What is the Crime Commission? (Meet the Crime Commission Week 1)

The Kansas City Metropolitan Crime Commission has been in existence for over 70 years, but there are a lot of people who are not familiar with our organization or the work that we do. We would like to help change that by sharing a little more about ourselves each week in a new blog series: Meet the Crime Commission!

Let’s start with the basics. What is the Crime Commission?

Simply put, we are a non-profit organization that helps to prevent crime in the Kansas City metropolitan area. We are NOT a law enforcement agency of any kind, but we do work together with local law enforcement as a part of a team focused on reducing crime in the KC metro area.

Here’s where there is often some confusion: The Kansas City Metropolitan Crime Commission is a 501(c)(3) organization, which oversees four programs that are each a PART of the Crime Commission. These four programs are:

1. The Greater Kansas City Crime Stoppers TIPS Hotline

2. The Metropolitan Community Service Program (MCSP)

3. The Surviving Spouse and Family Endowment Fund (SAFE)

4. The Second Chance Risk Reduction Center

Each one of these four programs focuses on a different aspect of what we call the “Cycle of Crime” (more about this later). Even though each program does different things, they are all a part of ONE organization: the Crime Commission.

We like to think of the Crime Commission as a family. In our family, the Crime Commission is the parent organization, which supports and directs its children (the programs) as they each pursue their own specialized interests. Despite their different focuses, all of the programs are united by the common goal of the entire Crime Commission "family": to power a safer, better Kansas City community.