{"id":479205,"date":"2025-12-30T04:14:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-30T04:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/479205\/"},"modified":"2025-12-30T04:14:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T04:14:09","slug":"whats-behind-philadelphias-historic-drop-in-homicides-in-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/479205\/","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s behind Philadelphia&#8217;s historic drop in homicides in 2025 ?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao MvWXB TjIXL aGjvy ebVHC \">PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) &#8212; With just days left in the year, 2025 is shaping up to be one for the history books: Philadelphia is on track to record its lowest homicide total in more than four decades.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">&#8220;Lower numbers don&#8217;t mean the work is done. It means the work is working,&#8221; said Adam Geer, the city&#8217;s chief public safety director.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Through Dec. 28, there have been 218 homicides in the city &#8211; a drop of nearly 17% from the same period last year. Compare that to 2021, the most violent year on record in Philadelphia, when there were 555 homicides during the same period.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">That&#8217;s a 60% decrease from the peak.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \"><strong class=\"vtkaO \">RELATED | <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/6abc.com\/post\/watch-6abc-action-news-special-philadelphia-crime-safer-city-crisis-comeback\/17958966\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Watch the Action News special &#8216;A Safer City: From Crisis to Comeback&#8217; <\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Watch the Action News special &#8216;A Safer City: From Crisis to Comeback&#8217;<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">&#8220;There&#8217;s no question that it&#8217;s a relief to us. What I hope more is that it is a relief to our communities that have been ravaged by gun violence,&#8221; Geer said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">He credited the decline to several factors, including millions of dollars invested in community organizations through a coordinated effort from the mayor&#8217;s office, as well as strong police work.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Former Philadelphia police officer Maureen Rush agrees.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">&#8220;It&#8217;s good old-fashioned police work, both patrol and detectives,&#8221; said Rush, who spent nearly two decades with the department before leading the Penn Police Department for 27 years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Rush said beefed-up forensics and shooting investigation teams are helping solve crimes, but she also pointed to a national trend of falling crime rates. Keeping that trend going will be critical in the new year, she added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC eTIW sUzSN \">&#8220;We have 2026 events coming up. It&#8217;s even more important to keep the trend going and to keep the numbers down because we are having people from around the world coming to Philadelphia,&#8221; Rush said.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright \u00a9 2025 WPVI-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) &#8212; With just days left in the year, 2025 is shaping up to be one for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":479206,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[217122,5229,1448,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-479205","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-217122","9":"tag-america","10":"tag-pa","11":"tag-pennsylvania","12":"tag-philadelphia","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115806579284787826","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}