York gun violence was down dramatically in 2023. Police credit changes in enforcement

When Mike Muldrow assumed the role of York City’s police commissioner four years ago, he faced a pretty daunting task.

The city was beset with gun violence. Shootings seemed to be occurring every day as what the city refers to as “groups” battled over turf or settled beefs with gunfire. During one such shooting, on West Philadelphia Street near North Newberry Street, nearly 100 rounds were fired at about 11 on a Wednesday morning, July 6, 2022. 

Shaheim Carr, a 27-year-old father of two, was killed.

Carr’s murder – three men were later arrested, but charges against one of them were dismissed – prompted the police commissioner to take to Facebook and offered words of solace.

“I know people are hurt right now,” he wrote. “I know people want to lash out, people want to retaliate, and people want to blame... But hold on ... take a second... just a second.... Breathe... and be thankful we still can.

"Don't let one rash decision, one angry moment of passion take you from your family (too).

"Don't let this violence, death and loss, continue to breed MORE (violence, death and loss)."

That day may not have been a turning point, but from that day forward, as he had from when he first assumed the leadership of the police department, he pledged to do things differently, to do things that would prevent his officers and detectives from having to console the families of the fallen and to keep young men, in his words, “alive and free.”

In 2023, it appeared that his approach was starting to work, that he and his team, which includes everyone in the department from the patrol officers to the detectives and the commanders, were making headway.

'There is a reason why this happened'

In 2023, the city had its lowest homicide rate in years, dropping from 23 in 2022 to eight last year, a drop of 65 percent, the police department reported. Homicides committed with a firearm were down 75 percent, from 22 in 2022 to five last year. “Group-related” killings – related to what the city formerly called gangs – dropped from 22 in 2023 to five last year. Non-fatal shootings dropped by 57 percent. Reports to police about “shots fired” dropped by 50 percent.

It was the fewest homicides in the city in recent years, according to statistics compiled by the York County Coroner's office. In 2021, the city experienced 14 homicides, up from 13 in 2020, but down from 17 in 2019. There were 13 murders in the city in 2018. Non-fatal shootings, the city police department reported, have also dropped, from 74 in 2020 to 68 in 2021 to 67 in 2022 to 25 last year.

The trend in other central Pennsylvania cities is mixed. Harrisburg reported 13 homicides in 2023, down from 23 the previous year. Lancaster, though, reported an increase, from 12 in 2022 to 18 last year.

Muldrow attributes the decline in York to how the police department has responded by changing its methods and how it approaches violent crime.

“There is a reason why this happened,” Muldrow, who announced on New Year's Eve that he is running for mayor next year, said during a meeting Thursday with members of his command staff; Tiff Lowe, the program manager of the Group Violence Initiative; and York County District Attorney Dave Sunday.

He credits this team – and the rest of his department and others involved in violence-reduction efforts – with what they consider an historic drop in gun violence.

“What we did was amazing,” Muldrow said.

'More graduations and less funerals'

From the beginning of his tenure as commissioner, Muldrow said, he brought a different style of policing to the city.

It is reminiscent of the movement toward community police, in which police embed themselves in the community, a kind of throwback to the days of the cop on the beat, to restore trust in the police department, he said. That approach was effective, but, as city police officials said, it can be a drain on already thin resources.

Instead, he said his approach – which seems unique in police strategies – was to pair the community policing model with enforcement. Part of that effort was the formation of the Group Violence Initiative and hiring Lowe to head up that effort.

Lowe said she is not a stay-in-the-office manager. She goes to where people live and talks to them. She often meets with women whose sons have begun to stray to the streets and talks to them about helping keep their kids alive. A lot of people, she said, felt that law enforcement didn’t care about them, that police were not their allies. It was a difficult perception to break.

She said she talks to young people and asks what they need to get out of dangerous lifestyles. “Do you need a job?” she’ll ask. “Do you need education? Do you just need someone to talk to?”

The most important part of her job, she said, was to go to “more graduations and less funerals.” She hasn't reached that goal. She said she still attended more funerals last year than graduations.

The carrot and the stick

If Lowe’s approach is the carrot, Lt. Matthew Irvin, a 14-year veteran of the department, is the stick. Irvin oversees the efforts in the department to reduce gun violence and major crimes.

If the officers in his division need to get search warrants and make arrests or, in Muldrow’s words, “clear a block,” they can do it and they will. In other words, Muldrow said, "If you don’t listen to us, we’re going to go out and make arrests.”

It’s about accountability, he said, and about being judicious in enforcing the law. Muldrow credits his father, the late Tom “Mo” Muldrow, who served in the department for nearly 20 years, with developing his ideas on policing.

His father told him there were two kinds of police – a letter-of-the-law cop and a spirit-of-the-law cop. The letter-of-the-law cop makes arrests and counts statistics and whatnot, just locking up bad guys. “The spirit-of-the-law cop asks, ‘Can I get the job done?’” Muldrow said. “If I can’t get it done that way, I’ll get it done the other way. If I have to call in Irwin and say let it loose, I’m going to do whatever I have to do to keep you alive.”

'Nobody goes home at 3 o'clock'

There is a placard in the police department that enumerates the number of days since an incidence of gun violence, much like those signs in factories that count the number of days since a workplace accident.

When Muldrow took over the police department, he said, the count would change every other day. Then, it was one a week. Time passed and the police department was changing, and it would only change every couple of weeks. Then, he said, a month would pass without a shooting.

As of Jan. 12, the number of days without an incident of gun violence was just short of 60 days.

Lowe has a similar placard in her office. She tells her staff, “If it goes to zero, nobody goes home at three o’clock.”

'It's really hard to do things differently'

When Dave Sunday started out in the district attorney’s office 15 years ago, he recalled going into plea court with a stack of hundreds of cases and throwing out pleas to defendants.

He said things have changed. And they reflect the changes the city police department has made. His prosecutors put more effort into cases, more thought. Does the defendant need mental health or substance abuse treatment? What’s the best path for someone who winds up in jail to become a contributing member of the community? What can they do to help?

Typically, he said, the district attorney’s office is the end-user of the criminal justice system. That’s just the nature of the beast, the “core competency” of the office, he said. The office prosecutes people, and that’s the job.

Certainly, he said, some people need to be locked up for punitive and community safety reasons. But if the office can work toward reducing demand on prosecuting people rather than just locking people up, it’s the best outcome, he said.

“It’s really hard to try to do things differently,” said Sunday, who is seeking the Republican nomination for state Attorney General.

It’s difficult because it's an evolutionary process. “It’s not immediately tweetable,” he said. People, he said, seek instant gratification, and the conversion of the criminal justice system to one that solves problems rather than just locking people up takes time. “The things we’re dealing with are generational problems.”

That is why Sunday is behind the efforts of the city police department. “We have to be a part of it,” he said.

'We have people coming to us'

In the Shaheim Carr case, Detective Commander Andy Baez said, the approach made a difference.

Moments after the shooting, he said, people from the neighborhood came forward and offered information and video from Ring doorbells and surveillance cameras. People in the neighborhoods, who previously were wary of police, came forward to help, something Baez has seen in other cases since.

Before, Baez said, detectives had to knock on doors and face stony silences from witnesses who feared for their own safety. They did not view the police as being on their side. Now, he said, they do.

“Now,” he said, “we have people coming to us.”

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York not 'a four-letter word'

It’s about saving lives. And it’s also about the city’s image.

As he travels the state campaigning for attorney general, Sunday said he has had people ask him why they should vote for him when York is such a violent “cesspool,” he said.

That perception lives. And as much as the trend seems to be moving in the right direction, officials know that’s hard to dispel.

“The only people who are saying that are the people who don’t move here, who don’t work here, who don’t play here. The only people who say that aren’t spending time in the city,” Muldrow said. “When I started here, people said I hope you can do something. York is rough now. But people are starting to feel good about where they live.”

As Baez said, “We want people to stop thinking York is a four-letter word.”

Columnist/reporter Mike Argento has been a York Daily Record staffer since 1982. Reach him at mike@ydr.com. 

This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: York PA gun violence down dramatically in 2023. Here's why, say police