How to get a police report (or the body-cam video) in Kansas City

On the morning of Sunday, August 30, the page where the Kansas City Police Department tells you how to request a copy of a police report carried this sentence: “The turnaround for request has increased to 24 weeks.” The page does not say when the increase happened, only that it did.

Twenty-four weeks. If you mail the department a request for a report today, that sentence says, plan on hearing back around the middle of February.

The department’s own FAQ page, live at the same time, says a mailed request for a single incident or arrest report takes “up to 30 days.”

Both pages belong to KCPD. Both were up this morning; we archived them. One of those numbers is wrong, or they are counting different things, and nothing on either page says which. That is worth knowing before you start. So is the rest of the map, because there are four ways in, and they are not equally slow.

First, what you’re asking for

A police report (the incident report) is the paper record an officer files: what was reported, where, when, a report number. It is the document your insurer wants, and the starting point for everything else. Under Missouri’s Sunshine Law (Chapter 610 of the state statutes, the law that makes government records public), incident reports are open records. Investigative files (the detective work behind an active case, body-cam video included) are different: RSMo 610.100 lets police keep them closed until the investigation goes inactive. That single distinction explains most of what follows.

The department, by its own FAQ, receives 700 to 800 records requests a week, handled by the custodian of records (Manager Natalie Cofield-Booker, Information Management Unit) and her designees.

The four routes, fastest first

1. Online. KCPD’s report and video request page routes you to an online form (a LexisNexis system the department calls “Request A Report”). The same form covers video requests, and there is a Spanish version. The main page puts the online turnaround at 12 to 16 weeks.

2. By phone, then in person. Call the Criminal Records Section at 816-234-5100, open 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., Monday through Friday, to check whether your report is ready, then bring photo ID to any patrol division station to pick it up. For a simple incident report, this is the route the department’s own pages make sound quickest.

3. By mail. Write to: Kansas City Missouri Police Department, Attn: Criminal Records Section, 1125 Locust St., Kansas City, MO 64106. Enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope and a check payable to the “Board of Police Commissioners.” This is the route carrying the 24-week warning.

4. A traffic crash report skips all of this: those are sold online through BuyCrash, with your name, the report number and the date.

One more timing rule before any of these start: the report has to exist first. The main page says reports become public 20 business days after the incident; the FAQ says 10 to 14. (Again: both are theirs; we can’t tell you which is current.)

What it costs

From the department’s posted fee schedule:

You pay before you receive. The FAQ says records release “once payment is cleared,” and the department will give a fee estimate on request. Card, cash, money order or check all work.

The body-cam part

Video requests go through the same online form, or directly to the Digital Technology Section (Attn: Digital Technology Section, Sunshine Law, 1125 Locust St., Kansas City, MO 64106 · 816-234-5589 · video@kcpd.org). Before you file:

• If the case is active, expect no. RSMo 610.100 closes investigative records, and the department’s FAQ says so plainly for officer-involved shootings and pending investigations. The request is still worth filing; it dates your ask.
• Unless it’s you. The same statute carves out the people in the incident: if you were involved (or you’re the parent, guardian, close family of someone who was, or their attorney or insurer), a written request entitles you to a complete, unaltered incident report, and to closed records for pursuing a civil claim (RSMo 610.100.4). The law treats a body-cam recording made in a private place, such as a home, a school, or a hospital, as closable too, but a person who appears in it, or whose voice is on it, can demand a full unedited copy in writing. “Expect no” is the rule for the general public; it is not the rule for you about your own incident. Say so in the request.
• The clock and the meter run together. The FAQ allows “six to eight weeks” for video and other investigative requests, and the fee is hourly. Ask for the fee estimate first, in writing.

A plain-English aside about a trap in the law’s timing: the Sunshine Law requires a response within three business days, but a response can legally be “we have your request, here is the estimated cost and time.” Three days is the acknowledgment clock, not the delivery clock. The delivery clock is the one that now says 24 weeks by mail.

If you want to follow the case afterward

The report is also the key to the courthouse. Missouri’s online court record system, Case.net, searches by name, not by incident, so the path runs: report → defendant’s name (from the report, or the prosecutor’s charging announcement) → Case.net. Without the report, the courthouse door mostly doesn’t open.

Reports from before 1999, and anything under subpoena, are handled only at police headquarters, 1125 Locust. Any written request works even without the official form, because the Sunshine Law doesn’t require a format, but the department posts a downloadable general-records request (Form 119) in English, Spanish and Vietnamese if you want theirs.

Updated August 31: added what the statute owes people who were in the incident or in the video (RSMo 610.100.4), after a re-verification pass against the statute text.

What’s next: we have archived all three KCPD pages as they read today, 24-week sentence and 30-day sentence both. We’ll re-check them and this guide monthly. The first question we’ll put to the department: which number should a person mailing a request actually believe? When it answers, this page gets the answer and a dateline. If you try one of these routes and the wait you get doesn’t match the posted one, tell us: tips@kcstare.com.