Why doesn't Kansas City control its own police?

By Nomin Ujiyediin,

Published November 23, 2021 at 4:00 AM CST

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Kansas City remains one of the only U.S. cities without authority over its own police department, but civil rights groups are demanding that to be changed. Plus, tens of thousands of properties in St. Louis still have racially restrictive covenants, even though they’ve been outlawed for decades.

For a year and a half, Kansas City activists have been calling for the city to retake authority over its police department — which since 1939 has been controlled by the state of Missouri, under the auspices of the Board of Police Commissioners. KCUR’s Peggy Lowe reports that so far there’s been little progress.

Racially restrictive covenants were used for decades to keep Black families out of white neighborhoods. In 1948, a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision made those covenants unenforceable, and 20 years later they were outlawed. In St. Louis, restrictive covenants are still tied to some 30,000 properties, most without the homeowners’ knowledge. St. Louis Public Radio’s Corinne Ruff has the first of a two-part series on these covenants.

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Kansas City Today is hosted by Nomin Ujiyediin. It is produced by Byron Love and edited by Gabe Rosenberg & Lisa Rodriguez

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