KSHB 41 reporter Isabella Ledonne covers issues surrounding government accountability and solutions. Share your story with Isabella.
Six people were killed over the weekend in Kansas City, Missouri. Some of the violence occurred at specific locations that grabbed the attention of community activists, city and county leaders.
They're focusing in part on problematic businesses they say are part of the problem.
"Accountability also goes to businesses," Mayor Quinton Lucas said at a Monday press conference. "Businesses that allow loitering every night in their area, businesses that allow crime to be repeated again and again."
Kansas City has a task force to look into those issues, known as the Public Safety Task Force. It's designed to hold businesses accountable to improve neighborhood safety.
Steps are being taken after Kansas City leaders and community members called on businesses to step up in addressing gun violence after multiple fatal shootings at the BP Gas Station at East 35th Street and Prospect Avenue.
Flowers currently sit at the corner across the street from the gas station where several gun violence victims died in the same spot.
"It's just too much violence," Diane Powell said as she was laying flowers.
The Public Safety Task Force was out on Tuesday speaking with the gas station and other nearby businesses on addressing safety. The task force looks at businesses that have community complaints or have a shooting outside.
"[The business] is not at fault, but it is accountability whether the owner intentionally allowed something or not," Public Safety Task Force Director Joe Williamson said.
Williamson explained that the task force gave the BP Gas Station an improvement plan to consider not selling drug paraphernalia, alcohol, changing business hours to avoid crime, and bringing in additional security.
"If [changes] don't happen, then the city will take whatever action we can," Williamson said.
That action has meant shutting down two businesses, ordering nearly 20 compliance plans, and making dozens of recommendations for businesses in the two years of the task force's operations, according to Williamson.
It's all to make neighborhoods safer.
But some community advocates, like Rachel Riley, president of the East 23rd Street PAC Neighborhood Association, believe targeting businesses isn't a long-term solution.
"You make a plan, and it'll work for now because the focus is on that business entity," Riley said. "But after they leave, it'll be business as usual. They may leave at that time, but they'll come right back."
Riley has been working to improve her neighborhood's safety for more than 20 years. She lost her son to gun violence in 2003.
"It's sad to say that Kansas City, unfortunately, has always been a very violent city," Riley said.
Riley explained there's a connection between loitering outside businesses and a lack of community spaces.
"There's no place on the east side [of the city] where a lot of this crime is happening," Riley said. "There's no place for people to go."
A lack of community spaces is one of the reasons she believes going after businesses isn't the answer.
"I can't control if my business is up and running, and it's legal, I can't control the customers that come in there," Riley said. "I can't control the people that come and loiter and sit on my property."
In the last year, Kansas City Police officers have been called to the East 35th Street and Prospect Avenue BP Gas Station 27 times for assaults, property damage and a homicide. The owners have until Wednesday night to respond to the Public Safety Task Force's compliance plan or risk being shut down.
"We don't mind taking that step and we will take that step, if necessary," Williamson said. "That's definitely on the table for these businesses right here, as well."
But some say there's still more to be done.
"To hold businesses responsible for things that we haven't done as a city, no, it's not fair," Riley said.
