Behind Kansas City's Crime Drop With Mayor Quinton Lucas

One of the hardest things for any mayor to do is convince people that a problem can actually be solved.

That may sound obvious, but when a city has struggled with violence for decades, cynicism starts to set in. Residents get frustrated. Headlines get harsher. And people assume that high levels of violence are simply part of life.

My guest today rejects that idea.

Quinton Lucas has served as mayor of Kansas City since 2019, a period that included both record levels of violence and, more recently, significant declines in homicides and shootings across the city .

In this episode, we talk about how Kansas City approached violence reduction and how to communicate complex solutions to an intractable problem.

Born and raised in Kansas City's inner city, Quinton Lucas serves as the 55th mayor of Kansas City, the youngest person elected to the role since 1855. Recognizing the importance of safety in our communities, Mayor Lucas serves as national chair for criminal justice efforts in the United States Conference of Mayors and as an advocate to reduce gun violence on America's streets as co-chair of Mayors Against Illegal Guns. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I'm Jeff Asher and this is the Jeffalytics Podcast. One of the hardest things for any mayor to do is to convince people that a problem can actually be solved. That may sound obvious, but when a city has struggled with violence for decades, cynicism starts to set in, residents get frustrated, headlines get harsher, and people assume that high levels of violence are simply parts of life. My guest today rejects that idea. Quentin Lucas has served as mayor of Kansas City since 2019, a period that has included both record levels of violence and more recently significant declines in both homicides and shootings across the city. In this episode, we talked about how Kansas City has approached violence reduction and how to communicate complex solutions to an intractable problem. We discussed police staffing, technology, community trust, and the pressure elected officials face during crime spikes. At its core, this is a conversation about leadership, persistence, and what it takes to keep working on a problem after most people have decided it can't be fixed. Let's dive in. There we go. Can you hear me? Okay. All right. We did it. I got sound.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

We've got her figured out.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Amazing. How are you, sir?

SPEAKER_01 1:08

I you know what? I can't complain. Nothing but sun shining on me on this beautiful day in Kansas City.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

I hope you're doing all right. I'm doing okay. I gotta say, I'm I'm a little uh I don't know if annoyed the right word, but you're the second mayor now that I've talked to and interviewed that is actually younger than me. And I'm not the old man. It makes me feel very unaccomplished to talk to somebody that is in my age range but has accomplished more.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Man, I have so many young haters, though, that uh I feel like I'm just the old institutional guy now.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

So well, uh let's dive in. Uh I really appreciate you. This is uh I think it's certainly my first Substack Live. So excited to be here and excited to uh test out this new medium for talking to people. So could you just talk me through like what is your background? How did you get to be in this position?

SPEAKER_01 1:54

You know, I mean, it's uh it's been a blessing. So I've been mayor of Kansas City since 2019. Uh I am born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, went away for school, but otherwise have been here my entire life. And uh, you know, I think the way I get here is actually the way I came up. I grew up with a hardworking woman. I was the youngest of three children. We knew homelessness a bit as a kid. I knew some other challenges, but on the whole, I always saw how government, particularly local government, could make a positive difference. And so that has inspired me throughout. Became an attorney. Uh, when I came back home, I think I saw a few issues that have been around for my entire life. So that inspired me for city council. I was lucky enough to get elected. Then the mayoral suit was open, 12-person primary, which means that all you need is like your mama and 500 people to vote for you. I was able to, you know, jump over that hurdle and uh, you know, and have been mayor ever since. The issues, though, I mean, so I became a mayor during the first Trump administration. Some issues are the same, some have changed mightily. I think that uh, you know, back in 2019, we were talking a lot of how do we ever get infrastructure funding? We were able to get that, that park change. We were talking, you know, I mean, just uh unimaginable street-level violence in a lot of our communities. I remember I spoke to the mayor of Baltimore before Brandon Scott at one point. We had a call because both of our cities were reeling for murder crises. And uh that's what you were seeing in a lot of places with Mayor Lifewood in Chicago, with lots of other folks that I worked with then. So a lot has changed, but a lot stays the same. I think one of the best things that's changed is our commitment to having good solutions to the problems that confront the American city.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

So talk me through that. What has been sort of your approach? Uh just sort of doing my background research. I saw from the start of your campaign and from the start of your administration, gun violence reduction has been sort of at the forefront. So what has been your approach and what have you sort of found that's been successful, and what have you found that maybe hasn't been as successful?

SPEAKER_01 3:52

I think step one, what you need to do is uh you need to make sure that you believe that things can change for the better. I think the biggest mistake that we make is something that I heard when I was running for mayor, actually. I have this wonderful councilwoman who was from kind of a suburban-ish area of the city. Imagine somebody who's from Staten Island. I'd gotten her to endorse me. Things were great. She said, uh, you know, she's old smoker, and she said, you know, you gotta stop talking about the murders. I was like, huh? Uh and she said, look, they'll never change, right? Like, everybody's tried, it's just the way it's gonna be. You gotta be about everything else in the city. And I told myself, like, well, thank you, ma'am, but that ain't it ain't gonna be how I live. This is the crisis, not just in the American city. I think it's fair to say it's a crisis, it's an epidemic in the black community. And so I think the first thing you do is try to commit to saying, I'm gonna talk about it. I may not solve it, but I'm gonna talk about it. But respect these people's lives. I'm gonna make sure that people know we can do something different. So that was that first step. The next step was, I'll be quite honest with you, a lot of battling with uh institutions at the time. We had a police chief when I first became mayor who I don't think had this sort of transformational view on how we can reduce homicides and shootings. He came from an old school, and an old school that, by the way, in 2020 was still very active in the fight, which was saying, no, the problem isn't that we don't invest in young people, that we aren't actually trying to treat symptoms. It's a problem that we just ain't thrown, we ain't put enough people in jail. We have not said that these guys are bad guys, right? We haven't, you know, yelled about it in the right way. So there was a lot of change of the mentality. And it took years, by the way, years. And so we've changed leadership with the police department. We have a new prosecutor now who I think subscribes to my view of how you do focused deterrence. She came out of my office, proud of that. And I think that, you know, we keep chipping away, recognizing that the misfortune and the greatest challenge to the American city, and watching the mayor's race in LA right now and everything else, whether it's violent crime or homelessness or other certain issues, you're dealing with an individual curse. Human beings aren't widgets. And so you can't just be like, all right, we got 2,000 people on the streets, let's just build this thing. They're all gonna go there, they're gonna operate nationally, naturally, it's gonna be great. Same thing with violent crime. You can't just open a gym, throw in 10 basketballs, and be like, hey, y'all, it's open until 2 a.m. Good luck. You need to continue to adapt, fail, deal with a tough narrative sometimes, because people expect you to fix it from day one. But I think Kansas City was ready to commit. And uh I think that's where we're seeing progress now.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

And sort of what what do you do ascribe that that progress to sort of in light of your successes? I'm just looking at the numbers, you're down. Obviously, 48 murders is 48 too many, but it's down substantially in 2023. You had 74 at this point, 66 in 2022. What do you ascribe that success to right now, especially in light of sort of that thought that it is happening everywhere, but it's happening bigger some places than others?

SPEAKER_01 6:57

Yeah. I mean, I think the the first thing I will say, and I mentioned focus deterrence before, for those who may have stumbled upon this substack and don't give a hoot about like what that is or what it means. It's very much this. In any American city, you have a small number of people who are engaged in lots of the violent crime and also disproportionately become the victims. To the extent that your community focuses on those folks. And so we have a group by the name of Stand Against Violence Casey, save like Save Casey. We visit with this group of people, we tell them, look, here are our exceptional life opportunities we're gonna provide for you job training, housing, counseling, right? All these sorts of things you may need, help reunifying yourself with your children if you follow the straight narrow path. If you do not, however, we are gonna come down on you, on prosecution. The police are watching you, but don't force us to do that approach. And we see that program paying incredible dividends, particularly in wards, patrol divisions of the city where violence is the most pronounced. I think that has been a transformational difference maker in terms of what we are trying to do. The other things that we are doing are specialty courts in our municipal court system. And why municipal court? Obviously, your homicides aren't being prosecuted there, but that's usually the gateway into more serious level offenses. And we recognize that from having a gun court, for example, if you are actually somebody, which takes some work, by the way, in a jurisdiction with a lot of crimes, if you're somebody who's gun play, gets to the level of having the attention of the police, but you didn't get shot or you didn't shoot somebody, this is a great moment for us to warn you is stop. Put it down, don't take it to the same places, get out of that trouble. That's one specialty court, a domestic violence court, does, I think, frankly, similar work as well. So that is, I think, how we've gotten started, and I think it's how we're seeing progress.

SPEAKER_00 8:51

And a lot of cities, especially medium and big size cities, are dealing with the issue of fewer police officers to do sort of the enforcement side of all of this work. How has have you adapted to having a smaller police force post-COVID?

SPEAKER_01 9:05

Yeah. I mean, look, here's the reality, which is the reality, which is the reality. I hope my staff cuts this line later. 1987 is not coming back. This has nothing to do with defund, refund, massively fund, or anything like that. The way we deliver core basic services, including American policing, will not be the same. I was in Baltimore. They were talking about how they used to have, gosh, right, 3,500 or something officers. In Kansas City, we used to have a lot more, too. What did we not have, by the way? We didn't have cameras that were deployable. We didn't actually have the ability to break down cell phones and get lots of investigative information. We didn't have people who were threatening to kill each other on TikTok, on Snap, like we do now. Things have changed fundamentally, but too many of our discussions on how law enforcement works is still based on a model that frankly was created by Darrell Gates at the LAPD, right? Have a ton of officers in places, build some SWAT teams, have that rapid response, frankly, kind of treat your city like you're an army, and that's the way it's going to work. It does not work. It is not working in any American city. And I will even go with suburban communities that contend it does. Their numbers may be there where they think they are approaching that same level, but law enforcement today, just like it was before, I'll say, but just in a different way. It is based on trust. It is based on some belief that there are consequences, and it is based on the fact that we need to continue to have a community that buys into what's happening. What my city, what other American cities, and I will give shout-outs to ones that don't get attention. St. Louis is one example, that have seen dramatic reductions in homicides from, frankly, historic highs of just a few years ago to frankly rather historic drops at 40, 50 year labos. The way they're doing that is community trust, technology, engagement, focused deterrence, and making sure that you are investing in other alternative responsibilities.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

I want to harp on that because it's an issue ideal with it. We had 1,600 in 2006, immediately after Katrina. We have 900 now. And it's like, what is our number of ideal officers? And the answer is you have what you have, and you sort of need to deal with that. How do you have this conversation where you have a sort of adult professional conversation about crime and crime reduction that doesn't get into sort of the activist political, you know, defund, refund? This is a this is a logistical strategic enforcement discussion, if that makes any sense. Like how do you communicate this to a wider audience? It is very hard, first of all.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

And I will, you know, say that. I don't know what is in my life after being mayor, but if I could just get paid to be like the music man, but going to be like, crime. Actually, it takes really creative strategies, right? I mean, it's it's just like everybody on every end, it is not just that commercial right there. Right. Like, yeah, no, it's like everything else. I mean, isn't it astonishing to me that nobody is saying we should treat cancer the same way we did 35 years ago? Nobody goes in and says, oh, well, you know, I think you just gotta go ahead and do this, right? Or that Nurse Hatchet is going to saw off a leg that nowadays we found new treatments for. But it seems like in law enforcement we still do that. Some of that is the advocacy that exists within it. But I think another big part is, you know, we need to be, there are two things that I think are really problematic in government. The first, and I'm guilty of this as much as anybody, there is this, there's this desire in government at the local, state, and federal level, when you don't know how to solve something, to just say I put a lot of money into something. If you ask me, if you blindsided me with a question, which is a fair one, just say it, Quentin Lucas, preschoolers don't read at the level they need to in Kansas City. What are you going to do? I say, well, in next year's budget, we're going to commit $40 million, 50% increase to ensuring that preschoolers can read. Everybody will applaud, be like, damn right. Yeah. And then after that, no one will know what happened. So in public safety, what we have done for vastly too long of all political stripes is to say that we will make sure that this year's police budget is increased, and that will make the difference. And by the way, lest you think I'm letting my defund friends off, right? They were doing in some ways the opposite and saying, right, by cutting budgets, spending them somewhere else, we don't know what the hell it's going to be, but you know, spend it somewhere else, then we will solve for things. Funding and budgets alone are not the solution. You need to talk about the strategies, you need to talk about the tactics. For those of us who are parents, right, what we don't just say is, well, honey, the way I think we're going to raise these kids is I'm going to make an above average income for the next 18 years, and I assume it's going to be okay. Right? No, you actually like, maybe we should live in this neighborhood, maybe we should do that, we should put them in this more. That's the first thing that we need to fix in Gebber. Thing number two, we can't be afraid of failure. And frankly, every politician we spend all this time in our career basically having political capital to spend. And look, I'm guilty of this too. And what do we usually blow it up? We usually blow our political capital on. All right, I really want to make sure the Saints stay in New Orleans. So even though the city's broke as hell, we're going to make sure that we fix the dome or the Smoothie King arena for the Pelicans. And that's what we're going to do. Not in that battle, but what we need to actually do is say, more often, spend that capital on saying, I know y'all. I know it is violent right now, but we also have the stories of the people that we've helped. And in year one, you are not going to hit the homicide numbers you want. My dream, if you're asking me for real, and when I ran for office, I said I'd like to get homicides in Kansas City down below 100. It is almost halfway through the year. We are actually below 50. Who knows what happens? But right, but we are finally getting closer. This is my seventh year as May. What I will take from that, though, right? And I had editorials and they wrote like he didn't meet this promise, all that sort of stuff. I'm still around. I was still re-elected. And I want to say part of that is not that Kansas City and stopped caring about crime. But they said we think he's actually trying to do something and something that will last. This, the way you treat these things is not a one-off campaign. It is not just bringing, you know, federal agents, 200 federal agents in and saying we're going to arrest everybody who wants, and that's going to make a difference. That, by the way, the year we did that was the most violent year in the history of Kansas City. Right. We're going to actually do more than sustain.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

And how, you know, I would love if you got to, you know, zero murders. That would be fantastic. At some point nationally, we're seeing this decline. At some point, it's going to stop declining. How do we have that conversation when, hey, okay, we've, you know, reduced murder a lot. There's still hard choices to make. There's the strategies that we've done work. How do you then not just fall back on sort of that tough on crime? We're going to, you know, more jail, more police, more toughness is the answer. That we know that there's a smarter answer. How do you communicate that?

SPEAKER_01 16:23

You know, you I heard this line. Actually, I think it comes from Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg, RIP. Uh, and it was uh, you don't throw away your umbrella when it's raining. Right? And I think what we need to make sure we continue to do is to first be innovative. So the really the big thing you have to decide, I'll go back to my raising children analogy. From age three to five, I don't know, my son loved me and I could, you know, I could hold him and keep him from running away. Oh, he's faster and bigger. So I gotta parent in a slightly different way. I think in terms of public safety, we need to recognize trends change. If you were following violence, you know, several decades ago, graffiti, the most interesting thing about it, right, was often people making threats to each other, right? They're not quite doing that the same now. It is on social media, it's morphed. So what does that mean? It means law enforcement attention may need to be in something different. And frankly, to save yourself some police budget, maybe you get some analysts who actually understand the social media discussion and all of that. And so you're actually having a non-deputized or sworn person who doesn't need the gun, the pension, and all the same stuff that's helping you actually address crime strategy issues. I mean, I think it is agreeing to be innovative. It is not being too possessive of just one plan, and it is understanding that this is a continuous battle for American cities. You know, I um I'll use another analogy. I don't know, I'm in a good mood. It's a Friday. For anyone, which is, I think most people, right, whoever think about their weight, right? Like you can't stop like eating right or working out or whatever, right? You have to just keep doing it. Oddly enough, forever. Right? There's never this moment where you're like, I'm perfect, I'm a be perfect, bring me the bucket of whatever my favorite food is, and I am going on a walk ever again. Instead, you keep doing it. And so I think what mayors, what American cities need to make sure they do is to say, how are we innovating? How are we continuing to commit to programmatic efforts? And I would implore people, implore them, get away from the budget. And that does not mean don't hurt your people. You know, don't, don't, you know, undervalue people who have committed themselves to your city and safety. But what we need to do in more situations is ask police chiefs, all right, what were your crime strategies? How do you think they worked? And how do you think we can do better next year? And that's how we go from just saying, all right, we finally hit a hundred homicides, after that being like, we hit 70, we hit 50. I mean, my favorite there are like a few American city stories. I find the Boston transformation over the last 40 years just exceptional. But a mayor I've read about, because I'm into black mayors, as you might expect. When David Dinkins was mayor of New York City, they averaged, what, about 2200 murders at their high point. 2200. New York City is less than a quarter of that these days. I mean, it's it's astonishing. When I was in law school, I taught in a prison in upstate New York with a lot of men who actually were from down in the city. And they would talk about all these things. I'd be like, brother man, things have changed. And the same way that things can change, Tara can change in your city, but you have to stay active on it. I think Mayor Dinkins would have loved to get below a thousand in his time. Now, when you get above 500, people are kind of saying, Oh my gosh, right, things are out of way.

SPEAKER_00 19:49

90%, some 711, I think, through April, asking for just advice. What is the what are the first things that you tell them? And do you have sort of a spiel that you would give them of these are the things that I think you should do?

SPEAKER_01 20:01

Yeah. So first thing, stay strong, sister, stay strong, brother. The way that crime usually most directly impacts a mayor's office, right? Some of us hire our chiefs directly, others of us have more interesting controls and they're civil servants, so it's not like they're as easy to fire as you would think. Uh but once you get past all the bureaucratic and administrative stuff, the way you will usually get hit on violence issues as a mayor is either there is an absolutely horrific homicide that breaks your heart to, or you have some children, teenagers that are wild and out, and they're like, wow, this city is a madhouse. What have you done, or why haven't you done enough? You come up with answers in the moment, but you don't come up with radical responses too quickly. Don't just be like, all right, I'm now deploying, you know, the National Guard to every bus stop in my city. The other thing that I think you do is say, I have a plan and I'm gonna stick with it. And that is hard, and sometimes you need to adjust, but don't let the adjustment be based on one incident. Don't let the adjustment be on your haters and your skeptics. You need to actually go with the, you know, the plan itself. Next thing you need to do is absolutely talk to people. Call other mayors. They're much easier to access than you would ever think. When I first became a mayor, we needed to talk to the mayor of Chicago. At that point, I did not have a relationship with her of the time. And uh, like I just had my staff call the main office and we got through in just a few minutes. It could have been a prankster, but whatever. Work. You know, see what's working. In fairness, see what's not working. And what I would encourage to any mayor or elected or person is, you know, when you hear struggles, don't be scared. I mean, this is just my personality. I love talking to people who have persevered and who have persevered through struggling moments. That's why St. Louis, Baltimore are interesting test cases to me. Right? Boston, you know, cool. I love I and I love Mayor Wu, consider her a friend, right? We've had good things. She's coming from a different space from the time she became mayor than, say, Brandon Scott was. And so, I mean, I think that's why you make sure you talk to people who've been in that struggle and it can work well for you.

SPEAKER_00 22:06

So, last two questions. I want to get away from crime specifically. Um, I did want to ask, you've got the World Cup coming up. I was just wondering, you know, how have you and your office and your city prepared for all of that? And is there a matchup or a team that you're cheering for specifically, or can you just you're not allowed to take sides?

SPEAKER_01 22:22

Well, I mean, look, let me tell you something about your last question. I had some journalists from England here. They would be practicing in Kansas City, and I happen to have a uh Lionel Messi jersey in my office. And I promise you that got into the newspaper in London, right? And people were like, this biased guy is against England. So no, no favorites. I'm here for everybody who comes from Curacao who's playing here, to Argentina who's playing here. Obviously, I want the most eyeballs possible on Kansas City. And so uh, you know, we'll just see how that all works. You can probably suspect who I may want to see go forward. In terms of preparation, I feel great. I feel great about the network that we built out, law enforcement. We've seen great collaboration across two different states, Missouri and Kansas, a number of suburban jurisdictions in opposite city. We've built out a transportation network. Frankly, we need all the time here, free buses that get you from the airport to the downtown area of the city, reduced cost buses that are getting you out to the stadium. We are ready and we are excited, and I'm gonna get really, really into soccer this summer, even though I do need to see who ends up winning the NBA finals before that.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

There you go. And then last question is even more out of left field. And I think I posted this on LinkedIn, and one of my followers mentioned that we have a shared affinity for uh the Bravo show Summer House. And so I was just gonna ask, what are your takeaways from the first part of the reunion?

SPEAKER_01 23:50

My God, you know, I think I did not expect that. I told you it was left field. You know, I'm gonna stick with uh KJ and just kind of talk about how you're learning about the human being, uh the interactions, I think maturity that we're getting kind of out of it. And I think we're seeing more examples that I hope more men, particularly young men, can take on in our country. I think it's a good message for our community more broadly. That's great. All right. Part two, Aaron, next week for those of you that are interested.

SPEAKER_00 24:18

Soon they come the Bravo Sphere, right? It's uh, you know, we'll have you back. We'll talk Summerhouse, we'll talk uh Vanderpump, we'll talk uh, you know, Southern Charm, all of them.

SPEAKER_01 24:28

I have to say I'm very grateful to my wonderful wife who uh has helped me get into more of this stuff. And uh she can really go to town on it, but I'll make sure I get some of the other shows in my repertoire before we turn and we're gonna we're gonna launch a podcast that's weekly.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

You and I just reviewing Bravo Chairs.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

That's outstanding.

SPEAKER_00 24:45

Thank you so much for joining us. This has been so wonderful and I really appreciate it. Hey, thanks so much. Have a great day. Thanks for listening to the Jeffalytics Podcast. Be sure to subscribe and to learn more, head on over to ahdatalytics.com for more information and previous episodes. If you like what you heard, please leave a glowing review, which will help others to discover the show. Until next time, I'm Jeff Asher.