KSHB 41 reporter Megan Abundis covers Kansas City, Missouri, including neighborhoods in the southern part of the city. She also focuses on issues regarding scams. Share your story idea with Megan.
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Kansas City, Missouri, is expecting 70,000 fans a day during the World Cup, and keeping them safe will take 1,300 officers every day.
Kansas City Police Chief Stacey Graves outlined her plans Monday night at a meeting of the South Kansas City Alliance.
"There are 1,200 officers at KCPD, so all of us will be working," Graves said.
To fill the 100-officer gap, the department is pulling in law enforcement from outside the city — and outside the state.
"We're bringing a lot of different law enforcement agencies from outside KC," Graves said. "We're asking help from 11 other states."
Those visiting officers will be housed in dorms, provided meals, and given rides to the zones where they'll be working.
Graves said normal policing services will continue in neighborhoods across the city throughout the event.
"You will also have staffing here in your patrol division stations, and we will continue normal policing services," Graves said.
If additional help is needed in the moment, nearby police departments will be on standby.
Graves says an incident commander will be assigned each day to oversee operations from a new command center that receives real-time intelligence not only from Kansas City but from the other 11 World Cup host cities.
Transportation, emergency services and public safety personnel — along with the 1,300 officers — will all work together out of that center.
"There still will be people who are on duty to respond to homicides," Graves said. "You name it, we'll still have people able to respond."
The department is also preparing for a range of scenarios.
"We're practicing and training for all of it; We're preparing for the worst and hoping for the best," Graves said.
Graves called it a historic moment for KCPD to be part of.
"We have captains solely focused on making sure that we have the staffing, the deployment, the safety, all things World Cup," Graves said.
Each day of the World Cup, only 25,000 people will be allowed into the Fan Fest at the National World War I Museum and Memorial lawn.
On the topic of growing the department beyond the World Cup?
Graves says KCPD's full staffing is 1,400 officers, and the department is looking to hire about 200 more. New officers are set to graduate in August in the largest recruitment class since 2007, with 50 people.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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