The city's solution to Crime, cotton candy, love beads, and choo choo trains.

If we make it pretty, crime will stop. Finally the mayor addresses crime, with a possible record breaking homicide rate in the works, an ever increasing deterioration of the inner city, and an inadequate number of police on the streets, the inept king of Kansas City has the solution. Economic growth by supporting new businesses on the east side, education, and light rail. As noted by Tony's Kansas City and Crime Scene Kansas City, no mention of added police.

I agree with the education part, unfortunately when you have a school board constantly cock blocking progress, the education portion of his 3 part master plan will never come to fruition. Until the old guard is removed from the school board, nothing will change.

Economic development, are you kidding me? Who in their right mind is going to start up a new business, a legit one, on the east side? There is already an overabundance of liquor stores, Criket cellular stores and fast food restraunts with interiors resemble high security banks. People aren't going to risk life and limb by starting businesses in areas that are armed robbery training camps.

Light rail, huh, say what? Look light rail is not now, nor has it ever been anything other than the pipe dream of people who have no real grasp of what this city needs. We dont need shiny commuter trains in this city. We need cops. If we can finance a light rail plan through sales tax, why can we not add more police through the same method? One of the city council members, too lazy to go back and check which one, suggested that we cant arrest our way out of the current crime problems facing this city. As a former criminal, I beg to differ. Nothing slows crime, gives criminals hesitation, like lots and lots of police. I'm not talking regular patrol cops, although that helps, and needs to be part of the solution. We need beefed up career criminal units, gang and drug task forces, detectives to deal with homicides and robberies.

We need to bring in outside help. We need law enforcement people from cities like L A and Detroit. Cops who have dealt with gang problems and violent crime that make ours pale in comparison. Until this city gets a real handle on the street level crime, all of the flowery horse shit about beautification and education and choo choo trains, is nothing but the clueless ramblings of people who rarely if ever travel to the areas that need the most help.

There is an entire population of good, honest, decent people on the city's east side who are being held hostage by a growing number of predators who place no value on life in general. Until the mayor and city council build rapport and confidence with the good people in bad areas, there can be no change, no progress just more of the same. The way to do that is through more effective law enforcement. When people no longer are gunned down while innocently sitting on their front porch, when the businesses that already exist are given more protection from the thugs that constantly use them as their own personal ATMs, when people can go out without fear of getting caught in a crossfire, then and only then will this city's government begin to build a lasting trust with the people who live in the inner city. When the people have confidence in the police and city government, they will report crime, they will be proactive in larger numbers, crime will drop. At the end of the day the truth is really simple, cooperating with the police will get you killed, until that changes, the east side will remain a war zone.