Drive around Kansas City, Kansas, for a couple of hours, and you're bound to see a bumper sticker or two warning that Kansas City, Kansas, "isn't for sissies." We're still trying to figure out who's behind that mobile advisory, but if Joe and Debi Ward got into the bumper-sticker business, their cars might announce: "KCK isn't for criminals and slumlords." Perhaps more than any other couple in KCK, the Wards make life tough for lawbreakers. Joe is a major for the KCK Police Department's Central Patrol, and Debi is the program director for the Unified Government's Code Enforcement Division. When he transferred to Central Patrol at the start of the year, Joe says he took aim at officers who were putting out a 60 percent effort and giving the KCKPD a reputation for being rude. (To signal a new day, he ordered fresh paint and new carpet for the patrol office.) Sure enough, Central Patrol was the one section of the city that saw crime decrease in the first quarter of 2007. Debi might have an even more difficult job as the top blightbuster in a city plagued with declining housing stock. An energetic, no-nonsense administrator, Debi contends with pissed-off owners who don't want to clean up their properties and with equally annoyed residents who don't want eyesores bringing down their neighborhoods. But even when she's off the clock, Debi has been known to call the complaint line anonymously if she spots an old beater rusting away on cinder blocks in a weed-choked backyard. We can only imagine the stories these two exchange over dinner.
