Campaign to recall councilman Jermaine Reed begins
Third District City Councilman Jermaine Reed has made plenty of headlines in his seven months in office. He rushed to the defense of Club Xpressions, a downtown violence magnet. And he put out the boneheaded idea of renaming Prospect Avenue after Martin Luther King Jr. Reed won his seat last May in an ugly election. Lawyer Michael Fletcher tried to run, but a court ruled that he wasn’t a Kansas City resident. Fletcher then sued former Councilwoman Sharon Sanders Brooks for defamation after Brooks said Reed had assaulted her, and Reed won in a landslide. But now some constituents are trying to boot him out of office.
Residents are focused mostly on Reed’s reaction to the plans to build a new crime lab at 27th and Prospect. The lab’s construction will require dozens of homeowners to move. The Rev. L. Henderson Bell, who was helping to organize the recall movement told Fox 4, “People are complaining about being displaced, and the young man said, to the people who are moving from their homes, being asked to move from their homes, he said, ‘Get over it’.” Bell told KCTV Channel 5 that Reed’s inexperience in politics is hurting the district. “We are literally being pushed around because we have a novice in office. He certainly seems to have so much respect for the system until he is not effective in challenging the things that need to work best for those in our community,” he told the station.
