Kansas City among top 10 most dangerous cities in U.S., new ranking says
U.S. News and World Report has Kansas City listed as number eight on a list of 25 most dangerous places for 2024-2025. The company determined its rankings using FBI crime reports of each city's murder and property crime rates per 100,000 people, according to the site.
Kansas City's homicide rate is a perennial problem highlighted by media and public officials. Over the past three years, the majority of killings have stemmed from arguments between individuals or groups of people, according to Kansas City Police Department data.
Petty arguments and retaliatory violence are also leading variables in the city's killings.
In 2025, an unusual number of homicides are from domestic violence situations. In the first three months of 2025, the city saw the same number of domestic violence homicides as all of last year, 12.
Kansas City set a record high number of homicides in 2023, when 185 killings were recorded in the city. In 2024, homicides took a dip (147) but the number of nonfatal shootings in KC soared.
Meanwhile, homicide rates in other major cities across the country have dropped, including in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles and Detroit.
As of April 17, Kansas City has recorded 44 homicides this year, according to data maintained by The Star, which includes fatal police shootings.
Crime statistics have fluctuated over the years in Kansas City as police and city leaders took on programs aiming at crime prevention.
A new effort launched last year called SAVE KC, stands for 'Stand Against Violence, Everyone/ Everywhere/ Every Day.' It works by using a focused deterrence model, identifying those most likely to commit and be victims of violent crimes, then providing them messaging and resources to transition out of cycles of violence.
Similar focused deterrence models have proven effective in reducing and preventing violent crime in metropolitan areas of Minneapolis/St. Paul, Boston, Chicago and Cincinnati.
Two other Missouri cities appeared on the dangerous U.S. cities list: St. Louis (no. 2) and Springfield (no. 14).
Here are the top 10 most dangerous places in the U.S., according to the U.S. News and World Report ranking:
Memphis, TN
St. Louis, MO
Detroit, MI
Birmingham, AL
Little Rock, AR
New Orleans, LA
Cleveland, OH
Kansas City, MO
Myrtle Beach, SC
Denver, CO
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20 Shocking Secrets People Kept From Family Friends
Reddit user _Walking_Detriment_ asked the community, "What's the most shocking thing you found out about someone you know?" Welp, people revealed some pretty unhinged secrets that their family, friends, and close acquaintances thought they could hide. But ultimately, the cat got out of the bag. So, here are some pretty wild, shocking, and dark things people discovered about someone they knew: "I worked with an ex-Marine closely for years. On my last day, I asked him to help me with something, and he said, 'Oh, sure, ask the guy with one leg.' I told him he was full of shit, and he took a hammer and hit his shin, to which I heard metal. Thinking it was a joke, I asked him to lift his pants. SURE ENOUGH, THIS MAN HAD ONE LEG, AND I NEVER KNEW." "My wife died two years ago at the young age of 49. A week after her passing, I decided to go through her personal devices to see if there were any other friends or family that needed to be contacted. What I found instead was that my wife had been chasing after other men during our entire 12 years together. When she met me, she had a side boyfriend that she was crushing on, but his life was too much of a mess for her to seriously consider him as a suitor (she was a single mom with two kids, and needed stability). But she loved the attention he showered her with, constantly begging her for sex. And there were other men that she met online. In total, I was up to six boyfriends she had during the time of our relationship. I stopped digging because each new boyfriend discovery absolutely destroyed me." "We found out AT THE FUNERAL that my wife's grandpa had a second family. There was a group of people huddling around his widow (she was 90 at the time) that no one recognized. They were chatting it up with grandma for quite some time, and eventually, my wife's dad and aunt asked them to leave. There were kids, adults, and seniors in this group — multiple generations of people. My mother-in-law finally fessed up and said they were his 'other family.' Jaws hit the floor, and it was really weird for the rest of the ceremony. They also tried to 'claim' some of his stuff afterwards. I had to watch my grandma's house like a hawk because they would snoop around and try to say things like 'he would want us to have this.'" "In the mid-'90s, I came home from my honeymoon to find a card in my front door from the FBI. My neighbor across the hall popped out and asked if everything was okay because there were a bunch of cops looking for me. It turned out my best friend of five years, who I thought moved away to be with his girlfriend, was seducing women around the country and robbing them, draining their bank accounts, and vanishing. He even stole their cars, drove to his next target city, and either sold the car to a chop shop or ditched it. He left a jacket behind at one of his victims' houses, and it had my name and phone number in his pocket. I went to the federal building in downtown Chicago, answered all of their questions, and convinced them I had no knowledge of any of this. After a few hours, I agreed to let them know if I ever heard from him." "I had recently graduated as a therapist working in a forensic clinic. We were interviewing interns for their placement (part of a graduate program). This was an important interview because a lot of our clinical staff, including me, were hired out of an internship. A lot of the applicants were from the same graduate school that I went to, so I knew a lot of these people personally. One of the applicants was a guy with whom I had a bunch of classes. He was taking the program part-time, so he had been in the program when I started and was still there when I graduated. We had maybe five classes together. I knew him as a very smart, but also very sarcastic, middle-aged guy. I knew he worked as a hairdresser outside of class at his boyfriend's salon, which caused him to be very popular amongst our class for his propensity to give free haircuts." "I found out as an adult that my stepdad (who had been around since I was seven years old) did time in prison for murder. Two decades before he met my mom, he walked in on a man having sex with his then-wife. Clearly, it didn't end well for the other guy. He did three years in prison because of the nature of the crime, and the laws in Texas being lenient on that type of stuff." "My mother has a somewhat strange belief that after death, a person must be buried 'whole.' Decades ago, when my grandma had to have her leg amputated because of diabetes, my mother dug a hole behind our house and stored the amputated leg there. I believe it didn't rot due to formalin or something similar. When my grandmother died, my mother took that leg and placed it in her coffin. Due to the coffin's design, no one noticed her real leg was there. Everyone likely assumed it was a prosthetic leg. My mother told me this after several years, and I am still grossed out by it to this day." "I found out a guy I knew faked a limp so he could get sympathy discounts at the movie theater..." "I have childhood friends who discovered after their dad's death (the kids were adults by then) that their dad had fraudulently taken out full powers of attorney on them. He refinanced his house in their names, and never paid any taxes." "The guy who put the roof on my parents' house and came out and did some repairs and whatnot around their home turned out to be a legit hitman. Years before he was a roofer, he was hired to murder a couple. Then he ended up murdering the people who hired him to do the hit. I believe he eventually confessed to killing four people total, but authorities suspected it could've been more. I kind of vaguely remember the guy. Of course, my dad was like, 'Nice fellow and a good handyman — hate to lose him!'" "I worked with two different people at two different places. They both ended up going to prison for making counterfeit US money. Both workplaces were printing companies. I had replaced the first guy, who had been demoted for not being a good leader/supervisor. When the Secret Service approached his mobile home, he stuffed hoards of bills in PLASTIC trash bags and tried to make his escape by running through the woods. These tore multiple holes in the bags, leaving a scattering of counterfeit bills trailing behind him through the forest before his inevitable capture." "I found out that my aunt's first husband wasn't killed in a car accident while visiting family overseas like I was told when I was younger. He was in witness protection because he had pissed off some affiliates of an Irish cartel. My aunt even thought he was dead. 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His father picked him up from prison every morning and came to take him back when our shift was over. l always wondered what happened to him and when he was fully released." "I'm sure I'm not the only '70s kid who found this out, but my mom revealed that she and my dad had an 'open marriage.' The kind where he said: 'I'm going to fuck other women, and you can fuck these friends of mine — let me have my fun, or I'm out of here.' Apparently, what followed was three bad years together, as my dad tried to convince my mom to participate in swinging, orgies, a poly relationship — the works. And my mom, who was barely 22 with two babies, went along with all of it to keep him happy and 'save their marriage.'" "My father told me that my mom (a teacher) used to steal the money for school trips where she worked. For some twisted reason, she moved my sister and me to the same school. I never understood why the other teachers were so bitter towards us. Apparently, there was a big scandal between the teachers, but we had no idea — the worst years of my life, finally explained." "After my grandmother died, we found out she'd been married before my grandfather, and had four kids. When she and the first guy decided to split, they just dumped the kids off at an orphanage and went their separate ways. She then married my grandpa, had another family, and just never mentioned the fact that she had four other kids. Apparently, my grandpa knew the whole time and never said anything about it either." "My mom suffered from cancer, and one night, while she was on strong medication for pain, she grabbed my arm and told me, 'I know the truth about your college letters. You didn't get rejected — you got accepted, and that's why you didn't go.'" "My mom attempted to miscarry me so she wouldn't have to get an abortion. She is now very jealous that I am leading the life she always wanted (educated, childless, and climbing the corporate ladder), and frequently takes it out on me in passive-aggressive ways. I'm just glad the drinking and drugs she did while she was pregnant didn't seem to have a lasting impact on me (other than maybe the fact that I black out quickly when drinking)." And finally, "About 25 years ago, one of my friends was killed in a house fire. He had been rooming with another friend at their mother's house. Our friend group thought that the fire was just an unfortunate accident for a couple of weeks. The surviving friend even stayed at my house, where all of our friend group kept hugging and comforting him as he weaved heroic stories. He tried getting his mom out of the house first and then tried his best to go back in for our friend, but by then, the flames and smoke were just too bad. Then one day, the police showed up and arrested him."
The Hill
2 hours ago
- The Hill
Bailey, Bongino tag team FBI leadership role
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Bailey also came to Trump's defense as the president faced criminal prosecution. Following Trump's conviction last year on 34 counts of falsifying business records in Manhattan, the Missouri attorney general sued New York, saying the prosecution stepped on the rights of his state's voters. He asked the Supreme Court — which has exclusive jurisdiction over legal disputes between two or more states — to block Trump's sentencing and a gag order until after the 2024 election. The justices rejected the plea. 'As Missouri's Attorney General, he took on the swamp, fought weaponized government, and defended the Constitution,' Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who was Trump's attorney in the hush money case, said Monday of Bailey. 'Now he is bringing that fight to DOJ.' It's not the first time Trump has made Bailey couple up. Trump last year endorsed both Bailey and his primary opponent, Will Scharf, as they competed to become Missouri attorney general. 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Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
How to outfox financial scammers
While financial scams have always been around, the variety of schemes that scammers employ to steal money are easily proliferated these days with the internet, social media, AI and crypto. Frauds and scams ranked No. 6 on the list of top consumer complaints last year, according to a recent report from the Consumer Federation of America. And the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center found that financial losses from cybercrime alone last year reached $16.6 billion – a 33% increase over 2023, with the vast majority of those losses coming from fraud. The average reported loss was $19,372. Earlier this month, the Federal Trade Commission noted that there was a more-than-four-fold increase between 2020 and 2024 in the number of reports of older Americans (age 60 and up) who said they'd been scammed out of $10,000 or more. The increase among those reporting that they'd lost over $100,000 was nearly seven-fold. Some people 'reported emptying their bank accounts and even clearing out their 401(k)s,' according to the agency. Common schemes How can that happen? Any number of ways. And it's not just those over 60 who are susceptible. 'Any type of scam can happen to anyone,' said Emma Fletcher, senior data researcher in the consumer response division of the FTC. Imposter scams, where criminals masquerade as a trusted government agency or business, are among the most common. Whereas in the past a lot of scams tried to trick you into giving out your financial account numbers, many now seek to persuade you to move your money from one of your accounts to another type of account the scammers can access. 'The scams generally involve someone contacting consumers to alert them to a fake and urgent problem and then proceeding to try to persuade them to transfer their money to 'keep it safe' or for some other false reason,' the FTC said. Among the lies they might tell: Your Social Security number is linked to serious crimes. They're calling about suspicious activity on your account. Or you're in trouble with the law and have to post bond. Or they may offer something that is too good to be true, like easy money for a simple task. In exchange, they will ask you to pay something up front. Among other types of imposter scams are: Tech support scams: These can take the form of a pop-up security alert or audible alarm on your computer, purporting to be from Microsoft or Apple. The message might be that your computer has been hacked, and it will include a number to call for help. Sometimes the criminals will tell you they need to get remote access to your computer to fix something. Prize and sweepstakes scams: It's never the victim's lucky day when a scammer, posing as a representative of a sweepstakes or lottery entity, contacts you and tells you that you have to pay money to get your big prize. Telltale signs of a scam To help spot a potential financial scam, keep an eye out for common red flags: A government agency or company contacts you out the blue and makes threats and demands. There are currently imposters even pretending to represent the FTC itself. The FTC notes it 'will never demand money, make threats, tell you to transfer money, or promise you a prize.' The same is true of any reputable business or government agency. You're told to go to a bitcoin ATM or make a bank transfer. Last year, the FTC found that 33% of older adults who reported losing $10,000 or more to an imposter scam said cryptocurrency was the method of payment requested, while 20% said they were asked to make a bank transfer and 16% said they were told to pay in cash. The most typical crypto payment involved sending someone to a bitcoin ATM, which some scammers may refer to as a 'safety locker,' Fletcher said. A case reported by CFA, for instance, involved a scam caller telling a consumer they were 'under arrest for failing to appear in court and was in contempt for missing jury duty. They insisted that the consumer needed to post bond, and the sheriff could not accept a check or credit card. Instead, the scammer directed them to a federal kiosk, specifically a Bitcoin ATM.' You're told to buy gift cards to pay the scammer: Another type of scheme has victims go to one or more stores to buy gift cards and then share the unique numbers and pin with the scammer. Reduce your odds of getting scammed There are several ways to reduce your chances of being swindled. Do not engage. When you get an unsolicited call, text, social media message or email – or you get a strange warning alert on your computer – don't respond. Do not call the numbers suggested nor click on any links offered. Instead, if you're concerned it may be legitimate, call the actual entity the person contacting you claims to be from and do so by looking up that entity's real number and website yourself. 'Stop and verify. If it feels urgent, if they're rushing you and creating alarm, and you weren't expecting that contact, go directly to the company or agency that they're claiming to be and check it out,' Fletcher said. Never move money on demand. If you do end up engaging, a clear sign something is wrong is that you're told you have to move money fast. You may be told you have to transfer money out of an account that has been compromised in order to 'protect it.' Or to send money to get yourself out of some sort of (fake) trouble. No legitimate business, government agency or law enforcement entity would require this. Never pay money for the promise of getting more money. Anything financial that sounds too good to be true usually is. And that's especially the case when you're being told you need to pay something upfront to get something desirable in return (e.g. a commission, a job, prize winnings, etc.) Don't assume you're too smart to be duped. A scammer can catch anyone at a particularly vulnerable moment. For example, you might already be in a heightened emotional state when you get a call or text; or the focus of the scam may pertain to something you were just dealing with – e.g., you may have recently driven through a number of tolls when a scammer sends you a text about unpaid tolls. 'For each of us there is a scam that can get us at just the wrong moment,' Fletcher said. 'The scammer hijacks your ability to think things through clearly.' Make liberal use of the 'Block Caller' and 'Report Junk' functions on your phone: Getting a call or voicemail from a number you don't recognize should be blocked. The same goes for unsolicited texts and social media messages. And, the FTC warns, don't necessarily trust your caller ID function either, as scammers have been known to 'spoof' it – meaning they can falsify the information sent to your caller ID display. If you've been scammed It can happen to anyone. If it happens to you, take steps to minimize your losses and help stop the scammers from victimizing others. Here is an FTC resource page that offers steps you can take if you think you paid a scammer or if the scammer has access to your personal information or to your computer. But, generally speaking you'll want to let your bank and/or other relevant entities such as the credit bureaus or gift card issuers know immediately. To minimize your losses, 'Time is of the essence,' Fletcher said. You also might want to consult a consumer law attorney who specializes in consumer rights and consumer fraud to see what your next best steps are. Then report your scam to the FTC at To prevent others from falling prey to the same type of scam, share your story with people you know. 'Pass on what you know. Research supports that word of mouth is the top way people hear about scams,' Fletcher said. Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data
