How Malik hopes to keep homicides down

Akron is examining new preventative measures

Akron’s rate of homicides and murders trended in a positive direction in 2023, along with major cities throughout the country.

The city last year saw a total of 34 homicides, the lowest number since 2016, when there were 32.

While Akron officials can’t explain the decrease locally, Mayor Shammas Malik said he intends to keep up the momentum by maintaining the city’s existing initiatives while also working on new preventative measures.

Building on existing programs

Although the details have not yet been worked out, Malik said the city is planning to continue its efforts to combat violence by including a focus on those most likely to cause trouble or end up as victims.

The city has allocated $7.5 million for Youth Violence Intervention Program Grants. It also last year updated its Youth Violence Intervention and Prevention Strategic Plan, setting a goal of reducing the number of violent crimes committed by Akron residents ages 1324 by 10% over the next five years.

About $3.1 million of that grant money has been awarded to organizations designed to prevent violence, many of which involve mentoring programs for school-age children and/or young adults.

“The city has been funding a number of organizations largely focused on prevention,” Malik said. “There are a couple that are focused on on intervention, but most are focused on prevention.”

He said the recipients awarded their grants under the program are going through a process of evaluation as the city looks “at how those groups are functioning,” Malik said.

Identifying the people most at risk

“We’re also hoping to launch a new initiative ... particularly focused on the 100 to 200 people who are most likely to be involved in violence in our community and really trying to intervene in in those lives to otherwise hold people accountable,” Malik said.

Malik said the plan to increase intervention requires identifying the individuals most at risk as opposed to the broad-based prevention strategy many mentorship programs are focused on.

“When you look at the data, this is city of 187,000 people,” Malik said. “It’s not that there’s 187,000 people involved in violence. There’s a small − and this is true in every city in America − there’s a small number of people who are most likely statistically to be involved in shootings and also to be victims of shootings, and they’re both perpetrators and victims of shootings.”

He said police know which individuals they come in contact with repeatedly − those who have long criminal records and are at high risk of being involved in violence in some way.

“We want to focus our resources on those folks,” he said. “We’re trying to intervene in people’s lives, trying to get people help, trying to get people a job, trying to get people some support, but also to let people know that if we identify them as having engaged in violence or having, you know, attempted or committed a murder, we’re going to hold you fully accountable.”

“We’re going to focus on on prevention and intervention from a community standpoint, and then from a law enforcement standpoint, we’re going to focus on on seizing guns and holding people accountable.”

He said the city’s new initiative may follow examples of similar programs in place in other parts of the country but did not have details.

“That’s something that we’re working on right now and we hope to have more news on that within the next few months,” Malik said.