Despite an officer deficit, the Wilmington Police Department reported a drop in crime in 2025.
Compared to 2024, Wilmington saw an 8% reduction in overall Part 1 crime, which includes murder, rape, robbery and felony theft.
The city also saw a 20% reduction in murders and a 21% reduction in shooting incidents. Wilmington Mayor John Carney said he and his colleagues were pleased to see the results of this report.
“It shows that our department and its leadership are doing their job,” Carney said. “It shows that the former mayor and Council are staying focused on this. It shows that our relationships with [the] police department [and] relationships with the communities is improving. And so, all good things.”
Carney added city staff aren’t going to rest and still have a lot of work to do, including continued policing and community-based programs like Partners in Care, which connects mental health clinicians and police officers on calls for service.
The Wilmington Police Department is authorized to have 305 officers, and it’s currently down about 18. That includes the 16 officers in training, according to Carney.
“And we know that numbers matter, that coverage matters,” Carney said. “We don't see activities in neighborhoods where we have police with a strong presence there and obviously, as I go to community meetings across the city, that's what people and residents want to see.”
Carney said in addition to policing, the city is going to continue inspecting abandoned properties and offering resources to the unhoused population in Wilmington. Carney said property inspections can help neighborhoods with more instances of disorder, drug dealing or prostitution.
“It does involve attention to those areas,” Carney explained. “We'll be talking more about that in the weeks ahead as we kind of fine tune our approach to that.”
That includes managing the Christina Park location, which Mayor Carney’s office established as a city-sanctioned unhoused community site in October.
Carney’s focuses in the coming year are to continue the downward trends in crime, address staffing deficits and prioritize community relations.
