Denver sees decline in homicides, youth victims

Three months after Raphael Velin was shot to death in Aurora, his friends stopped by his home to celebrate what would have been his 16th birthday.

They brought cake. And memories. And love for their lost friend. Raphael’s parents welcomed them, and tried to be happy, but their son’s loss was close and hard. As the gathering wound down, Raphael’s mother, Nancy Velin, collected 16 balloons and walked out into her front yard to release them.

Her son was one of 129 people killed in Denver and Aurora in 2023, and one of 12 kids under the age of 17 to be slain across the two cities as a wave of violence that crested during the COVID-19 pandemic finally began to recede.

Both Denver and Aurora saw mild reductions in homicides in 2023, though the number of deaths remains well above levels the cities saw in the years before the pandemic. The slower pace fits with a nationwide trend: many cites across the country saw a decline in violent crime last year from elevated levels between 2020 and 2022.

In Denver, 84 people were killed across the city, down from 88 in 2022, 96 in 2021, and 93 in 2020 — but still much higher than the 63 people killed in 2019, according to newly finalized data released by the Denver Police Department.

Notably, Denver experienced a 20% drop in the number of children and teenagers wounded in shootings in 2023 compared to 2022, and a 47% year-overyear decline in youth homicide victims.

But the city also saw a significant jump in shootings with three or more victims, according to data provided by the department. And across the state, the number of Colorado youth charged with homicide also spiked, hitting at least a 22year high in 2023 even as the state’s juvenile population has declined.

In Aurora, 45 people were killed in 2023, down from 53 victims in 2022, but up from 43 people killed in 2021, according to the police department. Denver’s 4.6% yearover-year decline in homicides and Aurora’s 15% drop put the cities on the mid-tolower end of the national declines.

Some 14 cities across the U.S. saw larger year-overyear declines in homicides, ranging from a 32% drop in Rochester, N.Y., to a 16% decline in Detroit, according to analysis of crime trends by the Council on Criminal Justice, a national think tank focused on criminal justice. Another seven cities they examined saw homicides rise in 2023.

“It appears that Denver is generally following the national trends, which are a reversion, rebound, return toward pre-pandemic levels,” said Adam Gelb, CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice.

In the last three years, shootings in Denver that wounded three or more victims rose sharply.

Denver recorded four shootings with three or more wounded victims in 2021, with 14 surviving victims across those four incidents. In 2022, that rose to eight shootings with 27 wounded victims. In 2023, the city saw 14 such shootings, with 56 people injured, according to the data provided by police.

Nine people were shot near the intersection of Market and 20th streets on June 13 amid the celebration of the Denver Nuggets’ NBA championship win. Five people were shot at a bar on Market Street in September after police say a 17-year-old girl opened fire when she was turned away at the door. Six people were shot, three fatally, at a party in east Denver in October. Three weeks later, seven people were shot at a motorcycle club, two fatally.

Four additional 2023 shootings had at least four victims, according to the data.

In all, 294 people were wounded in 225 shootings throughout Denver in 2023, compared to 292 people wounded across 246 shootings in 2022.

“We have fewer incidents but more people around when these incidents occur,” Denver police Chief Ron Thomas said. “…We are seeing an increase in community violence in public spaces, house parties and large gatherings.”

He said police officers have bumped up the priority level for calls about disturbances at house parties as they’ve recognized the potential for violence at such events.

“That’s not necessarily a run-of-the-mill disturbance anymore, we recognize the heightened propensity for violence so we want to get there much more quickly,” he said.

He added that much of the violence Denver experienced in 2023 happened between people who knew each other in some capacity, and many incidents were not “random acts of violence.”

Across 47 homicides in which police identified the relationship between the suspect and victim, 64% of victims were killed by someone they knew, a family member or an intimate partner. Another 36% were killed by strangers, according to the data provided by police.

That latter category includes the 12-year-old who was killed when a man tracked down his stolen car and shot the boy inside the vehicle, as well as two brothers killed in a road rage incident, and a man and woman killed in unprovoked stabbings.