The Cities That Saw Historic Murder Lows in 2025
Last year was a historic year in terms of the nation’s murder rate signalling the third straight year of record declines. Murder likely fell at the fastest rate ever recorded and it was at or near a historic low in terms of the nation’s murder rate.
It should come as no surprise that there are a number of large cities throughout the country that recorded historic lows in terms of the number and rate of murders in their borders. I count at least 12 such cities and three Honorable Mention cities that I think are worth pointing out.
First, the Honoroable Mentions:
New York City likely had the fewest shooting victims ever recorded in a year. The city’s shooting victim data is only updated through September right now, but we can estimate the totals for the last three months using the aggregated counts on the police department’s CompStat report. That report tends to slightly understate the number of shooting victims that show up each month in the open victim-level data.
There were fewer shooting victims in New York City than any other year on record even though there were ever so slightly more murder victims this year (around 300) than the historic low of 2017 (292). It’s worth noting that there were fewer people shot (fatally or nonfatally) in New York City this year (around 950) than were murdered there in any given year from 1968 to 1996.
New Orleans, LA and Worcester, MA are the two other cities worth pointing out as Honorable Mentions. Worcester media is reporting just two murders in 2025 though there is no data from the police department. That would be the lowest total in Worcester since 1963, but I’m not including them in the list of cities with historic lows because I’m missing data for 1981, 1989, 1990, and 1991. It’s unlikely that there were 2 or fewer murders in Worcester those years, but the lack of data for those years lands them in Honorable Mentions.
There were 121 murders in New Orleans which equaled the count reported by the city in 2019 — which was the fewest since 1970. Still, the New Orleans totals includes 14 lives taken on Bourbon Street before sunup on January 1st. Additionally, there were 290 shooting incidents in New Orleans in 2025, down by more than 70 from 2019 and the fewest on record (my data goes back to 2010 but likely the fewest in decades). So, not quite the lowest but tied for the lowest in 55 years which is not bad!
Now, on to the 12 cities with historic lows in 2025. They are: San Francisco, Newark, Bridgeport, Providence (data through 12/14), Richmond (CA), Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia, Fresno, Modesto, and Oakland (data through 12/28).
Note that we don’t quite have complete data for a couple of those cities, so I estimated the final year count based on the number observed through at least mid-December. The declines in these cities ranges from impressive to incredible.
There were 61 murders in Richmond, CA in 1991 and just 5 in 2025. Bridgeport went from 60 in 1993 to 4 last year. Modesto reported no murders in 2025 after having 25 in 2015. Murder fell by around 50 percent between 2021 and 2025 in Baltimore, Chicago, San Francisco, Oakland and Newark. Murder was down by more than 60 percent from 2021 to 2025 in Philadelphia.
Two points of clarification on the data are necessary.
First, the San Francisco Chronicle reported 27 murders in San Francisco in 1954 according to the San Francisco Police Department setting that year as the comparable historical low. But SFPD clearly reported 39 murders to the FBI in 1954 (see below) and I’m going with the FBI reporting for San Francisco. Whether it was the fewest since 1954 or 1942, however, is a distinction without a difference in my opinion, it has been a very long time since San Francisco had thiat few murders.
Second, Illinois has had some reporting issues to the FBI. For that city’s murder count I relied on the city’s violence reduction dashboard which has data that matches what the police department reports in it’s annual report.
“But wait,” you might be thinking. “Detroit had more than 1.5 million people in 1970 and 650,000 in 2024. How can you compare the two?” I got this response a lot when I posted about these cities on Bluesky a few weeks ago including one wonderful user who suggested that people were being misled by the raw numbers.
Estimating the murder rate for each agency for 2025 using 2024 population for each city shows the same overarching thing! Each of these cities also hit historic lows in 2025 based on the murder rate per 100,000. Detroit, for example, had the lowest murder count since 1964 and the lowest murder rate since 1967.
The bottom line doesn’t change whether you use counts or rates: these cities saw historic lows in 2025.
There are probably other cities that were at or near historic lows that I either didn’t see or don’t have complete data. Camden, NJ for example, had the fewest murders there since mid-1980s with 12. And there are other places like Jackson, MS and Birmingham, AL that aren’t setting historic records but have nonetheless experienced enormous declines over the last few years.
The counts and rates from these cities are impressive though one can rightly argue that there’s still more work to be done. And so we turn our attention to 2026 to see if any other historic lows can be achieved.
New In The Jeff-alytics Universe
Former Bureau of Justice Statistics Director Alex Piquero joins me to talk about how we measure crime in the United States. Alex and I discuss the plusses and minuses of the National Crime Victimization Survey and Uniform Crime Report and whether the University of Miami should apologize for using an illegal 5th down to beat my dad’s Tulane Green Wave in 1972.
Check it out on Substack, Spotify, Apple, Amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts!
Also, I went around New Orleans seeing if people knew more about Taylor Swift, the NFL or crime stats and found out that nobody knows anything about any subject. See my journey on YouTube or Instagram!
Your work is awesome. Apologies for being a pest but when I go down rabbit holes with the numbers you provide it is striking that the first few months of 2020 in bellwether cities seemed to show a significant uptick in homicides before covid hit. Which makes me wonder how much of the Covid uptick would have occurred regardless. And what possible explanation might there be for this. Philly had 23 homicides by mid-January 2020 and 6 as of today for 2026. https://www.phillypolice.com/crime-data/crime-statistics/
I was actually thinking the opposite about population change! I know that many cities have decreased in population since 1960 but the nation's population has nearly doubled. For our current absolute murder counts to be nearing the lows of the 60s would mean our rate is nearly half what theirs was? Nuts!