Since July 2013, there have been 10 homicides in Lawrence. This is an uncharacteristically high amount of murders for the city, considering there are typically one or two homicides in a year.

Isolating the cause of these crimes has been difficult for police. The crimes are not believed to be connected, so law enforcement is struggling to find a single method of prevention.

“Some of these had to do with mental illness, some of them had to do with domestic violence, some of those had to do with drugs, some of those had to do with arguments,” Sgt. Trent McKinley said. “So there’s really not a common denominator.”

The police department has successfully solved each of these crimes, however. According to McKinley, closing these cases is the best way to combat them.

“The best that we can do with each of those is to dedicate all of the resources we have to solving them, and that has been the case with all the homicides to date,” McKinley said. “We do not have any unsolved homicides at this time.”

Sophomore Isabelle Krones can see how living in one of these areas can affect a person.

“Individuals that do live where these things happen, it’s kind of surprising to them because you never think that you’re going to be near where a homicide (happens), or you’d like to think that you’re in a safe neighborhood,” Krones said.

However, McKinley asserted people living in the areas in which these crimes occurred should not expect a pattern of violence in their neighborhood.

“What we don’t want people to think is that these types of crimes are random and you as an individual … could potentially be a victim of one of these types of crimes because that is not at all what we’re seeing,” McKinley said.