NORFOLK, Va. — March 19, 2022, quickly turned into one of Norfolk's darkest nights. Five people were shot outside Chicho's on Granby Street. Only two survived. Among the dead, Sierra Jenkins, a reporter for the Virginian-Pilot newspaper. A memorial to the lives cut short still sits along the sidewalk.
Five months later, another mass shooting happened just five blocks away. A fight broke out at Legacy Lounge on East Plume Street. There were four victims this time, including two active-duty Navy sailors. They all survived.
Jason McDonald moved to Norfolk in 2020. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, violent crime spiked across the nation, including in downtown Norfolk.
Norfolk
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"I actually have a dog and I walked her a couple of times on Granby Street, but it just it didn't feel right for some reason,” he told me about his first years living in the city. “So, I ended up just walking the opposite direction towards Freemason."
McDonald is now president of the Downtown Norfolk Civic League. He's a voice for the approximately 5,000 people who call this neighborhood home.
"It's a walkable area,” he says. “It has a lot of restaurants, has a lot of bars, lots of places to meet friends."
None of that matters if the people who live, work and play downtown don’t feel safe.
“Downtown is as safe as it's ever been.”
-Assistant Chief Daryl Howard
Norfolk Police Department
I sat down with Assistant Chief Daryl Howard of Norfolk Police for a conversation about the specific things the city has done to curb crime downtown. Most noticeable are six cameras the city rents to keep a constant watch over Granby Street and nearby areas.
"Those in themselves have a deterrent aspect to them,” Howard explains. “So, people see those, they see the blinking blue light, so they know what they are. And that's kind of like our first line of defense."
The department also worked with city leaders to move more officers downtown on weekends or on nights with big events. That became a tough task given the staffing shortages the department faced.
"We came up with the idea of, how we were going to deploy the resources to the areas that we needed the most,” he says. “And with that, we shifted some things around and that's when you saw more bodies walking the streets of downtown Norfolk."
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But how are these efforts working? I requested statistics from NPD, comparing 2022 to 2023. When you zero in on the precinct that includes downtown, here’s what I found:
- In 2022, there were 11 shootings in the sector.
- 4 of the shootings were fatal.
- In 2023, there were only 2 shootings in the sector.
- None of those shootings were deadly.
What's happening downtown is mirrored across the city. Norfolk recorded 63 murders in 2022. That number dropped to 42 in 2023, according to NPD.
"We made some adjustments and I think what you see now is the benefits of that,” Howard explains. “We have seen a great decrease in our crimes."
Neighbors like Jason McDonald agree, remaining hopeful the crime trends continue in the right direction.
“I've noticed the change (…) it’s a very positive evolution."
News 3 photojournalist Wayne Pellenberg contributed to this report.
