Crosby Kemper III: library ‘lucky’ not to be even less safe than it feels

With typical candor, Kansas City Public Library CEO Crosby Kemper III tells The Kansas City Star today that its tabulation of recent library security problems is on the money. “We’ve been lucky that we haven’t had a really major incident,” he admits.

Kemper cites homeless persons downtown as a contributing factor to what the Star reports is a 59 percent rise from 2008 to 2009 in security incident reports (and projects will be a 52 percent increase this year over last). “It is a population we want to serve,” he tells the daily. “At the same time, it is a population with a lot of problems.”

Kemper adds, “We can do better than we’ve been doing.” The library board

met yesterday with police to talk strategy, according to the Star.