It has been 10 years since Kansas City had its own jail, but city officials are considering a move to re-open a jail at Kansas City Police headquarters.
In 2015, KCPD started sending all its detainees to the Jackson County jail down the street from police headquarters. But the county backed out that deal four years later in a dispute with the city over the cost of housing inmates.
The city is working on a plan to build a new jail. But that will take years. So, Mayor Quinton Lucas’ office has come up with an interim plan: reconstitute the jail on the 8th floor of KCPD headquarters downtown.
Community members call for more arrests
The problem of where to put municipal inmates haunts several Kansas City districts suffering from increased property crime and violence — including the neighborhood around 31st Street and Prospect Avenue.
“It's huge because the number one issue that we get when the police are called out is that, ‘Well, we can't arrest because we don't have a jail,’” Emmet Pierson, CEO of Community Builders Kansas City, told KCUR.
“The KCPD does not have a policy that says we do not arrest,” police Chief Stacy Graves told KCUR’s Up To Date. Graves also said the department also makes arrests for disorderly conduct, property crimes and lewd and lascivious behavior. Still, she acknowledges the need for more jail space.
Kansas City Councilwoman Melissa Patterson Hazley, who represents that area, said she hears complaints about the lack of a city jail all the time.
“It’s shocking to hear from regular people about where to house inmates,” she said.
Pierson recalled an incident on Aug. 13 when a disgruntled customer went to his car and re-entered the Sun Fresh grocery store on Prospect armed with a pistol. The manager spent four minutes on hold with 911. Police arrived just in a nick of time, Pierson said — the gunman was threatening to empty his weapon and said, “There would be crime tape all over the parking lot.”
However, the man wasn’t arrested because police said the few municipal cells KCPD has at Metro Patrol were full and the jail closed at 12:37 that afternoon.
“When a crime occurs, you know, we regularly and routinely hear that there's no jail. We have no place to take them,” Pierson said. “And we say, well, that's not really our issue because we can't continue to have lawlessness.”
Even when people are arrested, they often spend just a couple of hours in detention. A “time out,” Patterson Hazley calls it.
The KCPD holding cells at Metro Patrol at 76th and Prospect Ave. can hold 18 detainees, according to department spokesman Sgt. Phil DiMartino. He said no report was filed on the Sun Fresh gun incident.
“Police responded and it did not materialize into anything,” DiMartino said.
The mayor’s office said it plans to offer an ordinance next week to allow KCPD to move forward with rebuilding the 8th floor jail.
Jail at police headquarters a stopgap solution
The jail was built when KCPD headquarters opened in 1938. It closed in 2015 because the city wanted to get out of the business of running a jail.
The jail would hold 50-75 detainees, Graves said. “This is an urgent issue for us,” she said. “I'm not for mass incarceration, but I am for consequences, and some people need a time out.”
If the City Council approves the funding — which looks likely at this point — it would be months before construction would be complete. KCPD would also have to hire more detention officers. The department doesn’t know yet how many more detention officers would be needed. However, there are currently five such positions open, DiMartino told KCUR.
There is no cost estimate yet. But nine years ago when the jail closed, the department estimated it would cost at least $5 million to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, according to a KCPD newsletter at the time.
Since then, building codes have changed which would also increase the construction price.
While community leaders around 31st and Prospect welcome the police headquarters jail, their support is tepid.
“I guess this is a small, temporary step in the right direction. I don't think it's the solution,” Pierson said.
The solution, they say, is a new municipal jail.
Ever since Kansas City stopped housing detainees in the Jackson County Detention Center, the city has been sending inmates to the Vernon and Johnson County jails in mid-Missouri. Those 105 beds cost the city about $1.8 million a year. Shipping those inmates more than an hour from Kansas City is a burden on the inmate and their families, Patterson Hazley said. With detainees in out-of-town jails, the city can’t “control the conditions,” including getting people physical and mental health treatment, she said.
The discussion about what to do with city detainees and inmates is happening while the county builds a new $256.5 million jail on 40 Highway near I-70. The city and county discussed building a joint facility but those talks fell through — so now two new jails will be built. The municipal jail could cost between $179 million and $195 million.
City Councilman Crispin Rea said there have been talks about building a city jail on the same plot of land with the county’s new jail, but they would be separate facilities.
“There may be an opportunity down the road to engage in shared services or something like that, but that hasn't been the primary bulk of the conversation,” he said.
