Decline in homicides in ’23 ‘meaningful progress’

Anti-violence efforts, gun law changes contributing factors

After a 20% drop in Baltimore homicides last year, Mayor Brandon Scott said Wednesday that his administration would carry 2023’s momentum forward and work on “sustained, long-term” reductions in violent crime.

Flanked by more than a dozen city officials and community group leaders, Scott said last year’s decline in homicides and slight decline in nonfatal shootings is not cause for celebration, even if it is “meaningful progress.”

The city is poised, rather, to push its work forward to combat the “disease of gun violence” plaguing Baltimore communities, said Scott, a Democrat running for reelection this year in a primary race where public safety is expected to play a pivotal role.

“Now’s not the time to allow those with personal agendas to take us back to the old, broken ways of the past,” he said. “Baltimoreans’ lives and the future of our city are on the line, and as this coalition showcases, no single entity can do it alone.”

The city’s 263 homicides last year kept Baltimore below the 300 mark for the first time since 2015 and marked a roughly 20% drop from 2022. Cities across the nation are expected to see reductions in the range of 10% to 12%, according to Daniel Webster, who studies gun violence as a distinguished research scholar for the Center for Gun Violence Solutions at the the Johns Hopkins University. Contributing factors to Baltimore’s recent success could be a combination of anti-violence initiatives such as Safe Streets and the city’s expanding Group Violence Reduction Strategy, known as GVRS, alongside a new prosecutor’s administration, statewide changes to gun laws and even a better job by police of apprehending shooters, Webster said last month.

To Scott, the progress is a testament to his administration’s comprehensive violence reduction strategy, crafted in 2021. That plan called for nearly tripling violence intervention programs, to reduce homicides by 15% annually for five years. It also laid out the city’s plans to implement GVRS, a strategy attempted previously in Baltimore.

It took time for that plan to take effect, Scott acknowledged Wednesday

“We’re finally seeing those efforts paying off and saving lives,” he said.

Scott’s principal Democratic challenger in his reelection campaign is former Mayor

Sheila Dixon, who has made crime a centerpiece of her campaign. She’s said previously that, even if violent crime is declining, residents feel unsafe. She’s also pointed to a rash of car thefts in Baltimore and across the country.

Council President Nick Mosby, also a Democrat running for reelection, called last year’s totals a “historic reduction,” but acknowledged the “calamity” of more than 260 lives lost in the city. Mosby emphasized, too, that violent crime reductions were thanks to the work of community partners “doing the hard work” of reaching residents and connecting to the city’s young men.

“If we’re serious about not just standing here for this historic reduction, but serious about sustainable, consistent reduction of crime and public safety in our city, then we’ll continue to do the hard work,” Mosby said.

In 2024, the city’s Group Violence Reduction Strategy is expected to expand into the Central and Eastern police districts, followed by the Southern by about this summer. Those expansions into additional police districts have been delayed, which officials have said was at least partly the effect of redistricting that went into effect in July.

In the last two years, 132 people in the Western and Southwestern districts have accepted the offer of services under the GVRS model. Those participants have seen a revictimization rate of 4.3% and a recidivism rate of 5%, said Stephanie Mavronis, the interim leader of the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement, known as MONSE.

Meanwhile, on the enforcement side of the strategy, there were 130 GVRS-related arrests made in 2023, Mavronis said. There also are three ongoing investigations in the two districts where the strategy has been implemented.

“Not only is GVRS saving lives, keeping people safe, alive and free, it’s directly playing a role in driving down overall violence,” Mavronis said.

Other 2024 goals for the work MONSE oversees, Mavronis said, include: strengthening Safe Streets’ mediation work, fully launching a school-based violence intervention pilot program with the city school district, and strengthening connections with grassroots groups, hospital systems and victim service providers.

Asked how the city can reach residents who might not be feeling safer despite drops in violent crime, Scott said it’s about continuing the work.

“What you hear from us is not a celebratory tone, right?” Scott said. “We have to continue the work each and every day.”