Overview
- Preliminary counts from more than 550 agencies indicate roughly a 20% year-over-year decline in U.S. homicides in 2025, pending FBI confirmation.
- Baltimore ended 2025 with 133 homicides, down 31% from 2024, and 311 nonfatal shootings, reaching its lowest levels in about half a century.
- Baltimore leaders point to recruitment gains (241 sworn hires, up 47%), higher clearance rates and community violence interventions, as new FBI guidance moved late deaths to the year of injury.
- Chicago reported 416 murders, its fewest since 1965, with steep drops in shooting incidents and victims, according to preliminary police data.
- New York recorded broad declines, including 91 murders in Brooklyn (down 24%), and an NYPD year-end homicide count near 303, even as rape reports rose under a broadened legal definition.