Nathaniel Rosenberg photo
Police Chief Jacobson (right): “We went to nine less funerals this year."
NHPD data
Homicides and gunshots in New Haven fell by more than 30 percent last year, mirroring a nationwide trend of a post-pandemic drop in gun violence — even as the city saw a year-over-year jump in nonfatal shootings.
The overall decline in gun violence was the focus of a 2024 crime stats wrap-up hosted at police headquarters on Tuesday by Police Chief Karl Jacobson and Mayor Justin Elicker.
Last year’s 14 homicides and 182 gunshots are the lowest numbers since 2019, and represent 39 and 34 percent declines from 2023, respectively. More generally, they seem to represent a return to the lower violent crime numbers of the mid-2010s, before all crime spiked nationwide during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“I would say big picture, we should feel proud because we have made a lot of progress, and it is not time for us to celebrate because we have a lot more work to do,” Elicker said. The mayor concluded his remarks by naming each of the 14 homicide victims in the city last year.
Click here to read the police department’s 2024 crime stat summary in full.
Jacobson credited the decreased homicides to myriad factors: greater usage of license plate readers and cameras, increased and more effective community outreach programs, and a sustained focus on at-risk youth through programs like Project Longevity and the department’s Police Activity League. “It’s not one thing, it’s a lot of different things [working],” Elicker added.
For Pina Violano, a professor of nursing and the director of community engagement at Quinnipiac University, as well as a co-founder of the anti-violence nonprofit Swords to Plowshares, a factor in the decrease in homicides is “more dollars” committed to gun violence prevention, especially coming from the state.
Violano highlighted the grants distributed by the state legislature’s Commission on Gun Violence Intervention and Prevention, which was established in 2022, as an example of greater state investment in local violence prevention.
One of the groups that received a state grant is the New Haven-based Connecticut Violence Intervention Program, whose executive director, Leonard Jahad, credited the funds for allowing the group to hire more staff. Jahad estimated that they hired enough Violence Prevention Professionals (VPP), to reduce the ratio of at-risk youth served by each VPP from 25:1 to 13:1.
On the whole, Jahad said CTVIP had a “very good year compared to other years, but a very challenging November and December,” because of the killings of teenage friends Uzziah Shell and Daily Jackson within weeks of each other.
Jahad noted that preventing retaliation for the killings was a large part of reducing homicides, and said the group had successfully worked with NHPD to reallocate several people they deemed to be in danger out of the city.
Violano also praised Jacobson for doing a “phenomenal” job of ensuring NHPD prioritizes community engagement.
“They’re in the communities where they belong, they’re not in their cars,” she said. “I don’t think you could understate how much work that they do to build those relationships.”
At Tuesday’s press conference, both Elicker and Jacobson focused on the decrease in gunshots as much as the drop in homicides as proof of better gun violence prevention. The mayor noted that the city was somewhat “lucky” that they did not see more deaths with the uptick in people shot.
“That’s the number we want to see go down,” Jacobson said of gunshots. “That’s the number that’s really going to go forward in the future and give us better gun violence numbers.”
Violano, who previously worked as the violence prevention coordinator at Yale New Haven Hospital, attributed the decrease in fatal shootings, even as the number of nonfatal shootings increased, to the training in tourniquet use NHPD officers receive, as well as the quality of care provided at the hospital’s trauma centers.
Motor vehicle thefts, a hot-button topic in the city, also declined by 15 percent to 1,033 from a peak of 1,219 in 2023, though the number of thefts is still up dramatically, 43 percent, since 2020. Thefts from car break-ins are also up slightly.
Jacobson credited the recently established regional task force on the issue with cutting down on the number of thefts, even while he acknowledged there are still more than the NHPD would like.
Focusing on 2025, the chief said that his “number one focus” is recruiting more officers, now that the police union ratified its contract with the city. He also stressed how his broader goal was getting more officers on neighborhood-base walking and bicycle beats, both through higher staffing numbers and freeing up officers with artificial intelligence-generated police reports.
Elicker also highlighted the impending rollout of red light and speed cameras, as well as plans to support efforts in the state legislature to increase penalties for street takeovers.
“We went to nine less funerals this year. Nine less people had to die in the city,” Jacobson said. “That’s important, and I want to make sure we go to less funerals next year.”