Beacon reporting cited in lawsuit challenging KCPD constitutionality

Beacon reporter Josh Merchant published an in-depth story in December 2022 explaining why Kansas City is the only major city in the United States without control over its own police department — and the role pro-slavery forces played in its oversight.

The reporting showed how state control of policing in major Missouri cities was established as a martial law effort during the Civil War in 1861, around the time of secession.

Gov. Claiborne Fox Jackson sought control over anti-slavery population centers in the state that opposed secession. He preemptively seized control of the St. Louis Police Department and used its officers to raid a weapons arsenal for Confederate soldiers.

That didn’t work. Missouri didn’t secede.

Merchant initially began their reporting by examining police funding in Kansas City, where the police department takes up over $300 million of general revenue. The city isn’t allowed to fund the police department at any level below 20% of city revenue.

The conventional wisdom in Kansas City, advanced in news stories and narratives advanced by the police department, had attributed state control to a response to the corruption of the Pendergast political machine that ruled in the early part of the 20th century.

“But those Pendergast years were only a few decades out of a 150-year history,” Merchant said. “I was curious about the other parts of this history that we don’t hear as much about.”

Merchant’s article on the history of the Kansas City Police Department was cited in March 2024 in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of state control over KCPD by three Missourians. The plaintiffs include the mother of Ryan Stokes, who was shot and killed by a KCPD officer in July 2013. The reporting on the Civil War’s role in the oversight of the department was cited in this legal brief.

“I have faith in the quality of my work,” Merchant said.,“But to know that other people also have faith in the accuracy and truth of it mattered.”