Richmond just reported its lowest homicide rate in decades. Is it sustainable, or just a fluke?

Richmond recorded eight homicides in 2023 — the fewest since officials started keeping track in 1971 and a seemingly remarkable transformation for a city once dubbed a “murder capital” of America.

It’s a significant drop from the 22 homicides the city recorded in 2020 and the 18 logged during both 2021 and 2022. All of those totals pale in comparison to the record 61 homicides Richmond logged in 1991, and 47 homicides in 2009, which was about nine time higher than state and national averages for that year, according to The Nation.

The success in reducing the number of killings to single digits last year has been attributed to Richmond’s Office of Neighborhood Safety, an experimental community policing model established in 2007 to help curtail the deadly street violence that the city had endured for decades. Without utilizing its police force, the safety office attempts to find the most at-risk residents and divert them from crime through peer mentoring and financial support.

Richmond’s elected officials then sought to expand that work in 2020 through a newly formed Reimagining Public Safety Community Task Force that helped allocate additional funding for more employment programs, interventions for unhoused residents and the creation of a community Crisis Response Program.

But while 2023’s record-low number of homicides is a notable milestone, Richmond has experienced significant fluctuations in violent crime over several years.

The previous record low was 11 killings in 2014, for example. But that rose again to 21 homicides the following year, along with a 15% increase in overall violent crime. Additionally, Richmond experienced an increase last year in other crimes — such as aggravated assaults and robberies — raising further questions about whether the current downward homicide trend will continue in 2024 and beyond.

But those lingering uncertainties did not stop local leaders from celebrating the most recent drop.

Councilmember Gayle McLaughlin, who has been on the Richmond City Council for more than a decade, shared a proclamation during the council’s Tuesday meeting highlighting the ongoing collaboration between police, nonprofits and other community groups since the Office of Neighborhood Safety started gaining traction in 2007.

“Violent crime has plagued Richmond in past decades, hurting many families and the reputation of our city,” McLaughlin said Tuesday. “This significant reduction has been the result of a multifaceted approach, which includes prevention and intervention efforts to address crime at its root causes and simultaneously seeking prompt and fair suppression of violent crime when it emerges.”

Declining homicide rates aren’t unique to Richmond. The trend was mirrored nationwide, with major U.S. metro areas reporting a roughly 12% decrease in homicides last year, according to an analysis of 177 cities by firm AH Datalytics.

Across the Bay in San Mateo County, the city of East Palo Alto — also known as a national “murder capital” — reported zero homicides last year.

The same can’t be said for Richmond’s neighbor Oakland, which logged 126 homicides in 2023, according to records. It was the fourth straight year of 100 or more homicides in the city. There were 123 in 2022, 134 in 2021 — a 15-year high — and 109 in 2020.

On Tuesday, the Richmond City Council said that reducing homicide rates requires more than initiatives focused solely on violent crime. Officials lauded the city’s ongoing rent-stabilization policies, recreation opportunities, cultural events and job-training programs for being crucial in creating a safe community for families, saying they were smarter than a focus on prosecution and incarceration.

“Investment in young folks — investment in trying to support people — is what pays off,” Vice Mayor Claudia Jimenez said Tuesday. In order to address the root cause of violence, she praised Richmond’s multi-pronged approach, because “there is no one thing that is the bulletproof (way) to resolve this.”