Akron officials released crime statistics Wednesday for the first half of 2025, showing a significant decrease in overdose deaths and a slight increase in shootings and calls for police to respond to shots fired.
Instances of youth gun violence in particular have been the focus of the city and other partners, after a late night mass shooting in July at Mason Community Learning Center injured more than a dozen young people. The city has done several things to address the problem this summer, including giving out $100,000 in grants to sports programs and hosting events for young people.
"You'll see that our numbers generally continue to trend in the right direction, which is important but doesn't mean we don't still have work to do," Mayor Shammas Malik said.
Many reported crimes, including robbery, felonious assault, breaking and entering and auto theft, are down this year, Malik said. Shootings and firearms related offenses are both at about the same level as this time last year, and overall calls to police are down compared to 2024, he said.
"I think it's the community outreach from our officers," Police Chief Brian Harding said, when asked what he thinks is working to combat crime.
The department is working to get more officers out into the community, including academy cadets, Deputy Chief Michael Murphy said.
"One of the first things that we did to enhance our community engagement efforts," he said, "and this was kind of birthed out of some recommendations from the community a year or two prior, was getting our academy cadets, the participants in our academy out into the community, participating in community engagement sooner."
The Summit County prosecutor's office has also seen a decrease in cases, Prosecutor Elliot Kolkovich said.
"If we compare the first eight months of this year compared to the first eight months of last year, we have seen a 10% decrease in the number of cases sent to our office for prosecution," he said.
Murders have remained at about the same rate as last year, Malik said.
"Twelve murders in the first half of last year and 12 murders in the first half of 2025," he said.
Rape, burglary, firearms related offenses and shootings into a habitation are up compared to this time last year, Malik said.
"While robbery is down, burglary is up 14%," he said. "Robbery obviously reflects when a suspect robs a person where as burglary is breaking into a building to commit some kind of theft."
There's been a slight increase in shootings and calls for shots fired, Malik said.
"We had 823 in the first half of 2024 and 829 in the first half of 2025," he said.
However, the number of shooting victims has decreased, he said.
"Our number of shooting victims has continued to decline. In the first half of last year, we had 92 adult victims of shooting. Of those, 13 were fatal," he said. "So far this year, we've had 46 adult victims of a shooting, and seven have been fatal."
Overdose deaths are significantly down this year, dropping 46% from last year, according to police data. It's not just one thing that has helped save lives, Harding said.
"I think there's a lot of help with some mental health resources," he said. "I think additional presence of Narcan both with our officers and fire and paramedics, additional resources at the hospital."
Police use-of-force incidents are down this year, according to police data. Police used force 136 times so far this year compared to 158 times through this point last year.
The number of firearms police have recovered has also dropped this year, according to police data. APD recovered 541 firearms by this time last year and 380 firearms this year.
"I guess you could look at it from two different lenses," Harding said. "You could look at it from that means there's less guns in the community, or you could look at it from the lens that we just need to make sure that we proactively get those guns off the street."
There were a couple of factors that led to APD being so successful recovering firearms last year, he said.
"Last year we had one large seizure of roughly around 80 firearms on one case," Harding said, "so that actually skewed our numbers a little bit."
The department also lost a grant this year that helped officers recovering firearms, he said.
"The year before we had a grant that was a state funded grant that allowed us to put out additional resources and overtime focused on certain areas that we knew to have a great percentage of violent crime around gun violence," Harding said, "and that's not a grant we have this year."
