By Leslie Collins
Northeast News
June 25, 2012

Kansas City officials revealed more details about the city’s new initiative to combat violence in the urban core during the June 13 Public Safety and Emergency Services Committee meeting.

Kansas City recently launched KC No Violence Alliance (KC NoVA), which uses “focused deterrence” and a pyramid approach to combatting crime.

“This is a sharing process,” said Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker. “It is all of us around the table trying to focus limited resources on the right people and in the right way.”

KC NoVA partners include the Kansas City Police Department (KCPD), the City of Kansas City, Jackson County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Metropolitan Crime Commission, the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC), the Missouri Board of Probation and Parole and Greater Kansas City Local Initiatives Corporation (LISC).

One of KC NoVA’s goals is to reduce group related homicides and gun assaults in target areas by 15 to 20 percent by October of 2015, KCPD Chief Darryl Forté said.

Forté stressed the plan is not “etched in stone” and will be updated as needed.

“We want to make sure it’s (plan) right and we want to make sure to get some benefits to the residents of Kansas City,” he said.

To jump start the initiative, UMKC is gathering intelligence and data to help KCPD identify the most chronic, dangerous criminals and their associates.

“Part of this project rests on the most cutting edge process in my field academically today,” said Alex Holsinger, associate professor of criminal justice and criminology at UMKC. “It represents a merging of social network analysis and criminological theory.”

In addition, the data will divide individuals into two tiers as well as identify the unique intricacies of each social network and whether or not social networks overlap with others. Data will be maintained and updated along the way, Holsinger said. UMKC will also track the outcomes of the program, the types of crimes committed and whether or not the crime rate is decreasing.

Tier I criminals are considered the most dangerous and will be prosecuted, Peters Baker said. For Tier II individuals, KC NoVA will use a social services driven model.

Asked to describe Tier II individuals, Peters Baker told Northeast that those individuals haven’t necessarily committed a crime. But, those individuals are associating with gangs or violent criminals and are on the path to commit a serious crime.

The goal is to reach those individuals through social services before they do commit a crime, she said. Social services can range from anger management classes to help with earning a GED to job assistance and more.

“It’s not about throwing young black people in jail,” Forté said. “It’s about giving people opportunities that deserve opportunities. I know this will have a positive impact on the residents of Kansas City.”

When Public Safety Committee member John Sharp asked Peters Baker to describe what sets this program apart from past initiatives, she said, “We have not had this type of initiative at this level with this amount of cooperation and collaboration among agencies. Also, we’ve never reached out to the community to the degree we’re going to with this initiative.”

As for funding, KC NoVA received a $74,000 grant from LISC to help implement the program and KC NoVA will continue to seek other funding revenues, Forté said.

“If we waited until we had all the money before we started, we’d probably never start,” Forté said. “We’re going to make it work with whatever we have.”

For Peters Baker, if Kansas City can move the needle of crime even slightly, it will be worth it, she said.

“If we can stop some violent crime from happening, I can’t think of a greater goal that Chief Forté or I have,” she said. “If we can move it 20 percent, that’s 20 percent better than before. That’s 20 percent less victims.”