Tree branches that autumn has stripped of their leaves frame a winter view from Forbes Avenue of the Allegheny County Courthouse in Downtown Pittsburgh on Monday, Dec. 2, 2024
Like many U.S. cities, Pittsburgh saw homicide and nonfatal shooting rates drop in 2024 to pre-pandemic levels.
That trend did not play out, however, in the suburbs ringing the city in both Allegheny and Westmoreland counties, data shows.
"America's crime trends in 2024 were remarkably positive with an enormous decline in murder (and) a continued small but steady decline in violent crime," said Jeff Asher, a national crime-data analyst. "The nation's murder rate has largely erased the post-covid surge."
Pittsburgh police said they investigated 42 homicides last year, down 19% from 52 homicides in 2023. The 2024 figure is the lowest single-year tally since the bureau investigated 38 killings in 2019.
Raymond Sims was one of those 42 homicide victims.
Sims, 70, was fatally shot in March while sitting in his jitney near a busy East Liberty intersection.
His family, like many engulfed in gun violence, worked to share the personal details and stories behind the statistics -- focusing on their loved one's lives, not just their sudden deaths.
When Sims was growing up in Chicago's South Side in what then was the largest public housing project in the nation, he obtained the nickname "Rainbow," family members said. Despite the family's close-knit bonds, though, nobody knew why Sims got the name.
As Cassandra Paul helped mourn her father-in-law this spring with a balloon release, she talked about Sims' caring nature, even as his story became the latest chapter in the plague of gun violence in Pittsburgh.
In 2023, Paul lost her 29-year-old daughter, Tanika, to gun violence. Sixteen years before that, she buried her son, Terry Lee, then 19, when he was killed in a home invasion.
"It's tragedy after tragedy," said Paul, 51, as she huddled in a brown winter coat on an unseasonably cold March night with Sims' children and grandchildren. "I am so sick of our family standing outside with balloons."
Numbers up outside city
While homicides were down nearly 20% in Pittsburgh, numbers were up elsewhere in the county.
Police investigated 67 homicides in Allegheny County outside the city of Pittsburgh in 2024, up from 49 homicides in 2023 and 52 homicides in 2022, Allegheny County Police Assistant Superintendent Victor Joseph told TribLive.
"It's hard to put a finger on why there's an increase or a decrease," Joseph said. "If we had an answer to that question, we'd be in a much better place to prevent homicides."
He added: "Anytime there's any violence committed in a neighborhood, people are going to feel uneasy. And, whether the numbers are up or down, any amount of violent acts is too many."
While Sims, the jitney driver, was murdered in East Liberty, gun violence knew no borders.
This summer, it erupted at Ballers Hookah Lounge & Cigar Bar in Penn Hills.
Two or more people fired seven to 10 gunshots at the after-hours club shortly before 3 a.m. June 2, Allegheny County Police said. Authorities made their first arrest in the shooting a month later.
Nathaniel Smiley Jr., 44, a Pittsburgher with a long criminal record, died after being shot in the head following an argument at the Penn Hills club. Stephanie Stuart, 28, of McKeesport also was fatally shot in the volley of gunfire there.
Micaiah Williams died before celebrating his first birthday.
Micaiah, a 4-month-old infant who lived in Pittsburgh's Bloomfield neighborhood, died in September, five days after an alleged beating fractured four spots in his skull and damaged his brain down into the spinal cord.
Police arrested Micaiah's father, Seth F. Williams, 28, for the alleged abuse before Micaiah died at UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh.
These four victims were among 98 individuals whose deaths the Allegheny County Medical Examiner's Office defined as homicides countywide in 2024, data shows. In addition to local homicides, that number includes killings in which the fatal incident occurred outside the area but the victim died in Allegheny County.
The medical examiner encountered 102 homicide victims in 2023 and 122 homicide victims the year before that, data shows. The single-year tally last dropped below 100 in 2019.
Homicides also were up in neighboring Westmoreland County, where authorities confirmed four homicide deaths in 2024. That figure could rise, officials said, as they await rulings in a few more cases.
Westmoreland County's single-year high-water mark for homicides was 10 in 2014, according to coroner statistics.
The homicide trends -- numbers down in the city and up in surrounding suburbs -- also held true for nonfatal shootings. The numbers were down in Pittsburgh but up elsewhere in Allegheny County.
Pittsburgh police investigated 83 nonfatal shootings in the city in 2024, down from 118 the year before that, police spokeswoman Cara Cruz said. The 2024 figure is the lowest in five years.
In Allegheny County, outside Pittsburgh city limits, there were 85 nonfatal shootings last year, compared with 74 a year earlier, Joseph, the county police assistant superintendent, told TribLive.
National trend
Violent crime appeared to drop in several American cities in 2024, researchers and industry reports said.
Though the Council on Criminal Justice had not tabulated year-ending figures nationwide as of this weekend, one researcher from the Washington, D.C.-based group said it appears midyear trends held true. The rates of homicides, nonfatal shootings and aggravated assaults all decreased in multiple U.S. cities.
Reports from 29 cities showed homicides dropping 13% -- 319 fewer homicides -- in the first half of 2024, when compared to the first six months of 2023, a Council on Criminal Justice report showed. There were 18% fewer gun assaults and 7% fewer reported aggravated assaults during that period.
Pittsburgh was not one of the 29 cities that provided data for the Council on Criminal Justice's midyear report.
"The fact that we're starting to see these numbers dropping below 2019 figures, that's promising," said Ernesto Lopez, a Council on Criminal Justice senior research specialist based in the St. Louis area.
Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey repeatedly has touted how homicide rates have dropped under his leadership. In October, he told TribLive the city's homicide rate had decreased 30% since 2022.
Gainey on Friday touted his administration's increased staffing and funding for the city's Office of Community Health and Safety when asked about Pittsburgh's drop in 2024 in homicides.
"We've done what we said we would do," Gainey told TribLive.
Former Mayor Bill Peduto helped launch Pittsburgh's Office of Community Health and Safety in 2021, and the group responded to more than 3,000 incidents citywide in its first two years, city officials said.
The office is tasked with addressing various community needs, including mental and behavioral health crises, overdose incidents and homelessness, an official said.
The office, which is housed within the city's Department of Public Safety, works with other first responders and helps people connect with additional resources.
Gainey's 2024 budget proposed adding 20 new staff positions to OCHS. A total of 18 were hired.
While the mayor told TribLive on Friday he was pleased to see homicide rates dropping, he's not celebrating quite yet.
"We're not excited until we have no homicides," he said. "That's just the reality I've been focused on for a while."
But, Elizabeth Pittinger, executive director of Pittsburgh's Citizen Police Review Board, is among those saying Gainey's administration cannot "take credit" for the drop in violent crime.
"It's not any one thing that anybody's done -- it's a national trend," Pittinger told TribLive. "We can't say, 'Look, this is unique to Pittsburgh.' It's not."
Overall, homicides were down across the U.S. through the first half of last year, data showed.
Homicide investigations in 69 of the 70 largest cities in the U.S. dropped 17% -- from 3,783 killings to 3,124 -- in the first six months of 2024, compared with the first half of 2023, according to the Major Cities Chiefs Association.
As of July 1, homicides were down about 12% in Pittsburgh, the report said.
In Cleveland, whose 2023 population was about 50,000 larger than Pittsburgh's, homicide numbers dropped 36% during the same period, the report said. In Newark, which is Pittsburgh's size, homicides plummeted 34%.
By year's end, murders dropped nationwide more than 15% and overall violent crime dropped 3%, according to Asher, the crime analyst.
Gainey told TribLive he was not aware of the trending drop in homicide rates in other American cities.
Some metropolitan areas grabbed headlines throughout 2024 for their drops in violent crime.
Boston reported 24 homicides in 2024, which is the Massachusetts city's lowest single-year total on record and less than that of Pittsburgh, which boasts less than half of Boston's population of nearly 655,000.
As of July 1, Boston had reported just four homicides, data shows. That was a nearly 80% year-over-year decrease.
Clearing cases a challenge
Trends were mixed when it came to how many homicide cases police were able to close.
In Pittsburgh, the "clearance numbers" -- cases that police closed or where they made an arrest -- dropped to nearly 54% in 2024, compared with 65% a year earlier, said Cruz, the city police spokeswoman. The number last dipped below 50% in 2022.
Clearance rates among law-enforcement agencies nationwide typically hover around 50%, FBI data shows.
The clearance rate in 2024 soared in Allegheny County outside Pittsburgh.
Allegheny County Police, which typically investigate all homicides in the county outside Pittsburgh's city limits, cleared 81% of their homicide cases in 2024, said Joseph, the county police assistant superintendent.
That figure was 71% in 2023, 63% in 2022 and 70% in 2021, Joseph said.
But the Pittsburgh-area law enforcement veteran was hesitant to take a victory lap.
"Sometimes, you're gonna clear them, sometimes you don't," he told TribLive. "Our detectives work equally hard on all of our homicide cases."
The ever-spreading saturation of technology in American life continues to benefit law enforcement, especially when investigating violent crime, officials told TribLive.
"Technology plays a big role," Joseph said. "Whether it's video -- everybody has video now -- or cellphones, cellphone data, cellphone towers or technology in vehicles, it all plays a role in our investigations."