2024 COMBAT Community Impact Report

“I’m thankful for my life—to just be alive. I’m thankful people care about me.”

Our 2024 COMBAT Community Impact Report focuses extensively on the STRiVIN’ Social Services Referral program, which reached 3,808 referrals submitted in early 2025. The program’s objective is improving the conditions in a neighborhood through helping individuals and families improve the circumstances in their lives—before those circumstances worsen. 

“We used crime statistics to identify neighborhoods where the STRiVIN’ initiate was needed most,” COMBAT Executive Director Vince Ortega points out in the Impact Report. “Through the referral program we’ve been able to collect a different kind of data. We’re finding out what the needs are of the people living in these neighborhoods. People are struggling. Look at the needs of those being referred. Our objective is to get them assistance before their circumstances worsen.”

The Impact Report takes a big-picture look at the referral program, identifying those areas of needs Ortega mentions (trauma, housing, employment, utility assistance, income assistance, etc.). But it also introduces you to three people whose lives were directly impacted because they were referred to STRiVIN': 1) A Kansas City teen who nearly died twice before turning 16 and is now “thankful... to just be alive.” 2) Sasha, featured on the report’s cover, who´s committed to remaining sober for her three children. 3) Frank who describes how he´s getting a fresh start at life after “death was creeping up” on him.

» Striving To Reduce Violence In Neighborhoods (STRiVIN’) Initiative

» STRiVIN’ Social Services Referrals

Today, city officials from Washington, D.C. are replicating the referral program in their community.

Other highlights from the 2024 COMBAT Community Impact Report:

• A veteran law enforcement officer´s perspective on the illegal switches that turn semi-automatics into “machine guns,” resulting in dozens of shell casings now commonly being left behind at crime scenes: “There are those with no training and who care little about the harm they might inflict using these switches to spray bullets around. This is what we´re up against.”

• Missouri ranks among the states with the highest firearm homicide rates in the United States as The Facts & The Stats reflect the scope of gun violence on a local, state and national level.

• COMBAT continues to be an essential source of funding for local law enforcement and the courts—and for more than 90 Prevention and Treatment programs offering services to thousands at more than 400 locations across Jackson County.

• COMBAT urges those who take care of others to also take care of themselves through a seminar about Secondary Trauma Stress (STS).