FARGO — Homicides, shootings and stabbings have dominated the news the past few weeks.

Since June 1, there have been seven homicides across the Fargo-Moorhead metro, along with a number of other high-profile attempted murder cases.

WDAY dug through its archives and police reports for the months of June, July and August across the metro for the past three years and found that while homicide numbers are up, overall violent crime is either level or down.

Noticeably, during summer 2022, there were three officer-involved shootings in less than a month. Two of them were deadly.

There was also a beating death in downtown Fargo behind a bank, along with a shooting at a Fargo trailer park that was determined to be self-defense.

In summer 2023, there was the deadly police ambush of three Fargo officers, killing rookie officer Jake Wallin. Officers Andrew Dotas and Tyler Hawes were critically injured and are still recovering along with a bystander at the scene.

A child was shot to death while playing with a stolen gun at Romkey Park in Moorhead.

A West Fargo mother was found beaten to death inside her family home. There was also a shootout between men outside of the James Carlson Library in south Fargo.

While homicides are slightly up in Fargo and Moorhead for the year, gun crimes are actually on or below average.

“We are diligently working on this, we are proactively working on it,” said Capt. Bill Ahlfeldt of the Fargo Police Department.

According to Fargo police, in 2022 and 2023 they investigated seven shootings each year. There have been five shootings so far in 2024.

In Moorhead, there was one shooting in 2022, three last year and none this year. If the case is classified as a homicide, it’s only classified as that and no longer classified as a shooting.

When it comes to shots-fired calls, Fargo reported 38 in 2022, a drop last year to 23 and 19 this year.

Moorhead has also seen a huge drop in shots-fired calls, from 10 in 2022 to a combined nine (four in 2023 and five in 2024) the past two years.

On social media, some have commented the metro is becoming more like the city of Minneapolis.

According to a city stat tracker, so far this year, Minneapolis police have responded to more than 4,000 shots-fired calls, and more than 260 people have been treated for gunshot wounds.

Fargo police credit the decrease in gun crimes to a number of things, including the Metro Street Crimes Unit gathering intelligence to identify violent people in the community, and the use of a machine that examines spent shell casings to potentially link them to other crimes locally or even nationally.

“We can’t predict when and where it’s going to happen,” Ahlfeldt said. “But we do know individuals who might have them, we can link individuals through this type of system who might have used guns before. Through our intelligence and analysis team, we’re able to look at many factors.”

Sioux Falls, SD, a city similar in size to Fargo, does not track shootings or shots-fired calls. However, law enforcement was able to share homicide numbers.

There were eight in 2022, two last year and four so far this year, including three in June.

Matt Henson is an Emmy award-winning reporter/photographer/editor for WDAY. Prior to joining WDAY in 2019, Matt was the main anchor at WDAZ in Grand Forks for four years.