Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said Sunday his city has 60 unsolved murders but he thinks President Trump is looking to leverage his city’s “pain” to help him win reelection.
The Kansas City Democrat sought to keep homicides under 100 in the 2020 calendar year, but the city reported more than 100 murders in this year’s first six months.
“There are about 60 unsolved murders in Kansas City as we speak but they’ve sent 225 federal agents to do any number of things,” Mr. Lucas told “Fox News Sunday.” “I’d just as soon have each of them matched with an unsolved case and that’s how we can get through this instead of using this as a moment to try to create divisive rhetoric that I think is being exploited for the presidential election.”
Mr. Lucas told Fox that he thinks President Trump’s decision to send federal officials into cities to protect federal property was instead done to become a national police force operating without respect for local mayors or state governors.
“By the way, you don’t get elected mayor as some radical in most cases,” Mr. Lucas said. “Most of us are folks that work with law enforcement often, that run law enforcement departments in our city, and they have told me as well, ’We have this under control.’”
Mr. Lucas said he thinks major metropolitan areas with confrontational protests do not need additional federal officials arriving to instigate more problems in pursuit of what he sees as a political agenda.
• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.
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