COMBAT

On November 3rd, the COMBAT program will be on the election ballot for renewal via the ¼¢ sales tax that has funded the program for the past 20 years since 1989 and will fund it for another 7 years. This is NOT a new tax, but a renewal. Here it some of what it funds (and what will be lost should the sales tax not pass renewal by citizen vote:

• 300 drug and related violent criminals remaining incarcerated as sentenced in county jail
  • Jackson County ranks 13th in the nation for drug and related violent crime
  • Jackson County ranks LAST for available jail space in the nation
• 5 prosecutors and their staff (investigating detective, paralegals, legal secretaries)
• 43 of Prosecutor Jim Kanatzar’s staff including 15 assistant prosecuting attorneys
• Jackson County Drug Task Force with 20 detectives
  • since 1989, has closed 12,091 drug houses
  • has seized over $250,000,000 (million!) in street value of drugs just in the past 7 years
  • has confiscated over 3100 illegal guns just in the past 7 years
• CrimeStoppers TIPS Hotline’s ability to refer drug case tips for immediate action
  • COMBAT has funded the police in Jackson County who have made over 11,000 drug arrests over the past 20 years
• Drug Core Program providing rehabilitation and preventing recidivism
  • 94% ongoing success rate
  • has rehabilitated 1500 drug and related violent criminal mindsets over the past 7 years
• DARE program for school children
  • provided successful DARE program to 13,900 Independence School District students in the past 5 years
  • provided this program to over 200,000 kids in Jackson County over the past 18 years

COMBAT is so uniquely innovative and wildly successful in its multi-level approach from preventive suppression to apprehension and prosecution to full rehabilitation that it is the international template and benchmark model. Anti-drug law enforcement from all over the world and many countries have come here just to be schooled on the functions of COMBAT to take back home to replicate. Independence was known was the world meth lab capitol in the early ‘90s. From 1994-1996, because of and through COMBAT, an average of 3 meth lab cases were successfully worked per week, and Independence is no longer known as the meth lab capitol of the world directly and solely because of all of the functionality that COMBAT provides.