Kansas City leaders discuss public safety, but lack of clarity raises concerns | Opinion

If you expected calls for more and better public safety spending at Kansas City's Finance, Governance and Public Safety Committee meeting last week, you would have been disappointed.

Held at the Plaza branch of the library, the meeting opened with a brief discussion of various ordinances, including a proposal for more "equitable" economic development. Unfortunately, the language of the ordinance was so broad as to be meaningless. A skeptic might argue this will simply result in doubling taxpayer outlays for the same negligible outcomes we see now — but time will tell.

Street racing and sideshows came up as topics of concern, with some discussion about how the city and police are addressing these issues. Yet most of the audience — filling roughly half the auditorium — had come for the broader public safety discussion.

Mayor Quinton Lucas presented a series of slides on police funding and performance , but they were confusing. His presentation muddled fiscal-year funding numbers with calendar-year crime statistics. Homicide figures didn't align with the Kansas City Police Department's crime data , and 911 response time data contained multiple errors. The financial charts didn't match KCPD annual report numbers either, perhaps because they only reflected city outlays. Councilmember Nathan Willett, referencing a slightly different version of the slides, noted that the figures weren't adjusted for inflation. Adjusted for 2024 dollars , he argued, the city is actually providing less funding to the police than in past years.

Lucas is the only official serving on both the City Council and the Board of Police Commissioners. The public deserves more accurate data from him.

The public comments were the most surprising. Contrary to media portrayals of other recent meetings, where calls for more police and a new jail dominated, this crowd was more skeptical of such solutions. Some attendees spoke about addressing the "root causes" of crime, citing "incarceration without representation" and advocating for a "holistic" approach. These are important discussions. We should be talking about social services, housing, mental health, addiction and the absolute destruction of the family, something we have been aware of since then-Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan released his landmark report on African American poverty in 1965 .

But it's critical to remember that rapes, shootings, robberies and other crimes are happening — in abundance — today. And so the police must act today as well.

Gwen Grant, president of the Urban League of Greater Kansas City, put it well: "Police respond to crime; they don't prevent it." She suggested they focus on enforcing the law — a view I share. The KCPD has struggled to meet its primary objective of responding to and solving crimes. Expanding the police mandate to address every societal ill would be a mistake.

Opinions in the room were not unanimous. Several business owners decried the costs of property damage and theft. Councilwoman Melissa Robinson correctly pointed out that most violent crimes and emergency 911 calls come from the city's East Side. Former council member John Sharp emphasized that police response times directly affect emergency medical service outcomes.

Kansas City's crime problem absolutely has upstream causes. But the situation is too severe to debate those causes alone. When a patient is bleeding out, the priority isn't thoughtful discussion about diet and exercise; it's stopping the blood.

For those interested, KCPBS will air " A Tale of Three Cities " on Thursday, Sept. 19 — a 30-minute documentary comparing the different approaches to crime in Kansas City, Kansas; Kansas City, Missouri and Omaha. I was interviewed for the project but haven't yet seen the final cut. It should offer an interesting comparison of the approaches taken by our neighboring cities.

I do not envy anyone who must wrestle with the important issues of crime and law enforcement. It is a challenging job. Based on the discussion so far in Kansas City, I'm not confident our leaders are serious enough to make the difficult decisions ahead.