By Forum Staff
City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch announced on Tuesday that the Big Apple experienced significant reductions in crime and violence during the first month of 2025, with 1,700 fewer overall major crimes, a 16.8-percent decline compared to January 2024. This comes on the heels of 15.5-percent crime declines in the month of December.
The overall decrease in index crime encompassed all five boroughs and included a 36.4-percent decrease in subway crime, as well as double-digit declines in murder, robbery, grand larceny, auto theft, and shooting incidents. Hundreds of cops have been reassigned from desk jobs into the subway system; and subway deployments were optimized to cover the highest crime stations and ensure officers are on trains and platforms (as opposed to entrances and mezzanines), where 78 percent of crime actually occurs. Additionally, the department has deployed two officers to patrol every overnight subway train between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. to address the overnight transit crime
The City recorded the lowest number of shooting incidents in the month of January since CompStat began tracking the numbers over 30 years ago, including a record five straight days with no reported shooting victims. In the month of January, murder was down 24.2 percent compared to January 2024 (25 vs. 33), and shooting incidents were down 21.5 percent.
Other key major crime categories including robbery, grand larceny, and auto theft recorded particularly steep declines, driving the overall reduction in index crime. Robbery was down 26 percent (1,063 vs. 1,436); grand larceny was down 21.7 percent (3,256 vs. 4,161); and grand larceny-auto was down 23.1 percent (898 vs. 1,167). Felony assaults—which spiked upward in 2024—declined in January by 6.9 percent, compared to the same period in 2024 (1,983 vs. 2,130).
Tisch said the results are driven by deployments of police officers to hot-spot locations experiencing spikes in crime, or “zone” policing. Zone-based policing is a hyper local, data-driven model where problematic areas are identified by an algorithm that defines clusters of violence and disorder.
“January’s crime declines are an extraordinary testament to the work of our cops,” Tisch said. “Every day, we are analyzing crime numbers and optimizing our deployments to put cops in zones that need them. That’s starting to deliver real results. And New Yorkers can expect more of that data-driven policing to come.”
Public housing developments saw a 14.5-percent decrease in crime, compared to the first month of 2024 (425 vs. 497).
The NYPD’s Hate Crime Task Force also reported a substantial drop in bias-related incidents, with eight fewer cases in January 2025 compared to the same month last year (30 vs. 38).
The department noted an increase in reported rapes, with 149 incidents reported in January 2025 compared to 106 in January 2024. Of these reported incidents, 88 occurred in 2025, while 61 were incidents from prior years. This increase is in part explained by recent legislative changes that rightfully expanded the legal definition of rape in New York to include victims of certain sexual assaults as rape victims. Additionally, a higher percentage of rape cases reported were domestic in nature.
