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Lakeland had its first murder of 2025 on Tuesday evening.
According to Lakeland Police officials, Jermaine Harrison, 40, shot his brother-in-law, 49-year-old Joseph Gray, in a home off New Tampa Highway, which shut the major east-west roadway down for hours during rush hour and ended in the early morning hours Wednesday, when Harrison surrendered.
Police charged Harrison with one count of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder, as well as armed burglary to an occupied dwelling, armed kidnapping and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
Murder rates go up, and down: Statistics provided by Lakeland Police show murder rates on a roller coaster between 2019 and 2024. Both of those years had six murders, but in between, the rate spiked to 12 murders in 2020 — the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic — then dropped to eight in 2021, five in 2022 and just one in 2023.
In other words, Lakeland just matched the 2023 murder rate — with nearly eleven months to go.
The Tuesday murder was quickly solved. Of the 39 murders in Lakeland in the last six years, seven remain unsolved.
The COVID effect: Nationally, the murder rate also rose sharply in 2020, by nearly 30%. According to the Brookings Institution, it was the fastest spike ever recorded in the country. Across the nation, more than 24,000 people were murdered, compared to about 19,000 the year before.
Brookings, a Washington think-tank that conducts in-depth, nonpartisan research, attributes the high murder rate in 2020 to the COVID-19 pandemic, when tensions were high as businesses closed and employees lost jobs, and schools were closed and teens were home.
A report by the Council on Criminal Justice shows the murder and violent crimes rates down in 39 major cities last year, many dipping to pre-pandemic levels.
A safe community: Lakeland Police Chief Sam Taylor said reducing crime is a team effort between law enforcement and the community.
“Lakeland is a very safe community and I see first-hand every day how committed the men and women of the Lakeland Police Department are to ensuring people feel safe in their homes, businesses and public spaces,” Taylor said.
“Our agency is firmly rooted in the community policing philosophy, which is why we allocate resources to community-focused law enforcement positions outside of our uniform patrol officers and detectives.”
Taylor added that Lakeland Police are also committed to solving murders when they occur, ensuring victims’ families have some justice.
“In 2024, sadly, we worked six homicides, two involving small children,” he said. “Every year we hope that number is zero.”
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