For the first time in two years, Kansas City leaders reported an overall decrease in violent crime, which they attributed to an increase in police officers, nearly two years of an innovative deterrence program, and a public health approach to neighborhood conditions.
From a record year for homicides in 2023, murders decreased in most sectors of the city in 2025, with the exception of the Kansas City Police Department’s South Patrol, which includes the area between U.S. Highway 71 and Interstate 435 south of Bannister Road. Last year the homicide rate also dipped, but nonfatal shootings increased by 12%, leaving hundreds of people with gunshot wounds.
Kansas City Police Chief Stacey Graces, Jackson County Prosecutor Melesa Johnson and Mayor Quinton Lucas credited SAVE KC, a focused deterrence program instituted nearly two years ago, for part of the decrease.
SAVE KC, or Stand Against Violence Everyone, Everywhere, Every Day, targets a small number of repeat offenders, having them meet with law enforcement, community groups and social service providers who offer them tailor-made services. Offenders are also warned of the consequences, which include prosecution and jail time, if they don’t cooperate.
"It's not going to work overnight, and it hasn’t, but it's working," Johnson said.
One outlier in the homicide statistics is an “alarming” increase in killings connected to domestic violence. So far this year, there have been 20 such murders, compared to 12 last year.
Less obvious than statistics is an improved relationship between the leaders of the KCPD and the Jackson County prosecutor’s office, where Johnson is finishing her first year. In the past, then-Chief Rick Smith and then-Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker had a bitter feud, which got worse when she charged a white officer with second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of a Black man.
Graves, a KCPD veteran who was named chief three years ago, said she’s grateful for the collaboration between the two departments and her good relationship with Johnson.
“If there’s anything going on, you call me, I call you, and that right there is priceless,” Graves said to Johnson in a recent public meeting. “We can get so much handled from just you and I having a phone call.”
Johnson agreed.
“Law enforcement and prosecutors have to work closely, symbiotically almost, in the pursuit of justice,” she said.
In addition to a decrease in homicides, Graves said that this year there have been fewer burglaries, property damage, stolen autos and robberies. In part, Graves credited the crime drop to an increase in officers.
The lack of full staffing has long been a complaint from department brass as numbers have fallen short of the funded 1,258 full-time officers. This year, Graves said KCPD has 1,148 sworn officers with another 39 in the police academy, and a new class of 50 recruits set to enter the academy in January.
“We are closer (to full staffing) than we’ve been in many years,” Graves said.
Graves said she is asking for another 50 officers to be hired next year, in part because of the World Cup, and the Board of Police Commissioners has approved a budget request of more than $417 million, or about $50 million more than last year. Whether the department will get that is uncertain, as Lucas has called the ask “not feasible” while the city faces a $100 million shortfall.
Addressing another past complaint of too-few 911 call takers, Graves said this year she has 48, up from 32 in 2024, and a new call taker class starts in January with potentially eight more workers.
“We’re growing in numbers in other places, too,” Graves said. “We truly are building back KCPD.”
Lucas has heralded the decrease in nonfatal shootings on social media, attributing it to a public health approach that focuses on factors that contribute to violence in the first place. He pointed to the Aim4Peace program, which sends people to the hospital to respond immediately after a shooting or other violence.
The approach addresses “neighborhood conditions linked to violent crime, supporting individuals at highest risk, providing trauma-informed responses for victims and families, and connecting residents with long-term resources,” Lucas said.
