KSHB 41 reporter Alyssa Jackson covers portions of Johnson County, including Overland Park, Shawnee and Mission. If you have a story idea to share, send Alyssa an email.
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There is a unified, city-wide approach to address violent crime, especially among youth.
KSHB 41 talks about solutions throughout Kansas City, Missouri, often, and many of them don't just include the police department.
The Kansas City Public Safety Coalition, which includes 18 organizations, came together Tuesday afternoon at Union Station to talk about the state of public safety throughout the city.
With KCMO sitting at 82 homicides for the year, crime intervention was a primary focus.
The common denominator in many shootings are youth.
Youth Ambassadors, a group that provides trauma-informed programming and employment for teenagers, said in six weeks, 93% of their teens felt better equipped to handle conflict without violence.
"We know we’ll never hit 100% for everyone... the risk factors are difficult to work against," said Dr. Monique Johnson, executive director for Youth Ambassadors. "If there’s violence in the home, if a young person has negative mentors in their life encouraging the use of guns."
Every advocate and leader who attended the meeting is aware that intervention has to start early.
Thirty-four percent of homicide victims in KCMO are under 24 years old, according to KCPD crime stats. In that same age group, 29% are homicide suspects.
Solutions-based organizations and programs like Focused Deterrence, Youth Ambassadors and KC Common Good believe they're seeing progress.
"Success and violent crime reduction is more than just numbers; it’s when you’re reaching people in a cycle of trauma or exposure to violent crime," KCPD Chief Stacey Graves said.
Graves said the Focused Deterrence Program had one out of 20 participants re-offend since it re-started in the past few weeks.
"The others spent hours with outreach workers really interested in what opportunity was to be offered to them to get out of that life or association with violent crime," Graves said.
Homicides are going down, but shootings are up.
As of this week, there are 340 victims who've survived being shot in 2024.
According to KCPD, that's an increase of 25% compared to last year.
Even though shootings are up, this month is going much better than February of this year, when shootings were 80% higher compared to the year before.
The message city leaders and advocates were getting across on Tuesday is crime isn’t only happening in one neighborhood. That’s why it takes more than one room.
"It’s a movement going on in KC right now," Graves said. "We want to make sure we are violence interrupters."
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