Miami Mayor Suarez announced record reduction in murders for 2023
MIAMI - Miami Mayor Francis Suarez has some good news to start the year, 2023 was a historically safe year in the city.
"Miami started recording homicides in 1947. If you were to do a public records request for all of our homicides, the first year would be 1947. And in that year, we had 32 homicides. Today, I can report that in 2023, we ended the year with 31 homicides. Now obviously that's 31 too many, we'd love to have a year where we end with zero. And that will always be the goal," he said Wednesday when announcing last year's homicide rate.
The mayor said 2023 was quite possibly the lowest year for murders in recorded history.
"This is contrasted with what many of you remember in the 1980s, where I think in the year 1980, we had over 200 homicides, I think we had about 220 in 1980, which means that for every three days, there was a homicide in two out of those three days. If you want to just compare it to last year, which is a fair basis for comparison, we saw a 38% reduction year over year so we reduced our homicides by 38%. From last year, where we had 52 this year where we had 31," he said.
Suarez said he was grateful to all those who made 2023 possible.
"I'm grateful to our police and law enforcement, who put their lives at risk every single day, so that we can be safe. I'm grateful to our community partners, pastors, teachers, and leaders who helped build our ecosystem of public safety," he said.
The mayor said the reductions in murders were part of a larger reduction in violent crimes.
"Overall, year to year, year to date, from last year, we saw a 34 percent decrease in non-fatal shootings, what they call contact shootings from 151 to 100. We saw a similar drop in non-contact shootings from 379 to 255. We also saw a 10 percent reduction in robberies from 613 to 551. And this is all due in large part to the hard work and the sacrifice of the men and women of our police department," said Suarez.
Suarez said the city is committed to funding and supporting the police department and investing in innovative crime-fighting technologies.
"In 2024, we are positioned to hopefully hire more officers. In fact, there was just a class of cadets that I saw in the hallways I was sharing with them the news that we were sharing with the public today. We stand with our police officers who have stood by our communities," he said.
Suarez went on the thank Miami Police Chief Manny Morales and his officers for their dedication and service to the city.