Police Delays Costing KC Regional Jail

July 6th, 2009

The costs of a new regional jail project are creeping toward $3 million — with the promise of growing larger as Kansas City MO police delay joining the project, officials said.  Reported by the Kansas City Star.

Kansas City and Jackson County officials said the Police Department’s recent decision not to send detainees — at least for now — threatened to boost the cost to taxpayers by hundreds of thousands of dollars.   “It’s just a waste of taxpayer dollars,” said Chuck Eddy, chief of staff to City Manager Wayne Cauthen.    Members of the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners and police command have made clear they would like to close the eighth-floor detention unit at police headquarters. Sending prisoners to the regional jail “is not dead,” they added.  “It probably needs to be done, if we can do it the right way,” police board member Karl Zobrist said Thursday …

Eddy said the jail renovation work began in anticipation of the police joining in the regional jail. Police have been meeting for months with county and city officials about the project, according to city records.    Now a wall is being erected to separate the jail from areas that might be used for police later, officials said.   [But for now] the continued liability of operating the eighth-floor detention unit will remain for taxpayers, as well as the cost of transporting prisoners from police headquarters to Truman Medical Center.   In the new jail, the county will provide medical treatment, decreasing city taxpayer costs of ambulance transports and indigent medical care, officials said.

jakking County-City Issues, Economic Issues, Inmate Health Care, Jail and Prison Construction, Kansas City, MO Jackson County, Missouri

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