New York City saw the fewest shootings throughout 2025 since the NYPD began recording crime statistics in 1994, alongside a nearly two-year decline in the citywide crime rate, the mayor’s office and NYPD announced Monday.
The city has recorded 412 shooting incidents in 2025, lower than the previous record of 426 in the first seven months of 2017, according to preliminary NYPD data. Compared with July 2024, major crime across five of seven categories — murder, robbery, assault, burglary and grand larceny — decreased, with total crime dropping 5.6%.
The statistics provide evidence against claims from national Republican leaders and some city officials that New York City is unsafe.
This month was also the safest July in history for the transit system, which detractors often baselessly accuse of being crime-ridden, excluding 2020 and 2021, when the Covid-19 pandemic dramatically decreased ridership.
Transit crime dropped 8% since last July and housing crime dropped over 15%, according to the police data.
The July numbers are a positive indicator for New York City as it enters its seventh consecutive quarter of consistent crime reduction, Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement.
The announcement came one week after a mass shooter killed an off-duty police officer and three other people in Midtown on July 28.
Adams and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said they hope their announcement honors the legacy of the slain officer, Didarul Islam.
“As we mourn, we must also find ways to turn our pain into purpose; it’s the least we can do to honor the victims,” Adams said. “While this incident will forever be a stain on our city, it happened against the backdrop of a larger, more hopeful picture — one where the brave men and women of the NYPD continue to drive down crime.”
Adams said the perception of artificially high crime rates in New York City comes in part from excess media attention to high-profile crime.
“We feed into what people are feeling, and we have to be honest about that,” Adams said at a press conference. “If every day, all day, you’re reading about subversive things that can happen in a city of 8.5 million people, you have a tendency to believe that you’re unsafe.”
The subway system moves 4.6 million passengers per day and reports only five felonies on average, Adams added.
New York City had a far lower murder rate in 2024 than the majority of the United States’ largest cities, according to a report from the Council on Criminal Justice, an independent think tank.
Adams credited his administration’s recent launch of NYPD Qualify of Life teams — which address New Yorkers’ feelings of security and well-being, adding to traditional police work — with some of the reduction. Tisch also cited the NYPD’s focus on gang violence, noting that police detectives have arrested 347 gang members and associates in 2025.
Adams has touted his administration’s crime reduction in his independent campaign for mayor, often targeting Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani’s previous statements to “defund the police,” which Mamdani has since disavowed.
Adams said the July numbers demonstrated the success of his administration’s approach to crime.
“This incredible progress is no coincidence — it is thanks to our administration’s dedication to policing with precision and integrity,” Adams said. “At a time when many want to defund the police, our administration will always defend them.”
