Philadelphia’s shootings spiked during the pandemic, killing more than 500 people annually two years in a row. Now, after two straight years of declines in gun violence, the city is poised to move into a new era: With less than two months left in the year, Philadelphia is on track to have fewer homicides and nonfatal shootings than it did before the pandemic. And while the city’s drop in shootings is part of a larger national trend, no big city has seen as large a reduction in bloodshed as Philly has.
[This story also appeared in The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in America. Sign up for its newsletters here.]
As of November 12 in 2019, the year before Philadelphia and many other communities shut down schools and businesses to head off the deadly coronavirus outbreak, there were 306 homicides. On the same day this year, there had been 223 killings, a 46 percent decline from November 12, 2023, according to data from the Philadelphia Police Department. The total number of shooting victims through November 11 dropped from 1,502 last year to 956, a 36.4 percent reduction.
Nationally, homicides were down close to 18 percent in 277 cities as of this fall, according to AH Datalytics, a consulting firm that tracks and analyzes crime trends.
It’s hard to say what has caused the decline, but officials are attributing it to a combination of community and government-led violence interventions, law enforcement strategies, and the ending of COVID-19 restrictions.
Cautiously optimistic
The fact that Philadelphia is outpacing other big cities’ progress has led city leaders to be cautiously optimistic. Mayor Cherelle Parker said myriad anti-violence initiatives — including the city’s Group Violence Intervention program, which she and city officials recently announced was being expanded to include outreach to juveniles — enabled the sharp drop.
“I don’t want you to think that I’m being a Debbie Downer. I’m just overly cautious. I want to finish this,” Parker said after the announcement. “There is no one single tool. I know a lot of people want to hear, If we just do this one thing. That’s not my strategy. It’s prevention, intervention, and enforcement.”
Driving down shootings goes beyond stepped-up police deployments in high-crime areas, Parker said. It also includes non-policing initiatives, including city funding for dozens of anti-violence community organizations that provide mentoring and social services to people at risk of engaging in violence, and funding extended-day and extended-year school initiatives.
“Mental and behavioral health supports to deal with trauma, all of that is essential,” she said. “When you’re willing to do that, that helps your conflict resolution skills. Now if somebody offends you or slights you or disrespects you, you don’t feel like you have to take their life. It may sound easy to the average person, but if you didn’t grow up learning that, that is a strategy you don’t know. So I feel that the job of the government is to make sure people get connected to the tools.”
“There was a fear to walk”
The reduction in shootings has affected Philadelphians on and near the front lines of the gun crisis differently. Criminal defense attorney Berto Elmore, who specializes in defending those charged with drug and gun crimes, said more clients are coming his way, possibly because police are arresting more people for illegal gun possession.
In 2023, Philadelphia Police made 2,624 arrests for illegal gun possession, an 8.4 percent increase from the 2,404 arrests made in 2022, according to data the department provided to The Trace. This year, through November 3, police had made 2,041 illegal gun possession arrests, slightly down from 2,294 made by that time last year.
“Business is fine for criminal defense lawyers because right now there’s a lot of gun cases,” Elmore said. “I get so many phone calls about guns that it’s ridiculous.”
At the same time, he said, based on conversations with current and former clients, he senses that some young men who previously would have settled scores with guns are thinking differently. “Young people themselves are saying, Enough of this,” Elmore said. “They want to live. They see for themselves what’s going on.”
Michael Forrest, director of the Forrest-Walker Funeral Home in West Philadelphia, said that while homicide victims account for only a small percentage of his business, this year he anticipates that he’ll see even fewer homicides than the 15 he’s averaged in recent years.
The reduction in killings has been tangible and welcome, said Forrest, who credits the Parker administration. “She started speaking, and for whatever reason, I think people started to listen,” he said. “Her presence as a strong Black female kind of resonates with the issues in gun violence.”
He added: “Something had to be done. There was a fear to walk around the city. Everybody, including law-abiding citizens, went out and bought guns.”
Breaking a family curse
One of the things that was done to address escalating gun violence early in the pandemic: In 2020, the city launched the Group Violence Intervention program.
After a city agency or relative refers someone they’ve identified to be a member of a group involved in crime, the program offers help and incentives for them to change — and issues warnings if they don’t. Participants get visits from teams that include police officers, the program’s social workers, “credible messenger” community members, and mothers and other relatives of gun violence victims. A University of Pennsylvania study last year found that the program significantly reduced gun crime among many of its 276 participants.
Stanley Brown said he isn’t sure how the GVI program found him at age 21, when he was unemployed and devastated by the death of his mother. He reluctantly agreed to participate, and started setting goals. He is now 25 and, thanks to GVI, for the first time in his life, he’s employed — as a surveyor for the city’s Department of Streets.
“I was stuck between the two: streets or do better for myself,” he said. “I was born and raised in the Frankford projects. We ain’t never really have no positive role models. For me, I just wanted to break a family curse.”
A GVI pilot program is working with teens between ages 12 and 17 in one high-crime North Philadelphia police district. The program offers participants substance abuse and behavioral health counseling, family and individual therapy, workforce development, and GED and high school diploma support.
Despite the citywide decline in shootings, the work of GVI Director Deion Sumpter’s office has not slowed. Overall, Sumpter said, the adult program has built enough trust to continue reaching as many people as it did during the pandemic. Participants who found jobs, housing, and other services through GVI have been referring friends to the program, he said.
“We know the work, we know where we need to go, we know the individuals in these communities,” said Sumpter, who served three years in federal prison for armed robbery before earning an undergraduate and master’s degree in social work from Temple University.
U.S. Representative Mary Scanlon said she has seen the program’s effectiveness firsthand. “It’s just been so inspiring to be able to go out with Deion and his crew and see what they’re doing, to meet with the moms who are such an important part of this,” said Scanlon, who represents part of Southwest Philadelphia and nearby suburbs.
“Down in D.C., I have a lot of colleagues who say things like, Just get over it. Or There’s nothing we can do. It’s in someone else’s hands,” she said. “That’s not true here in Philadelphia.”
Mensah Dean is a staff writer at The Trace. Previously he was a staff writer on the Justice & Injustice team at The Philadelphia Inquirer, where he focused on gun violence, corruption and wrongdoing in the public and private sectors for five years. Mensah also covered criminal courts, public schools and city government for the Philadelphia Daily News, the Inquirer’s sister publication.
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