Mourning a mass shooting, crime stats show Stockton violence remains entrenched
A birthday party in Stockton turned into one of the region’s deadliest mass shootings in years, leaving four people dead — three of them children — and 13 others wounded.
The gunfire erupted Saturday evening at a crowded celebration for a child’s second birthday, shattering what should have been a joyful gathering and sending waves of grief through a city long familiar with violence.
“Stockton is a place of great resilience,” former Stockton mayor Michael Tubbs said. “I oftentimes say, ‘I wish we didn’t have to be so resilient all the time.’ There’s a resilience and a fortitude that comes from being in a community that has experienced such hardships.”
City leaders — including Stockton Mayor Christina Fugazi, who has described the rampage as gang‑related terrorism — have publicly linked the shooting to gang activity. But investigators have urged caution.
San Joaquin County Sheriff Patrick Withrow said Sunday his office could not confirm any gang ties and emphasized that detectives were “not going to confirm any gang involvement without all the facts.”
While investigators also have not confirmed a motive, the brutality of the attack — and its young victims — underscored the persistent toll that violence has taken on the Central Valley city of 300,000 despite years of law enforcement crackdowns and community intervention efforts.
“We have gang shootings and homicides in our city, but this hits differently,” Stockton City Councilmember Michele Padilla told the Los Angeles Times in the wake of the carnage. “This is something no one will forget.”
No arrests have been made, and investigators have not identified any suspects.
The FBI on Tuesday announced a $50,000 reward for information that could lead to an arrest and conviction — a high-profile push for answers in a city where violent crime and gang activity has proven stubbornly difficult to contain.
Nearly a decade ago in 2016, state and local law enforcement arrested 47 people associated with six active gangs, prompting then-Attorney General Xavier Becerra to declare a victory of sorts.
“Families in Stockton can breathe a little easier tonight knowing that gang members, drugs and deadly weapons are off the streets,” Becerra, who is now running for governor, said at the time.
Six years later in 2022, another attorney general tried again. Working with Stockton police and the San Joaquin County District Attorney’s office, Rob Bonta announced in June of that year that the agencies had targeted local gangs to arrest 88 people and seize 58 weapons.
Stockton crime, by the numbers
But violent crime and gang activity have continued to plague the area. San Joaquin County experienced 64 homicides in 2024 – the same deadly count as in 2015, state records show. The number of rapes has increased dramatically, to 310 last year from 198 in 2015.
There were 457 crimes committed with firearms in the county last year, down about 8% compared to 2015, but up dramatically from a low of 294 in 2021.
The violence culminated in the bloody scene on Saturday that killed two 8-year-old girls, a 14-year-old boy and a 21-year-old man.
“We’re not going to allow this to continue,” Fugazi told reporters after the shooting last weekend. “... We’re not going to tolerate that here anymore.”
Crime in Stockton has fallen this year
In the city of Stockton, crime prevention efforts had led to a modest drop in overall crime for the first nine months of 2025 when compared to the year before, data from the Stockton Police Department shows.
Total violent incidents from January through September totaled 2,555 in the city this year, down from 2,815 in 2024. The number of homicides dropped from 39 to 30 during the same period.
But seen over a longer period of time, crime trends within the Stockton city limits somewhat mirrored those in the rest of the county.
Overall violent crime in Stockton dropped by about 9% in 2024 compared to 2015, but has risen or remained steady since 2021. At the county level, total violent incidents also dropped by about 9% over the 10-year span, but have been rising since 2021, according to state Justice Department statistics.
The city had 49 homicides in 2015, and 54 in 2024.
Going beyond the crime statistics
Leia Schenk, a social justice and anti-violence advocate who has represented families in Stockton as well as Sacramento, said that crime trends themselves can’t tell the whole story. Some of the decline in violent crime, for example, could be because of population shifts. And what appears to be an increase in crime since 2021 could also be simply a return to more typical levels of all kinds of activity after the COVID-19 pandemic.
But Schenk said that Saturday’s shooting held a different and more frightening message for the community: The willingness of the perpetrators to kill children, she said, is a change even among those involved in gang activity. She and other community members have voiced concern that the rampage could lead to reprisals that also involve kids.
“This isn’t even the ‘normal’ gang killings that we are used to seeing,” she said. “This is no regard for life at all.”
“They knew this was a kids’ party and they didn’t care,” she said. “And that’s really dangerous. That’s the scary part.”
The only way out, she said, is a coordinated effort to counteract the roots of despair and violence.
“If things like this don’t cause people to come together, we will lose,” she said. “It’s dire.”
This story was originally published December 4, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Mourning a mass shooting, crime stats show Stockton violence remains entrenched."
