Lawsuit argues Missouri’s control of Kansas City Police Department is unconstitutional

Area residents, including the mother of a man who was killed by police, have filed a lawsuit alleging state control of the Kansas City Police Department is unconstitutional.

A Missouri law allows the Board of Police Commissioners, which includes four governor-appointed members and Kansas City’s mayor, to run the police department.

The federal lawsuit filed Monday says that structure violates equal protections provided by the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act.

“These laws target Kansas City’s Black residents on the basis of race for a separate and unequal policing structure to which no other residents of the State are subjected,” the lawsuit said.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, Attorney General Andrew Bailey, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and the Board of Police Commissioners, including Mayor Quinton Lucas, were listed as defendants. Most did not respond to requests for comment.

Ashcroft said providing public safety is a core responsibility of the government.

“If Kansas City and St Louis want to prioritize criminals over law abiding citizens it is the duty of the state to step in. Catch and release doesn’t work at the border or in Kansas City and St. Louis,” he said in a statement.

The law allowing state control was approved in 1861 in an effort to prevent the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department from turning against the Confederacy. The lawsuit said it was passed “to keep Black people captive, and to deny Black people basic human rights and dignities.”

In 1899, the measure was revised to apply to cities in Missouri with a population of at least 300,000 people — which singled out Kansas City and St. Louis, the two cities in the state with the largest number of Black residents.

St. Louis regained local control of its police department in 2013.

According to the lawsuit, there are no financial or operational reasons for KCPD to be controlled by the state. Instead, the structure prevents Kansas Citians from having a say on how the department spends tax dollars and how the community is policed.

The lawsuit says the police department is “unaccountable to those whom they police” and that the department has engaged in discriminatory practices.

Black people are subject to car stops at a disproportionate rate. Police have also shot and killed several Black men in controversial encounters. One of those victims was Ryan Stokes, the son of Narene Crosby, one of the lawsuit’s plaintiffs. Her 24-year-old son was killed by an officer at the end of a foot chase in July 2013.

Local control of the city’s police force has long been publicly debated in Kansas City, and Mayor Lucas has voiced support for it.

In recent years, questions surrounding Kansas City’s lack of control and what that means for police accountability, have surfaced during the 2020 protests for racial justice, after last year’s record breaking number of homicides and most recently, in the wake of the Chiefs rally shooting.