Although Richmond had a historic low number of homicides in 2025, there was a surge of shootings during the last three months of the year, according to a report shared at the Community Police Review Commission’s Wednesday meeting.
Incoming Richmond Police Chief Tim Simmons told the CPRC that although shooting incidents — which are classified as someone reporting that they were “shot” or “shot at” — fell from 151 in 2024 to 110 in 2025, 50 of those incidents happened from October through the end of December.
In the first nine months of 2025, two men were killed at nearly the same location, in front of the Triangle Court housing complex: 43-year-old Claude Richards III on July 9 and 28-year-old Jerry Williams on Sept. 19.
Since late October, however, gun violence spiked in the city with four more people shot to death: 20-year-old Griffin Hammond, on Nov. 8; 23-year-old Josue Cornejo, on Nov. 17; 50-year-old Larry Russell, on Dec. 17; and Romario Raso Garcia, described as being in his 30s, on Dec. 29.
In Hammond‘s case, the Contra Costa County District Attorney declined to file charges, saying the person who shot him did so in self-defense after Hammond reportedly shot that person outside a convenience store on Carlson Boulevard and Potrero Avenue.
In total, of the 110 shots fired reports of 2025, 32 of them resulted in people being injured, one of whom remains on life support. Simmons described them as potential “homicides that didn’t end up as homicides.”
“I’m actually sitting down with our team (Thursday) as a whole to kind of go over the trend,” Simmons told the commission. “There’s a current upward trend that we’re experiencing right now that is also carrying over into 2026.”
Much of the uptick in gun violence, Simmons added, is partially due to “old feuds and factions that are rising up” around the city.
Simmons said that the recent gun violence in Richmond has seen victims disproportionately centered in the Iron Triangle neighborhood and some of the large housing complexes in the Richmond Annex.
Historically, Richmond gun violence has stemmed from longstanding feuds between neighborhood groups in the central and southern portions of the city and the unincorporated North Richmond area, according to various law enforcement sources.
Outside of Richmond, two 36-year-old Richmond men were shot during the evening of Dec. 29 — one fatally and the other critically injured — on Rumrill Boulevard near Chesley Avenue in front of Mike’s Liquor Store, according to San Pablo police. Social media posts the next day identified the person who died as a man from North Richmond.
San Pablo police have not identified the man who was killed. Richmondside reached out to the department and the Contra Costa County Coroner’s Office for more information but did not hear back by publication time.
“There is a concerning trend right now and it is something that we are dedicating a good portion of our investigative resources to as well as our intervention resources,” Simmons said. “The last 90 days represents a 163% increase in gun violence from the 90-day period prior to that. It’s one of the largest 90-day jumps that I’ve been able to find in the last five years.
Office of Neighborhood Safety is trying to address recent violence surge
One of those intervention resources is Richmond’s Office of Neighborhood Safety (ONS), which was established by the city in 2007 in response to a spike in murders that decade. The group uses inter-generational mentorship to reach out to at-risk young people who might once have resorted to shooting someone to solve a dispute.
Sam Vaughn, ONS director, said that the group is attempting to address the recent spike in gun violence.
“As for the uptick in violence during the end of the year, violence in this community will always have its peaks and valleys,” ONS Director Sam Vaughn told Richmondside in an email. “When a peak comes, we address it as best we can, when it’s a valley we work hard to create an environment to make the peaks further apart.”
Vaughn declined to provide specifics, stating that he did not want to jeopardize the work that ONS is doing.
Simmons plans on meeting with the Richmond Neighborhood Coordinating Council (RNCC) — the body which represents all of the city’s neighborhood councils — on Monday to discuss ways in which the department might increase the number of officers patrolling the Iron Triangle, where the violence seems to be centered.
Because the Flock automated license plate readers were turned off in November by Simmons due to a data sharing feature that the department didn’t know had been made searchable by outside agencies, he said that investigators into these recent shootings have been “handicapped.” Richmond’s CCTV system, also operated by Flock, remains online.
“We had to resort to other resources and it slows the investigations down. We’re having to do things a little bit differently,” he said.
Simmons emphasized, however, that though there has been a surge in incidents, the city overall made progress based on data for calls for shots fired and ShotSpotter activations.
According to Richmond police statistics, there were 301 calls by residents reporting shots fired in 2024 compared to 259 calls in 2025. In 2024, there were 482 ShotSpotter alerts compared to 370 alerts in 2025.
“We need to celebrate that our homicide numbers are reducing but I feel like we still have a tremendous amount of work to do,” Simmons said.
By ‘groups’ do you mean gangs? Because there are a lot of gangs down in Crescent Park, groups not so much. I will never forget when Nico Martinez was murdered coming home from work by the swerving gang 60 rounds I am afraid that terror is approaching a return. I hope we get the flock cameras back- they are necessary as are other department needs. I do hope are some sources to help with the dramatic increase of domestic violence and child molestation, abuse.