By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel
104 homicides in 2009 and counting…
More pressing issues: City Hall personality differences, Green Impact Zones, light-ish rail, dress code fashion debates and school system makeovers. But, meanwhile, this city is killing itself, literally.
Statistics are empty as every life is a treasure, but the statisticians wait in the wings, pen in hand, ready to write that end of year piece comparing this year’s body count to the last (119). Cease fire, Kansas City.
Are there statistics on the wounded? Worried about the military’s PTSD challenges? What about our own issues here? Thanked a few veterans lately? When was the last time you thanked a police officer?
Because violent crime is contained to a geographical area, it appears that the collective psyche of the Metro area is one of lowered expectations and benign neglect. Have we come to the point of satisfaction having contained the violence? Maybe we’re weary.
We certainly do not take these crimes for granted. We feel powerless to do anything. We’ve seen this year after year. Is this just the way it is? Perhaps.
For those able to distance themselves from the dangers, this issue becomes a regional discussion. For those within the region, this becomes a discussion no one can really understand unless they’re from the region. For the city’s law enforcement teams, this is war. For the city government, this is frustrating and selfishly an embarrassment. For real estate companies, this is a statistical reality.
We look to places like Afghanistan now, and debate about a surge, even a cease fire. We’ll read in detail the many dimensions of the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks or lack thereof. We’ll shake our heads when hearing how the Taliban fuels their violence with opium farming. We’ll be touched this holiday season with commercials encouraging us to give to poor nations, for humanitarian causes.
But it seems we need to tend our own garden here…or perhaps that’s the argument; this area is not our garden, not our issue, out of our sphere of care.
It’s time to call a cease fire. Disarmament talks are out of the question, admittedly.
Mayor Funkhouser, announce a cease fire immediately and move your "command post" to the front lines soon.
Delicious
Digg
Why not fence the Killing Zone
.... and keep the animals in so they can kill each other off. Resupply with crack and bullets until no one is left standing, then bring in the bulldozers and hand out TIF bonds and build P&L East, with NO Dress Codes of course.
Hey we could hire Cauthen as a Consultant then and it would just like old times in good ol KC.