Jackson County Executive Mike Sanders called the new detention cells a better product at a better price.
It’s unclear what will happen to the dismal eighth-floor holding cells at downtown police headquarters – maybe they will remain as a kind of empty museum of despair.
City, Jackson County and city police officials yesterday announced their formal end as part of a cooperative agreement.
Beginning May 1, all city pre-arraignment police detainees will be held in a remodeled area of the downtown Regional Corrections Center, on the ground floor of the county jail.
The change avoids having to spend $5 million or more to renovate the 1938 police detention cells and cuts city costs per prisoner by 20 percent, said Mayor Sly James.
Video arraignment cameras there for city court also allow detainees to be processed faster, he said, and police will spend less time moving prisoners.
Jackson County Executive Mike Sanders said, “What we really have here is a better product for corrections at a better price.”
The action was years in the making and is the final part of a city-county cooperative detention agreement.
In 2009, the county opened the Regional Corrections Center to house Kansas City Municipal Court inmates. The remodeled operation can now provide 175 beds for inmates and 100 beds for detainees.
City Police Chief Darryl Forte said the old police detention cells were deplorable and a legal liability.
The prisoners now will be able to get 24-hour medical care and other help in a decent environment, he said.
Alvin Brooks, president of the board of police commissioners, said he started taking prisoners to the old lockup when he became an officer in 1954.
He doesn’t know what will happen to the eighth-floor cells, he said, but, “it’s a good moment for us and I just hope and pray we’ll continue to use these collaborations.”
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