Here’s where homicides have happened in the Oak Park neighborhood
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Grappling with gun violence
Kansas City’s Oak Park neighborhood has a high homicide rate from gun violence. KCPD and local leaders are rolling out a new anti-crime plan, KC 360, in the area, but residents have doubts and their own ideas of what the city could do improve things.
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Oak Park stretches 16 blocks from Prospect to Jackson avenues and from Linwood Boulevard south to Emanuel Cleaver II Boulevard.
In a one-square mile of the neighborhood, 27 people have been killed in the past three and a half years. The victims were as young as 15, as old as 60. Nearly all — 26 of the 27 — were shot.
So far this year, Kansas City has suffered 111 homicides, including seven in Oak Park, putting 2022 on pace to become the second deadliest year in the city’s recorded history.
The neighborhood is a test case for a new violence prevention strategy imported from an unlikely source — Omaha, Nebraska. Local nonprofit leaders and the Kansas City Police Department have said they are rolling out a pilot program called KC 360, which will fully launch next year.
