2020 has been historically violent for KC. What are police doing about it?

Click here for updates on this story

    KANSAS CITY, MO (KCTV) — There have been 144 homicides in Kansas City so far in 2020, putting this year on pace to potentially break the record for the city’s deadliest year.

Kansas City’s police department has been inundated with questions of what they are doing about it and what resources the city is devoting to solving the problem.

The department says they have devoted more resources to their homicide unit, in particular adding homicide detectives. KCPD’s homicide clearance rate is up about 10 percent from last year, to around 65 percent currently.

“One of the things we did at the beginning of the year, we added two detectives to each of these squads to add additional resources, additional people knocking on doors, looking for video evidence, interviewing witnesses, developing witnesses,” said Sgt. Jake Becchina. “All of these things that lead to these clearances of these cases and bringing people to justice.”

The detective teams are on a rotation for taking on new cases, to allow the squads to give time and attention to older cases.

“They also have time to rest and renew and refresh themselves, because to every homicide victim’s family, their case is the most important one,” said Becchina said. “And our detectives realize that, and they approach it with that mindset.”

Still, while the added resources have helped solve more cases, they haven’t stopped more and more new cases from cropping up. Last week saw four homicides in Kansas City, and this year may end up being the worst ever.

This year’s 144 homicides are inching up toward the three deadliest years on record. There were 153 homicides in Kansas City in 1993, 151 in 2017 and 150 in 2019.

At this time last year, there were 112 homicides, according to KCPD’s official tally on their daily homicide tracker.

The police department and the city have added a plethora of community-based programs meant to bridge the gap between police authorities and members of the public, particularly young people. In the meantime, the local community is left to wait for those programs to bear fruit, while police note that Kansas City’s rising violence is unfortunately in lock-step with what’s become a national trend.

Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.