2025 was a historic year for public safety improvements in Oakland, but city leaders aren’t waving the victory flag just yet.

Speaking at a press conference Wednesday morning at City Hall, Mayor Barbara Lee and public safety leaders recognized Oakland’s biggest single-year decline in homicides in decades. 

Oakland suffered 67 homicides last year, a 22% decrease from the previous year’s 86, according to the Oakland Police Department’s most recent annual crime report. Fifty-seven of these were classified as murder, down from 78 murders in 2024. The city’s violent crime rate — which includes homicides, nonfatal shootings, assaults, rapes, and robberies — was down 25%.

The mayor credited the city’s Ceasefire strategy as a key driver in violence reduction. Spearheaded by the Department of Violence Prevention, Ceasefire involves focusing on the small number of people identified as at-risk of being shot or shooting someone within the next 90 days, and offering them services and life coaching to get off the cycle of violence.

“The results show that when we invest in proven strategies and work together, lives will and can be saved,” Lee said.

Holly Joshi, chief of the Department of Violence Prevention, said her department’s life coaches and partnerships with community- and faith-based groups helped deter the highest-risk individuals from retaliatory violence.

Still, leaders acknowledged that the data does not align with the public’s perception of crime in Oakland, and that underreporting of crimes has been an issue for decades. 

And the start of the new year has been violent. In the first four days of 2026, five people were fatally shot in Oakland. James Beere, interim chief of OPD, told reporters that the homicides were from three separate incidents, two of which are “near-resolved,” he said.

“Two truths can be true at once — the city can still not feel safe enough, and the numbers can be real,” Joshi said.

“Do you feel safe leaving your house at 3 o’clock in the morning? Until that answer is yes, we still have work to do, but we can celebrate the progress in the meantime,” said Council President Kevin Jenkins.

Other categories of crime also saw major reductions last year, according to OPD data:

Commercial burglaries decreased by 47%.

Car thefts were down 39%.

Carjackings declined by 49%.

Last year, Beere said, OPD’s Homicide Section cleared 95% of all homicide cases, meaning they resulted in an arrest or were closed for other reasons. OPD’s homicide clearance rates have historically hovered between 50% and 70%, city records show.

“That’s a message for everyone out there: If you engage in violent crime, we will catch you, we will bring you to justice, and you will be charged,” Beere said.

Interim OPD Chief James Beere says violent crime and most categories of property crime saw major declines in 2025. Credit: Roselyn Romero/The Oaklandside

He credited surveillance technologies for helping officers respond to and investigate crimes. Automated license plate reader cameras, Beere said, helped OPD seize nearly 300 cars involved in sideshows in Oakland last year, with some of those cars being towed from other parts of California. In 2025, OPD deployed drones 156 times to help with sideshow response, armed and barricaded suspects, high-risk warrants, and other incidents, Beere added.

Other public safety highlights from city leaders included:

The city of Oakland is doubling down on completing OPD’s federal court oversight program. The mayor has created a “chief constitutional officer” position, which will be tasked with ensuring that Oakland police officers abide by constitutional policing, said Jenkins. This person will work with Michelle Phillips, an assistant city administrator hired to oversee constitutional policing efforts.

OPD has a new Ceasefire director. Annette Jointer, formerly with the Alameda County Probation Department, will take over the role previously held by Damita Davis-Howard, the current public safety director in the mayor’s office.

The Oakland Fire Department is getting a new fireboat, according to OFD Chief Damon Covington. Previously, OFD would have to call the San Francisco Fire Department for water rescues, as OFD had a World War II-era fireboat that was not operationally effective, Covington told The Oaklandside. Fire personnel are currently training to use the new fireboat, and the department plans to roll it out with a special ceremony in the coming months.

Pastor Jim Hopkins, emeritus pastor at the Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church, attended the press conference to support fellow clergy members involved in Faith in Action East Bay, one of the nonprofit organizations partnering with the city on violence prevention. In an interview with The Oaklandside, Hopkins said he feels cautiously optimistic about the reductions in crime.

“We still have a long way to go. Let’s not declare victory just yet,” he said.

Hopkins has been involved in the DVP’s “custom notifications,” conversations where a life coach and a community member will speak to a Ceasefire client at their home, in the community, or at Santa Rita Jail in hopes of connecting them with resources and steering them away from violence. Hopkins said many of the people he’s spoken with were young men who “want something different for themselves.” Recent DVP data shows the majority of Ceasefire clients are Black men between the ages of 18 and 34.

“People generally don’t want to be stuck in the cycle of violence,” said Hopkins. “They want a way out, and the life coaches help with that.”

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