Police Department!

Across the country, violent crime has been going down, but that means little in parts of Kansas City, Missouri.

Hearing gunfire in my neighborhood is a weekly event, and we don't react to it as we should.

We should be alarmed.

We should be horrified.

At the same time, like my house was getting shot up a lot.

This year in Kansas City, Missouri, shootings are up.

The last month has been very difficult for Kansas City.

We had a mass shooting on the day of the parade.

I could hear the whips and the bullets flying.

While homicides are down from last year's historic high.

But we will continue to work hard until that number is zero.

You have 1 or 2% of the whole population that messes it up for everybody else.

Should Kansas City be looking to other cities that are having success?

We've seen multiple guns, including assault rifles.

Next door is Kansas City, Kansas, and some are traveling 200 miles north to Omaha, Nebraska.

Look, we're a peer city with Omaha, and what we've seen up here today is they have invested in creating a pipeline of talent.

Far too often, I see cities want to address this is short term.

What occurred last week?

What is Kansas City doing right?

We also recognize obligation that we have as business leaders.

And what does it still need to learn?

Sometimes people think that violence is like a wave.

No no no no.

It is a literal organism that is living, breathing and getting smarter.

Funding for A Tale of Three Cities is made possible, in part by a generous financial grant from the William T Kemper Foundation, Commerce Bank trustee, the Health Forward Foundation, and from viewers like you.

Thank you.

February this year, and in the center of Kansas City, Missouri, fans are celebrating the Chiefs Super Bowl victory.

And we got about right where that medium right there on the on the street there.

And that's when we heard the gunfire.

Over 800 police officers are on duty.

In the past, parades like this have passed off without major incident.

But not this time.

This time, gunfire erupts.

Might have a situation here we're trying to keep an eye on.

Scott was right next to it, and he didn't know where one of his daughters was.

And I was screaming her name.

23 people were shot, around half of them kids.

And I knew as soon as I put eyes on somebody that wasn't her, I moved on.

Scott found his daughter safe, but one of those shot mother of three, Lisa Lopez- Galvan, died from her injuries.

I was really close with her.

We coached softball together, so, you know, and I looked right at her but didn't even didn't even know it was her.

So far, the police have made six arrests.

It seems that two groups of young men opened fire on each other.

This is absolutely a tragedy, the likes of which we would have never expected in Kansas City, and the likes of which we will remember for some time.

But in some parts of Kansas City, Missouri, gun battles are expected and have been for years.

Welcome to the East Side of Truth.

Welcome.

That's that's the hook right there.

You're you're you're very, very surprised that that happens every day.

Historically, Troost Avenue is Kansas City, Missouri's racial dividing line to the east, the communities of color.

Here we have a map that is going to show us homicides on the left and non-fatal shootings on the right.

10% of the city has 75% of the gun violence.

We know that Hispanic and African-American males particularly are more susceptible to being victims to gun violence.

The trend resembles a tornado or vortex of violence.

It's just a demographic that we serve and the community that we're in.

A lot of our kids is, unfortunately, have been have been exposed to violence.

The Kauffman School is a free public charter school on the Paseo that prioritizes recruitment from six ZIP codes east of Troost.

Average life expectancy for the whole of Kansas City, Missouri is around 77 years.

But in these zip codes, it's around 70 years, with some census tracks as low as 64 years.

To the west, where it's richer, it can be as high as 93 years.

In April this year, just ten days before the school hosted this community violence workshop, one of its students, 11 year old Courtney Freeman, was shot and killed in her home east of Troost after a shooting outside.

One of the students when she came in the door, she brighten up your day.

She was a member of our group, Kauffman Cares, which is an afterschool program.

The topic that we were working on this year was Community violence.

And the last six years, seven of the school students, high or former students have been murdered.

We're going to honor Leo Woodruff, Marquice Amos, Dominik Simmons, Derrez Green Kevaun Hughes, Darrell Weldon III and Kourtney Freeman.

In 2018, Leo Woodruff was the first murdered.

Leo was getting ready to start his junior year.

he was robbed and shot in the back of his head.

When you lose a piece of your soul, it changes you.

No one has been charged for Leo's murder.

A juvenile has been arrested in relation to Kourtney's murder.

How many of you in here have lost a loved one to violence?

In just over the last three and a half years, 55 children have been murdered in Kansas City, Missouri.

We can't sit there and go.

That's an issue that's taking place in the inner city.

It's not my deal.

No, it is your deal because it's going to impact you one way or the other.

This is our third annual Peace Walk, and it's an opportunity for the community and police to come together.

The other Kansas City, is Kansas City, Kansas.

After a long career on the other side of the state line with KCPD, Karl Oakman started here as police chief just over three years ago.

He's having success in bringing down the rates of violent crime.

Over the last three years, our homicides are down 58%.

Chief Oakman believes part of this is explained by the strong relationship he's building with the community, and the mayor backs him.

The police department is only as good as the information and support that we get from this community, and to see this outpouring of love and support from our community is really great.

In recent years, trust in the police has been tested by allegations made against retired officer Roger Golubski, including of sexual abuse.

Golubski denies any wrongdoing.

Chief Oakman is vocal about accountability in his department.

Since I've been here, I can count about 12 that we either had to terminate or they resigned in lieu of termination.

And he's developed a good relationship with the prosecutor.

I told him we will have the greatest relationship as long as I remember I'm the police chief and not the prosecutor.

And you need to remember you're the prosecutor, not the police chief.

And so far, it's worked well.

In contrast, in recent years in Kansas City, Missouri, key relationships have been strained.

2020, 2021.

Times when all of us worked in a room together.

The response to the homicide rate across the city has been really frustrating.

Our political leadership want to blame someone else, and that could be the mayor blaming the state legislature for gun laws.

That could be the police blaming the prosecutor for not prosecuting.

That could be the prosecutor blaming the county or the city for not having a jail.

All of those are legitimate concerns.

The problem is, nobody's willing to take responsibility for where we are.

We'll find out later if some of these relationships are improving.

Back in Kansas City, Kansas, there's another element to Chief Oakman credits for their success.

30s out of an activity.

Many times you have drugs.

There's usually indicative of weapons and violent individuals.

Over the last two years, with the help of the DEA, the police have carried out operations like this 2 or 3 times a week, targeting fentanyl dealers.

I was in the drug unit in the 90s, and we totally botched that whole approach.

We put everyone in jail.

And so with fentanyl, I really wanted to focus on the suppliers.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid 50 times more powerful than heroin.

Overdose deaths from it are devastating communities.

And that detective is required to trace it back to the dealer.

I would say 98% of the time that we hit a house with fentanyl, you know, distribution.

We're going to find firearms From this one raid on a house on a residential street, eight guns were recovered.

Just with our group, we seize over 190 guns.

And we're only in July.

Guns and violent individuals have been taken off the streets in recent months, over in Kansas City, Missouri, the police are also starting to focus more on fentanyl.

We want to make sure that we're not just responding to fentanyl.

overdose deaths, but we're preventing fentanyl even coming into Kansas City.

I can tell you, we've put a lot more efforts behind it.

Kansas City, Kansas, is the smaller of the two cities.

Its homicide numbers per capita have been moving in the right direction, whereas up to the end of last year, Kansas City, Missouri have not.

Let's add in Omaha, Nebraska.

We'll look into why their numbers are so low later on.

Last year in Kansas City, Missouri, there was a historic high of 182 homicides.

So far this year, the numbers are down.

Approximately 25% but on the flip side of that, non-fatal shootings are up.

Up by 25% as of July 22nd this year.

The number of mass shootings has contributed to this.

Where we had multiple people shot at one incident.

So why the homicide numbers down?

I don't think I know that there's a lot of momentum and a lot of focus on violent crime.

Here we are today, and I consider gun violence as a public health crisis.

A public health crisis that maybe Kansas City, Missouri, had an effective strategy for and which it dropped.

This footage was filmed in 2015.

Focus deterrence is a model that started in Boston in 1996 and has had success in other cities across the United States.

A focused deterrence model has helped Boston, a city nearly a third bigger in the first seven months of this year, see only eight homicides.

It's different in that we're trying to prevent violent crime before it occurs.

Kansas City, Missouri, had a focused deterrence model.

It was called the Kansas City No Violence Alliance or KC NOVA.

And the first year of its implementation was 2014.

2014 ended with the lowest homicide rate in since 1972.

Last year, Kansas City, Missouri had 182 homicides.

In 2014, it had 82.

KC NOVA worked by inviting members of violent groups to a call-in where they heard certain messages.

If you want help, we can give it to you.

They were offered support to turn their lives around and warned that if they chose not to, they and their groups would be targeted by law enforcement.

If you want me to be "Mean Jeanne" I'm happy to do that.

But the homicide numbers went back up in 2017.

A new police chief, Rick Smith, was appointed, and then a year later, a Department of Justice report found that for the two years post implementation, KC NOVA had no significant impact on homicides.

Resources were diverted away, but should Kansas City have stuck with it?

Councilman Rea had worked as a case manager with KC NOVA.

I believe that if we had stuck it through and made changes, we would have seen the homicide rate stabilize.

And I certainly don't think we would have seen the record numbers of homicides that we've seen in the last couple years.

Earlier this year, Kansas City, Missouri's new police chief, Stacey Graves, relaunched a focused deterrence model.

It's called SAVE KC.

I believe SAVE KC is here for the long term.

We have got to find a way in to break the cycle of violence in Kansas City.

That has been here for decades.

Unlike the previous model, SAVE KC has community representatives like Gwen Grant on its board.

I would say we're at the embryonic stage.

A new prosecutor will be elected soon, but SAVE KC seems to be helping the current one.

Jean Peters-Baker and the police to get along.

Those officers must get along it's absolute important.

But is there more that could be done right away?

Over these five years, 21.2% of all homicides were within that 4.16m.

Within Kansas City, Missouri, is vortex of violence.

There are smaller areas where the violent crime is concentrated.

That's a good shot right there.

And then within these small concentrations, there are even smaller areas known as hotspots.

We're standing in one that's 37th and prospect in the Oak Park neighborhood east of Troost.

Just about anything you name happens in this little corridor right here.

This is this is a hotspot.

In a five year period up to 2020, this one hotspot saw 29 homicides.

You can see a clustering around 35th and prospect where you guys get.

Now here's the thing.

If we know where the violent crime is likely to occur.

Strategic patrols by a few officers of these small areas can have a big impact.

Anybody inside, hands are up do it now.

And research shows this can be achieved without an abundance of arrests.

This footage was all shot in 2015 because at that time, Kcpd had a small unit of four officers and a sergeant that worked closely with a few neighborhood leaders, including forest, to focus on five hotspots.

One was centered on 35th and prospect.

It was proactive and we had issues in the neighborhood.

We had a mechanism that could reach out and squash that issue before it became deadly.

KCPD, anybody inside hands are up The police team also surveyed the hotspots terrain that lent itself to violent crime.

It offers a lot of anonymity And then brought pressure to bear to see the blight address addressed.

In doing this, we go through and look at different characteristics of properties so that we can make the proper recommendations to the owners, whether it be city owned or privately owned.

The police unit was funded by a federal grant, and then at the end of 2017, the money ran out and the unit was disbanded.

When it stopped and we didn't have a concerted, concentrated effort, the problem started to creep up again.

KCPD says it can't revive the unit.

But we are short 300 officers right now, which is significant to have a dedicated sergeant and four officers.

It's just not exactly possible.

I would love to see them actually get into authentic community policing, building those sustainable relationships where you're not just coming in to neighborhood meetings and giving crime statistics.

The police say they're still focusing proactive patrols on the hotspots.

But this can't be easy when so much time is spent responding to crime.

From the start of this year to August, the 21st, in a one block radius around 35th and prospect, there were nearly 350 calls for service, including 25 for armed events, so is there a way to tackle the violent hotspots that doesn't rely solely on law enforcement?

Here, they knew that it would take economics.

They knew it would take education, and they knew it would take collaboration to really massively create change really fast.

We're no longer in Kansas City, Missouri.

We've jumped nearly 200 miles northwest to Omaha, Nebraska.

The two cities are about the same size, and North Omaha could be compared to Kansas City's East side.

And in 2023, we had a lowest number of shootings on record that we've ever had.

Last year, Omaha had 65 shooting incidents.

Kansas City, Missouri had 443.

So how is Omaha done it?

Well, at the forefront has been a nonprofit set up in 2006 called the Empowerment Network.

It was founded and is still led by Willie Barney.

Even in poverty, people have strengths.

They have gifts.

They have talents.

How do you create environments where people can utilize their gifts and talents?

In 2011, after the community being consulted, the City Council passed an ambitious plan to develop five areas of North Omaha.

Can we move the dial and increase the graduation rates?

Can we look at economic development that benefits the whole community, including North Omaha?

On this day in April this year, Klassie has brought a group up from Kansas City to Omaha to learn more about its success.

To date, Omaha has seen five homicides for the year.

Or as Kansas City, Missouri is already on, nearly eight times that number.

Willie acts as a tour guide.

One stop is at this construction education center in North Omaha.

Opened in 2017.

High school students can study here for free, but you've got to hit poverty head on.

We want to reach the people that typically don't get the job opportunities.

So let's go out, talk to the teachers, talk to the principals.

Another stop is at 30th.

And Patrick, just north of what used to be a violent crime hotspot.

Now there is mixed income and senior housing schools and businesses.

And the last assault near this junction was over two and a half years ago.

So you have an area that feels safe and welcoming to everyone.

There's a lot they've done here and not all of it success has been measured yet.

Councilman Rea was on the trip north.

Whatever they're doing is working.

I want to know exactly what they're doing to reduce these homicides so we can replicate exactly that.

You don't feel like you know that at the moment?

I, no, I don't have clarity on that.

And I've tried to get some of that information.

It may be that the slightly stricter gun laws in Nebraska than those in Missouri or Kansas are playing a part, East of Troost in the Oak Park neighborhood, Forrest believes a less fractured community would help drive out the violence.

If you don't have it, it's coming over here wanting to shoot up stuff because y'all here, this is one of the gems of Oak Park.

this is I'm model block where you have occupancy and neighbors talk to each other and they come to neighborhood meetings.

Oak Park is still beset by blight, but this is what happens when you tear something down and don't replace it with anything.

This is exactly what you get.

For Forest, the empty lots and vacant houses present a development opportunity.

And it's just one of a number of blocks that is just ripe for single family housing.

And part of his dream is set to become reality here on this block in the violent crime hotspot centered on 35th and prospect, we're literally going to be building 36 brand new townhomes here, which is monumental.

I want to see our kids thrive and and grow.

Although he's been helped by the American Institute for Architects KC.

It's still taken eight years to get to this stage, and it's expected to take another 18 months before the homes are built.

It shouldn't be that hard to move forward when you're trying to do affordable housing.

Securing the funding has been difficult, and City Hall's land bank properties have cost the project precious time.

But we have 18 land bank properties that we had to clear title on, and it took us over two and a half years.

pre-COVID, the project was estimated at 10.5 million.

Post Covid is 20 million.

There are other projects underway in Oak Park is maybe 30 or 40 apartments, but these developments will struggle to match the momentum seen up in North Omaha, where in the last decade or so, an estimated $800 million has been invested by foundations, businesses and the city, with hundreds of millions of dollars of state funding on its way.

In Kansas City, we'll see, like maybe a block that has development.

We hope that people don't think of the east side of Kansas City as a wasteland.

Another key component of Omaha success is the way stakeholders under Willie's leadership have collaborated since 2008.

They've met every week, and the police have been part of this.

We really took it from this path.

Where are we going to make the police department as best we possibly could, but then also get into position so that we can really galvanize our community partner.

So when an Officer-Involved shooting or an use of force the police department comes to you, gives an update.

This helps the community trust the police and the police to trust the community.

When an officer trusts the community, they take it personal, so they go above and beyond.

Omaha's idea of weekly meetings has been brought to Kansas City, Missouri.

This is an open, shared, safe space.

Yes, this is done every single week since June of 2022, and we grew from 33 people to now, over 120 people.

Every single week.

It's part of what's called KC 360.

There was a shooting at 3045 Broadway.

As in Omaha, The police also attend these meetings.

I just came back from Omaha in the chief in Omaha was able to share that they've had a 100% clearance rate on their homicides.

That is inspirational.

When the police clear a case, they get it off their books, so to speak, and clearance rates can provide an indicator as to police community relations.

So how do our three cities compare?

Homicide clearance rates are a bit of a barometer of police trust, but it doesn't paint the whole picture.

Chief Graves believes a lack of trust in the wider justice system is affecting her numbers, with factors like light bail conditions set by the courts contributing to this.

If they know who that person is that committed the homicide there, they see that they're still out.

The whole system has to work on the back end.

Back at KC 360, one of those attending today is Kyle Hollins.

He grew up east of Troost.

So I graduated from high school homeless.

And during that time, what ended up happening was my morals and values began to erode because they didn't match survival mode.

Today, through his nonprofit, Kyle and his team seek out young people from East of Troost and help them to move beyond survival mode.

At the same time, like my house was getting shot up.

a lot.

Yeah, dangerous.

I'm 15 going on to say stuff like that.

Growing up, losing friends, losing family.

That just made me want to protect myself.

Being able to protect myself by having a gun on me.

Then a man at a house at a young age, being forced to beat him in in a house at a young age.

Lyrik's Institution is paying nearly 30 young people a stipend of just over $400 a month.

What do we do when it's fear?

For them to attend a six month course of cognitive behavior modification.

It also arranges internships, educational opportunities, and organizes guest speakers.

All of this is unlocking potential.

I know what I wanted to be in life at all.

I came here, it's a bunch of options.

I got dreams, I plan on chasing them.

They really changed my mindset.

What is my plan right now is to go to Missouri Western study sports management.

Given the opportunity to, learn like audio engineering and stuff, I took it Despite the urgent need of the work, it seems that some grassroot nonprofits in Kansas City, Missouri, have struggled to build up their funding.

We have money in Kansas City.

It's a matter of how do we align it to make sure that it's getting to the folks who are on the ground doing the work.

Grants from government bodies are usually reimbursable.

That means nonprofits need to spend the money before they receive the grant.

That entity has to have cash on hand to operate a program and then submit invoices to get reimbursed.

Early last year, City Hall set up a violence prevention fund of $30 million to be split over five years.

It's given Kyle's nonprofit a grant of $376,000, but he won't see any of it until he spends it, and he only has 30,000 cash in hand.

They really you're just kind of saying that you're allocating this money, which is not getting there.

And that's the problem that we're kind of having.

To date, The city fund has paid out just over $1 million, but it has nearly $9 million ready to be paid out once invoices are submitted and approved.

City Hall says the system is necessary to protect the taxpayer.

I don't know that we're administering it in the most straightforward way.

my my larger concern is whether or not it's going to programing that we know is going to reduce violence.

The idea is that at the end of a grant cycle, Dr. Kotlaja and her team will evaluate the programs funded.

So we're interested in both the numbers.

But also we want the stories.

This should lead to fewer tax dollars being wasted.

But at the moment as the shootings continue, some grassroot nonprofits which are more likely to know what could work, are struggling to run their programs.

So early this year, Mayor Pro Tem Rhiana Park Shaw invited Willie down to Kansas City to speak at symposiums on violent crime.

But what I would say to Kansas City is you have all of the ingredients.

Now it's time to take it, to scale and do it in a collaborative, aligned way.

And you're on that path right now, we know that only a small number of people are caught up in most of the violence.

We know where it's happening.

We know what could work.

So who's finally going to take things forward?

Unfortunately, Kansas City, you know, a lot of people living here, you know, grow up in that environment.

And and, you know, we just move forward.

We just continue to push on.

And it's unfortunate.

And I'm going to get real with this.

It just can't be our nonprofit organizations.

It just can't be the police department.

It can't be just the health department.

It can't just be the schools.

It has to be everyone.