| Public Housing Now Safer in Kansas City
U.S. Attorney Todd Graves announces PHSI accomplishments at a news conference in November. |
In Kansas City, MO, public housing units all around the city are becoming safer places to be.
One year after it was announced, the Public Housing Safety Initiative (PHSI)—a federal grant program designed to assist in the investigation, prosecution, and prevention of violent crimes and drug offenses in public, federally assisted, and Indian housing areas—is paying off in the Kansas City metropolitan area. CCDO administers PHSI, which is executed directly through U.S. Attorneys' Offices in cities around the country, Weed and Seed sites, and local public housing authorities.
When Kansas City was first selected as 1 of 10 communities nationwide to participate in PHSI, Todd Graves, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, promised a straightforward approach. He promised to use the grant money to reduce crime in targeted public housing areas, improve tenant conditions in assisted living environments, and improve interagency collaboration and communication on quality-of-life issues in public housing.
Now, Graves said, the PHSI funding is making a difference in Kansas City.
"The Public Housing Safety Initiative has allowed our law enforcement community to partner in a new way that has already resulted in reducing crime within our community's public housing areas," Graves said. "This new partnership already has resulted in the indictment of 12 individuals for crimes occurring in these areas."
Kansas City's Public Housing Safety Initiative includes the Kansas City, MO, Police Department, the Independence, MO, Police Department, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Kansas City Housing Authority, and the U.S. Department of Justice.
The program has provided $400,000 in federal funding to help the involved partners train police officers and crime analysts, improve surveillance and increase the number of sweeps conducted in public housing, target criminals who live in public housing areas, increase drug enforcement, improve investigations, and coordinate with probation and parole efforts.
"The resources that this funding provides further the ultimate goal of the initiative," Graves said. "It promotes a safe, crime-free living environment for the residents of these public housing areas."
The funding also has increased the partners' awareness of the criminal activity that surrounds public housing areas, which has increased the amount of resources law enforcement agencies dedicate to the initiative on their own. For example, the Kansas City, MO, Police Department now provides additional manpower during sweeps.
To ensure the initiative's success continues, the partner agencies also meet at least once a month to share information about upcoming operations, pass along intelligence, and offer updates from their respective areas of focus. They use the intelligence they gather to target hotspots of crime within Kansas City's public housing areas, assign extra patrols to those areas, and conduct sweeps.
For more information, contact:
Les Kerr
U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Missouri
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