KANSAS CITY, Mo. — In one of her last interviews, Jean Peters Baker sat down with KSHB 41 Anchor Kevin Holmes to look back on her time as Jackson County Prosecutor.
—
KH: “Why not seek re-election? What was the moment when you said, 'I’m done?'”
JPB: “In 2020, I pushed myself along. I had to push through that election. Grind through that. I had a lot of big cases pending and I had to do that, but I was probably really close. What this county needs is somebody who is energetic and fresh, and willing to go to the mat on every issue.”
KH: “What’s the one piece of advice you have for your successor?”
JPB: “The piece of advice I have is to keep those who right now are very dear and close to you and have been for a long time. Your trusted circle; keep them close because you’re going to need them. Because the job is so much harder than you can ever imagine it’s going to be.”
KH: “How would you describe your tenure as prosecutor of Jackson County?”
JPB: “I’d say people know who I am. They know my moxie. My willingness to engage. Hopefully, they believe I was a prosecutor who would always put their interest first.”
KH: “What grade would you give yourself?”
JPB: “Um, I’d give myself a B minus. Because violence is really, really high. Misinformation is at a real high. I’ve got some regrets about not trying to do more on that front. But my running of the office – I’ll give myself an A on the running of the office. You don’t hear of the functioning of my office. That’s because I run a good, solid office.”
KH: “What do you say to people out there who say Jean Peters Baker is not tough on crime?”
JPB: “I’d say I need you to sit down and look at some facts. Because there’s a little bit of political taglines in there. We don’t have any soft-on-crime policies. I hope we have some smart-on-crime policies. To pick a tagline of soft, or not tough enough—I’d say you ought to spend a day shadowing anyone in the prosecutor’s office to know that doesn’t have any meaning.”
KH: “What do you think caused that rift with KCPD?”
JPB: “That’s always been there. That was the tagline when Clair McCaskill was prosecutor. And I remember when she left, and Bob Beaird came in. And I’m still a very junior prosecutor working for him, and I thought that would change because he’s different. They’ll see him differently. And I was at a community meeting, and that was the tagline, and he had been on the job for less than a year. And it’s been that way with every prosecutor since.”
KH: “What’s been Jean Peters Baker’s biggest success as prosecutor?”
JPB: “A lot of it is the real unsexy things that people don’t know I do.”
KH: “What would you say has been your biggest failure?”
JPB: “I knew you’d ask me that question. There's so many things I’d hope for when I got into that job. One was that violence would be reduced. And we went through a period of deregulation of guns and expansion of self-defense. And that’s hurt us. It’s really hurt us. It’s a personal regret that I couldn’t get someone to listen. It is about guns. I’d have a much better time if people were killing each other with rocks. I could probably have gotten a lot more done. Politically, it’s gotten so awful.”
KH: “What’s next for Jean Peters Baker?”
JPB: “Something a little less hard.”
VOICE FOR EVERYONE | Share your voice with KSHB 41’s Kevin Holmes
—