“Anyone who thinks this city is in chaos, they just don’t know this city,” Mayor Eric Adams said during a news conference at police headquarters on Thursday. “New York City remains the safest big city in America, bar none. The numbers prove that.”
Crime reached record lows before the pandemic and then spiked afterward. Now, it is receding again.
According to the data, there were only 63 murders in the city in the first quarter of 2025, the second lowest ever recorded in the first three months of a year. Other major crimes, including robbery and grand larceny, also declined across the city, she said.
Felony assaults, which have remained persistently high in the past year, dropped 2.7 percent to 6,361 from 6,535 in the same period last year. In 2024, there were 29,417 felony assaults, the highest number in at least 24 years.
Commissioner Tisch credited the declines in part to the department’s focus on policing in “Violence Reduction Zones,” areas with historically high concentrations of crime, including 125th Street in Manhattan, downtown Flushing in Queens and East New York in Brooklyn. The “hyperlocal” deployment of officers to these areas has helped reduce crime, she said, citing a 25 percent drop in major crimes across these zones.
“This work makes our neighborhoods and the people who live and work in them, safer,” she said.
Major crimes on the subway also fell by 18 percent from the same period last year, police said. And, for the first time since 2018, there have been no murders in the transit system since the start of the year.