Three decades of crime data show how far New York City has come, and which questions remain open.
Thirty-three years of New York Police Department (NYPD) data fall into four eras, each with its own dynamics, its own winners and losers and its own unresolved questions.
Era 1: The Great Decline (1993–2008). Major felonies fell from 430,460 to 116,952, a 73% drop in 15 years. Every category fell steeply.
Era 2: The Long Plateau (2009–2019). The headline numbers plateaued near historic lows. But felony assault reversed course, and grand larceny stopped falling.
Era 3: The Pandemic Rupture (2020–2021). COVID-19 ended the plateau. Shootings doubled, and murder and car theft rose sharply. Some other crimes fell.
Era 4: The Uneven Recovery (2022–2025). Shootings and murder came back down, then kept falling to historic lows. But assault climbed higher, and larceny remains elevated. By some measures the city is safer than ever; by others, certain crimes are worse than they’ve been in a generation.
In 1993, New York City recorded 430,460 major felony complaints. Fifteen years later, the number had fallen to 116,952. Every category fell steeply.
Murder fell 73%. Shootings fell 71%. Auto theft — the quintessential 1990s New York crime — fell 89%, from 111,622 to 12,493. Burglary dropped 80%. Robbery dropped 74%.
The numbers went down every year for 15 straight years. The decline cut across boroughs, precincts and crime types.
While murder and shootings kept falling, felony assault reversed course and has been rising for 17 years.
Felony assault bottomed out at 16,002 in 2008. Then it started climbing. By 2019, it had reached 20,695, a 29% increase that drew little notice amid the broader crime decline. After the pandemic, the rise accelerated. By 2025, felony assault stands at 29,841 — 86% above its 2008 low and closing in on its 1993 level of 41,121.
“Felony assault has nearly doubled since 2008, undoing about half of that category’s gains from the great crime decline.”
In the Bronx, felony assault complaints in 2025 (8,949) have exceeded their 1993 level (8,925). Brooklyn is closing in. Queens has nearly doubled from its low.
The rise has persisted through three mayoral administrations, multiple policing strategies and a pandemic. Explanations under debate range from changes in reporting to social media–fueled conflicts to substance abuse. Whatever is driving it, felony assault has climbed for 17 years while most major crimes fell.
Shootings went the other way. In 2025 they stand at 688, the lowest figure in the 33-year dataset. That’s an 87% decline from 1993, and 11% below the pre-pandemic low of 776 in 2019.
Shootings doubled from 776 to 1,531 in 2020. By 2025 they were down to 688. Murder followed the same path: 309 in 2025, down from 488 in 2021 and the lowest since at least 1993.
Toggle between 1993 and 2025 to see how the map of shooting incidents has changed. Darker shading means more shootings. Hover over any precinct for details.
COVID-19 drove some crimes sharply up and left others flat or lower.
Crimes of opportunity on empty streets — burglary, auto theft — surged. Gun violence rose sharply as courts closed and social services contracted. But grand larceny (which requires victims present to steal from) and harassment both fell because fewer people were out.
Between the fall in shootings and the rise in assault sits a cluster of crimes that are well below their 1990s peaks but still elevated and no longer falling.
Auto theft dropped 95% from 1993 to 2018 — from 111,622 to 5,428. It was the greatest single-category decline in the dataset. Then it reversed. By 2023, it had nearly tripled to 15,795. The Kia/Hyundai vulnerability, social media–driven theft rings, and reduced street-level deterrence all played roles. Even now, at 13,532, it sits 149% above its floor.
Grand larceny — which includes phone snatching, package theft and retail crime — dropped from 85,737 in 1993 to 37,838 in 2010. Then it started rising again, and it has stayed elevated: 48,107 in 2025. It’s now the largest category of major felony, accounting for nearly 40% of the total.
Together, felony assault, grand larceny and auto theft now represent the bulk of the city’s crime problem. The old 1990s crime mix — dominated by burglary and robbery — has been replaced by a new one.
Some categories almost disappeared.
The city has virtually eliminated certain forms of crime while barely denting others. Burglary fell 87%. Felony assault fell 27%, and most of that happened before 2008.
Even as shootings fall citywide, they remain concentrated in a handful of precincts. In 2025, the top 10 precincts account for nearly 40% of all shooting incidents, and all 10 are in two boroughs.
Seven of the ten are in the Bronx and three are in Brooklyn. None are in Manhattan, Queens or Staten Island.
This map shows the percentage decline in major felony complaints by precinct from 1993 to 2025. Deeper green indicates a steeper drop. The Bronx precincts show shallower declines than the rest of the city.
While crime has fallen, the arrest rate for major felonies has risen sharply. In 1993, police made arrests in roughly 16% of major felony cases. Today, that figure is 46%.
Complaints fell from 430,460 to 121,756, while arrests fell more modestly from 68,357 to 56,039. Police are making fewer total arrests but clearing a much larger share of reported crimes. Total arrests in 2024 and 2025 — over 116,000 across all categories — are at their highest levels in the dataset.
The data shows progress on some crimes and backsliding on others.
In one New York, shootings are at a 33-year low, murder is near a historic floor and the pandemic spike has passed. Burglary and robbery are down 87% and 82% since 1993.
In the other New York, felony assault is approaching levels not seen since the early 1990s. Grand larceny remains elevated. Car theft remains well above its pre-pandemic floor. And gun violence is concentrated: seven of the ten precincts with the most shootings are in a single borough.
New York got safer. The open questions are why certain forms of violence have resisted 33 years of progress and what it would take to close the gap.