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2024.05.17 - LTR To AG Bailey Re Harassment of Employees
2024.05.17 - LTR To AG Bailey Re Harassment of Employees
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QUINTON D. LUCAS
Mayor
Re: Urgent Request to Cease Inflammatory Rhetoric and Prevent Targeting of Kansas City
Employees
I am writing to express my deep concern and disappointment regarding your recent actions that have
directly contributed to the online harassment and targeting of individual Kansas City government
employees.
Over the past two days, your office’s public statements and social media posts have criticized a tweet sent
out by the City’s twitter account—a tweet the City quickly took down, acknowledged as wholly
inappropriate, and for which both the City and its individual leaders, myself included, immediately
apologized. The City has also launched a Human Resources disciplinary process, which, as our top state
lawyer, you know is confidential during review. I respect your right to criticize the City, but your
inflammatory rhetoric has gone beyond rational disagreements and has resulted in members of your online
following directing vitriol, death threats, and harassment at specific Kansas City Black and female
employees who had no involvement in the objectionable tweet.
The violent racist rhetoric of this online harassment is galling. Pictures of female City employees with no
involvement in the now-deleted tweet have been shared online. In one post, an employee’s street address
has been provided next to an image of a Black person hanging from a noose. In addition to the disclosure
of addresses and photographs of multiple women working in communications for Kansas City, our
employees have been called “Niggers,” “whores,” and “enemies of the people,” and have been attacked
by commenters to denounce “diversity and inclusion.” There is no place in Missouri for this type of
rhetoric.
The growing online rhetoric on this issue, for which you are fanning the flames, has made City employees
targets for online hate mobs and put their personal safety at risk, including leading an employee to leave
her home for her safety. Whatever your intent, the consequence of your statements has been a flood of
threatening and harassing messages, calls, and posts directed at these public employees and their families.
This is unacceptable.
As Attorney General, your words carry great weight and influence. I urge you to consider the real-world
impact of your rhetoric and actions, particularly as it applies to non-elected officials. Criticism of
government statements and elected officials is appropriate, but targeting and implicitly encouraging
harassment of individual public servants is reckless and irresponsible. The buck stops with me. Please
leave non-elected government workers alone.
I am requesting that you immediately cease this dangerous practice and make a public statement
condemning the harassment and threats that City employees have received and are receiving. If you object
to posting the mere city in which a public figure lives, then you should condemn even more strongly the
posting of a municipal employee’s name, photo, and home address alongside racist and genuine threats of
violence.
The people of Kansas City and Missouri deserve leaders who will engage in good faith dialogue, not fan
the flames of anger and hate. I hope you will join me in lowering the temperature and ensuring all public
servants can do their jobs without fear.
Sincerely,
Quinton D. Lucas