Rochester’s peace wave

For Rochester, 2025 was one of the safest years in the last decade and a half, city police department records show.

While the exact reason is difficult to ascertain, the numbers show that violent crime returned to pre-COVID pandemic levels, according to a Beacon analysis of Rochester Police Department data. In fact, the total of 1,187 reported incidents last year was higher—just barely—than only one other year since 2011; in 2018, 1,183 violent crimes were reported.

Meanwhile, property crime and total reported crime incidents hit a record lows in 2025.

“That’s extraordinary because (there) was a time when it seemed like those numbers were never going to start turning downward; ever upward, it seemed. And now we’re showing dramatic progress,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said at a news conference with the RPD in October, when the year’s trendline was clear. “But despite talking about these very positive numbers, you’ll never hear me say ‘mission accomplished’ because there’s always one more person out there trying to commit a crime. And that is why our job is never over.”

“We’ve been through a lot in the past four years in this administration. A lot of good, a lot of bad. But the good and the progress, I think, far outweighs the negative,” RPD chief David Smith added at the same event. “And although we’re not where we really need to be, we are a long way from what we used to be.”

The drop in crime comes even as Smith often highlights an RPD staffing gap of 100 positions, with recruitment efforts still not erasing the deficit. Mayor Malik Evans believes his approach, in tandem with law enforcement, is working, however.

That approach includes continuing to use Gun Involved Violence Elimination and other state funding to upgrade technology; ramping up enforcement through measures like the gun violence state of emergency; expanding community engagement; and focusing on employment for youth and impacted individuals.

“You can see how we have reversed the trajectory of violent crime, not just with enforcement and accountability,” Evans said at his second inaugural address last week, “but with collective empathy and shared heartbreak for lives lost or lives forever changed.”

Violent crime

The violent crime category, which includes aggravated assault, robbery, and homicide, fell by 13 percent compared to 2024, from 1,365 to 1,187. This was mainly driven by drops in both robberies and homicides.

The decline in violent crime continues a trend seen in recent years. Reports of violence sharply spiked in 2020, with homicides and firearm-related crime in particular gaining attention from the media and local government.

The 34 homicides and 162 total shootings in 2025 are on par with 2019’s pre-COVID’s totals of 36 and 172, suggesting that the city may be returning to a more baseline level. That progress is echoed in other cities across the United States. The Council on Criminal Justice found in its 2025 study of 42 American cities that most had returned to pre-pandemic levels of crime.

During the spike, experts from Rochester Institute of Technology’s Center for Public Safety Initiatives gave several possible reasons for the sudden rise. A big factor was the COVID pandemic, which made administering services and carrying out community engagement more difficult, all while many young people were stuck at home with nothing to do.

At the same time, Black Lives Matter protests and calls to “defund the police” in 2020 following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis caused a strained relationship between the community and law enforcement. There were concerns among experts of a “Ferguson effect,” where officers withdraw from proactive policing due to increased scrutiny. 

Recent years have seen some community policing efforts at the RPD. In 2024, the department released its “Community Engagement Assessment,” a Bureau of Justice Assistance-produced report with 18 recommendations for the department. The extent of progress on those recommendations, which include measures for leadership, training, community collaboration, training, and recruitment, is unclear.

The RPD’s success with community outreach has been mixed. Keith Stith, deputy chief of community engagement, left his position at the beginning of 2025 after two years on the job. RPD cited Stith as a prime example of community collaboration in bringing the Frederick Douglass HBCU Football Classic to Rochester and bringing students in to show them career opportunities.

Sammie Drayton was promoted to deputy chief of community engagement in the weeks following Stith’s departure. The hiring of Patrol Commander Michael DeSain in 2024 also has been a boon, with officers now required to carry out two 15-minute walking sessions per patrol, Smith notes.

The chief and the mayor are aligned on this front. Evans has credited his administration’s community and youth engagement approach with curtailing violence. For instance, the “Choose Wisdom” campaign run by the Office of Violence Prevention targeted youth by using real subjects speaking about nonviolence.

“We’re showing our young people that we’re here for them,” Evans said in his inauguration speech last week. “We’re showing them the best crime prevention program is a job.”

Evans made youth employment a key part of his platform in his first term, citing research that employment leads to safer streets. The cornerstone seems to be summer employment programs, which have received a dramatic funding boost since their inception in 2006, increasing from a budget of $300,000 to $2.4 million in 2024.

However, much of that recent increase stems from one-time COVID pandemic recovery efforts, primarily through the American Rescue Plan Act. The 2025-26 approved budget allocates $1.8 million for youth employment services.

Other OVP programs highlighted by the mayor include street-level and school-based outreach teams, funding support for organizations through the Rochester Peace Collective, and the Advance Peace – Peacemaker Fellowship, which guides individuals impacted by violence.

Even with this progress on violent crime, the gun violence state of emergency for Rochester remains in place; it was renewed this week. The measure grants the mayor the authority to quickly mobilize services from the RPD, the Office of Violence Prevention, and the Office of Recreation and Human Services.

For example, Chester’s Check Cashing in the JOSANA neighborhood was shut down due to gun-related incidents last summer using the state of emergency powers.

The state of emergency was first instituted in 2022 and has been renewed every month.

Property crime

Property crime, which is broken down into the categories of larceny, burglary, and motor vehicle theft, hit a new low in 2025. A total of 5,830 such crimes were reported, a drop of 17 percent from the previous year and the lowest number in RPD records dating to 2011. 

In fact, the total number of larceny and burglary incidents were at record lows, at 3,776 and 617, respectively. That means larcenies and burglaries have fallen by 50 percent and 80 percent when compared to 2011.

The Council on Criminal Justice’s 2025 report found that this was also a trend across other cities. As with violent crime, the cause is uncertain, but experts believe it could be related to the recovery from the COVID pandemic.

Motor vehicle-related crime had its own spike about two years ago when a social media craze and faulty security measures in Kia and Hyundai cars were blamed for a rapid rise in thefts.

Last year, there were 1,437 thefts reported. That number is still high compared to the average for Rochester, but much lower than at the height of this trend when, in 2023, there were 3,942 thefts reported.

After that surge, Rochester became part of a lawsuit against Kia and Hyundai alleging negligent security practices, with the manufacturers later offering free security software upgrades.

Smith has credited those prevention efforts among car manufacturers, along with increased public awareness and enforcement, with the decline in car thefts.

The Dove Initiative, a special public safety detail that went into effect last summer, was instrumental on the enforcement side. The department says 215 arrests for stolen vehicles were made through the first three quarters of 2025.

The effort partnered RPD, State Police, and the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department with several suburban agencies to increase investigations, traffic stops, and ticket and warrant issuances.

Same hot spots

While the number of incidents has fallen, crime remains concentrated in the same areas. 

The bulk of violent crime continues to occur in underserved communities of the Crescent neighborhoods in the city’s northeast, northwest, and southwest. 

The North Clinton area, located in the city’s northeast, continues to be the most identifiable hot spot for violence and firearm crimes. The neighborhood accounts for an average of 13 percent of all homicides across the city, with that figure jumping to 19 percent during the surge in violence from 2020 to 2022.

Following the shooting of an officer in that area last June, Smith says, there was an increase in patrol officers as well as those from the Community Affairs Bureau and Special Initiatives Unit. He called parts of the neighborhood “an open air drug market” with dealers operating in vacant lots.

“The North Clinton corridor is always an area where we try to do extra law enforcement,” he said in a news conference in June. “Events caused us to step things up, so we began taking more aggressive enforcement actions.

“We also began doing more walking patrols, more biking patrols, meeting more with community members, and listening to those who lived and worked in the North Clinton Avenue corridor,” Smith continued. “I myself tried to log a few hours every day down there walking with Captain (Samuel) Lucyshyn, who regularly walks in his section.”

Evans echoed his police chief, saying: “We’ve always had challenges in North Clinton. But it has been exacerbated by open air drug markets.

“You literally have people who have taken over houses, taking over city lots for the purposes of injecting poison in the community. Period. That’s your headline,” he continued. “What we’re saying is and what the neighborhood is saying is: ‘Get out of here and stop doing this.’ And we have so many options for people. We have one of the best workforce development programs in the country in Monroe County. We want to get people into those types of programs, not being disruptive.”

The eastern side of the center city was also a location with high violent crime in 2025. The area includes Parcel 5, the Strong Museum, and the Eastman Theater, and has been a focal point of the city’s recent development.

The area’s position as a host of many festivals and nightlife events could explain this trend. In fact, during the COVID pandemic, when many in-person gatherings were canceled and businesses had limited seating, violent crime numbers dipped in that area.

Notably, most violent crimes in or near downtown are either aggravated assaults or robberies rather than homicides; there was only one there in 2025.

The most likely victims of fatal and nonfatal shootings continue to be adult Black males. In 2025, 86 percent of all shooting victims were male, 76 percent were Black, and 49 percent were between the ages of 25 and 44. 

From 2000 to 2013, the average victim was younger. Black men between the ages of 15 to 24 were the most likely to be shot during those years. Since then, it has consistently been the older age band of 25 to 44.

In contrast to violent crime, property crime is primarily concentrated in the southeast part of the city. The patrol area around the University of Rochester is a high incidence area for this category with 531 incidents in 2025.

However, this is a very concentrated issue, with 59 percent of incidents reported at the university itself or at Strong Memorial Hospital and the College Town area. 

The biggest hot spots continue to be in the eastern side of the Center City and East End districts, likely due to being high-traffic areas. In 2025, the 847 reports of property crime and 471 reports of motor vehicle crime there made up 14.5 percent and 18.6 percent of the year’s total in those categories.

The East End was designated as a special event zone by the mayor in 2024, making the section a zone with age restrictions, and the ability to limit types of traffic and search bags. Evans has touted it as a tool to combat crime in the area, but some business owners have lamented the decline in business and foot traffic.

Jacob Schermerhorn is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and data journalist.

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