Rochester Sees No Gun Deaths in Q1 2026 — A City's Long Road Back
A Number Worth Stopping On
A Number Worth Stopping On
No one has been shot to death in Rochester in the first quarter of 2026. Not one person.
That sentence deserves a moment. At this same point last year, seven people had been killed by gunfire in the city. At the peak of Rochester's violence crisis in 2021, the number was 14 — just through the end of March. (WXXI News, March 2026)
It is one data point, and the year is young. But it lands differently when you know where Rochester has been.
Where Rochester Was: The Peak Years
Where Rochester Was: The Peak Years
Rochester's homicide crisis crested in 2021. That year, the Rochester Police Department recorded 85 homicides — a number that shocked even longtime residents who had watched crime climb steadily through the pandemic years. (Rochester Beacon, January 2026)
The causes were real and well-documented. COVID-19 disrupted community services and youth programming at exactly the wrong moment. Young people were home, disengaged, and disconnected from the institutions that might otherwise have intervened. At the same time, the national reckoning following George Floyd's death in 2020 strained the relationship between Rochester residents and law enforcement — a tension that took years to rebuild. (Rochester Beacon, January 2026)
Property crime told the same story. Break-ins, car thefts, and larcenies were a daily reality in neighborhoods across the city — including ones considered relatively safe.
The Trajectory Since 2021
The Trajectory Since 2021
The numbers since 2021 tell a consistent story of decline, year over year.
Homicides dropped every single year after the 2021 peak. By the end of 2025, the Rochester Police Department recorded 36 homicides — down 11 from 2024, and roughly in line with pre-pandemic levels. (WXXI News, January 2026)
Shootings followed the same arc. By 2025, shooting incidents involving injury were down 58 percent compared to 2021. Non-fatal shootings declined for the fourth consecutive year. (WHAM, January 2026)
Property crime told an even more dramatic story. Total property crimes in 2025 hit the lowest level in RPD records dating back to 2011. Larcenies and burglaries have fallen by 50 percent and 80 percent respectively compared to 2011 numbers. Motor vehicle theft dropped 68 percent compared to 2023 — driven in part by a Kia and Hyundai security vulnerability that had briefly spiked those numbers. (Rochester Beacon, January 2026)
In the first half of 2025 alone, overall reported crime was down 13 percent compared to the same period in 2024 — which itself had recorded a 40 percent drop from 2023. (Rochester Beacon, July 2025)
What Is Actually Working
What Is Actually Working
These numbers don't move on their own. Several coordinated initiatives appear to be driving the change.
The Dove Initiative, a multi-agency enforcement partnership launched in the summer of 2025, brought together the Rochester Police Department, New York State Police, Monroe County Sheriff's Department, and several suburban agencies. Through the first three quarters of 2025, the initiative resulted in 215 arrests for stolen vehicles alone. (Rochester Beacon, January 2026)
On the technology side, Governor Hochul directed $24 million in law enforcement technology grants to Monroe County police agencies in 2025 — including $10 million to RPD specifically for camera upgrades and related tools. The Monroe Crime Analysis Center, part of a statewide network, processed over 28,000 requests for service in 2025, allowing agencies to work faster and more precisely. (Governor's Office, October 2025)
The state's Gun Involved Violence Elimination (GIVE) program, which Rochester has participated in for years, provides data-driven, targeted funding for gun violence prevention. Since Governor Hochul took office in 2021, Rochester has seen a 57 percent reduction in shooting incidents with injury and a 56 percent drop in firearm-related homicides. (Governor's Office, May 2025)
Mayor Malik Evans has also maintained a gun violence state of emergency, using it to issue closure orders on properties identified as hubs for criminal activity. Fifteen such closures were ordered in 2025. (WHAM, January 2026)
The Honest Picture
The Honest Picture
The numbers are real — and so are their limits.
Willie Lightfoot, former Rochester City Councilmember and founder of the ROC Against Gun Violence Coalition, offered a perspective that matters. He owns a laundromat on Jefferson Avenue and closes it at five in the afternoon — not because the data tells him to, but because that's how it feels. People's perception, he noted, does not yet match the numbers — and until residents in the hardest-hit neighborhoods feel the change, the work is not done. (WXXI News, January 2026)
That gap is real. Crime remains concentrated in the Crescent neighborhoods — the northeast, northwest, and southwest corridors of the city. The North Clinton area in the northeast continues to account for a disproportionate share of gun violence, averaging 13 percent of all homicides citywide, a figure that climbed to 19 percent during the 2020–2022 surge. (Rochester Beacon, January 2026)
Mayor Evans, asked when the city's gun violence state of emergency would finally be lifted, gave an answer that was equal parts honest and aspirational: when Rochester's homicide numbers reach the same level as Pittsford's. (WHAM, January 2026)
The underlying forces — concentrated poverty, disinvestment, limited opportunity in specific neighborhoods — have not been solved by enforcement alone. Progress in the data does not yet fully translate to safety felt on the ground in every part of the city.
A City Worth Rooting For
A City Worth Rooting For
We moved back to Rochester from Washington DC in 2009. Even coming from a city with its own serious crime challenges, the violence here was something we had to reckon with. We lived in the Park Avenue corridor for six years — a neighborhood considered among the safer parts of the city — and still had our house broken into twice and our car broken into twice in a single night. We eventually moved to Pittsford, partly for that reason.
But we never stopped rooting for Rochester.
What's happening now is not a press release. It is a measurable, multi-year trend backed by data from multiple independent sources — the Rochester Beacon, WXXI News, the RPD, and the Governor's Office all tell the same story. The city climbed a very steep hill between 2020 and 2022, and it has been descending steadily since.
Zero gun deaths through the end of March 2026 is a milestone. It is not a finish line. But for a city that has earned every inch of this progress, it is worth acknowledging — and worth protecting.
