in a day’s work at City Hall — where the City Council last Thursday rammed through two sudden, same-day ordinances that claw back $42.3 million in police funding. The ordinances — which four of the 13 council members feel they were kept in the dark about — require the state-run Board of Police Commissioners, which governs the KCPD, to negotiate contracts with the city to get all of the budgeted money back.
To a suspicious and jittery public, it still looks an awful lot like defunding police.
It’s quite possible this is also a savvy effort by the City Council to scratch out a little local leverage in the police department — which, again, is oddly overseen by that state board.
But certainly there are folks who would like nothing better than to reduce police funding, as has happened in other American cities in the past year since a police officer’s outrageous killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Whatever the motivation, the City Council’s move, fully backed by Mayor Quinton Lucas, was always going to be highly emotional and controversial.
But city officials made it doubly troubling by the way they handled it — announcing the move, approving it and making it effective all on Thursday, with no warning and little debate.
And all with nary a heads-up to the police department, the Board of Police Commissioners or the four council members from the Northland, where many police officers live: Teresa Loar, Dan Fowler, Kevin O’Neill and Heather Hall.
While Lucas announced the landmark legislation in a press conference at 11:30 a.m. Thursday, Loar said she heard about the massive $42.3 million claw back from her police officer son. Fowler said he heard about it in a phone call he returned to the mayor’s office at noon. Hall said she heard it from Loar. Only O’Neill, who happened to be in City Hall early Thursday, heard it straight from the mayor.
“The four Northland council members were completely cut off from any discussion, any information,” Loar says. “It caught us completely off guard. Nor did the police chief have any information, nor did the police board have any information. Is this how we govern? Is this transparency? Doesn’t sound like it to me.”
“I knew nothing about the press conference,” says Fowler.
“I was completely blindsided,” says Hall. “I had zero notice. I didn’t get an email or phone call from the mayor before his press conference.”
That means they had little if any time to prepare for the debate on the ordinances that afternoon, and no way to seek the input of their constituents. How can they do their job of representing voters under such circumstances?
Answer: They can’t. Some 40% of the Kansas City population went without effective representation on Thursday, and 100% of residents were blindsided.
“They’re still blindsided,” Hall says. “We’re all like, ‘What just happened and what does this mean?’”
O’Neill says the Northland is already underserved by its two police stations. “I can’t even imagine what that could end up being like if some of those funds are cut from the actual police budget and put into other social programs or what have you,” he says.
‘That is not transparent government’
When council members introduce something this significant, normally the committee process allows colleagues to hash out its pros and cons and to get citizen input. “That didn’t happen here,” says Fowler. “To me, that is not transparent government.”
Indeed, on Monday police officials and the four council members — who voted against the ordinances — were still trying to figure out the real impact on police operations. No one seems to know. But citizens are in an uproar about it, calling in to radio talk shows and inundating council members with angst and anger.
“Oh my gosh, my phone has blown up,” Loar says.
“They’re furious,” Hall adds. “My social media’s blown up, my phone’s blown up. People are coming by my house. I mean, it’s been chaotic. People are just devastated, and they’re scared. This is scary.”
As if on cue, a friend wrote to me, “I plan to quit shopping, eating, and entertaining in the KCMO city limits. It’s not a boycott or a political issue. It’s a safety issue.”
The four marginalized council members have teamed up to schedule a joint town hall for 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Northland Neighborhoods Inc., 5340 NE Chouteau Trafficway.
Meanwhile, this can’t help morale at police headquarters, where my source described the mood as “demoralized.” Officers don’t feel valued, the officer said.
The thing is, officers I’ve talked with support incorporating more mental health and social services into policing. Just not at the expense of real policing. In addition to it.
The question is, what do Kansas City residents want — and will they even be asked?
This story was originally published May 25, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
