If ever there was a reason for the Kansas City Missouri Police Department to remain under state control, your gone-rogue, cancel-culture, corrupt City Council just served up two heaping reasons in the last sixty days.

Technically speaking, the PD is already controlled locally as all police commissioners live here and are appointed locally. Then, that appointment is ratified by the state Senate and the Governor.

Be that as it may, reason number one came back in June of this year when Councilman Brandon Ellington decided that as part of the legislative branch of the local government he was going to swerve out of his lane and in to the judicial branch of the government and adjudicate, nay, erase, over 200 city tickets handed out during the protests and riots on city streets.

Despite the pleas of first District Councilwoman Heather Hall, expertly noting that such matters should be decided by municipal judges (that’s the judicial branch) not in council chambers, (the legislative branch), Ellington’s motion passed overwhelmingly, instantly erasing 200 municipal charges against protestors and rioters who thought it was a good idea to disobey police.

The second reason came during last Thursday’s Council Legislative Session when, on a 12-1 vote and without any opportunity for public comment, the council passed a resolution under the guise of the Art on the Block program, to authorize the painting of “Black Lives Matter” street murals in various areas of the city.

The resolution was the brainchild of Councilmembers Eric Bunch and Melissa Robinson, who made sneaky backroom deals outside the auspices of Missouri’s Sunshine Law, in order to get the nine signatures necessary to have the ordinance introduced, heard and passed all on the same day, without any public knowledge, much less testimony. Doing it this way, out of the prying eyes and ears of the public, also keeps it off the published council docket, avoiding the overwhelming public backlash they knew would come. You’d think after the Paseo / MLK re-naming debacle the council would have learned their lesson in backroom dealings. Apparently not.

Let’s also not forget the double standard here, given a recent street mural application for the painting of the speed tables near Concourse Park was denied because the colorful lily pad designs were not “neutral colors” or painted in “earth tones.” Apparently the garish black and yellow, block-letter designs in all the BLM murals this Dog has seen pass muster as earth tones and neutral colors.

It also bears mentioning that there were two additional permit requests formally submitted for street murals, both displaying support for the city’s first responders. One proposal submitted by this pooch for a Back the Blue/Red Mural on St. John in front of our offices and another submitted by former KCPD Sergeant and Northeast CAN Supervisor Michael Corwin for Back the Blue street murals in front of all the patrol bureaus were both ignored.

Funny how these requests got lost in the shuffle, isn’t it? No word on where those requests are in the process, much less why they weren’t included in the Art on the Block proposal rushed through by Council last Thursday. Things that make you go hmmmmm.

Here’s the bottom line: if you believe for one minute that a police department controlled by this corrupt bunch at City Hall would be free from any sort of micro-management or weekly meddling you are sadly mistaken. There’s a reason, a darn good one in this blue-line-supporting pooch’s eyes, that in 1939 the state took control of the local police to keep things away from Boss Tom Pendergast and his corrupt cronies. The paradigm worked then and it shows its value still today.