KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Crime continues to be a problem for Kansas City, Missouri.
On Saturday, the Kansas City Police Department held its largest police-community event of the year, United Against Crime in its six patrol divisions.
The goal is to increase the department's relationship with the community, and in turn reduce crime and increase trust in the department.
Dozens of community members, like Leah Banks, attended the event.
"You see little people that are grieving because of the loss of their parents or family members that they have lost to homicide and things of that nature, it touches your heart," Banks said.
She went to the Metro Patrol location to see what resources she could take back with her to University Academy.
"I feel like we're not exempt from any situation that's going to happen here in our city,“ Banks said.
KCPD said holding these kind of events is important to building community relations.
"It's a way to communicate with more people and get the community the resources they need,” KCPD Police Officer and Community Interaction Officer Bryan Masterson said.
While crime is a serious issue for the city, the event was family-friendly and full of food, face painting, Snoopy from Worlds of Fun and the crowd favorite - Royals Catcher Salvador Perez.
According to the latest statistics from KCPD, the city has 112 homicides so far this year, up from last year, but tied with 2017 when there were over 150 homicides.
It’s numbers like those frustrating community members.
"At some point, why is it that we always have to resort to violence in order to get something?” Donald Akers, Pastor at Lifting Up Ministries Family Worship Center asked. "If we can bring people together and talk about those things we can agree on, let's start there and then we can branch out and talk about other things.”
Also as an effort to help reduce crime, Evergy handed out LED light bulbs because KCPD said 90 percent of crime happens at night.
