Reducing Violence Is Going To Require Working Together

From COMBAT Director Vince Ortega

The death toll continues to climb, but I reject the notion that “this is just the way things are.” We cannot accept that a seemingly ever-increasing homicide rate is our new normal in Kansas City.

COMBAT is committed to turning the tide—to bringing people together to find ways to reduce this violence. But we must start by facing the stark reality.

When I heard two men, apparently stabbed to death, were found near a church in Northeast Kansas City in the early-morning hours Tuesday, I realized that wasn’t far, about three miles, from where another homicide victim was discovered lying in a grassy area Monday afternoon. Then I did the grim calculations in my head:

• Three homicides in 15 hours
• Seven in eight days
• Nine in 10 days
• 22 since July 1
• 87 thus far this year

That puts Kansas City on pace for its highest homicide total ever. The stats are staggering, but the numbers can also be numbing. 

Remember this: behind each number is a name. As I am writing this, I wonder how soon will it before the Kansas City Police or another one of our law enforcement agencies in the metropolitan area will be notifying the next victim’s next of kin? The surviving families are never the same.Frank Douglas’ son was fatally shot Martin Luther King, Jr. Day; Cameron Douglas was the seventh homicide victim in Kansas City in 2019. Frank has since met other parents of murdered children.

“For some of them, it was 20 years ago that their loved ones were killed,” Frank told a member of our COMBAT staff this spring. “You’d look at them and listen to them, and you couldn’t detect that this terrible thing hadn’t just happened yesterday. Their life has just stopped.”

How do we stop the violence?

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“We depend on law enforcement to solve crimes, but we can’t ask the police, alone, to solve violence. No one individual or single agency can stop this.... It’s going to take a collaborative, comprehensive effort to reduce violence, save lives and make our community safer.”