Kansas City on pace for lowest homicide count in 47 years

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) - With Kansas City poised to finish the year with its lowest number of homicides in nearly five decades, local law enforcement leaders are hailing a 2-year-old anti-violence program as a catalyst for change but say the city's historically high homicide rate is far from under control.

As of New Year's Eve, there had been 76 homicides in the city. The last time the count was lower was in 1967 with 66 people. Only 10 years since then have ended with fewer than 100 homicides. Last year, the number was 106.

"I would say it's the perfect wave of a lot of things coming together," said Maj. Joe McHale, head of the Kansas City No Violence Alliance, or NoVA. "But success isn't just one year."

NoVA relies on a tactic called "focused deterrence," a model created in Boston in the mid-1990s and refined over the years by cities like Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Los Angeles. Kansas City's version was born more than two years ago, soon after Darryl Forte was promoted to police chief.

The tactic is a carrot-and-stick approach in which all members of a criminal network are identified and sought out by police, who want them to know their actions can have unintended consequences for others in their cliques. Those who want to pull away from criminal affiliations are offered social services to help them do so.

Kansas City's program has evolved rapidly over a short period of time, with agencies like the Kansas City Police Department and Jackson County prosecutor's office reorganizing their resources to put more focus on violent crime.

"Nothing remotely resembles the way it was in the beginning," McHale said. "We started out with one enforcement squad of six guys, and now we have an entire division of 18 officers and over a dozen detectives. We created violent crime intelligence squads, three enforcement squads and administration staff is looking at weapons violations and a streamlined path to get them prosecuted."

Kansas City Police spokesman Tye Grant said Wednesday that the department has programs besides NoVA that have helped reduce the homicide rate in Kansas City.

He noted that Forte has cited efforts such as "hot spot" policing, which places extra officers in areas of the city where most violent crimes occur. Forte also made several personnel and departmental changes -such as moving more than 40 people into the Violent Crimes Division- in an effort to build community trust and increase the arrest rate for prolific criminals.

Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said her goal now is to sustain the lower homicide count, though she acknowledges that any number of violent deaths is too many.

"There are a lot of people who believe you cannot turn the trend on violence, that it just happens and there's nothing you can do about it," she said. "I don't believe that."