In 1994, Alex Lepper joined the Kansas City Police Department as part of President Bill Clinton’s Community Oriented Police Services program, which aimed to put 100,000 new police officers on streets nationwide. Researchers debate the effectiveness of COPS, but crime did go down in the mid-1990s.
It certainly went down in Kansas City.
“My partner and I were assigned to the area between 48th and 59th streets and Paseo to Prospect,” said Lepper. “We walked our beat and got to know the residents. People began to trust us and confide in us what they knew about area crime and criminals.”
Folks in the neighborhood referred to Lepper and his partner as Beavis and Butt-Head, a reference to the popular TV show at the time. Lepper’s superiors blanched at the nickname, but he knew it was a term of affection.
The homicide rate in the 1990s peaked at 152 and 153 in 1992 and 1993 respectively. It dropped to 142 in 1994, and continued to decline in the next three years before jumping to 133 in 1998. In his 1995 State of the Union remarks, President Clinton cited Kansas City as a success. The KCPD chief was seated in the gallery: