The Kansas City Police Department unveiled new uniforms Monday, retiring four decades of the French blue shirts and dark wool trousers and replacing them with a full navy blue uniform and a freshly designed shoulder patch.
Police Chief Stacey Graves said the department needed uniforms that used updated technology for comfort and a lower cost.
“You are looking at the new generation of KCPD with a new look and a new patch with historic meaning,” Graves said. “The way we represent our department with professionalism and integrity is of great responsibility. When we put on the KCPD uniform, we represent Kansas City's past and present and now our future.”
Both Graves and Tom Whittaker, chair of the five-person Board of Police Commissioners, likened the uniform change to a different direction for the police force, representing the evolution of police and the community.
“For the first time in over four decades, the look and the feel of our police force is changing,” Whittaker said.
Graves has changed the department since the days of former Police Chief Rick Smith, who retired in 2022 and left a contentious legacy marked by record high homicide rates and intense criticism from community activists and local business leaders. Graves brought back use of a focused deterrence crime program and is working with the Jackson County prosecutor's office, and most violent crime was down last year following several years of record homicides.
The KCPD team who studied the uniform change told the board that the new ones were more comfortable and durable, and allow for better mobility, Whittaker said.
“The policing of 2026 demands more than the fabric of 1984 could provide,” he said. “We want our officers to be identifiable and to command authority while also looking like the modern police force they are.”
KCPD Deputy Chief Derek McCollum said the total cost for the change is $1.75 million to be spread across two fiscal years. That figure included department-issued vests, outer vest carriers, outer vest accessory pouches and outerwear, KCPD spokeswoman Alayna Gonzalez said. The one-time projected cost to outfit 1,200 officers with the new uniform (pants, shirts and patches) is approximately $425,000.
The new patch shows the year the department was founded, 1874. The interior color is French blue, in a nod to the old uniforms, and they bear the seal of the state of Missouri, Graves said.
