Video highlights how many Kansas City kids have been killed in 5 years of violence

Luke Nozicka
·2 min read

The children looked into the camera and told of the things they love: playing hide-and-seek, jumping on a trampoline, drawing.

“I want to go to college,” one girl said as the sound of piano played in the background.

Then the music cuts off. And words on the screen tell viewers that, in the last five years, 28 of Kansas City’s 751 homicide victims were children, according to police data.

The minute-long video was released this week by Project Safe Neighborhoods, a crime-fighting initiative operated locally by a task force, to emphasize the need to combat violence plaguing Kansas City. It urged residents to call in tips about unsolved killings.

“Violent crime takes a terrible toll on the families who are directly impacted and on the wider community,” Acting U.S. Attorney Teresa Moore in western Missouri said in a statement. “The toll is heaviest when children are victims of violence.”

At least six of those 28 children were killed last year. They included 4-year-old LeGend Taliferro, who was fatally shot while sleeping in an apartment, and 1-year-old Tyron Payton, was killed in a shooting that also wounded his parents.

Tyron Payton, 1, was fatally shot on Sept. 21, 2020, in the 2900 block of East 33rd Street in Kansas City.
Tyron Payton, 1, was fatally shot on Sept. 21, 2020, in the 2900 block of East 33rd Street in Kansas City.

Last year also marked the deadliest in the city’s history, with 182 people killed in homicides, according to data maintained by The Star, which includes fatal police shootings. So far this year, 59 people have been killed.

Each killing adds to a sobering statistic for Kansas City: since 1980, more than 5,000 people have been killed in homicides, according to police data compiled by The Star.

In a news release about the video, Police Chief Rick Smith called the level of violence in the city “unacceptable.” Every resident, especially children, “deserves to feel safe,” he said.

Frederic Winston, special agent in charge of the local field division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said law enforcement can only make neighborhoods safer with the community’s help.

“Our children deserve safe streets, parks and playgrounds, free from the constant threat of gunfire,” he said.

The video promoted the region’s TIPS Hotline, which the Kansas City Metropolitan Crime Commission said has been credited with helping solve 20 homicides since the reward for information leading to an arrest was increased in 2019 to $25,000.

Police continue to ask anyone with information to submit tips by phone at 816-474-8477 or online at www.KCCrimestoppers.com.

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