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

I have no doubt that KCPD has many excellent officers.

I had an encounter with two last year when our daughter had a wreck late one night last year, and the responding officers were outstanding. Brooks wasn’t injured, just shaken up, but her car was totaled.

In addition, a member of the police Public Information Office who lives in our homes association is top of the line, and everyday police and press relations have improved since he joined the unit.

At the same time, however, I am very troubled — and I’ve said this before — about the direction of the organization in general.

Under the last two chiefs — Darryl Forte and now Rick Smith — we have seen a disturbing tilt toward increasing secretiveness and insulation.

For example:

:: When Forte retired unexpectedly in 2017, he slipped out the back door with $500,000 in accrued vacation, sick leave and comp time, and he refused to talk to the press about it.

:: Twice last year, Smith hindered the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office in investigating incidents involving questionable police responses. In one, two officers beat up a transgender woman, Brianna Hill, who was resisting arrest. In the other, an officer shot and killed 26-year-old Cameron Lamb under opaque circumstances.

:: Smith has chosen to communicate with the public and the media primarily through his blog, instead of phone calls and in-person interviews.

:: The department appears to be dead set against buying body cameras, which would be of immense help in determining appropriate and inappropriate police actions in controversial and deadly incidents.

Smith

Forte

While there are many specific problems with the police department, nearly all are rooted in a basic problem: Governance of KCPD has been a certifiable disaster since the demise of the Pendergast organization in Kansas City.

Follow along on a bit of interesting (you bet!) police department history.

Some time after the Civil War, the Kansas City and St. Louis police departments came under state control. In 1932, however, boss Tom Pendergast’s political machine challenged Missouri law to regain local control of Kansas City’s department. The move was successful, and Pendergast added the police department to the list of other departments that were reservoirs of patronage, with the boss’s lieutenants doling out jobs to reward political support and insure loyalty.

After Pendergast went to prison for tax evasion in 1939, the General Assembly passed a bill, which the governor signed, returning control of the department to the state. The law put the department under the control of a five-member Board of Police Commissioners, consisting of the mayor and four citizens appointed by the governor.

Significantly, the law gave the board the power to hire and fire the police chief, but it made the city responsible for paying for police department operations. Thus, in the case of police body cameras, the mayor and Council cannot force the police department to buy them because it has little say regarding the department’s budget.

An even bigger problem is that police boards have long coddled and rubber-stamped the chiefs. The citizen board members, who have a 4-1 advantage over the mayor, generally are very flattered to serve, and they tend to put the police department’s interests above the interests of the general public.

For example, The Star’s editorial board recently called for the department to allow an outside agency to conduct use-of-force investigations — which makes obvious sense — but Police Board President Nathan Garrett (a lawyer, wouldn’t you know it?) refused.

The Star quoted Garrett as saying, “No one has shown me convincing evidence that our practice has resulted in a miscarriage of justice.”

Of course not. When you’re wearing blinders, you don’t see anything you don’t want to see.

**

The only sure way to cure the adversarial relationship between the police department and City Hall, and to flush the police department from the cave it’s been in for decades, is for the city to gain control of the department.

It would be difficult but not impossible.

One way is by initiative petition, which would entail getting signatures of five percent of registered voters in six of Missouri’s eight congressional districts. That would be a very expensive proposition because signature procurers have to be paid, and even if the drive was successful, the proposal would be put to a statewide vote.

Another way would be for the General Assembly to pass a bill authorizing a statewide vote on local control. That’s what happened in 2012 with St. Louis. Political agitator and conservative supporter Rex Sinquefield reached an arrangement with then-Mayor Francis Slay, and Sinquefield bankrolled a $2 million statewide campaign. Voters then approved it overwhelmingly.

The day after the election the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran a story saying: