We're ready to help you safely enjoy watching the Chiefs in the Super Bowl

We’re experiencing an incredible moment here in Kansas City, and your police department has been working hard to ensure everyone can have a great time watching the Chiefs in Super Bowl LIV.

KCPD will be fully staffed citywide on Sunday evening, and we’re bringing in an additional 100 officers from units such as Tactical Enforcement and Traffic Enforcement. These additional officers will keep an eye on the city’s entertainment districts, but their assignment is to remain fluid and assist wherever needed.

Speaking of entertainment districts, all of them have shared their security plans with us, which include off-duty KCPD officers who will be assisting with security in those areas. Additional dispatch staff have been assigned specifically to handle calls related to game celebrations.

We’ve made extensive preparations to facilitate people having fun on this historic day for our city. Officers are ready for celebratory honking, yelling, high fives and more. We all have seen things go wrong in other cities that were supposed to be celebrating a championship, and no one wants that here, especially not celebratory gunfire. If you see something that looks like it’s starting to get out of control, please call us so it doesn’t grow into something really bad.

If the Chiefs win, more information about forthcoming celebrations will be posted early next week. In the meantime, we’re looking forward to helping everyone enjoy the game in the home of the Chiefs: Kansas City, Missouri.

Send comments to: kcpdchiefblog@kcpd.org

We're following up on New Year's Eve gunfire

These shell casings were all from one address in East Patrol Division after New Year's Eve.
Officers sorted them by caliber and type.

The New Year’s Eve celebration of two weeks ago may be a distant memory for some, but police are still hard at work following up on reports of illegal celebratory gunfire. Despite our pleas and enforcement, despite an 11-year-old girl previously being killed by such behavior, and despite the damage it does to property, people continued to engage in celebratory gunfire as 2018 turned to 2019. You can see some of what it was like from Central Patrol Division by reading through our Twitter feed that night, when we did a tweet-along with officers from about 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. This year, as every other year, officers had to take cover around midnight for their protection. 

The ShotSpotter gunshot detection system covers 3.5 square miles of the city that have a high rate of gun violence and shots fired. Using that and recovered shell casings, officers found one address where 360 shots were fired on New Year’s Eve night, and they were from at least nine different guns, based on the calibers of the shell casings. In just East Patrol Division, officers recovered 180 additional shell casings from at least 13 other incidents.

Officers recovered several spent bullets from the parking spot of the East Patrol Division commander, Major Greg Volker, at the station. If he had been there getting out of his car at that time, he would have been hit. It is only dumb luck that prevented another horrible tragedy like what happened to Blair Shanahan Lane. As of noon on New Year’s Day, we’d taken two reports of property damage consistent with celebratory gunfire: one to a garage and the vehicle inside it, and another to a vehicle’s window. We know there’s probably much more out there that wasn’t reported.

From 6 p.m. Dec. 31 to 6 a.m. Jan. 1, we received 301 calls to 911 about the sound of gun shots. The ShotSpotter system recorded 109 alerts during the same period. ShotSpotter can distinguish between gunfire and fireworks (there were those, too).

So what are we doing about it? We are gathering evidence so that as many people who illegally discharged firearms on New Year’s Eve (which is prohibited by City ordinance) can be issued citations if possible. It’s likely that some of those discharging firearms cannot legally possess a gun (because they are convicted felons, for example), so we are working with our federal partners to build those cases, as well.

New Year’s Eve should be a time of celebration and joy, not hiding in your basement with your children, as one terrified mom tweeted to us she was doing. We are doing our best to hold those accountable who wantonly risked the lives and safety of their neighbors.

Send comments to kcpdchiefblog@kcpd.org 

Secure guns, protect children

It is so easy to keep a firearm out of the hands of children. And yet loaded guns keep falling into the hands of young children in our city, often with tragic consequences. Chief Darryl Forté addressed that on this blog last December. 

If you have a gun in your home, it is imperative that it is stored safely. If you do not have a safe in which to keep your firearm, you can get a free gun lock with no questions asked at any of our six patrol stations, Children’s Mercy Hospital, from anti-crime groups and at a number of other locations. Our officers have even passed these out in areas where children have been shot accidentally. These locks can be installed in less than 15 seconds, as demonstrated by Captain Ryan Mills for KSHB reporter Sarah Plake.

Putting a lock on a gun is THIS easy. @41actionnews pic.twitter.com/xNMQIa75SG

— Sarah Plake (@SarahPlakeTV) June 26, 2017

Gun locks are just a start. Adults should not leave guns lying around in areas accessible to children. They should sit down with their kids to discuss firearm safety and the dangers guns can pose. Every officer on this department has undergone extensive and continuous firearm safety training. I’d wager all of them who have children at home have gone to great lengths to store their guns securely and have had discussions about gun safety. I know I did when my kids were younger.

And as we come up on the Fourth of July holiday, the members of the Kansas City Missouri Police Department and I implore you to refrain from celebratory gunfire. Bullets fired into the air come down, damaging property and injuring or killing people. As you saw on the aforementioned blog from Chief Forté, a 16-year-old was struck by celebratory gunfire last July 4th. And this year, the parents of Blair Shanahan Lane, an 11-year-old girl killed by celebratory gunfire in 2011, are once again going door-to-door with our officers in neighborhoods where our ShotSpotter system detected high levels of gunfire on Independence Day last year. Blair’s parents will tell their story of loss and how easily the tragedy could have been prevented. In the neighborhoods they visited in 2016, July 4th gunfire dropped by 100 percent from the same day in 2015, according to ShotSpotter.

There are many shootings that are difficult to predict and prevent. Accidental shootings by and of children are not. Very simple steps will stop the vast majority of these tragedies.

Send comments to kcpdchiefblog@kcpd.org. 

Gun safety training can prevent deaths and injuries in 2017

A change in state law will go into effect on Jan. 1 that will have a large impact on firearms possession in Missouri. This was a law I opposed in the 2016 legislative session, but now that it has become a reality, the best we can do is urge people to please be safe.

Senate Bill 656 eliminated the need for anyone age 19 or older to secure a permit to acquire and carry a firearm, among other provisions. Previous concealed carry laws required those seeking to carry a firearm to complete a training course that teaches gun owners how to safely and responsibly carry, shoot and store firearms. That is a very reasonable and appropriate step for possessing a deadly weapon. Our own officers spend months in the Police Academy learning how to properly handle a gun and then get updated firearms training twice annually.

We heavily encourage gun owners to continue to seek professional training on the proper care, handling and storage of a firearm. Although it no longer is mandated, it is essential to the safety of you, your family and anyone who comes into your home. We see far too often what happens when guns are handled and stored improperly.

I’d like you to consider just these 2016 cases in which our most vulnerable residents, children, were killed or hurt in Kansas City because of guns that were not stored or handled safely. Some you may have heard about in the news, and some you haven’t:

· On April 27, an 18-month-old found her father’s unsecured and loaded handgun and shot herself to death while her father slept. The father is charged with then trying to hide the gun.

· On July 30, another 18-month-old showed up at a local hospital with a gunshot wound through his calf. Family stated a man came over to show the baby’s father a gun, and in the course of doing so, it went off and shot the child. The victim survived.

· On October 27, a 5-year-old used a foot stool to climb onto a kitchen counter. He reached into a kitchen cabinet, found a loaded gun and accidentally shot and killed his 3-year-old brother.

· On November 6, a man said he was cleaning his handgun with his 12-month-old next to him when the loaded gun went off. The bullet went through his arm and struck his infant daughter in the back. She survived but sustained critical injuries to her pelvis and spine.

· On November 12, a woman who was 6 months pregnant, her boyfriend, her sister and her 1-year-old niece were “play fighting” in a bedroom of their home when the boyfriend retrieved a gun as part of the play fight. The pregnant woman said the gun usually was unloaded, so she wasn’t concerned. But this time it was loaded, and it went off, striking the pregnant woman in the groin. She suffered from the injury, but the unborn child was not harmed.

· On November 29, two 15-year-old boys got together to play a game of basketball. One wanted to show the other a gun he had somehow acquired. The first boy took out the magazine to show the second the bullets. After he put the magazine back in, he said he intended to pretend to fire the gun. The gun actually did fire, striking the boy’s friend in the face. The boy with the gun immediately started apologizing. The victim survived. 

Proper firearms training and storage likely could have prevented every one of those incidents. Those are just some examples this year from Kansas City. In the first half of 2016, a child died every other day in America because of accidental gunfire, according to research by USA Today and the Associated Press. The 2014 report, Innocents Lost, found that 70 percent of unintentional child gun deaths could have been prevented by proper storage alone. A total of 61 percent of the deaths occurred in the victim’s home, 10 percent at a relative’s home and 10 percent at a friend’s home. That’s why it is important for every single person who owns a firearm to obtain training to know how to use, handle and store it.

The KCPD and many other local organizations also distribute free gunlocks. Call any of our patrol stations, and we will help you find one if you need it.

One other case in which a child was hurt by unintended gunfire this year happened on the Fourth of July. A 16-year-old boy was outside his home lighting fireworks with friends when he thought a firework had struck him in the shoulder. When the burning pain didn’t stop, he realized he’d been shot. An emergency room doctor determined the bullet’s trajectory; it had come from the sky above the boy and headed straight down. The teen had been hit by celebratory gunfire.

Shooting guns off in the air is dangerous and illegal, and we see a lot of it on New Year’s Eve. Endangering the lives and property of your neighbors is no way to celebrate. The reality is that any bullet discharged from a gun, even into the sky, must land somewhere, and when it does, there’s significant risk of injury or death. Celebratory gunfire killed an 11-year-old Kansas City girl on July 4th five years ago, and it hurt a 16-year-old boy this year. The family of the 11-year-old girl went door to door with our officers this year in the days leading up to the 4th of July to visit houses where our Shot Spotter gunshot detection system determined there had been celebratory Independence Day gunfire the previous year. They pleaded with residents in the area not to shoot off guns and make any other family suffer what theirs has had to go through.

A few other gun safety issues as we enter the New Year that I wanted to address in our efforts to make Kansas City as safe as possible: If you own a gun, it is very important that you record its serial number and keep that number in a safe place. And although it is not required by law, (legislation has been pre-filed in the Missouri General Assembly that could mandate it, however) always report if your gun has been stolen. If your gun is stolen, reporting it helps police track down where it’s been and who has been using it (and having the serial number makes this much easier). Stolen guns are used in a host of violent crimes in Kansas City. We recover shell casings at every shooting scene and work tirelessly to match them back to guns. Being able to establish a chain of custody of those crime guns is imperative to solving cases and preventing future gun violence.

The Kansas City Missouri Police Department works hard to prevent shootings in our city, and we need everyone’s help to do it in 2017.

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Send comments to kcpdchiefblog@kcpd.org.