Murder of teens amid relentless 2021 bloodshed: Kansas City must take a new approach

Five Kansas Citians were killed in a span of three days, and two of the victims were children. Dominik Simmons and Dominique Nelson, both 15, were the city’s 37th and 38th homicide victims of the year, and two of its youngest.

The teens were gunned down last week in the 7300 block of Norton Avenue in Kansas City. No arrests have been made. Police are offering a reward up to $25,000 for information leading to an arrest in these deaths.

But the initial police response only caused more heartache for the families of these young victims.

Dominique was found shot to death after a fight broke out, police said. Initially, law enforcement officials identified her as an adult, which according to a relative further upset her already grieving family.

Too often, Black children have historically been categorized as adults, which lessens the value of their young lives, anti-crime advocates say. Adultification bias of Black girls robs them of their childhood, a 2017 Georgetown University study found. Young African American girls were viewed as less innocent than white girls, scholars wrote.

This was just a mistake by Kansas City police, a spokesman said. Let’s hope it’s no indication of what’s to come as officers search for her killer.

Dominik’s body wasn’t found until 14 hours after he was shot. When an initial search for possible additional victims beyond Dominique Nelson went nowhere, police stopped looking. They only started again the next day, after Dominik Simmons’ worried family called to report that he hadn’t come home. Eventually, he was found dead behind a vacant house near East 73rd Street and Norton, just two homes away from where he’d been shot.

The delay in finding him was “an unfortunate situation and we appreciate the persistence of the family as they continued to look for their loved one,” said a statement from the Kansas City Police Department.

Beyond the police response, what are we doing about the intolerable level of gun violence in Kansas City?

Teaching conflict resolution from early childhood through high school graduation is one key to reducing the bloodshed, said Annette Lantz-Simmons, who is with the Center for Conflict Resolution in Kansas City.

Keeping both adults and children safe has to be the city’s No. 1 priority.

‘They want to have control’

Kansas City needs a major philosophical shift on how to approach conflict. Police officers need support in the field from expert conflict resolution practitioners and qualified caseworkers. Effective change takes capital.

“We are not doing what we are morally required to do as a community,” Lantz-Simmons said, and we have to agree.

Yet again, this could be our deadliest year. In 2020, 182 people were killed, the highest yearly tally in the city’s history. But we can’t become numb to the violence. This time last year, 38 homicides had been reported, according to data maintained by The Star. This year, 39 people have been killed.

Recent mass murders in Atlanta and Boulder, Colorado, have once again pushed the kind of commonsense gun control that most Americans support to the top of the national agenda. President Joe Biden wants Congress to ban assault weapons and large-capacity magazines. But again, too, those who support unfettered gun rights erroneously claim that even so mild a measure as keeping guns out of the hands of convicted stalkers is unconstitutional.

“They want to have control of the political process,” said Missouri’s junior senator and senior demagogue Josh Hawley. “They don’t care about the Second Amendment, they don’t care about the First Amendment. And if you disagree with them, they want to write you out of the democratic process.” You mean, by making it harder to vote? That would indeed be nefarious.

In this part of the world, lawmakers are working hard to make guns even easier to get. Anyone over the age of 18 in Missouri is legally able to carry a concealed weapon already. No training or permit is required. In the Kansas House, lawmakers approved a bill earlier this month that would lower the age to legally carry concealed firearms from 21 to 18.

We know now that the prefrontal cortex isn’t fully developed until around age 25. And for lawmakers, good decision-making seems to kick in much later, if at all.