Will Crime Drop In New York City, Chicago Continue?

New York City saw historic reductions in overall crime through the first quarter of 2025, with the fewest shooting incidents in recorded history and the second lowest number of murders in the same period, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said on Thursday.

Through the first three months of 2025, shootings were down 23.1% (140 vs. 182), and murders declined 34.4% (63 vs. 96), compared with the same period in 2024. March 2025 also had the lowest number of murders ever on record for that month.

Other serious crime categories dropped, with reported robberies down22.8% (3,074 vs. 3,981), grand larceny declined 13.7% (10,226 vs. 11,855), auto theft was down 11.9% (2,773 vs. 3,148), and felony assault fell 2.7% (6,361 vs. 6,535).

Subway crime decreased to the second-lowest level in 27 years, with major crime dropping 18.1% (465 vs. 568) during the first quarter, and no murders in the transit system for the first time in seven years.

Tisch attributed the trend to "precision policing strategies," which she said "aren’t just working — they’re delivering historic results and making New York City the safest big city in the nation.”

Precision policing involves placing officers in areas experiencing the highest concentrations of crime — known as Violence Reduction Zones. In the first quarter, major crime in these zones dropped 25% compared to the same period last year.

In Chicago, the first quarter ended with 96 murders, a drop of more than 15% from the first three months of last year. New Orleans-based data analyst Jeff Asher, who follows crime numbers in Chicago and other cities discussed the trend with WBEZ radio.

Asher said big cities are "seeing a dramatic decline in murder. Philadelphia during this year’s first quarter had its fewest murders since the mid-1960s. Baltimore has had its fewest murders in decades. New Orleans has had similar drops. Chicago very much mirrors what we’re seeing in a lot of big cities."

Why does much of the public believe that crime is rising? Asher says many people rely on anecdotes. ‘Have I seen more robberies in the news than I saw last year?’ And you’re always going to have a recency bias: ‘How can crime possibly be down if, three weeks ago, my cousin’s barber was robbed?’

"And it has become politically advantageous, especially for the current president, to say that crime is up, no matter what. ‘Crime is up, crime is up, crime is up.’ I think that explains why public perceptions are so divorced from reality."

FBI director Kash Patel talked recently about the "violent crime explosion" over the last four of five years.

Says Asher, "Yes, we had an explosion of violent crime four or five years ago. What he leaves out is that, ever since, violent crime has been falling, to a point where it’s below where it was pre-pandemic. What this tells us is that, yes, you can say there was an explosion in murder nationally, but that doesn’t describe where we are now."

What could cities do to help keep the crime numbers dropping?

Asher urges investing in research to understand why murders have dropped, even as police numbers in many areas have dropped. He says, "Policing certainly plays a role in all of this, but I think that there is a vast ecosystem of interventions and policies and actions and reactions that are leading to these crime declines and, the better that we can understand the declines, the more we can do to respond when crime starts to increase."