Crime is on the rise. All you have to do is tune into the Kansas City television news channels on any given night and you'll see for yourself.

Drive-bys. Car jackings. Home invasions. Robberies. Homocides.

True, televison news focuses on crime more so than other news outlets. But this stuff is going on at an ever increasing rate.

The murder rate has jumped by more than 10 percent in dozens of large cities since 2004, a recent study by the Police Executive Research Forum showed. Robberies spiked in a two-year period, as did felony assaults and attacks with guns, according to the report.

Numbers don't lie.

But why? Experts say it's part of the cycle, up and down. One reason might be the socio-economic problem that leaves the county with an ever-expanding gap between the really rich and dirt poor, with the latter turning to violence to survive.

However, I think that will always be present.

The wave of violence has entered the middle class in recent years. Upper middle class professionals running over their husband with a Mercedes. A husband shooting his wife, who was cheating.

But I think it's the society we live in today. We are inundated with violence. It's almost to the point of excessive. Turn on your television. I bet if you polled 1,000 television watchers and asked them what their favorite show is, I'd be willing to bet money 50 percent would list a crime drama cop show or a tough as nails prosecutor lawyer show. People love these violent shows. That's why there's four CSI shows, three that are spin-offs from the orginial CSI.

I think the public accepts violence because of these shows. They probably think, "it's just the way of the world." And these shows, in a way, validate this assumption.

That might be true, but we certainly shouldn't think that way.

We need to start saying "enough is enough."