Richmond Police pinpoints over 15 ‘hot spots’ for city gun violence
VENN
RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) -- Richmond Police identified over 15 gun violence "hot spots" within the city during its crime briefing on Thursday.
As part of the Richmond Police Department's quarterly crime briefing on Thursday, April 17, Police Chief Rick Edwards revealed information on the violent crime hot spots his officers are currently monitoring.
While these hot spots are updated every six months, they are based on five years of data, according to Edwards.
In total, they reflect five types of crime: murders involving a person shot, aggravated assaults involving a person shot, robberies involving a person shot, shootings into occupied homes and shootings into occupied vehicles.
Gun violence hot spots in Richmond as of April 17. (Photo: Richmond Police Department)
The heatmap shown above illustrates where the current hot spots are, each indicated by a blue dot. The gradient from blue to red to yellow signifies the density of incidents -- the more yellow the area, the more incidents have taken place there.
The full list of 17 gun violence hot spots, each encompassing a 100-block range, is as follows:
- 1400 block of Jennie Scher Road
- 1500 block of Harwood Street
- 1300 block of Coalter Street
- 1500 block of Mechanicsville Turnpike
- 1900 block of Mechanicsville Turnpike
- 2100 block of Fairfield Avenue
- 2100 block of Ford Avenue
- 2400 block of Whitcomb Street
- 4000 block of Midlothian Turnpike
- 1500 block of Clarkson Road
- 5700 block of Hull Street Road
- 3400 block of Walmsley Boulevard
- 3600 block of Richmond Highway
- 600 block of Westover Hills Boulevard
- 1000 block of St. Paul Street
- 2900 block of Chamberlayne Avenue
- 4900 block of Chamberlayne Avenue
Several of these locations were also among the 21 hot spots identified by Richmond Police just about a year ago, during an April 15, 2024 press conference.
No charges filed in crash that left Richmond principal seriously injured
"These [hot spots] are where our officers are spending most of their time, trying to deploy those resources so we can keep a lid on some of these violent crimes," Edwards said.
8News has reported on gun violence within some of these hot spots in recent months. This includes a man shot dead on Walmsley Boulevard in mid-April, a deadly double shooting on Chamberlayne Avenue in early April, the murder of a 22-year-old Richmond man on Coalter Street in mid-March, a man injured in a shooting on Clarkson Road in mid-January and the murder of a 38-year-old Chesterfield County man on Hull Street Road in December 2024.
