Noah Berger for The Bay Citizen

An Oakland police officer stands watch at the scene of a double homicide on Tuesday, March 22, 2011

There's something different about homicides in Oakland this year — and it's not just that there are more of them.

Officials first took notice when the city saw 12 homicides in January, three times as many as the year before. The total number of homicides in 2011 has since grown to 37.

But there are some other slight differences.

According to new data from Measure Y, the city's violence-prevention program, homicide victims this year are, on average, older than the victims of years past, and slightly more homicides are occurring on weekdays, rather than Friday and Saturday nights.

Authorities are hard-pressed to assign meaning to the new patterns. Measure Y authorities say the numbers could mean that anti-violence efforts targeting youth are working, while crime analysts and homicide detectives say the numbers are the result of normal fluctuations.

Normal or not, several recent shootings have riled residents, prompting responses from the Oakland Police Department and Mayor Jean Quan. The Fruitvale district mourned en masse when prominent businessman and community leader Jesus "Chuy" Campos was shot to death April 8 during a botched robbery. Early Monday morning, a man with an assault rifle attempted a robbery outside a restaurant in Oakland's Jack London Square, shooting and killing two people and wounding four others in the process. Another shooting early Monday at a nearby nightclub left one man injured.

As residents remain shocked by the bloody events, and the police department struggles to respond with diminished staff and resources, public safety officials are looking to make some sense of the new numbers. 

Kevin Grant, who oversees the city's street outreach team, a group of individuals who walk the city's hot spots at night to quell potential violence, says the numbers show his team's efforts are working.

According to the Urban Strategies Council, a nonprofit hired by the police department to analyze city crime data, last year victims between the ages of 18 and 34 accounted for 57 percent of the city's homicides, while victims over 35 years old comprised 31 percent of homicides.

This year, the portion of victims over 30 is nearly the same as the number between 18 and 30 — 45 percent and 48 percent, respectively — according to Page Tomblin, who collected the most recent homicide data and oversees Measure Y programs.

Only two of this year's 37 homicide victims, or 6 percent, were under the age of 18. Last year, such victims accounted for 11 percent of all homicides.