By Joe Jarosz
Northeast News
July 29, 2015

KANSAS CITY, Missouri — Jackson County’s COMBAT — which stands for the Community Backed Anti-Drug Tax — held an anti-drug, anti-violence canvassing event along Independence Avenue last week.

COMBAT funds programs and organizations throughout Jackson County to help neighborhoods combat drugs and violence and provide education and treatment options to residents. The Northeast neighborhood was selected based on crime statistical data. This was the last canvassing event COMBAT conducted this summer.

The group of roughly 50 volunteers — from such area organizations as Healing House, Sheffield Place and the Guadalupe Centers — met outside the Avenue Family Church and were escorted around the neighborhood with the help of the Jackson County Sheriff’s and the Kansas City Police Department to urge citizens to Step Up, Speak Up and contact the crime hotline at 816-881-3662. COMBAT Director Stacey Daniels-Young said before volunteers officially began canvasing and distributing anti-drug and anti-violence materials, COMBAT received three tips from area residents.

The volunteers had a specific goal, to hang pamphlets on doors in the neighborhood. Volunteers reached several hundred houses on the scorching July day. If residents wanted to talk, volunteers were given instructions on how to interact.

“We’re encouraging residents to speak up,” Daniels-Young said.

Radell Oakman, a volunteer for COMBAT, said she started volunteering for the group because she saw too many children die because of violence in Kansas City.

“I wanted to help let people know there’s a group out there who cares,” Oakman said.

Mercedes Mora, a Northeast resident for the past 25 years, participated in the canvas and is a regular volunteer of COMBAT’s neighborhood canvasing. She said getting out and talking to Northeast residents about crime is, “very important.”

“With how law enforcement is perceived in the media, it’s important to show that they care about the neighborhoods they’re protecting and serving,” Mora said.

As a resident of the Northeast, she said the more word gets spread about crime prevention, the better the area becomes. Mora added that the area is headed in the right direction, but there is still improvements that can be made, such as creating more programs for area children as an alternative to drugs and graffiti.

“The parents need more information, too,” Mora said, explaining that some parents might not be up-to-date on lingo youths are using.