RICHMOND — For longtime Richmond police Sgt. Aaron Pomeroy, a time like this is simply a lull. For longtime community and anti-crime activist Antwon Cloird, it’s not even that.
“It’s just the period that leads up to the next one,” Cloird said.
What they are both discussing is a turn of events in the city that’s not frequent, but not entirely unusual: As Thanksgiving arrives, Pomeroy and his detectives have gone three months without opening a new homicide investigation.
The last killing in Richmond happened officially on Aug. 27, when a 65-year-old man died. Five days earlier, he had been shot along with another man, who also died. Those killings brought the 2022 total in the city to 18, the same number police investigated last year.
It was the fifth killing in August and the sixth in a four-week period; August was the fifth straight month the city had investigated at least two homicides.
Such numbers indicated a fast-moving trend for a city that long has held a tough reputation in the East Bay. The change is taken with due caution, if not flat skepticism.
“Maybe you have a time when it stops for a while, maybe you don’t,” Cloird said. “Even if there’s time it’s not happening, it doesn’t mean much, because you know that any moment it can start up again.”
Pomeroy said lulls in homicides generally indicate two factors that are playing into this one:
“It tells me that arguments that we see turn into violence are not happening. People are not using guns to solve those currently,” he said. “And the other thing is that our gang violence is in a bit of a lull. … There are times they slow their activity, or they don’t have beefs. It does happen.”
History bears that out.
In 2020, the city didn’t record its first homicide until April. That stretch was influenced, at least to some degree, Pomeroy said, by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. All criminal activity trended down during that time, he said, because of the fear and uncertainty the virus caused.
In a stretch from late 2017-early 2018, the city went a record 4½ months without a homicide. That stretch was part of a period that saw only 61 homicides in 39 months.
In more recent times, the killings have gone up. At least 15 homicides have been recorded in each year since 2017. And since one killing, as Cloird said, “often sparks another one,” it’s conceivable the city could reach 20 for the second time in three years.
Predicting a pattern, Pomeroy said, is a “hit-and-miss” prospect.
“You’d love to be able to say this lull is going going to continue on for a long time,” Pomeroy said. “Realistically, you know the longer you go, the closer you likely are to the end of it.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com