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

After studying the membership of the Police Governance Review Commission and the breakdown of Monday evening’s vote to keep KCPD under state control, it appears to me that the deck was tilted against local control.

The vote to retain state control was an achingly close 13 to 12, with four of the 29 members failing to attend the meeting.

At least seven of the original 30 members of the commission have or had some connection with the Police Department. And guess what? All seven voted to retain state control.

The seven were Jim Pruetting, traffic division commander for the PD; Bailus Tate and Tim McInerney, former police board chairmen; Brad Lemon, executive vice president of the Fraternal Order of Police; Hyajin Bushey and Justin Kobalt, police officers; and Sean McCauley, FOP legal counsel.

Can’t blame them, I guess, because they have vested interests or they have benefitted in some way from their PD connections.

Two others who voted to retain state control were former Missouri state representatives Tim Flook and Beth Low. I’m sure that as former legislators, they would like to see the PD stay under the state’s thumb. Why would the state want to give up control of a plumb like KCPD?

City Councilman John Sharp cast a very disappointing vote, in my view, in favor of retaining state control. Sharp is in his fourth term on the City Council, and he should know by now that state control is outdated and impractical.

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There are four governance commission members I’d like to call out for extra special consideration, however. They are the ones who failed to show up for the meeting and did not arrange participation by conference call.

Conference-call participation in meetings is routine these days. I was on a church board a couple of years ago when we demanded the pastor’s resignation, and one board member participated by phone from out of state.

About the only excuses I would accept for not participating in Monday’s meeting would be if the missing members were either unconscious or out of the country.

Here, then, are your hall-of-shame no-show/no-voters:

Angie Stanland, a vice president at Cerner.

Eddie Gladbach, a vice president at AMC Entertainment.

Emanuel Cleaver III, senior pastor at St. James United Methodist Church. (He’s the son of U.S. Rep. and former KC Mayor Emanuel Cleaver.)

Jerry Jones, an organizer with Communities Creating Opportunities.

As I said yesterday, the City Council can overturn the committee’s recommendation, but, still, it would take approval of the Missouri General Assembly to wrest the Police Department from the state’s grip.

A majority of the General Assembly won’t even vote to expand Medicaid for the poorest among us…How could we ever expect a majority to agree to yield control of the biggest police department in the state?

It probably would take a statewide initiative petition, followed by a statewide vote. And statewide initiative petitions are about the hardest thing in politics to pull off.

The requirement is that in at least six of the state’s nine congressional districts, petitioners must collect signatures equal to 5% of the number of people who voted in the most recent gubernatorial election.

I can’t imagine anyone undertaking a job of that magnitude just to change the Police Department status quo.

But I sure wish the Governance Review Commission would have at least gotten the ball rolling in the right direction.

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Here is the breakdown for the 25 members who voted…

For state control: Bailus Tate, Beth Low, Brad Lemon, Charles Meyers, Erika Brice, Hyajin Bushey, Jim Pruetting, John Sharp, Justin Kobalt, Pat McInerney, Sandy Skaggs, Sean McCauley and Tim Flook.

For local control: Barrett Hatches, Carol Grimaldi, Cici Rojas, Duke Dujavoich, Ed Ford, Gene Morgan, Gwen Grant, Kay Barnes, Melba Curls, Ken Novak, Sandra Aust and Sulaiman Z. Salaam.