Under the coordination and leadership of the united states attorney's office (usao), western district of missouri, a project safe neighborhoods (PSN) task force was RE-established in 2018

This $201,047 Formula Grant award from the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Assistance (CFDA 16.609 - Project Safe Neighborhoods) supports the Kansas City Metropolitan Crime Commission, doing business as Crime Stoppers, in implementing a comprehensive violent crime reduction strategy for the Western District of Missouri. The award will fund activities including intelligence sharing between federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, identifying violent crime hotspots, and targeting prolific offenders. Key program elements involve community engagement, social media campaigns to deter violence, deploying automated license plate readers in high-crime areas, and implementing targeted interventions in specific geographic zones with historically high violent crime rates. This 3-year grant, effective from October 1, 2024 to September 30, 2027, builds on the organization's past successful evidence-based interventions to address gang-related and retaliatory violence in the Kansas City metropolitan area.

PSN is currently implementing PSN strategies in the district. The task force combines federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, former and retired law enforcement officials, and local businesses and community organizations to implement a comprehensive holistic crime reduction program. The overwhelming response from partners involved in this task force has been very positive. Through intelligence sharing with the jackson county prosecutor's office, kansas city missouri police department (kcpd), and other state and federal agencies, the PSN task force has identified areas with the highest violent crime rates in kansas city, missouri to be targeted for a violent crime reduction strategy. The violent crimes in the target enforcement area are driven by gang or group related narcotics activity including retaliation driven crimes. The district will continue to build on past successful evidence-based interventions to share intelligence, to stay current on identifying specific violent crime hot spots within the target enforcement areas to provide coordinated police response to those areas, and to identify prolific violent offenders driving the violence. The district will continue our partnership with the kansas city police department's law enforcement resource center, in which the midwest crime gun intelligence center (cgic) is located as well as a gang intelligence squad to assist with identifying the violent active trigger pullers in the target enforcement area for investigation and prosecution. Funds will be used to support the reinstallation of automated license plate readers (alprs) in violent hot spot intersections in the target enforcement area to assist with the identification of violent individuals and gang/groups in the area. The western district of missouri's PSN program will work with community engagement and prevention assets to reduce violent crime. The PSN program partners have engaged with an advertising partner to assist with research and preparation of a targeted social media campaign, to deter those individuals and groups from committing violent acts in our community.