It is maddening and painful to watch The Star and Mayor Quinton Lucas wring their hands and nibble around the edges of two big issues that should be clear cut and unequivocal.
Before going any further, let me make clear the words we desperately need to hear from The Star’s editorial page and from Lucas:
“Kansas City needs local control of its police department, and it’s time for Police Chief Rick Smith to resign.”
First, let’s look at Lucas.
He has not called for Smith’s resignation, and he has been strictly equivocal on local control. Why? I’ve said it many times: He’s afraid to cross the police officers’ union, Local 99 of the F.O.P., which supported him in his successful election campaign last year.
As a result, we see Lucas hemming and hawing and calling for a preferential election to take the public’s temperature before he dares to take the plunge.
And regarding Kansas City’s spiraling murder rate, we see Lucas beating his breast and saying the buck stops with him, when, in truth (a truth he fully realizes) there’s little he can do. He’s just one member of the state-appointed, five-member Board of Police Commissioners, which calls the shots at 12th and Oak.
The people most responsible for the police department’s failure to respond effectively to the cascading homicide rate are the four other members of the police board, the ones other than Lucas.
The four who control the board are essentially cardboard cutouts. We hear absolutely nothing from them, and 99 percent of Kansas Citians couldn’t name one of them. They are insulated because they are appointed by governors sitting 145 miles away — a Republican governor who doesn’t really care what goes on in this Democratic city.
Wagner
I want people to know who these commissioners are because it is they who allow Smith and other police administrators to run the department however they want. The commissioners, besides Lucas, are Chairman Don Wagner, Vice President Mark Tolbert, Treasurer Cathy Dean and member Nathan Garrett.
Wagner, Tolbert and Garrett were all appointed by former Gov. Eric Greitens, and Dean was appointed by Gov. Mike Parson. I have to presume that all four are Republicans, which again puts them out of sync with this Democratic city.
It’s a pathetic and illogical situation. In this city of nearly 500,000 people (estimated in 2018 at about 492,000), the police department and its chief are not accountable to the local elected officials who authorize the funds to keep the police department functioning.
If we had local control, the mayor could tell the police chief, “Give me a murder-reduction plan in two weeks.” Instead, he’s limited to saying things like, “I’m heartbroken and disgusted by what our fellow Kansas Citians and our officers confront each day. “
…As much as I hammer on Lucas, I do not dislike him. I know he’s smart, and I know he cares deeply about the city and its residents. The residents know that, too, and they would follow him into the battle for local control if he would just swallow hard and step out front, where he belongs.
Now, The Star
Lot of tentativeness here, too. Maybe it’s the “Kansas City nice” thing. I don’t know. Whatever is holding back Editorial Page Editor Colleen McCain Nelson, it sure is frustrating.
Two recent editorials tell the story of timidity regarding Smith.
On June 2, during the George Floyd protests, The Star ran an editorial under this headline: “KC Mayor Quinton Lucas has met this moment. Will Police Chief Rick Smith join him there?”
The editorial was 95 percent about Lucas, but it tapped into the questions about Smith, saying: “When Lucas and Kansas City Police Chief Rick Smith spoke at a joint news conference on Sunday, we saw only one of them meeting this moment with focus, leadership and urgency.”
The only other reference in the editorial to Smith came at the end, when it noted that Smith had joined Lucas in observing a moment of silence for Floyd and concluded with this backhanded compliment to Smith: “But that Smith showed up and showed respect at least makes progress seem possible.”
We sure haven’t seen any progress since then, have we? The murder rate has gone through the roof, and Smith continues to offer no strategy or plan to attempt to counter it.
Then, yesterday, the editorial page took ventured out a bit farther when it criticized Smith for indirectly blaming the recent shootings of two police offiofficers on critics of police brutality following the murder of George Floyd.
The editorial said the police-officer shootings “were not political” and went on to suggest that Smith should know better.
Nelson
Once again, Colleen McCain Nelson chose to hit Smith with a pillow and to leave the hammer on the work bench.
I don’t understand why she doesn’t just come out and say Smith is not the person to be chief at this critical juncture. He’s not a progressive chief; he’s not a good communicator; and he has alienated Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker.
There’s no reason to feel sorry for Smith, either, as he will probably retire as a millionaire, or close to it. Remember, his predecessor, Darryl Forte, walked away in 2017 with $500,000 in accrued vacation, sick and comp time.
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Regarding local control, the editorial page has spoken favorably but is hardly campaigning for it — which is what it will take to help coalesce public support.
After Lucas called last month for the preferential vote, an editorial urged the City Council to put the question on the November ballot and urged voters to approve it “in overwhelming numbers.”
I just wish Nelson would come out as strongly on the editorial page as lead editorial writer Dave Helling did in a June 8 Op-Ed column. Helling wrote…
“Kansas City has known for half a century that state control of the police is oppressive and undemocratic…Yet decades’ worth of studies, town hall meetings, debates, editorials and calls for change have produced nothing.”
But that was Helling speaking for himself, not for The Star.
Let’s hope, in the days ahead, Colleen McCain Nelson will borrow Helling’s hammer and start whaling away.
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Note: The lead story in today’s Kansas City Star — titled “Invisible Man?” — is a detailed look at “embattled KCPD chief” Rick Smith. The adjective “invisible” alludes to the fact that while he frequently makes appearances in the predominantly white Northland and seems responsive to residents there, he is seldom seen at neighborhood meetings south of the river and is viewed as unresponsive to many there. Even former Chief Darryl Forte has found Smith unresponsive to his overtures…If you have a subscription, it’s a good read. The lead writer is longtime police reporter Glenn Rice.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/usage-of-whale-wail-wale
Fitz, the same reason I avoid using LAY and LIE. It distracts the reader.
Well, I’ll be damned if I’m going to take this lying down…
Just kidding, Tracy…I love the fact you’re a student of words and put a copy editor’s eye on everything you read. However, as I’m sure you deduced, “whaling away” is correct usage. I checked before using.
On “lie” and “lay,” I agree; I avoid it whenever I’m not 100 percent sure I’ve got it right. For example, if I said, “I got laid last night,” I’d be lying, but I’d lay any amount of money that the lie was correctly expressed.
So glad you had checked the WHALE usage first; we are all channeling our inner Casey Jones…the best of the best, who never missed a thing. I miss Casey.
As for your final sentence, well, very clever, but TMI, too much information! Especially considering that most of us have gained the Covid 7 or 11 or 19–and are feeling like blubbery WHALES…beached in the heart of America. But at least not at the Lake of the Ozarks in Party Cove. Oy.
Let’s see, city administrations across the country have been pandering to violent mobs, disparaging their own law enforcement and releasing the rioters without charges. In St. Louis, the prosecutor is trying to prosecute two homeowners who simply defended their home. The same prosecutor only charges 23% of the referrals from LE. In Atlanta a corrupt prosecutor under investigation himself and struggling for his political life is using the PD as his scapegoats. In Minneapolis, Seattle and NYC city administrators defund the PD and yet somehow these same buffoonish officials wonder why their crime rates are skyrocketing?
Spoken like a truly clueless idiot. Local control means “Hey chief, my nephew wants to be a cop, can you make him a captain? I’d SURE appreciate it” (wink wink). The police department submits case after case of crimes, including car thefts, to Jean Peters Baker but she’s more interested in prosecuting a cop, her own “shooting team” cleared. That’s the problem: city leaders and that prosecutor are more interested on higher office than doing their jobs.
I don’t have much faith in The Star to get the job done editorially on this issue, as I haven’t seen any evidence that it’s willing to offer any real resistance to the local “do-Goode’rs” here in Kansas City and the rest of the Cancel Culture crowd. Local control vs. state control. In the end it all comes down to people in positions of power being willing to do the right thing for the right reasons and let the chips fall where they may.
You and the Star are advocating the return of Lynch mob mentality. Let’s find a scapegoat for society’s ills and drag them to the public gallows- all to satisfy the mob.
Chief Smith is not to blame for the meteoric rise in homicides, nor the lack of common decency in today’s youth, but he is a convenient scapegoat. Bowing to the mobs and replacing the Chief every time something happens, makes the Chief a political pawn. I remember when The Star was constantly bitching about Chief Forte too and calling for his ouster.
The Chief of Police should be a professional, career law enforcement leader, not a political hack.
This is another reason to leave control of the KCMO police with the state.
What HE said!