Did the shooting of a 7-year-old pee wee football player tamp down gun violence in Akron?

The bullet that struck a 7-year-old boy at Lane Field may have had the unintended effect of subduing gun violence across Akron, according to a Beacon Journal analysis of police data.

“Every weekend from the month prior, someone was shot,” observed Helen Arnold CLC Principal Lamonica Davis, whose student, Tyren, was hit on the playground at Lane Field after playing pee wee football. “Now all the sudden, I haven’t heard anything since Tyren.

“For a while here in Akron, shootings were happening every week,” Davis said in a recent interview. “I don’t know if people were scared or they're like … ‘You know, that could have been my child, my nephew, my relative that got shot.’ Or they’ve been more cognizant of, ‘Let me stop doing what I’m doing. Let’s put the gun away.’”

To measure the perception that gunfire calmed after the Aug. 20 shooting at Lane Field, both within the neighborhood and across Akron, the Beacon Journal requested and received an updated listing of shots fired reports from the Akron Police Department.

The analysis reviewed the 32 days — a period long enough to include a comparable number of weekends, when gun violence tends to spike — before and after Aug. 20 every year since 2019.

In each year, the month after Aug. 20 saw reported gunfire go up between 41% and 79% compared to the month before Aug. 20.

This year, the reports of gunfire citywide dipped 16% in the 32 days following Aug. 20.

Correlations in the data do not necessarily point to causation. And looking closer at the impact the Lane Field shooting has had on its surrounding neighborhood requires examination of a dataset too small to draw reliable conclusions.

Still, every year around Lane Field, there are one to three reports of shots fired in the month before and again in the month after Aug. 20. Davis picked up on the increase in gunfire this year, not only around her school but also across Akron.

There were, in fact, eight reports of shots fired, including Tyren's shooting, in the month before Aug. 20. In the month since, there's been just one.

The finding is significant but would be best taken with a grain of salt for a few reasons.

The first is that reports of gunfire only exist if someone reports them, and the past few months of reporting on gun violence have made it clear that some residents have grown so tired of calling 911 every time they hear gunshots that they’ve stopped.

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The second reason is that not all reports of gunfire lead police to corroborating evidence, whether it be spent shell casings, bullet holes or victims.

The third reason is the fluctuations in the volume of reports filed, particularly when examining periods of time as short as a month. The 474 shots fired reports in Akron the month before and the month after the Lane Field incident represent less than 4% of the 11,898 shots fired reports since 2019.

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The significance of the finding, though, is that something unusual happened in the month after the Lane Field. An eight-month streak in steadily increasing reports of gunfire was broken.

How long that relieving trend will last is unknown. If the high-profile shooting of a 7-year-old and teen did quiet the gunfire, that effect already appears to be wearing off. While the month after the shooting saw a 16% decline in reports of gunfire compared to the month before, the reports are down less (10%) for September.

And despite the dip since Aug. 20, reported gunfire in Akron remains above pre-pandemic levels.

Beacon Journal education reporter Jennifer Pignolet contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Gun violence reports drop after Lane Field shooting of 7-year-old boy