By Molly Farrar
December 29, 2024
With the city on track to record the lowest number of homicides since 1957, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu lauded her administration’s “strong, coordinated leadership” across city departments for the historic low and continually decreasing violent crime rates.
Officials said on Friday that Boston’s homicide rate is at 24 for the year, compared to last year’s 37 homicides. Wu joined Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox and Isaac Yablo, the senior advisor for community safety from the mayor’s office, for a press conference a few days before the new year.
“We know that there’s more work to do, so today is not a victory lap, but a report out and a reflection of the type of results we see when we all understand community safety to be a collective responsibility that we share and that everyone has a part in,” Wu said.
Cox, a Boston native and commissioner since 2022, said overall instances of gunfire were down 14 percent this year compared to 2023 and down 37 percent compared to a five-year average.
This year also saw the lowest instances of gunfire since 2011, “when we began reliably tracking the statistics,” Cox said.
“In the entire time that I’ve been a police officer, going back since when I came on, the city has never been safer. Period,” Cox said Friday. “It could probably go back to before I was born in the city.”
In the past 20 years, the average number of shooting victims has been more than 260, Cox said. In the past three years, that average has declined by an average of 100 people each year. 2024 also marks the third consecutive year with less than 200 shooting victims, Cox said. Overall, violent crime is down by 2 percent, while aggravated assaults, including domestic assault, is up 3 percent.
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Wu credited multiple city partnerships and initiatives, including analyzing internal police data, increased police recruitment, diversification of the police force, as well as programs through the Boston Center for Youth and Families and Boston Public Schools. Officials pointed to Wu’s initiative to give jobs to any BPS student as the catalyst to reducing youth mischief at South Bay mall.
“The very next summer, we have nowhere near the number of incidents,” Cox said. “When you add in public partnerships, city partnerships, private partnerships, and all other federal partners involved, I think it makes us way more effective.”
Wu lauded Boston as a leader for similarly sized cities. Washington D.C. recorded 187 homicides, Baltimore 191, Memphis 295, and Detroit 200. Yablo and his team have spoken at conferences in Boston and across the country about their community outreach plans to reduce violent crime.
“We have been able to brag about our successes, both locally and on a national scale,” Yablo said. “We are not done. We will continue to get better. I’m in the community every single day, and I deal with residents that have been impacted by violence and community violence and trauma, and we cannot rest well until we are at zero.”
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