Mass Shooting at 57th and Prospect Ave.––The Fight to Liberate Our Own From Gun Violence and Lacking City Resources

Murder victims of Kevion Greene. From left to right: Jasity Strong, 28; Camden Brown, 29; and Nikko Manning, 22.

The Breakdown

In devastating news, early Sunday morning shots were fired into a crowd at Perfect Touch Auto Detail, an after-hours spot on 57th and Prospect. The suspect, Keivon Greene, is being held responsible for three deaths and six injuries––including his own. 

Greene (who was out on bail for resisting arrest and aggravated assault when the incident occurred) has been charged with two counts of second-degree murder, and one count of second-degree felony murder. 

We mourn, together with their families and friends, the deaths of Jasity Strong, 28; Camden Brown, 29; and Nikko Manning, 22. Manning and Strong were both celebrating their birthdays that night. 

A distraught Nikkia Manning, Manning’s mom, stained with blood from performing CPR on her son, tells The Kansas City Star that it took the Ambulance forty-five minutes to get to them. By the time they reached them, her son didn’t have a pulse. They were standing next to her car when he was shot. 

Manning’s cousin, Tracey Walker-White expresses her frustrations with rising violence and the City’s negligence in efficient solution building. 

“We come together in death. I want to come together in life,” she said. Recollecting a time when Kansas City had Summer youth programs and places for young adults to go she said, “There is just no community unity… I’m watching us failing our inner city, our youth.”

She voiced her frustration with the City’s focus on selling the new airport terminal and other major developments while other parts of the city are disregarded. 

A Broken System

The city has recorded 99 homicides this year alone. “We have a complex problem of gun violence in our neighborhoods. I’d say we have a culture of violence where it’s expected and accepted,” said Stacey Graves, Chief of Kansas City Police Department. 

However, the Kansas City Police Department accounts for 36 deaths from 2013 to 2021. They have more police shootings per arrest than 95% of all police departments. They have more racial disparities than 67% percent of all police departments and have killed or used deadly force on unarmed Black people more than many other police departments, ranking themselves one of the worst police departments in the nation.

This speaks to how overfunded the KCPD is. The funds that pay them to mutilate our Black community can, instead, be used for things like mental-health resources, housing, and education for our Black communities––areas that have been disregarded, as Walker-White mentions. 

What Happens When Cities are for Profit, Not People:

28 public schools in the KC school district closed in 2010 due to lack of funding, leaving hundreds  of children, parents, and staff to uproot their lives. And nearly every year since, the board proposed to close yet another school.

KCPS reports the closing of at least 30 school buildings from the 1980s to early 2000s. Even before the 28 schools were shut down in 2010. This is particularly harmful to parents who cannot afford private education for their children or to move their families to neighborhoods who don’t face the same threats of a deteriorating education program due to lack of funds. 

Not to mention, inner-city neighborhoods are suffering a significant decrease in property value. You are more likely to see abandoned houses and buildings in urban neighborhoods than suburban neighborhoods. Prospect alone has abandoned and burned buildings that the city has not done anything with. When the city does step in to help clean up a neighborhood, it is to gentrify the area to make it more appealing to tourists. Meanwhile, property value in suburban neighborhoods continues to rise, stifling attempts of urban families to move to those neighborhoods.

Black people are confined to certain neighborhoods where they are overlooked except to comment on and enforce policing of the violence in those neighborhoods. We are not having much value added. The closing of public schools speaks to that.

How Do We Eliminate These Issues?

The end to violence is not increased policing, which has proven to lead to more suffering. It is not increased imprisonment, which does nothing to help transform harmful behaviors according to Educator and organizer, Mariame Kaba. She, along with her fellow activists, have put endless efforts towards developing initiatives to repair harm done by the Chicago Police Department, and the same should be done in KC.

We need more resources and programs that contribute to the well-being of Black people. If we cannot depend on the city to provide these things for us, it is time we come together to put these things in place for ourselves. We must find ways to come together and place life-affirming resources in the hands of Black community. We have to be the change. This is easier said than done, because there is an entire system to tear down. There is an entire impoverished people to assist. We understand that to tackle larger issues, we must, first, have our basic needs met.

However hard it may be, it is not impossible. 

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