Kansas City Mayor Q Denounces Critics 'Leveraging' Record Breaking Homicide Pace

Credit where it's due . . . The Kansas City Star offers extensive coverage of the local homicide count that's moving at a record pace.

Here's an overview of their reporting . . 

The record for the city was set in 2020 with 182 killings, rocketing past the previous record of 155 homicides reported in 2017, according to data tracked by The Star, which includes fatal police shootings. Since then, homicide numbers have been among the worst the city has seen. In 2021, 157 lives were lost in homicides. There were 171 killings in 2022.

Caveat . . .  Kansas City Star numbers are slightly higher because their count don't correspond to UCI data that KCPD share with the FBI. 

Most other KC news outlets count by way of the KCPD Daily Homicide Report because it is peer reviewed by government officials and not merely the work of a corporate media outlet.  

Nevertheless . . . 

Here's what might be the most important passage . . .

Check Mayor Q shifting blame against his political opponents for noticing the numbers . . .

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said he’s also not happy with the city’s number of homicides. He recognizes that with each life lost, there’s a grieving person or family left behind.

“While there may be some who try to leverage these number for any number of different reasons, my heat breaks for all of the victims in Kansas City and I continue to believe that we can and should be a safer city,” Lucas said.

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com link . . .

Kansas City is on pace for deadliest year on record: 'We've got to do something now'

With a month left in 2023, Kansas City is on the verge of its deadliest year ever, in large part due to gun violence. What is the city doing?