The new Kansas City budget went into effect May 1 and with it comes a change in police staffing that has some concerned.
Police Chief Darryl Forte announced on his blog two months ago that cuts were coming, a result of a tight budget, but on Monday, he revealed the final results.
In all 109 sworn law enforcement positions have been eliminated. Some of the changes are on paper only, positions that are already vacant, but some residents are worried just the same.
The chief wrote about the cuts in his blog Monday. “Many of these spots have been vacant for years,” Forte wrote, “so it’s not as though we’re embarking on a sudden reduction in force.”
But that did little to ease the minds of some people in the city’s East Patrol Division, an area that had more homicides than any of the others last year.
In that blog post, he showed where vacancies exist that have been left unfilled to stay within budget.
This week, he announced that many of those positions will now be eliminated for the same reason.
24 positions have been eliminated from the Investigations Bureau.
The Patrol Bureau is losing 85 positions. Below is a breakdown for each neighborhood patrol division including positions lost, positions remaining and how those losses translate as a percentage change:
– Central Patrol reduced by 24 positions to 162 officers (13% change)
– Metro Patrol reduced by 14 positions to 150 officers (9% change)
– East Patrol reduced by 17 positions to 155 officers (10% change)
– South Patrol reduced by 13 positions to 94 officers (12% change)
– North Patrol reduced by 9 positions to 92 officers (9% change)
– Shoal Creek reduced by 2 positions to 92 officers (2% change)