TKC EXCLUSIVE!!! KANSAS CITY CALL REPORTER ERIC WESSON CHALLENGES MAYORAL CANDIDATE CLAY CHASTAIN'S CONTROVERSIAL ANTI-CRIME PLAN!!!



The topic of rising KCMO crime has been overlooked in the 2019 Mayoral contest despite rising level of violence throughout an exceptionally harsh Winter.

Now . . .

TRANSIT ACTIVIST CLAY CHASTAIN CONFRONTS PUSH BACK ON HIS ANTI-CRIME PLATFORM!!!

Here's the offending passage . . .

Clay Chastain:

"Racism still exists and must be stamped out. But it is not the sole cause of all our social problems. Mostly, they are a result of poor attitudes and lost values.

"I like black people. I find them real and approachable. It saddened and diminished me to see the innocent 15-year old black female teen gunned down for nothing, and what that must have done to her family.

"If I am elected mayor, rest assured I will make stopping the violence in our City my #1 Priority. Black youth killing black youth in record numbers is not only devastating the black community and black families, it is also devastating the City itself. We must summon all our community's resources to stop it and do it starting yesterday."

Kansas City journalist Eric Wesson responds:

Clay,

I usually don't really pay a great deal of attention to your emails, but I find this one over the top with some of the racially insensitive comments that you made and feeling that the way to stop crime on the "east-side" is to unleash more police officers in the neighborhoods.

"I like black people. I find them real and approachable." Really Clay??? Is that one of those manufactured fear codes like we aren't likeable or approachable. "Those angry black people." What a silly statement followed by one even sillier.

"It saddened and diminished me to see the innocent 15-year old black female teen gunned down for nothing, and what that must have done to her family." It saddened you and diminished you so much that you didn't even bother to look up her name and address the issue with her name. BTW it is An'Janique "Twin" Wright.

"Rescue our youth" programs for troubled and misbehaving young people . . .  We have such programs. They just don't make the youth in the program feel needy. Maybe if you actually lived here you'd know.

Sometimes it is better not to say anything.
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We've included Clay's anti-crime presser after the jump for readers to judge for themselves as the conversation about KCMO crime is FINALLY starting to ramp up.


Clay challenges Lucas on dancing around violent crime and offers his own anti-crime plan

Kansas City's last two mayors danced around growing crime and poverty on the City's eastside, infrastructure decay and deferred maintenance in favor of glitz, tax incentives to developers and downtown economic development.

Now mayoral candidate Quinton Lucas is doing equally as bad by focusing the public's attention away from the escalating black on black violence plaguing our City and onto racially tinged superficial issues like... more taxpayer money for 18th & Vine, more taxpayer money to fund the absurd idea of changing the name of the Paseo to MLK and now his new "Racial justice" platform that implies all the ills of the City are tied to racism. That is a full croc of something not pleasant and only further adds to the problem. Racism still exists and must be stamped out. But it is not the sole cause of all our social problems. Mostly, they are a result of poor attitudes and lost values.

I like black people. I find them real and approachable. It saddened and diminished me to see the innocent 15-year old black female teen gunned down for nothing, and what that must have done to her family.

If I am elected mayor, rest assured I will make stopping the violence in our City my #1 Priority. Black youth killing black youth in record numbers is not only devastating the black community and black families, it is also devastating the City itself. We must summon all our community's resources to stop it and do it starting yesterday.

Here then is my plan to Stop the Violence in Kansas City, Missouri:

#1. Immediately hire 100 plus new community police officers and assign them to patrol (mostly on bicycle) in all eastside neighborhoods. This new community police force will not only act as a deterrent to crime and give comfort to eastside citizens, it will also become a natural repository for tips to help the police solve crimes because the community police will establish relationships with locals, businesses, neighborhood leaders and church officials. Currently, 50 % of all murders go unsolved because people withhold information from the police leaving active murderers still on the loose.

#2. Work with the schools to start identifying troubled and misbehaving youth early on and place them in a "Rescue our Youth" after school program where they will get a nutritious meal, counseling, exercise and help with their homework. Concurrently, start another school program where high school students not interested in going on to college can enroll in a 2-year trade skill program (11--12th grade for auto mechanics, construction trades, machinist, etc.) so they will have a marketable skill when they graduate to earn a decent living. The idea is to provide wayward youth an alternative to a life of crime, drugs and gangs. If the parents are not doing their job, then the community and public school system must step in to help.

#3. Build a new green, rapid and state-of-the art Citywide transit system in the City with full service to the poorer parts of the City and try and place minority youth in jobs helping to build it. This will also create new economic development and investment along the rail and electric bus lines on the eastside and pride in the community.

#4. Posit this statement to corporate America: Ask not what poor American taxpayers can do for you (tax incentives) - ask what you can do for them. And that is... start locating your manufacturing plants and businesses in the poor crime ridden areas of American cities so that the poor can be trained for a job, be able to get to a job and have a job that gives them hope and creates a better and more equal America.

Mayoral candidate, Clay Chastain
#############

Developing . . .

Comments

  1. Very much like the Scott Wagner quote about killa city. Theyr'e talking about it, just not very eloquently.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Interesting. I haven't heard Jolie mention any kind of plan about crime. Where is she on this debate?

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  2. I don’t think we have near enough black in black crime to consider it newsworthy. If we ever have as much as Baltimore that would be different.

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  3. What a whiny little bitch this guy is, he’s still blaming whitey and as usual ignoring the real problem, black murders by the hundreds and he can’t even admit it, idiot

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  4. If crime in the ghetto was really a problem, why have none of the black candidates addressed it?

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  5. 10:23 NAILS IT.

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  6. Thank god for KC trauma surgeons. Without them the murder rate would double.

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  7. Go get his ass Eric thanks for keepin' it real.

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  8. Mr. Wesson certainly is free to opine on Mr. Chastain's public statement. I understand Clay's proposed plan to reduce crime, while Eric brought up some valid criticisms of the language used in the statement.

    I would simply ask Mr. Wesson to critique the current Mayor and other Mayoral candidates with the same filter he used to find fault with Clay Chastain. To do one without the other is to demonstrate bias/prejudice.

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  9. Clay for mayor. Yes

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  10. Better discussion than what I've seen at most of these "forums" where you can't even ask a question. They just bring the damn people in like cattle and have you listen to a prepared script. I thought the recent one at Bruce Watkins would be different and it was certainly more lively. But in the end, it was just more canned answers.

    If Clay is going to put himself out there like that, he can't blame Eric Wesson for calling him out. I'm a subscriber to the Call and they are my community paper of choice.

    But some of you have said it, this is just a discussion that most of the other candidates just don't want to have.

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  11. I support Clay Chastain for mayor3/15/19, 2:25 AM

    ^^^ Thank you for that comment. Glad to see the 3rd district isn't buying the company line.

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  12. Can eric name any of the six white people killed by the racist black murderer Brandon Howell? Truth hurts eric, get over it, the days of blaming white people for your problems are over.

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  13. Vote for Clay

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  14. You really can't even to begin to solve a problem or even seriously address it unless you actually define it.
    And the suggestion that the definition has to be "eloquent" merely means that the language has to be so superficial and convoluted that the issue isn't really addressed at all.
    In 2017, of the 150 homicides in KCMO, 88% of the victims were black. It's not possible to ascertain the percentages of the perpetrators because only around 50% of KCMO murders are ever solved.
    The numbers define the issue rather clearly whether make-believe "journalists" like Wesson like it or not.
    And, as usual, the rest of the stellar list of mayoral candidates have nothing to say about violence and homicides at all.
    The mindless treadmill continues and Wesson is trotting along with the rest of the usual suspects.
    It never changes.

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  15. "I like black people."

    Good for you, Clay. I don't. I'd rather they didn't exist at all. The crime and violence they commit and the drain on society they cause is too high a cost for them to exist.

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  16. Hew Wesson- Clay is proposing the placement of an additional 100 police on the east side of the city. How could you be critical of a candidate who is coming up with a solution to address the city's #1 Issue?
    The current council has failed to address this issue along with many other major issues in this city. Perhaps, you should call them out for their silence.

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  17. Minorities
    Love
    Klay

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  18. So Sly is out and with real animus from the public for all his posing and deal rigging. In the end the smell of things like the airport and Sanders scandal have the public realizing what a self dealing mess has been underway.

    It is good we won't have Bob Bennett posing like he has invented an amazing new thing. His cheerleading pony show only works on govtech. The real tech industry would be like "what?".

    Clean house, keep cleaning house, the sustainability officer, the head of the ATA, the port authority, include a slap down of the Chamber for acting without integrity. The platform to run against Jolie is not so hard to figure out.

    We want clean government, super attention to basic details. Competition and not to be in bed with a few of the usual suspects who are doing some backscratching for favors. Jolie and Crooks Hardly Fakin don't seem like real contenders to change much of anything, they are the inside players that annoy the public so much. Same Burn em Mac and KCPL and their beholden rubber stamp gang.

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  19. Clay will lead the way!!

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  20. Quoted from another reader;;;; Well stated

    "So far Clay is hitting the notes of change better than any of the other candidates. They want to play it safe, which means Clay should get the share of voters who are not so enamored with posing by Sly and his mediocre entourage.

    The machine may want Jolie, but the people are not so pleased with the stinking machine. Wouldn't be a bad time to start cleaning the entire city house. Too much time in place in Leawood, Overland Park, Cleaver. Get some new energy and lets reduce some of the entrenched more of the same locked in status quo dysfunction. And shake up a lot of the non profit bureaucracies too, some of them are so low impact and inbred.'

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  21. Eric Wesson...That dude is always high. He's usually very mellow. He must not have gotten his weed quotient for the week. Probably is mad at white people today, especially those who make more sense than he does.

    ReplyDelete
  22. So far Clay is hitting the notes of change better than any of the other candidates. They want to play it safe, which means Clay should get the share of voters who are not so enamored with posing by Sly and his mediocre entourage.

    The machine may want Jolie, but the people are not so pleased with the stinking machine. Wouldn't be a bad time to start cleaning the entire city house. Too much time in place in Leawood, Overland Park, Cleaver. Get some new energy and lets reduce some of the entrenched more of the same locked in status quo dysfunction. And shake up a lot of the non profit bureaucracies too, some of them are so low impact and inbred

    ReplyDelete
  23. Generally I like Eric. But Damn, all he is offering is more of the same. Clay actually took a position and it was a pretty good one. The language could be slightly better, but are we to get so wrapped up in language that we just do the same old and expect things to somehow get better.

    I suspect Clay would try real engagement in new ways, and to not be so hindered in PC that he would not even identify a major part of the problem.

    Do you think Cleaver and the Sly Gang have got this in hand. Blacks should want justice, they should also want self improvement. If we get both maybe we have a shot of actually improving something.

    ReplyDelete
  24. “Maybe if you lived here...”? Eric Wesson lives in Independence, Missouri. He technically doesn’t live here. Two outsiders with their facts mostly wrong. The Call Paper is really the joke of the day and in coming years it’s store front will shudder. Lucille Bluford must be rolling over in her grave knowing that The Call Paper cannot find good talent with objective facts and stories to keep them afloat. Instead, their stuff being a one-sided, political opinion rag and it’s readers are hardly qualified to filter the minutia.

    ReplyDelete

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