Blondie's bogus Kansas DMV adventure

Reader and link-provider extraordinaire blondie2hot7 sent me this story about a California DMV worker who was selling licenses out of her apartment for up to $800.

Those kind of DMV favors happen in Kansas, too, Blondie told me. In August, she said, she went to the DMV in Kansas City, Kan., to renew her license, but forgot her glasses and could not read the chart.

She watched the clerk send away a young black man who failed the eye test, and was thinking of stepping out of line. But when she got to the test, the clerk started clicking the letters until they "looked like billboards", Blondie said, and she walked out with her license.

"She didn't click any buttons for him," Blondie said.

This isn't selling licenses out of an apartment, but Blondie, who hours earlier had won $1,600 at a casino, said maybe it was her lucky day. The whole story

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Sermon: Anger & KC St. Pat's Day parade

Recent e-mail from reader Ray W., youth pastor of Antioch Church of the Nazarene in Overland Park:

• I am looking to find a crime level comparison for the Kansas City St. Patrick’s day parade between 2005 and 2006. I am doing research for a sermon.
• The sermon will be in the next few weeks on a Wednesday night. I am preaching on anger, and the progression of it in our world. I have noticed in the three years that I have been here (I moved here from Boston), that the reports of the parade of gotten worse, I want to make sure there is hard data on that. I will then be matching up the economical environment to see if there is any relevance, with the final product being that people's material needs that are pressing need to be met so that they can be open for spiritual change.

. Meanwhile, here are some numbers:

Note: limiting the query to the parade route along Grand Avenue produces only one or two crimes each year, sometimes none.

Hispanic crime wave on the Plaza?

Reader openmind asked in the open thread Tuesday:

• I live on the Plaza, and recently there has been a large number of rumors concerning “incidents” involving illegal immigrants. It seems like every week someone has a new horror story about a woman getting raped or a man getting stabbed, and every time its “a Hispanic illegal” that is the culprit. The funny thing is, I never see anything mentioned on the news or in the paper about the attack. Do you have any info on anything like this? Since I haven’t found any supporting stories, I just assume its fear mongering, but I still wanted to check with you.

Short answer -- I don't know; I get lots of crime data from Kansas City police, but no arrest data.  What I need to answer this question is arrests by race by address or police beat. I've put in a request for it In response to your query -- we'll see.

12th Street: 'We killed people for telling'

This eight-minute video, posted on YouTube, features a group of gun-toting 12th Street Kansas City gangbangers flashing their dope, their weapons and their views of the world.

It's hard to watch, harder to listen to and not safe for work - lots of bad language. There's an occasional rap-music overlay, and a narrator who I take to be the film-maker, madjohann. This is by far his most popular video, viewed 4,309 times when I saw it yesterday.

There's a guy who shows his finger he says was shot off, and another who says he saw a killing as a child. Perhaps most attention-grabbing is a wobbly older guy who boasts about robbing banks 25 years ago, "like Robin Hood", so a) people wouldn't disrespect 12th Street and b) sons and daughters wouldn't have to be poor like he was.

He seems to lament that it's not as easy to kill snitches as it used to be.

"We killed people for telling," he says. "We killed people for taking a stand. Their momma, their daddy, everyone else got to go. Nowadays, people got things kind of f*ed up, somehow."

Right.

Update 8:40 a.m.: This is apparently part of a five-hour, 2005 double DVD, Hood 2 Hood, featuring similar segments for KCK and a couple dozen other cities, reader Mike P. tells me. Thanks!

Hat tip to reader ScooterJ!

A reminder:
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Slavery reparations gaining momentum

The IRS has already paid at least $30 million in refunds to taxpayers who, most often misled scams, claimed slavery reparations. Several low-level IRS employees were also involved, and some prosecutions have resulted.

A past not forgotten
Advocates who say black Americans should be compensated for slavery and its Jim Crow aftermath are quietly chalking up victories and gaining momentum.
Fueled by the work of scholars and lawyers, their campaign has morphed in recent years from a fringe-group rallying cry into a sophisticated, mainstream movement. A pair of churches apologized recently for their part in the slave trade, and one is studying ways to repay black church members.
The overall issue is hardly settled, even among black Americans: Some say focusing on slavery shouldn’t be a priority, or it doesn’t make sense to compensate people generations after a historical wrong.

Photo: Reparations advocate Katrina Browne, whose ancestors were the biggest slave traders in U.S. history, has been working for the past seven years on a documentary film about their trade, "Traces of the Trade: A Story of the Deep North".

A (belated) reminder:

1. Comments must be signed. Unsigned comments may be deleted.
2. Comments signed as someone other than the writer may be deleted.
3. No profanity or vulgarity, racially or sexually offensive speech.
4. Feeling off-topic? Visit the open thread.

Thanks for your cooperation.
Greg Reeves

Missouri police rated on racial profiling

Missouri AG Jay Nixon has put online a massive report on racial profiling by police agencies in the state. You can look up how your department is doing, because police agencies are required by state law to submit traffic-stop reports by race:

• Concerns by the citizens of Missouri and the Missouri legislature regarding allegations of racial profiling by law enforcement prompted the passage of state law Section 590.650, RSMo (2000), which was enacted Aug. 28, 2000. Racial profiling has been defined as the inappropriate use of race by law enforcement when making a decision to stop, search or arrest a motorist.

Missouri police prone to pulling over black drivers

JEFFERSON CITY — Black motorists in Missouri continue to be pulled over by police at a higher rate than white and Hispanic drivers, according to a report.
The annual report, an analysis of more than 1.5 million traffic stops, was released Thursday by Attorney General Jay Nixon. It shows black drivers were 46 percent more likely to be stopped than either white or Hispanic drivers in 2005. The disparity has widened since 2004, when blacks were 38 percent more likely than whites to be stopped.

Recommended: Whitlock on Cosby

Just my $0.02, but Star sports columnist Jason Whitlock had an outstanding column this morning on Bill Cosby's Call-Out here Tuesday, which drew about 2,000 persons to Penn Valley Community College:

Cosby gets his points across

• I wasn’t shocked at all by what I heard from Cosby on Wednesday. I’d heard it all before at the Million Man March. Cosby was plainspoken, direct and brutally honest.
• Cosby stated that too many black people have accepted the labels — “at-risk, disadvantaged and minority” — put on them by the mainstream media.
• “Harriet Tubman had to put a gun to some (slaves’) heads to get them off the plantation,” Cosby said, referring to the queen of the Underground Railroad. “You know why? Because some of us want to stay at-risk and disadvantaged.”

This blog is about crime, not race, but it's hard to ignore the intersection of the two in this country. Related topics have come up on this blog before and can be found in the One Kansas City? category.

As Jason says, Cosby's line has drawn much fire. Latest attack:

Standing up to Cosby's harsh attacks on poor blacks
Like the start of baseball season and the end of the school year, Bill Cosby's rants against the black poor are becoming a perennial feature of the impending summer. On the most recent stops along his 18-city "Call Out" tour, Mr. Cosby has reignited controversy by publicly attacking young black men.
While I don't question his love for black people, his recent actions have appeared more venomous than valuable, more condescending than caring and more hateful than helpful.
- Marc Lamont Hill, an assistant professor of urban education at Temple University, writing in the Baltimore Sun today.

PLEASE NOTE:

Some well-received new rules for commenting.
1. Comments must be signed. Unsigned comments will be deleted.
2. Comments signed as someone other than the writer will be deleted.
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Thanks,
Greg Reeves

Red lights, Bill Cosby this week

For the community-minded among us, three events this week:

• Tuesday 7 p.m.: Bill Cosby "Call-Out" at Penn Valley
• Tuesday 7 p.m.: City-sponsored forum to discuss red-light cameras, Trailside Center, 9901 Holmes Road.
• Wednesday 7 p.m.:Same forum, Line Creek Community Center, 5940 N.W. Waukomis Drive.

Bill Cosby "Call-Out" coming here

Comedian and social critic Bill Cosby is bringing his national roadshow, "A Call-Out with Cosby" to Kansas City: 7-9 p.m. May 23 at Penn Valley. Star story:

• Cosby encourages low-income, urban families to see that solutions to some of their concerns might be within themselves, if they choose to take charge of their lives and use community resources available to them.

Those interested in attending the event should respond by Friday by e-mail:  boydkp@umkc.edu . Send name, organization, phone number, e-mail address, mailing address and number of tickets requested.

Cosby drew about 1,200 persons to his event in Cincinatti April 15. He's making these appearances at his own expense.

Cosby's original statement (7/2/04)

PLEASE NOTE:
Some well-received new rules for commenting.
1. Comments must be signed. Unsigned comments will be deleted.
2. Comments signed as someone other than the writer will be deleted.
3. No profanity or vulgarity, racially or sexually offensive speech.
4. THINK before you comment and please stay on topic.

Thanks,
Greg Reeves

St. Pat's: Should cops get "pro-active"?

KC police should get more aggressive in checking IDs of the "obviously criminal element", says Pete Maher, publisher of Midwest Irish Focus, a small monthly magazine:

• It's only common sense that if it becomes known in the criminal community that cops at the parade will be spot-checking ID's for outstanding warrants then many of the hooligans who have caused so much trouble might opt to go somewhere else for their fun and games.
• It isn't brain surgery to understand that a more aggressive stance by the uniforms along the parade route would discourage the terrorists who attend only to victimize the families along Grand Boulevard every March 17th. The policy these days seems to be to simply wait for trouble to begin and then alert The Kansas City Star how "bad" the situation has become.
• Pete's e-mail to me

Police spokesman Capt. Rich Lockhart responds:

• The police had the same staffing as the 2005 parade, which, as most will remember, was free from the disturbances of this parade.  If the issue of the parade is framed appropriately, there were a small number of people who were victims of a small number of incidents.  That is not to minimize what happened to any of the people who were victims of crimes; what happened to them is unacceptable and the police will work to bring those responsible to justice.
• What Mr. Maher is suggesting is that the police should be more proactive in confronting the “obviously criminal element” at the parade.  How do the police decide who is part of the “obvious criminal element?”  To confront people we need to have reasonable suspicion to believe a crime is taking place or about to take place.  We are not permitted to stop people without a reason.  Just because someone looks like they are part of a “criminal element” does not give us a reason to stop and question someone.
• Full response

Gun arrest: "You can't let it spoil your fun!"

Jennifer Brown, 34, doesn't get Downtown much from Johnson County, but she was at the St. Patrick's Day parade Friday, at 16th & Grand, with her husband and sister-in-law.

She wasn't sure which way Downtown was or which side of the street she was on, east or west. She saw a young man with a machine-pistol -- oops, a TEC-DC9 semiautomatic handgun with 30-round clip - arrested in front of her - and it didn't faze her one bit.

"We were watching the parade and I turned around to take a picture of my husband. He got all excited and said, 'Look at the police taking that kid down! He's got a gun!" she told me.

"That's when I started taking pictures. I was trying not to be so conspicuous, I didn't know if they'd yell at me, take my camera away or whatever," she said.

Will she be back next year?

"Oh, sure! You cannot judge your good time by one person. How many times have you been in a crowd of people, and you don't know how many people have guns. You can't let that spoil your fun," she said.

She sent me five photos of the arrest. Thanks, Jen! Her shyness cost her photographically - you can't see as much as in the previous post of arrest pix- but here they are: 1 2 3 4 5

Pix of a St. Pat's Day arrest/TEC-DC9 pistol

(Click picture for larger image)

A young mother at the parade with her husband and year-old son took this photo and the two below.

"My husband's family has for years enjoyed the St Patrick's Day parade, but this year it was bad," she wrote. She saw police tackle and arrest a young man with "a gun I've only seen on TV."

"We will not be going back," she wrote.

Some thoughts:

• As parade organizers and others have noted, hundreds of thousands of people attended this parade and had a good time.
• The women looking on in shock are older adults. Older adults of any race might look just as shocked.
• The young men grinning are teens or young adults at best. Males that age of any race might be as well, especially in a party atmosphere.

Readers of this crime blog, white and black, recently have noted our differences in 125+ comments on the St. Pat's parade. But perhaps they don't give themselves enough credit for conducting a multi-racial dialogue on a sensitive topic in largely civil terms, with even the occasional search for common ground.

(Click picture for larger image)

St. Pat's organizer: What more can we do?

St. Patrick's Day Parade organizer Mary Nestel isn't happy with front-page news like this:

• Shots were fired, and a family was brutally attacked by youths in a parking lot near 16th Street and Grand Boulevard.Police broke up at least 10 fights, tackled a gunman and nearly shot a juvenile who had a toy gun.
• In one attack Friday, a Kansas City Star employee and his family were kicked and beaten toward the end of the parade in one of the newspaper’s parking lots. A witness and Star security officials said one youth shot a gun into the air.
• Star story Saturday: Violence returns with gunfire, beatings, arrests

I called Mary this morning to see what, if anything, might be done differently next year.

"What more can we do?" she said. "We can’t tell certain people not to come down. It’s Kansas City’s largest single-day event, so aside from charging people to come...

"Where are our leaders in Kansas City to start looking at these, as the police called it, young thugs? Because the police did their jobs. They were all out there. We did not cut back in staffing. We even bought more barricades.

"We did our job by putting on an unbelievably successful parade. You could tell that by the thousands of people who came down and had a great time. And then a small 1 percent had to have a bad time thanks to some young thugs. Why were they even there?"

She told me she still hasn't seen a police report, and expects to meet with police later this week. She didn't like The Star placing the arrests story next to the parade recap on the front page Saturday:

"What are you guys going to do when that Arena opens and there’s a huge concert and everyone comes outside and about two blocks of cars are broken into and 10 people get mugged?" she said. "Are you going to put that right next to it? How is it going to be successful? It's not."

Update: Thursday, March 23, 2006:
I thought it would be helpful to put meeting updates, TV/radio links on the topic, etc. here.

Tonight: KCPT's Ruckus, 7-7:30 p.m., will discuss the parade, among other topics.

On Friday, the public television station's Week in Review program will also have the parade as a topic at 7:30 p.m.

On Monday, Kansas City police will conduct an internal review of their deployment and performance at the parade. Spokesman Capt. Rich Lockhart has also responded on this blog to a critic.

A report on the parade requested by Mayor Kay Barnes will be presented to the Kansas City Police Board at 9 a.m. Tuesday.

The Kansas City St. Patrick's Day Parade Committee will hold its wrap-up meeting Wednesday.

I'd be glad to add/link to other meetings, events or shows.

Black POs in Wichita sue

Black police officers in Wichita - not looking for a fat settlement - have alleged discrimination in a lawsuit:

• Racist cartoons were posted in a squad room.
• White officers got longer lunch breaks.
• No white POs responded when a black PO asked for help against six thugs with brooms.
• A black officer was required to provide proof of an appointment that kept her from attending a meeting although her white peers didn't have to.
• Story

The suit, filed in federal court, seeks no monetary damages.

KC police say they're trying to up the percentage of minority officers, but here's the current breakdown:

Demographic breakdown of the Kansas City Police Department by gender, race, Hispanic status and rank (PDF)

In this recent post about a lawsuit by Denver Hispanic police officers, reader F asked for a breakdown of Kansas City, KS police officers.

Here's my experience asking for a demographic breakdown of officers:
Kansas City Police Department:

• Me: Can I have a demographic breakdown of officers?
• KCPD: I'm emailing it to you as we speak

Kansas City, Kan. Police Department:

• Me: Can I have a demographic breakdown of officers?
• KCKPD: Why do you want it? I assume it's public record. I don't know if we even track that. I'll have to check with Major Brown. Major Brown is on vacation, he'll address it next week.

Denver Hispanic POs sue

• DENVER (AP) — Latino police officers have filed a federal complaint against the Denver Police Department, claiming it discriminates against them in recruitment, hiring, promotions, discipline and the work environment.

• Story

I rode with Kansas City, KS, cops Oct. 21 and a Spanish-speaking officer was crucial in defusing at least one call - a noise complaint against some young men who had placed refrigerator-sized stereo speakers in their mom's car - without her permission!

The Kansas City Police Department lists 42 officers who are Hispanic. That's about 3 percent of the force - less than half the Hispanic proportion in the city as a whole:

Demographic breakdown of the KCPD by sex, race, Hispanic status and rank (PDF)

CORRECTION NOTE: This post originally listed Hispanic P0s at 42, not 48. This error resulted from my omitting the Female Officers column in the above PDF.

Report: KC Safe City meeting

I don't have actual news out of the meeting this morning of the Kansas City Safe City Initiative. Several dozen cops, school principals, neighborhood officials and others met 8:30 a.m. to 11 a.m., and I dropped in only for about an hour. So these are just snapshots:

• The city's Animal Control officers have formed "sweep teams" to combat dog packs - a more efficient use of resources than trying to find every stray dog, said AC manager Mike Schumacher.
• Cops and school officials are dealing with 50 different languages in the Northland and a growing number of "transient" kids who move from school to school, KCPD Maj. Jan Zimmerman told the group.
• For an urban school, serious problems at Woodland Elementary School, 711 Woodland Ave., are minimal, principal Craig Rupert said. Police have always been helpful, he said - but now he has names and cell-phone #s to go with the badges.
• Troost School, 1215 E. 59th St., has battled sex offenders, vacant homes and properties, trash, and domestic violence affecting children, LINC before-and-after-school coordinator Calvin Davis said. "Children are our future, and, trust me, will act out what they see at home."

More schools presented progress reports. If you want to learn more, or get involved, call or email mayoral assistant Marcella Womack (816) 513-3525 safecitymarcella@yahoo.com

At the KC Safe City Initiative meeting

Thought I'd spend part of the morning at the meeting of the Kansas City Safe City Initiative, 4750 Troost. They're trying to make us one of the safest cities in America, you know.

KC Safe City Initiative to meet

Kansas City kicked off a Safe City Initiative in 2002. Goal: "to make Kansas City one of the safest cities in the nation."
Participants in the initiative - cops and codes enforcers, business owners and block watchers - will meet tomorrow to hear from seven elementary schools about progress since the beginning of the school year.
WHERE:  The Discovery Center, 4750 Troost Ave.
WHEN:  8:30-11:00 a.m. Friday, Jan. 20, 2006
Some safety issues being addressed:

• Gangs
• Graffiti
• Open-air drug sales near schools
• Sex offenders living in the area
• Seatbelt safety
• Illegal dumping, brush on sidewalks, hinderances to walking to school
• Animal Control
• Abandoned houses

You're invited.

Kansas City riots, April 1968

I was in Chicago, not Kansas City, in the days following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. All told, I think I'd rather have been here.
When I covered the Kansas City cops for this newspaper, the consensus among police veterans was that the level and extent of violence during the riots in this city were never reported.
Here's a chart that appeared in The Star on April 9, 1968 - early in five nights of rioting and unrest in the city.

Lead story that day:

• "Violence erupted for the second straight night on Kansas City's East Side last night, turning a large part of the area into a battleground where snipers dueled with police and national guardsmen in the glow of high-reaching flames from fire-bombed buildings."

Six days later, after things settled down, police Chief Clarence M. Kelley said he wanted to restore police-community relations. In what strikes me as a quaint touch, members of the "Negro community" asked that cops walk their beats, not drive. They were turned down.

Star story April 9, 1968, page 1 (jpeg)
Star story April 9, 1968, page 2 (jpeg)

Here's the federal government's Website for Martin Luther King Day. It stresses making today "a day on, not a day off." There are links to federal service and volunteer opportunities.

Al Brooks speaks out: 'Leawood Dead Pool'

By Greg Reeves
It's hard to make Al Brooks angry, but the "Leawood Dead Pool" has succeeded. That's the group of Leawood public works employees who made an office pool out of the final tally of homicides in Kansas City in 2005.
I spoke this afternoon with Brooks, an ex-cop who is now an at-large City Council member and mayor pro-tem. Here's what he said about the pool:

• "I thought it was the most outrageous thing that I’ve heard of in recent years. How do you play a game with people’s lives? With life and death? Have you heard what the spread was? You’ve got to have from this point to that point, like from 100 to 125. It’s 110 now. So I’ve got 110, I want it to stay at 110. But if you’ve got 116, you say, ‘Come on! We need six more homicides!’
• "That’s crazy. That is most disrespectful of the family members. Wasn’t Ali Kemp killed in Leawood? Wouldn’t it be horrible if they did this in their own community and said, ‘How many more homicides are we going to have in Leawood?’ How would Roger (Kemp, father of Ali Kemp) feel about that?
• "Regardless of the circumstances their loved one was in, whether it was drug-dealing or a prostitute or whatever the case might be, they are loved just as much as anyone else’s child is loved or loved one is loved.
• "The thing that I think bothers me the most is that you make a game with people’s lives. If it hasn’t reached your number, then you hope somebody else will be killed so that you will win the $50 pot."

Eight to 10 Leawood employees were suspended for one or two weeks in the case.

• "I think it should have been much harsher than that," Brooks said. "If that had happened on this side with some of our city employees, if I was asked, I would say they need to be looking for another job."

Leawood hobby: Counting KC dead

By Greg Reeves
Surely you don't take part in an office gambling pool, which are illegal in many places. Others do, however, including some Leawood public works employees, who had a "Dead Pool" on the final 2005 KC homicide total.
This email came to Star Unfettered Letters yesterday:

• "From: *******@********
• Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 2:32 PM
• To: letters@kcstar.com
• Subject: (no subject)
• Here's a good one. There were 12 public works employees who work for the City of Leawood. They decided to get a little pot together and who ever picked the correct number wins the pot. Well, the correct number is referring to the number of homicides in Kansas City, MO. All 12 are now on suspension. Most of them got one week. The pot holder received a two week suspension. A supervisor who new of the pot but did not participate received two weeks."

Star Leawood/OP reporter Henry C. Jackson checked it out and wrote a story with basically the same facts except Leawood city admin Scott Lambers told him the  # of employees was closer to 8 to 10.
Here's a useful overview from career site vault.com:

Other office-pool topics (found by CareerBuilder)

• How many cigarettes the boss will smoke in a meeting
• Who can knock over a cup of coffee with a golf putt from 45 feet away
• How often a co-worker will show up late
• How many times a co-worker will cry in a given period of time
• Cockroach race
• Who will become pregnant first
• Who will lose the most weight

Thanks and a hat tip to Star reporter Henry C. Jackson! 816-234-7722 (work)

You're invited: Crime Commission

What: Open meeting of the Kansas City Commission on Violent Crime
When: Monday, November 14, 2005, 6:30–8:30PM
Where: Don Bosco Senior Center, 580 Campbell (one block north of Independence Avenue, one block east of Charlotte) 691-2942
What4: To encourage public participation and input for the advancement of Commission goals

• City Council’s charge to the Commission:
• The charge of the Commission on Violent Crime is to investigate the current causes of violent crime in Kansas City and strategies that can reduce it. The commission will recommend implementation of integrated short- and long-term solutions, and provide oversight and monitoring of strategies that are implemented.

Info: Tracie McClendon, 513-3859 or Mary Ellen Bryan, 513-2534

Useful Star editorial on crime

By Greg Reeves

Our colleague, Star editorial columnist Yael Abouhalkah, is always right, we have learned over the years.

Today is no exception. In an unsigned editorial this morning, Yael (or someone who thinks just like him), talks about crime:

• Crime in Kansas City is down - a lot - since 1990.
• But violent crime is up 7 percent in the past three years.
• And homicide, the rarest crime and a poor measure of crime rates overall, has risen sharply this year over last.

Yael wrote the same thing in a column Thursday.

Tony's Kansas City: Favoritism reeks!

By Greg Reeves
In our recent read-through of 168 blogs at KCBloggers, we think Tony's Kansas City was linked to more than any other KC area blog.

That's a level of street cred we respect. Tony has now weighed in today on part of our discussion with City Councilman Troy Nash on the city's homicide rate.

We were so excited, we were going to parse his comment and respond sentence by sentence. But we read it closely, and it seems to boil down to this: Kansas City's a one-newspaper town, The Star's in bed with local politicians, won't criticize them and would be better off investigating them.

We'd be glad to go on forever about this, but we'd like to see what other readers of this blog are interested in first. Long-winded takes on the news biz can be...so long-winded.

We're official: Tony's Kansas City has discovered us!

By Greg Reeves
A newspaper trying to go online is like Lawrence Welk trying to dance at a rap concert, a famous Web pundit once said.

Example: We thought we could quietly develop this blog for a couple months without announcing it - you know, get the kinks out, make our mistakes early, etc. We'll start promoting ourselves online and in the paper on Sunday.

A month ago, however, 13 people commented on our post, "Top tattoos of Missouri prison inmates". Obviously, we'd been spidered.

And today we found a comment from tony@tonyskansascity.com. Tony runs a popular KC blog that usually treats The Star like a skin disease. Here's his welcome message to Crime Scene KC:

• "You know, these councilman granting you exclusive access to their plan reeks of favoritism. This is no doubt a benefit of your company’s position in this “one newspaper town.” I’ve noticed little criticism of city officials regarding the murder rate coming from The Star. The politicos help you scoop the rest of the city and seemingly guarantee that you won’t raise your voice. Seems to me that The Star would be better off forgoing the precious “exclusive” and providing some insight into what KC politicians are doing wrong and how those mistakes are failing to properly address KC’s murder rate."

Correct, correct, correct and correct! We see no problem with this point of view, although we may see the particulars differently. We'll parse these comments, we hope today.

Link back: Tony was commenting on part of our conversation with City Councilman Troy Nash yesterday, about minorities and the police.

Racial profiling: the BJS report

By Greg Reeves
We knew racial profiling was a hot-button issue in this country, but we didn't know it was hot enough to get the top Bureau of Justice Statistics official bounced out of his job.
That's the contention, anyway, in an AP story about BJS director Lawrence A. Greenfeld, who apparently struggled with his DOJ superiors over the most recent BJS study of racial profiling.
The issue: whether to announce the agency's findings with a press release or not. Greenfield wanted to. His bosses didn't. His bosses won.
The study, however, is available here in all its glory. Like most BJS studies, the data's a couple years old. And, like most BJS studies, it's authoritative and can be compared to earlier studies to derive a trend.
Key findings of the report, "Contacts between police and public":

• About 25% of the 45.3 million persons with a face-to-face contact indicated the reason for the contact was to report a crime or other problem.
• In 2002 about 1.3 million residents age 16 or older — 2.9% of the 45.3 million persons with contact — were arrested by police.
• The likelihood of being stopped by police in 2002 did not differ significantly between white (8.7%), black (9.1%), and Hispanic (8.6%) drivers.
• During the traffic stop, police were more likely to carry out some type of search on a black (10.2%) or Hispanic (11.4%) than a white (3.5%)

Councilman Troy Nash Part II: Minorities and police

By Greg Reeves
Our earlier post about Kansas City Council member Troy Nash was based on his statement last week that he wouldn't be interested in an "academic" discussion by the council's newly declared 29-member Commission on Violent Crime. He wants action on the crime issue.

Here's more of our talk with Nash about the subject:

Q. What is the perception of your constituents of the Kansas City police?
A. I have my own opinions about it, certainly, being an African-American male, number one, and living and breathing and experiencing in the community virtually my entire life, there’s been no exception to that rule, with the exception of the military, I was taken abroad.
But that’s home for me there, and I think it would be fair to say that there’s always sort of a natural tension in the system between the minority community and the police. And a lot of that follows along the historical continuum, given our history in this country.
But today I think things have improved. I think things have improved with the advent of community policing and those type programs. Police in a positive way has become part of our lives. We see them at our neighborhood meetings. We talk to ‘em on the corners when they ride their bikes. We now have their cell-phone numbers. All these things are sort of relatively new in the minority-police relationships.
However – and you know it was coming – I think that the police department or any other structural entity is not unlike the broader society. There’s still narrow, vested interests in the police department. You also have elements of racism manifesting itself in the department. I mean, I hate to see it, but that’s the reality. No different than local government, for that matter.

Councilman Troy Nash: Home Depot menace?

By Greg Reeves
Dangerous-looking city council member Troy Nash (left), in a conversation with us about race and crime in Kansas City, mentioned racial profiling:

Q. Are you talking mostly in traffic, or walking down the street, or?
A. Oh sure. I think across the board. Sure, sure – me personally. I could go to the Home Depot, and it happened. I walk, and there’s an older white lady, and I’m walking to her right side, she’s on my right side, and she clenches her purse.
And I sort of say in a joking way, ‘I don’t do that anymore. I can actually read and write and do arithmetic.’

Q. You said that to her, really?
A. Of course, of course I said it to her. Any time I have an opportunity to strike down that kind of foolishness and nonsense, I’ll do it in a non-offensive way, because I happened to have on jeans and things like that. So of course it’s alive and well.

Q. How did she react to what you said?
A. She didn’t react. Obviously, she’s going to keep walking. But this stuff happens, and Jim Rowland and I started that race-relations initiative – I know that’s not necessarily crime – but it’s kind of closely related. You hear these things over and over and over from our young people in this city, that they sense there’s a certain hostility there, and whether it’s perceived or real, and I happen to think that it’s real, the police needs to deal with it in a real and meaningful way. And that means treating all people fairly, and just showing these people a different side to themselves.