A statewide initiative to reduce gun crimes has led to a drop in homicides in the commonwealth, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares said Tuesday.
“We’ve seen absolutely fantastic numbers,” he said during a news conference in front of the Danville Police Department headquarters.
Operation Ceasefire’s goal was to decrease homicides by 10%, but they dropped by 17% across the state in the program’s first year, Miyares said. The campaign started in October 2022 and has focused on 13 cities, including Danville, Martinsville, Lynchburg and Roanoke.
“Just here in the city of Danville, we’ve seen a 25% decrease in homicides, a 28% decrease in robbery,” Miyares said.
The city had eight homicides in 2022 and six in 2023.
Aggravated assaults went up by 34% from 2022 to 2023 in Danville, which also saw a 10% drop in reported rapes. Violent offenses overall increased by 13% and all offenses combined increased by 5.5%, according to figures from the attorney general’s office.
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Operation Ceasefire addresses gun violence through prosecution and prevention, as well as promoting violence intervention strategies and working with local communities to reduce and prevent violent crime, according to a March 20 news release from the attorney general’s office.
Other cities under the program include Richmond, Petersburg, Norfolk, Hampton, Newport News, Portsmouth, Chesapeake, Emporia and Hopewell.
Twelve of the 13 cities saw reductions in crime in 2023, and nine saw an overall decrease in violent crime. Cities also saw 225 fewer violent crimes last year than in 2022, according to the news release.
Through March 20, Operation Ceasefire had prosecuted 155 cases, resulting in 106 convictions with 41 pending trials, according to the news release.
Lynchburg Commonwealth’s Attorney Bethany Harrison praised Miyares’ efforts with Operation Ceasefire and its results in Lynchburg.
“We know that justice requires accountability for the offender,” Harrison said. “Justice requires taking care of our victims of crime. Justice requires equipping our officers with the tools they need to complete their jobs. Justice requires collaboration by law enforcement agencies and prosecutorial authorities at the federal, state and local level.
Justice also needs prevention and intervention, she added.
“We’ve seen the fruits of these labors in the city of Lynchburg,” Harrison said.
According to figures from the attorney general’s office, Lynchburg saw a 50% decrease in homicides from 2022 to 2023, from eight to four, and an 8% drop in violent crime overall.
Danville Police Chief Chris Wiles pointed to the importance of collaboration between law enforcement and the community to achieve crime-reduction goals.
But “gun violence continues to devastate our communities, leaving many lives lost and countless lives shattered,” Wiles added, before mentioning the four police officers fatally shot while serving warrants at a home in Charlotte, North Carolina.
“That violence took the lives of four law-enforcement officers,” Wiles said.
Roanoke Police Chief Scott Booth, who was Danville’s police chief from 2018 to 2023, said overall crime in Danville has fallen to half of what it was since 2018.
“This was a collaborative effort between the police department, our federal agencies, our state partners like the attorney general’s office, our elected officials here who showed us a phenomenal level of support,” Booth said.
According to figures from the attorney general’s office, Roanoke’s homicide rate surged by 56% from 2022 to 2023. But reported rapes fell by 44% and robberies dropped by 17%. Overall violent offenses dipped by 5% and crime decreased overall by 6.4%.
Booth expressed hope that homicides would decrease in Roanoke this year.
“We’re already seeing the needle move,” he said. “We’re already seeing community members coming forward and providing us with information after a homicide, after a shooting, and that makes my heart grow each and every day.”
As for Martinsville, its overall crime rate decreased by 19%, with an 80% drop in robberies, from 10 in 2022 to two last year. Martinsville had no homicides in 2022, but three in 2023. Its violence crime rate went down by 6% overall.
Early in his part of the news conference, Miyares spoke about unrest on college campuses in Virginia,
He pointed out the importance of the First Amendment as “one of the bedrock principles of this country,” but issued a stark warning to campus protestors in Virginia who commit acts of violence, occupy academic buildings or threaten Jewish students.
“If you cross that line … if you commit acts of violence, if you are so foolish to think you can occupy an academic building in Virginia, if you’re so foolish to do what you’re seeing around the country and directly threaten our Jewish students or side with those that want to publicly exterminate our Jewish brethren and citizens, then there will be consequences, there will be action,” Miyares said.
He also had strong words for those who assaulted police officers Monday during protests at Virginia Commonwealth University.
“To those perpetrators, we will use every resource we have to track you down,” Miyares said. “We will find you, we will prosecute you. That is indeed a felony. There will be consequences for your actions.”
Antisemitism “is wrong. It was wrong back in the 1930s, it was wrong in the 1940s and it’s wrong today and we will not have it here in Virginia. Virginia is not New York,” he added.