Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch stood alongside Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul at One Police Plaza Tuesday and reported a record year for the NYPD in 2025 — one that saw the fewest number of shootings and victims since 2018, breaking records.
The occasion marked the first time Mamdani publicly stood inside police headquarters as mayor. Hizzoner applauded the yearly statistical round-up that, according to police, saw the fewest shooting incidents and shooting victims in recorded history.
According to Tisch, she has led the way in a dramatic decrease in over her one year tenure helming the department. According to the top cop, the Big Apple saw 688 shootings in 2025 compared to 904 in 2024. Authorities say this surpassed the previous record-low set in 2018 with 754 incidents. Cops say the number of people struck by gunfire also sharply fell with 856 victims in 2025 compared 1,103 in 2024.
The number of victims also fell to the 2018 low of 897. Last month also reportedly experienced the fewest shooting incidents in any month in history.
“These numbers describe an agency that’s firing on all cylinders: taking down violent gangs, removing thousands of guns off the street, and shattering record-low violent crime numbers. New York City is still the safest big city in the country, thanks to the extraordinary work of the women and men of the NYPD who answer the call every day to protect and serve,” Tisch said.
Police also report that major crimes in the subway system have fallen to their lowest point in 16 years, excluding pandemic years. Police say shootings inside the transit system fell by 62.5% while the number of victims themselves dropped by 78.6%.
The number of murders in the subway also reached its lowest in five years and fell from 2024 by 60%. Transit robberies also reached their lowest levels ever, including the pandemic years, falling by 12.5%.
Rise in youth crime and rape
Although authorities boasted about the significant decreases in crime over the course of 2025, it wasn’t all positive news.
Police reported a sharp increase in youth crime. The number of adolescents committing shootings has acutely risen.
Statistics show 14% of shooting victims were under the age of 18, a 5.2% increase from last year, while 18% of shooting perpetrators were also under 18. Both are at the highest percentages since the NYPD began tracking this data in 2018.
Traditionally, many young trigger-pullers have been a part of gangs and or have engaged in schoolyard beefs. In response, police implemented School Safety Zones in at-risk locations such as bus stops and the routes students take to and from school. The NYPD also changed its strategy with school safety agents, increasing deployments in and around schools.
Reports of rape also increased by 16% with 2,049 sexual assaults taking place. Domestic violence-related rapes also increased by 25% and now account for roughly half of all reported rape cases citywide.
“That’s why domestic violence cases, including sexual violence, are now being handled through the NYPD domestic violence unit with the focused attention that they require,” Tisch said.
As for the positive progress the NYPD made in 2025 under Tisch’s direction, Mamdani gave credit to the entire department and Tisch for their work to bring crime down across the city.
“I made the decision to retain Police Commissioner Tisch because of the work that she was doing, and that was work that could be measured in statistics,” Mamdani said, adding the changes made in the department’s top brass and effort to root out corruption. “And also in the manner in which she tackled the crisis at hand at the upper echelon of the department that she was inherited. And what we are seeing are the fruits of that work.”
Though he campaigned on pushing for police reforms such as disbanding the NYPD Strategic Response Group — a unit that typically responds to protests and other demonstrations, but has been criticized for its tactics — Mamdani declined to say if he would be implementing any major changes at the moment.
He did indicate he would consider other ways the city can help lower crime, including greater outreach to young New Yorkers.
“In terms of the whole of government approaches required to also provide services, programming, and opportunities for young people. And I look forward to having those conversations,” Mamdani added.
The NYPD compared their own numbers to that of Chicago, which suffered 1,400 shootings incidents over the same period despite having one-third of the population.
Philadelphia— with a population of 1.5 million people — also recorded more than 825 shooting incidents, while having less than one-fifth of New York City’s population, authorities say.
“In 2025 we halved Chicago’s more than 1400 shooting incidents,” Tisch said. “It puts this moment into historical context. For decades, people have pointed to the early 1990s as the moment New York City turned the corner on gun violence years that had been studied and written about, what is striking is that the drop in shootings from 2024 to 2025 was of a similar magnitude given all of this, it should come as no surprise that the number of people shot in New York City also fell to historic lows in 2025.”
