Lucas: Recent shooting makes it ‘exceedingly clear’ KCPD needs to invest in victims
On the evening of Jan. 10, 16-year-old Jayson Ugwuh was gunned down in Kansas City. Less than five years earlier, the same boy had held his dying 9-year-old brother after a barrage of bullets struck their home.
Then, on Wednesday, Jayson’s sister was arrested in a homicide that appeared to be connected to the teen’s death.
On Monday, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said retaliatory shootings like these can be prevented if residents trust their local police. But for too many in Kansas City, that’s not the case.
“We saw this coming, and I’m just disappointed we didn’t stop it,” Lucas said in an interview Monday.
He said the charging documents detailing the latest case make it “exceedingly clear” that the police department needs to be investing further in victims and their families to make sure they aren’t caught up in violence again. He said those who understand crime know retaliatory violence is a possibility, and that people don’t always talk to police.
Lucas pointed to The Star’s recent reporting showing how residents and experts agreed that lack of trust in police drove gun violence in the city.
“Maybe we need to get beyond just saying well, shame on the community for not talking,” Lucas said, suggesting that those who work in public safety double down on efforts to reach out to victims of gun violence.
Growing up in Kansas City, Lucas said, he knows many people have an idea who was behind their loved one’s shootings.
“And they’re pissed off that they don’t think that there will be official justice through the criminal justice system,” he said. “Unfortunately, if we can’t break the cycle of retaliation, then you end up getting folks to take justice into their own hands.”
The Kansas City Police Department has long employed a victim services coordinator and has members of the department who focus on “risk for retaliation” intervention after violent crimes, department spokesman Sgt. Jake Becchina said Monday.
“We believe strongly in our investments in building relationships in our communities,” Becchina said, listing off a number of programs, such as their community interaction officer program. “Relationships are the currency we work with in our community and we are focused on continuing to build them.”
Officers had been called just after 12:30 pm Wednesday to the 3100 block of Thompson Avenue on a disturbance that was later upgraded to a shooting call, Becchina said at the time. There, police found evidence of a crime scene, but didn’t find any victims.
While officers were investigating the initial crime scene, someone in a Toyota flagged down members of the fire department at Admiral Boulevard and Virginia Avenue, saying someone in their car had been shot. The driver of the car later “refused” to talk to police about what happened, according to the charging documents.
Inside the car, first responders found Keith Lars, 36, who had been shot in the chest and the leg, according to court records. He was declared dead at the scene a short time later.
Tityana Coppage, 21, was charged with second-degree murder and armed criminal action in Lars’s killing, according to a Sunday news release from the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office.
Following her arrest, Coppage told detectives that some members of her family believe Lars may have been involved in the death of Jayson Ugwuh, according to charging documents.
In a Twitter post the day of Lars’ killing, Lucas noted the homicide was the city’s seventh in 13 days.
“It’s time to listen to the many pushing for new approaches beyond a heavy-on-enforcement regimen,” he wrote.
Lucas acknowledged the police department’s victim advocate program and social workers. But he said police need to invest in building community trust beyond “doing a hot dog giveaway at the church at the end of the block every summer.”
Police previously confirmed that Jayson was the older brother of Jayden Ugwuh who was shot and killed alongside his cousin Montell Ross, 8, early one August morning in 2016 in the 5700 block of College Avenue as someone fired at least 20 gunshots inside their home.
In 2016 FOX4 reported that Jayson held his dying brother in his arms after bullets struck the 9-year-old’s body, killing him.
Ugwuh was the fifth homicide victim in Kansas City this year. Lars was the seventh. Kansas City ended last year with 182 homicides, the most in the city’s history in a single year, according to data maintained by The Star.
“I want to solve every murder in this city, I absolutely do,” Lucas said. “But more than anything, I want every friend, associate, partner, relative of anybody who’s been a victim, I want all those people to be able to stay alive. And we’re doing very badly at that right now in Kansas City.”
Gun violence will be the subject of a new, statewide journalism project The Star is undertaking in Missouri this year in partnership with the national service program Report for America and sponsored in part by Missouri Foundation for Health. As part of this project, The Star will seek the community’s help.
To contribute, visit Report for America online at reportforamerica.org.
This story was originally published January 18, 2021 at 3:57 PM.
