Police say homicides down in KC neighborhood due to KC 360. What do the numbers show?

Reality Check is a Star series holding those in power to account and shining a light on their decisions. Have a suggestion for a future story? Email tips@kcstar.com.

Marquita Taylor has inspected bullet holes in her home and looked out at a body in her yard.

But as the president of the Santa Fe Neighborhood Association in Kansas City, she’s also picked up trash, strolled through neighborhood open-air art galleries and watched the love poured out for the Santa Fe neighborhood she’s long called home.

Last month, Kansas City leaders touted a decrease in gun violence in the neighborhood just over a year after they launched a pilot program, known as KC 360, aimed at reducing gun violence and promoting healing.

The violence prevention strategy mirrors one by a similar name in Omaha, Nebraska, where officials said they achieved a 74% drop in shootings in 15 years.

“In just over a year, KC 360 decreased homicides by nearly 78% in the Santa Fe neighborhood thanks to KC Common Good, KCPD, Community and City Leaders and the support of our amazing partners and community,” the city wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “KC 360 is committed to replicating our success in other parts of the city.”

But that data only offers one piece of the picture.

While homicides are down in the neighborhood, nonfatal shootings remain steady, and a more extensive effort to track the impacts won’t launch until early 2024.

Continued effort may be the key to the program’s long term success, but it’s probably too soon to say whether it’s working, some community members say.

Are shootings really down?

Indeed, Santa Fe has seen a decrease in homicides this year.

In 2022 in Santa Fe, nine people were killed in seven different incidents in the neighborhood. So far this year, two homicides have been reported.

But two years of data is not enough to establish a pattern. In fact, the neighborhood also saw two homicides in 2021, five in 2020 and three in 2019.

And the numbers of nonfatal shootings in Santa Fe don’t appear to have changed much.

In 2022, police responded to nine nonfatal shooting calls in Santa Fe, according to KCPD. Between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30 of this year, they responded to eight nonfatal shooting calls.

KC Common Good separately released its own data, saying 14 people were shot but lived in Santa Fe in 2022, and 13 people were shot but lived thus far in 2023.

Taylor believes what they’re seeing in Santa Fe indicates they’re on the right path, even if they’ve only taken the first few steps.

“We are following Omaha’s pattern. But we are just in the first year. It takes time. I’m really concerned about negative reporting. This is a structured plan of action,” Taylor said. “This is not a one-year cure-all … This is a pilot in the very first neighborhood.”

Across the city, homicides are still alarmingly high. Kansas City is on pace to potentially break its own record for deadliest year ever.

As of Friday, 162 people had been killed in the city, according to data compiled by The Star, which includes fatal police shootings. By the same time in 2020, the deadliest year on record, 167 had been killed.

Nonfatal shootings are down slightly from 2022 citywide. As of Nov. 6, 453 people had been shot but lived. At the same time last year, the city had suffered an additional 23 nonfatal shooting victims, equating to 5% fewer victims, according to KCPD data.

What is KC 360?

In May 2022, then-interim Kansas City Police Chief Joseph Mabin announced the department had joined KC 360 and was conducting a pilot program in the Santa Fe neighborhood.

“Omaha 360 has been successful in working with community partners in the areas of prevention, intervention and community engagement,” Mabin said at the time. “The result has been a large decrease in gun and gang violence.”

Some have compared KC 360 to Kansas City No Violence Alliance, or KC NoVa, launched in 2014, which was considered an innovative crime-fighting approach. At the time, homicides in Kansas City dropped to a historic low. But by 2019, then-police Chief Rick Smith abandoned the program, pulling officers and other resources away from the program, and homicides in Kansas City climbed to record levels.

Chief Stacey Graves, who took over as head of KCPD in late 2022, said the new crime prevention initiative will not fully restore KC NoVA, but will use elements of the program that made it successful across Kansas City. The program is in the process of expanding citywide in 2024 .

The nonprofit KC Common Good is spearheading the KC 360 effort to reduce violent crime and increase access to opportunities. The nonprofit was founded in 2018 to address root causes of violence. The board is made up of faith, business and community leaders, including the mayor.

Progress continued in February, when City Council set aside $30 million over five years for crime prevention efforts.

But the pilot program of KC 360 began before that funding was guaranteed.

The effort, which began in June 2022 with a group of 35 individuals, has since grown into a group of more than 100 individuals and 60 organizations, including the police department, city officials, clergy members and local nonprofits.

‘I want to see a pattern’

In March 2019, Taylor told the Star the neighborhood couldn’t get substantial help from the city, prosecutors or police, despite repeated pleas for help.

Now, sitting around a table with city leaders and police officers each week to talk about the future of her neighborhood, Taylor is “cautiously optimistic.” She has served as president of the Santa Fe Neighborhood Association, which is also a nonprofit, for several years, and says she is now invested in KC 360’s success.

Taylor said for the first time, the neighborhood is being asked what they need, what they want.

“When I look at the social service organizations around the room, I’m like ‘this is Christmas,’” she said.

She said every neighbor she talks to has the same desire.

“They really want to just live in an area that they feel safe in. That’s cool and no longer being an area that has disinvestment.”

Santa Fe has a rich history in Kansas City. It’s home to the former house of Negro Leagues baseball legend Leroy “Satchel” Paige, which is currently being restored.

For the first time in her several years as a neighborhood leader, Taylor said those with power, including city leaders and social services organizations, are asking Santa Fe residents what they need. Together, they’ve helped rehab old homes, organized neighborhood trash clean-ups and cleared brush alongside the Urban Ranger Corps.

“No one is saying that we solved (gun violence),” she said. “All we can say is we’ve had success this year, and we want to see a pattern, and we want it to spread.

I want to see a pattern. I need to see a pattern. It’s certainly great to say where we are right now, but it’s going to take a lot more work. A lot more participation, a lot of concentration in various areas that’s around Santa Fe to really be able to say ‘yeah, we’ve really done something here.’”

What matters most right now, she said, is that they’ve started somewhere.

Tracking successes

Beginning in January of 2024, Marijana Kotlaja, an associate professor in criminal justice and criminology at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, will lead an effort to track the progress of all programs under the KC 360 umbrella. She said that will include more than 20 programs that will begin implementing interventions in 2024.

She said the weekly KC 360 partner meetings have at least 50 attendees, including police officers, researchers, city council members, clergy, nonprofits, business leaders and community members. She said she’s never seen such collaboration in the city around this issue.

“It’s a very eclectic group of people that are all coming together to tackle this issue from different directions, but at the same time, KC360 is a pipeline and can’t save the day alone.”

From her perspective, the overall goal of KC 360 is simple: reduce homicides and gun violence. But on a more micro level, her team is also looking to track positive results from prison re-entry and youth programs, for example.

But she also does not expect the change to be immediate in Santa Fe or across the city. Omaha 360, she noted, saw its biggest results in years 10 through 15 of the program.

“They saw results, but it’s going to take patience and time to see big changes in crime,” she said.

“Yes, what’s happening in Santa Fe is a promising start, but there are still a lot of different issues that need to be addressed in the neighborhood. Based on our 360 meetings, there are still pockets of drug use, a need for training and advocacy, and a desperate need for neighborhood rehab.”

That’s why community buy-in is so important, even just several months into the pilot.

“We know crime will fester in areas where nobody cares or there is social disorganization, so that was really about getting people in the community to have buy-in and want to make the communities better,” she said.

‘It’s just the beginning’

Taylor said in the nearly 20 months since the program began, she noticed the streets are cleaner. Neighbors watch the news and hear about KC 360. Aim 4 Peace and Partners for Peace, both programs focused on violence interruption, are out talking to folks, as is Maj. Cori Thompson with the Kansas City Police Department.

“We know where the crime is. We know it’s out of control,” Taylor said. “It’s going to take more than the city to solve it. It’s going to take dollars from other sources. It’s going to take input from various people. It’s going to take the neighbors that are living in it to step forward and say I’ve had enough.

So just to know that these social services organizations are putting their arms around us is a big help because we don’t feel we’re just alone anymore.”

She said the neighborhood’s relationship with the police department is better. Community members are bringing concerns to KCPD.

One of the goals when KC 360 was first announced was to begin bringing together neighborhood residents and community organizations on a weekly basis. They succeeded.

“We are empowering neighborhoods to no longer accept violent crime on their blocks. We’re connecting people with these resources and services to get to the root causes of violent crime,” KCPD Chief Stacey Graves said at the October press conference.

Taylor said after decades of being afraid, there is still fear. She still doesn’t feel safe sitting on her own porch. But she also feels renewed hope.

“We’ve been scared for so long. We’ve been afraid to come out and meet with our neighbors and do those things that they used to do,” she said.

“But it’s the beginning and if we don’t start somewhere then we never start anywhere and we continue to complain about how bad it is. This is an opportunity to do something about it. But it’s just the beginning.”