Kansas City, Kansas Gears Up for Chiefs’ Move: Police Say They’ll Be Ready by 2031
The countdown to 2031 is officially on in Kansas City, Kansas - and not just for Chiefs fans eager to see their team in a new home. With the franchise announcing in late December 2025 that it’s moving across the state line from Missouri to Kansas, public safety officials in Wyandotte County are already laying the groundwork for what will be one of the region’s biggest transitions in decades.
Kansas City, Kansas Police Chief Karl Oakman isn’t losing any sleep over it.
“There’s things that make me nervous where I lose sleep at night,” Oakman said. “A Chiefs stadium coming to Wyandotte County isn’t one of them.”
That confidence doesn’t come out of nowhere. Oakman pointed to his department’s experience managing large-scale events at Kansas Speedway - a venue that draws tens of thousands of fans twice a year for NASCAR races. According to Oakman, those race weekends require about 80 officers on duty, with roughly 60 working inside the venue under NASCAR’s payroll, and 20 more from his department handling outside logistics like traffic and crowd control.
That split - between officers hired directly by event organizers and those working for the city - closely mirrors how things currently operate at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium. Kansas City, Missouri Police Department (KCPD) Captain Jacob Becchina noted that about 25 KCPD officers are typically assigned outside the stadium, while more than 100 officers working inside are contracted by the Chiefs themselves.
For Oakman and his team, the transition to hosting the Chiefs in a stadium that will seat at least 65,000 fans won’t happen overnight. But he’s clear-eyed about the process.
“That’s something that we will do once the final things are done on the local level,” he said.
Still, there’s more than just security logistics to sort out. The Unified Government (UG) of Wyandotte County will need to make a financial decision that could directly impact public safety funding. Specifically, UG Commissioners are weighing whether to return a portion of their increased sales tax revenue to help pay off the stadium’s development costs.
Chief Oakman didn’t mince words about the stakes.
“If you can’t fund the police department, what’s the point of having the stadium?” he said. “They’re smart people that are involved in that, and I believe they’ll figure that out.”
The UG Commissioners face a looming deadline - Friday, February 20 - to vote on whether to hand back that incremental sales tax revenue. As of now, there’s no official word on when the vote will take place.
Meanwhile, the Kansas City, Kansas Fire Department has stayed quiet on the matter, declining to go on record this week. But on the Missouri side, Kansas City Fire Department (KCFD) Battalion Chief Michael Hopkins offered a glimpse into the kind of demand a stadium brings.
In 2024 alone, KCFD responded to Arrowhead Stadium 164 times - primarily on game days. Those calls were handled by firefighters not already embedded at the stadium working for the Chiefs, but rather by city personnel responding in real time.
As the Chiefs prepare to plant their flag in Kansas, Wyandotte County is already doing the behind-the-scenes work to make sure the infrastructure - and the people who support it - are ready. And if the preparation at Kansas Speedway is any indication, the foundation is already being laid for a smooth transition.