City leaders are touting 2024’s decline in gun violence, but they say more work needs to be done to improve those numbers further.
Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker. (Emma Lee/WHYY)
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Philadelphia is expecting to end 2024 with the lowest number of homicides in a decade, but officials say that’s still not good enough and vow to bring the numbers down even further.
Mayor Cherelle Parker has shown up on several occasions this year at locations where multiple shootings have occurred, most recently in mid-December after three young people were shot in Dilworth Park.
Her mantra has remained the same.
“Every shooting and homicide in Philadelphia personally pains me as your mayor and my administration,” she said. “It pains me because every homicide victim was somebody’s son, brother, father, uncle, daughter, sister, mother, and aunt. These are human beings that we are talking about, and not statistics.”
More than a year ago, Parker campaigned to become Philly’s 100th mayor on a promise to reverse the skyrocketing murder numbers.
“The foundation that I committed to you as mayor, would be that we would make public safety our number one priority,” she said. “The public health and safety of all Philadelphians will become our number one priority, and we would not be afraid to make the tough decisions that are necessary to bring some order back to our city.”
As 2024 comes to a close, homicides are down in the city by 37% this year compared to last year. The number of overall shootings is similarly down, with 36% fewer incidents compared to last year.
According to the city controller’s office website that tallies shooting incidents, Philadelphia had 847 nonfatal and 220 fatal shooting victims as of Dec 25, 2024. That’s well below the 1,291 nonfatal and 375 fatal shooting victims in 2023 and far less than 2021, which saw 1,831 nonfatal and 506 fatal shooting victims.
Parker’s pick for police commissioner, Kevin Bethel, is getting much of the credit for the declining numbers. Bethel, a former deputy police commissioner, was a career police officer who worked his way up the ranks and lost out for the top cop position until Parker selected him while he was leading the school district’s police force.
He said the men and women who patrol the streets are doing a good job.
“When I came on board, the mayor gave us a charge. They gave the department a charge to reduce the level of violence we’re seeing across the city,” Bethel said. “We’re having one of the best years we’ve had in over a decade. The numbers of violent incidents and the numbers of shootings are aligned with what we saw back in 2014. It wasn’t too long ago when we saw almost 560-plus homicides, and we’ve cut that number in half.”
https://whyy.org/articles/philadelphia-gun-violence-homicide-rate-drops/
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