Gun violence, property crime fell in 2025, but domestic violence is trending back up

Nearly all types of crime fell in Richmond in 2025, with significant drops in gun violence even as the city’s murder count held steady from the year prior at 54.

“While 54 is 54 way too many, when you look at the scope of what we dealt with in the past, it is progress,” said Richmond Police Department Chief Rick Edwards at an annual briefing on crime statistics.

Overall, major crime — a category that includes acts like murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault and arson, among others — dropped 12% between 2024 and 2025, although violent crime rose 8% due to a bump in aggravated domestic assault that is partly linked to a change in how certain acts are reported.

Nearly every form of property crime also decreased. Shoplifting was the one exception, rising 2%.

Here are some other takeaways from the 2025 data:

Gun violence went down

The total number of people shot last year declined from 249 to 221 — a figure that Edwards said is a more accurate picture of gun violence than murders alone.

“If you look at the difference between a murder and a nonfatal shooting, the intent of the actor is almost exactly the same,” he said. “Very few people in Richmond intend to shoot someone in the pinky toe. It is an attempted murder in almost every incident, and it’s just the luck of the angle of the wound or the skill of one of the surgeons at our great hospitals that save people’s lives.”

The 2025 shooting count was the lowest Richmond has recorded since 2015, when 203 people were murdered or wounded, and continues a pattern RPD noted this summer. The past decade saw the figure peak in 2021, with 320 shootings.

Domestic assaults rose

One of the most concerning trends police have flagged are increases in domestic violence, although some of that is due to a change in how RPD is classifying certain crimes, and the total number of domestic assaults still remained below 2020 and 2021 levels.

“That is a reporting issue, but it’s also a trend we’re seeing, and we want to address it,” said Edwards. “We have our goals every year. We look at where we need to improve. Last year we wanted to improve in property crime, and we really did. This year we’re going to focus on domestic assaults and taking those cases very seriously.”

Despite the overall dip in major crimes last year, aggravated domestic assaults rose 113% and were the biggest contributor to Richmond’s 8% increase in violent crime. Without them, RPD said citywide violent crime would have fallen 2% in 2025.

A significant part of the increase is due to a change in how RPD classifies domestic assaults involving strangulation or grabbing of the neck.

Previously police often classified those incidents as simple domestic assault, a type of case not included in major crime statistics. But in 2025, RPD began reporting them as aggravated domestic assaults, a more serious type of crime that typically carries a felony charge.

“That is leading to an increase in reports,” said Edwards. “And while I don’t like the statistic for our numbers, I do like the change because it shows the value and importance of tracking those chokings.”

Research is “unequivocal” that strangulation is one of the biggest indicators that domestic violence is escalating, he noted.

Domestic conflicts also surpassed robberies as the second most common motive for murder last year, accounting for 19% of all homicides. Arguments remained the biggest cause, leading to 43% of murders.

“What we’re seeing not only is direct domestic intimate partner violence, which is certainly a concern, but we’re also seeing a disturbing trend of romantic rivals who are shooting each other and killing each other,” said Edwards.

While Edwards and Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney Colette McEachin said officials are eager to bring cases against domestic violence perpetrators, they noted the emotional and financial ties between victims and abusers can make some of them uniquely hard to prosecute.

“When it comes to actually asking the victim to testify in open court about what has happened, what their family member has done to them or their child, it’s really difficult,” said McEachin.

When victims are reluctant to cooperate with law enforcement, she said prosecutors aim to refer them to services provided by organizations like the YWCA and shelters.

“We’re going to be here when you are ready,” she said.

Richmond’s most robbed stores were 7-Elevens

The other type of major crime that rose in 2025 was commercial robbery, with 7-Elevens being robbed 11 separate times over the course of the year.

Some of the increase appears to be linked to vape shops, where almost one-third of the robberies occurred. Those crimes were mostly “takeover-style” operations where masked gunmen burst into a store.

Others, though, seem to have started out as shoplifting that escalated to robbery when a clerk or customer intervened — a pattern largely not seen in the vape shop crimes.

Those kinds of situations spiraling out of control may be one of the reasons why 7-Elevens were the number-one store that was robbed in 2025 despite being “really well designed to thwart commercial robberies,” said Edwards.

The vape shop crackdown continues

This December Richmond announced a coordinated crackdown on vape shops engaging in illegal activities like drug sales.

At the time, officials said they had closed 18 of 30 vape shops they had inspected because of both criminal activity and violations of building and zoning codes.

Those numbers have risen: To date, 55 inspections have been conducted and 32 shut down, although four have been able to reopen after fixing problems that were identified.

Altogether, officials have cited operators with 587 violations.

“Every vape shop we're investigating, almost all of them are selling some kind of narcotics — usually marijuana, but often additional drugs like mushrooms and some others,” said Edwards.

The number of traffic fatalities involving pedestrians spiked

Of the 22 fatal traffic collisions that occurred last year, 13 — or almost 60% — involved pedestrians.

Those deaths have caused a wave of concern among residents, particularly after six pedestrians were killed over a three-week period, including longtime Valentine Museum director Bill Martin.

The 2025 percentage far exceeds what was seen in the prior few years. Pedestrians were involved in almost 24% of fatal collisions in 2024, 28% in 2023 and 39% in 2022.

“The pedestrian ratio has never been higher,” said Edwards.

More than three-quarters of all traffic fatalities occurred on roads that are part of what’s known as the “high-injury network,” or those streets that have previously been identified as having a large volume of accidents and deaths. About 60% were on the south side of the river, where infrastructure like sidewalks often lags behind the older parts of the city north of the James.

“We have growth in our city. We are having apartment buildings pop up south of the river, and some of the infrastructure in place still needs to catch up to the population density in those areas,” said Edwards.

Applications to work for RPD rose

Recruiting efforts improved last year, with RPD receiving 706 applications for employment.

Prior to 2020, Edwards said the department routinely received over 1,000 applications per year. But that number dipped sharply afterwards and only reached 546 in 2024. Meanwhile, the force has faced severe staffing shortages.

Edwards said RPD’s starting salary of almost $63,000 for new recruits is competitive with surrounding localities but the department is choosy about who it puts on the force.

“We don’t want to make mistakes on character,” said Edwards. “There are people that are applying for the police department that we don't feel will be a good fit for us, and we're not going to fill those just with anybody because we've got these vacancies. One bad officer can ruin the reputation of an entire organization.”

Contact Reporter Sarah Vogelsong at svogelsong@richmonder.org