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

Well, stop the presses!

Mayor Quinton Lucas has finally said he favors local control of the Police Department.

In a Dec. 22 interview with members of The Star’s editorial board, Lucas said that either the city or some plaintiffs acting on behalf of the city should file a federal lawsuit alleging that state control of KCPD violates the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

I couldn’t follow his reasoning on why state control violates the Equal Protection Clause — and I think such a lawsuit would probably fail — but at least he’s finally talking openly about local control.

Even though his criticism of state control was relatively tepid, he at least acknowledged that state control had outlived its usefulness, saying “It is not working.”

Until now, he has bobbed and weaved on the issue, mainly, I think, because he doesn’t want to get on the wrong side of the police union. But it sounds like he’s become so frustrated by the four other members of the Board of Police Commissioners ignoring his overtures for modest reforms that he is now getting serious about local control.

I’ve said all along that local control — which almost surely would require a statewide initiative petition followed by a statewide vote — will not come about without strong leadership from the mayor. To get traction and the public’s attention, Lucas would have to break out the megaphone and raise hell about this issue almost every day for a long time.

Even then the Republican-dominated General Assembly — which conceivably could vote to give up state control but probably won’t — would very likely ignore him. If he was able to get the public riled up, though, it would be a good start toward getting out of the wheel-spinning state we’ve been in since the Pendergast era.

The wheel-spinning state suits the Police Department (and the chief, the union president and the police board) just fine, of course, because it (and they) can continue rolling along without being directly accountable to the public or any local elected officials. (The governor appoints four of the five board members, and the mayor is automatically a voting member.)

Here’s the essence of state control: Chief Rick Smith can continue thumbing his nose at the mayor and City Council while spending tens of millions of dollars in city money; Union President Brad Lemon can continue negotiating outrageous protection from accountability for sworn officers; and the police board can continue bowing and scraping to the chief while remaining virtually anonymous.

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It is maddening to me how disconnected the police board is from the public. Once again, here are the names of the four members appointed by recent governors: Don Wagner, Nathan Garrett, Cathy Dean and Mark Tolbert.

Unless you’ve been reading my posts regularly, chances are you’ve never heard of any of them. As far as I know, they’re all Republicans. Garrett was a state trooper before becoming a lawyer; Cathy Dean is a retired lawyer; and Tolbert is a minister. Tolbert, who is Black, is the only minority among the four.

As for Wagner, president of the board, he is more familiar with the pages of The Independent, the local society newspaper, than with the pages of The Star. The main reasons he gets his picture in The Independent are 1) he married a daughter of the late Bill Deramus, former president of Kansas City Southern Railway, and 2) he made a fortune in the steel tank business.

Don and Jean Wagner, as seen in the July 12, 2014, issue of The Independent

In 2019, Wagner and 11 other wealthy area residents donated $100,000 to a Tom Watson charity to play a round of golf with Watson, Lee Trevino, Jack Nicklaus and David Feherty. And where did they play? Why, at the Kansas City Country Club, the most exclusive country club in the KC area.

Wagner has served on various civic and community boards, but he is out of his element in the government and political arena and has no experience battling for the interests of middle- and lower-income people.

Not only is he out of his element, but he is presiding, in name at least, over a department that is swamped by a record number of homicides. As far as I can tell, the board has not pushed Smith to come up with a significant plan to counter the homicide rate. And, really, how could we expect a very privileged, extremely wealthy white man to make important policy decisions that affect almost 500,000 mostly average citizens?

The answer is we can’t. So I say, God help us.

But you, Mayor Lucas, you can relate, and you’ve got the bully pulpit to demand change.

It’s time for you to start shouting from on high…from way up there on the 29th floor of City Hall. Let the average people hear you; it’s they who elected you.