KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Kansas City, Missouri, Board of Police Commissioners adjourned Tuesday from its regularly-scheduled monthly meeting with no announcement for who might select as the city’s next Chief of Police.
Following the public portion of their meeting Monday, commissioners met for a closed session.
The closed session was the first opportunity for board members to discuss the selection of one of three finalists in the running for chief following a public meeting last Saturday.
The three candidates, KCPD Deputy Chief Stacey Graves, Philadelphia Police Department Inspector DeShawn Beaufort and retired New Jersey State Police Lt. Col. Scott Ebner, were questioned in a public town hall on Saturday.
After a roughly two hours of closed session, the board announced they had not yet made a selection.
"I would like to thank members of the department and the community for helping us in the chief selection process," BOPC Vice President Cathy Dean said.
The board announced plans to reconvene in a newly scheduled meeting on Thursday.
"I want to tell the people of Kansas City that we have the upmost confidence that our chief will be able to hit the ground running starting the day that they are named," Mayor Quinton Lucas said. "After the Thursday meeting, there will be some determination in terms of the next police chief for Kansas City."
Earlier Monday, community leader and former police board commissioner Alvin Brooks penned a letter asking the board to push pause on their deliberations and schedule more meetings with the public to discuss community engagement.
Just before Saturday’s meeting, former KCPD attorney Ryan McCarty, who was terminated last week, released a eight-page letter with hundreds of pages of e-mail correspondence in which he claimed mismanagement among Interim Police Chief Joseph Mabin and Chief Legal Counsel Holly Dodge.
Lucas said Tuesday the board will investigate McCary's claims.
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