REVEALED: The three major US cities winning the fight against violent crime - and it all started with a barbershop

With crime remaining a concern across America cities - Baltimore, Detroit and San Antonio claim they've turned the tied against violence by making major changes. 

The cities - particularly Baltimore and Detroit - have often been portrayed as some of the most dangerous in the United States but now claim crime has taken a sudden dip. 

Brandon Scott, the mayor of notoriously crime-plagued Baltimore, says his efforts began at a barbershop.  

He claims that the city - which has been used by Hollywood for decades as a setting for crime-fighting cops on shows like The Wire and Homicide - used barbershops as the only real safe havens. 

Now, he's trying to grow out those places of refuge, with a massive Group Violence Reduction Strategy that led a massive drug bust, with 12 people indicted on drug and gun charges.

The strategy involves the city asking those caught up in the drug trade and gang violence to work with them. 

'Take us up on our opportunities to change your life or end up … indicted, headed to prisons,' Scott told CNN.

The results: a record 21% drop in homicides in the city - not even a decade removed from the riots following the death of Freddie Gray - in 2023, with a further 34% drop through the first half of 2024, according to the mayor. 

Stefanie Mavronis, the city's director of neighborhood safety, says Gray's death while in police custody, led the city to make change.

'We are not often a credible partner, and coming out of the uprising there was a lot of community energy around the idea that community has to be a part of the solution and needs to be a co-owner of our strategies moving forward,' she said. 

Scott says Baltimore's made progress through these programs that promote 'intentional collaboration between law enforcement, social services, and community members.'

The programs cost the city $7.3 million a year, with contributions from the federal and state government as well as donors. 

Another city that has preached collaboration between the community and law enforcement is Detroit. 

They used American Rescue Plan funds to fund a program called ShotStoppers in the Motor City. 

Six community groups are given a budget of $700,000 a year to pursue strategies to cut down on murders and shootings within a certain part of the city.

The communities can receive bonus funds of another $700,000 if they achieved certain markers. 

One example is FORCE Detroit, which uses the money to provide access to necessities for those most at-risk. 

Their region saw murders and shootings go down 72% from last November to this January vs. the year ago period and another 67% drop from February through April, which got FORCE Detroit bonuses worth $175,000. 

FORCE Detroit and three other groups had their contracts extended for a year thanks to their results and the city plans to expand the program. 

San Antonio, Texas has taken somewhat of a different strategy, one that was provided to them by people who study crime at the University of Texas in San Antonio.

While the initial plan calls for targeted, increased policing in high-crime areas of the city, but after that, the city will work on what they say are the underlying conditions behind criminal activity.

The city's most-troubled areas saw a 37% drop in crime in 2023 and an overall drop of 7.3% in violent crime in the city, though some have criticized it for being a cosmetic attempt to reduce crime.  

'When this plan first rolled out, not a whole lot of people were happy with it because it just seemed too simplistic and – again, quite candidly – kind of boring,' San Antonio Police Chief William McManus said. 

'But the fact of the matter is, it's working, and I think everybody has gotten used to it by now.'

This follows news in July that the city of Boston saw its murder rate plummet in the first half of 2024. 

New statistics show the city's law-enforcement are easily beating their target to reduce incidents of homicide by 20 percent in three years. 

Compared to the same six-month period in 2023 from January 1 to June 23, Boston has seen its murder cases plummet from 18 to 4. 

Crime stats also show that the number of rapes has fallen by 39.7 percent - from 90 down to 67 - as Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox lauded the city's efforts. 

'We are doing so many things, and hopefully it is having an impact,' he told the New York Times. 

Nationwide, crime rates surged during the pandemic, with widespread murder, rape and robbery rates increasing in major cities across the country.

Some cities remain locked into higher crime rates, like the California town of Antioch, dubbed 'the new Oakland' recently. 

Crime was already spiking on every major metric before a weekend of unprecedented gun violence left one man dead, emptied the city center and left business owners fearing for their future.

Police numbers have plunged from 115 to 76 in the last four years under the tenure of Mayor Lamar Hernandez-Thorpe who was elected in the teeth of opposition from the local police Officers' Association.

And the city has become a magnet for 'Chinese criminal syndicates' supplying drugs to the rest of the state with more than 60 illegal marijuana dens uncovered in the last two years.

'Now Antioch is old Oakland,' said local bar owner Tony Loinab. 'In one week over 200 shots in Antioch, how many people got shot? Three or four? In one week, not in one year, one week!'

Homeless encampments have returned to the city after a clear-out under the previous mayor in 2018, and murders were up by a third in the first six months of the year compared with the same period last year. 

Robberies were up 12 percent, larcenies were up 40 percent, and vehicle thefts were up 65 percent.

At a time of falling crime rates nationwide, rises were also recorded in burglaries, vandalism, and assault.