A 27 year old Army Reserve officer was slain last night near 27th and Southwest Blvd. Police found his body in the passenger side of an Escalade at a car wash. Fox 4 ran the story with the angle that the deadly shooting was “no surprise to area residents” with implications that the Westside is overrun with crime and that KCPD is not doing an adequate job policing the area.
While the inicdence of crime remains a serious problem in American cities, the amplification of which by local media, adds insult to injury often creating an inflated perception of the problem. This in turn leads many residents to move out of the city and keeps potential residents from moving in.
While this is not always the case, the story linked above is a clear example of this sort of irresponsible and destructive behavior that feeds into a overdeveloped sense of fear about crime in urban centers. The Westside is neither overrun with crime nor is it suffering from KCPD negligence. A look, for instance, at the 1st quarter KCPD homicide report will reveal the fact that none of the 24 homicides in Kansas City occurred in the Westside. This is not an anomale either. Further research on crime data through the KCPD or FBI resources will demonstrate the same trends.
Furthermore, the Boulevard has experienced a true ‘renaissance’ thanks in largepart Lynda Callon and the Westside Can Center - their storied work with the Day Labor Center and other programs has gained national attention. In addition to the Day Labor Center, Callon has taken community policing to its height in this city getting her full dollars worth out of the CAN center programs by having her officers assigned to the center and neighborhood full time where they are allowed to work in plain clothes and effectively treat many of the root issues in their community. While this has always been the aim of CAN centers- Westside is the only one to implement such practices.
So while others are hard at work increasing the viability and sustainability of our neighborhoods, the last thing we need is the scared, white flight perspective on crime making blanket statements about an entire region that are neither objective nor factual.
1 response so far ↓
brooksider // August 11, 2008 at 5:36 pm |
I doubt this will really affect real estate prices or people’s perception of the area. This was a slaying at a carwash in a mostly industrial area. Urban crime is a huge problem despite pro-urbanists beliefs that the news unfairly depicts certain neighborhoods as violent. If there’s a murder in JOCO it’s slashed on the news. KCMO news hasn’t run any stories about Brookside houses getting their doors kicked in broad daylight have they? Or the fact that 175 lawn mowers have been stolen out of garages from the Brookside area. Or the number of cars stolen from the streets. The neighborhoods that are close to or in the urban core do have more crime compared to the suburbs. It’s a part of life in the area that we must live with and combat as residents with the help of law enforcement. To be clear, white flight had more to do with combining ethnic groups in a school system not street crime.