Ingram's October 2022

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

Jackson County prosecutor Jean Peters Baker. A party-line Democrat, Baker often seems more concerned with achieving “equity” than with reducing crime. If Lucas objects to her perceived leniency, however, he has not said so publicly. He prefers to use his bully pulpit to berate gun manufacturers and Republican lawmakers. The murder of the two Stowers researchers brought the 2021 body count to 126, a near-record pace. Although the murders remain un- solved at this point, they are too public to ignore. The voters may buy Lucas’ excuses when he runs for re-election in 2023, but the Stowers people may not, and that bodes ill for Kansas City.

The problem is not the law. Illinois has some of the toughest gun laws in the country, and Chicago’s are tougher still, and yet, as The Wall Street Journal observes, “Violence in Chicago is so routine these days that it barely registers as news.” The city had 797 murders in 2020. An Honest Assessment The problem is inner-city culture. Unfortunately, Lucas has not even attempted to address the family dysfunction at the heart of Kansas City’s crime problem. An ambitious Democrat, he has followed the cues from party leadership and shifted the blame onto the police. In 2021, he un- successfully attempted to defund the police, and this year, he similarly proposed to take $37 million out of the police budget and give control of it to the city manager for a new “Com munity Policing and Prevention Fund.”

The murders of Camila Behrenson and Paulo Guzman Palma remain unsolved at this point, but they are too public to ignore.

Never one to accept responsibil ity when it can be shirked, Lucas has argued he has no control over

The views expressed in this column, which is also published online in the Heartlander, are the writer’s own, and do not necessarily reflect those of Ingram’s Magazine. Jack Cashill , Senior Editor, Editorial @ Ingrams.com

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