Philly’s gun violence declined in 2023. It still remains at levels well above the recent past

Philadelphia will soon have a new mayor, a new police commissioner, and dozens of new employees in key parts of city government.

All will inherit a gun violence crisis that is at an unusual crossroads: Shootings are plummeting, but they’re also still at levels well above recent historical norms.

The number of homicides in the city in 2023, for example, is down about 20% compared with last year, police statistics show — mirroring a decline in violence nationally and rivaling the largest single-year declines in Philadelphia over the last 60 years.

Still, with more than 400 people killed in 2023, the number of slayings remains near the highest level in recent city history. Prior to the pandemic — when the homicide rate hit record heights — the city had recorded more than 400 annual homicides just once in two decades.

Nonfatal shootings are on a similar trajectory. The number of people who were shot and survived this year decreased by nearly 30%, according to city statistics.

But with more than 1,200 wounded victims, including a rising number of children, the annual tally is higher than any pre-pandemic year since at least 2015.

The crisis has continued to overwhelmingly victimize people of color — nearly 80% of those who were shot in the city this year were Black, data show. And despite reductions in some neighborhoods that have traditionally seen high levels of violence, gunfire continues to be largely concentrated in neighborhoods long deprived of resources and with residents who are mostly Black or Hispanic.

Nicole Miller was among those forced to deal with the fallout from gun violence this year. The last time she saw her son Michael, 23, was in October, when he left her house in Olney to go meet a friend. She was at work, but watched him leave through her Ring camera on her front door.

Now, the only way she can see Michael is to watch his old TikTok videos or look at photos of him on her phone. He was fatally shot in Queen Village in a case that remains unsolved. The killing has devastated her relatives and left reminders of her son everywhere; his dog sometimes runs to greet a visitor at the door, Miller said, but will quickly retreat back upstairs after realizing that it isn’t Michael.

“No one should have to worry about their sons when they walk out the door and if they’re ever going to come back,” she said.

Still, violence is falling in more than just Philadelphia. Jeff Asher, an independent criminologist who studies national crime data, wrote in early December that murder had declined across the country by nearly 13% this year, and had dropped in nearly three-quarters of the more than 175 cities with publicly available data. Homicides remained above pre-2019 levels, he wrote, but were falling “likely at one of the fastest rates of decline ever recorded.”

Overall violent crime — a category that also includes rapes, assaults, and robberies — has also fallen by 7% in Philadelphia this year, police statistics show, although some other crimes have skyrocketed. Auto thefts, for example, have exploded, reaching their highest level since at least 2006.

City officials are quick to acknowledge that the decline in gunfire this year does not mean that the efforts to address it are over. Interim Police Commissioner John Stanford said he believes the department will continue pursuing effective patrol and investigative strategies under incoming commissioner Kevin Bethel, a department veteran and most recently the head of safety for the school district.

Stanford also credited a departmental effort that began in January 2023 to shift more patrol officers and new recruits into four key districts covering large swaths of Kensington and North Philadelphia, among other neighborhoods. Shootings in those four districts — traditional drivers of the city’s violence — combined to decline by about 33%, police statistics show.

District Attorney Larry Krasner, meanwhile, said he believes the sustained reopening of society after the pandemic has allowed schools, jobs, and organized activities for young people to once again serve as “basic prevention” tools. He also said law enforcement has sought to improve some of its capabilities amid the pandemic and the gun violence crisis, including police establishing a unit to exclusively investigate non-fatal shootings, and authorities securing some additional funding for enhanced forensics analysis.

“So it’s not just that stuff is back to normal,” Krasner said. “Stuff is back to normal in better ways, more thoughtful, data-informed, evidence-based ways when it comes to modern enforcement.”

Philadelphia officials have also touted the tens of millions of dollars in spending they have allocated for a broad array of initiatives they have cast as anti-violence work, including programs designed to provide services or intervention to those at risk of being shot or shooting someone, and providing grants to community-based organizations.

And although questions were raised this year about the latter program’s effectiveness — John Solomon, a community advocate, said he believes such efforts can take time to bear fruit but have the ability to impact lives. He was shot as a teen, and then spent time in prison for shooting someone. Now, he says, many Black-led groups like the one he runs, called Endangered Kind, are doing their part to mentor and support young people even in the face of ongoing violence.

“It takes time for a decline to happen,” Solomon said, adding: “I think that’s what the people need to see — some kind of progress, some kind of hope. ... There’s still a ton of work to do before we get to that point of feeling safe.”

Criminologists and other experts have long cautioned against viewing any single initiative or branch of violence prevention as the sole method for addressing the issue. Still, if comprehensive answers are difficult to pinpoint, interviews with city and police officials, community members, and data analysis offer some insights into how gun violence continued to impact the city this year.

Almost a year ago, Mayor Jim Kenney and then-Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw announced that the department was reassigning 100 officers — most in administrative roles — to street patrols in four districts where violence is highest.

Stanford said in a recent interview that the plan began coming together last fall, after Outlaw shook up her top command staff and they began re-examining where officers were typically deployed.

Within a few months, Stanford said, nearly three dozen other commanders would be moved into new posts across the city, and the department focused on adding resources to what he called “core four” districts — the 22nd, 24th, 25th, and 39th — where he said more than 40% of the city’s violence had occurred. The sprawling districts span much of North Philadelphia and beyond, covering territory from the Delaware River to the Schuylkill and across areas such as Kensington, Temple University, Hunting Park, and the communities bisected by Roosevelt Boulevard.

This year, police statistics show, shootings in each of those four districts are down by at least 20% through mid-December, the most recently available data. And in the 39th — which covers an area west of Broad Street and north of Lehigh Avenue — that drop was about 40%.

Still, the plunge was not limited to those districts. Shootings declined in the majority of the city’s 21 police districts as of the last week of December, police statistics show.

And there were nine districts in which at least 100 people were shot in 2022. All of them were poised to report decreases this year.

One troubling trend has persisted even as the city sees an overall reduction in gun violence: Bullets continue to strike young people.

More than 900 people aged 17 or younger have been shot in Philadelphia since 2019. And although the number dropped considerably this year, it remained significantly higher than before the pandemic.

In addition, as of mid-December, there had been more shooting victims aged 13 or younger this year than since at least 2015, data show.

Among the victims was a 4-year-old boy from South Philadelphia, one of five people shot after gunmen sprayed dozens of bullets down his block during an evening cookout in June. The boy was drawing on the sidewalk in front of his grandmother’s home when a stray bullet struck him in the abdomen.

“I looked out my window, and I just saw the little boy, tucked between the cars,” said Monica Green, a resident of the block. She said a man scooped the child, and screamed for help.

“The little boy didn’t make a noise, his eyes were just wide open,” Green said. “He was just strong.”

The child is now paralyzed from the waist down, and navigates his block in a small wheelchair.

After police saw a period this summer in which multiple young children were shot, district police captains prioritized enforcing truancy and curfews, said Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore. He said officials are also monitoring social media more closely to know when large gatherings and parties are being planned so officers can mitigate any issues there.

Still, 22 children were killed in homicides this year, including L.J. Williams, struck by stray bullets on his 12th birthday, and Randy Mills, a 15-year-old shot while riding home on a SEPTA bus.

The vast majority of victims, though, are Black men in their 20s.

Such as Jordan Hayward, 21, an aspiring firefighter; Rahmeer Jackson, 20, a talented chess player; and Isiah Brown, 22, who enjoyed a game of Scrabble.

For all of their loved ones, the pain of gun violence remains long after the shooting. Such is the case for Nicole Miller and her family.

After she lost her son Michael to the October shooting in Queen Village, Miller, 44, said, “I kind of feel like my life stopped. ... I feel like I’m just floating trying to get through a day, trying to get through a moment.” Her husband, Michael Miller Sr. — Michael’s father — said every family member has had a different ritual with him taken away, whether going for a daily walk or out to lunch.

And Michael Miller’s sister, Anieka, 27, said she didn’t realize how hard it would be to suddenly lose simple things, such as FaceTime calls, or walks to the corner store, or being let into the house by her brother if she left her keys behind.

“It’s just little stuff that you miss that happened every day that’s not happening anymore,” she said.

Siobhan Mayrant, Michael’s aunt, said she’s been writing letters to anyone who might be able to have an impact on the case — police, prosecutors, even possible witnesses — in an attempt to bring a measure of justice to her family and keep his memory alive.

And because the pace of the violence is so constant across the city, she said, she knows her family is not alone in their grief.

“Every single day you wake up, there’s somebody else being killed,” Mayrant said. “Another family is going through the same thing that we’re going through. They’ve got to bury their son or they’ve got to bury their nephew. And why?”