How are KC’s homicide numbers, halfway through 2025? Officials tout improvement
In the morning summer heat of June 23, after a violent weekend with five homicides in Kansas City, Pat Clarke, president of the Oak Park Neighborhood Association, led a news conference with local elected leaders to speak against violence in the community.
For years, when shootings and violence have impacted the area, Clarke’s been one of the loudest voices speaking out.
As of July 8, Kansas City has seen 87 homicides, according to data tracked by The Star, which includes fatal police shootings. Last year at this time, there were 81 homicides. In 2023, Kansas City’s deadliest year, 102 homicides occurred by July 1.
“These organizations out here, that’s what make this thing called, we,” Clarke said during the news conference outside a BP gas station on East 35th Street and Prospect Avenue.
“I do what I do because of those kids right there. Somebody gonna want to do this one day, and I gotta be able to show them how to do it and do it right,” Clarke said.
The news conference was held in one of Kansas City’s most violent neighborhoods, nine days after four people were shot in the parking lot of the BP gas station at 3500 Prospect. Monique Smith and Ronnie Hardman both died from their injuries.
Kansas City’s Eastside neighborhood is the area most affected by homicides, with 30 occurring in Kansas City police’s East Patrol Division. But shootings and homicides aren’t exclusive to the Eastside; they occur all over the city. Homicide surges during the summer are also common.
While elected officials, like Mayor Quinton Lucas and Jackson County Prosecutor Melesa Johnson, are concerned about violence in the metro, Lucas sees signs of progress in the number of nonfatal shootings decreasing by 46%.
“I think some of our intervention steps are paying dividends. Of course, it’s not enough,” Lucas told The Star in June. “We have an epidemic of violence on the streets of Kansas City. Particularly, an epidemic of violence that is disproportionately taking Black Lives, brown lives, and many others in our city.”
Almost 70% of homicide victims are Black men and women, police data shows.
Lucas and Johnson point to SAVE KC, a violence reduction program, the city’s multidisciplinary public task force, and investment in the prosecutor’s office’s victim and witness programs as ways to counter the violence in the community.
But violence persists, in part because of altercations that lead to shootings. So far this year, 30 homicides originated as arguments, according to police data. 16 homicides were a result of domestic violence.
Statistics like that are the reason local leaders are calling for more conflict resolution in the community, which they say is difficult to instill across the metro.
They say it’s part of the city’s long battle against violent crime.
“We didn’t get here overnight,” Johnson told The Star.
“Crime happens in every major metropolitan city. Jackson County and Kansas City, we are not immune [to] what we are experiencing. We know that sometimes we’ll take six steps forward just to take what feels like eight steps back, but we keep pressing forward,” Johnson said.
‘Public health crisis’
In Johnson’s first six months as Jackson County’s first Black female prosecutor, she has altered the local prosecution process, directing municipal prosecutors and law enforcement agencies to send serious domestic violence cases and drug distribution cases to the prosecutor’s office for felony charges.
Johnson’s office has filed more than 50% of the cases sent by law enforcement since February. The office also expanded the Crime Strategies Unit to focus on holding SAVE KC members accountable. They have received 38 cases for SAVE KC defendants: 28 have been filed for charges, while seven are under review.
SAVE KC is similar to a homicide reduction strategy called the Kansas City No Violence Alliance, or KC NoVA, which was formed in 2014 and worked in the short term, but used more punitive strategies, which were not sustainable long-term. The program was abandoned by 2019.
The office has also increased its visibility by attending 70 business meetings, community events, and neighborhood association meetings, so people understand what the office does, Johnson said.
But Johnson and other leaders are now aiming to address the root causes of crime by providing services like mental health and substance abuse treatment, education and training programs, conflict mediation/resolution training, and neighborhood cleanup programs. She stated the 77% success rate of the county’s drug court, a supervised substance abuse treatment program, is another encouraging sign.
“We can prosecute people until we are blue in the face, but until we get in front of these crimes through real prevention, through education, through workforce development, through mental health support, we’re gonna stay in this vicious cycle,” Johnson said.
Johnson also emphasized how her fight for additional victim and witness advocates in the recent county budget can help reduce crime.
“Over the past three years, this office has had to decline over 200 cases due to witness uncooperation,” Johnson said. “With these witness advocates, we are hopeful that we will be able to keep them stable and confident to participate in the criminal prosecution process because it can be scary, it can be overwhelming.”
Gwendolyn Grant, president and CEO of the Urban League of Greater Kansas City since 1995, and AdHoc Group Against Crime President Damon Daniel feel the community is seeing signs of progress, especially with the diverse aid services available. Nonprofit AdHoc Group Against Crime has been a bridge between the community and law enforcement since 1977, offering mental health services, workforce programs, and counseling to community members.
Adhoc is planning to open the Center for Healing and Justice next year, where they aim to provide a space for partnering agencies to offer their services in one building. Daniel hopes to have a cultural immersion program in the new center, including a poverty simulator, so elected officials can be put in the mindset of some of their constituents.
“I think we have to pull back the curtain a bit to really look at the scars and see what’s there and talk to real people,” Daniel said.
Daniel believes the county’s recent budget freeze, as it negotiated its latest budget, which affected some of these services, contributed to some of the violence the city has seen. He also believes community members are feeling the stress of societal issues like unemployment and not being able to afford housing, but that they are still disgusted by local violence.
“You talk about mothers, fathers, particularly our elders, who lived in the neighborhood or in the home for 30-plus years and feel like a prisoner in their own home,” Daniel said. “You got these young folks that are on the block who don’t respect their elders.”
20% of homicide suspects are between the ages of 18 and 24, police data shows.
There is also consensus among local leaders that businesses that allow loitering that leads to violence play a key role. Lucas said complicit businesses are a “huge part” of the violence concerns.
“I have credible businesses that aren’t opening, and that means a lot,” Lucas said. “I think what we’re seeing from some of these liquor stores and gas stations in Kansas City is that there are a number of detrimental secondary effects that were hidden in our neighborhoods and our communities.”
“It’s certainly a part of the equation,” Johnson said. “Any community that is economically vulnerable, that has a vulnerable houseless population, that has a vulnerable business population where developers can’t develop easily, you’re gonna have crime.”
The city’s multidisciplinary public task force, established in August 2023, was formed to investigate businesses and properties that have public safety concerns and city ordinance violations like nuisances and municipal offenses. Grant said the Urban Summit will continue to strategize ways to positively influence the community, but they also want to put pressure on the city to closely monitor businesses for public safety concerns.
“I don’t know what the law allows them to rezone a property and force people off of it,” Grant said. “I don’t know if they can go that far, but we need to close up some of these liquor stores, and we don’t need to let any more come.”
‘Go into the community’
While some of the numbers may seem encouraging, community leaders like Gwendolyn Grant, president and CEO of the Urban League of Greater Kansas City since 1995, believe the city still has a considerable violence problem, partly because of Missouri’s lax gun laws.
“I consider it to be a public health crisis,” Grant said. “We’ve got to figure out how to solve this problem.”
Despite programs in place, such as SAVE KC, that aim to prevent violence and which Johnson credits for the reduction in non-fatal shootings, the killings have continued.
But so have the efforts to fight crime.
Local government has been partnering with numerous nonprofits and social programs, like AdHoc. Plus, the Jackson County prosecutor’s office helps administer COMBAT, a quarter-cent tax that has been funding law enforcement, violence prevention, substance abuse treatment, and recidivism organizations in Jackson County since the 1990s.
With almost 35% of homicides beginning from an argument, conflict resolution is also much needed, leaders said.
“That’s the other challenge that some of our kids are facing right now, is they don’t know what their potential is,” Daniel said. “The examples, though, that our young people have, where are they? Are they in the classrooms? Are they in their neighborhoods? That’s what we need.”
But despite those efforts, homicide rates have remained high throughout the past five years, with record spikes in 2020 and 2023, which is why local government and nonprofits are continually evaluating different ways to reduce violence.
Violence is a multifaceted issue that has affected Kansas City for decades, leaders said. But change starts within the community, Grant said, which is why she urges community members to get involved and compel elected officials to clamp down on crime.
“Go into the community. Remove graffiti off of the walls,” Grant proposed. “Plant flowers on vacant properties. These lots that are just vacant, put some landscaping out there. Do some things to say to the community, ‘We value you, and this is not just a dump for you to come over here and do whatever you want.’”
This story was originally published July 10, 2025 at 6:00 AM.
