A new analysis shows why 2025’s record low shootings mask persistent challenges in felony assaults and overall crime levels
The Headlines Are True. The Full Story Is More Complex.
When Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch announced at One Police Plaza in January that New York City had recorded the fewest shooting incidents and shooting victims in the city’s recorded history in 2025, the headlines were accurate. The city recorded 688 shooting incidents, shattering the previous record set in 2018 by more than 10 percent. Murders fell 20.2 percent. Subway crime reached its lowest level since 2009 outside pandemic years. These are genuine, significant, meaningful reductions in the most serious forms of violence, and they reflect real work by the NYPD, by violence interrupter organizations, and by community members who have been demanding safer neighborhoods for years. But the same data that produced the press conference also contained evidence that demands a more complete accounting.
The Numbers That Did Not Make the Headlines
Felony assaults in New York City increased for the sixth consecutive year in 2025, reaching levels not seen since 1997. Hate crimes were down overall but antisemitic incidents remained at 57 percent of all hate crimes reported. Rapes were up 16 percent, a figure attributed largely to a broadened legal definition rather than a pure increase in incidents — but still requiring careful analysis. Overall major crime, while down 3 percent from 2024, remains substantially higher than the city’s 2019 pre-pandemic baseline. New York’s recovery from the pandemic crime surge has been slower than that of many peer cities.
What Mamdani Has Inherited and What He Has Changed
Mamdani entered office with public safety data that gave him genuine wins to announce. He also entered office with a policing philosophy that differs from his predecessors: a belief in civilian violence intervention, community-based safety infrastructure, and eventually a Department of Community Safety operating alongside the NYPD rather than replacing it. His decision to retain Jessica Tisch as Police Commissioner has, so far, produced a working relationship that maintains the NYPD’s data-driven approach to violent crime while leaving space for longer-term structural reform. Whether that combination can produce progress on felony assaults — the category where performance is weakest — will be a key test of the administration’s public safety philosophy. Vital City NYC has published the most rigorous independent analysis of New York City’s 2025 crime data, providing the nuance that press conference announcements inevitably compress. NYPD’s public crime statistics are updated monthly, allowing residents to track neighborhood-level trends. The question going forward is not whether New York is safer than it was — it largely is, in the most serious categories of violence. The question is whether the city can address the persistent and growing problem of assaults while maintaining the trust of communities that have long had complicated relationships with policing.
