YOUNGSTOWN — Carl Davis, whose five years as Youngstown police chief ended on Wednesday, remembers that his first year as chief in 2021 had its challenges, including 31 homicides in the city.

The number dropped to 13 homicides in 2025, the lowest number since at least 1967, the earliest year records are available. There were 14 homicides in 1967, according to research conducted at the Youngstown Police Department. Youngstown had 20 homicides in 2024.

Davis remembers that when he was named chief in January 2021, the country was dealing with the aftermath of the killing of black man George Floyd in Minneapolis at the hands of Minneapolis police officers on May 25, 2020, which touched off racial injustice protests, including one in Youngstown.

Davis remembers that the protests changed the way people looked at law enforcement.

“We found that there were individuals who no longer were interested in becoming police officers,” he said on Wednesday during an interview. “We were not only dealing with crime. We were dealing with manpower and staffing because no one wanted to join the police department.”

Davis said the George Floyd protests were “probably some of the largest since the civil rights movement, and there were calls for defunding the police. Of course that is something I strongly disagree with,” he said.

“And that offended a lot of officers, including myself. And what we saw, I believe, was a slowdown in production and proactivity from officers, not only here in Youngstown but across the country,” Davis said.

In 2021, when Mayor Jamael Tito Brown hired Davis to be chief, the city “saw an increase in crime and murders, gang activity,” Davis said. “We also had two well-known families here in the Youngstown area that were feuding. This all played into the increase in crime.”

Davis said that in the face of those challenges, he “surrounded myself with a talented group of young officers here in the Youngstown Police Department. That included patrol, sergeants, lieutenants, captains, some of the brightest minds here in the Youngstown Police Department, men and women. And there were some tangible changes made.”

In April of 2021, the police department announced the formation of its Neighborhood Response Unit, “a group of young, highly trained officers whose mission was to identify the bad actors involved in this crime, investigate and arrest those individuals committing these crimes and take them off of our streets,” Davis said.

“That unit was responsible for removing hundreds of guns off of our streets. I believe that contributed to the reduction in crime,” he said.

Meanwhile, the police department strengthened its partnerships with the State Highway Patrol, the FBI, the U.S Marshals Service, the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Ohio Adult Parole Authority, he said.

“And we announced the Impact Initiative,” Davis said of a program the police department introduced Sept. 8, 2021, to address increasing levels of crime and a smaller workforce.

At the time, Davis mentioned that he and Brown attended a meeting in Columbus in June 2021 with Gov. Mike DeWine for mayors and police chiefs. It was a factor in Youngstown announcing the Impact Initiative later that year. It brought more resources to Youngstown, especially to address gun violence. The program has continued since then, usually starting in early summer and running throughout the summer.

Another factor may have been the shooting death of 10-year-old Persayus Davis-May in her home on Samuel Avenue on the South Side early Aug. 18, 2021. Authorities believe she was an unintended target of shots intended for adults who were in the front yard of her family’s home.

Brown cried at a press conference at the Youngstown Police Department Aug. 18, 2021, as he called the girl’s death “a dark day for our community, probably the darkest I’ve ever had as mayor of the city of Youngstown.”

Brown said in March 2024 that the way the initiative has worked in Youngstown has been “talked about across the state. Often I talk to some of my colleagues and mayors around Ohio and they want to know what are you doing in Youngstown? I say we’re learning how to play with our partners and learning how to work together.”

On Wednesday, Davis described the initiative this way: “We go out at peak times and saturate areas where we noticed there was increased crime. That proved to be very successful for reducing crime in Youngstown.”

Using Community Development Block Grant funds, the city also installed pole cameras in various areas of the city a couple of years ago. “I can turn on this TV now and show you areas in the city where we have them. It’s a great tool for our investigators, our detectives. They have helped solve a number of crimes, including homicides,” Davis said.

He called the Flock cameras the city uses “probably the most amazing technology I’ve ever seen in my 39 years in law enforcement.”

The city signed a two-year $356,900 contract with Flock Safety in early August 2024 to get 56 license plate recognition cameras for the police department, according to Vindicator files. The cameras alert police when a vehicle comes through the city that has been reported stolen.

“Now you have a network of cameras that we can tap into and network not just in the city, but in Canfield, Poland, all over the country. We are able to share it. That has been a great tool for our investigators in helping us solve crimes and reduce crime in the city,” Davis said.

Davis said the police department also “cultivated community partnerships with our local clergy, pastors, churches. My pastor, Pastor Kenneth Simon, frequently preaches about going outside of the walls of the church and going out into the community,” Davis said.

He and others at the Youngstown Police Department participated in marches with the pastors, Davis said.

“Our message was to stop the violence. That resonated so very well with the community. I believe it helped with that trust factor,” Davis said. “That helped bridge some gaps and build up some trust. Now people are saying the police are also out here marching alongside them, calling for peace and an end to violence in their neighborhoods. That’s powerful,” Davis said.

He knows some Youngstown residents still don’t feel safe in their homes. But he thinks the reduction in homicides this year to 13 shows an improvement in safety, especially compared to 31 homicides in 2021, 23 homicides in 2022, 22 homicides in 2023 and 20 homicides in 2024.

“What I would say to those individuals is that now with 13 homicides, we have almost 20 fewer grieving mothers, almost 20 fewer grieving families (than in 2021). What we have been doing is working, and the data supports that.”

ABC News reported Wednesday on preliminary data that it says shows that cities large and small across the U.S. are “poised to end with the largest one-year drop in U.S. homicides ever recorded.”

The report states that based on preliminary sampling of crime statistics from 550 U.S. law enforcement agencies, the year is “expected to end with a roughly 20 percent decrease in homicides nationwide.” It identified Jeff Asher, a national crime analyst, for that information.

Youngstown’s reduction from 20 homicides in 2024 to 13 in 2025 is a 35 percent drop.

In Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, the number of homicides fell from 106 in 2024 to 70 in 2025, a decrease of 33%.

The number of homicides nationwide in 2025 is expected to be the lowest since the FBI began keeping such records in 1960, Asher said.

The ABC report quoted Robert Boyce, a retired chief of detectives for the New York City Police Department, who said that when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, homicides across the country soared 30 percent.

NEW CHIEF

Derrick McDowell, who defeated Brown in the Nov. 4 election to become the new Youngstown mayor, chose Detective Sgt. Sharon Cole as the new Youngstown police chief and Capt. Courtney Kelly to be the new Youngstown fire chief. They will be the first women to serve in the roles. McDowell, Cole and Kelly began their new jobs Thursday.

“It’s been a pleasure to serve the citizens of Youngstown, people that I have known all my life,” Davis said Wednesday. “I’ve been a resident here all my life, still remain a resident here.” He added, “Now I’m just going to take some time to rest, reflect and wait for my next assignment, whatever that might be.”

KILLINGS NOT INCLUDED

Lt. Mohammad Awad of the detective division of the Youngstown Police Department said the department does not count officer-involved shootings or prison inmate murders among the city’s homicides.

There were two homicides at the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center private prison on Youngstown’s East Side in 2025. An officer-involved shooting also took the life of Arthur T. Mitchell, 28, Oct. 9 in the 4000 block of Rush Boulevard on the South Side.

An initial Youngstown police report stated that officers responded to Rush Boulevard for a suspicious man. But while officers were there, “shots were fired and a responding officer was wounded.” The officer was later described as being in stable condition. Mitchell was killed in an “exchange of gunfire,” the report states.

Youngstown police asked the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation to handle the investigation, and the agency agreed to handle it, Attorney General spokesman Steve Irwin stated. Youngstown spokesman Andy Resnick said just after the shooting that it was “unclear at this time if (Mitchell’s) fatal injury was self-inflicted.”

The two inmate homicides at NEOCC this year were inmate Alex Smith, who died May 28, and Isiaha Waulk, 29, who was stabbed to death by another inmate Aug. 31, according to the Mahoning County Coroner’s Office.

Waulk was a U.S. Marshals Service inmate, according to Core Civic, the company that runs the prison, which also houses prisoners on behalf of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections.