KC’s violent crimes are clustered in one area, and police respond by reorganizing

Most of Kansas City’s violent crime torments neighborhoods in one-tenth of the city.

Last year, 75 percent of homicides, 71 percent of aggravated assaults, 74 percent of robberies and 62 percent of rapes occurred in that 34-square-mile area, according to maps created this month by Kansas City police analysts.

The area is south of the Missouri River to about 85th Street with Bruce R. Watkins Drive running through the center.

It includes much of the old Northeast, downtown, the Oak Park and Blue Hills neighborhoods, plus parts of the River Market, Country Club Plaza, midtown and Westport.

Another map displaying homicides since 2001 fills the same asymmetrical 34-square-mile area with red dots, revealing a few bald spots around the shopping and downtown areas, but consistent and concentrated violence elsewhere. For 13 years, the area has been home to an average of 79 percent of the city’s killings.

“When I started in 1985, that’s where the violence was,” said Police Chief Darryl Forté. “This is not new.”

But what is new is how police are responding, said Forté, who lobbied for the department’s top job by pledging to reduce violent crime. As of Friday, the city had recorded 15 homicides in 2014, eight fewer than this time last year.

In recent weeks, he moved more than 40 officers to the Violent Crime Division to focus on reducing violence — a structural upheaval that the department has not seen in decades.

“There has been so much reorganization in the last six months,” said Capt. Joe McHale, whose father worked for the department. “The department looks so different, it’s unbelievable.”

Late last year, Forté transferred a well-respected leader in the department, Maj. Ron Fletcher, from patrol to lead the Violent Crimes Division.

Then Forté moved the police portion of Kansas City’s No Violence Alliance, or NoVa, under the Violent Crimes Division to keep everyone on the same page. With NoVa, police and prosecutors focus on a small number of people responsible for the majority of the crimes.

Forté has also:

• Created three violent crime enforcement squads, each with a detective assigned, to be the boots on the ground that support the work of NoVa.

“Now when we have homicide suspects, we have a team ready to go after them,” Forté said. “If we need someone to sit on a house, we have someone.”

• Formed a violent crime intelligence squad, including gang and homicide investigators, to work under NoVa starting next Sunday.

• Launched a Law Enforcement Resource Center, with 35 employees including crime analysts who used to work at patrol stations all over the city. Now they will be in one place.

Instead of analyzing crime by geographic areas, the analysts study crimes by crime category across the city.

The center also is providing “real-time” crime and intelligence analysis to patrol officers responding to 911 calls and creating software to combine different police databases into one. The center performs the analysis used by NoVa to identify and track the most violent criminals.

Analysts also are trying to predict who could become criminals and victims by researching such things as who’s been a suspect, victim or witness in shooting cases in the past five years.

People with multiple hits are likely to be involved in future crimes, said Maj. Mike Corwin, who oversees the center. Analysts can relay information about those people, their friends and their vehicles to patrol officers and the enforcement squads, he said.

“Instead of sending officers out into 34 square miles and having them drive around blind,” he said, “we can say, here is a person, based on their behavior, that you need to take a look at and keep an eye on.”

Analysts also can zero in on problem addresses and relay that information.

“Most departments don’t combine analysis and intelligence,” Corwin said, adding that both are necessary.

“Crime analysis is the ‘what,’ ” he said. “Intelligence analysis is the ‘why’ and ‘who.’ ”

The new efforts build on some of Forté’s earlier moves as chief, including creating a victim assistance unit and saturating four “hot spots” of violent crime covering 13 square miles with extra officers.

Mayor Sly James said the hot spot program was working “to some extent.”

“I think it is working in terms of being more visible in those communities, which I think helps in the long run, establishing relationships. What we still want to see across the board is a decrease in the numbers of homicides, which I don’t think … I just think it’s a complicated issue.”

Reducing killings will take more than just police, James said.

“It’s going to take a lot of people working together, implementing the same policies,” he said. “One thing that we should know is that consistency of leadership over an extended period of time is generally what produces results. He’s been consistent in his leadership. I just don’t think he’s had the extended period yet.”

The Rev. Vernon Howard Jr., senior pastor of the Second Baptist Church of Kansas City, said power players in the city shouldn’t be let off the hook when it comes to reducing crime.

Civic, political and business leaders must improve the quality of education and invest in the inner city, he said. Efforts to reduce the number of guns, drugs and pawn shops would help, too.

“We know what can fix it,” Howard said. “The question is, can we come together?”

Beyond staffing changes, Forté would like to find money to better protect crime witnesses who work with police.

“They’re going back to that environment,” he said. “And we’re somewhere else where we can’t always protect them.”

He’d also like to boost technology. He talked to the mayor last week about finding money to add high-resolution cameras to a gun detection system called ShotSpotter that covers a 3.55 square-mile area.

And he’d like to put stationary license plate readers in hot spots to get information on getaway vehicles after crimes. As it stands, the department has 14 readers attached to patrol cars that roam the city.

“That’s all part of my bigger vision,” Forté said.

The foundation of all his plans, however, is building trust in the community, especially those areas hardest hit by crime, like the 34 square miles peppered with red dots in the urban core.

“Trust is a huge factor in reducing crime,” he said. “Without trust, we have nothing.”

James agreed.

“It takes all of us to recognize that to the extent we let criminals act and act out without being willing to turn them in and be willing to stand up and testify against them, we’re facilitating them,” he said. “Everybody in the city has a role to play in reducing crime.”

This story was originally published March 30, 2014 at 8:13 PM with the headline "KC’s violent crimes are clustered in one area, and police respond by reorganizing."