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Emergency Operations Center on Standby for Election Problems in Kansas City

By Dan Verbeck

http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kcur/local-kcur-785497.mp3

Kansas City, MO – If anything goes seriously wrong with the election in Kansas City, the 'fixers' are mostly all together in one place. KCUR's Dan Verbeck has been there and has a report.

It looks almost like a movie set. The election board, police, fire, ambulance services have a cavernous room on the old Northeast side, converted into the city's emergency operations center; the word emergency' is removed for now. It's normally reserved for tornado, flood and mass injury.

Deputy Police Chief Rachel Whipple doesn't want you to draw conclusions, except police do have an anti-disorder plan. "Now I give the people of Kansas City a lot more credit than that," says Whipple. "I don't think we're going to see that kind of behavior no matter who wins, but...if the worst should happen obviously we know how to deal with a critical incident."

And staffed until the election is decided. Quietly.

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