The chief of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, which is like the FBI but for Kansas, last week asked the state’s Legislative Budget Committee for a $100 million to relocate the agency’s headquarters to somewhere else in or around the capital city of Topeka because the neighborhood near the current building is riddled with crime and making employees feel unsafe, the Topeka Capital-Journal reports.
“The one thing I would ask you to keep in mind as we make this very large request for new headquarters building is that the one we’re in just isn’t safe,” said KBI director Tony Mattivi, who leads a law enforcement agency employing peace officers who carry deadly weapons on the job and whose mission is to protect Kansans from violence perpetrated by criminals. Mattivi also cited the decrepit and fire hazard-riddled state of the campus, a fire hazard-riddled old school house dating back to the 1800s, as another reason why the bureau needs a new purpose-built headquarters.
Why he couldn’t just work with that – the buildings literally have bats in them – instead of looking like a complete fucking jackass who can’t be bothered to clean up the streets around his agency is unclear. “I don’t mean to be unkind to anyone, but we’re in a horrible neighborhood. We have two separate buildings. We have no security or perimeter fencing. Employees walk between our buildings through an alley, and are often confronted with homeless people and drug addicts, because that’s what surrounds the KBI building. For us to be in that location with no security, no perimeter, is just unsafe, and I feel uncomfortable with the environment that we are putting our folks in given the location where we sit and the lack of security,” said Mattivi, evidently not sheepishly at all.