For the past year and a half, a string of violent crime involving teenagers with guns has captured the attention of Johnson County law enforcement.
The highest profile incidents resulted in murder charges — including the killings last year of Marco Cardino, in Olathe’s Black Bob Park and Jarod Rogers in Shawnee.
Those two incidents involved a total of eleven teens and were the result of drug deals gone sideways, according to prosecutors.
Then, earlier this year, two teenagers shot and killed each other while inside a car in Olathe, for reasons that may never be known.
Not every gun incident has resulted in death.
This summer, a teenage girl was shot in the face while riding in a car with two other teenagers in Lenexa. The boy who fired the gun later was turned in by his parents.
The string of gun violence also included a shooting at Olathe East High school last year, when a student exchanged fire with a school resource officer inside the school’s main office. Three people — including the student — were injured, but none died.
That’s at least seventeen teenagers involved in gun incidents since the start of 2022, and that doesn’t include other teens who may have tried to harm themselves using firearms or whose gun incidents did not attract media attention.
National data shows increase in teens carrying guns
Adolescents carrying handguns has been on the rise nationally, according to a recent study by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
From 2015 to 2019, teens reported carrying firearms at a rate that was 41% higher than the period 2002 to 2006, the report said, with higher increases in certain demographic groups.
The biggest increase was among whites, those in higher incomes and rural teens, according to the study.
Rates declined among Black teens, lower-income teens and those of American Indian or Alaska Native descent.
Johnson County statistics on how many teens may be carrying are difficult to analyze. But in general, “The rate of youth violence and youth homicides in Johnson County pale in comparison to what is seen in Wyandotte and Jackson counties,” said Dr. Robert Winfield, chief of acute care surgery at University of Kansas Health Systems.
Winfield sees gunshot victims as a surgeon, but he is also involved in a youth violence prevention center for the area with the University of Kansas main campus in Lawrence.
“Unfortunately kids in Kansas City have a tendency to die at a greater rate from homicide than their peers around the country,” he said.
But he hasn’t seen evidence that youth violence in Johnson County is beginning to catch up to Kansas City’s. Even so, sometimes there’s a lag in the data.
“Up to this point there hasn’t been an upward trend, but anecdotally we’ve seen the same things in the news and we obviously treat these patients in our trauma center. So it may be just a matter of the data catching up with what’s occurring in real time,” he said.
Johnson County statistics remain unclear
Johnson County data doesn’t provide an entirely clear picture of what is happening with teens and guns locally because of the way the records are kept.
The Niche Reporting Management System area that includes most of Johnson County shows 84 instances in which juveniles committed crimes with firearms in 2022.
That included every incident, even those that were not prosecuted. Out of those, there were 51 that resulted in arrests.
But that data doesn’t include Lenexa, which is in a different Niche reporting area.
Countywide, statistics provided by the Johnson County District Attorney’s office show an increase in the number of juveniles charged with firearm possession after a lull of only five in 2020.
In 2021, the case count rose to 23 and then increased again to 30 last year.
In Kansas, gun possession is allowed for people 18 and over if they are not addicted to a controlled substance, a felon or mentally ill. There are exceptions for minors possessing guns for certain activities such as target shooting and hunting.
Easy access to guns and links to drugs
The spate of high-profile shootings involving teens in Johnson County over the past two years may present at least the appearance of a trend toward increased gun use among young people, but opinions are divided on its true depth or its causes.
District Attorney Steve Howe doesn’t dispute that there’s a problem in Johnson County but wouldn’t go so far as to blame an overabundance of guns.
“It’s hard to say that we have trends as far as the number of juveniles in possession of firearms,” he said. “Do we have quite a few incidences where juveniles are involved in violent crimes? Yes,” he said.
Since 2019, some 21 juveniles have been taken into custody for felony murder, he continued.
“That’s a pretty significant situation,” he said.
He added that not every one of the teens in those cases was carrying a gun, but all were involved in drug sales gone wrong.
“That’s been the most troubling thing. We have juveniles and young adults willing to kill each other over a small amount of marijuana,” Howe said.
Leanna Barclay, transitional co-leader for Johnson County Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, puts some of the blame on state legislation that makes it easy to get a gun.
Kansas could be doing more on background checks and red flag laws that would keep convicted felons and those in crisis from owning guns, she said.
The state also should require secure storage of firearms, she said, such as one introduced by state Sen. Cindy Holscher and Rep. Linda Featherston, both Democrats from Johnson County.
But instead the state went the other way.
“Kansas recently lowered the age for concealed carry from 21 to 18. We don’t find that helpful,” Barclay said.
Still, both Barclay and Howe agree that tighter state and federal laws won’t completely solve the problem as long as guns are easy to steal.
“Criminals will find guns. Young people will be able to find a gun if they really work hard at it. But you don’t even have to work hard at it these days, is the problem,” Barclay said.
Although “ghost guns,” an untraceable type of gun usually bought over the internet, are a new factor, law enforcement has not been seeing a lot of them, Howe said.
Most often, the guns are either taken from parents or stolen, often out of car glove boxes.
What is being done
Howe and Barclay both say getting adult gun owners to be more responsible about storage is key.
Law enforcement officers are especially frustrated by people who leave their guns in cars, said Howe.
“We remind people just don’t leave firearms in your vehicle,” Howe said. “It’s ripe for the opportunity for someone to break into your car, steal the gun and then use it for other types of crimes.”
Barclay said many adults don’t recognize the risk of having a gun in the home and are more lax about storage than they should be.
She is a local leader for Be Smart for Kids, an organization that gives educational presentations on safe gun ownership. Be Smart advocates for gun safes and gives out gun locks.
The Johnson County Mental Health Center also distributes free gun locks at its Mission and Shawnee offices, as does the Johnson County Suicide Prevention Coalition through its website.
Howe added that his office is putting the message out through prosecutions that people who commit gun crimes will be held accountable.
“Our feeling is when you take another person’s life in these drug rip(offs) then you’re going to be held accountable. The degree of accountability depends on the degree of involvement of that individual when there’s multiple people involved,” he said.
Meanwhile, the KU youth violence prevention center takes a more holistic approach through its Thryve program, Winfield said.
Thryve workers see violence as symptoms of societal issues like food and housing insecurity, inadequate educational support and lack of job options, he said.
To combat that, the prevention center works with youths after school, helps them find jobs and promotes educational achievements.
When someone comes into the hospital with wounds from a violent assault, Winfield said, “we reach out to them and then a social support system.”
“We get them plugged into those resources in an attempt to reduce the risk of having a recurrent violent episode,” he said.
Roxie Hammill is a freelance journalist who reports frequently for the Post and other Kansas City area publications. You can reach her at roxieham@gmail.com.
