KANSAS CITY, Mo. – After Kansas City today filed its response to the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners’ lawsuit against the City pending in Jackson County Circuit Court, arguing that the Board’s complaints against the City are both legally and factually false, Mayor Lucas issued the following statement:

“One month ago, I worked alongside a supermajority of the City Council to craft legislation with a clear and simple goal of making Kansas City safer after generations of violent crime in our neighborhoods and to break the status quo in crime prevention and rising homicide numbers. I wanted to finally see a substantial, sustained decrease in homicides and shootings in our city. To ensure every child returns home safely to their loved ones at the end of each day.

“Since that time, the unelected majority of the Police Board and their outstate allies have claimed many things, but have not worked with the City Council, members of the Police Department, clergy, community leaders, or the neighborhoods most affected by violent crime toward a safer city. Instead, they have pursued litigation that is short on legal foundation, high on hyperbole, and wholly without merit. The Police Board’s legal theories are undermined by the law and the Board’s own annual practices, ignore the plain language of Missouri statutes, and their desired remedy asks the Court to violate the Missouri Constitution. 

“The unelected Police Board’s suit is not about protecting the brave women and men in the rank and file of our police department, nor is it about making the community safer. The suit is the Board’s effort to preserve their power and the power of Jefferson City over our local affairs, while Kansas Citians continue to suffer unconscionably high rates of crime in too many of our neighborhoods. Our taxpayers, our neighbors, our victims, our police officers, and our families deserve better. During the pendency of this suit, twelve Kansas Citians have been murdered, including a 15-year-old child. 

“I continue to encourage the taxpayer-funded Police Board to drop this wasteful litigation against the taxpayer-funded City and to work with us to build the safer Kansas City we all deserve.”

Today’s action follows long-time civil rights leader Gwendolyn Grant’s Motion to Intervene filed last Monday to join the lawsuit between the Board of Police Commissioners and the City of Kansas City. Ms. Grant is arguing on behalf of the City’s taxpayers that the ‘Taxation Without Representation’ scheme maintained in the Police Board’s Petition and the current state control structure violates the Missouri Constitution, specifically the Hancock Amendment.  Ms. Grant also raised several concerns under the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause against the Board of Police Commissioners for perpetuating a system that arbitrarily limits the voices of all Kansas Citians as compared to every other city in Missouri, and impermissibly limits the representation of African Americans and other minorities in Kansas City in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

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