Philly saw a historic drop in murders in 2024. What changed?

Philadelphia in 2024 experienced its largest annual decline in homicides in at least a half-century — a stunning reversal after three years of record-setting violence that devastated families and left thousands of men, women, and children struck by bullets.

According to police, 268 people were slain in the city last year — a 35% reduction compared with the year before, when more than 400 people were killed.

Just as remarkable, the decline came just three years after the city recorded 562 annual homicides — its highest-ever level of violence.

The homicide tally in 2024, by contrast, was the fourth-lowest since 1970.

Shootings have also plummeted. Police recorded fewer than 1,090 shootings last year, the lowest level in a decade, and on pace to rival the lowest rates since at least 2007.

The reasons for the decline are difficult to pinpoint, as was the case when violence began surging in 2020. Interviews with law enforcement officials, community leaders, and academic experts reveal a variety of potential factors for last year’s historic drop, including a continued return to normal life post-pandemic, an increase in arrests of perpetrators of violent crimes, and the continued expansion of grassroots community programs.

Violence has also been waning across the country, with homicides nationally poised to drop by unprecedented levels for the third year in a row. Killings in 2024 declined by about 40% in New Orleans, 30% in Washington, D.C., and 28% in Baltimore, according to AH Datalytics, a research organization that tracks crime rates across the nation.

Some observers in Philadelphia believe the city’s unrelenting pandemic-era violence — which left more than 1,500 people dead in three years — may have played a role in last year’s drop-off. Many feuds between gangs have burned out, some said, in part because potential shooters have been either arrested or killed.

Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel said that the department’s data analysts sought to study the theory last year, but that it was “very, very challenging,” because doing so involved revisiting old cases — some of which remain unsolved — for potential connections to suspects who are now dead or incarcerated for other crimes.

John Roman, who runs a public safety and justice program at the University of Chicago’s research organization NORC, said attrition among potential gunmen could be one contributing factor. But he also cited the widespread, post-pandemic return of services that often serve as de facto deterrents to crime, such as in-person schooling, after-school or weekend programs, counseling, probation visits, court services, and more.

“There isn’t one answer here,” Roman said. “This is complicated, and we’re going to be figuring this out for a while.”

» READ MORE: What community leaders think led to Philly’s drop in shootings, and what’s needed to sustain it long-term

For the families of last year’s victims, there is little to celebrate. Every homicide creates a ripple effect, with grief and trauma making it difficult for those left behind to sleep and to work. People who are shot and survive are often forced to navigate new disabilities, long-term pain, and mental health challenges.

“We get into this mode of ‘Let’s celebrate, crime has dropped,’” said Andre Simms, executive director of DayOneNotDayTwo, a North Philly youth mentorship group. “A lot of people died. A lot of people got locked up.”

Among those killed in 2024: Amber Lewis, 17, shot at a party in North Philadelphia. Kemo Vaughn, 51, and Tahira Wynn, 28, gunned down in their car. Melody Rivera, 29, killed by her ex-boyfriend and buried in a shallow grave, according to police.

Kameenah Bronzell, 18, who runs a memorial page for young gun violence victims on Instagram called PhillyAngelsss, has a unique perspective on the issue: Fewer young people have been killed this year, and so fewer families have reached out to her for help.

“But I still post the ones who are still on the page, for their birthdays, their anniversaries,” she said. “People are still gone.”

Until 2024, the city’s largest single-year drop in homicides was in 2013, when 246 people were killed — 25% fewer than the year before, according to an Inquirer analysis of police statistics.

In most other years, the number of homicides fluctuated by a few percentage points, without huge year-to-year swings, the analysis shows.

Bethel was a deputy commissioner during the last drastic decline and was among a group of law enforcement leaders who at the time credited targeted enforcement with helping identify, monitor, and promise consequences for potential shooters. (That initiative, called Focused Deterrence, was criticized by some for being too heavy-handed, and it ultimately fizzled out amid city leadership changes.)

Now, as the city’s top cop, Bethel said investigators and patrol officers were again focusing their attention on areas of the city that have traditionally experienced high levels of violence — including Kensington, North Philadelphia, and parts of West Philadelphia. Shootings in many of those neighborhoods have dropped to levels not seen in decades.

While Bethel said police would remain targeted in their approach, he acknowledged that some of the recent decline in violence — which began in 2022 before accelerating last year — might simply be an unexplainable retreat to more typical trends after a prolonged, sustained crisis period.

“If you look at the last 20, 30 years here — 560-plus homicides, that’s a lot,” Bethel said. “And so you knew something had to change.”

Beyond homicides and shootings, robberies with a gun were also down by more than a third in 2024, police statistics show. Residential and commercial burglaries declined, and rapes were down by about 1%.

Meanwhile, arrests in violent crimes, including for homicides and nonfatal shootings, increased, and although officers made more vehicle and pedestrian stops, they recovered fewer guns, according to police data.

Beyond policing, the city’s tools to address violence have expanded compared with a decade ago. And some observers credit additional programming — including the funding of grassroots organizations — with contributing to the recent drop.

Kendra Van de Water, cofounder of YEAH Philly, a West Philly-based violence-reduction program for young people in the criminal justice system, has seen job and housing opportunities expand in the last two years. She said the city’s approach to reaching young people hasn’t really changed, but the work of community-based organizations has become more widespread.

“A lot of young people are involved in more productive things. They have their needs met, they see more opportunity,” she said. “They’re sick of being in and out of placement and jail.”

Teenagers continue to make up a growing portion of the city’s shooting victims. Last year, 12.5% of shooting victims were under 18 — up from 9% last year and nearly double the proportion from 10 years ago.

Mayor Cherelle L. Parker said city support for community-based organizations — which began under her predecessor, Jim Kenney, and which she supported while on City Council — is “at the foundation” of her administration’s effort to reduce crime.

Still, funding for those programs is not permanent — and some organizers say it’s difficult to plan for the future without knowing what the city might choose to fund each year.

Others note that long-standing contributors to violence — including the city’s high poverty levels, concentrated unemployment, underfunded schools, and thriving drug markets — remain largely unchanged.

“This is a generational fight,” said Simms, of DayOneNotDayTwo. “We really got to attack the root causes.”

Roman, the public policy expert, agreed, saying the goal for leaders across the country should be to continue working to address violence by “getting more resources into places that don’t have enough.”

“As long as the risks that cause violence remain in place, there’s going to be a short-term reduction in shootings, but long-term, the prospects are no better than they were before,” he said. “It’s all about the underlying risk factors and creating communities where people have opportunities, and that’s been missing in some Philadelphia neighborhoods for decades.”

Staff writer Dylan Purcell and news researcher Ryan W. Briggs contributed to this article.