‘Don’t snitch’ rule leads to blood on Kansas City’s streets

If a 10-year-old boy must have a tube forced down his throat to keep him alive after he was shot sitting in a car at a Kansas City gas station, then some able-bodied adults can muster the fortitude to call the TIPS Hotline.

Start with the patrons who were at the station but fled before police got there.

They can remain anonymous even as they cooperate and share what they saw. What did the shooter look like? Any idea of the make or model of a getaway car?

Bullets broke two of the boy’s fingers and hit his spine. Still more bullets killed his father, KáVyea Curry Sr., 34.

The murderer didn’t stick around the station last Friday night at 45th Street and Cleveland Avenue. He ran away after the cowardly act.

As of Wednesday evening, no one had been arrested.

Perhaps the shooter is confident that witnesses won’t dare talk, that the offensive “don’t snitch” rule applies in this case, that potential tipsters will be so frozen by concern for their own well-being they will stay silent.

But the “don’t snitch” approach has ugly outcomes.

It protects the people who are creating havoc in Kansas City neighborhoods. It enables them to shoot and perhaps kill again, creating even more innocent victims.

The “don’t snitch” rule too often prevails after too many bloody crimes.

Last August someone killed 3-year-old Damiah White and her mother, Myeisha Turner, in Kansas City. Police were confident that such a horrific crime would trump the stay-silent mantra on the streets.

But their murders remain unsolved, a situation made more dispiriting when yet another young child has come so close to suffering the same fate.

Those responsible for heinous crimes such as the killing of KáVyea Curry Sr. and the shooting of his son, who will be in a body cast for eight years, should be held accountable.

The best way to help is to offer good leads to the Kansas City police homicide unit at 816-234-5043 or to the TIPS Hotline at 816-474-8477.

Police Chief Darryl Forté and his force can do their best, but they need assistance in tough-to-solve homicide cases.

Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker on Monday told a crowd attending a vigil for the two shooting victims, “I need a hero in this crowd.”

Or how about just an ordinary citizen, someone who’s tired of the killing and now willing to come forward to help put a murderer behind bars?

This story was originally published April 23, 2014 at 5:10 PM with the headline "‘Don’t snitch’ rule leads to blood on Kansas City’s streets."