KANSAS CITY, Mo. — With the record number of homicides in Kansas City still fresh on many minds, a local group says it’s bringing solutions to the front door.
Kansas City Police Department Chief Stacey Graves spoke at length in a Wednesday news conference about what must be done to curb violent crime.
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“We have to interrupt the culture of violence in KC,” Chief Graves said “Where conflicts end in gun violence. Resolve conflicts without violence, walk away."
Figuring out how to change that culture is a question asked over and over again, but Je T’aime Taylor, executive director of the Front Porch Alliance, believes she has part of the answer.
“To knock on the doors and ask folks, essentially, 'How can we help you?" she said.
Front Porch Alliance meets people at their front porch to bridge the gap between social, financial, and behavioral resources that people know about and the dozens of programs people don't know about.
"All of those programs give skills for tomorrow. but they also help them for today,” Taylor said. “We will revert back to behavior that is not becoming of our society if we don't have our basic needs."
She attributes a rise in violence to continued inequity.
Taylor focuses on getting to kids before they're in the criminal justice system, not just to teach conflict resolution, but show kids how to be successful.
“We're nothing more than grown-ups who were toddlers," she said. "But we do the same thing. So we bring in maybe words of argument, maybe we bring in guns or we bring in abuse because some way we're trying to scream out and say we need help."
Meeting with vulnerable people is step one .
Step two is education and resources.
So when they get to step three, walking away from crime, from anger, from hurt, they will have the strength to walk away.
