Ingram's October 2022

B E T W E E N T H E L I N E S

Pointed Perspectives & Penetrating Punditry | by Jack Cashill

A Tragic Motivation to Rethink Public Safety in KC The slayings of two international researchers are a grim reminder that bromides from pub lic officials aren’t coming close to a solution. black Kansas Citians suffered most. In a city roughly one-third black, 78 percent of the murder victims were African American. Although the calculus for “suspects”

As crime in the Kansas City area continues to flourish, will the murder of two scientists change the mayor’s view on crime and policing in the community? In the early morning hours of Oct. 1, firefighters were called to the scene of a blaze in the Midtown neighborhood of Kansas City. Inside the smoldering apartment, they found the bodies of Camila Behrensen, 24, and Pablo Guzman-Palma, 25, both scien tists at the city’s nearby Stowers Institute for Medical Research. The fire was not what killed the pair, the Kansas City Police Department says. After entering the apartment to extinguish the fire, KCFD located two victims inside, a police spokesman said in a prepared statement. All indications are that the pair, whose bodies showed signs of trauma, had been murdered before the fire was set.

is not nearly as reliable as that for victims, at least 84 percent of the sus pects were black. Lucas has been freely pontificating about the causes of crime since he took office. For him, the word “gun” almost always precedes the word “crime.” “For those who don’t know the Midwest, we are not unlike Texas. We have no requirement for concealed carry permits,” Lucas told a reporter in July. “Folks can access assault rifles very simply. There is little to no investiga tion into illegal gun

traffickers and dis tributors. And our police are not only overworked, but they find themselves at the risk of getting shot as well.” This argument

The fact that Kansas City’s mayor took a knee with the protestors tearing up the city in the 2020 riots did not have the calming effect the mayor likely intended, or reassure police that he had their backs.

The fact that Behrensen was from Argentina and Guzman-Palma from Chile will make it that much harder for Mayor Quinton Lucas to pacify international media with his disingenuous bromides. “I think in the short term it will certainly start a dialogue of the involved countries and the United States,” retired FBI agent Michael Tabman told 41 KSHB. “They’ll want security for their people.” A Promise Unkept When Lucas first ran for mayor in 2019, he put fighting crime at the center of his campaign. Specifically, he promised to bring the annual homicide count down to below

would work better i f ne i ghb or i ng Kansas did not have the same constitu tional-carry laws as Missouri. The numbers suggest gun laws are not a relevant factor. For example, Johnson County, Kansas, runs parallel to Kansas City, Missouri, for about 11 miles, sepa rated only by State Line Road. In 2021, Johnson County had just four homicides to Kansas City’s 157. The numbers are even worse than they appear, in that Johnson County has roughly 100,000 more people. In 2021, twice as many people in Kansas City were stabbed to death as were shot to death in Johnson County. In fact, more Kansas Citians were beaten or strangled to death than were shot to death in Johnson County.

100. As an African American, he convinced many voters he would have more moral authority to tackle the crime issue than the liberal female who ran against him. The voters did not get their ballots’ worth. Lucas was sworn in on Aug. 1, 2019. In that year, Kansas City suffered 148 homicides–up from 138 the year before. In 2020, the homicide rate shot up to a record 179 in the wake of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis. The fact that Lucas took a knee with the protestors who were then tearing up the city during the Floyd-inspired riots did not have the calming effect the mayor likely intended–nor did his gesture reassure police that he had their backs. As events would prove, he did not. In 2021, the body count in Kansas City subsided a bit to 157, though still 19 more than the year Lucas took office. As usual,

Jack Cashill Ingram’s Senior Editor P | 816.842.9994 E | Editorial @ Ingrams.com

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October 2022