One of nation’s safest cities: Boston reports lowest homicide rate since 1957

In a public safety milestone, Boston dropped its homicide rate from 2024 to 24 murders, ranking as one of the safest big cities in the country, officials said.

There were 37 homicides in the city in 2023, 40 each in 2022 and 2021, and 56 in 2020. Boston Police Department Statistics shown

“In all my time as a police officer … the city has never been safer, period, when it comes to crime and especially violent crime,” Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox said during a news conference Friday afternoon at Boston police headquarters. .

Cox added that the 24 homicides in 2024 “appears to be the lowest since 1957” and is “by far the lowest … since the data began to be reliably tracked in 2007.”

In addition to the 33% drop in homicides citywide since 2023, shooting incidents have decreased by 14%. Overall, violent crime was down 2 percent, Cox said. And arrests have been made in more than 50 percent of homicide cases, he said.

“This is about saving lives, and this is perhaps the most important investment of all,” Mayor Michelle Wu said during the press conference.

And while not all crime rates dropped as significantly, such as aggravated assault and robbery, each of which rose 3 percent and 30 percent, respectively, over the year, officials highlighted the collaboration

“Today is not a victory lap, but a report and a reflection of the kind of results we see when we all understand the collective responsibility of communities,” he said.

Officials attributed the advances in public safety to partnerships between leadership, including city police recruitment and retention, coordinated community efforts with city and local organizations and improved communication within departments about statistics of crime

Boston’s Crime Reduction Efforts

Wu described several public safety efforts in the city since April 2022, when Boston held a national expert-led violence reduction workshop with officials from the city department, the U.S. Attorney’s Office district and various community partners.

The workshop lasted several days as a “dedicated approach to bring everyone together in the violence prevention space,” Wu said. In its conclusion, the goal was set to reduce homicide rates by 20% over the next three years.

“Of course, we hit that goal next year and have exceeded it again year after year,” Wu said.

There has now been a “regular approach” to looking at crime data, Wu said, through weekly incident review meetings led by Issac Yablo, the mayor’s senior adviser for community safety. This has been key to reducing crime rates, Wu said.

“Let’s all come together and talk about what happened, how we can do better, and how our response strategy should be shaped and developed based on what happened,” Yablo said during the press conference. .

“We don’t enter into any solution-based conversation without the most up-to-date understanding of what the problems are, where they are and who is most likely to be affected,” he said.

The mayor and Yablo gave examples of the work the community has done to support this goal. This included clarity between city departments and within its community partnerships, particularly on youth safety programs and adjustments to the police academy.

More than 10,000 young people in the city had paid summer jobs this year after a job guarantee for all Boston Public School students, Wu said. He mentioned expanded youth-oriented programs, such as the return of weekly safety meetings and community activities at various times of the day.

Wu also noted the Boston Police Academy and how it “has had the largest academy classes that Boston has seen for the past several years in a row.” The mayor said it was a sign of investments made to improve officer welfare, negotiated contracts and the city’s creation of a “sustainable lifestyle” for officers.

“Murder triangle” a “stereotype”

Boston officials dismissed the idea that homicides are concentrated in the so-called “murder triangle,” or a few neighborhoods in the city said to have higher crime rates, calling it a “stereotype.” .

The term “murder triangle” for the neighborhoods of Dorchester, Roxbury, Mattapan, Hyde Park and the South End was coined earlier this month by Reverend Kevin Peterson during an interview with Boston 25.

Peterson is a Boston-based activist and founder of the New Democracy Coalition, a nonprofit organization focused on civic life and democracy through public participation and engagement.

“As the homicide rate goes down, we still find a disproportionate amount of homicides located in what we call the ‘murder triangle,'” Peterson told the network on Dec. 6.

“I’ve lived in two of these areas,” Cox said during the news conference, “and I’ve never said it like that.”

“That said, traditionally… areas where [there’s] probably the poorer or underlying issues, you probably have some correlation with some of the violence,” Cox continued.

“But, I think it’s pretty remarkable… [that] the number of homicides we have had in the city so far is much lower than at any other time,” he said.

Peterson did not cite data on the specific homicide rates of the neighborhoods he described, but told Boston 25 he expects to see “the murder rate plummet in the ‘Triangle’ just as it has in wealthier neighborhoods and white”.

And while Boston officials on Friday gave crime statistics for the city as a whole, rather than neighborhood-by-neighborhood numbers, they were quick to do away with assigning a name like the “murder triangle” to this part of town.

“Residents don’t refer to it as the ‘murder triangle,’ nor should they… Dorchester, Roxbury [and] Mattapan produces far more positive than negative,” Yablo said.

Wu shared similar sentiments and called on the media to help “turn back stereotypes that diminish the scale and effort of residents … making their neighborhoods livable, beautiful, safe and welcoming.”

“We know that breaking these cycles of violence and trauma and poverty is really important, and that takes all of us, but we also need to recognize the full scale of the good that’s happening,” Wu said.

Challenges and looking ahead

While the low crime statistics are a success for Boston, the question of how to keep homicide rates low will remain a challenge, especially in the summer months when violence tends to increase.

“In January, we’re going to start all over again trying to get to zero,” Cox said. But with the latest statistics, he was confident that his police department will continue to “work hard” and the ability of the city’s current leadership to continue to “be as efficient as possible,” he said.

And while Yablo said planning is starting now for crimes in the summer months, Wu noted there is no “one-size-fits-all approach.” Each homicide case “requires a different kind of strategy” in cases ranging from gang-related activity to youth-involved or domestic violence, Wu said.

“Having specific strategies and knowing within that number what the driving causes are, even in specific situations on a case-by-case basis, is really important in trying to keep dragging [the homicide rate] further down,” Wu said.

The mayor called the move to reduce the city’s homicide rates a “total effort” and “the single most important investment” to stop the systemic cycle of violence.

“When we do well in reducing violent crime, we do well in everything else,” Wu said.