By Sachin
For years, the standard response to gun violence in American cities was to make more arrests. Kansas City, Missouri, decided to try a different approach: interrupt the violence before it happens, and offer the people most likely to be caught up in it a way out.
That strategy has a name, “focused deterrence,” and in Kansas City it runs under a program called SAVE KC. By the end of September 2025, the city reported an 18% year-over-year decline in violent crime. Behind that number is a partnership among the police department, the county prosecutor, the mayor's office, community service providers, and a data platform built by Peregrine Technologies.
“We can’t arrest our way out of this issue,” said Chief Stacey Graves of the Kansas City Police Department. “Our approach is to balance accountability and opportunity to show our clients there are real consequences for violence but also provide immediate access to the resources they need to choose a better path instead.”
Versions of focused deterrence have been used in American cities for years, but SAVE KC is unique in how deliberately it pairs enforcement with opportunities for help.
The program works in three phases. First, analysts identify the small number of people most likely to drive or fall victim to violence. Then the program reaches them directly, often through a “call-in,” a face-to-face meeting that lays out both the legal risk of continued violence and the support available to those who step away. Finally, partner organizations deliver that support: job training, help obtaining identification and licensing, housing, relocation, and other services meant to remove the obstacles that keep people cycling through the system.
Melesa Johnson, the Jackson County prosecutor, described how tangled those obstacles can be. “They need identification to obtain a job, but need documentation to get an ID, but may need transportation to get that documentation,” she said. “Our service providers guide them through each step, removing obstacles, so they can build the successful lives they envision for themselves.”
See also: Trump Decried Crime in America, Then Gutted Funding for Gun Violence Prevention
The program is equally clear about the alternative. “SAVE KC’s message is clear: Give up crime, accept help, or face the full weight of prosecution,” she said. “As we explain to SAVE KC clients, we care about your future, but violence will never be tolerated.”
A program that turns on identifying the right people, and reaching them at the right moment, only works if the underlying information is fast and accurate. In Kansas City, at least at first, it was neither.
The department’s records were spread across systems that did not talk to each other: computer-aided dispatch, current and legacy records management systems, probation and parole files, and ticketing and crash data. Building a single picture of a prolific offender meant querying each of them by hand, and the department’s data carried tens of thousands of duplicate person records that could scatter one individual’s history across several files.
Captain Jonas Baughman, who helps lead the effort, remembers the friction. “Prior to Peregrine, our members were frequently frustrated due to administrative data hurdles,” he said. “By that I mean data was only available through a few outlets, namely analysts and our IT team, depending on the need. This created a constant trying-to-run-with-your-shoes-tied kind of feeling, particularly for officers. Peregrine has since all but eradicated these roadblocks, replacing them with impactful data and analytics at everyone’s fingertips.”
The clearest example was the department’s chronic offender report, the ranked list of people driving gun crime in the city. Building it by hand, Baughman said, “on a good day, it would probably take me four or five hours. It is immensely laborious and time-consuming.”
Peregrine Technologies builds a platform that transforms fragmented information into operational clarity, helping organizations make better decisions and coordinate more effectively. It does not collect, create, or sell data. In Kansas City, the company unified records the department already owned into a single, permission-aware environment.
The platform maps the department’s own records to its cases and roles, rather than presenting one flat pile of data. A proprietary matching capability the company calls Peregrine Match resolved the duplicate records into coherent profiles, so an analyst looking at one person sees that person’s full history instead of fragments of it.
With the sources unified, work that once took hours collapsed into minutes. The platform can generate a chronic offender report on demand, produce scorecards that flag high-risk individuals, and let officers pull an offender’s history (by crime category, role, and prior contacts) without waiting on an analyst or the IT queue. That speed is the point. Focused deterrence works only if it reaches the right people before the next shooting.
“In a sense, we have flipped the script from our prior iteration of focused deterrence,” said Baughman. “We are now more resource-oriented instead of enforcement-oriented, although there is always a balance to strike with the two methods.”
The Kansas City Police Department reported that violent crime overall fell 18% for the first nine months of 2025, measured against the same period a year earlier. Non-fatal shootings dropped 34%, and incidents with multiple non-fatal shooting victims fell 46%.
Among the people SAVE KC identified and engaged, the change was sharper still. Non-fatal shootings involving identified group members fell 62%, group-related homicides involving those members fell 40%, and shootings targeting SAVE KC participants fell 23%. Through August 2025, 38 people had attended call-ins. All 38 chose to accept services rather than walk away.
Mayor Quinton Lucas tied the results back to the program’s central bet. “SAVE KC proves that combining accountability with opportunity saves lives,” he said. “When we offer real paths to housing, employment, and stability alongside strong enforcement, people choose change. These results show focused deterrence works, not just by consequences, but by opening doors. We’re committed to this approach because it creates lasting safety for our entire community.”
[GP/KS]
Suggested reading:
Subscribe to our channels on YouTube and WhatsApp
Download our app on Play Store