RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — A new report released by the City of Richmond gives insight into gun violence trends across the city.
Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney’s office released the “Gun Violence Prevention and Intervention Annual Report” (GVPI) for 2023 on Wednesday. The report details crime statistics for this year compared to last year, and provides an overview of the efforts of city officials, local organizations and government agencies to improve public safety.
As of Oct. 31, the city has seen a 75% decrease in homicides with victims under 18 and a 29% reduction in non-fatal shootings. Richmond Police Chief Rick Edwards said these downward trends were made possible by officers moving fast to catch criminals, working with residents and utilizing new technology at the department’s disposal.
“Arresting an offender quickly is really key for us, because we make sure that the community knows that we take it seriously and that they don’t have to retaliate on their own,” Edwards said. “We’re working to make quality arrests. We’re working to partner with our community, and we’re leveraging technology so that we’re more effective and more efficient than probably ever before.”
Edwards told 8News the most impactful strategy the department has used to tackle crime this year has been to address the root cause of it. One of the ways they did that was with “Richmond community mediators,” formally known as “violence interrupters.”
“Those are the individuals that meet with members of our youth and talk to them in the schools or talk to them at a hospital or talk to them at some neutral location, tries to show them a different way and that there’s a different path other than using violence,” Edwards said.
According to the report, the city has also seen a 9% decrease in overall violent crimes. But there’s one area where 8News confirmed the city has seen an uptick compared to 2022 –homicides with victims of all ages. There have been 58 so far this year compared to 57 at this time last year.
“Last year was an exceptionally low number for murder,” Edwards said. “But the previous year [2021], we were at 90, so we’re going to come in well under that.”
Edwards said the department is always working on ways to keep crime down and has plans to continue doing so in the new year.
“Every day, we’re striving to lower those numbers,” said Edwards. “Because while we track them on a spreadsheet, and we look at them as data, they’re actually real people and real families that are destroyed with every one of those numbers that we talked about.”
The full GVPI report can be found here.
