The number of homicides in Atlanta dropped to 135 in 2023, down from 171 the previous year, the city’s police chief said Thursday.
Other violent crimes, including rape and aggravated assault, were also down last year, with the number of rape cases being cut in half.
But Chief Darin Schierbaum said the work doesn’t stop now. The crime-fighting efforts, made a priority by Mayor Andre Dickens, will continue to focus on getting guns off the streets by targeting gangs and drug dealers.
“This isn’t an end, this is a beginning,” Schierbaum said. “We’re going to continue to fight crime. And we’re very fortunate that every day that we fight crime, we’re doing it in partnership with our mayor.”
In 2022, the number of homicides in the city of Atlanta ticked up for the third year in a row, ending at 171, 10 more than the previous year and the highest tally since 1996. It wasn’t a problem unique to Atlanta as cities around Georgia and across the county also reported spikes in homicides.
Authorities cited unrest sparked by the pandemic and outrage over the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis as some of the causes of the widespread increase in violence.
The decline in violence also has been a nationwide trend.
“It is historic. It’s the largest one-year decline,” Jeff Asher, a national crime analyst, told ABC News. “It’s cities of every size, it’s the suburbs, it’s rural counties, tiny cities, it’s large cities. It’s really a national decline.”
The country is expected to see the homicide rate drop nearly 13%, meaning about 2,000 fewer people were killed than in 2022, ABC News reported.
Through September, Atlanta had the third-largest drop in homicides among major U.S. cities, Dickens said.
The number of shooting incidents dropped 18% in 2023, Schierbaum said. Officers helped get more than 3,000 guns off the streets, he said.
Other violent crimes were also down, including rape and aggravated assault. The two areas that saw an increase were shoplifting and theft of motor vehicles — a trend also seen across the country.
Combatting crime has been a key focus of Dickens’ “Year of the Youth” initiatives, including a midnight basketball league and activities at At-Promise Centers.
Credit: Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason.Getz@ajc.com
In 2022, a total of 19 children and teens were homicide victims in Atlanta, according to police department data. Just weeks into 2022, one of the year’s youngest victims, 6-month-old Grayson Matthew Fleming-Gray was in his car seat when his mother’s car was struck in a drive-by shooting. Later in the year, a shooting days after Thanksgiving killed a 12-year-old and 15-year-old and led to several teenagers being charged with murder.
Dickens said Thursday the city saw a 46% reduction in 2023 in youth homicides.
“One is still one too many,” he said. “We know that there were still unfortunate deaths that have occurred.”
But the age group of 17 to 24 is still seeing a high rate of gun violence, Dickens said. Two days into the new year, a teen was killed and two others were injured in a triple shooting at a southwest Atlanta home, police said.
Officers were called just before 2:15 p.m. to the 300 block of Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard in the Mechanicsville neighborhood. Investigators believe Montravious Pitts, 18, was targeted in the shooting, which remains under investigation.
“When a citizen of this city or a visitor is a victim of a crime, an entire family is impacted, the neighborhood is impacted,” Schierbaum said. “Because of the work of our homicide investigators and those that support them, the clearance rate for homicides that occurred in the city last year is 79%.”
Schierbaum said the national average for closing homicide cases is 61%.
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