Coming together

With any luck, maybe we're coming together, as a city, to fight the shootings and killings in the area.

First it was Alonzo Washinton, frankly, who set up his blog and has been meeting around town to fight crime.

Then the organization CeaseFire came to town, trying to reduce the number of killings.

That's been followed, as I understand, by the AIM4Peace group that also, apparently, needs money and is hoping to get some from City Hall itself.

Now, there's a local man, a Father, whose son and nephew were killed by some of these same shootings who is trying to get the community to come together to fight the crime. He's setting up a group he's called "Operation Promise Land" , to create 'an agressive door-to-door assault on the 'Stop Snitchin' campaign."

Maybe with all this and involvement by more people and churches and other community organizations, we could get a handle on this and reduce the number of senseless, tragic killing this year.

Here's hoping.

In the meantime, is anyone paying attention at City Hall?


Additional links:

http://www.kansascity.com/news/columnists/steve_penn/story/1215899.html

http://www.kansascity.com/news/breaking_news/story/1727682.html

A challenge to our city leaders

Questions that should be asked and answered by our Mayor, City Council, City Manager and all other leaders in the area, in case we could reduce the number of shootings and murders in town:

1) What are the organizations CeaseFire and Aim4Peace? What do they do?

2) Who is involved in the organizations?

3) Are they working effectively in town to reduce shootings and murders and possibly to otherwise improve our city?

4) What do they do? What are they doing in town?

5) What is their budget?

6) From where have they gotten their present, previous budget, to date?

7) Aim4Peace says they are short on funds. Is CeaseFire short, also?

8) If they are short on funds, are there good reasons for that?

9) If they are effective, would transferring city funds to either or both organizations help Kansas City reduce the number of shootings and murders in the area and/or otherwise improve life in Kansas City for a good number of our citizens?

Let's see if it happens.