Kansas City, Mo. ? The homicide rate here is on pace to break 100 for the first time in four years.

“It’s been a while since we’ve done that,” Capt. Vince Cannon, commander of the Police Department’s Murder Squad, said Friday. “We’re quite concerned with the growing rate.”

James R. Skivers, 50, of suburban Lenexa, Kan., became the city’s 50th homicide victim when he died Thursday night at a hospital. He was shot in the head a day earlier, at a car wash in Kansas City near the Kansas state line.

Earlier Wednesday, 12-year-old Dominique Henderson was cut down in his back yard in what police said was a drive-by shooting. No arrests have been made in either case.

The drug trade has fueled many of the killings, Cannon said.

“There are young adults who have a complete disregard for human life,” he said, “and I think drugs are at the heart of it. I think it has to do with gathering their little drug markets and defending their little drug markets.”

The last time Kansas City had more than 100 homicides in one year was 2001, when there were 114. There were 91 homicides last year, 92 in 2003 and 87 in 2002. Seven of the 2004 killings and one in 2003 have been linked to one man, serial killing suspect Terry Blair.

The record, 153 homicides, was set in 1993.

This year has been bad from the start, with five killings in the first 30 hours of 2005. By Feb. 28, the city had already seen 18 homicides.

“The detectives sometimes become overwhelmed by amount of work that’s asked from them,” Cannon said. “The way the unit is organized right now, the Murder Squad is on call for a 28-day period and you have six or seven detectives responsible for investigating all homicides in which there has been no arrest.

“How can you effectively investigate eight or nine homicides, when they just keep coming one after another?”

Mayor Kay Barnes, in a statement issued Friday, called this year’s increase “unacceptable” and said the city was developing a plan to deal with it.

“It will be a comprehensive plan that brings to bear increased law enforcement, efforts by community groups like Move UP, and empowerment of neighborhood groups that are most affected to help them deal directly with violence on their streets,” Barnes said.

Cannon, who took over the Murder Squad in September 2004, said quadrupling the size of the Assault Squad from two members to eight should help.

“A lot of times, what we call ‘assault’ is a failed attempt at a homicide,” he said. “We try to identify who our main assault people are and put them in jail as soon as we possibly can.”

Although the squad didn’t reach its current strength until last week, Cannon said the move to increase its size has already paid some dividends.

“Two or three weeks ago, we had a short lull in homicides,” he said.

“I think that was a direct result of what the Assault Squads were doing.”