Murders, shootings at record lows in Boston, officials say

City officials took a quick bow today in announcing the news that the 24 murders recorded in Boston so far this year are the lowest homicide numbers in the city dating to 1957 and that shootings and other gun crimes are also far lower than even just a few years ago.

Last year at this point, Boston had had 36 murders. The city so far has seen 129 people shot this year, compared to 139 last year - and a five year average of 189.

"The city has never been safer, period," Police Commissioner Michael Cox said at a press conference at BPD headquarters today.

But Cox, Mayor Wu, Isaac Yablo, a senior city advisor for public safety, emphasized they're not declaring a victory lap, that far more work remains to push those numbers even lower.

"One murder is too many," Cox said. "Any crime is too much."

Still, Cox said the overall decline in violent-crime stats, coupled with an increase in the number of recruits coming out of the BPD academy - although the department is still short roughly 200 officers - has let BPD begin to focus on other "quality of life" crimes, through a new series of "community intervention" strike teams aimed at hitting problem areas, most recently on Boston Common and at the South Bay Mall.

Cox added BPD is now working with small businesses across the city on what he said is an exploding problem of "organized crime syndicates" running large-scale shoplifting runs - made possible as violent crime goes down, freeing up BPD time for tackling other problems.

Cox said that violent crime overall in Boston is down 2% this year over last year. He acknowledged that the dramatic decline in murder has been accompanied by increases in aggravated assault, both in cases of domestic violence and other attacks.

Cox, Wu and Yablo pointed to several steps the city has taken to try to reduce violent crime, including increases in youth jobs and programming at city community centers aged at teens who might be headed towards violence. Wu said the city provided summer jobs for some 10,000 Boston teens this past summer.

Yablo praised three programs at the Boston Public Health Commission that work with specific teens and young men to try to steer them from gun violence. He also praised work by numerous private organizations, including the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute, Mothers for Justice and Equality and local hospitals with their own violence-intervention programs for working intensely with at-risk young people to steer them away from violence.

Like Cox, though, he said the work is far from over.

"We cannot rest well until we are at zero," he said. "That is our goal. We won't stop until we get to zero."

Wu added that there is one problem Boston alone will have trouble solving: The ease with which guns get into Boston, both from states where gun purchases are easy and from 3D-printed "ghost guns."

Major crimes in Boston for 2023 and 2024, broken down by type and by police district.

Note: BPD says the city has actually seen 23 murders to date this year; the 24 number includes a case in which somebody who was attacked in a previous year died this year.

Watch the press conference: