Mayor Quinton Lucas talks to demonstrators during a rally in Kansas City, Mo., on June 5, to protest the death of George Floyd.

Charlie Riedel/AP

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Charlie Riedel/AP

Mayor Quinton Lucas talks to demonstrators during a rally in Kansas City, Mo., on June 5, to protest the death of George Floyd.

Mayor Quinton Lucas, a Democrat, has announced a plan to completely remove all offenses related to marijuana possession from the city code, which he says are often pretexts for stopping people and lead to over-policing of Black and brown communities and negative police interactions.

Lucas is pushing other reforms, too, such as increasing the number of minority officers on the Kansas City police force, which is about 78% white in a city that's 29% Black, and embedding social workers in every station.

But I also recognize as the mayor of Kansas City, probably 50% of my electorate is saying you're doing too much to curtail police behavior and we want you to go back to respecting them more.