Police are moving forward with joining regional detention facility

When I was named Chief of Police in 2011, part of my strategic plan included closing the Headquarters Detention Unit. We now are closer than ever before to improving the environment for our detainees. I am very appreciative of the efforts of those at the City and at the Jackson County Detention Center in helping us reach this much-needed change. We hope to soon better accommodate those who have to be detained. We also will continue to seek opportunities to increase efficiencies as well as improve how we treat others.

Many pieces of the puzzle – everything from information technology to inmate transport issues – have had to come together  to make this consolidation happen, but we are very close to finalizing everything and moving forward with a city-wide detention center at 13^th and Locust.

During the recession, we closed the holding facilities at our patrol division stations because of reduced staffing and required all arrests to be booked at Headquarters. We now are going to reopen several of those, and detention officers will be reassigned there. Reopening these station holding cells is more convenient for officers and allows those who have committed lesser offenses to bond out. That frees up space at the main detention facility.

The regional jail will be a better environment for those who are detained. Our jail has been nearly the same since it was built in 1938. It has received no significant upgrades, and space has been extremely tight. Because it has not been upgraded, it never was required to be ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act)-compliant. It has been secure and functional, but it does not meet the needs of modern detention facilities. Joining with the City and Jackson County on a regional jail will provide that, as well as ADA compliance. Inmates also will receive services they don’t in our jail. All of them will be screened by a social worker for everything from substance abuse to mental illness problems. The social worker will be able to connect them with services that can assist them and perhaps even remove them from a criminal lifestyle. Inmates also will have 24/7 access to care by a licensed nurse. Because of funding, we only can provide that for 8 to 10 hours a day at our jail.

Joining a regional detention center also will eliminate redundancies in the booking and arraignment processes. Our jail never was intended to house inmates for more than 24 hours, so when inmates don’t make bond, they currently must be transferred to the City/County detention center. This causes them to have to be rebooked all over again at that facility.

I appreciate all the hard work on the part of our staff and that of the City’s and County’s to make this regional detention facility a reality. I also cannot say enough to commend our current Detention Unit staff. They often are short-staffed and do the best they can with an outdated facility. They spend their days dealing with the most belligerent and violent people in Kansas City, and they do it with respect and professionalism. They are about to undergo big changes, and I appreciate their willingness and openness.

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A better climate in arrest vans

For those who have been arrested in Kansas City on a freezing cold or burning hot day, the short trip to jail hasn’t been a comfortable one. Our 20 or so arrest vans do not have heat or air conditioning in the prisoner compartment. We had installed fans, but they often weren’t enough.

A small group of officers and a sergeant in the Metro Patrol Division decided to do something about this. This past summer, they rigged up a PVC pipe that attached to the air vent in the cabin and came out in the prisoner compartment so arrestees could get some air conditioning. When one of our Fleet Operations Unit supervisors saw what they’d done, he engineered an even better system with a fan that circulates the cabin’s heat or air-conditioning into the prisoner compartment. As one of the officers who drives the van said, “It’s the same air the officers are breathing.”

About four of the arrest vans have been retrofitted with the system thus far, and more will be as they’re brought in for service. It costs only about $50 to make this big difference in prisoner comfort. All new vans are being ordered with the air circulation system already in place.

I was very impressed when I heard these officers cared so much about the treatment of people who have just been arrested. They spent their own time and money to rig up a system to keep prisoners cool or warm. I was even more impressed when our Fleet Operations Unit took their idea and ran with it, coming up with an inexpensive and more effective way to deliver heating and cooling. In the grand scheme of things, this is a little adjustment, but it speaks volumes of the kinds of compassionate and problem-solving people we have working at this department.

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Highlights from yesterday's Board of Police Commissioners meeting

Highlights of the Dec. 22, 2009, Board of Police Commissioners Meeting:

• Capt. Rich Lockhart presented the department’s new web site, which will go live Jan. 4, 2010.

• Deputy Chief Cy Ritter reported that there have been 64 traffic fatalities in Kansas City this year compared to 58 at this date in 2008. He noted two disturbing trends:
- The number of passengers in vehicles killed this year is up 80 percent from last year.
- Motorcycle fatalities have increased 63 percent over 2008.

• As of Monday, Dec. 21, D.C. Ritter said police had eliminated the backlog of red light camera violations waiting to be reviewed. At one time, thousands were in queue. Four officers were pulled out of the Traffic Enforcement Unit to review the violations full time. Now that they’re caught up, residents who got violations from the cameras should receive their tickets in the mail much more quickly.

• After nearly two years of work to report crime statistics more accurately, Major Christine Laughlin announced that the State of Missouri has certified KCPD as NIBRS (National Incident-Based Reporting System) Compliant. Kansas City is the first large city in Missouri to achieve this certification. The State has reviewed the department’s last three months of data in the new system and declared it 100 percent accurate.

• Deputy Chief Rachel Whipple explained the work of a recent committee to reassign civilians to fill critical positions like 911 calltakers, report input control and station desk clerks left vacant by a hiring freeze. She said no one took a pay cut or lost their job, but several civilians were transferred, and others will have to take on the duties of two jobs.

• Deputy Chief Darryl Forte said that the department continues to negotiate with the City and Jackson County regarding a regional jail. He said the space in which the entities would like KCPD to move their detention operations lacks the square footage for four interrogation rooms. He said that was a requirement that is not negotiable for the department. KCPD also has yet to be quoted a price on leasing the space, he said. D.C. Forte said the space would only be a temporary location as part of a five-year plan to develop a new, regional jail, and commissioners questioned why the department would put in so much work and money to move detention operations to a short-term location. Chief James Corwin said if detention moves out of Police Headquarters, they need to go to a place that is designed to handle the scope of the operation. The KCPD Detention Unit books and processes 40,000 inmates annually.

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The information we need to commit to a regional jail

Today I delivered a request for proposal to City Manager Wayne Cauthen and Jackson County Executive Mike Sanders about the new regional jail. This document outlines the needs of the KCPD in a new jail and requests the information we’ve been asking for all along – like who the project manager is supposed to be. You can see my letter to the City Manager here, and the request for proposal here.

Some city and county officials have said the police department has unnecessarily stalled the regional jail project, and the Jackson County Legislature voted last Monday to move the project forward without our involvement. I can assure you that our reticence on this matter is not over trivial details. It is about effectively protecting the people of this city from violent criminals who should be in custody.

Nearly everyone who goes to jail in Kansas City comes through the police department’s detention facilities first. It is our duty to assure that these inmates are kept securely and that their physical needs are met. We also are responsible for booking all inmates, assuring they are safely transported to court and other facilities and assuring that investigators have access to inmates to question them. To date, no one has told us how any of this will be handled in the new jail. Our request for proposal asks for things as basic as a flowchart showing how an inmate will be booked, secured and transported. Because if this is not done correctly, public safety could be jeopardized, and the police department will be held responsible.

I hope you understand why it is absolutely vital for us to know the answers to these questions. It is not a matter of being uncooperative or trivial; it is a matter of safety. As much as I want to get out of the jail business, I cannot, with good conscience, jump into a project like this without knowing things as simple as whether the new facility can handle as many arrests as KCPD’s current facility or whether there will be enough computers for officers to book inmates.

I invite you to read our request for proposal for yourself so you can see the kinds of questions we need to have answered before joining in the regional jail project. We have requested responses from the County and the City by Sept. 4.

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Get Me Out of Jail!

I want to get out of the jail business. That is something I have said since I became police chief. Even more important than getting out of the jail business is getting out of the jail business with a plan. No one would begin a large scale project like getting out of the jail business without a plan, yet that is what I am being asked to do.

Talk of a regional jail has been ongoing for some time. The discussion began in earnest in March of 2008 but did not include the police. The initial plan did not include any discussion of the elimination of the jail at Police Headquarters. These plans continued to progress and during the budget discussions in January of this year, it was reported the savings to close the Municipal Correctional Institute (MCI) and house prisoners at the Jackson County Detention Center would save $1 million. Again, no mention is made of closing the jail at Police Headquarters. When the manager submitted his budget to the City Council, no mention was made of closing the jail at Police Headquarters.

Over the next few months, the Public Safety and Neighborhoods committee met several times. During these meetings, the Police Department’s Headquarters detention facility is either not mentioned at all or mentioned only as a passing issue. The newspaper coverage does not make any mention of closing the facility at Police Headquarters. In all of the discussion about the jail issue, the closing of MCI was the issue, not closing the police facility.

Recently, there has been a rush to get a decision from the police to get involved with this project. Currently, we can “house” people in the police facility for close to what we would be charged by Jackson County so our savings would be minimal. We have not been provided with a plan that provides adequate protection of the police interest. We are simply being told to get on board because they claim it will save money. The costs for this project have gone from $1.4 million to $2.1 million and are now at $3.3 million. I believe that in these tough budget times, I owe it to the tax payers of this city to question this project. I would never think of going into business with someone with out a plan. Yet, that is what is being asked of the police department.

The City has already taken $1.5 million from the Capital Improvements Sales Tax fund without the approval of the Board of Police Commissioners and without the knowledge of the police department. Now we are being publicly pressured to join in this partnership and give more money without a concrete plan. What’s worse, we are being blamed for a delay to a project that we were only recently asked to join.

We do not want to dive head first into an empty pool. We just want some water in the pool before we make a big commitment with the tax payer trust and money. Is that too much to ask?

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