The following is a very long Open Letter to the Mayor of Kansas City and our City Leadership. It is presented “as found” on the internet. (Thank you Tony’s KC for pointing this letter out.)
Mayor Lucas, Mayor Pro Tem Parks-Shaw, City Manager Vasquez, Councilman Duncan, Councilwoman Bough, members of the City Council, and members of the media:
What happened at a commercial property in South Kansas City this week demonstrates the real-world cost of Kansas City’s continuing failure to address property crime, repeat offenders, and its detention crisis.
I am deliberately withholding the owner’s identity, the property’s address, its specific location, and any information concerning current or prospective tenants. None of those details are necessary to understand what happened, and I will not jeopardize the owner’s privacy, an active police investigation, or future business negotiations. For the same reasons, I am also withholding details concerning access to the building, security measures, physical evidence, and the investigative steps being taken by KCPD.
What I can say is that individuals entered this commercial building and systematically stripped and destroyed major electrical, mechanical, and plumbing systems for scrap metal. This was not someone breaking a window, grabbing a few feet of copper, and running. Whoever did this apparently spent considerable time inside the building. Three rooftop HVAC units were destroyed. Major electrical systems were cut apart. Plumbing and other building systems were damaged.
Based on what we have seen so far, the preliminary cost could exceed $250,000—all for what may amount to only a few hundred dollars’ worth of scrap material.
That estimate does not include the owner’s lost rental income, insurance deductible, potential premium increases, possible loss of coverage, additional security costs, or the damage this could do to future leasing opportunities.
This is what being soft on crime costs the people who invest in Kansas City. Most of you know me as a restaurant owner and as someone who speaks strongly on behalf of Kansas City’s small-business community. But I also own a construction company that I have operated in Kansas City for more than 28 years. I understand commercial electrical systems, mechanical equipment, construction costs, property repairs, and what it takes to put a damaged building back together. This is not the first time I have encountered theft or vandalism at a commercial property. Unfortunately, anyone who has spent decades in construction has dealt with it. But this is the first time I have personally encountered criminal damage on this scale—potentially more than a quarter-million dollars in destruction caused so someone could obtain a few hundred dollars’ worth of scrap metal. When I say this building may require extensive electrical, mechanical, plumbing, and reconstruction work, I am not guessing. I am speaking from more than 28 years of professional construction experience.
I speak loudly and strongly because I am not looking at these problems from the outside. I experience them as a restaurant owner, a construction-company owner, an employer, a taxpayer, and someone who has spent decades investing in Kansas City. I know what this damage costs. I know what it does to an owner’s insurance. I know what it does to a construction schedule. I know what it does to a leasing opportunity. And I know what it does to an investor’s willingness to put another dollar into an area where there appears to be little accountability for the people causing the damage.
This same property experienced a separate theft or vandalism incident earlier this year, along with other problems. I am not including the specific details publicly because KCPD should be allowed to investigate without information being released that could compromise its work. After learning what had happened, the property owner asked me how people could do something so openly and whether Kansas City had a government that cared about crime.
I did not have a good answer.
A utility field representative with direct experience working in South Kansas City has also described seeing individuals openly carrying tools commonly used to cut and remove wire. To be clear, I am not identifying that employee, and I am not presenting the observation as an official statement from the utility company. The point is that people who work in these neighborhoods are seeing increasingly blatant behavior. There appears to be little fear of being stopped and even less fear of meaningful consequences. That perception is dangerous. When criminals believe nobody is watching, nobody will report them, or nothing meaningful will happen if they are caught, their behavior becomes bolder and the damage becomes greater.
I want to make something absolutely clear: My frustration is not directed at Chief Stacey Graves, Major Kari Thompson, South Patrol, or the officers responding to these calls. I have the utmost respect for what Chief Graves has built during her time leading KCPD. She has worked to strengthen relationships among the department, businesses, and the community. I am genuinely sorry to see her retire, although I respect her decision after more than 29 years of service.
Chief Graves has committed to remaining in her position until the Board of Police Commissioners selects her successor. I sincerely hope the next chief continues building on the relationships, accountability, communication, and community engagement she has established. I especially hope we preserve the close working relationships many of us have developed with Major Thompson and the officers at South Patrol. Those relationships matter. These officers care about our businesses and neighborhoods, and I have personally seen that.
Honestly, I cannot believe some of these officers continue doing this job.
If I had to investigate the same types of crimes, complete the reports, gather the evidence, arrest repeat offenders, and then see the same people return to the street, I would have quit a long time ago.
The officers should not be blamed for a larger criminal-justice system that repeatedly appears to undermine their work. I am going to let the investigative process play out and allow KCPD to do its job. I sincerely hope the officers can identify and arrest the people responsible. I will provide KCPD privately with all photographs, information about the earlier incident, repair findings, and any other evidence that may help. I am intentionally not distributing those specific details publicly while the investigation remains active.
But that brings us to the unavoidable question: If the responsible individuals are identified and arrested, what happens next? Will meaningful charges be pursued? Will any documented criminal histories be properly considered? Will the cases be prosecuted? Will restitution be sought? Will the consequences have any realistic chance of preventing another property owner from becoming the next victim?
Does anyone honestly believe that individuals capable of causing this much systematic destruction simply woke up one morning and committed their first property crime?
A recent Kansas City burglary ring was linked by police to more than 100 nonresidential burglaries across the metropolitan area. The man identified as the leader pleaded guilty to 14 counts of second-degree burglary and one count of property damage. He was sentenced to 17 years. Another defendant, whose phone was reportedly located at or near nine crime scenes, received an eight-year sentence. I understand that the leader’s attorney called 17 years the longest sentence he had seen for a property-crime case. I also recognize that different defendants have different levels of responsibility and that sentences must be based on the charges and evidence in each individual case.
But victims experience these crimes very differently than they appear on a court docket. A burglary is not simply a broken window or a stolen piece of equipment. It is the telephone call in the middle of the night. It is the fear that someone may still be inside. It is the sleeplessness, anger, physical exhaustion, insurance claim, repair bill, lost revenue, missed work, and constant worry that it will happen again.
I know that feeling personally after having businesses broken into multiple times. Business owners spend years building something. A criminal can damage or destroy it in minutes. The emotional impact and sense of violation do not disappear when the glass is replaced or the insurance paperwork is finished.
We need additional resources in South Kansas City. When offenders are caught and the evidence supports prosecution, we also need consequences that recognize the full damage inflicted upon victims—not merely the resale value of what was stolen.
Mayor Lucas, when you and other city officials asked voters to renew the quarter-cent public-safety sales tax for another 20 years, you sold that renewal as the way Kansas City would finance a new, permanent municipal jail and rehabilitation center.
The public was told that the bulk of approximately $24 million a year would go toward that facility. This was not the temporary modular jail. It was a separate, permanent facility estimated to cost approximately $250 million and be built next to Jackson County’s new detention center.
You called it a “responsible, moderate, not gigantic plan.” After voters approved the tax by approximately 60% to 40%, you said the investment would help ensure that bad acts have consequences that are “swift and certain.”
Kansas City taxpayers kept their end of the deal. They approved another 20 years of taxation. Where is the same urgency from City Hall?
What is the final design, capacity, construction schedule, opening date, and funding plan for the permanent jail that voters were told this tax would help build?
The temporary modular facility was supposed to address an immediate and well-documented detention crisis. It was not fully operational in time for the World Cup as originally intended. Even when it opens, approximately 100 beds will be nothing more than a temporary Band-Aid. It cannot become a substitute for the permanent facility voters were promised.
Why is a city of more than half a million people planning a permanent facility with only approximately 250 beds? Many of us believe Kansas City should evaluate a substantially larger facility—potentially one capable of expanding to at least 1,500 beds—based on an independent analysis of current demand, repeat-offender patterns, population growth, regional detention needs, and comparisons with similarly situated cities.
If phased construction or successful rehabilitation programs eventually create unused capacity, the city should evaluate whether excess beds could lawfully be leased to other jurisdictions through intergovernmental agreements, helping offset operating costs. Kansas City already sends municipal detainees to Johnson and Vernon counties in Missouri. Public reporting has placed those contracts at a combined 105 beds costing approximately $1.8 million annually—and that arrangement still depends upon those facilities accepting the detainees.
If city officials believe approximately 250 permanent beds will be sufficient, release the underlying data and an independent capacity analysis supporting that conclusion. Do not build an undersized facility that is obsolete before it opens and then return to taxpayers asking for more money.
I understand the legal distinction between municipal and felony cases. If someone is arrested and charged with felony burglary or felony property damage, the case is prosecuted through the state court system, and continued pretrial detention becomes a county and judicial matter. A municipal jail would not house someone awaiting trial solely on felony charges.
But that distinction does not excuse the larger failure. Residents and business owners do not care which government agency points its finger at another. They care that repeat offenders are identified, arrested, properly charged, detained when legally justified, prosecuted, and prevented from immediately victimizing someone else.
The city points toward the county. The county points toward the courts. The courts point toward the prosecutors. The prosecutors point toward the evidence or the limits of the law. Meanwhile, police make another arrest, an offender may return to the street, and another resident or business owner receives the bill. The public is the one left paying for everyone else’s failure to coordinate.
We recently watched Judge Kea S. Bird-Riley modify the bond of the woman accused in the Waldo tire-slashing cases and release her on her own recognizance despite prosecutors’ objections. Residents subsequently reported additional incidents, and she was later arrested again after missing court appearances. That sequence of events is exactly why people have lost faith in the system.
Police officers can continue making arrests, but when officers and residents repeatedly see the same individuals return to the street, what message does that send?
Shaun Brady’s killing became a major part of the public discussion about juvenile violence and Kansas City’s detention crisis. Less than two weeks after Shaun’s death, Mayor Lucas, you became emotional during a Police Board meeting while discussing teenagers involved in violent crime. Immediately afterward, you spoke to reporters about restoring detention space at KCPD headquarters.
The City Council subsequently approved $16 million for a booking and holding facility at police headquarters. The publicly announced plan called for capacity for 144 people, including 55 overnight beds, with construction expected to begin in early 2025 and the facility opening before the World Cup. That facility was never completed. Instead, the headquarters plan was placed on hold while the city shifted toward the modular facility. What happened to that promise? How much of the original $16 million was spent, where was it spent, how much remains, and how were the remaining funds reallocated?
So where is that same urgency today?
The teenager who admitted shooting and killing Shaun was not certified to stand trial as an adult. He ultimately pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced within the juvenile system. Because the case remained in juvenile court, the sentence was not made public. That is not accountability the public can see or evaluate. It illustrates a larger problem. A weak juvenile system can allow serious young offenders to move toward adulthood without the level of accountability many residents believe violent crimes demand. They then enter the next phase of their lives in an adult criminal-justice system that the public also increasingly views as ineffective.
This is not theoretical to me.
After a publicly circulated video of Councilman Johnathan Duncan’s remarks about Shaun’s death, Shaun’s sister, Sandra O’Brien, contacted me from Ireland. She told me she was disgusted, angry, and deeply let down by the process. She said she had lost faith in Kansas City’s judicial system and was sickened by Councilman Duncan’s comments about her brother. Councilman Duncan, Shaun was an unarmed small-business owner taking out the trash at his own restaurant when teenagers attempted to steal his vehicle. He was shot and killed. Any suggestion that responsibility for what happened belonged with Shaun was cruel, insulting, and deeply hurtful to a family already forced to endure an unimaginable loss. Shaun could have been any one of us as small-business owners—opening early, locking up late, walking an employee to a car, or simply trying to protect the business into which we invested our lives. His family deserved better. This property owner deserves better. Every Kansas City resident and business owner deserves better.
Mayor Pro Tem Ryana Parks-Shaw, at our July 13 roundtable with approximately 70 Kansas City business and property owners, you told me directly that you understood what it was like because you are also a small-business owner. You had previously made the same point to me in writing:
“As a business owner myself, I understand the investment, responsibility, and pressure that comes with operating a business.”
So, I am asking you directly, business owner to business owner: Would you continue investing your own money in Kansas City if this were your property? Would you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars repairing a building, securing it, and paying increased insurance premiums while wondering whether it could happen again? Would you encourage another business owner to sign a lease after seeing this level of destruction?
I am going to have to give this owner my honest opinion. If the city cannot demonstrate that it takes these crimes seriously, I cannot honestly advise someone to continue investing money in Kansas City. I may have to advise this owner to consider future investments in communities where there is a greater sense of security and accountability.
I hate saying that. I own businesses in Kansas City. I have invested my life here. I want businesses to open here, employ people here, pay taxes here, and help our neighborhoods succeed. But I cannot look another investor in the eye and pretend everything is fine while City Hall repeatedly ignores what is happening in South Kansas City.
This is exactly what approximately 70 business and property owners tried to explain at our roundtable. We discussed crime, vandalism, repeat offenders, detention, homelessness, emergency response, and the difficulty of obtaining meaningful follow-through from the city. That meeting was supposed to produce responsible officials, timelines, measurable results, and actual accountability.
We have been talking about these problems for years. This incident proves they are not abstract concerns. They are destroying private property, driving up insurance costs, discouraging tenants, and pushing investment out of Kansas City.
As a separate and completely unrelated example elsewhere in South Kansas City, I recently drove past the former McDonald’s across from Minor Park Golf Course. It is closed, boarded up, and has at least five pieces of plywood covering openings in the building. The 11000 block of Holmes Road was also among the South Kansas City McDonald’s locations identified by police during a previously reported series of robberies. I am not suggesting that the McDonald’s property has any connection whatsoever to the property discussed in this email. It is another visible example of the deterioration residents and businesses are watching spread throughout South Kansas City.
South Kansas City is increasingly being treated like Kansas City’s dumping ground—a place where vacant buildings can deteriorate, businesses can be victimized, property owners can absorb the losses, and residents are simply expected to accept it. I am tired of hearing how much Kansas City values development and small businesses while watching conditions like these, push investment away!
You cannot claim to support economic development while failing to protect the people already investing here.
I am attaching selected photographs of the damage because other business and property owners need to understand what can happen to a commercial building—even when the equipment is not located inside the publicly accessible portion of the property. The photographs attached to the public version of this email have been reviewed and cropped to remove nearby building names, recognizable landmarks, identifying paperwork, and other information that could disclose the property’s location. I am not including photographs or details showing how the property was accessed, its security arrangements, physical evidence, or anything else that I believe could interfere with KCPD’s investigation. If KCPD identifies a specific image or detail that should not be publicly distributed while the investigation remains active, I will cooperate fully.
These photographs serve an important public-safety purpose. Business owners cannot assume that locking the doors and securing the interior protects their entire investment. Criminals can target rooftop equipment and destroy RTUs, electrical components, plumbing, and other exterior building systems for a relatively small amount of scrap metal. A business does not have to lose merchandise from inside its building to suffer a financially devastating crime. Someone can access a roof, destroy multiple commercial HVAC units, and leave an owner facing hundreds of thousands of dollars in repairs, lost rent, insurance consequences, and additional security expenses. Every Kansas City business and property owner should look at these photographs and understand the risk. Review access to your rooftop and exterior equipment. Speak with qualified security, electrical, and HVAC professionals about appropriate protections. Do not wait until you receive the telephone call this property owner received.
Members of the news media are copied on this email. Why are these patterns not receiving sustained attention? Why are we not seeing more reporting about commercial buildings being stripped, businesses repeatedly burglarized, boarded-up properties, rising insurance costs, investors being pushed away, and the cumulative decline of South Kansas City’s commercial corridors? One individual break-in may receive a short story. What continues to go largely unexamined is the combined damage being done to entire neighborhoods.
This is not merely another property-crime statistic. It is lost investment, lost tenants, lost jobs, higher insurance premiums, declining property values, reduced tax revenue, and another section of Kansas City being allowed to deteriorate. How many more buildings must be stripped, boarded up, or abandoned before City Hall and the media treat what is happening in South Kansas City as the serious economic and public-safety crisis that it is?
Please provide direct answers to the following:
- What is the current opening date for the modular detention facility, and what construction, staffing, or operational issues remain?
- Why was it not fully operational by the publicly discussed World Cup timeline?
- What is the final design, capacity, construction schedule, opening date, and funding plan for the permanent municipal detention and rehabilitation facility voters were told the public-safety sales tax would help build?
- Why is the city planning approximately 250 permanent beds, and what independent analysis shows that capacity will meet Kansas City’s actual needs?
- What coordinated strategy exists among the city, KCPD, county officials, prosecutors, juvenile authorities, and courts for repeat property offenders?
- What happens when officers arrest an individual, but an available detention facility refuses to accept that person?
- What additional public-safety and investigative resources are being assigned to South Kansas City to address commercial burglary, vandalism, metal theft, and repeat offenders?
- How is the city ensuring that businesses purchasing regulated scrap metal comply with applicable identification and recordkeeping laws?
- What resources are available to property owners attempting to secure and restore commercial properties after major criminal damage?
- What measurable actions have resulted from the July 13 business-owner roundtable, and who is responsible for implementing each one?
- What is the city’s measurable plan for preventing more boarded-up and deteriorating commercial properties throughout South Kansas City?
- How much of the $16 million approved for the KCPD headquarters detention facility was spent, where was it spent, how much remains, and how were the remaining funds reallocated?
- What should I honestly tell property owners and investors who ask whether they should continue putting their money into Kansas City?
I have included Mayor Lucas, Councilman Duncan, Councilwoman Bough, Mayor Pro Tem Parks-Shaw, and other city officials on emails concerning crime and deteriorating conditions in South Kansas City for more than five years.
I pay Kansas City taxes. I operate businesses here. I employ people here. I invest in this community.
Whether I voted for you is irrelevant. You hold public office, and you work for every resident and taxpayer—not only the people and organizations you choose to acknowledge. I did not vote for some of you. But the way legitimate concerns from South Kansas City have been ignored has certainly not given me any reason to reconsider. The responding officers were professional, and I know KCPD will do everything it can with the evidence and resources available.
My frustration is directed at a city government and criminal-justice system that repeatedly leave officers, victims, property owners, and businesses dealing with the same offenders and the same failures.
I am angry because a private property owner now faces a potentially devastating loss.
I am angry because we have been discussing these exact problems for more than five years.
And I am angry because South Kansas City continues to receive silence instead of leadership.
Please do not send me a generic response explaining that one piece of this belongs to another department or jurisdiction. Coordinate with the appropriate agencies and provide a direct, honest explanation of what will be done.
This is not political rhetoric. This is the actual cost of Kansas City’s failure to protect its residents, businesses, property owners, and investors.
When are you going to step up and address it?
Matt Alexiou
