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.