In deadly year, KC officials to announce anti-crime plan in hopes of reducing violence
Kansas City officials plan to announce a four-pronged approach Wednesday the mayor says will unify existing resources, and create new ones, in an effort to reduce shootings and killings.
The announcement comes as Kansas City is on pace to suffer its deadliest year ever, in terms of total killings and the rate at which people are slain, criminologists say.
In an interview Tuesday, Mayor Quinton Lucas said he believes the framework that officials have spent nearly a year working on is “pretty much the most robust prevention effort we’ve seen in Kansas City before.”
The four pillars
Prevention is one of four pillars to the approach, Lucas said. That piece of the effort will mostly include the mayor’s office and community groups working to make sure there is consistency in anti-crime programming.
Another is intervention, which Lucas said will primarily be led by the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office.
It will look similar to the Kansas City No Violence Alliance, or KC NoVA, a “focused deterrence” strategy launched in 2014 that targeted violent people and offered them a choice: change your behavior or go to jail. In exchange, they would receive help finding jobs and getting an education.
The idea, Lucas said, is to interrupt violence at the individual level, to let people at risk of committing crimes know “there is a different path.” This, he said, will include new protocols for referring people to social services.
The third part is clearance, which Lucas described as being similar to Operation LeGend, the federal initiative launched this summer that aimed to get killers off the streets. It was named for 4-year-old LeGend Taliferro, who was shot and killed in Kansas City while sleeping in June.
That part of the strategy will mostly be the work of the Kansas City Police Department. Maj. Greg Volker, who oversees the Violent Crimes Division, was “instrumental” in the plan, according to the mayor’s office.
Administrative reforms, or “trust-building activities,” are the fourth pillar, Lucas said. Those include removing barriers for returning parolees and getting rid of outdated or potentially discriminatory codes from the city’s ordinances.
Lucas said he would like to look at the specific needs of individual neighborhoods. He talked, for example, about adding lighting or picking up trash in areas that might attract criminal behavior.
The mayor expects the framework to lead to better collaboration between the prosecutor’s office, the police department and organizations such as Aim4Peace, an anti-violence program. The city’s health and parks departments are among other agencies involved.
“The idea is that we don’t want to operate in silos anymore,” Lucas said.
‘You have to listen’
An official announcement about the effort will be made at 12:15 p.m. Wednesday outside City Hall with Lucas, Police Chief Rick Smith and Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker.
Officials hope to have the plan fully implemented by Jan. 1.
Annette Lantz-Simmons, executive director of the Center for Conflict Resolution in Kansas City, said her organization was brought in to help with the effort in February. She called it a “well thought-out plan.”
Among other things, the mayor’s office plans to host listening sessions with community members, Lantz-Simmons said. She said she is glad those in authority realize there is not just one way to solve violence that has plagued Kansas City for decades.
Kansas Citians who live in areas with higher rates of crime have told Lantz-Simmons they often feel lost and invisible.
“You have to listen to them,” she said. “You have to give them dignity, no matter what they’ve been through in their life. And that’s what this feels like.”
As of Tuesday morning, 149 people have been killed across the city this year, according to data kept by The Star, which includes law enforcement shootings. By this time last year, there had been 115 homicides.
Before 2017, when 155 people were killed, the city’s record number of killings came in 1993, when 153 were slain.
“Everybody wants murders to decline in numbers in Kansas City,” Lucas said Tuesday. “Everybody wants more neighborhoods to be safe.”
This story was originally published September 29, 2020 at 5:24 PM.
