Boston saw a notable decline in shootings in 2023 -- actually reaching record low levels -- in an encouraging trend that Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox thanks the public for its role in.
There were 144 total shooting victims in Boston in 2023, down from 180 in 2022 and 274 in 2020. According to Commissioner Cox, 2023 had the lowest number of people shot since the Boston Regional Intelligence Center began collecting data in 2005.
The trend in Boston mirrors that of many other major cities in the United States, including Detroit, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.
"I know it takes a lot of work, a lot of hard work to do that and a lot of partners to do that," Cox said. "We've been asking the public to help participate and understand that it's not just a public safety issue, it's a community issue. And they've been getting more involved and they've been very helpful."
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Homicides have decreased too, from 40 in 2022 to 35 in 2023.
"We went through a period certainly with COVID and just the period associated with it where maybe there [was] a break between us, the public, in a lot of ways," Cox said. "But we're really trying to mend those those ties. And I think we're, you know, receiving the benefit of actually establishing, you know, a true partnership with the public like we had before in the past."
While Cox was happy with the direction things were headed, he said there is still a lot of work ahead to continue to reduce gun violence.
"This is the theory of law of diminishing returns," he said. "The lower the number it gets, the more difficult it is to decrease it. But it just means we have to work even harder...And we're trying you know, we are trying to be as inventive as possible."
According to national crime analysts, preliminary data from around 200 cities shows a historic decline in murder rates. The public's perception of crime in America, analysts say, isn't consistent with the actual data.
"I think it makes people constantly scared that everything is getting worse, and it makes it so that policymakers and researchers and just average people that are involved in things happening in the streets, in their communities, are unable to learn the lessons of success, which are arguably more important than the lessons of failure," Jeff Asher with AH Datalytics said.
Back in Boston, Cox said the solve rate of non-fatal shootings lags behind the solve rate for homicides, something he says needs addressing.
"That's something that we probably need to work on and we will work on, hopefully with creating a task force of some type to deal with our nonfatal shootings," Cox said.
Other goals that the commissioner has for the new year include building more trust in the public and filling officer vacancies.
