Mentoring, jobs, enforcement: Kansas City leaders release roadmap for cutting crime

Set against the backdrop of another flurry of gun violence in Kansas City , a collection of community leaders gathered Thursday to tout an aspirational effort to cut into crime, saying that the city needed to address root causes like housing and jobs.

The collective “KC United for Public Safety,” made up of community groups, businesses, elected officials and law enforcement, released a report naming a swath of ideas for cutting crime based on input from throughout the city and efforts already underway.

Organizers said the project aims to replicate drops in crime seen in other cities like Omaha, Nebraska, through similar work.

Goals include reducing gun violence by half in five years, dropping the number of homicides in the city to below 100 annually, and making a “measurable impact” in areas like housing and home ownership, jobs and business growth. Prioritized efforts include focused deterrence from law enforcement, street intervention workers, support for shooting victims and families, expanded youth employment and mentoring, grants for neighborhood projects and housing and job training for those leaving incarceration.

“Addressing the root causes will allow us to be able to move forward in a way that will improve the safety of our city,” Mayor Pro Tem Ryana Parks-Shaw said at a news conference Thursday.

Said Mayor Quinton Lucas: “It will take money, it will take time, it will take people, but more than anything it takes commitment. Kansas City can truly be a safer community.”

Lucas noted that he had done police ridealongs in cities like Baltimore, St. Louis and Los Angeles, which have seen drops in crime.

“There is nothing different about our community that doesn’t allow it,” he said.

Just the night prior, five people were injured in a shooting in Westport . Kansas City police said four men and a juvenile were injured in that shooting, three with critical injuries. The victims were treated and are recovering, police said. No one was in custody for the shooting as of Thursday afternoon.

At Thursday’s news conference, Lucas shut down a question from a reporter for Police Chief Stacey Graves about the shooting, and directed questions about the incident to a police spokesperson.

Klassie Alcine, CEO of KC Common Good, a nonprofit that has helped to lead the KC United group, pointed to the economic fallout of violence in the city.

“Our violence is impacting our ability to attract and retain talent, it is impacting our ability for businesses to come and move to Kansas City,” she said.

Kansas City has recorded 123 homicides so far this year , according to data tracked by The Star, which includes fatal police shootings. At this point last year, the city’s deadliest year on record , the city had recorded 149 homicides. Kansas City ultimately tallied 185 killings across the city in 2023.

The city’s highest-profile instance of violence this year came in February at the end of the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl rally . An argument between two groups sparked gunfire that killed one bystander. Dozens were injured in the shooting and in the rush to flee the incident near Union Station.

Another mass shooting wounded six people at Crown Center in January . That shooting was also kicked off by an argument between two groups, which were believed to be gangs.

At Thursday’s news conference, Kansas City Council member Johnathan Duncan said the city’s crime issues didn’t develop overnight and wouldn’t be fixed quickly, but said, “But what we’re not going to do, we’re not going to throw our children away. We’re not going to ensure that we arrest them on the back end when we didn’t take care of them on the front end.”

The Star’s Kendrick Calfee and Ilana Arougheti contributed reporting to this story.