Fuckin' statewide vote for an issue that only affects one city...
And it's not 25% of the city's budget. It was a 25% increase in the police budget, bringing it to 38% of the city's budget. Just enough that KC had to scrap plans for free bus fares.
this post was submitted on 17 May 2026
810 points (99.6% liked)
Today I Learned
29797 readers
1093 users here now
What did you learn today? Share it with us!
We learn something new every day. This is a community dedicated to informing each other and helping to spread knowledge.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must begin with TIL. Linking to a source of info is optional, but highly recommended as it helps to spark discussion.
** Posts must be about an actual fact that you have learned, but it doesn't matter if you learned it today. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.**
Rule 2- Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding non-TIL posts.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-TIL posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.
If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.
Partnered Communities
You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.
Community Moderation
For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Fuck it. Hire bus drivers as police and have them drive buses.
Wouldn't be surprised if the bus thing was the real goal all along
I'm starting to think that our democracy is broken.
i mean i heard before USA has a flawed Democracy.
Republicans are for "small government" unless they control the state and it is a local gov.
"Small government" means there's a few rich people who control everything, and regular people don't have a place in it.
No, they're still for small government...as in they close down a tightly regulated and budgeted govt agency to outsource it to their buddies private company which exists solely to generate a profit.
25% of a city budget to police? Wtf?
All those armoured tanks they buy aren't cheap.
A lot of towns and cities spend way more than that.
Speaks volumes what those in charge think of the population doesn't it?
Here I am bitching at the metro because the grocery store has weight sensors on the self checkout because no one trusts me as a consumer.
load more comments
(6 replies)
I just checked, in Helsinki, Finland (my instance's location), 25% of the city budget (~1,25B€) would cover the police expense for entire country and more (~900M€).
Here police is managed by the state but I tried to make things comparable. And I don't believe the police is extremely underfunded there. Is the US police driving tanks or wtf?
Is the US police driving tanks or wtf?
Yep. They literally are 🤬
Armored carriers, helicopters. Those helicopters range for $5-20M each.
load more comments
(3 replies)
Urban police have a fuck ton of high tech equipment, high pay, and unlimited overtime (because the cities politically can't stop them from taking it). They also have frequent legal costs because they keep violating citizens' rights.
If two-thirds of a populace is opposed to something, and their government approves it anyway. Then their government is illegitimate.
Yep. Most governments are illegitimate
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,
Core concept, really.
Yes, that's capitalist "democracy" for you. Almost everyone agrees on increased funding and auditing to public healthcare, education, pensions and welfare in general, and yet we see all western capitalist countries heading in the opposite direction for the last 20 years.
That's not democracy tho. that's a plutocracy.
Fully agreed, there's only plutocracy and no democracy under capitalism
The issue here is what to do when you have multiple levels of government. One government entity may be against a policy, but a larger government entity which includes the smaller entity may be for a policy.
This case is regarding police funding, but this could apply to school or welfare programs as well.
load more comments
(20 replies)
Article does not load
TLDR: Kansas City has a weird setup where the police department is paid for by the city but reports to a committee that's mostly appointed by the state governor. A statewide ballot initiative passed that requires Kansas City to spend a certain % of their yearly budget on police, even though both the city mayor and the residence don't want to spend that.
Pendergast fault, its continues today because kc is a democrat strong hold, St. Louis use to be the same tho I think state is trying to regain control.
Yep, the state loves to control the two largest metropolitan areas. They also own St. Louis' police. They want full control over the cities because we're the cash cows for the state, despite all the lip service paid to farmers and rural people, who all depend on the money we generate here for their welfare.
It's a remnant of Civil War-era law and unlikely to ever change.
Yep we damn well didn't want to give the pigs anymore than they already get. And you aren't wrong about the situation in St Louis. People don't even understand how that shit can be like that. It's completely fucked up in the eyes of most the rest of the world but in Missouri it's just Tuesday.
Yup, I hate the KCPD.
It wasn't that long ago that they were just letting break-ins happen because they wanted to make Jackson County Prosecutor look bad and try to kill her reelection hopes, all for having the temerity to criticize the shitty job that cops do here. I see them when I'm out walking the dogs a lot and they're always friendly to my face, but I keep in the back of my mind that these people are a piece-of-refuse gang and they'd happily shoot me and my animals in the head if it were convenient for them.
Remember the cardinal rule, friends: Don't talk to cops. Ever.
Even if it weren't convenient and they were just pissed that day...
load more comments
(1 replies)
If the government did what the people want, our military destroyers would be named "Boaty McBoat Face" and similar
What's your point?
Alright, well I guess this transit expansion is going under the police file. I hope you like driving buses, cops.
But more seriously...
Adding insult to injury for Kansas City, local officials will have no say in how their money gets spent by the police department—even as they are required by the state to pour more funds into it.
Talk about a corruption machine.
Missouri is a very corrupt state. Besides what you just mentioned, which is true, we also voted in an anti-gerrymandering law in 2018.
Before it could go into effect, the Conservative Party got a repeal of the law onto the ballot with very shady text to trick voters into repealing their own votes.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
Hey this happens in Canada too. In BC, the capital city has 23% of budget go to VicPD. The city has tried turning down budget increase requests, then the province stepped in and forced them to do it.
view more: next ›