Santa Fe, The Pilot to Prevention: Kansas City Leaders Address Violent Crime Reduction

Posted October 11, 2023

Kansas City leaders gathered Tuesday for a press event in the Santa Fe neighborhood to give an update on fighting violent crime in the community.

As part of the KC 360 program, a community-based program designed to reduce crime activity, the town of Sante Fe has shown a reduction in homicides and non-fatal shootings compared to 2022 data.

The neighborhood of Santa Fe is a four-square-mile area that has accounted for 20 percent of city-wide homicides this century, according to the Kansas City Police Department.

Santa Fe homicides experienced a drop from nine cases in 2022 to two cases in 2023, and non-fatal shootings dropped from 14 cases to only 13. While these figures seem incremental, KC Common Good and city leaders see this as the first step in a long process to reduce crime in Santa Fe and the Kansas City area as a whole.

Kansas City, Missouri Mayor Quinton Lucas.

Mayor Quinton Lucas was one of the first speakers at the event to show his support for the progress made in Santa Fe.

“We believe we can make a difference. We believe that the status quo of violent crime in our community is not something that we have to live with year after year, generation after generation,” Lucas said.

Marquita Taylor, president of the Santa Fe Neighborhood Association, said Santa Fe is only a pilot for the bigger picture yet to come.

President of the Santa Fe Neighborhood Association, Marquita Taylor

We are a step and a pilot to something bigger, Taylor said. Taylor cites the influx of residents attending the KC 360 meetings as a great step for Santa Fe’s initiative for positive change and encourages more to join.

We need neighbors at these meetings. I see twenty to thirty neighbors at the meeting but I was to see hundreds,” she said.

The KC 360 program and partnering organizations have already invested more than $3.5 million to reduce violent crime in the neighborhood since its selection in June 2022.