JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

I always know when the Pulitzer Prizes have been awarded because a story pops up on The Star’s website saying Melinda Henneberger of the editorial page was once again a finalist.

And so it was today that Henneberger is, for the third year in a row, a PP finalist.

Now, this is a big deal for The Star and for Henneberger, and it’s too bad she’s been a bridesmaid three successive years. For the life of me, however, I don’t understand why The Star does these blinkers-on stories, year after year, without listing the actual winners of the Pulitzers.

That is a much bigger deal than The Star finishing second, and it reflects, once again, how parochial the hometown paper has become under Mike Fannin’s leadership and, more broadly, under the old and new McClatchy management.

It’s also a big reason why circulation has been in free fall and why the paper doesn’t have anything close to the influence it used to have over such things as civic projects, local elections and state and local government. It’s a shell of what it used to be.

I’m not going to harp on it any more because this has been unfolding before our eyes the last decade or so. But it’s worth noting, and I hope my constructive criticism will be noted somewhere down at 16th and McGee…at 16th and Mcgee until the end of the year, when the last of the paper’s employees there will be moving someplace else.

You wouldn’t know it from The Star, but the Pulitzer Prizes reflect the ongoing strength of traditional and non-traditional media nationwide. (Perhaps the most noteworthy non-traditional recipient of a Pulitzer this year was the publication Runner’s World.)

With that in mind, let’s move on to the Pulitzer Prize winners, who were announced announced today at a ceremony at Columbia University.

And I am pleased to report that we did have one local winner, Chris Haxel of KCUR, who contributed a podcast to the Guns & America national reporting project. Haxel was one of four NPR correspondents who shared the prize for Audio Reporting.

Here are the others…

Special Citation: Darnella Frazier, who was 17 when she recorded George Floyd being asphyxiated under the knee of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. She testified at Chauvin’s trial, and her video contradicted the initial police account of Floyd’s death.

Breaking News Reporting: The staff of The (Minneapolis) Star Tribune for coverage of Floyd’s death and the reverberations that followed.

Investigative Reporting: Matt Rocheleau, Vernal Coleman, Laura Crimaldi, Evan Allen and Brendan McCarthy of The Boston Glove for reporting that uncovered state governments’ systematic failure to share information about dangerous truck drivers.

Explanatory Reporting: (Two sets of winners) Ed Yong of The Atlantic for a series of pieces on the COVID-19 pandemic, and Andrew Chung, Lawrence Hurley, Andrea Januta, Jaimi Dowdell and Jackie Botts of Reuters for an examination of the legal doctrine of “qualified immunity” and how it shields police who use excessive force from prosecution.

Local Reporting: Kathleen McGrory and Neil Bedi of the Tampa Bay Times for reporting that exposed how a powerful and politically connected sheriff built a secretive intelligence operation to earmark children who might “fall into a life of crime” based on factors like whether they’d been abused or received a failing grade in school.

National Reporting: The staffs of The Marshall Project, Alabama Media Group, The Indianapolis Star and the Invisible Institute for a yearlong investigation of K-9 units and the damage that police dogs inflict on Americans.

International Reporting: Megha Rajagopalan, Alison Killing and Christo Buschek of BuzzFeed News for a series of stories that used satellite imagery, architectural expertise and interviews with two dozen former prisoners to identify a vast new infrastructure built by the Chinese government for the mass detention of Muslims.

Feature Writing: (Two winners) Nadja Drost, freelance contributor to The California Sunday Magazine (which went out of business last October) for an account of global migration documenting a group’s journey on foot through the Central American Darién Gap, one of the most dangerous migrant routes in the world, and Mitchell S. Jackson, freelance contributor to Runner’s World, for an account of the killing of Ahmaud Arbery that shed light on systemic racism in America.

Commentary: Michael Paul Williams of the Richmond (Virginia) Times-Dispatch for columns that led Richmond, a former capital of the Confederacy, through the painful and complicated process of dismantling the city’s monuments to white supremacy. (In this category, Henneberger was a finalist for “tenacious and deeply reported columns on failures in the criminal justice system.” One of her columns column was about Kansas City Police Chief Rick Smith‘s failure to utter a word about George Floyd’s death for six days and then not naming him when he did talk about it.)

Criticism: Wesley Morris of The New York Times for criticism on the intersection of race and culture in America.

Editorial Writing: Robert Greene of the Los Angeles Times for editorials on policing, bail reform, prisons and mental health in Los Angeles.

Breaking News Photography: The staff of The Associated Press for a collection of photographs from multiple U.S. cities capturing the country’s response to Floyd’s death.

Feature photography: Emilio Morenatti of The Associated Press for a series of photographs that took viewers into the lives of elderly people in Spain struggling during the pandemic.

Audio Reporting: Chris Haxel, Lisa Hagen, Graham Smith and Robert Little of NPR for an investigative series on no-compromise gun rights activists that illuminated the deepening schism between American conservatives.

Public Service reporting: The New York Times for sweeping coverage of the coronavirus pandemic that exposed racial and economic inequities, government failures in the U.S. and beyond, and filled a data vacuum that helped local governments, health care providers, businesses and individuals to be better prepared and protected.

Kansas City’s Black elected officials — U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver and those on the City Council — are determined to make the 18th and Vine Jazz District succeed as a tourist attraction.

Back in 2016, the City Council approved $7 million for a new round of improvements, and if there was any doubt about Black elected officials’ determination to go even bigger, it was erased this week when $6 million was included in the U.S. House of Representatives’ surface transportation bill.

Eighteenth and Vine is one of five projects totaling more than $18 million Cleaver was able to get included in the INVEST in America Act, which the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has begun to consider.

The transportation bill, which comes up every five years, marks the the return of Congressional “earmarks,” in which senators and representatives are able to direct funds to specific projects in their states and districts.

Earmarks went away a decade ago after they became synonymous with corruption, but now they are back with a fresh start and a chance to create projects that will give cities and states a lift.

If this particular earmark would put 18th and Vine on the map again, as more than an East Side attraction, it would be a great thing for Kansas City. As we’ve all seen, redevelopment at the legendary jazz district has proceeded in fits and starts. It’s still a long way from becoming a reliably strong tourist area, where people of all races converge to have fun, but the new project could be a big step forward.

It provides for creation of a “pedestrian plaza,” which would involve closing 18th Street to vehicles along a two-block stretch, from the Paseo to Highland Avenue. Here’s the area in question.

Supporters of the plaza envision farmers markets, festivals, outdoor concerts and more along the plaza.

Cleaver, brandishing his usual optimism, said, “The plaza area is going to be one of the most beautiful spots in Kansas City.”

Who can say for sure it won’t be? Several outstanding attractions are there now, headed by the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, and the area is ripe with possibilities.

The district will never go big-time, however, unless people feel safe going there. A big setback on the safety front took place April 25 when a 34-year-old personal trainer named Gary Taylor was killed in a bout of gunfire.

Twenty-nine-year-old Jerronn Anderson has been charged with first-degree murder in the case.

It was just the kind of incident that is all too common on Kansas City’s East Side streets. Court documents say Taylor was walking south on Vine Street with two of his friends. As the group approached 19th Street, Taylor stopped and turned toward the north. Anderson approached the three from that direction, and as Taylor turned away, Anderson brought out a handgun and fired. As Taylor fell to the ground, his two companions pulled out guns and fired toward Anderson, who later showed up wounded at an area hospital.

Now, that’s not a prescription for success, but that’s not to say the problem can’t be brought under control. It’s easy to say, “It’ll never happen,” but stranger things have happened, and millions of dollars of investment have produced some impressive results so far.

To me, the pedestrian plaza idea is worth a try. If that area could one day be something akin to Westport, it would be a remarkable feat. If that happened, as you traveled around the country, you’d hear a lot more people in other cities singing Wilbert Harrison’s immortal words, “Goin’ to Kansas City, Kansas City here I come.“

**

Besides 18th and Vine, here are the other Cleaver-sponsored projects that made it into the surface transportation bill…

:: $6 million for the KCATA to purchase zero-fare electric buses. (Kansas Rep. Sharice Davids filed a separate request for an additional $4.5 million.)

:: $2.16 million for improvements to Cliff Drive Scenic Byway in northeast Kansas City.

:: $3.1 million to replace a bridge in Lawson.

:: $900,000 for infrastructure improvements in downtown Odessa.

Time for another news digest, bringing you up to speed on what’s going on in KC and the region.

:: Once again, our governor, “Farmer” Mike Parson, has shown how much he detests Kansas City. (Same for St. Louis, he just hasn’t exhibited that in a while.)

There’s been story after story about wrongly convicted Kevin Strickland, the Kansas City man who has been imprisoned for more than 40 years for a 1978 triple homicide that prosecutors are now convinced he did not commit.

Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker’s hands are tied until a new law takes effect in August, when she and other prosecutors will be able to start asking judges to overturn convictions in cases of erroneous convictions. But Farmer Mike’s hands are not tied; he has the power to pardon. This week he pardoned 36 people, but he passed over Strickland, whose case he knows about.

Parson’s failure to act prompted Tricia Rojo Bushnell, director of the Midwest Innocence Project to say: “It’s hard to imagine how everyone can know someone’s innocent and he’s still there. At this point, no one with power has done the things to let him out.”

Farmer Mike doesn’t seem to care. His police board is going to war, legally, with Kansas City over the City Council’s decision to redirect $42 million that is part of the Police Department’s budget. That and Strickland’s plight are just two instances of how Parson and his Republican cohorts — most of them hailing from towns of 10,000 or less — like to hold the largest city in the state hostage to their whims and biases.

For the record, Parson, when he’s not in Jefferson City, lives in Bolivar, a town of about 10,500.

:: The new McClatchy Company, now owned by a New Jersey-based hedge fund, didn’t fight a unionization effort by the approximately 40, non-management editorial employees at The Star. This week, McClatchy said it would voluntarily recognize the Kansas City News Guild, which formed last month under the leadership of longtime columnist and reporter Mike Hendricks.

I suppose the reason McClatchy didn’t fight it was twofold: First, it would make the company look even more shark-like than it already is, and, second, McClatchy recognized fighting the movement would be a losing effort because the vast majority of eligible employees were on board.

You won’t see any more reporters hired as a result of this development — or more substantial coverage of local news — but at least those remaining employees will have some leverage with management.

The Star union will become a unit of the NewsGuild-CWA, the nation’s largest union for journalists and other news industry employees. The News Guild is a sector of the Communication Workers of America, representing about 24,000 journalists.

:: In the interests of linking downtown “islands” with downtown proper, several U.S. cities have removed, or are removing, some of parts of downtown interstate loops. One city that has done so with great success is Rochester, NY, which, in 2013, won a nearly $18 million grant from the Obama administration that enabled it it to remove a segment of its inner loop. In an exhaustive report about loop extractions, The New York Times said…

“People have already moved into townhouse-style apartments where the highway once stood. Scooters and bicycles share space with cars along the new Union Street corridor, a once unlikely sight. Several cross-streets cut off by the highway have been reconnected, encouraging more walking in the area. And the big fear of removing a highway — terrible traffic — hasn’t materialized.”

Could it happen here in Kansas City? Sure, and I hope it does. Kevin Collison, who for several years has written and published the website CityScene KC, reported this week that the Washington D.C.-based Congress for The New Urbanism (CNU) had published a report that advocated removal of part or all of Kansas City’s North Loop, which separates downtown from the River Market and the Columbus Park neighborhood.

As envisioned, the approach to the Heart of America Bridge, also known as the Missouri 9 bridge, would be lowered to grade, reuniting the River Market and Columbus Park neighborhoods and establishing easy access to Independence Boulevard.

A related idea is to fill in and cover up to four blocks of the South Loop with a downtown park. That would establish a seamless connection between Downtown and the Crossroads district.

Both ideas are just in the conceptual stage, but sooner or later one or both of those hideous loops will be going away, replaced by multi-lane roads that move traffic but allow easy access to the downtown, the River Market and the Crossroads.

For people like me, who are always looking for ways to avoid freeways, it will be a godsend.

:: The final step toward resolving the honoring of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. will take place this weekend as city Public Works crews will place Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard signs along Volker Boulevard and sections of Swope Parkway and Blue Parkway. A KCMO news release said the project will involve switching out of 37 standard street-name signs, as well as five traffic signal signs equipped with LED lighting at Volker and Oak, Swope Parkway and Prospect and Blue Parkway and Eastwood Trafficway.

If, like me, you are a supporter of the legacy of businessman and philanthropist William Volker, don’t worry: A nonresidential section of Oak Street between 45th Street (the Nelson Gallery) and 52nd Street (near UMKC) will be renamed Volker Boulevard.

:: Last but not least, we finally have a new trial date for 83-year-old David Jungerman, who is charged with murdering Kansas City lawyer Thomas Pickert outside Pickert’s Brookside home on Oct. 25, 2017. Jackson County Circuit Judge John Torrence recently scheduled jury selection to start on Monday, Dec. 13, with the trial beginning immediately after a jury has been sworn in.

Even though Jungerman, a mean and hateful man, has been safely off the streets for more than three years now, it will be good to see him finally brought into court and facing the assistant prosecutors and police investigators who have worked so hard to bring him to justice.

Dec. 13 will be a gratifying day for many people, assuming Jungerman doesn’t die in the Jackson County jail before then.

Here’s a photo of him from 2019.

More than a month has passed since KCUR reporter Aviva Okeson-Haberman was lying on a bed reading in her first-floor, East Side apartment when someone fired a bullet through the window and fatally wounded her.

The fact that five weeks have passed and no one has been arrested and no prime suspect appears to have surfaced makes me think two things…First, the theory that she took a bullet intended for another woman who lived in the same building is off base. Second, that the chances of solving the case may well turn on whether the shooter keeps his mouth shut.

I’m now fairly convinced this was a random but intentional shooting. I said in an earlier post I don’t buy the stray bullet theory at all.

To me, it seems likely the killer lived in the neighborhood, which is very rough and where residents are all too familiar with the sound of nighttime gunfire.

A woman I spoke to when I was reporting in the area of 27th and Lockwood speculated that it was a case of someone who had recently acquired a gun and was testing it to see if it worked and was accurate.

That challenges the imagination of people living in peaceful neighborhoods but it’s not implausible. Right next to Haberman’s building is an alley that in all likelihood would have been pretty dark at night. Contiguous with the alley are parking spaces for residents of the three-story, brick building where the 24-year-old Haberman lived. Her bedroom was at the rear of the building, and a shooter would have been at least 30 yards from the facing street, Lockwood, and 100 yards or so from Benton Boulevard, to the west.

In other words, there would have been little chance of the shooter being noticed, unless someone just happened to come out of the apartment building or pull into the alley.

Another possibility is that it was gang related. We’ve all heard that some gangs require fledgling members to show their mettle by killing someone…anyone. Then there’s the possibility — awful to contemplate — it was racially motivated. This is a Black neighborhood, by and large. Perhaps a young hooligan, one used to roaming the area and looking for trouble, happened to see Aviva, a white woman, in a vulnerable position (the blind in her room was up so it would have been fairly easy to see inside) and took a potshot.

Now, let’s consider the “unintended victim” theory.

Regular readers will recall I reported in my earlier post that the New York Post, a notoriously irresponsible newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch, had published a story quoting a woman who lives in an apartment adjacent to Haberman’s as saying she believed the bullet was intended for her. The woman, 26-year-old Sadi Sumpter, told the Post she believes the shooting could have been a botched hit meant for her and arranged by her ex-boyfriend, whom she described as a drug addict and a convicted felon.

While possible, it struck me as improbable, partly because the ex-boyfriend, who is (or was) in prison, knows exactly where the ex-girlfriend lives, which is across the hall from Haberman’s apartment. I think it extremely unlikely that either the ex-boyfriend or the supposed “hit” person would have confused the west and east sides of the building.

Further casting doubt on that theory is that the person the ex-boyfriend supposedly lined up to kill the ex-girlfriend was his new girlfriend, a woman who reportedly has 13 children…I heard that from a good source just this weekend.

As soon as I heard that, I dismissed the mistaken-identity theory. First of all, when would a woman who has 13 children — if that is actually true — have time to go to the range and practice her marksmanship?

More basically, how many women are involved in planned killings? Very few. And how many are involved in planned killings outside their homes? Far fewer.

So, from the New York Post, we’re supposed to believe that a woman with 13 children was skulking around the night of Thursday, April 22, gun in hand, not exactly sure where her victim lives, takes a shot from shoulder height, and, bam, hits her right in the head from a distance of 10 to 20 feet?

Nope. Not buying it.

**

So, how does this case get solved? Well, sadly, I don’t have a lot of confidence in the KCPD’s homicide division. In a recent story (not about Haberman) The Star said said that of 176 homicides that occurred in KC in 2020, police cleared just 91. That’s slightly more than 50 percent. Nationally, the clearance rate for homicides was 61 percent.

If you’ve watched The First 48, one of my favorite TV shows, you know that a good percentage of homicides get solved because the killers start running their mouths — either boasting or feelings of guilt or stupidity.

That’s probably what it’s going to take to solve this case. Maybe the killer has already talked and has just been lucky no one has reported it. Maybe he has kept quiet. Someday, though, he’ll probably let it out, if he hasn’t already. Generally, it’s only hardened killers who can keep something like that under wraps.

In any event, this is one of the most puzzling murders KC has seen in a long time. I hope the homicide detectives down at 12th and Cherry are pulling out all the stops on this one.

This got by the local news media, like a lot of things do these days, but ownership of the Country Club Plaza, or at least 50 percent of it, has changed hands.

You might remember stories from February 2020 that the nation’s largest shopping mall operator, Simon Property Group of Indianapolis, had reached an agreement to buy all of Taubman Centers and part of the Taubman family’s ownership interest.

Taubman Centers of Bloomfield Hills, MI, owned half the Plaza. Another real estate investment trust, Macerich of Santa Monica, CA, owns the other half.

The deal was supposed to close in mid-2020, but after Covid-19 took hold with a vengeance, Simon said it was backing out.

That led to a court fight, but in late December the deal went through, with Simon paying $43 a share for Taubman instead of the earlier agreed-upon price of $52.50 a share. (I stumbled across the news while researching Plaza ownership because of a City of Fountains Foundation project I’m involved in.)

The total price tag, Reuters reported, was $2.65 billion.

Now, in effect, Simon and Macerich are equal partners in the Plaza. This at a time when the future of shopping malls is very cloudy. Last year, the Macy’s store at the Prairie Village Shopping Center closed, and the Plaza has a lot of empty storefronts, including the Nichols Road Nike store that closed last Sunday.

In addition, plans for Nordstrom to open on the west end of the Plaza appear to be shaky. The projected opening has been pushed back a few times and now is scheduled for 2023.

When Simon pulled out of the Taubman deal last June, it looked like a good time to be getting out of the mall business. And yet, if the stock market is an indication, it appears Simon made a good deal. Since the transaction closed in the week between Christmas and New Year’s, Simon’s stock price (SPG) has risen more than 40 percent.

In a January story on a Motley Fool website, reporter Maurie Backman said that after Covid vaccinations became widespread — which they have — “there’s a good chance mall traffic will explode once consumers feel more confident with the idea of in-person shopping.”

The day of mall-traffic explosion is still down the road, but I’m sure a lot of people are sick of looking at the tired, old clothes they wore during the pandemic and are eager to get back to the stores, where they can touch and feel materials and try on new clothes.

Simon already owned two malls in Missouri — Battlefield Mall in Springfield and Osage Beach Outlet Marketplace — and it previously owned Independence Center. With the acquisition of Taubman, it picked up the former Taubman Prestige Outlets on I-64 in Chesterfield.

In Kansas, it owns Towne East Square in Wichita.

**

I suspect Simon, being the largest mall operator in the country — it has about 200 properties — will take the leading role in operation of the Plaza. But it’s unclear, and, curiously, the Plaza folks seem to be in denial about the change of ownership.

Earlier this week, I put in calls to Taubman and Simon to try to get a clearer picture of how the partnership might unfold. In short order I got an email from a vice president at FleishmanHillard, the Kansas City-based p.r. company that represents the Plaza.

In one email, the v.p. said, “Let me run this down for you.”

The next email said, “Taubman and Macerich each own 50% of Country Club Plaza.”

Well, that’s not the case and hasn’t been for five months. I don’t know why the Plaza management or its p.r. firm would state something that is flatly incorrect.

Maybe, like the local media, they missed the news.

With the events of the last week, we are moving closer to seeing a change in administration at the Kansas City Police Department.

I believe Rick Smith will be out as police chief, probably through resignation, by the end of the year.

The main reason is that continuous and relentless pressure from civil rights organizations has had a twofold effect: First, it has helped move Mayor Quinton Lucas from a teeth-grinding police critic to an unequivocal and outspoken adversary.

Second — and this is not as obvious but I sense it is happening — the pressure has taken a toll on one or more of the four Republican-appointed members of the Board of Police Commissioners.

I have seen two possible indications that the police board’s impenetrable wall of opposition to public opinion is starting to crack. Sometime in recent months, the board chose Bishop Mark Tolbert, a Black minister, as board president, succeeding Don Wagner, a blue blood who is more Mission Hills than Kansas City oriented.

(In 2019, Wagner was one of a dozen people who ponied up $100,000 each to play a round of golf with Tom Watson, who was hosting a fundraiser for the First Tee organization at the Kansas City Country Club.)

Then, on Monday, at a secret and illegal meeting, Tolbert was not around when three board members — Wagner, Cathy Dean and Nathan Garrett — voted to explore the possibility of a lawsuit in the wake of the City Council’s decision last week to reallocate 18 percent of the police department’s budget to a newly established “community services and prevention fund.”

Lucas, the only board member not appointed by the governor, voted “no,” but interestingly Tolbert did not attend the meeting.

Now, maybe he was out of town or otherwise committed, but this was an awfully important meeting, and he wasn’t there.

My speculation is that the ongoing pressure from the civil rights organizations, led primarily by the Urban League of Kansas City and the SCLC of Greater Kansas City, has put a hitch in his step.

He might be a Republican — he was appointed by then-Gov. Eric Greitens — but he’s also a Black minister. And he’s probably the only Black minister in Kansas City right now who is on record as backing Rick Smith.

It’s got to be a lonely position for him.

Civil rights leaders like Gwen Grant of the Urban League and Rev. Vernon Percy Howard of the SCLC, both very eloquent and powerful speakers, keep bringing heat, and they’re not going to let up until there is a significant change.

Their ultimate goal, like mine, is local control of KCPD, but short of that they want Rick Smith’s crew-cut scalp. If Tolbert’s knees are getting wobbly, it’s going to be difficult for Wagner, Dean and Garrett to hold the line.

I would look for Dean, a retired lawyer with the Polsinelli firm, to be next in line to yield to pressure from the civil rights groups. (She is the only board member appointed by Gov. Mike Parson.)

Wagner, who made a fortune in the steel tank business, and Garrett, a lawyer who formerly was a member of the Missouri Highway Patrol, will never cave. Like Tolbert, Wagner and Garrett are Greitens appointees.

**

We should all be very proud of Lucas for finding his spine and leading the drive to round up the nine votes needed last week to pass the ordinances giving the city more power over the Police Department’s budget.

I have watched with interest as the bond between Lucas on one hand and the Black ministers and other civil rights leaders on the other has tightened. It evidenced itself most clearly at the April 13 Park Board meeting, when civil rights leaders fist bumped and elbow bumped Lucas and then practically fell over each other in praising the mayor for helping build a consensus that brought about a resolution of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. street-naming quagmire.

The civil rights leaders had little use for the previous mayor, Sly James, who fumbled the MLK issue for at least two years.

At a news conference immediately after that April 13 meeting, one civil rights leader (I can’t remember which) said, referring to the turnabout on the MLK issue, “What changed? The mayor changed.” The others on hand nodded and raised their voices in agreement.

…It’s been gratifying to see the worm start to turn here. Whatever happens at the state level — no matter how much shit the General Assembly dumps on the city in retaliation for the council’s perceived impertinence — Lucas has the broadsword out and is swinging away at a longstanding miscarriage of governmental power.

Somehow, the state’s head must be cut off. State control of KCPD has got to end. Ultimately, it will take an initiative petition and a statewide vote. It’s an urgent matter. At the last session, the General Assembly considered but did not pass a bill that would make the initiative petition process significantly more difficult.

Next year, it could well happen. It’s essential to launch the petition drive and get it submitted before the General Assembly and Mike Parson take even more power out of the hands of Missourians.

In the near term, however, as the pressure keeps building on the police board, the chances of a board majority continuing to back Rick Smith are lessening. Lucas’ sword just might catch that scalp.

Today I want to talk about lollipops, specifically the two major versions of the song “My Boy Lollipop.”

One version — the best know by far — was “My Boy Lollipop.” The second, which came eight years earlier, was “My Boy Lollypop.”

Ever since I was a youngster listening to WAKY (“Everything’s going wacky!”) in Louisville, I’ve been listening to Millie Small’s 1964 version of “Lollipop” and loving it.

It was recorded in England, went to No. 2 there and later topped out at the same spot on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.

It is categorized as a ska/reggae song (a fact I didn’t know until I started researching it today). Ska, according to Wikipedia, is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to reggae.

Anyway, all these years that I’ve been listening to the version by Millie Small, a Jamaican singer and songwriter, I wasn’t aware of the existence of the 1956 version, “Lollypop,” by an American girl named Barbie Gaye.

And when I say “girl,” I mean girl because she was 14 when she recorded it. Moreover, she cut school the day the day the song was recorded in Midtown Manhattan.

I became aware of Barbie Gaye’s version just a few weeks ago, when it began turning up on SiriusXM’s “50s on 5” channel. (About all I listen to on SiriusXM is that and the “60s on 6.”)

When I first heard Gaye’s version, I was kind of taken aback and put off. But even at the first listening, I was struck by the richness of Gaye’s voice and her crisp delivery and cascading phrasing. Her version also has a nice saxophone solo that was cut from Small’s version.

Before I play both songs for you, here’s the story — condensed from Wiki — behind “My Boy Lollypop” and Barbie Gaye playing hooky to record it.

The song, originally called “My Girl Lollypop,” was written by Robert Spencer of the doo-wop group The Cadillacs. Record company executive Morris Levy bought it from Spencer, and he and an alleged gangster named Johnny Roberts removed Spencer’s name and listed themselves as the writers.

The song caught the attention of a Levy associate, mobster and music mogul Gaetano “Corky” Vastola, who had heard Barbie Gaye singing on a street corner on Coney Island. Vastola took her to meet famous New York radio DJ Alan Freed, who was equally impressed. Vastola became Gaye’s manager and soon acquired the sheet music and lyrics for “My Girl Lollypop” from Levy.

Wiki then says…

He gave them to Gaye, with no specific instructions except to change the gender of the song’s subject and be ready to perform it by the following week. Barbie Gaye changed the song’s title to “My Boy Lollypop” and rewrote the song accordingly. She added non-lyrical utterances such as “whoa” and “uh oh,” chose the notes for the lyrics, shortened and lengthened notes, decided which lyrics to repeat (“I love ya, I love ya, I love ya so”) and added the word “dandy” to describe the subject.

When it came time to record, Gaye cut school and took the subway to a recording studio in Midtown Manhattan. Gaye met the three members of the session band, guitarist Leroy Kirkland, saxophonist Al Sears and drummer Panama Francis. The band leader, Kirkland, asked Gaye to sing the song for them. After listening to her, they improvised music to match her vocals. They decided to record the song in a relatively new style of R&B called shuffle. The four musicians, including the white teenage girl, went into the studio and recorded the song in one take. Barbie Gaye was paid $200 for her writing contributions to “My Boy Lollypop” and her studio recording.

After being released by Darl Records in late 1956, Freed promoted the record aggressively. It went to No. 25 on his “Top 25” on WINS radio in New York but did not break through nationally. It sold enough, however, that Gaye got to tour with Little Richard and Fats Domino in 1957.

Like many artists at the time, Gaye received no royalties from radio play. Vastola kept all the profits.

…I don’t know if Barbie Gaye is still alive or, if so, where she lives. Millie Small died a year ago in London at age 72. Now, here are those two great versions of “My Boy Lollypop/Lollipop.”

It was a tumultuous day at City Hall Thursday, with Mayor Quinton Lucas declaring war on the Police Department (finally) and pulling off one of the most brazen sneak attacks to ever occur at 12th and Oak.

It was a big victory for City Council members — and residents, by extension — who have chafed under state rule of the Police Department. But the victory could be short lived because the Missouri General Assembly relishes rubbing the city’s nose in the dirt and can dictate what percentage of the city’s operating budget must go toward police operations.

More about that in a minute, but there was another significant facet of yesterday’s upheaval:

The developments signaled the most significant breach ever between the Northland, which has long tilted Republican and conservative, and the southern part of the city, which is decidedly Democratic and liberal.

The backdrop for yesterday’s events was that for months civil rights groups and others had persistently criticized Lucas for failing to challenge Police Chief Rick Smith and the state-dominated Board of Police Commissioners.

Gradually, though, Lucas grew frustrated with the police board’s stonewalling and refusal to consider even relatively minor changes he requested.

By Thursday he’d had enough, and he had organized a raiding party.

First, Lucas held a press conference announcing the introduction of two ordinances that would give City Manager Brial Platt the authority to negotiate with the police board how the department would spend about $42.3 million — more than 15 percent — of the police department’s $239 million budget.

The city, presumably, would push for much of that $42 million to go toward social services and other alternative approaches to conventional law enforcement. At the press conference, Lucas said the ordinances would go to a council committee for consideration.

Instead, in a breathtaking, rope-a-dope move, Lucas went to that afternoon’s council legislative meeting and asked for immediate approval. Being a good politician, he had the votes lined up, and both measures sailed through on 9-4 votes.

The four dissenting votes is where the north-south breach enters the picture.

Lucas’ press conference was met with wails of protest from the four Northland council members: Teresa Loar and Dan Fowler, who live in the 2nd District, and Heather Hall and Kevin O’Neill, who live in the 1st District.

At a press conference of their own, they asserted the measures were not well thought out and would harm the Police Department. Making an argument that will echo with their constituents, they said the ordinances masqueraded as a police-funding cut that would result in fewer police officers patrolling the streets.

“This is absolutely the worst piece of legislation I’ve seen ever since I’ve been here at City Hall,” Loar said.

All the screeching and hair pulling in the world wasn’t going to derail the freight train that Lucas was engineering, however. It was in-your-face all the way, with the nine council members from south of the river lining up behind the ordinances. For the record, those joining Lucas in the pile-on were were Brandon Ellington and Melissa Robinson from the 3rd District; Katheryn Shields and Eric Bunch from the 4th District; Lee Barnes Jr. and Ryana Parks-Shaw from the 5th District; and Andrea Bough and Kevin McManus from the 6th District.

In the end, it was a very satisfying day for residents who favor police reform, but, as I said above, the City Council might hold the hill only temporarily.

Kansas City is one of just a few big cities where state government, not city government, controls the police department. It’s been that way for a long time and isn’t likely to change anytime soon.

The governor appoints four of five members of the police board, with the mayor being the fifth member. The appointed members serving now were all appointed by Republican governors — Eric Greitens or Mike Parson — and they are a veritable rubber stamp for Police Chief Rick Smith, who, if he was subject to City Council approval, would have been fired months ago.

In addition, a state law says the city must spend at least 20 percent of its general fund on police operations. The city has been exceeding that, but the significance of the $42.3 million figure is that it represents the most the city can reduce the police budget and still comply with the 20 percent requirement.

…What might happen, and relatively soon, is the General Assembly could raise that percentage to whatever it wanted, say 25 percent or even 30 percent. The legislature adjourned last Friday but will be coming back into special session later this year, and I fully expect the Republican majorities in the House and Senate to take the whip to what they view as their rebellious subjects in Kansas City.

There are other ways the General Assembly could counterattack, and don’t be surprised if the guy leading the spanking mission turns out to be Sen. Tony Luetkemeyer, a Parkville Republican.

In the just-expired session, Luetkemeyer sponsored the bill that lifted the longstanding city residency requirement for Kansas City officers. And like the Northland council members, he wasn’t at all happy yesterday about the prospect of fewer officers on Kansas City streets.

He told The Star, “I think it’s the worst thing the city could do at a time when we have record high crime.”

Yes, the nine council members won yesterday, and Lucas had one of his best days so far in office. But they’d better be ready, in the months ahead, for a barrage of legislative rockets that, for noise and upheaval, could rival the Israelis’ shelling of Gaza.

Well thank God we were spared another Triple Crown victory by thoroughbred trainer Bob Baffert on Saturday.

A lot of people were pulling against Medina Spirit in the Preakness Stakes after the horse turned up to have had a banned substance in his system during the Kentucky Derby and Baffert at first blamed everyone and everything, except himself. But after he “discovered” that one of his assistants had applied a topical substance, he changed his tune and found humility.

So, it was with great joy that many racing fans, including me, watched as Rombauer, trained by Mike McCarthy, charged by Medina Spirit in the Preakness and took Baffert down a few more notches than he had already taken himself.

Medina Spirit ended up third, behind second-place finisher Midnight Bourbon. Medina Spirit is still likely to be taken down as the Derby winner, assuming a second drug test confirms he ran in the Derby with a corticosteroid in his system. His connections would not get any purse money. The payouts to bettors, on the other hand, would stand.

The Preakness was a much better race than the Derby, where Medina Spirit went gate to wire. With rare exceptions (Secretariat), it’s more exciting to see horses come from behind rather than run away with races from the start.

…I’ve said before that some of the most vigorous writing you can find is in the Daily Racing Form’s official charts. The charts include a description of how every horse runs in every race — where they start, how they proceed and how they finish.

Here’s the chart for the first three finishers in the Preakness…

ROMBAUER brushed the outer portion of his stall, recovered and settled off the pace while between rivals, took closer order leaving the far turn, leveled off under pressure past the five sixteenths, shifted four wide with momentum into the lane, sustained under left handed encouragement, forged past MIDNIGHT BOURBON heading the sixteenth pole then eagerly pulled away while drifting in a bit late. MIDNIGHT BOURBON, away in good order, prompted the pace three to four wide outside MEDINA SPIRIT, drew alongside while under a light hold heading to three eighths, dueled with that one into the lane, secured command near the three sixteenths, spurted clear soon after then gave way grudgingly while drifting in some late. MEDINA SPIRIT bobbled slightly at the break, quickly recovered and took command, set the pace two to three wide, came under pressure into the far turn, was under a ride while sparring with MIDNIGHT BOURBON past the five sixteenths, kept on to about mid stretch then gave way.

I love the detail, such as “brushed the outer portion of his stall (the gate)” and “forged past” and “gave way grudgingly.”

It was a great race, and now it’s on to the Belmont two weeks from Saturday. I hope Rombauer does it again. If he does, he won’t go off anywhere close to the 11-1 odds he went off at Saturday. It will be more like 2-1.

One guy we won’t have to worry about next month is Baffert: Today the New York Racing Association temporarily suspended him, disqualifying him from entering any horses in any New York races, including the Belmont. The owners of Pimlico should have disqualified him from entering horses at that track, but Baffert threatened a lawsuit and they backed off…NYRA is another matter. As the late, Hall-of-Fame-trainer Woody Stephens once said, “When you cross the Hudson, the buildings get taller.”

**

Did you see that the man who invented the glue that made the Post-it Notes what they are today died?

His name was Spencer Silver. He was a chemist who spent his career in 3M’s research lab developing adhesives. The New York Times obituary said that in 1968 he was trying to create an adhesive so strong it could be used in aircraft construction.

“He failed in that goal,” the story said. “But during his experimentation, he invented something entirely different: an adhesive that stuck to surfaces, but that could be easily peeled off and was reusable.”

It took about six years for 3M to find a product on which to use the adhesive, and it wasn’t until 1979 that 3M introduced Post-it Notes nationally. But once the genie was out of the glue bottle, it never stopped flowing. As Dr. Silver’s obituary said, “They have never stopped selling.”

Dr. Silver was 80. He died May 8 of a heart problem at his home in St. Paul, MN.

I stole that line — the part not in parentheses — from the inimitable Michael Barbaro, host of the New York Times’ wildly popular podcast The Daily.

That’s how he ends each day’s show, capsulizing for listeners the top stories in the news.

So, today, here’s the JimmyC version of the news roundup…

:: Ellen DeGeneres has announced her show will be ending at the end of 2022. I don’t watch her show, but I saw her 2018 Netflix special, Relatable, and it was hilarious. An article in the print edition of today’s Times, recounted her start on national TV, when she first appeared on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson in 1986.

She began with this joke…

Setup: “My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was 60.”

Punchline: She’s 97 today and we don’t know where the hell she is.

And then the kicker: “I’m kidding. We know where she is. She’s in prison.”

:: The Missouri House and Senate have both approved a bill, by wide margins, eliminating the requirement that Kansas City police officers live within the city limits. After Gov. Mike Parson signs the bill into law, officers will be allowed to live anywhere within 30 miles of the city limits, but not across the state line in Kansas. The Senate passed the measure 31-2 on Wednesday, and the House did so Thursday on a 140-4 vote.

Passage of the measure angered Mayor Quinton Lucas, who said the residency-requirement rollback was “based on animosity to Kansas City.” The bill does, however, have several advantageous elements, including that it bans police chokeholds, for the most part, and requires police departments to look into officers’ history with other agencies before hiring them.

As recently as five or 10 years ago, I would have strongly objected to lifting the residency requirement, but now I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. For decades, a majority of KC police officers have lived in the Northland, so we might as well let them live in Lee’s Summit, Independence, Raytown and other Missouri suburbs.

:: At long last, the General Assembly has approved an increase in the state’s 17-cents-a-gallon gas tax, one of the lowest rates in the nation. Starting Oct. 1, the tax will increase by 2.5 cents a year until it hits 29.5 cents a gallon in 2025. The hike would make Missouri’s rate closer to the national average among states.

MoDOT has estimated that the state faces a $745 million annual funding gap for roads and bridges.

“I don’t know how much longer we can keep kicking that can down the road,” said Republican Rep. Becky Ruth of Jefferson County, south of St. Louis. “We have an opportunity to invest, make an investment in our roads and bridges, help economic development, bring jobs here and make roads safer.”

It’s gratifying to see the Republicans in General Assembly finally come around on this issue and stop trying to duck a gas-tax increase. The last time the Republican-dominated assembly tried a back-door maneuver was in 2014, when they proposed a Constitutional amendment that would have imposed a 3/4-cent statewide sales tax to pay for road and bridge improvements. That, of course, would have shifted the lion’s share of the financial burden from highway users, like truckers, to the general public.

I met and teamed up with Tom Shrout, a transportation expert who then lived in St. Louis, and we came up with this slogan: “You pay, truckers don’t.” It was very effective, and Amendment 7 went down in flames, losing by about 18 percentage points.

Tom and his wife Debra moved to Los Angeles a few years ago, but we still stay in touch. He’s a regular reader of the blog and comments frequently.

:: Finally, KCUR reported Monday that about 40 editorial employees at the Kansas City Star, excluding editors and editorial board members, have begun an effort to unionize. Led by longtime reporter and columnist Mike Hendricks, the employees have presented Star management with a request for voluntary recognition as the Kansas City News Guild.

Hendricks told KCUR the initiative came in response to the bankruptcy filing by owner McClatchy last year and the subsequent takeover by Chatham Asset Management, a New Jersey-based hedge fund.

“We didn’t know what was going to happen with the paper, either with our jobs or with the direction of the newspaper,” Hendricks told reporter Carlos Moreno. “And we thought it’d be good to have a seat at the table.”

Very few people are around who remember the last time editorial employees at The Star and The Kansas City Times, then the morning paper, tried to unionize. It was in the early 1970s, and the movement was led by a friend and colleague of mine, Robert M. Dye. We were both general assignment reporters on The Times. It took a lot of guts to initiate that move because management was very strong, much stronger than it is now.

Unfortunately, the national NewsGuild sent in an ineffectual representative who was not able to rally or inspire the reporters, photographers, copy editors and other front-line employees. I remember Dye asking me if I would sign a document stating my support for the union, and I, about two years on the job, declined. I told him I’d vote for it but wouldn’t be out front.

I remember the city editor, the late Don D. “Casey” Jones, gently but firmly grilling me in the newsroom one night, asking how I felt about it and why. I told him I was for it but slipped away as quickly as possible. When it came time for a vote, it failed badly, as many of us expected.

Then came a big repercussion: Dye, one of our better reporters, was taken off reporting and consigned to the night copy desk. For reporters with high hopes, the copy desk was exile. In short order, Dye resigned and took a job at The Milwaukee Journal and Sentinel, where he later landed on the business side of the operation and made a big salary working directly for the publisher.

I admired him for taking a chance, but I was always glad I kept my head down during that period.

In this case, Hendricks doesn’t have to worry. He’s very close to retirement age and could walk out the door, head held high, at any time. In addition, it’s likely a majority of those in management sympathize with those pushing for the union. Everybody there, including Editor, President and Time-Clock Checker Mike Fannin have to be nervous about hedge-fund journalism.