For Immediate Release
September 26, 2024

Also check The Prosecutor's Blog on Property Crimes at The Troubling Myth of 'The Prosecutor Won't Prosecute'.

By Jean Peters Baker

Who has heard this false narrative, “the prosecutor won’t prosecute property crimes.” To those who are reading this blog, please show this to the next person who utters this myth.   Our policy is unchanged: if the evidence is legally sufficient, we will file the case. Our file rate on these cases remains high, but the real and very troubling issue is how very few cases make it to my office for review. I will lay out the data that will dispel this myth.

Since my last blog, there has been a focus on the large number of property crimes hitting our communities, especially businesses. It has left too many of us with a helpless feeling along with the broken glass. Though this remains a tough area of crime to solve, there are potential solutions.

But first, I want to address the myth. The data shows we file a large majority – as high as 88 percent for Motor Vehicle Thefts -- of the property crimes brought to our office. But a very small percentage of the total reported property crimes are submitted to us for charges. That is quite different from the myth of the prosecutor’s office not prosecuting.  And it is key information because a prosecutor can only prosecute the cases brought to that prosecutor.

The data presented below is as of September 13, 2024. Reported property crime totals were estimated from KCPD’s 2024 crime data report, publicly available via Open Data KCMO (see here). Our analysis detailed several major categories of property crimes: Stolen Motor Vehicles, Burglary, Theft, Stolen Property and Property Damage or Destruction. 

Check the graphs in this blog that detail each of the five categories of property crime we analyzed. It will show large amounts of these reported crimes -- as high as 99 percent for Larceny and Theft -- are never presented to our office. Of those few cases submitted to our office, most are filed. An example: of 1616 reported burglaries or break-ins, only 81 cases were submitted to our office. But we filed 82 percent of those burglary cases reviewed so far this year.

I’ve already mentioned that the highest filing rate is 88 percent for Motor Vehicle Theft. But the other four categories ratifies that our prosecutors file most cases they review. For Burglary, it’s 82 percent, as it is for Larceny and Theft cases, while 75 percent of the Property Damage and Destruction cases are filed by our office, and 78 percent of Stolen Property cases are filed.

Again, we file most of the cases presented to us. This year, 120 motor vehicle thefts have been submitted to us. Remember, 6,601 were reported. We’ve reviewed 68 of those 120 thefts so far this year, and 88 percent were charged.

Check these graphs of the five property crime categories we examined:  

 How do we move forward?

I would like to believe that this level of detail would finally check the continued misinformation about property crimes. I will note that this information can be followed  in our Criminal Case Dashboard, which is publicly available on the Jackson County Prosecutor’s website (see here). That dashboard is likely the only dashboard by a prosecutor in the state of Missouri and possibly in the region. I believe in transparency to wash out such misinformation. That’s important during times of high stress because misinformation can infect the criminal justice system with the sickness of finger-pointing.

Finger-pointing and perpetuating myths about not being willing to file charges blocks real discussion and development of solutions to this crime problem. Those who deflect by disparaging another partner in the system often do so because they lack ideas on how to address the underlying problem, and they cannot engage in self-reflection. But solutions can be found...if system partners can work together. Citizens and business owners do not deserve to continue to be victims. We can work together to address this issue and decrease the harms caused by property crimes.

I have already conducted pilot programs with the Country Club Plaza to assist with prosecuting high-value offenders. I worked with their security staffs to quickly identify, usually through sharing video surveillance, suspects who could easily be charged, given the evidence. To lessen the burden on police, our office agreed to review evidence from security. Only when our analysis found sufficient evidence existed to prosecute would we request KCPD to complete the investigation. This partnership resulted in the arrest and prosecution of a prolific retail thief who caused thousands of dollars of loss from area businesses. She is currently in custody awaiting her trial.  A similar partnership was developed two years ago with businesses in Westport. Both the Plaza and Westport have benefited from this partnership and have greatly aided the prosecution.

Recently, I was enlisted to join a new national program that will allow us to expand those pilot programs to multiple counties and across state lines to Kansas. The initiative, coined Vibrant Communities, will involve the National District Attorney's Association, area prosecutors in Clay, Platte, Jackson, and Wyandotte and Johnson counties in Kansas, law enforcement, and the national retail association.  Like our earlier initiatives in the Plaza, prosecutors will work with local security to address those high impact individuals who are causing repeated harm to businesses and hopefully, finding a path to prosecution.

I am also willing to innovate and try new approaches. For example, my office is in the process of helping the owner of the 31^st and Prospect development that includes the Sun Fresh grocery to deploy signs that will allow us to prosecute trespassers who bring prohibited firearms onto the property of the grocery store.

We also are very active partners in SAVE KC, a new effort to reduce violence in Kansas City. We’ve worked extensively to collaborate with police and other law enforcement partners in almost any way we can find. I recently shared with my police partners a program launched in Portland, Oregon last year that targets car theft. That effort in Portland has been credited with reducing automobile theft by over 40 percent.

We know we can do more to reduce all types of crime, from theft to homicide. The entire system must be willing to partner and try some new efforts. All must start with knowing the basic facts.

By Jean Peters Baker

The topic of crime has been a vivid and intimate part of my life for nearly 30 years. I’ve gone to more crime scenes than I can count. Often, I go back in daylight just to get another perspective. I’ve met with scores of families in their darkest hours after they’ve lost a loved one to violence. I search for and read every credible study about crime. I consume practically anything about crime, except for those formats that dramatize crime. You can say I am obsessed with the topic of crime.

But studies, even those that are well-researched or steeped in data, can’t soothe fear. Crime is too personal. Crime hurts too much to view it from a pure logical perspective. That can lead to more anger and frustration and leave victims and others searching for who to blame.

For some, my office is that villain. In any elected role, one must become comfortable with being served up by opponents and sometimes supporters. I’ve come to accept that some feelings cannot be changed in our current environment. If you view the world through political lenses, this blog is not for you. But for others, a look at the numbers might be helpful.

Today, I wanted to focus on property crimes. Though a large amount of my energy is on violent crime, property crimes also demand attention. Here’s a fact: So far this year, the Kansas City Police Department have sent my office 126 burglary cases. My office has charged 106 of those, as of July 28, 2024. That’s 84% of the burglaries that I can charge, I have charged.

If you dig further into the data you will discover that KCPD has a staggering 3,000 reported burglaries per year. If we have nearly 3,000 burglaries per year, why are there only 126 submitted so far this year? By the end of the seventh month of 2024, basic math suggests we should see at least 10 times that many burglary cases, about 1200 or more. This is where fingers begin to point in an accusing manner.

These numbers hold up in all areas of property crimes, including stolen automobiles, property damage, etc. Having been the victim of a burglary that remains unsolved, I can relate to how unsettling it is. I felt violated knowing someone was in my sanctuary. They enjoyed pizza in my kitchen and left their trash behind. Unfortunately, they did not leave behind any of my electronics or sentimental pieces of jewelry. These unknown perpetrators took what they wanted.

Now, I know that if police could easily solve these property crimes and send them to me, they would. This city does not suffer this problem alone. Every community in America struggles with these personal crimes with a low clearance rate.  

But we cannot build success by finger-pointing at each other. In fact, casting blame will only breed failure. We must build a stronger collaboration between police and prosecutors, and we must build more community trust in law enforcement and the criminal justice system. I’ll address those possibilities in upcoming blog posts. Some solutions are within our reach if all partners could focus on problem-solving rather than casting blame. 

This blog is the product of a series of community meetings and individual interactions I have had over the past year. I found myself trying to explain crime, especially property crime rates, to those who have been personally impacted and who are angry. In the current environment, it can be easy to engage in finger-pointing. Bluntly, business owners and community members reported that other actors in the system reported that I was directly to blame. Finger pointing will shift an aggrieved victim’s angry away from you and your organization to other actors in the system in the short term. For some actors in the system, it is just too tempting to avoid the finger point. Sadly, finger pointing does not solve a single property crime. So I went in search of some new answers with a correction of the misinformation that breeds more discontent.

 Updated 9/7/2024: A commenter asks the source for an anticipated 3000 burglaries per year. The dashboard on the prosecutor's website only counts burglaries received by our office. But KCPD reported in its 2023 Annual Report, p. 36, that 2,757 burglaries were reported to KCPD that year; in 2022, KCPD reported 2869.