Legislative Oversight - Crime Reduction and Violence Prevention For the purpose of the committee holding regular hearings with the Police Department, Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement, and other agencies to monitor the progress of the City's crime reduction and violence prevention efforts.

This legislative oversight hearing (LO25-0005) reviewed the City’s progress in crime reduction and violence prevention for the 2025 calendar year, highlighting historic lows in violent crime. As of December 1, 2025, the City recorded 127 homicides (a 29.8% decrease from 2024) and 288 nonfatal shootings (a 25.2% decrease from 2024). The administration attributes these trends to the Group Violence Reduction Strategy (GVRS), which has expanded to five police districts, and the Community Violence Intervention (CVI) ecosystem.

Key Performance Metrics:

• BPD Clearance Rates: Homicide clearance reached 64.23% (up from 56.42% in 2024), and nonfatal shooting clearance reached 42.16%.
• GVRS Impact: Since inception, 767 custom notifications have been delivered, and 335 participants have been enrolled in services.
• Safe Streets: Conducted 1,652 mediations in 2025.
• Recidivism: Probation recidivism for FY2022 cohorts showed 70.5% of youth had no new sustained convictions within one year.

Fiscal and Structural Context:

• BPD Budget: The FY 2026 budget is $614.01 million, with a 172% increase in compliance-related spending since FY22, largely driven by Consent Decree requirements.
• MONSE Budget: Funding grew from $8 million (FY22) to $22.4 million (FY26), a 178.6% increase, though the administration noted that ARPA funding—a significant portion of recent growth—will sunset at the end of the fiscal year, necessitating a transition to general fund support or program consolidation.

Key Issues and Oversight:

• Open-Air Drug Markets: Council members pressed for a more targeted, interagency plan to address open-air drug markets, noting that current violence prevention strategies do not explicitly address the drug trade.
• Consent Decree: BPD reported that nearly 50% of the decree is in initial compliance, though the timeline for full completion remains under the jurisdiction of the Court and the monitoring team.
• Data Integrity: The Committee raised concerns regarding conflicting data across agencies and requested a unified, standardized data set to track outcomes, particularly regarding disciplinary actions and case matriculation.
• Future Oversight: The Committee requested a memo from the administration on the feasibility of providing independent legal counsel to the Police Accountability Board (PAB) and Administrative Charging Committee (ACC), as well as a strategy for integrating data across BPD, MONSE, and the State's Attorney's Office.