CMPD Report Provides Look at 2024 Crime Stats in Charlotte
Chief Jennings will hear from city council at February meeting
CMPD held a press conference Thursday morning to go over its annual end-of-year report documenting crime stats in Charlotte, reporting a 3% drop in overall crime even as violent crime rose by the same percentage.
Department officials credited the overall decrease to the department’s work in its main focus areas: juvenile crime, automobile thefts, street takeovers and the curtailing of violent crime in localized areas of high victimization.
Though violent-crime victimization was up 3%, the number of violent crimes reported throughout the city in 2024 was actually down by a single percent.
CMPD’s data, consistent with the National Incident-Based Reporting System, focuses on victimization as opposed to incidents. A press release from the department explained how the number of incidents reported differs from the rate of victimization.
“If someone fires a gun at a home and eight people are inside of that home, all eight are considered victims,” CMPD’s press release said. “In this example, there was one shooting incident, but eight victims, and that is reflected in CMPD’s reporting system.”
One catalyst for the increase of victimization was a 4% rise in aggravated assault by pointing a firearm.
“We learned a lot about each other in 2024. We are a close group and a resourceful one,” CMPD Chief Johnny Jennings said of his department on Thursday morning. “Each day, our officers are out trying to make the community safer, and the data shows they are doing an excellent job providing the type of service our neighborhoods need.”
Some on Charlotte City Council, however, feel that more needs to be done to bring crime rates down and make residents feel safer.
Youth diversion initiatives see some success
The department launched its Coordinated Overlap Response Effort (CORE) in the fourth quarter of 2024 to increase officers’ presence in areas that had seen the highest rates of victimization.
The CORE 13 program deploys officers from CMPD’s 13 patrol divisions into hotspots in and around the Nations Ford/Arrowood Road corridors, North Tryon Street near Tom Hunter Road, and the Beatties Ford Road corridor.
This effort led to 75 seized firearms and 123 arrests in two months, which Jennings believes played a large role in lowering violent crime by 4% in the fourth quarter of 2024.
CMPD reported a 9% decrease in juveniles listed as suspects and credited that achievement to the department’s Juvenile Accountability and Diversion Empowerment (JADE) team.
JADE monitors at-risk youth by conducting home visits and providing resources to juveniles and their families to prevent recidivism. In 2024, 200 home visits were conducted and 122 juveniles were arrested.
CMPD officials stated that, in 2024, its Community Engagement Division offered 12 programs meant to provide healthy outlets and mentorships for teens and young adults, including CMPD’s Youth Diversion Program for youth aged 8 to 17.
That program diverts first-time offenders from the criminal justice system toward rehabilitation courses, leading to a 6% recidivism rate with 475 participants.
Other youth diversion programs that CMPD is involved with include Reach Out, Envision Academy, and REACH Academy. With 3,768 participants across all four programs, an analysis found a total success rate of 88% based on whether the participating youth reoffended, according to SAFE Charlotte data.
Despite the success of these programs, CMPD Lt. Erik Tran-Thompson touted the controversial House Bill 834, which rolled back the bipartisan Raise the Age legislation passed in 2019 by authorizing law enforcement agencies to charge 16- and 17-year-olds as adults for high-level felonies.
Read more: Clearing Up Confusion Around Raise the Age (2020)
Then-Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed the bill in 2024, though conservative lawmakers later overrode that veto. It took effect on Dec. 1, 2024.
“I remain concerned that this new law would keep some children from getting treatment they need while making communities less safe,” Gov. Cooper said of the bill. “Instead, the legislature should invest significantly more in our juvenile justice system to ensure resources are available to help prevent crimes and appropriately deal with children who break the law.”
A rising homicide total raises alarm among elected officials
Despite the decrease in juvenile crime overall, the department saw the number of juvenile homicide suspects nearly double while the number of juvenile homicide victims went up by 50%.
In fact, the 110 homicides reported in Charlotte in 2024 marked a 25% increase compared to the year before.
During a presentation to Charlotte City Council on SAFE Charlotte programming during its Jan. 13 meeting, Jennings downplayed the high homicide total as being better than other cities close to Charlotte’s size and not representative of the whole picture regarding crime in Charlotte.
“If you look at a city like Baltimore, they are praising a drop from 300-something homicides to 200-something homicides in a year,” Jennings said. “We definitely don’t want to be sitting at that number and celebrating 200 homicides in a year.”
“I understand that compared to other large cities, Charlotte is safer,” responded at-large council member Dimple Ajmera, “but our numbers have gone up significantly from where they were so something has to be done to address these issues at the root.”
Council member Ed Driggs of District 7 appeared frustrated that, despite the seeming success of certain programs and initiatives, violent crime didn’t seem to be
“SAFE Charlotte has been going for four years now and we can’t point to big success,” said Ed Driggs. “A lot of these problems are social … therefore … what your understanding is of the root causes of these issues is critical.”
Driggs added that “based on the experience of other cities like New York, there is a tradeoff between how aggressive your policing is and what kind of crime you have, and the tension there is the rights and the First Amendment and so on so how do you conduct effective policing and keep people safe and not either offend an ethnic group or trample on someone’s rights?
“I don’t speak out of any desire to oppress any members of the community but simply to talk about what works and what doesn’t as opposed to … actions we are taking that don’t result in observable changes,” Driggs continued. “People are expecting to see a decline in these crime rates … and that’s hard to do.”
Jennings will be back in front of council for a presentation on violent crime at its Feb. 10 meeting.
Vehicle-related crimes and other stats
According to CMPD’s annual report, vehicle-related crimes were also down, with auto thefts decreasing 8%. Thefts involving Kia and Hyundai cars, which have been targeted as the result of a popular TikTok trend in recent years, were down by 15%.
Reported cases of “street takeovers,” in which car owners shut down intersections or parking lots to perform stunts like drifting, burnouts and wheelies, significantly declined by 71% for pre-arranged events and 88% for pop-up takeovers. The decrease is in large part due to a new law criminalizing takeovers and adding new penalties, the press release claimed.
The department’s Stolen Car and Recovery Law Enforcement Team (SCARLET), which was launched in 2023, recovered 338 stolen vehicles, seized 225 firearms, made 221 felony arrests, and seized $4 million in narcotics.
Civilian initiatives like the Civilian Crash Investigation Unit (CCI) and Connect Charlotte also aided CMPD. CCI was made to reduce the time patrol officers spent responding to minor crashes that don’t involve injuries, accounting for 71% of crashes officers responded to per year. Between Dec.12-31, CCIs responded to 306 minor crashes, CMPD said.
CMPD’s pilot program Connect Charlotte allows officers access to registered residential and business cameras to gather evidence in neighborhood investigations. Note that registering your camera does not allow CMPD access to live video streams, it only enables officers to know a camera is present at your home or business and easily request video evidence.
The below statistical breakdown provided by CMPD gives an overall snapshot of crime victimization in 2024 compared to 2023. It should be noted that year-over-year data does not necessarily indicate a trend.
- Violent crimes: 7,413 offenses in 2024 compared to 7,215 offenses in 2023.
- Homicides: 111 in 2024 compared to 89 in 2023.
- Aggravated assaults: 5,679 in 2024 compared to 5,542 in 2023.
- Rapes: 232 in 2023 compared to 256 in 2023.
- Armed robberies: 868 in 2024 compared to 890 in 2023.
- Property crimes: 36,996 offenses in 2024 compared to 38,507 in 2023.
- Residential burglaries: 1,731 in 2024 compared to 1,989 in 2023.
- Commercial burglaries: 2,463 in 2024 compared to 2,335 in 2023.
- Larcenies from automobiles: 10,271 in 2024 compared to 11,390 in 2023.
- Vehicle thefts: 7,445 in 2024 compared to 8,054 in 2023.
- Arsons: 162 in 2024 compared to 143 in 2023.
View the full 2024 Annual Report here. Ryan Pitkin contributed reporting to this article.
