Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas has publicly described the city's police department as a "colonial system" that is "anti-Black" and "anti-immigrant" — a stance made politically possible by the unusual fact that Kansas City does not control its own police force. Under an arrangement rooted in Civil War-era Missouri politics, a five-member state commission — four of whom are appointed by the Republican governor — oversees the department's $364 million budget, its 1,200-plus officers, and the hiring and firing of its police chief, leaving the Democratic mayor routinely outvoted. The dispute highlights a widening national pattern in which Republican-controlled state legislatures increasingly override the policies of Democratic-leaning cities: Missouri voters last year narrowly approved a constitutional mandate requiring Kansas City to spend at least a quarter of its municipal budget on policing, even as city voters rejected the measure by a two-to-one margin.