New Year’s Eve celebratory gunfire was out of control

By John Sharp

Once again, KCMO was plagued with an extremely high volume of dangerous – and sometimes deadly – celebratory gunfire this New Year’s Eve that included at least two instances of people being injured.
One instance occurred in the 7800 block of Ruskin Way in the Ruskin area of south Kansas City when a bullet went through a window in a residence grazing an occupant.
Broken glass from the window injured another occupant who stepped on it.
Another injury occurred on the far east side of the city in the 10500 block of E. 42 nd St. when a victim was struck by gunfire when walking on the sidewalk. He was transported to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, according to police.
The high volume of this reckless shooting undoubtedly again caused numerous cases of property damage that was not reported to police such as bullets hitting roofs of buildings which property owners, especially of commercial properties, may not even be aware of until the next rain when the roofs begin to leak.
The Kansas City Police Department reported that its electronic Shot Spotter system which covers a relatively small part of the city’s 4-county geographic area in the central city recorded 237 instances of shots being fired from 6 p.m. New Year’s Eve to 6 a.m. New Year’s Day.
The department also reported receiving 144 calls of hearing gunshots during that time.
However, these figures likely drastically undercount the number of calls attempted to report shots fired because like last New Year’s Eve the area 911 system crashed and calls were transferred to a national emergency call center.
Last year I called 911 several times to report shots fired in my neighborhood starting about 11:30 p.m. New Year’s Eve, and the line went dead each time before it finally connected me to a national emergency call center, and it couldn’t even get through to our 911 call center.
This year when I called 911 to report shots I got a busy signal before being connected to a national call center. Then after being told my call would be answered “momentarily”, after several minutes I actually got to talk to an operator and was transferred to the police department’s non-emergency line instead of to our area 911 call center.
After waiting several more minutes I hung up and called 911 again, and when I finally got to talk to an operator at the national call center this time I was correctly transferred to our area 911 call center, but again I finally hung up after waiting on the line for several minutes since by then the shooting had stopped.
Besides people like me that tried but finally gave up talking to a local 911 operator, there were likely even more residents who over the years have learned there are so many shots fired around midnight New Year’s Eve that the 911 call volume is just too high to get through and don’t bother calling.
What a shame!