Sorry, Mayor Lucas: A 5% drop in Kansas City homicides isn’t progress | Opinion
Recently, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas made some end-of-the-year comments about our city’s homicide rate and nonfatal shooting percentages that left me reeling — and that is saying something for someone who represents clients accused of murder, mayhem and other acts of unnecessary violence throughout our region.
You see, as a lawyer and Midtown Volker neighborhood resident, who lives a mile away from Mayor Lucas, I know we hear the same nightly gunshots and are aware of the same homicides that affect our tiny sliver of the city. And those percentages, which are just a fraction of the whole, are a stain on our community and neighborhoods.
But most of Kansas City’s gun violence is experienced outside of Midtown in the east, south and northeast sides of our city. And it is there where those gunshots ring out in silence and leave shadows where loved ones once stood.
That is why when I read Lucas saying that our year-end body count was an “outstanding success” and represented “numbers that are transformational for public safety in our community” I thought, that is an interesting perspective if nothing else, but appears to have a hint of the ostrich effect.
Because to my naked eye, 139 homicides in 2025, 148 homicides in 2024, 185 homicides in 2023, 171 homicides in 2022 and 157 homicides in 2021 appear to more closely resemble a buoy of death bobbing in a city of bloodshed than a trend to be proud of. To say it another way: Going from two to three murders a week to two to three murders per week seems, oh well, a bit anticlimactic when discussing trends and transformations. After all, it was just three short years ago when Lucas expressed his optimistic outlook that Kansas City would get below 100 homicides a year.
But for well over a decade now, if not longer, Kansas City has held the ignominious moniker of “Killer City.” That means we need to be honest about our crime statistics even when they tell us a story we do not want to hear.
I do believe Lucas cares about our city, about its image and about decreasing the violent crime we have all become accustomed to expect. I do believe Police Chief Stacey Graves and her leadership of the police department has begun to bring increased accountability and safety to our streets. And I do believe that Jackson County Prosecutor Melesa Johnson has changed the approach of her office in dealing with dangerous and violent offenders for the better of all our city’s residents. I believe they care. But none of them can stop a bullet from being shot, or predict when the next body is going to drop.
Mayor Lucas is wrong to highlight nine fewer murders as progress, and to say that it is — that’s nothing more than bobbing from one dead body to the next, and never coming up for air. We need to be honest about the numbers, the shootings and the deaths. It is all too much. The responsibility to stop the killing must lie somewhere. As for me, I believe it lies with all of us. And the current body count should not be praised as the near ebbing of the tide.
I know that economic and educational opportunities and equality across all lines are the paddles to security, peace and fellowship. And I do not pretend to have an answer to stopping the bloodshed here at home, although I do believe we must all band together as Kansas Citians and speak with one united voice: Stop the violence. Stop the killing. Stop the violence. Stop the killing.
We can at least do that together, and I ask you all to say it with me.
Matthew T. Merryman is a partner with the Bates & Merryman Law Firm in Kansas City, and has been affiliated with the Midwest Innocence Project, the American Bar Association, the Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association, Operation Breakthrough, Scouting America, the Volker Neighborhood Association and the National Crime Victim’Law Institute.