As homicide numbers soar, clergy partner with Kansas City police to reduce violence
Local faith leaders have hope that a new initiative announced with police will help reduce violence in Kansas City.
A group of about two dozen pastors and church leaders, including some who have recently criticized police leadership, stood Tuesday at the downtown Kansas City Police Department headquarters alongside officers and chaplains to propose a new plan to work together to prevent homicides.
The announcement comes as the city faces its deadliest year of gun violence on record, and just weeks after summer protests and indictments of officers highlighted a historic lack of trust between Black communities and police.
Just days earlier, six people were killed in Kansas City in 26 hours, making it the deadliest weekend of the year.
The Rev. Darron Edwards, lead pastor of the United Believers Community Church, has been working on the initiative since May 2019. It is aimed at identifying and understanding the unique challenges within each of the police department’s six divisions across the city. The faith community already present in those geographic areas will work to improve communication and cooperation between neighbors and law enforcement.
“We are moving in a cultural shift to re-establish trust and integrity in our city,” Edwards said. “... Each of us in our own neighborhoods have been addressing it our way; now we’re coming up under one umbrella.”
The church leaders were joined Tuesday by Kansas City Police Chief Rick Smith, whose leadership has been criticized by some pastors, including Edwards. They were also joined by U.S. Attorney Tim Garrison, who serves as a local leader of Operation LeGend, a new federal crime-fighting initiative that’s been scrutinized locally.
“We cannot arrest and prosecute our way out of this situation in which we find ourselves,” Garrison said. “Law enforcement does not change hearts, but the people behind me are in the business of sharing truth that changes hearts.”
In action, the new initiative, named “Getting to the Heart of the Matter,” might look like building relationships with high-risk youth, providing mediation between gang members, partnering with police chaplains and social workers or referring community members for jobs within the police department, according to a news release.
When asked how the church leaders plan to connect with members of the community who aren’t part of a church, the Rev. Emanuel Cleaver III, senior pastor of St. James United Methodist Church, said while not everyone is a believer, most faith communities already have relationships within their neighborhoods.
“If we have people who are willing to mentor and help people work out anger issues, I think we can reduce the crime in a very short amount of time,” Cleaver said. He added that he believes the city could see a reduction in violence in a matter of months through this program.
Cleaver, who helped create the plan alongside Edwards and the Rev. Ronald Lindsay, senior pastor of the Concord Fortress of Hope Church, said while police and faith leader have worked together in the past, this plan is unique in its focus on individual police divisions.
“I think that’s what we’re looking for here is that personal interaction that we can have . . . through our faith-based community,” Smith said Tuesday.
Edwards drew his inspiration for the Kansas City initiative from research he did at Harvard on the Boston TenPoint Coalition, an effort established in 1992 in which Black clergy went into the streets to engage with violent offenders and mentor at-risk youth.
Crafting his own initiative involved 15 months of “pre-work,” Edwards said.
While it was easy gaining people’s trust in the faith communities, “the harder sell is of course crossing the political lines and the blue lines,” he said.
This summer, as protesters took to the streets of the Country Club Plaza following the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, the three pastors were part of a group calling for the end of senseless police brutality and the killing of Black men.
Their demands included body cameras for all officers and an end to excessive force by police, including the use of pepper spray on peaceful protesters.
“This is not a political agenda,” Edwards said Tuesday. “This is not speaking on behalf of the police. This is really the voice of the community, and the voice of the concerned in the faith community.”
He said while the plan was in the works long before Kansas City was on track to have the deadliest year in its history, Edwards believes local protests against police brutality and grief over the death of Kansas Citians, including 4-year-old LeGend Taliferro, created a renewed sense of urgency that something needs to be done.
“This has been written for a long time, but it took some critical things to happen, unfortunately, for the embracing to finally come about,” Edwards said.
During the news conference, Edwards recalled a song from his childhood that expressed a sentiment that is key to this effort: “Preacher roll your windows down, so you can hear the cries of the world.”
We hear you, Kansas City, Edwards said.
This story was originally published August 11, 2020 at 5:30 PM.
