The City of Wilmington Police Department has released its 2024 Year-End Report, revealing both progress in reducing certain types of crime and challenges related to an increase in the murder rate.
Over the past year, the community has seen a notable 21% decrease in overall Part 1 crimes, which include serious offenses such as murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, felony theft and auto theft. Additionally, there was a 11% reduction in shooting incidents and a 6% drop in shooting victims compared to the previous year. However, the data also shows a 71% increase in the murder rate compared to the prior year, a trend that police officials attribute primarily to domestic-related and isolated incidents, rather than group-involved violence. Investigators have made progress, with arrests in more than a dozen of this year’s cases, as well as resolutions in 10 murder investigations from previous years the report says.
The department emphasized that despite the increase in murders, the focus on crime reduction strategies has yielded results in other areas. For example, robbery incidents are down 30% year-to-date, and felony theft has seen an 18% reduction. Juvenile-related shooting incidents remain low, with only a slight year-over-year increase from 14 to 15 incidents.