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Banking on KC – Rick Armstrong of the Kansas City Metropolitan Crime Commission

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Kelly Scanlon:

Welcome to Banking on KC. I'm your host, Kelly Scanlon. Thank you for joining us. With us on this episode is Rick Armstrong, president of the Kansas City Metropolitan Crime Commission, who has an extensive background in law enforcement as well. Welcome, Rick.

Rick Armstrong:

Thank you. Glad to be here, Kelly.

Kelly Scanlon:

Crime is something that is on a lot of people's minds. It's something that cities around the country struggle with. Kansas City obviously is no exception. So what role does the Kansas City Metropolitan Crime Commission play in reducing crime and minimizing its impact?

Rick Armstrong:

I think collaboration is probably the greatest position point that the Crime Commission is fortunate enough to be sitting in. I get the opportunity to attend the Metro Chiefs and Sheriffs monthly luncheons. I'm still very involved with my colleagues in law enforcement, the chiefs and sheriffs and the federal agents in charge here that make up the Kansas City law enforcement community. So I get to hear and continue to be part of those conversations about the different challenges that each department and agency is having and being able to offer some insight coming from my relationship with now the business community that the Crime Commission represents and the citizenry position and perspective.

Because I think sometimes when you're in the trenches in law enforcement, it's always helpful to understand that we're all in this together, meaning the community, every citizen, the business community, special interest groups, law enforcement. It's a collaboration that makes, in my opinion, in my experience, that helps crime be impacted in a positive way.

Kelly Scanlon:

The organization that you head up here isn't new. Some people might think it is, but it's been around since 1949. What prompted its development and how has it changed over the years? How do you see its mission evolving under your leadership where you bring so much perspective as a former law enforcement agent?

Rick Armstrong:

That's a great question. It was chartered in September of 1949. The Crime Commission actually came out of a grand jury that had been convened in Jackson County looking at organized crime. And it was common across America in the mid to late 1940s for Crime Commission start materializing. What happened across major cities like Chicago, the Daley Machine up there, Kansas City. We had the Pendergast Machine going on here. The fine line between political patronage and corruption was crossed in many cities across America. And I think that coming out of prohibition and trying to reestablish what was allowable, what was appropriate, and how that began to undermine real violent crime across the country.

And Kansas, Missouri was no exception to that. Obviously the River Quay and that era of time got a lot of national attention in the relationship between Kansas City and Las Vegas and also the relationship back to Chicago. So the Crime Commission was a number of citizens who were also business leaders in Kansas City, who began to think out of that grand jury, what might they do to try to join together to expect more from government in terms of ethical, responsible leadership. And consequently, they formed the Charter of the Crime Commission and began meeting in September of 1949. And then the progression probably from 1949 through 1980 had a lot to do with just a couple individuals leading the Crime Commission as functioning operators.

The persons in my position as president in those early days helped work with law enforcement, but the business community helped them focus on meetings with law enforcement, meetings with city officials in Kansas, Missouri, because it originally started as the Kansas City Crime Commission. So it was focused in Jackson County in Kansas City, Missouri. And so they worked with the leadership there of the city government and the police department to collectively work toward reducing the impact that organized crime had in Kansas City. There's been some historical books written about it, and I think it had a major difference.

It also allowed for the business community to demand of government an expectation of legitimacy and ethical behavior when it came to contract and the interactions with the business community. I think it had a major impact and continue to thrive. The business community began to turn over. This year we had one of our board members, Andy Rieger, is the fourth generation board member. His great-grandfather was a charter member of the Crime Commission. And the point is that the business community continued to reinvest every two years, taking board membership and leadership roles, and many stayed on for decades with this idea that they were making an impact. So that takes us up to about 1982.

And in 1982, the Crime Commission was asked to absorb a program that was started down in Albuquerque, but it had to do with a crime stopper program. An anonymous tip organization. And they felt that if they could have people anonymously give a tip that they could help solve crime. Several people in Kansas City went down to Albuquerque to look at this program and see how it functioned. And one of those individuals was Irene Scaife who was chief of police at Overland Park PD, Margaret Long, trying to think of other people who were part of that original group that went down and brought that back to Kansas City. And Steve Cox, chief of Leawood, was one of the other individuals that was charter people that brought that idea back.

And where were they going to park it? Because you needed a dispatch, you needed the ability to communicate with the media. You needed someone to be able to work with law enforcement and redact information to keep it anonymous. And in 1982, we began our Crime Stopper program here. And fast-forward, since that inception, over 620 homicides have been solved because of those anonymous tips, tens of thousands of other criminals have been brought to justice and found and located and rewards paid out in the millions of dollars. It's the Hallmark program of the Crime Commission beginning as our oldest. We celebrated 40 years just a couple of years ago. That began this process of adopting other programs over a long period of time.

Kelly Scanlon:

One of those is the Second Chance Program, and from what I understand, it helps assist offenders with reentry. Can you talk with us about that one?

Rick Armstrong:

Absolutely. Second Chance is actually our youngest program beginning in 2008, Bill Dunn Sr. for J.E. Dunn Construction Company. He was a board member of the Crime Commission and he had a real passion for not building any more prisons. His company had built a number of prisons around the country and saw that there had to be some other alternative to that and saw a real value in people coming out of incarceration who could bring a workforce, a viable workforce back into the community. So we put together a study of the Crime Commission, embarked on a study with the UMKC, looking at gap analysis of where services were failing people coming out of prison in what we call the reentry space.

And out of that, they developed the Second Chance Program, got initial funding to get the program going. They had a broader idea of what they wanted to do, and it was during the downturn of the 2008 economy, so they couldn't raise as much money. They wanted to have a standalone sort of grant funded where they could actually fund other gap service programs to do the job that the Crime Commission is doing now with our Second Chance Program. So we adopted the Second Chance Program, and it's reentry, quick numbers from inception until today, 95% of our clients that are served through the program do not recidivate in one year out, which is a standard of likely that they won't recidivate or recommit another offense.

And with that, that goes against the national average. When I arrived here, 65% of people coming out of prison would recidivate in one year, meaning that only 5% or less would show that we were impacting 60% of at-risk people who are likely to commit another crime not to commit with the help and assistance of our program.

Kelly Scanlon:

What are some of the assistance that you offer in that situation? Do you teach job skills? Do you line up interviews with businesses? How does that work?

Rick Armstrong:

Well, I think it's all those things. And we just had a board meeting yesterday and our director of the program is Tracy Kirksey, who did 30 years for probation parole for Jackson County and Kansas City, Missouri, and had a large history into that. And she recognized during her time there that more needed to be done, that the state services were inadequate to prepare people out of prison. They really weren't built to make that transition from prison to successful reentry back into population. And so our case managers within Second Chance, four times a year go out to all the prisons in Missouri and Kansas to let folks who are going to be eligible for parole in that next year.

That organization exists, is waiting there to help them in that transitional pace. So we try to pass out brochures, literature, but also say, "Come see us." And I cannot tell you how many of our case managers will begin a story saying... We bring them to some of our board meetings, our clients who've had success in the program. And they will say, "Ms. Brittany came to see me. It's been a century, and she said, 'Come see me.'" And then she will say... Knocked on my door, then got off the bus from the correctional facility and walked over to Second Chance and said, "I'm ready. I'm here. How do you help me?" So it really begins with developing relationships while they're in prison.

When all of the Missouri Probation Pro losses have our Second Chance posters and literature in their offices and they recommend us. It's a volunteer program, so it's not mandated. So with that, that's entry one. And then we have a welcome back program that when they first come back, where we have people who have been through the program who are there to share with them their experience and the hard kinds of challenges that's going to be confronted with someone coming out of prison. They typically come out of prison without any credentials, no driver's license, no state ID card, which become really important for applying for jobs and getting a driver's license. Of course, they come out often without any funds, any financial backing.

They have no savings, job skills. They may have acquired some job skills in prison, but many of them may not have had job skills prior to going to prison. So not to mention something was said yesterday in our board meeting, which I found to be just a reminder of how difficult the process is. That many people didn't grow up in a household where anyone worked. So they didn't see the example of a mom or dad or an uncle and aunt or a grandparent getting up and going to work every day. And that normal routine that is normal for so many Americans, but not for a lot of the folks who unfortunately have got involved in a life of crime. And oftentimes their life of crime is predicated on where they were born, the circumstances they're born into.

And I think all of us would suggest that if we were born in those circumstances, we also might be inclined to engage in behavior that would be survivable and oftentimes would cross the line of the law. So I think having an element of human compassion to go into this, and coming from my background in law enforcement, I find that one of the more difficult things to accept is our ignorance. And looking back, I would say my 37.5 years of sworn law enforcement, we may have recognized that folks coming out of prison were high risk to reoffend. We may have targeted those individuals or looked for those individuals when we started having crime crop up.

And you could look at who was on probation or parole who had done those kinds of crimes prior to going to prison, so burglary or robbery or rape. And if something were to start happening, one of the first groups of people we looked at were those folks who had came out doing those kinds of behaviors that led to prison. We were right oftentimes those were the folks that were doing it. And so they were re-arrested. We just didn't think... I mean, talking law enforcement across the spectrum, we didn't think, "Well, we could intervene or maybe we could be doing something about that." And I think that when I came to the Crime Commission, I wasn't as knowledgeable or as excited of the four programs I was inheriting.

We have Crime Stoppers, we have the Metropolitan Community Service Program, we have the SAFE program for fallen police, and firefighters killed in the line of duty. And then there was Second Chance. And little did I know that in the first six months there recognized it was maybe our most important program for true crime prevention. We can statistically validate that the people that come out of prison, we know that their history and evidence will tell us they're going to commit crime again at a higher than 50% probability. And if we can reduce that to years, we have 1-2% recidivate. So if we can reduce it from 50% to less than 2%, then you know those are crimes not being committed. Individuals who are re-establishing themselves as viable citizens back into the community.

Taxpaying citizens, workforce that is sorely needed right now. And for a lot of the service industry jobs, I mean, they're done by folks that have acquired some of those skills in prison that we can then migrate forward in a healthy way to make them productive.

Kelly Scanlon:

Tell us about your personal journey from law enforcement to the position that you hold now. How did that come about?

Rick Armstrong:

Out of high school was recruited to the Police Cadet Program in Kansas City, Kansas from 1978 until 2013, December, cadet, officer, sergeant, lieutenant, captain, major, deputy chief and chief. Did everything that one would expect span of time in those career positions would do, supervising, responding, but most importantly working with the community. And the takeaway for me in my career that continues through the Crime Commission is that I was able to do my master's thesis at KU, was critical issues for implementation for community policing back in 1991, I started my research and finished in '93, was able to help implement that at Kansas City, Kansas, and looking at programs around the country, including Kansas, Missouri.

The program that we started there continues to operate today, KCK has a very vibrant community policing program and we like to laugh. I'm a Wyandotte County boy, born and raised, still live there. And we're one degree of separation. It's a small community and I think that's a strength that they have, but it's that strength of you have to commit to stay working together, living together, working together. No matter what our political ideology is, no matter what our social preferences are, whatever our economic differences are, I think that what you find is the greatest challenge for preventing crime across the country. What's common is that working together, it's not a police problem.

Crime is not a police problem. The police want to respond to it. They're the ones who are given full-time responsibility to deal with it but the origins of crime go way beyond the scope of policing.

Kelly Scanlon:

Let's stay with the idea of community. How does your organization, KC MCC, collaborate with local businesses and community organizations to enhance public safety, create awareness, help prevent crime in the Kansas City metro area?

Rick Armstrong:

Well, I mentioned our four programs. So interesting enough, the board of directors of the Crime Commission are 40 strong. And those 40 individuals come from some of the most vibrant businesses in Kansas City and including Mark Thompson for Country Club Bank. And Mark has been a long-time member of the Crime Commission. So Mark represents, he takes back to his organization, to the banking industry, the kinds of issues that, and brings forward to the Crime Commission to me as the president and my interaction with law enforcement. Part of our board meetings, I bring the chiefs and sheriffs, FBI, DEA, US Marshall, Missouri and Kansas Highway Patrol officials come into our board meetings and they get to hear from our business community, including people like Mark who would talk about the issues in banking and the challenges that are happening there.

And also hearing back from that law enforcement perspective of their limitations or their challenges of how they're investigating and working with that. But the real conversation is how do we do this more effectively together? So the 40 board members represent 40 businesses in the Kansas City metro, large businesses. We then have four programs, Crime Stoppers, MCSP, SAFE, and Second Chance. Each of those have between 30 and 35 board members and they represent other business communities, not to mention their church or their civic organizations or their neighborhood people. So I actually say I have about 160 board members that I in some way answer to or report to or work with. And so what we do is with that flow of information exchange, our programs sort of cover the spectrum, what we call the criminal justice system.

The criminal justice system for those listeners who are interested, you have law enforcement on the front end, in the middle you have the judiciary, the courts who make determinations of charging and not charging and ultimately making a determination of guilt or innocence through the jury process. And then the third part is corrections. So the Crime Commission work with law enforcement starts with the Crime Stopper program and taking direct tips and working with law enforcement to help us help them find and identify people they're looking for who have committed crime and getting citizens to self-report. People who are involved in the criminal enterprise or people that we're looking for who have committed crime to help keep their neighborhoods and their community safer.

So that's happening there. That's like the entry point of the criminal justice system. We also work with MCSP Metropolitan Community Service Program, that's working with the courts of multiple jurisdictions in the metro who give us, and folks who are found guilty of levels of crime in which part of their sentence is community service. And then they come and report to the MCSP program who are case workers there, assign them to cleanups and parks and adopt the streets in Kansas City, Missouri, and all sorts of initiatives to keep the community looking better. But also they do other kinds of volunteer work to work off those community service hours. So working with the courts and those same courts who make determinations of guilt and innocence, that's the middle part of the criminal justice system.

And then Second Chance, which is people coming out of prison is the correction side and where people get sent to prisons and the correction system doesn't... At least historically, there are examples around the country where people are trying to recognize this gap is helping people reenter. Is prison where you go to bit punished or is the punishment being sent to prison? And could prisons potentially be able to help train in a positive way to be successful coming out and being able to get back and reengage in life, reestablish relationships with their family and community, find viable work and be able to be productive, find a different kind of life, a second chance after mistakes made, and also maybe second chance, that life may have dealt them difficult circumstances they were born into.

What an opportunity if they could come back, we could help them reestablish and become viable citizens again. All this is predicated on the community supporting it, engaging in it, recognizing it, the collective nature that no matter where you live in the community, if we all see crime as all of our responsibility, all of us can change anything. I'm a big believer of that. At our board meetings this last year in 2024 specifically, we had a number of chiefs come in for interaction with our board, and the board raised the question, sent some of our business owners. Raised the question about theft on the plaza for instance, or theft for any industry or issues with banking and fraud and forgery and the things happening and the new challenges in the electronic world, and then the scams that are rampant.

So those are the questions asked of our local law enforcement chiefs. And we had some federal agents in charge as well, trying to answer what resources they have, what tools that they have to be able to help respond to those. There's a litany of things. So I think engaging with your local businesses, engaging with your local police department, ask for a representative to come out to talk about a particular issue that you believe you're having, whether it's theft, whether it's auto theft, whether it's burglary, forgery, or an unsafe environment around your business, because we have those reported as well. The challenges are unique and different, but your local law enforcement wants those crimes reported.

They want to engage because once we know what's happening, you begin to develop strategies. There's no one single strategy for any kind of issue that I've ever been aware of. Things like cameras, things like alarm systems, things like hiring security. Those are all sort of the common places. Sometimes it's a matter that's much more deeper than that. But it starts with that conversation with, you should report it and you should raise your concerns to the Crime Commission. Again, if you're part of the Crime Commission board, those are the kinds of questions my board ask me and then I bring those individuals forward to interact with the board so they can ask those questions directly.

One of those questions, are we charging enough? The new Jackson County prosecutor, Melissa Johnson, Melissa is coming as a guest to the Crime Commission board meeting in February to talk about her perspective on prosecution and some of the complaints or challenges that have historically happened and what her role is going to be. And then our board can share with her what their expectations as the business community is. And so getting together with one another is the right way to begin approaching any problem.

Kelly Scanlon:

Do you have any new programs or strategies that you might be introducing to further reduce crime or to enhance public safety?

Rick Armstrong:

I'm extremely excited. So I started my 10th year in January at the Crime Commission as president. And when I arrived there, I had a short stint. When I retired as Chief of KCK in 2013, it was on the hills of the Sandy Hook Massacre in Connecticut. And our superintendent in District 500 KC K Public Schools, which is one of the largest schools in the metro, wanted to increase safety in their schools. And so we're able to work through the idea they could create their own police department. And I was actually asked to take that task to help start a new police department.

And what a perfect time to retire out of one agency and start from scratch and focus on all the best, all the things I'd learned in my career in law enforcement, which was that policing should be adaptive to the community you're serving. It's not one size fits all. Policing shouldn't be the same in every city. The same should be fairness and justice and equity. But in terms of what your citizenry needs and what your population is expecting, and for a school district, they want a safe school. They want to keep kids in school. Suspensions may fix the problem in the classroom, they don't fix that student.

Kelly Scanlon:

True.

Rick Armstrong:

And truancy is the worst challenge for all because when someone is actually expelled or becomes truant and doesn't reengage, we know that individual has a very higher risk of committing crime and being involved in a lower chance of productivity for them to be successful. Our goal was not to arrest students. Our goal was to keep kids in class, to identify the kids at high risk, to mentor them, to be able to work with their parent, to be able to work with their teachers, to be able to collaborative around them knowing that, wow, what a success if we actually could get them to graduate.

Arresting, the ideas of small petty stuff that should be dealt with in a very efficient way in schools with recognition of sending a kid to jail for marijuana possession, introducing them to the criminal justice system and other individuals who have had failures in life seems to be disingenuous if we really want to help them. The schools have great systems for dealing with things like that. So my point is that when I saw what was happening there within the schools, you begin to see the potential. When I arrived to the Crime Commission, my question was to the board, what are we doing about children? What are we doing about youth?

And with that, we started a focus on the scholastic crime stop report, and we looked at a number of things. We did about a year-long study, brought together some experts in child behavior and school superintendent folks who knew some of the risks that they were working with and truancy, for example, and also the safety of school environment. We know mass school shootings, hundreds occur each year. It's become commonplace. And what we know about the investigation of that is that in virtually every school shooting perpetuated by a student, at least one other student knew about that challenge, that risk.

Kelly Scanlon:

You always hear that as-

Rick Armstrong:

...and didn't share. So we recognize if we could build relationships to those students body population or give them a tool. So our Crime Stopper Scholastic program, we have an app, it's called the P3 app. You can download it free at the Apple Store or the other applications. And in Kansas City, if you dial it up, you download it and there's barcodes all over town that you can just click it on your phone like your local QuikTrip and it will show you how to become... It's anonymous. It's a truly anonymous program. If I was any word, I want to make sure I underline, underscore anonymity, is that we have so many people say, "Is anything electronic anonymous?"

And I can assure you it is. Not one person since 1982, not one person's identity has ever been divulged giving us anonymous tips. We're now working in a school environment and kids are even more skeptical than adults about that kind of reliability. So that's probably our biggest hurdle but we decided that we could really make this happen. And I think there were around 50 schools who had some level of scholastic crime stoppers. And we went full-time with a retired detective, Kevin Boehm from KCMO PD, who was our former Crime Stopper coordinator when he retired from KCMO PD. He came back as the scholastic director three years ago. And we are now at 187 high schools in the metro.

Virtually every major school district in the metro is now part of Crime Stopper Scholastic. And in these last six years, we've actually prevented 19 suicides, students in the actual act, but also we've had two potential mass school shootings averted by tips given to us by students where the investigation led to a viable threat. A credible action was in the plan and in the works. So for us, it's already been worthwhile. And so we believe we can grow that program and if we could get every... Of course, remember the student turnover every three years, it's a whole new high school population.

Kelly Scanlon:

Yes, you have a new group of students. Yes.

Rick Armstrong:

So getting the young folks to not... What I would say my time at the school district that I carry forward is I underestimated as an adult just how capable our young people are. And I think that if our students would recognize this is within their grasp, they have the capacity to help ensure their safe school environment, bullying, obviously suicidal and mental health issues, and then obviously threats to the school and drugs and other bad behavior, criminal behavior is also a threat to that stable school environment. And they can take ownership and they can help us keep their school safe and we can work together. So I'm excited about that and I think that we can make a difference that every day, please don't give up.

My message is all of us can make a difference. Let's get together and figure out what the problem is and start working through solutions.

Kelly Scanlon:

You mentioned the 160 some board members that you say that you have in various capacities, but for our listeners today, who are mostly business leaders, entrepreneurs, and civic leaders. Other than becoming a member of your board, how can they get involved with KC MCC's efforts and support crime reduction and community safety initiatives?

Rick Armstrong:

We have some really fun events that the Crime Commission engages in, and those fun events help financially drive the organization to operate our programs and to keep us doing what we do. We're a nonprofit and proud to be so. Our goal, any funds that come through our way are redirected into the services and grow the services that we provide. So on June 7th is the Guns and Hoses event. It's the boxing where the police and firefighters, they start training in January to box each other. We pit fire against police, fire department's doing really well. Each year we get close, but each year it appears the firefighters do a better job of training and preparing.

But last year, we raised $600,000 at the Guns and Hoses event, and it's a fun, exciting event. Tickets are 25 if you want to be a business sponsor and do tables. The tables sell out each year. It's fantastic because the business community really comes in to support it. And once folks come, they come back again for two reasons. It's a really fun event. But the purpose, that program specifically, that event specifically, is primarily focused to raise funds for our Surviving Spouse and Family Endowment Fund, the SAFE Program, which we have 44 fire department, police department families who are supported by us, who lost their husband or wife in a violent encounter, killed in the line of duty.

We also support those folks during the Christmas holidays and then try to support them year round in relationship building and inviting them to things that the Crime Commission hosts or is engaged with. Many of our business people offer opportunities for some of those surviving spouses to attend their children, to keep them a part of recognizing that life still goes on for them, and we want to keep that relationship warm. The next thing that we do that also helps drive our program is our annual law enforcement appreciation luncheon. And that event, again, has continued to grow. And last year was a record year at over $400,000 for that event.

Those two events drive our program. And then our final major fundraiser is the Party Arrowhead, which is in November of this year. So Guns and Hoses, date June 7th, annual luncheon, October one, and then Party Arrowhead, November 8th.

Kelly Scanlon:

You can find all the information about those events on the website.

Rick Armstrong:

Online at the Crime Commission website.

Kelly Scanlon:

Yes. Which is?

Rick Armstrong:

Which is kc-crime.org.

Kelly Scanlon:

Yes, kc-crime.org. Rick, thank you so much for being our guest today, for explaining what the Crime Commission does and in many of the programs that you have, but also for your long history in law enforcement. Thank you for all of that.

Rick Armstrong:

It's been an honor and a pleasure. So thank you, Kelly.

Joe Close:

This is Joe Close, president of Country Club Bank. Thank you to Rick Armstrong, president of the Kansas City Metropolitan Crime Commission for joining us on this episode on Banking on KC. Rick highlighted how reducing crime requires a unified effort across law enforcement, businesses, community organizations, and individuals from programs like Crime Stoppers to Second Chance. The Crime Commission demonstrates that we all have a role to play in fostering safer neighborhoods and offering opportunities for transformation. Rick's decades of law enforcement experience remind us that crime is not just a police problem. It's a societal challenge that demands collective action.

Together we can create community where prevention, compassion, and accountability work hand-in-hand. At Country Club Bank, we believe in the power of collaboration to strengthen our city. Supporting initiatives like KC MCC reinforces our commitment to Kansas City safety and vitality. Thanks for tuning in this week. We're banking on you Kansas City. Country Club Bank member FDIC.

 

 

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