Hot Times Summer in the City

As Kansas City began to experience the first waves of real summer heat this weekend, criminal activity rose to profound heights with a series of shootings that should, but sadly do not, leave the city reeling.

• 5 Wounded in Drive By Shooting at 42nd & Tracy
• Teen Shot and Killed on 32nd St. in KCK
• Teen charged in shooting and police chase
• Man shot at 38th & Agnes
• Man shot in apparent gang related activity
• Man shot to death in parking lot on Prospect
• Homicide at 29th & Highland

Now, the correlation between criminal activity and seasonality is no novel topic. “The situational approach, rational choice theory and routine activities theory all suggest that weather could significantly influence crime rates and criminal behavior.” 

Be this as it may, significant questions remain concering the escalation of gang/drug wars in these summer months and the community efforts launched to meet these conditions. This applies not only to the KCPD, but community organizations, residents, business owners, etc.  The majority of these shootings circulate around the drug trade which, perpetrated by a minority, afflict a majority; a majority which has far more power to ‘treat’ these symptoms than perhaps they realize.

For instance, I have been by 42nd & Tracy twice since the drive by shooting that left 5 wounded and both times that corner was hot- Now how can 5 people get shot and the very scene of the crime continue to operate as narcotic real estate?

There are no easy answers, but a number of equally controversial solutions- police foot patrols(remember those), surveilance systems, robocop, okay maybe not robocop- but perhaps the regional jail for which honorable activists have long been fighting….

No easy answers, but there must be answers for when the weather gets hot and one side of town breaks out the slip’n’ slide and the other starts ducking stray bullets-