Urban League of Greater KC

Community activists gathered Wednesday to call for local control of the KCPD and for the Board of Police Commissioners to respond to a new Kansas City Star investigation into racism and discrimination within the department.

At a virtual forum Saturday, social justice leaders and community members discussed the hiring process and brainstormed the qualities they want to see in the next chief.

Expect the 14th annual Urban Summit of Kansas City to focus on the racial wealth gap and produce a strategy defining its advocacy agenda for 2022.

Gwen Grant's lawsuit says the board violated the rights of taxpayers under the Hancock Amendment, the citizens’ initiative that limits state revenues and local taxes.

The U.S. Justice Department has resumed "pattern-or-practice" investigations under the Biden administration. Kansas City activists hope such a probe could bring reforms to Kansas City Police.

Citing a high rate of violence against people of color, four major Kansas City groups call on Attorney General Merrick Garland to scrutinize the city's police department.

What is behind a coalition of Kansas City civil rights leaders asking the Department of Justice to investigate the city's police department, two municipalities that have considered banning conversion therapy, and the work of preserving the Kansas River.

Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker wrote a letter of support, saying police have “no accountability to our community.”

The war of words around Mayor Quinton Lucas’s plan to reallocate a portion of the police budget is now in the courts, with the city responding to the Board of Police Commissioners lawsuit. Both sides say the other is violating state law.

Mayor Quinton Lucas announced a plan to reallocate about one-fifth of the Kansas City Police Department budget that was welcomed by some civil rights leaders in Kansas City but also raised questions about his motives.

Police brutality and protests garnered the attention and sympathy of white Kansas Citians, but 2020 has not brought the systemic change activists say are needed to improve race relations in the metro.

Hundreds of volunteers spread out across Kansas City Saturday to transform streets with six Black Lives Matter murals. Photographer Julie Denesha focused on one mural, at 63rd & Troost, and two of the commissioned artists.