Kansas City Murders Spike 2025 Despite Decline Across US

This morning our progressive friends at pubic radio tout hopeful stats that clandestinely push more government funding and opposition to impending MAGA budget cuts. 

Here's the premise of their argument AND a questionable thesis . . .  

Despite fewer police officers nationwide now than before the COVID-19 pandemic. Graphs of the number of murders over the last five years look like a roller coaster hill: After a surge of violence in 2020 and 2021, the trend line has fallen over the last three years.

"We're seeing really not just declines, but large declines and large across-the-board declines. I mean, it's everywhere," Jeff Asher, co-founder of AH Datalytics, says.

Here's a bit more detail and the real message . . . 

Crime analysts have zeroed in on what they say is a primary driver of the rise and subsequent decline: the COVID-19 pandemic . . .

All of a sudden, there were a lot of young people — who are more likely to commit crimes than older people — at home, with little to do. And, John Roman, who directs the Center on Public Safety & Justice at NORC says, a vital support system was ripped away: public services. Between March and May of 2020, the country's local government workforce shrank by nearly 10%.

"They're the biggest employer of teachers. They employ coaches and counselors and aides and all the people that young people connect with," Roman says. "They employ physical health, mental health, behavioral health providers, and they fund all the local programming in the area. They fund your community center."

Five years after the start of the pandemic, local government employment is finally back at pre-pandemic levels. Municipalities are also bringing in more money, and their spending has rebounded as well. That means many services are coming back — and with them, places where young people can find support.

"We're spending money on stuff, and when stuff is nicer, people have places to go. It creates jobs," Asher says. "It creates environments where people are hanging out. It's not the broken-windows concept of 'we need to arrest people for graffiti,' but it's more like the kind of idealized version of broken windows that, 'if we make things nice and people are around it, it provides a means of interrupting cycles of violence."

Consider reading that one closely again and hold your laughter . . .  

NPR RESEARCH SEYZ GOVERNMENT JOBS & ANTI-CRIME FUNDING PREVENT CRIME!!!

That line won't elicit a good laugh but it's a joke nevertheless. 

In Kansas City TENS OF MILLIONS worth of cash has been committed to the fight against crime here in a town with a workforce that is dominated by government employees and yet KCMO now suffers a double digit increase in homicides despite a slight dip in the numbers last year.

Whatever theory that NPR offers . . . It has been debunked by the consistent echo of 2025 gunfire on local streets.  

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

NPR: Murders are down nationwide. Researchers point to a key reason

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