(soft music) (air whooshing) - Good evening, and welcome to Flatland.

I'm your host, D. Rashaan Gilmore.

I invite you to stay with us for what is sure to be a very compelling conversation.

On May 25th, 2020, the whole country, and, indeed, the whole world, watched in abject horror, as Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, kneeled on the neck of unarmed black man, George Floyd, killing him.

In the wake of his death, the City of Minneapolis, and many others just like it all across America, and communities both large and small are left to grapple with the size, role, impact, and budgetary costs associated with their police departments.

Kansas City is, by no means, an exception, with many issues involving law enforcement coming straight to the forefront.

An effort to shift a fifth of KCPD's budget to target crime prevention, community outreach, and engagement resulted in a legal battle between the Kansas City Council and the Board of Police Commissioners.

Former detective, Eric DeValkenaere, was found guilty in the 2019 killing of Cameron Lamb, the first known case of a Kansas City law enforcement officer to be convicted for the fatal shooting of a black man.

Activist groups have made a renewed effort to push for local control of KCPD, and police chief, Rick Smith, is scheduled to retire next year.

All of this during a time when KCPD has seen a rise in violent crime in the city and a record uptick in resignations from the department, leaving many city officials and community members worried about their ability to respond to calls.

- As a black man, I've always looked at the history of law enforcement and the role that we have played.

Back in the 1800s, a lot of the people that were overseers of slaves, they wore a badge.

Then we move into the early 20s, where Jim Crow and the lynching and things of that sort, where African Americans were telling the police these group of men took my kid, and then nothing were done, was done.

And then you move into the 1960s, with police being involved in the civil rights and the dogs and arrest and things of that sort.

And the brutality that some of these civil rights leaders suffered and the protestors suffered.

When I saw protestors in 2020, protesting to George Floyd, I understood, because I was out there protesting, during the Rodney King, riot.

So, each generation has had some type of incident with law enforcement, where it's been very, very negative.

So it's almost like we take two steps forward and then we get 10 steps going back, when major incidents occur.

- I think it's important to understand that you cannot get to a place of, of community, if you're not dealing with the problems of the past.

And we all come to this situation and to this topic with our respective points of view and our own agendas and that doesn't have to be negative.

But, I think that we've got to really be very serious as a community about what actual change looks like and why it's needed.

I was arrested once and it was the most painful experience of my life, because my mother was there to witness it.

It turns out it was a case of mistaken identity, he claimed.

But, she said that was the worst thing I've ever had experienced, watching my child being handcuffed and taken away in a police car.

You know, I'm, I'm here to tell the story, but what's behind the story is the context of it.

And the context is that do get stopped more often and that we are profiled and that very often these encounters end up with us losing our lives or a lot of questions about what happened to us.

And so that's why I wanted to share my own experiences.

I don't want people to be tuned out, because they think they already know what they should be thinking about the subject or how they should feel.

(police sirens) - This will tell us where all the calls are, like what's pending, what officers are on which calls.

And then it also labels what type of call it is, priority level.

Yep, a parent came onto the bus upset about something and started verbally arguing with the bus driver.

- And is this a good address for you?

- [Bus Driver] Yeah.

- Okay.

Basically every single car in the city is busy, we're blacked out citywide for almost half the shift, cars coming from north zone and Shoal Creek, answering high priority calls such as like a, a domestic violence in south zone and they're having to wait an additional almost 10 minutes, because of all that, then you have to contribute factors of traffic or construction or something and it's, it's just very unsettling to know that people are having to wait that long, of the situation.

- [Jim Buck] Response times matter, if I'm calling 911 because my neighbors are in a fight and those officers are gonna be there in three to four minutes, versus those officers that are either in eight to 10 minutes.

That extra five or six minutes of arguing and fighting, could be whether that escalates into something truly tragic.

(knocking on door) Honestly, it's been some of the most challenging last couple years that we've had.

The attrition and the loss has been such that right now, you're just trying it back to where you currently should be.

The retirements are gonna happen.

The, the ones that concern you are losing that five to 10 year officer.

And that's what we've lost a lot of.

In 2021 KCPD lost 226 employees to separation.

So from 2018 to 2021, KCPD lost 717 employees, but only hired 559.

That's a loss of 158 members.

- Not here today to, to sugarcoat or, or anything like that.

2021 was the second highest homicide rate.

weve ever had in Kansas City Really crime overall, across the country is down.

But violence, homicides and nonfatal shootings are up across the country.

And Kansas city has no exception to that.

- The violent crime could take considerably more resources of maybe six officers working on that particular shift.

You might tie up four or five of them, cause somebody goes with the victim to the hospital to ensure their wellbeing and their welfare.

You've got at least a couple officers maintaining a crime scene.

You've got somebody that has to go with the particular suspect for booking and processing and all that.

You know, so you potentially have four or five of your six tied up on one particular scene and that scene can run at least a couple, two, three hours.

What looked like six or even eight, working that particular shift, now you're down to three.

And the calls keep coming.

- [James] It's a tough time to be a police officer.

Departments all across the country are struggling to recruit officers to take, take the job.

No police chief wants to tell a member of the public that no we're not coming.

If you call 911, there's sort of a, you know, this baked in philosophy that you call and we'll come.

You know, determining how many people you need to staff a police department.

It's a complicated issue for, for a lot of reasons.

Some places use a crime rate.

crime rate goes up, need more officers Not really a good way of doing it So what they did was they had pairings of three different beats and one beat would get patrol removed and, and sent to another beat, where it would be double, doubled up.

And then, and then a third one would be, just a control group to see, you know, with no change.

Now they wanted to measure, you know, did crime change, did the perception of crime change if response times change.

And it basically turned out, there was no, there was no difference.

So, it sort of opened up the eyes of American policing to say, Hey, wait a minute.

You know, this random patrol, you know, and rapid response is probably not, you know, the way we should be doing business.

You know, and a lot of what the police do, doesn't really focus on crime.

So the best way to, to staff an organization is by seeing what kind of work there is required of them.

We don't need the police to do a lot of things that they're doing now.

And I think one of the positive things that will come out of, you know, what we're dealing with now is sort of a, you know, a, a reckoning with that.

- [James] The use of force by the police is, is is oftentimes not pretty.

And you know, people react to that, rightfully so, react to that and they, they wanna make sure that it's done properly.

- Adding more police to a, a body of people that a community already doesn't trust.

I don't think is, is the way to go.

The thought about calling the police to come and help you in a situation, can be a difficult choice to make.

- It's a very, very scary situation to be black and policed in Kansas city.

One of my first interactions with law enforcement here, was at the age of 15, where I was assaulted in handcuffs by law enforcement at a school dance.

Had experiences where I've had to help dress wounds on my own son, because he was harassed and beat up by the police walking home from work, carrying a pizza in high school.

In this climate where we live in a, in a system that is constantly asking for new ways to create more funding for policing, create more funding for law enforcement, what I want to encourage them to do is to consider to take that money and to give it to community, to serve the needs that they actually have.

- When people have the things that they need.

When they have food, shelter, clothing, employment, we don't have the big crime problems that you see.

We're talking about violence prevention, specifically primary prevention.

We're really thinking about things that support families, particularly young families, This is where we partner with the folks talking about livable wages, and we talk about, affordable housing, access to early childcare, early childhood learning and things like that.

These are all a part of the prevention spectrum.

If the house is on fire, people don't really want to hear about, well, here's how you could have prevented that fire.

(laughs) You know, people are like, no, come put the is fire out.

So many times that looks like, bring the police in, increase the police, staff the police up.

We don't really have evidence to show that that is, that is as helpful, but it looks immediate.

if you guys keep just putting the fire out, without really getting to the root of why it's on fire, the next house is gonna be on fire and then the next one, and this fire will never really go out.

- Crime prevention should be a community thing.

It's not a police thing.

And I know the police would embrace that, that, you know, yeah, they've been clamoring for help for a long time.

It's a two clause sentences.

You know, it's a proactive and aggressive of policing, and, you know, fulsome community partnerships and investing in the community.

That's the combination.

It's a, it's a one, two punch.

It's not a, not a singular effort.

- Some of those police officers are running from call to call, that that makes it difficult, to get to know the neighborhood, know the neighbors.

We have to it that trust, much better than what it is now and what it's been in the past.

- All right, and welcome back for the discussion portion of today's program.

With us, in studio today, is Lora McDonald, executive director at MORE2; Stacy Johnson-Cosby, the Center Planning and Development Council; Branden Mims, COO of the Ad Hoc Group Against Crime; and former KCPD Major, Darren Ivey, who also served as the commander of the department's crisis intervention team.

I wanna start with you, Major Ivey.

Congratulations on your years of service and your retirement, but I'm just curious, in reflecting back on your time, what can you share with our audience about your experiences dealing with violent crime and how your program, specifically, focused on remediating those concerns?

- What I saw with programs like the crisis intervention team, like you were talking about, one of the things that helped was whenever you have officers that are trained to deal with folks that are having an emotional mental health crisis, they obviously come in with deescalation skills right off the bat.

That's part of the trading they receive, so they have that, already that piece inside them.

So, when they go into a situation where there is a violent crime scenario, or one that just happened, they have a little bit more skills, I think, to process that and to help process the scene with the people, help the people process what's going on, help them get through what's going on.

I think that's the biggest change I saw, but I also saw the toll it took on officers over the years, those type of scenes as well.

- And I do wanna come back to that, in terms of the toll that it takes on officers.

And I'm curious, Brandon, though, if you can talk about the toll that policing takes on communities, particularly communities of color.

And one of the terms that the Major used was this term deescalation, and, oftentimes, you feel like there's not that when the police show up.

Obviously, he was working with a trained force that was designed with specific skills to encounter those situations.

What happens, in your experience or in your observation, when we don't have that level of training or experience showing up at scenes that may or may not be violent, but they end up that way because of, maybe, a lack of training, or because of issues on the community's side?

Where do you land with that?

- Each time that an officer responds to a scene, we hope, and trust, and pray that they are very skilled in deescalation, otherwise situations that maybe are at a level five quickly go to a level 10.

And so, what you sometimes will get from that is a hesitancy from community members to reach out for help or assistance from the police department In the last several years, under the current chief of police, we have seen much more officer-involved shootings.

We've seen many more complaints against the KCPD during Chief Smith's administration than we have seen under the previous chief, which was Darryl Forte's administration.

- Under Chief Smith, as you know, the deescalation really became a priority.

When he became the chief, he wanted everyone, not just the CIT officers, he wanted everybody in patrol, and everybody who was coming through the academy to have the same skills as a CIT officer.

The difference is CIT officers had to be a volunteer-based program under the Memphis model, which we follow, so we came up with a hybrid program, which was a two day program, where every single person in patrol got the same amount of deescalation skills as CIT officers did.

what do you feel is the missing link here when we talk about the dichotomy of where Brandon just described and what the Major described?

'Cause there's obviously some sort of a disconnect between where the police are coming from and where communities are coming from.

What are you witnessing?

- It's so interesting that you used the word dichotomy, because that's what I talk about, often, as the biggest flaw in how I see policing, is there's this idea of good people and bad people, and there's actually just people, D. Rashaan, there's just people, and we have good days and bad days, and good moments and bad moments, and that's also true of police officers.

There's people that have bad days in policing and there's people that have good days in policing, so I think it actually starts right there, with that understanding of there's not heroes and villains in this world.

We all make mistakes and fall short, right?

how do we begin to address that particular concern of making sure that those officers who shouldn't be on the streets aren't on the streets, and that those officers who are, and who are there to uphold their oath to protect and to serve all of our citizens, are supported?

- It's what Major Ivey said at the beginning, right?

Is deescalation is key, but there's also this deep intertwining of race and racism in policing Stacey, what are you experiencing?

Because I think a lot of people might think that, because you are an African American, a black woman, that you automatically might be assumed to not want more of a police presence, but you're actually calling for more police in the Southland.

- Right, and it's because of factual evidence that we do not have enough officers, that it's understaffed.

I even talked to my mom about this, and she's on the same page, especially in our neighborhood, the Southland, the crime is coming this way.

We're seeing crime that we've never seen before.

And what we do know also is that we don't have enough officers in South patrol.

when I pick up the phone to call 9-1-1, I want an officer to show up.

I don't want 'em to show up in hours, I want them to show up in minutes.

- Many studies have shown that an increase in the number of officers is not at all directly correlated with a decrease in crime.

And I see some of our panelists are shaking their head, so what is the happy medium to that?

And a second question, if you would jump into as a follow up, is what should be the role of the police?

- If people don't know how to solve a problem, or a community, or a business, or society doesn't know how to solve a problem, we have told them, "Call 9-1-1."

And that, of course, brings the police department out.

So, what is the role of the police?

And, to me, the role of the police is everything.

I think we need to be heavily invested in the community.

I think we've done a really good job with that in Kansas City.

I think we could do a better job, but I think we've done a great job with programs like POW, which we expanded down to the Southland, where we already had a POW program.

and the East patrol covering the whole area with our DARE program, with our youth police academies, with our Explorer programs, with volunteering, like programs with Lead to Read, by having social workers, by having two community interaction officers.

To be heavily involved, I think that's gotta be a major role.

And the reason is is the police can't do this alone.

And it's truly, it goes back to the old days of community policing, where the term was it's a community and the police working together to solve the problems of that community.

I'm curious what you are hearing from community members that you work with, and neighborhoods that your organization serves, at Ad Hoc, what should be the role of these 42 officers and six sergeants if they were to ever be hired and staffed at South Patrol, or anywhere in the department for that matter?

oftentimes, the media and the political climate of this country makes it seem as if those who live in the urban communities don't want policing, which could not be further from the truth.

We believe in the necessity of police officers.

However, there has to be a balance.

As you stated earlier, it really doesn't matter how many police officers you have.

We're not going to solve the problems of our communities with just more police officers.

Every year that I've been in Kansas City, when they were fully staffed at the police department, they were always saying, "We need more officers."

We have heard the phrase, "We need more officers," I know, for at least a decade that I have been here and doing community work.

So, the question is, at what point do we realize that we're not going to arrest our way out of the issues in our community, and begin to make real investment into the lives of the folk that we serve?

and I want them skilled, I want them trained, and then I want them to solve the crimes.

Because I think, once we get some crimes solved, and then there is a police presence that is appropriate for the area, then those who would commit the crimes will start looking around saying, "Hey, wait a minute.

"Chances are great that the police may catch me "when I'm doing the crime, so I better not do it," or, "If I do the crime, "they may catch me when they go to solve the crime."

- Right, I mean, and everyday people have these same basic needs and desires.

We wanna feel safe in our communities, we wanna feel like we can thrive in our communities, wherever they may be.

But I just wanna push back a little bit, Stacey, and ask, maybe, if you have ever had to question, when you call the police, are you going to get, as a black woman in this country, are you going to get exactly what you're expecting, what you described wanting from the police?

Do you have that moment where you worry if you're are gonna be on the receiving end of a threat or violence, may you not be safe, may not be believed?

Do you ever have those encounters?

I know my mom, and my sister, and women in my family certainly speak to that a lot.

- I had a situation many years ago.

I was in the car with my husband, and my sister, and her husband.

It was late at night.

We were driving along, somewhere along the Ward Parkway Corridor, and we had a police officer stop us.

Now, I'm driving the car, and so we know it's after midnight, we know why he stopped us.

There's no question.

Because, at the four way stop, he put a spotlight in the car.

He knew exactly who was in the car.

And so, he went around the block, he stopped us.

And for the better part of, probably, half an hour, he's at the car, playing the games.

And I said, I feel like I'm being harassed.

He reached for his holster, and he said, "You haven't seen harassment yet."

And so, what we did is, all four of us, we ended up making a police complaint, and we followed through.

And back then, we had to go downtown, I don't know how they do it nowadays, and he was reprimanded.

So, I know that's the case.

So, I've been on the receiving end of that.

I've been stopped by the police, in many cases, with doing nothing wrong, and I know that.

So, I'm saying it's twofold.

There are problems, there are problem police officers.

I know it happens to people, but when I pick up the phone to call a police officer nowadays, I get exactly what I expect.

And, if I don't, I know what the remedy is.

- Lora McDonald, the role of the police in Kansas City, what should it be?

I think Major Ivey talked in really strong terms about the burden that is put on police to show up and do everything.

You call 9-1-1, and no matter, cat up a tree, or a distressed relative maybe having a mental health crisis, or if there's a violent crime underway.

What should be the role of the police in our community?

- Well, I've been a social worker for 28 years, and we too get calls for all kinds of things, right?

For problem solving things that no one else seems to be able to know who to call, and will somehow reach a social worker.

So, it's not only police that receive the back end of people's problems, lots of professions deal with that day in and day out.

I would say that police officers have to see people at their absolute worst, usually.

I think their job is to enforce law.

To expound upon that, to enforce laws across the board fairly, and that's why we're all here, is because the application of the law doesn't look the same in our city, east and west of Troost, or if you're pink and freckled like me, I don't receive law enforcement the same as Stacey Johnson-Cosby just described, right?

I don't.

I've seen law enforcement in our city investigate a break-in in the triplex where I lived, where all that was stole from that apartment was a painter's radio, and they spent half the morning out there fingerprinting, interviewing all the neighbors like me.

By contrast, when my partner Jamal's place was broken into, at 51st and Benton, they treated him like a criminal, like he had broken into his own place.

I've seen this firsthand.

I was there when that happened.

When you see the more than once, you know what begins to happen is now there's a homicide and Jamal's the neighbor.

Is he going to comply?

Is he going to, I mean, be a good witness, right?

Because they already treated him like a suspect the last dealing, when he called for help.

So, I think that's what we're not seeing universally, D. Rashaan- - Yeah.

- Is fair application of the laws we need enforced.

- I'm a young black man.

I've been pulled over probably a hundred times by KCPD for one speeding infraction or another.

And, largely, my experience has been positive, and I appreciate that, but I can say that some of the individuals who come into Ad Hoc to file complaints, have told very different stories of what their interactions have been.

But I wanna make sure that, sometimes in these conversations, we loop all of the police in together as we begin to tell some very horrific stories.

I believe that this is not the vast majority of the officers who are putting their lives on the line each and every day.

Sometimes the bad seeds are the ones but it is how we deal with the bad ones that matter.

- Every month, on our website, we answer your questions about life in Kansas City and the issues you care about through our curiousKC Initiative.

Let's hear from our community reporter, Vicky Diaz-Camacho, about our question of the month.

(air whooshing) - This month's curiousKC question comes from Lilly.

She asked, "In what way does police presence "make Kansas City communities safer?"

(air whooshing) - You're a lot less likely to commit a crime if you see a police officer driving down the street constantly, or out on foot walking, or on a bicycle, or whatever.

But I also wanna go back to the community policing part.

I think that's huge too, 'cause the reason I feel we need to be so invested in the community, and have the manpower to do that is there is a historical trauma involved with many of our communities and police departments, and not just in Kansas City.

I mean, in the history of the United States.

We have to form a lot of relationships to have that trust back, or to strengthen the trust, maybe the trust we have.

So, by being in the communities in a non-police capacity is building the relationship, that way, when it is time to need that police presence or that cooperation for an investigation, you have that buy-in already, or, at least, you have a lot more buy-in than if you didn't do that.

So, I see it as both of those ways.

- And that's where we wrap up today's conversation for this episode of Flatland.

It's been executive director, Lora McDonald of MORE2; Stacey Johnson-Cosby, from the Center Planning and Development Council; Chief Operating Officer at Ad Hoc Group Against Crime, Branden Mims; and former KCPD Major, Darren Ivey.

Thank you for joining us.

(upbeat music) You can find additional reporting on police staffing in our region at flatlandshow.org, or you can also submit your own curiousKC question for the next month's topic.

This has been Flatland, I'm D. Rashaan Gilmore, and, as always, thank you for the pleasure of your time.

(air whooshing) - Flatland is brought to you, in part, through the generous support of AARP, and the Health Forward Foundation.